CHAPTER 9
"Not to be too hopeful--" McNeil rubbed his arm across his hot face--"sofar, so good." After kicking from his path some of the branches Ross hadlopped from the trees they had been felling, he went to help hiscompanion roll another small log up to a shelter which was no longertemporary. If there had been any eyes other than the woodland hunters'to spy upon them, they would have seen only the usual procedure of theBeaker traders, busily constructing one of their posts.
That they were being watched by the hunters, all three were certain.That there might be other spies in the forest, they had to assume fortheir own safety. They might prowl at night, but in the daytime all ofthe time agents kept within the bounds of the roles they were acting.
Barter with the head men of the hunting clan had brought those shypeople into the camp of the strangers who had such wonders to exchangefor tanned deer hides and better furs. The news of the traders' arrivalspread quickly during the short time they had been here, so that twoother clans had sent men to watch the proceedings.
With the trade came news which the agents sifted and studied. Each ofthem had a list of questions to insert into their conversations with thetribesmen if and when that was possible. Although they did not share acommon speech with the forest men, signs were informative and certainnouns could be quickly learned. In the meantime Ashe became friendlywith the nearest and first of the clan groups they discovered, goinghunting with the men as an excuse to penetrate the unknown section theymust quarter in their search for the Red base.
Ross drank river water and mopped his own hot face. "If the Reds aren'ttraders," he mused aloud, "what _is_ their cover?"
McNeil shrugged. "A hunting tribe--fishermen--"
"Where would they get the women and children?"
"The same way they get their men--recruit them in our own time. Or inthe way lots of tribes grew during periods of stress."
Ross set down the water jug. "You mean, kill off the men, take overtheir families?" This was a cold-bloodedness he found sickening.Although he had always prided himself on his toughness, several timesduring his training at the project he had been confronted by thingswhich shook his belief in his own strong stomach and nerve.
"It has been done," McNeil remarked bleakly, "hundreds of times byinvaders. In this setup--small family clans, widely scattered--that movewould be very easy."
"They would have to pose as farmers, not hunters," Ross pointed out."They couldn't move a base around with them."
"All right, so they set up a farming village. Oh, I see what youmean--there isn't any village around here. Yet they are here, maybeunderground."
How right their guesses were they learned that night when Ashe returned,a deer's haunch on his shoulder. Ross knew him well enough by now tosense his preoccupation. "You found something?"
"A new set of ghosts," Ashe replied with a strange little smile.
"Ghosts!" McNeil pounced upon that. "The Reds like to play thesupernatural angle, don't they? First the voice of Lurgha and nowghosts. What do these ghosts do?"
"They inhabit a bit of mountainous territory southeast of here, astretch strictly taboo for all hunters. We were following a bison trackuntil the beast headed for the ghost country. Then Ulffa called us offin a hurry. It seems that the hunter who goes in there after his quarrynever reappears, or if he does, it's in a damaged condition, blown uponby ghosts and burned to death! That's one point."
He sat down by the fire and stretched his arms wearily. "The second is alittle more disturbing for us. A Beaker camp about twenty miles south ofhere, as far as I can judge, was exterminated just a week ago. Themessage was passed to me because I was thought to be a kinsman of theslain----"
McNeil sat up. "Done because they were hunting us?"
"Might well be. On the other hand, the affair may have been just one ofgeneral precaution."
"The ghosts did it?" Ross wanted to know.
"I asked that. No, it seems that strange tribesmen overran it at night."
"At night?" McNeil whistled.
"Just so." Ashe's tone was dry. "The tribes do not fight that way.Either someone slipped up in his briefing, or the Reds are overconfidentand don't care about the rules. But it was the work of tribesmen, ortheir counterfeits. There is also a nasty rumor speeding about that theghosts do not relish traders and that they might protest intrusions ofsuch with penalties all around----"
"Like the Wrath of Lurgha," supplied Ross.
"There is a certain repetition in this which suggests a lot to thesuspicious mind," Ashe agreed.
"I'd say no more hunting expeditions for the present," McNeil said. "Itis too easy to mistake a friend for a deer and weep over his graveafterward."
"That is a thought which entered my mind several times this afternoon,"Ashe agreed. "These people are deceptively simple on the surface, buttheir minds do not work along the same patterns as ours. We try tooutwit them, but it takes only one slip to make it fatal. In themeantime, I think we'd better make this place a little more snug, and itmight be well to post sentries as unobtrusively as possible."
"How about faking some signs of a ruined camp and heading into the blueourselves?" McNeil asked. "We could strike for the ghost mountains,traveling by night, and Ulffa's crowd would think we were finished off."
"An idea to keep in mind. The point against it would be the missingbodies. It seems that the tribesmen who raided the Beaker camp left somevery distasteful evidence of what happened to the camp's personnel. Andthose we can't produce to cover our trail."
McNeil was not yet convinced. "We might be able to fake something alongthat line, too----"
"We may have to fake nothing," Ross cut in softly. He was standing closeto the edge of the clearing where they were building their hut, his handon one of the saplings in the palisade they had set up so laboriouslythat day. Ashe was beside him in an instant.
"What is it?"
Ross's hours of listening to the sounds of the wilderness were hismeasuring gauge now. "That bird has never called from inland before. Itis the blue one we've seen fishing for frogs along the river."
Ashe, not even glancing at the forest, went for the water jug. "Get yourtrail supplies," he ordered.
Their leather pouches which held enough iron rations to keep them goingwere always at hand. McNeil gathered them from behind the fur curtainfronting their half-finished cabin. Again the bird called, its crypiercing and covering a long distance. Ross could understand why acareless man would select it for the signal. He crossed the clearing tothe donkeys' shelter, slashing through their nose halters. Probably thepatient little beasts would swiftly fall victims to some forestprowlers, but at least they would have their chance to escape.
McNeil, his cloak slung about him to conceal the ration bags, picked upthe leather bucket as if he were merely going down to the river forwater, and came to join Ross. They believed that they were carrying itoff well, that the camp must appear normal to any lurkers in the woods.But either they had made some slip or the enemy was impatient. An arrowsped out of the night to flash across the fire, and Ashe escaped deathonly because he had leaned forward to feed the flames. His arm swung outand sent the water in the jar hissing onto the blaze as he himselfrolled in the other direction.
Ross plunged for the brush with McNeil. Lying flat on the half-frozenground, they started to work their way to the river bank where the openarea would make surprise less possible.
"Ashe?" he whispered and felt McNeil's warm breath on his cheek as hereplied:
"He'll make it the other way! He's the best we have for this sort ofjob."
They made a worm's progress, twice lying, with dagger in hand, whilethey listened to a faint rustle which betrayed the passing of one of theattackers. Both times Ross was tempted to rise and try to cut off thestranger, but he fought down the impulse. He had learned a control ofhimself that would have been impossible for him a few months earlier.
The glimmer of the river was pale through the clumps of bushes whichsometimes grew into the
flood. In this country winter still clungtenaciously in shadowy places with cups of leftover snow, and there wasa bite in the wind and water. Ross rose to his knees with an involuntarygasp as a scream cut through the night. He wrenched around toward thecamp, only to feel McNeil's hand clamp on his forearm.
"That was a donkey," whispered McNeil urgently. "Come on, let's go downto that ford we discovered!"
They turned south, daring now to trot, half bent to the ground. Theriver was swollen with spring floods which were only now beginning tosubside, but two days earlier they had noticed a sandbar at one spot. Bycrossing that shelf across the bed, they might hope to put water betweenthem and the unknown enemy tonight. It would give them a breathingspace, even though Ross privately shrank from the thought of plowinginto the stream. He had seen good-sized trees swirling along in thecurrent only yesterday. And to make such a dash in the dark....
From McNeil's throat burst a startling sound which Ross had last heardin Britain--the questing howl of a hunting wolf. The cry was answeredseconds later from downstream.
"Ashe!"
They worked their way along the edge of the water with continued care,until they came upon Ashe at last, so much a part of his background thatRoss started when the lump he had taken for a bush hunched forward tojoin them. Together they made the river crossing and turned south againto head for the mountains. It was then that disaster struck.
Ross heard no birdcall warning this time. Though he was on guard, henever sensed the approach of the man who struck him down from behind.One moment he had been trailing McNeil and Ashe; the next moment wasblack nothingness.
He was aware of a throb of pain which carried throughout his body andthen localized in his head. Forcing open his eyes, the dazzle of lightwas like a spear point striking directly into his head, intensifying hispain to agony. He brought his hand up to his face and felt stickinessthere.
"Assha--" He believed he called that aloud, but he did not even hear hisown voice. They were in a valley; a wolf had attacked him out of thebushes. Wolf? No, the wolf was dead, but then it came alive again tohowl on a river bank.
Ross forced his eyes open once more, enduring the pain of beams herecognized as sunshine. He turned his head to avoid the glare. It washard to focus, but he fought to steady himself. There was some reasonwhy it was necessary to move, to get away. But away from what and where?When Ross tried to think he could only see muddled pictures which had noconnection.
Then a moving object crossed his very narrow field of vision, passingbetween him and a thing he knew was a tree trunk. A four-footed creaturewith a red tongue hanging from its jaws. It came toward himstiff-legged, growling low in its throat, and sniffed at his body beforebarking in short excited bursts of sound.
The noise hurt his head so much that Ross closed his eyes. Then a shockof icy liquid thrown into his face aroused him to make a feeble protestand he saw, hanging over him in a strange upside-down way, a beardedface which he knew from the past.
Hands were laid on him and the roughness with which he was moved sentRoss spiraling back into the dark once again. When he aroused for thesecond time it was night and the pain in his head was dulled. He put outhis hands and discovered that he lay on a pile of fur robes, and wascovered by one.
"Assha--" Again he tried that name. But it was not Assha who came inanswer to his feeble call. The woman who knelt beside him with a horncup in her hand had neatly braided hair in which gray strands showedsilver by firelight. Ross knew he had seen her before, but again whereand when eluded him. She slipped a sturdy arm under his head and raisedhim while the world whirled about. The edge of the horn cup was pressedto his lips, and he drank bitter stuff which burned in his throat andlit a fire in his insides. Then he was left to himself once again and inspite of his pain and bewilderment he slept.
How many days he lay in the camp of Ulffa, tended by the chief's headwife, Ross found it hard to reckon. It was Frigga who had argued thetribe into caring for a man they believed almost dead when they foundhim, and who nursed Ross back to life with knowledge acquired throughhalf a hundred exchanges between those wise women who were the doctorsand priestesses of these roaming peoples.
Why Frigga had bothered with the injured stranger at all Ross learnedwhen he was able to sit up and marshal his bewildered thoughts into somesort of order. The matriarch of the tribe thirsted for knowledge. Thatsame urge which had led her to certain experiments with herbs, had madeher consider Ross a challenge to her healing skill. When she knew thathe would live she determined to learn from him all he had to give.
Ulffa and the men of the tribe might have eyed the metal weapons of thetraders with awe and avid desire, but Frigga wanted more than tradegoods. She wanted the secret of the making of such cloth as thestrangers wore, everything she could learn of their lives and the landsthrough which they had come. She plied Ross with endless questions whichhe answered as best he could, for he lay in an odd dreamy state whereonly the present had any reality. The past was dim and far away, andwhile he was now and then dimly aware that he had something to do, heforgot it easily.
The chief and his men prowled the half-built station after the attackershad withdrawn, bringing back with them a handful of loot--a bronzerazor, two skinning knives, some fishhooks, a length of cloth whichFrigga appropriated. Ross eyed this spoil indifferently, making no claimupon it. His interest in everything about him was often blanked out byheadaches which kept him limp on his bed, uncaring and stupid for hoursor even full days.
He gathered that the tribe had been living in fear of an attack from thesame raiders who had wiped out the trading post. But at last theirscouts returned with the information that the enemy had gone south.
There was one change of which Ross was not aware but which might havestartled both Ashe and McNeil. Ross Murdock had indeed died under thatblow which had left him unconscious beside the river. The young man whomFrigga had drawn back to sense and a slow recovery was Rossa of theBeaker people. This same Rossa nursed a hot desire for vengeance againstthose who had struck him down and captured his kinsmen, a feeling whichthe family tribe who had rescued him could well understand.
There was the same old urgency pushing him to try his strength now, tokeep to his feet even when they were unsteady. His bow was gone, butRoss spent hours fashioning another, and he traded his copper braceletfor the best dozen arrows in Ulffa's camp. The jet pin from his cloak hepresented to Frigga with all his gratitude.
Now that his strength was coming back he could not rest easy in thecamp. He was ready to leave, even though the gashes on his head werestill tender to the touch. Ulffa indulgently planned a hunt southward,and Rossa took the trail with the tribesmen.
He broke with the clan hunters when they turned aside at the beginningof the taboo land. Ross, his own mind submerged and taken over by hisBeaker cover, hesitated too. Yet he could not give up, and the othersleft him there, his eyes on the forbidden heights, unhappy and tormentedby more than the headaches which still came and went with painfulregularity. In the mountains lay what he sought--a hidden somethingwithin his brain told him that over and over--but the mountains weretaboo, and he should not venture into them.
How long he might have hesitated there if he had not come upon thetrail, Ross did not know. But on the day after the hunters of Ulffa'sclan left, a glint of sunlight striking between two trees pointed out awoodsman's blaze on a third tree trunk. The two halves of Ross's memoryclicked together for an instant as he examined that cut. He knew that itmarked a trace and he pushed on, hunting a second cut and then a third.Convinced that these would lead him into the unknown territory, Ross'sdesire to explore overcame the grafted superstitions of his briefing.
There were other signs that this was an often-traveled route: a springcleared of leaves and walled with stone, a couple of steps cut in theturf on a steep slope. Ross moved warily, alert to any sound. He mightnot be an expert woodsman, but he was learning fast, perhaps the fasterbecause his false memories now supplanted the real ones.
Th
at night he built no fire, crawling instead into the heart of a rottedlog to sleep, awakening once to the call of a wolf and another time atthe distant crash of a dead tree yielding to wind.
In the morning he was about to climb back to the trail he had prudentlyleft the night before when he saw five bearded, fur-clad men lookingmuch the same as Ulffa's people. Ross hugged the earth and watched thempass out of sight before he followed.
All that day he wove an up-and-down trail behind the small band,sometimes catching sight of them as they topped a rise well ahead orstopped to eat. It was late afternoon when he crept cautiously to thetop of a ridge and gazed down into a valley.
There was a town in that valley, sturdy houses of logs behind astockade. He had seen towns vaguely like it before, yet it had adreamlike quality as if it were not as real as it appeared.
Ross rested his chin on his arms and watched that town and the peoplemoving in it. Some were fur-clad hunters, but others dressed quitedifferently. He started up with a little cry at the sight of one of themen who had walked so swiftly from one house to the next; surely he wasa Beaker trader!
His unease grew stronger with every moment he watched, but it was theoddness he sensed in that town which bothered him and not any warningthat he, himself, was in danger. He had gotten to his knees to seebetter when out of nowhere a rope sang through the air, settling abouthis chest with a vicious jerk which not only drove the air from hislungs but pinioned his arms tight to his body.