Star of Danger

  Mostly the days were too full for much introspection, but sometimes when he was in bed at night, he found himself wondering why the invitation had been issued in the first place. He liked Kennard, they were friends, but would that alone cause Valdir Alton to ignore the long tradition on Darkover of ignoring the Terrans?

  He found himself wondering if Valdir’s reason for issuing the invitation were not very much the same as Reade’s reason for wanting Larry to accept it—that Valdir just wanted to know something about the Terrans, close up.

  He was, by now, used to riding, and a three-day hunt had been arranged partly for his benefit. He had managed to shoot well enough to bring down a small rabbitlike beast on the first day, which had been cooked over the campfire that evening, and he was proud of that, even though it was the only thing he had hit during the long hunt.

  At the top of the hill he drew even with Kennard, and they sat breathing their horses, side by side, looking across the valley.

  “It’s nice up here,” Kennard said at last. “I used to ride this way fairly often, a couple of seasons ago. Father feels that now it’s too dangerous for me to come alone.” He gestured at their escort, Darkovans Larry did not know: one a well-dressed young redhead from a nearby estate, the others men from the Alton farms, workmen of various sorts. One was in the uniform of the Guards, but Kennard himself was wearing old riding-clothes, slightly too small for him.

  “Dangerous? Why?”

  “It’s too near the edge of the forests,” Kermard said, “and during the last few seasons, trailmen have spread down into these forests. Usually they stay in the hills. They’re not really dangerous, but they don’t like humans, and we stay out of their way, as a rule. Then, too, this is on the border of mountain country, and men from the Cahuengas—”

  He broke off, stiffening in his saddle, looking intently across the valley.

  “What is it, Kennard?” Larry asked.

  The Darkovan boy pointed. Larry could see nothing, but Kennard called to his father, a shrill insistent shout, and Valdir turned his horse and came cantering back.

  “What’s wrong, Ken?”

  “Smoke. The mist lifted just for a minute, over there—” Kennard pointed, “and I saw it. Right at the edge of the Ranger station.”

  Valdir frowned, narrowing his eyes, shading them with his thin brown hand. “How sure are you? It’s a good hour’s ride out of our way—damn this mist, I can’t see anything.” He flung back his head like a deer sniffing the wind, peering into the distance, and finally nodded.

  “A trace of smoke. We’ll ride and check.” He glanced at Larry. “I hope you don’t mind the extra riding.”

  “Not at all, but I hope nothing’s wrong, Lord Alton.”

  “So do I,” Valdir said, his brows drawn down with worry, and touched his horse’s flank with a light heel. They were off down the trail, the sound of hoofs making a dull clamor on the leaves underfoot. As they neared the bottom of the valley, the mist lifted slightly and the men pointed and shouted. Larry’s nostrils twitched at a faint, acrid whiff of strange smoke. The sun had swung southward, and they were turning their horses up a widened trail that led to the top of a little hill, when Valdir Alton let out a great curse, rising in his stirrups and pointing; then he clapped his heels to his horse’s side and vanished over the top of the rise. Kennard spurred after him, and Larry, urging his horse forward, felt a surge of excitement and fear as he followed. He came over the rise in the road and heard Kennard cry out in consternation; he pulled up his horse and looked down, in dismay, at a grove of trees from which black smoke was coiling upward.

  Kennard slid from his horse and began to run. The man in the Guardsman’s uniform called to him and drew his crossbow up to rest, and Larry realized, with a shiver, that they were all looking warily at the surrounding trees. What might lie behind them?

  Valdir leaped from his saddle; the other men followed suit, and Larry slid down with the rest. The deathly silence seemed more ominous because it was cut through with the soft chirping of birds from a distance, twittering in the grove.

  Then Kennard called; he was kneeling in the road beside what Larry thought to be a gray boulder, but he put out his hand to turn it and Larry, his stomach cramping in horror, saw that it was the hunched body of a man in a gray cloak.

  Valdir bent over the man; straightened. Larry stood frozen, looking down at death. He had never seen a dead body before, let alone the body of a man dead by violence. The dead man was young, little more than a boy, a shadow of thin beard on his face. A great wound in his chest gaped black and bloody. He had been dead some time.

  Kennard was looking pale. Larry turned away, feeling faint and sick, and struggling not to show it, as Valdir turned away from the dead man.

  “Cahuenga—his cloak is Cahuenga from the far hills,” he said, “but boots and belt are from Hyalis. A raider—but no beacon flared when this station was attacked.” He stepped warily around the corpse. The Guardsman shouted, “Don’t go up there alone, Lord Alton!” and, sliding from his saddle, crossbow lowered, ran to follow him. Kennard followed, and Larry, as if compelled, ran after them.

  A blackened ruin, still smoking, showed the vague outline of a building. On a little stretch of green at one side lay the crumpled body of a man. When Kennard and Larry reached Valdir’s side, Valdir was already kneeling beside the body. After one glance, Larry turned away from the glazed, pain-ridden eyes; the man was bleeding from a great gash across his side, and from his lips a little dark-flecked foam stirred with his rasping breath.

  Over the inert body the other Darkovan aristocrat looked at Valdir; gripped the limp wrist. His forehead was ridged with dismay. Valdir, looking up, said, “He must speak before he dies, Rannirl. And he’s dying anyway.”

  Rannirl’s mouth was set. He nodded, fumbled at his belt, and from a leather wallet drew forth a small, blue-glazed vial stoppered with silver. Handling it carefully, and keeping his own face free of the small fumes that coiled up from the open mouth of the vial, he measured a few cautious drops in the cap: Valdir forced the man’s mouth open and Rannirl let the fuming liquid fall on the man’s tongue. After a moment a great shudder ran through the frame of the dying man, and the eyes fluttered.

  His voice sounded harsh, far away. “Vai dom—we did what we could—the beacon—fire—”

  Valdir gripped the limp hands, his face terrible and intent. There was something in his hands, something that glittered cold and blue; he pressed it to the dying man’s forehead, and Larry saw that it was a clear blue jewel. Valdir said, “Do not spend your strength in speaking, Garin, or you will die before I learn what I must know. Form your thought clearly while you can, and I will understand. And forgive me, friend. You may save many lives with this torment.” He bent close to the dying face, his own features a grim mask, lighted blue as the strange jewel suddenly flared and burned as if with inner flame. A spasm of terrible anguish passed over the dying Ranger’s face; he shuddered twice and lay still, and Valdir, with a painful sigh, released his hands and straightened up. His own forehead was beaded with sweat; he swayed, and Kennard leaped to steady his father.

  After a minute Valdir passed his hand over his wet brow, and spoke: “They didn’t sell their lives cheaply,” he said. “There were a dozen men; they came from the North, and hacked Balhar to pieces while he was trying to reach the beacon and set it aflame. He thought at first that they were Cahuenga, but two were tall pale men who were hooded almost like the kyrri, and one was masked. He saw them signal; they carried a mirror-flash device of some sort. After he fell, Garin saw them ride away northward toward the Kadarin.”

  Rannirl whistled softly. “If they could spare so many to prevent one beacon being lighted—this doesn’t look like a few bandits out after a raid on the farms in the valley!”

  Valdir swore. “There aren’t enough of us to go after them,” he said, “and we’ve only hunting weapons. And Zandru alone knows what other devil’s work has been done along here. Kennard”??
?he turned to his son—“go and light the beacon, at least. Quickly! Garin tried to crawl there, when they had left him for dead, but his strength failed—” His voice went thin in his throat; he bent and covered the dead face with the Ranger’s cloak.

  “He didn’t fight me,” he said. “Even for a man weakened with many wounds and after a dose of that devil’s drug of yours, Rannirl, that takes a rare kind of courage.”

  He sighed, then, recovering himself, told two of the workmen to bury the dead Rangers. The sound of mattock and pick rang dully in the grove; after a few minutes, Kennard came running back.

  “No way to light the beacon, father. Those devils took the time to drench it with water, just in case!”

  Valdir swore, again, moodily, biting his lip. “The people along the valley should be warned, and someone should track them and find which way. We can’t go to all four winds at once!” He stood for a moment, scowling, thoughtful. “If we had enough men we might take them at the fords, or if we could warn the countryside by beacon—”

  Abruptly he seemed to come to a decision.

  “There aren’t enough of us to follow them, and they’ve too big a head start in any case. But this probably means a good-sized raid. We’ve got to warn the people in the valley—and we can find a tracker there who can get on their trail and follow it better than we could. Nothing’s likely to happen before night.” He glanced up at the sun, trembling crimson at the zenith. “The hunt’s over; we’ll eat a bite and then start back. Kennard, you and Larry—” he hesitated. “I’d like to send you both back to Armida, but you can’t cross this country by yourselves. You’ll have to ride with us.” He looked at Larry. “It may mean some hard riding, I’m afraid.”

  The men had finished burying the Rangers; Valdir vetoed making a cookfire, directing the men to get cold food from their saddlebags. They sat eating, grimly discussing the burnt station and the dead Rangers in a dialect of which Larry could understand little. He could not eat; the food stuck in his throat. It was his first sight of violence and death and it had sickened him. He had known that violence was not unheard-of on Darkover, he had himself had a brief brush with it in his fight with the street boys, but now it assumed a dark and frightening aspect. With an almost painful nostalgia, he wished he were back in the safety of the Terran Zone.

  Or was that safety, too, a mere illusion? Was there violence and cruelty and fear there, too, hidden behind the facades, and was he just now becoming aware of all these things? He choked over the piece of dry biscuit he was eating, and turned his eyes away from Kennard’s too-searching gaze.

  Valdir Alton’s tall form shadowed him, and the Darkovan lord dropped on the grass at his side. He said, “Sorry that your hunt had to end this way, Lerrys. It wasn’t what we planned.”

  “Do you really think I’d be worrying about a hunt when people are dead?” Larry asked.

  Valdir’s eyes were shrewd. “Nothing like this in your life before? Nothing like this in your world? Everything in the Terran Zone very neat and law-abiding?” Once again Larry had the feeling that—as with Lorill Hastur—his thoughts were being read. He remembered, with a small twinge of fear, how Valdir Alton had probed the mind of the dying Ranger.

  He said, “I suppose there are law-breakers on Earth and in the Terran Zone, too. Only here it seems so—”

  “So close up and personal?” Valdir asked. “Tell me something, Lerrys: Is a man more or less dead when he is killed neatly by a gun or a bomb, than when he is—” He moved his head toward where the dead Ranger had lain. His face was suddenly bitter as he added, “That seems to be the main difference between your people and ours. At least the men who killed poor Garin did not do their killing while they were a safe distance away!”

  Larry said—glad to have something between himself and the memory of a dead man with a bleeding wound in his chest— “The main thing is that most of our people don’t do any killing at all! We have laws and police to handle that sort of thing for us!”

  “While here we feel that every man should handle his own affairs for himself, before they spread into wars,” Valdir said steadily. “If any man offends me, damages my property or my family, steals my goods—it’s my personal duty to revenge myself on that man—or to forgive him, if I see fit, without dragging in others who really have no part in the quarrel.”

  Larry was trying to fit that together—the contrast between the fierce individualism of the Darkovan code, and the Terran’s acceptance of an orderly society, based on rules and laws. “A government of laws and not of men,” he said, and at Valdir’s raised eyebrow, explained, “that’s supposed to be the original theory behind the Terran governments.”

  “While ours is a government of men—because laws can’t be anything but the expression of men who make them,” Valdir said. His face was grave and serious and Larry knew that while he might have started this conversation for the purpose of taking his young guest’s mind off the scene of unfamiliar violence, now he was deeply involved in what he was saying. “It’s one reason we want little to do with the Terrans, as such,” he said. “Without offense to you personally. It’s true that we have wars on Darkover, but they are small local hand-to-hand skirmishes; they seldom get bigger than this—” again he motioned toward the blackening ruin of the Ranger station. “The individual who makes trouble is promptly punished and the matter ends there, without involving a whole countryside.”

  “But—” Larry hesitated, remembering he was Valdir’s guest. The older man said encouragingly, “Go ahead.”

  “Kennard has told. me something of this, sir. You have long-lived feuds and when a troublemaker is punished, his family takes revenge, and doesn’t this lead to more and more trouble over the years? Your way doesn’t really settle anything. Really lawless people—like these bandits—ought to be dealt with by the law, shouldn’t they?”

  “You’re entirely too clever,” Valdir said, with a bleak smile. “That’s the one flaw in the system. We use their own methods to revenge ourselves on them; they raid us, we raid them back, and we’re as bad as they are. Actually, Larry, it goes deeper than that. Darkover seems to be in one of those uncomfortable times to live in—a time of change. And having the Terrans here hasn’t helped. Again—without offense to you personally—having a highly technical civilization among us makes our people dissatisfied. We live the way men were meant to live—in close contact with real things, not huddled in cities and factories.” He looked around, past the burnt station, at the high mountains, and said, “Can’t you see it, Larry?”

  “I can see it,” Larry admitted, but a brief stab of doubt struck at him. When he had said the same thing, his own father had accused him of being a romantic. The Darkovans seemed to want to go on living as if change did not exist, and whether they liked it or not, the space age was here—and they had chosen to let the Terran Empire come here for trade.

  “Yes,” Valdir said, reading his thoughts. “I can see that too—change is coming, whether we like it or not. And I want it to come in an orderly fashion, without upheaval. Which means I’ve made myself awfully damned unpopular with a lot of people in my own caste. For instance, I organized this defense system of border stations and Rangers, so that every farm and estate wouldn’t have to stand alone against raids by bandits from across the Kadarin. And there are some people who find this a clear violation of our code of individual responsibility.” He stopped. “What’s the matter?”

  Larry blurted out, “You’re reading my mind!”

  “Does that bother you? I don’t pry, Larry. No telepath does. But when you’re throwing your thoughts at me so clearly—” he shrugged. “I’ve never known a Terran to be so open to rapport.”

  “No,” Larry said, “it doesn’t bother me.” To his own surprise, that was true. He found that the idea didn’t bother him at all. “Maybe if more Terrans and Darkovans could read each other’s minds they’d understand one another better, and not be afraid of each other, any more than you and I are afraid of each other.?
??

  Valdir smiled at him kindly and stood up. “Time to get on the road again,” he said; then breaking off, added very softly, “But don’t deceive yourself, Larry. We are afraid of you. You don’t know, yourself, how dangerous you can be.”

  He walked away, quickly, while Larry stared after him, wondering if he had heard right.

  * * *

  VI

  « ^ »

  THE ROAD into the valley was steep and winding, and for some time Larry had enough to do to keep his seat in the saddle. But soon, the road widened and became easier, and he realized that he had been smelling, again, the smoke from the burned station. Had the wind changed? He raised his head, slowing his horse to a walk. Almost at the same moment, Valdir, riding ahead, raised his arm in signal, and stopped, turning his head into the wind and sniffing, nostrils flared wide.

  He said, tersely, “Fire.”

  “Another station?” one of the Darkovans asked.

  Valdir, moving his head from side to side—almost, Larry thought, as if he expected to hear the sound of flames— suddenly froze, statue-still. At the same moment Larry heard the sound of a bell: a deep-toned, full-throated bell tone, ringing through the valley. It tolled over and over, ringing out in a curious pattern of sound. While the little party of riders remained motionless, still listening intently, another bell farther away, fainter, but repeating the same slow rhythm, took up the ringing, and a few minutes later, still farther away, a third bell added a deep note to the choir.

  Valdir said, harshly, “It’s the fire-bell! Kennard, your ears are better than mine—which ring is it?”

  Kennard listened intently, stiffening in his saddle. He tapped out the rhythm with his fingers, briefly. “That’s the ring from Aderis.”