"What's that—over there—see, beyond the grove?"
There seemed to be furtive figures lurking among the palms.
"Those cannot be Baar's men, Miela—there are too many. What can it—"
We had reached a little doorway under the front terrace. There was no time to investigate these advancing figures. Baar and his men might already be inside the castle.
I slid through the doorway, every muscle tense. Miela had brought the knife from Baar's shack, and with it clenched in her hand was close beside me. I wanted to make her stay outside, where she could fly away if danger threatened, but she pleaded to follow me, and I let her come. I needed her, since I had no idea of the interior arrangements of the building.
We passed along a dim hallway and up a narrow flight of stone steps. Not a sound came to us; the interior of the castle was silent as a tomb. At the top of the steps we came almost directly into the inner patio of the building. Across a bed of tall flowers, nodding gently in a little morning breeze that swept down from above, I saw the head and shoulders of a man standing in the center of the courtyard; the lower part of his body was hidden by the flowers. I tried to duck out of sight, but he had seen me.
He was not over forty feet away. I stepped back, believing I could reach him in a single leap; but Miela held me.
"Not you, Alan. He would cry out. The noise would bring others." She raised her knife, and her eyes blazed into mine. "Never have I thought to kill a human. But now I—a woman—must kill. Stand quiet, Alan."
She flew swiftly up and poised over the man. He had started toward us. Evidently he was, so far, as anxious for silence as we, for he made no sound. I saw now he was one of those who had come to Baar's shack. His naked shoulders, his thick neck, and bullet head were all that showed above the flower stems as he plowed his way through them directly toward me; but the hand he swung aloft to aid his progress held a knife.
He glanced up at Miela, poised in the air above him, and saw the weapon in her hand. At this new enemy he stopped, confused.