They had reached a table-like flat of some sixty odd feet across. At either end jumbled rocks sloped gradually downward and directly opposite a higher sheer escarpment blocked progress. Their only escape lay to the right, away from their pursuers.
Besan led the way. He chose a course through the broken rocks that tried their wasted strength least. Yet he knew that before long they must halt and attempt to make a stand—
Suddenly he halted and the sword knife was in his hand.
A menacing elephantine shape loomed up in his path, a reddish-haired bearlike cratur. And behind the foremost cratur a half dozen others jammed the way!
He turned—and saw the snowy-striped heads of the savage warriors already entering the rocks. They were trapped.
Lifa pushed at him. Her purple eyes were blazing.
"Drive them out of the way!" she cried. "One whiff of your scent and they will scatter."
Besan groaned. His tank of scent lay back in the cave village of Detch.
"I can't," he confessed swiftly. "I am—I was born without scent glands."
Lifa's eyes were scornful. She clawed him aside and pushed forward, laying down an acrid barrage that split the lumbering craturs' living wall apart. They pushed through into the more open ground beyond the rocks.