"It should thin further within." Dumarest rasped the side of a stone over his blade. "We'll take turns, me, then you, then me, again. Short spells and halt to sharpen. A narrow passage will do as long as the branches are cut to allow progress. We'll halt to rest when we reach a clearing."
It took three hours during which they hacked and cut and squeezed past ripping thorns and jagged spines, their padding torn, sweat running down their bodies, the roar of blood loud in their ears as they sagged from exhaustion.
Dilys collapsed as they reached the clearing, lying to gasp, to pull the fabric from head and face, to sprawl, panting like a dog. Threnond was little better. Egulus leaned back against a mass of branches and looked upwards. The sky was hidden beneath a roof of greenery.
"Food," he said bitterly. "Water and shelter. Well, I guess we've found that, at least. The shelter of a grave. We could die in here and no one would ever be able to find us."
"If anyone is bothering to look." Bochner looked up from where he sat. "Any luck with the radio yet?"
"I've been sending a distress call for days, now." Threnond looked at the radio equipment in his hand. It was a jumble of adapted components, powered by a small energy cell. "If anyone's heard it, they haven't answered."
"Or you haven't caught it, if they did." Egulus was pessimistic. "What difference does it make? They'll never find us in here."
"Not here," agreed Dumarest, "but we'd be easy to spot if we were on the summit of that peak we saw."
"The peak?" Dilys lifted her head. "Earl, that's miles away! We can't-"
"We can!" He rose and stepped toward her and lifted her upright with an explosion of violence which gave his face the likeness of a savage animal. "We can if we try. If we want to. But we won't if we just sit around moaning that it can't be done. Now, move! On your feet and move!"
The sun passed zenith and headed toward the horizon. An hour before dusk they found a small stream and bathed, cooling their bodies and filling their stomachs in turn, as others kept watch; a precaution Dumarest insisted on and one which Bochner noted. A trait of his quarry's character-how many would have thought to be so careful at such a time and in such a seemingly harmless place?
Later, as the shadows closed in, he said, "We need to eat, Earl. Climbing to that peak will take energy the rest haven't got. Of course, we could leave them here and send help later."
Or forget them. The simplest way, but he didn't hint at that. The bait had been enough. He could learn from the way it was taken.
"We could," said Dumarest, "if we find help. If that help is willing to do as we ask. If it can find them when it tries."
"An old man," said Bochner. "A captain without a ship. A woman."
"People."
"True, but there are so many people." Bochner looked into the shadows. "With water there could be game. If so, it would follow trails-need I tell you what is obvious?"
They set snares made of woven wires and waited and caught small, furred creatures which squeaked and died and were skinned to roast over a fire created by sparks struck from steel. Daylight provided more food from the snares which had been set overnight, and again they began to climb. At dusk, the vegetation had developed into tall trees which soared like the columns of an ancient cathedral, their upper branches plumed to hide the sky. Progress was easier, but slowed by the thick humus which held the damp consistency of mud.
And there was no more game.
Its lack puzzled Bochner.
"There are fruits," he pointed out. "And there should be things to eat them. There are insects and yet no apparent lifeform adapted to prey on them. See?"
With his boot he scraped back a portion of the dirt, revealing a host of scurrying beetles. The fruits, small, hard-skinned, now rotting, lay where they had fallen.
Dumarest looked at the trees, the immediate area. Life took many forms, but always it followed certain patterns. The large preyed on the small and where there was food there was something to eat it. The animals they had snared and eaten had been rodents, ratlike things with teeth and jaws adapted to an omnivorous diet. They had been fairly plentiful further down the slopes-why not here?
Threnond said, "What's the matter? Are we lost?"
"No."
"How can you tell?" The dealer in items of death was hungry and irritable and conscious of his overriding fatigue. He set down the radio and moved off into the shadows clustered between the boles. "While you decide, I've something to attend to. A natural function-you understand."
A delicacy he had demonstrated before, but not with such abruptness. Dumarest took a step after him, halted as Bochner rested a hand on his arm.
"Let him go, Earl."
"There could be danger."
"Always there is the possibility of danger, my friend. In the wine you drink, the food you eat, the bed in which you sleep. We are surrounded by perils, but to guard against them all is beyond the ability of man. We take what precautions we can and, for the rest we trust to luck. If our luck is good, we continue to survive. If it is bad-" he shrugged, "then we cease to have cause to worry."
And no man should be fool enough to burden himself with the welfare of another-a point Bochner hadn't emphasized but had left in no doubt. A tenet of his philosophy revealed in the tone of his voice, the expression of his eyes, the words chosen to illustrate a meaning. When a man played cards, he betrayed more than he guessed to a skilled observer and Dumarest had assessed his motivation. The cult of self, the way of the feline. The law of the beast who has only one instinct, one drive. To survive at all costs. To live. To continue to exist, for without personal existence there was nothing.
And yet he had dived into the ocean, risking death to save another.
"Threnond!" Dumarest raised his voice. "Shan? Shan, where are you?"
Silence, broken only by the rustle of feet in the humus as the woman and Egulus came to join them. A silence which held a sudden, brooding menace.
"Shan!"
"He can't be far," whispered Dilys. "There was no need for him to go far."
"Shan!" Dumarest looked up and around, feeling the old, familiar prickle of impending danger, the primitive warning which had served him so well before. "Stay together," he said. "Keep watch. Bochner, you light a fire. Hurry!"
He moved to where a clump of saplings stood between separated trees. As flame rose from the fire the hunter had built, Dumarest cut down four of the slender poles, trimmed them, sharpened their ends to form crude spears.
As Dilys took hers, she said, "Why this, Earl? Trouble?"
"Maybe not. Just hold on to it, in case. Use it to lean on if you like."
"Sure, just like an-"
She broke off as he lifted a hand, listening. From above and to one side, falling with a gentle rustle through the leaves, came something which twisted and turned to land like a flattened snake.
"A belt!" Egidus lunged forward. "By God, it's a belt!"
After it came nightmare.
It dropped with a thin chatter of castanets, veiled, gems flashing in the firelight, fans and parasols flared and shimmering with a nacreous sheen. A thing which followed the bole, suspended on a thin strand, swinging, touching Egulus, who yelled and sprang back and yelled again as he fell, to roll helpless on loam.
To stare with horror at the mammoth spider dropping towards him.
"Earl! My God! What-"
Dilys spoke to empty air. Dumarest was gone, lunging forward with a speed which, in the firelight, made him seem little more than a blur. To halt, spear upraised, butt on the loam beside the fallen captain, the sharpened point buried deep in the mat of fur covering the spider's thorax, wood shredding beneath the snap of its mandibles, silk pluming from the pulsing spinnerets forming clouds of gossamer which drifted like a mantle to clog his head and arms.