and the sunlight had just reached the damp bottom of the gorge. I was wool-gathering, I suppose. A kind of peace and serenity comes over me when I’m in the mountains.
Then the wolf laid her ears back and growled warningly.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked her, speaking in the language of men without even thinking about it.
‘Horses,’ she replied in wolvish. ‘But perhaps they are not really horses. They smell of blood and of raw meat.’
‘Do not be concerned,’ I told her, lapsing into wolvish. ‘One has encountered them before. They are Hrulgin. They are meat-eaters. What you smell is the blood and meat of a deer.’
‘One thinks that you are wrong. The smell is not that of deer. What one smells is the blood and meat of man.’
‘That is impossible,’ I snorted. ‘The Hrulgin are not maneaters. They live in peace with the Ulgos here in these mountains.’
‘One’s nose is very good,’ she told me pointedly. ‘One would not confuse the smell of man-blood and meat with the smell of a deer. These flesh-eating horses have been killing and eating men, and they are hunting again.’
‘Hunting? Hunting what?’
‘One thinks that they are hunting you.’
I sent out a probing thought. The minds of the Hrulgin aren’t really very much like the minds of horses. Horses eat grass, and about the only time they’re aggressive is during the breeding season. The Hrulgin look a great deal like horses – if you discount the claws and fangs – but they don’t eat grass. I’d touched the minds of Hrulgin before at various times when I’d been traveling in the mountains of Ulgoland. I knew that they were hunters and fairly savage, but the peace of UL had always put restraints on them before. The minds I touched this time seemed to have shrugged off those restraints, though.
The wolf was right. The Hrulgin were hunting me.
I’d been hunted before. A young lion stalked me for two days once before I’d finally chased him off. There’s no real malice in the mind of a hunting animal. He’s just looking for something to eat. What I encountered this time, however, was a cruel hatred, and much worse, to my way of looking at it, an absolute madness. These particular Hrulgin were much more interested in the killing than they were in the eating. I was in trouble here.
‘One suggests that you do something about your shape,’ the she-wolf advised. She dropped to her haunches, her long, pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. In case you’ve never noticed, that’s the way canines laugh.
‘What is so funny?’ I demanded of her.
‘One finds the man-things amusing. The hunter puts all his thought on the thing he hunts. If it is a rabbit he hunts, he will not turn aside for a squirrel. These meat-eating horses are hunting a man – you. Change your shape, and they will ignore you.’
I was actually embarrassed. Why hadn’t I thought of that? For all our sophistication, the instinctive reaction that seizes you when you realize that something wants to kill and eat you is sheer panic.
I formed the image in my mind, and slipped myself into the shape of the wolf. My companion seemed to be impressed. ‘Much better,’ she said approvingly. ‘You are a handsome wolf. Your other shape is not so pleasing. Shall we go?’
We angled up from the stream-bed and stopped at the edge of the trees to watch the Hrulgin. The sudden disappearance of my scent confused them and it seemed also to infuriate them. The herd stallion reared, screaming his rage, and he shredded the bark of an unoffending tree with his claws while flecks of foam spattered out from his long, curved fangs. Several of the mares followed my scent down the gorge, then back, moving slowly and trying to sniff out the place where I’d turned aside and slipped away.
‘One suggests that we move along,’ the she-wolf said. ‘The flesh-eating horses will think that we have killed and eaten the man-thing they were hunting. This will make them angry with us. They may decide to stop hunting the man-thing and start hunting wolves.’
We stayed just back of the edge of the trees so that we could watch the baffled Hrulgin near the edge of the mountain stream in case they decided to start hunting wolves instead of men. After about a half-hour, we were far enough out in front of them that the chances that they could catch up with us were very slim.
The change in the Hrulgin had me completely baffled. The peace of UL had always been absolute before. What had driven the Hrulgin mad?
As it turned out, the Hrulgin weren’t the only monsters that’d lost their wits.
My automatic use of the word ‘monster’ there isn’t an indication of prejudice. It’s just a translation of an Ulgo word. The Ulgos even refer to the Dryads as monsters. Ce’Nedra was somewhat offended by that term, as I recall.
Anyway, I decided not to revert to my own form once we’d evaded the Hrulgin. Something very strange was going on here in Ulgoland. My companion and I reached that peculiarly shaped mountain upon which Prolgu stands, and we started up.
About half-way to the top, we encountered a pack of Algroths, and they were just as crazy as the Hrulgin had been. Algroths are not among my favorite creatures anyway. I’m not sure what the Gods were thinking of when they created them. A blend of ape, goat, and reptile seems a bit exotic to me. The Algroths were also hunting for people to kill and eat. Whether I liked him or not, I definitely needed to have words with the Gorim.
The only problem was the fact that Prolgu was totally deserted. There were some signs of a hasty departure, but the abandoning of the city had happened some time back, so my companion and I couldn’t pick up any hint of a scent that might have told us which way the Ulgos had gone. We came across some mossy human bones, however, and I didn’t care for the implications of that. Was it possible that the Ulgos had all been killed? Had UL changed his mind and abandoned them?
I didn’t really have time to sort it out. Evening had fallen over the empty city, and my companion and I were still sniffing around in the empty buildings when a sudden bellow shattered the silence, a bellow that was coming from the sky. I went to the doorway of the building we’d been searching and looked up.
The light wasn’t really very good, but it was good enough for me to see that huge shape outlined against the evening sky.
It was the dragon, and her great wings were clawing at the sky and she was belching clouds of sooty fire with every bellow.
Notice that I speak of her in the singular and the feminine. This is no indication of any great perception on my part, since there was only one dragon in the entire world, and she was female. The two males the Gods had created had killed each other during the first mating season. I’d always felt rather sorry for her, but not this time. She, like the Hrulgin and the Algroths, was intent on killing things, but she was too stupid to be selective. She’d burn anything that moved.
Moreover, Torak had added a modification to the dragons when he and his brothers were creating them. They were totally immune to anything I might have been able to do to them with the Will and the Word.
‘One would be more content if you would do something about that,’ the wolf told me.
‘I am thinking about it,’ I replied.
‘Think faster.
