“Send in your cat, why don’t you—animal man!” Bister grinned, his teeth showing in the light almost as sharp and pointed as Surra’s. “I’ll mark her—just as I’ll gut you—Terran!”
Storm backed, raised his hand, and jammed the torch into a small crevice of the rock. He was a fool, he supposed, to fight Bister. But something within him compelled him to front the other—whoever or whatever he might be—with only bare steel between them. It was the old, old war of the barbarian fighting man who was willing to back his cause with the power of his own body.
“Surra—” Storm motioned to the cat. She remained where she was at the top of the down trail, her eyes bright, watching the men facing each other in the path of light. And she would not move unless he so ordered.
Storm’s knife was again in his hand. For a moment the weariness of his body was forgotten, his world had narrowed to those two bared blades. He heard and did not mark a cry from uptrail as the men there caught sight of the scene on the ledge.
But if the Terran did not mark that exclamation Bister did. And the big man rushed, wishing to make a beginning and an end all in one attack before the others could move to Storm’s assistance.
Storm dodged and knew a small bite of dismay at the slowness of his movement. But, as it had in the Nitra camp, his purpose possessed him, dampening out physical weakness. Only now his body did not obey with the speed and perfection he needed for safety.
Bister was conscious of that, and knew that Storm was not now the same man he had faced between the Port and the Crossing. He struck quickly, with expert precision.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
B
lade rang on blade as Storm met that attack. But Bister was boring in, confidence behind each move as he forced the Terran to retreat. Storm tried to weave a pattern of small feints and withdrawals that would bring him around so that full glare of the torch beam would strike in the other’s face. Bister was well aware of that danger and he did not advance as Storm gave way.
He could end this in a moment, the Terran knew, by one summons to Surra. But he must face Bister out by himself—standing on his own two feet, steel against steel—or else he could never command the team again.
Time had no meaning as their boots shuffled warily on the rock ledge. After his first leap of attack was countered, Bister, too, became careful, willing to wear down the slighter Terran. Storm felt a small wet trickle under the blanket on his shoulder and knew that his wound must have reopened under that protecting plaster of leaves. That trickle would drain his strength even more, put weights on his feet, just when he needed all the agility he could command.
It was he who was being forced into the path of the light, and once Bister had him blinded in the full glare of that beam he would be pinned helplessly. His thoughts raced, assembling all he knew of the apers. They had been given bodies to resemble his own, training that would make them react as closely as possible to the human. Yet still inside they must remain truly Xik, no matter how conditioned their cover or they would be of no use to their superiors. And the Xik—what set of circumstances would throw an Xik fighter off guard, rattle him badly? What would be his worst fears, his ultimate terror? Why had there always been war to the end between them and the human species?
Storm shuffled, danced, evaded by a finger’s small breadth a wily rush that would have pushed him into the danger zone. Why did the Xik fear and hate the Terrans? What was the deep-set base of that fear and could he play upon it now?
His thoughts were cut by the clash of steel meeting steel as the hilt of his own weapon was driven back almost to his breast and the jar of that blow numbed his arm for an instant. All the sixth sense that Storm drew upon when he worked with the team was alert behind the defenses of his well-trained body.
Then—as if that flash of knowledge came from some source outside his own mind—Storm knew, knew the weakness of the Xik, because in a manner it was his own weakness by racial inheritance, a weakness peculiar in turn to the Dineh also, a weakness that could also be a kind of strength, so that men clung to it for the security they desired.
“You stand alone—” He spoke those words in Galactic, his tone level. “Your kind have blown themselves up back there, Bister. There is no ship waiting to take you from Arzor. Alone—alone—one among the many who hate you. Never shall you see your home world again! It is lost among the nameless stars.”
He knew in that same burst of understanding why the Xik had destroyed Terra—they had hoped to kill the heart of the Confederacy with that one bold stroke. But because the races bred on Terra differed, because her colonies were already mutating from their original breed, that scheme had failed.
“Alone!” He flung that single word with an upthrust of his Singer voice, trying to put into it the power he had felt when facing the Nitra wizard. Bister was alone, and so was Storm. But in this moment the agony of the old loss was dulled for the Terran. He could use that taunt as a weapon, and it carried no backlash to tear him in return.
“Alone!” He could see Bister’s eyes, dark, wide, and he saw, too, that small flame of desperation deep in them. Beneath his aper disguise the Xik was stirring. Storm must bring that alien up to the surface, set the buried self to struggling against the disciplined outer shell.
“No one to back you here, Bister. No cell brothers, no battle mates. One Xik left alone on Arzor to be hunted down—”
All the scraps of briefing the Terran had heard concerning the invaders and their customs came flaming into his mind, clear, distinct, lying ready to his use, as his feet circled in the motions of the duel.
“Who will cover your back, Bister? Who will raise the name shout for you? None of your brothers shall know where you died or mark your circle on the Hundred Tablets in the Inner Tower of your clan city. Bister shall die and it shall be as if he never lived. Nor will he have a name son to take up his Four Rights after him—”
Coll Bister’s mouth hung open a little and there was the glisten of moisture on his forehead, shiny on his cheeks and jaw. That alien spark in his eyes grew stronger.
“Bister shall die and that is all. No awakening for him by the Naming of Names—”
“Yaaaaah!”
The aper charged. But Storm had been warned by a momentary tenseness in his enemy’s body. He swerved with much of his old spontaneous grace. The other’s blade caught in the silver necklace on the Terran’s breast, scored stingingly across his chest. And the force of Bister’s body striking his drove Storm back to the very edge of the ledge.
For fear of being forced over the drop Storm grappled, knowing his danger. The aper was unwounded, strong enough to crush the Terran’s resistance. Storm could only use all the tricks of Commando fighting that he knew. One of them brought him out of that grip and reeling back to safety under the undercut.
Bister gave a shrill whine. His eyes were nonhuman now, filled only with the fear and loss Storm had hammered into his alien brain. Every belief that had bolstered his kind when they went into battle had been ripped to tatters by an enemy he hated above all others. He lived only for one thing now—to kill—not caring if his own death was the price he must pay for success.
And because he had slipped over the edge of sanity he was more dangerous and yet easier to handle. Storm backed and Bister followed, his crooked fingers grasping at the air before him.
Storm raised his own hand, flat, ready. Then he pivoted and what he had worked for happened. Bister blundered into the direct beam of the torch. For a moment his crazed eyes were blinded and Storm’s blow landed, clean and unhurried, as he might have delivered it on the drill field.
The aper gave a light cough that was half grunt and collapsed slowly forward, going to his knees, and then on to his face, to lie un-moving. Storm reeled back until his good shoulder met rock and he was supported by it. He watched Surra creep, her belly fur brushing the ledge, to sniff at Bister. She snarled and would have raised a paw with claws ready to rake, but the Terran hissed an order at her.
r /> Brad Quade crossed the path of the light, knelt beside the aper. He turned the man over, felt for a heartbeat beneath the torn shirt.
“He is not dead.” Storm’s voice was thin and faraway even in his own ears. “And he is truly Xik—”
He saw Quade rise quickly, come toward him. Tired as he was, the Terran could not bear to have the other touch him. He drew away from the wall, to avoid Quade’s outstretched hand. But this time his will did not command his body and he crumpled, one hand falling across Bister’s inert body as he went down.
The picture had been part of Storm’s dreams. Yet now that he opened his eyes and lay without strength to move on the narrow bed, it was still there, covering one wall with a bold sweep of colors he knew and loved. There were the squared mesa of the southwestern desert on his own world, above that the symmetrical rounded cloud domes first developed by Dineh painters when they worked with sand as their only material. And there was a wind blowing about that mesa. The Terran could almost feel it as he saw the hair of the painted riders whipped about their faces, the manes of their spotted ponies pulled across their eyes. The mural covered the wall beside his bed and Storm slept with his head turned toward it so that those riders in the wind were the first thing he saw when he had strength enough to raise his heavy eyelids. The artist who had created that scene had ridden in the desert winds of home, been torn by their force, had known well the scent of wool and sage, of twisted pine, and the dull, sun-heated sand. To watch that painting was like waking under the pine tree in the cavern of the gardens, and yet this was more closely Storm’s than the tree, the grass, the flowering things of his lost earth. Because this was a thing of beauty brought to life by one of his own blood. Only an artist of the Dineh could have pictured this—
The painted wall was far more real to him just then than those who came to tend his body. For Storm, the medic from the port and the silent, dark-faced woman who came and went were both shadows without substance. Nor was he able to emerge from his picture-world to answer Kelson’s questions when the Peace Officer had appeared beside his bed—the Arzoran was far less distinct to Storm than the nearest spotted pony. He did not know where he was, nor did he care. He was content to share his waking hours and his longer periods of dreaming with the riders on the wall.
But at last those periods of wakefulness grew longer. The dark woman insisted upon piling pillows to bolster his shoulders, lifting him so that he could not watch the wall in comfort. And he realized that she spoke to him shortly, even sharply, in the Dineh tongue, as one might who was impatient with a child proving stubborn. Storm tried to cling to his languid dreams—only to have them torn from him abruptly when Logan limped in. The mask of bruises had faded from the other’s face, so that Storm traced there something more than just the signature of Dineh blood, a teasing resemblance to a memory he could not quite recall.
“You like it?” The younger Quade looked beyond Storm to the mural, that section of Terran desert, untamed, but captured for all time on an Arzoran wall.
“It is home—” Storm answered truthfully and knew how revealing both words and tone were.
“That is what my father thinks—”
Brad Quade! Storm’s right hand moved across the blanket that covered him, its thin brownness crossing one familiar stripe to the next. His covering was Na-Ta-Hay’s legacy, or if not, one enough like it to be its twin. Na-Ta-Hay and the oath he had demanded of Storm—and Brad Quade’s death lay at the core of that oath.
The Terran lay hoping for the familiar spur of anger to toughen his resolution. But it did not come. It was as if he could feel only one thing now—longing for that pictured land. Yet even if there was no anger to back it, the oath still rested on him and he must do what he had come to Arzor—
Storm had half-forgotten Logan, but now the younger man rose from the chair he had chosen and moved forward to the mural, his eyes on those wind-battered riders. There was a shade of wistfulness in his face, and none could ever doubt his kinship with the men pictured there.
“What was it like?” he asked abruptly. “How did it make a man feel to ride so across that country?” Then he was conscious of the hurt that memory might deal, and a darker flood crept up his clean jawline. He turned his head to the bed, his eyes troubled.
“I left that life,” Storm picked his words with care, “when I was a child. Twice I returned—it was never the same. But it stays, deep in one’s mind it continues to live. The one who painted that—for him it lived. Even here, far across the star lanes, it lived!”
“For her—” Logan corrected softly.
Storm sat up, away from his bolstering pillows. He could not know how stone-hard his face had become. He did not have a chance to voice his question.
Another stood in the doorway, the big man with the compelling blue eyes, the man Storm had come to find and yet did not want to meet. Brad Quade walked to the foot of the bed and looked down at the Terran measuringly. And Storm knew that this was to be the last meeting of all, that in spite of his queer inner reluctance, he must force the issue and be ready to face the consequences.
With some of his old speed of action the Terran’s hand went out, caught at the knife in Logan’s belt, and jerked it free, resting the blade across his knee, its point significantly toward Brad Quade.
Those blue eyes did not change. The settler might have been expecting that very move. Or else he did not understand what it implied. But that Storm did not believe.
He was right! Quade knew—accepted the challenge—or at least recognized the reason for it, for the other was speaking:
“If there is steel between us, boy, why did you bring me out of the Nitra camp?”
“A life for a life until our last accounting. You kept the blade out of my back at the Crossing. A warrior of the Dineh pays his debts. I come from Na-Ta-Hay. Upon Na-Ta-Hay and upon his family you have set the dishonor of blood spilled—and other shame—”
Brad Quade did not move, except to step closer to the foot of the bed. When Logan stirred, he signaled with his hand in an imperative order that kept his son where he was.
“There is and was no blood spilled between the family of Na-Ta-Hay and me,” he replied deliberately. “And certainly no shame!”
Storm was chilled. He had never believed that Quade would deny his guilt when they at last faced each other. From his first sight of the settler he had granted him the virtue of honesty.
“What of Nahani?” he asked coldly.
“Nahani!” Quade was startled. He leaned forward, his big brown hands grasping the footrail of the bed, breathing a little faster as if he had come running to this meeting. And Storm could not mistake the genuine surprise in his tone.
“Nahani,” repeated the Terran deliberately. Then struck by a possible explanation for the other’s bewilderment, he added:
“Or did you never know the name of the man you killed at Los Gatos—?”
“Los Gatos?” Brad Quade stooped, as if striving to bring his blue eyes on a level with the dark ones Storm raised to meet them. “Who—are—you?” He spaced those words with little breaths between, as if each were forced from him by that sharp point still in Storm’s hold.
“I am Hosteen Storm—Nahani’s son—Na-Ta-Hay’s grandson—”
Brad Quade’s lips moved as if he were trying to shape words, and finally they came:
“But he told us—told Raquel—that you were dead—of fever! She—she had to remember that all the rest of her life! She went back to the mesa for you and Na-Ta-Hay showed her a walled-up cave—said you were buried in it—That nearly killed her, too!” Brad Quade whirled, his broad shoulders undefended to Storm’s attack. He balled his hands into fists, brought them down against the wall as if he were battering something else, a shadow not concrete enough to take the punishment he craved to deal out.
“Blast him! He tortured her on purpose! How could he do that to his own daughter?”
Storm watched that sudden rage die as Quade’s control snapped in
to place. The fist became a hand again, reached out to touch with delicate tenderness, the edge of the mural.
“How could he do it? Even if he were such a fanatic—” Quade asked again, wonderingly. “Nahani wasn’t killed—at least by me. He died of snake bite. I don’t know what you’ve been told—a twisted story apparently—” He spoke quietly and Storm slumped back against his pillows, his world unsteady. He could not fan dead anger to life. Quade’s sober voice carried too much conviction.
“Nahani was attached to the Survey Service,” Quade said tiredly. He pulled a chair to him, dropped into it, still eyeing Storm with a kind of hungry demand for belief. “I was, too, then. We worked together on several assignments—and our Amerindian background led us to close friendship. There was trouble with the Xik on some of the outer planets and Nahani was captured in one of their sneak raids. He escaped and I went to see him at the base hospital. But they had tried to ‘condition’ him—”
Storm tensed and shivered. Quade, seeing his reaction, nodded.
“Yes, you can understand what that meant. It was bad—he was—changed. The medic thought perhaps something could be done for him on Terra. He was sent home for rehabilitation. But during the first month, he got away from the hospital—disappeared. We learned later that he made his way back to his own home. His wife and son were there, a two-year-old child.
“Outwardly he appeared normal. His wife’s father—Na-Ta-Hay—was one of the irreconcilables who refused to acknowledge any change or need for change in the native way of life. He was fanatic almost past the point of strict sanity. And he welcomed Nahani back as one rescued from the disaster of becoming Terran in place of Dineh. But Raquel, Nahani’s wife, knew that he must have expert help. She got word of his whereabouts to the authorities without her father’s knowledge. I was asked to go with the medic to pick him up because I was on leave and I was his friend—they hoped I could persuade him to come in peaceably for treatment.
“When he discovered we were coming, he went on the run again. Raquel and I followed him into the desert. When we found his hidden camp, he was already dead—of snake bite. And when Raquel returned to her father’s place for her baby, he was like a wild man—he accused her of betraying her husband, of turning traitor to her people, and drove her off with a gun.