Wellearn was too calm to pretend otherwise. Wherever he glanced, he saw new horrors. One image in particular sank barbs in his memory. There was an elderly man who must have walked, he thought, as far as Tempestamer had swum to get here. For his pads were completely worn away, and he was hobbling along on the under-edge of his mantle with vast and painful effort, no taller than a new-budded child, leaving a broad wet trail like a giant sluq…
For the first time Wellearn realized: there were some dooms far worse than death.
Beating back those who got in their way, using poles from their briqs’ saddles in preference to prongs, Skilluck’s party breasted the slope below the observatory and obtained their first view of the entire city. Wellearn repressed a cry. The trails of luminous vines which he had seen in Embery’s company were being torn loose and waved madly around until they died, as though the bravetrees of all the houses had suddenly developed palsy. Northward, in the quarter of the fireworkers, there was a vast glare on the underside of a pall of smoke, suggesting that all the stored fuel had been set ablaze at once. And the night breeze carried not just fumes but the sound of screaming.
“Looks to me as if they’re even crazier over yonder!” Skilluck muttered. “So who’s going to want to quit the briqs and settle here? If we can’t carry all the sane survivors … That’s the spyglass-house, is it?”
His answer came in the shape of a well-aimed throwing prong, which missed Strongrip by a claw’s-breadth. At once they dropped to the ground, prepared to crawl the rest of the way.
“The defenders are still on guard,” Wellearn whispered. “I must let them know who we are!”
“But—”
“I know what I’m doing!” And he began to work his way uphill, soilover-style, using his claws and the edges of his mantle instead of his pads.
Sharpening his hearing to its utmost, he caught fault cries up ahead.
“Looks like a well-organized attack! Stand to!”
Another few moments, and a half-score of prongs flew over him. Somewhere behind was a strangled moan.
Moving as fast as he could, he closed the distance to the side of the observatory: that great complex of bravetrees and countless other plants where he had been shown marvels beyond belief. At every gap between their boles protruded a cruel spike instead of the former telescopes, and from roots to crown prongsmen waited to deliver death like a blow from the sky.
He gathered all his force and shouted, “Embery!”
And instantly doubled over, offering the toughest part of his mantle to any missile.
It came—but he felt only a blow, not a stab. The throwing prong skidded away into the undergrowth.
“Someone called my name!” he heard … or did he? Had tension allowed him to mistake imagination for reality? Straining perception to the utmost, he waited.
And almost rushed to dreamness with relief. No doubt of what he heard this time.
“No, daughter, it isn’t possible. The stress has been too much for you—”
“Embery! Shash! Chard!”
Wellearn had to straighten out again to deliver his words with maximum force, and for an instant could imagine the prong that was going to lodge in his mantle. But he went on, “The Wego are here! The Wego are here! Don’t—!”
One of the defenders high in the observatory’s treetops heard the warning too late. He had taken aim and let go. Wellearn screamed.
But the prong sank into soft ground … so close, he could feel the quivering impact. After a little, he was able to recover himself and return to normal pressure as Shash and Embery and half a score of their friends rushed to meet him.
Shamelessly embracing Embery under his mantle, as though they were about to mate in public—but she was showing his bud, his bud!—and anyway nobody would have cared if they had, Wellearn translated the conversation going on softly among the trees of the observatory, trying to make himself believe in his own heroism. That was what they were all calling it, Skilluck too … but it wasn’t, it was just that he had done what the situation called for, and anyway most so-called heroes turned out to have been temporarily crazy, living a dream instead of reality.