Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Did you say something else?” Jaire asked. She was a barely visible column of ghostly gray-white in his chamber; he had propped the torch in a corner to provide as little light as possible. There were no sconces in Oridorna. “As I came in, I mean.”

  “Uh — oh, no, I was muttering to myself, if I must admit it. I spoke to you after I heard you gasp. Don’t creep up on me anymore. Say something. Make a noise. Hm — I just realized. Your people, if awake, would know you were coming?”

  “Of course, without trying. I am sorry, Cleve. I will make a noise.” She clapped her hands. “Will that do?”

  “Admirably. Perhaps a little less exuberantly.” He started to ask her why she’d come, then instead asked, “Jaire … what do you know of sorcery?”

  “Sorcery? Nothing. Very little. We have understood that it is practiced Outside, by women. It is called Star-power, they are the Starpowered Ones.”

  That set off no alarums in Cleve’s brain, prompted no memories. He possessed the words; he possessed what was probably the only complete Andoran vocabulary on Andor.

  “They are … real? I mean, they can really ensorcel?”

  “So we understand. There are no Starpowered Ones among us, or among the Orisans, although the Tree-men slaves say some of their women have the power. They believe it, I know that.”

  “Um. What — what can these Starpowered Ones do?”

  Her answer was simple and succinct: “Anything, I think.”

  “Anything! Doesn’t that astonish you? Frighten you?”

  “It does not concern me. Perhaps I am Starpowered. But I would not know how to exercise the power. Perhaps one must have eyes, or perhaps one must have what you call ‘color.’ No, I do not think about it. There are many things Outside, we know, that we do not understand.”

  He sighed. Well, he’d ask again — Outside. “Why are you here, Jaire?”

  “I have told my brother and my grandfather and my aunt,” she said. “My brother and my grandfather have touched you, they understand. You are warm, and you rescued me. I owe you my life, even though you freed me of the debt. But I came here to beg of you your warmth.”

  Her use of the word “beg” made it more difficult. Had she said “I want you to share your warmth with me” or “I want your warmth” or some such, it would have been easier to tell the eyeless woman to … get lost. The fact that another wanted or asked for or even needed something had never given Cleve a feeling of obligation or guilt; what he had had on Earth, what little he had here, he had got by his own efforts. But in this situation …

  “Jaire, you remember what happened before. Another wanted my warmth, and liked it to the point of being perfectly willing to maim me to keep it with her, or to slay me to prevent my taking it elsewhere.” My warmth, he thought, in a mental snort.

  “I know,” her little voice said. He would have preferred to look elsewhere, but found he could not. In the semidarkness she was lovely and feminine; a nude blonde standing a few feet away. He could not see, in the unsteady light of the flickering brand, her strange, veined skin, her near-transparent hair, her weirdly eyeless face. He could see only that she was a pale, shapely young female interestingly half-lit by the frenetic ebb and flow of torchlight. A breakable young female, very possibly.

  And he was a man.

  “I know,” she said again. “But I am not Siraa. She would enslave you — she will enslave Shilaat if he takes her to mate. I assure you. I would be your slave.” And Jaire came a few paces forward and went to her knees beside his pallet, her arms a little apart from her body, her hands open — as, probably, she had been taught befits a slave in Orisana during her captivity there. Her unclothed breasts were trembling ivory in the fitful, pale illumination from his glim. “I am your slave, Cleve. Accept me as your slave.”

  “Don’t be silly, Jaire,” he said, deliberately using words to cut. “You are the granddaughter of the Keeper, the sister of the leader. I am an Outsider, and I am leaving for the Outside — immediately.”

  “When it is time to wake?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, thinking of the timelessness for dwellers in perpetual darkness. There was no morning in Oridorna, no noon, no night. There was a time to wake, a time to sleep, and times to eat. And no clocks, no sun, no stars. Only life and death marked the passage of time here, among these people. They had one shorter measurement, of course: the women.

  “Well, then, if you leave when it is time to wake, I will be your slave until then.”

  “Jaire — ”

  “I have told you: My brother and my grandfather understand. I have told them. I am not a maiden — Shilaat was brutal in that. I beg you for warmth. I beg you for one experience I shall remember all my life. I beg you to accept me your slave, Cleve.”

  “You are my slave, Jaire. Come share my warmth.”

  *

  A hood of soft hide covered with long, silken white hair shielded his head and most of his face. He wore a tunic of the same white fur over leggings of the same stuff, and they had fashioned boots for him, the women of Oridorna. Over the snowsuit thus formed, Cleve slung two thin baldrics, preventing them from shifting overmuch with his movements by a third thin strip of llico, around his waist. On his left hip was the curved sword he had taken from Bavuraat; spoils of combat. On his right swung the little pouch containing the Oridorn deathbox. His long-furred mittens were stuck in what served him as a belt.

  At the foot of a long tunnel sloping gently upward from Oridorna, Cleve bade good-bye to the gentle people of this impossible land. Two warriors would accompany him; he had persuaded the old man Zaide and his grandson Zaire and granddaughter Jaire to take their leave of him here.

  “I am indebted and grateful to all of you,” Robert Cleve said, looking at their forever-impassive faces.

  All their faces, he had noticed, looked sad. Perhaps it was the lack of eyes, perhaps it was that they had never seen facial expressions. Perhaps it was that they were indeed sad. Without eyes, without lachrymal glands, they were denied the release of tears, even as infants. Perhaps they would always be sad, doomed from birth to possess no outlet for their fears, their pains, their anguish. They could not weep.

  “You have shown us that other people are not necessarily enemies, Cleve of Earth,” old Zaide said. “You are the first guest within the collective memory of Oridorna. You are the first man not of Oridorna to be called Warrior of Oridorna. You have provided us with knowledge, and history. You will be long remembered and spoken of among us.”

  “Until death,” Jaire said in her soft, sad voice, and Cleve felt a tightening in his throat, the growing of a lump. The woman, he knew, would present a tear-streaming face were she able. What, he wondered, was their release? Or had they any?

  He touched them one by one, Zaire gripping his hand and touching its palm as he had that other time, in the cavern of Orisana. No weapons: friends.

  “Nor will I ever forget Oridorna and my friends here,” Cleve said, and felt proof of his own possession of tear ducts. Despite the fact that there was none to see, he turned. “Let’s go.”

  He and his two guides, both armed with the Oridorn deathboxes, made their way up into darkness. Cleve carried the torch he alone needed.

  ‘The way may be clear,” the man with the belly said, “or they may be there — the Orimors.”

  “Certainly they will be close by,” the other man, the muscular one, said. Cleve nodded and plodded on, ever upward. The darkness spun away as they advanced; intimidated by his torch. It closed in behind them again, as if following them like some dangerous beast just without the radius of his brand’s illumination.

  They rounded several turns, passed through a particularly tight squeeze between smoothed, out-jutting granite, and ascended. There was a little dip, then a climb over the fallen rubble of a long-ago rockfall from the stony ceiling, then a steeper climb.

  “Here,” the muscular Oridorn said, halting and putting out a hand. They had been walking along beside a narrow little serpe
nt of trickling water for many, many paces. The stream, when Cleve tested it, grew steadily colder as they ascended beside it.

  “There is a curve in the passage ahead, Cleve. Just beyond that is the opening onto the mountain. Can you hear the wind?”

  Cleve admitted he could not, and the man sighed; how pitiful were all but those of Oridorna! With their weakened hearing, they could depend only upon the things they called “eyes” — which were of no value whatever when they were without what they called “light!”

  “A moment, then,” Cleve said. “I will put out the torch by dipping it in the water. You can pick it up as you return.”

  He did, laying the torch across the path. “Be careful not to stumble over it in the da — ” he began, and stopped himself. The stomachy Oridorn chuckled. They now stood in darkness — but it was no longer absolute. Somewhere ahead, there was light. The three men stood in a gray world, and Cleve stared about him.

  How long it had been! Even this dim, filtered daylight, seeping in through the opening ahead and creeping around a bend in the tunnelway, was beautiful to a man so long denied the sight of sun and moon — moons — and stars.

  They went forward and rounded the tunnel bend.

  And there was the world of light.

  Cleve squinted.

  After perhaps a minute of squinting, letting his pupils grow accustomed to the light, letting his eyes accustom themselves, glut themselves on the ruddy sky of Andor, seen through the low natural doorway ahead, he turned to his companions. They were shivering.

  “Go back,” he said. “What can you do to help me from here? I will crawl out, keeping as low as possible. Me they might take for one of themselves, at least temporarily. You they’d attack at once.”

  “We will wait here,” the muscular guide said.

  Cleve closed a cold hand on the man’s icy arm. “Thank you. I am going now. Go back.”

  And he went alone up the passage, toward a ruddy sky grayed by wind-swirled snow, toward a moaning, howling wind, toward inimical beast-men and inimical elements and — the unknown.

  17 - The Beast-Men of Orimora

  The mountaintop was a ragged white vista falling away below him on both sides. It was not the mountaintop, strictly speaking; the peak rose up behind him, a challenge of snow-covered rock. An angry wind thrust at him, pulled at him, attempting to hurl him from this place where he had no business being. This was the domain of wind and snow and ice and chill sunlight. The wind howled as it attacked him, howled and moaned like ghost-voices inviting a newcomer to their icy ranks. The snow glittered; it was cold snow, ski snow, and he knew the temperature here was closer to zero Fahrenheit than to freezing.

  The opening to the cavern whence he’d come was no more than four feet high, and he had crawled forth, his furry mittens protecting his already cold hands. The wind stung his eyes so that they were immediately blurred with tears. He pulled lower his furry hood, drawing it up, too, over his mouth and nose so that only his slitted eyes were forced to take the wind’s icy assault.

  He saw nothing, no one. When he rolled onto his back to gaze upward at the peak, there was nothing there save an unwelcoming Nature. Vision was limited; the wind swirled snow that filled the air and clouded it, bringing the tears to his eyes. He wiped them away and waited before moving until they came no more. He looked down.

  The snow-covered mountain vanished into the snow-filled air — and into clouds and mist, wispy shapes that wreathed the mountain and nudged it cautiously, as if to test its cold bite.

  He began to crawl downward. Another pause; another reconnoiter. Still he saw no signs of life.

  Cleve rose to stand tall and challenging on the mountainside. He turned slowly, looking about him on the three sides left open to his vision. Nothing. Only the snow, mounded and jagged as it clung to the mountain’s rough face. And behind him — a steady, empty slope to the top.

  He was helpless not to do what he did. It had been in his race since time began, infecting the race of Man like a nonmalignant cancer that, many times, had proved very malignant indeed.

  He made his way up to the very peak and there left one of the strips of dried fish the Oridorns had pressed upon him. Into its hard surface, already freezing though dry, he scratched his name. And when he had finished, he smiled a wry smile and added another name.

  Robert Cleve. And Doralan Andrah.

  Then he turned and began to descend — toward the clouds.

  He had descended some forty feet — ten of which he slid, without injury or more than minor pain — when they appeared.

  They rose up around him, ghost-shapes in the gray air of their domain. The Orimors.

  They were tall; he had known that, from their hides. Closer to seven feet than six, and some, he judged, were taller than that. They were shaggy and white, as of course he had known they would be, with their beautiful pelts of snowy silk, many of the individual hairs being as many as three inches long. Their hands must have been tough, he thought at that first sight. Their backs were as furry as their bodies, but the palms were devoid of it, dark and leathery-looking. They were four-fingered, as he was, with an apposable thumb. Hairy or not, savage or not, they were close to being men.

  Their eyes were nearly invisible in their hairy faces, and he saw that there was yellow within those narrow sight slits. A bit of unfurred forehead showed, the fur growing down to a long widow’s peak on each, ending just above the bushy, craggy brows. He assumed they had ears; they were fur-buried. Their noses were small and flat, the same grayish-black as their palms. They stood very erect, for more like men than Earthly gorillas or chimpanzees.

  “The Abominable Snowmen,” he muttered. “Perhaps some of them have got to Earth? Or perhaps some from Earth have somehow come here, to Andor. Certainly these are the creatures we know are in Tibet and Wisconsin!”

  They wore only their fur and arms. Baldrics and belts, swords and daggers, spears. None carried shields. There was no possibility of their accepting him, even in this whirling snow, as one of themselves. They were taller, far broader. And of course their faces were not his face, and the mittens he wore only superficially resembled their hands.

  Very slowly he let his right mitten slip off, wiping it off against his own white-haired thigh. Very slowly he doubled those instantly cold fingers, squeezing hard, then plucked at his little pouch with them.

  One of the Orimors launched a spear. A spear is not like an arrow or a bullet; there is plenty of time for the target to duck, if he sees the cast. Even at twenty feet, Cleve jerked aside from the shaft that swished toward him — and shot past, several feet of wood shod with metal.

  He raised his left hand, palm toward them. He spoke, loudly, the Andorite word for peace.

  One of the Orimors shrieked at him, the sound not unlike that emitted by an Earthly panther or mountain lion. He waved his sword and started forward. Another drew back his spear, sighted, and launched it.

  Cleve whipped up the Oridorn deathbox and got his thumb into the cord loop and pulled. He swung his hand as he lunged aside from the onrushing spear.

  The spear’s haft, curving slightly in its flight, actually touched his hide-covered side. He heard the hissing sound as it kicked up snow behind him. At the same time he watched the effect of his defense.

  The pelt of the spear thrower blackened at the chest. The creature sank without a cry. The yeti-like creature beside him looked down in horror at the blackening area of his own pelt, on his left hip, and bellowed in pain. He lunged forward, taking three long steps before he, too, collapsed.

  Cleve didn’t want to kill all of them. But he wondered — briefly — if he had a choice. They ringed him on three sides; a quick glance showed him none above him. But he did not want to go upward again, and right now his back was a target. His glance showed him a cluster of snow-covered rocks a few feet downmountain, and he dived for the partial cover they offered.

  An iceball whizzed past his head. He had moved just in time; one of the snowmen behind
him had launched a natural missile. Of course. There was no vegetation up here; nothing from which to make spears. The spears, like their scimitars, came from the men living at the base of the mountain. But natural weapons could be quickly created here on the cold mountainside. Snowballs, squeezed until they were icy. For that matter, a dagger of ice could be fashioned pretty swiftly. If it were used just as swiftly, it would be as effective as stone or perhaps steel.

  His enemies set up a shout — animal screams — as he leaped. He plunged among the five or six tall rocks clustered there, covered with snow so that they formed a sort of white sanctuary. He struck the ground among them — and it opened and swallowed him.

  Cleve crashed down onto a hard surface but a few feet below. Snow tumbled after him as he struck and rolled, floundering. He had lost his left mitten, now, and his hand contacted something soft and silky. A pelt? Yes — a pelt on its original owner. It moved.

  Cleve rolled onto his back and looked up to see the scimitar rushing down at him in the manlike hand of its Orimor wielder. Cleve did not bother with his weapons; he rolled aside as fast as he could move.

  The sword struck the rock where he’d lain with a loud clang as Cleve scrambled onto his side. He still clutched the Oridorn “gun”; he swung it up and triggered it. He watched his attacker go staggering back, dying soundlessly. He — or it — collapsed against the stone wall a few feet away and sank slowly down to die sitting up with its chin on its chest.

  I’d be dead, Cleve thought, without this weapon! I’d never have got even this far; they'd have killed me up there, from a distance. My sword was as useless up there as a club. Worse, I could have thrown the club with something approaching accuracy!

  “Daron preserve!” a voice cried, and Cleve looked quickly in its direction.

  The man rose slowly, shivering; he wore dark furs, but his head and hands were unclothed, and his parkalike garment was open at the throat.

  “Daron preserve and bless! A man!”

  “Get that sword,” Cleve said. “We’re far from out of this. There are — ”