As I stepped onto that rutted way I saw that any resemblance was indeed only superficial, since there was no stability to anything there. Rocks melted into ground and grew again in another place. The road flowed and I struggled through it knee-deep, as I had walked streams with Orsya. Those things I had sensed being below the surface of rocks, now showed themselves plainly, so I must keep my eyes from looking at them or be lost in madness.
There was only one stable thing in all this—the sword. When I looked upon it for a space and then to what lay before me, that too was solid, had some security, if only for a small fraction of time.
I came to a dip which had been the dell in which, I slew the guard. But this brimmed with a bubbling, stinking stuff which might be poisonous mud. There was no way for me to go except down into it.
* * *
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XV
BUBBLES ROSE to the surface of that slime pit and burst, releasing fetid puffs of gas. Swim? Could I put this twisted body of mine to such effort? I tried with my teary eyes to discover footing which might lie either to the left or the right. But in both directions was only that shifting which was so confusing; I quickly looked away.
If I were to go it must be by this road. Once more I put my paw to the scarf about my warty skin. Then I gripped the sword as tightly as I could and went down into that mass of half-liquid corruption. It was too thick for swimming. I sank into it slowly, though I flailed with my arms, kicked those weaker legs and feet.
I was not engulfed as I had feared. My desperate struggles brought me some progress, though it was so slow! The sickening fumes made my head light, kept the tears flowing from my eyes.
It was a little time before I noticed that where the sword rested a path opened through the stuff. Once aware of that I applied the blade with cutting strokes, carving a slit through it.
At long last there was a rock ledge facing me and I pulled out on stable land, though the mess sucked avidly at my body as if it would not let me go. I had to turn and cut with what strength I could still muster to free myself.
Then I lay full length on that rock, breathing in great gasps, even though the major part of each breath I drew was the foul gas from the bubbles. Up . . . an inner warning pricked at me . . . up and away.
Once more I was reduced to crawling, leaving smears from my caked body on the rock. Up . . . still that inner urge was a lash, growing in intensity.
I heard a sound from the morass behind, louder than the bursting of those bubbles, more akin to the sucking which had come from my own struggles. My paws gripped again and pulled feebly, bringing up the weight of my heavy body. The sword I held between my fangs, cutting my lips when I moved them incautiously, but in such safety as I could devise.
The sucking sound was closer, but I could not yet turn my head. Fear lent the last impetus to reach the top of the rise, to drag myself along the lip. Then, somehow, I hunched to my knees, swung my body around.
They were coming through the muck with a speed I could not equal. There were two of them and—
Spent with my efforts to reach this point I could not get to my feet unaided. But I wriggled to one of the stones and with its help was somehow erect again, my back against it, facing those things.
They were gray and warty of skin; they had heavy arms and thick shoulders, toad faces (though the mouths were fanged). Ridges of ragged flesh arose across their skulls from one great ear to the other. These were kinsmen of the body I inhabited!
Their gashes of mouths opened as they yammered in no understandable speech. Each carried in his hand an ax, as mighty of blade as that of Volt which I had seen often in Koris’ keeping, but far shorter of haft. It was plain they were hunting me.
There was no running from this, nor would I, I believe, even if I could force my weary body to the effort. The axes resembled those used by Sulcar borderers, which could be used either as a hand weapon, or to be thrown from a distance, with fatal results if the axman was expert.
Whether these toadmen were, I did not know. But in such cases it is always best to give high credit to your foe’s fighting prowess rather than underrate him.
I had the sword and for that to be effective I must wait until they were closer. If they were going to throw those axes, I did not believe it was possible for them to do so while they pushed through the mud. If I retreated no farther from the rim, I could dispute their landing, giving me one small advantage.
But I was so slow of body, so worn from my push through that fetid hole, that I could not move fast. I might not even leave the support of the rock against which I had set my back. When I brought up my sword in a swing meant to suggest defense, my arm answered my will so reluctantly that I felt this was indeed a fight already decided in favor of the enemy.
“Sytry!” I tried to raise the hilt to the level of my lips, the point thrusting at whatever sky this space owned. “Steel, I hold by that Name, battle I do, in that Name. Whatever favor cometh from powers I know not, yet are of the White and not the Shadow, let it rest upon me now! For I have that to do which has not been done, and there is yet a road before me—” A jumble of thoughts, ill chosen, but in that moment the most I could muster to express a plea of which I was not sure anyone, or anything, would heed.
If I could have taken only two steps forward, thrust while they were still scrambling up out of the mud, then I would have had a small advantage. But I knew that effort was not in me. Take those two steps and I would not meet them on my feet, but groveling before them, my neck bent and ready for the fall of their axes.
They must have believed me easy prey, or else they were so slow of wit that they knew only one method of attack and that a forward run, weapons aloft, yammering out what might have been war cries. I tried to swing the sword as I would have done had I had my normal body.
Its hilt loosened in my hold, spun out of my grasp, and hurled on through the air. Once more it no longer appeared a sword, but rather a flash of golden light. So swift was its passage that my eyes could not follow it, to see what it wrought in my defense. What I afterwards witnessed were wounds gaping beneath the lower jaws of the toad-men, pumping forth purplish liquid; saw them stumble and sprawl forward, sliding across the stone, their axes, falling from paws suddenly lax, striking ringingly, while I cowered back against my support, gaping foolishly.
There was another ring, louder than the axes had made, almost bell-like in tone. The sword lay there, no longer a flashing fury of destruction. I pushed away from my support, tottered to it. But the effort of stooping to pick it up made me topple and fall in turn. For a moment or two I lay there, the steel of the blade under my body. From its touch against my noisome skin spread, first a kind of warmth and then, following that, a renewal of strength. So heartened I braced myself up on my forepaws.
Where the bodies of the toadmen had lain puffed a shimmering fog of blackish motes, as soot might rise from the disturbance of a place where many fires had burned and then been quenched. And, as soot, the particles settled again to the surface of the rock, ringing—
Not the toad bodies I had seen fall to the strokes of the sword, but two lighter frames, so close to skeletons that one could see the bones plainly through the too tightly stretched skin. These, in spite of the extreme emaciation, were those of normal human kind!
The strength which had come out of the blade was in me, so I got to my feet, shuffled through the black dust to the nearest of those skeleton-men. His features were very sharp in his skull face. Looking upon him I thought that once he must have been of the Old Race or kindred blood. Death had broken some ensorcelment and returned him to his true self. Death? I glanced down at my own paws, the warty skin on my arms. Was death the only way of return?