Dare to Go A-Hunting by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: &WORKING
Published: 2011-03-22T17:46:48+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Their only source of light were the motes Covering in the air, a patch over the head of each. When Farree, in one wing-aided bound, joined the other three by the wall of the cliff, only to whirl around and stand ready, waiting for the charge he was sure was coming, his attention was all for the ground. There was a swirl of light which whipped about him as the lash of a whip might have cut at his body. He gasped and choked. The lights were lower, circling about him at throat level, drawing in closer.

He flung up an arm to beat them off and small pains stung his skin as if they were in truth sparks from a fire. Nor could he so win free of them. The circle was at chest level now. Unconsciously he had furled his wings as the fire sparks flicked along their surfaces.

His left arm was pinned to his body by the sparks, but the right one still held the stunner. There was no way he could spray those strange attackers. Nor had he any belief that they were even insects ready to sting him into submission, for his mind did not pick up the slightest hint of life as he knew it in those minute flashes.

Farree tried to expand his wings again, to perhaps rise above the attackers. At that moment, as his struggles grew stronger, the ground itself burst outward, spraying earth and stones into the air as there boiled out of a crumbling hole the first of those things he had mind seen in the tunnel. He had already set the stunner to full strength and part of its beam, though his arm was unable to hold steady as he was being jerked back and forth, chopped across the first two of the ground runners. Yazz showed her teeth and made a rush at the third to climb out of the runway below.

Above her head the sparks which had accompanied her formed a ball aimed at her. However, like all of her species, her movements in attack were delivered so swiftly that her body became slightly blurred to the sight. Though the ball swooped, Yazz was gone, only her hind legs and thrashing tail visible, the whole forepart of her body now within the hole.

Farree kicked and twisted his body. At last there was an instant when he could bring the stunner to bear on part of the star ring about him. There was a winking and he felt a relaxation of the pressure which had been squeezing him. Bojor roared, that vast surge of sound echoed from the cliffs about. Farree stumbled back, one of his furled wings striking against the bartle's bulk. A vast paw fell heavy on his shoulder drawing him farther on toward the cliff. The lights, which had surrounded the bartle and brought him to bay here, divided into two clusters, one of which struck at each paw.

Yazz drew back from the entrance to the burrow.

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