“Storm!” Dort’s excitement broke through the control he had kept on his voice. “Do you have a wound scar you can show in a hurry? Scars mean something here. That will prove you’re a warrior according to their standards—as well as a man with a real fightin’ totem. The chief may even accept you as an equal.”
If scars would help, the Terran was only too willing to oblige. He jerked at the loosely looped lacing of his shirt, pulling the silky material down to bare his left shoulder and display a ragged white line that marked his meeting with a too alert sentry on a planet whose sun was only a faint star in the Arzor night heavens.
“I am a warrior and my fighting totem has saved my life—” He spoke directly to the Norbie chieftain, as if the other understood and did not need Dort’s translation by finger. The other answered in his twittering speech as he moved his hands. Dort grinned.
“You’ve done it, fella. They’ll make drink-talk with us now, seein’ as how you’re a real warrior.”
Krotag’s camp supplied them with five experienced tracker-hunters and Larkin was well pleased, though it was plain the natives considered the stampede as an opportunity graciously arranged for their benefit by the Tall-Ones-Who-Drum-Thunder-in-the-Mountains as a means of adding to their clan wealth in horses.
Now as the riders and the Norbies worked in pairs to bring back the widely scattered animals, it became more and more apparent that Storm had been right in his suggestion that the stampede had been planned. Though even the natives found no identifiable traces of the raiders, it was clear that the horses had been separated into small bands and adroitly concealed in canyons and pocket valleys.
The clues to the identity of the stampeder or stampeders were so conspiciously absent that Storm heard some muttering to the effect that Krotag’s men, now virtuously engaged in hunting the mounts, might well have hidden them in the first place, so they could claim the stallion and the three or four footsore mares Larkin promised them for their services.
Storm wondered about that a day or so later as red dust churned up by trampling hoofs arose about him until he pulled to one side of the bunch he was helping to head in to the gather point. The Terran adjusted the scarf he had tied over nose and mouth, watching another rider who was a distant dot, yet plain because of his white horse. That was Coll Bister. And by all rights Storm owed Bister some gratitude, for it was he who had found and brought in Rain, the horse the Terran now rode. But the ex-Commando couldn’t find any liking for the man. He was one of those most outspoken against the Norbies and in addition he had shown covert hostility toward Storm, for no reason that the Beast Master could understand.
As usual the Terran had kept aloof in the herd camp, using his animals as an excuse for bedding down a little apart from the others. But his skill with horses had won him more ready acceptance than most off-world newcomers could claim. Larkin had turned over to him the breaking of additional mounts to take the place of work horses lost in the stampede, and the men not out on the hunt often gathered to watch him gentle them.
Had he wanted to, Storm might have enjoyed a favorite’s position. His particular gifts, his even temper, and his willingness to carry his share of the tedious herd work, were all qualities the riders could readily appreciate. They were willing to accept Storm’s reticence, which had hardened at the Center into an encasing shell. To the frontiersmen that ancient planet on which their stock had first been bred was an exotic mystery. It was a great tragedy that Terra was now gone, and naturally a Terran would feel it deeply. The death of his home world tended to lend Storm something close to exiled majesty in Arzoran eyes.
Only with Larkin and Dort Lancin did Storm approach a relationship stronger than just the comradeship of the trail. Dort was teaching him finger-talk and pouring out for his benefit all the Norbie lore he himself had absorbed over the years, displaying toward the Terran the proprietorship of the instructor for an apt pupil. With Larkin the bond was horse, a subject on which both men could talk for hours at the night’s campfire.
So he knew Larkin and Dort and liked them in that pallid way that was the closest he was able to come to friendship with one of his own kind nowadays. But Bister was beginning to present a problem, one which he did not want to face. Not that Storm had any fear of physical combat should the other push his dislike that far. Bister bore all the signs of being a top bully, but in a fair fight—in spite of Bister outweighing and overtowering him—Storm was certain of victory.
In a fair fight—Storm’s tongue licked dust from his lips behind his scarf. Why had that thought crossed his mind? And why did it bother him just now to see Bister sitting there as if waiting for him to ride up?
Although Storm had never pushed a fight, neither had he ever directly avoided trouble when it was necessary to face it—not before. Why didn’t he want to come to grips with the problem Bister would present to him sooner or later?
Another rider drew level with Rain and a yellow hand lifted from a braided yoris hide hackamore to sign a greeting. Though the Norbie had followed Storm’s example and drawn a scarf over the lower half of his thin face, the Terran recognized Gorgol, youngest of the scouts Larkin had hired.
“Plenty dust—” The native made signs slowly out of courtesy for Storm’s beginner’s learning. “Ride dry—”
“Clouds—over mountain—does rain come?” Storm signaled back.
The Norbie’s head swung so he could look over his lean shoulder at the red rises now to the east.
“Rain comes—then mud—”
Storm knew that Larkin feared mud. Rain in these wastes, the heavy downpours of spring, could make a sticky morass of all level ground, producing dangerous quagmires.
“You bird totem warrior—” That was a statement, not a question. The Norbie youth rode with an easy grace, matching the pace of his smaller black and white mount to Rain’s stride until he cantered beside the Terran as if they were practicing such a maneuver for some exhibition.
Storm nodded. Gorgol’s left hand went to a cord about his own neck on which hung two curved objects, black and shiny. There was a shy self-consciousness about the native as he dropped his hand again to sign:
“I no warrior yet—hunter only. Have been in high peaks and killed an evil flyer—”
Storm asked the proper question in return. “An evil flyer? I not of this world—I know not evil flyer—”
“Big!” The Norbie’s fingers spread to their farthest extent making the sign for great size. “Bird—evil bird. Hunt horse—hunt Norbie—kill!” His forefinger and thumb scissored in the emphatic sign for sudden and violent death, then rose again to tap the trophies swinging against the corselet which covered his breast.
Storm stretched out his hand in polite question and the boy pulled the thong from his neck, passing it to the Terran for examination. The objects strung on it were plainly a bird’s claws. And, using the length of Baku’s talons in relation to her thirty-four inches as comparison, the creature that had borne them must indeed have been huge, for each claw measured the length of Storm’s hand from wrist to the end of the longest finger. He returned the necklet to its proud owner.
“You great hunter,” Storm nodded vigorously to underline his finger statement. “Evil flyer must be hard to kill.”
Gorgol’s face might be half hidden by the scarf mask, but his whole person expressed pleasure as he answered.
“I kill for man deed. Not warrior yet—but hunter, yes.”
And well he might boast, Storm thought. If this boy had killed the monster he described while hunting alone—and the Terran had learned enough of Norbie customs from Dort to know that idle boasting was no part of native character—he had every right in the world to claim to be a hunter.
“You be frawn herder?” the Norbie continued.
“No. I have no land—no herd—”
“Be hunter. Kill evil flyer—kill yoris—trade their skins—”
“I stranger,” Storm pointed out, making the signs slowly as he launched bravely i
nto expressing more complicated ideas. “Norbies hunt Norbie lands—off-world men do not so hunt—”
The hunting law was one of the few rigidly enforced by the loosely knit government of Arzor, as the Terran had been warned at the Center and again at the space port. Norbie rights were protected. Herd riders could kill yoris or other predatory creatures attacking their stock. But any animal living in the mountains, or in the native-held sections of the plains was taboo as far as the settlers were concerned.
Gorgol objected. “You bird totem warrior—Krotag’s people bird totem—you hunt Krotag’s land—no one say no—”
Far within Storm a feeling stirred faintly, some emotion, frozen on that day when he had returned from a hazardous three months of duty behind the enemy lines to discover that he was a homeless man. He moved restlessly on the saddle pad and Rain snorted nervously, as if the stallion, too, had felt that painful tug. The Terran’s face, beneath his mask, was set in passionless endurance as he fought against that feeble response to Gorgol’s impulsive offer.
“You’re pullin’ it late—” Bister’s dust-hoarsened voice rasped not only on Storm’s ears but on his awakened nerves. “Sure got you a big bunch this time. The goat here lead you to where he had ’em all salted away nice and neat?”
That new aliveness in Storm rose in answer to the prod of antagonism. He did not like Bister, but he no longer accepted that passively as just another unpleasant fact of his present existence. There might be cause for him to do something positive to counter the other’s needling. The Terran did not know that over the edge of the scarf his eyes, usually better controlled, now gave him away. Coll Bister was more alert to small points than he seemed.
The settler pulled his own scarf away from his mouth and spat. “Maybe you don’t believe these goats have brains enough to plan it all out—eh?”
Storm was more interested in the idle swing of Bister’s right hand. A quirt dragged from the man’s thick wrist, a quirt with an extra-long length of a doubled yoris-hide lash.
“We wouldn’t have found as many horses as we have if Krotag’s men weren’t nosing them out for us.” Storm’s position on the riding pad looked lazy, his hands were well away from the weapons at his belt. But he sensed, with a good moment’s grace in which to act, what was coming, as if he had sucked that knowledge out of the air along with the grit and dust.
That dangling right arm rose as the last straggler of the stray bunch trotted by. It could be that Bister was aiming to snap his quirt at the tired yearling. But Storm did not believe that. A sudden pressure of knee sent Rain forward so that the yoris-hide strap did not strike Gorgol’s bare thigh, but landed in a stinging slap on Storm’s own better protected leg.
Bister had not been prepared for that, nor for what happened next. Storm’s well-timed retaliation sent the bigger man to the ground—the arm that had wielded the quirt temporarily numb to the elbow. With an inarticulate roar of rage Bister struggled to his feet only to go down again, sent sprawling by a Commando blow delivered by the edge of Storm’s open hand. The Terran had thought out his strategy in advance.
To his surprise Bister did not get up to rush him again. Instead when the big man did rise to his feet he stood still, his chest heaving, his face flushed, but making no move to continue the fight.
“We’re not through—” he spat. “I’ve heard about you, Storm. You Commandos can kill a man with your bare hands. All right. Wait until we get to the Crossin’ and let’s see you stand up to a stun meetin’! I’m not done with you—nor with those goat pals of yours neither!”
Storm was bewildered enough to be shaken out of some of his self-confident complacency. Bister’s restraint now did not fit into the type of character he appeared to be. Neither, Storm was certain, was it a case of the Arzoran rider being just all bluster and no bite. Looking down at that flushed face, into the dark eyes raised to his, Storm wondered if he had completely misread Coll Bister. The man was not in the least afraid, he was confident—and he hated! So why had he refused to continue to fight now? The Terran watched the other swing up into the saddle. He would allow Bister to call the next move in the game—until he learned more about the stakes.
“Remember—” Bister’s fingers were busy with his face scarf, ready to jerk the mask up over his square jaw once again—“we aren’t through—”
Storm shrugged. Bister doubtless could bear watching, but there was no advantage to be gained from allowing the other to think so.
“Ride your side of the trail,” he returned shortly, “and I’ll ride mine, Bister. I’m not out to rope trouble.”
The other cantered off and Storm turned to find Gorgol watching that retreat. The Norbie drew level with the Terran once more and his eyes held an unmistakable note of inquiry as he signed:
“He challenged but he did not fight—why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Storm said and then made more halting finger-talk. “I know not. But he does not like Norbies—” He thought it best to give a warning that might save the boy future trouble with the trail bully.
“So do we know. He thinks we steal horses—hide and then find them for Larkin. Maybe that good trick for Nitra—for wild men of the Peaks. Not for Krotag’s men. We make bargain with Larkin—we keep bargain.”
“Somebody hid those horses, made yoris come to stampede,” Storm observed.
“That true. Maybe outlaws. Many outlaws in mountains. Not Norbies, but raid on Norbie land. Norbie fight—kill!”
Gorgol sent his horse on after the disappearing bunch of strays and Storm followed at a slower pace. The Terran had his own motive for coming to Arzor, for riding into this Basin country. He certainly did not want to become involved in others’ quarrels. Larkin’s stampede had just happened and Storm could do no less than help the trader out, but he was not going to pursue his trouble with Bister, or get pulled into any fight between the settlers and the Norbies.
The threatened rain broke upon them with a wild drumming of thunder that evening. After its first fury it turned into a steady, drenching downpour. And from then on Larkin’s riders had little time to think of anything except the troubles of the trail.
Surra crawled under a tarp on the wagon to join the meerkats, growling her stubborn refusal for any venture into the wet, and even Baku sought shelter. This steady fall of moisture was beyond the team’s past experience and they resented it, a state of mind Storm came to share as, ankle deep in mud, he helped to fill the softer spots of the trail with branches and grass, or rode into the swirling waters of a river to rope and guide loose horses along a line of stakes the Norbies had set up to mark a questionable ford.
By the end of the second day of rain the Terran was sure they could not have advanced a mile without the aid of the native scouts. The mud did not seem to tire the Norbies’ wiry, range-bred horses, though it constantly entrapped the off-world stock. The natives did not display any weariness either as they dashed about ready with a dragrope or an armload of brush to fill in a bad mudhole.
But on the third day it began to clear, and word was passed that two more days’ travel should bring them into the auction town—news they all greeted with relief.
CHAPTER FOUR
T
he soil had absorbed water like a sponge. Now the heavy heat of the sun drew out in return luxuriant foliage such as Storm would not have guessed this waste could produce. The horses had to be restrained from grazing lest they founder. And the Terran also needed to keep close watch on Ho and Hing who relished digging in the easily excavated earth. It was almost impossible to believe that after six more weeks of such plenty this country would again be close to desert.
“Pretty, eh?” Dort set his mount to climb a small hillock, joining Storm. The yellow-green ground blanket ahead was patterned with drifts of white, golden, and scarlet flowers. “But wait a month or so and”—he snapped his fingers—“all dried and gone. Just sand and rocks, some of the thorn bushes, and the rest a lot of nothing. Fastest changing country
you ever saw!”
“Surely the grazing can’t disappear that fast in the Basin. Or do you have to move the frawn herds continually?”
“No. Give any of this land water and it’ll grow all you need. There’s year ’round water in the Basin, and a different kind of grass with long tough roots. You can drive a trail herd through here spring and fall. But you can’t hold animals on range in this district. Frawns are big eaters, too—need a wide range. My dad has seventy squares and he runs about two thousand head on ’em ’round the year.”
“You were born on Arzor, Dort?” Storm asked his first personal question.
“Sure was! My dad had a little spread down Quipawa way then. He was born here, too. We’re First Ship people,” he ended with a flash of pride. “Three generations here now and there’re five spreads runnin’ under our ear notch—my dad’s, me an’ my brother’s, my sister and her man’s over in the peninsula country, my Uncle Wagger and his two sons—they have theirs, the Borggy and the Rifts, over on the Cormbal Slopes.”
“A good world to come back to—” Storm’s gaze swept over the level land eastward to those mountains that had called him since he had first sighted them.
“Yes.” Dort glanced at Storm and then quickly away again. “It’s good country—wide. A man can ride free here. Me—when I was in the forces and saw Grambage and Wolf Three and some of those other worlds where people live all stuck together—well, it wouldn’t suit me.” Then, as if his curiosity pushed him past politeness, he said:
“Seems like you knew a country like this once, you act right at home—”
“I did—once. Not the same colors—but desert and mountains, short springs to make a waste bloom—dry, dead summers—hot sun—open range—”
“That burn-off wasn’t war—it was plain murder!” Dort’s face was flushed, anger against the irredeemable past alight in his eyes.
Storm shrugged. “It is done now.” He lifted his reins and the stallion single-footed it down the other side of the hillock.
Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder (Beastmaster) Page 4
