In the Moons of Borea (12 page)

`But how do you — ?'

'No time now, Henri. Later. And here comes Harold
—look out!'

Harold had taken two paces toward them, his massive hands reaching. Then, finding himself weaponless, he smatched a sword from one of his men. As he did so, de Marigny shrugged out of his fur jacket and let down his cloak from where he had gathered it at his waist.

As the Earthman's fingers brushed the studs that controlled the cloak in flight, so the Warlord yelled: 'Get aloft, Henri. Quick — I'll grab your legs!'

'They're trying to get away!' Harold roared, and he rushed forward, swinging his sword around his head. De Marigny was already airborne over the deck and bringing the cloak under his expert control when Silberhutte and the chief's son came together in a clash of steel and flying sparks. He looked down and was barely in time to
see
the fight finish as quickly as it began. For such had been the violence of the shock when the two crashed together that their weapons had shivered into fragments; the metal of their blades — axe and sword alike — had actually shattered!

Harold had then stepped back to hurl the heavy, jagged hilt of his sword at Silberhutte's face. But the Warlord, avoiding the deadly missile, had stepped in close to use the splintered haft of his axe as a club. Swinging it against Harold's neck, he had battered the giant to his knees. Then, as the Texan leaped to grab at de Marigny's legs, so he simultaneously contrived to smash his knee into the Viking's forehead. Once again this combination of blows must surely have killed any normal man, but even as Silberhutte secured his hold on de Marigny's calves and the two drifted aloft, so they could make out the shape of the fallen man moving on the deck below, trying to climb to his feet.

'He must be made of iron!' Silberhutte muttered, shaking his head in disbelief as the cloak now bore them more surely upward into the dispersing mist.

And now, too, the remainder of the crew awoke from
the stupefaction of seeing Harold so swiftly dealt with for the second time by the 'little' stranger. But their awakening was too late, and their cries of rage were of no avail as the cloak-fliers quickly soared out of range. Only one of the many spears thrown after them passed close; the remainder fell well behind, splashing into the sea. Then the ship was momentarily lost to their view as they rose swiftly upward into the chill but rapidly thinning mist.

Seconds later they climbed into open air. Circling high overhead, the bats were beginning to disperse, heading for that island briefly glimpsed before the mist had come down. At this distance and from this elevation, the island's shape could not be discerned, but the cloak-fliers had little doubt that it was the Isle of Mountains.

Will you be all right, Hank, hanging onto me like that?' de Marigny called down to his passenger.

`I'll be okay,' the Warlord answered. 'Don't worry about me. Just follow the bats.'

`Just as you say — but what makes you so sure they won't turn on us?'

`Because they told me so,' the Warlord returned, laughter in his voice.

'They
what?'
de Marigny shouted. 'How in the name of — '

'They're telepathic, Henri. Most animals are, to one degree or another. Dogs and dolphins are, for sure. You must have noticed how a dog reacts when it senses you're afraid of it? Well, the bats are telepathic, too, only more so. They're highly intelligent, cleverer than dolphins, I'd say. They're probing my mind right now, as they were when I was sleeping. That's why you thought I was having a nightmare. And watch what you're thinking, for they're probably probing you, too!'

'And do they know why we're here, that we're looking for Moreen?'

`Yes, and they know we mean her no harm. If we did . . . well, that would be just too bad.'

For a moment they were quiet and only the whine of the wind in the cloak disturbed the silence. Then, noting that the mist had finally dispersed, leaving the surface of the sea a dull and wave-flecked bronze colour, de Marigny called: 'Hey! Look down there. The bats didn't just pick on Harold's ship.'

Far below the three longships showed against the sea, though height and distance now made it impossible to pick out individuals among the antlike figures that scurried about the decks. One of the ships — drifting quite aimlessly, crippled, with its sail torn and askew — seemed to be completely void of human activity. The other vessels moved in, throwing lines aboard and closing with her.

`Hanarl's ship,' the Warlord grunted. 'She must have been taken completely by surprise. Well, there's nothing we can do — and you must know how we'll be dealt with if ever the Vikings get their hands on us after this. Let's hope they don't catch up with us.'

'You think they'll try?' de Marigny asked, urging more speed from the cloak as the great bats began to draw away.

`Sure of it,' Silberhutte declared. 'It's Thonjolf's one remaining chance to save face — Harold's, too. And don't forget, Henri, somewhere out there, possibly at this very moment, a thousand longships are making sail in this direction. Oh, yes — we'll do well to find Moreen and be far gone from here when those ships arrive . .

When they were well underway and de Marigny could give his attention to things other than the firm control of his flying cloak, he managed to reach down and receive from Silberhutte the fastenings of the other's harness. Not without some difficulty he then clipped his passenger's straps safely into position. Now at last, while the big Texan hung in comparative comfort below, de Marigny was able to work his own dangling legs and stretch them, bringing life back to them after their crushing by Silberhutte's mighty. arms.

The three dragonships were mere matchsticks floating far below and behind them by then, while ahead the rocky, natural bastions of the island loomed ever closer. Gradually climbing higher into the sky of Numinos, they had at last seen that indeed the island was in the shape of a regular, five-pointed star. It appeared that in some bygone age there had been five mountains, all of a height and probably volcanic. As time passed, the elements had whittled the formation into a single star-shape on the outside while forming an irregular lake within. Steam and a little smoke, puffing up still from the centre of the vast, still lake, showed that volcanic activity was not yet extinct in the area; but soon, as the bats began a breathtaking descent and de Marigny followed suit, the central lake was lost to sight behind the topmost spires of the exterior mountains.

Down the great bats fell in a spiralling stream, and rushing up to greet them came the jagged fangs of secondary peaks, crested now with tufts of white cloud that formed ever faster as Borea slipped in front of the sun to shut out its light and warming rays. Darkhour was almost here, and so chill the wind howling over the mountains that de Marigny felt obliged to take yet another pinch of Annahilde's warming powder.

Then the winds were suddenly shut off, and the view beyond the mountains disappeared in an instant as the fliers fell below the level of the range to continue their descent oceanward. They were coming down in a bay formed of two of the island's starfish arms, and they could now see and hear the wash of ocean on the rocks far below and marvel at the gaunt appearance of the inhospitable coastline. Here the ocean-facing cliffs rose black and threatening, almost perpendicular from the sea, so that it seemed almost impossible for anyone approaching by ship to gain any sort of foothold upon them.

Stark and bare, the place looked uninhabitable, and yet the fliers were certain that there were people here: the people of the cavern that Silberhutte had seen in telepathic pictures snatched from the minds of the great bats; those same creatures that now skimmed unhesitatingly toward a shadowed entrance whose mouth loomed darkly ominous in the rocky wall some forty feet above the level of the choppy sea.

A few seconds later, hot on the trail of the hindmost bat, the fliers entered a deep high-ceilinged cave. From the entrance to a depth of some fifty feet, the ceiling had been propped up with stout beams fashioned from whole pines — wood which was now black with age, decayed, and sagging — and brackish water dripped from above, splashing on the slimed stone floor. Overhead, showing through a crisscross of heavy beams, the pair saw how badly rotted was the rock of the ceiling, how saturated with the salts of ocean and the nitrous drip of acidic moistures.

Beyond this point de Marigny was forced to cut back their velocity to little more than walking speed. The
bat they followed made no attempt to wait for them but disappeared with an amplified burst of fluttering into the darkness of the cave's winding tunnel. In its wake a single high-pitched whistle echoed eerily back to them. Finally, finding themselves flying blind as the light quickly diminished, they were obliged to settle to the moist shingle floor where they waited until their eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom.

`People live in here?' de Marigny inquired as his eyes began to pick out details of the fissurelike tunnel. 'They actually
live
here?'

`No, this is only the entrance,' the Warlord stated matter-of-factly. 'We've some way to go yet before we reach the cavern where the people live. The tunnel goes right back to their cave and even continues beyond it, in the form of old volcanic vents which come out on the inner slopes above the central lake. That lake feeds a lesser pool in the great cave, where the cavern people do their fishing.'

De Marigny looked at his friend in astonishment. 'You got all that telepathically, from the bats?'

The other nodded. 'Yes, and I'm getting other stuff right now.' He peered into the gloomy reaches of the tunnel. `Actually I should feel quite at home here; there's much about this place that has the atmosphere of the plateau on Borea. And yet . .

`Yes?'

`Well, Annahilde was right. It's an effort to stop myself running right out of here. The island's star-shape, you know

De Marigny nodded. 'I forgot about that. Of course I personally feel nothing.'

'No, you shouldn't. It's just something I'll have to
live
with for now; but after all, I've had it worse than this before. I was once inside the plateau's forbidden tunnel, which leads down to a cave full of star-stones — the genuine articles — beneath the very heart of the place. By comparison this is only a very small fear.'

De Marigny looked at his companion's dusky outline and found it hard to imagine that the Warlord could fear anything. Presently he said, 'I believe I can see a little better now. Should we press on?'

`Do us good to stretch our legs,' the big Texan nodded. Then: 'Henri, do you mind if I take your axe? You've learned to handle it pretty well,, but I've had a lot more firsthand experience. We don't really know for sure what's up ahead, and — '

`Take it by all means,' de Marigny cut in, handing his weapon over. 'In my hands it's only a pick — or an axe, or whatever you want to call it — but with you behind it, the thing's almost an arsenal!'

Moments later, having wrapped the cloak about his waist, de Marigny was ready. Silberhutte, clipping the straps of his harness securely behind his neck, hefted the axe once in his hand and said, 'Well, ready or not, here we come. While we walk, I'll probe ahead and see if I can pick up the bats.'

The Warlord managed a grin that de Marigny sensed rather than saw. 'It was quite a shock for them when they found I could read their minds almost as well as they read mine. They never met a human telepath before. Come to think of it, apart from Armandra's and the mind of one other girl I knew — and not forgetting the alien cesspits of the CCD minds — these are the first genuine telepathy I've been able to contact. One thing I'm sure of is that they're good guys. They don't dislike people.'

`Oh? What of their attack on the longships?' de Marigny asked.

`Their allegiance lies with the people of the cavern,' the Warlord answered, 'especially with Moreen. They knew why the Vikings were coming, and their attack was to show how strongly they disapproved. I don't know what
that girl has, but I reckon the bats love her dearly.' After a moment he added: 'Hey, Henri, you'd better worry about that, eh?'

`About what? How do you mean, Hank?'

`Well, didn't old Annahilde say you'd fall for Moreen? It certainly seems like the girl's got something worth falling for!'

`Is that so?' de Marigny soberly answered. 'Well, whatever she's got, surely the last thing we want is any sort of complication. Just look at the circumstances. Can you really see an affair brewing between me and some unknown girl — here on Numinos, in an environment alien as this — as if the trouble we have already isn't enough?'

`Just kidding, Henri,' the Warlord nodded, stepping out
a
little faster along the tunnel. 'But you have to admit Annahilde's prophesies have been right on target so far, eh?'

When no answer came, he added: 'Forget it.' But de Marigny was pleased to hear the Texan's low chuckle sounding in the darkness. Already his massive companion was forgetting his deep, subconsciously rooted fear of the place, and that could only be a point to the good.

So they set out to walk down the dusty, guano-smelling passage through the mountains, moving in comparative silence, with only the dull echoes of their footsteps to accompany them.

After traversing the first two bends, all remaining exterior light was shut out, but they were thankful to note that the gloom was relieved, however faintly, by a fungus phosphorescence that glowed from the flaky walls. If anything, they were able to go ahead a little faster, though there were stretches here and there where the absence of the patchy fungus threw them into pitch-darkness. Gradually they became used to feeling ahead with their feet and hands; and so they progressed.

Midway through one of these regions of Stygian darkness, where they were to each other's eyes vague outlines seen against a very faintly glowing background, Silberhutte fetched an abrupt halt and grasped his companion's arm. `Henri, I just got something from the bats. There's danger up ahead ... Wait a minute . .

`Yes?'

The Warlord grunted. 'Some sort of trap. No, it's not meant for us after all. We just have to step warily, that's all.'

Moving even slower now, after some time they reached a spot where a steady breeze blew in their faces. Soon after, from high above, the dim light of Darkhour filtered down through a fissure that reached clear up to the open air. By that feeble light they saw that the tunnel had widened out considerably, that to their right a subterranean ravine now opened, at the foot of which unseen waters gurgled and rushed, hurrying blindly to some unfathomed destination.

Once the fissure was behind them, the breeze all but disappeared, and with its passing, the gloom descended once more; the wide ledge they trod seemed to vanish in the darkness ahead, as did the chasm
to
their right; the silence was relieved only by the sound of their hushed breathing and the far-off
drip, drip, drip
of falling water. Then, in the distance — a mere flicker at first but quickly brightening — they spied an orange-burning flame whose light beckoned them more rapidly on.

The flambeau — of seaweed drenched in some slow-burning, glutinous resin — was set in a blackened hardwood bracket fastened to the wall of the tunnel. Its sputtering flame illuminated the ledge, the rough lip of the ravine ... and something else. A trip wire had been stretched inches above the floor across the entire width of the ledge. Climbing the craggy wall to their left to a height of some thirty feet, the trip was fastened
to a wooden beam that protruded from a V-shaped crevice.

Piled above this beam, precariously balanced, great boulders filled the crevice in such a way that even a gentle tug on the trip wire would bring them tumbling down in an avalanche that would sweep anyone on the ledge over the lip of the ravine into oblivion.

`Hardly what you might call a friendly welcome,' the Warlord dryly commented, 'but at least we were warned about it.'

De Marigny nodded. 'It would have been a sight less friendly if they'd left the torch unlit for us! Careful how you go, Hank.'

Gingerly they stepped over the trip wire, uncomfortably aware of the great weight of boulders above, and quickly continued on down the tunnel for a further hundred yards or so. There, rounding a gentle bend and plunging once more into darkness, they spotted in the near-distance the flickering glow of a second torch. Now their progress became much more rapid as they moved between a succession of sputtering torches, evading the booby traps their light invariably disclosed, until at last the tunnel narrowed down to a mere shaft, and the ravine disappeared altogether. Then it was that they emerged into a cave of truly fantastic proportions, where a party of the cavern dwellers awaited them.

At first they did not see the men who waited, so stunned were they at the sight that greeted them as they came out of the tunnel into the vast cavern. Flambeaux seemed to burn everywhere — forming a rough circle around the floor of the cave some fifteen feet or so below them, a circle at least fifty yards across which marked the perimeter of the cave's walls; blazing brightly higher up in the walls of the place, from where the mouths of lesser caves looked down; burning in braziers borne on the decks of rafts that floated on the rippled surface of a pool which occupied at least
one-third of the cavern's floor space; and, across the
cave proper, illuminating the mouths of a hundred smaller caves
which were plainly the dwelling places of family units —
so that the whole scene was as of some Troglodyte grotto, or perhaps
a diamond mine of the fabled King
Solomon. The smoke from all of these sources seemed drawn on a draught of air to a central vent high in the ceiling, so that the atmosphere was surprisingly clean and free of debris.

But even as they gazed at the scene in silence — watching fire-bright fishermen casting their nets from the decks of the rafts and listening to the low chanting of figures where they squatted in some sort of ceremony around a blazing fire — so they became aware of their reception committee. Out from the shadows they stepped, forming a ring about the pair, and a moment later sparks were struck from flints to ignite yet more torches.

Not quite so tall as the average Viking and carrying far less weight, the men of the cave were pallid, their eyes showing a distinct lack of colour. They were clothed in garments
made
from animal skins or furs, many of which appeared to have been woven from the soft fur of the great bats. None of them were youngsters, the majority appearing to be in their thirties or older; and all of them seemed to have stooped shoulders, a stigma which was very prominent among the more obviously aged.

`We come in peace,' de Marigny offered when a few moments had passed in uneasy silence.

`Aye, we know that,' said one greybeard stepping forward and holding his torch high. 'If you did not, then the bats would have struck you down.'

The same man turned to Silberhutte, eyeing first the hand axe and then the face of the man who held it. 'Since you come in peace, you will surely not need that.'

`Ah?' the Warlord started, then saw the old man's meaning. He quickly put the weapon away in his belt. `Your pardon,' he said. 'We did not know what to expect.'