Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder Page 22

  “Also the wild ones?”

  “The wild ones—yes.”

  Impossible! There were tribal feuds nursed for the honor of fighting men. To send in the peace pole for a clan, or perhaps—stretching it far—several clans at a time, was one thing. But for the Shosonna and the Nitra to sit under such a pole with their war arrows still in the the quivers—that was unheard of!

  “I go—” Gorgol slapped his travel bag. “The horses, they are in the big corral—you will find them safe.”

  “You go—but you will return to ride again?” Hosteen was bothered by the suggestion of finality in the other’s signs.

  “That lies with the lightning—”

  The Norbie was gone. Hosteen walked back across the room to lie down on a bunk. So Gorgol was not even sure he would be back. What did he mean about that lying with the lightning? The Norbies recognized divine power in shadow beings who drummed thunder and used the lightning to slay. The reputed home of these God Ones was the high mountains of the northeast. And those same mountains also hid the caverns and passages of that mysterious unknown race who had either explored or settled here on Arzor centuries before the Terran exploration ships had reached this part of the galaxy.

  Hosteen, Logan, and Gorgol, together with Surra, the dune cat, and Hing, the meercat of the Beast Team, had discovered the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens, a fabulous botanical preserve of the Sealed Caves. That, and the ruined city or fortification in the valley beyond, was still under scientific study. It was easy to believe that there were other Sealed Caves in the hills—and also easy to understand that the Norbies had made gods of the long-vanished and still-unknown space travelers who had hollowed out the Peaks to hold their mysteries.

  Hosteen could spend hours speculating about that and not turn up one real fact. Now it was better to sleep through the day heat and ride out at night to answer the return order from the holding. For all Hosteen knew, that summons might have been sounding for days, which could account for Logan’s absence. He turned on his side and willed himself to sleep.

  That mental alarm clock that had been conditioned into him during his service days brought him awake hours later. To come out of the cave into the dusk of evening was walking into a wall of heavy heat, but it was not as bad as sunlight. He allowed Rain to splash in the shallows of the river before he swung up to the riding pad. Baku’s world was not that of the night, but she accepted it at his urging, climbing into the star-encrusted sky.

  The Center House was three nights’ ride from the line camp. And two of the days in between Hosteen had to spend in impro-vished shelters, lying flat on the earth to get what coolness the parched soil might provide. Shortly before midnight on the third night, he rode up to the blazing light of his goal. The unusual glare of atom lamps was another warning of emergency.

  “Who’s there?” The suspicion-sharp hail out of the gate shadows made the Terran draw rein. Then from his right a furry body materialized beside the snorting stallion, reared on its haunches, and drew a paw with sheathed claws along Hosteen’s boot.

  “Storm,” he answered the challenger and dismounted to caress Surra. The rasp of the dune cat’s tongue on his hand was an unusually fervid greeting, which awoke answering warmth within him.

  “I’ll take your horse.” The man who came from the gate carried an unholstered stunner. “Quade’s been waitin’, hopin’ you’d make it soon—”

  Hosteen muttered a brief thanks, more interested in the fact that there were other men in the courtyard. But there were no Norbies, not a single one of the native riders he was used to seeing there. Gorgol had been right; the Norbies had all pulled out.

  With Surra rubbing against his thigh, now and then butting him playfully with her head, he went to the door of the big house. Tension was alive in the cat, too. She had sometimes been like this on the eve of one of their wartime forays. Trouble excited but did not worry Surra.

  “—continent-wide as far as reports have come in—”

  Maybe Surra was exhilarated by the present happenings, but the tone of that voice told Hosteen that Brad Quade was frankly worried.

  CHAPTER TWO

  W

  ithin the house, Hosteen found himself fronting a distinguished gathering that included most of the settlers in the Peak country—even Rig Dumaroy, whose usual association with Brad Quade was one of uneasy neutrality. But, of course, in any Norbie trouble Dumaroy would be present. He was the one large holder in the frontier country who was prejudiced against the Arzoran natives and refused to hire any of them.

  “It’s Storm—” Dort Lancin, who had ridden in with the Terran on the military transport almost a year ago, waved two fingers in greeting, a sign that was also a hunter signal for watchfulness.

  The tall man standing by the com board glanced over his shoulder, and Hosteen read a shadow of relief on his stepfather’s face.

  Dort Lancin, his older and more taciturn brother Artur, Dumaroy, Jotter Hyke, Val Palasco, Connar Jaffe, Sim Starle—but no Logan Quade. Hosteen stood inside the doorway, his hand resting on Surra’s head as the big cat nuzzled against his legs.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Dumaroy, a wide and rather vindictive grin on his face, answered first.

  “All your pet goats have lit out for the hills. Always said they’d cross you up, always said it—now you see. And I say”—his grin faded, and he brought his big hand down on his knee in a resounding slap—“there’s trouble brewing up there. The sooner we fort up and send for the Patrol to come in and settle this once and for all—”

  Artur Lancin’s level voice, threaded with weariness, cut across the other’s bellow with the neatness of a belt knife slicing through frawn fat. “Yes, you’ve been broadcastin’ on that beam all night, Dumaroy. We received you loud and clear the first time. Storm,” he addressed the younger man, “you see anything different out in the hills?”

  Storm flipped his hat up on the daryork horn rack and unfastened the belt that supported his stunner and bush knife as he replied.

  “I think now what I did not see is important.”

  “That being?” Brad Quade was pulling a fresh swankee container from the unit. He brought it over and then, with a fingertip touch on Hosteen’s shoulder, guided him to a foam chair.

  “No hunters—no trails—nothing.” Hosteen sipped the restoring liquid between words. He had not realized how bone-aching tired he was until he sat down. “I might have been riding in an empty world—”

  The two Lancins watched him narrowly, and Dort nodded. He had hunted with the Norbies, was welcome in their villages, and well understood the strangeness of an empty country.

  “How far did you go?” Quade asked.

  “I made the rounds to set up markers.” Hosteen brought his claim map from the inner pocket of his shirt. Quade took the sheet from him and compared its lines with the country survey chart that was a mural for one wall of the room.

  “Clean up to the gorge, eh?” Jaffe commented. “And no hunter sign?”

  “No. I thought it was because of the Big Dry retreat—”

  “That wouldn’t come quite this early,” Quade replied. “Gorgol brought in your cavvy of mounts four days ago, took his bag, and rode off.”

  “I met him at the line camp.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That there was a clan summons out—some sort of intertribal gathering—”

  “Durin’ the Big Dry?” demanded Hyke incredulously.

  “I told you!” Dumaroy pounded with his fist this time, and Hosteen heard a snarling rumble from Surra. He sent a mental command to silence the cat. “I told you! We’re sittin’ right here on the only free runnin’ water that keeps on runnin’ through the worst of the Dry. And those goats are gonna come down and try to butt us out of it! If we’ve the sense of water rats, we’ll go up and clean ’em out before they can get organized—”

  “Once before you moved up to clean out Norbies,” Quade said coldly. “And what did we
find out—that the Norbies weren’t responsible for anything that had happened—that there was an Xik holdout group behind all our stock losses!”

  “Yeah—and is this another Xik trick? Callin’ in all the tribes now?” Dumaroy’s hostility was like a fog spreading from him toward the other man.

  “Maybe not Xik this time,” Quade conceded. “But I refuse to make any move until I know more about the situation. All we are sure of at present is that our Norbie riders have quit and are heading for the mountains at a time when they are usually eager to work, and that this has not happened before.”

  Artur Lancin stood up. “That’s sense, Dumaroy. We aren’t goin’ to stick our heads into some yoris’ mouth just on your say-so. I say we do a little scoutin’. Meanwhile, we rustle up riders from the Basin or even pick up some drifters from the Port to tide us over. With the Dry on, the herds aren’t goin’ to move too far from the river, and we’ll need only a yoris patrol and some count work. My granddad got through, ridin’ on his own, with just his two boys to back him in the First Ship days. None of you here look too soft for the saddle now.”

  “That’s right,” Sim Starle agreed. “We’ll keep our coms on a circle hookup and with the alert on. Anybody learns anything, he sends the word out on the beam. I’m for sittin’ quiet until we’re sure about what’s happenin’ and why. Maybe these Norbies are havin’ them a medicine powwow—and that’s none of our danged business!”

  Hosteen, sinking deeper into his fog of weariness, watched the settlers leave for their ’copters, to fly back to the scattered holdings of the Peak country. He was still too torpid to move when Brad Quade re-entered, having seen off the company. But he roused himself to ask the one question bothering him most.

  “Where’s Logan?”

  “Gone—”

  The tone of the other’s voice pulled Hosteen out of his lethargy of fatigue. “Gone! Where?”

  “To Krotag’s camp—at least that’s what I think—”

  Hosteen was on his feet now. “The young fool! This is medicine business, Gorgol said so—”

  Brad Quade turned. His face might seem impassive to an outsider, but it did not hide his feelings from Hosteen. “I know. But he has drunk blood with Kavok, Krotag’s first son. That makes him a clansman—”

  Hosteen bit back his protest. “Medicine” was tricky. A man could be an adopted clansman, living in blood brotherhood with a Norbie, but that might not cover prying into the inner beliefs of the natives. There was no use putting his thoughts and fears into words. Brad Quade knew all that and more.

  “I can make it back up to the washes. How much of a start has he?”

  “No. This was his choice; he took it with his eyes open. You won’t ride after him. Tomorrow, if you will, I want you on the way to Gal-wadi in the ’copter.”

  “Galwadi!”

  Brad Quade picked up the claim map. “You have this to record, remember? Then—have a talk with Kelson. He knows Logan.” Quade ran one hand through his thick black cap of wiry hair. “I wish Kelson had got that bill through the Council—Logan was so keen on that Ranger business they talked about. If that had gone through, maybe he’d have had a job he’d really settle down to. But you can’t make the Council hump just the way you want them to—even when you prod. Anyway—you see Kelson and try to get a line on what’s happening. There may have been an official clamp on Norbie news—I suspect that. And I’d better stay here for now. Dumaroy’s just hotheaded enough to try one of those dangerous schemes of his if there’s no one to talk him down—and just one incident might set off big trouble.”

  “What do you think is happening?”

  Brad Quade hooked his thumbs in his wide rider’s belt and stared at the floor as if he had never seen such a pattern of river stones before. “I have no idea. This is ‘medicine’ right enough—but it’s unique at this time of the year. The Quades were First Ship people. I’ve found nothing in our family records like this—”

  “Gorgol told me the peace poles were up for the wild tribes.”

  His stepfather nodded. “I know; he told me, too. But just to sit and wait—”

  Hosteen made one of his rare gestures of feeling toward this man he had once sworn to kill, resting a brown hand on the other’s wide shoulder.

  “To wait is always the hardest. Tomorrow night I will go to Gal-wadi. Logan—he is Norbie under the skin, and he has drunk blood with the Zamle Shosonna. That is a sacred thing—big medicine—”

  Brad Quade’s hand came up to cover Hosteen’s for a moment of shared warmth. “Big enough—we can hope that. Now, you look like a two-day marcher in the flats. Get to bed and rest!”

  To wait—Hosteen felt the first pinch of his own private kind of waiting as he sat in the ’copter boring through the night sky on the way to Galwadi. Behind him he left everything that counted on Arzor—a soft-furred, keen-eyed cat with a coat of yellow and a brain that perhaps matched his own in intelligence, though that intelligence might be of a different order, a horse he had trained, Hing, the meercat, a small, tumbling, clownish animal that had waddled four half-grown kits out for his inspection earlier that very evening, Baku, perched on the top corral bar, bidding him farewell with a falcon scream. And a man, a man whom he had once respected even while he hated him and whom he would now follow anywhere, anytime, and for any purpose. He left all those in what might be the heart of enemy territory if their forebodings crystallized into the worst of futures.

  To all outward seeming, there was no tension in Galwadi. Hosteen, coming from the land registration office, eyed the traffic on the street speculatively. The hour was far into dusk, and the small city, which had been dead in the day’s heat, was alive now, the streets and shops busy. But whether he could hire any riders here was another question. To get new light-and-tie men at this season was a problem. There were several gather-ins in the lower town, and those would be a starting place for his quest. But first—dinner.

  He chose a small, quiet eating place and was surprised at the wide array of dish dials he was offered. Food on the holdings was usually plentiful but plain, with little variety. The few off-world luxury items were carefully saved for holidays. But here he was fronted with a choice such as was more usual in a Port city catering to off-world visitors. Then he noted a Zacathan in the next booth and realized that a restaurant in the capital needs must satisfy the alien government representatives as well as the settlers.

  Deciding to plunge, Hosteen dialed three dishes he had not tasted since his last service leave. He was sipping at a tube planted in a dalee bulb when someone paused by his table, and he glanced up to see Kelson, the Peace Officer of the Peak section.

  “Heard you were looking for me, Storm.”

  “Tried your office com,” Hosteen assented. He was a little at a loss as to how to word his question. Should he just bluntly ask what was up—if there was any news being withheld from the holdings? But Kelson continued.

  “Coincidence. I was trying to reach you. Called the Peaks—Quade said you were here registering your squares. You’ve decided to settle in the Peak country then?”

  “Yes—horse breeding with Put Larkin. He’s off-world now. Heard of a new crossbreed on Astra—Terran blood interbred with the local species of duicorn. Can stand up to desert heat there—or so the breeder claims.”

  “So they might do for the Big Dry here, eh? It’s a thought. But your range isn’t open yet—”

  What did that matter, Hosteen wondered. No one would start on holding work until the rains came. But Kelson was beckoning to someone across the room.

  “There’s a problem—maybe you can help us,” the Peace Officer continued. “Mind if we join you? Time’s essential in this one—”

  The man who came up was an off-worlder of a type usually not seen on a frontier world. His sleek form-fitting tunic, picked out with a silver-thread pattern, and the long hose-breeches of flat black were those of a business executive on one of the densely populated merchant worlds, and fashionable though they
might have been on his home planet, they were as incongruous here as they were ill-becoming to his pudgy figure. Ridiculous as he might look in this Ar-zoran restaurant, one did not think him a figure of fun when one observed his craggy face, saw the square set of a determined and forceful chin and the bleak eyes that were those of a man used to giving orders. Hosteen recognized the breed and stiffened—it was one with which he had little sympathy.

  “Gentle Homo Lass Widders, Beast Master Storm.” Kelson made the introductions, using the title of respect from the inner planets for the stranger, who seated himself without invitation across the table from Hosteen and proceeded to survey the Terran with an appraisal the other found insolent.

  “I am not of the forces now.” Hosteen corrected Kelson perversely. “So it is not Beast Master—today I light and tie for Quade.”

  “You’re a holding head rather since an hour ago, aren’t you? You’ve located your stakes. Have you set up a brand?” Kelson asked.

  “Arrowhead S,” Storm replied absently. “And what do you wish of a mustered-out Beast Master, Gentle Homo?”

  “About a month, maybe more, of your time and services,” Widders rapped out in the clicking Galactic basic of the business worlds. “I want to have you—and your team—guide me into the Blue section—”

  Hosteen blinked and looked to Kelson for confirmation that he had really heard that idiotic statement. To his surprise, the expression on the Peace Officer’s face read that this stranger from one of the hothouse worlds meant exactly what he said.

  “It is a matter of time, Beast Master. I understand we must get into that country within the next two weeks if we go at all before next season.”

  Hosteen did not blink this time. He merely replied with the truth.

  “Impossible.”

  “Nothing,” returned Widders with his irritating confidence, “is impossible, given the right man and credits enough. Kelson believes you are the man, and I can provide the credits.”