Part 3

Hardan too sensed the alien silence and remoteness of this close-cropped expanse of sward. Almost he expected to see a flock of the woolly, vari-colored bladts grazing there, so close was the brook-watered grass trimmed to its roots. Something, ancient foul things, must lurk in those brooding ruins and come out in the moonlight to eat. No grass could grow so uniform and short.

So they moved together, speaking no more, through the hushed silence of growing dusk, into the shadows of the vast vertical mass of the ancient wall that dipped southward. They searched for a way to scale that soaring obstacle, vainly.

The rim of the upper sea, the false sea that was vurth floating lightly above the true sea far below, they reached and Hardan felt the tingling thrill of a stranger returning home as the delicate moist tendrils contacted his exposed flesh. He heard Ylda's sigh of sensuous ecstasy as she sucked in the dank richness of the confined atmosphere, and he heard the Aarthman breathing unsteadily as though half-choked.

"How you can stand this pea-soup," came the little man's strangled voice, "is beyond me. It's like walking underwater; yet breathing."

Hardan laughed and slipped out of his cumbersome padded garb. Now he could climb the wall or fight more freely. The intangible unseen menace of the walled city and fields now struck him with returned power. He bound the suit into a pack on his shoulders and set about examining the damp and crumbling wall. The moisture had loosened its ancient bonding material and he found many foot and hand holds.

Swiftly he angled upward, his two companions following the way he had found. Once he ran into a section of intact wall and was forced to turn back, and Ylda swung upward along a new series of crevices, leading the way. Hardan now brought up the rear instead of Kern Rensom.

The vurth ended, and even as they saw that less than twenty feet lay between them and the wall's top, a hideous gagging squelching sound, like a mud-wallowing drunkard venting his addled rage, sounded from below.

Hardan turned to look down, his sword in his right hand and his feet jammed in a shallow crack.

A vast bulk, indistinct in the failing light of the vanished sun, and rendered yet more vague by the aerophytic sea that washed around its lower body, reared there. Hardan sensed that the greasily smooth hide, wet and slime-covered, was slate-gray, liberally splotched with patches of ghastly pale yellow. He saw an inner gaping maw, its huge inner jaws covered with bony serrated ridges, and in a deadly fringe about this mouth a score or more of specialized tentacles stretched like multi-jointed arms upward.

"Climb swiftly!" roared Hardan, "while I hold it back."

The tentacles slithered nearer, their gray snaky flesh ending at the tips in sucker-like yellow-tinged discs. Hardan swung his weapon down at the nearest and from the severed tentacle tip a steaming purplish ichor spurted. And with its wound the burbling mouthings from below redoubled.

The Wetlander sprang upward, a questing tentacle brushing his heel as he found a new vantage point several feet higher, and then he sliced through this leathery appendage's tip as well.

But now three of the tentacles wormed together at him, and though his blade slashed off two of them, the third found his naked flesh and the suction discs ripped at him. He clung to the wall, his discarded sword clattering downward, but relentlessly the monster was dragging him from his precarious perch.

He heard a sob at his side and his other sword was drawn from its sheath even as his left hand lost its grip. Then he was released, the tentacle tip yet clinging to his flesh, and he found Ylda tugging at his arm. The Aarthman lowered his bow and Hardan pushed the trembling girl up to him.

A moment later they were all three safe a scant four feet above those questing hungry ropes of flesh, and Ylda was in his arms....

IV

Moonlight silvered white the inner crater when they reached the Aarth city. The gates were closed and Kern Rensom said they would not be opened until the dawn. He guided them to a hunting estate owned by his older brother, a well-to-do Aarthman farmer, that was not far from the upper sea's rim and there they left him.

That night they slept in a soft mound of hastily gathered Wetland moss, the thick wetness of the upper sea closing about them like a warm blanket. And for long Hardan lay awake, his blood singing with the knowledge that Ylda's love was his.

Their escape from the penned-in monster, the Drylanders' fabled Thog Molog, had broken through the barriers of her false pride and she had confessed that she loved him. And she had explained to him that she was really the daughter of a noble landowner who had been courted by the aging Serid Jern against her parents' wishes. She had disguised herself as a sarif girl and joined the priestesses as a novice to reach Lake Gron and her husband-to-be.

"But I am glad I met you, Hardan," she had whispered, "before I mated with him. I could not have really loved him; only the glamour of his wild frontier kingdom attracted me.

"Nor will my father object to my marrying a sarif. He holds that the man himself is of more importance than his rank."

Hardan smiled, before he went to sleep, at the reversal in his position. Now he was the sarif, rather than Ylda. Nor did he intend to tell her of his equal rank until they stood together before her father....

With morning they left the upper sea and with the Aarthman made their way to the city. Here the diminutive men and women made much of them, feting and dining them, and learning all they could of the Wetland civilization they had never before contacted.

Kern Rensom showed them the buildings where the corroded tools of their ancestors were stored so carefully, and he took them inside the twisted wreckage of the space ship on the slope above the city. Most of all was Hardan interested in the metallic-leaved books and stacks of circular containers of record tape. Here was the secret of the Aarthmen if they but had the key of written words to unlock it.

The pictures interested him as well. The Aarthmen owned several worlds: cloud-swathed, green-clad continents and vurthless broad seas, and a dying red world of deserts. And their sun was a tiny red ball without the least sign of an outer solar ring. How much more beautiful was Osar's generous ringed luminary, thought the Wetlander.

So it was that they spent day after day in the peaceful valley of the Aarthmen, cementing the bonds of friendship that Hardan hoped would release the forgotten knowledge of Aarth for both races. Almost had he forgotten the toiling caravan of huge six-wheeled wagons that even now must be traveling through the waterless desolation of the passes of the Blue Malsalm Range to the north.

"You should be told, Hardan," Kern Rensom said, as the mounted messenger rode off down the broad paved street, "that the wagon train you guided has halted less than a day's journey to the north. And the evil-brained sarif, Nitka Porn, has laid a trap for the small party of soldiers who pursue them."

Hardan's eyes flashed. It was not enough that Nitka Porn had taken over control of the train. Now he must slaughter more Wetlanders instead of attempting escape. He realized that he must kill the huge-bodied sarif before he could cause any more bloodshed and misery. Perhaps there was yet time to rescue the doomed warriors.

"One of our hunters crept close enough to the wagon train to catch the thoughts of Nitka Porn," the little man was saying. "The attack is to be late today or in the morning."

"Kern Rensom!" cried Hardan, "could you get me a guide and maars to take me to the soldiers?"

"I can do better," grinned the Aarthman. "I can come along. And bring a score of warriors as well."

Hardan took his sword-belts down from their pegs and buckled them on. He looked to his bow and replaced the somewhat frayed string. Then he strode out the door to where the maars they had ridden earlier in the morning were kept. And with him walked the little Aarthman, clean-shaven now and dandified in embroidered blouse and wide-bottomed trousers of woven blue fabric. He too was hooking on his harness of knives, arrow quiver, and throwing club.

They mounted, pulling their desert robes from behind the saddles--this last was an Aarth invention that shielded them from sunglare and stinging sand flurries--and rode toward the poorer section of Smeth City where hunters and warriors lived. Nor were they long in recruiting a force of thirty mounted men and leaving the city behind.

Yet as they reached the great gate in the towering outer wall, the wall that barred the lower crater to any but Aarthmen, a wide-hatted rider with desert robes high about his face, awaited them. And as they filed through the narrow slot the sliding gate-slab permitted this rider to join the party.

Hardan rode close to the stranger and uncovered the shielded features. He shrugged and shouted across to Kern Rensom.

"I might have known," he laughed. "It is Ylda."

"Why should I not go?" she demanded. "Perhaps it is my father or my brother who commands the soldiers. They were to be assigned to the Aba River command this term."

"So!" Hardan nodded. "You tire of us and wish to go with them. Or perhaps you wish to find them so we can mate."

The high color that flooded Ylda's downy haired cheeks was answer enough. Her chin elevated proudly, but she said nothing. And Hardan too hoped her father was serving his year, every sixth year a Consar was supposed to enter the armed forces of Tarn, for that much the sooner could they be mated.

* * * * *

Through the gate they rode and up increasingly dry barren slopes until they reached the jumbled hell of ridges, splintered crevices, and ragged gorges that lay above the crater's rim. They rode through the midday heat, pausing but once to soak their dehydrated garments of padded vurth in a cave-hidden pool, and then onward again until the shadows on their right grew long and dark.

"It is near," the Aarthman who guided them said. He dismounted. "Here we must leave our maars and proceed on foot if we are to surprise the sarifs."

The little party obeyed, glad of the opportunity to stretch cramped stiff limbs. They followed along a narrow shallow gorge to where it opened into a larger sunken pass. Down there, in a rock-strewn boxlike cavity, they saw movement.

"We are too late," Hardan muttered to Ylda. "Shiny leather shells and metal caps are those of Wetland soldiers. It is they who are trapped in that hollow."

Now they could see the sarifs just below their own vantage point. They clustered at either end of the cliff-walled trap, their arrows and the jagged boulders they had collected effectively barring any attempt by the soldiers to cut their way through. Already more than half the Tarnish fighting men were down, and it was but a matter of time until the last of them died.

Further to the east, in a stream-watered little park, the wagons were bulked in a rude circle. They were fewer now, less than thirty were left of the original train, and they were patched and travel-stained. "We had better divide, Kern Rensom," said Hardan thoughtfully. "You take ten men and take cover above the western party. I will take the others to capture the wagons and the other party."

"Good," agreed the little man from Aarth, and he started issuing orders at once.

Taking advantage of whatever cover the broken nature of the uplands afforded, the Aarthmen and the Wetlanders slipped downward toward the sarifs. Nor were they detected before they had reached a bulging ridge of flinty red rock twenty feet above them.

Hardan cupped his hands and shouted down at the fifteen ragged men below, "Throw down your weapons, sarifs. You are surrounded."

The men turned, startled, to look upward into the eyes of twenty strange little men and the two Wetlanders. Nor could they fail to see the arrows that centered on their vitals. One by one they loosed their bows and spears, their nerveless fingers twitching.

Nowhere could Hardan see Nitka Porn, though he counted five of the rebel sarifs immediate underlings in the group.

"Where is Nitka Porn?" he demanded.

The sarifs stirred uneasily, their sullen green eyes shifting and their tongues dabbing at blackened cracked lips. They were a hopeless, stupid-looking crowd. From them the Drylands had sapped their strength and sucked dry their brains. Nor had the browbeating of Nitka Porn been without influence in this final result.

One of them, a broken-toothed oldster who feared the rebel sarif the less because he was so near to death, stepped clumsily forward.

"He is at the wagons, Hardan." The reedy old voice trembled. "So securely were the soldiers trapped that he knew they must die. He went for wagons to carry the loot."

"Good, Vesko Rok," said Hardan. "Now I would ask you more. Come aside with me."

The old sarif shuffled after Hardan out of earshot of the others. Quickly he demanded the names of all the sarifs loyal to Nitka Porn in this and the other group. Then he gave orders to separate the prisoners.

"Nolson," he said to one of the sturdy little men of Aarth, "I want you to remain here with ten men. Guard well these seven sarifs."

The Aarthman's blue eyes were bright. "They will not escape," he said.

"The others we are taking back to the wagon train," Hardan told him, and set out along the rugged path down toward the camp.

* * * * *

Nitka Porn came riding out of the camp with two others of his men. They were all three fat and healthy-looking. They had fared better than the rest of the party, riding much of the day in the tank baths of the wagons and eating the best of the food.

Behind them rolled three wagons, the teams of bony maars pulling them driven by women. Apparently all the able-bodied sarif males had been forced to join the ambushers.

When they came opposite the Aarthmen and the sarif prisoners stepped out from their concealing boulders and rocks, the show of weapons by the little hairless men of Aarth sufficient to make the whole force seem armed.

"I want you, Nitka Porn." Hardan's voice was slow, his pent-up rage well under control.

The huge sarif's freckled face was mottled with fear and hatred. His yellowish-green eyes were baleful as he swung down from the saddle. Hardan's ears heard a rush of feet and then a ghastly series of shrieks and thuddings, and from the corner of his eye saw the other two horses were now riderless. The sarifs were trampling at something underfoot and the Aarthmen were turning away pale sickened faces from what was there.

Ylda's hand was on his arm. "Take him prisoner," she begged. "Tarnish justice will punish him. And he is so big, so brutal--you will be killed!"

Hardan pushed gently at her arm. Nitka Porn was a spear's length away now and his swords were drawn. Then, before Hardan could stop her, Ylda had stepped between them.

"Surrender your weapons, Nitka Porn," she commanded imperiously, "and you will live to see Aba."

Nitka's flat-nosed simian face snarled. "Surrender and be torn apart as were they?" His head nodded toward the mumbling knot of crazed sarifs beside the terrified maars. He laughed hoarsely, and with one great arm swept the girl close.

One of his swords now pressed against the breast of Ylda, ready to plunge deep into her vitals. He backed again toward his maar.

"At the first sign of attack," he told Hardan, "the woman dies."

He prepared to climb into the saddle, to ride away into the eastern uplands that led toward the Desert of Niid and the Bitter Sea that had been their goal. And then it was that Hardan remembered the strange power of the Aarthmen.

No sooner had the thought been born in his brain than the little men chuckled and their dejected faces brightened. Nitka Porn's body froze immobile and slowly he spread his arms so the girl stepped free.

"Enough," Hardan called. "Release him and let him fight for his life."

"Better that we should make him slice his own throat," muttered one of the Aarthmen, but unwillingly they complied.

And after a moment the dazed sarif picked up his dropped swords and faced the unmoving Wetlander's gauntness. Trapped at last he was and like a cornered sorap with broken wings he launched himself at Hardan.

Their swords met, clashed and sparks flew from their slithering blades. They broke and circled again, each wary for an opening that the other could not parry. Again and again the four swords rasped, yet from neither man was any blood drawn, so evenly were they matched. Nitka Porn's reach was the longer, but his bulk slowed down his speed, and it was here that Hardan saw his advantage.

Slowly he must wear down the big man, and the dry air that the huge Wetlander was not yet accustomed to breathing would do the rest. He would weaken, grow clumsy, and then his blade would find an opening.

But this Nitka Porn must have sensed. He swung his swords in a veritable hurricane of chopping steel and bore Hardan back against the rearing maars of the foremost wagon. A maar's forefoot lashed out, numbing Hardan's left shoulder, and the apish sarif's face glowed with devilish satisfaction. The success of his strategy so pleased him that he dropped his guard momentarily.

It was the opening Hardan needed. Gritting his teeth against the pain and numbness of his bruised shoulder he lunged upward with his left sword and his other blade darted in lightning strokes at the sarif's middle. His left hand jarred limply from the sword grip, but Nitka Porn staggered backward dying, the sword piercing deep into his eye-socket.

"Well done!" a hearty voice cried, and he turned to face a leather-husked captain of the Tarnish Guard with his remaining five men.

Ylda gave a little cry and in a moment was in the soldier's arms. A hot wave of jealousy burned within Hardan and then was gone.

"It is my father!" she cried gladly....

* * * * *

The sun was high overhead when they rode toward the crater valley of the Aarthmen where they were to spend another hand of days before guiding the wagon train on its way to the Bitter Sea. And now their purpose was to establish a treaty between Aarthmen and Wetlanders. Nor did Hardan fear that his small friends would receive any but fair treatment--their ability to read minds guarded them against that common failing of expanding races, to take what they wanted by treachery.

"We will guide the train to the Bitter Sea," he told Ylda as he loosed her from her bonds. "Some day all the Wetlands will be ours, and the men of Aarth will rule the Drylands, and ships-that-fly will link us together.

"But until then the trek must go on. Along this trail we are marking out other wagons will follow until a great road stretches here. There will be lakes and underground hostels along the way, and our children will travel in vurth-insulated wagons without maars, wagons faster than the wind.

"It was so on Aarth, their legends declare, and so it will be with us."

Ylda pouted. "What do we care about Aarth and treks?" she demanded. She nestled closer and her eyes closed contentedly.