“No, surely you knew what you did. You can do anything.”
“Uh—” Lockridge shook his head, trying to clear it. For the first time, he understood what had gone on. He really hadn’t planned events. Auri’s plight triggered the rage pent in him; thereafter, drilled-in habits had carried him along. Unless, of course, the Tenil Orugaray were right in believing that a man could be possessed by Those who walked this wilderness.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
“To seek you, who would lift the ban on me,” Auri said naively.
That made sense, though it dashed his ego a little. She’d acted in what seemed her own self-interest. And maybe not too recklessly, even, judging by how she had given the Yuthoaz the slip afterward. Only by pure bad luck had she been heard and captured; then pure good luck brought Lockridge to the very band that had seized her.
Luck? Time could turn on itself. There was indeed such a thing as destiny. Though it might be blind—Lockridge remembered Brann’s final word. “You came to me . . . and warned me!” An ugly thrill went down his nerves. No! he spat at the night. That was a lie!
Defiance brought decision. He paid Auri scant heed, while his plan and the sombre sense of fate grew within him, but he heard her talking:
Many got from Avildaro into the forest. I know where some are hidden, those I left to return to you. We can seek them out, and afterward another village of the Tenil Orugaray,”
Lockridge braced himself. “You shall,” he said. “But I have a different place to go.”
“What? Where? Beneath the sea?”
“No, ashore. And at once, before Brann thinks to send men there. A forsaken dolmen, half a morning’s walk to the south. Do you know it?”
Auri shivered. “Yes.” Her voice grew thin. “The House of the Old Dead. Once the Tenil Vaskulan lived in that place and buried their great folk; now only ghosts. Must you indeed? And after sunset?”
“Yes. Have no fears.”
She gulped. “Not—not if you say so.”
“Come, then. Guide me.”
They began to walk, through choked brush and down deer trails saturated with murk, he stumbling and swearing, she slipping sprite-like along. “You see,” he explained when they stopped to rest, “my, uh, my friend, The Storm, is still in Brann’s hands. I must try to get help for her rescue.”
“That witch?” He heard a whisper of tangled locks as Auri tossed her head, and a sniff that actually made him chuckle. “Can she not look after herself?”
“Well, the rescue party should also be able to chase the Yuthoaz home.”
“So you will come back!” she exclaimed in a rush of gladness. Somehow he didn’t think it was selfish. And had her return to Avildaro been entirely so? He felt uncomfortable.
Little else was said. Progress was too difficult. The slow hours passed; and the night, short in this season near midsummer, began to wane. Stars paled, a greyness crept between the trees, the first twitter of birds came faint and clear.
Lockridge thought that now he could recognize the path he had followed with Storm. Not far to go—
Auri stiffened. Her eyes, luminous in the small dimly seen face, widened. “Hold!” she breathed.
“What?” Lockridge gripped the axe till his palm hurt.
“Do you not hear?”
He didn’t. She led him forward, turning her head right and left parting withes with enormous caution. Presently the sound reached him too: a crackle in the brush, far behind but ever more near.
His gullet tightened. “Animals?” he hoped foolishly.
“Men,” Auri told him. “Bound our way.”
So Brann had dispatched a patrol to guard the time gate. Had the Yuthoaz been as woodscrafty as this girl, they would have been waiting there for him. As matters stood, he had a chance.
“Fast!” he ordered. “Never mind silence. We must reach the dolmen ahead of them.”
Auri sprinted. He came behind. In the misty twilight, he stumbled over a log and into a stand of saplings. They caught at his garments and cried out in wooden voices. Shouts lifted from the glades at his back.
“They heard,” Auri warned. “Swiftly!”
Over the trail they fled. Trees crawled past with horrible slowness. And the light strengthened.
When they emerged on the meadow, it lay aglitter with dew under a sky flushed rose. The hillock loomed before them. Breath raw in his lungs, knifed by his spleen, Lockridge made for the hollow tree where Storm had hidden the entrance control.
He fumbled within. Auri screamed. Lockridge drew forth the metal tube and looked about. A score of warriors were at the edge of the clearing.
They roared when they saw him and bounded forward. Lockridge staggered with Auri, up the knoll, above a second-growth tangle into plain view. An arrow went whoo-oo past his ear.
“No, you dolt!” called the Yutho leader. “The god said to take him alive!”
Lockridge twisted studs on the tube. A man broke through the young trees at the foot of the mound, poised, and waved his fellows on. Lockridge saw with unnatural sharpness: braided hair, leather kilt, muscular torso and the long tomahawk—Brann must have nerved this gang up to face almost anything.
The tube glowed and trembled in his grasp. Other Yuthoaz joined the first and ploughed through grass and briars, on to do battle. Lockridge threw Withucar’s axe. The lead man dodged and barked laughter. His followers rioted behind him.
The earth moved.
Auri wailed, went to her knees, and clutched Lockridge’s waist. The Yuthoaz stopped cold. After an instant, they scampered with yells into the thicket below. There they halted. Glimpsewise through leaves, Lockridge saw them in their confusion. He heard their captain bay, “The god swore we couldn’t be hurt by any magic! Come on, you sons of rabbits!”
The downramp shone white. The Yuthoaz advanced again. Auri couldn’t be left here. Lockridge seized the girl’s arm and flung her into the entrance.
The leader was almost upon him. He tumbled through the hole, fell flat, and twisted the controls. The hovering plug of earth moved down, blotted out the sky, hissed into place.
Silence closed like fingers.
Auri broke it in a shriek that rose swiftly toward hysteria. Lockridge collected himself and slapped her. She sat where she was, dumbstricken, staring at him with eyes from which humanity was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Lockridge said. And he was as he watched the red blotch appear on her cheek. “But you must not run wild. We are safe now.”
“W-w-w-w—” She fought for breath. Her gaze dashed back and forth, around the icily lit walls that enclosed her; she grovelled on the floor and whimpered, “We are in the House of the Old Dead.”
Lockridge shook her and snapped, “There is nothing to fear. They have no powers against me. Believe!”
He had not expected will to mount so fast in her. She drank several sobs, her body stiffened and shaking, but after a minute of regarding him she said, “I believe you, Lynx,” and the craziness departed.
That gave him back his own strength, together with a bleak alertness. “I did not mean for you to come here,” he said, “but we had no choice if you were not to be caught. Now you will see strange things. Do not let them frighten you.” A satiric part recalled how Storm had given him much the same advice. Had he indeed come to accept this eldritch world of passage between the ages so soon? His home century seemed a half-forgotten dream.
But that was doubtless because of present urgency. “We have to move,” he said. “The Yuthoaz cannot follow us in here, but they will tell their master, and he can. Or we may meet-well, never mind.” If they, unarmed, encountered Rangers in the corridor, that was the end of the affair. “This way.”
She followed him mutely, down to the foreroom. The auroral curtain in the gate drew a gasp from her, and she held his hand with a child’s tightness. He rummaged through the locker but found nothing except outfits appropriate to this milieu. Time travellers must carry their own advanced gear. Damn!