in horror. "Man! You don't know what you're saying!" hecried. "This is the Crown, and I am the Keeper; I cannot part with itas long as there is life in me."
"And when there is not, what? Will it be laid on your pyre, so that itmay end with you?" Dranigo asked.
"Do you think we'd throw it away as soon as we got tired looking atit?" Salvadro exclaimed. "To show you how we'll value this, we'll giveyou ... how much is a thousand imperials in trade-tokens, Dranigo?"
"I'd guess about twenty thousand."
"We'll give you twenty thousand Government trade-tokens," Salvadrosaid. "If it costs us that much, you'll believe that we'll take careof it, won't you?"
Raud rose stiffly. "It is a wrong thing," he said, "to enter a man'shouse and eat at his table, and then insult him."
Dranigo rose also, and Salvadro with him. "We had no mind to insultyou, Keeper, or offer you a bribe to betray your trust. We only offerto help you fulfill it, so that the Crown will be safe after all of usare dead. Well, we won't talk any more about it, now. We're going inYorn Nazvik's ship, tomorrow; he's trading in the country to the west,but before he returns to the Warm Seas, he'll stop at Long ValleyTown, and we'll fly over to see you. In the meantime, think aboutthis; ask yourself if you would not be doing a better thing for theCrown by selling it to us."
They wanted to leave the dishes and the new lumicon, and he permittedit, to show that he was not offended by their offer to buy the Crown.He knew that it was something very important to them, and he admitted,grudgingly, that they could care for it better than he. At least, theywould not keep it in a hole under a hut in the wilderness, guardedonly by dogs. But they were not Keepers, and he was. To them, theCrown would be but one of many important things; to him it waseverything. He could not imagine life without it.
He lay for a long time among his bed-robes, unable to sleep, thinkingof the Crown and the visitors. Finally, to escape those thoughts, hebegan planning tomorrow morning's hunt.
He would start out as soon as the snow stopped, and go down among thescrub-pines; he would take Brave with him, and leave Bold on guard athome. Brave was more obedient, and a better hunter. Bold would jumpfor the deer that had been shot, but Brave always tried to catch orturn the ones that were still running.
He needed meat badly, and he needed more deerskins, to make newclothes. He was thinking of the new overshirt he meant to make as hefell asleep....
It was past noon when he and Brave turned back toward Keeper's House.The deer had gone farther than he had expected, but he had found them,and killed four. The carcasses were cleaned and hung from trees, outof reach of the foxes and the wolves, and he would take Brave back tothe house and leave him on guard, and return with Bold and the sled tobring in the meat. He was thinking cheerfully of the fresh meat whenhe came out onto the path from the village, a mile from Keeper'sHouse. Then he stopped short, looking at the tracks.
Three men--no, four--had come from the direction of the village sincethe snow had stopped. One had been wearing sealskin boots, of the sortworn by all Northfolk. The others had worn Southron boots, with ribbedplastic soles. That puzzled him. None of the village people woreSouthron boots, and as he had been leaving in the early morning, hehad seen Yorn Nazvik's ship, the _Issa_, lift out from the village andpass overhead, vanishing in the west. Possibly these were deserters.In any case, they were not good people. He slipped the heavy riflefrom its snow-cover, checked the chamber, and hung the empty coveraround his neck like a scarf. He didn't like the looks of it.
He liked it even less when he saw that the man in sealskin boots hadstopped to examine the tracks he and Brave had made on leaving, andhad then circled the house and come back, to be joined by hisplastic-soled companions. Then they had all put down their packs andtheir ice-staffs, and advanced toward the door of the house. They hadstopped there for a moment, and then they had entered, come out again,gotten their packs and ice-staffs, and gone away, up the slope to thenorth.
"Wait, Brave," he said. "Watch."
Then he advanced, careful not to step on any of the tracks until hereached the doorstep, where it could not be avoided.
"Bold!" he called loudly. "Bold!"
Silence. No welcoming whimper, no padding of feet, inside. He pulledthe latchstring with his left hand and pushed the door open with hisfoot, the rifle ready. There was no need for that. What welcomed him,within, was a sickening stench of burned flesh and hair.
The new lumicon lighted the room brilliantly; his first glance wasenough. The slab that had covered the crypt was thrown aside, alongwith the pile of deerskins, and between it and the door was ashapeless black heap that, in a dimmer light, would not have beeninstantly recognizable as the body of Bold. Fighting down an impulseto rush in, he stood in the door, looking about and reading the storyof what had happened. The four men had entered, knowing that theywould find Bold alone. The one in the lead had had a negatron pistoldrawn, and when Bold had leaped at them, he had been blasted. Theblast had caught the dog from in front--the chest-cavity was literallyexploded, and the neck and head burned and smashed unrecognizably.Even the brass studs on the leather collar had been melted.
That and the ribbed sole-prints outside meant the samething--Southrons. Every Southron who came into the Northland, even thecommon crewmen on the trading ships, carried some kind of anenergy-weapon. They were good only for fighting--one look at the bodyof Bold showed what they did to meat and skins.
He entered, then, laying his rifle on the table, and got down thelumicon and went over to the crypt. After a while, he returned, hungup the light again, and dropped onto a stool. He sat staring at theviolated crypt and tugging with one hand at a corner of his beard,trying desperately to think.
The thieves had known exactly where the Crown was kept and how it wasguarded; after killing Bold, they had gone straight to it, taken itand gone away--three men in plastic-soled Southron boots and one manin soft boots of sealskins, each with a pack and an ice-staff, and twoof them with rifles.
Vahr Farg's son, and three deserters from the crew of Yorn Nazvik'sship.
It hadn't been Dranigo and Salvadro. They could have left the ship intheir airboat and come back, flying low, while he had been hunting.But they would have grounded near the house, they would not havecarried packs, and they would have brought nobody with them.
He thought he knew what had happened. Vahr Farg's son had seen theCrown, and he had heard the two Starfolk offer more trade-tokens forit than everything in the village was worth. But he was a coward; hewould never dare to face the Keeper's rifle and the teeth of Brave andBold alone. So, since none of the village folk would have part in soshameful a crime against the moral code of the Northland, he hadtalked three of Yorn Nazvik's airmen into deserting and joining him.
And he had heard Dranigo say that the _Issa_ would return to LongValley Town after the trading voyage to the west. Long Valley was onthe other side of this tongue of the Ice-Father; it was a good fifteendays' foot-journey around, but by climbing and crossing, they couldeasily be there in time to meet Yorn Nazvik's ship and the twoStarfolk. Well, where Vahr Farg's son could take three Southrons, Raudthe Keeper could follow.
* * * * *
Their tracks led up the slope beside the brook, always bearing to theleft, in the direction of the Ice-Father. After an hour, he foundwhere they had stopped and unslung their packs, and rested long enoughto smoke a cigarette. He read the story they had left in the snow, andthen continued, Brave trotting behind him pulling the sled. A fewsnowflakes began dancing in the air, and he quickened his steps. Heknew, generally, where the thieves were going, but he wanted theirtracks unobliterated in front of him. The snow fell thicker andthicker, and it was growing dark, and he was tiring. Even Brave wasstumbling occasionally before Raud stopped, in a hollow among thepines, to build his tiny fire and eat and feed the dog. They beddeddown together, covered by the same sleeping robes.
When he woke, the world was still black and white and gray in theearly dawn-light, and the robe tha
t covered him and Brave was powderedwith snow, and the pine-branches above him were loaded and sagging.
The snow had completely obliterated the tracks of the four thieves,and it was still falling. When the sled was packed and the dogharnessed to it, they set out, keeping close to the flank of theIce-Father on their left.
It stopped snowing toward mid-day, and a little after, he heard ashot, far ahead, and then two more, one upon the other. The first shotwould be the rifle of Vahr Farg's son; it was a single-loader, likehis own. The other two were from one of the light Southron rifles,which fired a dozen shots one after another. They had shot, or shotat, something like a deer, he supposed. That was sensible; it wouldsave their dried meat for the trip across the back of the Ice-Father.And it showed that they still
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