The Beast Master bm-1 Read online

  “No, but the Norbies could. Storm, you’re green and from off-world, but you’ve a head on your shoulders. You ride with Dort. If you find any more strays, pick ‘em up. Maybe that educated cat of yours can hold ‘em for you in some cutback. If there was any funny stuff behind that yoris attack, I want a Norbie scout nosin’ around to uncover it.”

  Surra could match the pace of the tired horses as they headed toward the distant river bottoms. And Baku rode the air currents above, a fourth and far-searching pair of eyes. By all rights the eagle should locate the native camp first. Storm knew that was true when the black wings spread in a glide and Baku perched on a rock outcrop, her dark plumage very visible against the red of the stone. Having so attracted the Terran’s attention, she took off again, leading them more to the southeast.

  The horses, scenting water, quickened pace, winding through a thicket of pallid “puff” bushes where the cottony balls of weird blossoms hung like fur muffs on the leafless branches. Surra, her coat hardly to be distinguished from the normal shade of the alien grass, trotted ahead, sending into the air in terrified leaps some of the odd rodent inhabitants of that limited world.

  Dort suddenly drew rein, his hand flung up in warning, so that Storm obeyed his lead. Surra was belly flat and hidden in the grass and Baku came earthward, uttering a sharp, imperative call.

  Ok so far”I take it we’re sighted?” suggested Storm quietly.

  “We are. But we won’t see a Norbie unless he wants it that way,” Dort returned. “Yaaaah –” he called, dropping his reins on the horse’s neck and raising his hands, palm out.

  A physical peculiarity of Norbie throat structure prevented any vocal speech that could either be understood or imitated by the off-world settlers. But there was a well-developed form of communication and Dort employed it now. His fingers moved swiftly, though Storm could hardly separate the signs he made. But his message was understood, for a shadow detached itself from the trunk of a tree and stood out, giving Storm his first sight of a native apart from a tri-dee picture.

  The Terran had pored over all the films concerning Arzor at the Centre. They had been exact and colourful, meant to entice settlers to the frontier world. But there is a vast difference between even a cleverly focused and very lifelike tri-dee and the real thing.

  This Norbie was tall by Terran standards, very close to seven feet, looming over Storm himself by close to a full twelve inches. And he was exceedingly lean for his height, with two arms, two legs, regular, even handsome humanoid features, a skin of reddish-yellow not far removed from the shade of Arzoran earth. But there was the one distinctive physical attribute that always centred off-world attention to the forehead at a first meeting between Norbie and alien visitor – the horns! Ivory white, they were about six inches long, curling up and back over the hairless dome of the skull.

  Storm tried to keep his eyes from those horns, to concentrate instead on Dort’s flying fingers. He must learn finger-talk himself as soon as he could. Then, baffled, he turned his attention to the native’s dress and weapons.

  A wide band of yoris hide was shaped into a corselet, which covered the Norbie’s trunk from armpit to crotch, split at the sides over the curve of the hip to allow free leg movement.

  The legs in turn were covered with high-legginged boots not unlike those worn as a protection against the thorn shrubs by the settlers. The corselet was doubled in thickness at the waist by another strip of scaled hide serving as a belt, supporting several pocket pouches decorated with designs made by small red, gold, and blue beads, and the ornamented sheath of a knife close to a sword in length, while in his six-digit hands the hunter carried a weapon Storm already knew. It was longer than any Terran bow he had seen, but it was a bow.

  Dress, armour, and ornament were combined in one last article of apparel, a wide collar extending to shoulder point on either side, and almost to the waist in front, fashioned entirely of polished yoris fangs. If those had all been taken by this one Norbie, with only a bow and a knife as weapons, then the hunter would have to be respected in any company of fighting men in the galaxy!

  Dort dropped his hands to his saddle horn as the native signed a reply. Then he stiffened as the Norbie set arrow shaft to bowstring with a speed that startled the Terran.

  “Look out for your cat!”

  Storm hissed Surra’s call. She arose out of the masking grass and came to him, the arrow trained upon her unrelentingly. Dort was trying frantic sign-talk. But Storm had his own method of reassurance. Swinging from the saddle pad, the Terran motioned and Surra moved closer, rubbing with feline affection against his legs. Storm went down on one knee and the cat set her forepaws on his shoulders, touching her nose lightly to his cheek.

  3

  Storm heard a bird-trill and glanced up to meet the astonished yellow eyes of the Norbie, their vertical pupils expanding visibly. The native spoke again in his thin, sharp twitter, a surprising sound to come from the throat of that large body as his fingers flicked a question at Dort.

  “Call in that eagle of yours, too, if you can, Storm. You’re rnakin’ a big impression and that can be good for us –”

  The Terran scratched Surra under the jaw and behind the ears and then stood up. Spreading his feet a little apart and tensing his shoulders for the shock of Baku’s landing weight, he whistled.

  Wide wings beat the air as Baku dropped in a series of spectacular turns. But when those powerful talons gripped Storm’s shoulder they did not pierce flesh. Under the merciless beams of the Arzor noon sun the blue-black plumage had a metallic sheen, and the patch of bright yellow feathers about the cruel blue-grey curve of the beak stood out as if freshly daubed with paint.

  “Saaaa –” The Terran’s warning alerted both cat and bird. Feathered head and furred one moved to his signal, and two pairs of predatory, glittering eyes regarded the Norbie with intelligent interest.

  That’s done it!” Dort was relieved. “But keep ‘em under control when we go into the camp.”

  Storm nodded, staring at the spot where the native had stood only seconds earlier. The Terran prided himself on his own scoutcraft and ability to become a part of the landscape, but this Norbie was better than the best he had ever seen.

  “Camp’s down on the river bank.” Dort came out of the saddle. “We walk in. Also –” He drew his stun rod from its holster and fired the ready charge into the air. “You don’t enter with a loaded rod, it’s not considered manners –”

  Once more Storm followed the settler’s direction. Baku took off into the sky and Surra paced a yard or so before them, the tip of her tail twitching now and then to betray her interest in her surroundings. There was the scent of strange cooking and stranger living smells, as well as small sounds, coming up slope.

  A Norbie camp was not pitched on formal lines. Lengths of kalma wood, easily shaped when wet and iron stiff when dried, had been bent by each householder to form the framework for a hemisphere tent. The hides stretched over that frame were piebald mixtures patched together from the fruits of the individual family’s hunting. Blues of frawn pelts were joined by clever lacing to the silver-yellow scales of young yoris skins, banded in turn with the red fur of river rodents. The largest tent had a complete border about its base and door flap of jewel-bright bird skins set in a pattern of vivid colour.

  Storm could see no women as they came down to the cluster of tents. But before each of the dwellings stood Norbie males, young and old, each armed. The scout who had met them on the trail was waiting at the flap of the bird-trimmed lodge.

  As if unaware of the silent audience, the off-world men threaded their way to that tent and Dort halted before the chieftain. Storm stood quietly a little behind him, allowing none of his interest in his surroundings to show. Silently he counted some twenty of the rounded tents, and he knew that each housed a full family, which could number up to fifteen or more natives, since a man married into his wife’s clan and joined her family as a younger son until the number of his children
increased to make him the head of his own family. Judging by Norbie standards this was a town of some size – of the zamle totem – for a stylized representation of that bird of prey was painted on the name shield before the chieftain’s lodge.

  “Storm” – Dort spoke softly as his hand signed a greeting to the impassive natives – “call in that bird of yours again. These are-”

  “Zamle clansmen,” the Terran nodded. “So they’ll be favourably impressed by my bird totem?” Again he whistled to summon Baku, bracing himself for the bird’s landing. But this time matters were not to go on smoothly. For, as the eagle came, she screamed a challenge in a way unlike her usual manner. And she did not come to Storm, but threw her body back, presenting her ready talons to the tent as if that hide and fur erection were an enemy.

  Storm, startled, hurried forward. Baku had grounded now, walking across the open space before the Norbie chieftain in a crouch, her feathers standing up, wings trailing half open on either side of her black body. She was in a red rage, though the Terran could not see what had aroused her. That is – he did not, until a streak of living green burst from the tent in reply to the eagle’s scream of challenge. Luckily Storm got there first, catching Baku by the legs before she could strike at her attacker.

  Screeching in a frenzy the eagle beat her wings, tried to turn her talons on her handler, while Storm exerted all his strength of shoulder and arm to keep her fast, striving at the same time to enforce his mental control as well as the grip of his hands. The Norbie chief had caught up his own feathered champion and was engaged in a similar battle until one of his clansmen flung a small net over the angry zamle. When the green bird had been bundled back into the tent and Baku had been calmed, Storm tossed her onto his riding pad, confining her with jesses so she could not leave that perch until he freed her.

  Breathing hard he turned to find the Norbie chief beside him, intent on the eagle. The native’s fingers flew and Dort translated.

  “Krotag wants to know if this bird is your totem.”

  “It is.” Storm nodded, hoping that that gesture meant the same on Arzor as it had on Terra.

  “Storm!” Dort’s excitement broke through the control he had kept on his voice. “Do you have a wound scar you can show in a hurry? Scars mean something here. That will prove you’re a warrior according to their standards – as well as a man with a real fightin’ totem. The chief may even accept you as an equal.”

  If scars would help, the Terran was only too willing to oblige. He jerked at the loosely looped lacing of his shirt, pulling the silky material down to bare his left shoulder and display a ragged white line that marked his meeting with a too alert sentry on a planet whose sun was only a faint star in the Arzor night heavens.

  “I am a warrior and my fighting totem has saved my life –” He spoke directly to the Norbie chieftain, as if the other understood and did not need Dort’s translation by finger. The other answered in his twittering speech as he moved his hands. Dort grinned.

  “You’ve done it, fella. They’ll make drink-talk with us now, seein’ as how you’re a real warrior.”

  Krotag’s camp supplied them with five experienced tracker-hunters and Larkin was well pleased, though it was plain the natives considered the stampede as an opportunity graciously arranged for their benefit by the Tall-Ones-Who-Drum-Thunder-in-the-Mountains as a means of adding to their clan wealth in horses.

  Now as the riders and the Norbies worked in pairs to bring back the widely scattered animals, it became more and more apparent that Storm had been right in his suggestion that the stampede had been planned. Though even the natives found no identifiable traces of the raiders, it was clear that the horses had been separated into small bands and adroitly concealed in canyons and pocket valleys.

  The clues to the identity of the stampeder or stampeders were so conspicuously absent that Storm heard some muttering to the effect that Krotag’s men, now virtuously engaged in hunting the mounts, might well have hidden them in the first place, so they could claim the stallion and the three or four footsore mares Larkin promised them for their services.

  Storm wondered about that a day or so later as red dust churned up by trampling hoofs arose about him until he pulled to one side of the bunch he was helping to head in to the gather point. The Terran adjusted the scarf he had tied over nose and mouth, watching another rider who was a distant dot, yet plain because of his white horse. That was Coll Bister. And by all rights Storm owed Bister some gratitude, for it was he who had found and brought in Rain, the horse the Terran now rode. But the ex-Commando couldn’t find any liking for the man. He was one of those most outspoken against the Norbies and in addition he had shown covert hostility toward Storm, for no reason that the Beast Master could understand.

  As usual the Terran had kept aloof in the herd camp, using his animals as an excuse for bedding down a little apart from the others. But his skill with horses had won him more ready acceptance than most off-world newcomers could claim. Larkin had turned over to him the breaking of additional mounts to take the place of work horses lost in the stampede, and the men not out on the hunt often gathered to watch him gentle them.

  Had he wanted to, Storm might have enjoyed a favourite’s position. His particular gifts, his even temper, and his willingness to carry his share of the tedious herd work, were all qualities the riders could readily appreciate. They were willing to accept Storm’s reticence, which had hardened at the Centre into an encasing shell. To the frontiersmen that ancient planet on which their stock had first been bred was an exotic mystery. It was a great tragedy that Terra was now gone, and naturally a Terran would feel it deeply. The death of his home world tended to lend Storm something close to exiled majesty in Arzoran eyes.

  Only with Larkin and Dort Lancin did Storm approach a relationship stronger than just the comradeship of the trail. Dort was teaching him finger-talk and pouring out for his benefit all the Norbie lore he himself had absorbed over the years, displaying toward the Terran the proprietorship of the instructor for an apt pupil. With Larkin the bond was horse, a subject on which both men could talk for hours at the night’s camp-fire.

  So he knew Larkin and Dort and liked them in that pallid way that was the closest he was able to come to friendship with one of his own kind nowadays. But Bister was beginning to present a problem, one which he did not want to face. Not that Storm had any fear of physical combat should the other push his dislike that far. Bister bore all the signs of being a top bully, but in a fair fight – in spite of Bister outweighing and over-towering him – Storm was certain of victory.

  In a fair fight – Storm’s tongue licked dust from his lips behind his scarf. Why had that thought crossed his mind? And why did it bother him just now to see Bister sitting there as if waiting for him to ride up?

  Although Storm had never pushed a fight, neither had he ever directly avoided trouble when it was necessary to face it – not before. Why didn’t he want to come to grips with the problem Bister would present to him sooner or later?

  Another rider drew level with Rain and a yellow hand lifted from a braided yoris hide hackamore to sign a greeting. Though the Norbie had followed Storm’s example and drawn a scarf over the lower half of his thin face, the Terran recognized Gorgol, youngest of the scouts Larkin had hired.

  “Plenty dust –” The native made signs slowly out of courtesy for Storm’s beginner’s learning. “Ride dry –”

  “Clouds – over mountain – does rain come?” Storm signalled back.

  The Norbie’s head swung so he could look over his lean shoulder at the red rises now to the east.

  “Rain comes – then mud –”

  Storm knew that Larkin feared mud. Rain in these wastes, the heavy downpours of spring, could make a sticky morass of all level ground, producing dangerous quagmires.

  “You bird totem warrior –” That was a statement, not a question. The Norbie youth rode with an easy grace, matching the pace of his smaller black and white mount to Rain’s
stride until he cantered beside the Terran as if they were practising such a manoeuvre for some exhibition.

  Storm nodded. Gorgol’s left hand went to a cord about his own neck on which hung two curved objects, black and shiny. There was a shy self-consciousness about the native as he dropped his hand again to sign:

  “I no warrior yet – hunter only. Have been in high peaks and killed an evil flyer –”

  Storm asked the proper question in return. “An evil flyer? I not of this world – I know not evil flyer –”

  “Big!” The Norbie’s fingers spread to their farthest extent making the sign for great size. “Bird – evil bird. Hunt horse –hunt Norbie – kill!” His forefinger and thumb scissored in the emphatic sign for sudden and violent death, then rose again to tap the trophies swinging against the corselet which covered his breast.

  Storm stretched out his hand in polite question and the boy pulled the thong from his neck, passing it to the Terran for examination. The objects strung on it were plainly a bird’s claws. And, using the length of Baku’s talons in relation to her thirty-four inches as comparison, the creature that had borne them must indeed have been huge, for each claw measured the length of Storm’s hand from wrist to the end of the longest finger. He returned the necklet to its proud owner.

  “You great hunter,” Storm nodded vigorously to underline his finger statement. “Evil flyer must be hard to kill.”

  Gorgol’s face might be half hidden by the scarf mask, but his whole person expressed pleasure as he answered.

  “I kill for man deed. Not warrior yet – but hunter, yes.”

  And well he might boast, Storm thought. If this boy had killed the monster he described while hunting alone – and the Terran had learned enough of Norbie customs from Dort to know that idle boasting was no part of native character – he had every right in the world to claim to be a hunter.