Free Nightpool by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

Quazelzeg,” she said. “He is the
unliving. And he would make slaves of us all.”
    *
    They did not leave the cave until nearly
nightfall, and again Teb followed blindly as the foxes made their
way through the low, narrow tunnels. Renata left an old aunt with
the cubs; and three more foxes joined them at the common, so now
they were twelve again as they wound and dropped and climbed
through the pitch-black holes. Then at last a faint smear of
moonlight far ahead, and a smell of the sea, told Teb they were
coming to the western portal.
    At the portal they listened, but there was
no sound except the far lapping of the water. The moon was thin and
its shadows indistinct. Pixen sent a young fox out to look, and he
was gone a long time, returning at last with an uneasy frown.
    “No strange scents, nothing stirring. The
land seems empty, but I feel something amiss, all the
same.”
    “Come back inside,” Pixen said, and he went
out himself to have a look.
    Pixen was gone even longer. He returned with
his ears back and his tail lashing. “There are still troops at the
western portal—nine that I counted—and they have the two jackals
with them. Luex was surely right, they do stink. The troops are
growing restive—I think we’d better go on before they decide to
explore.”
    Teb took up his pack and waterskin, touched
the knife at his belt, and followed Pixen out the small hole, with
the others crowding behind him. The bushy cover outside scratched
his face and caught at his clothes, and he could not seem to go
silently as the foxes did. Soon Pixen stopped. “Take off the pack
and waterskin, Teb. Reeav and Mux will drag them back inside.”
    Rid of his belongings, Teb was able to move
more quietly. He feared for the foxes, though, for even in the thin
moonlight they could be easily seen. The tops of the bushes caught
light, and the tops of the stones, and when they drew near to the
bay, a thin path of light fell across the water. On the other side
of the water rose the dark towering mass of Fendreth-Teching,
topped by the rocky peaks of the dragon lair.
    The little band moved along beneath a mass
of bushes, Teb crawling through the leafy tunnel of branches that
insisted on snagging his clothes. The foxes slipped through quite
untouched. Teb breathed in the scent of the bay, salt and wild.
When they came out of the bushes they were on a sheer cliff high
above the water, and now the way was rocky and precarious. The
foxes skipped along it and, Teb suspected, would have traveled much
faster without him. He tried to see where he was by the shape and
width of the bay directly below. Yes, here the bay had begun to
narrow, but he could not yet see, off ahead, the thin channel
linking the Bay of Dubla with the outer, seaward Bay of Fendreth.
Once they reached the channel, Bleven would lie less than a mile
beyond. He would go on alone then.
    But suddenly heavy flapping filled the sky,
and a coughing growl. The jackals were on them, dropping and
snarling. Hoofbeats were pounding behind, loud on the stone as if
they had just come up from softer ground.
    “Run!” Pixen cried to Teb. “We’ll delay
them.”
    But Teb could not; his knife was slashing at
a jackal even before he knew he had drawn it, for the creature had
little Reeav in its mouth, shaking her. He slashed at its throat,
then its face, but it would not let her loose. At last, with three
foxes at its throat, it twisted in agony and let her go. Reeav
staggered away. Mux tried to get to her, but the riders were all
over them, all was confusion. A jackal grabbed Teb’s leg, tearing;
then he felt himself snatched up by the shoulder as a horse shied
against him and he was lifted and thrown across a saddle, facedown,
so the saddle back jammed hard into his ribs and belly, knocking
out his breath and searing him with pain. The horse swerved, and
Teb revived enough to bite the rider’s arm and kick at him; he got
a blow across his back that shoved him into the saddle again