The lizards screamed and hissed above them. "They're coming again," the girl managed to gasp.
Jen cried out. Trevor hesitated. He tried again for the rocks, and Jen moaned as a swift scaly head snapped at her neck.
So that's it, Trevor thought furiously. I'm not to be hurt, but they can drive me through Jen.
And they could, too. He would never get Jen to the concealment of the rocks alive, with those two wide-winged shadows tearing at her. He had to go the way they wanted or they would leave her as they had left Hugh.
"All right!" Trevor yelled savagely at the circling demons. "Let her alone! I'll go where you want."
He turned, still carrying Jen, plodding after the other slaves who were being herded down the canyon.
All that day the black hawks drove the humans down the watercourse, around the shoulder of basalt and out onto the naked sun-seared lava bed. Some of them dropped and lay where they were, and no effort of the hawks could move them on again. Much of the time Trevor carried Jen. Part of the time he dragged her. For long vague periods he had no idea what he did.
He was in a daze in which only his hatred still was vivid, when he felt Jen pulled away from him. He struggled, and was held—and he looked up to see a ring of mounted men around him. Korins on their crested beasts, the sun-stones glittering in their brows.