"No, I would not," the ogre said. "I have long since done with foolishness. Come to think of it, I was never foolish. I have arrived at that time of life when sleeping in my burrow and sitting at its entrance to watch the world go by is all I need and want."
"But you'll tell us what to expect."
"Only hearsay," said the ogre, "and you have enough of that. Anyone can give you that, and you are a fool if you pay attention to it." He looked closely at Cornwall. "I think you are no fool," he said.
24
Jones' camp seemed deserted. The three striped tents still stood, but there was no one to be seen, not even any of the little people.
The crude table still stood, and scattered about it and the now dead fire hearths, on which the feast had been cooked, were gnawed bones and here and there a beer mug. Two beer barrels still lay on the wooden horses, where they had been placed for tapping. A vagrant wind came down between the trees and stirred a tiny puff of dust in the road that ran to the battlefield.
Mary shivered. "It's lonely," she said. "After last night it is lonely. Where is everyone?"
The two horses they had ridden to the camp pawed listlessly at the ground, impatient to be back in the knee-deep pasture grass. They tossed their heads, jangling the bridle bits.
"Jones," said Cornwall. He'd meant to make it a shout, but in the moment of shouting some sense of caution toned down his lung power, and it came out as a simple word, almost conversational.
"Let's have a look," he said. He strode toward the larger tent, with Mary at his heels.
The tent was empty. The military cot still stood in its corner and the desk and chair. The corner opposite the desk was still hung with dark drapes, and beside it stood the large metallic cabinet. What Jones had called his cameras were gone. So was the box in which he had kept the little colored miniatures. So were all the other many mysterious objects that had been on the desk.
"He's gone," said Cornwall. "He has left this world. He has gone back to his own."
He sat down on the cot and clasped his hands. "There was so much he could have told us," he said, half talking to himself. "The things he started to tell me last night before the Hellhounds came along."
He glanced about the tent and for the first time felt the alien quality of it—the other-worldness of it—not so much the tent itself or the articles remaining in it, for they were, after all, not so greatly different—but some mysterious sense, some strangeness, a smell of different origins and of different time. And for the first time since he'd started on the journey he felt the prick of fear and an overwhelming loneliness.
He looked up at Mary, standing there beside him, and in a strangely magic moment her face was all the world—her face and eyes that looked back in his own.
"Mary," he said, scarcely knowing that he said it, reaching up for her, and as he reached, she was in his arms. Her arms went around him hard, and he held her close against himself, feeling the soft, yielding contours of her body against the hardness of his own. There was comfort and exultation in the warmth of her, in the smell and shape of her.
She whispered in his ear, "Mark, Mark, Mark," as if it were a prayer, as if it were a pledge.
Tightening his arms, he swung her to the cot and turned so that he was above her. She raised her head to kiss him and the kiss kept on and on. He slid a hand into her robe and felt the nakedness—the soft fullness of the breast, the taut smoothness of the belly, the tender lushness of the pubic hair.
The entire world hammered at him, trying to get in, but he was proof against it. He shut it out in a small tight world that contained only Mary and himself. There was no one else but the two of them. There was nothing mattered but the two of them.
The tent flap rustled and a tense voice called, "Mark, where are you?"
He surged up out of the private world of him and Maty and sat blinking at the figure that stood within the parted flap.
Hal said, "I'm sorry—terribly sorry to disturb you at your dalliance."
Cornwall came swiftly to his feet. "Goddamn you to hell," he yelled, "it was not dalliance."
He took a swift step forward, but Mary, rising swiftly, caught him by the arm. "It's all right," she said. "Mark, it is all right."
"I do apologize," said Hal, "to the both of you. It was most unseemly of me. But I had to warn you. Hellhounds are nosing close about."
Gib popped through the flap. "What possessed you," he asked in an angry tone of voice, "to go off by yourselves? Without the rest of us?"
"It was quiet," said Cornwall. "There seemed to be no danger."
"There is always danger. Until we leave these benighted lands, there always will be danger."
"I wanted to find Jones. To ask him if he would join us. But he has left, it seems. It doesn't look as if he's coming back."
"We need no Jones," said Hal. "The four of us, with Oliver and Sniveley, will be quite enough. No two of us alone, perhaps, but all of us together."
25
The little ones had deserted them. Now they traveled quite alone, the six of them together.
It was nearing evening, and the land had changed but little. Five miles from the knoll where the Witch House stood they had come upon the Blasted Plain. Lying to the far horizon, it was a place of desolation. Drifting sand dunes lay here and there, and in between the dunes the land was parched and empty. Dead grass, dried to the consistency of hay, could be found in the lower areas where water once had lain but now there was no water. Occasional dead trees lifted their bonelike skeletons above the land, clutching at the sky with twisted, broken fingers.
Three of the horses were loaded with water, with the members of the party taking turns at riding the other two. Early in the day, Mary had rebelled at an unspoken conspiracy that would have delegated one of the remaining mounts to her and had done her share of walking. Except in the sand dune areas the walking was not difficult, but it held down the miles they could have made if all had been mounted.
Hal and Cornwall now led the march. Hal squinted at the sun. "We should be stopping soon," he said. "All of us are tired, and we want to be well settled in before darkness comes. How about that ridge over to the left? It's high ground, so we can keep a watch. There are dead trees for fire."
"Our fire up there," protested Cornwall, "could be spotted from a long way off."
Hal shrugged. "We can't hide. You know that. Maybe there is no one watching now, but they knew we started out. They know where we can be found."
"The Hellhounds, you think?"
"Who knows?" said Hal. "Maybe the Hellhounds. Maybe something else."
"You don't sound worried."
"Of course I'm worried. You'd be stupid not to be worried. Even not to be a bit afraid. The best advice we got back there was from the ogre. He said don't go. But we had to go. There was no point in coming that far if we weren't going on."
"I quite agree with you," said Cornwall.
"In any case," said Hal, "you and Gib would have gone on alone. It would have ill behooved the rest of us to do any hanging back."
"I saw no hanging back," said Cornwall.
They trudged along in silence, sand and pebbles grating underneath their feet. They neared the ridge Hal had pointed out.
"Do you agree?" said Hal. "The ridge?"
Cornwall nodded. "You're the woodsman."
"There are no woods here."
"Nevertheless, the ridge," said Cornwall. "You are the one to know. I still remain a city man and know little of these things."
As they climbed the ridge, Hal pointed out a deep valley that gashed its side. "There is dry grass in there," he said. "The horses can do some grazing before dark. Then we'll have to bring them up to the camp for night."