Huge rock cliffs loomed up before them, towering like a giant's twisted play-things where he might have dropped them. Spires and points of sandstone, ridges of granite and volcanic tuffs, rimrock and crumbled talus; they made fantastic colors where the sun caught them. And running straight between the boulders was a crimson road, smooth as placid water.
Grim cried, "Go on ahead. I'll hold them off. If that Kohonnes of yours has any power at all—tell him this is the time to use it!"
Grim brought his foot against the bay's rump, sent it racing terrified onto the scarlet road. Clinging to the reins, Tlokine had no time to cry her refusal to leave Grim. The bay took her away fast, leaving Grim alone.
Randolph shouted, "I have you now, Thorssen. Don't hope for a blast of my disintegrator, either. You're going back to that altar. Eight days I said—and eight days it still is!"
Grim kicked his feet free of the stirrups and leaped to the rock. Putting his hands flat on the stone, he swung himself to the first ledge, then to the second. With booted toes and clinging fingers, he pulled himself straight up the face of the cliff.
Randolph howled; threw himself like a madman at the cliff. He came after the Viking, rasping spaceoaths beneath his breath. Grim caught a blurred glimpse of Althaya spurring her roan along the scarlet roadway, closing the distance between Tlokine and herself.
Rock shattered above him. Grim stared at a boulder coming loose under the blast of a disintegrator pellet; came bouncing downward. Grim flattened himself, hearing Black Randolph cry, "It'll knock you down to my level, Thorssen."
The boulder struck on a lip of stone and went bounding beyond him. Grim drew a breath and climbed faster. He came to a flat section that topped the surrounding bluffs. He scrambled onto it as a blast from Randolph's disintegrator caught the rocklip that he was on and sent it flying.
He lay dazed, knowing the pirate was climbing after him, but unable to do anything about it. He opened his mouth and gulped in air, hearing a steady roaring in his ears. He knelt, stood up; and still the roaring swelled and grew. He finally recognized it as a waterfall.
Black Randolph swung over the edge of the cliff and came charging across its flat top, head down. His fists were balled into great clubs. Grim shook his head, got to a knee and then to both feet, waiting.