King of The World's Edge by H. Warner Munn

Author:H. Warner Munn [Munn, H. Warner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi
Published: 2012-07-22T12:34:21+00:00

13 The Stonish Giants and the Flylng Heads

All that day we pushed toward the north, through the forest, beneath a gray sky from which, toward evening, a light snow came sifting down. By this time we had left the large towns well behind us, though we could see smoke rising in many places, questioning and answering, as the word was passed along to the scattered villages and the lonely outposts, in hard-won clearings.

But these very messages defeated their own purpose, for the broken, puffing pillars of smoke showed us the position of our enemies, and Hayonwatha read the signals and told us of the almost total destruction of the City of the Snake, and of how we were thought to have gone down the river toward the south, many coracles having been found to be missing.

This mistake was the saving of us, for the forts along the northern frontier were lax in their night watch, and we passed between them, so closely that we saw the dying embers of a signal fire, with no one near it, and slipped within the borders of the free Chichamecan wilderness, five and fifty fighting-men in single file, making no more noise than so many foxes. And few as we were, Myrdhinn was with us, a host in himself!

Toward morning, having marched twenty-four hours without food or sleep, with short pauses for rest, we began to feel that we should be far enough from danger so that we might stop and recuperate. But Hayonwatha led on as tireless as ever, and seeing that our aged seer did not demure, we were shamed and followed on, though all our muscles complained, having softened during our imprisonment.

Just at daybreak, we came out upon the shores of a small lake with a wooded island in it. Here, under instruction from our leader, we made rafts and piled upon them all our armor and gear.

These things we ferried over to the island, while Hayonwatha and his ten men returned into the forest and were gone a long time, wiping out our tracks. Then they made false tracks and returned on the opposite shore, blotting out their latest marks before they entered the icy waters and rejoined us, half dead from the cold.

Nor could we make any fire till after dark, and then only the merest spark among a nest of boulders where every ray of light was deadened—and this of certain woods carefully chosen which gave no smoke that might carry an odor to the shore. So, without supping, · we slept, and in the morning found that any traces we might have left were now securely hidden, for snow lay deep upon our brush shelters and continued falling all that day.

This was followed by severely cold weather in which the lake froze over, except upon one side of the island for a space of about twenty feet where an underwater current rushed black and bubbling to the surface. Here the fishing was very good.

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