The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Dalgard pointed out, “but I am no dweller in the depths.”
    “Neither were Those Others, yet they used these ways. And I tell you”—in his earnestness the merman laid his hand once more on Dalgard’s arm—“to turn back now is out of the question. The death which haunts the darkness is still sniffing out our trail.”
    Dalgard glanced involuntarily over his shoulder. By the faint and limited light of the purple disks he could see little or nothing. An army might creep there undetected.
    “But—” His protest was in answer to the merman’s seeming unconcern.
    Sssuri at the first intimation that the hunters were behind them had shown wariness. Now he did not appear to care.
    “They had fed,” he replied. “Scouts follow because we are something new and thus suspect. When hunger rises once more in them, and their scouts report that we are meat, then is the time to draw knives and prepare for battle. But before that hour we may have won free. Let us search for the gate we now need.”
    However confident the merman might be, Dalgard could not match that confidence. In the open air he would have faced a snake-devil four times his size without any more emotion than a hunter’s instinctive caution. But here in the dark, unable to rid himself of the belief that thousands of tons of sea water hung over his head, he found himself starting at any sound, his knife bare and ready in his sweating hand.
    He noted that Sssuri had stepped up the pace, passing into his sure-footed glide which made Dalgard exert himself to keep up. Before them the corridor stretched without a break. The merman’s promised exit, if it existed, was still out of sight.
    It was difficult to gauge time in this dark hall, but Dalgard thought that they were at least an hour farther on their way when Sssuri paused abruptly once more, his head cocked in a listening attitude, as if he caught some whisper of sound too rarefied for his human companion.
    “Now—” the thought hissed as if he spat the words, “they hunger—and they hunt!”
    He bounded forward with a spurt, which Dalgard copied, and they ran lightly, the dust undisturbed in years puffing up beneath the merman’s bare, scaled feet and Dalgard’s hide boots. Still the unbroken walls, the feeble patches of violet in the ceiling. But no exit. And what good would any exit do him, Dalgard thought, if it opened under the sea?
    “There are islands off the coast—many islands—” Sssuri caught him up. “It is in my mind that we shall find our door on one of those. But—run now, knife brother, for those at our heels awake and thirst for flesh and blood. They have decided that we are not to be feared but may be run down for their pleasure.”
    Dalgard weighed his knife in his hand. “They shall find us with fangs,” he promised grimly.
    “It will be better if they do not find us at all,” returned Sssuri.
    A burning arch of pain encased Dalgard’s lower ribs, and his breath came in gusts of hastily sucked air as their flight kept on, down the endless corridor. Sssuri was also showing signs of the grueling pace, his round head bent forward, his furred legs pumping as if only his iron will kept them moving. And the determination which kept him going was communicated to the scout as a graver warning than any thought message of fear.
    They were passing under one of the infrequent violet lights when Dalgard got something else—a mental thrust so quick and sharp it was as if a sword had cut through the daze of fatigue to reach his brain. Yet that had not come from Sssuri, for it was totally alien, wavering on a band so near the extreme edge of his consciousness that it pricked, receded, and pricked again as a needle might.
    This was no message of fear or warning, but of implacable stubbornness and ravening hunger. And in that instant Dalgard knew that it came from what was sniffing out their trail, and he no longer wondered that the hunters were immune to other mental contact. One could not reason with—that!
    He spurted forward, matching the merman’s acceleration of speed. But to Dalgard’s horror he saw that his companion now ran with one hand brushing along the wall, as if he needed that support.
    “Sssuri!”
    His thought met a wall of concentration through which he could not break. In a way he was reassured—for a moment, until another of those stabs from their pursuers struck him. He longed to look back, to see what hunted them. But he dared not break stride to do