Forcing back his multitude of question and curiosity, Larry reached out for his now-drying clothes and began to draw them on. He knew Kennard well enough, by now, to know that he had had all the explanation the other lad would ever give him. Silently, he pocketed his little knife, his medical kit, thrust his feet into his boots. Still silently, he followed Kennard as the Darkovan started down the western slope of the mountain, down into the trackless wasteland that lay between Cyrillon’s castle and the lands of Lorill Hastur.
All that day and all the next they spent forcing their way down through the pathless underbrush, following the westward sun-route, sleeping at night in hollows of dead leaves, eating sparingly of the bread and meat remaining of Kennard’s provision. On the night of the second day it came to an end, and they went supperless to bed, munching a few dried berries like rose-hips, which were sour and flavorless, but which eased hunger a little.
The next day was dreadful, forcing their way through the thinning underbrush, but they halted early, and Kennard, turning to Larry, said, “Give me your handkerchief.”
Obediently, Larry handed it over. It was crumpled and filthy, and he couldn’t imagine what Kennard wanted it for, but he sat and watched Kennard rip it into tiny strips and knot them until he had a fairly long strip of twisted cloth. He searched, on silent feet, till he found a hole in the ground; then, bending a branch low, rigged a noose and snare. He motioned to Larry to lie flat and still, following suit himself. It seemed hours that they lay there silent, Larry’s body growing cramped and stiff, and Kennard turning angry eyes on him when he ventured to ease a sore muscle by moving it ever so slightly.
A long time later, some small animal poked an inquisitive snout from the hole; instantly, Kennard jerked the noose tight and the small creature kicked, writhing, in the air.
Larry winced, then reflected that, after all, he had been eating meat all his life and this was no time to get squeamish. He watched, feeling vaguely useless and superfluous, as Kennard wrung the creature’s neck, skinned and gutted it, and gathered dead twigs for a fire.
“It would be safer not to,” he said, with a wry smile, “but I haven’t any taste for raw meat—and if they’re still on our trail after this long, we’re out of luck anyhow.”
The small furred thing was not much bigger than a rabbit; they finished every scrap of the meat and gnawed the bones. Kennard insisted on himself covering the fire and scraping leaves over the place where it had been, so that no sign of their camp remained.
When they slept that night, Larry lay long awake, feeling somehow ill at ease; half envying Kennard’s woodcraft—he was lost and helpless in these woods without the other boy’s knowledge—yet possessed by a nagging disquiet that had nothing to do with that. The woods were filled with strange noises, the far-away cries of night birds and the padding of strange beasts, and Larry tried to tell himself that he was simply uneasy about the strangeness of it all. The next morning when they prepared to go on, he kept glancing around until Kennard noticed and asked him, rather irritably, what was the matter.
“I keep hearing—and not quite seeing—things,” Larry said reluctantly.
“Imagination,” Kennard said, shrugging it off, but Larry’s disquiet persisted.
That day was much like the former. They struggled down exhausting slopes, forcing their way through brushwood; they scrambled through country that looked like smooth forest but was matted with dead trees and deep ravines.
At night Kennard snared a bird and was about to light a fire to cook it when he noticed Larry’s disquiet.
“Whatever is the matter with you?”
Larry could only shake his head, silently. He knew—without knowing how he knew—that Kennard must not light that fire, and it seemed so senseless that he was ready to cry with the tension of it. Kennard regarded him with a look halfway between impatience and pity.
“You’re worn out, that’s what’s the matter,” he said, “and for all I know you’re still half-poisoned by the drug they gave you. Why don’t you lie down and have a sleep? Rest and food will help you more than anything else.” He took out his tinderbox and began to strike the fire—Larry cried out, an inarticulate sound, and leaped to grab his wrist, spilling tinder. Kennard, in a rage, dropped the box and struck Larry, hard, across the face.
“Damn you, look what you’ve made me do!”
“I—” Larry’s voice failed. He could not even resent the blow. “I don’t know why I did that.”
Kennard stood over him, fury slowly giving way to puzzlement and pity. “You’re out of your head. Pick up that tinder—” When Larry had obeyed, he stood back, warily. “Am I going to have trouble with you, damn it, or do we have to eat raw meat?”
Larry dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands. The reluctant spark caught the tinder; Kennard knelt, coaxing the tiny spark into flame, feeding it with twigs. Larry sat motionless, even the smell of the roasting meat unable to penetrate through the thick, growing fog of distress. He did not see Kennard looking at him with a frown of growing dismay. When Kennard took the roasted bird from the fire and broke it in half, Larry only shook his head. He was famished, the smell of the meat made his mouth water and his eyes sting, but the fear, like a thick miasma around him, fogged away everything else. He hardly heard Kennard speak. He took the meat the Darkovan boy put into his hands, and put it into his mouth, but he could neither chew nor swallow. At last he heard Kennard say, gently, “All right. Later, maybe, you’ll want it.” But the words sounded very far away through the thing that was thickening, growing in him. He could feel Kennard’s thoughts, like seeing the glow of sparks through half-dead ash; Kennard thought that he, Larry, was losing his grip on reality. Larry didn’t blame him. He thought so too. But the knowledge could not break through the numbing fear that grew and grew—
It broke, suddenly, a great cresting wave. He heard himself cry out, in alarm, and spring upright, but it was too late.
Suddenly the clearing was alive with darkly clustering swarms of crouching figures; Kennard yelled and leaped to his feet, but they were already struggling in the meshes of a great net of twisted vines that had jerked them closely together.
The fogged thickness of apprehension was gone, and Larry was clear headed, alert, aware of this new captivity. The net had drawn them close, but not off their feet; they could see the forms around them clearly in the firelight and the color of phosphorescent torches of some sort. And the new attackers were not human.
They were formed like men, though smaller; furred, naked save for bands of leaves or some woven matting around their waists; with great pinkish eyes and long prehensile fingers and toes. They clustered around the net, twittering in high, birdlike speech. Larry glanced curiously at Kennard, and the other lad said tersely, “Trailmen. Nonhumans. They live in the trees. I didn’t know they’d ever come this far to the south. The fire probably drew them. If I’d known—” He glanced ruefully at their dying fire. The trailmen were circling round it, shrilling, poking at it gingerly with long sticks, throwing dirt at it, and finally they managed to cover it entirely. Then they stamped on it with what looked like glee, dancing a sort of victory dance, and finally one of the creatures came to the net and delivered a long speech in their shrill language; neither of the boys, of course, could understand a word, but it sounded enraged and triumphant.
Kennard said, “They’re terrified of fire, and they hate humans because we use it. They’re afraid of forest fire, of course. To them, fire means death.”
“What are they going to do to us?”
“I don’t know.” Kennard looked at Larry curiously, but all he said, at last, was, “Next time I’ll trust your hunches. Evidently you have some precognition too, as well as telepathy.”
To Larry, the trailmen looked like big monkeys—or like the kyrri, only smaller and without the immense dignity of those other creatures. He hoped they did not also have the kyrri trick of giving off electric sparks!
Evidently they did not.
They drew the net tight around the boys’ feet, forcing them to walk by tugging at the vine ropes, but offered no further violence. A few hundred feet of this, and they came upon a widened path; Kennard whistled, softly, at sight of it.
“We’ve been in trailmen country, evidently, most of the day. Probably they’ve been watching us all day, but they might not have bothered us if I hadn’t lit that fire. I ought to have known.”
It was easier to walk on the cleared path. Larry had lost track of time, but was stumbling with weariness when, much later, they came to a broad clearing, lighted by phosphorescence which, he now saw, came from fungus growing on broad trees. After a discussion in their twittering speech, the trailmen looped the net-ropes around the nearest tree and began to swarm up the trunk of the next.
“I wonder if they’re just going to leave us here?” Kennard muttered.
A hard jerk on the rope disabused them. Slowly, the net began to rise, jerking them off their feet, so that they hung up, swaying, in the great bag. Kennard shouted in protest, and Larry yelled, but evidently the trailmen were taking no chances. Once the slow motion rise stopped, and Larry wondered if they were going to be hung up here in a sack like a pair of big sausages; but after a heart-stopping interval, they began to rise again.
Kennard swore, in a smothered voice. “I should have cut our way out, the minute they left us!” He drew his dagger and began feverishly to saw at one of the great vines enclosing them. Larry caught his arm
“No, Kennard. We’d only fall.” He pointed downward into the dizzying distance. “And if they see that, they’ll only take the knife from you. Hide it! Hide it!”
Kennard, realizing the truth of what Larry said, thrust the knife into his shirt. The lads clung together as the great vine net ascended higher and higher toward the treetops; far from wishing, now, to cut their way out, they feared it would break. The light brightened as they neared the lower branches of the immense trees, and at last, with a bump that flung them against one another, the net was hauled up over a branch and on to the floor of the trail-men’s encampment in the trees.
Larry said urgently, “One of us should be a match for any two of those little creatures! Perhaps we can fight our way free.”
But the swarms of trailmen surrounding them put a stop to Larry’s optimism. There must have been forty or fifty, men, women and a few small pale-fuzzed babies. At least a dozen of the men rushed at the net, bearing Larry and Kennard along with them. When, however, they ceased struggling and made signs that they would walk peacefully, one of the trailmen—he had a lean, furred monkeyface and green, intelligent eyes—came forward and began to unfasten the complicated knots of the snare with his prehensile competent fingers. The trailmen, however, were taking no chances on a sudden rush; they surrounded the two boys closely, ringing them round and giving them no chance to escape. Seeing for the moment that escape was impossible, Larry looked round, studying the strange world of the trail-city around him.
Between the tops of a circle of great trees, a floor had been constructed of huge hewn logs, covered over with what looked like woven rush-matting. It swayed, slightly and disconcertingly, with every movement and step; but Larry, seeing that it supported this huge shifting crowd of trailmen, realized that it must have been constructed in such a way as to support immense weights. How could so simple a people have figured out such a feat of engineering? Well, he supposed that if beavers could make dams that challenged the ingenuity of human engineers, these nonhumans could do just about the equivalent in the treetops.
A pale greenish light filtered in from the leaves overhead; by this dim light he saw a circle of huts constructed at the edges of the flooring. A thatch of green growing leaves had been trained over their roofs, and vines covered their edges, hung with clusters of grapes so succulent and delicious that Larry realized that he was parched.
They were thrust into one of the huts; a tough grating slammed down behind them, and they were prisoners.
Prisoners of the trailmen!
Larry slumped on the floor, wearily. “Out of the frying pan into the fire,” he remarked, and at Kennard’s puzzled look repeated the remark in rough-hewn Darkovan. Kennard smiled wryly. “We have a similar saying: ‘The game that walks from the trap to the cookpot.’ ”
Kennard hauled out his knife and began tentatively to saw at the material of the vines comprising their prison. No use—the vines were green and tough, thickly knotted and twined, and resisted the knife as if they had been iron bars. After a long grimace, he put the knife away and sat staring gloomily at the moss-implanted floor of the hut.
Hours dragged by. They heard the distant shrill and twittering voices of the trailmen, birdsongs in the treetops, the strident sound of cricketlike insects. In the moss that grew on the hut floor there were numerous small insects that chirped and thrust inquisitive heads up, without fear, like house pets, at the two boys.
Gradually the green-filtered light dimmed; it grew colder and darker, and finally wholly dark; the noises quieted, and around them the trail-city slept. They sat in darkness, Larry thinking with an almost anguished nostalgia of the clean quiet world of the Terran Trade City. Why had he ever wanted to leave it?
There, there would be lights and sounds, food and company, people speaking his own tongue…
In the darkness Kennard stirred, mumbled something unintelligible and slept again, exhausted. Larry felt suddenly ashamed of his thoughts. His quest for adventure had led him here, against all warnings—and Kennard seemed likely to share whatever obscure fate was in store for them at the hands of the trailmen. By Darkovan standards he, Larry, was a man. He could at least behave like one. He found the warmest corner of the hut, hauled off his boots and his jacket, and, on an impulse, spread his jacket over the sleeping Kennard; then, curled himself up on the moss, he slept. He slept heavily and long; when he woke, Kennard was tugging at his sleeve and the wicker-woven door was opening. It opened, however, only a little way; a wooden tray was shoved inside and the door closed again quickly. From outside they heard the bar drop into place.
It was light, and warmer. With one impulse, the two boys fell on the tray. It was piled high with food; the luscious grapes they had seen growing, nuts with soft shells which Larry managed to open with the broken blade of his small knife, some soft, spongy, earthy things which smelled like excellent honey. They made a substantial meal, then put the tray down and looked at one another, neither wanting to be the first to speak of the apparent hopelessness of their position.
Larry spoke first, examining the intricate carving of the tray: “They have tools?”
“Oh, yes. Very fine flint knives—I’ve seen them in a museum of non-human artifacts in Arilinn,” Kennard returned, “and some of the mountain people trade with them—give them knives and tools in return for certain things they grow: dye-stuffs, mostly, certain herbs for medicines. Nuts and fruits. That sort of thing.”
“They seem to have a fairly complex culture of their own, then.”
“They do. But they fear and hate men, probably because we use fire.”
Larry, thinking of the forest fire—only a few days ago— could not really blame the trailmen for their fears. He examined the cup which had contained the honey. It was made of unfired clay, sun-baked and rough. What else could a culture do without fire?
There were still some fruits and nuts remaining on the tray, so abundant had been the meal. He said, “I hope they’re not fattening us up for their Sunday dinner.”
Kennard laughed faintly. “No. They don’t even eat animals. They’re completely vegetarian as far as I ever heard.”
Larry exploded, “Then what the mischief do they want with us?”
Kennard shrugged. “I don’t know—and I’m damned if I know how to ask them!”
Larry was silent, thinking that over. Then: “Aren’t you a telepath?”
“Not a good one. Anyway, telepathy transmits worded thoughts, as a rule—and emotions. Two telepaths who don’t speak the same langua
ge have such different concepts that it’s almost impossible to read one another’s minds. And trying to read the mind of a non-human—well, a highly skilled Hasturlord, or a leronis (a sorceress like the one you saw at the fire) might be able to manage it. I couldn’t even try it.”
So that, it seemed, was that.
The day dragged by. No one came near them. At evening, another tray piled high with fruit, nuts and mushrooms was slid into their prison, and the old one deftly extracted. Still a third day came and went, with neither of the boys able to imagine a way to get out of their predicament. Their jailer entered their hut, now to give them food and take away their empty dishes. He was a large and powerful creature—for a trailman—but walked with a limp. He seemed friendly but wary. Kennard and Larry discussed the possibility of overpowering the creature and making their escape, but that would only land them in the trailmen’s city—with, perhaps, hundreds of miles of trail-men’s forest country to be traversed. So they contented themselves with discussing plan after futile plan. None of them seemed even remotely feasible.
It seemed, by the growing light, to be noon of the fourth day when the door of their prison opened and three trail-men entered, escorting a fourth who seemed, from their air of deference, to be a person of some importance among them. Like the others, he was naked save for the belt of leaves about his waist, but he wore a string of clay beads mingled with crimson berries, and had an air of indefinable dignity which made Larry, for some reason, think of Lorill Hastur.
He bowed slightly and remarked in perfectly understandable, though somewhat shrill Darkovan dialect: “Good morning. I trust you are comfortable and that you have not been harmed?”
Both boys leaped to their feet as if electrified. He spoke an understandable tongue! The guards surrounding the trailman personage put their hands to their flint knives, but seeing that neither boy made a move toward the man, stood back.