Norton, Andre - Witch World - Estcarp Cycle 03 by Norton Andre

Author:Norton, Andre [Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-08-15T01:41:01+00:00

During the day I was certainly one under some order, though I could not have put it into words. The broken mountains were my goal. Senseless, senseless, one part of my mind repeated over and over.

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Urge me in, bring me out—what had I accomplished? A meeting with refugees on a single holding, and on them I had made only a negative impression.

I thought I had been sent to recruit—but my feeble effort had not even begun that task. So—and that brought me up short as I halted on the verge of a mountain reaching ravine—so what had been the real reason for my return to Estcarp? I kicked viciously at a stone, sent it rolling from me with a sound to break the general silence.

A use for me—what? None that I could see, and my ignorance gnawed, plunging me into action, the only kind open to me now, the return over-mountain. I scrambled down slope, began to run almost blindly, taking little heed of my body with my mind so bedeviled with frightening half-thoughts to which there were no sane answers.

A fall was the end of that witless race, witless because there was no escaping from fears I bore with me.

I lay panting on the earth, beating my still-swollen hands on the gravel until the pain of that contact shocked me back to quiet again.

Once the blood stopped pounding so heavily in my ears I heard the gurgle of water and I was drawn by that, my dry mouth gaping even before I reached a spring fed pool. I lapped up the fresh liquid as might one of the hunting cats. Water cold against my face restored more rational thinking. To run terror stricken was never an answer, so—yield to this mysterious ordering until more could be learned. I was far more a man when I left the spring. There was an explanation somewhere and it could only lie in Escore. For the beast army was not of Estcarp’s devising. So the sooner I gained to Escore, that much earlier would I learn my place in the new scheme of things.

Hunger grew in me. It had been a long time since I had chewed those trail rations under the rock ledge.

Yet nowhere in this wilderness was there food. But I had known hunger before and kept on the move in spite of its twinges. The mountains—could I find again that valley which led to our climb point?

Sometimes when I looked about me, either that peculiar distortion which had plagued us before was in force, or else my lack of food worked upon my vision, for there was a disorientation to this land through which I moved.

Evening did not stop me, for the need of Escore had grown to an all pervading urge. I stumbled on, in a narrow cut, but whether the right one I could not have said. And then—ahead was light! Stupidly I plowed to a halt and blinked. I had a

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