Storm Over Warlock Page 8

  8. UTGARD

  A wind from the west sprang up an hour before sunset, lashing wavesinland until their spray was a salt mist in the air, a mist to soddenclothing, plaster hair to the skull, leaving a brine slime across theskin. Yet Thorvald hunted no shelter, in spite of the promise in therough shoreline at their backs. The sand in which their boots slippedand slid was coarse stuff, hardly finer than gravel, studded with nestsof drift--bone-white or grayed or pale lavender--smoothed and stored bythe seasons of low tides and high, seasonal storms and hurricanes. Awild shore and a forbidding one, to arouse Shann's distrust, perhaps afitting goal for that disk's guiding.

  Shann had tasted loneliness in the mountains, experienced the strangeworld of the river at night lighted by the wan radiance of glowingshrubs and plants, forced the starkness of the heights. Yet there hadbeen through all that journeying a general resemblance to his own paston other worlds. A tree was a tree, whether it bore purple foliage orwas red-veined. A rock was a rock, a river a river. They were equallyhard and wet on Warlock or Tyr.

  But now a veil he could not describe, even in his own thoughts, hungbetween him and the sand over which he walked, between him and the seawhich sent spray to wet his torn clothing, between him and that wildwrack of long-ago storms. He could put out his hand and touch sand,drift, spray; yet they were a setting where something lay hidden behindthat setting--something watched, calculatingly, with intelligence, anda set of emotions and values he did not, could not share.

  "... storm coming." Thorvald paused in the buffeting of wind and spray,watching the fury of the tossing sea. The sun was still a pale smearjust above the horizon. And it gave light enough to make out thattrickle of islands melting out to obscurity.

  "Utgard----"

  "Utgard?" Shann repeated, the strange word holding no meaning for him.

  "Legend of my people." Thorvald smeared spray from his face with onehand. "Utgard, those outermost islands where dwell the giants who arethe mortal enemies of the old gods."

  Those dark lumps, most of them bare rock, only a few crowned withstunted vegetation, might well harbor _anything_, Shann decided, giantsor the malignant spirits of any race. Perhaps even the Throgs had theirtales of evil things in the night, beetle monsters to people wild,unknown lands. He caught at Thorvald's arm and suggested a practicalcourse of action.

  "We'll need shelter before the storm strikes." To Shann's relief theother nodded.

  They trailed back across the beach, their backs now to the sea andUtgard. That harsh-sounding name did so well fit the line of islands andislets, Shann repeated it to himself. Here the beach was narrow, a stripof blue sand-gravel walled by wave-worn boulders. And from that barrierof stones piled into a breastwork by chance, interwoven with bone-baredrift, arose the first of the cliffs. Shann studied the terrain withincreasing uneasiness. To be caught between a sea, whipped inland by astorm wind, and that cliff would be a risk he did not like to consider,as ignorant of field lore as he was. They must locate some break nearerthan the fiord, down which they had come. And they must find it soon,before the daylight was gone and the full fury of bad weather struck.

  In the end the wolverines discovered an exit, just as they had found thepassage through the mountain. Taggi nosed into a darker line down theface of the cliff and disappeared, Togi duplicating that feat. Shanntrailed them, finding the opening a tight squeeze.

  He squirmed into dimness, his outstretched hands meeting a rough stonesurface sloping upward. After gaining a point about eight feet above thebeach he was able to look back and down through the seaward slit. Opento the sky the crevice proved a doorway to a narrow valley, not unlikethose which housed the fiords, but provided with a thick growth ofvegetation well protected by the high walls.

  Working as a now well-rehearsed team, the men set up a shelter ofsaplings and brush, the back to the slit through which wind was stillable to tear a way. Walled in by stone and knowing that no Throg flyerwould attempt to fly in the face of the coming storm, they dared make afire. The warmth was a comfort to their bodies, just as the light of theflames, men's age-old hearth companion, was a comfort to the fugitives'spirits. Those dancing spears of red, for Shann at least, burned awaythat veil of other-worldliness which had enwrapped the beach, providingin the night an illusion of the home he had never really known.

  But the wind and the weather did not keep truce very long. A wailingblast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voicesof half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans notonly heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of thatbeat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea musthave long since covered the beach over which they had come and was nowtrying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They couldnot talk to each other over that din, although shoulder touchedshoulder.

  The last flush of amber vanished from the sky with the speed of adropped curtain. Tonight no period of twilight divided night from day,but their portion of Warlock was plunged abruptly into darkness. Thewolverines crowded into their small haven, whining deep in theirthroats. Shann ran his hands along their furred bodies, trying to givethem a reassurance he himself did not feel. Never before when on stableland had he been so aware of the unleashed terrors nature could exert,the forces against which all mankind's controls were as nothing.

  Time could no longer be measured by any set of minutes or hours. Therewas only darkness, the howling winds, and the salty rain which must bein part the breath of the sea driven in upon them. The comforting firevanished, chill and dankness crept up to cramp their bodies, so that nowand again they were forced to their feet, to swing arms, stamp, drivethe blood into faster circulation.

  Later came a time when the wind died, no longer driving the rainbullet-hard against and through their flimsy shelter. Then they slept inthe thick unconsciousness of exhaustion.

  A red-purple skull--and from its eye sockets the flying things--keptcoming ... going.... Shann trod on an unsteady foundation which dippedunder his weight as had the raft of the river voyage. He was drawingnearer to that great head, could see now how waves curled about theangle of the lower jaw, slapping inward between gaps of missingteeth--which were really broken fangs of rock--as if the skull now andthen sucked reviving moisture from the water. The aperture marking thenose was closer to a snout, and the hole was dark, dark as the empty eyesockets. Yet that darkness was drawing him past any effort to escape hecould summon. And then that on which he rode so perilously was carriedforward by the waves, grated against the jawbone, while against his ownfighting will his hands arose above his head, reaching for a hold todraw his shrinking body up the stark surface to that snout-passage.

  "Lantee!" A hand jerked him back, broke that compulsion--and the dream.Shann opened his eyes with difficulty, his lashes seemed glued to hischeeks.

  He might have been surveying a submerged world. Thin streamers of fogtwined up from the earth as if they grew from seeds planted by thestorm. But there was no wind, no sound from the peaks. Only under hisstiff body Shann could still feel that vibration which was the seabattering against the cliff wall.

  Thorvald was crouched beside him, his hand still urgent on the youngerman's shoulder. The officer's face was drawn so finely that hisfeatures, sharp under the tanned skin, were akin to the skull Shannstill half saw among the ascending pillars of fog.

  "Storm's over."

  Shann shivered as he sat up, hugging his arms to his chest, his tattereduniform soggy under that pressure. He felt as if he would never be warmagain. When he moved sluggishly to the pit where they had kindled theirhandful of fire the night before he realized that the wolverines weremissing.

  "Taggi----?" His voice sounded rusty in his own ears, as if some of themoisture thick in the air about them had affected his vocal cords.

  "Hunting." Thorvald's answer was clipped. He was gathering a handful ofsticks from the back of their lean-to, where the protection of their ownbodies had kept that kindling dry. Shann snapped a length between hish
ands, dropped it into the pit.

  When they did coax a blaze into being they stripped, wringing out theirclothing, propping it piece by steaming piece on sticks by the warmth ofthe flames. The moist air bit at their bodies and they moved briskly,striving to keep warm by exercise. Still the fog curled, undisturbed byany shaft of sun.

  "Did you dream?" Thorvald asked abruptly.

  "Yes." Shann did not elaborate. Disturbing as his dream had been, thefeeling that it was not to be shared was also strong, as strong as someorder.

  "And so did I," Thorvald said bleakly. "You saw your skull-mountain?"

  "I was climbing it when you awoke me," Shann returned unwillingly.

  "And I was going through my green veil when Taggi took off and wakenedme. You are sure your skull exists?"

  "Yes."

  "And so am I that the cavern of the veil is somewhere on this world. Butwhy?" Thorvald stood up, the firelight marking plainly the lines betweenhis tanned arms, his brown face and throat, and the paleness of his leanbody. "Why do we dream those particular dreams?"

  Shann tested the dryness of a shirt. He had no reason to try and explainthe wherefore of those dreams, only was he certain that he wouldsometime, somewhere, find that skull, and that when he did he wouldclimb to the doorway of the snout, pass behind to depths where theflying things might nest--not because he wanted to make such anexpedition, but because he must.

  He drew his hands across his ribs, where pressure still brought anaching reminder of the crushing force of the energy whip the Throgs hadwielded. There was no extra flesh on his body, yet muscles slid easilyunder the skin, a darker skin than Thorvald's, deepening to a warm brownwhere it had been weathered. His hair, unclipped now for a month, wasbeginning to curl about his head in tight dark rings. Since he hadalways been the youngest or the smallest or the weakest in the world ofthe Dumps, of the Service, of the Team, Shann had very little personalvanity. He did possess a different type of pride, born of his ownstubborn achievement in winning out over a long roster ofdiscouragements, failures, and adverse odds.

  "Why do we dream?" he repeated Thorvald's question. "No answer, sir." Hegave the traditional reply of the Service recruit. And a little to hissurprise Thorvald laughed with a tinge of real amusement.

  "Where do you come from, Lantee?" He asked as if he were honestlyinterested.

  "Tyr."

  "Caldon mines." The Survey officer automatically matched planet toproduct. "How did you come into Survey?"

  Shann drew on his shirt. "Signed on as casual labor," he returned with aspark of defiance. Thorvald had joined the Service the right way as acadet, then a Team man, finally an officer, climbing that nice evenladder with every rung ready for him when he was prepared to mount it.What did his kind know about the labor Barracks where the dull-minded,the failures, the petty criminals on the run, lived hard under a secretsocial system of their own? It had taken every bit of physical enduranceand energy, every fraction of stubborn will Shann could summon, for himto survive his first three months in those barracks--unbroken and stilleager to be Survey. He could still wonder at the unbelievable chancewhich had rescued him from that merely because Training Center hadneeded another odd hand to clean cages and feed troughs for theexperimental animals.

  And from the center he made a Team, because when working in a smallergroup his push and attention to duty had been noticed and had paid off.Three years it had taken, but he _had_ made Team stature. Not that thatmeant anything now. Shann pulled his boots on over the legs of roughdried coveralls and glanced up, to find Thorvald watching him with anew, questioning directness the younger man could not understand.

  Shann sealed his blouse and stood up, knowing the bite of hunger, dullbut persistent. It was a feeling he had had so many times in the pastthat now he hardly gave it a second thought.

  "Supplies?" He brought the subject back to the present and thepractical. What did it matter why or how one Shann Lantee had come toWarlock in the first place?

  "What we have left of the concentrates we had better keep foremergencies." Thorvald made no move to open the very shrunken bag he hadbrought from the scoutship.

  He walked over to a rocky outcrop and tugged loose a yellowish tuft ofplant, neither moss nor fungi but sharing attributes of both. Shannrecognized it without enthusiasm as one of the varieties of nativeproduce which could be safely digested by Terran stomachs. The stuff wasalmost tasteless and possessed a rather unpleasant odor. Consumed inbulk it would satisfy hunger for a time. Shann hoped that with thewolverines to aid they could go back to hunting soon.

  However, Thorvald showed no desire to head inland where they mightexpect to locate game. He disagreed with Shann's suggestion for trackingTaggi and Togi when those two emerged from the underbrush obviously wellfed and contented after their early morning activity.

  When Shann protested with some heat, the other countered: "Didn't youever hear of fish, Lantee? After a storm such as last night's, we oughtto discover good pickings along the shore."

  But Shann was also sure that it was not only the thought of food whichdrew Thorvald back to the sea.

  They crawled back through the bolt hole. The beach of gravel-sand hadvanished save for a narrow ribbon of land just at the foot of thecliffs, where the water curled in white lace about the barrier ofboulders. There was no change in the dullness of the sky; no sun brokethrough the thick lid of clouds. And the green of the sea was ashened togray which matched that overcast until one could strain one's eyestrying to find the horizon, unable to mark the dividing line herebetween air and water.

  Utgard was a broken necklace, the outermost island-beads lost, the innerones more isolated by the rise in water, more forbidding. Shann let outa startled hiss of breath.

  The top of a near-by rock detached itself, drew up into a hunched thingof armor-plated scales and heavy wide-jawed head. A tail cracked intothe air; a double tail split into equal forks for half-way down itslength. A leg lifted as a forefoot, webbed, clawed for a new hold. Thissea beast was the most formidable native thing he had sighted onWarlock, approaching in its ugliness the hound of the Throgs.

  Breathing in labored gusts, the thing slapped its tail down on thestones with a limpness which suggested that the raising of thatappendage had overtaxed its limited supply of strength. The head sankforward, resting across one of the forelimbs. Then Shann sighted thefearsome wound in the side just before one of the larger hind legs, aragged hole through which pumped with every one of those breaths a darkpurplish stream, licked away by the waves as it trickled slickly downthe rock.

  "What is that?"

  Thorvald shook his head. "Not on our records," he replied absently,studying the dying creature with avid attention. "Must have been drivenin by the storm. This proves there is more in the sea then we knew!"

  Again the forked tail lifted and fell, the head, raised from theforelimb, stretching up and back until the white underfolds of thethroat were exposed as the snout pointed almost vertically to the sky.The jaws opened and from between them came a moaning whistle, acomplaint which was drowned out by the wash of the waves. Then, as ifthat was the last effort, the webbed, clawed feet relaxed their grip ofthe rock and the scaled body slid sidewise, out of their sight, into thewater. There was a feather of spume to mark the plunge and nothing else.

  Shann, watching to see if the reptile would surface again, sightedanother object, a rounded shape floating on the sea, bobbing lightly ashad their river raft.

  "Look!"

  Thorvald's gaze followed his pointing finger and then before Shann couldprotest, the officer leaped outward from their perch on the cliff to thebroad rock where the scaled sea dweller had lain moments earlier. Hestood there, watching that drifting object with the closest attention,as Shann made the same crossing in his wake.

  The drifting thing was oval, perhaps some six feet long and three wide,the mid point rising in a curve from the water's edge. As far as Shanncould make out in the half-light the color was a reddish-brown, thesurface rough. And he thought b
y the way that it moved that it must beflotsam of the storm, buoyant enough to ride the waves with close tocork resiliency. To Shann's dismay his companion began to strip.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Get that."

  Shann surveyed the water about the rock. The forked tail had sunk justthere. Was the Survey officer mad enough to think he could swimunmenaced through a sea which might be infested with more suchcreatures? It seemed that he was, for Thorvald's white body arched outin a dive. Shann waited, half crouched and tense, as though he could insome way attack anything rising from the depths to strike at hiscompanion.

  A brown arm flashed above the surface. Thorvald swam strongly toward thefloating object. He reached it, his outstretched hand rasping across thesurface. And it responded so quickly to that touch that Shann guessed itwas even lighter and easier to handle than he had first thought.

  Thorvald headed back, herding the thing before him. And when he climbedout on the rock, Shann was pulling up his trophy. They flipped the findover, to discover it hollow. They had, in effect, a ready-made craft notunlike a canoe with blunted bows. But the substance was surely organic:Was it shell? Shann speculated, running his finger tips over theirregular surface.

  The Survey officer dressed. "We have our boat," he commented. "Now forUtgard--"

  Use this frail thing to dare the trip to the islands? But Shann did notprotest. If the officer determined to try such a voyage, he would do it.And neither did the younger man doubt that he would accompany Thorvald.