“That is not for our deciding,” corrected Ukurti. “If he is found, you, my younger brother, must deal with him—that we lay upon you.”
“That do I accept—”
There was a crackle of sound, not from without but from the mike before Logan. He jerked it up to mouth level.
“Come in—come in!”
“TRI calling base camp—”
Hosteen leaped across the tent and tore the mike from Logan’s grasp.
“Storm here—come in TRI—”
“—sighted the LB. Going down for look—on side of mountain—” The din of static half drowned out the words.
Hosteen made an urgent hand signal to Logan and watched his brother snap on the locater. If Widders kept talking, that ought to give them a fix on the present position of the ’copter.
“LB all right—going down!”
“Widders—Widders, wait!” But Hosteen knew that his protest would never be heeded by the men out there. Logan’s fingers relayed the information to the Norbies.
“So he has found what he has sought,” the Drummer replied. “It may be that his quest wins the favor of the High Dwellers after all. We shall wait and see—”
Hosteen clung to the mike, calling at intervals, but without raising a reply—until, at last, it came with forceful clarity.
“We are going to look for evidence of any survivors. Forgee—Forgee!” The voice grew as shrill as a Norbie pipe, carrying a note of surprise that deepened to alarm. “No! Fire—fire down the mountain. Forgee—they’re coming—Storm! Storm!”
“Here!” Hosteen tried to imagine what was happening out there.
“Fire at ’em, Forgee. Got that one!”
“Widders! Are you under attack?”
“Storm—we can’t hold ’em off—the fire’s spreading too close. We’re going to make a run for it—can hold out in the cave—”
“Hold out against what?” There was no answer from the mike.
“Those-Who-Drum-Thunder have answered,” Krotag signed. “This is the end of the evil doer.”
“Not so. They may still be alive,” Hosteen protested. “We can’t leave them there—like that—”
“It has been decided.” Krotag’s reply was final.
“You,” Hosteen appealed to Ukurti, “have said this man is my burden. I cannot leave him there—without knowing the truth of what has happened to him—”
Again it was as if the two of them stood apart from space and time in some emptiness that held only Norbie medicine man and human—that they were in contact in a way Hosteen could never explain.
“The truth was spoken—the burden is yours, and you are not yet loosened from it. These off-worlders have no part of what lies in the Blue, and they have been punished. But I do not think that the pattern is yet finished. The road lies before you; take it without hindrance—”
“If my brother walks this road, then do I also,” Logan’s, hands flashed.
Ukurti turned on the younger man the measuring regard of his paint-ringed eyes. “It is said rightly that brother should shoulder brother when the arrows of war are on the bow string. If this is your choice, let this road be yours also and no one—save the High Dwellers—shall deny it to you.”
“This is spoken on the drum?” Using finger speech, Krotag asked Ukurti.
“It is spoken on and by the drum. Let them journey forth and do what is set upon them. No one can read the path of his beyond-travel. This is a thing to be done.” His fingers tapped a small patter of notes on the drum head, a rhythm that sent a crawling chill up Hosteen’s back.
From the dark beyond the doorway came Surra, slinking belly to earth, her eyes slitted, her ears tight to her skull. And behind her, Baku, her beak snapping with rage—or some other strong emotion. Last of all Gorgol, stalking like a sleep walker, his eyes staring wide before him. The Drummer gave a last tap and broke the spell.
“Go—you all have been chosen and summoned. Upon you the burden.”
“Upon us the burden,” Hosteen agreed for all that strangely assorted group of rescuers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
M
irage?” Logan asked dazedly, perhaps not of his gaunt, hard-driven companions but of the very world about them.
Having won through the cauldron of rocky defiles on foot, for the way they had come was not for horses, it was indeed hard to believe in this valley—the land sloping gently before them, widening out in the distance until they could no longer see the wall heights that guarded it to the west because here the yellow and yellow-green vegetation of the river lowlands was lush. There was no sign of the searing Big Dry cutting down grass and bush. And in the distance there was the shimmer of water—either a curve of river or a lake of some size.
Gorgol braced himself on his folded arms and surveyed the countryside with an expression of awe, while Hosteen sat up, his back against a rock wall still warm enough to feel through his shirt, though this was twilight. Three, four, five days they had spent in hiding, the nights in winning through to this point, where the Blue was at last open before them.
And on the last night only Gorgol’s knowledge of the outback had saved them. All water gone, the Norbie had searched the ground on hands and knees, literally smelling out a clue, until he scooped the soil from a small depression. He buried there a hollowed reed with a twist of dried grass about its tip, sucking at the other end with an effort that left him gasping, until after a half hour of such labor he brought liquid up from the source he alone suspected.
Surra whined, nudged against Hosteen, her nostrils expanding as she took in the scents arising from this oasis of the wild. At least to the cat, this was no hallucination, and Hosteen was willing to rely upon her senses sooner than upon his own. Gorgol opened a small pouch on his warrior belt and brought out a pencil-shaped object. He pressed it against one finger tip to leave a small dot of glowing green. Then he drew marks crisscross on his hollow cheeks, in no pattern Hosteen could see, that glowed, making of half his face a weird mask. He held the crayon out to the Terran.
“We go in peace, so this we must do—”
“For the wild men?”
“Not so. For them we must continue to watch. But for Those-Who-Drum, now we bear the marks of peace in their sight.”
Hosteen took the soft stick, applied to his own skin a netting of lines, and passed it along to Logan. To every race their customs, and he was willing to follow Gorgol’s lead here. The paste on his face stung a little and left the skin feeling drawn and tight.
Although they were now painted for peace, they entered the valley with the caution of raiders. Hosteen guessed that in spite of peace poles passed between age-old enemies, Gorgol’s distrust of the wild and rumored cannibal tribes, whose hunting territory this was, still guided his actions.
Baku had flown ahead to the water. Surra padded down the slope before them, blending, in the twilight, with the vegetation, until Hosteen could only follow her movements when she chose to establish mind contact with him. The cat was alert and wary, though she had found nothing suspicious. Now the men followed her, keeping to cover as much as possible.
If there was native life in this valley, it would locate not too far from the water. Yet, water they themselves must have and soon. The heat clung on the upper slope, harsh on their parched bodies. Then Hosteen noted that Gorgol was catching at the headed stems of tall grass, crushing them in his hands and holding the resultant mass to his lips, chewing, spitting. The Terran followed the Norbie’s example. He discovered the moisture so gained was a bitter juice, but it eased the dryness of his mouth.
As they went, he looked about them, trying to guess which of the mountains within sight could be that on which Widders had located the LB. The fix from the camp com had guided them here—but now they would have to find the actual wreckage—
Hosteen tensed. His hand went up in a gesture to freeze both of his companions. Surra had given warning. Between them and the water were strange natives. The three flattened a
gainst the ground, and now the Terran regretted the luminous paint on their faces, which might be a source of betrayal.
So far, the others did not suspect their presence. Surra stalked them as they moved steadily along to the south. Hosteen made contact with Baku and knew that the eagle, in turn, would pick up the enemy party.
There were small night sounds. The creatures of the tall grass had not yet gone into Dry Time burrows. Their squeakings and chirpings were loud in Hosteen’s ears when he lay on the ground, acutely aware of every small noise, every movement of bush or grass clump. But this was the old, old game the Terran had played so many times during the war years when eyes, noses, keener natural senses than his own, had formed the scouting team, he being the director of activities.
Now, the party of natives had been trailed out of range. The three again had an open path to the water. Hosteen’s signal sent them skulking from one piece of cover to the next, working their way through the steadily increasing gloom to the lake—for lake was what Baku reported that body of water to be.
They arrived at the edge of growth of reeds and endured silent torment when insects closed in in a stinging, biting fog. But it was worth that painful, slow progress through mud and slime-coated growing things to plunge their hands into water, scoop up the warm, odorous, and oddly tasting liquid, not only to drink but also to freshen their dehydrated and peeling skins.
Revived, they shared the sustenance tablets brought for emergency rations.
“That mountain—” Logan said. “We’ll have to find the right one.”
“It is there.” To their surprise Gorgol finished his signs with an assured point to the north. “Medicine—and the fire—” But he did not explain that.
Hosteen remembered the night when he had stood in the yard of the Peak holding and watched that flash of light to the north, the flash that had been accompanied by the vibration in the air. That seemed like a long time ago now, and he was visited by an odd reluctance to set out for the mountain Gorgol had set as their goal.
Filling their canteens, they left the lapping waters of the lake, continuing around its perimeter, with Baku aloft in the bowl of the night sky and Surra ranging in a wide pattern back and forth across the line of their advance.
Twice more they took cover to escape Norbie parties. And it was in the last quarter of the night that they began to climb. Bulking big before them so that it cut away the stars was a mountain.
Sound came, first as a faint thumping, then in an ever increasing roll. Drums! Drums with the same compelling power as the small one Ukurti had carried but with far greater range. Logan came up level with Hosteen.
“Village—” He raised his voice to be heard over that roll.
Eastward, Hosteen believed. And he trusted that the drums meant some ceremony was in progress, a ceremony that would keep the villagers safely occupied at home for the few precious hours remaining of the sheltering night.
Surra located the ’copter, her report bringing them to the flattened area of burned-over ground in which lay the twisted, fire-warped framework of the off-world flyer. And not too far away was the half-charred body of the pilot, a burned stump of arrow still protruding from between his shoulders.
“We haven’t much time until daybreak. Widders spoke of a cave. We’ll separate and look for that,” Hosteen said.
Together with Surra, they fanned out from the burned ground upslope. Long line of vegetation ash ridged that rise, puzzling Hosteen by the uniformity of their width and the straight thrust of their lengths. It was almost as if an off-world flamer had been used here—
The Xik? Another holdout group hidden in this remote and forbidden land, just as that other had been when he and Logan had stumbled into their secret base? Those Xiks had used a flamer in their all-out attempt to get Logan when he escaped, destroying their stolen horse herd recklessly in the hope of finishing off one man who could blow wide open their concealed operations on this frontier world. Yes, it was conceivable that another Xik Commando force could be holed up here.
The flamed furrow came to an end abruptly. Here was blackened earth, vegetation charred into powder, and there normal grass, a bush standing high, swaying a little in the predawn wind. Had the flames been aimed up from below, then? But Hosteen had passed nothing in a direct line with the destroyed ’copter and these fire scores that could have produced them. If it wasn’t a flamer—then what? Hosteen skirted a bush and began again his hunt for any cave opening, though half mechanically, his mind still partly occupied with the riddle of the fire.
An eye-searing flash lashed the ground only yards ahead, and he stumbled back as flames crackled and bushes flared into torches in the night. Another breakout of the same fire to his left sent Hosteen south and east, running with the fire licking at his heels. He had never seen anything like this before, but the certainty grew, as he fled before the reach of the long red tongues, that the blazes were being used with a purpose, and that purpose—In spite of the heat waves at his back, a chill held the Terran. He was being herded! Someone or something was using a whip of fire to drive him, just as a plains rider used a stock whip to control a stray from the frawn herd.
He stumbled on, striving to pick a way over the now well-lighted ground to avoid any misstep that would leave him the helpless prey of the rage behind him. A small gorge opened ahead, and the Terran made a running leap to cross it, coming down in a panting heap on the far side. When he would have struggled to his feet once more, an arrow quivered deep in the earth by his right hand in blunt warning.
Hosteen hunched together, drawing his feet under him, preparing to spring for freedom if he saw a chance. A ring had closed about him, not of fire but of natives. Unlike the Norbies of the lowlands, these warriors were shorter, closer to Terran build. Their horns were charcoal-black arcs over their skulls, and the same black had been used to draw designs on their faces, not with the aimless crisscross lines that Gorgol had used for peace paint but in intricate and careful patterns.
If he had had a chance in those first few seconds for an attempt at defense or escape, he had lost it now. Whirling out of the flickering half light came one of the native hunters’ most effective weapons—a cord net made of the tough, under-the-surface roots of the yassa plant, soaked in water until the mesh was greasy slick. Once enmeshed in that, even a fighting yoris was helpless, as helpless as Hosteen Storm at this moment.
Ignominiously packaged, he was transported downslope to a village, a village that was no collection of skin-covered tents, like those of the nomad Norbies he had known, but of permanent erections with heavy logs rolled shoulder high to form walls, above them a woven wattle of dried vine and reed, with high-peaked thatched roofs.
Out of nowhere had come a Drummer, a medicine man wearing a feather tunic and cloak but in a vivid metallic green, the tunic crossed on the breast with a zigzag, sharp-angled strip of red. And the drum he thumped, as he led the procession carrying the prisoner through the village, was also red. Torches were set up along the way, their flames burning a strange, pale blue. Then Hosteen was out of the open, staring up into the shadows of one of the peaked roofs, as he was dumped roughly on a beaten earth floor.
House—or was it more temple? He tried to assess the meaning of what he saw. There were no sleep rolls in evidence, but in the center of the one huge room was a pit in which burned a fire of the same blue as the torches. And there were cords passing from one to another of the heavy support timber columns the length of the building, lines on which hung bark and shriveled things, together with round objects—
A Thunder House! And those were raid trophies—the heads and hands of dead enemies! Hosteen had heard of that practice as being usual among the Nitra clans. But this building was larger, older, far more permanent than any Nitra wizard tent. The Terran tried to remember every scrap of information he had been able to garner about the Nitra and to apply it to what he could see about him now.
Those warriors who had brought him in were settling down about the
fire pit, passing from one to the other a bowl that probably held the mildly intoxicating clava juice, and they showed signs of staying for some hours to come.
The clan Drummer had taken his place on the stool to the north, keeping up a little deep, grumbling sound on his knee drum. That, too, followed the custom of the outer-world tribes—the northern stool for him who drums for the Thunder Ones; the southern stool, still vacant here, for the head Chief of the village or clan.
Hosteen closed his eyes, fixed mind and will on contact with the team, but to no avail. There was nothing—no trace of Surra or Baku—along the mental lanes. He had never quite been able to gauge the range to which his silent command call could reach in relation to either eagle or cat. But this present silence was more than worrying. It carried with it an element of real fear. A man who depended heavily upon the support of a cane could fall helplessly when that cane was snatched from his hand.
The Terran swallowed, as if he could swallow down his rising uneasiness. Had he, through the years, become so wholly identified with the team, so dependent upon them, that he would be a cripple when they did not answer his call? That thought bit deep, so deep he was hardly aware of the Thunder House and those in it until a commotion by the door made him open his eyes and turn his head as well as he could in the confines of the net.
Another party of natives brought a second prisoner, and the Drummer now beat out a heavy tattoo that needed no translation, so filled with triumph was its sound. A minute later the tangled and still struggling captive was dumped beside Hosteen, the lines of his net made fast to the same pillars that held the Terran.
“Hosteen!”
He could barely make out Logan’s features, marked still with smears of the luminous paint.
“Here. Gorgol with you?”
“No, haven’t seen him since we split up. There was a fire all around, and I blasted out ahead of that. Ran right into this net—they had it strung up waiting between two trees.”