I took the arrows from his quiver, and covered Laq with branches and dead leaves, for I had no strength to bury him. Returning to the glade, we managed to find the three arrows I had lost in the fight; then we turned our faces eastward once more.
We crossed the Crimson Brook and the Blue, and then at last we began to talk with our signs and our halting phrases.
"What is the tube?" I asked Dy-lee. "How did it drive off Halfspoor?"
As well as he could, he showed me. It was a whistle, of a sort, and though we men could not hear its note, he explained that the animals could. A low sound, made by barely breathing into it, brought the dogwolves barking happily to our sides; but a stronger puff caused them to howl dolefully. I had seen what a really powerful blast on it could do to even a knifetooth bear.
"And the guardians have these whistles?" I asked him, and he answered, Yes, they did, though Laq must have lost his. That was why they needed no weapons when they strode the Fearful Forest. A man would not have to slay a carnivore when he could chase it away in fright, with its ears splitting.
And yet, all I sensed when Dy-lee blew the thing was a tingling of the eardrums. Strange and new! That an animal could hear a sound which a man could not!
But still I thought a bow and a few good arrows were not to be sneered at, and resolved again to teach my friends their use, in preparation for the time, even though it be hundreds of years hence, when all the whistles shall be lost.
I pictured Halfspoor in my mind, and how he had stood off from Dy-lee and swung blows at the air when the whistle blew. I saw him run again, cuffing his own ears to beat away the tearing, bone-rending sound of the to-me-silent tube. What a host of miracles I had to tell to Lora!
We crossed the Gray Brook and came to Sunset Fields, and the sun was less than an hour from its setting in the west. There was a figure running toward us, now in the waning sunlight, now in the dappling shade of the tree ferns. I cried out joyfully, for it was my Lora.
She neared us, and seeing Dy-lee and the dogwolves, cried out with horror. "Ahmusk! Fly, or they will slay you!"