The boat on the beach was marked by a mound of snow, and the white stuff had drifted high about the entrance to the cave-cabin. Blake pulled the hood of the parka, which had been flung over him while he slept, higher about his ears and wondered if this was the time to cut and run, if he could make the carrier before his host-guard caught up with him. The hunter had left some minutes earlier; Blake watched his exit from beneath lowered eyelids, trying to play the man deep in slumber.
But he was reluctant to face the storm without. He kept telling himself that in that whirling white curtain he would lose all track of landmarks, that he would quickly be lost and unable to find his way to the tower which held the carrier.
During the past hours he had tried to discover whether Pranj had visited this level. Though he was no nearer solving the mysteries of this world and he probably never would, he had established a limited communication with the hunter. The latter was named Pakahini; his true home lay to the westward across the arm of sea which lapped this island; he had come here to trap for the fur of a variety of animal numerous on this site but greatly prized in his own community. With pride he had displayed his catch: creamy white skins Blake could not identify. He had almost completed this particular trip, and was now gathering in his traps and bundling his take, preparatory to returning to his own people.
But to all Blake's halting inquiries concerning the hags and their worm-hounds he replied with shrugs so the other did not know if he was not making his questions clear, or whether the other refused to discuss the subject. Blake suspected the latter.
To his surprise the hunter had his own explanation for Blake's appearance, one to which he had only to agree, when the other stated it, to have it readily accepted. He was, in the other's belief, the victim of a shipwreck. And, Blake thought with a wry grin, that was one way of looking at his arrival by carrier. His alien speech and dress to Pakahini meant that he came from overseas, which argued that the hunter had met travelers from the East—or had heard of them—and so was able to accept that idea readily.
But Blake did not accept, in his turn, so easily the present plans of Pakahini. Both of them, he gathered from a long speech the other had made that morning, were to return in the boat to the town of his people. Blake's clothing had been fingered with appreciation, his belongings examined. Proof that he was from a highly civilized community was plain, and Pakahini wanted to display him to his tribe.
The hunter's own degree of culture was, Blake guessed, on the upward grade. His people were thirsty for new skills, for anything which would add to their advancement. They were not of the race which had built the towers. Pakahini had managed to give the impression that the towers were already old ruins when the first tribes of his race had penetrated into this section. And his people did not work in stone at all.
But all this, Blake told himself, was not solving his own problem. If he remained in this camp Pakahini would return. And eventually he would find himself in the boat out there, being paddled north to become a trophy for the hunter to show off in his village. Once off the island, the American might never be able to win back to it. He would have to move—and right now!
Blake raised his left arm as high as he could, flexing the fingers of that hand grimly in spite of the pain all movement brought. The stiffness was going, but he still did not dare to put much weight upon it. That climb to the trail above—he wondered if he could make it. The alternative was to walk along the shore and hope to discover an easier slope. With the danger of being lost by venturing too far from the trail at the top of the cliff.
He finally decided on the shore path. If he overtaxed his arm now, what of the climb into the tower? He might reach his goal only to be baffled in the last few feet!
Snow beat about him and he pulled the parka hood over his head. He tramped along so close to the cliff wall that his shoulder brushed now and again against the rock, his guide in the storm. One good thing about the snow: it would cover his trail speedily. If Pakahini was gone long enough, he could not track the runaway upon his return.
Already the hunter's camp was hidden, not only by the storm but also by a turn in the cliff wall. Blake pushed on, glad that the wind was at his back. He had no way of measuring either time or distance but finally he found what he sought, a break in the walls, a staircase of rock ascending from a flat platform of stone running out into the waters of the bay. Some relic of the tower people he supposed.
The broken and crumbling steps were coated with ice where spray had frozen. He eyed them doubtfully and then solved the problem in his own fashion by seating himself on the nearest and then rising to the next—"bumping" up as in babyhood he had "bumped" himself down a more familiar stairway. It was an odd way to make the climb but the safest that he knew, and it put little strain on his shoulder.
Twice he skidded and saved himself on the very edge of a downward slide. And he breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the top. Now if the day were clear, or he had more of a woodman's training he might be able to strike straight across country for his tower. But with the blizzard hiding most of the landscape, he did not quite dare that. He must retrace a path along the top of the cliff until he connected with that game trail.
Only now he must face the force of the wind, and he had to fight a blast which left him gasping for breath when it met him head on. Blake paused, a little frightened. That had been enough to sweep him off the cliff. He did not dare to keep on in the open.
If the island followed the contours of the one in his own world, the one which was one gigantic city, then it wasn't too long. But half a block in this storm could completely bewilder a man. He should find a tower and hole up, wait for the fury of the wind and snow to abate. Pakahini might think him lost and not search at all and make his scheduled departure. The more Blake considered that idea, the more sensible it seemed. Now—to find a tower. . . .
He could follow the wide way inland which led from the head of the staircase. Sooner or later that should guide him to a tower.
Unlike the scattered, purposeless planting of the towers he had seen, this route ran with a mathematical thrust toward the heart of the island. And he had not gone far before towers did loom out of the murk. But all of these were intact, unbroken, affording no shelter in their round bases. They were also larger than the others. He went on, staggering when the wind struck at him cruelly.
It was cold. Through the slacks, the boots which had been protection enough against storm on his own level, the chill struck him. His hands, covered with the mittens which were attached to the parka sleeves, he stuck into his arm pits, huddling in upon himself, making his wavering way from one rock mass to the next, hunting a hole which was never there.
The shriek of the wind was now deafening. It could have covered the advance of a whole regiment of metal worms and their ogrish owners. Blake paused every few strides to stare about him. But the white blanket rising now well above his ankles showed no breaks.
He came to another flight of steps, broad enough to be a series of ledges. And at the top of that ascent was a wide expanse open to the sky, scoured clean of drifts by the wind. He dared not venture out there, but climbed down once more to make his way about the platform. The pavement ended there; there was no other guide to follow.
Blake leaned against one of the intact towers. The ruins where he had entered this world lay to his left—he had retained that much sense of direction. Should he strike out now that way, trusting to luck to find a den in which to sit out the storm? This couldn't keep up forever!
There was a tower. He could go as far as that one and still win back to this point. Blake made that, then stumbled ahead to the next, to be faced by a wall of thorn bush half-hidden in a snow bank. He could thread his path from one to another, around the barrier of the brush.
He was panting, his head beginning to whirl, when he at last was brought up (literally blown against it with bruising force) against a tower which did afford a refuge. There was a large gap, an opening into blackness. Blake had remnants of caution, enough to hold him in the opening sniffing, afraid of another lair. But the foul odor was missing and he stumbled in, scuffing through the charcoal residue which marked the defeat of the fortress. The black dust sullied the snow as Blake perched on a projecting ledge and sat staring dully out into the storm.
But as the chill crept up his body he was conscious of a new danger. Either he must keep moving or have fire. His fine plan for hiding out during the storm was stupid. He should have had more patience, have maneuvered Pakahini into leading him back to the carrier. Now he was lost, without a fire, imprisoned by the storm.
Not yet was he aware of the full extent of his folly. He made himself walk back and forth across the circumscribed space. A certain amount of snow shifted down from time to time from the roofless reaches above, but the walls did hold off the wind.
Time had no meaning, but he suddenly realized that the howling of the wind no longer blasted his ears and when he peered out the snow had ceased. A lull—or the end of the storm? Either way it was a signal, or he accepted it as such, to make the best of the break and start for the carrier.
He was sure he had been heading in the right direction when he blundered in here, or he made himself believe that he had, a little off the direct course because of the brush wall.
The snow was now as high as his knees, and plunging through the drifts was cruelly tiring. Insensibly Blake altered course, choosing a route where the drifts had not formed, protected by towers or trees.
Now and then he halted, not only to rest, but to examine the ruins in search of that particular tower with the fanged top which marked the vicinity he sought. There were strangely shaped pinnacles in abundance now that they were no longer hidden by the storm, but none showed the right outline.
Blake was struggling through a last high drift, making for a cleared space between two towers when his head snapped up and he listened. That frenzied howl was not born of the wind. He had heard it too clearly before—the screech of a hag huntress!
He looked back. Sound was distorted here by echo. Was that cry from one nosing on his own trail? Or had some crone cornered other prey? Pakahini?
The hunter had shown so little fear of the hag and her worm when he had disposed of them to rescue Blake that the latter could hardly believe he would allow himself to be attacked. But suppose a man fell here, it would be easy to break a leg, twist an ankle in this place of ice and snow and rolling stones. And unable to move he would be sure prey for the worm and its mistress.
Pakahini? Blake shifted from one foot to the other. He owed the hunter his life. And if their positions were now reversed and Pakahini needed aid . . . But he could not be sure, perhaps the worm was slinking along behind him! And he had no way of deducing from which direction the scream had come.
Sense dictated an advance. But Blake turned back, quartering toward the right, padding into a run wherever the ground was bare enough to allow haste. His breath hissed between his teeth as he listened, over the pound of his own heart, for a second cry.
Here the towers were farther apart, and the tangled bushes between them forced him into wider and wider detours from the track he had marked for himself. Then he started, rubbed his mitten across his eyes, and looked again. He was right! There was the fang- topped tower. Chance had brought him back to the very place he was seeking!
And swift upon that recognition came again the howl which had drawn him there. He slowed pace, for with the sound his own warning struck. Danger ahead!
A third howl, so swift on the dying echoes of the other that he was certain it had not come from the same throat. A pack of crones gathering in for an easy kill?
Blake skinned the mitten from his right hand and reached for his dagger; then set the steel blade between his teeth while he looked about him for a rock to hurl. He advanced cautiously, slinking from the shadow of copse to the protection of a pile of rubble, until he rounded the fang tower.
From there a cleared space led with only the thinnest screen of stunted and leafless brush to the tower he sought, the one which hid the carrier. But he forgot about that when he saw what was happening before him.
A fur clad figure was pinned to the ground by the shining length of a worm. And over it struggled, talon against talon, tooth against tooth, two of the hags, tearing and gouging at each other in an elemental determination to each have the kill for herself. In almost automatic reflex Blake's arm went back, and the stone he had found sped through the air to strike against the skull of the nearest with a horrible, hollow sound. The hag he had brained went limp in her opponent's grasp, and the other took advantage of that chance, burying her teeth in the now flaccid throat.
Blake sprang across the clearing. There was a chance that the victim was not yet dead. For the first time in his life he used a knife to kill, experiencing an odd shock as it entered flesh and bit deep into body wall. The hag raised a dripping mouth, gasped at him with wild eyes. He leaped aside as the worm stirred and struck for his legs. Then the wild woman seemed to shrivel in upon herself and collapsed. And the worm remained as it was, rearing to grasp at Blake but not quite making it as the will which had powered it died.
Methodically, as Pakahini had done at their first meeting, Blake smashed the eyes, saw the metallic creature fall clatteringly to the rock. And then he turned to the hunter on the ground. A single glance was enough. Only by the torn and befouled parka could Pakahini be identified now. Even the manner of his entrapment and death would remain a mystery, as Blake could not bring himself to touch that horribly mangled body. Had he come here hunting Blake and been trapped? Perhaps—but now Blake wanted nothing but to be out of this world.
He pulled himself up the tower wall, swung down into the dusky interior. Snow had drifted a little over one corner of the carrier. Mechanically he brushed it off and then dropped down crosslegged before the control with its row of notches. He had no idea where he was or which of those would bring him to a time and place where he could find help, or even manage to survive. He could only guess.
Blake put out his hand to the control. Second notch—a blind choice, but this time if he had made the wrong selection he would not allow himself to be separated from the carrier. He tugged the lever loose and pulled.
The lights, sounds, spells of darkness. He closed his eyes against their dizzying whirl. The vibration ceased and Blake sat for a long moment, his hand slipping from the rod. Then he was aware that he, too, was sliding slowly along the platform. He opened his eyes.
He was out of the tower—that was true. But the carrier was canted to one side, because around it rose walls of broken brick from which projected jagged spikes of rusty metal. Overhead was a roof pocked with ragged holes through which a sun shone, a sun without warmth.
Pockets of snow were cupped in the rubble. A trickle of sandy gravel whispered and he whipped around, knife ready. Across a barricade of debris a rat, bloated, obscene, too tame and confident, watched him.
Ruin and desolation. Blake got shakily to his feet and then over a pile of blackened stone. Food. Water. It seemed a long time since he had eaten with Pakahini. He flinched from his memory of the hunter. When he wavered to his feet he was dizzy and he suspected he was close to the end of his strength. Dared he take the carrier on and perhaps plunge into some trap of Pranj's?
The platform had brought him into what was the more cluttered end of an underground room and, as Blake clawed his way through the piles of rubbish which had cascaded from above, he smelled smoke—wood smoke. There was a fire!
It had burned down to a single smoldering brand: the charred wood enclosed by a circle of bricks. Blake stirred the coals to life, feeding the fire from a pile of wood in which he discovered both broken furniture and splintered packing cases mingled indiscriminately. The graceful leg of a period chair puzzled him and he surveyed it dully, turning it about in his hand. He had seen its like in a decorator's shop of his own world. Its presence here hinted at some major disaster. But he was cold, tired, weak, and still suffering from the shock of the last scene in Pakahini's world.
Several blocks of concrete had been placed as if to serve as seats. And in a corner was a pile of ragged blankets and strips of torn cloth which could be a bed. But Blake saw no signs of food, nor could he guess who or what camped here.
". . . sure," the voice shrilled and cracked outside, "he's the one, Manny. We saw him come outta here just before the Limey hider picked him off. Then Ras shot the Limey. He's the one who's been raidin' our cache. . . ."
Blake, in a panic he could not then master, wavered back to the carrier. He made himself small behind a landslide of brick and watched for the arrival of the newcomers. But the fact that they spoke recognizable English was an overwhelming relief.
There was a clatter of feet on stone and a small figure tumbled down through the opening which served as a door. Blake blinked as the other advanced into the sunlight.