Dare to Go A-Hunting ft-4

by Andre Norton

  The picture was clear in his mind, sharply clear so that he saw in only an instant or two of holding it a horror which made him shiver. Oddly enough in shape it was not unlike Togger, save the pulpy, fattish body was covered with mud-streaked hair. Like the smux, the foremost pair of feet were equipped with great claws, the inner side of which were saw-toothed, a visible threat to any likely to be caught by those. The heads were round, bearing to the fore flexible antennae on the tips of which were balls which he knew, from the thoughts of the enemy who had herded them ahead, served as eyes and had an astounding range of sight in the dark of the tunnel through which they traveled at a speed which was seemingly foreign to the fact that they crawled on three pair of legs, the armed ones held aloft as if ready for battle at any moment.

  Farree quested ahead, seeing in a strange way through the eyes of the herder. The underground traveler was aware of him now, but unable to push him out and away, though his increasingly frantic attempts made him strive to read Farree as Farree had already reached him.

  Farree struck. The command which he thrust deep into that other mind was already aimed at the grotesque army scuttling under the surface of the ground. But with the necessity of keeping hold on the herder, and, through him, trying to reach the other creatures, Farree had to sacrifice sight of the burrowers. Whether his push reached them, or whether they surrendered to his unvoiced command he could not tell. Something hit the ground before him with a thud. For an instant that broke his concentration. Togger had lurched out of Farree's jerkin to leap to the ground between two of the crossing web lines. The smux flung himself, with a powerful thrust of his strong hind feet, at the nearest of those lines. His foreclaws whipped out, cutting into the earth, and when he brought them together with an audible click there was a crinkling in the dry soil as if, freed from a very taut hold, the web lines had snapped away from that break, carrying part of the earth with them.

  "Bad—" Farree caught that but he did not catch the smux whom he tried to snatch up again. Togger was running over the webbed earth in the general direction of that glow which marked Bojor's choice of battleground. Time and again the smux stopped for only an instant or two to snap the lines just under the surface of the soil, though for what purpose Farree could not understand.

  However, that thickening of the air, or what had seemed that, which had kept him from speedy flight, was gone. He soared up and out across the web Togger was so effectively destroying, heading toward Bojor at the foot of the cliff.

  Over his head the circle of lights had broken apart and now fell behind him like a headscarf blown by the wind. Twice he bent all the strength he could muster into trying once again to take command of the underground party, only now he encountered the blankness of a new shield, one strong enough to stand firm against his probing. Thus he concentrated on reaching the cliff, the ship stunner in his hand.

  "Bad—come—" Not Togger this time. He had already flown past the smux, could no longer see him. That was Bojor. And if the bartle had assessed the enemy enough to add come, then indeed the attack would be a formidable one.

  Farree reached the edge of the webbed country. Bojor squatted almost directly before him, the crest of longer and stiffer hair between his ears standing up. The light which had marked Bojor when they had watched him from the ship was now plastered against the cliff side some distance away from the stout body. Bojor's eyes were red and opened to their farthest extent. He looked up to Farree but did not hold that glance very long; his attention dropped quickly to the ground immediately before him. Farree winged a fraction closer and lit, not folding his wings, but feeling the security of the ground beneath his feet. He had the stunner in a tight grip and now dared once more to mind search.

  Almost he leaped into the air as he met a surge of what was not thought as he knew such, but rather a great hunger, a need which came from many minds. He tried to separate one of those threads from another, to trace it back to the mind which gave it birth, but they were so entangled there was no hope of that; and they were very close.

  "Togger—come—now—" There was that sending and he saw in the dim light sent off by the motes a blotch of shadow which sped in closer to one of the bartle's legs. Once there, crowded in against the bartle, the smux turned around, claws up and ready in something of the same stance that Bojor had taken in defense. Outdistancing the smux was Yazz; she was not running, but weaving a pattern with short jumps from one clear patch of ground to another. It was manifest Yazz sensed some danger which was inherent there.

  Chapter Eleven

  Their only source of light were the motes Covering in the air, a patch over the head of each. When Farree, in one wing-aided bound, joined the other three by the wall of the cliff, only to whirl around and stand ready, waiting for the charge he was sure was coming, his attention was all for the ground. There was a swirl of light which whipped about him as the lash of a whip might have cut at his body. He gasped and choked. The lights were lower, circling about him at throat level, drawing in closer.

  He flung up an arm to beat them off and small pains stung his skin as if they were in truth sparks from a fire. Nor could he so win free of them. The circle was at chest level now. Unconsciously he had furled his wings as the fire sparks flicked along their surfaces.

  His left arm was pinned to his body by the sparks, but the right one still held the stunner. There was no way he could spray those strange attackers. Nor had he any belief that they were even insects ready to sting him into submission, for his mind did not pick up the slightest hint of life as he knew it in those minute flashes.

  Farree tried to expand his wings again, to perhaps rise above the attackers. At that moment, as his struggles grew stronger, the ground itself burst outward, spraying earth and stones into the air as there boiled out of a crumbling hole the first of those things he had mind seen in the tunnel. He had already set the stunner to full strength and part of its beam, though his arm was unable to hold steady as he was being jerked back and forth, chopped across the first two of the ground runners. Yazz showed her teeth and made a rush at the third to climb out of the runway below.

  Above her head the sparks which had accompanied her formed a ball aimed at her. However, like all of her species, her movements in attack were delivered so swiftly that her body became slightly blurred to the sight. Though the ball swooped, Yazz was gone, only her hind legs and thrashing tail visible, the whole forepart of her body now within the hole.

  Farree kicked and twisted his body. At last there was an instant when he could bring the stunner to bear on part of the star ring about him. There was a winking and he felt a relaxation of the pressure which had been squeezing him. Bojor roared, that vast surge of sound echoed from the cliffs about. Farree stumbled back, one of his furled wings striking against the bartle's bulk. A vast paw fell heavy on his shoulder drawing him farther on toward the cliff. The lights, which had surrounded the bartle and brought him to bay here, divided into two clusters, one of which struck at each paw.

  Yazz drew back from the entrance to the burrow. Her jaws were fast set upon a thick round body, just behind the head of the creature. It was beating its forefeet against the ground in a vain effort to win free.

  Its efforts merely broke loose clods which the claws showered through the hole from which it had been so unceremoniously ripped. Yazz gave a quick snap and threw her captive to the other side of the hole. It landed on its back, kicked feebly, then was still, while its killer was already heading back into the hole after more prey.

  As Farree was swept against the cliff, those sparks of light which had snared him before formed a new ball, drawing back several paces. He gasped air into lungs which had been compressed, took aim at that ball.

  He never fired. Instead he gave a cry as the balled lights sped at his head. A solid mass, it struck an instant later with a force which snapped his head back. The sparks wheeled endlessly before his eyes. Then, on the tail of that strike there followed pain so intense he could neither hear, nor see, n
or understand anything, save that the world was a place of torture. The brilliant, eye-searing white which had followed on the stroke of the sparks darkened and then even the pain, at last, also was gone.

  As he had been in his dream he was somewhere else, not in his body, though he searched frantically for awareness of flesh and bone and could not find it. Yet he was able to sense that he was not alone. Bojor—Yazz—he tried to hail them—

  Nothing of the warm sense of friendship, which should follow on his thinking those names, came to him. He tried to advance the mind search. As it had been when he met the haze he could not pierce the unseen envelope which appeared to hold him.

  No, he could not reach out—but he could be aware– aware that he was not alone in this nothingness. Farree drew back into himself with a rush. For a moment he wanted to cower in hiding as he had in the Limits when some drunken and sadistic inhabitant of that hell was seeking him to afford amusement, for that which was without him projected a feeling of strength and ruthless purpose. Only he was no longer Dung, the outcast of the Limits; he was Farree, winged and—free? No, not free; he was caught in a trap, held to await the pleasure of those who had set it.

  "—Langrone? But none of the guards survived!"

  Thoughts, not voices. Only he could not send any reply. He was mind-dumb but not deaf.

  "They were found—" Farree was granted an instant or two of a picture of a green hillside and on it lay forms sprawled. The nearest lay face down and dribbling down a bare back, from twin pools of raw flesh, was blood. Wing! The wings had been cut from the dead!

  "—dead—" He had been so intent upon that picture which one mind broadcast that he had missed part of the sentence.

  "Langrone," repeated the first mind voice emphatically. "Doubtless poisoned like Atra—bait!" There was contempt in that. Through the darkness there came a thrust of pain but it seemed far away—accompanying the body which he could no longer feel for himself.

  "Blind!" The mind voice was very sharp, cutting into him as a knife could have cut his flesh—it was undoubtedly an order delivered to him. "Prisoner with no hope!" a second contemptuously delivered.

  If he had for some reason accepted the fate the first comment had laid upon him there was still resistance in him against the second. Prisoner he might be—somehow dead-alive—but that core of him which had awakened with his wings, had been nurtured by Maelen and Vorlund, remained strong enough to refuse to surrender.

  "—Selrena." Again he had missed part of the thought speech.

  "We cannot carry– Ha—what is that thing?"

  "What? Where?"

  "It moved over there!"

  There came a time of quiet and then the first of his captors spoke again: "It is one with the beasts that these death givers have brought to serve them. A rock finished it off. Now—we cannot carry him. Let Selrena lift him if she wishes. Or let him lie; he will be true dead soon enough. The winged people do not take well to the dark ways. If he is Langrone he is really of no matter to us."

  "Say you that to Vaspret's face?"

  "Langrone!" The other repeated the word as if he were spitting it out in a gob. "Air Dancers! What does it matter that they are being hunted?"

  "Remember that which the death dealer from the other ship found? Do you think that they will let go of any of this world now that they have laid hands on that? Roxcit's lying place they are going to search for. With what they have in their ways of strange knowledge they are going to find the second cache soon. That they hunt the winged people—yes, there is no real harm for us in that. But that they break the guard we are set to—"

  "Well enough, well enough! Remember, if this Langrone is one with Atra he has been blinded by those others. He will be able to draw them—"

  "Not so. For them perhaps he shall be bait now." There was satisfaction in that.

  The darkness in which Farree was closed drew tighter about him as if to force the air from his lungs, even as the lights had earlier done. He was aware of that frightening increase of pressure even if he was no longer aware of his body. Then—there was nothing.

  Farree opened his eyes. There were no longer folds of black choking him—rather what he saw was grey—like the light of very early morning or the haze which had turned him back from his first scouting on this world. He rested on his side but a small attempt at movement told him that he was still the prisoner the mind voice had claimed him to be.

  However, the haze of grey seemed to sway sluggishly in an odd way which made him feel ill. He was entirely aware of his body again but the ills of that were of less importance than what the swaying of haze revealed or obscured.

  There was a chair which towered above him as he lay not too far away from it on a floor covered with a pavement of alternate green and brown blocks of stone, the brown blocks veined with threads of green. The chair was white and the legs, arms, and the frame of the back were heavily and intricately carved, the arms ending in balls as clear as if they had been solidified from fresh stream water. The chair had a padded back and seat of heavily patterned stuff, green leaves, flowers of every shade and here and there a band of what appeared to be such runes as Zoror had once shown him, saying that it was believed that the People he sought once preserved knowledge by such markings.

  Before the chair was a footstool and on this sat a small creature which he could not immediately determine as a sentient being or a lower animal.

  The small body was covered with spotted scales, golden in shade, but its contours were humanoid. A head which was round in the back and narrowed to a point in front crowned a long and sinuous neck. It had four limbs, stick thin, the upper pair of which ended in webbed six-fingered paws; the back ones ended in broad pads. Between the forepaws it rolled back and forth a tube of white which was patterned by a series of holes. Putting one end of that to the sharp snout mouth and fingering along the length, it now produced a series of notes which sounded like trickling water. The eyes were very large and were glowing like green flames, if such could exist.

  Those eyes were regarding Farree and he knew that the creature was perfectly aware of him. Cautiously he tried mind touch—but was astounded to find that he had apparently been deprived of that sense—it was like the haze he had faced before. He met a wall.

  The tinkling notes of the pipe grew louder and the room haze was thinning, disappearing. He could see more of the room now—the sturdy legs and lower surface of a long table, the color of walls where ran the runic patterns of the chair cushions; but these were clear, unhidden by any other designs.

  Farree licked dry lips, preparing to use his voice as he was unable to mind touch. But he never got a chance to see if the creature with the flute would be able to understand vocal communication. There was movement beyond the table and he then saw fully the figure who came around the end of it.

  To his first glance the newcomer looked like many of the spacers he had seen—tall, humanoid—perhaps taller even than Zoror. He wore tight covering on his legs and feet as if foot gear and clothing were one—above that a laced jerkin clasped in to a narrow waist with a broad belt which glimmered and flashed with a silvery radiance. His head was covered with hair which was mingled red and gold. The skin of his face and his uncovered hands was pale—there was no space tan to darken it.

  There was something set and remote in his expression. Heavy-lidded eyes were half shut in a face which was as perfect as if it had been carefully carven out of a substance as white as the chair he now sought and settled in. Remote that expression might be, but he was regarding Farree closely, and there was that about him which suggested that he was in complete command here.

  "So—" Though Farree had not been able to pierce the interference resisting his own thought, the barrier did not exist for this stranger. "Who may you be?" The feeling that question suggested was a cold curiosity. Again Farree strove to answer but for him the barrier held.

  On the footstool the flute player leaned forward. It no longer played that instrument, but floppe
d down to its pad feet and advanced a step or so. As if it controlled Farree's body it leaned forward and tapped the captive's lips with the tip of its flute, clearly an invitation or perhaps an order to use vocal speech. Having done so it padded back to the footstool and once more resumed its seat.

  The man in the chair had watched that action and now he nodded. "So—" He once more turned his gaze on Farree. "Who?" He made of that single word a sharp order.

  "Farree—" To his own ears that hoarse sound was extremely loud as if he might be shouting—there was even a murmur of echo to follow.

  "There is no mistake that you are that." The questioner's speech sped smoothly into his mind. "What name have you or had you in Langrone ranks? Or have they taken that away from you, cripple, along with all the rest?"

  "I am called Farree." He did not understand what the other meant.

  There was a faint frown on the man's face. Then Farree shook as a spear of mind send invaded him. He was no longer aware of the room, the man, the flutist—only of the same torture which engulfed him when Maelen and the rest had attempted to break the barrier which existed between him and much of his own past. He could not defend himself against the power this other projected, but neither could that one penetrate the shield which someone or something had used upon his captive. The pain became darkness and he was only aware of weak relief that the force was gone.

  Breathing fast as might one who had nearly gone beyond the ability to breathe at all, Farree was again aware of the room and those two watching him. That frown had grown the darker on the face of his interrogator and the creature on the footstool had drawn arms and legs back against its body, shivering, as if it also had been the target of sudden assault.

  "How did you escape?" The send did not ravage him now, rather it was softer. In the great chair the man was leaning forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes no longer lazy.