The hawks were going to the cave. They were heading toward it in an
exact line, turning neither to right nor left, and this time they were
not in any doubt. They, or whoever or whatever dominated them, knew
this time exactly where to find the fugitives.
"But that's impossible," Trevor tried to tell himself. "There's no way
they could suddenly learn exactly where the cave is after all this
time."
No way?
A thing was forcing its way up into Trevor's anxious thoughts, a
realization that he did not want to look at squarely, not at all.
But it would not be put down, it would not stop tormenting him, and
suddenly he cried out to it, a cry of pain and guilt,
"No, it couldn't be! It couldn't be through me they learned!"
It fronted him relentlessly, the memory of that awful moment in the
canyon when whatever had gripped him through the sun-stone had seemed
to be turning over the leaves of his brain like the pages of a book.
The vast and alien mind that had gripped his in that dreadful contact
had read his own brain clearly, he knew. And in Trevor's brain and
memories it had found the secret of the cave.
Trevor groaned in an agony of guilt.
He crawled out of his rock-heap and began to run back up the ravine,
following the path the hawks had taken. There might still be time to
warn them.
Stumbling, running, he passed the canyon fork. And now from above him
in the canyon he heard the sounds he dreaded--the sounds of women
screaming and men shouting hoarsely in fury and despair. Farther on,
over the rocks, scrambling, slipping, gasping for breath, he came to
the cave-mouth and the sight he had dreaded.
The hawks had gone into the cave and driven out the slaves. They had
them in the canyon now, and they were trying to herd them together and
drive them down toward the lava beds. But the slaves were fighting back.
Dark wings beat and thundered in the narrow gorge between the walls of
rock. Claws struck and lashing tails cut like whips. Men struggled and
floundered and trampled each other. Some died. Some of the hawks died
too. But the people were being forced farther down the canyon under the
relentless swooping of the hawks.
Then Trevor saw Jen. She was a little way from the others. Hugh was
with her. He had shoved her into a protecting hollow and was standing
over her with a piece of rock in his hands, trying to beat off a hawk.
Hugh was hurt badly. He was not doing well.
Trevor uttered a wild cry that voiced all the futile rage in him, and
bounded over a slope toward them.
"Hugh, look out!" he yelled. The hawk had risen, and then had checked
and turned, to swoop down straight at Hugh's back.
Hugh swung partly around, but not soon enough. The hawk's claws were in
his body, deep. Hugh fell down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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