Nuala screamed, "Atholiners! Quick—jump for it!"
She was at his side, clutching at his hands. "Those little pellets—they'll eat everything they hit. Quick! By Grock ... be quick!"
Travis had a confused glimpse of her flashing eyes, of a gaping hole rapidly spreading along the smooth, metallic side of the ship. His legs tensed, and he was jumping. Ahead of him the green light was bathing the horsemen in its verdant flame. A man screamed. The scream gurgled, died abruptly.
He landed and rolled. He came to his feet, stil-gun in hand. The horsemen were just particles of lazily floating dust. Travis turned to his ship, saw it eaten before his eyes, as though an invisible beast were champing on it, taking huge mouthfuls.
Then the ship was gone, and he and Nuala stood alone on the grassy knoll.
"Some surprise party," he said, and laughed harshly. "We have one gun—which doesn't mean a thing, if Rudra is anything like you think he is."
"Rudra? Yes, we must think of him. He may or may not know we are here." She looked about at the windswept knoll, at the gnarled pine trees standing straight and tall, bleak and stern. She glanced away, toward a tier of flattish rocks. "Sometimes his horsemen take care of—intruders. Sometimes he lets visitors—wander. Never has he let them escape him for very long."
Something of the menace of the man beat at Travis, as though a cold wind moaned above the pines and blew past his ear with mocking words. Rudra will get you if you don't watch out. Rudra has never let a visitor escape him for very long.
He put his hands on his stil-gun and stroked its rounded grip. "We can't just stay here. We'd starve to death in these wilds." His hand indicated the windbent oaks below, the gaunt pines, the rolling grasslands that lifted toward distant hills.
Nuala brooded at him. Her red mouth quirked, almost angrily. She snapped, "I've been thinking! We still can surprise him if we could get into Kovokod, the main city."