Andre Norton - Daybreak—2250 A.D.

“These cities of the dead have their uses. One can find treasures here—as you know well. One can also find worse things.” He touched the bandage pad on his shoulder. “I do not think my people will have a liking for the cities. Now, when I can again walk a straight trail, I must go back to report to the tribe. And maybe it shall follow that we will settle along some river valley where the soil is black and rich. And there shall we open up old fields to the seed grain, and turn out our sheep to graze on the hillsides. Then shall the Village of Birds again take root, in a fair and fruitful land.” He sighed.

“You have named yourself a warrior,” Fors said slowly.

“Against whom do you war? Are there Beast Things also in your deserts?”

Arskane smiled grimly. “In the days of the Great Blow-up the Old Ones loosed certain magic they could not control. Our wise ones know not the secret, having only to guide them the tales of our fathers, the flying men. But this magic acted in strange and horrible ways. There were things in the desert which were born enemy to man, scaled creatures most horrible to look upon. The magic made these both cunning and quick so that it was ever war to the death between them and all humankind. But as yet they seem few and perhaps the molten rock from the mountains has eaten them up entirely. For we have seen none of their breed since we left.”

“Radiation.” Fors played with the hilt of his short sword. “Radiation mutations—but sometimes it worked well. Lura’s kind was born of such magic!”

The dark-skinned southerner looked at the cat who sprawled at ease beyond. “That was good—not evil-magic. I wish that my people had friends such as that to protect them in their wanderings. For we have had to fight many times against beasts and men. The Plainspeo-ple have not shown themselves friends to us. There is always danger to watch for. One night when I was in a dead place I was set upon by a pack of nightmare creatures. Had I not been able to climb beyond their reach and use my knife well they would have stripped the flesh from my bones.”

“That I know.” Fors brought out the drum and put it into the other’s hands and Arskane gave a little cry of pure delight.

“Now can I talk with the Master of Scouts!” His fingers started to tap out a complicated beat on the head but Fors’ hand shot out and clamped about his wrist.

“No!” The mountaineer forced the fingers away from the drum. “That might signal others—as well as your people. It was a thing unknown to me which dug that trap—”

The scowl which twisted Arskane’s black brows smoothed away as the mountaineer continued:

“I believe that that is the work of the Beast Things.

And if they still skulk in this city your drum would bring them in—”

“The trap was old—”

“Yes. But never yet have we found Beast Things living together in great numbers. He who set it may now be still dwelling only the length of these ruins from us. This is a large city and all the men of the Eyrie would not be enough to search it well.”

“Your tongue is as straight as your wit.” Arskane set aside the drum. “We shall get free of this dwelling place of shadows before I try to speak with the tribe. Tomorrow I shall be able to take the trail. Let us be off with the dawn light. There is an evil in these old places which seems to clog the nostrils. I like better the cleanness of the open land.”

Fors made up a small bundle of the city loot, caching what remained in an inner room: His leg was fully healed and Arskane could ride the mare for the next day or two. Regretfully the mountaineer looked upon the pile of his gleanings before he covered them up. But at least he had the map he had made and the journal of his explorations both packed away in the Star pouch, along with some of the colored pencils and the small figures from the museum case, Arskane wandered through the building most of the afternoon, trying his legs he said, but also interested in what lay there. Now he turned on one wrist a wide band of wrought gold and carried a massive club with the head of a spike embedded in a ball which he had found in a room devoted to implements of war. His throwing spears and bow had been recovered from the depths of the trap but the shafts of the spears were broken and he could not draw the bow until his shoulder healed.

The sultry heat of the past days had not yet closed in when they ate their last meal in the museum at dawn the next day and stamped out the fire. Arskane protested against riding but Fors argued him up on the mare and they started out along the one trail the mountaineer had mapped, the one which had brought him into the city. They made no stops, traveling at their best pace down the littered street—with before them the cluster of tall buildings which had been Fors’ goal on his first day in the city. If fortune favored them he was sure they could be almost out of the circle of the ruins by nightfall.

Arskane used his hands as sun shields and watched with wonder the towering buildings they moved among.

“Mountains—man made—that is what we see here. But why did the Old Ones love to huddle together in such a fashion? Did they fear their own magic so that they must live cheek to cheek with their kind lest it eat them up when it was loosed—as it did? Well, they died of it in the end, poor Old Ones. And now we have a better life—”

“Do we?” Fors kicked at a loose stone. “They had such knowledge—we are groping in the dark for only crumbs of what they knew—”

“But they did not use all their learning for good!” Arskane indicated the ruins. “This city came out of their brains and then it was also destroyed by them. They built only to tear down again. I think it better to build than to blast.”

As the murmur of his words died away Fors’ head snapped around. He had caught a whisper of sound, a faint pattering. And had he, or had he not, seen the loathsome outline of a bloated rat body slipping into a shat-tered window? There were sounds among the stones— almost as if something—or things—were following them. Lura’s ears were flat to her skull, her eyes only battle slits in her brown mask. She stood with her forepaws planted upon a fallen column staring back along the track they had come, the tip of her tail quivering. Arskane caught their unease.

“What is—”

At first Fors thought that the scream which answered that half question came from the throat of a bird. And I then the mare swung up her head and gave a second second wild cry. Arskane threw himself off just as she reared to crash back on the stones. Then Fors saw the dart rising and falling in the gaping wound which had torn open her throat.

“In—” Arskane’s hand about his wrist jerked him into a cavern opening in the front of the highest tower. As they fled Lura’s blood-chilling war cry ripped the air. But a second later she too was with them pushing back into the dark center of the building.

They paused at the top of a ramp which led down into murky shadows. There were floors below. Fors could see a bit of them. But Arskane pointed to the floor. Beaten in the dust and dried mud was a regular path of footprints-made by feet too narrow—clawed feet!

Lura backed away from that highway spitting and snarling. So—they had not escaped but come straight into the stronghold of the enemy! And it did not need the cry of triumph from without, coming in shrill inhuman exultation, to confirm that.

But the trail led down—they might still go up! Lura and Arskane shared Fors’ thought, for both ran for the left hand corridor which was parallel to the street level. There were heavy doors along the hall, and no matter how hard they pushed none of these gave. Only one at the very end was open and they crowded up to look down a shaft into utter darkness. But Fors had glimpsed something else.