It suddenly charged toward a spot inside the woods and just as suddenly abandoned its charge and fled yowling across the clearing toward Anana. The fur on its back and hind legs was aflame.
Kickaha grasped immediately that a fifth person was in the game and that he had tried to scare the wolf away with a brief power-reduced shot from a beamer. But in his haste he had set the power too high and had burned the wolf instead of just stunning him.
Or perhaps the burning was done deliberately. The newcomer might have set the beast on fire and be guiding him this way with stabs of beamer power to see what he could flush up.
Whatever his intent, he had upset the plans of the person sneaking up on Anana. He had also upset Anana, who, hearing the frantic yowls approaching her with great speed, could not resist raising her head just high enough to see what was happening.
Kickaha wanted to take another quick look behind him, but he did not have time. He rose, bent the bow and released the shaft just as something dark reared up a little way above the grass about forty feet from Anana. It was dressed in black and had a black helmet with a dark faceplate, just like the helmets with visors that the Los Angeles motorcyclists wore. The man held the stock of a short-barreled beamer to his shoulder.
At the same time, the wolf ran howling by, the flames leaping off onto the dry grass and the grass catching fire. The arrow streaked across the space between the trees and the edge of the clearing, the sun sparkling off the metal head. It struck the man just under the left arm, which was raised to hold the barrel of the beamer. The arrow bounced off, but the man, although protected by some sort of flexible armor, was knocked over by the impact of the arrow.
The beamer fell out of his hands. Since it had just been turned on, it cut a fiery tunnel through the grass. It also cut off the front legs of the wolf, which fell down howling but became silent as the beam sliced through its body. The fire, originating from the two sources, quickly spread. Smoke poured out, but Kickaha could see that Anana had not been hit and that she was crawling swiftly through the grass toward the fallen man and the beamer.
Kickaha whirled then, drawing another arrow from the quiver and starting to set it to the bowstring. He saw the tall figure of the man lean from around behind the trunk of a tree. A hand beamer was sticking out, pointing toward Kickaha. Kickaha jumped behind his tree and crouched, knowing that he could not get off an arrow swiftly or accurately enough.
There was a burning odor, a thump. He looked up. The beam had cut through the trunk, and the upper part of the tree had dropped straight down for two inches, its smoothly chopped butt against the top of the stump.
Kickaha stepped to the left side of the tree and shot with all the accuracy of thousands of hours of practice under deliberately difficult conditions and scores of hours in combat. The arrow was so close to the tree, it was deflected by the slightest contact. It zoomed off, just missing the arm of the man holding the beamer. The beamer withdrew as the man jumped back. And then the tree above Kickaha fell over, pulled to one side by the unevenness of the branches' weight. It came down on Kickaha, who jumped back and so escaped the main weight of the trunk. But a branch struck him, and everything became as black and unknowing as the inside of a tree.
When he saw light again, he also saw that not much time had passed. The sun had not moved far. His head hurt as if a root had grown into it and was entangled with the most sensitive nerves. A branch pressed down his chest, and his legs felt as if another branch was weighing them down. He could move his arms a little to one side and turn his head, but otherwise he was as unable to move as if he were buried under a landslide.
Smoke drifted by and made him cough. Flames crackled, and he could feel some heat on the bottom of his feet. The realization that he might burn to death sent him into a frenzy of motion. The result was that his head hurt even more and he had not been able to get out from under the branches at all.
He thought of the others. What had happened to Anana? Why wasn't she here trying to get him free? And the man who had severed the tree? Was he sneaking up now, not sure that he had hit the archer? And then there was the man in black he'd knocked down with the arrow and the person across the clearing who had set fire to the wolf and precipitated the action. Where were they?
If Anana did not do something quickly, she might as well forget about him. The smoke was getting thicker, and his feet and the lower part of his legs were getting very uncomfortable. It would be a question of whether he choked to death from smoke or burned first. Could this be the end? The end came to everybody, even those Lords who had survived fifteen thousand years. But if he had to die, let him do it in his beloved adopted world.
Then he stopped thinking such thoughts. He was not dead and he was not going to quit struggling. Somehow, he would get this tree off his chest and legs and would crawl away to where the fire could not reach him and where he would be hidden from his enemies. But where was
Anana?
A voice made him start. It came a foot away from his left ear. He turned his head and saw the grinning face of Red Orc.
"So the fox was caught in my deadfall," Red Orc said in English.
"Of course, you planned it that way," Kickaha said.
The Lords were cruel, and this one would want him to die slowly. Moreover, Orc would want him to fully savor the taste of defeat. A Lord never killed a foe swiftly if he could avoid it.
He must keep Red Orc talking as long as he could. If Anana were trying to get close, she would be helped if Red Orc were distracted.
The Lord wanted to talk, to taunt his victim, but he had not relaxed his vigilance. While he lay near Kickaha, he held his beamer ready, and he looked this way and that as nervously as if he were a bird.
"So you've won?" Kickaha said, although he did not believe that Red Orc had won and would not think so until he was dead.
"Over you, yes," Red Orc said. "Over the others, not yet. But I will."
"Then Urthona is still out there," Kickaha said. "Tell me, who set up this trap? You or Urthona?"
Red Orc lost his smile. He said, "I'm not sure. The trap may be so subtle that I was led into thinking that I set it. And then, again, perhaps I did. What does it matter? We were all led here, for one reason or another, to this final battleground. It has been a good battle, because we are not fighting through our underlings, the leblabbiy. We are fighting directly, as we should. You are the only Earthling in this battle, and I'm convinced that you may be half-Lord. You certainly do have some family resemblances to us. I could be your father. Or Urthona. Or Uriel. Or even that dark one, Jadawin. After all, he had the genes for red hair."
Red Orc paused and smiled, then said, "And it's possible that Anana could be your mother, too. In which case, you might be all-Lord. That would explain your amazing abilities and your successes."
A thick arm of smoke came down over Kickaha's face and set him coughing again. Red Orc looked alarmed and he backed away a little, turning his back to Kickaha, who was recovering from another coughing fit. Something had happened to his legs. Suddenly, they no longer felt the heat. It was as if dirt had been piled on them.