“The trader U-Ky leaves today,” the priest said. “It is true I shall be with him as it is necessary that I return to the Walls. And my Deves will bear me company. If you can bargain for transport with U-Ky—then let it be done.”
It seemed that the Zacathan had very little trouble striking the bargain with the red-maned trader whom Jofre continued to watch narrowly. The fellow was a double for that alien who had been on Wayright though there was no way he could have made the journey back without their knowing it. It must be that there was such a strong resemblance between members of his race that it was difficult for outsiders to differentiate between them. What Zurzal offered him was a packet of silver pieces, such an exchange allowed by Wok Bi, in whose presence the transaction was done—silver being, it appeared, in rare supply on Lochan.
Their bargaining obtained the use of four of the swing carrying monsters. Zurzal, with the scanner across his knees, occupied the left swing of the first, Jofre the right. Behind them came Taynad with the Jat, balanced by a selection of equal weight of their gear, and the final bearers transported the rest of their equipment.
The heat as they set out was intense but at least, perched on swings, they were above the insect swarms. Though the constant movement of those seats made the off-world riders a little giddy and queasy, inclined to hold on tightly wherever a good anchorage offered.
U-Ky’s caravan was a fairly impressive command and he rode to its head. There was also the bearer who balanced the great weight of the Axe against a tall pile of bundles. Swinging along behind the priest were the robed Deves. Strung out behind came some of the maned people, only a few of them red-maned and the rest as yellow-backed as the tundra.
Their rate of progress was no faster than a ponderous walk; apparently the huge bearers kept to what was a steady pace for them and never displayed any change in gait. Under the climbing and burning sun this travel was misery for the off-worlders and Jofre had to fight to hold on to his patience.
The yellow tundra seemed to stretch forever and though the caravan headed confidently forward, there was no trace of trail or road to be seen, nor any markers rising to guide the unknowing. It must be that the natives were like animals or birds on some of the other worlds which possessed ingrown direction skills.
They made no halt for nooning but as the sun shifted westward there began to show a line of dark marking the junction of sky and land ahead. It was toward that they continued doggedly even as the sun set and the quick dusk of Lochan closed in.
Still the caravan showed no signs of coming to a halt and the off-worlders were decidedly uncomfortable and tired. Then, out of the northern shadows, there shot a beam of light which flickered, Jofre decided after a moment’s watching, in a distinct pattern. He was aware of movement on the right-hand swing of the bearer ahead of him; the rider there, one of the yellow manes, had raised what looked like a thick stick. From the tip of that flashed in turn an answer to that flare ahead.
So announced they swung on into what was an encampment, nearly as large as the caravan itself as to numbers. There were no sod buildings here, rather stretches of woven reed mats set to form very crude tentlike enclosures. While awaiting them were not only members of the maned race, and robed Deves, but a new type of Lochanian native. These were short in size, hardly larger than the Jat, and armored—or shelled—with dull green carapacelike body covering from which a wide, also shielded head and thin knobby jointed limbs projected. They did not mingle with those who crowded forward to greet the caravaners, rather held off in a party to themselves.
Jofre, catching good sight of one standing just beneath one of the massed luminous moss torches of the camp, recognized this as a tribesman concerning which there had been a very short note in their scant study tapes. This was a Skrem, one of the nomads whose tribes drifted along the very edge of the Shattered land.
The off-worlders were glad to be able to slide down from their shaking conveyances and immediately sought the outer regions of the camp for relief. Even the issha training, Jofre decided, had not prepared him for such a journey as this had been. He drew a deep breath as he relatched his belt; even another fraction of a time mark might have been a disaster.
The small outlander party was left alone. Their luggage had been carelessly dumped as their bearers trudged mechanically away to the assembly of their own kind. There was no offer of any tent covering, but the three united in piling their equipment so that it gave a measure of shelter and they did not try to approach the low-burning fires which marked the fore of those misshapen tents. They had their trail rations and they selected small shares of those, knowing from the start they must take good care of the highly nourishing, if near-tasteless stuff, since living off the land might be impossible.
The caravaners apparently had a more robust meal to suit them. Joints of some unidentifiable meat were spitted over the fires and then portions sawed off with belt knives to please the diner. Bulging skins appeared also and were passed from hand to hand. The Lochanians, Jofre noted, were quite practiced in the tricky maneuver of throwing back the head and allowing a thick curl of liquid to flow from the lower bag end directly into their mouths.
This informal feasting was still in progress when a party of three approached the impromptu campsite of the off-worlders. Against the glow of one of the fires could be made out the unwieldy bulk of one who could only be the Axe of Rou, attended by one of the Deves, and scuttling along at his side one of the Skrem.
The three from off-world arose, the Jat pushing in behind Taynad, peering around her with timid curiosity.
“Well journeyed,” Zurzal had the translator at ready. “What does the Axe desire of this company?”
For a moment or so after he came to a halt the priest merely puffed as if he had made the trip across camp at some labor.
“Strangers, Rou frowns upon your travels.”
“How so?”
“The season is late, we move too slowly, there is no entering the Shattered Land after the Wild Winds rise.”
“Our pace is one set by you and your people, Axe of Rou. Can it be that Rou now requires that we prove ourselves by finding a faster way to satisfy His bidding in this matter?”
“There is one.” The priest paused as if he were undecided about this, as if he were being forced against his will to come to a decision he distrusted. “The Skrem know another path. This is I’On.” He indicated the strange native. There was little to be seen in the way of features on that one’s face. The helmet (or the outgrowth of natural skull) reached forward in a visor shape which fully shadowed the eyes. Below those half-hidden pits the face narrowed to a sharp point of chin, the nose joined to that in a beaklike extension.
I’On made no move nor sound to acknowledge the introduction. Instead he stepped ahead of the priest to stand directly before the Zacathan, his head moving slowly up and then down, as if he measured the much taller lizard man from head to foot and back again.
Zurzal could not speak any greeting since the other’s speech had not been picked up to be read by the translator.
From the Zacathan, the Skrem turned to Jofre, favored him with the same scrutiny, passed on to Taynad, and last of all shot his head a little forward as if to get a better look at the Jat, which had squeaked and withdrawn nearly behind the girl.
Having submitted them all to some form of his own measurement, the Skrem returned to the Zacathan.
What issued from the beak mouth was a chittering sound not unlike that Jofre had heard the hive man give back on Wayright.
“Why hunt you ghosts?” sputtered the translator.
“To learn,” Zurzal returned briefly.
“To learn what?”
“The ways of the past.”
“Those of the silences are eaters of men. Would you fill their pots joyfully?”
“I would learn of them—”
“There are always fools in the world.” The contempt of that pushed even through the translator. “Well, what have you to offer, fool,
to be taken to meet the results of your folly?”
“What do you ask, I’On?”
The Skrem did not answer at once. Rather he turned his head slowly as if to inspect all the pile of their belongings. Then of a sudden, so suddenly, that it brought Jofre to a crouch and ready to defend himself, he turned to the guard.
“This one goes also?”
“He goes,” Zurzal assured him.
“He will have a service to offer—when the time is ready. Let him be also ready.”
“What service?”
“It shall reveal itself. So be it. The Shattered Land shall be a gate opened to you, fools. We shall claim our price when it is right. Be ready to move out at first light.”
He turned and left them, brushing past the Deves and leaving the priest to stare after him before the Axe looked, his big eyes a little narrowed, at the Zacathan, and on to Jofre.
“What does he mean? What service can such as you offer the drifting ones?”
“You heard, Axe, what we heard. It would seem that we have now an open-ended bargain. But it will have to suffice.”
For a moment it seemed as if the priest was going to protest further and then he turned away, but not before he shot another look at Jofre which was both speculative and unpleasant.
“Why me?” Jofre actually voiced that question when they were alone again.
He heard Taynad laugh. “Did he not speak of ghosts who want man flesh for their pots? Perhaps he would herd a particularly toothsome dish in their direction. But I think—Learned One,” she said slowly, “that Skrem—he has a strong inner sense—he sought. Us he could not touch—but the little one,” she stooped and gathered up the trembling Jat, holding its body close, “it knew and feared. I think that we had best be doubly on guard.”
“As if we can be anything else,” Zurzal returned. “This is indeed perhaps folly, yet I cannot—I cannot stray from what I would do here!”
CHAPTER 27
WHAT I’ON HAD TO OFFER on his part they learned the next morning. Though the caravan moved on its way, the off-worlders remained with the Skrem. Two of the Deves also relinquished their traveling swings, though the Axe had gone with the others. It was apparent that the priest fully intended to have his own sources of information—or control—accompanying the Zacathan’s party.
The stamping march of the bearers was well away from the overnight campsite when the Skrem went to work. He scrabbled in the mosscarpet some distance away from the trampled ground and came up with three rods which he fitted together—much like the tripod on which the scanner rested. But what was then affixed on top was a round of what appeared to be crystal, backed with an interweaving of the same material as the rods.
As the off-worlders remained by the pile of their gear, the Skrem affixed the platter to the tripod and wriggled it back and forth. Jofre recognized something from the Lair days—their mountain sentries had used burnished mirrors for the flashing of messages overland. This must be a similar form of communication.
Swiftly the Skrem tilted his signal back and forth. Then from the northeast there came a flicker of light in return. Methodically the Skrem set about dismantling the apparatus and then reburied it, pulling the moss back over it,
How long must they wait? Taynad leaned back against a box of supplies. It seemed to her now that her wits certainly must have been astray when she had joined up with this muddle-headed Zacathan. Jofre was oathed to him, she was not—save by word alone. The mission to Tssek had been her first big one and it had fallen apart through no fault of her own. She had been given those orders—why did she continue to question them this way? She could only return in thought to those moments when she, Jofre, and Yan had been one—as if at that time there had been forged something as strong as a blood oath. It was almost as if her own will had been weakened, that she had been drawn along as one sometimes was in ill dreams when one struggled against an invisible threatening power.
“Power—strong—big—” She had a mind vision of a fire raging up into the sky, heat which was not from any sun, even one as hot as this one. Yan crouched against her. The Jat’s paw hand rested over her hand and its large eyes were turned up to view her face. “Power—” Yes, that had sprung from Yan’s thinking, not her own. She shot a glance in Jofre’s direction.
He was watching the actions of the Skrem with complete absorption as if he expected some trouble to burst from a gesture or action on the part of the alien. No, Jofre must not have been touched by that half-message.
Taynad closed her hand gently about the Jat’s. “Power?” She struggled to give all the strength she could to make that word a question.
What she received in return did not altogether surprise her. A wavering, oddly slanted face flashed into her mind—Jofre—as Yan must see him.
“Power?” she asked again in thought.
Flames—shooting flames bursting outward as if a dozen lasers were firing at a single target. She instinctively cringed. Yan was very sure.
The flames were, of course, merely a picturing of punishing force, of that she was certain. The guard could have not smuggled in any weapon that would reveal itself so. In fact she was very sure that she knew exactly the number and style of every piece of armament he had hidden about his person.
There were tales that the Shagga could produce strange effects—bemuse minds—make one see what was not there—even as the issha could protect themselves for short periods of time. But Jofre was not Shagga—to them he was the enemy who must be erased—one way or another.
Why did they want him prisoner, that was a small puzzle—better dead—off-world dead where he would be no problem. Why prisoner—and only dead at the last resort as the instructions passed to her? Or—her thought took another small leap—were those twigs and their messages counterfeit? The Guild was supposed to possess infinite knowledge. She knew that Zarn had been charged with certain delicate negotiations with the Guild. Suppose it was the Guild who wanted Jofre—alive—or dead by her hand?
Her eyes lowered to that hand curved to comfort the Jat. Shadow did not slay Shadow. She must have better reason—Which came back to—
The Jat squirmed closer to her. Another mind picture—blurred—so distorted she could make nothing of it. Except that she was certain that it was an object—something which Jofre owned, or controlled, or—
“They are coming!” Zurzal was on his feet, looking out over the tundra in the direction which that flash had marked. There was certainly movement there and at a speed far transcending the plod of the bearers. As they plowed on through the moss the new party revealed themselves, however, as grotesquely alien to the off-worlders as U-Ky and his caravaners had been.
There were four mounted figures, each leading a line of four-footed creatures but apparently by no lines or reins, the mounts being followed without urging by six of their own kind, in a line behind each of the riders.
They were of the same musty yellow as the tundra, their legs long and thin, their bodies apparently hairless and also nearly skeleton-slender. They held their heads on a straight line with their bodies as they came, and the muzzles ended in sharp points. Those heads were small in proportion to a spread of horns, bending sharply backward, which were flat and shovellike in appearance.
As the runners came pounding up to the deserted campsite Jofre saw that their feet were long and narrow, the fore ones sprouting claws which apparently were not retractable. The Skrem who brought them rode well forward on those slim backs, their hands gripping the edges of the shovel horns.
In height they were close to the size of a small horse such as Jofre had seen used for pleasure riding on Wayright, and on the backs of those without riders there were weavings of odd-looking harness. But there were no saddles; apparently one was to perch like the Skrem, hold on to the horns, and hope for the best.
The Skrem made no move to aid in the loading of the extra mounts, gathering in a knot around I’On and chittering loudly. Fortunately the animals they had brought did not
seem to resent the actions of the three in dividing up their gear and stowing it into the baggage nets. Jofre wondered if what they had to haul would not be too heavy a load but the creatures, except for a grunt or two, made no complaint.
At length it was time for they themselves to scramble up, finding that their seats on those ridge-boned backs were not comfortable—but, as with the swings, had to be endured. The riders were back in place, and I’On mounted behind one of those. At some signal the off-worlders did not catch the party wheeled in parade order and headed out, northeast, in the same style as they had arrived, lining up behind the four leaders.
It was a rough jolting, and the hold on the creatures’ horns did little to steady one. But at least they went at a good speed and the animals, ridden or laden, apparently were ready to keep to that pace. Within a short time there loomed before them a rise in the land like a wall. The grey stones of it pierced the moss. The Deves, who had done nothing to help with the luggage, and both bestrode one of the animals, uttered a call which blended both of their voices. This was the Var, a natural walling as far as the Lochanians knew, separating the plains from the highlands. It was also a cut across which a bridge had been strung—an exceedingly fragile-looking bridge—by the approaches to which there were both maned men and Deves stationed. However, at the sight of the two Deves with the Skrem party these fell back and the first of the riders was out on the bridge.
At least here their mounts slowed to a walk and ventured out on the swinging support at well separated intervals, so there was a wait on the far side for their party to again assemble. Also here their path led through gullies and there were rising hills. The vegetation changed to a sharp degree. The yellow moss of the tundra was gone. Here were skeleton-thin, branched shrubs, around the roots of which clustered patches of indigo blue, an eye-aching green, and a bloody red growth which put forth bristles, not unlike thorns, and attracted a great many flying things.