Desperately he thrust a hand into his pocket seeking for the small knife he usually carried. He found it and pulled it out. His face thrust hard into the sand as one talon around his neck held him. He realized numbly that he was being held, that the thing was doing nothing else. It had caught him. Now it guarded him. For what? He opened the knife convulsively and struck blindly upward.
The talons shifted a fraction so that he could jump up. He swung around to face the thing. The head weaved bewilderingly, the mouth ricked open and spitting. The talons struck and Prestin jumped sideways. A spot of greenish blood dappled the dark blue body where his knife had drunk.
Menace breathed from the thing like heavy musk in a shuttered room. At first it had only wished to hold him captive, but he resisted and struck back. Now, clearly, the thing would seek to kill him.
The talons lashed again. As he jumped this time, Prestin struck down and sideways with the knife. The blade razored through a talon, half-severing it, and the thing keened a high spitting, splitting shriek.
“You didn’t like that, did you?” said Prestin, panting, sweating, deathly afraid.
Preston could not run, for the thing was manifestly faster over the ground than he; but even if he could have, he felt through his fear, he would still choose to meet it face to face. He had done all the running in this life he would do. He moved in and slashed again and the thing jumped back, whistling.
The long snakelike neck snapped forward like a catapult and the cat’s head leaped at his throat. The fangs gaped wide, white and needle-sharp, showing the inside of the lips a dark green, the throat a bilious green-yellow. Prestin leaped aside, staggered, flung up an arm and felt the puncturing fangs bite through tendon and flesh.
He slashed with the knife again and missed. The head flicked around and then struck in again. He rolled over panting, screaming, and felt the fangs bite into his back and shoulder. He pushed up on one knee as the head flung itself furiously upon him again. He grabbed the neck just below the head and held on like a man on a bucking bronco. The head lunged insanely.
It jerked and screamed and swayed and spat. Prestin hung on. He dropped his knife and clung on now with both griping fists. The taloned claws kept battering at him and he kicked back, furiously slamming his heavy shoes into the dark blue body.
He heard—or thought he heard—a sharp crack.
The neck went limp. The head lolled. He felt warm green ichor welling out of the mouth and running down over his fists. With an exclamation of disgust he threw the thing from him.
The body fell away and Prestin saw the wooden haft protruding from it, the heavy wedge-shaped javelin head half-buried in blue flesh. He sprang up and turned swiftly.
The man laughing at him had a bronzed, dark-bearded face, blue eyes and tousled hair. He waved.
“Molto buono! Ecco—Andate!”
The Italian was thick and muddied, but recognizable.
Speaking the same language, Prestin said, “What—who are you?”
“Never mind that now. Bring the assegai. I need it. And hurry!”
With some repugnance, Prestin tore the javelin free. He felt shakiness and pushed it away; now was no time for reaction to weaken him. But it had been a very close shave…
He ran over to the dark-bearded stranger. The man wore neat enough green tights and a short green jacket. He had a quiver full of the javelins over his shoulder and a short sword at his left side. He wore no hat and Prestin felt cheated: the man should at least have worn a hat with a curly brim and a feather.
“Who are you?” the man said, in a voice that was gruff although not unfriendly.
“Prestin. And you?”
“Only Prestin. Some of you other-worlders have no realization of etiquette in names. I am”—he spoke now with a conscious dark pride, the thick Italian ringing more true—”I am Dalreay of Dargai, Todor Dalreay of the keep and lands of Dargai, nobly born—fugitive!” He finished with hard, hurting bitterness.
“Well,” said Prestin placatingly, “that makes two of us.”
“How so?” The man—Dalreay—could match Prestin’s own shifts of mood and feeling. His dark blue eyes showed a clear determination to surmount his present problems, and, although perhaps not in such a flamboyant way, the same purpose was firmly shared by Prestin.
“Well—you saw! That—that thing was going to kill me.”
“The Ulloa? I don’t think so. They hunt for the Valcini.”
“The Valcini?”
“There is much to learn if you are to stay alive. The first thing is speed. The Valcini will be following that Ulloa, or more of its foul kind may be hunting with it. We must abandon this locality for now. As a fugitive I am well used to that.” Again that soul weariness blurred his words and drew his mouth down in lines of dejection.
He began to walk toward a clump of the tenpin trees and Prestin followed.
At the foot of a jade specimen Dalreay bent and tugged fiercely at a tuft of the coarse grass. Instead of the grass tearing from its roots, a whole square section of ground opened up like a trapdoor to reveal steps cut in the earth leading down into darkness.
“I’ll go first, Prestin. But for Amra’s sake don’t fall on me! It’s a long way down.”
On the top step lay a bulky brown canvas bag and this Dalreay lifted and carried by means of a leather strap over one shoulder. Prestin noted the materials from which things were made—Dalreay’s clothes, the javelins, the bag—realizing they would give him a clearer understanding of this world’s technology and culture levels.
With his left hand scraping down the damp, crumbling earth and his feet treading cautiously down one step at a time in total darkness, Prestin descended after Dalreay.
He did not question doing this. He did not stop to argue. He simply felt that under the ground lay a possible haven that most certainly did not exist on the surface of this frightening world.
He started to count the steps. He felt this befitted a quondam scientific mind. After 365 he gave up, not missing the significance of the figure. Dalreay halted a short time after that, one hand behind him to stay Prestin, saying, “We’re nearly there. Now listen to this. You are an out-worlder and therefore can be easily killed. So do exactly as you are told and do not question others too much.” He made a small half-sniggering sound. “As for me, I am Dalreay of Dargai, and I know.” He went on down. “Come.”
Baffled, but strangely trusting this dark, sardonically bitter man—in much the same way he had felt he could trust David Macklin—Prestin went on down.
“Keep quiet from now on.” Dalreay’s hand showed now against a vague pinkish glow from below. His beard was thrust arrogantly up.
Prestin did not answer but by his silence acquiesced to Dalreay’s order.
They both moved down in complete silence, their feet soundless on the cut earth, their hands scraping without noise against the damp dark wall. Prestin could now see that myriads of tiny glittering facets, tiny jewels, had been set in the wall. The pinkish glow strengthened until they no longer needed touch to reassure their balance and the numbers of jewels increased. When they stepped at last onto a stone floor, the glow all about them blazed magnificently from solid walls of gems.
Prestin wanted to cry out in wonder but Dalreay gripped his arm and frowned. They moved on swiftly through a tunnel cut from the heart of a living jewel.
This Todor Dalreay—now that Prestin could see him again by the light of the jewels—seemed to be the archetype hunter, frontiersman, intrepid folk hero. Seemed to be. For, to Prestin, the air of doomed resignation, the bitter anguish with which the strong man had spoken of his home and of being a fugitive, carried overtones of tragedy and despair.
Dalreay now held a javelin easily balanced between the fingers of his right hand, his left clinging firmly to the canvas bag suspended from his shoulder. Prestin followed, treading warily.