by Andre Norton
“A warrior rides,” he said.
Dokital’s hand went up to the collar he wore. “There is no warrior wearing this, starwalker,” his head came around, his eyes were again red flames of eagerness. “Break these from us and you shall see warriors! But this must be soon.”
A note in that alerted Kade. "Why?”
“The word has been passed. These are evil.” Dokital combed his fingers in the mare’s cropped mane. “There is said kill, kill!”
“Who kills? Those of the collars?”
“Those of the collars. With more from beyond.” Dokital pointed with his chin toward the land which cupped the Terran post. There was the scarred landing apron, the winding river, the drifts of fast-growing grass broken by groves of trees, but it was a land at peace as far as Kade could see.
“From beyond?” he echoed.
Again, not lifting his hands from the mare’s neck, Dokital gestured with his head toward the river.
“There are hunters out there. The Overmen bring them to a killing.”
Kade reined in the stallion, leaned over as if to examine the rein lying along the horse’s neck. But instead his eyes went on to the river bank. Not too close to the post one of the small bat-winged flying lizards zoomed to what must be the extent of its limited flight range. And it headed, not along the course of the waterway, but into the prairie. For the first time the Terran heard a sound near to a chuckle from the Ikkinni at his side.
“They walk there like the kwitu.”
“Hunters?”
“That?” Dokital spat accurately over the mare’s head, his opinion of such clumsiness in the stalk so made graphic. “No. One who drives.”
“How many?”
“One who drives—six—eight—ten.” The native recited the listing of belt controls indifferently. “Another who drives more, more.” His crested head turned on his neck as he conveyed the idea that the post was now ringed by unseen enemy.
“But why?”
“Over many say starwalkers bring demons. It fears. Also Overmen drive.”
And the Overmen could only be taking orders from the Styor! The stallion obeyed Kade’s reining, the pressure of his knees. Out of the grass, between them and the walls of the post courtyard, arose a line of men. And from the post Kade heard a shout—perhaps of warning, perhaps of outrage and surprise. Small figures boiled out of hiding, ripped loose from the grove, erupted from the face of the prairie. There was no time to reach the control of the post’s force field. Kade could hear a distant clamor which argued that a fight had already broken out inside.
He booted the stallion into a dead run, flattened himself as small as he could on the animal’s back.
The war cries came from all directions and a spear, too hastily thrown, arched over the Terran’s back.
“Slay. Slay the demons!”
This time the spear scored Kade’s shoulder, ripping the stuff of his tunic, its passage marked by a smarting red line. But he had broken through the line of natives which came apart, curling away from his mounted charge. He was by the corral, almost into the courtyard.
A red Terran coat made a splotch of color by the drab wall of the com room. But the man who wore it was propped on his arms, coughing out his life, as a spear shaft danced between his shoulder blades. Kade drew his stunner, sent one Ikkinni crashing into the dying Terran.
Then, out of nowhere, a mesh wrapped about his head and shoulders, and he fought wildly against a net, trying to keep his seat on the saddle pad. The throttling cords gave a little as Kade jerked at them. Against him the mare crowded and a knee ground into his thigh as fingers caught at his wrist, forced the stunner out of his hold.
“Kill! Kill!”
Buk shouted the order from behind a barricade of bales. The Overman was sweating and there was an avid eagerness in his face. His fingers were on his control box, he must be driving his gang frenzied by those jolts of force. And a handful of the Ikkinni were battering at the door of the com room, using spear butts fruitlessly against a substance only a flamer could pierce.
The haired hand which had pried the stunner out of Kade’s grip steadied, as the thumb clicked a new charge into place. Somewhere, somehow, the young Ikkinni had picked up the oldest rule of hand gun shooting; to aim it as one points a finger. And the finger now pointed to Buk’s control.
Nothing outwardly marked the impact of that arrow of energy until Buk tottered against the bales, his mouth drawn into a square of pain, his hands pawing at the air, while the control box shattered in a bright burst of unleashed power.
But Buk was not finished. Perhaps mere blind fear and pain sent the Overman at Kade, the largest target in his vicinity. He threw his knife and the Terran, still half-pinioned by the net, had no defense. One of those same net ropes saved the off-worlder’s life, deflecting that wicked point to score flesh but not wound deeply.
For the Terran the rest of the fight possessed a dreamlike haze. Buk came on, wobbling uncertainly, his hands clutching air as if to tear at Kade. The Stallion backed, snorted, and ran. While Kade, one hand over the bleeding cut in his side, clung to the saddle pad with all his remaining strength. Nor was he aware that another rider followed, while the loose mares, scattered and running wild, eventually gathered to their leader to head for the hills where evening shadows were already standing long and dark.
Kade remembered only one other thing clearly. The scene came to him for the rest of his life as a small vivid picture.
The horses and their riders were already screened by rising river banks, but they followed the curve of the stream, so that Kade, as their gallop fell again to a trot, was able to witness the act of a Styor ship coming from the north. The flyer was not a freighter, but a needle-slim fighting ship, undoubtedly one of the Cor garrison.
It circled over the Terran post where the rising smoke told of continued destruction. Then, with an ominous deliberation the flyer mounted skyward vertically. The pilot’s return to earth was slow, deadly, for he rode down his tail flames which crisped everything. Had any Terran survived the initial attack by the controlled natives, there was little or no hope for him now. Attackers and attacked alike had been burnt from the face of Klor. To Kade the callous efficiency of that counterblast sealed the Styor guilt.
The Terran cried out, tried to turn the stallion back. But the reins were torn from his hold and, as a mist of pain and weakness closed in on him, Kade was dimly aware that they were headed on up the river into the mountains.
Arching sky over him was black, with the stars making frost sparkles across it, for the night was cold with the chill of early spring. Yet warmth and light were at his left, a warmth which was a cloak pulled over his half bared body. Kade dragged one hand across his left side, winced as its weight pressed a mass of pulpy stuff plastered on his wound.
He heard a low nicker, saw a horse’s head, half visible in the limited light of the fire, toss with a flicker of forelock. And a figure came from the dark to loom over him. Dokital. Kade blinked, trying to see what was strange about the Ikkinni. A long moment later his dulled wits knew. The native’s throat was bare, his slave collar was gone. As the other folded up his long legs to hunker down beside the Terran, Kade raised his hand.
“It is free.”
White teeth flashed between dark lips. “It is free.”
Those long-fingered hands went to work on Kade so he speedily forgot everything but the painful reaction of his body. The crushed mess was scraped from tender skin and a second poultice applied, patted into place with what seemed to Kade to be unnatural firmness. Unclenching his teeth he asked a question.
“We are in the hills?”
“The higher places,” Dokital assented. “The collar masters can not come here. The Spearman brings down their fly-boats.”
“And the post?” But Kade’s memory already supplied the answer to that.
“There is no place. Those have left it only stinking earth.”
Kade digested that. There was a chance, a very
slim one, that perhaps Abu or Che’in, or both, had survived. He was sure that Santoz was the man he had seen die on the spear. Every Trade post was equipped with an underground emergency com. If the other two had managed to reach that in safety before the burn-off, there was a good chance they could hold out there until the help summoned by their SOS came. But the chance of such survival was indeed thin. Had they been above ground, still exchanging fire with the attackers when the Styor ship struck, then, he was the last Terran left on Klor.
Meanwhile, for him, the mountains where the Styor ships could not patrol were the safest hideout.
“The horses?”
“One died from a spear,” Dokital reported. “But the rest ran—faster than the kwitu, than the slog, faster than any Ikkinni, or any spear from an Ikkinni hand. Truly they are windswift ones!”
“Where do we go?”
Dokital fed a piece of rust-colored wood to the fire. “It is free. In the upper places there are many free warriors. It will be found.”
“Iskug?”
“Iskug or others.” He added a second piece of wood and the flames shot higher. Kade pulled himself up on one elbow, saw the horses stand, their heads pointing to the light, as if they, too, sought the promise of security, if not the warmth, of the fire.
But if Dokital meant that splotch of yellow-red in the night as a signal, there came no immediate answer. And at last the flames died, unfed, while Kade slept uneasily, but unstirring.
He awoke again cold, cramped, a chill slick of dew beading his good shoulder where he had pushed aside a light covering of twigs and lengths of dried grass. The throbbing in his side was only a faint memory, to be recalled when he moved stiffly to sit up. Last night’s fire was burnt away to a handful of charred wood ends and a smear of ash. Seeing that, he looked around quickly, plagued with the thought he had been left in a deserted camp.
A sharp jerk jarred his wound into painful life again as he discovered that his feet were anchored, lashed together at his ankles, the ends of those bonds fastened out of sight and reach. The slab of vegetable plaster on his side flaked away as he leaned forward to pull at the cords. Certainly Dokital the night before had shown no signs of hostility. Why had he bound the Terran while he slept?
With a catch of breath at the hurt it cost him, Kade managed to finger the cords about his ankles. They were twisted lines such as were used to weave hunters’ nets and he could feel no knots. The ends of the lines vanished between large boulders on either side, holding him firmly trapped. He remembered Che’in’s talk of four fold knots to hold an enemy. But that had been a part of native magic. What he felt and saw here had very concrete reality.
CHAPTER 9
ABOUT HIS BOOTS the loops were tight and smooth almost as if they had been welded on. And their substance was not that of ordinary rope, for his fingers slid greasily around without contacting any roughness of braided surface. Kade raised his head, tried to gauge by the amount of light now gilding the peaks how far the morning had advanced. The hour was well past dawn, for sun touched the upper reaches.
Standing strongly against the sky were those three impressive peaks, the Planner, the Netter, the Spearman, which told him that their flight the day before had brought them in the same general direction as the hunt had taken weeks earlier.
Last night’s camp had been made against the flank of a rise where the debris of an old landslip had set up a backwall of boulders. Kade caught the faint gurgle of water flowing swiftly, so a mountain stream could not be too far away. And that sound triggered his thirst. Suddenly he wanted nothing so much as to bury his face in that liquid, drink his fill without stint.
Kade could see the space where the horses had stood in the dark, watching the fire. But there was no sign of those animals now, just as Dokital had vanished. Had the Ikkinni taken them and gone for good?
The Terran writhed, and in spite of the pain which clawed at his side, drew his feet as far toward his middle as he could before kicking vigorously. The bonds gave a matter of inches and that was all. With his hands he dug in the loose soil and gravel beside and under him, discarding a length of charred branch, hunting a stone with which he could saw at those stubborn loops. If necessary he would try abrading them with handfuls of the gravel.
A first pebble was too smooth. Then he chanced on a more promising piece of rock, having a blunted point at one end. Pulling forward, his left arm protectingly across his wound, Kade worried at the cords. And rubberwise, those bonds resisted his determined assault.
Dripping with sweat, weak with effort and pain, Kade sat, shoulders hunched, the stone clasped in his hand. He was sure that an hour or more had passed since he had awakened, the sun was farther down the sundial of the mountain. And he was equally sure with the passing of time that he had been abandoned by Dokital, though why the native had taken the trouble of tending the Terran’s wound before deserting him Kade could not understand. Unless the Ikkinni had left him staked either as an offering to the three stark mountain gods, or to be found by the pursuing Styor.
And the latter supposition sent Kade to a second attack on the ankle ropes.
The odor of the dried poultice, of his own sweat, was strong in his nostrils, but not strong enough to cover another scent. He became aware of that slowly, so intent was he on his own fight. The new stench was rank, so rank that he could no longer ignore nor mistake it. Kade stiffened, head up, nostrils wide.
Once that noisome odor had been sniffed, a man never forgot it. And the whiff he had had to plant its identity in his memory had come from a cured, or partially cured, hide back at the post. This was so ripely offensive it could only emanate from a living animal. Animal? Better living devil!
The musti of the caves were dangerous enough, they had claws to rend, fangs to threaten. But they had a cousin which was far more of a living peril, a thing which hunted by solitary tracking, which could spread wing or creep on all fours at will, with a man-sized body, a voracious hunger, an always unsatisfied belly. And because it feasted on carrion as well as live prey it aroused revulsion instantly. Kade cringed as he began to guess why he had been tethered here, though the reason behind that action still eluded him. It would have been far safer for Dokital to have used a spear and finished him off neatly and quickly.
That stench was now almost a visible cloud of corruption. But, though the Terran strained his ears for the faintest sound which might hint at the direction from which sudden death would come, he heard nothing save the sigh of wind through branches, the continuing murmur of that tantalizing stream. Only his nose told him that the susti must be very close to hand.
He squirmed around, Jerking desperately at his bonds, managing to fight enough play into those ties so that he could pull himself up, put his back to a boulder. Half naked, with nothing but the stone in his hand, Kade looked around for another possible weapon. To his mind the outcome of the fight before him was already settled, and not in his favor.
His stunner was long gone, but he still wore the belt with its empty holster. Now Kade tore feverishly at the buckle, pulled the strap from around him. He held a belt of supple yoris hide, a buckle and the holster weighing down one end. And he twitched it in test, seeing that he could make it a clumsy lash of sorts. With that in his right hand and his stone in the left, the Terran pushed tight against the rock to wait for the lunge he was sure would be launched at him from one of three directions.
Straight across the ashes of the fire was an open space, the last path the susti would choose. The creature was reputed to be a wily hunter, and its species had been ruthlessly hunted by Ikkinni and Styor alike for generations. Stealth must have been bred into its kind by now.
To Kade’s left the trail of debris made by an old slide made a gradually diminishing wall, a dyke of large and small boulders, rough, climbable, but not a territory to welcome a rushing charge. And anything crossing it would be plainly in view for several helpful moments before reaching him. The Terran hoped that would be the path. He held his head hi
gh, trying to test the odor for a possible direction of source.
His right offered the greatest danger. There was a curtain of brush some five feet away. He could see broken branches where Dokital must have raided for wood and for the covering he had heaped over Kade before leaving. But the vegetation was still thick enough to conceal a full squad of Ikkinni had the natives chose to maneuver within its cover. Was it too thick to allow the winged susti passage?
Kade swung the belt back and forth, trying to get the feel of that unlikely weapon. He could use the strap as a flail, with the faint hope that the holster might thud home in some sensitive spot, say an eye. But that hope was so faint as to be almost nonexistent. And his head turned slowly from boulder wall to brush, striving to catch some betraying movement from the thing which must be waiting not too far away.
Such waiting gnawed at the nerves. The belt ends slapped against the Terran’s breeches. Kade braced himself against the stone, struggled again to loosen the cording at his ankles. Free he might have a chance, a minute one, but still a chance. Then his heart thumped as one of the two anchoring lines gave so suddenly he was almost thrown. The cord rippled toward him from between two rocks. That side was free!
But he was to be given no more time. The susti had assured itself that this was not a baited trap. With a blast of roar, partly issuing from a crocodile’s snout—if the crocodile had worn fur and possessed tall standing ears—and partly from the ear-storming claps of leather wings, the nightmare which haunted Klorian wilds burst through the brush and came towards Kade in a scuttling rush.
The Terran hurled his stone as a futile first line of defense, before swinging with the belt, cracking against the snout in a vicious clip. The talons, set on the upper points of the wing shrouded forelimbs, cut down. Somehow Kade ducked that first blow, heard the claws tear across the rock against which he had taken his stand. There was only the chance for one more blow with the belt. Again he felt and saw the improvised lash crack against the creature’s snout. Then one of those wings beat out and Kade was pinned helplessly to the stone, his face buried in the noisome, vermin-ridden fur. One of the powerful back legs would rise, a single rake would disembowel him.
