“But what do they want?” I demanded. As he had said, a hundred years ago such piracy would have been usual, but now! The appetites of the big Combines and Companies had long been curbed by the Patrol; there were drastic answers to such action.
“Something,” Alcey returned. “Just what has not been made entirely clear. So your problem”—he shook his head—”now becomes a relatively minor one, except of course for you. There is this—” he hesitated. “I may not be doing right to tell you this, but you should be prepared. I saw your body when it was returned here. Your medico, he was not sure you could make it, but the Lydis had been warned out privately by one of their local merchant contacts. They agreed to carry a message from me to the nearest Patrol post. We had only hints and rumors then, but enough to know they must lift ahead of time. And you—or your body—could well not have survived that lift. The medico protested it on your behalf.”
I glanced down from meeting his eyes to the hands resting before me on the table top. Long thin fingers, ivory skin, strange hands—but they did my will, moved at my command. What if-if he was right in his foreboding that the Krip Vorlund taken away in the Lydis was dead, now perhaps spaced in a coffin suit after the manner of my people, so to lie among the stars for all eternity?
Beside me Maelen stirred. “I must be going,” she said, and her voice was faint, very weary. So she recalled my thoughts—the change between her and her sister could not last much longer. With every passing moment their danger grew.
“But you do not know what Korburg wants here?”
“This much. There have been recent changes in the Council, especially as it touches the government of some inner planets. This world might provide a refuge or way station—temporary, of course, but perhaps necessary for some Veep when a coup on his home world has failed, a place from which he could come back with an army trained here.”
It sounded unlikely, but his preparation for guessing right was better than mine. It remained clear that there was no hope at present of reaching the Lydis. If Captain Foss had made it to the nearest Patrol post-Then it would only be a matter of time before they would visit Yiktor. On the other hand Maelen had very little time left. And we would be safer to return to her people to wait out the struggle. I asked for a recorder, and with both of them listening taped a message which I thought would identify me to all on board the Lydis. Then I told Alcey what I would do and he agreed.
The consul furnished us with fresh mounts, though they were not as wiry and mountain-trained as the two who had carried us to Yrjar. At nightfall we rode from the port. This time we were not so lucky in escaping notice, for we were trailed and only Maelen’s power acting on the mounts of the pursuers let us pull ahead. The singing left her further drained and she urged us to greater speed, lest she fail before we found the camp.
Toward the end of that nightmare journey I carried her before me in my arms, since she could no longer sit on her animal. We put on a last burst to come to the secluded ravine between two steep hills where we had left the others. The tent was there, rent and crumpled on the ground. And half entangled in the folds lay one of the Thassa.
“Monstans!” Maelen broke from my hold and stumbled toward him, falling to the ground by his side, yet struggling up to look into his still, white face. She caught his head between her hands, bent to set her lips to his, sharing her breath with him.
I saw the tremor of his eyelids. The whole front of his tunic was stained scarlet, but somehow he had held on to the last dregs of his life force until our coming.
“Merlay”-it was a whisper in our minds, not any words shaped by those pallid lips-”they have taken her—think she—is—you—”
“Where?” Our demand was as if in one voice.
“East—” So much had he done in our service, but no more. The life he had held to swept out of him in one small sigh.
Maelen looked to me. “They seek my life. If they believe that they now have me—”
“We can follow.” I had to promise that. And, for good or ill, I knew I would keep my word.
XIX
I SAW THEREAFTER how determination of will can carry one beyond the limits of body strength. For she whom I had brought before me drew upon such will to send her on from the destroyed camp.
“Mathan?” I searched about for some trace of the other Thassa before I left the body I had wrapped in the tattered tent. Maelen sat on her saddle pad, both hands pressed to her face. Now she spoke, her voice muffled by her fingers.
“He has gone ahead.”
“A prisoner also?”
“My power fades so fast. I cannot say.” She dropped her hands to look upon me. Her eyes were dull. It was as if even as I watched, life ebbed from her. “Tie me,” she begged. “I do not know how much longer I can ride.”
I did as she wished before we left the ravine, following a trail the raiders had made no effort to conceal. There were many kasi tracks and, while I could not be sure, I thought that more than a dozen riders had passed this way.
The way we took was not a road, yet it had been used before, and it pointed through the hills ever westward toward Oskold’s hold. Maelen made no effort to guide her mount, which nevertheless followed closely the one I rode. She once more shaded her face with her hands, and I thought that now she shut out the world both physically and mentally, so she could either reach or hold some tie which would pull us to what we now sought.
Night became day and we found a camp where there were embers of a fire still warm to the touch. Maelen’s head now hung forward heavily on her breast, her arms limp at her sides. She roused only to much urging from me. But I got water between her lips, saw her swallow as if that act were both painful and difficult. More than a little liquid she refused.
It was strange to see one I had come to accept as having more than human powers become so dependent. But her half-open eyes focused on me after I had made her drink, and there was knowledge and recognition in them.
“Merlay still lives-they take her to some overlord—” Her voice was the merest thread of whisper.
“And Mathan?” I held to the hope that the other Thassa had escaped death or injury, that he might eventually join us in whatever frail attempt we must make to free Maelen’s body from the raiders.
“He is—gone—”
“Dead!”
“Not-so. He has gone to call-” Her head fell forward again and her too slender body swayed in the bonds which held her on the kas. I could not rouse her again. Thus I stood in the deserted camp of the enemy and wondered what was to be done. Manifestly Maelen could not continue, and to go on alone was rank folly. Yet neither could I abandon the trail.
“Ahhhhhh—” Half sigh, half crooning cry from Maelen. I hurried to her again. But, though that sound continued from between her lips, still she did not come out of the stupor.
There was a rustling in the bushes. I whirled, the Thassa sword-knife fitting in my hand awkwardly, since it was a weapon new to me. From the branches, down-drooping and still hung with leaves, came an animal— an animal? No—more than one, and not from just one side. Nor was the beast that had first pushed a fang-fringed muzzle through the vegetation a pattern for the rest. No, here were the Borba and Vors, and their like Tantacka, here was the like of—Simmle— More and more of them!
And the beast who led that silent, purposeful advance was one new to me, long and lithe of body, feline in its movements, with a prick-earred head, and—and eyes with the spark of human intelligence in them!
“What? Who?” I tried to beam an inquiry at their leader.
“Mathan!” The identification was sure.
Those others, were they also Thassa? Or some of those whom Maelen had sent into the wilderness? Or companions of other beast masters and mistresses?
“Part and part,” Mathan gave me answer.
He loped soft-footed to Maelen’s kas, stood upon his hind legs to look upon her.
“Ahhhhh—” Again that cry from her. But she did not open her eyes or look at him and that company. For a company—no a regiment!—it was.