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Altha opened her eyes and looked up at me. Then her dark eyes flared with terror, and she cried out and clutched at me frantically. My arms closed about her instinctively, and within their iron-thewed clasp I felt the pulsating of her lithe body, the wild fluttering of her heart.

“Don’t be afraid.” My voice sounded strange, scarcely articulate. “Nothing is going to harm you.”

I could feel her heart resuming its normal beat, so closely she clung to me, before her quick pants of fright ceased. But for a while she lay in my arms, looking up at me without speaking, until, embarrassed, I released her and lifted her to a sitting position on the grass.

“As soon as you feel fit,” I said, “we’ll put more distance between us and—that.” I jerked my head in the direction of the distant ruins.

“You are hurt,” she exclaimed suddenly, tears filling her eyes. “You are bleeding! Oh, I am to blame. If I had not run away—” She was weeping now in earnest, like any Earthly girl.

“Don’t worry about these scratches,” I answered, though privately I was wondering if the fangs of the vermin were venomous. “They are only flesh wounds. Stop crying, will you?”

She obediently stifled her sobs, and naively dried her eyes with her skirt. I did not wish to remind her of her horrible experience, but I was curious on one point.

“Why did the Yagas halt at the ruins?” I asked. “Surely they knew of the things that haunt such cities.”

“They were hungry,” she answered with a shudder. “They had captured a youth—they dismembered him alive, but never a cry for mercy they got, only curses. Then they roasted—” She gagged, smitten with nausea.

“So the Yagas are cannibals.” I muttered.

“No. They are devils. While they sat about the fire the dog-heads fell upon them. I did not see them until they were on us. They swarmed over the Yagas like jackals over deer. Then they dragged me into the darkness. What they meant to do, Thak only knows. I have heard—but it is too obscene to repeat.”

“But why did they shriek my name?” I marveled.

“I cried it aloud in my terror,” she answered. “They heard and mimicked me. When you came, they knew you. Do not ask me how. They too are devils.”

“This planet is infested with devils,” I muttered. “But why did you call on me, in your fright, instead of your father?”

She colored slightly, and instead of answering, began pulling her tunic straps in place.

Seeing that one of her sandals had slipped off, I replaced it on her small foot, and while I was so occupied she asked unexpectedly: “Why do they call you Ironhand? Your fingers are hard, but their touch is as gentle as a woman’s. I never had men’s fingers touch me so lightly before. More often they have hurt me.”

I clenched my fist and regarded it moodily—a knotted iron mallet of a fist. She touched it timidly.

“It’s the feeling behind the hand.” I answered. “No man I ever fought complained that my fists were gentle. But it is my enemies I wish to hurt, not you.”

Her eyes lighted. “You would not hurt me? Why?”

The absurdity of the question left me speechless.

CHAPTER 7

Table of Contents

IT WAS PAST SUNRISE when we started back on the long trek toward Koth, swinging far to the west to avoid the devil city from which we had escaped. The sun came up unusually hot. The air was breathless, the light morning wind blew fitfully, and then died down entirely. The always cloudless sky had a faint copperish tint. Altha eyed that sky apprehensively, and in answer to my question said she feared a storm. I had supposed the weather to be always clear and calm and hot on the plains, clear and windy and cold in the hills. Storms had not entered into my calculation.

The beasts we saw shared her uneasiness. We skirted the edge of the forest, for Altha refused to traverse it until the storm had passed. Like most plains-dwellers, she had an instinctive distrust of thick woods. As we strode over the grassy undulations, we saw the herds of grazers milling confusedly. A drove of jumping pigs passed us, covering the ground with gargantuan bounds of thirty and forty feet. A lion started up in front of us with a roar, but dropped his massive head and slunk hurriedly away through the tall grass.

I kept looking for clouds, but saw none. Only the copperish tint about the horizons grew, discoloring the whole sky. It turned from light color to dull bronze, and from bronze to black. The sun smoldered for a little like a veiled torch, veining the dusky dome with fire, then it was blotted out. A tangible darkness seemed to hover an instant in the sky, then rush down, cloaking the world in utter blackness, through which shone neither sun, moon, nor stars. I had never guessed how impenetrable darkness could be. I might have been a blind, disembodied spirit wandering through unlighted space, but for the swish of the grasses under my feet, and the soft warm contact of Altha’s body against mine. I began to fear we might fall into a river, or blunder against some equally blind beast of prey.