“You were in the car when the Hippae struck?”
“We were in the car when the fires started,” said one of the younger Brothers. “We took off and went out into the grass a ways, thinking we’d pick up survivors later. I don’t know how many days we’ve been out there, but we only found one man.”
“We picked up a couple dozen of your people,” Sebastian Mechanic said to them. “Young fellahs, most of ‘em. They were wandering around pretty far out in the grass. There may be more. We been going out there every day to look. The Hippae aren’t around there anymore. They’re all around the swamp forest now.”
“They can’t get through, can they?” asked one of the men, obviously the one man the Brothers had rescued. His face was very pale and he carried what was left of one arm in a sling.
“Not so far as we know,” said Sebastian, wanting to be comforting. “And if they did, we’ve got heavy doors down in the winter quarters and people down there already making weapons for us to use.”
“Weapons,” breathed one of the Brothers. “I had hoped—“
“You’d hoped we could talk to them?” asked Elder Brother Laeroa bitterly. “Forget it Brother. I know you worked for the office of Doctrine, but forget it. I’m sure Jhamlees Zoe still retained his hope of converting the Hippae up to the moment they killed him He’s hoped for that ever since he came to Grass, no matter how many times we told him it would be like trying to convert tigers to vegetarianism.” Sebastian nodded agreement as he said, “lust be thankful the Hippae don’t have claws like Terran tigers do. Otherwise, they’d be able to climb and we couldn’t get away from ‘em. Now, you start on up the slope there. I’ll get on the tell-me and have somebody come pick you up.”
The Brothers got wearily to their feet and started up the long meadow in a shuffling line. When Sebastian and Persun had seen that all of them could walk, they went to listen outside the car while Roald messaged for help.
“On their way,” Roald said at last.
“Good,” Sebastian murmured. “Some of ‘em look like they couldn’t walk more than a hundred yards or so.”
“Thirty some-odd brothers left out of a thousand,” Persun commented, as he went to install the next device.
“One thing we can be grateful for,” the other replied. “There’s nothin’ left of the other nine hundred and some-odd to bury.” He paused beside the mechanical driver. “Have you noticed how quiet it is?”
The two men stood looking around them. “The noise of the tube driver,” Persun said. “It’s frightened everything.”
“The driver isn’t that noisy. And we haven’t been using it for the past little while.”
“The noise of that aircar, then.”
The silence persisted. The swamp forest, usually full of small croak-ings and rattles, the call of flick birds, the cry of leaf dwellers, was silent.
“Eerie,” whispered Persun. “Something wrong. I can feel it.” He started back toward the aircar, feeling in his pocket for his knife. Behind him Sebastian moaned.
A head peered sightlessly at them from the edge of the trees. Blank eyes glared in their direction. Above the eyes, flesh was torn to expose the bone, which gleamed moistly white. The head wobbled on its neck, rising into view, shoulders, arms, then the hideous Hippae maw below. A rider on a mount! A rider dead or so nearly dead as made no difference. The corpselike mouth opened to emit a screaming rattle, and with that sound the edge of the forest erupted into life. They burst into the open across a wide front, both riders and mounts screaming hate, defiance, death, and dismemberment. Persun turned back to grab Sebastian, who stood as one hypnotized.
Sebastian’s only thought, before his body was ripped apart, was that their morning’s labor had been too late.
Persun backed toward the aircar and swung the knife, a scream choked back, there had been another tunnel to the north. Teeth like razors raked his knife arm. His weapon clattered onto a rock. He clenched his jaw, readying himself for the final pain, his eyes staring into the blind dead eyes of the rider above him.