Tales From High Hallack, Volume 3 Read online

  The horses were spooked by the drums, though not as badly affected as human ears. They were left in charge of one of the party while Bearclaw and Jim Whiterock unlashed the burden the one pony had carried.

  They made no move to draw weapons, though two of them shouldered Uzis and the rest had sidearms well to hand. The ants might just be blown up with a well-placed grenade, as they had discovered some time ago. But the result had been an intense searching of the surrounding territory from which the experimenter had barely escaped. And after all, they were not to count coup on dead ants but to capture a live one for the shamans to use for an experiment.

  The drums were still in force as they rounded an outcrop of cliff and saw the stalled truck. They could feel the erratic rhythm through their bodies, and it required a man’s near full strength to hold steady against it.

  The ant was on its feet again, but weaving back and forth, its large eyes like fire coals. It was jabbering away—some English, other words that made no sense at all. Bearclaw gave a hand signal.

  The triple-woven net flew out and, though the creature took a step back, it was caught while the men around it hastily wrapped the folds tighter and tighter. It was stumbling along a prisoner in spite of its struggles as they returned the way they had come.

  Bearclaw, having seen that the captive was as well secured as their preparations could make it, padded on into another jag of the cliff. The four drummers, their sparse gray hair woven with red strips of fur to give them proper warrior length, which the passing years had denied them, sat in a line. Their eyes were near buried in the deep creases of sun wrinkles but were wide open, staring at him without losing a single beat of palm against the stretched hide of hand drums. He made a swift hand signal.

  As one the wrinkled hands no longer struck the drums. For a second or two Bearclaw felt slightly dizzy. It took a couple of deep breaths to assure himself that that part of the ordeal was over.

  “The ant is netted, then, Younger Brother?” That was Ashdweller of his own clan who rightly broke silence first.

  “It is, Elder Brother. We are ready to ride.”

  They were already slinging their drums and getting stiffly to their feet. One of them, the Dakota, had stiff-jointed difficulty in that, but none allowed themselves to note that weakness. Being peers in power-raising, it did not matter that their old bodies sometimes betrayed them.

  There was another group of horses being led out, and the drummers made it into their saddles. Ashdweller allowed his mount to pace forward toward the waiting Bearclaw while his three late companions were trotting already.

  “There will be storm soon—”

  The younger man nodded. “We shall push the pace, Elder Brother, make sure of that. Those who dance the thunder will not be left without the reward of seeing what can be seen.”

  They had to ride single file for a while, and it was behind Bearclaw’s tough trail horse that the ant was bundled along on its own two feet, which had been carefully freed for that purpose. At first it had continued to twitch and shake its head, but now it walked with confidence, showing no sign of any discomfort.

  “Why did you do this?” Its voice was metallic, but not unpleasant, and it spoke English as if that were its native tongue.

  There was no need either to inform or to argue with the creature, Bearclaw knew. He had scouted enough into the territory these creatures now ruled to know that each one was merely a scraping of the main enemy and had no will nor mind of its own.

  He thought back over the hard months just behind—the embarkation into a city far removed from the one he remembered—new houses gleaming, set in carefully tended parklike surroundings—no haste, no noise, no clutter. It had not taken him long to be suspicious. A world was not transformed overnight for no reason. His own squad of communication experts had kept to themselves;· perhaps in all of them the age-old suspicion of the ways of the white skins awoke. While the man they had fought beside seemed eager to accept the new way of life, their own body of men had watched and waited. At Bearclaw’s suggestion they had spread out through the city, putting on the guise of amazed innocents. Three of them had discovered the underlying truth on the same day—

  The ants ruled. Ruled not with guns, terror, and death as their strengths, but with the aid of man’s own greed for the luxuries of life. But what these creatures judged good for man was sucking out of those in their nets all that was truly life. Tools were outlawed—they held potential harm for the users;· most games were outlawed;· men went dully to jobs where they watched a flow of useless knowledge across screens and might once in a while push a button.

  And the rebels—they disappeared into the fine new hospitals, coming out as tin and alien in their thoughts as the ants.

  But one could not fight the ants with weapons that were known. They apparently acted from one brain—Jim Hard had met with a lounger in the park who, after he had made well sure there was no one else in earshot, supplied the knowledge of the great sky ships that had brought them and the fact that those orders they obeyed came from an off-world source which no man could hope to reach.

  Orders by telecommunication—when they had gathered that night they had centered in on that. They had been selected for the Signal Corps, as had happened in earlier wars, because they could talk in their native tongues without encoding and with any possible understanding by any listener who was not Navajo, Ute, Apache, or Dakota. They were young and somehow their particular group had been fired with a desire to use more than their tongues. There were manuals to be studied, and they had had the luck to serve under an officer who was obsessed with the possibility of new forms of communication—so they had learned. Learned that their only true weapon against the ants was to cut the transmission that kept the creatures in control.

  It had taken time. His squad had broken up and gone to their own homes. Those who had lived in cities found their families gone—back to the reservations, as a horror of ant slavery seemed also to be a part of their own heritage.

  For some time the ants had not encroached on that near-forgotten wasteland that had been left to the People. And the alienness that surrounded their always busy metal bodies was a warn-off that the whites did not seem to feel. It was then that Hanson Swift began his pilgrimage.

  Shamans of the past had been mighty enough that their names were remembered for generations by the Elders. But Hanson was more than a Shaman of note—he was as much a leader of men as an always-lucky war chief. From the east he had come, slipping from tribe to tribe, always talking, to the Elders, to the young, to those who would listen,· and those became more and more in number.

  Once there had been a league of tribes in the east who had kept peace among themselves over many generations. Oneida sat beside Mohawk in council, and all men spoke their minds until there was agreement.

  Now there was an awakening among all the tribes such as there had not been since they had been beaten to the dust by the invaders from overseas. Shamans might be jealous of their powers at first, but they were drawn into one accord sooner or later.

  Now the knowledge of those wisdom keepers from nearly a dozen nations was centered in the southwestern desert land, and they awaited what Bearclaw tugged behind him, its metal feet clanging against rock. The stream of talk the thing had spouted at first had died away as they continued into a land of rocks and sand, majestic cliffs and river beds dry these fifty years or more.

  That the creature could be in long-distance communication with its fellows was more than a suspicion. But they could not keep the drum vibration going throughout their journey. As it was, they picked a way already studied out by a scout in which they could not be well sighted from the air. And certainly none of the machines this enemy used were for desert travel.

  He was aware of signals from the broken lands,· there had been a tight network drawn about the powwow country, and he did not believe that even a real ant might walk that way without being noted. Swift had arrived two days ago with the information that h
ad put an end to the last challenge of the Shamans.

  White men spoke of luck—the people knew that certain happenings were sent and meant to be noted and made use of by their blood. Rain was a gift of the Above Ones—but it had its dangers also. Torrents of water could in moments flood usually languid streams;· the touch of lightning could set off dreaded crown fire in the forest lands. And it was that lightning which seemed to be the war gift of the Above Ones in this matter.

  The rumors had come early;· the proof arrived with Swift and his following of Shamans and men who had served enough with the war machines of the whites to follow the knowledge shown them by the sky itself. Lightning could knock out those controls that kept the ants about their business;·not entirely—the majority of them appeared to recover after a space—but it could disconnect the unheard orders that backed their attempt to make all mankind into helpless children again.

  Now they had a captive of their own to experiment with—and coming swiftly into sight was the place of proving. The Shamans had been at their conferences for days picking out a time. There had been dream fasting, ceaseless night sings, all the possible ways of summoning the attention of the Old Ones. Maybe two years ago Bearclaw would have shrugged aside the thought that there were men even among the People who could accomplish more with the full use of their minds than a weaponed and well-trained soldier could do against any enemy. Only a man never loses the blood that runs in him, can never dodge and hide from his inheritance.

  Dirty drunken Indians—he had been embittered for years by such comments and sneers, ashamed for those who had become the refugees at the edges of white towns, those who had been drained of all that had given them pride in the fact that they were the People.

  There were still such outcasts, yes, far too many of them. Though those who seemed to pick up the words Swift uttered spread them with nearly the same power as he could say. Men had once hidden their tattered beliefs in things beyond; now they followed them openly.

  Let the ants show the white men what it meant to be helpless—comfortable after the fashion his kind held to be the proper state of mankind—but helpless—like sheep marched from one pasturage to another with no will of their own.

  Bearclaw angled right, only a portion of his band following him, but there still kept up with them one of the drummers, his raw-boned range nose matching full stride with the others.

  They fronted a canyon now. The bare rock in brilliant color under the sun. Bearclaw caught the scents of sage added to a fire along with other herbs—some from half the continent away. They had been purifying this slit in the rock for a week, tying prayer sticks in crannies wherever they could be thrust into crevices of the stone wall, or into the sand along the path to be followed.

  The chant took life from the drum that the lone Shaman tapped with swift, expert fingers. And it sounded in three different tongues from the men about him—each giving their own accent to their petition.

  Bearclaw slid from his mount, one of the younger men beside him following suit and grasping the reins of his horse along with his own. There was no word now from the ant. Bearclaw found himself almost uneasy at that smooth visage with its now dusty metal skin and its huge and apparently all-seeing eyes.

  “Our duty is to serve man—” The words seemed to boom, even above the ever-forceful beat of the drum. “Ask what you will—we shall make it yours.”

  Bearclaw could not believe there was any note of pleading in that even, resonant voice. The ants had no emotions—knew no fears—were only here to confine, herd, change a world into something which was near actionless death.

  He gave the special twist which fastened the thrice-blessed cords that had held the creature captive. Stepped back. For a long moment they stood so, man of humankind, thing born of some misguided brain on another world. A thing which had no reality in itself, only harkened to orders fed it.

  “We have come to serve you—” the ant repeated. “To protect man is all our power—”

  It was the Shaman who edged his bony nose forward, and his hand slapped the drum in quick time. Bearclaw raised one hand and pointed ahead.

  The rhythm was a pain in his own head but he held himself erect and watched. First the creature’s head swung around so it could eye the drummer. Its eyes blinked and seemed to contain a spark of fire far in their bubble depths.

  Its arms clicked upward, moving jerkily, its fingers reaching toward its head. Then it turned a little and went, not with the calm swing with which it had marched, but jerkily.

  Meanwhile about them the day was darkening. The horses threw up their heads and two whinnied. There was no need for any of them to look to the sky. Had there been any doubt left among them it was gone. What came was Shaman-called—called by such a gathering of power as this country had never known. Perhaps had it been possible to do so in the past there would have been no white men walking the land—though the action it was designed for now was striking at something else—at that unseen, space-spun thread which united the ants with the indestructible brain that had set them about their conquest and made prisoners, after a fashion, of half the world.

  They turned their backs now on that wavering figure heading out into the open. Sand twists were rising,· they had barely time to reach the shelter already staked out—to loose the horses and to climb up into the place of the old ones, Those Gone Before,· to throw themselves down in what shelter the time-cracked buildings would afford, and wait.

  Rain dances—yes—the people of the mesas had danced down the rain for untold centuries. It had become something that the white man came to watch and wonder at. But united to the rain dance now was the Calling—That Which Dwelt in the Woodlands of the North and East, That Which Climbed near Sun High, That Which was the very strength of their own bones and blood.

  The shaman caressed his small drum with the sweep of his palm, but there was no way to hear its answer. For then their sound struck, from mountain top to mountain top—the brilliant flash of lightning seeming far more frightening than any storm brought before. And through all the clamor of the wind and that thunder Bearclaw could somehow feel a vibration within his own body. Yet it did not assault as had that which had taken the ant prisoner. No, instead this gave him a feeling of power as if the lightning itself flooded along his veins—that he could point a finger and scar a mountain. This was in him, of him, it fed somehow upon what it was and yet he was not consumed, only strengthened.

  He closed his eyes and saw—

  Was this thing like the medicine dreams of a would-be warrior? No, he was already proven on the war trail. Nor was he a Shaman with the jealously guarded powers passed from one generation to the next.

  Still he saw—

  It was as if he were given wings and had soared out into the furious buffeting of the storm. Yet it did him no harm, nor would it. Below him stood the ant—stood? No, its knees bent;· it fell upon them. And from its head, like the line that might have taken a fish, was a thin line—extending not upward into the heavens as he had thought—traveling westward.

  That which was now Bearclaw followed the line until it came to join with others. He recognized beneath him the trucks that he had watched hours earlier.

  Out of nowhere struck an arrow of the same brilliancy as the lightning. It did not cut the cord. Now, rather it melted into it, speeding through those others below. The bait had been taken, now the catch was waiting.

  The whirls of wind-raised sand were high, but they did not hide the truck from Bearclaw, scout in a new and different war. Suddenly the head truck went off the road. The one behind grazed it, and they all came to a stop.

  That cord down which the arrow had slid so easily snapped out of sight. There was a sharp upward blaze from those still mingled on the ground. Then a thicker stem also reached ahead into a distance that the sand storm and then the burst of wind and rain covered.

  Still that which had summoned Bearclaw kept him aloft—until he saw those other cords snuff out. Then he was lying, head on
arm, in the place of the Old Ones with the roar of the storm heavy in his ears. Only he knew what he had seen, and surely he had not been the only one who had witnessed that. There were too many of the spirit-trained Elders who must have taken the same sky trail, though he had not seen or sensed their company. But he knew—the ants were surely tied, and those ties could be broken. At least the country claimed by the People could be freed from their snares and prisons. Let the white man sit prisoner among them if he so wished—there was none of the old strength in him.

  Bearclaw looked at his own callused hands and expanded each finger to its furthest extent. Here were no folded hands.

  Afterword

  There are forceful stories which make such an impression on the reader that it lingers for years. “With Folded Hands” is a classic. It is also a story which makes the reader uneasy and with a not too far hidden spark of that old fearsome feeling—what if?

  It is undoubtedly taking a very great liberty on my part to turn to that fine example in the Hall of Fame with an answer. I expect wholehearted disagreement with this answer. However, it is also a deep-held belief of mine that there are phases of human consciousness and abilities which we have not learned to use to the utmost. And the values of one race are not always those of another. So because I have been haunted for years by “With Folded Hands,” I am now daring to provide an answer—which I hope Mr. Williamson will be kind enough not to blast into the farthest reaches of space.

  —Andre Norton

  Bard’s Crown

  Elf Fantastic (1997) DAW

  Catlin shivered and pleated her shawl nervously between her fingers. She noted that the two serving maids had crept into the corner of the small bower as closely as they could, away from the door into the great hall.

  Another burst of raucous laughter reached her. There was no way she could deal with this. Kathal, like any son of Clan Dongannan, had gone to the High King for a year’s service in the Guard near a year ago. Now he was back because he was the o’Dongannan, their uncle having died of a rheum. But the boy who had gone away, as reckless and thoughtless concerning others as he had been, was lost. That mead-swigging brute at rough play with his cronies out there—brother or not, she could say nothing to which he would listen.