"Then the only important thing right now is to keep moving. Our luck has held so far. And there are seven more charges in this gun. I'll shoot to kill as many times as I have to."
The forest was alive with shadows and almost night-dark where the trees towered in groups of five or six, gigantic oaks with interlacing branches that completely blotted out the sky. Even the few, downstreaming shafts of sunlight had become fewer and more widely scattered and the gloom was so all enveloping that it brought a chill to Alicia's heart.
They were a mile and a half from the thick tangle of underbrush where the guard lay with his body half in shadow and the leaves about him turning dark again when they heard the rustling. It was faint at first, but it came swiftly nearer and for an instant Teleman thought that more para-guards were descending to the forest floor through the rustling canopy of leaves and interlocking branches directly ahead of them.
He stopped advancing abruptly and gripped Alicia's arm, drawing her quickly into the deep shadows which clustered about the base of a moss-grown oak so huge that its bole had the girth of a dozen slenderer trees fused by some strange freak of lightning into a massive whole, its charred surface completely hidden by the bright emerald moss, and circular patches of darker coloration where the moss had shriveled and died.
The rustling had taken on a strange and disturbing loudness, hard to associate with just the swaying of the foliage about the descending boots of para-guards, and the dry leaf crackle of their tread on the forest floor. It was accompanied by clickings and a dull, droning sound, and suddenly, as Teleman stared with a coldness creeping up his spine, light flashed between the trees and a deafening blast echoed and reverberated through the forest, shaking the ground and filling the aisles of the forest with a swirling shower of leaves.
Teleman was hurled back against the oak and Alicia was thrown with such violence to the ground that she lay for an instant motionless, too stunned to cry out or free herself from the tangle of charred creepers and smoke-blackened leaves which had descended upon her face.
Teleman dropped to his knees and dragged himself toward her, his temples pounding, a dull ache in his back. He cleared away the clinging vines with a single sweep of his arm and lifted her up, holding her tightly and gently massaging her cheeks with the back of his hand.
Her eyes opened and she stared up at him, her eyes wide with fright.
"Hurt bad?" he whispered, afraid of what her answer might be and wishing that he did not have to ask the question at all.
She shook her head. "No, I'm all right. Help me to get up. What was it? Another bomb? For a moment I thought—"