“What now?” Irene asked, too tired even to be properly irritable.
“Maybe I can distract them,” Dor said. “If I succeed, the rest of you hurry through the pass.”
They worked their way as close to the pass as they could without being discovered. Amolde oriented himself so that the magic aisle was where they needed it. Then Dor concentrated, causing the objects to break into speech.
“Ready, Khazars?” an outcropping, of rock cried.
“Ready!” came a chorused response from several loose rocks.
“Sneak up close before firing your arrows,” the outcropping directed. “We want to get them all on the first volley.”
“Save some for our boulder!” the upper face of the cleft called. “We have a perfect drop here!”
The Onesti soldiers, at first uneasy, abruptly vacated the cleft, glancing nervously up at the crags. It seemed impossible for anyone to have a boulder up there, but the voice had certainly been convincing. They charged the rocks, swords drawn. “Move out!” Dor cried.
Amolde and Grundy charged for the pass. Smash and Irene hesitated. “Go on!” Dor snapped. “Get through before the magic ends!”
“But what about you?” Irene asked.
Dor concentrated. “Retreat, men!” the outcropping cried.
“They’re on to us!” There was the sound of scrambling from the rocks.
“I’m not going without you!” Irene said.
“I’ve got to keep them distracted until the rest of you safely clear the pass!” Dor cried, exasperated.
“You can’t keep on after-“
Then the voices stopped. The magic aisle had passed.
“After Amolde gets out of range,” she finished lamely.
The soldiers, baffled by the disappearance of the enemy, were turning about. In a moment they would spy the two; the moonlight remained too bright for effective concealment in the open.
“I grew a pineapple while we waited,” Irene said. “I hate to use it on people, even Mundanes, but they’ll kill us if-“
“How can a magic pineapple operate outside the aisle?” he demanded, knowing this argument was foolish, but afraid if they moved that the soldiers would spy them.
She looked chagrined. “For once you’re right! If cherry bombs are uncertain, so is this!”
Smash was standing in the cleft. “Run!” he cried.
But the soldiers were closing in. Dor knew they couldn’t make it through in time. He drew his sword. Without its magic, it felt heavy and clumsy, but it was the best weapon he had. He would be overwhelmed, of course, but he would die fighting. It wasn’t the end he would have chosen, had he a reasonable choice, but it was better than nothing. “Run to Smash,” he said. “I’ll block them off.”
“You come, too!” she insisted. “I love you!”
“Now she tells me,” he muttered, watching the soldiers close in.
Irene threw the pineapple at them. “Maybe it’ll scare them,” she said.
“It can’t. They don’t know what-“
The pineapple exploded, sending yellow juice everywhere. “It detonated!” Dor exclaimed, amazed.
“Come on!”’ Amolde called, appearing behind the ogre. Suddenly it made sense; the centaur had turned about and come back when they hadn’t followed. That had returned the magic to the vicinity, just in time.
They ran to the cleft. The Mundanes were pawing at their eyes, blinded by pineapple juice. There was no trouble.
“You were so busy trying to be heroes, you forgot common sense,” Amolde reproved them. “All you needed to do was follow me while the Mundanes’ backs were turned. They would never have known of our passage.”
“I never was strong on common sense,” Dor admitted.
“That’s for sure,” Irene agreed. “That juice won’t hold them forever. We’ll have to move far and fast.”
They did just that, their fatigue dissipated by the excitement. Now the path led downhill, facilitating progress somewhat. But it was treacherous in the darkness at this speed, for the mountain crags and trees shadowed it, and it curved and dropped without fair warning.
Soon the soldiers were in pursuit.
But Dor used his talent, making the path call out warnings of hazards, so that they could proceed more rapidly than other strangers might. His midnight sunstone helped, too, casting just enough light to make pitfalls almost visible. But he knew they couldn’t remain on the path long, because the soldiers were more familiar with it, and had their torches, and would surely catch up. They would have to pun off and hide-and that might not be enough, this time. There was too little room for concealment, and the soldiers would be too wary.
Then disaster loomed. “The bridge is out!” the path warned.
“What bridge?” Dor panted.
“The wooden bridge across the cut, dummy!”
“What happened to it?”
“The Onesti soldiers destroyed it when they heard the Khazars were coming.”
So Dor’s party had brought this mischief on itself! “Can we cross the cut some other way?”
“See for yourself. Here it is.”
They halted hastily. There, shrouded by darkness and fog, was a gap in the mountain-a fissure four times the full reach of a man, ex tending from the clifflike face of the peak above down to the deep valley below, shrouded in nocturnal fog. Here the moonlight blazed down, as if eager to show the full extent of the hazard.
“A young, vigorous centaur could hurdle that,” Amolde said. “It is out of the question for me.”
“If we had the rope-“ Irene said. But of course Chet had that, wherever he was now.
Ascent of the peak seemed virtually impossible, and there was no telling what lay beneath the fog. The bridge had been the only practical crossing-and only fragments of that remained. This had become a formidable natural barrier-surely one reason the Khazars had been unable to conquer this tiny Kingdom. Any bridge the enemy built could readily be hacked out or fired.
But now the torches of the garrison of the upper pass were approaching.
That was the other pincer of this trap. A few men could guard that pass, preventing retreat. The slope was steep here, offering little haven above or below the path. If the soldiers didn’t get them, nature would.
“The salve,” Irene said. “See the fog-we’ve got to use the salve!”
“But the curse-we’ve lost the counterspell!” Dor protested. “We’ll have to do some dastardly deed!”
“Those soldiers will do some dastardly deed to us if we don’t get away from here fast,” she pointed out.
Dor looked at her, standing in the moonlight, wearing his jacket, her fine-formed legs braced against the mountain. He thought of the soldiers doing a dastardly deed to her, as they had started to do in the dungeon. “We’ll use the salve,” he decided.
They scrambled down the steep slope to reach the level of the mist. They had to cling to trees and saplings, lest they slide into the cleft involuntarily.
Dor felt in his pocket for the jar-and found the dime he had obtained from Ichabod in Modern Mundania. He had forgotten that; it must have slipped into another crevice if his pocket and been over looked. It was of course of no use now. He fumbled farther and found the jar.
Quickly they applied the salve to their feet. The supply was getting low; this was just about the last time they would be able to use it.
Then they stepped cautiously out onto the fog.
“Stay close to Amolde,’ Dor warned. “And in line. Anyone who goes outside the magic aisle will fall through.”
Now the soldiers reached the cut. They were furious when they discovered no victims there. But almost immediately they spied the fugitives. “Cnvm adknvl” one cried. “Sgdx’qd rim sgd bknto.” Then he did a double take.
For a moment the soldiers stared. “Sgdx can’t do that!” one protested as the rear of the magic aisle swung around to intersect him.