Then we lost our bearings on a barren plain known as the Wilderness of Sorrow-and we could understand why anyone would feel sorrowful on encountering it.
On the other hand, the mount that Darnad had exchanged was in fact very strong-and my own beast wearied before his did!
We finally crossed the Wilderness of Sorrow and emerged on the shores of an incredibly wide river-wider even than the Mississippi.
Another pause while we borrowed a boat from a friendly fisherman and managed to cross. Luckily Darnad had a precious ring on his finger and was able to convert this into pearls, which were the general currency of these parts.
We bought supplies in the riverside town and learned-to our relief, for there had always been the chance that the guard was lying maliciouslythat two women answering to the description of Horguhl and Shizala had passed that way. We enquired if Shizala had seemed to be under restraint, but our informant told us that she did not appear to be bound.
This was puzzling and we could not understand why Shizala should seem to be travelling to the terrible domain of the Argzoon of her own free will.
But, as we told ourselves, all this would be learned the quicker if we caught up with them.
They were still some three days ahead of us.
So we crossed the Carzax River in the fisherman's boat, ferrying our mounts and provisions with us. It was a difficult task and the current drew us many miles down river before we reached the other side. The fisherman would collect the boat later. We pulled it ashore, strapped our provisions to our animals and mounted.
It was forest land now, but the trees were the strangest I had ever seen.
Their trunks were not solid like the tree-trunks on Earth, but consisted of many hundreds of slender stems curling around one another to form trunks some thirty or forty feet in diameter. On the other hand, the trees did not reach very high, but fanned out so that sometimes when passing through a particular grove of low-growing trees our heads actually stood out above the trees. It made me feel gigantic!
Also, the foliage had a tinge similar to the ferns of the Crimson Plain-though red was only the main color. There were also tints of blue, green and yellow, brown and orange. It seemed, in fact, that the forest was in a perpetual state of autumn and I was pleased by the sight of it. Strange as the stumpy trees were they reminded me, in some obscure way, of my boyhood.
Had it not been for the object of our quest, I would have liked to relax more and spend longer in that strange forest.
But there was something else in the forest that I was to meet shortly-and that decided me, if nothing else could have done, on the necessity of moving on.
We had been travelling in the forest for two days when Darnad suddenly pulled his mount up short and pointed silently through the foliage.
I could see nothing and shook my head in puzzlement.
Darnad's beast now seemed to move a little restlessly, and so did mine.
Darnad began to turn his dahara, pointing back the way we had come. The peculiar, ape-like beast obeyed the guiding reins and my own followed suit, rather quickly, as if glad to be turning back.
Then Darnad stopped again and his hand fell to his sword.
"Too late," he said. "And I should have warned you."
"I see nothing-I hear nothing. What should you have warned me of?"
"The heela"
"Heela-what is a heela?"
"That-" Darnad pointed.
Skulking towards us, its hide exactly the same mottled shades as the foliage of the trees, came a beast out of a nightmare.
It had eight legs and each leg terminated in six curved talons. It had two heads and each head had a broad, gaping mouth full of long, razor-like teeth, glaring yellow eyes, flaring nostrils. A single neck rose from the trunk and then divided near the top to accommodate the heads.
It had two tails, scaly and powerful-looking, and a barrel-shaped body rippling with muscle.
It was unlike anything I could describe. It could not exist-but it did!
The heela stopped a few yards away and its twin tails lashed as it regarded us with its two pairs of eyes.
The only thing to its advantage, as far as I could see, was that it measured only about half the size of an ordinary dahara.
Yet it still looked dangerous and could easily dispose of me, I knew.
Then it sprang. Not at me and not at Darnadbut at the head of Darnad's dahara.
The poor animal shrieked in pain and fear as the heela sank its eight sets of talons into its great flat head and simply clung there, biting with its two sets of teeth at the dahara's spinal cord.
Darnad began to hack at the heela with his sword. I tried to move in to help him but my animal refused to budge.
I dismounted-it was the only thing I could doand paused behind the clinging heela's back. I did not know much about Martian biology, but I selected a spot on the heela's neck corresponding to the place where he was biting the dahara. I knew that many animals will go for a spot on other species which corresponds with their own vital spots.
I plunged my sword in.
For a few moments the heela still clung to the dahara's head; then it released its grip and with a blood-curdling scream of anguish and fury fell to the mossy ground. I stood back, ready to meet any attack it might make. But it got up, stood shakily on its legs, took a couple of paces away from meand then fell dead.
Meanwhile, Darnad had dismounted from the dahara, now moaning in pain and stamping on the moss.
The poor beast's flesh had been ripped away from a considerable area of its head and neck. It was beyond any help we could give it-save to put it out of its pain.
Regretfully, I saw Darnad place his sword against the creature's head and drive it home, wincing as he did so.
Soon dahara and heela lay side by side. A useless waste of life, I reflected.
What was more, we should now have to ride double and though my dahara was strong enough to carry both of us, we should have to travel at about half our previous speed.
Bad luck was dogging us, it seemed.
Riding double, we left the heela-infested forest behind. Darnad informed me that we had been lucky to meet only one of the beasts since there had been others of its pack about. Apparently it was quite common amongst heelas for the leader to attack the victim first and, if successful, lead the rest in for the kill, having tested the victim's strength. If, on the other hand, the heela-leader were killed, then the pack would skulk off, judging the enemy too strong to risk attacking. Besides which they would feed off their dead leader's corpse. In this case, the corpse of the dahara, too.
It seemed that, like hyaena, the heelas were strong but cowardly. I thanked providence for this trait, at any rate!
Now the air grew colder-we had been travelling for well over a month-and the skies darker. We began to cross a vast plain of black mud and obsidian rock, stunted, sinister shrubs and ancient ruins. The feet of our single dahara splashed in deep puddles or waded through oozing mud, slipped on the glassy rock or stumbled over great areas of broken masonry.
I asked Darnad if these were the ruins of the Sheev but he muttered that he did not think so.
"I suspect that these ruins were once inhabited by the Yaksha," he said.
I shivered as cold rain fell on us.
"Who were the Yaksha?"
"It is said they are ancient enemies of the Sheev but originally of the same race."
"That is all you know?"
"Those are the only facts. The rest is superstition and speculation." He seemed to shudder inwardly, not from the cold but from some idea that had occurred to him.
On we went, making slower and slower progress over that dark wasteland, taking shelter at nightscarcely distinguishable though it was from day!-under half-fallen walls or outcrops of rock.