And once more Dalgard answered his unspoken question.
"We seek another door into the city, one long known to these
tribesmen."
Raf would gladly have run, but he could not move faster than his
guides, and while their pace seemed deliberate, they did not pause to
rest. The whole city, he decided, must be honeycombed with these
drains. After traversing a fourth tunnel, they climbed out of the
flood onto a dry passage, which wormed along, almost turning on itself
at times.
Side passages ran out from this corridor like rootlets from a parent
root, and small parties of mermen broke from the regiment to follow
certain ones, leaving without orders or farewells. At the fifth of
these Dalgard touched Raf's arm and drew him aside.
"This is our way." Tensely the scout waited. If the stranger refused,
then the one plan the scout had formed during the past half-hour would
fail. He still held to the hope that Raf, with what Raf carried, could
succeed in the only project which would mean, perhaps not his safety
nor the safety of the tribe he now marched among, but the eventual
safety of Astra itself, the safety of all the harmless people of the
sea, the little creatures of the grass and the sky, of his own land at
Homeport.
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