The Ginger Star-Volume I of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  Kazimni gave a sidelong glance out of his tilted yellow eyes. "How do you know that?"

  "Perhaps the wind whispered it to me."

  "Or perhaps the wise woman."

  "What are they, Kazimni?"

  "We're great talkers here in the Barrens. Great tellers of tales. We fill the winter nights with talk. When our throats go dry with it we wet them with more khamm and talk again."

  "What are they?"

  "The Harsenyi nomads bring us tales, and so do the darkland traders. Sometimes they winter with us at Izvand, and those are good winters." He paused. "I have heard stories of Northhounds."

  Stark repeated the name. "Northhounds." It had a solemn ring to it.

  "I can't tell you if the stories are true. Men lie without meaning to. They talk as if they had been part of a thing that happened to someone they never knew and only heard of by sixth remove. Northhounds are a sort of demon to the Harsenyi, and to some of the traders. Monsters that appear out of the snow-mist and do terrible things. It is said that the Lords Protector created them long ago, to guard their Citadel. It is said that they still guard it, and woe take any wanderer who stumbles into their domain."

  Hairs prickled briefly at the back of Stark's neck, just at the memory of those shapes he had seen in the Water of Vision. "I think you can believe in Northhounds, Kazimni." He changed the subject. "Is that why your people are content with life in the Barrens—because they are free?"

  "Is it not enough?" Kazimni jerked his chin contemptuously toward the Irnanese. "If we lived soft, as they do, we too would be slaves, as they are."

  Stark could understand that. "You must have known what brought on the trouble at Irnan."

  "Yes. Good trouble. As soon as we've rested and seen our wives, we'll be back on the Border. There'll be need of fighting men."

  "No doubt. But how would your people feel about emigrating?"

  "To another world?" Kazimni shook his head. "The land shapes us. We are what we are because of it. If we were in another place, we would be another people. No. Old Sun will last us yet a while. And life in the Barrens is not so bad. You will see that when we come to Izvand."

  The road looped and wound among the frozen ponds. There were other travelers on it, though not as many as in the Fertile Belt. They were of a different breed, darker and grimmer than the flotsam of the southern roads. There was a good deal of trade back and forth across the border; drovers with herds for the markets of Izvand and Komrey, merchants with wagon-loads of grain and wool, strings of pack-animals carrying manufactured goods from the southern workshops, long lines of great creaking wains hauling timber from some far place in the mountains. Coming the other way were caravans bringing furs and salt and dried fish. All traveled in groups, well armed, each lot keeping to itself. There were inns and rest-houses along the way but Kazimni avoided them, preferring to camp in the open. "Thieves and robbers," he said of the inn-keepers. And of the accommodations, "They stink."

  The Izvandians moved rapidly, passing everything else on the road. And yet sometimes Stark felt as though that movement was only an illusion and they were trapped forever in the unchanging landscape.

  Gerrith felt his impatience. "I share it," she told him. "For you, one man. For me, a people. Yet things must go at their own pace."

  "Does your gift tell you that?"

  She smiled at him. It was night, with the Three Ladies shining through gaps in scudding cloud-wrack. They were in an unfamiliar quarter of the sky now, but still beautiful. Old friends. Stark had grown quite fond of them. Nearer at hand, the light of a little fire flared and flickered across Gerrith's face.

  "Something tells me. Everything is in train now, and the end has already been written. We have only to meet it."

  Stark grunted, unconvinced. The beasts, huddled together with their tails to the wind, munched at heaps of moss piled up for them. The Izvandians laughed and chattered around their fires. The Irnanese were wrapped bundles, suffering in silence.

  Gerrith said, "Why do you love this man Ashton so deeply?"

  "But you know that. He saved my life."

  "And so you cross the stars to risk losing it on a world you never heard of before? To go through all this when you know that he may already be dead? It's not enough, Stark. Will you tell me?"

  "Tell you what?"

  "Who you are. What you are. A lesser gift even than mine could sense that you're different. Inside, I mean. There's a stillness, something I can't touch. Tell me about you and Ashton."

  So he told her, of his childhood on a cruel planet far too close to its sun, where the heat killed by day and the frost by night, where the sky thundered and the rocks split, where the ground shook and the mountains fell down.

  "I was born there. We were part of a mining colony. A quake and a great fall of rock killed everyone but me. I'd have died too, but the People took me in. They were the aborigines. They weren't human, not quite. They still had their hairy pelts, and they didn't talk much, a few clicks and grunts, cries for hunting and warning and calling-together. They shared all they had with me."

  Heat and cold and hunger. Those were the most of it. But their hairy bodies warmed his small nakedness in the bitter night, and their hard hands fed him. They taught him love, and patience, how to hunt the great rock-lizard, how to suffer, how to survive. He remembered their faces, wrinkled, snouted, toothed. Beautiful faces to him, beautiful and wise with the wisdom of first beginnings. His people. Always his people, his only people. And yet they had named him Man-Without-a-Tribe.

  "More Earthmen came, in time," Stark said. "They needed the food and water the People were using, so they killed them. They were only animals. Me they put in a cage and kept for a curiosity. They poked sticks between the bars to make me snap and snarl at them. They were going to kill me too, when the novelty wore off. Then Ashton came."

  Ashton the administrator, armed with the lightnings of authority. Stark smiled wryly.

  "To me he was just another flat-faced enemy, something to be hated and killed. I'd lost all my human origins, of course, and the humans I'd met had given me little cause to love them. Ashton took me, all the same. I couldn't have been a very pleasant charge, but he had the patience of mountains. He tamed me. He taught me house manners, and how to speak in words, and most of all he taught me that while there are bad men, there are also good ones. Yes, he did give me much more than just my life."

  "I understand now," Gerrith said, and he thought she did, truly, as well as anyone could. She stirred the fire and sighed. "I'm sorry I can't tell you whether your friend is still alive."

  "We'll know that soon enough," Stark said, and lay down on the cold ground and slept.

  And dreamed.

  He was following Old One up a cliff, angry because his feet did not have long clever toes, fiercely determined to make up for his deformity by climbing twice as hard and twice as high. The sun burned terribly on his naked back. The rock scorched him. Black peaks pierced the sky on all sides.

  Old One slid without sound into a crevice, making the imperative sign. The boy N'Chaka crept in beside him. Old One pointed with his throwing-stick. High above them on a ledge, its huge jaws open in sensuous languor, a rock-lizard slept half-lidded in the sun.

  With infinite care, moving one muscle at a time, his belly tight with emptiness and hope, the boy began again to follow Old One up the cliff—He did not like the dream. It saddened him, even in sleep, so that he started awake in order to escape it. He sat a long time by the dying fire, listening to the lonely sounds of the night. When he slept again it was without memories.

  Next day, in the afternoon, they saw the roofs of a stockaded town by the shore of a frozen sea. With pride and affection, Kazimni said, "There is Izvand."

  11

  It was a sturdy town, solidly built of timber brought from the mountains, with steep roofs to shed the snow. Izvand was the trade center for this part of the Inner Barrens, so that there was a constant coming and going of wagons and pack trains. T
raffic churned the narrow streets by day, and at night the mud froze into ankle-breaking chaos. In the summer, Kazimni said, fishing was the business of many Izvandians, and as soon as the ice went out of the harbor the high-prowed boats would be hauled from their winter sheds.

  "Not a bad life," he said. "Not bad at all Plenty of food and fighting. Why don't you stay with us, Stark?"

  Stark shook his head, and Kazimni shrugged. "Very well. This is the season for the darkland traders to start moving north. I'll see if I can arrange something. Meantime, I know a good inn."

  The inn had a creaking sign, much weathered, depicting some large and improbable fish with horns. There were stabling and fodder for the beasts, and rooms for the people. These were small and cold, sleeping four apiece in two close-beds, and they had lacked soap and water for a long time. The common-room steamed with warmth and sweat and the not-unappetizing odor of fish soup. It was good to be warm again, to eat hot food and drink khamm, which was like sweet white lightning. Stark enjoyed these simple pleasures without guilt.

  When he saw that the others were all finished he stood up, and Halk said, "Where are you going?"

  "I have a mind to see the town."

  "Don't you think we had better be planning what we're going to do next?" He had drunk quite a bit of khamm.

  "A little more information might help us decide," said Stark mildly. "In any case, we'll need warmer clothing and more provisions."

  Without noticeable enthusiasm, the Irnanese rose and fetched their cloaks and followed him into the chilly street.

  Halk. Breca, who was Halk's shield-mate. Gerrith. Atril and Wake, the brothers, two of Yarrod's picked men. Stark could not have asked for better. Yet they six were a small handful against the North. Not for the first time Stark considered slipping away from them to finish his journey alone and unencumbered.

  He was surprised to hear Gerrith say softly, "No. Me at least you must have with you. Perhaps the others as well, I don't know. But if you go alone, you will fail."

  "Your gift?" asked Stark, and she nodded.

  "My gift. On that score it is quite clear."

  The market was roofed against snow. Doors at the entrances shut out most of the cold wind. Smoky lamps and braziers burned. Merchants sat amid their wares, and Stark noticed that few of them were of Izvand. The pale-haired warriors apparently scorned such occupation.

  The market was busy. The party from Irnan wandered with the crowd, buying furs and boots and sacks of the sweet, fatty journey-cake they make in Izvand against the cold. After a while Stark found what he was looking for, the street of the chart-makers.

  It was a small street, lined with alcoves where men sat hunched over their drawing tables, surrounded on three sides by honeycomb shelves stuffed with rolls of parchment. Stark went from shop to shop, emerging at last with an armload of maps.

  They went back to the inn. Stark found a relatively quiet table in a corner of the common-room and spread out his purchases.

  The maps were for the use of traders, and in the essentials they agreed well enough. The roads, with inns and shelter-houses marked. Modern towns like Izvand, pegs to hold the roads together where they crossed. Vestiges, here and there, of older roads leading to older cities, and most of these marked ominously with death's heads. On other matters they were vaguer. Several of them showed Worldheart, hedged about with many warnings, but each one in a different place. Others did not show it at all, merely indicating a huge area of nothing with the comforting legend Demons.

  "Somewhere in here," said Stark, setting his hand over the blank area. "If we keep going north, sooner or later we'll find someone who knows."

  "So the maps don't help much," said Halk.

  "You haven't looked closely," Gerrith said. "They all show one thing, and that is that we must travel by the road as far as we can." Her fingers flicked across the wrinkled parchment. "Here we are blocked by the sea, and here by a mountain wall. Here again, where the land is low, are lakes and bogs."

  "All frozen now," Halk said.

  "And impassable even so. The beasts would be dead or crippled and we would be starving before a week's end."

  "Besides," said Wake, who always spoke for the brothers, "there is the matter of time. Irnan may already be under attack. Even if we could make it the other way, it would take too long."

  Halk looked around the table. "You're all agreed?" They were. Halk tossed back another glass of khamm. "Very well. Let us go by the road, and go fast."

  "That is another point," Stark said. "Whether to travel alone, or go with some trader. A trader's company would be safer . . ."

  "If you could trust the trader."

  ". . . but we would be held to the wagon pace."

  "We didn't make this journey to be safe," said Halk.

  "For once, I agree with you," Stark said. "By the road, then, and alone." The others voiced assent. Stark bent over the maps again. "I'd give much to know where the Wandsmen's road runs."

  "Not on these maps," said Gerrith. "They must go up from Skeg to the east, across the desert. There would be post-houses and wells, everything to get them quickly on their way."

  "And safeguards, doubtless, to make sure that no one can follow them." Stark began rolling up the parchments. "We'll leave at the fourth hour. Best get some sleep."

  "Not yet a few moments," said Breca, and nodded toward the inn door.

  Kazimni had just entered, in company with a lean brown man in a furred cloak who moved with the agile, hungry, questing gait of a wolverine. Kazimni saw them, and the two came toward their table.

  "I'll talk," said Stark quietly. "No comment, no matter what I say."

  Kazimni hailed them with great cheer. "Greetings, friends! Here is one you will be glad to meet." He introduced his companion. "Amnir of Komrey." The man in the furred cloak bowed. His eyes, gleaming like brown beryls, darted from one face to another. His mouth smiled. "Amnir trades far into the darklands. He thinks he can be of help to you."

  Stark invited the men to sit and introduced his party. The merchant ordered a round of khamm for all.

  "Kazimni tells me that you have an errand northward," he said, when the glasses had arrived and the ceremonial first sip was taken. "What I think of the wisdom of that errand is neither here nor there." He glanced at the heap of parchments on the table. "I see you have bought maps."

  "Yes."

  "You were, perhaps, thinking of going on alone?"

  "Hazardous, we know," said Stark. "Nevertheless, our errand is urgent."

  "Better to make haste slowly than not at all," said Amnir sententiously. "There are wicked men in the Barrens. You can't know how wicked. Six of you—and all stout fighters, I'm sure—would be as nothing against those you will meet along the road."

  "What would they want with us?" Stark asked. "We have nothing worth the stealing."

  "You have yourselves," said Amnir. "Your bodies. Your strength." He bowed to the ladies. "Your beauty. Men and women are sold in the Barrens, for many purposes."

  Halk said, "I think anyone who tried that would find us a poor bargain."

  "No doubt. But why take the risk? If you're captured, or killed resisting capture, where is your errand then?" He leaned forward over the table. Sincerity shone within him. "I trade farther into the darklands than anyone because I am able to face the dangers there not only with courage, which many others have as well, but with prudence, which many others seem to lack. I travel with fifty well-armed men. Why not share that safety?"

  Stark frowned, as though pondering. Halk seemed on the point of saying something, and Breca gave him a warning glare.

  "All he says is true," Kazimni said. "By Old Sun, I swear it."

  "The time, though." Stark shook his head. "Alone, we can move much faster."

  "For a while," Amnir agreed. "And then—" He made a chopping gesture with the edge of his hand against his neck. "Besides, I'm no laggard, I can't afford to be. You'd not be losing much."

  "When do you leave?"
r />   "In the morning, before first light."

  Again Stark seemed to ponder. "What price would you want?"

  "No price. You'd find your own food and mounts, of course, and if we should be attacked you'd be expected to fight. That's all."

  "What could be fairer?" asked Kazimni. "And look, if the pace proves to be too slow, you can always leave the wagons. Is that not so, Amnir?"

  Amnir laughed. "I'd not be the one to stop them."

  Stark looked across at Gerrith. "What does the wise woman say?"

  "That we should do what the Dark Man thinks best."

  "Well," said Stark, "if it's true that we can go our own way if we choose to later on—"

  "Of course. Of course!"

  "Then I think we ought to go with Amnir in the morning."

  They struck hands on it. They drank more khamm. They arranged final details, and the two men left. Stark gathered his maps and led his party upstairs. They crowded into one of the small rooms.

  "Now what does the wise woman say?" asked Stark.

  "That Amnir of Komrey means us no good."

  "It needs no wise woman to see that," said Halk. "The man smells of treachery. Yet the Dark Man has agreed to go with him."

  "The Dark Man is not above telling lies when he thinks they're called for." Stark looked round at them. "We'll not wait for the fourth hour. As soon as the inn is quiet, we go. You can do your sleeping in the saddle."

  In the star-blazing midnight, they rode out of Izvand. The cold ribbon of road stretched north toward the darklands, and they had it all to themselves. They made the most of it. Halk seemed to be consumed with a passion for haste, and Stark was in no mood to dispute him. He, too, wanted to leave Amnir as far behind as possible.

  The land had begun its long slope upward to the ice-locked ranges of the north, and from the higher places Stark could keep a watchful eye on the backtrail. He could also sniff the wind and listen to the silence and feel the vast secret land that encircled him.

  It was not a good land. The primitive in him sensed evil there like a sickness. It wanted to turn tail and go shivering and howling back to the smoky warmth of Izvand and the safety of walls. The reasoning man in him agreed, but kept moving forward nevertheless.