Perhaps there was some logic in that argument. And—short of dragging Ashla away bodily, which he could not do—there was nothing left but to yield to her desire and do the best he could to take all precautions possible.
They circled farther to the south in order to move into the wind. There was only one wan light showing at the garth now—the night lantern in the yard. As far as they could judge, the inhabitants of the household were safe abed. The field crossings were made in rushes that took them from the shadow safety of one wall to the next. Then they were close to the stake barrier about the buildings.
Naill’s nose wrinkled against the smell of the garth and its people. Just as the human scent of Kosburg’s larger holding had awakened revolt in him, so did the odor of this place. And this time the impact of his olfactory senses was even sharper. He heard a small gasp from his companion, saw her run her hand vigorously under her nose.
“That”—Naill tried to drive the truth home—”is the smell of off-worlders!”
“But we—we are—” She was shaken, bewildered.
“We are of the Iftin, who do not kill trees or live encased in dead things! Now do you begin to believe that we are we—and they are they?”
“Samera can be like us also!” she said obstinately. But Naill thought that she eyed the bulk of the buildings before her a new way—certainly not as one returning to a familiar place.
The phas shed was set against the stake wall, or they would never have made the entry. A running leap took Naill within grasping distance of the top. Once up, he lowered his sword belt to aid Ashla’s climb. Below them they could hear the stir of the animals, a snorting from one of the beasts. Ashla lay flat on the roof and crooned softly, a soothing rise and fall of small notes. The snorting stopped.
“They will be quiet,” she whispered. “I fed them their mash, they know my voice. And—there is the loft window!”
Still on her hands and knees, she scuttled across the shed roof and crouched beneath the opening. Then she arose slowly to look inside. Her survey took so long that Naill wondered if the dark baffled her sight, better than human though it was. Then, even as she had quieted the phas colts, so she signaled again—a small hissing of whisper, the separate words of which did not even reach as far as his own post. Three times she spoke. Naill caught a glimpse of movement within. The windowpane swung out and a child stood there, her arms reaching for Ashla.
Only, when Ashla’s hands went out in return, the child shrank back and Naill heard her frightened cry.
“No—no—not Ashla—a demon! A demon is here!” Her screams were as wild as they had been in the forest clearing. Naill moved, crossing the roof with a wild thing’s leap to catch at Ashla, force her back with him to the wall drop.
“Over!” He threw rather than let her climb, following in an instant. There were other sounds in the garth. Just as his expedition to Kosburg’s had aroused that other holding, so were Samera’s screams doing here—and now the hounds’ bay drowned out her cries.
“Run!” Naill caught Ashla’s hand, and they were well on their way across the first field before he was conscious that she was not dragging back, that her flight was as quick and sure as his. But she was sobbing as she fled.
“Not—not—” She fought to get out words Naill believed he already knew. “Not Ashla,” she choked out. “Never Ashla again!”
His own revolt against Terrankind had been complete, but he had had no ties with anyone at Kosburg’s beyond a kind of passive companionship. How much harder this must be for someone who had to learn that even close blood ties no longer held between settler-born and Iftin. Would the shock be as great this time as it had been when she had faced Illylle in the forest pool?
The main thing was to get away, back into the shelter of the woods. The garthmen might bring the hounds out in the fields, patrol for the rest of the night in the open, but that they would venture far into the forest he doubted. And he intended to be as far to the westward as possible before the coming of dawn.
“You spoke the truth,” Ashla said as Naill swung her down a gully, pushed her along that cut. “That was Samera and we—we were no longer sisters. She—she feared me, and when I looked upon her, it was as if she were someone I had known long ago but for whom I no longer felt in my heart. Why?”
“Ask that of those who set the treasure traps,” Naill retorted. “I do not know why they must have their changelings—but changelings we are now. We have no longer any contact with off-worlders.”
“It was so with you?”
“Yes. I tried to go back to Kosburg’s when I recovered from the fever, after I was changed. When I saw them . . . I knew there was no going back.”
“No going back,” she repeated forlornly. “But where do we go?”
“West—to the sea.”
“Perhaps that is as good a place as any,” she agreed mechanically. And she did not speak again as they plunged deeper into the wood.
They kept on past the dawn, since the day was cloudy. Though no rain fell, yet there was a mist in the air and this turned chill, so they were glad of the hooded cloaks. Wearing these, they melted so into the general green-silver-brown of the forest, Naill thought any trailer without hounds would pass them directly without noticing.
The river had taken a bend to the north, and they had not yet reached its bank when Naill learned he had underestimated the enemy to an extent that might mean their deaths. A flyer’s hum grew loud and with it the crackle of unleashed energy. Rising smoke and fumes marked the beat of a flamer whip wielded from on high! The pilot was cruising hardly above treetop level, using a portable flamer on the shorter forest growth of the river bottoms.
In spite of the dampness of the mist, the recent rains, no vegetation could resist that. And a fire so begun would burn until a storm of hurricane proportions would be required to quench it. No longer depending upon their own hunting methods, the garthmen must have appealed to the port officials for aid. If he and Ashla could be thus herded into the open by the river, they would be easy prey.
The ruthlessness of that flame lash was enough to panic a fugitive. Naill forced his fear under control.
“What is it?” The girl’s attention was for the way they had come, the smoke, the sound of crashing trees as the ray ripped the wild.
“They have a flyer and are using a flamer from it.” Naill reported the truth.
“Flyer . . . flamer . . .” She was bewildered. “But those are Worldly weapons—no garthman would use them.”
“No—so they must have called the port officials.”
“How could they? The Believers do not allow com units in any garth—those also are Worldly.”
“Then the port police were already out—for some reason.”
There had been that other flyer hunting over the river when he had first made his way to Iftcan. But that was days ago. Why would they still be patrolling the wild? Hoorurr had been wing-shot by a hunting party in the forest. Had that party failed to return? Such a mishap could explain some of this.
Nor did it matter how they had come; the fact that they were methodically lashing the forest with their destructive weapon was the danger. And about the Iftin fugitives other creatures were taking flight. A small pack of borfunds burst through brush, running beside Naill and Ashla for several feet before they plunged again into a thicket. Birds fluttered from tree to tree, and other things swung or winged from branches, moving north before the fire.
“What—” Ashla halted, stripped off the cloak to roll it over one shoulder so it would not impede her flight. “The river—we head for the water?”
Naill longed to agree that that was their salvation. But he could not be sure—not with the flyer above. Oddly, he never thought of attempting communication with the pilot of that craft. The mutual repudiation between changeling and settler had been so complete that he had no hope of any understanding from the off-world officials of the port. The river it would have to be.
They made for that, pushing their weary bodies to the limit of physical endurance. Luckily, the flyer pilot was engrossed in laying a crisscross pattern of fire. Ashla stumbled, nearly went down, her breath coming in huge, tearing gasps.