Chapter II

His body soaked luxuriously in the shady pool beyond a looming jut of reddish granite. Were his lungs drinking in the moist richness of the Upper Sea, the vurth-maintained mistiness above the true seas of Osar, he might have thought he was back in Tarn.

The Wetlands of Tarn were a handful of islands and a narrow thirty-mile-wide strip of foggy tropical plains and forests along the true sea of Tarn. Over the sea and back over the mainland extended the upper sea, a false sea of floating aerophyte growth, tenuous and frothy as spun threads of silvery moonbeams; yet capable of retaining a vast amount of moisture and warmth.

For almost a mile it extended upward, its delicate tendrils touching the restless sea and the fertile moistness of the land alike to draw life from them. It offered no resistance to the passage of men or ships; yet it shielded them from the harshness of the vast ringed sun of Osar.

And here four million Wetlanders lived and built their dank massive-walled cities. Half of them were Tarns, ruled by the Council of Consars, and across the vastness of the Tarn Sea four other smaller kingdoms fought and squabbled over their narrow strips of vurth-shielded Wetland.

The land was overcrowded and so it came about that a few hardy adventurers pushed out into the Drylands. At first they followed the rivers, their bodies slowly toughening to the actinic rays of the direct sunlight, and later they struck out into the unknown dryness of grassy plains and deserts. They fought the huge apish Drylanders and ate the hairless horned ulfo of the plains and the woolly bladts of the barren hills.... And they found Lake Gron, where a large central island offered new homes for thousands of impoverished Consars and their sarifs.

So it was that endless series of wagon trains, drawn by domesticated Dryland beasts, maars and ulfos, pushed up the Aba River, and the Gron River beyond the dam at Aba, to the upland lake. And the hardy men of the frontier guided them--even as Earthmen ten centuries before, and a thousand light-years distant, had guided their effete Eastern countrymen into the Rockies and beyond....

Hardan stirred at last and climbed, refreshed, from his pool. Darkness had come and a dozen fires blazed merrily within the ringed double walls of the roofed wagons. He gathered up his weapons and clothing, wearing only the thin inner jerkin and trunks against the dryness of the night air, and went to the wagons.

Before dawn the wheels were rumbling and grinding up over the rock-strewn ridge above the river headed out into the eastern grasslands. The sleeping tanks, where the Wetlanders slept on moist elevated pads of vurth, were full and the spare water tanks were loaded as well. A dry trek of three, possibly four, days lay ahead of them before they could reach the eastward branching of the Aba River.

Hardan and three of the young sarifs stayed behind as the train moved away, readying the ten oldest wagons and the discarded equipment for the fire that was to help cover their tracks. Later parties of Wetlanders would find the ashes of wagons and the fire-blasted skeletons of men beside the trail and presume this had been a massacre by the apish barbarians of the plains.

"I wish the council of sarifs had ordered the death of Nitka Porn last night," said a blocky young sarif uneasily. "If they escape during the night there will be trouble."

Hardan touched his torch to the wagon they approached. The others were already ablaze. Together they swung into the saddles of their snorting maars. Only then did he speak.

"Yes, Malth Jed," he agreed. "It seemed to me that the council feared Nitka's wrath even though he was a prisoner. For that reason I advised Dandu Mot to double the guard."

"There was light from the fires last night," argued Malth Jed. "Why wait for daylight to slice their necks?"

"I do not believe all Porn's followers are prisoners," Hardan said grimly. "They may hope to free Nitka Porn and recapture the wagon train. Any delay would help that plot."

"Fools," grunted Malth Jed shortly. "The red-bearded one would turn on them even as he turned on the Consars."

By this time the other two sarifs had joined them on the rim of the bluff above the river. The wagons blazed up brightly, their sun-dried wood and cloth burning fiercely. With the morning sun only a smoking huddle of ashes and twisted metal would remain.

Hardan reined away from the bluff. They made too perfect targets against the illumination of the fire. But suddenly he arrested the little party's advance with a hiss of warning.

* * * * *

From the pale darkness before them the sound of distant shouts and shrieks came to them. The caravan was being attacked--or the outlaw sarifs had been freed!

"Spread out," Hardan commanded tensely, "as we reach the wagons. That way we will present a poorer target."

He dug his heels into the maar's sleek sides and they galloped forward along the rutted broad track of the wagon train.

The fighting had ended by the time they traversed the half mile gap that lay between them. The wagons were halted in a jumbled confused S-shaped tangle in the growing dawn. Only a sullen silence greeted them, but they saw dark movement against the slant-roofed bulk of the wagons.

"Hold!" warned Hardan. "Let me ride forward. It may be a trap."

And then, from a clump of wagons further along the snaking train, a maar and rider pounded out into the grasslands and headed in their direction. A man shouted something, and a confused chorus of yells answered him. After the lone rider a dozen other mounted men raced.

"It's a woman!" Malth Jed grunted, his bow ready in his thick fingers. "The white-robed novice of Zo Aldan Ra."

"Then they've overcome Dandu Mot and freed the red-bearded one," Hardan muttered, readying his own weapons.

The girl rode swiftly closer. The four riders went to meet her, their swords loosened in their sheaths and their spears in their hands. Only Malth Jed relied on his heavy hunting bow as a weapon; the others preferred throwing spears and swords.

"Hardan!" shrieked Ylda, "behind you!"

The frontiersman twisted in his saddle, a throwing spear grazed his vurth-padded shoulder, and he found himself facing the hate-twisted features of the two sarifs who had accompanied him. The strength of Nitka Porn in the wagon train must have been considerable, he thought ruefully, as he crossed swords with the lanky sarif on his left.

The sarif was no swordsman, the cowardly spear had been his only hope, and even as he turned his terrified eyes briefly toward his fellow an arrow bristled from the other sarif's throat. He shrieked and hurled his sword at Hardan even as he dug his heels into the maar's flanks. He went racing away, blood streaming from his sword-pierced upper arm.

Malth Jed reined closer. "Wound you?" Hardan shook his head.

"They killed Dandu Mot--many others--one of the holy healers who rebuked them--and now they loot the wagons." The girl's lips quivered as she spoke breathlessly.

"I guess you get your wish now, Ylda Rusla," he said grimly. "We ride back to Aba to ask for troops to pursue Nitka Porn."

Further conversation was impossible. The first pursuers, augmented now by a score or more of men on foot, were upon them. Spears and arrows were dropping around them as they wheeled their maars about to escape.

Ylda's maar went down, squealing horribly, a spear in her belly, and the girl was hurled over her mount's head into the tangled coarseness of the yellow ulfo grass. Before Hardan could swing back to scoop the unconscious body of Ylda from the ground their pursuers had reached her and surrounded her.

Hardan rode into them, hewing and slashing with his twin swords, letting his maar move as she willed. Blood splashed and spurted before his maddened blows, and the rebellious sarifs fell back momentarily. Ylda screamed. He saw a sarif on foot hoist the girl's struggling form to a mounted man, a huge-bodied redbeard, and the rider's fist smashing down at the juncture of rounded neck and fragile jaw.

Ylda went limp as Nitka Porn's blow landed and then the outlaw rode away, waving a derisive fist at Hardan across the bulwark of mounted men and attacking sarifs on foot.

He was battling for his life a second later. A spear found his body, and then another. Arrows hailed upward at him, piercing his padded limbs and drawing blood. In a moment he would be over-powered. Yet he fought on, trying to break through the press of rebel sarifs to pursue Ylda's captor.

"Hardan," a terrible voice roared above the shouts of his attackers, "escape.... Outnumbered!"

A spark of sanity remained in his weary brain. And the words of Malth Jed fanned it into life. His swords hissed, carving out a momentary gap, and he sent his maar plunging back the way they had come. He saw Malth Jed, sagging in his saddle, racing before him, and even as he watched a feathered shaft jutted abruptly from between his shoulderblades.

The stocky sarif slumped forward, clinging in his death agony to the saddle, and so they rode away into the growing daylight of the Drylands--a wounded cursing Wetlander and a jouncing bundle of dead sinews and bone that had once been a man....

* * * * *

Two hands of days had passed before Hardan dared leave the sheltered cave beside the Gron River not far from the ashes of the abandoned wagons. The two maars had pastured in a grassy hidden ravine and there too had he buried the stocky body of Malth Jed.

Then he had taken up the trail of the wagons again, and, despite the soreness of his half-healed wounds, come up with them in a matter of three days riding. He found them camped at the Isr River junction.

So now he lay on his belly in the early twilight, peering down into the rough circle of wagons, his eyes searching for the white-robed form of the girl he loved.

At last he saw her with one of the priests and a priestess sitting beside a small cooking fire apart from the others. But she no longer wore the garb of a novice. Instead she wore the green cloak of a Consar over her bulky vurth-stuffed coverings. A moment later he saw that her legs were linked by a short length of chain, riveted to either ankle by a cuff of metal. And across the fire squatted an armed man, a guard.

Hardan was puzzled at her change of garb, but his blood pounded with joy as he saw her apparently unharmed and well-fed. With the coming of darkness he could rescue her, and, Ung Roth willing, the priests and their wives as well.

So he set out looking for a concealed pathway to the river's edge and a thousand feet further downstream came upon a sheer gorge cut into the clay and soft gray rock of the bluff. Down this he lowered himself and in the increasing gloom made his way to the river and submerged.

He swam upstream, silent as a hunting _prel_, his only weapons his two swords. His spear and the excess garments he had left on the little sunken bowl of grass where his maars grazed.

Like a great Dryland Ape of the woodlands he crept up from the water at last, his only shelter the waist-high clumps of ulfo grass that dotted the river's shingly bank. And he won at last inside the carelessly guarded ring of wagons to the small fire where Ylda sat silently and stared into the flames.

From the shelter of a great double-spoked wheel he studied the camp. Well for the fleeing sarifs, he thought, that no raiding party of Drylanders had come to attack. He heard them quarreling and shouting drunkenly, and saw their swords and other weapons heaped carelessly beside the fires as they ate and caroused.

The guard spat impatiently into the fire and ran a dry tongue over his parched lips. Longingly he studied the growing excitement at the center of the encampment. There was nothing to do here, only the priest and priestess discussing the strange healing property of a vegetable mold recently discovered in Tarn. He slapped his hip, cursed roughly, and climbed to his feet.

"Don't stir from the fire," he ordered Ylda fiercely. His tongue poked thirstily at his lips.

The guard swaggered away from the fire toward the curtain-hung rear of the wagon just ahead. This wheeled canvas-and-wood shack had a sagging roof sloping from a central ridge to either end of the box so that a sort of awning covered the low rear entrance. He reached inside and when his arm emerged a basket-woven jar was in his hand, its inner earthware lining containing a sloshing fluid.

Hardan scented the raw reek of alcohol, of _garack_, as he crept closer. The guard's thick lips smacked, he rubbed a rasping fist across his mouth and snorted appreciatively. Then the jar tilted again, gurgled.

The guide sprang, his fingers clamping about the startled throat of the sarif. He squeezed hard, choking back the gasp of terror, and the jug crashed to the hard ground. Then his fist chopped in a short vicious punch to the sarif's neck that felled the man.

He trussed the sarif swiftly with his own filthy brown cape, stuffing a generous handful into the gaping mouth, before he crossed to the fire and squatted in the guard's place.

Ylda came to her feet, hand to her mouth.

"Hardan!" She came toward him jerkily, the chain making her take mincing, careful steps.

"Sit down," he told her. "And warn your friends to keep their places." The priest and the priestess smiled quietly.

"Fear nothing from us," they told him. "Our calling is to heal the bodies and minds of the sick. It was for that mighty Ung Roth Ka came from the greater of the four moons to dwell among men. We care nothing for the quarrels and jealousies of men."

"Though," added the priestess, "as a woman and not a servant of Zo Aldan Ra, I hope you escape safely."

The priest nodded, his eyes twinkling. "We are yet only human. Though we will not use violence yet we can give advice and appeal to our mighty master in your behalf."

Hardan bowed, his hand making the respectful sign of a believer on the great god of healing. "I will bind you before we leave," he said, "unless you will come with us."

The priest shook his head. "There are many sick and fearful in the train," he said, "we remain to aid them."

Hardan turned to Ylda. "After I break your chain slip beneath the wagon and through the grass to the river. I will follow."

He arose and came over to her as though to examine her bonds. His hands clamped the chain and he tested the hand-forged links. One of them twisted and spread apart. Quickly he wrapped a strip of her green cape around either length of chain and her leg.

Ylda slipped away. Hardan busied himself binding the priest and priestess of the only gods and then followed. Almost he had reached the river when the silvery light of the four moons of Osar shone from beneath a pear-shaped cloud above the distant eastern hills.

Instantly the river flats were lighted bright as their beloved Wetlands. And a guard, rousing from his half-sleep in the white brilliance, saw Hardan's moving shape. He cried a warning.

* * * * *

Hardan knew the need for stealth was gone now. He ran to the river bank where Ylda waited, took her hand, and flung himself out into the sluggish muddy stream. He swam directly across and there, taking her in his arms, headed into the vine-tangled growth of scrub _ossa_ and knotty _brel_. And at its edge he halted long enough to send a shout of defiance back at the clustering sarifs.

After that he wasted no more breath. Downstream he threaded his way until a crook in the river piled a welcome wall of blue clay and shale between the camp and them. Here he again took to the river and a few minutes later they were running breathlessly across the moonlit plain beyond toward the hidden maars.

"Tricked them that time," chuckled Hardan, saddling their mounts. "We'll circle eastward toward the Blue Malsalms and then head back toward Aba."

Ylda put her slim fingers on Hardan's arm and squeezed. It told him, more than words, that she was happy to have escaped and that as yet she was breathless.

He lifted her into the saddle and then mounted himself. It was so easy now--a day's ride away from the river and then a southward swing until they could head directly westward back toward Aba and the river trail to the Wetlands....

* * * * *

The rocky escarpment loomed closer and closer as they drove their lathered maars up the boulder-strewn slope. Ylda turned for a hasty glance backward.

"They're gaining, Hardan," she shouted.

"It'll be night soon," Hardan called back, "and the Drylanders fear darkness." But his eyes probed vainly for a way of escape ahead.

His mouth twisted wryly as he recalled his plan of the preceding night. At midday a mounted party of the giant Drylanders, savage yellow-haired, apish brutes, had sighted them and for the last five hours they had found safety only in swift flight. Now, unless a gorge or pass opened in the looming grayness of the brown-splotched cliffs, they were trapped at its base.

Already the triumphant scrawling of the Drylanders sounded in their ears as the ape-things fanned out on either hand. Once that curved line pinned them against the cliff they were trapped, to be killed or, if captured alive, saved for sacrifice to the foul god of the Drylands, Thog Molog.

The sheer escarpment loomed higher and more forbidding as they neared it. Hardan felt his chest grow hollow as the last prospect of escape dwindled. All that remained now was to find a vantage point above their pursuers and sell their lives dearly. To be taken alive was unthinkable.

A huge flat-topped boulder shouldered the cliff, its rim twenty feet above the sandy soil, and toward this Hardan led the way. It was a natural fort that they might hold until darkness clamped down.

Hardan rode his maar close up to the rock, where a crevice split several feet diagonally down the face of the boulder, and swung up from the saddle. A moment later he was crouched on the rock helping Ylda to his side.

Their maars moved away only a few paces and started grazing on the sparse-leaved clumps of ossa and brel at the cliff's base. Hardan turned, facing the cliff, and now he saw an opening in the cliff wall where the boulder's flat rim touched it. It was a low oval of darkness going back deep into the cliff's heart, a cave entrance hid by the great rock.

"In, quickly," he ordered Ylda, "before the Drylanders arrive."

And hardly had they reached that welcome shelter than the huge warriors came thundering up to the cliff.

At sight of the empty saddles the Drylanders growled their amazement, their guttural meager speech carrying excited overtones of superstitious terror. Hardan understood enough of their brutish gabble to learn that they believed their monster god, Thog Molog, had carried them away.

Then keen tiny eyes discovered the flat-roofed boulder and a moment later their shadowy hiding place was discovered. Instantly the hushed mutterings and moans of awe changed to roars of rage. They came swarming up over the rock.

Hardan met them with arrows and spears. The first wave of attackers fell back, only to launch a second and more powerful assault. This time they swung up to the boulder-top together and the Wetlander dropped back into the cave-mouth, his twin swords bared.

The apish giants crouched down and came raging at him, only to be spitted on his flashing blades until the opening was choked with bloody chilling flesh. Their comrades dragged the bodies backward and once the orifice was cleared flung themselves at him again.

His swords bit deep, drinking the life of Drylander after Drylander until at last the assault ceased. Darkness had fallen and the great brutes had lost their stomach for further battle. So they withdrew, taking their dead with them, and built three fires of dry brush and cactus about the uprear of the huge rock.

"And that's that tonight," panted Hardan, wiping his swords mechanically of the blood that smirched their keen blades.

In the darkness Ylda's soft hands ran over his arms and chest searching for wounds. His blood ran hot as her soft flesh met his.

"You're untouched!" she cried, unbelieving.

"Had all the advantage," Hardan scoffed. "But if we're here when the sun rises again--we won't be so lucky."

Ylda peered out, her eyes reading the purpose of the three fires. Placed so they effectively ruled out any escape in the darkness, the Drylanders on guard would see instantly any movement atop the rock. Her breath caught in her throat and she clung to Hardan's sweat-damp body.

"We'll try the cave," Hardan told her thickly, very conscious of her intimate nearness. "It may have another entrance higher or beyond the cliff."

Roughly he broke away from the girl and started back into the darkness, his swords probing the gloom. And behind him he heard the girl following. The floor was uneven, rough patches of rock, and so, she stumbled before she had come a dozen paces.

After that her hand clung to his crossed sword-belts as the way climbed gradually higher.

Echoes of their passage grew more distant. The cavern roof and walls must be drawing away on all sides. Hardan licked his dry lips and the parched dryness of his vurth-padded body sapped his strength. They halted for a moment to finish the last of their water bags and munch a tough strip of dried ulfo meat before pushing on.

"We must find water soon," whispered Ylda faintly, "or I am finished."

And a short distance further along Hardan felt her fingers slip from their grip on his belt. She lay silent and limp on the rocky floor, her soft skin harsh and dry as the Dryland hills, and her cracked lips moaning.

He lifted her and staggered onward. His years in the Drylands had toughened his flesh and lungs to withstand the arid violence of the grasslands for several hours, but even yet he must sleep in or near water at night. He suffered mightily, his lungs on fire and his throat a dust-rasping channel. Like a man in a grotesque nightmare of torture he felt his wooden limbs move uncertainly far below him.

Only when the stars were above him and he felt the welcome fluidity of water about his parched ankles did he halt and lower the girl. The water was chill but his thirsty body sucked at it greedily.