Jum barked loudly. They turned in the direction at which he pointed. The beasts that had taken refuge on the masts of the tharakorm were swooping silently down upon them. They meant to keep the four occupied while their fellows landed.
With a rush of beating wings, they dived, then pulled up and swung around just above the reach of spear or sword. They circled over the deck, rose and prepared for another onslaught.
Deyv turned his back to them, uncoiled his rope and tied one end round the hilt of his sword. Then he closed his hand on the middle of the rope. When the khratikl came down in close formation, they found the blade suddenly in their midst. The sword swung at the end of the rope, its edge scraping a beast across the front of its grotesquely out-shelving chest, another across the front of its head and a third through the leather of a wing. Two of the creatures flopped onto the deck and then got up to run. Vana speared one. Hoozisst smashed the head of the other with his tomahawk.
Shrieking, the rest withdrew to the yardarms to confer.
Deyv turned round. Their chasers were within spear range of the humans now. The closest numbered twelve. The rest of the flock had fallen behind and would never catch up.
All of the spears were thrown. Three found their marks, but one went through the skin of a wing without hurting its owner. The hole, however, made it unable to keep up with the rest.
‘Nine to go!’ Deyv shouted.
Vana fitted a dart into her blowgun, took aim and blew. Another shriek, another casualty. She hit two more, and then, amidst the cheering, buzzing, barking and yowling of the defenders, the khratikl turned. They were quickly lost in the dark.
Those on the mast made one more dive. It was a half-hearted attempt. Deyv’s sword sliced the rear leg off one. Hoozisst’s tomahawk thudded into the breast of another. Crying, the survivors flew off for home.
21
Vana said that they should rest, perhaps sleep, while the fires kept Feersh from attacking. They could take turns on guard duty.
‘No,’ Deyv said. ‘I realize we’ve been through an exhausting ordeal. I’m shaking, I’m so fatigued. But we can’t allow them any breathing space. There’s no telling what ancient devices she might have aboard but which she can’t get to yet. Besides, she’s vindictive enough to drop our soul eggs over the side. We’d never find them, and all this would have been in vain.’
Sloosh started to buzz. Deyv kept on talking.
‘Another thing. She may have more than one plank. She could send her slaves and children over it to take us by surprise. For all we know, she may be doing it now or may have already done it. But I’m hoping that if she does have one, she hasn’t thought about using it. Or maybe she lacks the nerve to try it; though, from that one glimpse of her face, I’d bet she lacks fear, whatever else she lacks.
‘So, I say we put our planks across and storm her tharakorm. Now! Before she gets over the shock of seeing her khratikl fail!’
‘Excellent!’ Sloosh buzzed.
Vana said, ‘You’re right. But, I’m so tired. I don’t know if I can even lift my arm any more.’
‘You’re as tough as the rest of us,’ Deyv said. ‘If we can do it, you can.’
‘Besides, we’ve eaten,’ the Yawtl said. ‘We’ll begin feeling stronger shortly.’
‘There’s a point at which food doesn’t help,’ she said. ‘But I’m not letting you down. Or my tribe.’
Deyv understood by this that she meant her tribe was the inferior of no other. She knew she was no longer a member of her people, but she still had hopes of rejoining them. She had not given up, though her body was warring with her will at that moment.
He was ashamed that he had thought only of dying when his egg had been stolen. She had not even considered the idea. She had set out at once on the trail of the thief. Her people did not look at things the way his did. Was their attitude superior? Considering the way events had gone, they were. If he had let himself perish in that terrible room in the House, he would not be here now.
Suddenly, he was aware they were looking at him. He shook himself, like Jum just coming out of a river, and said, ‘Then here’s what we’ll do.’
After igniting two torches, they went below deck and fetched the plank. They carried it to another room, the window of which was opposite another in the tharakorm occupied by Feersh, her brood and slaves. She might be thinking by now of doing the same thing as they were. Simply from habit, she might use the same window.
The board was just long enough to span the entrances with a few inches extra on each end. Feersh must have had some trouble finding the window opposite her, and she must have had great confidence in her ability to estimate distances. But she had probably practised many times. She was not one to ignore anything that might ensure her survival. Not if what Hoozisst said about her was true.
She must also have been very strong despite her scrawny physique. Deyv had trouble holding down his end of the plank against the edge of the window when it was almost fully extended. However, he told himself, he was almost exhausted.
Once the board was on the rim of the window opposite, he started across it. Below was an abyss, the bottom of which he could not see and was glad he could not. The Yawtl followed. Vana and the two animals were next. Deyv and Hoozisst held the board steady for the Archkerri. Before Sloosh was halfway across, his weight had so bent it down that the few inches within the edge of the window had become less than an inch. Deyv hissed at him and then told him in a low voice to go back.
Sloosh walked backward and gingerly eased himself, rear first, through the window. Deyv would have liked to call to him to ask what he intended to do next, but he was afraid that his voice would be heard above. The sides of the two tharakorm curved up and joined, forming a canopy. Those above could not see him, but there was a slight chance that they might detect a loud sound from the window.
‘We need him,’ Deyv muttered, ‘but we don’t have him. So…’
They left the torches in the room because their light might be seen by those on deck. The corridor was dark, the fires having burned out, though the stench of the fumes and of burned bodies was heavy. Deyv led the way, groping along until he went up the stairs into the cabin. Light from torches outside the cabin enabled him to distinguish objects in it. The stink of the charred corpse of a slave made him feel like retching.
He walked softly through the door and looked around the corner. The fires and the torches revealed Feersh, her children and the slaves behind the cabin. The witch was saying something to them in a low voice. When she had finished she put her hand on Jowanarr’s shoulder. The daughter turned towards Deyv, who quickly ducked back around the corner.
‘Get to the other side!’ he whispered.
A moment later, they heard their enemies enter the cabin. Someone was climbing onto the roof. Deyv stepped back from the side of the cabin, where he had been crouching, and he dared a quick look upward. A slave woman was standing on the roof, her back to him, trying to see through the fire and smoke along the railings.
He shot back to the cabin wall and said, ‘They’ve left a look-out up there. But where are the others going?’
The Yawtl said, ‘I think they are going to do what we just did. But in the other direction.’
‘Then they have other planks.’
‘Wouldn’t doubt it.’ The Yawtl chuckled.
‘Then they’ll see the lights of the torches we left behind!’
If they ran to the fore cabin, they might be seen by the sentinel. A scream would alert the witch. There was, however, no time for much consideration of action.
Without telling the others what he was going to do, Deyv leaped up, slapped his hands on the edge of the cabin roof and pulled himself up and over. The woman whirled on hearing him, but he was on his feet and lashing out with his tomahawk. Its edge caught her above the ear, and she crumpled without a sound. He leaped off the roof and ran towards the fore cabin. Those below might hear his feet, but there was nothing he could do about it. Behind
him Vana and Hoozisst’s feet thudded and Jum’s and Aejip’s paws slapped the deck.
They were in luck. Coming into the corridor, he saw that Feersh and her party were all looking down the corridor that led straight out from the bottom of the stairs. It looked to him as if she had sent people down it and they were waiting for them to return. Ah! Some slaves had gone to fetch a plank.
The doorway of the room through which he had entered this tharakorm shed light. It was feeble enough but the witch’s party must have noticed it. That no one had been sent to investigate, however, showed that they had given the light little thought. Why should they? There were plenty of burned-out torches lying round where the battlers of a short time ago had dropped them.
Still, Feersh would have been told of the light. She might decide to get someone to investigate when she came near this room. He turned and pressed the others into a room on the other side of the corridor. He got down on all fours and stuck his head round the corner of the doorway. They had been just in time. Here came a slave running ahead with a torch, two slaves carrying a long plank, and another slave behind them.
The man in the lead raced ahead of the others until he came to the room containing the torches. He looked through the doorway and then sped back to report. Deyv could not hear what he said, but evidently Feersh was not alarmed. She said something, and the two slaves manoeuvred the plank through the door of a room about twenty feet beyond the hiders.
Deyv had to withdraw his head. When the light from the group had dimmed somewhat, he looked again. Nobody was in the corridor.
He waited, then sped silently down the corridor. Hoping that they would be intent on their business, he dared a glimpse into the room. All were watching the two slaves put the plank across the gap.
When he had told the others what he had seen, Vana said, ‘Sloosh will surely see them.’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t see him. Perhaps he went back to the top deck. But he must’ve decided to pull the plank back through the window. Otherwise, they’d have seen it.’
‘In which case,’ Vana said, ‘he’s still at the window. He’d have to stay there so we could get back if we had to run.’
‘Not so,’ Hoozisst said, and he groaned. ‘You never know what he’s thinking. If he happened to recall some philosophical question he had not solved, he might be working through it.’
After telling Vana to post herself by the doorway, Deyv went back to the room he had first entered. He did not think that anybody would come out from the other room. They had no reason to fear attack from behind.
When in the room, he cautiously looked out of the window from a distance and at an angle. They could not see him, but he could see them. Two big male slaves in Indian file were carefully walking over the board, their hands out to balance themselves, their right hands grasping spears. They were spaced so that their weight did not bend the plank too much at one point. One went through the window; in a few seconds the other was in. Then a female, carrying a torch, followed them.
Deyv watched more go across, including the witch’s two surviving sons. Feersh was preceded by a female also carrying a torch. Feersh had her hand upon her shoulder. They went across more swiftly than the others had, the witch urging the obviously frightened woman ahead with low but fierce words.
Seven were left to cross. Deyv ran back to the room where Vana and Hoozisst were and told them what to do. They followed him, and when they reached the room only five were in it. Jowanarr and Seelgee, the daughters, were on the plank. Jowanarr seemed to be still suffering from the blow to her head. Her sister was behind her, her hands on Jowanarr’s shoulders to steady her.
A woman slave was standing by the window, a torch upheld to help light the two daughters’ path. Another woman was in the window of the tharakorm opposite, also with a torch.
Deyv gave the word to attack. Aejip bounded in, yowling, and hurled herself at the nearest man. Jum launched himself at a man’s throat. Deyv came next, and his sword cut into another slave’s neck. The Yawtl stuck the point of his sword into the belly of the fourth man. The woman, screaming, dropped her torch and got onto the plank. Deyv kicked her hard and she went off the side of the plank.
While the animals were still struggling, quite successfully, with their victims, Deyv and Hoozisst grabbed the end of the plank. They heaved up on it. Jowanarr fell through the window headfirst, but her sister, shrieking, toppled off.
That left Feersh, her two sons, a daughter and the slaves in the other ship-creature. Sloosh, if he were still in the room and not on the top deck, must have seen the situation. He would be hurrying down now to bar their exit from the door. That is, unless he was putting the plank back so that Deyv’s group could get over it and help him.
Deyv stuck his head out of the window. The plank was already bridging the gap. He turned and told the others they must get going. By then the animals had finished off the two male slaves. Deyv ran down the corridor, dark by now, his fingers groping the wall to count the doorways. When he reached the fourth, he stopped and entered. Somebody bumped into him from behind. He stumbled forward under the impact, swore, grabbed the window edge, and halted himself. He made sure that the plank extended far enough into the room to be safe. He climbed onto the board and, his fear of being too late overcoming his fear of the abyss, ran across.
Sloosh was gone. Evidently he had put the plank across and then hurried towards the room where Feersh was. Or where she had been.
He rounded the corner. Down the corridor light shone from a doorway. Sloosh was illumined in it, one hand holding up the great war axe, the other holding his club. When he reached the doorway, Deyv found Feersh railing at her children and slaves. It was no use. They feared her, but they feared the invaders more.
22
Greedy Hoozisst had taken the Emerald and hung it from his neck, and then the captives’ hands and feet had been tied. All but one had been put in a room whose open exit was a window to the outside. Hoozisst had told Sloosh how to control those chambers which had sliding doors. They used the little animal on the wall of Feersh’s quarters to close the room in which the bound prisoners were kept. To make sure that the witch could not kill herself by getting out through a window, they enclosed her in a room without one. Since she would soon have died of oxygen-starvation, Sloosh punched a hole in the hull wall.
All of Deyv’s party except the Archkerri wanted to puncture the gas cells immediately. Sloosh, however, said that it would be too dangerous at this time. To convince them, he took them back up to the top deck.
‘Look at that peak on the horizon,’ he said. ‘Notice how fast it’s going by, yet it must be a long way off. We must be travelling at least a hundred miles an ukhromikhthanshukh
‘What’s that?’ Deyv asked.
Sloosh had given the particular groups of buzzes corresponding to certain sounds in Vana’s language. But the word was unknown to her.
The Archkerri explained that the Earth rotated on its axis about once every 142.8hours. An hour, that is, an ukhromikhthanshukh, was a unit of time. There were about thirteen of these between sleep-time and sleep-time, though that was not by any means exact. At one time the Earth had rotated on its axis once every twenty-four hours. At other times, it had not rotated at all, but this state had not lasted long, since the ancients of that time had set it back to spinning every twenty-four hours.
The others still did not at all understand what the word meant.
‘That is because you have a very feeble idea of time. You can’t be blamed for that, since your technology and science are undeveloped.’
Stung, Deyv said, ‘You have much less sense of time than we do!’
‘Not true. What I have is a lesser sense of urgency. Though it’s much more developed now because of my association with you people. My people would be appalled if they knew how strong it was. Perhaps it would be better if all the Archkerri had this, however. A lack of that sense may explain, in part, why we are so few and you other sapients are, in co
mparison, so many.’
He closed his eyes, then opened them.
‘Let me put it this way. You remember when we crash-landed in that other tharakorm? We were going only about fifty miles an hour. We’re going twice as fast now. If we land now, we’ll be killed. The tharakorm probably wouldn’t be damaged, but we’d be smashed to pulp. So, landing now is out.’
‘But this storm might last a long time!’ Vana said. ‘By the time we could land, we might be more than a thousand miles from our home!’
‘More like three thousand miles,’ Sloosh said. ‘It could even be six thousand or ten thousand. Who knows?’
They were horrified. Tears ran down the cheeks of Vana and Deyv. The Yawtl did not weep, but he looked as if he would like to. Jum and Aejip didn’t know what the cause of the grief was, but the dog whimpered and the cat licked Vana’s leg. Perhaps they thought that the approaching thunder and lightning were making their masters afraid.
After a while the roar and crash and dazzling whiteness drove them below deck. Deyv had thought that they might as well question Feersh now, but he decided that it would be well nigh impossible. It was far too noisy. Every time a lightning bolt exploded near by, he jumped and then shook. He would not have the concentration that the interrogation would require.
Even so, he regretted that he could not make her tell him where his soul egg was. It would be so soothing to hold it in his hand, to stroke it, to press it against his chest, to kiss it. It radiated comfort and courage, and by bending his thoughts round it, he could make the thunder and lightning seem remote, undangerous. At this time, he hated the witch more than he ever had. When the storm was over, he was going to make her reveal the hiding place of the eggs if he had to unravel her nerve by nerve.
He huddled in an inner room, where Sloosh said they would have less chance of being struck by the lightning. His arm was around the dog, who pressed closely against him. Vana was embracing the cat. Sloosh stood in a corner, his eyes closed. He might have been asleep or thinking about something remote from human affairs or even his own. The Yawtl was nervous, but he had no one to cling to, so he had gone into an embryonic position. His knees were against his chest, his arms around his knees, his head bent to touch them. When a bolt ripped the air close-by, he started as if he had awakened in his mother’s womb, hearing the call to be born.