Vault of the Ages by Poul Anderson

headdrooping weariness and they themselves felt aching bones and sandy eyelids. But need drove them, a need of a hiding place from the ranging Lann and a need, still greater and more bitter, to know what had happened to their people.
    Carl threw one last glance behind him. The Dales rolled green and still and beautiful away to the east, and the quiet evening air was full of sunset and the sleepy twitter of birds. No other human was in sight. Oh, it was a broad and fair land, and he knew what sort of hunger was in the Lann for such a home. But by all the gods, he thought with an anger dulled by his tiredness, it was the Dalesmen’s home first!
    The road had narrowed to a single track, and once under the trees it became a grassy lane where the hoofs were muffled and rabbits fled startled before the riders. They passed a charcoal burner’s lonely hut, abandoned now in the face of the Lann. “That’s the last dwelling,” said Tom, his voice flat and empty. “After this, there’s only the wilderness.”
    A little way beyond, the trail petered out altogether and there was nothing. But here another pathway ran into the first, and Carl bent low over it, straining his eyes in the twilight.
    “Look!” he cried. “Look here—spoor of travelers!”
    They saw it then: fresh wheel tracks and hoof prints, broken twigs, and a trampled way plunging into the forest. Owl let out a faint yip. “It may be our own folks!” he chattered. “They could’ve come by the road past Harry’s instead of the one we took—it’d lead them here—Come on, fellows! Come
on!”
    The dusk rose between the high trunks like mist, and, winding around the trees, it was hard to follow even the plain wagon trail over the hilly ground. Carl’s pony gasped under him, and he patted the bowed neck. “Easy, old man, easy,” he whispered. “It can’t be far now. A loaded wagon can’t travel fast through this stuff.”
    “Look! Up ahead!” Tom pointed a shadowy arm through the deepening twilight. A ruddy spark danced waveringly beyond a tinkle of stream. “A campfire!”
    Too tired to think whether those might be Lann who had made it, the boys forded the brook and scrambled with their mounts up the farther bank. Yes, yes … a small fire, picking out the shapes of two wagons and tethered animals… a man leaning on his spear…
    “Who’s that?” The voice rolled forth, weary and shaken. “Halt or we shoot!”
    “Father!” yelled Owl joyfully. He sprang from his horse and ran toward the sentry. Tom plunged after him, and Carl was not far behind. When the Chief’s son arrived, John the farmer was embracing his boys and crying praises to all the gods, while their mother wept her joy. In the ruins of their world, they still had each other!
    The dim red flicker of light picked out other faces, an old man, his son with wife and baby, and a young woman. They must have joined forces as they escaped. There were four brawny oxen to pull the wagons, a string of horses, and a couple of dogs, all resting under the trees. The wagons were piled high with family goods, and Carl frowned even as his hand was being shaken. What was the use of dragging all that through heartbreaking miles of forest when it slowed travel and invited raiders?
    Well. … He remembered what his father had once said: “People are people, you can’t change them much and a Chief has to take them as they are. Never forget that it’s their will which keeps him Chief.”
    He wondered with a sick fear what had happened to his father in these last long days. Were the Lann already at Dalestown?
    Carl eased himself to the cool, damp earth, looked into the sputtering flames, and listened drowsily to John’s account of what had come to pass. Even if the story was grim, it was good to sprawl again and rest.
    Scouts had brought word the very day the boys had left John’s homestead, that the Lann vanguard was emerging from the woods near by and gathering itself in the fields. The war-word had