He floundered wildly, and the thought flashed through his mind, Do I die here—here, in this whirlpool of shifting grit, swallowed up, buried alive, before I even find the primitives...?
He struggled again to rise, and could not. The choking dust swirled higher. His senses dimmed. The blazing sun began to darken.
And then they came.
They came with a rush, across the crest, their metal masks blurred to blinding flashes. Out of the clefts of the rocks they came, and up from the sand-pool's edges, howling like the screamings in a nightmare, the wailings of banshees.
Their bodies were brown as the sun-blistered rocks, their shoulder-plumes scarlet as heart-blood. Their girdles were scarlet, too, and the plumed bands that circled wrists and ankles. Monstrous footgear, broad as their lean, hard bodies, sprayed sand as they charged. Light flared in iridescent splendor from strange, outré weapons.
Desperately, Jarl tried again to rise. But again, the eddying grit gave way beneath him.
Then they were upon him—seizing him, dragging him up and out of the powder-dry morass that held him. The great webbed shoes they wore did not sink in, but, rather, skimmed the surface.
Vainly, Jarl struck out and sought to struggle. But he was as a child in the grip of giants. The primitives' hands were like shackling bands of steel upon him.
He let himself go limp. After all, was this not the very thing he'd come for?
Unless they killed him here and now....