Holger climbed to his feet and approached. “I like this no,” said Alianora. “Yet if ye deem it best we take his riches—for sure ’tis we can use some pennies on our faring—then I’ll help carry the load, and ask the curse fall on me alone. Oh, my dear!”
Holger waved hugi aside and stooped by the wallet, a crude drawstring affair. Some coins had already spilled out. They gleamed under his gaze, miniature suns in their own right. Surely, he thought if he put some of this treasure to worthy use, such as building a chapel to good St. George, he could keep the rest unharmed.
What was that smell? Not the stink of the hides, but another, a faint skiff as of rainstorms, under this clear dawn sky… Ozone? Yes. But how come?
“God!” Holger exclaimed. He sprang up, snatched Alianora in his arms and bounded back toward camp. “Hugi! Get away from there! Get away from this whole place! Don’t touch a thing if you want to live!”
They were mounted and plunging down the western slope in minutes. Not till they had come miles did Holger feel safe enough to stop. And then he must fob off his companions’ demands for an explanation with some weak excuse about the saints vouchsafing him a vision of dire peril. Fortunately his stock stood too high with them for anyone to argue.
But how could he have gotten the truth across? He himself had no real grasp of atomic theory. He’d only learned in college about experiments in transmutation by such men as Rutherford and Lawrence, and about radium burns.
Those tales of a curse on the plunderer of a sun-stricken giant were absolutely correct. When carbon was changed to silicon, you were bound to get a radioactive isotope; and tons of material were involved.
13
AFTERNOON FOUND THEM still descending, but at a gentler pace and in milder air than before lunch. The woodland, oak and beech and scattered firs, revealed signs of man: stumps, second growth, underbrush grazed off, razorback shoats, at last a road of sorts twisting toward the village Alianora expected they could reach today. Exhausted by his encounter with Balamorg, Holger drowsed in the saddle. Birdsong lulled him so that hours went by before he noticed that that was the only noise.
They passed a farmstead. The thatched log house and sheep-folds bespoke a well-to-do owner. But no smoke rose; nothing stirred save a crow that hopped in the empty pens and jeered at them. Hugi pointed to the trail. “As I read the marks, he drave his flocks toonward some days agone,” said the dwarf. “Why?”
The sunlight that poured through leafy arches felt less warm to Holger than it had.
At evening they emerged in cleared land. Ripening grainfields stretched ahead, doubtless cultivated by the villagers. The sun had gone down behind the forest, which stood black to the west against a few lingering red gleams. Eastward over the mountains, the first stars blinked forth. There was just enough light for Holger to see a dustcloud a mile or so down the road. He clucked at Papillon and the stallion broke into a weary trot. Alianora, who had amused herself buzzing the bats that emerged with sunset, landed behind the man and resumed her own species. “No sense in alarming yon folk,” she said. “Whate’er’s their trouble, ’twill ha’ made them shy enough.”
Hugi’s big nose snuffed the air. “They’re driving sheep and cattle within the walls,” he said. “Eigh, how rank wi’ sic smell! And yet’s a whiff underneath… sweat smells sharper when a man’s afeared… an’ a ghost o’ summat else, spooky.” He huddled back on the saddlebow, against Holger’s mailed breast.
The flocks were considerable. They spilled off the road and across the grain. The boys and dogs who ran about rounding up strays trampled swathes of their own. Some emergency must have forced this, Holger decided. He drew rein as several spearmen challenged him. Squinting through the dusk, he saw the peasants were a sturdy, fair-complexioned folk, bearded and long-haired, clad in rough wadmal coats and cross-gaitered pants. They were too stolid to be made hysterical, but the voices which asked his name were harsh with unease.