This was a forest already emptied of many of its inhabitants for garth clearings had gnawed at it steadily to north and east. And the creatures that were wary and shy had long since departed. Not all, however. Some still holed up in tree or ground burrows. Now these slept through the dead season.
Strong was the scent and louder the clamor of the dogs. At least those sentinels must long ago have aroused their masters. Remembering the fate of other garths, they would be doubly alert. Armed with blasters, they should be able to turn back an attack.
The Iftin party must take care. It would do no good to be caught in some fight and mistaken for the Enemy. Ayyar caught Jarvas’ sharp hand orders, dividing them into two parties, right and left. It was right Ayyar turned, Illylle beside him, Rizak a little behind.
They detoured about the clutching, dangerous branches of a large thorn tree. Now the scent was not so strong. Ayyar sniffed another odor, the death that surrounded each garth where tree, bush, all green life died in ragged cuttings gouged out of the true beauty of Janus. And he knew again hatred for those who thus slew.
Was this Himmer’s garth? He asked Illylle. She looked about her. But now she shook her head.
“This is too far east. Perhaps it is Tolferg’s.” But was she sure or only wished it so?
It seemed to Ayyar that the barking had lessened. Fewer hounds giving tongue? Now, flickering light among the trees—torches?
They slackened pace and kept to cover until they looked through a screen of withered brush, out over raw land where huge stumps stood, charred from the dogged burning of fires kept going for weeks, even months.
The light came from torches blazing on a stockade wall. Behind that was the garth building. Several of the torches had been pitched down to set fire to dried material heaped in the open, so that the stretch of cleared land was as light as the besieged could make it, though every half-burned stump provided a pool of shadow. With their hind-quarters pressed against the now barred gate of the garth enclosure stood four hounds, showing their fangs to the night. They had not come to that stand easily. Wounds bled on their flanks and shoulders, and another dog lay struggling to win to its feet but unable to do so.
Between the edge of the wood and the gate lay at least six more of those vicious four-footed guards. It looked as if they had been loosed to buy time for their masters.
“To the right, beside the forked stump,” Illylle whispered.
The black clot of stump had been fire-hollowed into an unusual shape, its center portion burnt away, but the two outer rims rising in projections, giving the remaining stub the appearance of an animal head, ears up, alert to any sound.
Between those ears was movement, a rounded shadow arising for an instant. From the rear the skulker looked Ift, cloak spread out in the concealing sweep Ayyar used upon need. The head turned—Ift! Illylle’s fingers tightened on Ayyar’s arm. The counterfeit could not be detected, at least not here and now. Rizak whispered.
“Could That have captured some of the old true race, made them Its servants?”
“Who knows? But this is of the Enemy.” Of that Ayyar was sure. “How many?”
He searched the ground with hunter’s eyes and used his nose to locate five more before him. Since they were certainly not all bunched here, perhaps double or triple that number might be abroad.
Illylle drew a sharp breath. “They wait—for what?”
A scream answered her, such a cry as only extreme fear and pain might tear from a human throat. Out of the brush to their right stumbled a weaving figure, rags of clothing still about it, but not enough to conceal that it was a woman. Shrieking, she staggered on between the hidden attackers who made no move to pull her down.
“She is their key to the gate,” Rizak said.
Would it have worked? Perhaps, had not the hounds moved. Two of them sprang, almost as one—not at the creeping shadows, but for the woman. Their fangs ended her screams as she was borne to the ground. Then the hounds howled as ray beams from the stockade crisped them. Their masters must have believed them mad.
One of the false Iftin sprang into the open, caught an outflung arm of the woman, hurled the body back into the shadow of a stump where two of his fellows pounced upon it and dragged it away with them.
“Aloft—over there!” Rizak’s head was up.
One of the port flitters was in the night sky, and from it lashes of fire beat the ground.
“Back!” Ayyar pulled at Illylle. They ran from the death that would spare nothing in the ignited woodland.
“Down river—south—” panted Rizak moments later. He was right. The rock and sand there would not burn; they might find shelter if they could reach it. As yet the beams struck only about the garth clearing—but they would work out from there.
In this much they were favored, the trees took long to ignite. It was only when the flame lash touched the lower growth that danger spread.
They heard sounds in the brush, the flight of other things. Then two figures burst into a glade on the left—false Iftin, one wearing the rags of a smoldering cloak about his shoulders, as if he felt no heat or pain from that burning garment. They were heading for the river, too.
Were those the only survivors among the attackers? Some must have been caught in the first lashing of the flitter, Ayyar was sure.
“We—can—not—make—it—” Rizak coughed through the smoke.
“To the right!” A momentary glimpse had suggested salvation to Ayyar.
One of the trees, almost the size of a Great Crown, had fallen here ages past. Its roots pointed to the sky on one side of a deep pit. From that hole came a smell Ayyar knew of old, kalcrok. He had been web-captive in just such a burrow. But this scent was old. The burrow could not have been used lately. Perhaps the absence of large game, driven away from the garth, had led to its abandonment.
“In!” He followed his own order, pulled Illylle with him, to land on a mat of evil-smelling debris, Rizak sliding down behind.
What Ayyar sought lay directly before him, the entrance to the inner burrow. The webs about the walls were only tatters. This was safely deserted and could save them. He scrambled forward into the heart of the kalcrok nest hole.
III
It was a tight fit as they wedged into that runway in the deep earth. Somewhere along was a side chamber wherein the once owner had had its nest. This should house them from the fury of the flames. When they lay together in that evil-smelling hole, Ayyar’s heart still pounded heavily.
“Jarvas, Kelemark, Lokatath—” he heard Illylle whisper.
Yes, what of the others? Had they found the small measure of safety offered by the river lands? But Rizak was thinking ahead.
“Burnt-over, this land will be bare for any searching. If they loose hounds . . . ”
“These burrows have more than one door.” Ayyar could speak from his fearsome earlier experience. “And they run straight. The other door will open nearer the river.”
“Rizak, when will the brethren now over the South Sea return?” Illylle asked.
“We roused early. They should come with the true spring.”
“To find the country arrayed against them.”
“They do not come openly ever,” he defended their fellow changelings, the ones who were moved by implanted instinct to invade the Forest, set the treasure traps and wait thereafter to find and aid the new Iftin who emerged from the Green Sick as their kindred.
“But neither have they yet faced such danger as this,” Ayyar pointed out. “They may return to find no Forest and all off-worlders hunting them down. That plans well, striking in winter when we do not move.”
“I cannot believe,” Illylle’s head lay on her arm, her mouth in these close quarters so near to his cheek that Ayyar felt the warmth of her breath with every word she spoke, “that the Mirror failed us! We saw the flooding and the storm and what struck the Waste. That could not have escaped—”
“But we do not know the nature of That,” Ayyar interrupted. “It may be that danger arouses It to greater strength and efforts, to the summoning of more servants and warriors. With the Larsh It brought down Iftcan. Now with these off-worlders It will hammer the remains of that city into black ash. There is only one way to face It—”
“Yes—deal with those at the port, see that they know the truth!”
Ayyar could feel the shiver run through Illylle. His own body reacted thus as well. To go among the unchanged, to speak to them face to face, to be so close—that was an ordeal that perhaps none of them could stand up to, physically or emotionally. If there were some other way, one that did not include a meeting—a communication, until that could be used at long distance.