“Shall we leave it going?” asked Urson. “Fire keeps animals away.”
“If there are animals,” reminded Geo, “and they do want anything to eat…well, they’ve got that thing back there.”
On leaves raked together they stretched out by the wall. There was quiet — no insect hum, no unnameable chitterings — except for the comforting river rush beyond the trees.
Geo woke first, eyes filled with silver. He was dreaming again the strange happenings he had dreamed before….No. He sat up: the entire clearing had flooded with white light from the amazingly huge disk of the moon sitting on the rim of the trees. The orange of the fire had bleached before it. Iimmi and Urson looked uncomfortably corpse-like. He was about to reach over and touch Iimmi’s outstretched arm when there was a noise behind him. Beaten cloth? He jerked his head around and stared at the gray wall. He looked up the concrete that tore off raggedly against the night. There was nothing but stone and jagged darkness. Fatigue had snarled into something unpleasant and hard in his belly that had little to do with tiredness. He stretched his arm in the leaves once more and put his cheek down on the cool flesh of his shoulder.
The beating came again, continued for a few seconds. He rolled his face up and stared at the sky. Something crossed on the moon. The beating sounded once more. His eyes rose farther. Something…no, several things were perched on the broken ledge of the wall. A shadow shifted there; something waddled along a few feet. Wings spread, drew in again.
The flesh on his neck, his back, his chest, grew cold, then began to tickle. He reached out, his arm making thunder in the leaves, and grabbed Iimmi’s black shoulder. Iimmi grunted, started, rolled over on his back, opened his eyes — Geo saw the black chest drop with expelled breath. A few seconds later the chest rose again. Iimmi turned his face to Geo, who raised his finger to his lips. Then he turned his face back up to the night. Three more times the flapping sounded behind them, behind the wall, Geo realized. Once he glanced down again and saw that Iimmi had raised his arm and put it over his eyes.
They spent a few years that way.
A flock suddenly leaped from the wall, fell toward them, only to catch air in a billow of wings across the moon. They circled, returned to the wall, and then, after a pause, took off again. Some of them fell twenty feet before the sails of their wings filled and they began to rise again. They circled wider this time, and before they returned, another flock dropped down on the night.
Then Geo grabbed Iimmi’s arm and pulled it down from his eyes. The shapes dropped like foundering kites: sixty feet above them, forty feet, thirty. There was a piercing shriek. Geo was up on his feet, and Iimmi beside him, their staffs in hand. The shadows fell, shrieking; wings began to flap violently, and they rose again, moving out from the wall. Now they turned back.
“Here it comes,” whispered Geo. He kicked at Urson, but the big sailor was already on his knees, then feet. The wings, insistent and dark, beat before them, flew toward them, then at the terrifying distance of five feet, reversed. “I don’t think they can get in at the wall,” Geo mouthed.
“I hope the hell they can’t,” Urson said.
Twenty feet away they hit the ground, black wings crumpling in the moonlight. In the growing horde of shadow, light snagged on a metal blade.
Two of the creatures detached themselves from the others and hurled themselves forward, swords swinging above their heads in silver light.
Urson grabbed Geo’s staff and swung it as hard as he could, catching both beasts on the chest. They fell backward in an explosion of rubbery wings, as though they had stumbled into sheets of dark canvas.
Three more leaped the fallen ones, shrieking. As they came down, Urson looked up and jammed his staff into the belly of a fourth about to fall on them above. One got past Iimmi’s whistling staff and Geo grabbed a furry arm. He pulled it to the side, overbalancing the sailed creature. It dropped its sword as it lay for a moment, struggling on its back. Geo snatched the blade and brought it up from the ground into the gut of another, who spread its wings and staggered back. He yanked the blade free and turned it down into the body of the fallen one; it made a sound like a suddenly crushed sponge. The blade came out and he hacked into a shadow on his left. And a voice suddenly, but inside his head…
The…jewels…
“Snake!” bawled Geo. “Where the hell are you?” He still held his staff; now he flung it forward, spear-like, into the face of an advancing beast. Struck, it opened up like a black silk parachute, knocking back three of its companions before it fell.
His view cleared for an instant; Geo saw the boy, white under the moonlight, dart from the jungle edge. Geo ripped the jewels from his neck and flung the handful of chain and leather over the heads of the shrieking beasts. At the top of their arc the beads made a double eye in the light before they fell on the leaves beyond the assailants. Snake ran for the jewels, picked them up, and held them above his head.
Fire leaped from the boy’s hands in a double bolt that converged among the dark bodies. Red light cast a jagged wing in silhouette. A high shriek, a stench of burnt fur. Another bolt of fire fell in the dark horde. A wing flamed, waved flame about it. The beast tried to fly, but fell, splashing fire. Sparks sharp on a brown face chiseled it with shadow, caught the terrified red bead of an eye, and laid light along a pair of fangs.
Wings afire withered on the ground; dead leaves sparked now, and whips of flame ran in the clearing. The beasts retreated, and the three men stood against the wall, panting. Two last shadows suddenly dropped from the air toward Snake, who still stood with raised arms out in the clearing.
“Watch out!” Iimmi called to him.
Snake looked up as wings fell at him, tented him, hid him momentarily. Red flared beneath, and suddenly they fell away, sweeping the leaves — moved by wind or life, Geo couldn’t tell. Wings rose on the moon, circled farther away, were gone.
“Let’s get out of here!” Urson said. They ran forward toward Snake.
Geo said, “Am I ever glad to see you!”
Urson looked up after the disappearing figures and repeated: “Let’s get out of here.”
Glancing back, they saw the fire had blown back against the wall and was dying. They walked quickly toward the forest. “Snake,” said Geo when they stopped, “this is Iimmi. Iimmi…we told you about him.”
Iimmi extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Look,” said Geo, “he can read your mind, so if you still think he’s a spy…”
Iimmi grinned. “Remember your general rule? If he is a spy, it’s going to get much too complicated trying to figure why he saved us.”
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 someday I get a chance to give it to you. Sometimes you seem more trouble than you’re worth.”
“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 the jewels and put them around his neck again.
“So that’s what our treasure can do,” said Iimmi.
“And much more than that,” Geo told him. “Why don’t you take one, Iimmi? Maybe we better not keep them all together.”