Soundlessly as a cat, Ryker rose to his feet and padded to the mouth of the cave. Peering out, he saw her crouched in a huddle on the stone ledge. Cold blue starfire shone from her naked shoulders, caught and dazzled in her silken hair, and glowed upon the soft rondures of her bare breasts.
Ryker caught his breath at the loveliness of Valarda, nude in the starlight.
He must have made some slight sound—perhaps the scuff of his boot leather rasping against dry stone—for she turned and saw him. And he saw that she had been weeping, for starfire glittered in her tear-wet lashes like tiny gems.
In the star sheen her perfect breasts were coppery silver above, polished ebony beneath. He had one swift, breathtaking look at her nakedness. Then she shook forward the black wings of her long hair, veiling from him the temptation of her tawny flesh.
And her face—open, vulnerable, soft lips atremble, some strange, heart-deep sorrow visible in her wet eyes—went hard and proud and cold. It was as if she had, in an instant, donned a lifeless mask; her eyes were frozen now, aloof, with the hauteur of a princess whose privacy a boor has blundered into.
He cursed himself for letting her discover him watching from the shadows like some panting voyeur. He opened his mouth to make some fumbling apology for intruding upon her privacy—and then, very suddenly, they were both of them too busy for words.
A terrible shape, black as night, edged with star jewels where the dim light caught its scales, clambered up over the brink of the ledge.
The slioth was a cliff scavenger, found commonly in these cliffs and mesas, which was accustomed to devouring the bodies of dead things. It did not usually prey upon the living, but—after all—meat is meat, and even the cliff dragon likes a hot, fresh meal at times.
For a split second it paused, clinging there by the suction pads on its six, hook-clawed feet. Then it slithered up and over the ledge and came at them, eyes burning like lamps of green phosphor, filled with a mindless, ravening hunger.
The girl sprang for the safety of the cave but Ryker was in her way. She stumbled against him and went down on her knees and he tried to interpose his body between the lizard and the girl. One hooked paw raked him from throat to navel and he staggered back, until he stood flat against the wall of the cliff.
Miraculously, he was unharmed. The tough, insulated synthetic of his thermal suit had been built to keep in his bodyheat. It had never been designed to resist the terrible, razory claws of the slioth or its distant cousin, the dreaded sandcat of the Dustlands. But it was strong enough to keep those steely hooks from his flesh, although the fabric was slit open from neck to waist.
The lizard reared up, hissed like a steam whistle, and reached for them with three of its mailed limbs. Blood thundering in his ears like pounding surf, Ryker fumbled with numb, clumsy fingers for the gun which lay holstered against his thigh.
He half-drew it, and then, suddenly, the girl was in his arms, all of her cool, sweetly-rounded nakedness pressed against his own bared torso, her slim arms locked around his neck, making his draw awkward.
He cursed in harsh, senseless gutturals, swivelled to one side, and fired as the huge reptile loomed up, casting its black shadow over them.
In the inky gloom, the bolt of electric flame was brighter than many suns.
The cliff dragon was armored in leathery hide, and mailed with tough overlapping plates of horny chitin, like a lobster’s shell. But the gun was set for a needle beam, and the sizzling ray lasered through the body of the beast and spurted from its back—bright, diffuse flame intermixed with gobbets of meat and thick, splattering gore.
The slioth squalled deafeningly. It fell backwards off the ledge and, a moment later, they heard it thud against the rock-strewn slopes below.
The blaze of afterimages wavered before his eyes, blotting out everything but the pale, wide-eyed face the girl lifted to his. Where-the soft roundness of her tender breast was pressed against his bare skin, he felt the thudding of her heart, and she felt his own heartbeat like an echo of hers.
She trembled in his arms, and he soothed her with strong, rough hands that were curiously gentle.
And then he kissed her, a tender probing kiss that went on and on as if their lips had grown together into one mouth. And she did not draw away until they both had to breathe.
She withdrew her body from his own then, and went into the cave, not looking at him, and left him there, stiffly leaning against the cliff, his chest and arms and mouth still tingling with the warmth of her and with the sweetness of her.
The boy and the old man stood, both naked, both saying nothing, both staring with wide, frightened eyes. The reek of burnt dragon meat was thick and sour on the dry, cold air.
He holstered his gun and stooped, entering the cave again. Valarda was curled up in her blankets, her back turned towards him so that he could not see her face.
No one said anything.
Ryker returned to his fur cloak and pretended to sleep.
But he lay awake for hours staring into the green-lit gloom, remembering the silken softness of her body against his own, and the honey sweetness of her mouth under his kiss.
II
The Caravan Road
6. The Oasis Town
Dawn had lit the cave-roof with its pale luminance before Ryker got back to sleep, and when at last the others roused him it was near midday.
He went out to check on their lopers, and was surprised to find them unmolested. They had tethered the beasts at the foot of the cliff wall of the mesa, some distance up a narrow ravine where they could feed on the rock lichens and podweed. The slioth had not investigated the ravine, apparently.
As for the cliff dragon, its body was gone. Either the bolt from Ryker’s power gun had not slain it outright, and it had dragged itself off to its lair, or its fellow scavengers had carried it away to feast in private.
Ryker thought it likely the beast had limped away on its own. Such reptiles are notoriously hard to kill, having brains so small it takes them hours to realize they are dead—an old hunting joke—and two hearts.
Nobody spoke over breakfast. And there was utterly no reference made to last night. It was as if none of it had even happened. Valarda did not meet his eyes, and served his meal with a cool reserve.
Ryker was just as glad. The embrace, the kiss, they had been one of those things and meant nothing. And he was in a surly, taciturn mood and felt little like conversation. The little imp, Kiki, however, had a twinkle of mischief in his green eyes as the boy demurely asked how he had slept.
They rode on that day, due west, following the curve of the meridian.
There had been some discussion about this, but not much. The girl informed him that they wished to reach the oasis of Yhakhah, where it was their intention to join a caravan traveling north.
This oasis town—actually, little more than a more-or-less permanent camp—stood at the northernmost terminus of the old waterway called Nilosyrtis, at the southern tip of the Casius Plateau. Now, it was the most logical place to go from where they were, perhaps; but Ryker still wondered why Valarda wished to venture into those parts. No matter what she had said to him, it simply could not be true that they wanted to travel north from that point. For north lay nothing: the barren cliff wall of the Casius, the bleak and uninhabited tableland itself, and then endless leagues of empty desert which stretched clear to the pole.
There was no city or encampment of the People north of Yhakhah. So where was she going?