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  “They are still here?”

  “Not so. They go—” Gorgol pointed north. “Think they live there. Not want men to know where they hide—so kill—”

  Well, that was one more reason for not heading north when they tried to get out out of here. But Gorgol was still making finger-talk.

  “They have rider—he tied—maybe they make kill to feed evil spirits”—he hesitated and then added that horrific sign Storm had first seen Sorenson make—“THE MEAT.”

  Storm had heard of some Norbie tribes who, for purposes of a dark devil worship—or devil propitiation—ate prisoners they took under certain conditions. To most of the Arzoran tribes this custom was an abomination and there was a fierce and never-ending warfare waged between the ritual cannibals and their enemies. In Norbie minds the quality of evil was so associated with THE MEAT that it was natural for Gorgol to make the assumption he had just offered.

  “Not so,” the Terran corrected. “Butchers not eat captives. This prisoner—he was from the plains?”

  “Rider,” Gorgol agreed.

  “Any settlers near here? We could find them—tell them about evil men—how they kill—”

  Gorgol turned his head slowly so he looked south. “Many suns come up—go down—before reach settlers that way. Maybeso we can go. But not in dark—I not know this country—and Nitra be in hills. Man walk soft, go quick, be very careful—” But he glanced back at the Terran with a kind of level measurement the off-world man did not understand.

  “With that I agree,” Storm spoke and signed together. The dark was almost on them now. He shared out bedding from his own roll, saw Gorgol was comfortable and then curled up on the grass beside Surra, sleeping as he had so many times before in perfect confidence that the super-acute hearing of the dune cat would warn him of any danger.

  It was almost dawn when Storm did wake at her faint signal. He came not only awake but instantly alert, a trick he had learned so far in the past he was no longer conscious of knowing it. Whatever was coming had not aroused Surra’s fighting instincts, only her interest. He listened intently, hearing Gorgol’s heavy breathing, the rattle of hoof on gravel as Rain stirred. Then that other sound, a pattering noise so faint he could have missed it without Surra’s caution.

  The light on the gravel bar was gray enough to distinguish objects and he was ready with the stun rod. He aimed at the dusky blot as soon as he was sure it was not a horse. The top-heavy outline against the rocks could be that of only one animal he had seen on Arzor, and they could certainly use the meat such a kill would provide. A minute later he was busy blooding the carcass of a yearling frawn, one which was plump enough to have enjoyed good foraging lately. Though what a frawn was doing alone in this wilderness was a mystery. The animals were plainsbred and ran in herds and they were never, under ordinary circumstances, either found in the mountain or alone.

  Gorgol had an explanation when they squatted close to the fire Storm dared to light after he had heaped some rocks together as a screen. Chunks of frawn steak were spitted on sharpened sticks and the Norbie was giving their even browning careful attention.

  “Stolen. Evil men put frawns in hiding—perhaps they lose this one when they drive many through—perhaps storm made herd stampede—”

  Storm regarded the meat reflectively. There was a side problem to all this stealing of horses and frawns. What in the world—or in Arzor—did the thieves intend to do with their plunder? The market for frawns lay off-world. There was only one space port and all animals loaded there had to be legally accounted for with sales and export papers. Settlers would be the first to detect any newcomer who could not account for his holdings clear back to the moment he set foot on Arzor. What was the profit in stealing meat on the hoof that you had no hope of selling?

  “Why they want meat—no sell—” He passed that along to Gorgol, knowing the young native was acute enough to follow his chain of thought.

  “Maybeso not sell—big land—” The Norbie waved his left hand wide. “Take frawns far—horses, too. Norbie knows of places where Butchers hide. Norbie take horses from their secret places. Hurol, he of Gorgol’s own clan—he take three horses so last dry time. He big hunter—warrior—”

  So the Norbies raided the secret caches of the Butchers. Now that scrap of information might lead to something. Suppose the Norbies should be encouraged in that useful occupation, one which appealed so to their own natural tastes? Put a Norbie afoot in the wastes and he could get along. Unhorse an off-worlder without supplies and it was a far different matter. But it all came back to this—how did the Butchers intend eventually to profit from their raids?

  The situation might almost suggest a hidden space port to handle illicit trade. A hidden space port! Storm stiffened, his eyes very wide and level as he stared unseeingly at the fire. And Surra, catching from him that hidden tension, growled deep in her throat. There had been hidden space ports of a sort. He had uncovered one himself and brought in a mop-up squad to deal with it and those who manned it. Such a port established to milk a planet of food supplies—! Eagerly he responded to that familiar spur of the hunt.

  Sure—the war was over—officially. He had spent that dreary year at the Center to prove it. But suppose, just suppose that his wild suspicion were right! Then he had another chance—a chance to strike back once more at those who had taken away his world. Storm began to hum under his breath. In that moment his quarrel with Brad Quade was very far away—a thin wisp of a thing out of a half-forgotten story. If he were right—! Oh, Faraway Gods—let him now be right in his preposterous guess!

  The Terran turned to Gorgol who had been watching him with close to the same narrow-eyed intensity that Surra’s thin pupils mirrored.

  “These Butchers—they have horses?”

  “It is so,” signaled the other.

  “Then, as Hurol, let us see whether some of those horses may not carry us!”

  Gorgol’s thin lips drew back in the half-smile of his people. “That is good hearing. For these have killed our blood, and for that there must be a taking of hands in return—”

  In that moment Storm realized how close he had been to making a grave error of judgment, one which might have finished his friendly relations with the native. Had he ridden south as had been his first plan, then he would have outraged custom that demanded a personal vengeance for those killed here. It was a small thing to weigh against the crime he suspected, but it was a good argument to use against that scrap of conscience that recalled the unfinished matter of Quade.

  CHAPTER NINE

  M

  uch as he wanted to be on the move, Storm desired Surra to have another day of rest before he put her to the strain of the trail. And Gorgol’s wound also needed tending. After seeing to his patients, the Terran made his own plans for a scouting trip. First south, because he wanted to be sure that the Nitra were not between his party and that retreat route. But before he left, he made other preparations.

  Grease from the frawn meat mixed with powdered red dust and a chalky stuff ground from some small soft pebbles provided him with a kind of paint and he went to work, streaking face and chest with splotches and broken lines—War paint or camouflage, it served equally well on both counts.

  Gorgol watched the paint job with keen interest.

  “You make warrior magic?”

  The Terran glanced down at the stripes on his chest and smiled, but the movement of lips made no difference in the general ghastly effect of his new face mask.

  “I make warrior magic—my people’s magic—”

  On impulse he put over his head the circlet of the necklace and fastened about him, looped over his weapon belt, the concha—the embellished one of his inheritance. Then he considered weapons.

  He could use a bow, having two hands. But Gorgol could not. And he would not leave the Norbie with no better defense 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-pupiled 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 honorable 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 odor. 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 unsavory 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 favor 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.

  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 canceled the need for any herders—though with the yoris season at its height Storm would have considered guards necessary.

&n
bsp; 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 neighboring 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 defense position of their species.

  Horsemen! Three of them. And the horses they rode were a dark-skinned stock, a different breed than 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 gray 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 were 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.