by Don Wilcox
“Drink?”
Under the conditions it was the perfect gesture of friendship. He evidently knew how a sluggish, non-winged biped feels after climbing a steep mountain slope in a hot sun. I drank.
He placed the jug in a rocky niche, and proceeded to demonstrate that he knew a second good English word.
“Ready?” he said.
“Ready,” I affirmed.
His huge brownish-gray wings spread. His stiff whiskers fairly rattled as he jumped into the air.
He swung a talon at me. I leaped as I had seen Wells do. He cleverly caught me up in his tawny muscular arms, and we went sailing off into the cool breeze high above the hills.
CHAPTER XVII
Victim from the Past
We were headed for the octagon.
That was the same way that Orchid Wings had taken Wells.
Suddenly such high anticipations filled my thoughts that I almost forgot the chills in my spine. Still, I must confess that the flapping of wings right above my head gave me some apprehensions—the chief one of which was, where would I be if they quit flapping?
Old Rattle Whiskers didn’t exercise his English vocabulary any more. Consequently, when he deposited me I was still in doubt whether he actually understood my language or had only succeeded in parroting a few words.
“When will you come back for me?” I said, clinging to his wing feathers.
“Later,” he said. Then he gave a low chuckle, probably because my blank expression amused him. He was off at once with a flutter and a buzz of feathers and whiskers.
X shook myself with a feeling that there might be feathers sticking to me. I rubbed the sore spots where the claws had dug in. Then, for the first time in my life, I stopped to realize what a clumsy locomotion walking is—compared to flying.
This particular mountain was shaped like a huge starfish. It was covered with a waist-high thickness of yellow, wide-bladed grass. The slope was gentle, and I knew at once where to go.
Halfway down the point toward the hexagon someone was waving at me. Praise be to St. Patrick, it was Wells!
“Private Toby McCorkle reporting for duty, sir,” I said as I advanced. He acknowledged my salute. There was a briskness in his manner suggesting that he expected that salute, and that military obedience was exactly what he wanted. A strange manner for a friend you haven’t seen for four months.
But he broke the mood as quick as he could reach out and grab me by the arm.
“McCorkle, you old son-of-a-gun,” he laughed. “Fancy meeting an Irishman out in this feathered desert. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“Now that’s a good one,” I said. “Where have I—”
“I know, I know,” he said. “What you and the fellows think about me wouldn’t go in books. We’ll skip that, Corky. We’ve got work to do. We’ve come here on the long chance that we might save a man’s life.”
“Whatman?”
“A new arrival. Probably someone we don’t know. Orchid Wings learned about it. It’s what they call a new vonzel—a visitor to this land.”
“Like us?”
“I suppose so. There’s a lot of mystery about these newcomers. Orchid Wings knows about them before most of the tribe. But she can’t seem to tell me why they come or where they come from.”
I caught my breath. “Orchid Wings talks these things over with you? How?
Do you understand feather talk?”
“She speaks a bit of English, my friend,” said Wells, giving me a proud wink. “She’s a very apt pupil.”
I followed Wells down the slope toward the octagon flat. The grass was high enough to offer us concealment if we needed it. But as we neared the floor of sand it thinned into scattered patches.
“We’d better hold back,” said Wells. “It wouldn’t be so good, being sighted by the main tribe when their big shots are in a feasting mood.”
We settled down and waited. I kept looking all around, as nervous about this business as Whitey Everett would have been.
“Where’s Orchid Wings?” I said. “And what happened to old Rattle Whiskers that brought me?”
“Wherever they are, they’re keeping watch, the same as we are. No one knows exactly where this arrival will take place. You know how it was when we made our entrance.”
“We just dropped in,” I said. Then as I gazed over the landscape I spotted the mountain upon which the memorable landing had taken place. It all seemed ages ago. The terror ©f those first days had faded considerably with the passing of time.
And yet the danger hung over us again today as truly as it had then. We were back in the region of the main tribe.
But it was not the whole tribe that went in for feasts. Wells had learned that it was the small inner circle of leaders, particularly one big shot by the name of Thunder Splitter.
“The whole tribe fell in as a part of the ceremony, you remember,” Wells recalled. “But only a handful of the privileged class joined Thunder Splitter in the actual eating.”
“Are you telling me that most of these wingmen wouldn’t eat human flesh?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Wells. “Even you and I might eat human flesh if we got hungry enough. What I’m saying is, this big guy who holds the reins over the main tribe is the chief promoter of this feast habit. And for some reason his appetite goes on a rampage whenever he knows there’s going to be some new arrivals.”
This was supposed to make me feel more comfortable, I suppose. But it didn’t. If a thousand wingmen joined in on the festival they couldn’t be much more civilized than the man who got the meat.
“How,” I asked, “does Thunder Splitter know there are new arrivals coming? Does the goddess of white flames confide in a heel like him too?”
“Orchid Wings doesn’t know,” said Wells. “She thinks he must feel it in his bones.”
“His wishbone, I suppose. By the way—” I squinted a searching eye at Wells, “just how do matters stand between you and Orchid Wings?”
“In what way?” Wells shot back coldly.
“Socially speaking.”
“That,” said Wells, “is one of the matters we don’t have time to discuss.” For a minute the silence was pretty cold. The noonday sun did its best to keep things from chilling, but it took a few warm words from Wells to defrost the conversation.
“I like Orchid Wings,” he said slowly. “We began to understand each other during those first days when she followed you and me along the west range. Later I learned that she could speak a little English. She learned from her godfather—that’s the whiskery old gentleman who flew you over here.”
“Rattle Whiskers—but where did he learn?”
“I think he must have made a trip to the English speaking world. Don’t ask me how he could. All I know is that he and Orchid Wings and six of their friends have a different angle on this desert life from most of the tribe. I think they must have a pull with the gods.”
“The goddess of white fire, you mean?”
“Perhaps. If we’re doomed to spend the rest of our lives here we may break a path for the scientists who are sure to follow.”
We talked, then, of the German professor, his motive conquest in coming here, and more recently his escape from our bonds.
“So you never found out who cut him free?” Wells said, smiling. “Did you try to follow his trail?”
We hadn’t been able to do so, I explained, because a light rain had obliterated all tracks.
“Well, just to put your curiosity at rest,” said Wells, “the German hiked most of the way across to the east range, and your friend Rattle Whiskers carried him over the last few miles. Now he’s living over there in the tunnels where he can rest up, and study, and watch the wingmen through a crevice.”
Wells went on to say that he frequented that same observation station himself. However he made it a point not to come face to face with the professor.
“Spying is my business,” said Wells. “Every day I learn more about thi
s desert life. From the top of a peak a stranger might look down and say, ‘What a barren country. How simple life must be in these great open spaces.’ Well, it’s far from simple, believe me.”
“It’s damned primitive,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s also damned complicated. That brings me back to Orchid Wings. Do you realize that she’s in danger of becoming an outcast?”
“Why?” I said. But Wells stepped over my question and went right on.
“Do you realize that the main tribe is building up trouble for her? That devilish Thunder Splitter held a big mass meeting a few days ago, and in the presence of a thousand or so wingmen he read the colors of the sky and the colors of the mountains, and then he uttered a damning prophecy. The Flash Death is on its way.”
“The Flash Death?” I groaned. “It sounds like a secret weapon.”
“In Thunder Splitter’s hands that’s just what it is. It may just be his clever psychology. Still, I don’t know. I thought the same about the Fire Goddess until Orchid Wings took me to see.”
I didn’t understand how Orchid Wings could be responsible for the coming of some mysterious Flash Death. When I questioned Wells on this point I brought back a little of that chill. I tjried to smooth it over.
“If it was that murder of a winged spy—the one they dropped to the Fire Goddess,” I said, “take my word for it, Orchid Wings wasn’t guilty. I saw it happen.”
“They were all guilty—almost. But if they hadn’t done it, their family secrets would have leaked back to Thunder Splitter and they’d all have paid a penalty of death for holding out on him. It was simpler to murder the spy and dispose of him so he’d leave no traces.”
“So they were all eight guilty,” I pursued.
“Almost. That is, their killing would have been murder—in the eyes of the gods—if the goddess of white flames had refused to consume him. But she didn’t. It was simply pffft-gone! So, according to their code, everything was all right.”
It was a hellova weird code, any way you looked at it. I recalled that those desert rodents we dropped in also went pffft—and were gone. Did that mean they deserved to die, the same as the murdered wingman?
But Wells was being practical in taking the traditions of these people at face value, I realized. After all, if this was to be our life, we’d better streamline ourselves.
“To return to the subject of Orchid Wings,” said Wells—and it was unquestionably his favorite subject, “this trouble that threatens her is Thunder Splitter’s doings. He looks at the colors of the sky and the mountains—”
“And sees Orchid in them, I suppose?”
“And reads a prophecy out of his own imagination. He says that someone—some female,—is guilty of disloyalty.”
“Oh-oh. What kind of disloyalty?”
“Tribal disloyalty.”
“What,” I asked, trying not to sound too terribly curious, “does tribal disloyalty consist of?”
“That,” said Wells, “is a topic in itself. I don’t have time to go into it just now.”
He was right. Our time for talk was over. For at that instant the anticipated miracle happened.
A lone cloud of pink smoke appeared right over the center of the octagon floor. It drifted with the breeze, growing larger and darker until it became an angry, blood-red storm cloud.
It boiled out like the smoke of an explosion. Then it rolled into a sharp edged arm of rock extending out like a root from the base of the peak.
Lightning flashed out of the cloud, then, and the thunder blasted against our ears. The concussion of that blast jolted the ground under our feet and sent a shudder over the waves of wide-bladed yellow grass. Echoes of the thunder growled back from the neighboring mountains.
“Ye gods!” Wells barked. “Every wingman in the whole countryside will know what’s up!”
At once the red cloud dispersed like so much steam. It melted almost as darkness melts before light. Then out of the explosion fell the load it had carried—a human figure, clad in some sort of theatrical costume. He was falling the last thirty feet of his journey. He lit running.
“Help me surround him,” Wells was yelling, at first glimpse. “Make him understand he’s got to hide or he’ll be killed—er—both of them.”
Yes, a second man had appeared, falling out of the melting red mists. He too was dressed in theatrical garb.
Wells and I were instantly on the run toward the two newcomers. Already a few winged figures were taking off from mountain peaks. Soon they would be swarming over this playground of violence.
The second of the newcomers must have been knocked unconscious by his fall. He rolled to a stop with an arm hooked over the back of his neck and his shiny headgear pushed down over his face. He didn’t move.
We were within a fifty yard dash of these two arrivals—close enough, I recall, that I felt a kinship for them immediately—if only because they had human legs.
Our race turned automatically toward the man who had fallen. The other fellow had a chance to look out for himself—a darned good chance. He was carrying a shield and a sword. And he was in a healthy fighting mood. In fact, his sword was bloody, and the ornamented yellow shield was marked with red-stained gashes.
He saw us running toward his fallen comrade, now. He stopped cold, and he whirled to take in the landscape. For a moment he reeled. You could tell he had just then discovered that someone had changed worlds on him and he didn’t know what to make of it.
We yelled at him, but the words missed fire. He obviously didn’t understand our language.
“Look out for him!” I shouted to Wells. That bloody sword looked ominous. This fellow was an ancient Greek warrior right out of battle. He suddenly starting striding for us.
“Give him a race,” Wells cried. “Lead him off. I’ll get the other—Look out! The wings!”
Picture yourself trying to get an army tank to chase you into the tall timbers at the same time a plane is trying to smack you from overhead, and you have a fair gauge of my confusion.
I heard the first of the wingmen zip over my head, too close for comfort. I ran, as Wells had ordered. This ancient Greek warrior came after me.
I dodged back and forth to keep him coming, but kept a safe margin of distance between us. He was no dash man, weighted down with a metal helmet, a clumsy shield, and that big iron sword.
When I turned for a glance at Wells I saw some fists and talons swinging. That first ambitious wingman had tried his murderous claws on a tough fighter. The sand was clouding up, but out of the whirl you could see those flapping pinions shudder as a heavy blow thudded against a wingman’s jaw.
I wished I could have stopped to bet on the winner. But duties called me elsewhere. The Greek chased me up the slope and right away he got his shield and sandal straps and sword tangled up in the tall grass.
That gave me a moment to breathe, and gaze, and go sick. The wingmen had picked up their chosen victim. There were too many wings for Wells’ two fists. He had stymied the first two or three attackers. But the next wave went for the unconscious newcomer.
They bore the fallen Greek back to the center of the octagon. Their sharp-eyed fellow citizens were flocking in by the hundreds. There was nothing more anyone could do. Wells, momentarily in the clear, sprinted back to join us.
Then we saw the dreadful ceremony of the feast repeated.
The bewildered ancient warrior with the weapons also saw. The horrifying sight told him only too plainly what we had been unable to convey with words. His fellow traveler was being torn to bits by four or five bloodthirsty wingmen in the center of the fluttering circle.
CHAPTER XVIII
Thunder Splitter Marks Us
Before that feast was half over I had my first close-up of the Number One Feaster, the high mogul of all the wingmen, the mighty Thunder Splitter!
It happened because Wells’ fists had made an impression on some of the first attackers. They weren’t willing to take one and leave three.
/> And so, with the feast half done and the hundreds of fliers still going through their weird formation, back came a few of the pride-wounded huskies to bear down on the rest of us.
We’d have got our everlasting if it hadn’t been for Orchid Wings and Rattle Whiskers. As a pair of air jeeps they did all right by Wells and me. They had picked us up in the early moments of the feast. They had taxied us to higher ground and hid with us. Consequently we had safe seats near the top of the grandstand, so to speak, when the feasters came back to look for us.
The ancient Greek warrior, however, was still standing down there near the flat, looking like he was trying to figure which way was up and down in this world. They spotted him.
“That’s Thunder Splitter in the lead!” Wells exclaimed as the attackers came on. “I never supposed he’s be so bold. He’s going to fly right at that Greek’s throat.”
The trick that Thunder Splitter played just then might have been good strategy for a leader, but to me it looked dirty. Followed closely by four others, he dodged out of his course just before coming within striking range of the Greek warrior.
The second wingman, accordingly, plunged on. He had to spearhead the attack. His talons went for the warrior’s head. Zing! They slipped over the metal helmet.
And at almost the same instant—whack! That big iron sword flashed an arc through the air like the blade of a windmill.
Feathers flew. A dark dripping of blood followed the swerve of the wingman as he circled crazily to the ground. His wing had been chopped in half and his muscular body had taken a deep gash.
This was no wing-tip loss, calling fo’t tribal ridicule. It was undoubtedly a mortal wound. You could hear the wingman screaming as he lay there pounding his talons on the ground. And that, mind you, was the fate Thunder Splitter missed by being careful.
Then there followed a race between the three other huskies and the Greek warrior. The Greek knew it was time to run, but he meant to slash the wasplike torso of any pursuers who came too close.
None of the three kept so well out of reach as their leader, Thunder Splitter. His boldness went to words not deeds. He circled wider and wider around the retreating Greek.