Wergenget, his eyes still heavy with sleep, stumbled up to Kickaha. “What’s Opwel saying?”
Kickaha said the sentinel’s voice was being drowned out. Wergenget began yelling for everybody to shut up, and in a minute he’d subdued them. Opwel, able to make himself understood, relayed the message of the man in the tree.
“Two men and a woman ran by on the beach. And then, a minute later, warriors of the tribe of Thans came along after them. They seemed to be chasing the two men and the woman.”
Kickaha hollered. “Did the woman have long hair as black as the wing of a crow?”
“Yes!”
“And was the hair of one man yellow and the other red?”
“Onil says one man had yellow hair. The other was black-skinned and his hair was the curliest he’d ever seen. Onil said the man was black all over.”
Kickaha groaned, and said, “Anana! And Urthona and McKay!”
He ran for the gate, shouting, “Anana!”
Wergenget yelled an order, and two men seized Kickaha. The chief huffed and puffed up to him, and, panting, said, “Are you crazy! You can’t go out there alone! The Thans will kill you!”
“Let me loose!” Kickaha said. “That’s my woman out there! I’m going to help her!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Wergenget said. “You wouldn’t have a chance.”
“Are you just going to sit here and let her be run down?” Kickaha yelled.
Wergenget turned and shouted at Opwel. He yelled at Olin, who replied. Opwel relayed the message.
“Onil says he counted twenty.”
The chief rubbed his hands and smiled. “Good. We outnumber them.” He began giving orders then. The men grabbed their weapons, saddled the moosoids, and mounted. Kickaha got on his own, and the moment the gate was open he urged it out through the opening. After him came Wergenget and the rest of the warriors.
CHAPTER TEN
AFTER BEING KNOCKED back into the channel, Anana had begun scrambling back up. The water by then was to her breasts, but she clawed back up the side, grabbing the grass, pulling it out, grabbing more handfuls.
Above her were yells, and then something struck her head. It didn’t hurt her much, didn’t even cause her to lose her grip. She looked down to see what had hit her. The case containing the Horn of Shambarimen.
She looked toward the black wall of water rushing toward her. It would hit within ten seconds. Perhaps less. But she couldn’t let the Horn be lost. Without it their chances of ever getting out of this wretched world would be slight indeed.
She let herself slide back into the water and then swam after it. It floated ahead of her, carried by the current of the stream rising ahead of the flash flood. A few strokes got her to it. Her hand closed around the handle, and she stroked with one hand to the bank. The level had risen above her head now, but she did not have to stand up. She seized a tuftful of grass, shifted the handle from hand to teeth, and then began climbing again.
By then the ground was shaking with the weight of the immense body of water racing toward her. There was no time to look at it, however. Again she pulled herself up the wet slippery bank, holding her head high so the case wouldn’t interfere with her arms.
But she did catch out of the corner of her eye a falling body. By then the roar of the advancing water was too loud for her to hear the splash the body made. Who had fallen? Kickaha? That was the only one she cared about.
The next moment the rumble and the roar were upon her. She was just about to shove the case over the edge of the bank and draw herself up after it when the mass struck. Despite her furious last-second attempt to reach safety, the surface waters caught her legs. And she was carried, crying out desperately, into the flood.
But she managed to hold onto the Horn. And though she was hurled swiftly along, she was not in the forefront of the water. She went under several times but succeeded in getting back to the surface. Perhaps the bouyancy of the case enabled her to keep to the surface.