Daybreak—2250 A.D. Read online

  In the next hour he went about a mile, keeping to the main street and visiting only those buildings which Lura declared safe. The mare carried an odd assortment of bundles and he realized that he could not hope to transport more than a few selected samples of the abundance. He must cache part of his morning’s finds in the museum and take only the cream of his gleanings south. Now that the city was discovered the men from the Eyrie would “work” it with greater efficiency, sending experts to choose and dismantle what they needed most and could best use. So the sooner he started back with the news, the more time they would have to work here before the coming of the bad weather in the fall.

  The day grew even warmer and big black flies came out of the crevices of the stones to bite viciously, making the mare so crazy he could hardly control her. He had best head back now to the green and the lake and there sort over his loot. But, as they passed the place where he had found the wealth of paper, he stepped in for a last check upon all he must leave behind. The sun made a bright bar across the floor bringing into prominence the pencil marks he had made there. But—he was certain he had not used a yellow or blue pencil, although there had been a few.

  Now—yellow and blue lines crisscrossed the red and green ones he had left—almost challengingly. The boxes of pencils he had piled for later transportation had been opened and two were gone!

  He could see the tracks in the floor dust—his own boot-heel pattern and across that a more shapeless outline. And in the corner by the door someone had spit out the stone of a cherry!

  Fors whistled in Lura. She examined the evidence on the floor and waited for instructions. But she was displaying none of the disgust with which she had greeted that earlier spoor. This might have been left by a roving Plainsman who was exploring the city on his own. If that were so, it behooved Fors to move quickly. He must get back to the Eyrie and return with help before some other tribe staked out a fair claim to the riches here. Once or twice before the mountaineers had been so disappointed.

  Now there would be no question about leaving most of the spoil he had gathered. He must cache it in the museum and travel as light as possible to make time. Frowning, he stamped out of the shop and jerked at the mare’s lead rope.

  They came into the woods, cutting across a glade in the general direction of the museum. The mare snorted as they passed the end of the lake. Fors tugged her along by main force, bringing her up the steps to be relieved of her load. He packed the bundles into the room he now considered his own and freed the mare for grazing. Lura would keep watch until he had time to get everything in order.

  But when Fors spread out the morning’s loot On the floor he found it very difficult to pick and choose. If he took this—then he could not carry that—and that might make a greater impression upon the experts of the Eyrie. He made piles, only to completely change their contents three and four times over. But in the end he made up a pack which he hoped would best display to the mountain clan the quality of this find and be a good example of his own powers of selection. The rest could be easily concealed somewhere in the rambling halls of this building until he returned.

  He sighed as he began to sort the discards into order. There was so much to be left behind—why, he should have a pack train of horses, such as the Plains tribes used to carry their gear on the march. The drum rolled and he picked it up, rubbing his fingers across its top to hear again the queer pulsing sound. Then he tapped with his nails and the sound echoed weirdly through the halls.

  This must have been the drum which had sounded through the night after his fight with the boar. A signal—! He could not resist other experimental thumps—and then tried out the rhythm of one of his own mountain hunting songs. But this strong music was more eerie than any from the flute or the three- and four-stringed harps his people knew.

  As the frightening rumble died away Lura flowed in, her eyes uncannily aglow, haste and urgency expressed in every dark hair on her head. He must come with her and at once. Fors dropped the drum and reached for his bow. Lura stood by the door, her tail tip flicking. •^ She went down the steps in two bounds and he went after her, not sparing his leg. The mare was standing in the shallows of the lake undisturbed. Lura glided on, between trees and bushes and into the thick depths of the wood. Fors followed at a slower pace, not being able to move so quickly through the green obstruction.

  But before he had gone out of sight of the lake he heard it—a faint moaning cry, almost a sigh, which had been wrung out of real suffering. It arose to a hoarse croak, framing muffled words he did not understand. But human lips had shaped them, he was sure of that. Lura would not have guided him to one of the Beast Things.

  The gabble of strange words died away into another moan which seemed to rise out of the ground before him. Fors shied away from an expanse of dried grass and leaves which lay there. Lura had dropped to her belly, reaching out with a forepaw to feel delicately of the ground, not advancing into the small clearing.

  One of the pits which he had found throughout the city was Fors’ first thought—at any rate a hole of some sort. Now he could see a break through at the opposite end of this cleared space. He started to edge around, treading on the half-exposed roots of trees and bushes and holding on firmly to anything which looked sturdy.

  From the torn gap in the mat of dried grass and brush rose a sickening stench. Trying to spare his leg he went to his knees and peered into the dusk below. What he saw there set his stomach to churning.

  It was a wicked trap—that pit—a trap artfully constructed and skillfully concealed with the matted covering. And it held its victims. The small deer had been dead for days, but the other body which, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw writhe weakly, must have lain there for a shorter time. The blood on the impaled shoulder still ran free.

  Sharp-pointed stakes had been set in the earth at the bottom, pointing upward to catch and hold the fallen for a tortured death. And the man who half hung, half lay there now had escaped that death by less than six inches.

  He had struggled to free himself, as the gaping wound in his own flesh testified, but all his strength had not brought his loose. Fors measured the space between the stakes and then looked around for a good-sized tree. This would not be easy— It did not take long to fetch what was left of his climbing rope and make a noose in it. The man in the pit looked up with glazed eyes. Whether he could see or understand what his rescuer was planning Fors did not know. He fastened the end of the cord to an arrow and shot the line over the branch which hung the closest to the trap.

  To make one end of the rope fast to the tree took only an instant. Then, with the other in his hand, Fors lowered himself cautiously over the edge of the pit, using his elbows to break his speed as he slipped down to the smeared stakes. Black flies rose in a noxious cloud and he had to beat them off as he reached the side of the prisoner. The belt about the fellow’s middle was tight enough and he knotted the rope.

  The way out of the pit was more difficult, since the makers had fashioned it with every precaution against that very operation. But a landslide at one end gave some footing and Fors fought his way back to the top. It was plain that whoever had set that pitfall had not visited it for some time and Fors left the sentry duty to Lura.

  This was going to be nasty business, but it was the only way he could see of saving the sufferer below. He untied the rope end on the tree and twisted it about his wrists. Lura came without being summoned and seized the dangling tip in her jaws. Together they gave their weight to a quick jerk which was answered by a wild scream of agony. But Fors did not lessen the steady pull and Lura matched him step by step as he crept back.

  Out of the black hole rose the lolling head and bloody shoulders of the stranger. When he swung clear Fors made fast the rope and hurried back to pull the limp body away from the edge of the fiendish mantrap. His hands were slippery with blood before he got the unconscious man free. He could not carry the fellow, not with his bad leg. Also he must weigh more than Fors by for
ty pounds. For, now that he lay in the sunlight, Fors recognized him as the dark-skinned hunter of the island. But his big body was flaccid and his face greenish white under its brown pigment. At least the blood was not spurting from that wound—no artery had been touched. He must get the stranger back to the museum where he could see to the ugly tear-There was a crashing in the brush. Fors hurled himself for the bow which lay where he had dropped it. But it was Lura who came out, urging the mare before her. The scent of blood made the mare roll her eyes and circle away, but Fors wanted no nonsense now and Lura was of a like mind. She walked up to the horse and gave several low snarls. The mare stood still, sweating, her eyes showing white. But she did not rear as Fors somehow got his patient across her back.

  Once back in the shelter of the museum he gave a sigh of relief and rolled the stranger-onto his blanket. The other’s eyes were open again and this time with the light of reason in their dark brown depths. The hunter was very young. Now that he was so helpless this was plain. He could not count many more years than did Fors himself—in spite of his big frame and wide, well-muscled shoulders. He lay in quiet patience watching Fors make a fire and prepare the salve, but he said nothing, even when the mountaineer went to work with his crude surgery.

  The stake had passed through the skin of the shoulder, tearing a wicked gouge, but, Fors saw with relief, breaking no bones. If infection did not develop the stranger would recover.

  His handling of that torn flesh must have caused the stranger agony but he made no sound, although when Fors finished at last beads of bright crimson showed along the other’s lower lip. He made a gesture with his good hand toward the pouch at his belt and Fors unfastened it. He selected with fumbling fingers a small bag of white material and pushed it into his rescuer’s hand, jerking his thumb at the pannikin of water Fors had used during his surgery. There was a coarse brownish meal in the bag. Fors drew fresh water, shook in a little of the stuff and set it back on the fire. His patient nodded and smiled weakly. Then he stabbed himself in the chest with a forefinger and said: “Arskane—”

  “Fors,” and then pointing to Lura the mountaineer added, “Lura.”

  Arskane nodded his head and added a sentence in a deep, almost rolling voice which had a drum note in it. Fors frowned. Some of those words—yes, they were like his own speech. The accent, though, was different—there was a slurring of certain sounds. He tried in his turn.

  “I am Fors of the Puma Clan from the Smoking Mountains—” He tried gestures to piece out meaning.

  But Arskane sighed. His face was drawn and tired and his eyes closed wearily. Plainly he could not make the effort for coherent speech now. Fors’ chin rested on the palm of his hand and he stared into the fire. This was going to alter his own plans drastically. He could not go away and leave Arskane alone, unable to fend for himself. And the big man might not be able to travel for days. He would have to think about this.

  The boiling water began to give off a fragrant odor-new to his nostrils but enticing. He sniffed the steam as the water turned brown. When the liquid was quite dark he took a chance and pulled the pan off to cool. Arskane stirred and turned his head. He smiled at the steam arising from the water and gestured that when it was ready he would drink.

  This, then, must be the medicine of his own people. Fors waited, tested it with a cautious finger tip, and then raised the dark head on his arm, holding the pan to those bitten lips. Half the liquid was gone before Arskane signed he had enough. He motioned for Fors to try too, but a single bitter mouthful was enough to satisfy the mountaineer. It tasted far worse than it smelled.

  For the rest of the afternoon Fors was busy. He hunted with Lura, bringing back the best parts of a deer they surprised at the end of the lake, and some of the quail flushed out of the grass. He added an uncounted number of armloads to the stack of firewood. There were berries, too, won from a briary thicket. And, when at last he threw himself down beside the fire and stretched out his aching leg, he was so tired he thought that he could not move again. But now they were provisioned for more than one day ahead. The mare had shown a tendency to wander off, so he shut her into one of the long corridors for the night.

  Arskane was awake again after the fitful feverish sleep of the afternoon, and he watched as Fors prepared the birds for broiling. He ate, but not as much as Fors offered. The mountaineer was worried. There might have been poison upon those trap stakes. And he had nothing with which to combat that. He heated up the bitter brown water and made Arskane drink it to the dregs. If there was any virtue in the stuff the big man needed all its help now.

  As it grew dark Fors’ patient fell asleep again but his attendant hunched close to the fire, even though the evening was warm. The mantrap was occupying his thoughts. True, all the evidence pointed to its not being visited for a long time by those who had set it. The trapped deer in it had been dead for days and there had been another skeleton, picked clean by insects and birds, at the other end of the hole. But someone or something had spent much labor and time in its construction, and it had been devised by a mind both cunning and cruel. No Plainsman he had ever heard of followed that crafty method of hunting, and it was certainly not to the taste of the men of the Eyrie. It was new to Arskane, or he would not have fallen a victim to it. So that meant others —not of the plains or of the mountains or of Arskane’s tribe—others roaming this city at their will. And in the cities there lived at ease only—the Beast Things!

  Fors’ mouth was dry, he rubbed his hands across his knees. Langdon had died under the throwing darts and the knives of the Beast Things. Others of the Star Men had met them—and had not returned from that meeting. Jarl wore a crooked red seam down his forearm which was the result of a brush with one of their scouts. They were horrible, monstrous—not human. Fors was mutant-yes. But he was still human. These were not. And it was because of the Beast Things that mutants were so feared. For the first time he began to understand that. There was a purpose behind the hatred of the mutants. But he was human! And the Beast Things were not!

  He had never seen one, and the Star Men who had and survived never talked about them to the commoners of the Eyrie. Legend made them boogies of the dark-ogres—foul things of the night.

  What if it had been a Beast Thing trap Arskane had been caught in? Then the Things must live here. There were thousands upon thousands of hiding places in the ruins to shelter them. And only Lura’s instinct and hunting skill, and his own ears and eyes to guard them. He looked out into the dusk and shivered. Ears and eyes, bow and sword, claws and teeth—maybe none of those would be enough!

  7. DEATH PLAYS HIDE AND SEEK

  For four days Arskane lay in the cool hall of the museum while Fors hunted for the pot or ranged scouting trips through the woodland, never venturing too far from the_ white building. And at night across the fire they grew familiar with each other’s speech and exchanged stories of their past.

  “Our Old Ones were flying men,” Arskane’s deep voice rolled across the room. “After the Last Battle they came down from the sky to their homeland and found it blasted into nothing. Then they turned their machines and fled south and when the machines would no longer bear them in the sky they landed in a narrow desert valley. And after a time they took to wife the women of that country. So did my tribe spring forth—

  “On the fringes of the desert, life is very hard, but my people learned to use the waste for what it will give man and later they held much good land. Until twice twelve moons ago did they hold it—then the earth trembled and shook so that a man could not stand upright. From the “mountains to our southland came fire and many evil smells. Talu of the Long Beard and Mack the Three Fingered died of coughing in the death fog which came down, upon the village. And in the morning the world shook again just as the dawn light broke and this time the mountains spewed forth burning rock which flowed down to engulf the best of our hard-won fields and pastures. So we gathered what we might and fled before it, all the tribe together, driving our sheep and taking
with us only what might be carried in the pony carts and on our backs.

  “We struck to the north and discovered that the earth had broken in other places also so that to the east the sea had eaten into the land. Then we must flee from the rising waters as we had fled from the fire. And it seemed that nowhere might we find a place to call our own again. Until at last we came into this territory where so many of the Old Ones once had lived. Then divers of the young warriors, myself among them, were sent on to scout and mark out fields for our sowing and a place to build anew the Village of Birds. This is a fair country—” Arskane’s hand gestured south. “I saw much and should have returned with my news, but, having come so far, my heart would not let me rest until I saw more and more of its wonders. I watched in secret the comings and goings of the Plainspeople, but they are not as my folk. It is in their hearts to live in houses of skin which may be set up in any field they choose and taken down again when they grow weary. Your mountain breed I do not know—we have little liking for high places since our mountains brought destruction upon us.

  “These cities of the dead have their uses. One can find treasures here—as you know well. One can also find worse things.” He touched the bandage pad on his shoulder. “I do not think my people will have a liking for the cities. Now, when I can again walk a straight trail, I must go back to report to the tribe. And maybe it shall follow that we will settle along some river valley where the soil is black and rich. And there shall we open up old fields to the seed grain, and turn out our sheep to graze on the hillsides. Then shall the Village of Birds again take root, in a fair and fruitful land.” He sighed.

  “You have named yourself a warrior,” Fors said slowly.

  “Against whom do you war? Are there Beast Things also in your deserts?”

  Arskane smiled grimly. “In the days of the Great Blow-up the Old Ones loosed certain magic they could not control. Our wise ones know not the secret, having only to guide them the tales of our fathers, the flying men. But this magic acted in strange and horrible ways. There were things in the desert which were born enemy to man, scaled creatures most horrible to look upon. The magic made these both cunning and quick so that it was ever war to the death between them and all humankind. But as yet they seem few and perhaps the molten rock from the mountains has eaten them up entirely. For we have seen none of their breed since we left.”