The Walls of Air Page 0,78

furs and talking quietly among themselves in their own tongue. Rudy overheard a drift of it now and then, a spare, quiet murmur, modulated like the sigh of the wind, half-augmented by signs and marked by subtle changes of inflection. Only Hoofprint of the Wind came to sit with him and Ingold, bringing meat and mush and a bottle of some kind of drink that had a nasty sweetish backtaste and an insidious alcoholic content.

'Now,' the chief said, when they had eaten and the semidarkness of the shelter was deepening with the coming of evening outside. 'You wise men, who read all the papers of the mud diggers beyond the mountains, what is this ghost that is more terrible than the Eaters in the Night, wise man?'

'More terrible?' Ingold asked softly. Rudy heard in the mellow, grainy voice not

only apprehension but overwhelming curiosity. Pointed to its lair, Rudy thought, he'd investigate it or die.

'So must it be.'

'Why? Have you seen it?'

There was a movement of denial and the glint of silver on a thick, gleaming braid.

'Then how do you know that it is more terrible?'

The Raider shrugged, a slight gesture reminiscent of the Icefalcon's curt movements. They flee before it,' he said. 'All the holes in the ground from which they rose up have they deserted and they come no more to this part of the plain. If this thing has eaten up the Eaters, now that they are gone, will it not destroy us also? When the chosen prey of a thing dies out, will it not turn to other? We know nothing of this thing and never have we seen it. Yet why have the Eaters gone? From what would such creatures flee? Have you heard the name of this thing, Desert Walker, in all your lore?'

'No,' Ingold said. 'I have heard nothing of this. When did they depart, the Eaters in the Night?'

Hoofprint of the Wind paused in thought, counting backward in time. Outside, the wind grew to a shrill-voiced violence with the dropping of the ground temperature; a few inches above their heads, the hide roof of the shelter rattled angrily on its moorings.

'It was the time of the first quarter moon of autumn,'the tall barbarian said finally, and Rudy, gifted with the dark-sight of a mage, saw Ingold look up suddenly, a strange eagerness illuminating his lined face. 'Yes,' the chieftain went on. They rose in the last full moon of the failing summer, far away in the north, and hunted across the lands of us, the Stcharnyii, the Chasers of the Mammoth, the People of the Plains. And we moved south, the Twisted Hills People, the White Lakes People, the Lava Hills People, and all the others of the Stcharnyii. We have hunted the deserts, picking little bugs from the ground as the dooic do. And now the Eaters in the Night have gone away and rise no more from their holes. But what has driven them forth, Desert Walker? What is this ghost that they fear? For now it has come here and driven the Eaters forth out of their holes, even in the desert. We have camped the night beside such a hole, and they came not in the night. Now what shall we do if this thing will choose to hunt us!'

Ingold sat quietly for a time, as if he had turned to stone. But Rudy could feel the tension in him, like a current of electricity, and could hear it when he spoke, under the deep, scratchy calm of his voice. 'When the deer depart, the lion does not feed on the grasses on which they fed,' he said softly. 'Nor does the hrigg, the horrible bird, eat the bugs and lizards that are the prey of its prey. It may be that humankind has nothing to fear from this ghost. But tell me. Hoof-print of the Wind, where is this hole where you spent so calm and dreamless a night?'

'From here,' the chieftain of the Raiders said, 'we could be there tomorrow, riding swift horses.' His amber eyes gleamed a little, like a beast's in the dark.

Beside him, Ingold asked casually, 'And have you not swift horses?'
Chapter 10
In spite of his dashing attempt at Errolflynnery, Rudy had never been on a horse before his arrival in this universe. On the road down from Karst he'd ridden exactly once, when he'd gone with a patrol of the Guards to investigate a farmhouse burned out by the White Raiders. The memory