Children of the Gates (5 page)

“You see,” the small man with a graceful wave of his hand had indicated his hoofed and clawed and pawed companions, “our strength. Now we ask of you your absence. This is our domain and you have not asked our permission to enter it.”

To his own surprise Nick found himself answering:

“We did not want entrance. We came without it being our will.” He pointed to the jeep. “One minute that was on a road in my own world—the next it was here.”

The small man lost the smile that was close to a taunt. In fact all expression faded from his face. He held out his hand and the spear he had flung earlier arose in the air, went to him, fitting its haft neatly into his grasp. If he made some sign to his company Nick did not catch it. But the four oddly assorted animals arose and faded away into the gloom, where they were instantly lost as if they had turned into nothingness.

“You are, being what you are,” the stranger said slowly, “not for our governing. But I say to you, get you hence, for this is a forest under rule and not a wild wood open to wanderers.”

He lifted the spear once again as if about to cast it. But it would appear that was only to underline his order. For a moment he held it so, then the blaze of his cloak, the mist about his hair billowed out like smoke from a fire, clouding his body to hide it utterly. The vapor drew back again on a center core, then vanished. They were alone. Nick turned to his companions.

“Who—what—?”

Stroud reached back into the jeep and jerked out the bundle of tools, hurrying so fast to unwrap it again that he almost dropped it. He drew out a small wrench and a screwdriver. Crocker grabbed the latter, holding it at chest level as if it were a weapon or shield. Stroud thrust the wrench at Nick who accepted it with surprise.

“Hold that in plain sight,” the Warden ordered.

“Why? What—what was that?”

“Why—because it’s iron. An’ iron is out an’ out poison as far as the People are concerned. If we’d had this in sight he wouldn’t have dared even sling that toothpicker at us. As to who or what he is—you’d better ask the Vicar. We’ve seen his like a couple of times before. People of the Hills, the Vicar calls ’em—the Old Ones who have always been here according to what he says. They can get at a man all right—not with those spears an’ swords of theirs—but in his mind—makin’ him see whatever they want him to. An’ if they say this place is theirs they mean it. We’d better get out—”

Stroud was already two strides along the back trail, Crocker matching him. Nick hurried to follow. The others did not look around. If they feared any ambush they showed no sign of that. He would be governed by them. Iron—iron was poison, was it? He held the wrench in sight. Good enough—if showing this was a form of protection he was willing to comply.

He could not draw level with the others until they were well away from the jeep. Nick himself kept looking around suspiciously, certain at one time or another he would catch a glimpse of one of the animals slinking behind to make sure they were leaving what was a haunted forest. Yet he never saw anything except the trees. Not even a unicorn this time.

When he finally joined Stroud he had another question.

“What about the animals? I can understand a bear—though leopards are African animals. But those other two—they weren’t real—they couldn’t be—”

He heard Crocker grunt. “You tapped it right there, Yank. But it doesn’t matter how ‘real’ they are, you know. Here they’ll be real enough to tear your throat out if that Green Man back there gave the order. You’ll see worse than them. You heard him mention the Dark Ones? Those nobody wants to see! They have most power in the dark as far as we can tell—” He turned his head to look full at Nick, his face haunted by some memory. “Iron beats them, too. Ask Jean and Lady Diana sometime. They were berry picking and came upon a tower—it looked like a tower. That was late afternoon an’ a cloudy day, so perhaps those in there were more active than they would have normally been. Jean saw one—full on—an’ she, well, we had to wake her up at night for awhile. She had nightmares that near sent her around the bend! We’ve learned a lot—mostly the hard way—about what you can an’ can’t do here. An’ you’ve just had your first lesson—when you’re warned off you go!”

In spite of their zigzag path they made far better time getting out of the forest than Nick and Linda on their first journey. But when they came out into the comparative open Crocker gave a cry of alarm.

“Down!”

Seeing Stroud throw himself belly flat and half roll under a bush almost large enough to give him complete coverage, Nick tried to follow suit, though his own hastily won protection was smaller and thinner than that which sheltered the Warden. He saw Crocker a little beyond, also flat, but with his head supported on his crooked arm, looking out and up over the water.

“No—not a flying saucer!” Nick’s protest was said aloud. And a vengeful-sounding hiss from his left reminded him to keep his mouth shut. Only he could not believe what he was seeing. Somehow this was harder to accept than those mixed-up beasts in the forest.

The thing—machine—illusion—whatever it was—hung silver bright and stationary well above the surface of the water. It was saucer shaped in part, though the upper half swelled to near dome proportions.

Unmoving, it hung. Then, from the south, there sped another sky craft of an entirely different model. This one was cigar shaped and moving at such speed it arrived almost in the wink of an eye. It swooped at the waiting saucer and from it shot a brilliant beam that should have struck full upon the swelling upper half. Instead the beam hit an invisible wall a good distance from the skin of the vessel.

The cigar backed off in another of those incredibly swift maneuvers, rose over the stationary craft to strike from a different angle. This was not a duel, for the saucer made no attempt to retaliate. It merely hung there in the open, well protected by whatever shield it carried, while the other craft, in a frenzy of effort, aimed its weapon-beam from various angles. Nick could imagine the frustration building up in the attacker—to launch his—or its—greatest power and not even awaken a slight response from the attacked must be infuriating.

Finally the cigar climbed directly above the saucer and hung there as motionless as the craft beneath it. There were no rays stabbing downward from it now. Instead there was an instant of sparkling light, a flash that was gone so quickly Nick could not even be sure he had sighted it at all.

Slowly the cigar began to descend, straight down on the saucer. What this maneuver might be Nick could not guess, nor had he any help from his companions. So slow was the descent that it was plainly ominous. The pilot of the upper ship now must be using the ultimate weapon at his command.

Down, down—was he going to ram the other—as did the Japanese pilots of World War II who died willingly to take an enemy plane or battleship with them? Down—

Nick saw a tremor in the lower ship. And then—

It was gone!

Exploded? But there had been no sound, no shock wave, no debris. It was just gone.

The cigar lurched, gave an upward jump. It circled the lake twice as if trying to make sure the enemy was no longer there. Once more it returned to hover over the site of the attack. Then it left, streaking away with a speed that took it out of sight in seconds.

Crocker sat up, holding his screwdriver in one hand before him as a worshipper in church might hold a candle.

“Fun and games,” he commented. “So they’re out to burn each other down now. That good or bad for us, I wonder?”

“What was he trying?” Nick wanted to know. “Coming down on the saucer that way?”

“I would guess, and it’s just a guess, mind you, that he was going to use his force field against whatever one that other ship had. The flyers—they’re years—centuries ahead of us with their technology—just as the People are with their ‘magic.’ Anyway the other plane decided it couldn’t take it.”

“I know one thing”—Stroud crawled on hands and knees between them—“that’s plain now, m’boyos. We’re gettin’ out of this here country. With the Nasties back flyin’ overhead, this ain’t a healthy place for us to be. An’ we’ve been warned out of the woods so we can’t go kitin’ in there to be safe. Get started out as soon as we can.” He was on his feet, his pace near a run, as he headed up the open land toward the river camp. Yet even if it were needful to make speed, Nick noticed, he kept as much as he could to cover, as did Crocker. And Nick copied their caution.

5

Nick ran his hands along the handlebars of the motorbike. To leave it here would be like closing the door yet tighter on any chance of return. But Stroud was right, he could not take it through rough country ahead and it would be worthless anyway when the gas was exhausted. He wheeled it to the back of the shelter and there concealed it as best as he could.

They had waited until close to dawn of the next day before preparing for their trek back to what the English party considered their best haven of safety. But the night had not been an easy one. They had taken guard duty by turns, alert for any sky sign to prove the hunters’ return, or any noise at ground level to suggest they were watched.

There had been a moon and the night was cloudless. And the light had drawn strange shadows, to look upon, which stirred the imagination, Nick believed, in a manner that did not allay uneasiness.

He had not been helped to confidence when, during his watch, an hour after midnight, the furred shape of Jeremiah flowed past him into the open just beyond his reach. Out there the big cat sat down, his tail stretched out straight behind him, his attitude one of listening. Then, without warning, the tail lashed from side to side, and there was a low growl. The sound never arose to that squall meaning a challenge, but kept on a low note, while the tail beat the sandy soil.

Nick wanted to use the flashlight he had taken from his saddlebags. But, though he longed to see what had so affected the cat, he did not want to run the risk of drawing the attention of what might be prowling out there.

He could hear nothing at all except what were, as far as he could tell, normal noises of the night. What Jeremiah could see, or hear, remained lost to his less efficient senses.

The cat cowered to the ground, tail still. He no longer growled. Across the sky something large and dark moved silently. There was a slow, single flap of wings, and it was gone. Jeremiah streaked back, leaping Nick’s knees to reach the interior of the shelter.

But the sound that followed his return—Was it laughter? Not loud, hardly above an evil chuckle, it sounded. And it seemed to Nick to come out of the air, not from ground level. That flying thing? Nick drew on logic, reason—though logic and reason from the past had little to do with this world. How much was real, how much imagination?

Now that it was morning and they were preparing to leave, he found disbelief easier.

“Too bad you’re havin’ to leave your fine big bike.” Mrs. Clapp was inducing Jeremiah to enter a woven basket, a form of imprisonment he was protesting. The cat turned his head suddenly and seized her hand between his jaws, though he did not apply the pressure of a true bite.

“Now, now. would you be left here, old man?” She scratched behind Jeremiah’s ears. “Get in with no more fuss about it. It is me who’ll have the carryin’ as you well know. An’ when have I ever made it the worse for you?”

She closed the lid, fastened it with quick efficiency.

“Yes.” She spoke to Nick again. “A fine big bike an’ one that cost you a good penny too, if I have eyes in m’ head to guess. This country’s not for ridin’ though—less’n we get ourselves some of the white ones—”

“White ones?” He slung his saddlebags together over his shoulder and turned his back on the bike, trying to put it out of mind.

“Them what belong to the People. Ah, a fine proud sight they are, ridin’ on their white ones. Horses those are, or enough like horses to give ’em the name. We’ve seen ’em twice at their ridin’, always between the goin’ of the sun an’ the comin’ of dark. A fine sight.” She reached for a small pack to one side, but Nick had his hand on it before her fingers closed on its carrying loop.

“You have enough to look after with Jeremiah,” he said.

Mrs. Clapp chuckled. “That I have. A big old man he is—ten years about. No . . .” Her round eyes showed a trace of distress. “Over forty years back—that’s how you said it now, didn’t you? Forty years—that I can’t believe somehow. Almost a hundred and ten that would make me, an’ I’m no granny in front of a fire. An’ Jeremiah—by rights he’d be long gone. But he’s here an’ I’m as spry as ever. So I ain’t goin’ to believe in your forty years.”

“Why should you?” Nick returned. “It’s a time that does not hold here, that’s certain. I read something once—does time pass us, or do we pass it? And we can add to that now—how fast or slow?”

“Slow, I’ll speak up for the slow!” She smiled. “Ah, now, hand me over m’ collectin’ tote. I’ll just have that handy. It’s a good lot of things to fill the stomach snug, like you can find just marchin’ along. Drop ’em into a stew an’ you’ll be smackin’ your lips an’ passin’ up your bowl for more.”

She slung the woven grass band supporting what was a cross between a basket and a tote bag made of reeds over her stooped shoulder. And, with Jeremiah’s basket firmly in hand, trotted out, Nick following.

They all carried by shoulder bands, or knapsack fashion, similar bags. And Nick noted each also kept close to hand the iron defense, either in the form of one of the small tools from the jeep, or, in the case of Stroud, a small knife, blade bared.

Linda had Lung on a leash again. The Peke kept close to his mistress, but he held his head high, turning it from side to side as if he were defining and cataloging the various scents of the land.

The Run’s bank was their road. And along it they went in an order that apparently was customary to them, Hadlett and Stroud to the fore, then Mrs. Clapp and Jean Richards, with Linda, Crocker and Lady Diana playing rear guard. Nick joined the latter.

“Running water.” Lady Diana looked down into the Run. “That has more than one use here, young man. You drink, you wash, and it can be a barrier for some of the Dark Ones.”

Crocker grunted. “Except you never know with a new type whether it’s water-shy or not.”

“There’s that of course,” Lady Diana agreed. “But here every-
thing’s really a matter of luck or chance. We’ve had more than our share of luck so far. There have been very difficult times—”

Again Crocker had an addition. “That’s one way to see it. I’d say we’ve just squeaked through, more than once. I’d thought we’d used up all our luck when we walked away from the crash.”

“What is
that?
” Nick had been only half listening, more intent upon the land around them than the conversation. He was staring with stark amazement at what lay half on the bank, half in the Run on the opposite side of the water.

A boat, canted over a little so its lower deck was awash on one side. But such a boat! And how had it come into the Run, which was manifestly too narrow and shallow to give it water room?

Now that they were closer he could see that it had been nearly gutted by fire, which had eaten in places into the great stern wheel that had been its method of propulsion. But how had it come here—and when?

He had seen a cruising sternwheeler on the Ohio River that took passengers for nostalgic rides during the summer. One such caught now in time?

“It’s too big for this stream—” He protested against the evidence his eyes supplied.

“Not in flood time.” Lady Diana carried a stout staff and with this she pointed to evidence, higher up the bank they traveled, that some time in the past there had indeed been a far greater rush of water here.

“We went over that coming down the first time,” Crocker supplied. “Looks as if there had been an explosion. Hadlett said those things often blew up if they were pushed too hard. If there were any survivors”—the pilot shrugged—“they must have gone off. It’s been here for some time.”

“This stream must join a larger one farther south.” Lady Diana nodded. “It drains the lake and flows southeast. If they came through and were lost, they could have turned into it, hunting—” She shook her head. “Panic came, and they pushed the engines harder all the time—then the end here.”

“Those were in use,” Nick had no desire to view the charred hulk closer, “more than one hundred years ago.”

“We’ve seen stranger than that.” Lady Diana strode along at an even pace Nick was trying hard to match.

“Overseas.” She did not enlarge upon her statement and Nick did not ask questions.

About a mile beyond the wreck of the sternwheeler, their party turned aside from the riverbank, to shortly after climb a rise overlooking fields. There Nick had his second shock of the morning.

For there were lines bisecting this open land. They were straggling and in some places nearly gone, but this had been walled once, with fieldstone divisions, into recognizable fields! And down the slope directly before them was evidence of a road, drifted with soil, overgrown by grass, yet still a road that had once run straight between those deserted fields.

Stroud’s arm swung up. In instantaneous answer the whole party dropped, flattened themselves in the shrubs growing here. From across the fields came another band of wanderers.

There were horses, undersized when compared to those Nick knew—some bearing riders, others running loose, herded along by the same riders. Behind them crawled an object so totally beyond his experience that he could not put name to it. On a platform to which had been hitched a massive team—if you could refer to some twenty straining animals as a “team”—was a domed construction. The vehicle was awkward, yet it did cover ground, a guard of horsemen around it reining in their restive mounts to keep pace with the lumbering wagon.

The band had turned into the road, avoiding the walled fields which would be an obstruction it could not hope to overcome. Nick was thankful the whole caravan was heading away. He marked the bows and lances that equipped the horsemen, who presented so barbaric a sight he could not believe they would make comfortable fellow travelers.

“Mongols.” Lady Diana lay shoulder to shoulder with him. “True Mongols—a clan or family perhaps.”

“You mean,” Nick demanded, “the people of Genghis Khan—
here?
”

The stern wheeler had been a shock. But a Mongol party was almost as severe a dislocation of logic as the strange animals of the wood. And they had not the awesome feeling of the forest to cloak them with the air of being where they belonged.

“That is a yurt—one of their traveling houses,” Lady Diana continued.

He glanced around. Her weatherbeaten, strong-featured face was alive with interest.

“Here the past comes alive.” She seemed to be talking to herself. “Perhaps those warriors down there really did ride with the Great Khan. If we could talk to them—”

“Get a lance through us if we tried it,” Crocker replied. “If I remember rightly they had a talent as bowmen, too.”

“They were good enough,” Lady Diana agreed, “to wipe out half the chivalry of Europe. And they could have mastered the whole continent if they had pressed on.”

“I’d rather,” Nick commented, “see the last of them now.”

But they had to lie in their hastily found hiding places (which perhaps would be no shelter at all should one of the horsemen choose to come scouting) for some time until the Mongols passed out of sight. How many more remnants of the past had been caught here?

“Those fields, the road—” Nick strained to see how far he could trace that highway. “Who built those?”

“Who knows?” Crocker answered. “There are a lot of such places. We’ve seen a complete castle. And there are the cities of the People.”

“Cities?” Nick remembered mention of those before. “The ones the flyers bomb?”

“Not bomb.” Crocker sounded exasperated. “They fly over and hover and shoot rays down. Not that that seems to accomplish anything. But it’s not bombing as we know it. I can testify to that.”

“The cities,” Lady Diana mused, “they are different. Our own cities sprawl. You ride for miles through gradually thickening masses of little box houses swallowing up the country, you see less and less open. These cities are not like that at all, they have no environs, no suburbs, they are just there—in the open.”

“All towers,” murmured Crocker, “and such colors as you wouldn’t think people could use in buildings. No smoke—all light and color. But if Hadlett’s right—they’re traps. And traps can be attractive—we’re in no mind to prove that.”

“Traps?”

“We believe,” Lady Diana explained, “that the Herald comes from one. And that can be the source of energy or whatever it is that draws us—all of us—from our own world. Whatever governs our coming has been going on for a long time.”

“We saw a Roman cohort. If that wasn’t one of their dream spinnings,” Crocker said. “You can’t be sure of what is real and what isn’t, not here with the People around.”

Stroud rose to his feet, and the rest came out of hiding. They used what cover was available to cross the road where the ruts left by the yurt and the hoofprints were deep set, coming into the fields. At the edge of a small copse they laid down their packs to rest and eat.

“That’s an orchard over there.” The Vicar pointed to another stand of trees a field away. “Apples, I believe—perhaps early ones.”

He glanced at Stroud inquiringly. It was apparent that, on the march at least, the Warden was in command.

Stroud squinted into the sun. “We’ve got to make the farm before dusk. And with them around”—he glanced in the direction the horsemen had vanished—“it’s a risk to stop.”

“Not too big a one,” the Vicar answered. “We’ll be under cover of the trees.”

“The wall”—Lady Diana stood, measuring the distance ahead as if this was something she knew well how to do—“runs along to the trees. And it grows higher all the way.”

“We could do with some fruit.” Mrs. Clapp patted her harvest tote as if she already felt it lumpy with plunder.

“All right,” Stroud decided. “We set guards though an’—”

“I am afraid that we shall do nothing now,” Hadlett cut in. “Look there.”

As usual Stroud had steered them to cover. If they kept near to ground level they would escape sighting from any distance.

Bearing down from the same general direction that the Mongols had come was a second party. These were on foot and Nick could see they moved with the caution of those who expected either ambush or attack. They were in uniform and some had rifles, though the majority were not so armed. Their clothing was dull, earth brown, ill fitting, and he could not identify them.