Whatever these vandals were doing they were working in stealth and fear and Dirrul realized their aim must be illegal. He fought to break free of his bonds so that he might warn the loyal Vininese garrison. The two guards shoved him back roughly. One of them grabbed Dirrul's tunic in a claw grip and the cloth tore open, revealing Sorgel's identification disk.
Both guards bent over him, fingering the disk, talking soundlessly with their facile fingers. Suddenly they jerked the disk off, snapping the chain. At the same moment a rolling explosion from within the wall shook the earth.
Dirrul heard a great noise and a terrifying fear filled his mind. It was a steady undiminishing fear that gripped every muscle of his body. His throat was ice-cold. His heart pounded and gasped for breath. Every nerve-end in his body quivered and his imagination was swamped with a flood of shattering ephemeral horrors.
Nothing could shake off the terror. Dirrul's skill with reason and logic failed him. It was impossible to organize his thinking to combat the sensory shock waves disrupting his thoughts. Logical patterns made no sense. The very process of trying to build meaning into them—the process of thinking itself—left him weak and trembling.
The guards watched his terror for a moment, watched while he clung close to the ground, trying to dig his fingers into it. Then one of them laughed—a piercing discordant shriek, shrilling louder than the din behind the wall. The second man, snarling viciously, kicked Dirrul in the ribs.
For Dirrul the blaze of pain was almost a relief. As his body responded to it on a level of instinct, the chattering terror in his mind diminished. A second blow on the head sent him reeling close to the brink of unconsciousness. His perceptive reactions went slightly out of focus.
In a wavering mist he saw the black figures emerge from the gate, dragging a dozen or more captives with them. A second explosion rocked the earth and flames leaped high behind the yellow wall. In the glare Dirrul recognized Glenna, struggling frantically in the arms of her masked captor.
Dirrul's memory after that was a vague patchwork of unrelated episodes. He saw huge saddled reptilian bipeds dragged out of the concealing brush. The captives were bound in the saddles and the black-robed figures mounted behind them. Later two of the men pulled Dirrul up and tied him across a saddle too.
At a sickening gallop the caravan moved away from the green highway, striking out over the purple plain. For a while Dirrul lost rational control of sensation. He felt but without understanding. His brain pulsed in a continuous terror that seemed to resolve itself into sound—a continuous high-pitched scream coming from within his own mind. His body throbbed with pain and nausea wrenched emptily at the muscles of his stomach. But he could not sort out the feelings, classify them or adjust to them.
At the edge of the plain the caravan turned up a steep rocky trail which led into the ragged range of mountains banked behind the Vininese city. They came to a stop in a stony ravine, concealed beneath a tangle of gigantic purple-leafed vines.