CHAPTER FIVE
It was getting dark when I slipped through a side gate, shabby andinconspicuous, into the spaceport square. Beyond the yellow lamps, Iknew that the old city was beginning to take on life with the fallingnight. Out of the chinked pebble-houses, men and woman, human andnonhuman, came forth into the moonlit streets.
If anyone noticed me cross the square, which I doubted, they took me forjust another Dry-town vagabond, curious about the world of the strangersfrom beyond the stars, and who, curiosity satisfied, was drifting backwhere he belonged. I turned down one of the dark alleys that led away,and soon was walking in the dark.
The Kharsa was not unfamiliar to me as a Terran, but for the last sixyears I had seen only its daytime face. I doubted if there were a dozenEarthmen in the Old Town tonight, though I saw one in the bazaar, dirtyand lurching drunk; one of those who run renegade and homeless betweenworlds, belonging to neither. This was what I had nearly become.
I went further up the hill with the rising streets. Once I turned, andsaw below me the bright-lighted spaceport, the black many-windowed loomof the skyscraper like a patch of alien shadow in the red-violetmoonlight. I turned my back on them and walked on.
At the fringe of the thieves market I paused outside a wineshop whereDry-towners were made welcome. A golden nonhuman child murmuredsomething as she pattered by me in the street, and I stopped, gripped bya spasm of stagefright. Had the dialect of Shainsa grown rusty on mytongue? Spies were given short shrift on Wolf, and a mile from thespaceport, I might as well have been on one of those moons. There wereno spaceport shockers at my back now. And someone might remember thetale of an Earthman with a scarred face who had gone to Shainsa indisguise....
I shrugged the shirtcloak around my shoulders, pushed the door and wentin. I had remembered that Rakhal was waiting for me. Not beyond thisdoor, but at the end of the trail, behind some other door, somewhere.And we have a byword in Shainsa: _A trail without beginning has no end_.
Right there I stopped thinking about Juli, Rindy, the Terran Empire, orwhat Rakhal, who knew too many of Terra's secrets, might do if he hadturned renegade. My fingers went up and stroked, musingly, the ridge ofscar tissue along my mouth. At that moment I was thinking only ofRakhal, of an unsettled blood-feud, and of my revenge.
Red lamps were burning inside the wineshop, where men reclined on frowsycouches. I stumbled over one of them, found an empty place and letmyself sink down on it, arranging myself automatically in the sprawl ofDry-towners indoors. In public they stood, rigid and formal, even to eatand drink. Among themselves, anything less than a loose-limbed sprawlbetrayed insulting watchfulness; only a man who fears secret murderkeeps himself on guard.
A girl with a tangled rope of hair down her back came toward me. Herhands were unchained, meaning she was a woman of the lowest class, notworth safeguarding. Her fur smock was shabby and matted with filth. Isent her for wine. When it came it was surprisingly good, the sweet andtreacherous wine of Ardcarran. I sipped it slowly, looking round.
If a caravan for Shainsa were leaving tomorrow, it would be known here.A word dropped that I was returning there would bring me, by ironboundcustom, an invitation to travel in their company.
When I sent the woman for wine a second time, a man on a nearby couchgot up, and walked over to me.
He was tall even for a Dry-towner, and there was something vaguelyfamiliar about him. He was no riffraff of the Kharsa, either, for hisshirtcloak was of rich silk interwoven with metallic threads, andcrusted with heavy embroideries. The hilt of his skean was carved from asingle green gem. He stood looking down at me for some time before hespoke.
"I never forget a voice, although I cannot bring your face to mind. HaveI a duty toward you?"
I had spoken a jargon to the girl, but he addressed me in the lilting,sing-song speech of Shainsa. I made no answer, gesturing him to beseated. On Wolf, formal courtesy requires a series of polite _nonsequiturs_, and while a direct question merely borders on rudeness, adirect answer is the mark of a simpleton.
"A drink?"
"I joined you unasked," he retorted, and summoned the tangle-headedgirl. "Bring us better wine than this swill!"
With that word and gesture I recognized him and my teeth clamped hard onmy lip. This was the loudmouth who had shown fight in the spaceportcafe, and run away before the dark girl with the sign of Nebran sprawledon her breast.
But in this poor light he had not recognized me. I moved deliberatelyinto the full red glow. If he did not know me for the Terran he hadchallenged last night in the spaceport cafe, it was unlikely that anyoneelse would. He stared at me for some minutes, but in the end he onlyshrugged and poured wine from the bottle he had ordered.
Three drinks later I knew that his name was Kyral and that he was atrader in wire and fine steel tools through the nonhuman towns. And Ihad given him the name I had chosen, Rascar.
He asked, "Are you thinking of returning to Shainsa?"
Wary of a trap, I hesitated, but the question seemed harmless, so I onlycountered, "Have you been long in the Kharsa?"
"Several weeks."
"Trading?"
"No." He applied himself to the wine again. "I was searching for amember of my family."
"Did you find him?"
"Her," said Kyral, and ceremoniously spat. "No, I didn't find her. Whatis your business in Shainsa?"
I chuckled briefly. "As a matter of fact, I am searching for a member ofmy family."
He narrowed his eyelids as if he suspected me of mocking him, butpersonal privacy is the most rigid convention of the Dry-towns and suchmockery showed a sensible disregard for prying questions if I did notchoose to answer them. He questioned no further.
"I can use an extra man to handle the loads. Are you good with packanimals? If so, you are welcome to travel under the protection of mycaravan."
I agreed. Then, reflecting that Juli and Rakhal must, after all, beknown in Shainsa, I asked, "Do you know a trader who calls himselfSensar?"
He started slightly; I saw his eyes move along my scars. Then reserve,like a lowered curtain, shut itself over his face, concealing a briefsatisfied glimmer. "No," he lied, and stood up.
"We leave at first daylight. Have your gear ready." He flipped somethingat me, and I caught it in midair. It was a stone incised with Kyral'sname in the ideographs of Shainsa. "You can sleep with the caravan ifyou care to. Show that token to Cuinn."
* * * * *
Kyral's caravan was encamped in a barred field past the furthest gatesof the Kharsa. About a dozen men were busy loading the packanimals--horses shipped in from Darkover, mostly. I asked the first manI met for Cuinn. He pointed out a burly fellow in a shiny redshirtcloak, who was busy at chewing out one of the young men for the wayhe'd put a packsaddle on his beast.
Shainsa is a good language for cursing, but Cuinn had a special talentat it. I blinked in admiration while I waited for him to get his breathso I could hand him Kyral's token.
In the light of the fire I saw what I'd half expected: he was the secondof the Dry-towners who'd tried to rough me up in the spaceport cafe.Cuinn barely glanced at the cut stone and tossed it back, pointing outone of the packhorses. "Load your personal gear on that one, then getbusy and show this mush-headed wearer of sandals"--an insult carryingparticularly filthy implications in Shainsa--"how to fasten apackstrap."
He drew breath and began to swear at the luckless youngster again, and Irelaxed. He evidently hadn't recognized me, either. I took the strap inmy hand, guiding it through the saddle loop. "Like that," I told thekid, and Cuinn stopped swearing long enough to give me a curt nod ofacknowledgment and point out a heap of boxed and crated objects.
"Help him load up. We want to get clear of the city by daybreak," heordered, and went off to swear at someone else.
Kyral turned up at dawn, and a few minutes later the camp had vanishedinto a small scattering of litter and we were on our way.
Kyral's caravan, in spite of Cuinn's cursing
, was well-managed andwell-handled. The men were Dry-towners, eleven of them, silent andcapable and most of them very young. They were cheerful on the trail,handled the pack animals competently, during the day, and spent most ofthe nights grouped around the fire, gambling silently on the fall of thecut-crystal prisms they used for dice.
Three days out of the Kharsa I began to worry about Cuinn.
It was of course a spectacular piece of bad luck to find all three ofthe men from the spaceport cafe in Kyral's caravan. Kyral had obviouslynot known me, and even by daylight he paid no attention to me except togive an occasional order. The second of the three was a gangling kid whoprobably never gave me a second look, let alone a third.
But Cuinn was another matter. He was a man my own age, and his fierceeyes had a shrewdness in them that I did not trust. More than once Icaught him watching me, and on the two or three occasions when he drewme into conversation, I found his questions more direct than Dry-towngood manners allowed. I weighed the possibility that I might have tokill him before we reached Shainsa.
We crossed the foothills and began to climb upward toward the mountains.The first few days I found myself short of breath as we worked upwardinto thinner air, then my acclimatization returned and I began to fallinto the pattern of the days and nights on the trail. The Trade Citywas still a beacon in the night, but its glow on the horizon grew dimmerwith each day's march.
Higher we climbed, along dangerous trails where men had to dismount andlet the pack animals pick their way, foot by foot. Here in thesealtitudes the sun at noonday blazed redder and brighter, and theDry-towners, who come from the parched lands in the sea-bottoms, wereburned and blistered by the fierce light. I had grown up under theblazing sun of Terra, and a red sun like Wolf, even at its hottest,caused me no discomfort. This alone would have made me suspect. Onceagain I found Cuinn's fierce eyes watching me.
As we crossed the passes and began to descend the long trail through thethick forests, we got into nonhuman country. Racing against the GhostWind, we skirted the country around Charin, and the woods inhabited bythe terrible Ya-men, birdlike creatures who turn cannibal when the GhostWind blows.
Later the trail wound through thicker forests of indigo trees andgrayish-purple brushwood, and at night we heard the howls of the catmenof these latitudes. At night we set guards about the caravan, and thedark spaces and shadows were filled with noises and queer smells andrustlings.
Nevertheless, the day's marches and the night watches passed withoutevent until the night I shared guard with Cuinn. I had posted myself atthe edge of the camp, the fire behind me. The men were sleeping rolls ofsnores, huddled close around the fire. The animals, hobbled with doubleropes, front feet to hind feet, shifted uneasily and let out longuncanny whines.
I heard Cuinn pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of theforest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him,then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts of the clearing.
For a moment I thought nothing of it, thinking that he was taking a fewsteps toward the gap in the trees where he had disappeared. I suppose Ihad the idea that he had slipped away to investigate some noise orshadow, and that I should be at hand.
Then I saw the flicker of lights beyond the trees--light from thelantern Cuinn had been carrying in his hand! He was signaling!
I slipped the safety clasp from the hilt of my skean and went after him.In the dimming glow of the fire I fancied I saw luminous eyes watchingme, and the skin on my back crawled. I crept up behind him and leaped.We went down in a tangle of flailing legs and arms, and in less than asecond he had his skean out and I was gripping his wrist, tryingdesperately to force the blade away from my throat.
I gasped, "Don't be a fool! One yell and the whole camp will be awake!Who were you signaling?"
In the light of the fallen lantern, lips drawn back in a snarl, helooked almost inhuman. He strained at the knife for a moment, thendropped it. "Let me up," he said.
I got up and kicked the fallen skean toward him. "Put that away. What inhell were you doing, trying to bring the catmen down on us?"
For a moment he looked taken aback, then his fierce face closed downagain and he said wrathfully, "Can't a man walk away from the campwithout being half strangled?"
I glared at him, but realized I really had nothing to go by. He mighthave been answering a call of nature, and the movement of the lanternaccidental. And if someone had jumped me from behind, I might havepulled a knife on him myself. So I only said, "Don't do it again. We'reall too jumpy."
There were no other incidents that night, or the next. The night after,while I lay huddled in my shirtcloak and blanket by the fire, I sawCuinn slip out of his bedroll and steal away. A moment later there was agleam in the darkness, but before I could summon the resolve to get upand face it out with him, he returned, looked cautiously at the snoringmen, and crawled back into his blankets.
While we were unpacking at the next camp, Kyral halted beside me. "Heardanything queer lately? I've got the notion we're being trailed. We'll beout of these forests tomorrow, and after that it's clear road all theway to Shainsa. If anything's going to happen, it will happen tonight."
I debated speaking to him about Cuinn's signals. No, I had my ownbusiness waiting for me in Shainsa. Why mix myself up in some other,private intrigue?
He said, "I'm putting you and Cuinn on watch again. The old men dozeoff, and the young fellows get to daydreaming or fooling around. That'sall right most of the time, but I want someone who'll keep his eyes opentonight. Did you ever know Cuinn before this?"
"Never set eyes on him."
"Funny, I had the notion--" He shrugged, turned away, then stopped.
"Don't think twice about rousing the camp if there's any disturbance.Better a false alarm than an ambush that catches us all in our blankets.If it came to a fight, we might be in a bad way. We all carry skeans,but I don't think there's a shocker in the whole camp, let alone a gun.You don't have one by any chance?"
After the men had turned in, Cuinn patrolling the camp, halted a minutebeside me and cocked his head toward the rustling forest.
"What's going on in there?"
"Who knows? Catmen on the prowl, probably, thinking the horses wouldmake a good meal, or maybe that we would."
"Think it will come to a fight?"
"I wouldn't know."
He surveyed me for a moment without speaking. "And if it did?"
"We'd fight." Then I sucked in my breath, for Cuinn had spoken TerranStandard, and I, without thinking had answered in the same language. Hegrinned, showing white teeth filed to a point.
"I thought so!"
I seized his shoulder and demanded roughly, "And what are you going todo about it?"
"That depends on you," he answered, "and what you want in Shainsa. Tellme the truth. What were you doing in the Terran Zone?" He gave me nochance to answer. "You know who Kyral is, don't you?"
"A trader," I said, "who pays my wages and minds his own affairs." Imoved backward, hand on my skean, braced for a sudden rush. He made noaggressive motion, however.
"Kyral told me you'd been asking questions about Rakhal Sensar," hesaid. "Clever. Now I, for one, could have told you he'd never set eyeson Rakhal. I--"
He broke off, hearing a noise in the forest, a long eerie howl. Imuttered, "If you've brought them down on us--"
He shook his head urgently. "I had to take that chance, to get word tothe others. It won't work. Where's the girl?"
I hardly heard him. I was hearing twigs snap, and silent sneaking feet.I turned for a yell that would rouse the camp and Cuinn grabbed me hard,saying insistently, "Quick! Where's the girl! Go back and tell her itwon't work! If Kyral suspected--"
He never finished the sentence. Just behind us came another of the longeerie howls. I knocked Cuinn away, and suddenly the night was filledwith crouching forms that came down on us like a whirlwind.
I shouted madly as the camp came alive with men struggling out ofblankets, fighting for life i
tself. I ran hard, still shouting, for theenclosure where we had tied the horses. A catman, slim and black-furred,was crouched and cutting the hobble-strings of the nearest animal. Ihurled myself on him. He exploded, clawing, raking my shoulder withtalons that ripped the rough cloth like paper. I whipped out my skeanand slashed upward. The talons contracted in my shoulder and I gaspedwith pain. Then the thing howled and fell away, clawing at the air. Ittwitched and lay still.
Four shots in rapid succession cracked in the clearing. Kyral to thecontrary, someone must have had a pistol. I heard one of the cat-thingswail, a hoarse dying rattle. Something dark clawed my arm and I slashedwith the knife, going down as another set of talons fastened in my back,rolling and clutching.
I managed to get the thing's forelimbs wedged under my elbow, my knee inits spine. I heaved, bent it backward, backward till it screamed, a highwail.
Then I felt the spine snap and the dead thing mewled once, just airescaping from collapsing lungs, and slid limp from my thigh. Erect ithad not been over four feet tall and in the light of the dying fire itmight have been a dead lynx.
"Rascar...." I heard a gasp, a groan. I whirled and saw Kyral go down,struggling, drowning in half a dozen or more of the fierce half-humans.I leaped at the smother of bodies, ripped one away with a stranglehold,slashed at its throat.
They were easy to kill.
I heard a high, urgent scream in their mewing tongue. Then the furredblack things seemed to melt into the forest as silently as they hadcome. Kyral, dazed, his forehead running blood, his arm slashed to thebone, was sitting on the ground, still stunned.
Somebody had to take charge. I bellowed, "Lights! Get lights. They won'tcome back if we have enough light, they can only see well in the dark."
Someone stirred the fire. It blazed up as they piled on dead branches,and I roughly commanded one of the kids to fill every lantern he couldfind, and get them burning. Four of the dead things were lying in theclearing. The youngster I'd helped loading horses, the first day, gazeddown at one of the catmen, half-disemboweled by somebody's skean, andsuddenly bolted for the bushes, where I heard him retching.
I set the others with stronger stomachs to dragging the bodies away fromthe clearing, and went back to see how badly Kyral was hurt. He had therip in his arm and his face was covered with blood from a shallow scalpwound, but he insisted on getting up to inspect the hurts of the others.
There was no one without a claw-wound in leg or back or shoulder, butnone were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someonedemanded, "Where's Cuinn?"
He didn't seem to be anywhere. Kyral, staggering slightly, insisted onsearching, but I felt we wouldn't find him. "He probably went off withhis friends," I snorted, and told about the signaling. Kyral lookedgrave.
"You should have told me," he began, but shouts from the far end of theclearing sent us racing there. We nearly stumbled over a single,solitary, motionless form, outstretched and lifeless, blind eyes staringupward at the moons.
It was Cuinn. And his throat had been torn completely out.