Then Nessa's querulous bleat was in her ears; her loins quivered with the fall-feeling; the sunlight fled, and darkness engulfed all. Darkness and great, dizzying circles of pain that drove the breath from her body. She tried to cry out. The cry died in her throat. Fiery needles scored her arm, and breath deserted her. Dull silence....
CHAPTER V
Wrath and Uprising
It was a strange heaven and hell in which she stirred feebly. Heaven because she rested on a soft, warm couch of fur; hell because a horde of flaming pain-imps wrenched and tugged and twisted at her sword-arm. Heaven because a thick, earthy fragrance was about her; hell because dinning in her ears was a babble of coarse and indistinguishable chatter.
Meg opened her eyes—then closed them, shuddering violently—knowing, now, that this was neither heaven nor hell, but life. Life futile and unwanted.
She was lying at the bottom of the Wild One trap, her right arm bent crookedly beneath her, her body aching with a hundred bruises. But alive. Alive because the warm, furry bed on which she lay was the body of Nessa, cruelly pierced and broken by the sharp-pointed sticks from which the doe's bulk had saved Meg.
Meg's eyes filled with waters of sorrow and pain. Sweet Nessa, gallant Nessa, was gone. And now—
And now above her, squat silhouettes against the blue sky, were the Japcans from whom she had almost escaped. Even now one of their number was being lowered into the pit; was reaching for her warily, one hand clutching a ray-stick. Meg groped, with her good left hand, for the sword she had dropped, but the yellow dwarf's finger tightened, green radiation expunged all thought from her brain. As in a dream she felt herself being lifted and borne, surrounded by fat figures whose voices were raised in angry condemnation.
Then she was again within the confines of the camp and Grensu was before her, his tiny, slant eyes aflame with bitterness.