“Useful to the extent of daring the thorns?”
“Maybe.” And Arskane fell to cross questioning him as to how much of his equipment the Beast Things had destroyed.
“Everything of value to me!” Fors’ old feeling of helpless inadequacy closed in upon him. “They ripped the Star pouch to shreds and burned my notes and may—”
“There are the arrowheads,” persisted Arskane. “Those were not burned.”
Since he seemed to mean it when he urged such an expedition Fors began to believe that the southerner had some purpose of his own in mind. He himself saw no reason to return to the lizard valley. And he was still protesting within him when they came to the top of the rise down which Arskane had gone to the rescue. Lura had refused to accompany them any farther than the edge of the Blow-Up and they had left her there pacing back and forth, her flattened ears and moving tail emphatic arguments against such foolishness.
They stood looking down at a wild scene which almost turned Fors’ stomach. He gulped and balled his puffed fingers into fists, so that the pain took his attention. The lizards might live upon the grass of the terraces but it appeared that they were also meat eaters and they were now making sure of the supply chance had brought them.
Two of the Beast Things were already but skeletons and the pack of the valley’s inhabitants were fast at work on the others, a line of laden porters tramping up to the cave entrances while their fellows below swung tiny knives with the same skill with which the martyrs had earlier wielded their sickles.
“Look there—to the left of that rock—” Although Arkane’s touch made pain shoot along the length of his arm Fors obediently looked.
There was a pile of stuff there. Fors identified the remnants of his leggings and a belt such as was worn by the Beast Things. But a glint of color just beyond the haphazard pile of loot was more interesting. It stood in a tiny hollow of the wall—three blue rods—just about a finger high—familiar-Fors’ puzzlement vanished. Those rods—they were the little figures he had brought from the museum in the Star pouch. Now they were set up—and before the feet of each was a pile of offerings!
They were gods. And with a sudden shock of illumination he knew why the lizard folk did them honor.