by Andre Norton
To his vast disappointment the wall, save for that heat scar, looked as stanch as it had been on his first examination. He could not wait to know the truth. Reversing the blaster so its stock was a club, he ran forward in spite of the lingering heat, to thrust the butt into the scar with all the force of his weight and strength behind it.
There was a shock that made the Terran grunt as the metal stock met the blocks. But it wasn’t the blaster that gave. A whole section where the flame had licked moved outward—perhaps not very much. But he had felt it give. Heartened he struck again. The section of blocks broke apart, not along the joints where they had been mortared together, but in the middle of the stone squares themselves—proving once again that the building material of the unknown aliens was more enduring than the products of nature.
Before he attacked the second time Storm allowed the wall to cool. The fumes of the ray were gone, almost as if they had been sucked away or absorbed by some quality in the air of the garden cavern. A bush with a lacy covering quivered until its iridescent leaves shook, and Surra, her fur ruffled, her eyes glinting wild and feral, crawled from under it to the roadway and stood panting before Storm.
He rubbed behind her ears, along the line of her pointed fox jaw, talking to her in that crooning speech that soothed her best. She was excited, overstimulated, and he marveled that she had answered his call. One could never be sure with the felines, their independence kept them from being servants—companions, yes, and war comrades, but not servants to man. Each time Surra obeyed some order or summons Storm knew that obedience was by her will and not his. And he could never be sure whether his hold on her would continue. Now, under his gentling, she softened, purred, dabbing at his hands with a claw-sheathed paw. The alien trap had not taken Surra either.
They plundered the fruit gardens for another meal, filled their canteens with purified water from a miniature waterfall in one of the lake lands and waited. Until, at last, with the three of them working, they were able to handle the cooled blocks and break their way through the barrier.
Logan had been right in his surmise. No tunnel reached before them, only the mouth of another cave, and, beyond that, the light of Arzoran day. They led the horses one by one through that break, and Gorgol, who had gone out on a short scout, returned, his hands flashing in an excited message.
“This place I know! Here I slew the evil flyer when I went on my man hunt. There is a trail from this place—”
They came out in a valley so narrow that it was merely a ravine between two towering heights. And the cut was so barren of vegetation that the sun trapped within those walls made a glaring furnace of the depths, so that the contrast between this sere outer world and the delights of the cavern was even more pronounced. On impulse Storm turned back to rebuild the barrier they had broken through, piling the crumbling blocks of stone across the opening. Logan joined in, his healing lips no longer so puffed that they could not shape a smile.
“Let the sealed ones continue to keep their secrets, eh?” He laughed. “This is too good a hiding hole to waste. We may have need of it again.”
But how quickly that need was to come they did not dream. Gorgol mounted one of the mares and turned her to the southern end of the valley. Logan swung up bareback on a second horse, they having packed what was left of their supplies on the yearling. Storm was just about to settle himself on Rain’s pad saddle when Surra gave her battle cry, bounding ahead of the Norbie’s horse, to face the end of the valley, the hair along her backbone roughed, her ears flattened to her skull as she hissed defiance.
Her hiss was answered twofold. Gorgol’s stun rod went up as a yellow-gray boulder detached itself from the general mass of rocks before them, produced driving feet, and charged in an insane rage before Storm understood what was happening.
The yoris, meeting the beam of the stun ray head on, gave a choked scream and landed in a skidding heap while Gorgol fought his terrorized horse. The mare Logan was riding panicked, and her rider, still suffering from his beating, with no reins or saddle as an anchor, was thrown, rolling over just as a second yoris came out of a pocket in the cliff and screeched down to join its mate.
Storm’s arrow hit a lucky mark, the soft underskin of the lizard’s throat, one of the giant reptile’s three vulnerable spots. But the thing was not killed outright. Snapping its murderous jaws, it beat against the ground, and Logan threw himself back with a cry, a red stream welling through his boot over the calf. Gorgol beamed the wounded lizard and it went limp. But the Norbie paid no heed to the yoris as he vaulted to Logan’s side.
Young Quade had both hands clasped tightly about his leg just above that wound, his face very pale. He glanced up at Storm with an odd emptiness in the brilliant blue of his eyes.
Gorgol drew his knife and cut a length of fringe from his belt. He worked the boot from Logan’s leg with a quick jerk that made the other catch his breath. With the cord of fringe he looped a tourniquet above the wound and then passed the ends to Storm to twist tight while he went to the yoris, prying open its mouth to peer within. That examination required only a second. The native stooped to slash at the middle of the lizard, ripping out a great hunk of fatty flesh. He ran back to clap it over the bloody gash on Logan’s leg.
“Male”—Logan got the word out between set teeth—“poison—”
Storm was cold inside. There was nothing in his depleted aid kit that could handle this. And he had heard tales of yoris poison, most of them grisly. But Gorgol was signing.
“Draw poison out—” He gestured to the raw gob of lizard fat. “No ride, no walk—be quiet—sick, very sick soon—”
Logan shaped a shadow of a smile. “He’s not just fanning his fingers when he says that.” His voice sounded oddly thick. “I think I’ve had it, fella—”
The pallor that crept up under his brown skin was close to gray and his hands and arms jerked in spasmodic quivers that he apparently could not control. A small trickle of blood rilled from the corner of his swollen mouth.
Gorgol went back to the yoris and cut a fresh strip of fat. He motioned to Storm to pull off the first poultice and slapped on the second. With the blood on the discarded lump there was a blue discoloration. The Norbie pointed to it.
“Poison—it comes—”
But could they hope to draw out all the venom that way, wondered Storm. Logan no longer twitched. His head had slumped forward on his chest and he was breathing in quick snorts, his ribs showing under the tight skin as the lungs beneath them labored. His skin was clammy to the touch, with cold perspiration rising in great beads. Storm thought that he was no longer conscious.
Four more times Gorgol changed that poultice of lizard flesh. The last time it came away without a trace of the blue stain. But Logan lay inert, his breathing very quick and shallow.
“No more poison. Now he sleep—” the Norbie explained.
“Will he wake?”
Gorgol studied the unconscious rider. “Maybeso. No thing else to do. No ride, no walk, maybeso this many days—” He held up two fingers.
“Look here,” Storm began aloud and then switched to signs. “You tell me how go—I find help—come back—you wait for me in place of growing things—”
The Norbie nodded. “I keep watch—you bring help—tell also about evil ones—”
Together they carried Logan back into the cavern and then Storm proceeded to strip down for a quick journey along the trail Gorgol drew in the dust for him to memorize. He would take Rain but not Surra. Perhaps he would find Baku outside. But he intended to set and keep a pace the cat could not match.
At the last, he took only two of the canteens, a packet of iron rations, and his bow and arrows. Gorgol offered him back the stun rod and he hesitated, refusing it only because he knew the symbolic reliance the Norbie placed upon it. That, and the thought that the Xiks might just invade the valley outside and he had to leave Gorgol the best defense.
Logan was still limp and unresponding when Storm examined him bef
ore he left. But the Terran was sure that the other’s breathing was better, that his stupor was now close to normal sleep. If he did nothing in the way of exercise to send the remaining poison through his system, he had a good chance for recovery. And all settlers possessed yoris antidote, which Storm could bring back with him.
So, in the hours of the next dawn, the Terran set out, passing the scavenger-stripped bones of the yoris, heading along that trail Gorgol had committed to memory two seasons earlier.
As Storm rode he beamed a silent call for Baku. But, as there came no answering dive from the skies, no rasping scream of greeting, he began to fear that the eagle had not escaped the backlash of the Xik weapon. He missed Surra’s scouting, the aid of her keen scent and keener hearing, and he began to realize that he might have come to depend too heavily upon his team.
The path Gorgol had discovered leading out of this slice of valley was a defile that curved around southwest, and should, the Norbie had promised, bring him out of the mountains proper by sundown. Nowhere did Storm find any trace of either Nitra or Xik, though twice he crossed a fairly fresh yoris trail and once marked claw prints in a bank of soft earth that might have been the sign left by the monster of the heights Gorgol called the evil flyer.
He camped that night in a small side gully, a dry camp where he shared with Rain the contents of one of his canteens, and the stallion grazed disdainfully on some bunches of coarse grass already browning to summer death. But the morning came cool and cloudy and Storm pushed the pace, wanting to be out of these gorges if another cloudburst was brewing aloft, his lively imagination painting a vivid picture of what a sudden dash of water down these ways would mean to a trapped horse and its rider.
By midmorning the threatening clouds had not yet released their burden of water, and the Terran was cantering into the fringe of lowland that extended a tongue to the very foot of the Peaks. According to Logan, he should come across the first of the line cabins before nightfall and find within the communicator that would link him to all the range holdings of the district.
But Storm chanced upon the village first. The Staffa had cut a path across this level country and the Terran detoured to follow its west bank, sure that what he sought could not have been located too far from the necessary water. The rounded tent domes of a Norbie camp were a very welcome sight. He reined in, slung his bow so that he could show empty hands for the sentry, and waited. Only no sentry appeared to challenge him, and now, when he let Rain trot closer, Storm could sight no warriors about those tents. The continued eerie silence finally made him halt once more.
Norbie villages were never permanent affairs. You could come across the signs of old camp sites along any river in the right district. But neither was it customary for any clan to ride off and leave their curved roof poles standing, the hide and skin coverings stretched in place. Both possessions counted as part of the families’ wealth and were too hard to replace.
By the crimson strings marking the shield pole of the largest tent this was a Shosonna clan, allied to Gorgol’s people and friendly to the settlers. Had it suffered a Nitra raid? Storm kept Rain down to a walk and proceeded cautiously toward the tents. More Xik deviltry?
“All right, rider! Stand where you are and keep your hands open!”
That voice came out of the blue—or rather lavender sky—as far as Storm could determine. But the bite in the tone was enough to lead the Terran to obey orders—for that moment anyway. He held up his hands, palm out, searching sky and ground for the invisible challenger.
“We’ve a far sighter on you, fella—”
So! Storm’s pride in his scout’s art revived a little. A far sighter could pick up a man a mile or more away. The unknown speaker could have cut him down before he even knew the other was in the country. But who was that unknown? Outlaws talking for the Xiks? Settlers? One guess was as good as another.
Rain snorted, stamped, and half turned his head toward his rider as if to ask what they were waiting for. Storm still watched the lodges before him, the waving grass of the plain, the banks of the stream, searching for some sign of the men he was sure were hidden there. His own impatience approached the boiling point. This was no time to play games of hide-and-seek. The sooner Logan had medical attention the better. And the knowledge of the Xik holdouts must be relayed to the authorities at once.
At last he deliberately dropped his hands. And that might have been an awaited signal, for three men stepped out of the chieftain’s tent in the village and began to walk toward him, their stun rods centered steadily on him.
“Dumaroy!” he said under his breath, “and Bister!” That was a combination he did not relish.
Coll Bister had fallen a step or so behind his companions and Storm, giving him his main attention, was sure the other had recognized him. A moment later he had oral proof of that.
“It’s that crazy Terran I told you about!” Bister must be purposely raising his voice it carried so well. “Run with the goats all the way down the trail to the Crossin’. Clean off his head, he is. And it looks like he’s teamed up with the horned boys for good.”
Dumaroy strode ponderously on, an impressive figure physically, and as dangerous in his own way as a frawn bull. Storm knew his type. If the settler had already made up his mind, nothing could change his point of view.
“Why the holdup, Dumaroy?” the Terran asked mildly, in his most gentle voice. “I’m glad to meet you. Back in the Peaks—”
Once before Storm had been a target for a stun rod and had suffered the consequences. But then he had not taken the beam dead center. This was worse than any blow, almost as bad as the wild tumult he had ridden out in the backlash of the Xik projector. He did not realize that he had fallen from the saddle pad until he was lying dazed on the ground, the sky swirling madly over him and a faint shouting making a clamor in his ears.
He felt hands turn him over roughly, secure his wrists, taking him prisoner as he tumbled into a dark pit of unconsciousness. His last weak thought was that one of the three had shot him without warning. And Bister’s broad face was in the picture. Only there was something wrong with that face—something wrong with Bister—and it was important that Storm understand that wrongness, very important to him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
T
he torturing headache that was the result of being stun rayed provided a fierce rhythm over and under Storm’s eyes. And his eyes hurt in the bargain when he forced them open. But a feeling of urgency carried over from the past and the Terran fought for control over mind and body. His tentative struggles informed him that he had been staked out on the ground and that every pull he gave to his bonds heightened the pounding in his head.
The time was early evening, Storm judged, as he squinted at the daylight between half-closed lids, and he could hear the coming and going, the inconsequential talk of riders in camp around him. In spite of his sick dizziness the Terran concentrated on picking up what information he could from their conversations.
Piece by piece, half-heard sentences built an ugly picture indeed. Some of what Logan had feared had already come to pass. Dumaroy’s main herd had been raided and the trail of the stolen beasts led straight to the Shosonna river bank camp, which the aroused riders had attacked in retaliation. Luckily the Norbies had fled in time and there had been no killing, though when the riders pursued them, two men had been badly wounded by arrows.
Dumaroy was now awaiting reinforcements, determined to track down the Shosonna back in the hills and teach them a drastic lesson. He had sent out a call to rally all able-bodied settlers as there were signs that the retreating Shosonna band had crossed fresh Nitra trails and the original posse feared a uniting of the two native clans against the settlers’ expedition.
Let there once be a real battle between Norbie and settler and Xik plans would be well on the way to complete realization. The holdout outlaws could continue to needle both sides without loss of either secrecy or any of their own numbers. That is, it might have wo
rked that way had not Storm reached the settlers. But surely once he had a chance to tell his story Dumaroy would have to reconsider, to wait for the Peace Officers. Bister—somehow Coll Bister had an important part. Storm was as certain, as if he had seen him do it, that Bister had rayed him before he could give his information. What sort of a tale had the other concocted while the Terran lay unconscious to explain that raying without warning, to supply a valid reason for keeping the other prisoner?
That Storm was friendly toward the natives was not strong enough. Too many of the settlers felt the same way. As a Terran he could be suspected of mental instability—had Bister played that angle? It was a hard one to refute. Everyone had heard the rumors out of the Center and Bister had traveled with him from the Port to the Crossing—Nobody here he could appeal to—
Since the Terran could not raise his head more than an inch or so his range of vision was necessarily quite limited and those men he sighted were all strangers. Dort Lancin had a range in the Peak area, and if the settlers came in at the summons to back Dumaroy, he should arrive sooner or later. Dort Lancin was a stanch supporter of the pro-Norbie party and he could speak for Storm. But the Terran fumed inwardly over the waste of time.
Bister—that was Bister approaching now. On impulse Storm closed his eyes. A sharp tug on the rope about his ankles sent a quiver of pure agony through his head and he had difficulty in remaining still. Then followed a similar jerk at the wrists extended above his head. Scuff of boots on the ground—a grunt. Storm dared to peek. Bister was standing, his attention distracted by the sound of galloping horses.
Storm watched the settler as one fighting man measures another—an enemy—during a momentary truce. The fellow was a puzzle. He nourished hatred for Storm, had disliked the Terran from the first, for no reason Storm could fathom. If Bister were true to type, he would have been only too eager to mix it up physically. Yet Storm had mastered him without difficulty at their first embroilment and thereafter Bister had tried to get others to do his fighting for him—almost as if his impressive body, his cover of trail bully, was only the outer husk of a very different personality.