were pulling with similar patient determination at Jon-Tom
and Mudge.
" 'Ere now, you cold buggerers, take your bloody 'ands off
me!" The otter twisted free.
So didJTalea and Jon-Tom. Yet the pale visitors wordlessly
kept advancing, groping for the strangers.
Another sound quietly filled the cavern. It seeped across
the river and dominated the rise and fall of the expressionless
choir. A deep, low moaning, it was in considerable contrast
to the melody of the white singers. It was not at all nice. In
fact, it seemed to Jon-Tom that it embodied every overtone of
111
Alan Dean Foster
menace and malignance one could put into a single moan. It
issued from somewhere back in the black depths, beyond
where the singers had come from.
"That's about enough," said Bribbens firmly. He hefted
his backup steering sweep and began swinging it at the
singers stumbling about on deck. Two of them went down
with unexpected lack of resistance. Their heads bounced like
a pair of rubber balls across the deck. The black eyespots
never twitched and they uttered not a word of pain. Their
singing, however, ceased. One of the skulls bounced over the
railing and landed in the water with a slight splash, to sink
quickly out of sight.
A shocked Bribbens paused to stare at the decapitated
corpses. There was no blood.
"Damn. They aren't alive."
"They are," Clothahump insisted, struggling awkwardly in
the grasp of three singers who were trying to wrestle his
heavy body off the ship, "but it is not our kind of alive."
"I'll make them our kind of dead." Talea's sword was
moving like a scythe. Three singers fell neatly into six halves.
They lay on the deck like so many lumps of white clay,
motionless and cold.
Jon-Tom hurried to assist Clothahump. "Sir, what do you
think we... ?"
"Fight for it, my boy, fight! You can't argue with these
things, and I have a feeling that if we're taken from this boat
we'll never see it again." He had retreated inside his shell,
confounding his would-be abductors.
Above the shouts of the boat's defenders and the singsong
of their horribly indifferent assaulters came a reprise of that
ominous, basso groaning. It was definitely nearer, Jon-Tom
thought, and redoubled his efforts to clear the deck.
He was swinging the club end of his staff in great arcs,
indiscriminately lopping off heads, arms, legs. The singers
112
THE HOUR Or THE GATE
broke like hardened clay, but the dozens dismembered were
replaced by ranks of thoughtless duplicates, still droning their
eerie anthem.
"Get us out in the current!" Talea was trying to keep the
white bodies away from the bow.
With Mudge shielding him from clutching fingers Bribbens
put down his oar and returned to the main sweep. Though he
leaned on it as hard as he could, and though the current was
with them, they still couldn't move away from the shore.
Jon-Tom leaned over the side. Using his reach and the long
club he began clearing bodies from the waterline. White
bands pulled possessively at him from behind, but Flor was
soon at his side swinging her mace, cutting them down like
pale shrubs. Most of them ignored her. Possibly it had
something to do with her white leather clothing, he mused.
He concentrated on swinging the club in long arcs, knocking
away heads or pieces of boneless skull with great rapidity.
Their slight resistance barely slowed the force of his swings.
When the heads were knocked loose the bodies simply
ceased their shoving and slid below the surface. A few
bobbed on the current and drifted like styrofoam down the
river.
The singing continued, undisturbed by the bloodless slaugh-
ter, by screams of anger or despair. Rising louder around the
boat was that rich, bellowing moan. It had become loud
enough now to drown out the chorus. A few fragments of
rock fell from the cavern roof.
Finally enough of the bodies had been swept from the side
of the boat for it to drift once more out into the river. Like so
many termites supple white singers continued to march down
toward the water. They walked until the water was up to their
chests and began swimming slowly after the boat.
Breathing hard, Jon-Tom leaned back against the railing,
holding tight to his staff for additional support. All of the
113
Alan Dean Foster
original swimmers who'd forced the craft in to shore had
been knocked away or decapitated. Now that they were out
again in midstream, the current kept them well ahead of their
lugubrious pursuers.
"I don't understand what—" He was talking to the boat-
man, but Bribbens wasn't listening. He'd suddenly locked the
steering oar in position and was unbolting smaller ones from
the deck.
"Paddle, man! Paddle for your life!"
"What?" Jon-Tom looked back at the shore, expecting to
see the horde of singers clumsily stumbling after them across
the rocks.
Instead his gaze fastened onto something that stifled the
scream welling up in his throat and turned it into that peculiar
choking noise people make at times of true horror. A vast,
glowing gray mass filled the cavern shore behind them. It
came near to touching the ceiling. Where large formations
rose the gray substance flowed over or around it, displaying a
consistency partly like cloud and then like lard. Its moans
rattled the length of the cavern and echoed back from distant
walls.
It looked like a fog wrapped with mucus, save for two
enormous, pulsing pink eyes. They stared lidlessly down at
the tiny fleeing ship and the stick figures frozen on its deck.
Bits of its flanks were in constant motion. These portions
of mucus slid toward the ground. As they did so their color
paled to a now familiar white. Tumbling like the eggs of
some gigantic insect, they dropped off the huge slimy sides
onto the rock and gravel. There they rolled over and stood
upright on newly formed legs. Simultaneously a section of
their smooth faces parted and a fresh voice would join
intuitively in the awful mellifluous chorus of its duplicates.
Something hard and unyielding struck Jon-Tom in his
midsection. Looking down he saw the hardwood oar Bribbens
114
THE HOUR OF THE GATE
had shoved at him. The glaring frog face moved away, to pass
additional oars to the rest of his passengers.
Then he was back at his sweep, rowing madly and yelling
at his companions. "Paddle, damn you all, paddle!"
Jon-Tom's feet finally moved. He leaned over the side and
ripped with the oar at the dark surface of the river. It was
difficult going and the leverage was bad, but he rowed until
his throat screamed with pain and a deep throbbing pounded
against his chest.
Yet that horror lurching and tumbling drunkenly along the
shore just behind them put strength in weakened arms. Talea,
Ror, Caz, and Mudge imitated his efforts. Pog had hidden
behind his wings, where he hung from the spreaders, a
shivering droplet of black membrane, flesh, and fear. Clothahump
stood and watched, watched and mumbled.
A thick gray pseudopod reached across the river, emerging
from the slate-colored moving mountain. It slapped violently
at the water only yards from the stem of the fleeing vessel.
For all its nebulous horror, the substance of the monster was
teal enough. Water drenched those on board.
Black almost-eyes glistened wetly as white grub-things
continued peeling from the pulsating bulk of the beast.