"How close?" Her voice was muffled but she had recovered her composure. "Earl, how close?"
"Brace yourself."
He dropped one hand to the release and freed her of the restraints. A hill loomed before them and he rugged, praying that the explosion hadn't totally destroyed the emergency units, that the hull would take the strain, that something, anything, would give them that little extra to clear the summit.
A gust of wind saved them. A vagrant blast which caught the prow of the raft, lifted it the essential fraction, letting it drop only after they had cleared the jagged peak. Below rolled a steep slope studded with massive boulders, mounded with accumulated soil tufted by patches of vegetation. Like a stone thrown over water the raft bounced and skidded, metal tearing with harsh raspings, fragments ripped free to litter the slope. A mount flung them into the air, a dip lay beyond, a boulder which smashed like a hammer into the prow of the raft, to send them both hurtling forward, to part, to land with a stunning impact, to roll and finally to come to rest.
Dumarest stirred, feeling the ache of strained muscles, a warm wetness on the side of his face. A questing hand lowered stained with red, the blood welling from a gash in his scalp. With an effort he turned and sat upright, fighting the nausea which gripped him and sent the terrain wheeling in sickening spirals.
When it had passed he looked around. Behind him rested stone, a rock against which he had been thrown, the force of landing softened by the vegetation on which he lay. Sharp thorns and jagged stones had ripped the plastic of his tunic exposing the glint of metal mesh buried within. A defense which had saved him from cruel lacerations but had done nothing to save him from ugly bruises.
But he was alive, intact, dazed a little, suffering minor injuries but that was all. His luck had not deserted him.
And Lavinia's had not deserted her.
She lay in a shallow dell, a place thick with soft grasses, shrubs like springs which had taken her weight and eased the final part of her landing. She was unconscious, a lump beneath the mane of her hair but, as Dumarest discovered after examining her body, she was free of broken bones.
Rising he looked around. The suns were low, the air holding a peculiar hush as if strained with the energies of an imminent storm. But there were no clouds and little wind.
Walking back to the ruin of the raft he found his knife, used it to slash a reedy plant and collected a handful of pale sap which he used to bathe the woman's face.
"Earl?" Her eyelids fluttered. "Earl-what happened? Earl!"
"Steady!" His hand was firm on her shoulder.
"Sit up if you can." He waited as she obeyed, staring with eyes free of suffused blood. A good sign-the chances were small she had a concussion. "Any internal pain? No? Good. Can you stand up and take a few steps?" He relaxed as she did as asked. At least she was mobile and he was freed of the necessity of taking care of a maimed and helpless person.
"Earl! Your face!"
"It's nothing." He collected more sap and washed the blood from his temple and cheek. The sap held a thin, sweet flavor and he drank a little. "Is any of this vegetation good to eat?"
"It won't hurt you but it contains no nourishment."
As he had expected, but at least it would fill their bellies in case of need. Lavinia stared her horror as he mentioned it.
"Earl, you can't be serious. We can't stay in the open. We have to find shelter before it's dark."
"Here?" He looked around, seeing nothing but the barren slope of the hill, the wreck of the raft.
"We must! Earl, we must!"
"Because of your bogey-men?"
"The Sungari! Earl, for God's sake believe me! If we are in the open at night we'll never see the dawn!"
Valid or not her terror was real. Dumarest looked at her, recognizing her near-panic, her incipient hysteria.
Quietly he said, "In that case we'll have to find somewhere to spend the night. Look around for a place while I go back to the raft."
"Why, Earl? What good can it do? The thing is a wreck."
But one which held sharp scraps of metal, wire, fabric, ribs-all things which could spell survival in a wilderness.
Dumarest examined it. The floor had been of metal covered with a coarsely woven fabric held with strips. He ripped them away, lifted the material and slashed it free with his knife. A coil of wire followed, some rods, a section of foil which he rolled into an awkward bundle. By the time he had finished the suns were resting on the horizon and Lavinia was desperate.
"I can't find a place, Earl. There aren't any caves. I don't even know in which direction the nearest stop-over is. The Sungari-Earl!"
He dropped his burden and held her in his arms until the quivering had stopped and she was calm again.
"If we can't find a place to stay then we'll make one." He gestured at the things he had assembled. "Need it be strong? Do the Sungari actually attack? Are they large or what?"
She didn't know as he had expected. Her fear was born of rumor and whispered convictions of a knowledge based on a lack of evidence. But, unless he were to end with an insane woman on his hands, he had to pander to her delusion.
As they worked she said, "Why couldn't we have used the wreck? Couldn't it have been easier?"
"No." Dumarest adjusted the fabric which he had stretched over the curved rods and lashed with wire. Rocks surrounded the crude tent and now he covered it with a thin layer of sand. "It was too big," he explained. "Too heavy to move and too awkward to seal. And I don't want to be there when they come looking for us."
"Looking?" Her eyes widened, filled with purple from the dying light. "Who? Gydapen?"
"A clever man." Dumarest dusted more sand over the shelter. "He knew you would be eager to get back home and, if we'd crashed over the Iron Mountains, we'd have stood no chance. He even guessed that you might suspect him and head for a stop-over but, as you said, you'd have to ride high to spot one. Either way he couldn't lose."
"The explosion," she said, dully. "He sabotaged the raft."
"Which is why he insisted that we take wine with him and kept us busy with his cat and mouse game. He needed time to set the bomb and he wanted it to be late when we left." Dumarest looked at the woman. "He wanted to kill you," he said, evenly. "And he will want to be certain you are dead."
Would already be dead if it hadn't been for him. Lavinia had a sickening vision of herself, broken, bloodied, the prey for scavengers. It had been so close! If Dumarest hadn't suspected, hadn't acted when he had-and even then it had been close.
She felt a momentary weakness and closed her eyes, thankful she wasn't alone, thankful too that it was Dumarest with her and not Roland or Alcorus or even Charles when alive. Charles-how ignorant she had been! And Gydapen — how stupid!
She heard the rasp and scrape of stone against steel and turned to see Dumarest squatting, knife in hand, sparks flying from the blade. Some finely fretted material lay before him on a small heap of whittled twigs. A nest which caught the sparks and held them as, gently, he blew them to flame.
A fire-but why?
Watching, she saw him feed the glow, building it to a blaze which he lifted with the aid of metal torn from the roll of foil and carried to a place between rocks well to one side. More foil, the rest of the roll, made a humped shape behind it.
"A decoy!" Finally she understood. "If anyone should come they will see it and think we are with it. But no one will come at night, Earl."
"Can you be sure of that?"
"How could they spot the wreck?"
"There are ways." He added more fuel to the blaze. Smoke wreathed his face making it cruel in the crimson light. "We found the bomb but a tracking device could have been fitted."