The Iron Breed

by Andre Norton

  Furtig was startled by a sharp grunt from one of the young Tuskers. A moment later the familiar scent of Liliha filled his nostrils. She came to sit down beside him, no longer muffled in that distorting material. And her coming gave him an idea of how to approach the Tusker Elder.

  Swiftly he began to sign, trying to put all the meaning he could into that flexing of fingers, waving of hands, drawing on the ground. The moon was full tonight, and this small clearing was well lighted.

  The Tuskers appeared to follow the explanation that this female was one who lived in the lairs, one who sought the secrets of the Demons in order to defeat them with their own weapons. Having finished, Furtig spoke to Liliha without turning his head:

  “Show them something to prove the powers of the lairs.”

  There on the ground where he had drawn suddenly shone a round of yellow light. The Tuskers grunted. Furtig could hear the youngsters stamp nervously, though Broken Nose betrayed no sign of surprise. As Elder he must so assert his superiority.

  “This”—Furtig moved his hands into that light—“is one of the secrets of the lairs. We have others, many others. So that this time the Demons will not find us defenseless. There is one ship of them only, and we have counted but four Demons.”

  “Scouts may run before the tribe,” pawed out the young boar. “There may be many more coming.”

  “True. But now we are warned. There are many hiding places in the lairs.” Furtig was getting a little excited. It might be he was going to win allies for Gammage even before he reached the caves and had to face the skepticism of his own Elders.

  “And no dangers?”

  “There are Rattons there, on the lower levels.”

  This time Broken Nose himself grunted. Rattons could be understood better than Demons. If the Tuskers had not seen Rattons, they had heard of them and their devilish traps. Then Foskatt spoke softly:

  “We have little time to argue with the Tuskers. This is a matter of our own people.”

  He was right. They had delivered a warning to the Tuskers, who must now make their own decision to flee beyond the range of the flyer or to stand and fight. Furtig began the last signs—

  “We go to our people. But watch for the flyer—stay under cover.”

  Again Broken Nose grunted. This was an order to his own followers, for they turned and trotted into the bushes, only the old boar and his interpreter lingering. The latter signed:

  “We stay to watch.”

  Furtig was glad of their choice. Those eyes in the huge tusked head, swung low before him, seemed small. But he knew their keen vision. There was no more deadly foe to be faced than this clan when its anger was roused and it prepared for battle. There could be no strangers leaving the lairs along here that the Tuskers would not mark. And, Furtig thought, even armed though they might be with strange weapons, if the Demons came on foot, they had better come warily. For all their bulk and seeming clumsiness, the Tuskers were able to lurk undetected in hiding. They had vanquished Barkers many times in red defeat, using the wind itself to mask their scent.

  * * *

  Ayana gazed at the plate before her. The meat's rich juices formed a natural gravy. The others were eating eagerly, with the greed of those who have been on E rations for a long time. The meat had tested harmless, resembling the best one could find on Elhorn. Why then did it nauseate her to look at it? She lifted a piece to her lips, found she could not bite into it. Why?

  “A whole herd,” Tan said between mouthfuls. “We shall have food in plenty close to hand.”

  Ayana continued to look at the meat. It was well cooked, and, while it had been cooking, the savor had made her mouth water. She had hardly been able to wait, any more than the others, until it was ready. She had been as eager as they to taste the first real food they had seen since they lifted.

  “Luck, pure luck,” Tan continued, “running into these on my first cast into the open country. They have not been hunted for a long time. Easy enough to pick up a couple.”

  Ayana stood up. She had been fighting the thought valiantly with all her strength of will. But it broke now through her defense, and she could not control her words.

  “How do we know that—this is an animal?”

  She was a fool, of course. But there were those furred things on the bridge. Without the trappings, the weapon, they might be called animals. Yet she was sure they were not. These things they had cooked had not had the same appearance, that was true. But they knew too little, far too little of this world. She could not stomach meat which might be—be the flesh of intelligent beings. There, she had faced the thought which had struggled darkly in her mind. With a little cry she clapped her hands over her mouth, pushed past Jacel, and hurried, not only from the cabin but down through the ship until she reached the ramp hatch.

  But that was closed; they were sealed in. And it seemed to her that she must have fresh air, that the fumes of the cooked meat, which she had thought so appetizing earlier, were now a sickening vapor.

  Ayana battered at the hatch fastening, the door rolled open, and she could fill her lungs with the air of night. Then hands fell in a harsh, punishing grip on her shoulders, jerking her back into the ship's shell.

  “What are you trying to do? Set yourself up as a perfect target for anything out there?” Tan was angry. She had heard that note in his voice only a few times in her life.

  He pushed her to one side forcibly, turned to reseal the hatch. Ayana rubbed her arm, blinking fiercely. Tan was not going to see betraying tears in her eyes.

  When he had the seal tight, he swung around, his eyes hot and hard, watching her.

  “Now—what did you mean by that scene?” he demanded as if there had never been, or could be, any good feeling between them.

  And his hostility awakened her own spirit.

  “Just what I said. We know too little of the situation here. You thought of those beings on the recorder tape as animals. But they are not, and deep in your mind, you know that. Now—you bring others back—for food!” Her revulsion returned. She had to cover her mouth for a moment. “We do not know what they are!”

  “You need a mind-clear treatment.” His anger was chilling, no longer hot and impulsive but worse. He was entering one of those remote moods when he froze anyone who tried to communicate. “You saw what I brought hack. It was all animal. Perhaps”—he came a little closer, stood looking down at her with that cold menace—“perhaps you do need a mind-clear. You did not test out as entirely level-stable—”

  “How do you know that?” Ayana demanded.

  Tan laughed, but there was no lightness of spirit in that sound.

  “I had my ways of learning what I needed to know. It is always well to be aware of the weaknesses of one's fellows. Yes, I know your L report, my dear Ayana. And do you believe that I cannot put that knowledge to the best use?”

  He caught her shoulders again and shook her, as if to impress her with his strength of both body and will. It was as if that ruthless handling shook from her mind a shield she had clung to for years. Tan was—Tan was—She stared at him, beaten for the moment, not by his will, but by her own realization of what Tan really was.

  “We will have no more stupid imaginings.” He did not wait for her to answer; perhaps he believed she was fully cowed. “Eat or not—if you wish to starve that is your decision. But you will keep your mouth shut on such ideas.”

  Jacel, Massa, were not fools, nor, Ayana believed, could they be dominated by Tan. If what she had said made them consider—But for the present, until she had time to think, she must let him believe that he had won. Though he appeared to have no suspicion that he had not. There was confidence in the way he pulled her around, shoved her at the ladder, with the unspoken but implied order to go aloft.

  The worst was that Ayana must continue to share their small cabin. The horror that grew in her was even greater than the desolation she had known moments earlier. Tan would enforce such a relationship, she knew. There was only one esca
pe. She was the medic—and the cramped medic-lab cabin was hers alone. She could shelter there until she had had time to think things out.

  She climbed, her thoughts racing. If Tan believed he had broken any resistance in her—One level more—the medic cabin. She had hardly believed she could escape him so easily. But she made a quick dash, thumb-locked the door behind her. She fully expected him to bat out his rage against its surface. But there was only utter and complete silence.

  Ayana backed away until she came up against the patient's bunk. She faced the door, taut, listening. When there came no assault, she relaxed on the edge of the bunk.

  The palms of her hands were sweating, she felt weak, sick. The confrontation of the past few moments had frightened her as she had never been frightened before in her life. Tan knew her L report. He could turn that to his own advantage. Every weakness, every way of reaching her had been charted on that! He could use such knowledge to influence the others to distrust her. Her outburst at the table had given him a base on which to build false claims. She had played directly into his hands—She was—

  Ayana began to fight back. He had thrown her so far off base that he had gained the advantage for a while. It was time she forgot what had happened and began to consider the immediate present. She had been warned; perhaps Tan had made his first mistake in revealing that he thought he could dominate her.

  Think, use her brain; she had a good one, L report or not. Ayana had a good and useful mind. Now was the time to put it to work, not allow herself to become enmeshed by emotion, let alone fear, the most weakening of all.

  She must not depend on either Jacel or Massa, but stand alone. For if Tan could prove to be an entirely different person from the one she thought she knew, loved, then whom could she trust? Herself—and her skills. Ayana began to look about the cabin and what it contained. Herself and her skills—perhaps she would find that enough.

  Though she did not rise, her head was up, her shoulders no longer hunched as if she expected at any moment to feel the sting of a lash laid across them. She was Ayana and she fought to remain that—herself, not something owned by Tan.

  * * *

  Bright as the moon had been in the clearing, it was no guide to paths under the growth cover. But Furtig slipped along easily, treading the way in memory as well as if he walked one of the well-paved ways of the Demons. These were hunting lands where those of the caves often came.

  The night had voices, birds whose hunting also depended upon the cover of the dark hours, insects, smaller life, which stilled instantly as the scent of the travelers reached them.

  Furtig breathed deeply, planted each foot with pleasure in the fact that it met soil and not the hard surface of a corridor. He was of the caves after all. And with every whisper of sound, the rich scents the wind brought him, he rejoiced.

  Liliha, for all her In-born life, did not lag, but with gliding grace matched the pace the two warriors set. Perhaps she looked from right to left and back again more often than they, for to her this was all new. But she appeared to find more interest than cause for alarm in what lay about.

  They halted at a spring Furtig remembered well, drank their fill, ate of the supplies they had carried with them from the lairs. But always they listened, not for the usual night sounds, but for the beat of the Demon flyer within weapon reach overhead.

  “If there are only four of them,” Furtig said, “then they can be defeated. Even if they are scouts—if they did not return, their clan would take warning.”

  “It depends,” Foskatt pointed out, “on why they scout. If it is merely to seek new ground, and they do not return, yes, perhaps that would be the end for their kin.”

  “We cannot,” Liliha said with the assurance of the In-born, to whom the study of Demons was a way of life, “judge anything that the Demons do by what we would do in their place. They do not think as we.”

  “If they think straightly at all,” Foskatt growled. “Remember the old tales—in the final days after the Demons had loosed their own doom, they were so twisted in their ways that they hunted and preyed upon each other, dealing death to their kin as well as to our kind in turn. And it would seem that they have begun such ways once more. At least they have taken the Tusker younglings without cause—for one purpose—”

  “Again you are not sure,” Liliha countered. “It may be they have taken the younglings to study them, to see what manner of people are now in possession of the world they ruled so evilly in the old days.”

  “I do not think so,” Furtig said. He was unable to prove that Foskatt was right in his reading of the Demons' motives. But somehow he was as sure of it as if he had indeed witnessed the outcome of the stealing of Broken Nose's young.

  “Why did they not capture Ku-La and me in the same fashion?” he continued. Ever since he had heard of that seizure from the air which the flyer had practiced, this had puzzled him. It would have been very easy to capture the two of them from that open bridge. Of course, had the Demon tried it, Furtig had held the lightning weapon. Was that why they had escaped? Had the Demon seen and recognized from aloft the lightning thrower? If so—then Gammage's plan to arm as many of the People as they could had great merit.

  It was as if Liliha now read his thoughts. “You were a warrior, armed—not a helpless and frightened youngling. It may be that the Demon wanted no trouble with captives so he chose the least dangerous that could be found. How much farther are these caves of yours?” she ended briskly.

  “If we do not have to turn from the straight trail, we shall be there shortly after sunrise.”

  They kept on under trees, using brush as a canopy where trees thinned or failed. They crossed any open space with a rush, always listening for ominous sounds from the air. Dawn found them working their way into the higher lands of the caves. Furtig heard the yowl of the first sentry, alerting the next. That cry would pass from one to the other until it reached the ears of the Elders. He did not know if he had been recognized for himself, or merely as one of the People.

  But the fact that the three came openly was in their favor. Sentries and guards would loosely encircle them as they went but would not try to stop them. However, as the three breasted the next-to-the-last slope before they reached the cliff of the caves, they were fronted by one who rose out of the dried grass to await them. Her gray fur was silken, shining in the sun. And though she was small, she held herself proudly erect.

  “Eu-La!” The sight of her brought back the warm memory of how she had sent him forth on this venture armed not only with the fighting claws she had found, but also with her belief in him.

  “Cave brother,” she said gravely, as gravely as one who had mothered younglings, so dignified was she. But her eyes slid from him to Liliha and her lips parted on a hiss.

  “You bring a strange Chooser—!” She spat the words as if they were an ill saying.

  “Not so!” He should have known. Just as a warrior would flatten ears and twitch tail at the sight of a non-kinsman, so would female meet strange female. “This is Liliha, an In-born of the lairs. She has not chosen, nor will she, save among her own kin—that is lair law.”

  Eu-La was openly suspicious, but she looked again to Liliha, studying her carefully.

  “She is not like the cave Choosers. That is true.”

  “And it is also true, as your kinsman has said,” Liliha uttered in the throaty, purring voice of friendship, “that I have not come to choose among you, but to speak of other things, things of danger, to your Elder Chooser.”

  She moved closer, and, as if Eu-La were suddenly convinced, they each extended a pink tongue, touched it to the cheek of the other, in the touch-of-friend.

  “Open is the cave of Eu-La to Liliha of the lairs,” Eu-La said. Then she looked to Foskatt, who had fallen a little behind. “But this is also a stranger.”

  “Not quite so, cave kin. I was once of the caves before I went seeking Gammage. I am Foskatt, but perhaps you have not heard my name, for I went forth seasons ago.�
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  “Foskatt,” Eu-La repeated. “Ah, you are of the cave of Kay-Lin. The Elder Chooser there has spoken your name.”

  He was startled. “And who is that Elder Chooser?”

  “She is Fa-Ling.”

  “Fa-Ling! Who was litter sister of my mother! Then indeed I still have close kin in the caves!”

  “But you, Furtig, have you learned all Gammage's Secrets that you return?” There was a teasing purr in Eu-La's voice.

  “Not all, sister. But a few—yes.” His hand went to the lightning thrower at his belt. “But more than any talk of secrets, we bring news for the Elders.”

  “Two sets of Elders now,” she told him. “There have been changes at the caves. The western People have come to join us. They have taken over the lower caves. A new tribe of Barkers moved into their lands and they lost five warriors and an Elder in battle. There is much fear now that the Barkers move against us next. And it is a large pack.”

  Furtig listened closely. Perhaps now the Elders might agree to Gammage's plan. If they believed that they could not hold the caves, even uniting two tribes, they might be pushed into trekking to the lairs.

  Save—the Demons and what had happened to the younglings of the Tuskers. Perhaps one could suggest that the cave clans take to flight, yes. But away from both Barkers and lairs, not into the buildings where Rattons and Demons alike waited. Bad or good, Furtig could not judge. He could only deliver the message and warning he carried.

  Resolutely Furtig continued on, Eu-La matching him step to step. Now and then she glanced at him measuringly, as if so trying to read his thoughts. But she asked no questions, seemed pleased enough that he had returned.

  Her acceptance of Liliha had been quick. Furtig hoped that was a sign that the other females would do the same. If the In-born could continue to make it clear that she was no threat to their mate-choice, he did not see why they would be hostile. Compared to Eu-La—or Fas-Tan—her scantily furred body might not please, might seem to be ugly. Though being used now to the In-born Furtig did not consider it so. But he hoped, for the sake of their mission, that the others would.