by Andre Norton
He could use a bow, having two hands. But Gorgol could not. And he would not leave the Norbie with no better defence than just his long-knife. Now he unbuckled the holstered stun rod. Storm knew that the natives had a deeply rooted prejudice against using another man’s weapons – believing that there was a mystical relationship between man and his arms. But there were also occasions of free gift in which the ‘magic” of the weapon could be transferred intact. He did not know the Norbie ceremony, but he could follow his own intuition.
As he had done on the morning he had started on this expedition. Storm held the sheathed weapon to the sky and then to the earth, before he extended it to Gorgol with the sign that signified the weapon was to be a permanent gift.
Gorgol’s slit-pupilled eyes widened, but he did not yet touch finger to the rod. Stun ray guns were imported from off-world, they cost what seemed to a native a fabulous amount in trade goods and Norbies seldom bought them, since it was too hard to get fresh clips to recharge them. But the gift of such a weapon was sometimes made by off-worlder to native and that was a very serious and honourable thing.
“Press here – aim so –” Slowly Storm went through the drill, but he knew that Gorgol had worked by the side of settler riders often enough to understand. The Norbie nodded and stood proudly as the Terran rebuckled the holster to the belt of the new owner.
Storm was about to sling his arrow quiver over his shoulder when Gorgol stopped him with an imperative gesture. One-handedly the Norbie transferred half of his hunting points to the Terran’s keeping. The war arrows were sacred and could not be given to another lest they fail him in some crucial moment. Now, equipped, painted, a true Navajo again outwardly, Storm saluted with upraised hand and padded away from the camp, Baku taking to the air to accompany him.
An unpleasant smell issued from the water still murky with mud. Where necessary, Storm splashed through shallows. But he worked his way around the drying outer rim of the valley, not attempting to swim the lake. There were dead animals, bloated, floating in the silted liquid. However, he found no trace of the party’s horses, of Mac and the third Norbie from the Crossing, or any of the party supplies. Had any of the mounts survived they must have been scooped up by the raiders.
As the Terran approached the southern end of the valley where the tunnel lay, he halted at regular intervals to sweep the ground ahead with his vision lenses. And now he could see that there was a change in the outline of the heights there. But it was not until Storm reached the wall of the lake and climbed a slime-encrusted mound of mud-cemented debris that he knew the worst.
The tunnel was gone, obliterated by a slide that would probably yield only to the powerful punch of a boomer, if there were one on Arzor, which he very much doubted. A man probably could climb those heights, fearing all the while to be trapped in another slip of the soft earth, but he could not get Rain through. It was certainly intended by someone or something that there was to be no easy escape southward. Storm felt a queer elation because he had already made his choice before he knew that the door had been slammed shut.
An hour or so later Gorgol accepted the information indifferently. Apparently it was of little matter that Baku was the only one that could now cross into the outer world with any ease. He, himself, was eager to head north. And Storm promised that they would leave Surra and Rain with their supplies in the cliff camp the next morning, he and Gorgol to try to trace the path the wandering frawn had used. For frawns were not climbers and it was certain that any trail the animal had followed into their valley was one a horse could negotiate.
Storm had considered himself, rightly by his standards, to be somewhat of an expert at trailing. But Gorgol was able to pick traces seemingly out of the surface of unmarked rock, guiding them to a thin crevice in the cliff walls where the prints of the frawn’s hoofs did show in drying mud. That crevice was narrow to begin with, and it climbed, but not too straightly. Above them Baku quested, sometimes totally lost to sight in the immensity of the sky where she faced no travel obstacles at all.
They came at last to a pocket-sized pass and Gorgol picked from between two rocks there a small hide pouch lined with frawn fabric, smelling of some aromatic herb.
“Faraway men chew – makes powerful dreams –” The Norbie passed the find to the Terran who sniffed inquiringly at the strong odour. It was not unpleasant, but he had never come across it before that he could remember. He was sorry for that ignorance as what he held might be an important clue to the true identity of the outlaws.
“Dream stuff grow on Arzor?” he asked
“Not so. Wizard use some found in Butcher camp. Made head shake – many dreams – evil. It is a spirit thing – not good.”
Storm tucked the find inside his belt. Undoubtedly it was a narcotic of some kind, perhaps with a stronger effect upon the Arzoran natives than upon the original off-world users.
“Through here – with horses –”
A small patch of earth was indented plainly by the prints of horsehoofs, though these were later overlaid with the frawn tracks bound in the other direction. And all the horses had been shod, proving they were not Norbie stock.
On the other side of the pass they found the reason for the wandering of the frawn, a yoris kill, the white bones of a full-grown frawn picked clean. But the killer had not profited greatly, though it had gone to its own death with a full paunch, because the huge lizard lay there too, its sickly yellow corpse thriftily skinned and left as a feast for a pack of small scavengers.
Gorgol slipped from one cover rock to the next, losing little of his agility because of the arm bound across his chest, venturing at length to squat beside that unsavoury carcass as the feasters fled. When Storm joined him the Norbie pointed to the reptile’s head.
That was a disturbing sight, not because the whole top of the saurian skull was completely missing, but because the Terran knew only one weapon that could cause a death wound such as that. And it was one completely outlawed at the end of the war.
“A slicer!” he breathed. More evidence that his wild guess of yesterday had some base in fact. He glanced at the bow in his own hand and grimaced. A bow against a stun ray was not too impossible odds – but a bow opposed to a slicer was no odds at all – in favour of the man equipped with the slicer!
The Norbie rose to his feet and looked around him. He picked up a stick and thrust it under that wreck of a head, turning up the skull to pry at the lower jaw. Under his probing a sudden stream of greenish liquid fountained high. Gorgol twittered in much the same tone of consternation Hing used upon occasion. Dropping his stick he made finger-talk.
“Yoris’ death poison – mating season now.”
That meant that the big, ugly reptiles were twice as vicious and far more deadly. During the mating season each of the males would have effective poison fangs to use against rivals, and yoris’ venom was often fatal – at least to off-worlders. From now on they must be prepared to kill the lizards on sight without waiting for any attack.
Leaving the carnage on the small plateau, Storm strode to the rim for a survey of what lay below. The land there presented a surprising vista, though perhaps he should have been prepared, having seen the ruins in the lake valley. As far as Storm could see the cliff walls were cut into a series of giant steps – really terraces – most of which were cloaked – or choked – with thick growths of vegetation. Leading from a point to the south, a road had been cut and cleared from level to level – perhaps the trail along which the outlaws drove their stolen animals. For the pass through which he and Gorgol had just come could not have accommodated a herd of any size.
The Terran unslung his lenses to study in detail the floor of this second valley. It was easy to pick out a sizable frawn herd at graze there, the curious loping gait of the animals making them seem almost top-heavy when they moved because of their heavily maned forequarters and high-held horned heads contrasted to the relatively weak nakedness of their sharply sloping hindquarters free of almost all but a tight fuzz of hair.<
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Frawns – but no horses. And no signs of riders either. The limiting walls of the valley itself perhaps provided an adequate barrier to drifting and cancelled the need for any herders –though with the yoris season at its height Storm would have considered guards necessary.
This valley was much wider than the outer one and only the lenses allowed Storm to see that the opposite walls were terraced in the same fashion as those below. The grass was luxuriant and high, and there were no signs of the flood that had devastated the neighbouring lowland.
Nor were there any other evidences of what Storm sought. This place might be only a convenient hiding place for stolen herds. If it had not been for the wound on the dead yoris –
Gorgol’s hand pressed the Terran’s arm. Obedient to that warning, Storm turned his lenses swiftly back to the valley floor. The frawns were no longer grazing. Instead the bulls were tossing their heads, galloping awkwardly to the right, while the cows and young were falling back into a tight knot, heads pointing outward, the typical defence position of their species.
Horsemen! Three of them. And the horses they rode were a dark-skinned stock, a different breed from those of Larkin’s string, wiry, smaller animals, such as those Storm had seen in the Norbie camp. However, the men who rode them were not natives. Nor did they wear the almost universal Arzoran settler dress of yoris-hide breeches and frawn-fabric shirts.
Storm went down on one knee, swinging around to follow that group of riders with his powerful glasses. His first sight of those dull black tunics – the black that always looked as if it were coated with grey dust – had confirmed all his suspicions. This was it! Those enemy uniforms, the hidden business in stolen frawns, everything clicked together with a satisfying snap. No wonder they had wiped out the Survey party, striving at the same time to make the deed seem a native massacre! Blame everything on the wild Norbies. A beautiful cover, a situation made to order for the Xiks.
“Saaaa –” Gorgol had learned to imitate the call Storm used for the team, the only sound he had in common with the Terran. The native was energetically stabbing his forefinger into the air northward in a demand for Storm to shift his attention to that point.
The frawns were still bunched, not relaxing their vigilance. However, their very ordinary reaction to the invasion of their feeding grounds was not what interested the native. Some of the force of the storm had stripped a path down the mountain, clearing a haphazard lane of yellow-red earth that ended in a mound on the next to the last terrace. And, hugging that, almost indistinguishable from the ground on which he lay, another was watching the same scene. With the aid of Storm’s lenses that spy leaped into full view, and the Terran saw the long, lean body of a Norbie who must be completely concealed from sight as far as anyone on the floor of the valley was concerned. There was something odd about the fellow’s head. Those horns, curving back across the hairless pate, they were not ivory white as Gorgol’s, as those of all the other Norbies Storm had seen, but dyed a blue-green,
He looked to Gorgol for enlightenment. The young Norbie had flattened himself out on an overhanging rock from which he could get the fullest view of the other native, his chin supported on the injured arm, his features impassive, but his cat-eyes were much alive. Then his lips drew flat against his teeth in the humourless grin that signified anger or battle excitement among his kind, and his other hand, resting on the rock next to the Terran, made the finger-sign for Nitra.
Was that a hidden scout travelling alone? Or did he act as the advance ranger for a war party? Norbie custom allowed for either answer. A youngster out on a personal hunt for a warrior trophy could prospect these ranges on his own. Or a raiding party might have marked down this hidden valley and its secret herds and decided to make the Butchers their prey. From these terraces with their thick cover an ambush attack by expert bowmen could cause a good deal of trouble.
Gorgol’s fingers moved again. “One only –”
Though the Terran could not speak Gorgol’s language, nor the native do more than imitate the team call, Storm had discovered that he could convey information in a sketchy way, or ask a question with extravagant movements of his lips and be half-understood. He held his lenses still but turned his head to ask:
“War party?”
Gorgol dipped his chin and moved his head from side to side in emphatic negation.
“One only.”
Storm longed for Surra. He could have set the dune cat to shadow that warrior, make sure in her own way that he was the only one of his kind along the terraces. Now the Terran’s own plan for trailing those three riders must be revised. Without Surra to run interference it would be folly to venture down into the lower reaches of the valley and perhaps be cut off from the pass. Yet he wanted to see where those riders were headed.
The Terran worked his way along the small plateau, passing once more the very dead yoris, to reach the northernmost tip. There he dared to get to his feet and lean back against a rust-red finger of rock, sure that he was a part of the stone to anyone who was more than a few rods away.
This valley was surely a wide expanse, roughly in the outline of a bottle, of which the south was the narrowest part. And the outlaws could, and probably had, camouflaged everything at ground level. He could pick out no buildings, no indication that this was anything but virgin wilderness.
Except for that one thing planted there, stiffly upright, sending small sparks of reflected sunlight through a masking of skilfully wrought drapery, a piece of work that made Storm grant those below very full marks.
He judged that sky-pointing length narrowly, knowing that its landing fins must now be sunk well below the surface of the meadowland. That meant that a great amount of labour had been expended – as well as pointing to the fact that the pilot who had ridden down his ship’s tail flames into that constricted area had been a very expert one. From the appearance of the drapery it must have been some time since the ship had been landed and apparently built into the general surroundings. If he could see the thing stripped, he might be able to identify the type – though with that slender outline it was no cargo carrier – Storm believed it might be a scout or a very fast courier and supply ship, the kind a man might latch onto during the break-up immediately before surrender for a fast getaway. Whatever its kind, Storm knew that on its scarred side he would find only one symbol. But was he now spying on a secret and well-established colony, set up while the Xiks were still powerful, or just a hideaway for holdouts who had fled the order to lay down their arms?
Gorgol came up beside him. “Nitra go –” He flicked a finger north. “Maybeso hunt for trophies –” His hand remained outspread, his gaze centred on the half-hidden ship. Then his head snapped around and his astonishment was very plain to read.
“What?” he signed.
“Faraway sky thing.” Storm used the native term for space ship.
“Why here?” countered Gorgol.
“Butchers – evil men bring –”
Again the thin-lipped fighting grin of Norbie anger stretched Gorgol’s mouth.
“Faraway sky thing no come Norbie land.” He strained the fingers of his right hand to join the left in making that protest “Norbie drink blood faraway men – talk straight – swear oaths of warriors. Faraway ship thing only come one place on land – not near mountains where Those-Who-Drum-Thunder be angry! Faraway men not talk straight – here sky thing too!”
Trouble! Storm caught the threat in this. The Norbies allowed the space port to be located well away from the mountains that to them were sacred. And the treaty that had made the settlers’ holdings safe to them allowed only that one place of landing and departure for off-world ships. To let the rumour get started that there was a second port right in the heart of their mountains would be enough to break every drink-blood tie on Arzor.
Storm let his lenses swing from their strap, held out his hands to focus Gorgol’s attention.
“I warrior –” He underlined that statement by drawing his index fi
nger along the faint scar line on his shoulder. “Gorgol warrior –” With the same finger he touched the other’s bandaged forearm gently. “I get warrior scar, not from Nitra, not from other tribe like mine – I get wound fighting evil men –of that tribe!” He made a spear of his finger, stabbing the air toward the grounded space ship. “Gorgol wounded by those evil men – from there!” Again he pointed. “They are of those who eat THE MEAT –” He added the worst symbol the sign language contained.
Gorgol’s yellow eyes held the Terran’s unblinkingly before he signed:
“Do you swear this by Those-Who-Drum-Thunder?”
Storm drew his knife from his belt, pushing its hilt into the Norbie’s hand and then drew it up by the blade until the point pricked the skin encircled in the necklace on his breast.
“Let Gorgol push this home if he does not believe I speak true,” he signed slowly with his free hand.
The Norbie drew back the knife, reversed it with a flip of his wrist and proffered the hilt to the Terran. As Storm took the blade from him, he replied, “I believe. But this – bad thing. Faraway man fight evil men his kind – or oath broken.”
“It is so. What I can do, I shall. But first we must know more of these men –”
Gorgol looked down into the valley. “Nitra hunts – and the night comes. In the day we can move better – you have not the eyes that see in darkness –”
Storm knew an inward relief. If the Norbie had wanted to keep up with the scout, now it would have been hard not to agree. But this suggestion coming from the native fitted in with the Terran’s own wishes.
“Big cat –” Storm suggested, “get well – be able to hunt Nitra while we watch evil men –”
Gorgol agreed to that readily, having seen Surra in action. And with a last detailed examination of the concealed ship, which told him no more than he had learned earlier, Storm started back to the outer valley, to plan an active campaign.
10
Although it was close to dark when they returned to the outer valley, Storm set about building a screen of rocks behind which they could shelter a night fire, with Gorgol’s one-handed aid. There was, of course, the cave in which he had been imprisoned. But that was the width of the valley away. And, in addition, he shrank from experiencing again its turgid air and the faint exhalation of stale death he recalled only too vividly.