She faced away angrily. Tyi smiled.
They traveled south and east. Tyi and Neq were re-
turning to make their report to Dr. Jones. Vara, though
she did not see it that way, was that report. She was the
only one remaining who could answer the necessary ques-
tions about the nature of Helicon's demise. But she thought
she was coming to have her vengeance on Neq; she did
not mean to let him escape.
Tyi did not start any conversations. Neq hardly felt
like talking himself, and Vara remained sullen. They had
about three thousand miles to go: between three and four
months at their swift pace. It was not likely to be a pleasant
trip.
But they had to work together, for the natives were
generally unfriendly and the old hostels no longer existed
even in the formal crazy demesnes. They were cutting
across what had been known as western Canada, intend-
ing to skirt the southern boundaries of a series of large
lakes, and the northern boundaries of the worst badlands.
Tyi had a crazy map; it claimed such a route existed.
Someone had to forage each day for food; someone
had to stand guard each night; someone had to get them
safely through outlaw territories. Tyi did most of it at
first. Then Vara, shamed, began to help.
Neq, stripped of his sword, could neither fight nor
forage effectively. He was dependent on the other two,
and mortified by the situation. It was hard to give up a
weapon, and not merely in the circle! All he could do was
keep watch—and for that he had to stay awake. That was
not easy after a twelve hour hike, each day.
One night as they camped by a river, Neq consoled
himself by striking the tip of his pincers against the bells
of his glockenspiel. He had not tried to play it since leav-
ing the smithy's shop. But the sound was not proper;
metal on metal annoyed him. He took the little wooden
hammer and tapped the notes experimentally, regaining
the feel of the music. Soon he was running through the
scales, improving his competence while the others slept.
It was possible to play entire melodies with no more than
the hammer! He began to hum, measuring his voice against
the clear tones of the instrument. It was there in him yet:
the joy of music.
Finally he unstopped the voice that had been dormant
during the entire time of killing, and that had emerged
only when his sword was buried. He sang, accompanying
himself carefully on the glockenspiel:
Then only say that you'll be mine
And our love will happy be
Down beside some water flow
By the banks of the 0-hi-o.
He sang all of it, though this was not that river and his
voice, despite the smithy's compliment, was imperfect
now, a creaky shadow of its prime. But the instrument
gave him a certainty of key he had not had before, and
the spirit of the melody suffused him with its odd rapture.
As he sang, he rocked to the lovely, tortured vision of
it: the young woman taking a walk by the river strand,
refusing to marry the suiter, being threatened by his knife
at her breast, and finally drowned. An ugly story but a
beautiful song—one of his favorites, before he had come
too close to living it. There were tears in his eyes, making
his watch difficult.
"Your wife—did you kill her too?"
He was not startled to find Vara awake. He had known
he could not sing aloud without arousing her curiosity or
ire. "I must have."
"I ask only because I have to," she said bitterly. "Tyi
balked me, on pain I should know you. Before I kill you.
I saw you had no bracelet."
"She was a crazy," he said, not caring what she might
think about Neqa.
"A crazy! What have you to do with them?"
"I thought to rebuild Helicon."
"You lie!" she cried, clutching at her sticks, which were
always with her, warrior-style.
Neq looked at her tiredly. "I kill. I do not lie."
She turned away. "I may not kill you yet."
"You want the mountain dead?"
"No!"
"Then tell me: what is Helicon to you? Were you not
kept prisoner there, and betrayed at the end? Don't you
hate it yet?"
"Helicon was my home! I loved it!"
He studied her in the moonlight, perplexed. "Do you
want it restored, then, as I do?"
"No! Yes!" she cried, crying.
Neq let it be. He kn«w what grief was, and the burn-
ing for revenge. And futility. Vara was in the throes of it
all, as he had been when Neqa died. As he was still. It
might be months, years before she made sense to others
or to herself, and she would not be so pretty, then.
He tapped the flat metal bells of the glockenspiel again,
picking out a new tune. Then he sang, and Vara did not
protest.
"I know my love by her way of walking
And I know my love by her way of talking . . ."
Tyi slept on, though their conversation was not quiet.
"When I first saw Var," Vara said, "he was standing on
the plateau of Mt. Muse, looking down from the rim. He
could have dropped a rock on me, but he didn't, because
he wasn't the kind to take advantage."
"Why should anyone drop a rock on you?" Neq de-
manded, disliking this reference to the dead man.
"We were meeting in single combat. You know that,"
"Why did Bob send a child?" Was the truth at last
within reach?
"And after we fought, it was cold, and he held me so I
would not shiver. He gave me his heat, for he was always
generous."
They were working at cross purposes.
"Would you warm your enemy if he were cold?" she
asked him.
"No."
"You see. Var was a giver of life, not of death."
She had meant to hurt him, and she had succeeded.
How could he return to this bitter girl what he had taken
from her?
"Ambush," Tyi murmured. "Well-laid; I saw it too late.
You two break while I cover the retreat."
Neither Neq or Vara reacted openly; both were too
well versed in tactics. They exchanged a glance of chagrin,
for neither had been aware of the situation. But if Tyi
said there was an ambush, there was an ambush, though
the forest seemed deserted.
Vara turned nonchalantly and started back. Neq
shrugged and followed, while Tyi whistled idly and moved
toward a tree as though for a call of nature. But it was
too late; the trap sprung, and they were ,neatly in it.
From front, back and sides armed men appeared and
converged. They carried clubs and staffs and sticks. No
blades, oddly. Now Neq understood how the three had
walked into the trap: the ambushers came out of holes in
the ground! The trapdoors were flush with the forest floor
and covered with leaves so that nothing showed until
they opened.
But this was a great deal of trouble for a mere ambush!
>
And no sharp weapons! Why?
Tyi and Vera had run together the moment the men
appeared. Now they stood back to back, sticks in each
hand. Neq remained where he was; his first abortive mo-
tion to uncover his sword had reminded him that he was
no longer armed. If he joined the other two he would only
hamper them.
The men closed in. Neq remembered the similar ma-
neuver of a tribe six years before, closing in on a truck. If
he could have known in time to save Neqa ... !
"Yield," the leader of the ambush said.
No one answered. They were too wise in the ways of
outlawism to doubt that death would be cleanest in battle.
Such elaborate preparations would not have been made
merely to recruit tribesmen! ,,
"Yield or die!" the leader said. A ring formed about the
two stickers, and another around Neq. "Who are you?"
'Tyi of Two Weapons."
"Vara—the Stick."
The ambusher considered. "Only one Tyi of Two
Weapons I know of, and this is pretty far out of his
territory."
Tyi didn't bother to answer. His sticks remained ready;
his sword hung at his side.
"If it is him, we won't take him alive," the leader said.
"Or his woman."
Vara didn't deign to correct him. Her sticks were ready
too.
"Why would he travel without his tribe?" another man
inquired. "And with a girl young enough to be his
daughter?"
"That's why, maybe," the leader said. He came over to
Neq. "But this one doesn't talk, and he covers his weapon.
Who are you?" -
Slowly Neq raised his left arm. The loose sleeve fell
away and the metal pincers came into view.
There was a murmur in the group. The leader stepped
back. "I have heard of a man who had his hands cut off.
So he had his sword grafted on, and—"
Neq nodded. "They were ambushers."
The circle about him widened as the men edged away.
"We have a gun," the leader said. "We do not want to
kill you, but if you move—"
"We only pass through," Neq said. "We have no busi-
ness with you." He was now talking to distract attention
from Tyi, who might then get out his own gun unobserved.
There were enough men here to overcome the little party,
though that would not have been the case had Neq's blade
been in place and Tyi's gun ready. The outlaw's gun was
not the advantage they supposed.
"You have business with us," the leader said. "We re-
quire a service from you. Perform it and you shall go free
with the wealth of our tribe on your shoulders. Fail it,
and you shall die."
Neq ached with fury to be addressed in this manner, as
though any threat by any straggling outlaw could move
him. He had/destroyed a tribe of such arrogance before.
But he had given up the sword. Now he would live or die
without it. "What is your service?"
"Walk the haunted forest at night."
Neq stifled a laugh. "You fear ghosts?"
"With reason. By day the forest harms no one, and
stands athwart our richest hunting-grounds, just a few
miles down this trail. But the ghosts strike those who
enter at night. First the blades, then the dull weapons.
Banish our spook: walk it at night and live. We will re-
ward you richly for breaking the spell. Our food, our
equipment, our women—"
"Keep your trifles! Feed us today; tonight we challenge
your ghost. Together. Not for your sake, but because it
crosses our route."
"You will keep your sword covered in our camp?"
"I keep my arm covered if no man annoys me."
"And you?" the leader called to Tyi.
"And I," Tyi agreed, and Vara also nodded.
Slowly the encircling men lowered their weapons.
As the sun descended they were ushered to the edge of
the haunted forest. It seemed normal—mixed birch, beech
and ash, some pine, with pockets of pasture heavily grown.
Rabbits scooted away from the party. Good hunting,
certainly!
"Are there radiation markers near here?" Tyi inquired.
"Some. But that danger is over. We have a click-box;
the kill-rays are gone."
"Yet men still die," Tyi murmured.
"Only by night."
That certainly didn't sound like radiation. It didn't
come and go; it faded slowly, and was not affected by
daylight.
"If Var were here—" Vara began. And caught herself.
"It is about ten miles," the tribe leader said. "We have
a smaller digging downstream. Sometimes we need to
travel between the two at night—but we must bike twice
as far, over the mountain. No one passes the valley by
night."
"The river looks clean," Tyi observed. "Your footpath is
open?"
"Throughout. There are no natural pitfalls, no killer-
animals here. Once there were shrews, but we extermi-
nated them. Now there are deer, rabbits, game-birds. No
hunting animals."
"You have found bodies?"
"Always. Some without marking. Some mutilated. Some
dead fighting. We never send a man alone or unarmed,
yet all perish."
So they ambushed innocent travelers to send here, Neq
thought. Very neat, but none too clever. Hadn't it oc-
curred to them that whoever conquered the haunted forest
might have second thoughts about the manner he had
been introduced to it? He might decide on a bit of ven-
geance. In that case, solution of the forest riddle could be
disastrous for the tribe.
Tyi began to walk. Neq and Vara followed quickly. It
was not dark yet, but night would set in long before they
got through the forest. A ten mile hike by night, rested
and fed—routine, except for ghosts!
When they were well away from the tribesmen, they
split, ducking down out of sight on either side of the trail.
No word was spoken; all three were conversant with such
technique. The greatest danger might be from the men
behind, not the supposed ghosts in front. Strangers might
be deliberately killed in the forest to sustain the notoriety
of the region, for surely the tribesmen could not be en-
tirely ignorant of the nature of the threat, whatever it
was.
But no one was following. Cautiously the three pro-
ceeded, Tyi flanking the forest side of the trail, Vara fol-
lowing the river side, and Neq, who could not fight, mov-
ing cautiously down the center. He held a thin stick in
his pincers, probing for deadfalls, and he walked hunched
to avoid a potential trip-wire or hanging noose. He ex-
pected to encounter something deadly, and not a ghost!
In an hour they had covered less than two miles. Then-
extreme caution seemed to have been wasted; no threat
of any kind materialized. But eight miles remained, and
eight hours of darkness. The fear of the tribesmen had
been genuine; perhaps they delved underground because
of a lingering terror of the
forest surface.
The way was beautiful, even at night. The somber trees
overhung the path to the west, highlighted by the full
moon, and the river coursed slowly on the east side, and
great vines covered with night-blooming flowers lay along
the ground. The heavy fragrance surrounded them in-
creasingly, musky and refreshing in the slight breeze.
Neq recalled his childhood. It had been nice, then,
with his family and his sister. All the subsequent glory
and ruin of empire could not compare with that early
security. Why had he left it?
Hig the Stick 1 The man had cast his lustful gaze on
Nemi, Neq's young twin sister! Neq clenched his sword-
hand in reminiscent fury and bravado—and remembered
he had no hand. Yod the Outlaw had taken it—
Time twisted about. It was dark, but Neq could see
well enough in the diffused moonlight. A shape was com-
ing at him, and it was the shape of Yod. Yod, whose foul
loin had—
Neq whipped up his gleaming sword and launched
himself at the enemy. A head would ride the stake tonight!
Contact! But his sword did not handle properly. It
clanged, a discordant jangle.
Shocked, he remembered. No sword! This was the
glockenspiel, for making music. •
He peered more carefully at his opponent. "Tyi! Do