His decision was a natural projection of his own character. He could not have acted otherwise. He moved in a sudden leap sidewise. One arm encircled the startled catman's neck. The Anghorian could have eluded him, and offered battle. But he had not. Apparently he awaited direction from Alhone. He held his dagger to the quivering side. The fur was silky, soft beneath his fingers, inviting violence.
He raised his head and shouted, "Moljar waits. Does the girl stay with me? We will die before we part."
The voice was a petulant whine now. "Fool. You will not die. You are here to serve me. I am not served by corpses."
Akare made a quick, lightning-like jerk from Moljar's grasp. The half-breed sank his dagger in to the hilt, ripped sidewise. Then he leaped away, covering the girl against the wall. A stream of bright thin blood spurted from Akare's pulsing side as he crawled toward the far side of the cavern, mewing with pain.
Mahra's hands clutched Moljar's shoulders as they crouched against the coruscating colors of the veined granite. Her breath came in short, jerking gusts. "For a half-breed," she breathed, "you have honor."
Her hands stiffened, dug into his skin. Moljar's hair bristled on his neck. Intuitively, he raised his dagger, though it was a useless, silly gesture now.
From the far side of the cavern, moving ghost-like from a massive opening, a dense vaporous sphere floated toward him. It eddied and pulsed, and in its center was the dim outline of a human shape encased in plastic, its head helmeted by a faint glowing light.
"A Mistman!" Mahra gasped. "Moljar...."
The half-breed had no time to think. Capture or death would find him moving, though there seemed no hope in it.
A yellow beam of light slashed outward from the man in the sphere. Moljar dropped beneath it. But it caught the girl full. His eyes saw her stiffen into a hard stone mannikin and tumble forward. From his hands and knees he sprang upward like a maddened beast, straight toward the pulsing heart of the Mistman's vaporous shell.