Chapter Seven
Uruk's laugh startled me, for to my mind those arms of mist were indeed ominous. However, there was contempt in the sound he made as he watched them thin, reach out for us like tentacles of some sea monster such as the Sulcarmen knew in the far south. And quick on that laughter he began a soft chant.
I saw his words. By what feat of sorcery this happened I could not explain. But the words formed blue sparks in this gloom, issuing from his lips as a stream, yet spreading out beyond to gather in a glittering puff cloud of their own. He moved confidently forward and perforce I followed.
Then that glitter of blue sparks touched upon one of the threatening tendrils of mist. There was a flash. The mist whipped back to join a center core which grew opaque, ever darkening, as more and more of the unnamable material was drawn to it.
Now there was no mist, rather a wavering figure which did not appear certain of what concrete form to take. From it issued a feeling of menace, building so quickly that it was like a blow. But if whatever that thing was thought to find us open to such counterattack, it learned quickly that we were not. For though it flung itself to the rocky way under our feet and strove to crawl at us, the blue mist dropped in turn.
"Ha, Targi!" Uruk no longer chanted; now he called as a man will shout a personal challenge to the enemy. "Do you then think me already your plaything? Helm-biter"—for the first time he gave his weapon a name—"is no steel of any man's forging. You should know that."
The mist winked out.
Uruk nodded. "He must be greatly shaken," he said musingly. "Targi is not of the Great Ones, no more than am I. But I would have thought he fancied his hold on the Dark Power stronger." Now his voice sharpened and he demanded of me: "How did he die—in that time we know?"
I dredged up Tolar memory. Targi—had Tolar seen him die? Or only heard it reported before his own grievous wound had driven him from the field? Then the words came to me haltingly, for the pictures in my mind were very dim and far away.
"He died by an ax. They raised an outcry when they found his body—that I remember."
"By an ax," Uruk repeated. "Then—"
I knew what troubled him. If it had been his Helm-biter that had so dealt with Targi, to slay him again might avail us nothing. Unless we could also reach the inner core wherein Targi or what was of the real Targi might find secure refuge.
"He will strive to repeat the pattern," Uruk said, this time as if to himself. "So—"
The way before us was dark. That evil coiling thing of little real substance had vanished. However, we had not lost our wariness, which was well. For now out of the dark again came snaking, some actually crawling upon the rock to better entangle our feet, those root ropes. The ax swung—I need not use the proper hand on Ice Tongue to prick at those reptilian, wriggling lines of dark.
It was butchery there in the half-dark. Neither Thas nor rope could truly face our weapons when we set our backs to the wall of the passage and swung the bright metal to bring death. The sword snarl was that of a wolf eager to be at the throat of its prey. And, while Helm-biter did not give tongue in a like manner, yet the very passage of the double-bladed head through the air made a kind of singing. While the Thas squealed and grunted.
Uruk raised his voice above their clamor. "Make an end now!" he ordered. "Targi used these to buy him time—the time he must not have. He thinks he will be safe in that place he has devised, so we must reach him before he sets a lock to guard his safety."
We came away from the wall in a charge. Uruk roared aloud the old battle cry of HaHarc. The sound of his voice was nearly deafening in that small section, and the blaze of our weapons made them living fire in our hands.
The Thas broke. I knew of old that they were fighters who needed the dark to make them confident. And there were bodies' enough, mostly from Uruk's hewing, to discourage them. Whether Targi withdrew the compulsion he had laid upon them to attack we never knew. But at our advance they broke and ran. Some fled ahead down the lefthand section of the passage, some withdrew to the right behind us.
Uruk moved swiftly. He might not trot nor run through this murk, but he made the best pace the cramped quarters and our uncertain footing allowed him. And I kept at his back, though I looked often to make sure that those who had run had not doubled back to follow us.
In my own time, the Thas had envenomed their spears. But those we tramped over, lying still sometimes in hands no longer able to raise them, showed no discoloration of point. In so much were we now favored.
We came to a forking of the passage, then a second, and a third. Each time Uruk turned right or left with no hesitation. I did not ask, but somehow I believed he knew where he went.
Thus we broke from a side way into one of those caves through which Tsali and I had earlier gone—or if not that, one so much like it no man could tell the difference. The stalagmites shown with crystalline sparkling as Ice Tongue's brilliance caught them. I would have been muddled by the number and variety of these age-long mineral growths, but my companion did not pause, nor search. I saw that Helm-biter swung a fraction in his grasp; perhaps that was acting now as one of those needles the Sulcarmen kept locked within bowls to point a path across the sea.
So we reached at last to another opening in the wall, a crevice I might have overlooked, for it required careful squeezing to get by a large lump of rock into it. Another narrow passage awaited beyond, only the walls of this had certainly been hewn smooth, and I saw here and there a pattern of runes I did not know—save from them seemed to reach a coldness to touch the innermost part of a man, awakening in him uneasiness and despair. Only the warm sword hilt in my scarred hand fought that subtle assault upon my courage.
Uruk slowed his pace. His head was well up, for that passage had not been the cramped size beloved by the Thas. Men, or something much like men, had made it.
"Now—" The word was half a breath he expelled. "Now we win or fail, Tolar-that-was, for we have tracked him as he never believed any man born in the Light could do. And at the bay he will throw against us all his strength—"
He had hardly gotten forth the last word when a blow out of nothingness struck against us both. It sent me reeling unsteadily back, toward that half-concealed entrance. This was as if a giant and all-powerful hand had thumped against my chest, leaving me no defense, hurling me away. I lashed out wildly with Ice Tongue, seeing nothing tangible to so attack but feeling that I must do something or be utterly overborne and rendered helpless.
Uruk was forced back also, but only a step or two. His shoulders were hunched a little, his feet planted apart as if he were determined there would be no more retreat. I tried to copy his stance. More than that, I fought to edge forward again to join him.
The pressure continued. I had not been able to win a palm's-length forward; no, instead I had lost two backward. Anger, dour and sullen, filled me, unlike any I had felt before; Tolar's anger, which had in my touch with him been so tattered by despair. Tolar—once more I turned to that hidden other part of me which the sword had brought to birth.
Uruk was moving forward, his action resembling that of a man wading through thick mud. Each step he took was short, but he made it. I rubbed shoulder against the wall where my last retreat had borne me. Now I took the sword into my right hand, put out the left. As I had felt for those holds in the deep well, so did I now lock fingertips into the lines of the runes. Very small was the purchase such holds gave me. But I came forward again, slowly, one hindered step against another, just as Uruk moved.