“The gate,” Simon said.
“And its defenders,” Jaelithe added in a half whisper. Those were to be seen now, moving along the cut. For all their unearthly, unhuman aspect, they were setting up an ambush with the cunning of intelligence, or what had been born from intelligence which had once existed. Here and there Simon marked such weapons as the one he held in his own hands.
“They are coming through!”
There was no change in the metal pillars, no sign that the gate was in use, until those men suddenly appeared as if from the air itself. Possessed fighting men, yet they showed caution as they fanned out, moved up the break. There was no hint from those in hiding. And the controlled warriors of the Kolder advanced without facing attack. A full company of them came through, were well along the cut from which every sign of those in ambush had vanished. Now the nose of one of the crawlers appeared, followed by the rest of its ponderously moving bulk. One of the possessed at the controls, but beside him a Kolder agent.
Around, from below, from across the cut, Simon sensed that upsurge—an emotion in the air, dark and heavy. “They hate—” Jaelithe whispered. “How they hate!”
“They hate,” Aldis mimicked her tone. “But still they wait. They have learned to wait, for that is what they have lived to do.”
A second truck crawled out of nothingness. Now the invaders’ foot force was well down the old road. This second vehicle had a larger cabin on its body, the top of which was a transparent dome. And in that sat true Kolder, two of them—one wearing a metal cap.
The smoldering cloud of emotion was so strong now Simon expected it to rise as a visible fog. But still those in ambush made no move. A smaller party of possessed, marched stolidly along—labor ready for the need.
Then—nothing more.
“Now!”
Sound, lower than thunder but with a bestial hate which made it one with elements, which owed nothing to intelligence or human understanding. The fury which had been building boiled into action as the possessed shivered, jerked, fell.
There was not enough room in the cut for the trucks to turn. But the one bearing the Kolder officers reversed, crawled backward, so that the possessed who followed it were crushed and broken beneath its treads. Then the driver jerked and quivered in turn. He fell out of sight in the cabin, yet still the truck retreated, or strove to withdraw, though its backward run was now far more unsteady. At last it crashed into one of the piles of debris and slowly tilted, as the treads clawed vainly to keep it upright.
The Kolder wearing the cap had not moved, even his eyes remained closed. Perhaps it was his will which had kept the truck going, even protected him and his fellows now as neither seemed affected by the attack which withered and slew those about them.
His companion turned his head from side to side, studying the route. But no expression Simon could read crossed his white face.
“They have what they want now,” Aldis again with that tittering laugh. “They have caught a Master to give them a key to the gate.”
They had come out of hiding, those skeletons—the bait of the Kolders drawing them free of caution. Many of them were bare-handed as they swarmed about the truck, strove to climb to the bubble-topped cabin.
Mewling cries—half that company fell back, their bodies blackened, their limbs moving spasmodically. But still more gathered, not quite as unwary now. Until several came together, bearing with them a loop of metallic chain. Three flings before it fell into position about the bubble. Then fire ran around it in a spitting line. When that was pulled away and they climbed again, there was no trouble. The bubble shattered and they were at their prey.
Jaelithe covered her eyes. She had seen the sacking of cities and the things done in Karsten when the Old Race had been horned into outlawry. But this was something she could not watch.
“Only one—” Aldis babbled, “he must be saved for the key—they must have their key!”
The metal-capped Kolder hung limply in his captors’ clutches, his eyes still closed. The skeletons were gathering along the cut, to form up as a grotesque demon army behind that captive and those who held him. There were the alien rifles among them, but others had armed themselves with the weapons of the possessed. And their hate was still high and hot. Then, holding the Kolder to the fore, they marched, as if a forgotten training was revived in their union of purpose—for the gate.
Simon moved as the first of them stepped between the pillars and vanished. The Kolder—now these—what evil would be loosed in the world he had come to consider his own?
“Yes, oh, yes!” Jaelithe cried. “A wind, then a whirlwind—and we must face the storm!”
18 KOLDER BESIEGED
ONLY THE DEAD lay in the cut, that sense of alien presence had accompanied that sinister army through the gate. How many had been in that force? Fifty. A hundred? Simon had not counted them, but he believed not over a hundred. And what could so few do against the entrenched might beyond? This was not to be a matter of laying an ambush.
But the Kolder should be too occupied now to remember the fugitives, and this was the time to return with the force before them.
“We go back—”
Aldis gave one of those eerie, tittering laughs. She had crept away from them, was moving along the edge of the ravine, looking at them over her shoulder, a sly grin on her lips. Almost she was coming to resemble the skeletal inhabitants of this land. The last vestiges of beauty had been bleached from her.
“How will you go?” she called. “Door without key, door you cannot batter down. How do you go, mighty warrior and lady witch?”
She was running in a zigzag, fleetly, back into the waste.
“After her!” Jaelithe scrambled by him. “Do you not see? That talisman—it is the key—for her—for us!”
If she were right—Simon followed. Light as it was to carry, the alien rifle was an awkward burden as they smashed through brush. But he clung to it. In spite of the veil of vegetation growing over the debris of the buildings, the ruins were impressive. This had been, if not a city, a fort or settlement of some size. And the number of hiding places among the broken walls were beyond counting. As he and Jaelithe burst into an open space, Simon stopped her with an outthrust arm.
“Where?” He made the one word into a demand and saw her gaze about with dawning comprehension. “She might be within arm’s distance or well away, but where?” He hammered home the hopelessness of their unthinking pursuit. This warren of ruins was made for endless hide and seek.
Jaelithe raised her hands and cupped them over her eyes, standing very still while her breathing quieted. Simon did not quite know what she would do, but in confidence he waited. She pivoted, part way around, and then dropped her hands to point.
“Thus!”
“How do—?”
“How do I know? By what is not there—Kolder barrier—and she wears the Kolder talisman.”
A thin clue—there could be other Kolder traces in this land. But it was the only one they had. Simon nodded and accepted her guidance. It was a crooked path Jaelithe set them, and it bored on into the mass of ruins away from the cleft. Simon marked a back trail as they went, blazing growths, or scratching stones. But the time this chase was taking he regretted.
They came out on a large paved space, ringed by buildings in a better state of repair than those nearer the cut. There was a different look to these structures—not quite the sealed appearance of the Kolder holds, yet with some of their stark rigidity of design. Grace and beauty in the sense his world knew them, Jaelithe’s people held, were totally foreign to the minds which had conceived and built these. And any one of them might provide Aldis with numerous hiding places.