The Iron Breed

by Andre Norton

  His heart labored so that his breath came in short gasps; and there was a mist which came and went before his eyes to cloud the back trail. Jony squinted, trying to center on one shadow among the many. Had there been movement back there?

  Geogee, Maba, returning? Had the twins so quickly lost the trail of the People? Jony felt he should care, should try for action. Only he was too tired, too strengthless, to do more than crouch where he was and wait for whatever fate moved there to come upon him.

  That shadow which was no shadow advanced so slowly. Jony longed to shout to the lurker, urge a confrontation. He was so worn with effort that he wanted a swift ending, not this eternal wait . . .

  It was . . . Otik!

  Of all whom he might have expected, the clansman was the last. Nor could Jony tell whether Otik was a fugitive from some lost battle, a scout of the People, or had returned for Jony's own sake. He did not even have strength at this moment to raise his raw, scraped hands to sign out any question.

  Straight toward him padded the clansman. Otik was nearly as tall as the stone woman behind which Jony sheltered, and he moved with some of that same ponderous solidity which was Voak's. As he loomed over Jony, the boy saw that he carried two staffs: his own laboriously made one of wood, and the metal-fanged one from the river bed.

  Somehow Jony raised his shaking hands, signed a single name in question: “Voak?”

  Otik gathered both shafts into the crook of his arm, leaving his hands free for reply. “To the place of the cage.”

  So the People were taking their new captives to that same safekeeping which their ancestors had used to hold their ancient enemies. That is, unless the twins caught up with them, and Geogee fought for the off-worlder who had come to mean so much to him.

  “Geogee—Maba?” Jony uttered the names aloud knowing that Otik would recognize those sounds.

  “No see,” the clansman replied.

  With the dignity of his race he lowered himself, to balance on stooped legs. Even so foreshortened Jony had to look up a little to meet his eyes.

  “You hurt.” Otik might have been gravely concerned or merely curious. Jony, well shaken out of his old belief that he was an integral part of the clan, could never accept again that unquestioning feeling that he was one with the People, so was now not able to guess what lay behind the other's question.

  “Strange weapon”—the sign language lacked so much that he needed when he would talk with his old companions—“make me weak, must crawl not walk.”

  Otik gave an assent gesture. He must have seen the tracks of Jony's painful progress through the wide hall.

  “Geogee do,” he made answer. “Geogee go with ship ones.”

  How much the People had witnessed Jony could not tell. But the certainty with which Otik signed that made him sure the clansman had seen the attack on Jony.

  “Geogee”—Jony forced his weary hands through the motions—“hunt People. Want shipmen free.”

  “Geogee”—Otik remained unruffled—“no go right way. He—Maba go other side. Tracks in dust say so.”

  Jony drew a long breath of relief. Then he had been right in his second guessing about the girl. She was not leading her brother to cut off the clansmen, but rather in the wrong direction to gain them time. How long she might be able to continue that deception Jony did not know. Neither was he in the least happy about her wandering in this city. And what would happen when Geogee realized he had been tricked? The younger boy might not turn on Maba; their tie was close. But he would hurry back here to make sure of Jony, try to force from Jony where Volney had been taken. Jony had no doubt of that at all.

  “Must get away,” he signed.

  Otik made no answer. Rising to his big feet again with more agility than his bulk of body would suggest, he reached down, hooked one paw in Jony's armpit and drew the other up with no more difficulty than if Jony had been no larger nor heavier than Maba.

  With Otik's support Jony could stand. When the other moved, he was able to stumble along upright. The clansman did not turn back toward the shadowed interior from which he had come, rather edged on for the open.

  However, as they rounded the stone woman, Jony dragged back for an instant or two. Otik turned his head, stared. What came suddenly into Jony's mind was so wild a thought that it could well have been born out of some disorder in his thinking processes. It was now, when he half-faced the stone woman, when memory moved sharply in him, that he wanted to try an act which might be the height of folly, or else the wisest action he had ever chosen.

  He signed to Otik to wait, pulled a little away from the clansman, steadying himself with a hold on the stone figure. Slowly he brought up his bleeding, dust-engrained hand. It was hard to lift, as if it were also a heavy chunk of unfeeling stone.

  Jony forced his wrist higher, flattened palm, straightened his fingers. Then, with a purpose he could not have logically explained, he half-stepped, half-fell forward, so that his flesh rested as it had once before against the age-pitted surface of stone.

  Only what it met did not feel like stone. This was warm, strange. Jony could find no word to describe the sensation. Not the flash of instant response which had frightened him before. No, this was different. It was as if from the larger, immobile hand there flowed into his, rising, ebbing, rising again, an unknown form of energy. Perhaps a man long athirst and chancing upon a spring and drinking his fill might have so experienced this wondrous expansion of well-being, of restoration.

  Through his palm, down his arm, into his body—more and more and more! Though Jony did not realize it, tears spilled from his eyes, tracking through the dust on his face. He wanted to sing, to shout—to let the whole world know this wonder happening to him!

  SIXTEEN

  Jony was not himself again—he was much more. He stood as tall as a Big One, as strong as Voak! With his hand he could flatten the walls about him, snatch a flyer out of the air, overturn the sky ship, so that it could never fly up and out to betray them! He could . . .

  Somewhere deep within Jony's mind fear flared. No—no! He dared not be like this. Yet he could not draw back from that wonderful contact through which flowed the power; his palm of flesh seemed united to the stone by an unbreakable bond.

  NO!

  As he had exerted his talent in the past for control, now he called upon it to sever this dangerous contact. His determination resulted in a sudden sharp cutoff. The stone hand sent him spinning away, rejected him as harshly as before it welcomed him gladly.

  Jony would have fallen down the series of ledges, save that he struck against Otik. The clansman stood rock-still, an anchorage for Jony to cling to momentarily.

  Otik neither put out an arm to steady, nor a paw-hand to repulse the other. He merely stood and let Jony hold to him, until the reaction to that break in energy flow subsided. The boy drew several deep breaths. What secret of the city builders he had tapped he had no way of knowing, but he was not reckless nor unthinking enough to try it again.

  However, it had given him back a body obedient to the orders of his mind. For that he was thankful. Now he signed to his silent companion:

  “Find Geogee—Maba—”

  Otik surveyed him from head to foot. Then he made answer by holding out the metal staff without further sign. Jony took the weapon eagerly, running his hand along its length. That hand, though still dust-grimed, bore now none of the raw marks left by his long crawl. Nor either did its palm when he turned that to the light. His whole strength of body was renewed, as if he had slept well, eaten heartily, and had borne no burdens of mind for a long time.

  Otik moved back into the shadows of the long hall behind the stone woman. Here, as Jony hastened to catch up, he saw those waiting boxes. If there were only some way to prevent their ever being taken from this place! To think of their contents in the hands of the spacemen!

  Only there was no time now to deal with these. Even if the two who escaped on the flyer returned with an attack force, they surely would be more inte
nt on discovering the whereabouts of their men than transferring loot. At least for the present.

  The clansman never turned his head to look as he padded by; that pile of boxes did not appear to exist for him. They skirted the rise of blocks which held the sleeper's box, kept on. It was when they passed the opening through which they had earlier emerged from the lower ways that Jony grew uneasy.

  If Maba had not guided Geogee by that passage, where in this pile had she taken him? How far did this hall extend? Were there more passages, other ways? He saw that the path of sun which had struck across the floor from the wall opening had since vanished. The time must be closer now to nightfall. And if the twins were lost here in the dark . . .

  Jony believed there was more to fear in this ancient place than even a vor or Red Head. Recalling the impulse which had made him unite touch with the stone woman, he was surprised at his recklessness. That that had healed and strengthened him was only good fortune. The same flow of energy directed at one of the twins might even kill!

  Otik slowed down. His heavy head swung from side to side, as he turned his gaze directly to the floor, examining its surface. In this more shadowed portion Jony could make out a few traces in the dust; undoubtedly Otik could read them more clearly. As it grew darker he would have to depend more and more on the clansman.

  Unless . . . he sent out a questing thought. And touched—very faintly—Maba! Jony's confidence rebounded. As it had happened once before in this pile, he had his own guide to follow.

  They had not reached the end of the hall when Otik turned right, Jony only a stride behind him. In the wall on that side there was another opening. Jony tried contact again . . . faint still—and not steady! Her pattern seemed to weave in and out, as did the only touch he could ever have with the People, a sense of presence rather than real contact. It had never been so before with the twins. Perhaps Geogee was using some other covering trick Volney had taught him.

  The thought of Volney gave Jony certain grim satisfaction. He could picture the spaceman in the cage of the People. At least there the off-worlder could do no more harm. What was the man's power over Geogee? It appeared to Jony that the stranger had, in a new fashion, used mind-control on the boy, erasing all Geogee's former life and associations, or reducing them to something best forgotten, and implanting new desires to make the twin one of the enemy.

  As he thought of Geogee, Jony's confidence in Maba was again a little undermined. She had been with the ship's company long enough to be influenced. It was only the vivid memory of her smashing their cherished machine (an act he was sure had not been arranged for his benefit), which persuaded Jony that the girl had not also been mind-warped by the off-worlders.

  The door led, not into another tunnel or place of descent, but into a series of small sections above ground. From the third of those they emerged into the open. They now faced the portion of the city which lay behind the huge central pile, completely unknown to Jony. There was no straight river of stone here to serve as a guide out to the country.

  Instead, confronting them was a space of ground on which no stone had been laid or built. This was covered by a thick tangle of vegetation, presenting as thick a barrier as the stone walls behind. Even Otik gave a surprised grunt when he surveyed it.

  Between that impenetrable tangle and the place from which they had just emerged there existed a thin ribbon of clear ground. The trail left on that was plain to read. Those they followed had turned to the left, keeping to that narrow pathway.

  Dusk was closing in. Jony's sense picked up several forms of small life living within the safe mat of vegetation. Also he listened for something else: that ominous buzz from the air announcing a return of the flyer with more men; men armed with weapons against which the People had no chance. He longed for the stunner Geogee had taken from him, weighed the metal staff in his hand, and knew how little use that would be in a struggle against the off-worlders.

  In the half-light he saw Otik's hand move in the sign for water. The clansman's sense of smell could pick that up where Jony's could not. A moment later Otik's staff whirled up at ready. Jony sensed no danger signal of his own, but it was apparent that the clansman was highly suspicious of something. Jony tried mind-seeking. He caught Maba, to his gratification, closer and clearer. Geogee must still be wearing the too large helmet which cut off such contact. But there was nothing else. Except from the section before them there came a complete absence of the small life signals he caught elsewhere.

  Otik halted abruptly. His nostrils were fully extended. Even Jony could now catch a faint, sickening stench, as if ahead some rot lay open under the sky.

  Scenting that, the boy needed no other warning from his companion. Here, in the heart of the stone place, was a colony of Red Heads! But the twins had gone this way! Had the children blundered into this worst of dangers without any warning?

  Otik still held his head as high as he could, sniffing audibly. That they should venture through any part of country those plant-beasts patrolled was pure folly. Over the Red Heads none of Jony's talent could prevail, any more than he could force the People themselves to his bidding. With growing apprehension, he surveyed their surroundings. That wall to the left had no openings big or little. To their right the thick vegetation was far too entangled to crash a path through. Any attempt to do so would shred his skin, even slash Otik, in spite of the other's thick fur covering.

  Where were the twins? That Jony could still mind-reach Maba meant she was alive—one small hope granted him.

  To his utter surprise Jony saw Otik move again. Not in retreat, as the boy had entirely expected, but on along the same path. Jony trailed behind, for this way was too narrow for them to go abreast. The plant-beasts were the one enemy even the People did not face, yet Otik was proceeding as if he believed they had a chance!

  The stench grew stronger, while coming dark added to Jony's wonder at Otik's recklessness. Once night had fallen the Red Heads would be mobile, at their most dangerous. He brought his own staff into a good position for a slashing blow, such as he had used with the vor, but it would offer no defense to the stupefying vapor the things broadcast when in action.

  An arch of stone arose before them, and, when they moved just under that, the whole scene ahead changed. The matted growth drew sway. Though it still formed a wall of its own, there was a far greater open space here.

  In the middle of that open area was a large pool which possessed an edging of vigorous plant life. Yet over its murky waters coasted none of the winged things one would naturally find at such a spot. This scene was silent, devoid of any life save that which was ground-rooted.

  Spaced around the turgid and unpleasant looking stretch of water were the Red Heads. In terms of general growth, this collection was stunted, rising hardly higher than Jony's shoulder at their tallest. Their red, bulbous tips were faded-looking, more of a sickly, yellowish shade. And many of them had lower leaves which were only rotting stubs.

  Also, the blossomheads were canted at crooked angles, as if the creatures were too weakened to hold them straight. Yet a stir ran through their company as Otik and Jony drew nearer, such movement as a wind might raise when furrowing the grass on the open plain. This growth might be sickly, even dying, but the things still knew when prey approached.

  Jony sprang forward. Aroused by his very loathing of the creatures, he swung his staff so the sharp fang could bite into the nearest stem. There was a dull thunk of sound as the metal sheared in. A liquid of such putrid smell as to make him gasp sprayed forth as the head of the thing fell to one side, attached now to the plant only by a thin strip of outer bark.

  The plant-beasts moved so sluggishly that Jony was encouraged, leaping to attack the next in line. Had Geogee used the stunner on them? Or had some illness of their own species half-crippled the plants so that they could be so easily dealt with? He did not know; he was only thankful that these were not the virile species he had seen elsewhere.

  Perhaps Otik had been fired by his
example and the results Jony was getting. For the clansman stumped out in turn. His wooden staff could not sever stems as Jony's more efficient tool was doing, but he beat down upon red blossoms, which burst under his attack, stripped away leaves with the vigor of his swings.

  The two crossed the plot where the plant-beasts festered, to reach the opposite side beyond the pool. Here was another stretch of stone-paved open, cutting through it a runnel of dark water which either fed or drained the pool. The smell rising from that was noxious in the extreme. Then Jony, fired by his easy victory over the enemy the People feared so, was nearly caught in a trap set by his over-confidence.

  The last Red Head had been crouching in the stream, its rooted feet sucking up the moisture. If the fate of its fellows had alerted it, it had not chosen to move, either in defense or flight—then. Now, directly in Jony's path, the plant-beast straightened with a snap to full height. And this one was truly a giant among the poor wizened dwarfs of the company. Taller than Jony, its ball head displayed a deeper, glowing red, visible even through the growing dark. The boy could see that expanding bag beneath the blossom, ready to empty its cloud of blinding, stupefying pollen in his direction. Its two long upper leaves, lined with fang thorns, were already reaching confidently in his direction.

  With a cry Jony leaped back as one of the leaves lashed viciously, nearly sweeping him from his feet. He crouched low, metal staff in both hands, sharp cutting edge up. If the creature released that pollen, he might have only an instant, perhaps two, before he collapsed. Then Otik would have little defense in turn.

  Those leaves were reaching again; while the under, more slender growths gathered around the mouth of the pollen bag, ready to fan the discharge toward Jony. The boy would have no time, no chance to get close enough to slash at the ball head as he had when meeting the weaker growths.