Then two of the creatures detached from the others and hurled themselves forward, swords arcing suddenly above their heads.
They swung their staffs as hard as they could, catching both beasts on the chest. They fell backwards in a sudden expansion of rubbery wings, as though they had stumbled into billowing dark canvas.
Three more now leapt over the fallen ones, shrieking. As they came, Urson looked up and jammed his staff into the belly of a fourth monster who was about to fall on them from above. One got past Iimmi"s whistling staff and Geo had to stop swinging and grab a furry arm. He pulled it to the side, overbalancing the huge, sailed creature. It dropped its sword as it lay for a moment, struggling on its back. Geo grabbed the blade and brought it straight from the ground up into the gut of another of the creatures who spread open its wings and staggered back. He wrested the blade free, and then turned it down into the body of the fallen one; it made a thick sound like a crushed sponge. As the blade came out again and he hacked into a shadow on his left, a voice suddenly sounded, but inside his head.
_The ... jewels ..._
"Snake!" bawled Geo. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?" He was still holding his staff, and now he flung it forward, spear-like, into the face of an advancing beast. Struck, it opened up like a black parachute, knocking away three of its companions, before it fell.
In the view, cleared for an instant, Geo saw a slight, spidery form, dart from the jungle edge into the clearing. With his free hand Geo ripped the jewels from his neck and flung the confused handful of thong and chain over the heads of the shrieking beasts. The beads made a double eye in the light at the top of their arc before they fell on the leaves beyond. Snake picked them up and held them above his head.
Fire leapt from the boy"s hands in a double bolt that converged in the center of the dark bodies. A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a wing. A wing flamed, waved flame, and the burning beast tried to take air before it fell, splashing fire about it. Orange light caught sharp on brown faces chiseled with shadow, caught in the terrified red bead of an eye or along double fangs behind dark lips.
Burning wings withered on the ground; dead leaves had sparked now, and whips of light ran on the clearing floor. The beasts retreated and the three men stood against the wall, panting.
"Watch out!" Iimmi suddenly called.
Snake looked up as the great wings tented over him, hiding him momentarily. Red flared beneath them, and suddenly the beasts fell away, their sails sweeping over the dead leaves, moved by wind or life, Geo couldn"t tell. Dark flappings rose on the moon, grew further away, and were gone.
Away from the wall, they saw the fire had blown up against the wall and was dying. They ran quickly toward the edge of the forest. "Snake," said Geo when they stopped. "This is Iimmi, this is Snake. We told you about him."
Iimmi extended his hand. "Glad to meet you."
"Look," said Geo, "he can read your mind, so if you still think he"s a spy ..."
Iimmi grinned. "Remember the general rule? If he is a spy, it"s going to get much too complicated trying to figure why he saved us like that."
Urson scratched his head. "If it"s a choice between Snake and nothing, we better take Snake. Hey, Four Arms, I owe you a thrashing." He paused, then laughed. "I hope some day I get a chance to give it to you."
"Where have you been, anyway?" Geo asked. He put his hand on the boy"s shoulder. "You"re wet."
"Our water friends again?" suggested Urson.
"Probably," said Geo.
Snake now held one hand toward Geo.
"What"s that? Oh, you don"t want to keep them?"
Snake shook his head.
"All right," said Geo. He took one jewel and put it around his neck.
Geo took the wrought chain with the platinum claw from his neck and hung it around Iimmi"s. The white eye shown on his dark chest in the moonlight. Now Snake beckoned them to follow him back across the clearing. They came, stopping to pick up swords from the shriveled darknesses on the ground about the clearing. As they pa.s.sed around the edge of the broken building, Geo looked for the corpse they had left there, but it was gone.
"Where are we going?" asked Urson.
Snake only motioned them onward. They neared the broken cylinder and Snake scrambled up the rubble under the dark hole through which the man-wolf had leaped earlier that evening.
At the door, Snake turned and lifted the jewel from Geo"s neck, and held it aloft. The jewel glowed now, with a blue-green light that seeped into the corners and crevices of the ruined entrance. Shreds of cloth hung at the windows, most of which were broken. Twigs and rubbish littered the metal floor. They walked between double seats toward a door at the far end. Effaced signs still hung on the walls.
N .. SM .. K .. G
The door at the end was ajar, and Snake opened it all the way. Something scuttered through a cracked window. The jewel"s light showed two seats broken from their fixtures. Vines covered the front window in which only a few splinters of gla.s.s hung on the rim. Draped in rotten fabric, a few metal rings about wrists and ankles, two skeletons with silver helmets had fallen from the seats. Snake pointed to a row of smashed gla.s.s disks in front of the broken seats.
_Radio_ ... they heard in their minds.
Now he reached down into the mess on the floor and dislodged a chunk of rusted metal. _Gun_, he said, showing it to Geo.
The three men examined it. "What"s it good for?" asked Urson.
Snake shrugged.
"Are there any electricities, or diodes around?" asked Geo, remembering the words from before.
Snake shrugged again.
"Why did you want to show us all this?" Geo asked.
The boy only turned and started back toward the door. When they were standing in the oval entrance, about to climb down, Iimmi pointed to the ruins of the building ahead of them. "Do you know what that building was called?"
_Barracks_, Snake said.
"I know that word," said Geo.
"So do I," said Iimmi. "It means a place where they used to keep soldiers all together. It"s from one of the old languages."
"Where to now?" Urson asked Snake.
The boy climbed back down into the clearing and they followed him into the denser wood where only pearls of light scattered through the trees.
They emerged at a broad ribbon of silver, the river, broken by rocks.
"We were right the first time," Geo said. "We should have stayed here."
The sound of rippling, sloshing, the full whisper of leaves and foliage along the edges of the forest--these accompanied them as they lay down on the dried moss behind the larger rocks. And with the heaviness of release on them, they dropped, like stones down a well, the bright pool of sleep.
_The bright pool of silver grew and spread and wrinkled into the familiar shapes of mast, the rail of the deck, and the whiteness of the sea beyond the ship. The scene moved down the deck, until another gaunt figure approached from the other direction. The features, though strangely distorted by whiteness and pulled to grotesquerie, were recognizable as those of the captain as he drew near._
_"Oh, mate," said the captain._
_Silence, while the mate gave an answer they couldn"t hear._
_"Yes," answered the captain. "I wonder what she wants, too." His voice was hollow, etiolated like a flower grown in darkness. The captain turned and knocked on Argo"s cabin door. It opened, and they stepped in._
_The hand that opened the door for them was thin as winter twigs. The walls of the room seemed draped in spider webs and hangings insubstantial as layered dust. The great desk seemed spindly, grotesque, and the papers on top of it were tissue thin, threatening to scutter and crumble with a breath. The chandelier above gave more languishing white smoke than light, and the arms, branches, and complexed array of oil cups looked like a convocation of spiders._