Each man, within his skull, carried a living hell.
Watching, Dumarest had seen it.
"Earl?" Lavinia touched his face and felt the sweat which wet her fingers. Felt too the little quivers which ran through him so that he trembled like a beast which had been run too hard for too long. She pushed back his hair, touching the gash on his scalp, the sting of the salt on her hand a pain which, meeting, diminished the rest. "For God's sake! Earl!"
He was trapped, buried, stifling. Sand clogged his lungs and mountains weighed his limbs. He threshed, tore at the opening, jerked it aside and lunged through to roll on the stoney ground to rise, to stare wide-eyed at the stars.
Earth!
Which was the sun which warmed Earth?
"Come back, you fool!" Lavinia screamed from within the confines of the shelter. "Come back! The Sungari- hurry!"
It was already too late.
Dumarest heard a thin, high pitched whine, the drone of something which passed, the lash of air against his face, his eyes. It came again and he dropped, feeling a jerk at his hair, something which touched his scalp and burned like fire.
Against the stars there was a shimmer, a blur. Night mist falling or something else?
Then again the whine, something which struck his shoulder, to rip the plastic and tear at the metal beneath. A blow which bruised and hurt and shocked him from his daze. Alerted, his instinct to survive replaced conscious thought.
He dropped, felt the whine of disturbed air slash through the spot where he'd been standing, rolled to see sand and dirt plume inches from his face. The shelter was close and he dived towards it, seeing the opening part a little, the pale glimmer of a face. It backed as he advanced, making room for him to pass through, legs kicking, his boot hitting something and being hit in turn. Jerking up his knees he drove the edge of his hand against something which shimmered, again at something else which droned.
"Earl!"
"Something to block the opening? Quickly!"
The fabric was too thin. He held it, smashing at it with his fist as it bulged, wedging the fabric handed to him against it, lashing it with strands of wire. Above, on the roof of the shelter, something scrabbled, rasping, making eerie chitterings.
"It's too thin," she whispered. "Too thin."
And he had been too confident of her mistaken fear of the dark. It had been no mistake. Thinking so had almost cost him his life.
"They'll get us!" Her voice rose a little. "They'll break in."
"No." He reached out and found her. She was naked, the fabric she had passed to him the clothing she had ripped from her body. "They won't break in," he soothed. "Not now we're out of sight."
Out of sight their scent masked, but that need have nothing to do with it. Sight alone would have been enough. The fury of the attack had caused it to last after he had vanished from view. A delayed action which even now was ending.
As he listened the scrabbling faded, the chittering died.
"Earl?"
"It's over. All we need do now is wait."
Wait as she moved against him, soft and warm and with a femininity which could not be denied. A burning, demanding creature of passion who held him and touched him and sent her lips questing over his cheeks, his eyes, lingering on his mouth until his arms closed around her. A cleansing, human thing who washed the fragments of delusion from his mind and filled the tiny shelter with a heat which rose to engulf them both.
Which ebbed to flood again at the approach of dawn.
Dumarest stirred, looking at the tumble of hair against his shoulder, the face it stranded, the eyes closed, the lips swollen, the whole lax in satiation. The morning light was dim as it percolated through the fabric, brightening as he cleared the opening, becoming a pale flood as he pushed aside the flaps.
Crawling outside he rose and stretched. His hands stung and he saw the knuckles scored with shallow wounds, the fingers dark with blood. More dried blood matted his hair and traced a pattern on his face. His boots were torn, the pants showed long gouges as if sharp knives had slashed at the material. On the sanded surface of the shelter the grains were fanned into intricate designs.
The fire he had lit had died, a patch of ash marring the sand with greyish blackness. He gathered fuel and lit another, feeding it gently, adding leaves and tufts of greenery so that a thin column of smoke rose into the air. A column which thickened and turned an oily black as he fed slivers of plastic into the flames.
"Earl?" Lavinia had woke and dressed herself in the torn shred of her clothing, the gleam of nacreous flesh showing through the rents as she crawled from the shelter and straightened. Her eyes, like her lips, were puffed a little, soft with tender memory, the pleasure so recently enjoyed. "Why the fire? A signal?"
"If anyone is looking for us I don't want them to waste time." Dumarest looked at the sky, squinting, the dried blood on his face giving him the appearance of a savage warrior.
"But last night you were worried about Gydapen finding us," she pointed out. "That's why you built the fire as a decoy."
"That was last night."
"And now?"
"We're stranded in the wilderness. We need food and water and shelter against the night. We have no maps and no compass. Can you guide us to safety? Get us to a stop-over before dark?" He shrugged as she made no answer. "If all else fails we'll have to try, but I don't think it will be necessary. Gydapen will want to check that we are dead. The fire will tell whoever's looking that we're not. He'll land. When he does we'll take his raft."
If anyone came. If he landed. If he could be overpowered -Dumarest made it sound so simple.
"We need water," she said. "Something to wash in. Your face and hands are covered in blood." As was her cheek, her shoulders and back, the swell of her breasts. Blood from Dumarest's injured hands and face. "And I'm hungry."
"We've nothing to eat."
"Maybe I could find something. There could be berries and roots. I'll look around."
"You'll get back into the shelter and stay there," he said, flatly. "Sleep if you can but don't come out for any reason. Movement is easily spotted from the air."
The tiny space was a mess, the sand torn with the fury of their passion, splotched with blood. To one side something glinted as it rested against an edge of the shelter. Dumarest picked it up. It was a foot long, wings now broken, scaled body now crushed to ooze a thin ichor. Six legs ended in vicious claws. Two huge eyes glowed like flawed gems. Gaping mandibles were serrated like razor-edged saws. A streamlined creature, armed and armored, which could fly and strike and be as effective as a missile.
"What is it?" Lavinia frowned as she studied it. "How did it get in here?"
He had carried it with him when he had dived into the shelter. He had crushed it, rolled on it, broken it with a slash of his palm. Had the final attack been to recover it? If any others had died they were not to be seen.
"The Sungari?" Lavinia glanced at Dumarest. "Is that what it is?"
A part but never the whole. No Pact could be made with such a thing. It was an extension as a bee was to a hive. A nocturnal flyer programmed to attack anything in the shape of a human. A collector of food which scoured the terrain during the hours of darkness.
Somewhere, buried deep, must repose the intelligences which directed it. The true Sungari.
Throwing aside the creature Dumarest said, "Get into the shelter now and wait. And remember what I said-don't leave it for any reason."
"And you, Earl?"
"I'll be close."
Meekly she obeyed, finding a pleasure in having decisions made for her, orders which she had to obey. The day brightened and she heard small scuffling sounds followed by silence. Through the opening she could see the thick column of smoke rising upwards. A shape rested beside it, manlike, still. Dumarest sleeping? Lying quietly as he tended the fire?