by Andre Norton
Fors wriggled over on his side to face Arskane. Even in that dim light he could see that the southerner’s right eye was almost swollen shut and that a shallow cut on his neck was closed with a paste of dust and dried blood.
“Do you know this tribe?” Arskane asked after two croaking atempts to shape the words with a dust-clogged tongue.
“No. Both the clan flags and their horse markings are new to me. And some of the words they use I have never heard before. I think that they have come a long way. The tribes the Star Men know do not attack without warning—except when they go against the Beast Things —for always are all men’s swords bare to them! This is a nation on the march—I counted the banners of ten clans and I must have seen only a small portion of them.”
“I would like to know what use they have for us,” Arskane said dryly. “If they did not see profit in our capture we would now be awaiting the attention of the -death birds. But why do they want us?”
Fors let himself to recall all that he had ever heard concerning the ways of the Plainspeople. They held freedom very high, refusing to be tied to any stretch of land lest it come to hold them. They did not lie—ever—that was part of their code. But also did they deem themselves greater than other men, and they had a haughty and abiding pride. They were inclined to be suspicious of new things and were much bound by custom—in spite of their talk of freedom. Among them a man’s given word was held unbreakable, he must always hold to a promise no matter what might come. And anyone who offended against the tribe was solemnly pronounced dead in council. Thereafter no one could notice him and he could claim neither food nor lodging—for the tribe he had ceased to exist.
Star Men had lived in their tents. His own father had taken a chiefs daughter to wife. But that was only because the Star Men possessed something which the tribe reckoned to be worth having—a knowledge of wide lands.
A wild burst of sound broke his thoughts, a sound which grew louder, the full-throated chanting of fighting men on the march.
“With sword and flame before us,
And the lances of clans at our backs,
We ride through plains and forests
Where sweep the tides of war!
Eat, Death Birds, eat!
From a feast we have spread for your tearing—”
A flute carried the refrain while a small drum beat out the savage “eat, eat” It was a wild rhythm which made the blood race through the listener’s veins. Fors felt the power of it and it was a heady wine. His own people were a silent lot. The mountains must have drawn out of them the desire for music, singing was left to the women who sometimes hummed as they worked. He knew only the council hymn which had a certain darksome power. The men of the Eyrie never went singing into battle.
“These fighting men sing!” Arskane’s whisper echoed his own thoughts. “Do they welcome in such a manner their high chief?”
But if it were the chief who was being so welcomed he had no present interest in captives. Fors and Arskane remained imprisoned as the dreary hours passed. When it was fully dark fires were lighted at regular intervals down the main way and shortly after two men came in, to release them from the “ropes and stand alert while they rubbed stiff hands. There were bowls of stew planked down before them. The stuff was well cooked and they were famished—they gave the food their full attention. But when he had licked the last drop from his lips Fors bent his tongue in the Plains language he had learned from his father.
“Ho—good riding to you, Plainsborn. Now, windrider, by the custom of the shelter fire and the water bowl, we would have speech with the high chief of this tribe—”
The guard’s eyes widened. It was plain that the last thing he expected was to have the formal greeting of ceremony from this dirty and ragged prisoner. Recovering, he laughed and his companion joined jerringly.
“Soon enough will you be brought before the High One, forest filth. And when you are that meeting will give you no pleasure!”
Again their hands were tied and they were left alone. Fors waited until he judged that their sentry was fully engaged in exchanging chaff with the two visitors. He wriggled close to Arskane.
“When they fed us they made a mistake. All Plains-people have laws of hospitality. Should a stranger eat meat which has been cooked at their fires and drink water from their store, then they must hold him inviolate for a day, a night, and another day. They gave us stew to eat and in it was cooked meat and water. Keep silent, when they lead us out and I shall claim protection under their own laws—”
Arskane’s answering whisper was as faint. “They must believe us to be ignorant of their customs then—”
“Either that, or someone within this camp has given us a chance and waits now to see if we have wit enough to seize it. If that guard repeats my greeting then perhaps such an unknown will know that we are ready. Plains-people visit much from tribe to tribe. There may be one or more here now who knows the Eyrie and would so give me a fighting chance to save us.”
Maybe it was that Fors’ greeting had been passed on. At any rate, not many minutes elapsed before the men came back into the tent and the captives were pulled to their feet, to be herded between lines of armed men into the tall hide-walled pavilion which was the center of the city. Hundreds of deer and wild cattle had died to furnish the skins for that council room. And within it, packed so tightly that a sword could not lie comfortably between thigh and thigh, were the sub-chieftains, chiefs, warriors and wise men of the whole tribe.
Fors and Arskane were pushed down the open aisle which ran from the doorway to the center. There the ceremonial fire burned, sending out aromatic smoke as it was fed with bundles of dried herbs and lengths of cedar wood.
By the fire three men stood. The one, a long white cloak draped over his fighting garb, was the man of medicine, he who tended the bodies of the tribe. His companion who wore black was the Keeper of Records —the rememberer of past customs and law. Between them was the High Chief.
As the captives came forward Vocar arose out of the mass of his fellows and saluted the Chief with both hands to his forehead.
“Captain of Hosts, Leader of the Tribe of the Wind, Feeder of the Death Birds, these two be those we took in fair fight when by your orders we scouted to the east. Now we of the clan of the Raging Bull do give them into your hands that you may do with them as you wish. I, Vocar, have spoken.”
The High Chief acknowledged that with a brief nod. He was measuring the captives with a keen eye which missed nothing. Fors stared as boldly back.
He saw a man of early middle age, slender and wiry, marked with a strand of white hair which ran back across his head like a plumed crest. Old scars of many battle wounds showed under the heavy collar of ceremony which extended halfway down his chest. He was unmistakably a famous warrior.
But to be High Chief of a tribe he must be more than just a fighting man. He must also have the wit and ability to rule. Only a strong and equally wise hand could control a turbulent Plains city.
“You”—the Chief spoke first to Arskane—“are of those dark ones who now make war in the south—”
Arskane’s one open eye met the Chiefs without blinking.
“My people only go out upon the battlefield when war is forced upon them. Yesterday I found my tribesman food for the death birds and through his body there was a Plains lance—”
But the Chief did not answer that. He had already turned to Fors.
“And you—what tribe has spawned such as you?”
13. RING OF FIRE
“I am Fors of the Puma Clan, of the tribe of the Eyrie in the mountains which smoke.” Because his hands were bound he did not give the salute of a free man to the commander of many tents. But neither did he hang his head nor show that he thought himself not the full equal of any in that company.
“Of this Eyrie I have never heard. And only far-riding scouts have ever seen the mountains which smoke. If you are not of the blood of the dark ones, why do you run with one of them?”
“We are battle comrades, he and I. Together we have fought the Beast Things and together we crossed the Blow-Up land—”
But at those words all three of the leaders before him looked incredulous and he of the white robe laughed, his mockery echoed a moment later by the High Chief, to be taken up by the whole company until the jeering roar was a thunder in the night.
“Now do we know that the tongue which lies within your jaws is a crooked one. For in the memory of men— our fathers, and fathers’ fathers, and their fathers before them, no men have crossed a Blow-Up land and lived to boast of it. Such territory is accursed and death comes horribly to those who venture into it. Speak true now, woodsrunner, or we shall deem you as twisted as a Beast One, fit only to cough out your life upon the point of a lance—and that speedily!”
Fors had clipped his rebel tongue between his teeth and so held it until the heat of his first anger died. When he had control of ftimself he answered steadily.
“Call me what you will, Chief. But, by whatever gods you own, will I swear that I speak the full truth. Perhaps in the years since our fathers’ fathers’ fathers went into the Blow-Up and perished, there has been a lessening of the evil blight—”
“You call yourself of the mountains,” interrupted the White Robe. “I have heard of men from the mountain who venture forth into the empty lands to regain lost knowledge. These are sworn to the truth and speak no warped tales. If you be of their breed show us now the star which such wear upon them as the sign of their calling. Then shall we make you welcome under custom and law—”
“I am of the mountains,” repeated Fors grimly. “But I am not a Star Man.”
“Only outlaws and evil livers wander far from their clan brothers.” It was the Black Robe who made that suggestion.
“And those are without protection of the law, meat for any man’s ax. These men are not worth the trifling over—”
Now—now he must try his one and only argument. Fors looked straight at the Chief and interrupted him with the old, old formula his father had taught him years before.
“By the flame, by the water, by the flesh, by the tent right, do we now claim refuge under the banner of this clan—we have eaten your meat and broken our thirsting here this hour!”
There was a sudden silence in the large tent. All the buzz of whispering from neighbor to neighbor was stilled and when one of the guards shifted his stance so that his sword hilt struck against another’s the sound was like the call to battle.
The High Chief had thrust his thumbs between his wide belt and his middle and now he drummed on the leather with his finger tips, a tattoo of impatence. But the Black Robe moved forward a step reluctantly and gestured to the guard. So a knife flashed and the hide thongs fell from their cramped arms. Fors rubbed his wrists. He had won the first engagement but—
“From the hour of the lighting of the fires on this night until the proper hour you are guests.” The Chief repeated those words as if they were bitter enough to twist his mouth. “Against custom we have no appeal. But be assured, when the time of grace is done, we shall have a reckoning with you—”
Fors dared now to smile. “We ask only for what is ours by the rights of your own custom, Chieftain and Captain of many tents.” He made with his two hands the proper salute.
The High Chiefs eyes were narrowed as he waved forward his two companions.
“And under custom these two be your guardians, strangers. You are in their care this night.”
So they went forth from the council tent free in their persons, passing through the crowd to another hide-walled enclosure of smaller size. On the dark skins of which it was made various symbols were painted. Fors could make them out with the aid of the firelight. Some he knew well. The twin snakes coiled about a staff—that was the universal sign of the healer. And those balancing scales—those meant the equalizing of justice. The men of the Eyrie used both of those emblems too. The round ball with a flower of flames crowding out of its top was new but Arskane gave an exclamation of surprise as he stopped to point at a pair of outstretched wings supporting a pointed object between them.
“That—that is the sign of the Old Ones who were flying men. It is the chief sign of my own clan!”
And at those words of his the black-robed Plainsman turned quickly to demand with some fierceness:
“What know you of flying men, you creeper in the dirt?”
But Arskane was smiling proudly, his battered face alight, his head high.
“We of my tribe are sprung from flying men who came to rest in the deserts of the south after a great battle had struck most of their machines from the air and blasted from the earth the field from which they had flown. That is our sign.” He touched almost lovingly the tip of the outstretched wing. “Around his neck now does Nath-al-sal, our High Chief, still wear such as that made of the Old One’s shining metal, as it came from the hand of his father, and his father’s father, and so back to the first and greatest of the flying men who came forth from the belly of the dead machine on the day they found refuge in our valley of the little river!”
As he talked the outrage faded from the Black Bobe’s face. He was a sadly puzzled man now.
“So does all knowledge come—in bits and patches,” he said slowly. “Come within.”
But it seemed to Fors that the law man of the Plains-people had lost much of his hosility. And he even held aside the door flap with his own hands as if they were in truth honored guests instead of prisoners, reprieved but for a space.
Once inside they stared about them with frank curiosity. A long table made of polished boards set on stakes pounded into the earth ran down the center and on it in orderly piles were things Fors recognized fiom his few visits to the Star House. A stone hollowed for the grinding and bruising of herbs used in medicines, its pestle lying across it, together with rows of boxes and jars—that was the healer’s property. And the dried bundles of twigs and leaves, hanging in ordered lines from the cord along the ridge pole, were his also.
But the books of parchment with protecting covers of thin wood, the ink horn and the pens laid ready, those were the tools of the law man. The records of the tribe were in his keeping, all the customs and history. Each book bore the sign of a clan carved on its cover, each was the storehouse of information about that family.
Arskane stabbed a finger at a piece of smoothed hide held taut in a wooden stretcher.
“The wide river?”
“Yes. You know of it, too?” The law man pushed aside a pile of books and brought the hide under the hanging lantern where oil-soaked tow burned to give light.
“This part—that is as I have seen it with my own two eyes.” The southerner traced a curved line of blue paint which meandered across the sheet. “My tribe crossed right here. It took us four weeks to build the rafts. And two were swept away by the current so that we never saw those on them again. We lost twenty sheep in the flood as well. But here— my brother scouted north and he found another curve so—” Arskane corrected the line with his finger. “Also—when the mountains of our land poured out fire and shook the world around them the bitter sea waters came in here and here, and no more is it now land —only water—”
The law man frowned over his map. “So. Well, we have lived for ten tens of years along the great river and know this of its waters—many times it changes its bed and wanders to suit its will. There are the marks of the Old Ones’ work at many places along it, they must have tried to hold it to its course. But that mystery we have lost—along with so much else—”
“If you have ridden from the banks of the great river you have come far,” Fors observed. “What brought your tribe into these eastern lands?”
“Whatever takes the Plainspeople east or west? We have the wish to see new places born in us. North and south have we gone—from the edges of the great forests where the snows make a net to catch the feet of our horses and only the wild creatures may live fat in winter—to the swamp lands where scaled
things hide in the rivers to pull down the unwary drinker—we have seen the land. Two seasons ago our High Chief died and his lance fell into the hand of Cantrul who has always been a seeker of far lands. So now do we walk new trails and open the world for the wonder of our children. Behold—”
He unhooked the lamp from its supporting cord and pulled Fors with him to the other end of the tent. There were maps, maps and pictures, pictures vivid enough to make the mountaineer gasp with wonder. They had in them the very magic with which the Old Ones had made their world live for one another.
“Here—this was made in the north—in winter when a man must walk with hide webs beneath his feet so that he sinks not into the snow to be swallowed as in quicksands. And here—look you—this is one of the forest people—they lay paint upon their faces and wear the hides of beasts upon their bodies but they walk in pride and say that they are a very ancient people who once owned all this land. And here and here—” He flipped over the framed parchment squares, the records of their travels set down in bright color.
“This—” Fors drew a deep breath— “this is greater treasure than the Star House holds. Could Jarl and the rest but look upon these!”
The law man ran his fingers along the smooth frame of the map he held.
“In all the tribe perhaps ten of our youth look upon these with any stir in their hearts or minds. The rest— they care nothing for the records, for making a map of the way our feet have gone that day. To eat and to war, to ride and hunt, to raise a son after them to do likewise—that is the desire of the tribe. But always—always there are a few who still strive to go back along the old roads, to try to find again what was lost in the days of disaster. Bits and pieces we discover, a thread here and a tattered scrap there, and we try to weave it whole.”
“If Marphy spoke now the full truth,” the harsher voice of the healer broke in, “he would say that it was because he was born a seeker of knowledge that all this”—he waved at the array—“came to be. He it was who started making these and he trains those of like mind to see and set down what they have seen. All this has been done since he became keeper of the records.”