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at all, not much more than meaningless sounds muttered under the breath.
He searched his mind as best he could under the effect of the sandmirk
voices which were now clearly circling the camp at a distance of no more than
fifty yards away or so- for something stronger than the multiplication tables
with which to oppose them. In desperation, he began to recite the argument of
his doctorate thesis on the changes in social custom deriving from the rise of
the cities inFrance during the Hundred Years' War. Night after weary night,
after all other work had been done, he had sat in the single light of his desk
lamp, hammering out that thesis. If there was protective magic in anything he
knew, it would be in that.
"& Examination of the direct effects of the English military incursion into
western France in the two decades immediately following the thirteen-fifties,"
he muttered,"show a remarkable process of change at work unrecognized by the
very people caught up in it. Particularly theportofBordeaux . .."
Suddenly, to his joy, he realized it was working. All those midnight hours of
effort he had put into the thesis had created a piece of mental machinery with
a momentum that was too powerful for the cluttering of the sandmirks to clog
and stop. As long as he could keep the words of it running through his head,
he could hold them off. It was as if the chittering was blocked now by a
barrier that allowed only the harmless noise of it wash over the barrier's
top. The thesis had been two hundred and twenty double-spaced pages of
typescript when finished. He would not reach the end of his material too soon,
as he had with the multiplication tables. He glanced across the fire at Brian,
and found the other still praying. Neither one of them dared take time off to
speak with each other, but Jim tried to signal with his eyes that he was
holding his own and he thought that Brian understood and returned a like
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message.
The sandmirks were close now just outside the circle of firelight; and the
sound of their voices was so shrill and encompassing that Jim could hardly
hear the sound of his own voice in his ears. Nonetheless, he and Brian were
holding their own and the predators in the darkness would not dare attack
while their prey still had the will and the strength to defend themselves. As
Jim watched, Brian reached down to throw a couple more of the dead branches on
the fire.
Flames spurted up on the new fuel; and for a second, straining his eyes, Jim
thought he had a glimpse of shadowy shapes slipping back out of sight into the
further darkness. He and Brian continued their watch, and their own private
litanies.
The night wore on.
The fire blazed. The sandmirks continued to circle, never stopping for one
moment their invitation to terror. Croaking, with voices gone hoarse from
steady, long use, Jim and the knight faced each other above the fire. Sir
Brian swayed a little with weariness; and Jim felt himself also growing
light-headed with exhaustion. The dark continued unbroken around them. The
raw, damp scent of dawn was in the air, but daybreak was yet some time off.
And now, for the first time since he had begun to recite his thesis, Jim felt
the pressure of the sandmirk voices beginning to crumble away the barrier he
had erected against them. His exhausted memory fumbled, lost its place on the
remembered page it was quoting, and found it again. But in that second of
weakness the effect of the chittering had gained ground. It pierced through
the words Jim painfully uttered; and its power was growing steadily.
Jim became conscious that Brian had stopped speaking. Jim also stopped and
they stared at each other across the fire while the sound of the chittering
soared in volume all around them, lifting triumphantly into the night.
The knight reversed his sword, picking it up to hold blade upward in both
hands.
"In God's name," said Brian, in such a torn and ragged voice that Jim could
hardly understand him, "let's go to them, while we still have the strength to
do so."
Jim nodded. In the final accounting, to charge death was preferable to
fleeing from it in sick fear. He stepped around the fire to stand beside
Brian.
"Now!" said the knight in his husk of a voice, raising his sword overhead
But before they could charge the almost invisible foe that encircled them, a
scream almost worse than the chittering split the darkness to their right. At
once, the sound that had driven them to the edge of madness ceased utterly, to
be followed by the noise of many small bodies crashing away in flight through
the woods.
Another scream sounded, this time straight ahead and farther out. A moment of
waiting followed, during which the sounds of flight had all but died in the
distance; and then came a third scream, farther off yet.
"By Saint Giles!" whispered the knight in the stillness. "Something's killing
them& "
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He had hardly finished before a fourth scream came, this time a long distance
off. After that, utter silence.
Numbly, Brian moved to build up the fire. It crackled, blazed afresh and the
shadows drew back a long distance. Jim glanced upward.
"Look," he said. "I think& "
Brian looked. An edge of cloud was pulling back from a few stars that were
still visible; and the sky behind the stars was paling.
"Yes. Dawn," said Brian.
They stood watching as the sky turned toward light and the remaining stars
faded to invisibility.
"But what was it that came to our rescue?" the knight asked.
Jim shook his head.
"I don't know," he said, hoarsely. "I can't guess what "
He broke off.
Something had moved a blacker black within the darkness of the still-deep
shadows beyond the firelight. It moved again and came forward slowly, stepping
into the light. A four-legged shape as large as a small pony, green-eyed, with
long narrow muzzle, half-parted to show white, gleaming teeth and a tongue as
red as the fire flames.
It was a wolf. A wolf double the size of the largest wolf Jim had ever seen
in a zoo or on film. The green eyes went past the knight and the fire to burn
savagely upon Jim.
"So it's you," a deep, harsh voice from the scimitar-armed jaws said. "Not
that it makes all that difference. But I thought as much."
Chapter Nine
The mind can take only so much before reaction sets in. With all Jim had been
through since he had ended up in this world, and particularly after the ordeal
he had just gone through as the prey of the sandmirks, he should not have been
struck numb by the fact that now it was a wolf who could talk like a man. But
he was.
He sat down on his haunches with a thump. If he had been in his regular human
body, he probably would have collapsed on the ground. But the effect was the
same. He struggled to find his voice while the monster wolf walked forward to
the fire.
"Who who're you?" he managed at last.
"What's the matter, Gorbash?" snarled the wolf. "Sandmirks got your memory?
I've only known you for twenty years! Besides, there's few living who'd
mistake Aragh for any other English wolf!"
"You're who Aragh?" croaked Brian.
The wolf glanced at him.
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"I am. And who are you, man?"
"Sir Brian Neville-Smythe."
"Never heard of you," growled the wolf.
"My house," said Sir Brian stiffly, "is a cadet branch of the Nevilles. Our
land runs beyond Wyven-stock to theLeaRiver on the north."
"None of my people up there," grated Aragh. "What're you doing down here in
my forest?"
"Passing through on our way to Malvern, Sir wolf."
"Call me Aragh when you talk to me, man."
"Then address me as Sir Brian, Sir wolf!"
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