The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  CHAPTER V Warrior of Iskar

  Conway went, taking Marcia with him. Rohan came out at once but Esmond was sleeping like the dead. Apparently he had worked for hours by the light of the stone lamp, making notes on the people of Iskar.

  Conway wondered, as he shook him awake, whether any of that data was going to get safely back to Earth. He knew, as certainly as he knew his own name, that their stay here was ended and he did not like the look in Krah’s eyes.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Marcia was saying, over and over. “I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know whether you were alive or dead. Your radio didn’t answer. I stole a sledge.”

  “Did you come alone?” asked Rohan.

  “Yes.”

  “My God!” said Esmond softly, and picked her up in his arms.

  She laid her bleeding cheek against his and sobbed out. “They stoned me, Peter, the women did. The men brought me through the streets and the women stoned me.”

  Esmond’s mild face became perfectly white. His eyes turned cold as the snow outside. He strode down the hall bearing Marcia in his arms, and his very step was stiff with fury. Rohan followed, crowding on his heels.

  Old Krah never gave them a chance to speak. His five sons were ranged behind him and there was something very formidable about them, the five tall, fair men and the tall, old one who was like an ancient dog-wolf, white with years but still leader of the pack.

  Krah held up his hand, and the Earthmen stopped. From her place by the fire Conway saw that Ciel was watching, staring with fascinated eyes at the alien woman who had come alone across the snow-fields to stand beside her men. The wind piped loud in the window embrasures, coming down from the high peaks with a rush and a snarl that set Conway’s nerves to quivering with a queer excitement.

  Krah spoke, looking at Marcia.

  “For this I am sorry,” he said. “But the woman should not have come.” His frosty gaze rose then to take in all of them. “I offer you your lives. Go now—leave the city, leave Iskar and never return. If you do not I cannot save you.”

  “Why did they stone her?” demanded Esmond. He had one thing on his mind, no room for any other thought.

  “Because she is different,” said Krah simply, “and they fear her. She wears the garments of a man and she walks among men and these things are against their beliefs. Now, will you go?”

  Esmond set the girl on her feet beside him, leaving his arm around her shoulders.

  “We will go,” he said. “And I will kill the first one who touches her.”

  Krah was gentleman enough to ignore the emptiness of that very sincere threat. He bowed his head.

  “That,” he said, “is as it should be.”

  He looked at Rohan.

  “Don’t worry,” Rohan snapped. “We’ll leave and may you all go to the devil. This is a fit world for wolves and only wolves live in it!”

  He started toward the door with Esmond and his daughter and Krah’s eyes turned now to Conway. He asked softly, “And you, man who is called Rand?”

  Conway shrugged, as though the whole thing were a matter of no importance to him. “Why should I want to stay?” His hands were shaking so that he thrust them into his pockets to conceal it and little trickles of sweat ran down his back. He nodded toward the window opening.

  “There’s a white wind blowing, Krah,” he said. He drew himself erect, and his voice rose and rang. “It will catch us on the open plain. The woman will surely die and perhaps the rest of us also. Nevertheless we will go. But let it be told through the city that Krah has laid aside his manhood and put on a woman’s kittle, for he has slain by stealth and not by an honest spear!”

  There was silence. Esmond stopped and turned in the doorway, the girl held close in the circle of his arm. Rohan stopped also, and their faces showed the shock of this new thought.

  Conway’s heart beat like a trip-hammer. He was bluffing— with all the resources of the sledge, he thought, their chances of perishing were fairly small, but there was just that germ of truth to pitch it on. He was in agony while he waited to see if the bluff had worked. Once inside the city walls he knew that the Lake was lost to him as it had been to his father.

  After what seemed a very long time, Krah sighed and said quietly, “The white wind. Yes. I had forgotten that the Earth stock is so weak.”

  A subtle change had come over the old man. It was almost as though he too had been waiting tensely for some answer and now it had come. A deep, cold light crept into his eyes and burned there, something almost joyous.

  “You may stay,” he said, “until the wind drops.”

  Then he turned sharply and went away down the stair and his sons went with him.

  Esmond stared after them and Conway was amused to see the wolfish fury in his round, mild face.

  “He would have sent us out to die,” said Esmond, as though he wished he could kill Krah on the spot. Danger to Marcia had transformed him from a scientist into a rather primitive man. He turned to Conway.

  “Thanks. You were right when you threatened them on the wall. And if anything happens to us I hope Frazer will make them pay for it!”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” said Conway. “Take Marcia back to the sleeping rooms—it’s warmer there and she can lie down.” He looked at Ciel and said sharply, “Can you understand me?”

  She nodded, rather sullenly.

  Conway pointed to Marcia. “Go with her. Bring water, something to put on that cut.”

  Ciel rose obediently but her eyes watched him slyly as she followed the Earth-folk out and down the hall.

  Conway was left quite alone.

  He forced himself to stand still for a moment and think. He forced his heart to stop pounding and his hands to stop shaking. He could not force either his elation or his fear to leave him.

  His way was clear now, at least for the moment. Why was it clear? Why had Krah gone away and taken his sons with him?

  The wind swooped and screamed, lifting the curtains of hide, scattering snow on the floor. The white wind. Conway smiled. He had this chance. He would never have another.

  He turned and went swiftly into the second corridor that opened opposite the one where the others had gone. It too contained four small sleeping rooms. One, however, was twice as large as the others and Conway was sure it belonged to Krah.

  He slipped into it, closing the curtain carefully behind him.

  All that he needed was there. All that he needed to make possible this one attempt that he could ever make upon the hidden valley of his dream.

  He began to strip. The coverall, the thin jersey he wore underneath, the boots—everything that was of Earth. He must go through the city and he could not go as an Earthman. He had realized that there was only one way. He was glad of the white wind, for that would make his deception easier.

  It would be cold and dangerous. But he was contemptuous of cold and beyond caring about danger. He was not going to eat his heart out and die, as his father had, because his one chance was lost forever.

  In a few minutes Rand Conway was gone and in the stone chamber stood a nameless warrior of Iskar, a tall, fair man wrapped in white furs, shod in rough hide boots and carrying a spear.

  He retained two things, hidden carefully beneath his girdle—the little gun and a small vial, sheathed and stoppered with lead.

  He turned, and Ciel was standing there, staring at him with wide astonished eyes.

  She had slipped in so quietly that he had not heard her. And he knew that with one loud cry she could destroy all his plans.

  In two swift angry strides he had caught her and put one hand hard over her mouth.

  “Why did you come here?” he snarled. “What do you want?”

  Her eyes looked up at him, steady and fierce as his own. He said, “Don’t cry out or I’ll kill you.” She shook her head and he took his hand away a little, not trusting her.

  In slow painful English she said, “Take me with you.” “Where?”

 
“To Earth!”

  It was Conway’s turn to be astonished.

  “But why?”

  She said vehemently, “Earth-woman proud like man. Free.” So that was the smoldering anger she had in her. She was not patient like the other women of Iskar, for she had had a glimpse of something else. He remembered what Krah’s son had said.

  “Did Conna teach this?”

  She nodded. “You take me?” she demanded. “You take me?

  I run away from Krah. Hide. You take me?”

  Conway smiled. He liked her. They were the same kind, he and she—nursing a hopeless dream and risking everything to make it come true.

  “Why not?” he said. “Sure, I’ll take you.”

  Her joy was a savage thing. “If you lie,” she whispered, “I kill you!” Then she kissed him.

  He could tell it was the first time she had ever kissed a man. He could also tell that it was not going to be the last.

  He thrust her away. “You must help me then. Take these.” He handed her the bundle of his discarded clothing. “Hide them. Is there a back way from the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show it to me. Then wait for me—and talk to no one. No one. Understand?”

  “Where you go?” she asked him. The look of wonder came back into her eyes, and something of fear. “What you do, man of Earth?”

  He shook his head. “If you don’t help me, if I die—you’ll never see Earth.”

  “Come,” she said, and turned.

  Esmond and Rohan were still with Marcia, still full of their fears and angers—too full to worry about Conway, the outsider. The house of Krah was empty and silent except for the wind that swept through the embrasures with a shriek of laughter, like the laughter of wolves before the kill. Conway shivered, an animal twitching of the skin.

  Ciel led him down a little stair and showed him a narrow passage built for the taking of offal from the slaughtering pen— woman’s work, unfit for warriors.

  “I wait,” she said. Her fingers closed hard on the muscles of his arm. “Come back. Come soon!”

  Her fear was not for him but for herself, lest now in this last hour her hope of freedom should be snatched away. Conway knew how she felt.

  He bent and gave her a quick rough kiss. “I’ll come back.” Then he lifted the curtain of hide and slipped out into the darkness.

  CHAPTER VI Echoes of a Dream

  The city was alive and vocal with the storm. The narrow streets shouted with it, the icy turrets of the houses quivered and rang. No snow was falling but the thick brown whiteness drove and leaped and whirled, carried across half of Iskar in the rush of the wind. Above the tumult the stars burned clear and steady in the sky.

  The cold bit deep into Conway’s flesh, iron barbs reaching for his heart. He drew the warm furs closer. His heartbeats quickened. His blood raced, fighting back the cold, and a strange exaltation came over him, something born out of the wild challenge of the wind. His pupils dilated, black and feral as a cat’s. He began to walk, moving at a swift pace, setting his feet down surely on the glare ice and the frozen stones.

  He knew the direction he must take. He had determined that the first time he saw the city and it was burned into his memory for all time.

  The way to the Lake, the Lake of the Gone Forever.

  There were not many in the streets and those he passed gave him no second look. The white wind laid a blurring veil over everything and there was nothing about Conway to draw attention, a lean proud-faced man bent against the wind, a solitary warrior on an errand of his own.

  Several times he tried to see if he were being followed. He could not forget Krah’s face with its look of secret joy, nor cease to wonder uneasily why the old man had so suddenly left the Earthfolk unwatched. But he could see nothing in that howling smother.

  He made sure of the little gun and smiled.

  He found his way by instinct through the twisting streets, heading always in the same direction. The houses began to thin out. Quite suddenly they were gone and Conway stood in the open valley beyond. High above he could distinguish the shining peaks of the mountains lifting against the stars.

  The full sweep of the wind met him here. He faced it squarely, laughing, and went on over the tumbled rocks. The touch of madness that had been in him ever since he reached Iskar grew into an overwhelming thing.

  Part of his identity slipped away. The wind and the snow and the bitter rocks were part of him. He knew them and they knew him. They could not harm him. Only the high peaks looked down on him with threatening faces and it seemed to him that they were angry.

  He was beginning to hear the echoes of his dream but they were still faint. He was not yet afraid. He was, in some strange way, happy. He had never been more alone and yet he did not feel lonely. Something wild and rough woke within him to meet the wild roughness of the storm and he felt a heady pride, a certainty that he could stand against any man of Iskar on his own ground.

  The city was lost behind him. The valley had him between its white walls vague and formless now, closing in upon him imperceptibly beyond the curtain of the storm. There was a curious timelessness about his journey, almost a spacelessness, as though he existed in a dimension of his own.

  And in that private world of his it did not seem strange nor unfitting that Ciel’s voice should cry out thinly against the wind, that he should turn to see her clambering after him, nimble-footed, reckless with haste.

  She reached him, spent with running. “Krah,” she gasped. “He go ahead with four. One follow. I see. I follow too.” She made a quick, sharp gesture that took in the whole valley. “Trap. They catch. They kill. Go back.”

  Conway did not stir. She shook him, in a passion of urgency. “Go back! Go back now!”

  He stood immovable, his head raised, his eyes questing into the storm, seeking the enemies he only half believed were there. And then, deep and strong across the wind, came the baying of a hunter’s horn. It was answered from the other side of the valley. Another spoke, and another, and Conway counted them. Six—Krah and his five sons around and behind him, so that the way back to the city was closed.

  Conway began to see the measure of the old man’s cunning and he smiled, an animal baring of the teeth.

  “You go,” he said to Ciel. “They will not harm you.”

  “What I do they punish,” she answered grimly. “No. You must live. They hunt you but I know trails, ways. Go many times to Lake of the Gone Forever. They not kill there. Come.”

  She turned but he caught her and would not let her go, full of a quick suspicion.

  “Why do you care so much about me?” he demanded. “Esmond or Rohan could take you to Earth as well.”

  “Against Krah’s will?” She laughed. “They are soft men, not like you.” Her eyes met his fairly in the gloom, the black pupils wide and lustrous, looking deep into him so that he was strangely stirred. “But there is more,” she said. “I never love before. Now I do. And—you are Conna’s son.”

  Conway said, very slowly, “How did you know that?”

  “Krah know. I hear him talk.”

  Then it had been a trap all along, from the beginning. Krah had known. The old man had given him one chance to go from Iskar and he had not taken it—and Krah had been glad. After that he had withdrawn and waited for Conway to come to him.

  The girl said, “But I know without hearing. Now come, son of Conna.”

  She led off, swift as a deer, her skirts kilted above her knees. Conway followed and behind and around them the horns bayed and answered with the eager voices of hounds that have found the scent and will never let it go.

  All down the long valley the hunters drove them and the mountain walls narrowed in and in, and the ringing call of the horns came closer. There was a sound of joy in them, and they were without haste. Never once, beyond the white spume of the blowing snow, did Conway catch a glimpse of his pursuers. But he knew without seeing that old Krah’s face bore a bleak and bitter smile, the t
errible smile of a vengeance long delayed.

  Conway knew well where the hunt would end. The horns would cry him into the throat of the cleft, and then they would be silent. He would not be permitted to reach the Lake.

  Again he touched the little gun and his face could not have been less savage than Krah’s. He was not afraid of spears.

  The girl led him swiftly, surely, among the tangled rocks and the spurs of ice, her skirt whipping like a grey flag in the wind. High overhead the cold peaks filled the sky, leaving only a thin rift of stars. And suddenly, as though they were living things, the walls of the valley rushed together upon him, and the shouting of the horns rose to an exultant clamor in his ears, racing, leaping toward him.

  He flung up his head and yelled, an angry, defiant cry. Then there was silence, and through the driven veils of snow he saw the shapes of men and the dim glittering of spears.

  He would have drawn the gun and loosed its bright spray of instant sleep into the warriors. The drug would keep them quiet long enough for him to do what he had to do. But Ciel gave him no time. She wrenched at him suddenly, pulling him almost bodily into a crack between the rocks.

  “Hurry!” she panted. “Hurry!”

  The rough rock scraped him as he jammed his way through. He could hear voices behind him, loud and angry. It was pitch dark, even to his eyes, but Ciel caught his furs and pulled him along—a twist, a tum, a sharp corner that almost trapped him where her smallness slipped past easily. Then they were free again and he was running beside her, following her urgent breathless voice.

  For a few paces he ran and then his steps slowed and dragged at last to a halt. There was no wind here in this sheltered place. There were no clouds of blowing snow to blur his vision.

  He stood in a narrow cleft between the mountains. On both sides the cliffs of ice rose up, sheer and high and infinitely beautiful out of the powdery drifts. The darkling air was full of whirling motes of frost, like the dust of diamonds, and overheard the shining pinnacles stood clear against a sky of deepest indigo, spangled with great stars.

  He stood in the narrow valley of his dream. And now at last he was afraid.