“And good eating,” Larry commented, cracking a bone for the succulent marrow.
“It’s even possible that we might meet a hunting party.” Kennard said hopefully. “Perhaps some of the men from the Hastur country beyond the mountains hunt here—where the game roams in such abundance.”
But they were both silent at the corollary of that statement. If no one hunted here, where the hunting was so splendid, then the mountain pass that lay between them and safety must be fearsome indeed!
The third day was cloudier than the last, and Kennard stopped often to examine the fainter and fainter shadows and calculate the sun’s position by them. The land was rising now; the gullies were steeper and more thorny, the slopes harder to scramble up. Toward that evening a thin, fine drizzle began to fall, and even Kennard, with all his skill, could not build a fire. They gnawed cold roast meat from the night before, and dampish fruits, and slept huddled together for warmth in a rock-lined crevasse.
All the next day the rain drizzled down, thin and pale, and the purplish light held no hint of sun or shadow. Larry, watching Kennard grow ever more silent and tense, could not at last contain his anxiety. He said, “Kennard, we’re lost. I know we’re going the wrong way. Look, the land slopes downhill, and we have to keep going upward toward the mountains.”
“I know we’re going downhill, muffin-head,” snapped Kennard, “into this canyon. On the other side the land rises higher. Can’t you see?”
“With this rain I can’t see a thing,” said Larry honestly, “and what’s more, I don’t think you can either.”
Kennard rounded on him, suddenly furious: “I suppose you think you could do better?”
“I didn’t say that,” Larry protested, but Kennard was tensely trying to find a shadow. It seemed completely hopeless. They were not even sure of the time of day, so that even the position of the sun would have been no help, could they have seen a shadow; this damp, darkish drizzle made no distinction between early afternoon and deep twilight.
He heard Kennard murmur, almost in despair, “If I could only get a sight of the mountain peak!”
It was the first time the Darkovan boy had sounded despair, and Larry felt the need to comfort and reassure. He said, “Kennard, it’s not as bad as all that. We won’t starve here. Sooner or later the sun will shine, or the rain will stop, and the pass will be before us clearly. Then any one of these little hilltops will show us our right direction. Why don’t we find a sheltered place and just wait out the rainstorm?”
He had not expected instant agreement, but he was not prepared for the violence, the fury with which the Darkovan boy rounded on him.
“You damned, infernal, bumbling idiot,” he shouted, “what do you think I’d do if it was only me? Do you think I can’t have sense enough to do what any ten-year-old with sense enough to tie his own bootlaces would do in such a storm? But with you—”
“I don’t understand—”
“You wouldn’t,” shouted Kennard. “You never understand anything, you damned—Terranan!” For the first time in all their friendship, the word on his lips was an insult. Larry felt his blood rise high in return. Kennard had saved his life; but there was a point beyond which he could not rub it in any further.
“If I have so little sense—?”
“Listen,” Kennard said, with suppressed violence, “my father gave his surety to the Terranan lords for your safety. Do you think you can simply disappear? Your damned Terrans who can never let any man live his own life or die his own death? No, damn it. If you visit my people—and you vanish and are killed—do you suppose the Terrans will ever believe it was accident and not a deep-laid plot? You headblind Terrans without even telepathy enough to know when a man speaks truth, so that your fumbling insolent idiots of people dared—they dared!—to doubt that my father, a lord of the Comyn and of the Seven Domains, spoke truth?
“It’s true, I rescued you for my own honor and because we had sworn friendship. But also because, unless I brought you safely back to your people, your damned Terrans will be poking and prying, searching and avenging!” He stopped. He had to. He was completely out of breath after his outburst, his face red with fury, his eyes blazing, and Larry, in sudden terror, felt the other’s rage as a murderous, almost a deadly thing. He realized suddenly that he stood very close to death at that moment. The fury of an unleashed telepath—and one too young to have control over his power—beat on Larry with a surge of power like a ship. It rolled over him like a crashing surf. It pounded him physically to his knees.