Follow the road.
Yes.
The village would be coming up soon. Might as well take another look, during daylight hours, he decided. Might even be able to frighten a few people.
Below, he saw a centaur on a hilltop, staring upward. What was it Mouseglove had said? "I even saw centaurs among them?"
Dive. Give him a good look.
They dropped rapidly. The centaur turned and ran. Pol chuckled.
"It's a beginning," he remarked, as they climbed again.
Ahead, Lord. More of the flying things. Let me smash them.
Pol squinted. The dark metallic shapes were circling over a small area. He looked below.
Aren't there more of them on the ground?
Yes. But those in the air will be easier to get at.
He felt Moonbird's body grow warm beneath him.
But isn't there someone--human--down there with them? It looks like a girl.
Yes.
Even from this height, he could see the color of her hair....
Let's go after the ones on the ground. Be careful not to harm the girl.
Moonbird sighed and wisps of a grayish gas seemed to curl from his nostrils, to be immediately dispersed by the winds.
Humans always complicate things.
Suddenly, they were diving. The scene below enlarged rapidly. Pol was certain now that it was Nora, at the center of a triangle formed by three of the flying things. These seemed more elaborately constructed than those he had encountered in the night. They had landed and were moving--hopping and crawling--along the ground, closing in on her. She, in turn, was using the rough terrain to keep them at a distance, maneuvering so that rocks and stands of shrubbery barred their ways, as she worked her way toward the fringes of the forest. Once she got in among the trees, he decided, she might well be able to elude them. Still, she might not.
He smelled an odor of rotten eggs now, as the results of some internal chemical reaction of Moonbird's seemed to fill the air about him.
Suddenly, Moonbird's wings were extended and his body was assuming a more upright position as he slowed. Pol braced himself. Mouseglove, seated before him, did the same.
The landing was even worse than he had anticipated--a spine-jolting crash that nearly threw him loose from his position. He squeezed with his legs and his knuckles tightened. It was several seconds before he realized that they had come down directly atop one of the devices.
Then Moonbird belched--a moist, disgusting sound, which was accompanied by an intensification of the odor Pol had detected during their descent. Immediately thereafter, he appeared to be regurgitating. A great stream of noxious liquid spewed from his mouth to drench the second machine nearby. It fumed for several seconds after it struck, then burst into flame.
Pol sought Nora. She now appeared to be retreating as much from them as from the final machine. Suddenly, however, she recognized him.
"Pol!"
"It's all right!" he called back, just as Moonbird advanced and began striking at the device which was now bounding about as if attempting to take flight.
The first blow damaged its right wing. The second shattered it completely. By then, however, two more had descended and a third was diving but pulled up and began to circle.
Moonbird belched again and another began to flame. The final one launched itself toward his face.
Pol crouched low, as did Mouseglove, but not so low that he could not see what followed.
Moonbird opened his mouth and raised his forelimbs. There followed a crunching sound, and then he was tearing the wings off the flier.
...Not at all good to eat.
He spat. The remains fell before him and began to smolder.
Pol looked up. The one remaining bird was climbing higher and higher.
Chase it?
No. I want to help Nora. Wait.
He climbed down and threaded his way through the wreckage.
"Hi," he said, taking hold of her hand. "What happened? What are they?"
"They're Mark's," she replied. "The same sort of thing that came to save him. He sent them for me...."
"Why?"
"He wants me. He said he'd come for me."
"And you don't want to go to him?"
"Not now."
"Then I think we'd better go see him and straighten this out. Where is he?"
She looked at him, at Moonbird, back at him.
"South, I believe," she finally said, "at a forbidden place they sometimes call Anvil Mountain."
"Do you know how to find it?"
"I think so."
"Have you ever ridden a dragon before?"
"No."
He squeezed her hand and turned.
"Come on. It's fun. This one's named Moonbird."
She did not move.
"I'm afraid," she said. "The last dragons anyone saw were Devil Det's. ..."
He nodded.
"This one's okay. But let me ask you whether you're more afraid of this Mark guy and his gadgets or a tame, housebroken pet I just rode in on."
She shook her head.
"Where did you find it? How do you control it? Is it true about your being related to the House of Rondoval? You said you were a traveler--"
"Too much. Too long to tell you now."
"....Because, if you are of Rondoval--as they said--then that probably is one of Det's dragons."
"He's mine now. But I won't lie to you. I didn't before, either. I just didn't know then. Yes, I'm related to that House. I'd like to help you, though. Will you show me where this guy lives? I want to talk with him."
She studied his face. He met her eyes. Abruptly, she nodded.
"You're right. He means harm. Perhaps we can reason with him. How do we mount?"
"Let me introduce you first. ..."
As the ground dropped away beneath them, Pol leaned past Nora and told Mouseglove, "There's going to be a little detour on the way to Dibna. I want to visit the person who controls these things."
Mouseglove nodded.
"You postponing your revenge, too?" he asked.
Pol reddened.
"Revenge?" Nora inquired. "What does he mean?"
"Later," Pol snapped. "Tell me about forbidden places."
"They are areas containing leftover things from the old days when people still used that sort of equipment."
"They are supposed to be haunted," she added.
"I've heard similar stories," Mouseglove put in. "Seen some artifacts too, in my line of work. The day you were taken away, I heard Mor speak of some sort of balance. Our world went the way that it did, the one he was taking you to went the other way. The two ways seem basically incompatible, and attempts to combine them are dangerous. I got the impression Det might have been doing something along those lines."
"So Mark could be a greater menace than is immediately obvious?"
"It seems that way."
Pol shaded his eyes and stared ahead, locating the tiny dot the bird-thing had become.
"We seem to be headed in the same direction."
"What revenge?" Nora said.
"I'm not sure. Let it go, huh?" He glowered at the small thief, who smiled back at him. "An intention is less than a deed," he said, "less even than an attempt." His gaze grew unfocussed. He seemed to pluck at something in the air. "You're a fine one to preach," he added, long moments later, as the smaller man clutched suddenly at his chest, "when you've got my figurines inside your shirt."
Mouseglove blanched, then fell into a spell of coughing "I'll deal with you later," Pol said. "I doubt you'll be running off in the meantime. Right now, though, I think I'm beginning to see what Mor meant about a menace when he was bringing me here."