Before the missile could be fired, the load it carried delivered to the castle, the fury of the warhead tearing at stone and flesh and bone and turning graceful men and women into crawling things of horror.
"Now! For God's sake stop them if you can!"
The air blurred.
It shook to the quiver of wings, the passage of bodies spined and with serrated fins, creatures of chitin and bone. Living darts, pointed, barbed, coming from nowhere and striking without warning.
The officer screamed and fell, holes where his eyes had been, blood gushing to stream down his face and join the fountain pulsing at his throat.
His men spun, some running, others beating at the air with hands too slow to hit the living missiles. They died, falling with blood marking their bodies, clothing ripped, flesh torn from bone, bone shattered by the bullet-like impact.
A shift and other men, more death, more destruction of the invading force. And more. And more. Until, finally, it was over.
From the raft the ground was a mottled patchwork of rocks and boulders lined with crevasses and dotted with patches of scrub. A hard place to find anything still less the relatively small figure of a man. Sighing Gartok lowered his binoculars and palmed his aching eyes.
For two days now he had been searching without success but stubbornly refused to give up. Dumarest was alive, he was sure of it, and if he was alive, then somehow, he would return to the surface.
The Sungari would help him.
"Sir?" The driver of the raft was young and proud at having being chosen by the tough mercenary to handle the vehicle. "Shall I continue in this direction?"
One way was as good as another but ahead reared the bulk of the Iron Mountains with the attendant dangers of turbulence and varying densities of air. Even an experienced driver could lose a raft in such conditions.
"No." Gartok made his decision. "Swing to the left and follow the foothills. Ride low and keep even."
Again he lifted the binoculars. They were fitted with an infrared detector and could reveal the presence of any living thing by its own body-heat, but the lenses remained clear.
"To the right," ordered Gartok. "Hold it!"
Something was over there and he tightened his hands at the hint of movement. A trace augmented by the sudden flicker of the detector. A living creature-Dumarest?
Gartok swore as a foal suddenly sprang from behind a rock to race down a crevass then, as the detector flickered again, yelled to the driver.
"Down! Down and to the right a little. Hurry, damn you! That's Earl!"
He was sitting on a boulder, his head resting in his hands, a thin coating of some kind of slime dried on his clothing so that he seemed to have been dusted with a frost-like powder. As Gartok approached he looked up.
"God!" The mercenary came to a halt. "Earl, your face!"
It was tense, drawn, the eyes sunken, the hair also coated with the lace-like patina. More rested on his cheeks, paling his lips, webbed on his eyebrows. It gave him the appearance of having aged a century; an illusion broken only when he spoke.
"Kars."
"Here!" Gartok had come prepared. He lifted a bottle and jerked out the cork. "Drink some of this." He restrained his impatience as Dumarest obeyed. "You found them, didn't you?"
"The Sungari? Yes."
"It had to be you. I told those weak bastards who came demanding that you should be handed over that. Told them and ordered them from Belamosk. By God, I'd have killed them had they lingered. Then I came looking for you." He added, simply, "I've been looking for a long time."
With others, scouring the skies with rafts, searching, always searching. But he, at least, had found.
"Earl?"
"It's over, isn't it? The war?"
"Over. Every last mercenary is dead. Tomir too, they found him in a cellar."
"I know."
"You know?" Gartok frowned, then changed the subject. "What are they like, Earl? Did they feed you? Give you water? How did you manage to persuade them?"
Questions followed by more and all stemming from a natural curiosity. Some impossible to answer while others could only be guessed at. The extent of the underground domain. The means by which access was gained to the surface. The method of breeding the selective strains which formed the extensions of the main intelligence-or had there only been one.
Was Zakym the home of a tremendous, alien brain?
One thing was certain, the Sungari owned this world despite what men may have thought. They, it, were the masters. Men were tolerated as a harmless insect would have been tolerated by a magnanimous gardener. But should that insect bite it would be crushed as men would be exterminated should they grow too fast and become too greedy.
Plague could do it. The destruction of all surface life, the crops and herds, would force them to withdraw. And there could be other ways based on the mind. Terrors which he could only imagine. Horrors without a name.
Dumarest rose and drank more of the brandy and felt the warmth of it spread from his stomach and restore some of his humanity. He had wandered too long in the dark, relied on the alien life-form too greatly, had suffered its probing too long. He needed to face those of his own kind, to hear voices, to take a long, hot bath and feel clean and wholesome again.
He needed to hold Lavinia in his arms and feel the soft comfort of her, the assurance of her need. But when they returned to Belamosk she was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Roland came running to meet them as the raft landed in the courtyard. "Earl, how good to see you! And Kars! But where is Lavinia?" He looked from one to the other. "Haven't you seen her?"
"No."
"But, Earl, you sent word for her to come and join you!" Roland looked baffled. "I don't understand this. The messenger was explicit. He said that you'd been found and was hurt and wanted to see her. She insisted on leaving immediately. I wanted to accompany her but she refused to allow it. We'd had a small argument, nothing serious, but you know how determined she can be at times. I didn't want to upset her further so didn't press the point. But if you didn't send for her then who did?"
Dumarest said, "What did the man look like? Describe him."
"A big man, broad with a broken nose and scars around his eyes. He had a patch on the back of his left hand as if it had been burned at one time. I thought he might have been a herdsman."
"Flying a raft? Was he alone?"
"Yes. Of course, I should have noticed about the raft. It was stupid of me. One other thing, he had lost the little finger of his left hand."
"Louchon!" Gartok scowled as he rubbed the edge of his jaw. "He was with Tomir but I thought he was dead. The scars are the result of a cheap regraft and his hand once bore a tattoo. Someone didn't like the design and burned it away with acid. A year later that same man was found hanging head down over a fire. No one could prove who had cooked his brains but Louchon got the credit A hard man, Earl."
One the Sungari had missed and he had served Tomir as had the cyber. If one was alive then so could be the other and it was obvious why the woman had been taken.
"Did the man say where I was supposed to be?"
"He mentioned a stop-over on the edge of Suchong's estate. The one near Eibrens Rise. I know it and could guide you." Roland was anxious. "Earl, what is wrong? Why should anyone have tricked Lavinia?"