The Time Traders

  CHAPTER 16

  Murdock lay on his back, gazing up at the laced hides which stretched tomake the tent roofing. Having been battered just enough to feel all oneaching bruise, Ross had lost interest in the future. Only the presentmattered, and it was a dark one. He might have fought Ennar to astandstill, but in the eyes of the horsemen he had also been beaten, andhe had not impressed them as he had hoped. That he still lived was aminor wonder, but he deduced that he continued to breathe only becausethey wanted to exchange him for the reward offered by the aliens fromout of time, an unpleasant prospect to contemplate.

  His wrists were lashed over his head to a peg driven deeply into theground; his ankles were bound to another. He could turn his head fromside to side, but any further movement was impossible. He ate only bitsof food dropped into his mouth by a dirty-fingered slave, a cowed huntercaptured from a tribe overwhelmed in the migration of the horsemen.

  "Ho--taker of axes!" A toe jarred into his ribs, and Ross bit back thegrunt of pain which answered that rude bid for his attention. He saw inthe dim light Ennar's face and was savagely glad to note thediscolorations about the right eye and along the jaw line, thesignatures left by his own skinned knuckles.

  "Ho--warrior!" Ross returned hoarsely, trying to lade that title withall the scorn he could summon.

  Ennar's hand, holding a knife, swung into his limited range of vision."To clip a sharp tongue is a good thing!" The young tribesman grinned ashe knelt down beside the helpless prisoner.

  Ross knew a thrill of fear worse than any pain. Ennar might be about todo just what he hinted! Instead, the knife swung up and Ross felt thesawing at the cords about his wrists, enduring the pain in the rawgouges they had cut in his flesh with gratitude that it was notmutilation which had brought Ennar to him. He knew that his arms werefree, but to draw them down from over his head was almost more than hecould do, and he lay quiet as Ennar loosed his feet.

  "Up!"

  Without Ennar's hands pulling at him, Ross could not have reached hisfeet. Nor did he stay erect once he had been raised, crashing forward onhis face as the other let him go, hot anger eating at him because of hisown helplessness.

  In the end, Ennar summoned two slaves who dragged Ross into the openwhere a council assembled about a fire. A debate was in progress,sometimes so heated that the speakers fingered their knife or ax hiltswhen they shouted their arguments. Ross could not understand theirlanguage, but he was certain that he was the subject under discussionand that Foscar had the deciding vote and had not yet given the nod toeither side.

  Ross sat where the slaves had dumped him, rubbing his smarting wrists,so deathly weary in mind and beaten in body that he was not reallyinterested in the fate they were planning for him. He was content merelyto be free of his bonds, a small favor, but one he savored dully.

  He did not know how long the debate lasted, but at length Ennar came tostand over him with a message. "Your chief--he give many good things foryou. Foscar take you to him."

  "My chief is not here," Ross repeated wearily, making a protest he knewthey would not heed. "My chief sits by the bitter water and waits. Hewill be angry if I do not come. Let Foscar fear his anger----"

  Ennar laughed. "You run from your chief. He will be happy with Foscarwhen you lie again under his hand. You will not like that--I think itso!"

  "I think so, too," Ross agreed silently.

  He spent the rest of that night lying between the watchful Ennar andanother guard, though they had the humanity not to bind him again. Inthe morning he was allowed to feed himself, and he fished chunks ofvenison out of a stew with his unwashed fingers. But in spite of themessiness, it was the best food he had eaten in days.

  The trip, however, was not to be a comfortable one. He was mounted onone of the shaggy horses, a rope run under the animal's belly to loopone foot to the other. Fortunately, his hands were bound so he was ableto grasp the coarse, wiry mane and keep his seat after a fashion. Thenose rope of his mount was passed to Tulka, and Ennar rode beside himwith only half an eye for the path of his own horse and the balance ofhis attention for the prisoner.

  They headed northeast, with the mountains as a sharp green-and-whitegoal against the morning sky. Though Ross's sense of direction was nottoo acute, he was certain that they were making for the general vicinityof the hidden village, which he believed the ship people had destroyed.He tried to discover something of the nature of the contact which hadbeen made between the aliens and the horsemen.

  "How find other chief?" he asked Ennar.

  The young man tossed one of his braids back across his shoulder andturned his head to face Ross squarely. "Your chief come our camp. Talkwith Foscar--two--four sleeps ago."

  "How talk with Foscar? With hunter talk?"

  For the first time Ennar did not appear altogether certain. He scowledand then snapped, "He talk--Foscar, us. We hear right words--not woodscreeper talk. He speak to us good."

  Ross was puzzled. How could the alien out of time speak the properlanguage of a primitive tribe some thousands of years removed from hisown era? Were the ship people also familiar with time travel? Did theyhave their own stations of transfer? Yet their fury with the Reds hadbeen hot. This was a complete mystery.

  "This chief--he look like me?"

  Again Ennar appeared at a loss. "He wear covering like you."

  "But was he like me?" persisted Ross. He didn't know what he was tryingto learn, only that it seemed important at that moment to press home toat least one of the tribesmen that he _was_ different from the man whohad put a price on his head and to whom he was to be sold.

  "Not like!" Tulka spoke over his shoulder. "You look like hunterpeople--hair, eyes--Strange chief no hair on head, eyes not like----"

  "You saw him too?" Ross demanded eagerly.

  "I saw. I ride to camp--they come so. Stand on rock, call to Foscar.Make magic with fire--it jump up!" He pointed his arm stiffly at a bushbefore them on the trail. "They point little, little spear--fire comeout of the ground and burn. They say burn our camp if we do not givethem man. We say--not have man. Then they say many good things for us ifwe find and bring man----"

  "But they are not my people," Ross cut in. "You see, I have hair, I amnot like them. They are bad----"

  "You may be taken in war by them--chief's slave." Ennar had a reply tothat which was logical according to the customs of his own tribe. "Theywant slave back--it is so."

  "My people strong too, much magic," Ross pushed. "Take me to bitterwater and they pay much--more than stranger chief!"

  Both tribesmen were amused. "Where bitter water?" asked Tulka.

  Ross jerked his head to the west. "Some sleeps away----"

  "Some sleeps!" repeated Ennar jeeringly. "We ride some sleeps, maybemany sleeps where we know not the trails--maybe no people there, maybeno bitter water--all things you say with split tongue so that we notgive you back to master. We go this way not even one sleep--find chief,get good things. Why we do hard thing when we can do easy?"

  What argument could Ross offer in rebuttal to the simple logic of hiscaptors? For a moment he raged inwardly at his own helplessness. Butlong ago he had learned that giving away to hot fury was no good unlessone did it deliberately to impress, and then only when one had the upperhand. Now Ross had no hand at all.

  For the most part they kept to the open, whereas Ross and the other twoagents had skulked in wooded areas on their flight through this sameterritory. So they approached the mountains from a different angle, andthough he tried, Ross could pick out no familiar landmarks. If by somemiracle he was able to free himself from his captors, he could only headdue west and hope to strike the river.

  At midday their party made camp in a grove of trees by a spring. Theweather was as unseasonably warm as it had been the day before, andflies, brought out of cold-weather hiding, attacked the stamping horsesand crawled over Ross. He tried to keep them off with swings of hisbound hands, for their bites drew blood.

  Having been tumbled from his mount, he remaine
d fastened to a tree witha noose about his neck while the horsemen built a fire and broiledstrips of deer meat.

  It would seem that Foscar was in no hurry to get on, since after theyhad eaten, the men continued to lounge at ease, some even dropping offto sleep. When Ross counted faces he learned that Tulka and another hadboth disappeared, possibly to contact and warn the aliens they werecoming.

  It was midafternoon before the scouts reappeared, as unobtrusively asthey had gone. They went before Foscar with a report which brought thechief over to Ross. "We go. Your chief waits--"

  Ross raised his swollen, bitten face and made his usual protest. "Not mychief!"

  Foscar shrugged. "He say so. He give good things to get you back underhis hand. So--he your chief!"

  Once again Ross was boosted on his mount, and bound. But this time theparty split into two groups as they rode off. He was with Ennar again,just behind Foscar, with two other guards bringing up the rear. The restof the men, leading their mounts, melted into the trees. Ross watchedthat quiet withdrawal speculatively. It argued that Foscar did not trustthose he was about to do business with, that he was taking certainprecautions of his own. Only Ross could not see how that distrust, whichmight be only ordinary prudence on Foscar's part, could in any way be anadvantage for him.

  They rode at a pace hardly above a walk into a small open meadownarrowing at the east. Then for the first time Ross was able to placehimself. They were at the entrance to the valley of the village, abouta mile away from the narrow throat above which Ross had lain to spy andhad been captured, for he had come from the north over the spurs ofrising ridges.

  Ross's horse was pulled up as Foscar drove his heel into the ribs of hisown mount, sending it at a brisker pace toward the neck of the valley.There was a blot of blue there--more than one of the aliens werewaiting. Ross caught his lip between his teeth and bit down on it hard.He had stood up to the Reds, to Foscar's tribesmen, but he shrank frommeeting those strangers with an odd fear that the worst the men of hisown species could do would be but a pale shadow to the treatment hemight meet at their hands.

  Foscar was now a toy man astride a toy horse. He halted his gallopingmount to sit facing the handful of strangers. Ross counted four of them.They seemed to be talking, though there was still a good distanceseparating the mounted man and the blue suits.

  Minutes passed before Foscar's arm raised in a wave to summon the partyguarding Ross. Ennar kicked his horse to a trot, towing Ross's mountbehind, the other two men thudding along more discreetly. Ross notedthat they were both armed with spears which they carried to the fore asthey rode.

  They were perhaps three quarters of the way to join Foscar, and Rosscould see plainly the bald heads of the aliens as their faces turned inhis direction. Then the strangers struck. One of them raised a weaponshaped similarly to the automatic Ross knew, except that it was longerin the barrel.

  Ross did not know why he cried out, except that Foscar had only an axand dagger which were both still sheathed at his belt. The chief satvery still, and then his horse gave a swift sidewise swerve as if infright. Foscar collapsed, limp, bonelessly, to the trodden turf, to lieunmoving face down.

  Ennar whooped, a cry combining defiance and despair in one. He reined upwith violence enough to set his horse rearing. Then, dropping his holdon the leading rope of Ross's mount, he whirled and set off in a wilddash for the trees to the left. A spear lanced across Ross's shoulder,ripping at the blue fabric, but his horse whirled to follow the other,taking him out of danger of a second thrust. Having lost hisopportunity, the man who had wielded the spear dashed by at Ennar'sback.

  Ross clung to the mane with both hands. His greatest fear was that hemight slip from the saddle pad and since he was tied by his feet, lieunprotected and helpless under those dashing hoofs. Somehow he managedto cling to the horse's neck, his face lashed by the rough mane whilethe animal pounded on. Had Ross been able to grasp the dangling noserope, he might have had a faint chance of controlling that run, but asit was he could only hold fast and hope.

  He had only broken glimpses of what lay ahead. Then a brilliant fire, asvivid as the flames which had eaten up the Red village, burst from theground a few yards ahead, sending the horse wild. There was more fireand the horse changed course through the rising smoke. Ross realizedthat the aliens were trying to cut him off from the thin safety of thewoodlands. Why they didn't just shoot him as they had Foscar he couldnot understand.

  The smoke of the burning grass was thick, cutting between him and thewoods. Might it also provide a curtain behind which he could hope toescape both parties? The fire was sending the horse back toward thewaiting ship people. Ross could hear a confused shouting in the smoke.Then his mount made a miscalculation, and a tongue of red licked tooclose. The animal screamed, dashing on blindly straight between two ofthe blazes and away from the blue-clad men.

  Ross coughed, almost choking, his eyes watering as the stench of singedhair thickened the smoke. But he had been carried out of the fire circleand was shooting back into the meadowland. Mount and unwilling riderwere well away from the upper end of that cleared space when anotherhorse cut in from the left, matching speed to the uncontrolled animal towhich Ross clung. It was one of the tribesmen riding easily.

  The trick worked, for the wild race slowed to a gallop and the otherrider, in a feat of horsemanship at which Ross marveled, leaned from hisseat to catch the dangling nose rope, bringing the runaway against hisown steady steed. Ross shaken, still coughing from the smoke and unableto sit upright, held to the mane. The gallop slowed to a rocking paceand finally came to a halt, both horses blowing, white-foam patches ontheir chests and their riders' legs.

  Having made his capture, the tribesman seemed indifferent to Ross,looking back instead at the wide curtain of grass smoke, frowning as hestudied the swift spread of the fire. Muttering to himself, he pulledthe lead rope and brought Ross's horse to follow in the direction fromwhich Ennar had brought the captive less than a half hour earlier.

  Ross tried to think. The unexpected death of their chief might well meanhis own, should the tribe's desire for vengeance now be aroused. On theother hand, there was a faint chance that he could now better impressthem with the thought that he was indeed of another clan and that to aidhim would be to work against a common enemy.

  But it was hard to plan clearly, though wits alone could save him now.The parley which had ended with Foscar's murder had brought Ross a smallmeasure of time. He was still a captive, even though of the tribesmenand not the unearthly strangers. Perhaps to the ship people theseprimitives were hardly higher in scale than the forest animals.

  Ross did not try to talk to his present guard, who towed him into thewestern sun of late afternoon. They halted at last in that same smallgrove where they had rested at noon. The tribesman fastened the mountsand then walked around to inspect the animal Ross had ridden. With agrunt he loosened the prisoner and spilled him unceremoniously on theground while he examined the horse. Ross levered himself up to sight themark of the burn across that roan hide where the fire had blistered theskin.

  Thick handfuls of mud from the side of the spring were brought andplastered over the seared strip. Then, having rubbed down both animalswith twists of grass, the man came over to Ross, pushed him back to theground, and studied his left leg.

  Ross understood. By rights, his thigh should also have been scorchedwhere the flame had hit, yet he had felt no pain. Now as the tribesmanexamined him for a burn, he could not see even the faintestdiscoloration of the strange fabric. He remembered how the aliens hadstrolled unconcerned through the burning village. As the suit hadinsulated him against the cold of the ice, so it would seem that it hadalso protected him against the fire, for which he was duly thankful. Hisescape from injury was a puzzle to the tribesman, who, failing to findany trace of burn on him, left Ross alone and went to sit well away fromhis prisoner as if he feared him.

  They did not have long to wait. One by one, those who had ridden inFoscar's company gathered at the grov
e. The very last to come were Ennarand Tulka, carrying the body of their chief. The faces of both men weresmeared with dust and when the others sighted the body they, too, rubbeddust into their cheeks, reciting a string of words and going one by oneto touch the dead chieftain's right hand.

  Ennar, resigning his burden to the others, slid from his tired horseand stood for a long moment, his head bowed. Then he gazed straight atRoss and came across the tiny clearing to stand over the man of a latertime. The boyishness which had been a part of him when he had fought atFoscar's command was gone. His eyes were merciless as he leaned down tospeak, shaping each word with slow care so that Ross could understandthe promise--that frightful promise:

  "Woods rat, Foscar goes to his burial fire. And he shall take a slavewith him to serve him beyond the sky--a slave to run at his voice, toshake when he thunders. Slave-dog, you shall run for Foscar beyond thesky, and he shall have you forever to walk upon as a man walks upon theearth. I, Ennar, swear that Foscar shall be sent to the chiefs in thesky in all honor. And that you, dog-one, shall lie at his feet in thatgoing!"

  He did not touch Ross, but there was no doubt in Ross's mind that hemeant every word he spoke.