“I,” pointed out Dalreay, “did not have the opportunity to see.”
Nodger spluttered and drank more wine, his one eye avoiding Dalreay’s icy glance.
Prestin warmed to the byplay. Clearly, these Dargan of Dargai were people who would not tamely bow down to the Valcini agents of the Contessa; they had struck back by blowing up one of the jewel mines. No doubt there was a running war in bloody progress. But as much as he might wish to know more of the Dargan, he had to find Fritzy. That quest alone gave him a single slender solace for living here.
His goblet was empty and he politely asked Dalreay for water, being offered wine and refusing. “Here, imp!” shouted Dalreay, hurling the goblet at the head of a half-naked youngster, who grinned wolfishly and caught the cup. Prestin watched him go to a wooden pipe protruding from the back of the Galumpher and turn a spigot at the top. Clear water gushed out, silvery and diamond-bright sparkling, cool just to look at.
“Is that—?”
“Certainly.” Dalreay laughed off-handedly. “The Galumphers carry a huge third stomach filled with water which they cool by exchange of body heat. They are engineeringly better than your earthside camels, and they carry a great deal more water, for which Amra be praised.”
“And you sink a tap and draw it off as required.”
“The Dargan of Dargai are hunters. We know animals.”
“You had to learn about the Galumphers, though. What was Dargai like?”
“Ah—!” went around the circle like a rolling wash of the ever-returning tide, a sigh of complete homesickness, the heartfelt cry of the wanderer, forever condemned, never to return. “What of Dargai…”
“By Amra, that is a question that demands a poet to answer!” exclaimed Dalreay, lowering his goblet, his eyes bright, his face flushed, his beard all abristle.
“Warmth and wine and women, wonderful!” said Nodger, brimming his goblet to his mouth, lost in the melancholic hindward gaze of all the adults. The children went on eating and drinking and gossiping among themselves. For them, Dargai was a name only, a name that meant sighs and whisperings from their parents; they would never know the despair of the homeless for they had been born wanderers.
The Galumphers slogged on and all down the line of the caravan the Dargan went to breakfast. Small Galumphers trotted between the legs of their parents, keeping up with the less-than-human walking-pace of the procession with ease. Some dust flew up from the great flat hooves. A few men walked ahead, but Prestin felt that they did it more as a genuflection to tactics than with any hope of avoiding attack by the Ulloas. Those cat-faced birds with the wingless bodies and dragonfly legs would race in at ten times the speed of a Galumpher.
Looking out on the scene, and being rocked by the somnolent swaying, Prestin could feel the timeless relaxed pace of life for these wanderers of Dargai. This life would breed a special kind of person, a person far different from the man that was Dalreay. There would be concern among the oldsters. Prestin could visualize it all.
A girl walked past below, her slender bronzed legs carrying her by their Galumpher with ease. She wore a yellow shawl and a kirtle, leaving much of her upper body bare to the wind; her dark hair blew free from her mantle, and a shake of her head as she went was clear indication that she knew Dalreay was watching. A very self-composed young lady, this, Prestin surmised. Then he smiled. Dalreay was gobbling away, trying to finish his mouthful of meat, his eyes bright, his hands fidgeting. He bolted the last of his food and swung down to land like a flying spider at the feet of the girl.
She pranced back, one hand upflung, teasing him. What they said was lost in the soft slosh-slosh-sloshing of the Galumpher’s broad pads, but Prestin heard Dalreay call the girl Darna; he felt a pang as he saw their two dark heads together as they walked up the caravan line, close, absorbed.
A thin trumpet blast cut through the bright golden promise of the scene like a squeal of brakes on an icy road.
Prestin jumped up. Everyone was rushing about with a purposeful activity. The children huddled down in the center of the Galumphers’ backs. The women put out the cooking fires and dismantled the trivets. Then they began to fashion the bales, packages and beds into parapets about the beasts’ backs, forming shelters. Helped by the older children, the work went fast, silently and with utmost urgency. The men appeared to cluster about the legs of the Galumphers and spread out to one side, each man carrying his arms, the metal bright under the sun.
“What is it?” asked Prestin of Nodger as the trumpet pealed again.
Nodger, his fat face and belly shaking, pulled a thick bale of pelts up for a shelter. “It is the warning, out-worlder! Someone attacks us! Pray Amra it is only a few miserable cowardly Ulloa—pray Amra!”
The lookout perched atop his scarecrow wooden tower on the Galumpher three over from Prestin screeched and pointed. The trumpet keened again. Prestin stood up, balancing on the long slow-swaying back, and stared at the horizon. Out there black dots speeded. They seemed to parallel the caravan’s course, but they were in a converging pattern, as Prestin saw when he looked more carefully, closing in, squeezing the parallel arms into a triangle.
Some ominous menace breathed at him from those distant shapes.
He realized what the menace must be as the watcher atop the rolling wooden tower shouted again for speed.
Those dots out there were traveling fast—faster than the Ulloa, faster than any normal animal had any right to travel. The watchman shouted, “Valcini!” And again, a hopeless wail against the wind, “Valcini!”
Dalreay caught at the leather thongs of the Galumpher, staring up, the cords taut, shouting, “Bob! The swords we took from the guards—they are still in your bed. Arm yourself! The Valcini attack and we must fight!”
Swallowing, Prestin scrambled down to the bed swinging from its thongs, the nearest cords empty as the women hauled up the blankets to form their parapet. He felt inside and touched the warm metal of the swords. He pulled them out carefully, handling their sharpness gingerly. Now he had two swords. What the hell was he supposed to do with them? Cry “Banzai!” and charge?
“Down here,” Dalreay called peremptorily.
Prestin joined him on the sand, walking along automatically as the caravan wended on, holding one sword in each hand. He waved them experimentally.
“The women will hurl javelins,” Dalreay said tightly. He looked worried. “We fight like men and hunters of Dargai!”
Prestin considered that Dalreay and his kinsmen would be deadly fighters with these swords. He understood that most of their equipment had been taken in the past from the Honshi guards. Iron smelting and steel forging would be difficult under the conditions of their pilgrimage; so, like most cultures in similar circumstances, pillage and acquisition had strong appeal for them.
Dalreay looked along the line at the clustered men, now ready to rush to the threatened point of the caravan. Prestin slogged along, keyed up but not too frightened, with the tough fighting men around him, of an Ulloa.
He looked again at the speeding dots. Not Ulloa. He licked his lips. The dots abruptly ceased all forward motion. He jumped with the suddenness of that—then he blinked as each dot seemed to bloat and grow in size as though being pumped up. Then he understood—they had turned inward and were charging head on.
A great cry burst from Dalreay. Prestin looked, saw what Dalreay saw, and understood what he faced.
“The Valcini attack! Armored cars! Recoilless rifles! Machine guns! Stand fast my people, for this is our doom!”
VII
Preston rubbed an unsteady hand over his unshaven chin. He could see with his own eyes the truth of Dalreay’s impassioned cry. The man knew enough about interdimensional traffic to be well aware of Earthside weapons—he felt wry disgust at his own delicacy on the subject.