By the lengthening shadow he guessed that it was far along in the afternoon when the third and last party of Beast Things came into camp. And with them was the leader.
He was no taller than other members of his tribe, but a certain arrogant confidence in his bearing and stride made him seem to overtop the others. His hairless head was narrow with the same slit nose and protruding fanged jaws, but the brain case was domed, larger by half again over any of the rest. His eyes held a cunning intelligence and there was a subtle difference in the way he looked over his world—a difference which Fors did not miss. This Beast Thing was no true man—no, but neither was he as brutish as the pack he led. One could almost believe that here lay the power which had brought the foul band out to range the open lands.
Now he came to stand between the two captives. Fors turned away from the rat cages to meet those queer eyes firmly.
But the mountaineer could read nothing understandable in their depths and the protruding jaws expressed no emotion which might be deduced by a human. The leader of the Beast Things might have been wildly elated, annoyed, or merely curious, as he stared at first one and then the other of the staked-out prisoners. But curiosity must have directed his next move for he dropped down crosslegged between them and mouthed the first real words Fors had ever heard issue from one of the city-bred monsters.
“You-where?” he demanded that of the Plainsman who could not or would not answer.
When he did not reply the Beast Leader leaned over and, with a deliberation which was as cruel as the blow, slapped the captive with lip-bursting force across the mouth. It then swung to Fors and repeated his question.
“From the south—” Fors croaked.
“South,” the leader repeated, distorting the word oddly. “What in south?”
“Men—many, many men. Ten tens of tens—”
But that sum was either beyond the calculations of the creature beside him, or the Beast Thing did not believe in its truth, for it cackled with a ghastly travesty of laughter and, reaching out, brought a fist down across his wounded arm. Fors fainted, dropping into blackness with a sick swoop.