Shabra slowed pace. I marveled at how far Fikkold had come with his spouting wound. A flock of black winged things arose from a tangle of brush and twisted trees, circled above us, crying raucously.
“Whip!”
Out of nowhere came that warning. Then I saw Shabra turn his head, and knew that the alarm came from the one who carried me. I gave a sharp jerk to the weapon, A light flash snapped out. One of the black things screeched, somersaulted in the air and fell. The rest broke, flew for a distance, and then reformed with the cunning of an advance guard, to try once more to complete their circle. Three times they attempted that, and each time the lash drove them off, broke their pattern. From the last attack they flew before us, as if determining somewhere on ahead to lay an ambush.
We were still going down slope. Here the grass in the open spaces was coarser and darker than that of the upper country. And in places it was broken and stamped flat as if a host had gone this way. My scout training asserted control. To ride face on into impossible odds was no way to provide help for those I sought. Tentatively I thought this at Shabra.
They know you come. You cannot hide from those who hold this land.
The answer came clearly and promptly. I was ready to accept any help from my mount which he had ready to offer.
His pace had dropped to a walk. He held his head high, his wide nostrils drawing in and expelling the air in audible sniffs, as if by this sense he could detect what lay ahead. Abandoning the blood trail which had guided us to this point, he swung to the right on a course which angled sharply from the one we had followed.
Along the pillar way. Peace holds there in part.
Shabra’s explanation meant nothing to me, but that he was willing to risk this route did. I could not scent anything in the air, though I strove to. But there was something else—a weight upon the spirit, a darkening of the mind, which grew as we advanced, until it was a burden on me.
We came out on the rim of another slope and below lay open country with, not too far away, the line of the river. In that plains land was a circle of menhirs, not concentric rings as had been the stone web, but a single line of rough pillars, two of which had fallen and lay pointing outward. They encircled or guarded a platform of stone of a slate-blue color. And on that platform were the two I sought. While outside the ring of menhirs, a motley pack of creatures crawled, prowled, sniffed. Black blots of rasti slithered in and out, visible where the grass was well trampled. Several werewolves paced, sometimes on four feet, other times erect. The black birds wheeled and dipped. An armorplated thing raised a ghastly head and clawed forefeet now and then. And white blobs of mist gathered, drifted, thickened and thinned. But all these moved outside the ring of stones, and they avoided the two which had fallen outward, leaving a goodly space free about those as they continued their siege.
From the circle led two paths of pillars, one from the direction of the river, one marching up the hill to my right. Of these, many had fallen, some were broken, even blackened, as if they had been lightning struck.
Shabra trotted to the line near us. Again he began an in and out advance. Those broken and blackened stones he leaped or passed with speed; by the others he modified his pace. But back and forth, in and out, he worked down to the besieged circle.
Kyllan! Greeting, recognition from the two I sought.
Then: Take care! To your left—
There was an upheaval among the watchers, and one of the armored monsters came at a clumsy run. It opened its mouth to puff foul and stinking breath at us. I swished the whip and the lightning curled about the scaled barrel just behind the head. But that did not slow the thing. Next I laid the lash of energy across its head and eyes. It gave an explosive grunt and plowed ahead.
Hold! Not Kemoc nor Kaththea, but Shabra, warning.
Under me the horned one bunched muscle, leaped, plowed to a halt by a standing stone. The armored thing came on, to be hurled back as if it had run headfirst into a wall that even its bulk could not breach. Its coughing roar grew louder as it kept on stupidly attempting to reach us. Now some of the other attackers gathered to join it. A wolf-man, striding on two feet, yellow-red eyes cunning and intelligent, rasti a-boil, a drifting blob of mist—
Hold!
I gripped Shabra as tightly with my knees as I could, and kept a left-handed hold on the curve of his neck while I held ready the whip with my right. He made a dart past one of the shattered pillars while I lashed at the mist curling in at us. There was a burst of brilliant fire. The thing, whatever it might have been, ignited from the whip’s force. Rasti squalled as it puffed out to catch two of them in its throes.
We were in another of the pools of safety by a standing stone. The space ahead was not too wide, but midpoint there was a fallen pillar, and there gathered rasti and wolfmen. The mist drifted back from any contact with the weapon I carried.
Come—now!
That was Kaththea. She stood on the blue block, her hands to her mouth as she chanted. Though the meaning of what she sang did not reach me. I felt a response in my body, a rising surge of strength. The horned one sprang, breaking into a run. I lashed out on either side, not with any aim, but to clear our path.
I heard growling from a hairy wolf throat. One of the were-things sprang, striving to drag me from Shabra’s back. I stiff-armed it, my blow striking, by good fortune alone, beneath its jaw. But it left a dripping slash along my arm. Somehow I managed to cling to both my seat on the horned one and the whip. Then we were within the circle. And outside, the howls of that weird pack arose in a discordant chorus.
Shabra trotted to the blue stone. Kemoc half lay, half sat there, with his back supported by a shrunken pack. His helm was gone, his arm bandaged. And in his hand was the hilt of a sword, its blade broken into a narrow sliver. Kaththea still stood on the stone, her hands now at her breast. She was gaunt, as if from months of ill foraging, her beauty worn to a dying shadow, her spirit so outgoing through its sheath of flesh that I was frightened to look upon her. I slid from Shabra’s back and came to them, dropping the whip unknowingly, my hands out to give them all that I had, of my own strength, comfort—whatever they could draw from me.
Kemoc greeted me with a faint, very faint stretch of lips, the merest shadow of his one-time smile.
“Welcome back, brother. I might have known that a fight would draw you when all else failed.”
Kaththea came to the edge of the rock and half jumped, half fell into my arms. For a long moment she clung to me, no Wise Woman, no Witch, but only my sister, who had been sorely frightened and yet found the need to put aside that fear. She raised her head, her eyes closed.
“Power.” Her lips shaped the word rather than spoke it clearly aloud. “You have lain in the shadow of Power. When—where?” Eagerness overrode her fatigue.
Kemoc stirred and pulled himself up. He was studying me, intently from head to foot, his gaze lingering on my chest where the tunic gaped and the just healed scars from my hurts were still plain to read.
“It would seem that this is not your first battle, brother. But—now it would be well to tend to this—” He gestured to the gash the werewolf had opened on my arm. Kaththea pushed away from me with a little cry of concern.
I felt no pain. Perhaps whatever virtue lay in the healing mud held for a while in the bodies of those so treated. For when Kaththea examined the hurt the edges of the wound were closed and I bled no longer.
“Who has been your aid, my brother?” she asked as she worked.
“The Lady of Green Silences.”
My sister raised her head and stared at me as one who seeks for signs of jesting.
“She also calls herself Dahaun and Morquant,” I added.
“Morquant!” Kaththea seized upon the second of those names. “Of the Green Ones, the forest born! We must know more, we must!” She moved her hands as if wringing speech from silence.