“I can only guess. That drum was fashioned to summon across the desert country. Here it may be farther from us than it sounds.”
Twice more that day they heard the summons rumble across the distant hills. It would continue to sound at intervals, Arskane said, until all the roving scouts returned. That night the two sheltered in a grove of trees, but they did not light a fire. And before daylight they were on the trail once more.
Fors had not lost his sense of direction but this was new country, unknown to him from any account of the Star Men. The trip across the Blow-Up land had taken them so far off the territory on any map he had ever seen ±hat he was entirely lost. He began to wonder privately if he could have returned to the Eyrie as he had so blithely planned, or made that trip without retracing his way through the city. This land was wide and the known trails very, very few.
On the third day they came to the river, the same one, Fors believed, he had crossed before. It was swollen with rain and they spent the better part of the day making a raft on which to cross. The current tore them off their course for several miles before they could make the leap ashore on the opposite side.
At sunset they heard the drum again and this time the throbbing was close to thunder. Arskane seemed to relax, he had had his proof that they were heading in the right direction. But as he listened to the continued roll, his hand went to the hilt of his knife.
“Danger!” He was reading the words out of the beat. “Danger — death — walks — danger — death — in — the — night—”
“It says that?”
He nodded. “The drum talk. But never before have I heard it speak those words. I tell you, brother, this is no common danger which sets our drums to such warnings. Listen!”
Arskane’s upheld hand was not neded for Fors had caught the other sound before his companion had spoken. That light tap-tap was an answer, it was less carrying that the clan signal, but it was clear enough.
And again Arskane read the message: “Uran here-coming—That is Uran of the Swift Arm, the leader of our scouts. He ventured west as I came north at the faring forth. And—”