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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  T

  he off-worlder threw both hands high above his head, a head that under the sun shown as brightly red-gold as the fires of the lightning.

  He began to speak, and he did not use the hand signs of the settlers. The twittering bird notes—which authorities had sworn could not be shaped by human vocal cords or lips—poured from him. He was talking to the Norbies in their own tongue!

  Shrill cries broke his first pause. Truce poles were tossed in the air until the fluttering of their totem streamers whirled in a crazy dance of ribbon strips.

  Hosteen’s mouth straightened into a hard line; his face was graven, without expresison, save that his eyes were watchful, as watchful as those of a man facing a death peril.

  The signs were the same from world to world, race to race, species to species. This orator had the Norbies in the grip of a spell woven by his words. And he was inciting them to action! Their “big medicine” was working—alive! The trouble Quade and Kelson had smelled in the plains now walked openly in the Blue. Walked? No rather spoke with drum and voice—to urge what?

  Hosteen’s own inability to understand more than the emotions being aroused was a torment. But his doubts were resolved. Magic, if you wanted to call it that—but something his own inheritance recognized—was drugging their minds to provide a free path for unreasoning action, which could be used by that man in the off-world uniform with a Norbie painted face.

  “Ani’iihii—” Hosteen spat.

  Sorcerer was the right name for this witch man shaping disaster and death out of the words, as the witches of Terra long ago had shaped a man’s death from a lock of his hair ceremoniously buried in a grave.

  The drums replied with a beat that awoke a response in Hosteen’s own hurrying blood. Just so, generations ago, halfway across the galaxy, had men of his own race drummed and danced before raiding. This was preparation for war.

  And with such a collection of tribes, there could be only one answer to the identity of the intended enemy—the scattered holdings of the plains settlers, strung out thinly with leagues of open range land between each Center House, ripe for plucking by strike-and-run fighters. Norbies were warriors by tradition and training. It would take very little to turn them into an efficient guerrilla force that could wipe off-worlders from Arzor before they were aware of their danger.

  The very nature of the country would fight for the natives at this season. Their carefully kept water secrets would make them far more mobile than any Patrol expeditionary force the settlers could call in.

  Hosteen rubbed his forearm across his face. Nightmares out of the past provided spectres to follow a man for years. He had served on the fringe of a war that had involved not only worlds but solar systems, had seen the blotting out of nations and planets. Yes, the Patrol could be called in to end such a hit-and-run war—but afterwards, Arzor, as they knew it now, would cease to exist.

  There was a final boom of drum—the orator was returning to the ledge of the tunnel, the Norbies ebbing back into the valley. Back to their village—to arm, to plan? Why? Hosteen could not pick the answer to that out of their twittering.

  He worked a grenade out of his belt pouch. The stranger was on the ledge. Hosteen waited for a challenge, for some attack. But the other was staring straight before him, his eyes wide. He walked with a stiff, rocking pace. If he had locked the Norbies in some spell of eloquence, he was as tightly enchanted himself. Glancing neither to right nor left, he entered the passage.

  This was the mountain on which the LB had landed. Hosteen watched the Norbies withdraw, tried to think. The LB—and Widders’ story of those weak signals picked up by line camp corns. Just suppose the craft’s com could still broadcast! A message might be sent to alert the plains!

  The stranger could be hunted later—but to get to the LB now was worth the risk.

  Surra—Baku—Gorgol. None of them had been brought to the village while Logan and he had been there. Were the three still at large?

  Hosteen sent out once more that unvoiced, unheard rallying call of the team—tried to locate some mental radiation from bird or cat to reinstate once again their tight compact, so that man, cat, and eagle would not be three alone and adrift but a weapon, a defense such as Arzor, with all its hidden secrets, did not know.

  “Baku!” He sent thought spinning like a lasso into the sky, striving to reach the mind behind those falcon-sharp eyes. But there was no answer.

  “Surra!” Now he deserted the upper spaces and withdrew to the ground in search of one walking velvet-footed. “Surra!”

  The answer he had ceased to hope for came like a stab of fire.

  “Where?” His lips shaped the word as the query flew back along that tenuous thread of thought connection.

  Impression of dark—of rock-walled passages. The cat must be somewhere within the mountain. Yes, Surra was there. And she lay in wait for some living thing now moving toward her. The orator?

  The frustration that had rasped Hosteen moments earlier vanished. He worked the numbed line of mental contact just as he had the fingers of his numbed hand. Surra was an important part of him; without her, the composite entity that was the team was crippled, helpless as a man shorn of some important sense organ.

  And he knew from the quality of her response, fierce, demanding, that that that lack had been hers also.

  “The one coming”—he sent his message—“trail but do not take. Keep in touch with me.”

  Surra would take the stranger under surveillance. Hosteen was free to reach the LB. He swung down from the ledge and worked his way along the slope, using every bit of cover and scoutcraft he knew.

  Drums again, faint—they must be in the village. He used a springy bush to lower himself into the clearing, where the sweet-sick scent of decay hung heavy. The offerings were still heaped about the rounded sides of the craft; the escape port on the top was closed.

  Had it ever been opened or was the LB still sealed with a passenger list of dead men? The presence of the stranger argued that at least one of the castaways had escaped.

  Hosteen climbed a sapling, which bent under his weight, allowing him to land near the tail. Slamming his hand down on the pressure lock of the hatch, he waited tensely.

  With a squeak of protest, the port began to lift slowly. Hosteen’s one fear vanished as he seized the edge of the door and forced it straight up. The LB had opened after its landing on Arzor; he was not about to enter a tomb.

  The interior space of such a craft was limited, and from abandon-ship drill in the Service he knew its layout. Pushing between two rows of acceleration bunks set against each wall, he reached the nose, where the auto and hand pilots and the com set were to be found.

  Side lights had gone on when he opened the hatch, showing him the wiring was still in order. Hosteen hunched into the small space before the com. He flicked the switch to open and was rewarded with a promising click-click of an expanding broadcast aerial, the purr of a working com. With finger on button, he tapped out the message he had composed on the way downhill.

  The landing signals of this ship had registered months ago on the pickups of two line camps. Only because those camps were rarely visited had the signals gone undetected so long. He tapped out his warning twice by hand, setting it so on a repeat wire. Now that would go on broadcasting at ten revolutions an hour until it was turned off, and he intended to see that was impossible unless the com or the ship was destroyed.

  Hosteen made adjustments, resealed the shield panel, and then went to explore the rest of the craft in the faint hope of discovering a weapon. But the stores’ compartment was open and empty. Save for the plasta foam pads on the bunks, there was nothing left.

  He was standing directly under the escape hatch, preparing to leave, when a roll of thunder startled him. Only reflex action saved his life as he slammed his hand on the seal button of the port.

  Thunder again, but now muted into a distant mutter by the protection of the hull. The
LB trembled under-a blow. Hosteen scrambled for the pilot’s seat, thumbed on the visa-screen—to view a roaring holocaust. If the fire that had lashed the mountan before had spared the LB, it did so no longer. The craft shook and reeled under streams of flame.

  Would the insulation intended for the protection of space flight hold against this fierce concentration of energy? The force of that attack was twisting the ship around, might push it on down the slope.

  Had the broadcast from the com alerted the stranger in the mountain, the message been picked up by some device of that other civilization? Hosteen was sure that this attack came from the Sealed Cave armory.

  Surra! Hosteen braced himself in the shuddering cabin as he strove to reach the cat. But once more he met only the solid barrier he had found that night when he had been prisoner in the Norbie village. Perhaps the fire cut off contact. A reasonable explanation if not a comforting one.

  The LB was no longer on an even keel. Hosteen caught one of the stanchions supporting the nearest bunk. The visa-screen told him the whole craft was encased in wildly ranging flame. He was trapped with no defense but the walls of the ship.

  He stretched out on a bunk and snapped the acceleration webbing to hold his body in place. If that bath of energy did roll the LB over a cliff, he could have that small protection.

  The nose of the craft tilted down and the whole hull quivered as the dive picked up speed. Then there was a bone-wrenching crash as the ship met some obstruction head on. The visa-screen went blank. And the com—he thought that the com had not survived either. How many broadcasts had it made before the end? Enough for one full message to reach beyond the Peaks?

  Hosteen lay sweating on the bunk, the LB now more vertical than horizontal. The cabin lights flickered, dimmed, then brightened again in a crazy dance of light and dark. Though the LB no longer moved, would a shifting of his own weight send it into another slide?

  Freeing himself from the webbing, the Terran gingerly swung his feet to the floor, keeping a grip on the stanchion. The steeply sloping deck did not move as he clawed his way to the pilot compartment to discover chaos behind a buckled wall. The com was dead. Well, if this attack had been to silence the warning, the enemy had won the first skirmish. That didn’t mean he would also win the war.

  Without the visa-screen. Hosteen was blind. Did the fire still bathe the ship? He wedged into one of the tilted bunks again, rested his forehead on his crooked arm, and bent all the energy left in his mind and body into a concentration aimed at Surra.

  “Here—” The word she could not form aloud was a whisper in his brain.

  “The man?”

  “Here—” A repetition of her first answer or an assurance that she still had her quarry under observation?

  “In the mountain?”

  “So—”

  “Then stay—follow—” he ordered.

  Maybe his ability to reach the dune cat meant that the fire no longer ringed the LB. But to get to the hatch now required some acrobatic maneuvering. And when his first attempt to open the port did not succeed, Hosteen knew the starkness of dread. Had the flames sealed his escape hole?

  Then, though with protest, the hatch moved as he beat on it with one frantic fist, holding to his support with the other. Smoke swirled in a choking blue fog, burning his eyes, strangling him with coughing until the air filter of the cabin thinned it.

  Smoke, heat, but no sign of active flames. Hosteen retreated to rip and pry at the plasta foam covering of the bunks, removing the stuff in tattered strips. Half of these he draped over the rim of the hatch opening, pushing the material through to lie across the heated shell of the LB. The rest he took with him as he climbed out on the temporarily protected area.

  The side of the LB bore the lick marks of fire, and around it the ground was charred black. Upslope, small blazes still crackled in bushes.

  Hosteen worked fast, tying lengths of the plasta foam about his feet and legs above knee level. The tough synthetic fabric would be a shield against the heat. With more scraps mittening his hands and covering his arms, he crawled up the tail of the LB, leaped for the top of a fire-blackened rock, and started the climb back to the tunnel ledge.

  Back in the mountain Surra would be his eyes, a part of himself projected. He could track the stranger, perhaps find Logan. Logan!

  All he could do to warn the plains had been done. The holdings would have to take their chances while he faced the heart of the trouble here and now.

  Tap—tap—tap—

  The Terran was an animal, startled, snarling in defiance, his teeth showing white between tightened lips as Surra’s could upon occasion. He stood still, watching that figure come out of a copse that had escaped the lick of the fire.

  A cloak spread like huge wings of a mantling bird—a Drummer! And there was no knife in Hosteen’s belt, no stunner. He had only his two hands—

  However, the other had no more. By tradition, the Norbie would be unarmed—depending upon his power for his protection. And no native would raise hand against a Drummer, even one of an enemy tribe. The vengeance taken by “medicine” was swift, sure, and frightful.

  But if this one depended upon that custom now, he would have a rude, perhaps fatal awakening. Hosteen had to get his hands on the tambour the native carried, silence it before the Drummer could use it to arouse the warriors.

  The Terran tensed for another leap. His body arched up; his bandaged hands caught up burned and fire-scorched wood. He moved with the sure speed of a trained fighting man.

  Tap—tap—

  There had been no acceleration in that soft patter, no deepening of the beat. No settler understood drum talk, but Hosteen wondered. He had expected an outburst of alarm when he was sighted. What he heard as he charged was a calm sequence of small sounds—like a friendly greeting. Instead of throwing his body forward in a tackle, he halted to face the enemy squarely.

  “Ukurti!”

  Fingers lifted from the tight drumhead—moved in talk.

  “Where do you go?”

  Sharp, to the point. Hosteen tugged at the wrappings on his hands, freed his fingers to reply:

  “To the mountain.”

  He dared not risk evasion, not with this Drummer whom he knew to be not the witch doctor of scoffing off-worlders but a real power.

  “You have been to the mountain once.”

  “I have been once,” Hosteen assented. “I go again—for in this mountain walks evil.”

  “That is so.” The quick agreement surprised Hosteen.

  “He who drums for the Zamle totem says that?”

  “One who drums, drums true, or else the power departs from him. In the mountain is one who says that thunder answers his drum, that he brings lightning to his service.”

  “It has been heard, so has it been seen.” Again Hosteen kept to the strict truth.

  “Fire has answered; that is truth. And because of this warriors bind arrowheads to war shaft, chant songs of trophies to be smoked in the Thunder Houses.”

  “Yet this is not good.”

  “It is not good!” Ukurti’s head pushed forward; his paint-ringed eyes on either side of his boldly arched nose were those of Baku sighting prey before she was quite poised for the killing swoop. “This one who wears the name of Ukurti has been to the place of sky ships’ landing and has seen the powers of those who ride from star to star. They, too, drum thunder and raise lightning of a kind—but it is not born of the true power of Arzor.” His booted foot stamped the black ground, and a tiny puff of ash arose.

  “Before them, others walked the same trails—even here on Arzor. To the strangers their power, to us ours. This is an old trail, newly opened once again. And in it lie many traps for the heedless and those who want to believe because it serves their false dreams. I who bear the name of Ukurti in this life and who have the right to speak of this power and that”—again he stroked the drumhead gently, bringing a muted purr of sound from its surface—“say that no good comes of a trail that leads
to blood running free on the ground, the blood of those who have shared water, hunted, eaten meat with us, and welcomed in their tents my people.”

  “And he-who-drums-thunder here says that this shedding of blood is right—that the war arrow is to be put to the string against my people?”

  “That is so.”

  “For what purpose does he demand a shedding of blood?”

  “That his power may eat and grow strong, giving many gifts to those who serve it.”

  “But his power is not the power you follow.”

  “That is so. And this is an evil thing. Now I say to you, who also have a power that is from beyond the stars and lies within you, go up to this man who is of your own kind and set your power against him.”

  “And you will not drum up those to hunt me?”

  “Not so. Between us is a peace pole. It has been set upon me to—in a small way—smooth your trail.”

  “You knew I was here—you were waiting for me?”

  “I knew. But no man explains the working of his own medicine. This is a thing of my power.”

  “Pardon, Drummer. I do not ask the forbidden.” Hosteen’s fingers made swift and contrite apology.

  “But from here you walk alone,” Ukurti continued.

  “Do all the clans walk the trail leading to the running of blood?” Hosteen ventured.

  “Not all—yet,” but the Drummer did not enlarge upon that.

  “And this I must do alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “Then, Drummer, give me of your luck wish before I depart.” Hosteen signed the formal request made by all Norbie warriors leaving a clan camp. He waited. Did the other’s favor reach to actually invoking his power for an off-world alien or did his aid only consist of standing aside to let Hosteen fight his own battle? The difference could mean a great deal to the waiting Terran.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A

  breeze swirled ash, cooled earth, drove away the smoke and stench of fire, and pulled at the edge of the Drummer’s feather cloak. Ukurti stared down at the tambour, which he held in both hands, as if he were reading on the tightly stretched skin of its head some message. His fingers tapped out a small burst of sharp notes while he spoke. Though that twittering was unintelligible to Hosteen, he thought he detected in it a rhythm that could be either a blessing or a curse. Then Ukurti’s hands left the drum and made signs the Terran could understand.