There were nine of us, nine adventurers seeking to escape from this artificial mound, this Moder which contained treasure and horror, and now I turned to look at my two rascals who came walking down toward us.
Nodgen, the tough Brokelsh, carried a bloodstained spear.
Hunch, the Tryfant, poked apprehensively at one of the Nierdriks, who flopped over, his arms limp.
“Are they all-?” began Hunch.
“You great fambly!” roared Nodgen, in his coarse Brokelsh way.
I did not smile. I was aware of the decline of the suns, and the lengthening jade-and ruby-tinged shadows beneath the trees.
“Let us get on.”
Yes, there were nine of us, and we wended down the side of the Moder and we kept a very sharp eye out for more unpleasantness.
We had chosen to descend by a path different from the one up which the expedition had toiled to the summit, and now as we went down, the sweet scent of twining plants filled our nostrils, and the tinkling sounds of hidden brooks made a mockery of the horror contained within the Moder. Hunch kept on casting glances back up the path. Well, that was fine. That meant we had our backs covered. To look at us as we came to the base of the descent and surveyed the belt of thorny scrub ahead would no doubt have occasioned either amusement or disdain in any splendid court of Kregen. We had outfitted ourselves with fresh clothes; but now these were ripped and torn and stained. But our weapons were sharp. I noticed with interest that Quienyin continued to carry his shortsword strapped to his waist. Perhaps his powers had not fully returned? He had lost his powers as a famed and feared Wizard of Loh, and within the lowest depths of the Moder he had regained them. But — perhaps he had not satisfied himself? It seemed to me he was not prepared to put full trust in himself or his powers just yet. That made sense, given the harsh and terrible nature of much of Kregen.
The sense of power being exercised wantonly, the crushing feeling of oppression, and the expectation of impending doom we had lived with during our time in the Moder did not magically lift the moment we stepped off the mountain. Naive to expect it would. The Wizard of the Moder might have been tamed; now we had to face the terrors of the Humped Land, the sere and unforgiving land clustered and clumped with the artificial mounds, each containing fortune and horror. The land ahead of us and barring our escape would test us all.
“You two,” said Prince Tyfar with that habitual note of command tempered by the feelings of comradeship, “scout the entrance where we came in. It is just possible a few beasts have been left us.”
“Quidang, Prince!” said Barkindrar and Nath, and they took themselves off, moving very circumspectly among the foliage.
The members of the main expedition, from whom we had been parted in the depths of the Moder, would have been long since gone. They would be spurring back to civilization bearing the loot. I looked at Tyfar and he saw my quizzical glance.
“I know, Jak, I know. But we must try.”
“Yes.”
“Let me bustle around and make a fire while those two are gone,” said Hunch, the Tryfant. “I am famished-”
“Very well. Do I need to caution you over the fire?”
“No, no, Jak — I mean, notor — no need.” And Hunch shivered and looked across at the trees where there were more shadows than the last of the suns shine.
He had taken a sack stuffed with goodies from the abode of the wizard, after we had humbled that proud and cruel man — if the thing had been a man at all — and when the fire was going well within the little dell beneath a bank we had picked, Hunch shook out his sack. We all stood back. The stench offended.
“By Tryflor!” yelped Hunch. “The damned Moder lord-”
“The rast has tricked us!”
“The food — putrid!”
“Well,” I said over the hubbub. “Maybe it is just as well. That cramph of a Moder lord might have magicked the vittles in our insides. I do not care to contemplate that, by Krun!”
“You have the right of it, Jak,” observed Tyfar. “But we are hungry.”
“The Humped Land will not be so sere that we cannot find aught to eat.”
Tyfar made a face. He was a prince — admittedly, a prince of Hamal, which great empire was locked in deadly combat with my own land of Vallia — and the idea of chasing rodents and other lowly creatures for food did not appeal to him. Then he smiled.
“When you come to the fluttrell’s vane, Jak, one must do what one must. I shall not care for it, no, by Krun. But I will eat a green lizard when my guts rumble!”
“Nodgen,” I said, “do you go and see what fruits there are on those bushes.”
“Aye, Jak — notor — that will be something.”
These two, Hunch the Tryfant and Nodgen the Brokelsh, had been slave with me, and my trick of freeing them and giving them manumission before witnesses still had not quite overcome the old freedom of speech. It mattered nothing to me. But I fancied our deception had to pass muster, at least in the eyes of Tyfar. He was a man with high ideals, studious and yet quick with his axe; but he had been brought up in a culture in which slavery was a mere part of life. I wondered if he would ever be brought to understand what we were trying to do in Vallia, and if he shared the blind hatred of that island empire of his fellows. He thought I came from Djanduin. Well, I do, in a very real sense — but if he discovered I was a Vallian…
I brushed these tiresome thoughts away. We had to survive to cross the Humped Land. I had not forgotten the fearsome swarth riders, who infested the land between the Moders; but I forbore to mention them at that moment, for fear of what would happen to the water pot Hunch was carrying across to the fire.
We set watches and the suns sank and Barkindrar and Nath returned. They reported the compound was empty of life, not a riding animal to be seen. But they did bring a few crusts of bread and a packet of palines wrapped in leaves somewhat shriveled.
“Whoever dropped this and cursed for his loss did us a good turn, by Belzid’s belly,” quoth Barkindrar. By this I understood that he and Nodgen, Brokelsh both, were compatible.
“You did not believe the Wizard of the Moder had let us get away with his food, then?” said Quienyin. He was clearly interested in Barkindrar’s reasoning.
The slinger looked down, despite all his bluff toughness, discomfited by this direct interest in him by the Wizard of Loh.
“It was in my mind, San. We got away easy, like.”
“We put the damned Moder Lord down,” said Tyfar. “I still wonder if we did the right thing not to kill him. I see it was right and a kind of a small Jikai; but, all the same… He has played a scurvy trick on us.”
“It was right not to slay him, Prince.” I spoke briskly. “Now, if you agree, we will eat up this princely meal, stand our watches, and when the Twins rise we will set off.”
They all gaped.
“But — Jak-”
“I do not think you will enjoy travel in the heat of the suns. And if we are to find ourselves mounts, we must look to the future. Or do you wish to remain a heap of moldering bones here?”
There was no answer on Kregen under Antares to that.
After our exertions and despite our hunger and the conditions in which we found ourselves, we found sleep. The watches changed, and no one felt inclined for conversation. Our thoughts, I feel sure, dwelt on the confrontations of the morrow when we could expect to be visited by the swarth riders. They had shepherded the expedition to this particular Moder out of all the hundreds dotting the Humped Land. They were mysterious, enigmatic; but they were some kind of men and therefore amendable to the argument of steel.
But, for all that, they possessed the only riding animals that we could expect to lay hands on around this desolate place.