The Beast Master bm-1 Read online

  Storm, breathing a little faster, stood rubbing one hand against the other, looking down at the now unconscious rider. Did local etiquette demand that he now dispose of his late opponent in some manner, he wondered. Or did one just leave a loser where he fell?

  He stooped, hooked his hands in the slumberer’s armpits, and dragged him with some difficulty – since he was a large man and now a dead weight – to prop him against the side of a neighbouring building. As the Terran straightened up he saw a shadowy figure in the dusk turn and walk abruptly away. There was no mistaking Bister’s outline as he passed the garish lights of a café. Had this rider been sent against Storm by Bister? And why couldn’t, or didn’t, Coll Bister fight his own battles?

  “By the Great Horns!” Dort bore down on him. “What did you do then? Looked as if you only patted him gentle like, until he went all limp and keeled over like a rayed man! Only you didn’t pull your rod at all.”

  “Short and quick,” commented Ransford. “Commando stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  But Ransford showed none of Dort’s excitement. Take it easy, kid,” he warned. “Make a parade of bein’ a tough man and a lot of these riders may line up to take you on. We don’t use blasters maybe, but a man can get a pretty bad poundin’ if a whole gang moves in on him – no matter how good he is with his hands –”

  “When have you ever seen the kid walkin’ stiff-legged for a fight?” Dort protested. “Easiest-goin’ fella in camp, an” you know it! Why did you jump that guy anyway, Storm?”

  “His eyes,” the Terran replied briefly. “He wanted to make it a real fight.”

  Ransford agreed. “Had his rod out too quick, Dort, and he pulled it for the kid, too. He was pushin’. Only don’t push back unless you have to, Storm.”

  “Aw, leave the kid alone, Ranny. When did he ever make fight-talk on the fingers?”

  Ransford chuckled. “It wasn’t the fingers he used for his fight-talk – mostly the flat of his hand. I’m just warnin’ him. This is a hot town tonight and you’re from off-world, Storm. There’re a lot of chesty riders who like to pick on newcomers.”

  Storm smiled. That I’m used to. But thanks, Ransford, I’ll walk softly. I never have fought for the fun of it.”

  That’s just it, kid, might be better if you did. Leave you alone and you’re as nice and peaceful as that big cat of yours. But I don’t think she’d take kindly to anyone stampin’ on her tail, casual-like. Well, here’s the Gatherin’. Do we want to see who’s in town tonight?”

  Lights, brighter than the illumination of the street, and a great deal of noise issued out of the doorway before them. The structure assembled under one roof, Storm gathered, all the amenities of bar, theatre, club, and market exchange, and was the meeting place for the more respectable section of the male population – regular and visiting – of Irrawady Crossing.

  The din, the lights, the assorted smells of cooking, drinks, and horse, as well as heated humanity, struck hard as they crossed the threshold. Nothing he saw there attracted Storm and had he been alone he would have returned to the camp. But Dort wormed a path through the crowd, boring toward the long table where a game of Kor-sal-slam was in progress, eager to try his luck at the game of chance that had swept through the Confed worlds with the speed of light during the past two years.

  “Ransford! When did you get back?”

  Storm saw a hand drop on the veteran’s shoulder, half turning him to face the speaker. It was a hand almost as brown as his own. And above it, around that equally brown wrist –! Storm did not betray the shock he felt. There was only one place that particular ornament could come from. For it was the ketoh of the Dineh – the man’s bracelet of his own people developed from the old bow-guard of the Navajo warrior! And what was it doing about the wrist of an Arzoran settler?

  Without realizing that he was unconsciously preparing for battle, the Terran moved his feet a little apart, bracing and balancing his body for either attack or defence, as his eyes moved along the arm, clothed conventionally in frawn fabric, up to the face of the man who wore the ketoh. The stranger and Ransford had drawn a little apart, and now in his turn Storm shifted back against the wall, wanting to watch them without being himself observed.

  The face of the settler was as brown as his hand – a weather-burned brown. But his were not Navajo features – though the hair above them was as black as Storm’s own. And it was a strong, attractive face with lines of good humour bracketing the wide mouth, softening the almost too-firm line of the jaw, while the eyes set beneath rather thick brows were a deep blue.

  Storm was not too far away to hear Ransford’s return cry of “Quade!”

  He had caught the hand from his shoulder and was shaking it vigorously. “I just got in, rode herd for Larkin down from the Port. Say, Brad, he’s got some good stuff in his new stud string –”

  The wide mouth curved into a smile. “Now that’s news, Ranny. But we’re glad to have you back, fella, and in one unbroken piece. Heard a lot of black talk about how bad things were going out there – toward the end –”

  “Our Arzor outfit got into it late. Just one big battle and some moppin’ up. Say – Brad, I want you to meet –”

  But Storm took two swift steps backward, to be hidden by a push of newcomers, and Ransford could not see him. For once it was useful to be smaller than the settler breed.

  “Queer –” The veteran’s voice carried puzzlement. “He was right here behind me. Off-worlder and a good kid. Rode herd down for Larkin and can he handle horses! Terran –”

  “Terran!” repeated Quade, his smile gone. Those dirty Xiks!” His words became highly flavoured and combined some new expressions Storm did not recognize. All worlds, it seemed, developed their own brand of profanity. “I only hope the devils who planned that burn-off were cooked in their turn – to a crisp! Your man deserves every break we can give him. I’ll look him up – any good horseman is an asset. I hear you’re going out to the Vakind –”

  They moved on but Storm remained where he was, surprised and not a little ashamed to find that the hands resting on the belt about his flat middle were trembling a little.

  A meeting such as this did not match with the nebulous plans he had made. He wanted no curious audience when he met Quade – and then each of them should have a blaster – or better still – knives! Storm’s settlement with his man must not be one of the relatively bloodless encounters of Arzoran custom but something far more decisive and fatal.

  The Terran was about to go out when a bull-throated roar rising above the clamour in the room halted him.

  “Quade!” The man who voiced that angry bellow made Brad Quade seem almost as slender as a Norbie.

  “Yes, Dumaroy?” The warmth that had been in his voice while he spoke with Ransford was gone. Storm had heard such a tone during his service days – that inflection meant trouble. He stayed to watch with a curiosity he could not control.

  “Quade – that half-baked kid of yours has been ridin’ wild again – stickin’ his nose in where it isn’t wanted. You pull herd guard on him, or someone’s goin’ to do it for you!”

  That someone being you, Dumaroy?” The ice thickened into a glacial deposit.

  “Maybe. He roughed up one of my boys out on the Peak Range –”

  “Dumaroy!” There was the snap of a quirt in that and the whole room was silent, men edging in about the two as if they expected some open fight. “Dumaroy, your rider roughed up a Norbie and he got just what he deserved in return. You know what trouble with the natives can lead to – or do you want to have a knife feud sworn on you?”

  “Norbies!” Dumaroy did not quite spit, but his disgust was made eloquently plain. “We don’t nurse Norbies on my spread. And we don’t take kindly to half-broke kids settin’ up to tell us how to act. Maybe you goat-lovers up here like to play finger-wriggle with the big horns – We don’t, and we don’t trust ‘em either –”

  “A knife feud –”

  Dumaroy interru
pted. “So they swear a knife feud. And how long will that last if my boys clean out their camps and teach ‘em a good lesson? Those goats run fast enough when you show your teeth at ‘em. They sure have the finger-sign on you up here –”

  Quade’s hand shot out, buried fingers in the frawn fabric that strained across the other’s wide chest.

  “Dumaroy –” He still spoke quietly. “Up here we hold to the law. We don’t follow Mountain Butcher tricks. If the Peak country needs a little visit from the Peace Officers, be sure it’s going to get just that!”

  “Better change your rods to blast charges if you ride on another man’s range to snoop.” Dumaroy twisted out of the other’s hold with a roll of his thick shoulders.

  “We tend to our own business and we don’t take to meddlers from up here. If you don’t want to have your pet goats tickled up some, give them the sign to keep away from our ranges. And they’d better not trail any loose stock with ‘em either! And, if I were you, Quade, I’d speak loud and clear to that kid of yours. When Norbies get excited, they don’t always look too close at a man’s face before they plant an arrow in his middle. I’m serving notice here and now” – his glance swept from Quade to the other men about him – “the Peaks aren’t goin’ to be ruled from the Basin. If you don’t like our ways – stay out! You don’t know what’s goin’ on back in the hills. These tame goats who ride herd around here aren’t like the high-top clans. And maybe the tame ones will learn a few lessons from the wild ones. Been a lot of herd losses in the last five months-and that Nitra chief, old Muccag, he’s been makin’ drum-magic in the mountains. I say somethin’ bigger than a tribe war is cookin’. And we ain’t goin’ to have goats camped on our ranges when the arrow is passed! If you’ve any sense, the rest of you, you’d think that way too.”

  Storm was puzzled. This had begun as a personal quarrel between Quade and Dumaroy. Now the latter was attempting to turn the encounter into an argument against the natives. It was almost as strange as Bister’s early actions. He sensed an undercurrent that spelled danger.

  5

  The Terran was so intrigued by that problem that he did not see Quade turn until he was aware, suddenly, that the Basin settler was staring at him. Those blue eyes were searching, oddly demanding, and there was a shadow of something that might have been recognition in them. Of course that was impossible. To his knowledge he and Quade had never met. But Arzoran was coming toward him and Storm stepped back, confident that outside in the half-light of the street the other could not find him unless he willed it.

  But Storm did not move so fast that a startled cry of warning did not reach him. Had it not been for that call and perhaps the fact that his attacker was overeager, the Terran might have gone down with a Norbie long-knife driven home between his shoulders, to cough out his life in the dusty roadway. But the ex-Commando had lived long enough under constant danger so that once more his reflexes took over, and he dived to the right, bringing up against the wall of a building, as someone rushed past him. That half-seen figure flashed into the obscuring dark of an alleyway, but the light reflected from a naked blade as he went.

  “Did he get you?”

  Storm swung around, his hand on his own knife hilt. The light from the Gatherin’ showed him Brad Quade standing there.

  “Saw that knife swing,” Quade elaborated. “Did he mark you?” Storm stood away from the wall. “Not at all,” he answered in the same gentle voice he had used at the Centre. “I have to thank you, sir.”

  “I’m Brad Quade. And you?”

  But Storm could not force himself to take the hand the other held out to him. This was all wrong and he could not go ahead with a scene differing so far from the one he had visualized all these years. He had been pushed off base and he had to get fast, no matter how many would-be assassins lurked in the alley mouths of Irrawady Crossing. Would his name mean anything to Quade? He doubted it, but he could not really be sure. Yet he could not give a false one. His quarrel with this man was not one to be cloaked with tricks and lies.

  “I’m Storm,” he replied simply, and bowed, hoping that the other would believe the meeting of hands was not a greeting custom of his kind, since manners varied widely from planet to planet and his accent ruled him off-world.

  “You’re Terran!”

  Quade was too quick, yet again Storm could not bring himself to deny anything.

  “Yes.”

  “Quade! Hey, Brad Quade! You’re wanted on the corn-talk –” a man hailed from the door of the Gatherin’. As the settler looked around Storm faded away. He was sure the other would not pursue him through the town.

  Carefully, with attention alerted to any pitfalls or possible ambush sites ahead, Storm went back to the stable. But he did not breathe easily until he was mounted on Rain and riding out of the Crossing with the firm intention of keeping away from that town in the future.

  Months before he had worked out an imagined meeting with Quade to the last tiny detail, a very satisfactory meeting. He, Storm, would select the proper time and place, make his accusation – to a man who did not fit the pattern of the Brad Quade he had seen tonight. This Quade was not at all the passive villain he had pictured him to be.

  And their business could not be transacted on the crowded street of a frontier town just after Quade had probably saved his life. He wanted – he had to have – his own kind of a meeting.

  Storm shied from following that line of reasoning. He did not honestly know why he had run – yes, he had run – from Quade tonight. He had come to Arzor only to meet Quade – but which Quade, the figure he had created to justify his action, or the man he had met? His actions were becoming as hard to understand as Bister’s –

  No, Storm’s heel touched Rain and the horse obediently broke into a gallop. There was nothing wrong with his motives – Quade deserved what Storm had to bring him. What if the settler’s warning had saved his life? It wasn’t any personal wrong of his own he had come to avenge – he could not cancel Quade’s debt to the dead!

  But the Terran did not sleep well that night, and he volunteered as a herd-holder as Larkin took the first of the string in to the crossing for showing in the morning. It was midday when the trader returned, well satisfied with the morning’s sales. And he brought a stranger with him.

  Though Storm did not know the man, the earth-brown uniform he wore was familiar enough, being that of Survey. And he had met other men of that service, had studied under them, in the training camp of the Beast Masters. Nor was he greatly surprised when Larkin beckoned him over.

  “Sorenson, archaeologist,” the Survey man introduced himself, the crisp galactic speech overlaid with the faint lisp of a Lydian-born.

  “Storm, Beast Master, retired –” the Terran replied as formally. “What can I do for you, Specialist Sorenson?”

  “According to Larkin you haven’t signed up with any outfit yet and you don’t plan to apply for a land grant just at present. Are you free for a scout engagement?”

  “I’m off-world, new here,” Storm pointed out. But he was excited, this was a perfect answer to his immediate problems. “I don’t know the country –”

  Sorenson shrugged. “I’ve Norbie guides, a settler pack master. But Larkin tells me you have kept your team intact – I know the work such a team can do and I can use you –”

  “I have my team, yes –” Storm nodded toward his bedroll. Surra sprawled there, blinking in the sun, the meerkats chittering beside her, while Baku perched on the rim of the supply cart. “Dune cat, meerkats, African eagle –”

  “Good enough.” Sorenson only glanced at the animals. “We’re heading into desert country. Have you heard of the Sealed Caves? There is a chance they may be located down in the Peak section.”

  “I’ve heard, also, that they are a legend.”

  “We got a little more accurate information recently. That territory’s largely unmapped and your services will be useful. We have a government permit for pot-hunting.”

  “S
ounds like a good deal, kid,” Larkin spoke up. “You wanted to look over the Peaks. You’ll get your pay from me in horses –and you can either sell ‘em at auction or you can keep that stallion you’ve been riding and take the black pack mare for your gear, and let me put up the other two. If you find a likely range down there, stick up your stakes and register it when you come back –”

  “Also, you can take your scout pay in a government land voucher,” Sorenson added quickly. “Useful if you want to stake out in new country. Or use it for an import permit –”

  Storm stirred. He felt pushed, and that aroused opposition. On the other hand, the expedition would take him away from the Crossing and from both the knifer – whoever he might be –and Quade until he could decide about the latter. Also – the Peak country held Logan Quade and he wanted to know more about that young man.

  “All right,” he agreed, and then instantly wished that he had not, but it was too late.

  “Sorry to hurry you, Storm” – Sorenson was all brisk efficiency now – “only we pull out early tomorrow morning. The mountain rains won’t last too much longer and we have to count on them for our water supply. That’s pretty arid country up there and we’ll have to leave it anyway at the beginning of the big dry. Bring your own camp kit – we will furnish the rest of the supplies –”

  Over Sorenson’s thin shoulder Storm caught sight of a pair of riders rounding the wagon. Ransford – and Brad Quade! At the moment they were looking at the horses, but a slight turn of the head would bring Storm into the settler’s line of vision.

  “Where do I meet you to move out?” the Terran asked quickly.

  “East of town, by the river ford – that grove of yarvins, about five –”

  “I’ll be there,” Storm promised and then spoke to Larkin. I’ll keep Rain and the mare as you suggest. We’ll settle for the auction price of the others when I get back.”

  Larkin was grinning happily as the Survey man left. “Keep your eyes open around the Peaks, son, and stake a good stretch of land. Give us three-four years and we’ll have us some colts that’ll beat anything even imported from Terra! That pack mare – she’s the best of the lot for a rough trip, steady old girl. Any of your kit you want to store, just leave it in the wagon, I’ll see to it –”