Chapter 16: Skirmish

The forest was silent except for the faint sounds the car's engine made as it cooled off. One of Gardhe's lesser moons crept hesitantly from behind ragged clouds, throwing the looping, furry branches of nearby trees into sharp relief against the sky.

They could feel faint glows of energy from a few tiny minds in the woods nearby, coming from birds that slept high in the branches of the trees. No larger animals were anywhere around. And nowhere, strain as they might, could they find the brighter glow of a human mind. Not satisfied, Chad tuned his probing to the band that could penetrate the Dark God's thoughtscreen material. He scanned the entire area around the car in minute detail. Finally, he was satisfied that there was nothing to be found.

"So okay, we're here," Slick Jim at last commented uneasily, reaching to switch the car's ignition back on. "What do we do next?"

"We'd better wait for morning. I didn't figure on us getting here at night," Chad answered after a moment's thought. "The moons are pretty dim, and there sure ain't no street lights in these here woods. We might as well grab us some shuteye, 'stead of trying to drive through these trees in the dark. Anyhow, from the position of the moons and stars, daylight shouldn't be too far off. When it gets light enough out we'll take off. We'll stick with the car until it bogs down, bumps into something it can't get past, or runs outa gas. These forest paths are pretty smooth, but they weren't made for driving cars on."

Ginger turned to him, her face barely visible in the glow of the car's dash lights. "Can't you just call The Goddess? Have Her pick us up?"

"'Fraid not. She told me that our minds work on a little different wave length from Hers, or whatever it is that minds operate on. She can't locate us unless we're fairly close. We could get Her attention by letting off a big enough bang of energy all at once, but around here that might not be too smart. We're a lot closer to The Dark God's territory than we are to Hers. We sure as Hell don't want Him to find us before She does! It would've been real neat if we could have been dumped off down by where She lives, but we couldn't have gotten Tucker to do it without making him more suspicious of us than he already was. At that, we wouldn't of managed to get away with as much as we did with him, if he hadn't been off balance and scared of getting caught. We just didn't give him time to think."

"Does the CD player work?" Kenny turned from looking out a window, disappointed that he couldn't see more of this new world.

"I don't know, and we ain't gonna find out," Slick Jim slapped his hand away from the knobs before Chad could say anything. "We hadn't better do nothing to attract attention until we know what's goin' on."

They leaned the seats back and stretched out the best they could, deciding to stay within the dubious protection of the car, and took turns dozing and scanning the area around them. At last the sky turned lighter along one edge, and shortly after that Gardhe's yellowish sun climbed reluctantly into view over the top of a nearby ridge.

"Okay, let's move it." Chad woke the others. "We can see what we're doing now, anyhow. You can all practice scanning what's up ahead of us, picking out where it's smooth enough for Jim to drive this junker."

"Whattaya mean, junker?" Slick Jim grinned at him, feeling too good about this adventure to take offense at Chad's kidding. "It got us here in one piece, didn't it? It'll take us a long way farther yet, and it's a lot faster'n walkin'. It's got fourwheel drive, and at least it ain't one of these new buggies what ain't got no ground clearance to speak of. You wouldn't get far with one of them around here."

They were making pretty good time, Chad agreed as they drove slowly along through the forest. Better than walking, and a whole lot easier on the feet. They stopped occasionally to drink from Gardhe's clear streams, to munch sandwiches and once or twice to top up the old car's radiator. The sun rose higher and the day grew warm as they worked their way ever southward.

"Uhoh," Chad exclaimed at last. It was late in the afternoon, and they were confronted by a rough stretch of ground with no way around it as far as they could probe. "I think this's it. Looks like this here's about as far as we're gonna get with this buggy."

"That's okay," Slick Jim answered, killing the engine. He leaned back with a tired sigh, stretching his arms to relieve aching muscles. "We're 'bout outa gas, anyhow. It'll feel good to walk for a while."

They piled out of the car and started unloading equipment from its spacious trunk. Chad had tried to set them up with everything they'd need, but it had been an almost impossible task to find it all on such short notice. They certainly hadn't had time to send off to L. L. Bean or Eddie Bauer's for anything. It wasn't long before they had on their new hiking boots, their loaded packs slung on their backs.

"Hey, I thought we was gonna get us a lotta gold and jewels, and stuff," Slick Jim complained, the second or third time that they stopped to rest and drink from a goodsized stream that tumbled down the side of a ridge. "Not hike our feet off in these here woods."

"There's all kinds of gold here, if you wanta carry it with you," Chad told him. "There's about all you could ever want, right here in the gravel at the bottom of just this one stream, even."

He reached out, feeling around in the stones of the stream bed for masses of the heavy metal. One by one, yellow chunks of all sizes burst up from the water and landed at their feet, until he had amassed a pile of gleaming nuggets almost a foot high.

"There's your gold if you really want to carry it with you, but there'll be a lot more than that for us before we're through."

Slick Jim dropped to his knees, catching up a handful of nuggets and letting them slide through his fingers.

"It's for real," he whispered, awed by their solid weight. "It's really gold! Hey, man. How much would a pile like this be worth back home?"

"Maybe seventyfive or a hundred gees," Chad replied offhandedly. "I can find you a half a million bucks worth or more, if you want me to take the time to do it. Right here and now, it's worth nothing at all."

Slick Jim got reluctantly to his feet, eyes still glued to the glittering pile. At last, shaking his head, he reached down and picked up a single nugget that was about half the size of a golf ball. He studied it carefully, rubbing it lovingly with his thumb before putting it in his jacket pocket.

"Okay! Let's git. I got the picture."

"Oh, no!" They were interrupted by a cry of horror from Ginger. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, hand pressed against her mouth, staring down at something that was hidden from the rest of them by a low fringe of brush.

"What is it? Oh..." Chad's voice trailed away as he saw what had shocked her. "It's all right. Just a couple of the Followers who made it a little farther than most of their friends."

They stared in fascination at the bodies already entwined by slender furry vines, stretched out in the glassy immobility brought on by The Dark God's weapons. A young man and woman in tattered garments, their faces were still frozen in grimaces from the terror that had gripped them. Each carried a small child clutched in their stiffened arms. No roaming predator had touched the still figures, and only the encroaching vines showed that they had not fallen mere moments before.

"Can't... can't you do something for them?" Ginger quavered. "Do we have to just leave them there like that?"

"There's nothing we can do," Chad answered grimly, picturing in his mind the still forms of his friends as he'd last seen them. "There's maybe nothing anyone can do that will ever wake them. It's better to just leave them where they are."

It was with quiet footsteps and muted voices that the little group went on its way, in every mind the bitter thought that if they failed in their task, the same fate could be theirs. Or even if they succeeded, Chad thought to himself. He kept them to a steady walking pace, not wanting to overstress muscles unused to such tasks, stopping frequently along the way to adjust pack straps and rest their feet.

"Hey, man," Kenny spoke up as they set up camp for the night. "I thought you said these here woods was full of all kinds of wild animals and stuff. I ain't seen nothin', hardly, 'cept for one or two of these little birds."

"They're here," Chad answered grimly. "Just like the Followers we saw back there. Hiding under bushes, or down in their holes. You can find them, if you want to take the time and know where to look."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess so." Kenny looked a bit sick. "It's all like this?"

"All this part where the fighting was, anyhow. I s'pose once we get south of the cities it won't be so bad. No reason for them to hit that part of Gardhe quite so hard."

They huddled close around a small fire that night, depressed by the thought of all the open space around them. They were children of the cities, and in all their lives had never known anything but littered streets, junked cars and crumbling buildings. Only Chad slept soundly, reassured by the quiet of the night, but he was sure that the others would be glad to see the light of morning.

"Take it easy along through here," Chad warned, shortly before noon. "We should be getting close to a main road. We don't know how many patrols the cities may still have out."

They looked around in sudden alarm, realizing anew that this was not just some simple stroll in the park. Chad risked a brief probe ahead once in a while, careful to stay on a band far removed from the normal ones. He reminded the others to keep their still rudimentary powers as nearly dormant as they possibly could.

The road when they reached it was deserted, stretching broad and bare as far as they could see in both directions. Suddenly uneasy, they stopped at the edge of the open space where sheltering trees had only months before been cleared well back from the traveled roadway.

"That sho' look lak a long way over to the other side," Ginger said with a nervous giggle. "We gonna make a run fo' it?"

Chad didn't answer for a moment. Nothing stirred, as far as he could probe in any direction, but there was something about the road itself that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle and try to stand on end.

"Something's wrong here," he muttered, half to himself. "I dunno just what, but this sure feels like a trap, somehow. All right! Let's go, but keep together, and be ready for anything."

The very air seemed still and dead as they ventured forth, and they hunched their shoulders as they trotted toward the shelter of the trees on the far side of the road. They had almost made it, and Chad had started to relax when a blast of invisible force lashed out at them!

"Brace yourselves on me!"

Chad flashed the thought to the others, and then he was fully occupied with fighting back. It wasn't quite mental force, or anything else he was familiar with. He groped blindly, trying to resist it. Once the first shock had worn off, he was able to fight its numbing, burning effects. Gradually, he extended his protection to the rest of the group. Strangely enough, the attack never wavered. It neither strengthened nor faded as he stood there waiting for the others to recover. As soon as they could move, they staggered on toward the trees. Then, just before they reached shelter, the attack snapped off, vanishing as suddenly as it had begun!

"Wow! That was really rough," Sammy gasped, helping Ginger to a seat on a swelling tree root while Mig halfdragged Kenny to safety under the trees.

"Yeah, like what happened, man?" Nora leaned against Slick Jim's muscular arm. "What hit us?"

"Sheer, raw power," Chad answered, puzzled. "Like it was a curtain of energy, set to keep anything from crossing the road. All of you stay here. I'm gonna check it out some more."

Blanking out his surroundings, he sent a delicate tendril of perception toward the invisible curtain. Hunt and strain as he would, he could detect no trace of the energy he knew was there. Bracing himself, he stepped out once more into the roadway, to be hit and inundated again by the flooding energies.

At first, all that he was conscious of was the steady flow. He tried to figure out where it was coming from, but it seemed to pour straight down at him from the empty sky. His efforts to trace it back to its source made no sense to him, until suddenly he realized that the energy was coming from two directions at once.

As soon as he had that much figured out, it only took him another moment or two to decipher the rest of the puzzle. The energy came from a pair of matched devices, one at each of the two cities connected by this particular stretch of road. As far as he could determine, neither machine was set to respond when anything living ran into their curtain of force.

"What did'ja do?" Kenny asked worriedly when he rejoined them. "You was givin' off all kinds of static out there."

"Tryin' to find out where all that energy was coming from," he replied, and told them what he had found out. "Looks like they was tryin' to keep any loose Followers from heading south."

"How come the barrier follows the road?" was Ginger's question.

"It doesn't. It only goes in a straight line. This stretch of road just happens to be on a direct line between the two cities. We were lucky. If we'd of hit it any place but right here we wouldn't have been ready for it, the way we were walking all strung out through the woods."

"But how can they use the roads, with these barriers set up along them?" Slick Jim asked. "And, are you sure you didn't set off an alarm? Kenny's right, you made one Hell of a racket out there, for anyone what could hear it."

"I don't see how they could use the roads, or do anything else around where these barriers are. Nothing with any kind of a mind could survive hitting them, unless it was strong enough to fight off the effects. Now that I know what to look for, there's a few dead birds strung out along the road, here. Maybe, if we run into any more of these barriers, that'll give us a little warning. As for setting off an alarm, that's a chance I had to take. If we didn't set any off the first time we went through, my going back shouldn't have hurt anything. We'd better make tracks outa here, though. Just in case someone does come along to check it out, or even just makes a routine patrol along here."