The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson Page B

and cried out in wooden voices. Shouts lifted from the glades at his back.
    ‘They heard,’ Auri warned. ‘Swiftly!’
    Over the trail they fled. Trees crawled past with horrible slowness. And the light strengthened.
    When they emerged on the meadow, it lay aglitter with dew under a sky flushed rose. The hillock loomed before them. Breath
     raw in his lungs, knifed by his spleen, Lockridge made for the hollow tree where Storm had hidden the entrance control.
    He fumbled within. Auri screamed. Lockridge drew forth the metal tube and looked about. A score of warriors were at the edge
     of the clearing.
    They roared when they saw him and bounded forward. Lockridge staggered with Auri, up the knoll, above a second-growth tangle
     into plain view. An arrow went
whoooo
past his ear.
    ‘No, you dolt!’ called the Yutho leader. ‘The god said to take him alive!’
    Lockridge twisted studs on the tube. A man broke through the young trees at the foot of the mound, poised, and waved his fellows
     on. Lockridge saw with unnatural sharpness: braided hair, leather kilt, muscular torso and the long tomahawk – Brann must
     have nerved this gang up to face almost anything.
    The tube glowed and trembled in his grasp. Other Yuthoaz joined the first and plowed through grass and briars, on to do battle.
     Lockridge threw Withucar’s as. The lead man dodged and barked laughter. His followers rioted behind him.
    The earth moved.
    Auri waited, went to her knees, and clutched Lockridge’s waist. The Yuthoaz stopped cold. After an instant, they scampered
     with yells into the thicket below. There they halted. Glimpsewise through leaves, Lockridge saw them in their confusion. He
     heard their captain bay, ‘The god swore we couldn’t be hurt by any magic! Come on, you sons of rabbits!’
    The downramp shone white. The Yuthoaz advanced again. Auri couldn’t be left here. Lockridge seized the girl’s arm and flung
     her into the entrance.
    The leader was almost upon him. He tumbled through thehole, fell flat, and twisted the controls. The hovering plug of earth moved down, blotted out the sky, hissed into place.
    Silence closed like fingers.
    Auri broke it in a shriek that rose swiftly toward hysteria. Lockridge collected himself and slapped her. She sat where she
     was, dumbstricken, staring at him with eyes from which humanity was gone.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Lockridge said. And he was as he watched the red blotch appear on her cheek. ‘But you must not run wild. We are
     safe now.’
    ‘W-w-w-w —’ She fought for breath. Her gaze dashed back and forth around the icily lit walls that enclosed her; she groveled
     on the floor and whimpered, ‘We are in the House of the Old Dead.’
    Lockridge shook her and snapped, ‘There is nothing to fear. They have no power against me. Believe!’
    He had not expected will to mount so fast in her. She drank several sobs, her body stiffened and shaking, but after a minute
     of regarding him she said, ‘I believe you, Lynx,’ and the craziness departed.
    That gave him back his own strength, together with a bleak alertness. ‘I did not mean for you to come here,’ he said, ‘but
     we had no choice if you were not to be caught. Now you will see strange things. Do not let them frighten you.’ A satiric part
     recalled how Storm had given him much the same advice. Had he indeed come to accept this eldritch world of passage between
     the ages so soon? His home century seemed a half-forgotten dream.
    But that was doubtless because of present urgency. ‘We have to move,’ he said. ‘The Yuthoaz cannot follow us in here, but
     they will tell their master, and he can. Or we may meet – well, never mind.’ If they, unarmed, encountered Rangers in the
     corridor, that was the end of the affair. ‘This way.’
    She followed him mutely, down to the foreroom. The auroral curtain in the gate drew a gasp from her, and she held his hand
     with a child’s tightness. He rummaged through the locker but found