Vault of the Ages

Chapter 5 RETURN — AND RETREAT

The sun was lowering again when the boys came to the western edge of the farm lands and entered the woods. Their horses slogged along in head-drooping weariness and they themselves felt aching bones and sandy eyelids. But need drove them, a need of a hiding place from the ranging Lann and a need, still greater and more bitter, to know what had happened to their people.

Carl threw one last glance behind him. The Dales rolled green and still and beautiful away to the east, and the quiet evening air was full of sunset and the sleepy twitter of birds. No other human was in sight. Oh, it was a broad and fair land, and he knew what sort of hunger was in the Lann for such a home. But by all the gods, he thought with an anger dulled by his tiredness, it was the Dalesmen’s home first! The road had narrowed to a single track, and once under the trees it became a grassy lane where the hoofs were muffled and rabbits fled startled before the riders. They passed a charcoal burner’s lonely hut, abandoned now in the face of the Lann. “That’s the last dwelling,” said Tom, his voice flat and empty. “After this, there’s only the wilderness.”

A little way beyond, the trail petered out altogether and there was nothing. But here another pathway ran into the first, and Carl bent low over it, straining his eyes in the twilight.

“Look!” he cried. “Look here—spoor of travelers!”

They saw it then: fresh wheel tracks and hoof prints, broken twigs, and a trampled way plunging into the forest. Owl let out a faint yip. “It may be our own folks!” he chattered. “They could’ve come by the road past Harry’s instead of the one we took—it’d lead them here—Come on, fellows! Come on!”

The dusk rose between the high trunks like mist, and, winding around the trees, it was hard to follow even the plain wagon trail over the hilly ground. Carl’s pony gasped under him, and he patted the bowed neck. “Easy, old man, easy,” he whispered. “It can’t be far now. A loaded wagon can’t travel fast through this stuff.”

“Look! Up ahead!” Tom pointed a shadowy arm through the deepening twilight. A ruddy spark danced waveringly beyond a tinkle of stream. “A campfire!”

Too tired to think whether those might be Lann who had made it, the boys forded the brook and scrambled with their mounts up the farther bank. Yes, yes… a small fire, picking out the shapes of two wagons and tethered animals… a man leaning on his spear—

“Who’s that?” The voice rolled forth, weary and shaken. “Halt or we shoot!”

“Father!” yelled Owl joyfully. He sprang from his horse and ran toward the sentry. Tom plunged after him, and Carl was not far behind. When the Chief’s son arrived, John the farmer was embracing his boys and crying praises to all the gods, while their mother wept her joy. In the ruins of their world, they still had each other!

The dim red flicker of light picked out other faces, an old man, his son with wife and baby, and a young woman. They must have joined forces as they escaped. There were four brawny oxen to pull the wagons, a string of horses, and a couple of dogs, all resting under the trees. The wagons were piled high with family goods, and Carl frowned even as his hand was being shaken. What was the use of dragging all that through heartbreaking miles of forest when it slowed travel and invited raiders?

Well…. He remembered what his father had once said: “People are people, you can’t change them much and a Chief has to take them as they are. Never forget that it’s their will which keeps him Chief.”

He wondered with a sick fear what had happened to his father in these last long days. Were the Lann already at Dalestown?

Carl eased himself to the cool, damp earth, looked into the sputtering flames, and listened drowsily to John’s account of what had come to pass. Even if the story was grim, it was good to sprawl again and rest.

Scouts had brought word the very day the boys had left John’s homestead, that the Lann vanguard was emerging from the woods near by and gathering itself in the fields. The war-word had gone on hurried feet from house to lonely house, but it had taken more than a day to assemble the men, and they met the enemy weary from a night’s hard traveling.

“They scattered us,” said John somberly. “Their horsemen outflanked our pikemen and struck us from the side and behind. We fought long and hard. Many died in their tracks, but the others broke us up into little knots of men and finally we ran. The Lann hunted us down. They hunted us like dogs harrying a rabbit. Only nightfall saved us, and we streamed home knowing we were beaten. The Lann ranged about, plundering wherever they came, but that may have been a good thing. It held them up long enough for us to flee.”

If the northern farmers had gone to Dalestown in the first place, joined themselves to a large army under a leader who knew something of warcraft… Carl clamped his mouth shut on the words that he knew were too late.

“There are many families retreating like us through the woods,” said the young man, Torol. “It’s slow going, but I don’t think the Lann will bother chasing us. They’ve richer booty at hand—our homes.” He spat. His wife started to cry, softly and hopelessly, and he put an arm about her shoulder and murmured what empty comfort he could.

Carl reflected that the business of sacking the northern marches would keep the invaders occupied for a while. Then they would also have to assemble their entire army—a part of which had fought here. And, while they seemed to have a cavalry such as none of the southern tribes had ever dreamed of, the bulk of their host must be footmen just as it was in the Dales.

So all in all, he thought Ralph would have a few days’ grace yet before the hammer blow fell.

Nevertheless, he wanted to get home and join his father as soon as possible. He groaned at the thought of creaking through brush and hills with these overloaded oxcarts, and thought for a moment of leaving the group and pushing on alone. But no—his eyes went to the tired, dusty faces of Tom and Owl—those two had followed him, stood by him like true comrades in the face of the unknown powers of the City. Now they were with their folk, and the little caravan would need every hunter it could get to keep itself fed on the way. “The Chief,” Ralph had said, “is the first servant of the tribe.”

Carl shook his head, sighing, and spread a blanket roll for sleep. He would let John’s sons tell about the expedition to the witch-folk. Just now, he wanted only to rest.

The following day grew into a slow nightmare of travel. For all the straining and grunting of oxen, and even the horses hitched on in especially difficult places, the wagons made no speed. They were snared in brush and saplings, stuck in the muddy banks of streams, dangerously tipped in the wild swoop of hillsides and gullies. Men had to push from behind, chop a path in front, guide the stubborn beasts along rugged slopes, cursing and sweating and always listening for the war whoop of the Lann. Near evening, Carl shuddered with relief when John asked him to go hunting.

The boy took bow and arrows, a light spear, and a rawhide lariat, and slipped quietly into the tangled woods. His aching shoulders straightened as he moved away from the creaking wagons, and he sniffed the rich green life about him with a new delight. Summer, leaves rustling and breaking the light into golden flecks, a glimpse of blue sky amid cool shadows, a king snake sunning itself on a moss-grown log, a pheasant rising on alarmed wings before he could shoot, like a rainbowed lightning flash—oh, it was good to be alive, alive and free in the young summer! Carl whistled to himself until he was out of earshot of the caravan, then he grew still and his flitting brown form mingled with the shade. He had some work to do.

It didn’t take long to spot a woodchuck’s burrow—but was the animal at home? Carl fitted an arrow to his bowstring and lay down to wait. The sun crept westward, his nose itched, flies buzzed maddeningly around his sweat-streaked face, but he crouched like a cat until patience was rewarded. The woodchuck crept from its hole, Carl’s bow twanged, and he slung his prey at his belt. Nice fat one. But it would take more than that to feed ten people. Carl went on his way.

He shot at a squirrel and missed, not feeling too sorry about it, for he liked the impudent red dwarfs. Scrambling along a slope, he met a porcupine and added it to his bag. The bill went down to a thin, trickling brook which he followed, picking up a small turtle on the way. Mixed food tonight. But not very much yet, even if Tom and Owl were ranging elsewhere…. Hold—what was that, up ahead?

Carl splashed along the brook until it ran off a stony bluff into a broad, quiet pool under the mournful guarding of a willow thicket. The ground about the water hole was muddy with trampling. This was where some worth-while game drank! Carl didn’t care to wait alone for it after dark. He knew the large difference between courage and foolishness. Next evening he and someone else could return. The caravan wouldn’t be many miles away then, he thought impatiently. No—wait! Something else-Carl chuckled to himself as he saw the broad, hard-packed trail running from the pool. A cowpath, but it was the rangy, dangerous herds of woods-running wild cattle which had beaten that road through the forest. He knew that such trails often ran nearly straight for a score of miles. If this one did, the wagons could follow it, the trek home would become easy and swift, and . . .

Skirting the pool, he ran down the trail at a long lope to check. What if he didn’t bring back any more game? This news was worth a hungry night. He’d follow the path a mile or two to make sure. The trees flowed past, and evening quiet dropped over the land, muffling all but the calling of birds and the soft thud of his own moccasined feet, running and running.

When he stopped, wiping the sweat from his face and laughing aloud in glee—yes, the trail could easily be used—he grew aware that the shadows were very long. In his excitement he’d gone farther than was wise and now he couldn’t make it back before nightfall.

“Stupid,” he muttered. But there had, after all, not been much choice, and in any case he had little to fear. He started back, walking this time. The sunset air was cool on his face and under his wet shirt. He shivered and hastened his steps.

Night deepened as the sun went under the hills. Shadows ebbed and flowed around him, creeping from the brake, flooding softly between the trees. A single pure star blinked forth, white in the dusk-blue sky over the trail. An owl hooted and a wildcat squalled answer, far off in the woods. Somewhere a deer ran off in terror. It could be near or far, the leaves played strange tricks with sound, and now the very light was becoming as queer and magical. Carl thought of the godling spirits which were said to haunt the lonely glens. A thin white streamer of mist curled before him, and in spite of his City-strengthened doubts, he muttered a guardian charm.

Willows hung dark against a glooming heaven, the pool was up ahead and fog was smoking out of it to blur the last remnants of sight. Carl picked a slow way through the weeping branches, skirting the white, mysterious glimmer of mist and water.

Something moved in the twilight. Carl stiffened and an icy flash stabbed along his spine. The thing ahead was a deeper blot of darkness, rippling and flowing as if it were a mist-wraith too, but it was big, it was huge, and the last wan light threw back a cold green look of eyes.

Carl backed up, hefting his spear, until he stood in the cow trail again. The beast edged out of the thicket and crouched. Its tail lashed and a growl rumbled in its throat.

A tiger!

There were not many of the huge striped cats this far north, but they were cursed and dreaded as killers of sheep and cattle and sometimes men. To the tribes, there had always been tigers—they had no way of knowing that these were the descendants of animals escaped from zoos in the Doom. This one must have been lying in wait for the herds to come to drink, and was angered by Carl’s disturbance, angry enough, perhaps, to look on him as a meal.

Slowly, hardly daring to move, Carl leaned his spear against the tree at his back. It wouldn’t do much good if the beast charged. He drew out a fistful of arrows, slipped the bow off his shoulder, and strung it with one gasping motion. It was a better weapon.

The tiger snarled, flattening its belly to the ground. The smell of blood from the bag of game at Carl’s waist must have stirred its hunter’s heart. The boy fitted an arrow to the string and drew the bow taut. His pulse roared in his ears.

The tiger crept nearer.

The bow sang, and the tiger screamed and launched itself. Carl sprang aside almost as he shot. The tiger hit the ground where he had been and threshed about, biting at the arrow in its shoulder. Carl picked another arrow off the ground where he had thrown them, drew the bow, and let loose. He couldn’t see in the murk if he had hit or not. The tiger staggered to its feet, growling. Before the tawny thunderbolt could strike again, Carl’s bow had hummed afresh. The tiger screamed again and turned away. Yelling, Carl groped for another arrow. He fired and missed, but the beast was loping in a three-legged retreat. As Carl sank shaking to the ground, he felt blood hot and wet beneath him.

If the tiger lived, he thought without exultation—he was still too frightened himself for that—it would have a proper respect for mankind.

The thought continued as he resumed his way. It wasn’t the animals which man had to fear. Tiger, bear, snake, even the terrible dog packs could not face human fire and metal. Slowly, as men hewed down the wilderness, its snarling guardians were driven back. Their fight was hopeless.

And in the City, it had began to dawn on him that not even the supernatural, demons and ghosts and the very gods, threatened men. The powers of night and storm, flood and fire and drought and winter, were still a looming terror, but they had been conquered once by the ancients and they could be harnessed again.

No, man’s remorseless and deadly foe was only— himself.

But that enemy was old and strong and crafty. It had brought to agonized wreck the godlike civilization of the ancients. Today, in the form of taboo and invading barbarians, it was risen afresh, and seemed all too likely to win.

Overwhelming despair replaced Carl’s fear. Could the children of light ever win? he thought. Must the Dalesmen go down in flame and death before the trampling horses of Lann? Must the last gasp of ancient wisdom rust away in darkness? Could there ever be a victory?