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completely concealed on all sides by tall trees. Best of all, a small, clear
stream flowed out from under the roots of one of the trees.
Blade climbed another tree and once more checked their rear. Once more he was
relieved to neither see nor hear any signs of pursuit.
Here they were well out of sight, and except for the woodcutters and hunters,
there were few among the Wakers with much tracking skill in open country.
Before Krog could bring his hunters down from the north, Blade and Narlena
could easily be safely back in Dreamer territory.
They drank. Blade felt the water pouring down his throat, sluicing away the
caked dust from the long run, and restoring life to his aching limbs. Then
with Narlena curled beside him, he lay down and slept.
When they awoke, twilight had drenched the forest. They drank deeply
again, stretched their cramped, chilled limbs, and moved on again. After
half an hour they came out of the forest into open rolling countryside, within
a mile of the river.
Toward the east Pura was sinking quietly into shadow silent, dark, and
apparently lifeless. Above the towers the first stars were coming out in the
purple sky. Blade handed Narlena one of his knives, drew his sword, and led
the way to the river.
Although the country south to the river was almost treeless, their pace was
far from easygoing. The hedges that the villa owners had cultivated and kept
carefully pruned in the days of Pura's glory had run wild and grown almost to
the height of the trees. Vines wound their way in all directions, heavy with
overripe berries that poured a sickly sweet odor into the evening air and
squashed to slippery, sticky pulp underfoot. Everywhere the purple thistle
grew, rank and tangled, clawing at their bare legs with its multitude of
thorns. Blade tried to avoid the thistle patches as much as possible, but
sometimes there was no way around them, nothing to do but to hack a way
through with his sword. By the time they were halfway to the river, both his
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legs and Narlena's looked and felt as if they had been lashed with barbed
wire.
Their goal was a bridge that had once carried a high road running from north
to south, a few miles west of the city. If the Wakers had blocked it off,
however, Blade planned to swing still farther west until the walls of the
gorge dropped down into level country. Then they could easily swim or ford the
river.
But he hoped they could use the bridge. The faster he got back to the Dreamers
and warned them of
Krog's plans, the happier Blade would be.
They slipped down the last few hundred yards toward the riverbank as
cautiously as if they had been stalking a Waker gang amid the ruins of Pura.
In the gathering darkness Blade could see Narlena only as a shadowy form. But
the sureness of her step as she moved along beside him was a vivid contrast to
the cringing and trembling girl he had led out into the open country for the
first time so many weeks ago.
A hundred yards from the entrance to the bridge Blade stopped and motioned
Narlena down flat on the ground. Then, sword held ready, he stalked forward.
He groped for a firm and silent footing at each step, senses on hair-trigger
alert, suspicious of any sign of a hostile presence. If Krog's men were lying
in ambush, he could at least give Narlena a chance to make her way into the
safety of the darkness and then west and across the river. Step by step now,
with longer and longer intervals between steps, the bridge twenty yards away &
A sudden eye-searing glare of light as a dozen blue-white beams leaped out of
the darkness and pinned him to the spot. Blade's sword leaped high in an
instant, and he whirled around, his dazzled eyes trying to make out behind the
glare what sort of enemy he faced. Who in Pura could turn night into day like
this?
All but one of the lights died, and out of the suddenly returning darkness
came a familiar voice.
Unbelievable, perhaps, here and now, but unmistakable.
"Blade! Welcome back!"
"Yekran! Is that really you?"
The brawny figure of the Dreamer fighter loomed out of the darkness. Two thick
solid arms reached up and clapped Blade on the back.
"Of course it's me, you idiot. Is Narlena ?"
"Still alive and well, and with me."
Blade turned his head toward the darkness behind him and shouted, "Narlena,
it's Yekran and some other Dreamer fighters. Come on!"
He turned back to Yekran on legs shaky with the release of tension and shook
his head. "All right, Yekran, I believe you. But what the devil are you people
doing out here?"
"That's a long story. Let's be on our way home, and I'll tell you on the way.
We don't wait around out here even now."
Chapter Seventeen
«^»
As the Dreamer patrol swung along the south bank of the river at a pace that
would have done credit to
Waker fighters, Yekran told Blade of what had been going on among the
Dreamers. Part of the story
Blade had already guessed. The simple fact that a Dreamer patrol was operating
many miles from home and several miles out in the open country beyond Pura
made it clear that the Dreamers had gained much skill and self-confidence
since he had been captured. They were no longer afraid of the open countryside
but could move about it with confidence and pride.
But there was a great deal more that Blade did not understand starting with
the glaring lights that had sprung at him out of the darkness. Yekran was
surprised at Blade's lack of understanding.
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"Surely in your home world where you are all Wakers, you must often need to
travel about after dark? Do you not use such things? We took a glow-bulb and
put it on the end of a long stick. On the other end of the stick we put a
cylinder of marconite. Then we connected the marconite to the bulb with wires.
Now we can carry daylight with us wherever we go. I do not think the Wakers
will like that."
"You haven't used the lights on them before?" asked Blade.
"No. This night was the first time we tried them out. We wanted to wait until
we had many of them.
That way they would be a surprise to the Wakers when we first used them in
battle."
Blade nodded and grinned. Yekran had accidentally hit on one of the basic
rules for using secret weapons: don't spring them on the enemy in penny
packets. Hit him hard with a lot of them at once.
But there was more. The vaults were opening by the score each night now, and
more than a hundred
Dreamers were coming in each week. There were now more than a thousand of them
in the enclave that
Yekran's fighting bands had made safe from the Wakers. Nearly five hundred of
them were old enough to be trained as fighters, and nearly two hundred had
already been trained. The rest could at least throw spears and stones down [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]