Thirsty . . . water . . . I needed water . . . Once more I hunched along, the gravel bruising and cutting my hands as I crawled, and came to the river. My hands went into the flood.
Out of the water arose a nightmare to front me!
It was fanged; a great gapping mouth stretched wide and ready to snap me in. For that moment I saw only the mouth and the teeth within it. I threw myself back and away, wrenching my wound so that I lost consciousness.
“—awake!”
“Kyllan?”
“Awake! Dussa, let him wake!”
Cool wetness on my face. But that frantic cry did not ring in my ear; it was in my mind.
“Kyllan?”
“Wake you! If you would live, wake!”
Not Kyllan, not Kaththea. This was not the known mind touch. It was a thin, keening voice which hurt my brain as some sounds hurt the ears. I tried to flee it, but it held me fast.
“Wake!”
I opened my eyes, expecting somehow to see that monster from the river. But instead it was an oval face of pale, fair coloring, and around it tendrils of spun-silver hair dried, to spring into a floss cloud.
“Wake!” Hands on me, pulling me up.
“What—who—?”
She kept looking over her shoulder, as if she also feared what might emerge from the river. Her anxiety was plain.
But to me it had little meaning, and when she looked back to me she frowned. Her thoughts were as sharp pointed knives to prick my swimming brain into action.
“We have little time. They make a bargain—with you for payment! Do you wish to be given to those?”
I blinked. But the urgency of her mind touch stirred within me the instinct for self-preservation that will keep a man going even when his conscious mind has retreated into non-thought. Clumsily I tried to answer to her tugging, somehow crawling to the river as she pulled and pushed me in that direction.
Then I remembered and tried to jerk out of her hold.
“Thing—thing in there—”
Her grip tightened and she thought at me fiercely. “No longer. It will obey me. You must get away before they send for you.”
So determined was her will that it overrode my small spark of rebellion and I lurched on. Then I was floundering in the water.
“On your back—over on your back.” she ordered.
Somehow I did find myself on my back, and once more I was drawn along, my head held above the surface. We were headed downstream. My companion swam, but also used the current to aid our flight. For flight it was. My immersion cleared my thinking enough to let me know that we were in danger.
Then it began to rain; huge drops struck the surface about us. The clouds were at last loosing the burden with which they had so long threatened us. I closed my eyes against the beating, and I thought my companion’s apprehension heightened.
“Must—must get ashore—before the floods come. . . .” I caught her hurried thought. Then she called a call so high in pitch it faded from my mental grasp. Shortly after, there was a burst of relief from her mind. Then followed her orders.
“We must go under water here. Take a deep breath and hold it when I say so.”
My protest did not register with her. So when her order reached my mind I filled my lungs as best I might. There was abrupt darkness about us. We were not only submerged beneath the water, but must also come under some other roofing. There is a fear in this for my species, and perhaps I felt it the more since I was helpless. Did she realize I must breathe—breathe—now!
Then my face broke water, my nose and mouth open to the air. I gulped that in, and with it a strong animal scent, as if we transversed a burrow, yet water still lapped about us. It was dark, yet my companion advanced with confidence.
“Where are we?”
“In a runway to an aspt house. Ah, now we must crawl. Hold to my belt and come—”
Turning from my back was a task which left me sweating again, but turn I did in those cramped quarters. Her hands aided and guided me, setting my groping fingers in a belt with many sharp shells set along its surface. We crawled, we came into a wide circular place which had ghostly light shifting from the upper portion of its dome.
The flooring under us was piled with dried rushes and bunches of leaves, while the walls of the dome were of dried mud mixed with more reeds, plastered into some smoothness. At the apex of that ceiling were small holes to give air, though that was heavily tainted with the strong animal odor. Light also came from another source: bits of vegetable matter had been wedged haphazardly into the walls and emitted a weird grayish radiance.
We were not alone in that domed room. Squatting across from us was a furred creature. It was large. If it had stood on its powerful hind feet it might have just topped my shoulder. Its head was round, with no discernible ears, a wide mouth with noticeable, jutting teeth, and feet provided with long heavy claws. Had I fronted it in other company I might have watched it warily. But now it smoothed its fur with its paws, combing through that thickness with its claws. It did this almost absently, for its eyes were fixed upon the girl who had brought me. Though I could not catch their thought speech, I was sure they were communicating.
She was Orsya, but why she had brought me from the islet, and from what danger we fled, I had no idea. The furred owner of the house waddled to a hole and, ducking into it, was gone. Orsya turned her attention to me.
“Let me look upon your wound.” It was an order rather than a request, but one I obeyed. For the raging pain Dahaun’s treatment had reduced was fast returning, and I wondered how much more I could stand.
The Krogan girl brought out a knife and cut more of my breeches and the bandage I had knotted tighter. Though the light of our refuge seemed twilight to me, it apparently served her adequately. She examined my wound intently.
“It is better than I had hoped. The woodswoman knows her herbs,” was Orsya’s comment. “While her roots and leaves would not heal it, yet the poison has eaten no deeper. Now let us see what can be done.”
I had raised myself on my elbows to watch her. Now, with a palm flat against my chest, she pushed me flat again.
“Rest—do not move! I shall speedily return.”
As the animal, she crawled through that mud arch and I was left alone. The light-headedness which had come and gone upon the islet plagued me, and with it the pain in my thigh was a fire charring to the bone.
It seemed a very long time before she came back, and I needed all my small remaining stock of fortitude to endure it. I knew that I had a fever and it was increasingly hard to keep in touch with the world about me.
Orsya bent over my wound again; her touch was at first sheer agony as she coated torn flesh with a soft, wet substance she took from a shell box. Then a coolness spread from that coating, soothing, turning the torn flesh numb. Three times she spread the coating, each time waiting for a short interval before she applied the next layer. Then she put over it some wide leaves.
When she had finished she raised my heavy head and urged into my mouth some globules that burst as I bit down on them, filling my mouth with a salty, bitter fluid.
“Swallow!” she commended.
In spite of my distaste, I did, though it was faintly nauseating and left my throat feeling raw. Water from a shell cup followed, before she settled me back on an improvised pillow of reeds scraped up from the floor.
I slept then, my last waking memory that of seeing Orsya curl up at the other side of the house. She held something between her hands; whatever that object was, it gave off flickers of light which ran hither and thither across the walls, for what purpose I could not guess.
When I awoke again I was alone. But my head was clear and the pain in my wound was only a suggestion of ache. Suddenly I wanted out—into the clear, clean air which did not carry the animal smell, wanted out enough so that, if I still had my sword, I might have been hacking at the walls which pent me there.
Only, when I tried to sit up, I discovered that the plaster Orsya had put on my thigh was now a great weight, its surface under my exploring hands, seemingly as hard as stone. It tied me as efficiently where I was as if she had left me in dungeon chains. But I did not have long to fret about that, for she crawled in from the tunnel, carrying something wrapped in a net.