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.In retreat? Yes, if their speed meant anything.Brak had no notion who the combatants might be.He was a stranger, in astrange kingdom.The voice ahead rose, suddenly clear with hysteria: "The Horned Lady protectme! The Horned Lady accept my soul and carry it beyond the Dark Veils toparadise.May I dwell in paradise numberless days! May my soul know peace,absolution, comfort in the Horned Lady's embrace."Digging in his bare heels, Brak headed the pony forward in a trot.The man wascrying a prayer, and it sounded like the prayer of one with not much time leftto live."The Horned Lady bless me with her eternal embrace," came the terrorized voiceas Brak burst around the outcrop, riding hard.Light and shadow interplayed where the watercourse widened.As Brak hurledhimself from his pony's back, he had time enough for a quick estimate of whathad happened.A huge-wheeled bronze chariot had overturned, throwing its driver from thecar.From the rolled upper rim of the car, wicked knife blades protruded,short and glittering, spaced about three fingers apart.The charioteer hadbeen gored by two of these spiny daggers, which were obviously meant to fendoff those who would leap aboard the chariot to attack.The driver lay beneaththe car, an indistinct blur of bronze armor and creeping redness.Brak's rapid impression convinced him that here was a different kind ofchariot from those he had distantly observed rolling away to the north.Uponthe front of this car, in rich bronzed bas-relief, was the device of agoddess.Page 58 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlShe was a comely young woman, shown from the waist upward, and without garmentor ornament, except for a thin dagger hanging down upon a linked chain betweenher breasts.From her bronze forehead sprouted two horns of lovely whorledintricacy.In one of her uplifted hands she held a sheaf of plenty.In theother she tore a lightning fork down from the sky.The Horned Lady.The image of the warrior-goddess was picked out by a beam ofred light that fell aslant the car.Her bronzed eyes seemed to mock Brak, defyand dare him.All these details the big barbarian absorbed almost in a breath's time.Abruptly he heard again the scrape-and-grind, so loud this time that it hurthis ears.Brak whipped his head around.Up the slope, he saw what made the noise, andchoked.Six times longer than Brak was tall, the sluglike creature was likesome great tube of sinuous substance.Far overhead, the black mouth of itsburrow in the obsidian mountain stood out.From this the creature must havebeen roused.All along its cylindrical body it had small, white, pulpy appendages, themerest vestiges of legs.It actually seemed to propel itself down the slopeand around boulders toward the dying charioteer by means of an obscenewriggling action.Rather than by skin, it was protected by lizard-shiny plateswhich gleamed with a gray-metal luster.These plates were hinged together bymoist pink membranes Brak could glimpse as the body articulated.The platesscraping rock caused the grinding sound.And as the monstrous thing worked its way down toward its victim under thechariot, that armor-plated body smashed and ground the solid rock beneath itto dust.Armor that could pulverize obsidian? Brak's brain nearly boggled.But thefrightful cloud of dust hanging in the air behind the crawling nightmaretestified to the abrasive strength of those plates.At the head of the tubelike thing, two round, opalescent eyes twice as largeas Brak's own head burned in the gloom.The thing was drawing near the flatbottom of the watercourse.Half of its body still extended up the slope.Suddenly a slit in the lower part of its head opened.Tensely crouched, broadsword bared, Brak waited with the blood-hammer ofdanger running high in his veins.All pretense that he might be civilized hadvanished from his face, which was ugly.Twilight scarlet glinted on his blade.He was a savage figure, a brawny animal like the very beasts he had hunted inthe wild lands of the north that gave him birth.The charioteer continued to babble his delirious prayer
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