Star of Danger

  But even if he died here in the mountain passes, he was going to show Kennard that where a Darkovan could lead a Terran could follow! And then, damn it, when they got back to his world, he’d challenge Kennard to try following him a while in the world of the Terrans—and see if a Darkovan could follow where a Terran led!

  He got up, grinned wryly, turned his pockets inside out in the hope of a stray crumb of food—there wasn’t one— and said, “The sooner the better.”

  The grade was steeper now, and there began to be snow underfoot; they went very carefully, guarding against a sideslip that could have meant a ghastly fall. His injured arm felt numbed and twice it slipped on handholds, but he proudly refused Kennard’s offers of help.

  “I’ll manage,” he said, tight-mouthed.

  They came to one dreadful stretch where frost-sheathed stones littered a high ledge without a sign of a track; Kennard, who was leading, set his foot tentatively on the ledge, and it crumbled beneath him, sending pebbles crashing down in a miniature rockslide whitened with powdery snow. He staggered and reeled at the edge of the abyss, but even before he swayed Larry had moved, catching the flash of fear at the touch, and grabbed and held him, hard—the older boy’s weight jerking his hurt arm almost from the socket—until Kennard could recover his balance. They clung together, gasping, Kennard with fear and relief and Larry with mingled fright and pain; something had snapped in the injured shoulder and his arm hung stiff and immovable at his side, sending shudders of agony down his side when he as much as moved a finger.

  Kennard finally wiped his brow. “Zandru’s hells, I thought I was gone,” he muttered. “Thanks, Lerrys. I’m all right now. You—” He noted Larry’s immobility. “What’s the trouble?”

  “My arm,” Larry managed to get out, shakily.

  Kennard touched it with careful fingers, drew a deep whistle. He moved his fingertips over it, his face intent and concentrated. Larry felt a most strange, burning itch deep in his bones under the touch; then Kennard, without a word of warning, suddenly seized the shoulder and gave it a violent, agonizing twist. Larry yelled in pain; he couldn’t help it. But as the pain subsided, he realized what Kennard had done.

  Kennard nodded. “I had to slip the damned thing back into the socket before it froze the muscles around it. Or it would have taken three men to hold you down while they worked it back into place,” he said.

  “How did you know—?”

  “Deep-probed,” Kennard said briefly. “I can’t do it often, or very long? But I—” he hesitated, did not finish his sentence. Larry heard it anyhow: I owed you that much. But damn it, now we’re both exhausted!

  “And we’ve still got that devilish ledge to cross,” he said aloud. He began unfastening his belt; tugged briefly at Larry’s. Larry, curiously, watched him buckle them together and slip the ends around their wrists.

  “Shame you can’t use your left hand,” he said tersely. “Too bad they found out you were left-handed. Now, we’ll start across. Let me lead. This is a hell of a place for your first lesson in climbing this kind of a rock-ledge, but here it is. Always have at least three things all together hanging on. Never move one foot without the other foot and both hands anchored. And the same with either hand.” His unfinished sentence again was perfectly clear to Larry: Both our lives are in his hands, because he’s the weakest.

  For the rest of his life, Larry remembered the agonizing hour and a half it took them to cross the twenty-foot stretch of rock-strewn ledge. There were places where the least movement started showers of rocks and snow; yet they could only cling together like limpets to their handholds and to the face of the rock. Above and below was sheer cliff; there was no help there, and if they retraced their steps, to find an easier way, they would never get across. Half a dozen times, Larry slipped and the belt jerking them back together saved him from a very long drop into what looked like nothingness and fog below. Halfway across, a thin fine powdery snow began to fall, and Kennard swore in words Larry couldn’t even begin to follow.

  “That was all we needed!” Suddenly he seemed to brighten up, and placed his next foot more cautiously. “Well, Larry, this is it—this has got to be the worst. Nothing worse than this could possibly happen. From now, things can only get better. Come on—left foot this time. Try that greyish hunk of rock. It looks solid enough.”

  But at last they were on firm ground again, dropping down as they were in the snow, exhausted, to breathe deep and slow and gasp like runners just finished with a ten-mile race. Kennard, accustomed to the mountains, was as usual the first to recover, and stood up, his voice jubilant.

  “I told you it would get better! Look, Larry!”

  He pointed. Above them the pallid and snowy light showed them the pass, less than a hundred feet away, leading between rock-sheltered banks—a natural walkway, deeply banked with the falling snow, but sloping only gradually so that they could walk erect.

  “And on the other side of that pass, Larry, there are people—my people—friends, who will help us. Warmth and food and fire and—” he broke off. “It seems too good to be true.”

  “I’d settle for dry feet and something hot to eat,” Larry said, then froze, while Kennard still moved toward the pass. The terrible, creeping tension he had felt just before their capture by the trailmen was with him again. It gripped him by the throat; forced him to run after Kennard, grabbing at him with his good arm, holding him back by main force. He couldn’t speak; he could hardly breathe with the force of it. The wave surged and crested, the precognition, the foreknowing of terrible danger…

  It broke. He could breathe again. He gasped and caught at Kennard and pointed and heard the older boy shriek aloud, but the shriek was lost in the siren screaming wail that rose and echoed in the rocky pass. Above them, a huge and ugly craning head, bare of feathers, eyeless and groping, snaked upward, followed by a huge, ungainly body, dimly shining with phosphorescent light. It bore down upon them, clumsily but with alarming speed, cutting off their approach to the pass. The siren-like wailing scream rose and rose until it seemed to fill all the air an,d all the world.

  It had been too good to be true.

  The pass was a nest of one of the evil banshee-birds.

  * * *

  XII

  « ^ »

  FOR AN INSTANT, in blind panic, Larry whirled, turning to ran. The speed with which the banshee caught the change in direction of movement paralyzed him again with terror; but during that split second of immobility, he felt a flash of hope. Kennard had begun to run, stumbling in helpless panic; Larry took one leap after him, wrenching him back, hard.

  “Freeze,” he whispered, urgently. “It senses movement and warmth! Keep perfectly still!”

  As Kennard struggled to free himself, he muttered swiftly, “Sorry, pal,” swung back his fist and socked Kennard, hard, on the point of the chin. The boy—exhausted, worn, defenseless—collapsed into the snowbank and lay there, motionless, too stunned to rise or to do more than stare, resentfully, at Larry. Larry flung himself down, too, and lay without moving so much as a muscle.

  The bird stopped in mid-rush, turning its blind head confusedly from side to side. It blundered back and forth for a moment, its trundling walk and the trailing wings giving it the ungainly look of a huge fat cloaked man. It raised its head and gave forth that terrible, paralyzing wail again.

  That’s it, Larry thought, resisting the impulse to stuff his hands over his ears. Things hear that awful noise and they run—and the thing feels them moving! It’s got something like the electrostatic fields of the kyrri—only what it senses is their movement, and their smell.

  In this snowbank…

  Very slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, fearing that even the slightest rapid motion might alert the banshee again, he scrabbled slowly in his pocket for his medical kit. It was almost empty, but there might just be enough of the strongly chemical-smelling antiseptic so that they would not smell like anything alive— or, he thought grimly, good to ea
t.

  “Kennard,” he whispered, “can you hear me? Don’t move a muscle now. But when I slop this stuff around, dive into that snowbank— and burrow as if your life depended on it.” It probably does, he was thinking.

  The smell of the chemical was pungent and sharp; the banshee, moving its phosphorescent head against the wind, made strange jolting motions of distaste. It turned and blundered away, and in that moment Larry and Kennard began to dig frantically into the snowbank, throwing up snow behind them, scrabbling it back over their bodies.

  They were safe— for the moment. But how would they get across the pass?

  Then he remembered Kennard’s earlier words about the banshees. They’re night-birds, torpid in the sunlight. The phosphorescence of their heads proved that they were no creatures of normal sunlight.

  If they could live through the night…

  If they didn’t freeze to death…

  If some other banshee couldn’t feel their warmth through the snow around them…

  If the sun shone tomorrow, brightly enough to quiet the great birds…

  If all these things happened, then they just might live through their last hurdle.

  If not…

  Suddenly all these ifs, coming at him like blasts of fear from Kennard, stirred fury in him. Damn it, there had to be a way through! And Kennard seemed to have given up; he was just lying there in the snow, silent, apparently ready for death.

  But they hadn’t come so far together to die here, at the last. Damn it, he’d get them over that pass if he had to burrow through the damned snowbank with his bare hands…

  The banshee seemed to have gone; cautiously, he lifted his head, ever so slightly, from the snowbank. Then, thinking better of it, he plastered the freezing stuff over his head before lifting it up, quickly surveying the pass above them. Less than a hundred feet. If they could somehow crawl through the snow…

  Urgently, he shook Kennard’s shoulder. The Darkovan boy did not move. This last terror had evidently finished his endurance. He muttered, “Right back where we were— when we left Cyrillon’s castle—”

  Larry’s fury exploded. “So after dragging me halfway across the country, within sight of safety you’re going to lie here and die?”

  “The banshees—”

  “Oh, your own god Zandru take the banshees! Well get through them or else we won’t, but by damn we’ll try! You Darkovans—so proud of your courage when it’s a matter of individual bravery! As long as you could be a hero”—he flayed Kennard, deliberately, intently, with his words—“you were brave as could be! When you could make me look small! But now when you have to work with me, you konk out and lie down to die! And Valdir thinks he can do anything with your people? What the hell—his own son can’t shut up and listen and cooperate! He’s got to be a goddam hero, or he won’t play, and just lies down to die!” Kennard swallowed. His eyes blazed fire, and Larry braced himself for another outburst of that flaying, dreadful Alton rage, but it was checked before it began. Kennard clenched his fists, but he spoke grimly, through his teeth.

  “I’ll kill you for that, some day—but right now, you’ll see whether a Terran can lead an Alton on his own world. Try it.”

  “That’s the way to talk,” Larry said, deliberately jovial to infuriate Kennard’s despairing dignity. “If we’re going to die anyhow, we might as well do it while we’re doing something about it! To hell with dying with dignity! Make the. blasted beast fight for his dinner if he wants it—kicking and scratching!”

  Kennard laid his hand on his knife. He said “He’ll get a fight—”

  Larry gripped his wrist, “No! Warmth and movement are what he senses! Damn you and your heroics! Common sense is what we need. Hell, I know you’re brave, but try showing some brains too!”

  Kennard froze. He said through barely moving lips, “All right. I said I’d follow your lead. What do I do now?”

  Larry thought fast. He had pulled Kennard out of his fit of despair, but now he had to offer something. If he was going to take the lead, he had to lead—and do it damned fast!

  The banshee sensed warmth and movement.

  Therefore, it must be something like the kyrri; and the only way to outwit it was with cold, and stillness. But they could freeze to death and it could outwait them. Or else—

  The idea struck him.

  “Listen! You run one way and I’ll run the other—”

  Kennard said, “Drawing lots for death? I accept that. Whichever one of us he takes, the other goes free?”

  “No, idiot!” Larry hadn’t even thought of that. It was a noble Darkovan concept and honorable, but it seemed damned unnecessary. “We both get free—or neither. No, what I’m thinking about is to confuse the damned thing. I move. He’s drawn off after me. Then I stop, burrow in a snowbank, stay still as a mouse—and while he’s trying to scent me again, you start running around. Somewhere else. He’ll start to move in that direction. Then you freeze and I start again. Maybe we can confuse him, keep him running back and forth long enough to get across the pass.”

  Kennard looked at him with growing excitement. “It just might work.”

  “All right, get ready—freeze!”

  Larry jumped up and started running. He saw the huge lumbering bird twitch toward him as by a tropism, then come speeding. He yelled to Kennard, dived into a snowbank, scrabbled frantically in and lay still, not daring to move or hardly to breathe.

  He felt, rather than seeing, the great bird stop short, clumsily twitch around, jerking in irritation. How had its prey gotten over there? Kennard dashed about twenty yards toward the pass, shouted and dived. Larry jumped up again. This time he tried to run too far; the evil creature’s foul breath was actually hot on his neck and his flesh crawled with anticipation of the swift, disemboweling clawing stroke. He fell into the snow, burrowed in and lay still. The siren wail of the confused bird rose, filling the air with screaming terror, and Larry thought, Oh, God, don’t let Kennard panic again…

  He raised his head cautiously, watched Kennard dive down, rose again and dashed. The bird twitched, began to lumber back, suddenly howled and began to dash madly in circles, its huge head flopping and flapping.

  The banshee howl fell to terrified little yelps and the creature fell on its back, twitching.

  Larry yelled to Kennard, “Come on! Run!” He was remembering psychology courses. Animals, especially very stupid animals, faced with a situation wholly frustrating and outside their experience, go completely to pieces and crack up. The banshee was lying in the snow squealing with a complete nervous breakdown.

  They ran, gasping and trembling. The clouds seemed suddenly to thin and lift, and the pale Darkovan sun burst suddenly forth in morning brilliance.

  Larry hauled himself up, exhausted, to the summit of the pass. He rested there, gasping, Kennard at his side.

  Before them lay a trail downward, and far away, a countryside patched with quiet fields, smoke rising from small houses and hearthstones, the tree-laden slopes of low foothills and green leaves.

  Exhausted, wearied, famished, they stood there feasting their eyes on the beauty and richness of the country that lay below. Kennard pointed. Far away, almost out of sight range, a gray spire just visible through the mist rose upward.

  “Castle Hastur—and we’ve won!”

  “Not yet,” Larry said, warningly. “It’s a long way off yet. And we’d better get right out of the high snows while this sun is bright enough to keep any of that big fellow’s sisters and his cousins and his aunts from coming around!”

  “You’re right,” Kennard said, sobering instantly, and they trudged off down the narrow trail, not really liking to think what had made it. But at least the sun was bright, and for the moment they were safe.

  Larry had leisure to feel, now, how weary he was. His dislocated shoulder ached like the very devil. His feet were cold and hot by turns—he was sure he had frostbite—and his fingers were white and cold from scrabbling in the snow. He sucked them and sl
apped them together, trying hard to keep from moaning with the pain of returning circulation. But he kept pace with Kennard. He’d taken over the leadership—and he wasn’t going to give out now!

  The slopes on this side were heavily wooded, but the woods were mostly conifers and spruce, and there was still no sign of food. Lower down on the slope, they found a single tree laden with apples, damp and wrinkled after the recent storm, but still edible; they filled their pockets, and sat down to eat side by side. Larry thought of the peaceful time, so few days ago really, when they had sat side by side like this, before the alarm of forest-fire. What years he seemed to have lived, and what hills and valleys he had crossed—figuratively as well as literally—since then!

  Kennard was frowning at him and Larry remembered, with an absolute wrench of effort, that they had exchanged harsh words in the pass.

  Kennard said, “Now that we are out of danger—you spoke words to me beyond forgiveness. We are bredin, but I’m going to beat them down your throat!”

  Oh no! Not that again!

  “Forget it,” he said. “I was trying to save both our lives; I didn’t have time to be tactful.”

  Kennard is sulking because I saved our lives when he couldn’t. He wants to settle it the Darkovan way—with a fight. Larry said, aloud, “I won’t fight with you, Ken. You saved my life too many times. I would no more hit you than —than my own father.”

  Kennard looked at him, trembling with rage. “Coward!”

  Larry took a deliberate bite out his apple. It was sour. He said, “Calling me names won’t hurt me. Go ahead, if it makes you feel better.” Then he added, gently, “Anyhow, what would it prove, except that you are stronger than I? I’ve never doubted that, even for a moment. We’d still be in this thing together. And after coming through all this together—why should we end it with a fight, as if we were enemies instead of friends?” Deliberately, he used the word bredin again. He held out his hand. “If I said anything to hurt you, I’m sorry. You’ve hurt me a time or two, so even by your own codes we’re even. Let’s shake hands and forget it.”