"Goodnight, Earl."
"Goodnight."
It was a time for sleep and yet Dumarest found it impossible to rest. Overstrained muscles joined with older injuries, accentuating their aches so that he turned and twisted, dozing to wake and turning to doze again. Drugs would have brought oblivion, would have at least ended the discomfort; but they, like everything else, were in limited supply.
Later, when they were essential, they would be used.
But time need not be wasted.
Sitting upright, Dumarest leaned his back against the ice. Facing him Arbush was asleep, his face covered, his gross frame jerking as if he dreamed. One hand was lying in the long-dead embers of the fire, the other clutched his gilyre. Above the stars blazed with fading glory, their light diffused by a thin skein of cloud, a gossamer veil carried on an unseen wind. A wind which could lower, cloud which could thicken; a storm could fill the air with a raging blizzard.
If so, they were as good as dead.
Was this where it was all going to end? The long search over. The path he had followed since a boy; the hard, bitter, blood-stained path among the scattered worlds to end here on this unknown planet, beneath a nameless sun?
The stars seemed to swirl, to take on other configurations, to become a mane of silver hair. Derai whom he had known, who had promised so much, who had left him to dream in endless, subjective sleep. As others had left him; too many others. Kalin, Lallia, Mayenne-all now dead. Dust and fragments of the past.
The wind gusted lower, sighing, holding the wail of a Ghenka song. The metal plate on which they had built the fire rasped over the ice as he fell against it. Sleep finally came with a host of memories, faces which loomed close to fall away, to be replaced by others distorted in the fabric of nightmare.
He woke with a hand clamped hard over his mouth, his nose.
"Earl!" Arbush's voice was a strained whisper. "Earl! Wake up! There's something watching us!"
Chapter Seven
It was past dawn, the sky a blanket of nacreous cloud, the sun a glowing patch of milky brightness. The cloud had robbed the ice of color; now it stretched in a mass of tormented white and grey, blurring as it met the cloud so that it was hard to see the horizon.
Dumarest said, "Where?"
"Over there." Arbush pointed to where a ridge stood, about a hundred yards to the east of the crevasse in which they had slept. "I woke and it was light. You seemed to be resting, so I thought I'd light a fire and warm some food before waking you. I'd stood up to stretch and I turned and saw it."
"Saw what?"
"I don't know. It was white, roundish, about as tall as a man, maybe a little taller. It moved, which was what caught my eye; had it remained still it would have been invisible."
Whatever it had been, it wasn't visible now. Which meant nothing. The area was laced with fissures, mounds to provide cover, a thousand places in which to hide. Even now, it could be moving closer. If so the blind-end, shallow crevasse in which they stood could turn into a trap.
Dumarest said, "We'd better get moving."
"Now? Without anything to eat?"
"We'll stop later. If something's watching us it may follow. If it does, we could spot it. You only saw the one?"
"Yes."
"And you're sure it was something which moved?"
"I'm sure." Arbush was defensive. "I know what you're thinking, Earl. A man freshly awake, turning; seeing a patch of moving shadow and mistaking it for something else. But it was there and it was real enough. If I'd been holding the laser I'd have taken a shot at it."
The blind, thoughtless reaction of a man faced with the unknown.
Dumarest turned, wincing as he headed towards the mouth of the crevasse. The sleep had done little good and the drugs he had taken earlier had lost their effect. Now his body was a mass of pain, the taste of blood raw in his throat, hands and legs numbed by the cold. He stamped, beating his hands to restore the circulation. Arbush watched as he fumbled for ampules and the hypogun from his pack.
"Let me do that, Earl." His gloved hands were clumsy and he cursed as the tiny vials fell to the ice. Stripping off the coverings, he thrust his bare hands beneath his clothing, holding them close to his loins. Warmed the fingers were more flexible and he loaded the instrument, firing it as his hands turned blue.
Dumarest caught the hypogun as it fell.
"How about yourself?"
"I ache," admitted the minstrel. "That beam must have damaged my kidneys." He blinked as Dumarest fixed painkillers into his blood. "I thought you wanted to conserve that stuff?"
"I did," said Dumarest. "Until we needed it. That is now."
"Because of what I saw?" Arbush frowned, thinking. "It looked like a man," he said slowly. "But if it had been a man, surely he would have come closer? Joined us. A beast then, but here, in this wilderness?"
It was possible, a wanderer from some other region, a creature obeying instinctive promptings. Scenting food, perhaps; attracted by the fire, the music, the song. If so, and if it came close enough to be killed, it would be an asset. The meat for food, the bones for fuel, the stomach a container in which to boil a stew.
Unless it reached them first in which case it, not they, would eat.
Laser in hand Dumarest led the way from the crevasse, climbing up to the far edge, taking a sight on the peak which rose like a rotten tooth and heading towards it; his eyes moving from side to side, every sense alert.
The caution slowed them down. Each crack had to be checked, every mound carefully circumnavigated. Behind him Arbush glanced constantly over his shoulder, several times stumbling to fall, jerking at the rope which joined them.
At noon they stopped to eat; firing scraps of fuel with a laser, warming cans of meat, a measure of basic, following it with a gulp of brandy.
Dumarest had chosen a sheltered spot against a crusted hummock; a shallow indentation providing some protection against the wind which now gusted with irregular force. A chance which had to be taken: but the hummock was high, the sides sleek, the area before them relatively flat and affording good visibility.
The meal finished he opened three cans of meat and tipped out the contents, to lie in a small heap next to the dead ashes of the fire.
"Bait." said Arbush, understanding. "Are you going to kill it. Earl?"
"Maybe, but first I want to see what it is."
"An animal, following us; what else is there to know?"
What it was, what it fed on, whether or not it was alone. Answers which Dumarest kept to himself. He said, "We'll back away from the hummock. You look left, I'll look right. If anything's waiting out there, don't fire until you have to."
Nothing was waiting. Well away from where he had placed the food Dumarest found a mound and dropped behind it, looking back the way they had come. Minutes passed, the wind blowing, carrying a wisp of snow: frozen particles which stung the exposed areas of his face. Beside him Arbush moved restlessly, lacking the trained patience of a hunter: the stolid indifference to hardship which Dumarest had learned when barely old enough to walk.
And, finally, they came.
Arbush sucked in his breath. "God, Earl they're-"
"Be quiet!"
Dumarest had seen them before the other: roundish shapes, dingily white, moving to freeze into invisibility before moving again. Five of them, which could have been animals shaped something like bears.
But animals would never have moved with such calculated deliberation, would never have merged to break into positions of advantage; to have stood watch while some of their number scooped up the discarded food, to place it in what could only be pouches.