The Defiant Agents Page 6

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  "The night comes," Tsoay spoke slowly in English. "Do these you fearhunt in the dark?"

  She shook her head to free her forehead from a coil of braid, pulledloose in her struggle with Travis.

  "They do not need eyes or such noses as those four-footed hunters ofyours. They have a machine to track--"

  "Then what purpose is this brush pile of yours?" Travis raised his chinat the disturbed hiding place.

  "They do not constantly use the machine, and one can hope. But at nightthey can ride on its beam. We are not far enough into the hills to losethem. Bahatur went lame, and so I was slowed...."

  "And what lies in these mountains that those you fear dare not invadethem?" Travis continued.

  "I do not know, save if one can climb far enough inside, one is safefrom pursuit."

  "I ask it again: Who are you?" The Apache leaned forward, his face inthe fast-fading light now only inches away from hers. She did not shrinkfrom his close scrutiny but met him eye to eye. This was a woman ofproud independence, truly a chief's daughter, Travis decided.

  "I am of the People of the Blue Wolf. We were brought across the starlanes to make this world safe for ... for ... the...." She hesitated,and now there was a shade of puzzlement on her face. "There is areason--a dream. No, there is the dream and there is reality. I amKaydessa of the Golden Horde, but sometimes I remember otherthings--like this speech of strange words I am mouthing now----"

  "The Golden Horde!" Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the BlueWolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythianart, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly.Tatars, Mongols--the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of thesteppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across theplains of middle Europe. The men of the Emperor Khans who had riddenbehind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan,Tamerlane--!

  "The Golden Horde," Travis repeated once again. "That lies far back inthe history of another world, Wolf Daughter."

  She stared at him, a queer, lost expression on her dust-grimed face.

  "I know." Her voice was so muted he could hardly distinguish the words."My people live in two times, and many do not realize that."

  Tsoay had crouched down beside them to listen. Now he put out his hand,touching Travis' shoulder.

  "Redax?"

  "Or its like." For Travis was sure of one point. The project, which hadbeen training three teams for space colonization--one of Eskimos, one ofPacific Islanders, and one of his own Apaches--had no reason or chanceto select Mongols from the wild past of the raiding Hordes. There wasonly one nation on Terra which could have picked such colonists.

  "You are Russian." He studied her carefully, intent on noting the effectof his words.

  But she did not lose that lost look. "Russian ... Russian ..." sherepeated, as if the very word was strange.

  Travis was alarmed. Any Russian colony planted here could well possesstechnicians with machines capable of tracking a fugitive, and ifmountain heights were protection against such a hunt, he intended togain them, even by night traveling. He said this to Tsoay, and the otheremphatically agreed.

  "The horse is too lame to go on," the younger man reported.

  Travis hesitated for a long second. Since the time they had stolen theirfirst mounts from the encroaching Spanish, horses had always been wealthto his people. To leave an animal which could well serve the clan wasnot right. But they dared not waste time with a lame beast.

  "Leave it here, free," he ordered.

  "And the woman?"

  "She goes with us. We must learn all we can of these people and whatthey do here. Listen, Wolf Daughter," again Travis leaned close to makesure she was listening to him as he spoke with emphasis--"you willtravel with us into these high places, and there will be no trouble fromyou." He drew his knife and held the blade warningly before her eyes.

  "It was already in my mind to go to the mountains," she told him evenly."Untie my hands, brave warrior, you have surely nothing to fear from awoman."

  His hand made a swift sweep and plucked a knife as long and keen as hisfrom the folds of the sash beneath her loose outer garment.

  "Not now, Wolf Daughter, since I have drawn your fangs."

  He helped her to her feet and slashed the cord about her wrists with herknife, which he then fastened to his own belt. Alerting the coyotes, hedispatched them ahead; and the three started on, the Mongol girl betweenthe two Apaches. The abandoned horse nickered lonesomely and then beganto graze on tufts of grass, moving slowly to favor his foot.

  The two moons rode the sky as the hours advanced, their beams fightingthe shadows. Travis felt reasonably safe from any attack at groundlevel, depending upon the coyotes for warning. But he held them all to asteady pace. And he did not question the girl again until all three ofthem hunkered down at a small mountain spring, to dash icy water overtheir faces and drink from cupped hands.

  "Why do you flee your own people, Wolf Daughter?"

  "My name is Kaydessa," she corrected him.

  He chuckled with laughter at the prim tone of her voice. "And you seehere Tsoay of the People--the Apaches--while I am Fox." He was givingher the English equivalent of his tribal name.

  "Apaches." She tried to repeat the word with the same accent he hadused. "And what are Apaches?"

  "Indians--Amerindians," he explained. "But you have not answered myquestion, Kaydessa. Why do you run from your own people?"

  "Not from my people," she said, shaking her head determinedly. "Fromthose others. It is like this--Oh, how can I make you understandrightly?" She spread her wet hands out before her in the moonlight, thedamp patches on her sleeves clinging to her arms. "There are my peopleof the Golden Horde, though once we were different and we can rememberbits of that previous life. Then there are also the men who live in thesky ship and use the machine so that we think only the thoughts theywould have us think. Now why," she looked at Travis intently--"do I wishto tell you all this? It is strange. You say you areIndian--American--are we then enemies? There is a part memory which saysthat we are ... were...."

  "Let us rather say," he corrected her, "that the Apaches and the Hordeare not enemies here and now, no matter what was before." That was thetruth, Travis recognized. By all accounts his people had come out ofAsia in the very dim beginnings of migrating peoples. For all herdark-red hair and gray eyes, this girl who had been arbitrarily returnedto a past just as they had been by Redax, could well be a distantclan-cousin.

  "You--" Kaydessa's fingers rested for a moment on his wrist--"you, too,were sent here from across the stars. Is this not so?"

  "It is so."

  "And there are those here who govern you now?"

  "No. We are free."

  "How did you become free?" she demanded fiercely.

  Travis hesitated. He did not want to tell of the wrecked ship, the factthat his people possessed no real defenses against theRussian-controlled colony.

  "We went to the mountains," he replied evasively.

  "Your governing machine failed?" Kaydessa laughed. "Ah, they are sogreat, those men of the machines. But they are smaller and weaker whentheir machines cannot obey them."

  "It is so with your camp?" Travis probed gently. He was not quite sureof her meaning, but he dared not ask more detailed questions withoutdangerously revealing his own ignorance.

  "In some manner their control machine--it can only work upon thosewithin a certain distance. They discovered that in the days of the firstlanding, when hunters went out freely and many of them did not return.After that when hunters were sent out to learn how lay this land, theywent along in the flyer with a machine so that there would be no moreescapes. But we knew!" Kaydessa's fingers curled into small fists. "Yes,we knew that if we could get beyond the machines, there was freedom forus. And we planned--many of us--planned. Then nine or ten sleeps agothose others were very excited. They gathered in their ship, watchingtheir machines. And something happened. For a while all th
ose machineswent dead.

  "Jagatai, Kuchar, my brother Hulagur, Menlik...." She was counting thenames off on her fingers. "They raided the horse herd, rode out...."

  "And you?"

  "I, too, should have ridden. But there was Aljar, my sister--Kuchar'swife. She was very near her time and to ride thus, fleeing and fast,might kill her and the child. So I did not go. Her son was born thatnight, but the others had the machine at work once more. We might longto go here," she brought her fist up to her breast, and then raised itto her head--"but there was that _here_ which kept us to the camp andtheir will. We only knew that if we could reach the mountains, we mightfind our people who had already gained their freedom."

  "But you are here. How did you escape?" Tsoay wanted to know.

  "They knew that I would have gone had it not been for Aljar. So theysaid they would make her ride out with them unless I played guide tolead them to my brother and the others. Then I knew I must take up thesword of duty and hunt with them. But I prayed that the spirits of theupper air look with favor upon me, and they granted aid...." Her eyesheld a look of wonder. "For when we were out on the plains and well awayfrom the settlement, a grass devil attacked the leader of the searchingparty, and he dropped the mind control and so it was broken. Then Irode. Blue Sky Above knows how I rode. And those others are not withtheir horses as are the people of the Wolf."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Three suns ago."

  Travis counted back in his mind. Her date for the failure of the machinein the Russian camp seemed to coincide with the crash landing of theAmerican ship. Had one thing any connection with the other? It was verypossible. The planeting spacer might have fought some kind of weird duelwith the other colony before it plunged to earth on the other side ofthe mountain range.

  "Do you know where in these mountains your people hide?"

  Kaydessa shook her head. "Only that I must head south, and when I reachthe highest peak make a signal fire on the north slope. But that Icannot do now, for those in the flyer may see it. I know they are on mytrail, for twice I have seen it. Listen, Fox, I ask this of you--I,Kaydessa, who am eldest daughter to the Khan--for you are like unto us,a warrior and a brave man, that I believe. It may be that you cannot begoverned by their machine, for you have not rested under their spell,nor are of our blood. Therefore, if they come close enough to send forththe call, the call I must obey as if I were a slave dragged upon a horserope, then do you bind my hands and feet and hold me here, no matter howmuch I struggle to follow that command. For that which is truly me doesnot want to go. Will you swear this by the fires which expel demons?"

  The utter sincerity of her tone convinced Travis that she was pleadingfor aid against a danger she firmly believed in. Whether she was rightabout his immunity to the Russian mental control was another matter, andone he would rather not put to the test.

  "We do not swear by your fires, Blue Wolf Maiden, but by the Path of theLightning." His fingers moved as if to curl about the sacred charredwood his people had once carried as "medicine." "So do I promise!"

  She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded in satisfaction.

  They left the pool and pushed on toward the mountain slopes, workingtheir way back to the pass. A low growl out of the dark brought them toan instant halt. Naginlta's warning was sharp; there was danger ahead,acute danger.

  The moonlight from the moons made a weird pattern of light and dark onthe stretch ahead. Anything from a slinking four-footed hunter to a warparty of intelligent beings might have been lying in wait there.

  A flitting shadow out of shadows. Nalik'ideyu pressed against Travis'legs, making a barrier of her warm body, attracting his attention to aspot at the left perhaps a hundred yards on. There was a great splotchof dark there, large enough to hide a really formidable opponent; thatwordless communication between animal and man told Travis that such anopponent was just what was lurking there.

  Whatever lay in ambush beside the upper track was growing impatient asits destined prey ceased to advance, the coyotes reported.

  "Your left--beyond that pointed rock--in the big shadow--"

  "Do you see it?" Tsoay demanded.

  "No. But the _mba'a_ do."

  The men had their bows ready, arrows set to the cords. But in this lightsuch weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into thepath of the moon.

  "What is it?" Kaydessa asked in a half whisper.

  "Something waits for us ahead."

  Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave apiercing whistle.

  There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, hisarrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay. There was a cry, scaling upin a throat-scalding scream which made Travis flinch. Not because ofthe sound, but because of the hint which lay behind it--could it havebeen a human cry?

  The thing flopped out into a patch of moonlight. It was four-limbed, itsbody silvery--and it was large. But the worst was that it had beengroveling on all fours when it fell, and now it was rising on its hindfeet, one forepaw striking madly at the two arrows dancing head-deep inits upper shoulder. Man? No! But something sufficiently manlike to chillthe three downtrail.

  A whirling four-footed hunter dashed in, snapped at the creature's legs,and it squalled again, aiming a blow with a forepaw; but the attackingcoyote was already gone. Together Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu wereharassing the creature, just as they had fought the split horn, givingthe hunters time to shoot. Travis, although he again felt that touch ofhorror and disgust he could not account for, shot again.

  Between them the Apaches must have sent a dozen arrows into the ravingbeast before it went to its knees and Naginlta sprang for its throat.Even then the coyote yelped and flinched, a bleeding gash across itshead from the raking talons of the dying thing. When it no longer moved,Travis approached to see more closely what they had brought down. Thatsmell....

  Just as the embroidery on Kaydessa's jacket had awakened memories fromhis Terran past, so did this stench remind him of something.Where--when--had he smelled it before? Travis connected it with dark,dark and danger. Then he gasped in a half exclamation.

  Not on this world, no, but on two others: two worlds of that brokenstellar empire where he had been an involuntary explorer two planetyears ago! The beast things which had lived in the dark of the desertworld the Terrans' wandering galactic derelict had landed upon. Yes, thebeast things whose nature they had never been able to deduce. Were theythe degenerate dregs of a once intelligent species? Or were theyanimals, akin to man, but still animals?

  The ape-things had controlled the night of the desert world. And theyhad been met again--also in the dark--in the ruins of the city which hadbeen the final goal of the ship's taped voyage. So they were a part ofthe vanished civilization. And Travis' own vague surmise concerningTopaz was proven correct. This had not been an empty world for thelong-gone space people. This planet had a purpose and a use, or elsethis beast would not have been here.

  "Devil!" Kaydessa made a face of disgust.

  "You know it?" Tsoay asked Travis. "What is it?"

  "That I do not know, but it is a thing left over from the star people'stime. And I have seen it on two other of their worlds."

  "A man?" Tsoay surveyed the body critically. "It wears no clothes, hasno weapons, but it walks erect. It looks like an ape, a very big ape. Itis not a good thing, I think."

  "If it runs with a pack--as they do elsewhere--this could be a very badthing." Travis, remembering how these creatures had attacked in force onthe other worlds, looked about him apprehensively. Even with the coyoteson guard, they could not stand up to such a pack closing in through thedark. They had better hole up in some defendable place and wait out therest of the night.

  Naginlta brought them to a cliff overhang where they could set theirbacks to the hard rock of the mountain, face outward to a space theycould cover with arrow flight if the need arose. And the coyotes, lyingbefore them with their noses resting on paws, would, Travis kne
w, alertthem long before the enemy could close in.

  They huddled against the rock, Kaydessa between them, alert at first toevery sound of the night, their hearts beating faster at a small scrapeof gravel, the rustle of a bush. Slowly, they began to relax.

  "It is well that two sleep while one guards," Travis observed. "Bymorning we must push on, out of this country."

  So the two Apaches shared the watch in turn, the Tatar girl at firstprotesting, and then falling exhausted into a slumber which left herbreathing heavily.

  Travis, on the dawn watch, began to speculate about the ape-thing theyhad killed. The two previous times he had met this creature it had beenin ruins of the old empire. Were there ruins somewhere here? He wantedto make sure about that. On the other hand, there was the problem of theTatar-Mongol settlement controlled by the Reds. There was no doubt inhis mind that, were the Reds to suspect the existence of the Apachecamp, they would make every attempt to hunt down and kill or capture thesurvivors from the American ship. A warning must be carried to therancheria as quickly as they could make the return trip.

  Beside him the girl stirred, raising her head. Travis glanced at her andthen watched with attention. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes asfixed as if she were in a trance. Now she inched forward from themountain wall, wriggling out of its shelter.

  "What--?" Tsoay had awakened again. But Travis was already moving. Hepushed on, rushing up to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder.

  "What is it? Where do you go?" he asked.

  She made no answer, did not even seem aware of his voice. He caught ather arm and she pulled to free herself. When he tightened his grip shedid not fight him actively as during their first encounter, but merelypulled and twisted as if she were being compelled to go ahead.

  Compulsion! He remembered her plea the night before, asking his helpagainst recapture by the machine. Now he deliberately tripped her,twisted her hands behind her back. She swayed in his hold, trying to winto her feet, paying no attention to him save as a hindrance against heranswering that demanding call he could not hear.