II
Stark waited, until they should tire of their own silence.
Finally one demanded, "Of what country are you?"
He answered, "I am called N'Chaka, the Man-Without-a-Tribe."
It was the name they had given him, the half-human aboriginals who hadraised him in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury.
"A stranger," said the leader, and smiled. He pointed at the dead Camarand asked, "Did you slay him?"
"He was my friend," said Stark, "I was bringing him home to die."
Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader,"He was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thord! And he has not beenrobbed." He proceeded to take care of that detail himself.
"A stranger," repeated the leader, Thord. "Bound for Kushat, with a manof Kushat. Well. I think you will come with us, stranger."
Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking him, he did not resistwhen the tall Thord plundered him of all he owned except hisclothes--and Camar's belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gunThord flung contemptuously away.
One of the men brought Stark's beast and Camar's from where they weretethered, and the Earthman mounted--as usual, over the violent protestof the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved outfrom under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.
For the rest of that night, and through the next day and the night thatfollowed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts andchew on their rations of jerked meat.
To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was theNorth country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships andcommerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touchedthese wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough.
To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimmer where thebarrier wall of the polar pack reared up, gigantic against the sky. Thewind blew, down from the ice, through the mountain gorges, across theplains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose,broken monoliths of stone. Stark remembered the vision of the talisman,the huge structure crowned with eerie darkness. He looked upon the ruinswith loathing and curiosity. The men of Mekh could tell him nothing.
Thord did not tell Stark where they were taking him, and Stark did notask. It would have been an admission of fear.
In mid-afternoon of the second day they came to a lip of rock where thesnow was swept clean, and below it was a sheer drop into a narrowvalley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up anddown as far as he could see, were men and beasts and shelters of hideand brush, and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand,they camped under the cliffs, and their voices rose up on the thin airin a vast deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of theplains.
A war party, gathered now, before the thaw. Stark smiled. He becamecurious to meet the leader of this army.
They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped downthe cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls.They came in among the shelters of the camp.
Here the snow was churned and soiled and melted to slush by the fires.There were no women in the camp, no sign of the usual cheerful rabblethat follows a barbarian army. There were only men--hillmen and warriorsall, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle.
They came out of their holes to shout at Thord and his men, and stare atthe stranger. Thord was flushed and jovial with importance.
"I have no time for you," he shouted back. "I go to speak with the LordCiaran."
Stark rode impassively, a dark giant with a face of stone. From time totime he made his beast curvet, and laughed at himself inwardly for doingit.
They came at length to a shelter larger than the others, but builtexactly the same and no more comfortable. A spear was thrust into thesnow beside the entrance, and from it hung a black pennant with a singlebar of silver across it, like lightning in a night sky. Beside it was ashield with the same device. There were no guards.
Thord dismounted, bidding Stark to do the same. He hammered on theshield with the hilt of his sword, announcing himself.
"Lord Ciaran! It is Thord--with a captive."
A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within.
"Enter, Thord."
Thord pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at hisheels.
* * * * *
The dim daylight did not penetrate the interior. Cressets burned, givingoff a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor ofpacked snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was noadornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table, both dark with ageand use, and a pallet of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed tobe a heap of rags upon it.
In the chair sat a man.
He seemed very tall, in the shaking light of the cressets. From neck tothigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunicof leather, dyed black. Across his knees he held a sable axe, a greatthing made for the shearing of skulls, and his hands lay upon it gently,as though it were a toy he loved.
His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen beforeonly in very old paintings--the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings ofMars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhumanvisage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, itsprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.
The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not uponThord, but upon Eric John Stark.
The hollow voice spoke again, from behind the mask. "Well?"
"We were hunting in the gorges to the south," said Thord. "We saw afire...." He told the story, of how they had found the stranger and thebody of the man from Kushat.
"Kushat!" said the Lord Ciaran softly. "Ah! And why, stranger, were yougoing to Kushat?"
"My name is Stark. Eric John Stark, Earthman, out of Mercury." He wastired of being called stranger. Quite suddenly, he was tired of thewhole business.
"Why should I not go to Kushat? Is it against some law, that a man maynot go there in peace without being hounded all over the Norlands? Andwhy do the men of Mekh make it their business? They have nothing to dowith the city."
Thord held his breath, watching with delighted anticipation.
The hands of the man in armor caressed the axe. They were slender hands,smooth and sinewy--small hands, it seemed, for such a weapon.
"We make what we will our business, Eric John Stark." He spoke with apeculiar gentleness. "I have asked you. Why were you going to Kushat?"
"Because," Stark answered with equal restraint, "my comrade wanted to gohome to die."
"It seems a long, hard journey, just for dying." The black helm bentforward, in an attitude of thought. "Only the condemned or banishedleave their cities, or their clans. Why did your comrade flee Kushat?"
A voice spoke suddenly from out of the heap of rags that lay on thepallet in the shadows of the corner. A man's voice, deep and husky, withthe harsh quaver of age or madness in it.
"Three men beside myself have fled Kushat, over the years that matter.One died in the spring floods. One was caught in the moving ice ofwinter. One lived. A thief named Camar, who stole a certain talisman."
Stark said, "My comrade was called Greshi." The leather belt weighedheavy about him, and the iron boss seemed hot against his belly. He wasbeginning, now, to be afraid.
* * * * *
The Lord Ciaran spoke, ignoring Stark. "It was the sacred talisman ofKushat. Without it, the city is like a man without a soul."
As the Veil of Tanit was to Carthage, Stark thought, and reflected onthe fate of that city after the Veil was stolen.
"The nobles were afraid of their own people," the man in armor said."They did not dare to tell that it was gone. But we know."
"And," said Stark, "you will attack Kushat before the thaw, when theyleast expect you."
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"You have a sharp mind, stranger. Yes. But the great wall will be hardto carry, even so. If I came, bearing in _my_ hands the talisman of BanCruach...."
He did not finish, but turned instead to Thord. "When you plundered thedead man's body, what did you find?"
"Nothing, Lord. A few coins, a knife, hardly worth the taking."
"And you, Eric John Stark. What did you take from the body?"
With perfect truth he answered, "Nothing."
"Thord," said the Lord Ciaran, "search him."
Thord came smiling up to Stark and ripped his jacket open.
With uncanny swiftness, the Earthman moved. The edge of one broad handtook Thord under the ear, and before the man's knees had time to sagStark had caught his arm. He turned, crouching forward, and pitchedThord headlong through the door flap.
He straightened and turned again. His eyes held a feral glint. "The manhas robbed me once," he said. "It is enough."
He heard Thord's men coming. Three of them tried to jam through theentrance at once, and he sprang at them. He made no sound. His fists didthe talking for him, and then his feet, as he kicked the stunnedbarbarians back upon their leader.
"Now," he said to the Lord Ciaran, "will we talk as men?"
The man in armor laughed, a sound of pure enjoyment. It seemed that thegaze behind the mask studied Stark's savage face, and then lifted togreet the sullen Thord who came back into the shelter, his cheeksflushed crimson with rage.
"Go," said the Lord Ciaran. "The stranger and I will talk."
"But Lord," he protested, glaring at Stark, "it is not safe...."
"My dark mistress looks after my safety," said Ciaran, stroking the axeacross his knees. "Go."
Thord went.
The man in armor was silent then, the blind mask turned to Stark, whomet that eyeless gaze and was silent also. And the bundle of rags in theshadows straightened slowly and became a tall old man with rusty hairand beard, through which peered craggy juts of bone and two bright,small points of fire, as though some wicked flame burned within him.
He shuffled over and crouched at the feet of the Lord Ciaran, watchingthe Earthman. And the man in armor leaned forward.
"I will tell you something, Eric John Stark. I am a bastard, but I comeof the blood of kings. My name and rank I must make with my own hands.But I will set them high, and my name will ring in the Norlands!
"I will take Kushat. Who holds Kushat, holds Mars--and the power and theriches that lie beyond the Gates of Death!"
"I have seen them," said the old man, and his eyes blazed. "I have seenBan Cruach the mighty. I have seen the temples and the palaces glitterin the ice. I have seen _Them_, the shining ones. Oh, I have seen them,the beautiful, hideous ones!"
He glanced sidelong at Stark, very cunning. "That is why Otar is mad,stranger. _He has seen._"
A chill swept Stark. He too had seen, not with his own eyes but with themind and memories of Ban Cruach, of a million years ago.
Then it had been no illusion, the fantastic vision opened to him by thetalisman now hidden in his belt! If this old madman had seen....
"What beings lurk beyond the Gates of Death I do not know," said Ciaran."But my dark mistress will test their strength--and I think my redwolves will hunt them down, once they get a smell of plunder."
"The beautiful, terrible ones," whispered Otar. "And oh, the temples andthe palaces, and the great towers of stone!"
"Ride with me, Stark," said the Lord Ciaran abruptly. "Yield up thetalisman, and be the shield at my back. I have offered no other man thathonor."
Stark asked slowly, "Why do you choose me?"
"We are of one blood, Stark, though we be strangers."
The Earthman's cold eyes narrowed. "What would your red wolves say tothat? And what would Otar say? Look at him, already stiff with jealousy,and fear lest I answer, 'Yes'."
"I do not think you would be afraid of either of them."
"On the contrary," said Stark, "I am a prudent man." He paused. "Thereis one other thing. I will bargain with no man until I have looked intohis eyes. Take off your helm, Ciaran--and then perhaps we will talk!"
Otar's breath made a snakelike hissing between his toothless gums, andthe hands of the Lord Ciaran tightened on the haft of the axe.
"No!" he whispered. "That I can never do."
Otar rose to his feet, and for the first time Stark felt the fullstrength that lay in this strange old man.
"Would you look upon the face of destruction?" he thundered. "Do you askfor death? Do you think a thing is hidden behind a mask of steel withouta reason, that you demand to see it?"
He turned. "My Lord," he said. "By tomorrow the last of the clans willhave joined us. After that, we must march. Give this Earthman to Thord,for the time that remains--and you will have the talisman."
The blank, blind mask was unmoving, turned toward Stark, and theEarthman thought that from behind it came a faint sound that might havebeen a sigh.
Then....
"Thord!" cried the Lord Ciaran, and lifted up the axe.