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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Spanish. The singers did not respond. They descended the slight slope of the beach with fluid grace. The ones in the lead began reaching, clutching over the railing. Two of them grabbed Talea's right arm. "Ease back there," she ordered them, pulling away. They did not let go and continued to tug at her insistently. Several other pale singers were already on the deck and were pulling with similar patient determination at Jon-Tom and Mudge. " 'Ere now, you cold buggerers, take your bloody 'ands off me!" The otter twisted free. So didJTalea and Jon-Tom. Yet the pale visitors wordlessly kept advancing, groping for the strangers. Another sound quietly filled the cavern. It seeped across the river and dominated the rise and fall of the expressionless choir. A deep, low moaning, it was in considerable contrast to the melody of the white singers. It was not at all nice. In fact, it seemed to Jon-Tom that it embodied every overtone of 111 Alan Dean Foster menace and malignance one could put into a single moan. It issued from somewhere back in the black depths, beyond where the singers had come from. "That's about enough," said Bribbens firmly. He hefted his backup steering sweep and began swinging it at the singers stumbling about on deck. Two of them went down with unexpected lack of resistance. Their heads bounced like a pair of rubber balls across the deck. The black eyespots never twitched and they uttered not a word of pain. Their singing, however, ceased. One of the skulls bounced over the railing and landed in the water with a slight splash, to sink quickly out of sight. A shocked Bribbens paused to stare at the decapitated corpses. There was no blood. "Damn. They aren't alive." "They are," Clothahump insisted, struggling awkwardly in the grasp of three singers who were trying to wrestle his heavy body off the ship, "but it is not our kind of alive." Page 52 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html "I'll make them our kind of dead." Talea's sword was moving like a scythe. Three singers fell neatly into six halves. They lay on the deck like so many lumps of white clay, motionless and cold. Jon-Tom hurried to assist Clothahump. "Sir, what do you think we... ?" "Fight for it, my boy, fight! You can't argue with these things, and I have a feeling that if we're taken from this boat we'll never see it again." He had retreated inside his shell, confounding his would-be abductors. Above the shouts of the boat's defenders and the singsong of their horribly indifferent assaulters came a reprise of that ominous, basso groaning. It was definitely nearer, Jon-Tom thought, and redoubled his efforts to clear the deck. He was swinging the club end of his staff in great arcs, indiscriminately lopping off heads, arms, legs. The singers 112 THE HOUR Or THE GATE broke like hardened clay, but the dozens dismembered were replaced by ranks of thoughtless duplicates, still droning their eerie anthem. "Get us out in the current!" Talea was trying to keep the white bodies away from the bow. With Mudge shielding him from clutching fingers Bribbens put down his oar and returned to the main sweep. Though he leaned on it as hard as he could, and though the current was with them, they still couldn't move away from the shore. Jon-Tom leaned over the side. Using his reach and the long club he began clearing bodies from the waterline. White bands pulled possessively at him from behind, but Flor was soon at his side swinging her mace, cutting them down like pale shrubs. Most of them ignored her. Possibly it had something to do with her white leather clothing, he mused. He concentrated on swinging the club in long arcs, knocking away heads or pieces of boneless skull with great rapidity. Their slight resistance barely slowed the force of his swings. When the heads were knocked loose the bodies simply ceased their shoving and slid below the surface. A few bobbed on the current and drifted like styrofoam down the river. The singing continued, undisturbed by the bloodless slaugh- ter, by screams of anger or despair. Rising louder around the boat was that rich, bellowing moan. It had become loud enough now to drown out the chorus. A few fragments of rock fell from the cavern roof. Finally enough of the bodies had been swept from the side of the boat for it to drift once more out into the river. Like so many termites supple white singers continued to march down toward the water. They walked until the water was up to their chests and began swimming slowly after the boat. Breathing hard, Jon-Tom leaned back against the railing, holding tight to his staff for additional support. All of the 113 Alan Dean Foster original swimmers who'd forced the craft in to shore had been knocked away or decapitated. Now that they were out again in midstream, the current kept them well ahead of their lugubrious pursuers. "I don't understand what " He was talking to the boat- man, but Bribbens wasn't listening. He'd suddenly locked the steering oar in position and was unbolting smaller ones from the deck. "Paddle, man! Paddle for your life!" "What?" Jon-Tom looked back at the shore, expecting to see the horde of singers clumsily stumbling after them across the rocks. Instead his gaze fastened onto something that stifled the scream welling up in Page 53 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html his throat and turned it into that peculiar choking noise people make at times of true horror. A vast, glowing gray mass filled the cavern shore behind them. It came near to touching the ceiling. Where large formations rose the gray substance flowed over or around it, displaying a consistency partly like cloud and then like lard. Its moans rattled the length of the cavern and echoed back from distant walls. It looked like a fog wrapped with mucus, save for two enormous, pulsing pink eyes. They stared lidlessly down at the tiny fleeing ship and the stick figures frozen on its deck. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |