“What is that?” demanded one of the natives.
“Take up your hampers and hasten on to your village and tell no one, as long as you live, what you have done, not even your mates: If you do not tell, no one will know for we shall not tell.”
“We will never tell,” cried the men in chorus.
“Do not even talk about it among yourselves,” cautioned David, “for even the trees have ears, and if the Korsars come to your village and question you tell them that you saw three men and two women traveling toward the east just beyond the borders of the city of Korsar. Tell them that they were too far away for you to recognize them, but that they may have been The Cid’s daughter and her companion with the three men who abducted them.”
“We will do as you say,” replied the carriers.
“Then be gone,” demanded David, and the eight men hurriedly gathered up their hampers and disappeared into the forest toward the north.
When the two girls were sufficiently revived and rested to continue the journey, the party set out again, making their way to the east for a short distance and then turning north again, for it had been Tanar’s plan to throw the Korsars off the trail by traveling north, rather than east or south. Later they would turn to the east, far north of the area which the Korsars might be expected to comb in search of them, and then again, after many marches, they would change their direction once more to the south. It was a circuitous route, but it seemed the safest.
The forest changed to pine and cedar and there were windswept wastes dotted with gnarled and stunted trees. The air was cooler than they had ever known it in their native land, and when the wind blew from the north they shivered around roaring camp fires. The animals they met were scarcer and bore heavier fur, and, nowhere was there sign of man.
Upon one occasion when they stopped to camp Tartar pointed at the ground before him. “Look!” he cried to David. “My shadow is no longer beneath me,” and then, looking up, “the sun is not above us.”
“I have noticed that,” replied David, “and I am trying to understand the reason for it, and perhaps I shall with the aid of the legends of the Korsars.”