Darkness and Dawn by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction - Adventure, Science Fiction - Space Opera, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Space Opera, American, Fiction, Regression (Civilization), Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, &WORKING, Adventure, Extinct cities, General, Nuclear warfare
ISBN: 9780743435956
Publisher: Baen Pub. Enterprises
Published: 2003-03-01T08:00:00+00:00

2

Sander's slumber was full of dreams in which dead men arose to face him with broken weapons in their slack hands. He roused now and again, sweating, hardly sure of what was dream and what reality. He could then hear sometimes a soft growl deep in Rhin's throat, as if the koyot scented something dangerous. Yet the voice and the light were surely gone.

By the first hint of dawn Sander was ready to move on. This seemed to him a haunted land. Perhaps the unburied dead of the town oppressed his spirit. The sooner he was well away from such an ill-omened place, the better. However, he made a quick survey of the ground where the night before that half-seen beast had reared up in the light.

That truly had been no dream, for there were paw marks deep-set in the soil, pads and claws in clear impression. Beyond, he discovered a single other print, small and distinct, unmistakably human. Rhin sniffed at the tracks and again growled. It was plain from the swing of the koyot's head that he little liked what his own special senses reported. Another reason to be on their way.

Sander did not even wait to eat. He swung up on the riding pad, and Rhin trotted off at a pace that soon carried them well into the tough grass of the lowlands, parallel with the sea. The passing of the koyot stirred into life some birds, and Sander uncoiled his sling, made ready a pebble, brought down two of those fugitives. Once away, where he could light a fire, there would be food.

He headed directly for the distant line of forest, misliking the feeling of nakedness that he had in the open, a sensation the plains bred youth had never experienced before. As he rode, he tried to see traces of the path the voice had taken. But, save for the tracks near his improvised camp, Sander found nothing that would suggest he and Rhin were not alone.

Resolutely, he kept from glancing back at the now-distant village. Perhaps his visitor had returned there, since it was plain from the words they had exchanged that the unknown had been in search of those who had despoiled the town. What had the stranger named it? Padford. Sander repeated the word aloud. It was as strange as the accent of the other's speech.

Sander knew so little of the land beyond the Mob's own range. That such villages existed he had picked up from the Traders' guarded accounts. But the herdspeople of the wide lands in the west had no personal knowledge of them. He wished now that he had made a closer examination of the dead. It seemed to him, trying to recall those glimpses of the bodies, that they had been unusually dark of skin, even darker than he was himself, and that their hair had been of a uniform black. Among his own people, who were an even brown in skin color, hair color varied from light reddish gold to dark brown.

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