They were approaching an intersection. The street running off to the left would take them west, to the edge of the city. Once out in the country, there would be more room to run, hide, eventually circle back across the river, and come into Dreamer territory from the south. The intersection moved closer-fifty feet away, now twenty, now-
Blade lunged forward, sword flashing free of its scabbard, into the back of the guard in front of him in a single sweeping motion. Blade was halfway to Narlena before the falling guard hit the ground, before any of the four guards behind him could do anything more than stare and gape.
Narlena turned toward him as he dashed up to her. He slapped her hard on the rear and pointed down the street. «Run!» he yelled, and swung his sword at the guard on his right as the man rushed at him with spear held high and ready. The sword clanged down off the spear shaft and laid open the man's stomach. He screamed and reeled back, clutching at his blood-spurting midriff. Blade sprang through the line of slaves, dragging Narlena behind him. He chopped down the left-hand guard before the stunned and bemused man could raise his sword. Then he shouted again, this time to all the slaves. «Run! Flee! The People of the Blue Eye are doomed. I go to bring vengeance on them. Vengeance!»
The roaring voice jotted the slaves into action. Blade saw the four at the head of the line lunge at the two lead guards, clawing at the spears as they rose to stab downward. A slave screamed as one spear ran through his stomach, but both guards went down under the clawing hands and kicking feet. A second later Blade heard screaming. He waited no longer; the street lay open before him and Narlena. He pointed west and broke into a run.
A spear whistled past him as they ran. Another skipped off the rocks many feet to one side of them. Then there was nothing but the wind in their ears and the pounding of their own feet on the rubble-strewn streets. The sounds of a savage little battle faded behind them-the slaves and the guards were fighting each other to the death. They would delay the pursuit.
On they ran. Now there was silence behind them and only the empty city lying before them, its buildings steadily dwindling as they moved west. Narlena was keeping up far better than Blade had expected. The hope of freedom and revenge seemed to be pumping super-human strength into her thin, battered limbs. Only the tightness in her face revealed the effort she was making.
Blade's memories of maps and patrols told him that they had about three miles to cover before reaching open country. They were nearing the end of the second mile before Narlena started to flag and slow. Her breath was coming in tortured gasps as she thrashed her arms about wildly. Blade led her off the street and into a building that offered shade from the sun. She collapsed in the dust and lay still. Without the convulsive heaving of her chest Blade would have thought her dead or dying. After a few minutes she sat up and gasped, «Is there any water?»
Blade shook his head. «I couldn't bring any with me. That would have made the guards suspicious.»
She nodded wearily. «At least those guards won't bother anybody any more. I kept telling the slaves that they could drag the guards down by sheer weight of numbers any time they wanted to do it. They finally believed me.»
«You were responsible for that?» Blade let his surprise show openly in his voice.
«Why not?» she said matter-of-factly. «I have learned much while I was a slave. I am a Dreamer no longer. I will never be one again, even when we go back to the other Dreamers and lead them to kill every Waker in Pura.» Her jaw tightened as she said that. Blade reached out and took her hand.
He sat there holding it silently until Narlena shook herself and said, «Blade, I think I can run again.» He helped her to her feet. They went out into the street again, looking cautiously about them for signs of approaching pursuers. For a moment Blade considered climbing to the top of the nearest tall building to get a better view to the east. Then he decided against it. The time it would take might give the pursuit a chance to organize, even to catch up. Getting caught in a building would be the end of them.
They set off to the west again. Now they moved at a steady lope that Blade knew he could keep up for hours and Narlena could manage as far as the edge of the city. Among the buildings were occasional patches of rank grass that had once been parks. Scarecrow trees stood tossing their branches in the stiffening breeze.
Soon they reached the streets where the purple thistles were growing in hedgelike masses from cracks where slabs of pavement many feet square had been heaved upward. The gutters were thick with mud, debris, and dead leaves. Some of the more ruined buildings were completely overgrown by moss, grass, thistles, and even small trees until there was practically nothing to show that a building had once stood there. Finally, there were no more buildings on either side: They slowed their pace to a walk as they passed through the five-century-old arch that marked the western edge of the city.
Beyond the arch lay the open country, green, rankly overgrown where it had once been tamed. The only signs that men had once lived there were the road running west and the occasional villas which dotted the hills and valleys. Stairs ran up to the top of the vine-sheathed arch. This time Blade climbed up it to take a long and careful look back toward the city. He did not expect to see any pursuers. He and Narlena would have a considerable head start on any force the People of the Blue Eye could send out. And the other Waker gangs still had little desire to move about in the daytime.
He saw nothing moving, nothing anywhere in all that wilderness of stone, although he strained his eyes to the limit. But from the top of a tower visible far to the east streamed a long coiling plume of dark blue smoke-the general alarm signal of the People of the Blue Eye. If the pursuit was not yet in sight, it was certainly being organized. Time to move on again.
Blade and Narlena scrambled down the dusty stairs of the arch and headed west along the main road for another half mile. Then they turned south, toward the river. Their path led along a private road leading up to one of the villas and beyond them across the wooded hills. They slipped through the shadows under the trees for half an hour, then reached a sunlit patch of long grass, completely concealed on all sides by tall trees. Best of all, a small, clear stream flowed out from under the roots of one of the trees. Blade climbed another tree and once more checked their rear. Once more he was relieved to neither see nor hear any signs of pursuit.
Here they were well out of sight, and except for the woodcutters and hunters, there were few among the Wakers with much tracking skill in open country. Before Krog could bring his hunters down from the north, Blade and Narlena could easily be safely back in Dreamer territory.
They drank. Blade felt the water pouring down his throat, sluicing away the caked dust from the long run, and restoring life to his aching limbs. Then with Narlena curled beside him, he lay down and slept.
When they awoke, twilight had drenched the forest. They drank deeply again, stretched their cramped, chilled limbs, and moved on again. After half an hour they came out of the forest into open rolling countryside, within a mile of the river.
Toward the east Pura was sinking quietly into shadow — silent, dark, and apparently lifeless. Above the towers the first stars were coming out in the purple sky. Blade handed Narlena one of his knives, drew his sword, and led the way to the river.
Although the country south to the river was almost treeless, their pace was far from easygoing. The hedges that the villa owners had cultivated and kept carefully pruned in the days of Pura's glory had run wild and grown almost to the height of the trees. Vines wound their way in all directions, heavy with overripe berries that poured a sickly sweet odor into the evening air and squashed to slippery, sticky pulp underfoot. Everywhere the purple thistle grew, rank and tangled, clawing at their bare legs with its multitude of thorns. Blade tried to avoid the thistle patches as much as possible, but sometimes there was no way around them, nothing to do but to hack a way through with his sword. By the time they were halfway to the river, both his legs and Narlena's looked and felt as if they had been lashed with barbed wire.