"You've got to help me. I'm in pain. I need your help to use the rest of the drugs." It was like talking to the dead.
"Get up on your feet, man. I can't make it alone. I need your help. Get up, damn you. You owe it to me."
Arbush whispered, "Sorry, Earl. Sorry. I-"
"Talk," sneered Dumarest. "The madness you spoke about. You wanted adventure, you said. Or did you take a woman who wasn't yours and had to run? Was that your courage? No wonder you stayed on the Styast. Who else would have you? A fat lying, dirty coward, full of bad music and pitiful songs. You should have died when we landed. Shalout would have had more guts than you. Even Beint, with only one hand, would have put up a better fight. You scum! You filth! Get up and act like a man!"
Anger was a good anodyne for despair, but the attempt to arouse it met with the same result as the appeal.
Only the spur of physical pain was left.
Dumarest knelt, gasping, feeling the blood in his throat and his mouth. He coughed and spat a ruby stream, dark, filled with bubbles. Resting his fingers on the cold flesh of the minstrel's face, he pressed the tips against the closed eyes. Gently, too much would blind, not enough have no effect.
Arbush moaned, writhing, one arm lifting to weakly knock the hand aside.
Dumarest coughed again and beat his hands together, steadily, relentlessly; feeling the numbed flesh begin to tingle. Warmed he sent his right hand over the fat body, feeling the swell of the rotund belly, the thickness of the thighs, the tender flesh between.
Gripping, he squeezed.
Arbush screamed like a stricken beast.
"Earl! For God's sake!"
"Up!" snarled Dumarest. "Get on your feet!"
He fumbled for the last of the drugs as the minstrel heaved himself from the snow, used them, threw the hypogun to one side.
Pointing to a ridge which cut the sky ahead he said, "There. We must reach it before we stop. Now move!"
They made the ridge, another beyond it, a third over which they heaved themselves to rest; gasping, looking back over their trail. It wound like the path of a drunken snake; twice the length necessary had they been fit, able to surmount the mounds and hummocks around which it wended. Something moved at the far end.
"They're after us," wheezed Arbush. "Those men we saw before. Following us and waiting until we drop."
Scavengers, or simply men wanting revenge for those killed by the flying, armored figures. Dumarest looked at the sky; as yet it was clear, but should the flyers come they would present easy targets.
He said, "Let's get moving. The city should lie beyond that rim."
"We could signal, maybe," panted Arbush as he beat his way through the snow. "Use the lasers, tie something on an axe to use as a flag, anything."
"Maybe."
"Why not, Earl? They could come out and get us. Damn it, we need some help."
Food, warmth, medical attention, all could be waiting. A spur which kept Arbush moving, arms and legs working as if parts of a machine, his mind lost in an enticing dream.
"Steam baths," he whispered. "Hot showers. Oils applied by lovely girls. Meats, hot, with crisp skins and filled with succulent juices. Mulled wine, spiced so as to tingle the tongue; fires, ovens, heat to take the chill from flesh and bone. Once I was on a hot world, Sere; a place of jungle and desert, the sun like a furnace in the sky. I hated it then, but I would give half of what remains of my life to be there now."
His voice broke, took on the thin, keening of a song; a dirge which held the wail of distraught women, the cry of a bereft child.
It ended when they saw the city.
"Earl!"Arbush turned, snapped from his delirium; his mottled face was haggard, defeated. "How the hell are we going to reach it?"
* * * * *
It lay in the cup of a valley, a gem held in an upturned palm; towers, spires and rounded domes, the flat expanse of walls, the spread of terraces covered with transparent material which glowed in the sun.
A paradise in the wilderness, enchanted, enticing- unobtainable.
Crouched on the rim Dumarest studied it, fighting the blurring of his eyes; the wavering of planes and lines which, at times, gave the impression of looking through water.
It could almost have been a mirage.
Almost, but no mirage he had ever seen had rested in the cup of a valley; and the flyers he had seen had been real enough. No mirage had fired the missile which had almost killed him. And those flyers must have come from this city.
He studied it, ignoring Arbush's babble; the low mutter of his voice as, once again, he yielded to the fogs which misted his brain. Around the place lay a broad circle of flat ground now covered with a dust of snow; more snow heaped in high dunes at the half-mile expanse of smooth terrain. Once reached, it would be easy to cross. Reaching it was something else. The valley was deep; the rim on which he crouched a quarter mile above the heaped snow at its foot. A smooth, sheer drop, as if something had cut away the rock and ice in a mathematical pattern. A bowl, wider at the rim than at the foot, the surface roughly concave; the curve flattening as it descended. To either side it was the same.
Blinking he withdrew from the edge, gripped the minstrel's shoulder, shook him, sent the flat of his gloved hand across the mottled cheek.
"We're here," he snapped. "We've arrived. All we have to do is to climb down a slope."
"All?" Arbush sucked in his breath, his eyes bloodshot, but clear. "I was dreaming, Earl. I thought I had wings. We need wings. How else are we to get down?"
"The same way as we did before. Pitons and ropes. We'll take it in short, easy stages."
Stages which had to be short, but which would never be easy. Before it had been hard, now it would be almost impossible.
Dumarest fumbled at his pack, his pouches. Four pitons, two axes, rope and a hammer. Arbush had the same, aside from the pitons of which he had six.
Ten pitons, eighty feet at a time, but the drops would be too long and still they would not have reached the bottom. He looked at the axes, the rings at their ends. They would help, but it still wasn't enough. Back at the rim he searched the lower expanse. The wall, appearing smooth, was not. A thin fissure ran in a diagonal, from a point a hundred feet down to another twice as far. And they had the lasers, one charged, the other almost exhausted.
"We'll start from here. Two pitons buried deep. Feed the rope through one and bind it on the other, so it will take the strain as you let me down. When it reaches the middle, lash it tight. I'll make a hold and signal. When I do, feed through the rest of the rope, knock free the extra piton and follow me down as you did before." "Earl-"
"There's a fissure down there in which we can rest." Dumarest picked up one of the hammers. "Let's get at it." It was too hard, his body too weak. Before he had struck a half-dozen blows, he knew it was impossible. Dropping the hammer he drew the near-depleted laser, aimed it, sent the beam to melt a hole into which he rammed the piton. Three blows and it was secure. The other quickly followed.
Quickly, because there was no time to dwell on the difficulty of the task. No time to allow the final surge of energy to subside.
Two stages and they reached the fissure to lie gasping, to crawl down its length; to face again the impossible task of crawling like flies down a wall of ice.
Dumarest threw aside the exhausted laser, used the other, finished the job with blows of the hammer; each stroke sent waves of nausea through his mind, filling his vision with darts of color.
On the third stage down, he knew they would never make it.
He hung on the end of the rope, Arbush above lashed to a piton; a bulky figure like a grotesque spider caught in a frayed web. His voice was thin, strained, "Earl!"
Dumarest moved, looking upwards, the turn of his head taking an age, the effort to shift mountains.