This crawler was returning to the keep, empty of supplies. Supplies. Simon swallowed. Food, water—both in this barren country would be found only in Kolder hands. Already the need of water pressed him; it probably was as hard for the others. Five of them and a prisoner—and there the might of the Kolder. Perhaps it would have been simpler to invade the keep.
“Simpler—” Jaelithe’s answer was almost a part of his own flow of thought. For seconds Simon did not realize that it was not. “Perhaps simpler, but not the right answer.”
He glanced at her where she lay, her mail-clad shoulder nearly rubbing against his. With her helm on her head and the loose scarf of metal links depending from it wound about chin and throat, half her face was veiled. But her eyes met his squarely.
“Reading of thoughts?” Again she answered an unvoiced question. “Not quite that, I think, rather that a similar path is followed by us both. You are aware, too, that this is necessary for our venture. And the answer is not safety—not for us—but something far different.”
“The gate!”
“The gate,” she affirmed. “You believe that these Kolder must have something from there to aid in what they would do in our world. That I believe also, therefore they must not succeed.”
“Which depends upon the nature of their gate.”
The one which had brought Simon into this world had been a very simple affair—a rough stone between pillars of the same crudely hewn substance. A man sat himself there so—hands at his sides fitting into depressions such as also cupped his buttocks. He then waited for dawn and the gate was open. The guardian of that way had told Simon legends in the hours he had passed of a long night waiting for the dawn. The tales told that this was a stone of great story: the Siege Perilous of Arthur’s use, an enchanted stone which somehow read a man’s soul and then opened to him the world in which he best fitted.
But whatever gate had let the Kolders through to defile this world had not been that kind. And what five of them could do to close it, Simon had not the least idea. Only Jaelithe was also right—this was the thing which must be done.
They skulked along the heights as the light grew stronger, able to follow the marks of the caterpillar trucks below. One of the marines climbed the mesa wall to scout beyond. The others took turns in sleeping in a hidden crevice. Only Aldis sat, staring before her, her hands, though bound at the wrists, resting tight against the Kolder talisman on her breast, as if such touch brought her strength.
She had been a rarely beautiful woman, but now she aged before their eyes, her flesh thinning until the bones were stark in jaw and cheek, her eyes sunken in ridged sockets. Her tangled golden hair was as incongruous as a girl’s wig on an old woman. Since they had begun the march her sight had never focused on any of them; she might have been one of the possessed. Yet Simon thought it was not the quenching of life which made her so, but rather a withdrawal to some hiding place deep within her, from which spirit and life would waken when the need came.
And so, for all her present passivity, she was to be watched—if not feared. Loyse was the watcher and Simon thought she took more than a little pleasure in the knowledge that their roles were now reversed, that it was she who controlled, Aldis who obeyed.
Simon lay with his eyes closed, but he could not sleep. The energy he had expended in the Kolder keep and after, instead of tiring him, seemed to set ferment to working. He had the sensation of one faced with a problem, clues close to hand, and the driving need to solve it. More used to weapons he could hold, touch, this new ability to work mentally kept his mind restless, awoke uneasiness in him. He opened his eyes to find Jaelithe watching him across the narrow cleft in which they sheltered. She smiled.
And for the first time he wondered a little at the form of their meeting. That barrier he had thought so thick, growing thicker, had vanished utterly. Had it ever been there at all? Yes—but now it seemed as if it had existed for two other people, not for them.
She did not touch him by hand, or mind, but suddenly there was a flow of warmth and feeling about him, in him, which he had never experienced before, though he thought he had known the ultimate in union. And under that caressing warmth he at last relaxed, the pitch of awareness no less, but not so taut and binding.
Was this what Jaelithe had known as a witch, what she had missed and then thought she had found again? Simon understood perfectly how great that loss must have seemed.
Scrape of boot on rock—Simon was on his feet, looking to the end of the crevice. Sigrod swung down. He pulled off his tight-fitting, crestless helm, wiped his arm across his sweating face. His cheeks were flushed.
“They are there right enough, a whole camp of them—mostly possessed. They have a thing set up.” He was frowning a little as if trying to find the words in his seaman’s vocabulary to best describe what he had seen. Then he used his fingers to support description. “There are pillars set so . . .” Forefinger pointed vertically. “And a crosspiece—so.” A horizontal line. “It is all made of metal, I think—green in color.”
Loyse moved. She jerked aside one of those hands Aldis kept folded over her Kolder talisman, displaying a part of the alien symbol. “Like this?”
Sigrod leaned closer, eyeing the talisman carefully.
“Aye, but it is big. Four—five men can march through at once.”
“Or one of those crawling vehicles of theirs?” Simon asked.
“Aye, it will take one of those. But that is all there is to it—an archway out in bare country. Everything else well away from it.”
“As if it is to be avoided,” Jaelithe commented. “Yes, they must be dealing with strange and powerful forces here. Dangerous forces if they strive to open such a passage.”
An archway of green metal, alien technology to be unleashed through it. Simon made his decision.
“You,” he nodded to the crewmen, “will remain here with the Lady Loyse. If we do not return within a full day strike for the shore. Perhaps there you can find that which will take you to sea and so escape—”
Their protests were ready, he could read them in their eyes, but they did not attempt to deny his authority. Jaelithe smiled again, serenely. Then she stooped and touched Aldis on the shoulder.
Though she did not exert any other direction, the Kolder agent rose in turn and moved to the end of the crevice, Jaelithe behind her. Simon sketched a half salute, but his words were for Loyse.
“Your part in this is done, Lady. Go with fortune.”
She, too, was all protest which she did not utter.
Then she nodded.
“To you, also, fortune—”
They did not look back as they began that long tramp, about the base of the mesa so that they might come upon the Kolder camp from the south. The sun was already warm on the twisted rocks about them. It might make this land a furnace before they were out of it. Out of it where? In hiding near the Kolder gate—or—? Somehow Simon was now sure that the gate was not their only goal.
17 BLASTED WORLD
THE SUN was high and, as Simon had foreseen, hot, so that the weight of mail shirt on his shoulders was a burden. He had twisted his Kolder smock about his head turban-wise in place of his missing helm, but the heat beat at his brain as he looked to the Kolder gate. As with the Siege Perilous in Petronius’ garden so long ago, he could see nothing beyond it but the same desert of rock. Did this one also need a certain time of day to activate it? He judged that the gate was complete, for no one worked there. Though men lay about the camp site as if struck down in exhaustion.
“Simon!”
Jaelithe and Aldis were in the shadow of a rock pinnacle, sheltered in the only way possible from the glare of this grim waste. The Kolder agent was on her feet, looking not to her companions, but straight out through the shimmering heat waves to the gate. Her hands were again over the Kolder talisman. But her face had come alive. There was an avid eagerness in her expression, as if all she had ever wanted lay just before her for the taking. She began to walk forward at a pace which quickened as she went.
Simon would have intercepted her, but Jaelithe raised a warning hand. Aldis was out in the open now, paying no heed to the heat or the sun, her tattered robe streaming behind her as she began to run.
“Now!” Jaelithe was running in turn and Simon joined her.
They were closer to the gate than those in the camp, and for part of that distance they would be screened from sight as the Kolder party sheltered behind two of the crawler trucks and some of the piled boxes.
It was the gate which was drawing Aldis, and, though she had stumbled and drawn back during their journey about the mesa, she showed no signs of fatigue now. In fact her speed of flight was almost superhuman as she pulled ahead of both her pursuers.
There was a shout from the camp. Simon dared not turn his head for they had come upon a smoothed stretch over which Aldis sped like a winged thing. He doubted if he could match her pace, though Jaelithe was not too far behind her. The gate structure loomed taller in the heat waves.
Jaelithe put on a burst of speed which allowed her to grasp Aldis’ torn robe. The fabric ripped the more under her clutch and the other’s struggles, but she held fast, although Aldis still pulled her towards the gate. Simon pounded up, his heart beating heavily in his chest, unsteady on his feet from the effort.
Something crackled overhead. Only one of Aldis’ wild plunges took them out of the path of that. They were under fire from the camp and in the open they were easy targets. Simon could see only one possible escape. With all his strength he threw himself against both of the women as they struggled, and so rushed the three of them under the crossbar of the gate.
It was plunging from midday into night in a single instant. The sensation of venturing where his kind had no right to go lasted for seconds which were eternity. Then Simon fell into gloom with a lash of rain beating across his body. While overhead crackled such a display of lightning that he was dazzled blind when he raised his head. Jaelithe lay within the circle of his arm and she twisted about, her cheek now close to his.
Water washed about them, dashed into their faces as if they lay in the bed of a swiftly rising stream. Simon gasped and pulled himself up, dragging Jaelithe along. Then she cried out something drowned by the drumming of the storm. By a lightning flash Simon could see that other body, the water striking against it as it lay crosswise, damming the stream. He reached for Aldis. Her eyes were closed, her head rolled limply. Simon thought that he might be carrying a corpse, but he brought her up from the bed of the rapidly filling stream.
They were in a valley between high walls and the water was pouring down very fast. Objects bobbed on its surface, arguing of a flash flood. Simon struggled to the wall and eyed it for possible footholds. They were there, but to make that ascent with Aldis was a task which exhausted them both. So that once at the top of the rise he lay again with Jaelithe, his back to the rain, his head pillowed on his arm as he breathed in great sobs.
Neither of the women stirred as at last he levered himself up to gaze about. The sky was dark and the rain continued to pour. Not too far away loomed a bulk promising shelter. Simon shook Jaelithe gently until she blinked up at him.
“Come!” Perhaps she did not hear that word in the fury of the storm but she wavered to her hands and knees and then to her feet with his support. He got her under cover and went back for Aldis.
It was only when he returned that Simon was aware of the nature of their quarters. This was no rock nor crevice cave such as they had used for refuge in the Kolder territory, but a building. Lightning flashes revealed only fragmentary glimpses of the remains. Remains because in the far end of the room in which they stood the roof was partly ripped away, the wall had a great gash down it.
That the break was old was apparent by the straggling bunches of grass which had rooted here and there on the broken flooring. And, in spite of the freshness of the rain-filled wind, there was a musty smell to the whole place.
Simon moved cautiously down the length of the room to that break. There was debris on the floor, twice he nearly lost his footing in a stumble. He trod upon something which crackled and broke under his weight, and caught a glint of lightning flash. With his hands he felt about, Fabric—something rotten which went to slimy shreds, making him wipe his hands on a bunch of grass. Then metal—a rod. Simon picked that up and came back to the doorway where the gloom of the storm seemed lessening, or maybe his sun-dazzled eyes were now adapting to it.
What he held could only be a weapon, he decided. And it bore some resemblances to the rifle of his own world. There was a stock and a barrel. But the metal was lighter in weight than that of any firearm he had known.
Jaelithe had her hand on Aldis’ forehead.
“Is she dead?” Simon asked.
“No, she must have hit her head when she fell. This is the world from which the Kolders came?” There was no fear in her voice, merely interest.
“It would seem so.” One thing he was certain of: they must not get too far from this spot, from where they had come through the gate. To lose their way meant perhaps no return.
“I wonder if there is any sign of the gate on this side.” As usual now Jaelithe’s thoughts had followed his. “They must have some guide if they come through and wish to return again.”
The wild storm was dying. The night-darkness which had enveloped them when they had come through the gate was now modified with a gray approaching dawn light. Simon surveyed the terrain with the intentness of a scout. This was not desert such as lay on the other side of the gate. There were evidences of one-time occupation of the country all about him, as if this had once been thickly settled land. What he had first believed rocky hills on the other side of the cut, turned out to be the shells and ruins of buildings.
There was a familiarity about all this. He had seen such before when armies had fought their ways across France and Germany years ago. War-torn—or at least visited by some great disaster. And sometime in the past, for vegetation grew among the ruins, rank and high, as if the very destruction of those buildings had provided fertilizer for the plants and shrubs.
No sun showing yet, but the light was that of full day. By that he could see the scars cutting deep into the ruins, where the very ground seemed frozen in a curdled slag, and the nightmare of his own world hovered. Atomic war? Radioactive land? Yet on a closer inspection Simon did not believe so. An atomic bomb would not have left buildings still erect on the edges of those congealed puddles, taken half a structure and spared the balance to stand as a ragged monument. Some other weapon—
“Simon!”
He did not need Jaelithe’s alerting whisper for he had seen that movement behind a ruined wall. Something alive, large enough to be formidable, perhaps on the stalk, was moving in the general direction of the hideout Jaelithe’s hand went to her belt where sword and knife still hung. Simon looked for the weapon he had found on the floor.
“Simon!”
He did not need Jaelithe’s alerting whisper for he had seen that movement behind a ruined wall. Something alive, large enough to be formidable, perhaps on the stalk, was moving in the general direction of the hideout Jaelithe’s hand went to her belt where sword and knife still hung. Simon looked for the weapon he had found on the floor.
Its similarity to a rifle, in spite of its light weight, made him consider it seriously. But the narrow opening in the barrel puzzled him—too small to emit even the needle darts of the Estcarpian sidearms. What had been the purpose of that slender tube? Simon held it in firing position. There was no trigger, merely a flat button. And, without believing there would be any result, Simon pressed that.
The bush on which he had sighted the alien weapon shivered, rain water shaking from the leaves. The whole plant quivered and it continued to quiver while Simon watched, hardly believing what he saw. Now the limbs bent earthward, the growth was withering, the leaves shriveling up, the stems twisting visibly. He heard a gasp from Jaelithe as the mass was at last still, a seared and wrinkled lump on the ground. There had been no sound, no visible ray—nothing, save that result of his firing the alien gun.
“Simon! Something coming—” Jaelithe looked beyond the withered bush.
He could see nothing; but feeling—that was different The sense of danger grew acute. Her hand touched the arm which still supported the weapon.
“Be ready.” On the words came another sound from her throat, low—no words—just a murmur.
Cover—three good patches of cover out there. Whatever lurked could hide in all or any. Jaelithe’s purring call was louder. He had once seen her spill a Kolder ambush out of hiding; was she trying the same tactics now?
The alert in him was reaching a climax. Then—From all three covers they came, running silently. One from behind a wall, another from a thick brush, the last from behind a half-fallen building. They were men—or, Simon corrected that as they came into plain sight—they had the general appearance of men. Rags of clothing still covered parts of their bodies, but that only added to the horror, rather than made them more human. For those bodies were thin, arms and legs showing as bone covered with skin, no flesh or muscle underneath. The heads they held high on stick necks were skulls. It was as if the ruins had given up the long dead to stalk the living.
Simon swung up the alien rifle, swept it across that trio. For some heart-choking seconds he thought that the first firing had exhausted whatever strange ammunition that weapon held. Then they halted their silent rush, stumbling only a step or two farther. Their bodies jerked as the bush had quivered.
They were no longer silent, instead there came a thin, high, squealing unlike any human speech, as they jerked and danced, until they toppled to lie still. Simon fought down the nausea which was a bitter taste in his mouth. He heard Jaelithe cry out, and he put his arm about her, drawing her close so they clung together.
“So—”
Both of them were startled by the voice from behind. Aldis, on her feet, one hand steadying her against the cracked wall, came to the door of the building. The smile on her face, as she looked out at the row of doubly dead added to Simon’s sickness. It accepted that scene and was pleased by it.
“They still live then—the last garrison?” She paid no attention to either Jaelithe or Simon; they might not have existed. “Well, their vigil is about to end.”
Jaelithe moved out of Simon’s hold. “Who were these?” She asked in a voice which demanded an answer.
Aldis did not turn her head. Still smiling, she continued to study the dead.
“The garrison—those left to hold the last barrier. Of course, they did not know that that was their only duty—just to hold while the Command reached safety. They believed, poor fools, that it was only a withdrawal to re-form, that help would reach them. But the Command had other problems.” She laughed. “However, this is a surprise for the Masters, for it seems they have held longer than was expected.”
How could she know all this? Aldis was not Kolder born. In fact, as far as any knew, there were no women at all among the Kolder. But somehow Simon did not doubt that it had happened just as she said. Jaelithe made a small gesture with her hand as a scout might wave caution.
“There are more—”
Again he did not need her warning. The sense of danger had not greatly lessened. But he could sight no movement about the stretch of open ground before them. And this time Jaelithe did not strive to bring them out. Instead, she turned to gaze at the cut from which they had climbed.
“They gather—but not against us—”
There was a sound from Aldis—not a laugh, but a titter which scaled past the bounds of sanity.
“Oh, they wait,” she agreed. “They have waited, a long time they have waited. And now come those who would hunt for us—only there will be a second hunt.” Again that titter which was worse than any cry of pain or terror.
But what she said was not insane; it made sense. The Kolder could be coming through the gate to hunt for the three of them. And these—these things—which lingered here were gathering to meet them. Did the Kolder know what they faced?
Simon gave a hasty glance along the edge of the drop. To go out might make them the quarry for those who were moving in. but only so could they see the gate in action. And the nagging fear which had ridden him since they had crashed through had been that return might be denied.
There was a solid-looking base out there, perhaps it had once supported a superstructure of which only a single rod pointing skyward remained. With their backs to that base they would have a vantage point from which to watch the gate. Cradling the rifle in his arm, Simon caught at Aldis and pulled her along, Jaelithe following fleetly.
What Simon had believed during the storm to be a stream bed now showed as the remnants of a paved road, half covered by falls of debris from the heights. A stream still ran down its middle. A little to the right of their present stand, but down on the level of the road, the wall of the cut, on either side, had blocks of green metal set as pillars.
“The gate,” Simon said.
“And its defenders,” Jaelithe added in a half whisper. Those were to be seen now, moving along the cut. For all their unearthly, unhuman aspect, they were setting up an ambush with the cunning of intelligence, or what had been born from intelligence which had once existed. Here and there Simon marked such weapons as the one he held in his own hands.
“They are coming through!”
There was no change in the metal pillars, no sign that the gate was in use, until those men suddenly appeared as if from the air itself. Possessed fighting men, yet they showed caution as they fanned out, moved up the break. There was no hint from those in hiding. And the controlled warriors of the Kolder advanced without facing attack. A full company of them came through, were well along the cut from which every sign of those in ambush had vanished. Now the nose of one of the crawlers appeared, followed by the rest of its ponderously moving bulk. One of the possessed at the controls, but beside him a Kolder agent.
Around, from below, from across the cut, Simon sensed that upsurge—an emotion in the air, dark and heavy. “They hate—” Jaelithe whispered. “How they hate!”
“They hate,” Aldis mimicked her tone. “But still they wait. They have learned to wait, for that is what they have lived to do.”
A second truck crawled out of nothingness. Now the invaders’ foot force was well down the old road. This second vehicle had a larger cabin on its body, the top of which was a transparent dome. And in that sat true Kolder, two of them—one wearing a metal cap.
The smoldering cloud of emotion was so strong now Simon expected it to rise as a visible fog. But still those in ambush made no move. A smaller party of possessed, marched stolidly along—labor ready for the need.
Then—nothing more.
“Now!”
Sound, lower than thunder but with a bestial hate which made it one with elements, which owed nothing to intelligence or human understanding. The fury which had been building boiled into action as the possessed shivered, jerked, fell.
There was not enough room in the cut for the trucks to turn. But the one bearing the Kolder officers reversed, crawled backward, so that the possessed who followed it were crushed and broken beneath its treads. Then the driver jerked and quivered in turn. He fell out of sight in the cabin, yet still the truck retreated, or strove to withdraw, though its backward run was now far more unsteady. At last it crashed into one of the piles of debris and slowly tilted, as the treads clawed vainly to keep it upright.
The Kolder wearing the cap had not moved, even his eyes remained closed. Perhaps it was his will which had kept the truck going, even protected him and his fellows now as neither seemed affected by the attack which withered and slew those about them.
His companion turned his head from side to side, studying the route. But no expression Simon could read crossed his white face.
“They have what they want now,” Aldis again with that tittering laugh. “They have caught a Master to give them a key to the gate.”
They had come out of hiding, those skeletons—the bait of the Kolders drawing them free of caution. Many of them were bare-handed as they swarmed about the truck, strove to climb to the bubble-topped cabin.
Mewling cries—half that company fell back, their bodies blackened, their limbs moving spasmodically. But still more gathered, not quite as unwary now. Until several came together, bearing with them a loop of metallic chain. Three flings before it fell into position about the bubble. Then fire ran around it in a spitting line. When that was pulled away and they climbed again, there was no trouble. The bubble shattered and they were at their prey.
Jaelithe covered her eyes. She had seen the sacking of cities and the things done in Karsten when the Old Race had been horned into outlawry. But this was something she could not watch.
“Only one—” Aldis babbled, “he must be saved for the key—they must have their key!”
The metal-capped Kolder hung limply in his captors’ clutches, his eyes still closed. The skeletons were gathering along the cut, to form up as a grotesque demon army behind that captive and those who held him. There were the alien rifles among them, but others had armed themselves with the weapons of the possessed. And their hate was still high and hot. Then, holding the Kolder to the fore, they marched, as if a forgotten training was revived in their union of purpose—for the gate.
Simon moved as the first of them stepped between the pillars and vanished. The Kolder—now these—what evil would be loosed in the world he had come to consider his own?
“Yes, oh, yes!” Jaelithe cried. “A wind, then a whirlwind—and we must face the storm!”
18 KOLDER BESIEGED
ONLY THE DEAD lay in the cut, that sense of alien presence had accompanied that sinister army through the gate. How many had been in that force? Fifty. A hundred? Simon had not counted them, but he believed not over a hundred. And what could so few do against the entrenched might beyond? This was not to be a matter of laying an ambush.
But the Kolder should be too occupied now to remember the fugitives, and this was the time to return with the force before them.
“We go back—”
Aldis gave one of those eerie, tittering laughs. She had crept away from them, was moving along the edge of the ravine, looking at them over her shoulder, a sly grin on her lips. Almost she was coming to resemble the skeletal inhabitants of this land. The last vestiges of beauty had been bleached from her.
“How will you go?” she called. “Door without key, door you cannot batter down. How do you go, mighty warrior and lady witch?”
She was running in a zigzag, fleetly, back into the waste.
“After her!” Jaelithe scrambled by him. “Do you not see? That talisman—it is the key—for her—for us!”
If she were right—Simon followed. Light as it was to carry, the alien rifle was an awkward burden as they smashed through brush. But he clung to it. In spite of the veil of vegetation growing over the debris of the buildings, the ruins were impressive. This had been, if not a city, a fort or settlement of some size. And the number of hiding places among the broken walls were beyond counting. As he and Jaelithe burst into an open space, Simon stopped her with an outthrust arm.
“Where?” He made the one word into a demand and saw her gaze about with dawning comprehension. “She might be within arm’s distance or well away, but where?” He hammered home the hopelessness of their unthinking pursuit. This warren of ruins was made for endless hide and seek.
Jaelithe raised her hands and cupped them over her eyes, standing very still while her breathing quieted. Simon did not quite know what she would do, but in confidence he waited. She pivoted, part way around, and then dropped her hands to point.
“Thus!”
“How do—?”
“How do I know? By what is not there—Kolder barrier—and she wears the Kolder talisman.”
A thin clue—there could be other Kolder traces in this land. But it was the only one they had. Simon nodded and accepted her guidance. It was a crooked path Jaelithe set them, and it bored on into the mass of ruins away from the cleft. Simon marked a back trail as they went, blazing growths, or scratching stones. But the time this chase was taking he regretted.
They came out on a large paved space, ringed by buildings in a better state of repair than those nearer the cut. There was a different look to these structures—not quite the sealed appearance of the Kolder holds, yet with some of their stark rigidity of design. Grace and beauty in the sense his world knew them, Jaelithe’s people held, were totally foreign to the minds which had conceived and built these. And any one of them might provide Aldis with numerous hiding places.
“Where?” Simon asked.
Jaelithe put her hand on the top of a low wall which ran about that open space. Her breath came fast and the dark finger marks of fatigue under her eyes were plain.
They had drunk their fill of rain water in the storm, but there had been no food for a long time. Simon doubted if they could hold this pace much longer. And now Jaelithe shook her head slowly.
“I do . . . not . . . know. It has gone from me—” Her hurried breaths were close to sobs. Simon caught her, drew her against him, and she came willingly as if very grateful for his strength, his touch which held comfort.
“Listen,” he spoke softly, “do you think you could sing her out, as you did in those in ambush?”
“We must. We must!” Her voice was a husky whisper with an element of hysteria in it.
“And we can! Remember once—back in Kars when there was need of shape-changing and you said that you would call upon me for that which you needed to make the ceremony a swift one? Now it will be the same: call upon me for what you need.”