CHAPTER 32
"It is time..." someone whispered to Dennis as he floated in a lake of fire.
Dennis flailed out with his arms and legs. The healing nightmare broke into white shards, opening the youth's eyes to the reality of the evening-shadowed pasture. The cows, driven only by habit and the weight of their udders, were drifting back along the trail to Rakastava.
"It is time that we return to Rakastava," Chester was saying. "If you wish that we should return to Rakastava."
"All right," Dennis said, pretending that not he but the robot had made the decision. Then he added, "Wait."
Chester had slipped off the remnants of the yellow tunic in order to clean the wounds on the youth's torso. Dennis wadded the tail of the garment, relatively unstained by blood and the foul ooze from Malbawn's wounds. With the cloth he carefully wiped the blade of the Founder's Sword.
The nicks which the chitin edges left in the metal were too deep to worry about now. With a few strokes, he cleaned away the flashing that would make the sword stick in its scabbard; but it would be the work of hours to smooth the sword-edges back into the smooth lines they had before he fought Malbawn.
"Help me..." and Chester's gleaming limbs were lifting the youth to his feet even before his lips formed "... up, Chester."
The last half dozen of the cows, chewing their cud in sideways motions as they waited to enter the narrow trail, shied back as the companions approached.
Dennis planted one foot in front of the other, taking full strides and knowing that every time his heel hit the ground, the shock would make the top of his head ring like copper cymbals. No matter how careful he was, he'd have to bear the pain anyway. He strode forward as if he didn't feel it.
After a time, he didn't feel the pain. His eyes weren't focusing properly, but there were no longer hammer-blows to his skull. He could walk on, guided by the black-and-white blur of the cow ahead of him and the delicate pressure of Chester's grip in his left palm.
Dennis tripped.
He didn't fall, though for a moment he wasn't sure that he hadn't because everything turned gray and pulsed at the tempo of his heartbeat. Then his vision cleared and he saw the thorny purple vine over which he had stumbled.
Even as he watched, the vine's feather-leafed tip retracted toward the side of the trail on which it was rooted.
There was sluggish motion throughout the undergrowth fringing the trail. More of the spike-armed vines quivered where there was no wind, pulling back to where they wouldn't be trampled by the returning herd.
After Dennis passed in the morning, they'd woven their thorny tendrils across the path in a net that doomed anyone trying to flee Malbawn's lumbering advance.
If Dennis had run—as so many before him had certainly run—he would have been held screaming on the thorns while Malbawn's pincers closed on him from behind.
Dennis drew his sword. The rush of adrenalin cooled his body and made supple again his wound-stiffened muscles.
He slashed at the vegetation. It fluttered and fell before the keen edge of the Founder's Sword.
Dennis stepped into the arc his blade had cleared and brought the sword back in another wide sweep. Vines squirmed like headless snakes. The trunk of a wrist-thick sapling thumped down beside its severed stump, unable to fall sideways because its branches were interwoven with those of the trees nearby.
"Going to trap me, weren't you!" Dennis screamed as he cut a third time at the silent vegetation. "Going to hold me like a goat being slaughtered!"
"Dennis," said the robot behind him in an urgent voice. "You know that the vines had no choice but to obey Malbawn. It is for Conall and his folk that your anger is meant."
The youth was gasping for breath. "Don't tell me what I mean," he said, but he'd already paused. The cows who'd begun to follow down the trail at a safe distance stared at Dennis with brown, nervous eyes.
Chester silently offered Dennis the scrap of tunic which he'd dropped. The youth polished the blade again, cleaning away the sap that gummed and might corrode the metal.
Sheathing the weapon, Dennis and his companion followed the trail marked by the herd's steaming droppings. He lengthened his stride, warned by the gathering darkness.
"Chester," he said as the great pile of Rakastava loomed before them. "I don't think the people here had a choice, any more than the vines did."
Then, as they entered the stable with the last of the herd behind them, Dennis added, "It's hard to be afraid. And they haven't learned that you have to face fear..."