The Game of Stars and Comets Page 11

  The Terran followed Dokital's example of the night before, heaping a loose pile of grass into which he crawled, listening to the movements of the horses until he fell asleep, knowing that they would give the alarm against alien intruders.

  Kade awoke soon after dawn to hear the low whinny of the lead mare as she went down to the stream. He pulled free of his nest, went to the water also. Following the immemorial custom of hunt and war trail Kade drank only a small amount of water, pulling tighter the belt about his middle. As he swung past the boulder wall of Dokital's camp a gorged winged thing shuffled along the cleaned skeleton of the susti, and two smaller shapes turned angry red eyes on him before they scuttled away into hiding.

  Taking his bearings from the three peaks, the Terran headed westward. He had to make detours around two unclimbable cliffs and paused now and again to erase the marks of his own passing. Slightly before midday he did reach his goal. As he crept along a ledge the sun was pleasingly warm on his shoulders and he did not regret the loss of his tunic. For against the hue of sand and earth here his own bronze skin and the drab shade of his breeches should be indistinguishable.

  Although miles separated him from the post, there was no mistaking the scar which the Styor burn-off had left to mark the site. Not one of the walls still stood, only a round splotch of blackened earth gleamed under the sun, the terrible heat of the ship's flaming tail had cooked earth and sand into slag.

  He could have hoped for nothing else. Had there been survivors, they must be sealed underground, their only hope of rescue to come from off-planet. Kade looked from that scar to more immediate landscapes. He had one small point in his favor: the Styor would expect a Terran to be completely bewildered if thrown on his own in the Klorian wilderness, and the Overmen of teams sent out to track any possible survivor would be overconfident.

  That estimation of the enemy was borne out when Kade surveyed the foothills below his present perch. There were trackers out, right enough. He could sight two separate teams heading eastward, and they moved openly, strung out as might beaters sent to scare up game. There was no doubt that sooner or later someone down there would stumble on the trail left by the horses day before yesterday and follow it to the valley of the susti. Which meant he must move and find a better hideout.

  But even as Kade started to crawl from his ledge, he stiffened, hearing that familiar clap of sound, the roar of a spaceship homing on a post land area. And, in the sunlight, the silver body of a descending Trade scout was a streak as vivid and elemental as an avenging bolt of lightning.

  Chapter 10

  If Kade had been startled by the sudden arrival of the Terran ship in Klorian skies, the search parties below betrayed their agitation by the speed with which they took to cover. Although he could no longer sight them, the off-worlder knew they still existed, a barrier between him and that ship now making a perfect three-fin landing on the apron of the vanished post. He had not the slightest chance of reaching the rescue party.

  But he continued to watch their activities with strained eagerness. Would the Styor attempt to attack the party from the ship? Or would the aliens bring up one of their fast inter-atmosphere cruisers from Cor and begin a running fight when the Terran scout took off again? Kade did not see how they would dare to let the ruined post tell its story to Trade. Had the Styor not blasted, but allowed the evidences of a native attack to stand, they might have successfully blamed it on rebellious Ikkinni, indirectly on the Terrans themselves because of the importation of horses. As he lay there on the ledge, his head supported on his forearm, Kade thought that made good logic.

  But why had they spoiled such a plan with the burn-off? What had gone wrong? Unless—unless they had learned of the blasting of Buk's control! Had the Styor lords, safely in the background of that assault, been able to monitor events from a distance and observed that the Ikkinni had a weapon of deliverance at last? Had they ordered the burn-off to catch their own dupes as well as the Terrans for no other reason than to make sure that no more stunners would fall into Ikkinni hands, than if they moved fast and were lucky, no rumor of the weapon's use could reach the rest of their slave gangs? It could be an answer, if a drastic one—risking a blockade from Trade in order to keep their slaves. But how could he judge the thinking patterns of a Styor by his own processes? The risk to them might have appeared heavier on the other side of the scales.

  At any rate someone had been frightened enough, or angry enough to order that burn-off. Would the next attack come against the newly landed ship?

  Minutes passed and no Styor flyer arose above the horizon. There was no sign of life from the breaks below where those hunting parties had gone to earth. Kade could make out, despite the distance, figures emerging on the ship's ramp, descending to the congealed scar of the post. And he speculated again as to whether Abu or Che'in was sealed, still alive, below the glassy surface of that burn.

  Renewed activity below his perch drew Kade's attention away from the splotch on the prairie. There was a new advance, not back toward the plains, but up slope, heading towards him. And for a moment or two he wondered if he had been sighted and Ikkinni slaves dispatched to pick him up.

  If the newcomers knew the terrain well they could take a path around the spur on which he crouched, cutting him off. And Kade dared not chance that they were ignorant of that, too many labor gangs had been hired out for hunting in these hills. He had to leave at once.

  The Terran gave a last long look at the scene about the ship. Those small stick things which represented his own kind had gathered in one spot on the scar. His guess that at least one of the Team was in a hidden underground com chamber must be right and they were preparing to break the prisoner out. Kade eyed the section of broken, wooded land below him, the long curve of open prairie. To try to cross those miles was simply asking to be speared—or blasted if the Styor had issued more potent arms to their Overmen. He had not the slightest chance of reaching the safety of the ship and that was a bitter truth to digest.

  But suppose the scout took off successfully with the man or men who had been rescued? There would remain that now open com chamber and the possibility he could try for it later, send in his own call. That was the hope he must hold to as he retreated now.

  Kade crept from his ledge, started downward with the ridge rising as a wall between him and the only aid he could count on, using every tactic known to a hunter—and the hunted—to cover his trail.

  Once he wriggled under a fallen tree, lay still, fighting the rapid pump of his own heart, the rasp of his breathing, while an Ikkinni paused within arm's-length, head up, nostrils distended, as if he could pick out of the light breeze which was ruffling his cockscomb of hair the scent of the off-worlder.

  Kade blinked when he saw that that particular tracker wore no collar. If the slave Ikkinni had been loosed in the hills, their free brethren were also on the move with a purpose which drove them into dangerous proximity to the Overmen and their governed squads.

  The Terran watched the native fade into the brush, and lay long moments in hiding, until he was sure of a detour which would not bring him treading on the other's heels. So tangled a path did Kade follow that he was honestly surprised when he came again into the meadow where the horses grazed. And the hour was close to sunset as he stayed under cover watching the animals.

  But the peace of the scene was reassuring, especially when the stallion betrayed quick vigilance with his own examination and then welcome for Kade. Had the Terran been Ikkinni or Styor he was certain the herd would have been in flight before the invaders could get within blaster range of the animals.

  However, with hunters boring into the mountain valleys, man and mounts dared not remain there in spite of the coming night. Kade mounted the lead mare, headed her back along the trail he had explored the day before, and was glad that the others came behind willingly, the stallion playing rear guard.

  The Terran pressed the pace, wanting to be over the rougher stretches of trail while the daylight
lasted. But he paused every time they were forced out of cover to look behind. And he regretted he had no chance to erase their tracks.

  They came back, in the gray of the twilight, to the wooded slope where earlier he had met the mares. And now the leader he rode whinnied nervously, had to be urged on. Yet Kade could see nothing but empty country below, and he was sure they had outdistanced the hunting parties. There remained the free Ikkinni, nor did he forget that blood which made an ugly blotch on the saddle pad not far from his knee.

  He let the mare pick her own choice of ways as long as she obeyed his selection of direction. And she went cautiously, pausing to sniff the air, survey the unending ocher vegetation ahead. Once or twice the stallion snorted, as if growing impatient at that slow advance, but he did not press ahead.

  Kade was hungry, as he could never remember having been since the ceremonial fasting of his adolescence, and here in the shadow of the trees he was cold as well. Sooner or later he would have to choose a camp site.

  The mare stopped short, her ears pointed forward, and now the stallion joined her, his whole stance expressing interest in something hidden from Kade's less acute sense. There was nothing to be seen save the trees, the sparsely growing underbrush, and countryside being blotted out by dusk.

  Then the breeze, which awakened a murmur of sound, failed and Kade caught a quiver in the air—it was hardly more than that. Only the rhythm of that faint beat was manmade, he became convinced of that the longer he listened. And surely the Styor hunting parties would not advertise their presence by such means.

  A village or gathering of cliff Ikkinni? Some ceremonial in progress? Or—His imagination supplied other explanations. He pressed his heel against the mare's round side, urging her on. And, as she obeyed, that faint pulsation grew louder. Then some trick of shifting wind brought it to him as a regular up-down ladder of sound. And his blood answered that alien cadence with a faster coursing, his heart accelerated to keep time to that drumming.

  Horses and man came out of the trees into a glade, and here the drum was a hollow core of vibration which pulled, not only at the eardrums, but at the nerves of the listener. The horses were uneasy, nickering. Finally the stallion reared, gave his ringing challenge as his front hooves beat into the sky. Kade caught for dangling reins too late, aware that that fighter's scream of defiance could carry, echoed as it was by the rises about them.

  Yet there was no pause in the boom of drum or drums, no answering move in the shadows to indicate that the drummer was aware of strangers. And Kade knew that he must investigate the source from which that beat came.

  He dismounted from the mare, tethered her by her reins, sure her sisters would not drift too far away. Then, trusting in the fighting powers of the stallion, Kade chose to ride the stud on, drawn by that rolling sound.

  Luckily a measure of light still held. The horse struck into an easy canter which took them out over a stretch of bare earth pocked with scrubby plants, an abrupt contrast to the more luxuriant foliage of the upper slope. They came into a draw gouged out by some seasonal water gush but now dry, firm and smooth enough to ape a leveled road. The stallion's canter lengthened into a gallop. The horse shied as one of the long-legged wingless birds erupted from the right. But when the Klorian creature ran on straight ahead, Kade's mount appeared to accept that burst of speed from its strange racing companion as a goad and the stride of those powerful legs lengthened once again.

  The drums were loud now, a continuous, thunderous roll. And perhaps they acted upon the horse with some of the same impact of which Kade was himself aware. But the man kept his head and tried to control his mount as a glow ahead told him he must be approaching the site of activity.

  Running yards ahead of the stallion the bird uttered a mewling cry, gave a contorted sidewise leap which warned Kade. He loosened rein again, kicked the stallion into a bound, flattened himself as close as he could to the horse's back. There had been a shadow crouched in the dry water course, a figure which arose in a spring. The horse leaped and that shadow fell away with a cry of terror.

  Now when Kade pulled at the reins he found that the horse was past obedience. Given time he might bring the stallion back under control, but for a time the Terran could only keep his seat and wait for this fury to run itself out.

  Kade thrust his knees under the loose foreband of the pad, riding as had his ancestors during the excitement of a buffalo hunt on a world half the galaxy away, reasonably sure he would not lose his seat. As horse and rider rounded a curve in the stream bed, the glow brightened, shooting heavenward in two pillars of light.

  Without his rider's urging, the stallion began now to curb his headlong rush as he drew closer to the fires, coming at last to an abrupt halt. As the horse reared, voicing a tearing scream, Kade knew his precautions against being thrown had been well taken.

  And he guessed in part what might lie ahead for he would never forget that stench, a whiff of which came nauseous and pungent through the softer odor of smoke and burning wood. Somewhere behind the hazy gleam of those twin fires was a susti, either alive, or very recently dead.

  At first those fires dazzled his eyes. Then, as the stallion advanced in an odd, sidling way, with suspicion and wariness in every move, the Terran caught the weird scene in its entirety.

  Here some freak of nature had hollowed an almost perfect horseshoe-shaped amphitheater, three slopes rising from a bare floor of sand, the fourth open to the gorge down which Kade had come.

  An audience filled those slopes, movement pulsated around the bend of the horseshoe with here and there a down-covered Ikkinni face brought into momentary sharpness as the flame pillars wavered. Yes, there was an audience; more natives than Kade had ever seen gathered in one place before. He pulled at the reins, to discover that the stallion would still not obey. Unless he dismounted he was going to be carried on into the channel of light between the fires.

  Kade drew the bone knife, knowing the uselessness of that weapon against the spears which would meet him now.

  With rein and voice he appealed to the stallion, hopelessly. For the horse was still sidling ahead, hooves moving in a dance of small advances, smaller retreats. Then the arched neck went down and a front hoof tore up a fountain of gravelly sand.

  A figure moved at a point midway between the fires but still yards away from the two in the gorge. And Kade saw the focus of this entire assemblage.

  An Ikkinni stood there, equipped with net and spear, though he held the net in his hands and the spear lay on the earth with one of his feet set upon its shaft. Kade's attention, caught by the wink of fire on that weapon's point, located a round ring of cord about the ankle of the waiting native; something he remembered well. This was a prisoner, his feet bound even as Kade's had been in the deserted camp. A captive and yet armed with the weapons of his people, tethered by his feet—

  And the smell of susti!

  The stallion advanced, his head still held at an awkwardly low angle, as if he were nosing out a trail which existed a foot or so above ground level. The steps the horse took were small, mincing, and Kade felt the roll of muscle between his own knees, sensed the power for attack building up there.

  It was then that horse and rider must have been sighted for the first time. A cry, eerie, piercing, sounded from some point high up on the slope to Kade's left. He heard a chorus of answering hoots from the other half-seen sections of the amphitheater. The Ikkinni prisoner turned, crouching, and Kade saw him full face. Nor was he in the least surprised to see that the captive was Dokital.

  How the former post slave had come here Kade did not know, but that he had been set in his present position for the amusement or edification of enemies of his own species was apparent. And the nature of the peril to be faced was more evident with every breath of tainted air which Kade drew.

  Nor did the Terran doubt that the animal he bestrode had indeed been conditioned, either by nature or by off-world techniques, to seek out and attack the source of such a stench, a livin
g susti.

  The stallion continued his seemingly awkward advance toward Dokital. And the cries which had heralded the appearance of horse and rider abruptly died away. Nor did any spectator move to interfere with either Kade or his mount. Perhaps, thought the Terran savagely, taking fresh grip on his wholly inadequate bone knife with fingers which were sweat-sticky, they had settled to watch their entertainment increased threefold.

  Dokital, after his first startled glance at the newcomers, half-turned from them again, his whole stance betraying preparation for action as he stared beyond the fires to the rounded curve of the horseshoe, plainly expecting danger from that direction.

  The stallion was well into the firelight and Kade debated as to the wisdom of dismounting. He had seen the animal in successful action against one of the weird bat-things, and the weight of a rider might handicap the four-legged fighter. Loosening his knees from the pad, he leaned forward and stripped hackamore and reins from the horse's head. The head was up now, nostrils distended, small flecks of foam showing in frothy patches about the angle of the half open jaw.