He climbed almost recklessly, leaning into the rock, merging with it, moving his four limbs as he had learned to do in imitation of the great rock-lizard, so that he looked like one himself, going claw-over-paw up the cliff and lacking only the balancing tail. He reached the ledge and hauled himself onto it, lying still to get his breath. In the pass below him he heard the clink of arms and harness, and he looked down. The shadows were thickening there, but enough light still reflected from the sky and the high cliffs to show him the riders. The narrowness of the pass had strung them out in a long line, and the treacherous footing had slowed them down. The unmounted tribesmen presumably were somewhere behind them. At the head of the line was Ciaran in her black mail. Her voice rose up to him, a thin thread of sound much broken by the wind. He could not understand the words, but it was obvious that she was impatient and urging the others to move faster. Stark smiled. She must feel that the talisman was already in her hands.
He rose and went along the ledge. Ciaran drew level with him, passed him by. Behind her came the Mekhish chiefs, grumbling and cursing at the evil nature of the place and at the growing dark. Some of them had torches and paused to light them, fighting the wind. Stark was not in any hurry now. He came to where the ledge was blocked by stones fallen from above, and he stopped and undid the thong that held the spear across his back. The wind tore at him, beating him back against the cliff. He set his head against it. He thrust the long stout blade of the spear in among the rocks, and set his feet, and pried.
Beyond the point where he stood the cliff face had rotted inward, where frost and the summer melt had eaten away the softer veins. The detritus had fallen, and piled, and slipped, and piled again, and now there were countless tons of rock poised and ready to slide. All that was needed was a touch.
Stark heaved up on the butt of the spear. The dislodged boulders went bounding down with a heavy ominous clashing, like a series of hammer-strokes.
Stark turned and ran.
XII
There was an outcry of startled voices, and after that a complete cessation of sound from below. Stark could picture them sitting stiffly in their saddles, stretching eye and ear in the darkness, listening. The hammer-strokes died away in a booming rattle as the boulders hit the floor of the pass and wore out their momentum. For a brief space it seemed that there was silence, except for the wind. Then there began to be other sounds, of stones rolling and clacking together, and knocking, and shifting. The sounds overlapped each other, growing louder, and underneath them was a deep groaning grinding bass. Stark thought that he heard voices shouting again, very loud this time. The ledge began to quake under him. He threw himself flat, hugging the inner surface. The grinding noise exploded into a great roar. Behind him a section of the cliff face disappeared downward into darkness and a mighty cloud of dust.
Stark clung to the ledge, his arms over his head, his face pressed grinning against the rock. He howled triumphant obscenities that neither he nor anyone else could hear. And it was better than he had hoped. His deafened ears picked up, as though they were echoes, the crashings of three lesser rockfalls touched off by the first one. Very quickly after the last one there came a sort of stunned quiet, stitched through with a trickling of pebbles and a faint screaming.
Stark got to his hands and knees and looked down. The dust hung in the air like smoke, but it was heavy and the wind was tearing it. Below it was a mass of rock completely blocking the pass. And it had fallen like a portcullis between Ciaran and her men, except for a handful that Balin’s slingers should take care of.
Stark laughed and began leisurely to climb down the cliff.
He did part of that climb in complete darkness, a task that left him no margin of attention for what was going on below. He could hear cries of pain and anger, and what he thought was Balin’s voice raised in some rather violent demands, or orders. There were other sounds, all confused, and all of them at the moment of no interest to him. The nearer moon swung overhead and after that it was easier, though not nearly as easy as it had been going up. By the time the light of a high-held torch reached to him, and hands caught him to ease him down, he was glad of the help.
Balm’s face appeared in the torchlight, wild with excitement “We have her. We have her! And the pass is closed.”
“For a while,” Stark said. “For a while.”
He flexed his legs, bending to rub the aching stiffness out of them. It dawned on him that he was tired enough to drop right where he stood. “Has anybody got wine? I could do with a drink.” Somebody handed him a leather bottle and he drank thirstily. Balin was still talking, telling how Ciaran and the seven or eight men who had kept up with her had tried to break back at the first sound of falling rock, and how three of the chieftains had been caught under the slide. Before the rest could gather their stunned wits together Balin’s slingers had dropped them out of their saddles. Ciaran had tried to charge them with her axe and they had dropped her, too, and Balin had thought that she was dead. Then a great many of the people of Kushat had rushed back from around the bend. They had killed the chieftains on the ground, those who had not been slain outright by the stones, and they had wanted to kill Ciaran too when they found that she was still breathing.
“I had to mount guard over her myself.” Balin said. “Then I thought they were going to kill me. I had the devil of a time convincing them.”
“We may need her,” said Stark. “Her men will start pulling away those rocks With the first light. I think there are three more falls, though not such big ones, between here and the mouth of the pass, and it will all take them time, but sooner or later they’ll clear the way. When they do we must have the means to destroy them—or else we must buy our way free.”
A considerable crowd had gathered. They had been cheering Stark, but now there was some growling and muttering, and Stark said, “Don’t be so impatient. You can always kill her later on, if we find we don’t need her.”
Thanis pushed her way to him. “Stark, why don’t we trade her to them in exchange for Kushat? They’d give up the city to get her back.”
Apparently there were many who agreed with her. Stark shook his head. “Of course they would. And you’d have Kushat for just as long as Ciaran would need to rally her men and retake it. And then you would wish that you had killed her.”
Thanis considered that, walking beside him and Balin as they started through the crowd. “We could say that we would give her back, and then as soon as they left the city we could kill her…”
Stark looked at her. “That’s treachery. And it’s also bad business. The tribesmen would stamp your city flat and use the stones for butcher’s blocks.” He found himself suddenly shouting at them all. “Can’t you understand? You couldn’t hold the city with every man and every weapon you had, and you can’t hold it now, with nothing. You lost Kushat, and you’ll never get it back unless the talisman gives you the power.” They were silent, startled by his anger and impatience. “If it does not, we may buy our own lives with Ciaran, but don’t hope for more.”