RAIDERS OF THE SECOND MOON-8
504 Words
WITHOUT INCIDENT THEY reached the field where Rold toiled among the rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field, his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork’s great joy found the rope hanging as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the jungle matted ground outside the wall.
“Will we hide here in the trees until night?” asked the girl’s full voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. “I think not,” he said. “The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we will paddle boldly across the water.”
“That is good,” agreed the slave, “unless they see us put out from the shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite the Temple of Uzdon.”
“Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,” said Noork thoughtfully. “In that way even if they detect us we will have put a safe distance between us.”
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
“Once we reach the jungle,” he told the girl, “off come these robes. I am broiled alive.”
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him. “Misty Ones!” he hissed to Rold. “They crouch among the reeds. They carry nets and clubs to trap us.”
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore them to the ground. Noork’s mightier muscles smashed more than one hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork’s head curiously and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
“So,” he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but was not, “it is the trapper’s turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?”
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- Writer
