Children of the Gates

  And the worst of that (Elossa had to close her eyes against the horror of that leering, drooling thing) was that it was obviously female. For their attackers wore but little clothing—scraps of filthy stuff about their loins the extent of their body coverings, the females among them as aggressive and bestial as the males.

  The silence in which their attack had been carried out was broken now. Grunts, whistles, noises not even as intelligent as sounds made by far more cleanly living animals broke out in an unintelligible chorus.

  Elossa, the center of one circle of captors, could see nothing of the Raski. She forced herself to look at these ringing her in. While they indulged meanwhile in small torments, pulling viciously at her hair, tweaking her flesh until the nails—of those which had nails—near met, leaving raw marks which bled a little.

  There appeared to be, she began to understand, some argument in progress among them. Twice one party of the creatures strove to drag her away from the river, while others jabbered and screamed and fought over her to bring her back.

  She waited for the man named Karn to appear, somehow sure that he must have been the one to unleash on them this frightful band. But there was no one but the things themselves. One had thrust a stick into the fire, whirled it around in the air until the end blazed and now limped, for one of its legs was shorter than the other, toward her, the fiery point manifestly aimed at her eyes.

  Before that reached the goal the would-be torturer was tackled by a much taller and heavier male, whose tentacle fingers fastened about its fellow’s thin, corded throat and dragged him back, flinging him away with callous force.

  Before the jabbering creature could reclaim its stick there was a sharp outcry from those nearest the river. Now the large male waded into those about Elossa cuffing with fists, kicking out with feet on which there were no toes, growling hoarsely.

  Having battered near half of her captors away, the male stooped and caught at a great handful of her hair. By this painful hold he dragged her to the water’s edge. Then, seizing her by the middle of her body, he raised and flung her out.

  She did not land in the water, but rather in some kind of a boat which rocked perilously under her weight, but did not turn over. A moment later Stans landed half on top of her, hurled in the same manner.

  The Raski lay so limp Elossa feared he was dead. His weight across her body forced her into the bottom of the boat where there was a wash of slimy water. She had to struggle to lift her head so that would not lap into her face.

  Under them the boat lurched and then floated free. But none of the horrors on the shore made move to join the prisoners in it. They were being sent alone, bound and helpless, into the full force of the current. Elossa’s struggles made the boat rock dangerously. But she had achieved a few inches of room which did just keep her face above the water.

  Caught in what was indeed a swift current, the boat rode dizzily, sometime spinning half around. Much of Elossa’s range of sight was curtailed by Stans’ body. She could really see only straight up where the sky held a thin, promising sunlight. But, as they were borne along, walls began to rise on either side, those same walls closing in toward the river. They cut off much of the sky. All she could soon see was a strip forming a ribbon between two towering stretches of dark rock.

  The sound of rushing water was ever present. Now and then the boat grated against some obstruction beyond Elossa’s curtailed range of sight and she waited tensely for their craft to rip apart on a sunken stone, or be over turned, allowing them to drown. Meanwhile she struggled against the cords about her wrists. Those were well under the water which washed in the boat and she wondered if the continued immersion might loosen the ties. But she was afraid to fight too hard lest her movements endanger the buoyancy of their clumsy craft.

  A groan from Stans heartened her a little. Perhaps if he could regain consciousness they might have a slightly better chance. Then she saw the seeping of blood from his shoulder. That nearly healed wound which he had carried from his brush with the first sargon must have been wrenched open once again.

  “Stans!” She called his name.

  A second groan answered her. Then a muttering which was near lost in the sound of the water. Imagination was busy nibbling at the grip she held tight upon her emotions. Given the swiftness of the current here what might well lie ahead? Rapids which no such leaky craft as this could hope to ride, or even a waiting cataract or falls?

  “Stans!” Perhaps she was wrong in trying to arouse the Raski—what if he should make some sudden move which would overbalance them?

  But the water was washing higher now. It flicked in small waves against her chin. If he did not shift his weight In some manner she would be past the ability to keep her face above its surface much longer.

  His body did move a fraction and the boat dipped. The water swirled up and she choked as it entered her nose without warning.

  “Be—be quiet!” Her voice arose nearly to a shriek in her fear.

  “Where. . . .” His voice was weak, she thought, but it sounded as if he were conscious.

  “We are in a boat.” She tried to outtalk the river sounds. “I am partly beneath you. There is water here. I must keep my face above it.”

  Had he understood? He made no immediate answer. She tried to wriggle away from him to the bow of the boat, hold her head up. Her neck ached and it was becoming more and more difficult to do that.

  Then his words came clearly enough. “I shall try to move away,” he said. “Be ready!”

  She braced herself, took a deep breath to have her lungs full if she were to be ducked. His weight did move, slid a little down her body toward the stern of the boat. That rocked wildly under them, and the waves she feared did wash over her face. But through some favor of providence the craft did not overset.

  Once more he moved. And then she felt free. Now it was her turn.

  “Be ready,” she warned. “I shall try to edge away, get my shoulders higher.”

  After a fashion she did. Her chin was jammed down into her chest, but the water was now well away from her face. Also she could see that he, in turn, was wedged across the boat in part, his head and shoulders against one side, his legs and knees trailing down the other.

  The current was still fast but the boat seemed to ride it a little more steadily. Elossa knew very little of boats; they were never used by the Yurth. Perhaps their changes of position had something to do with the alteration.

  From her present place she could see that the river must fill a very narrow gap between two very steep banks. It was as if they passed so through a mountain canyon. Even if they were free, and managed somehow to get out of the water, she greatly doubted that there was any way either of those natural walls could be climbed.

  Once more she cautiously tried the ties about her wrists. And, to her overwhelming excitement, they gave a little. The water’s soaking must have helped. She passed her discovery to Stans. He nodded, but it did not seem to interest him. Under the darkness of his skin there was a greenish color. His eyes closed as if it was beyond his strength to keep them open, and he lay inert. It might have taken all the energy he could summon to have made the move which freed her.

  But her own determination and will were growing stronger. The extreme effect of those horrible attackers had faded. Alone, bound and helpless though they seemed to be, she could begin to search for some hope. To get her hands free—that was what she must first do.

  In spite of the pain in her wrists, she flexed and relaxed, flexed and relaxed, tugging at intervals, though that repaid her with torment in her flayed skin.

  Stans continued to lie with closed eyes and the girl believed that he had again lapsed into unconsciousness. She wondered how long their voyage down the river would continue. She was able to force her head up another few inches to see that once more the walls of the cut through which they were traveling were beginning to descend—the cliffs were not so tall and forbidding.

  A last effort and she jerked one h
and free. Her puffed fingers had no feeling in them. Then the agony of returning circulation made her want to scream aloud. She forced herself to flex those swollen and blood-stained hands in spite of the pain. But she could also use them to cautiously lever herself up farther in the boat, release her head and neck from the strain put upon them.

  Though it was hard to make her fingers obey to any success she picked at the ties around her ankles. The thongs had cut deeply there and puffed rings showed bloody. Then she remembered that the creatures who had taken them captive had not searched her. And, using both hands together, she hunted within the bosom of her robe for that concealed pocket where she carried the small knife to serve her at meals.

  It nearly fell through her nerveless fingers, but she managed to saw away at the thongs. As soon as those parted she edged warily around to see what she could do for Stans. Sitting up in the boat she had a better view of the river. Here it was much narrower than it had been in the valley, which might well add to the speed of the current.

  The boat itself was blunt bowed, rising high on the sides. It appeared to be made of a wooden frame over which was tight stretched hide so thick it must come from some beast beyond Yurth knowledge. That was also scaled on the outside as she could see where it had been brought over at the edge and laced down. And she did not doubt that it was perhaps far tougher than any wood.

  There was a feeling of age about it, as if not of her time at all. And she marveled at how buoyantly it rode.

  Using both hands she shifted Stans a little, with a catch of breath as the boat dipped ominously. But at least she was able to saw at the cords near buried in the flesh of his wrists where they had been drawn so cruelly tight.

  His ankles had fared better than hers for he wore the boots of a hunter. And there was more give to the bonds there. Once he was free she settled him as best she could to steady the boat. The blood stains from his shoulder had not spread, she could hope that the wound had stopped bleeding.

  Now—without any oar, paddle, or means of controlling their craft—what could be done to better their present state? Elossa drew a deep breath as she turned her attention back to the river.

  16

  She did not have long to so wonder for the end of their wild voyage was very near. The higher walls about them sank swiftly, until they came out of the canyon into another valley—if valley it was and not a plains country beyond the mountains. At least this level land, clothed in the autumn hued grass, spread like a sea as far on out as Elossa could distinguish ahead.

  The river which carried them did not flow so swiftly here, and its way across the plain was marked by stands of water-nourished brush and small trees which were the only vegetation to rise above the level of the thick grass. For the rest this seemed a deserted land. It was close to sunset as far as Elossa could judge and there was not a bird to be seen, no grazing animals in sight.

  While the dull hue of the grass and the faded colors of the tree leaves gave a forbidding cast to the whole of this land, it appeared as if all vibrant life had been drawn out of it, and only withered remnants left. Looking around she shivered, more from inner than outer chill.

  A groan from Stans drew her attention back to her companion. His eyes were open and he had shifted his position a little. When his gaze met hers his eyes were still open. It was plain he realized at least some of what had happened. With his hand he touched his shoulder carefully and winced. But at least he was fully conscious. Now he looked out at the plain into which the river was carrying them.

  “We are beyond the heights.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Yes,” Elossa answered. “Though where we may be I have no idea.”

  He was frowning and now he rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Was it a dream—or did we see Karn back there?”

  Elossa chose her words. “We saw a man. . . . he had a face like the Mouth of Atturn . . . you called him Karn.”

  “Then it was not just a dream.” Stans spoke heavily. “But Karn is long dead. Though, yes, he was priest as well as king and in his own time men whispered behind their hands—a dark legend but one even I have heard remnants of. Karn dealt with forces most men did not even believe existed. Or so they say—and said. It is true I cannot remember clearly.” Now he shook his head. “I feel that I should, but that some wall stands between me and the truth. Karn. . . .” his voice trailed away.

  “If that was your long dead king,” Elossa cut in sharply, “he has taken to himself some evil followers. The monsters who brought us down were no true blood of men.”

  “Yes. And them, of them I have no knowledge at all. But why they loosed us to the mercy of the river and this boat. . . .” He moved again and his face twisted with what must have been a grievous twinge of pain. But he had hitched up farther and was gazing around as if now intent upon assessing their situation clearly.

  “No oars,” he commented. “It is plain we are not meant to command any part of the future. But. . . .”

  Elossa, who had looked back at the river and what lay ahead, gave an exclamation. There seemed to be a wall of brush now directly above the water, though that flowed unimpeded beneath it. It was evident that bearing down upon the barrier as they were, there was no other chance but that the boat would be brought up against it.

  Carefully she got to her knees, balancing with difficulty as the boat bobbed and moved under her weight. Even if he stood, Elossa guessed, she could not have reached the top of that obstruction across the water.

  The boat rocked again as Stans raised himself higher. He gestured to the river itself.

  “Swim for it?” he suggested.

  Though Elossa had splashed about in mountain pools and knew that she would be at a loss in this current-driven river. She hesitated. Perhaps, were they to bring up against the mass of the barrier, that could be better climbed. Yet the presence of the barrier itself was an implied threat. It had not simply appeared there as some freak of nature, of that she was sure. Made—it brought to mind the question of its makers and the purpose for which they might have erected it.

  In the end they were given no choice at all. For even as the boat neared the barrier, there dropped, seemingly from the very air over their heads (though Elossa knew it must be the result of some well trained casting) a net which entangled both the boat and its occupants.

  She and Stans were fighting that entrapment when those who had so arranged their capture appeared out of the brush and trees on either side of the stream. Unlike the misshapen monsters of their first encounter with the mountain dwellers, these were straight of body, well formed. And—they were Yurth!

  Elossa cried out for help. These were kin, her own blood. But—were they. Some wore the coarse clothing of the mountain clans, enough like her own to have come from the same looms. Others had on the tight-fitting body suits she had seen in the pictures the ship had shown her, the same that Yurth who had aimed the ancient weapon at them scarce a day ago had appeared in.

  Elossa sent out an imperative mind-call. To be so startled in return that she cried out. These were closed—tight guarded against her touch. Yurth they might appear in body—they were not Yurth in mind.

  Also she saw now their faces more clearly—they were blank eyed, without expression. Nor did they speak to one another in any words as these on the left bank drew the net and so the boat and its two occupants toward them.

  “Yurth,” Stans said. “Your people—what would they do with us?”

  Elossa shook her head. She felt so strange and at a loss—meeting closed minds, blank faces where she had the right to expect something far different—that she now had the sensation of being caught tight in some nightmare, or else laid under so strong a hallucination that it endured in spite of any attempt on her part to break it.

  “They look Yurth—” She spoke her bewilderment aloud. “But they are not, not the Yurth I know.”

  If they were not her people, they were well used to handling prisoners taken in their odd net and water
trap. And there were too many of them for either Elossa or Stans, weakened as he was by the reopening of his wound, to put up any defense. Even though her first attempt at communication had failed, the girl tried twice again to launch mind-send at their captors. But it would seem that none were receptive.

  In the end, their hands once more bound behind them, she and Stans were marched away from the river and the boat, now tied at the bank, striking out across the dull emptiness of the plain. At sunset they camped where a circle of stones set to confine fire to a much blackened and ash-piled piece of ground suggested that this was a well used halting place.

  The Yurth had marched in silence, speaking neither to their prisoners nor each other. Elossa had come to feel a shrinking from contact with any of them. They might well be only hollow shells of the people she had known, sent to obey the will of some other, without a spirit of their own remaining in their bodies.

  At least those bodies remained human in their need for food and water. For supplies were produced and shared with their prisoners, unbound for the purpose, but watched closely while they gnawed on lengths of what seemed dried meat, as hard to chew as wood, and allowed to drink from journey bottles. Even the water had a strange, stale taste as if it had been in those storage containers for a long time.

  “Where do you take us?” In the general silence of that camp Stans’ voice rang out unusually loud. He had spoken to the Yurth who was rebinding his hands.

  The man might have been deaf for he did not even glance up as he tested the last knot with grim efficiency before he turned away. Now the Raski looked to Elossa.

  “They are of your stock, surely they will answer you.” There was an odd note in his voice. Almost, Elossa thought, as if he had already identified her wholly with his enemies, in spite of the outward trappings of captivity which she wore.