THE SEA HAG(48)

Scattering now, the herd ambled to its food—each cow choosing the tuft that its great brown eyes thought most tasty. They let Dennis and Chester come within a few feet of them—if the companions walked slowly. A closer approach sent the cows bolting some yards further, to stare back doubtfully at the unfamiliar figures.

Dennis paused, breathing fresh air and feeling the direct sun. It was going to be scorching here at midday, when the dew burned off and the light plunged straight down with no shadows.

He frowned at the black and white backs straggling away from him and each other.

"Chester?" he asked. "How are we going to get them back to the stables in the evening? They won't let us get close to them."

"They will return of themselves, Dennis," the robot said quietly, "to be milked by the machines of Rakastava so that the weight of their udders will not pain them."

Dennis looked at his companion in puzzlement. "But they didn't need me to drive them here, either," he said. "They knew the way..."

He shrugged. "Well, maybe they just wanted somebody here to guard the cows. They're afraid of the jungle, after all."

"They are afraid of many things, Dennis," Chester said. "And who is it to say they are wrong?"

"Let's go get ourselves some breakfast," the youth said. He sauntered on a slanting course toward the jungle—rather than try to follow the forebodings that Chester seemed determined to rouse.

"Crocodiles eat their portion of the fools who roam, Dennis," the robot said.

"What's a crocodile, Chester?" Dennis asked with a little more interest than he had intended to display.

"There are no crocodiles on this Earth, Dennis," Chester replied.

The youth grimaced.

He wondered idly how the pasture was kept in grass. Grass survived hard use better than broader-leafed greenery, so heavy cropping by animals would keep the jungle from reclaiming the open area... but a few score cows weren't by themselves enough to achieve that here. Perhaps the folk of Rakastava mowed it occasionally.

Perhaps Rakastava itself extended a brown, slick-textured pseudopod that sheared away the vegetation.

"Fah!" Dennis said loudly. "I'm away from the place for now."

As he got nearer, he saw that the jungle was making small inroads already. Plants with coarse, colorful leaves spiked up several yards into the grass—springing from deep-buried roots. Vines trailed surreptitiously across the pasture edge, ready to snag Dennis' foot if he placed it carelessly.

There was a boulder, gray and as big as a house, lying not far ahead at the jungle margin. The grass in front of it had been trampled down.

Dennis glanced over his shoulder. None of the cows had wandered in this direction. The boulder didn't seem to be a salt lick or—

He was walking forward and his head was moving, turning toward the boulder, but the boulder moved also. Half of its front—it was bigger than he'd thought—slid aside in a rippling motion.

It was a hut of lichen-gray leaves woven onto a wicker framework. Something shifted across the opening from within.

This has to be a boulder, humped and gray and rolling out through the doorway toward me...

The humped thing straightened onto two of its six legs. Its eyes were faceted red glints. The remainder of the body was gray and yellowish and fish-belly white.

The creature was alive and half again as tall as Dennis. Its jointed legs had spikes and knife-sharp edges of chitin. They glittered as the creature flexed them with scissoring clicks.

"It's time and past time," the creature said, "that Conall remembered that he owes more than beef to feed Malbawn."





CHAPTER 30




Dennis drew his sword. His whole body was trembling.

Malbawn's voice was deep and breathy; the plates of its beak flexed sideways as it spoke.

"Run, Chester," the youth whispered.

All Dennis could remember was the corpse of the Wizard Serdic lurching toward him as it drew the sharpened pole from its body. Dennis had run then, and he wanted to run now—

But there was no escape from nightmare.

He would face Malbawn with his star-metal sword; face the creature striding through the grass on saw-edged limbs, nine feet tall and armored in chitin. The inexorable certainty of the corpse had taught Dennis never to run from fear.

It was only intellectually that he could grasp the fact that Malbawn would kill him. He knew that, but he'd never been killed before and the concept had no emotional reality.

The creature paused when its human quarry didn't flee as expected. Malbawn's head was a flat triangle with the beak on its forward point and the fiery eyes behind to either side. The four raised limbs moved slowly, like the claws of crabs fencing in the water.