The moonlight was stronger now and he could see that the street he moved along was filled with clumps of small bushes and with patches of briars through which a narrow trail snaked along, weaving from side to side to avoid the heavier growth that had intruded on the street. A deer path, he wondered, or was it one primarily used by men? If it were a man path, he should not be on it. Lie pondered that, deciding to stay on it. On it he could cover a fair amount of ground; off to one side of it, his way impeded by heavy growths of trees, fallen timber, the old houses and, worse, the gaping basements where houses had once stood, his progress would be slowed.
Something caught his foot and tripped him, throwing him off balance. As he went down, something raked against his cheek, and behind him he heard a heavy thud. Twisting around from where he had landed in the briars, he saw the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from a tree to one side of the twisting trail. A set, he told himself; for Christ's sake, a set, and he had blundered into it. A few inches either way and he'd have had an arrow in his shoulder or his throat. A trip across the path to trigger a bended bow, the arrow held in place by a peg. Cold fear and anger filled him. A set for what? For deer, or man? What he should do, he thought, was wait here, hidden, until the owner of the set came at morning light to see what he had bagged, then put an arrow in him to ensure he'd never set such a trap again. But he didn't have the time to do it; by morning light he must be far from here.
He rose from the briars and moved off the street, plowing through rank growths of brush. Off the street the going was slower. It was darker among the trees, the moonlight blocked by dense foliage, and, as he had anticipated, there were obstacles.
A short time later he heard a sound that brought him to a halt, poised in mid-stride, waiting to hear the sound again. When it came, in the space of a heartbeat or two, he knew what it was: the soft mutter of a drum. He waited and the sound came again, louder now and with the drumrolls longer. Then it fell silent, only to take up again, louder and more insistent, not simply the tatooing ruffle of a single drum but more drums now, with the somber booming of a bigger drum marking off the ruffles.
He puzzled over it. He had struck across the city's southern edge, believing that by doing so he would swing wide of any tribal encampment. Although, so far as that was concerned, he had been foolish to think so. One could never tell where a camp might be. The tribes, while staying in the confines of the city, moved around a great deal. When the vicinity of one camping ground became too fouled for comfort, the tribe would move down the street a ways.
The drums were gaining strength and volume. They were, he calculated, some distance ahead of him and slightly to the north. Some big doings, he told himself, grinning in the dark. A celebration of some sort, perhaps a commemorative notice of some tribal anniversary. He started moving once again. The thing for him to do was get out of here, to pay no attention to the drums and continue on his way.
As he slogged along, keeping off the clearer paths of the one-time streets, the noise of the drumming grew. There was in it now a blood-curdling savagery that had not been evidenced at the start. Listening to it, Cushing shivered, and yet, chilling as it was, it held a certain fascination. From time to time, interspersed between the drumbeats, he could hear a shouting and the yapping of dogs. In another mile or so he detected the flare of fires, slightly to the north and west, reflected off the sky.
He stopped to gauge the situation better. Whatever was going on was taking place just over the brow of the hill that reared up to his right—much closer than he first had judged it. Perhaps, he told himself, he should angle to the south, putting more distance between himself and whatever might be going
on. There might be sentries out and there was no sense in taking the chance of bumping into them.
But he made no move. He stood there, with his back against a tree, staring up the hill, listening to the drumming and the shouting. Maybe he should know, he told himself, what was happening just beyond the hill. It would take no time at all. He could sneak up the hill and have a look, then be on his way again. No one would spot him, He'd keep a close outlook for sentries. The moon was out, of course, but here, underneath the heavy foliage of the trees, its light was tricky and uncertain at the best.
Almost before he knew it he had started up the hill, moving at a crouch, sometimes on hands and knees, seeking the deeper shadows, watching for any movement, slithering up the slope, the low-hanging branches sliding noiselessly off his buckskins.
There is trouble brewing, Monty had reminded him, trouble in the west. Some nomad band that had suddenly been seized with the thirst for conquest, and probably moving east. Could it be, he wondered, that the city tribes had spotted such a movement and were now in the process of whipping themselves into a warlike frenzy?
Now that he was near the brow of the hill, his caution increased. He slid along from one deep shadow to another, studying the ground ahead before he made any move. Beyond the hill the bedlam grew. The drums rolled and thundered and the yelling never ceased. The dogs kept up their excited barking.
Finally he reached the ridge top, and there, below him, in a bowl-like valley, he saw the ring of fires and the dancing, yelling figures. In the center of the circle of fires stood a gleaming pyramid that caught and reflected the light of the leaping flames.
A pyramid of skulls, he thought—a pyramid of polished human skulls—but even as he thought it, he remembered something else and knew that he was wrong. He was looking at, he knew, not human skulls but the skulls of long-dead robots, the shining, polished brain cases of robots whose bodies had gone to rust centuries before.
Wilson had written of such pyramids, he recalled, and had speculated on the mysticism or the symbolism that might be behind the collection and display of them.
He hunkered close against the ground and felt a shiver growing in him, a shiver that reached forward across the old, gone centuries to fasten icy fingers on him. He paid little attention to the leaping, shouting figures, his attention fastened on the pyramid. It had about it a barbaric aura that left him cold and weak and he began inching back, carefully down the hill, moving as cautiously as he had before, but now driven by a gripping fear.
Near the foot of the hill he rose and headed south and west, still moving warily, but in a hurry now. Behind him the drumming and the shouting faded until it was no more than a murmur in the distance. But he still drove himself.
The first paleness of dawn was in the eastern sky when he found a place to hole up for the day. It was what appeared to be an old estate, set above a lake and situated on a piece of ground enclosed by a still-standing metal fence. Glancing eastward across the lake, he tried to pinpoint the spot where the tribe had held its dance, but except for a thin trickle of smoke, he could make out nothing, The house was a stone and brick structure and so thoroughly masked by trees that he did not see it until he had made his way through a broken place in the fence and was almost upon it. Chimneys sprouted from both ends of it and a sagging portico, half collapsed, ran along its front. Behind it stood several small brick buildings, half obscured by trees. Grass grew tall and here and there beds of perennials, some of them in bloom, had persisted through the ages since the last people had occupied the house.
He scouted the area in the early dawn. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the place in recent days. There were no paths, no trails, broken through the grass. Centuries before, the place must have been looted, and now there would be no reason for anyone to come back here.