Jofre whirled around, fighting to keep his feet, but his bones might have softened in an instant. He crumpled to the ground, half bouncing off a rock. But even that encounter failed to scrape the Jat away and its body was now a lump-load on his chest. The guard found it sheer agony to get a breath, and he realized that, for the second time, he had taken a bolt from a stass stunner, leaving him easy prey for any attack.
He did not lose consciousness; though, for a period of time he could not measure, he strove somehow to shift the body of Yan, hoping that would let him breathe easier. The fact that he did have some small movement in his neck was a faint promise that he could do this. Had the Jat taken to itself part of the charge of that weapon, thus giving Jofre the slimmest of chances? But again, how did the creature—?
“Be still—not move—” the thought struck into his mind. Yan’s head was squeezed a little down so that the Jat’s forehead pressed against Jofre’s. The contact—could it be what aided their transfer of thought?
He had managed to edge his head around a fraction, something he certainly could not have done had he taken the full force of the ray. Now he could breathe—and hear—
But he could not see, save for a hair-fringed, tiny slit of what was beyond. The Zacathan’s boots were within that very limited range of vision and that was all. Now—he must fight in his own way, as he had aboard the Tssekian ship, call upon his inner strength. And this time he lacked the Lair stone to amplify what powers he could summon.
The drone of the flitter was very loud; the craft must be setting down somewhere near. They had not stassed Zurzal for some reason. Taynad—? Apparently the Jat was not unconscious. It might well be as locked as he into helplessness of body but its mind was alert. Could he somehow reach Taynad through that furry head resting against his own?
“Learned One,” it was a strange voice, speaking trade tongue, “you are to be congratulated on a most impressive display from your invention—or discovery—or whatever you claim it to be. We were duly made aware of just what this discovery has to offer—for our purposes, of course.”
Zurzal’s boots had not moved in that narrow slit of sight allowed Jofre.
“One success does not make for a continued series of them—” the hissing note in the Zacathan’s answer had the fury of a reptilian arousal. “You play games, let us come to the point. I take it you are Guild.”
“But of course,” the smooth voice returned. “We tried to discuss matters with you some time back but it appears that you are a very stubborn lizard, Learned One. It was then decided that, until we had real proof of what you were able to do, we would just wait and see. We even helped you along the way—Gosal’s ship was ready when you needed transportation, and if you had not won out of Tssek through your own efforts, we had plans to assist you there also. Yes, we have a number of work hours tied up in you and your affairs, Learned One. Now it is time to collect payment.”
“Take the scanner if you wish,” Zurzal returned. Jofre could see a slight movement as if he shifted weight from one foot to the other. “It will do you no good. That summoning of the past you saw burned out the charge.”
“Oh, but surely that can be easily corrected. You yourself, Learned One, will be only too glad to lend your full assistance.”
“I hardly think so,” Zurzal returned.
“You are a master of knowledge—or so you Zacathans claim. But do not underrate others. We have our sources also. I think you will be most eager to give us any aid within your power. Opgor, let us have a demonstration of your marksmanship.”
Jofre could not mistake the crackle of a blaster. He saw those two firmly planted feet tremble, totter out of his line of sight. And there was a smell—the smell of cooked meat.
A hissing like that of a snake about to strike.
“Excellent beam control, Opgor. Now, Learned One, you may not have the use of that right hand of yours, and your other is not much good. But you can direct others in providing the agile fingers needed. Also—understand this, we know very well that if you cannot be provided with the proper regeneration treatment in time you are NOT going to regrow that one. So your cooperation is necessary. It really is very simple, isn’t it? We shall see that you have proper accommodations and tending just as long as you give us in exchange some of the vaunted knowledge of yours.
“And it will not be limited to just the use of your scanner. Oh, no, a chance such as this comes perhaps once in a being’s lifetime. You will provide our information experts with the sites of suitable delvings for the future. You see, in the end, the game is ours.”
“Is it?” Taynad—what was she doing using that voice, addressing this Guild leader as she would a lesser servant?
“We have not indeed forgotten you, my dear. Guild bargains hold. You have been dispatched to ensnare one of your own kind—though a traitor. He is freely yours and in such condition that you will not have to worry about any guards. You will be lifted from here, returned to the port with your catch. Gosal shall again obey orders and see that you and this lump of meat will be returned to Wayright. What happens beyond that, I leave to your own people. We have done as we were paid to do.”
“It would seem, Veep,” the Taynad Jofre could not see answered, “that you have taken into consideration every point except one. Your knowledge may run deep but I do not think that it encompasses the oaths of the issha breed. I gave the Learned One my promise to be one with him until this adventure was finished—”
“It is finished.” There was a note of impatience in that. “The lizard has done what he desired—proved the usefulness of this time reader of his. Therefore, you are now freed. We will proceed as planned—”
“The lizard—Lord Rang—he is dying!”
Those words were like a jolt—as sharp a jolt of fear and energy as any the Assha stone had ever delivered. Jofre reached for strength from the Center, and that responded. He knew he could move again, but how greatly would the stass hinder that movement? He could only test it by the swiftest action he could summon.
His arm swept under the Jat’s flaccid body.
“No watch now—” Those three words fed Jofre’s energy another, if shorter, jolt. They believed him entirely out of the picture. Well, they would discover what an issha could do to revenge his oath!
There was a babble of voices to which he closed his ears. That rock he had slid down against at the first attack gave him a solid base against which he shifted now. Then he flung aside the Jat and was up, his back to the stone. And he had been right! Their attackers were gathered some distance away about a body on the ground and one of them knelt beside it, an open medical kit to hand.
Taynad? She was in the midst of them, Zurzal’s frilled head on her knee. But her eyes sought farther afield—found Jofre. He tensed—she would cry out—
He had already picked his man. By the clothing and the way orders sprouted from him, this was the leader. His back was to Jofre, whom they had totally dismissed from their minds.
The guard inched forward. Had he been able to throw off all the effects of the stass, he might well have gone into action. However, his arms and legs did not respond to the orders his raging mind gave. Rage—anger—it was fuel, it could burn away doubts, increase energy if it were so used. Jofre allowed, in a sudden snap of control, his rage to flare.
He was behind that Guild leader, the clawed chain out, about the man’s throat, its hooks biting into the other’s thick flesh.
“Now,” Jofre said in a set, quiet voice, “there is a new payment, life for life. You die, brother of all evil.”
CHAPTER 31
“BLOOD PRICE—”
They had frozen as if a stass had taken them all, though they did not collapse. Jofre tightened hold with his left hand on the chain, though he was not yet ready to supply the final twist. His right flashed around and gripped the blaster in his captive’s holster, flicking it out into the open.
One of that group of four about the prone Zacathan rolled and was on his fe
et, running towards the flitter. Jofre fired. A scream which tore the air was his answer. That would-be escape ended with a sobbing, screeching body rolling on the earth, beating at smoldering clothing.
The man Jofre held jerked, and then uttered a cry of his own as one of the hooks tore into his flesh. He who had tried for the flitter now lay quiet.
“Blood price—” Jofre repeated and his voice seemed battle shrill in the heavy silence.
Taynad moved, setting Zurzal’s head gently aside. As she pulled up to her feet her hand skimmed along the side of the man beside her, neatly disarming him. Jofre waited. He could kill now with one twist of his wrist and burn down those others in a wide-armed sweep, but such would take in Taynad.
She held her own weapon steady but did not try to aim at Jofre. Perhaps she did not dare, for, even as she crisped him, she would be destroying also the leader he held.
“Drop your weapons!” It was she who said that and the blaster was on the other three.
Perhaps the precarious position of their leader might not have brought such instant obedience, but the fact that they, too, were now within range of a blast which could not miss made them indeed draw their weapons and drop them to the ground.
“Kick them—” Jofre took a quick hand in the game, though he was not yet sure by which rules Taynad was playing—“out!”
That man who had continued to kneel by the Zacathan with the medical kit picked his sidearm up by the barrel and hurled it in Jofre’s direction. The other kicked as ordered, sending his weapons in the same direction.
Taynad turned again to the man she had already disarmed. Still holding the blaster at ready, her other hand grabbed at his dangling arm, ran down the sleeve there and now held a knife by the blade. This she tossed after the blasters.
“There is no blood price yet.” For the first time she addressed Jofre directly. “The Learned One still lives—if that one can keep life in his body.” She nodded toward the one with the medic’s bag.
“Do so,” Jofre snapped. At the same time he brought the barrel of the blaster around behind the ear of the man he held in the chain noose. That one crumpled so suddenly that he nearly took Jofre down with him before the guard could loosen his grasp.
He stood over that unconscious prisoner for a moment, eyeing Taynad. But she was no longer looking in his direction; her attention was all for the two men she covered with her blaster.
Jofre dared believe that, at least for now, they were on the same side. He used the chain for another purpose, in spite of the cruelty of the embedded hooks, and fastened the wrists of his captive securely behind him before dragging them down so that the hooks on the other end could be caught firmly in the boots, leaving the other’s body arched as a bow.
With that one as secure as he could make him, the guard rounded one of the rocks to the side of the man from whose sleeve Taynad had dislodged the hidden knife. A blow delivered with the edge of his hand sent that one sprawling and his own belt was used to truss him up.
That left the medic, but Taynad was standing over him now as he worked on the Zacathan. Jofre saw that charred stump and his breath hissed between his teeth as if he shared some of Zurzal’s reptilian blood.
“I guard,” he told the girl. “There is Yan—”
“Yes,” she agreed but she did not put away the blaster. With that still swinging in one hand she hurried to that small brown form curled at the foot of the rock.
“You!” Jofre demanded attention from the medic who had been keeping his head down, working quickly and, Jofre thought, with practiced skill at the Zacathan’s burn. Perhaps, seeing who he companioned with, he had plenty of skill in such matters.
“Tell me,” the guard demanded, “what can you do to bring the Jat out of stass?”
“For humanoids there is an injection,” the man answered, though he did not look up. “Whether that will work for a Jat—who knows?” He shrugged.
“You for one had better,” Jofre said. He watched the last of the elastic casing applied to Zurzal’s wound and then he gestured to the Jat. “Be about your business there now.”
Zurzal slowly opened his large eyes. They did not seem to focus on Jofre, but before him, straight up into the sky. “The legions rode—” he said and his frill fluttered, save for where the weight of his head pinned it to the ground. “The legions of the lost rode—we saw them.”
Jofre went down on one knee. “We did, Learned One. No man can now say that you are a fool—for we have seen the past alive because of you.” He did not know why he chose those words, only they seemed to come without summoning as what must be said now.
“What—I am—” His right arm trembled, raised, and he turned his head that he might look down the length of his body to survey that wound of horror.
“You are alive, Learned One. And they are prisoners.”
“But—you were in stass—”
“The Jat—it put itself between—now—” Jofre looked beyond Zurzal to where Taynad held Yan within the crook of one arm while the medic readied an infusion punch against the furred upper limb now dropping so limply over Taynad’s knee. “Now, that medic of theirs tries revival.”
“Little one—” Not words of voice, words of mind—Taynad’s mind.
Jofre moved again to the girl’s side. He no longer had the Assha stone; did that mean that he could give no more aid? He could only try. But he laid the blaster well within reach as he took Taynad into his hold much as she had the Jat.
“Little one—” She was mind calling, and he added to that call as best he could. There was a passage of power between them, he could feel the flow of it. “Little one, come back to us—”
Jofre’s lips shaped the same words as blazed now in his mind. His rage had been expended in the attack, so he did not have that fuel for the inner fire. But there were other emotions besides rage. Yan had offered himself for a life shield—that was the act not of any animal Jofre knew, but the action of a man. Therefore all the emotion which could pass between battle comrades could—must come—NOW!
“Yan—dark—Yan—lost—” A trail of thought so tenuous he might almost believe it a wisp of his own imagination. But he felt Taynad seize instantly upon it as one might seize upon a rope to pull to safety some climber who had lost footing on a treacherous slope.
“Yan! Come—come—!”
At first no answer and then—yes, that line was holding. Jofre poured what power he could into their linkage, and Taynad, Taynad was a very anchor of strength!
There was a little moaning cry and Yan’s head turned against the girl’s shoulder.
Jofre gently withdrew his support. He felt as if he had spent long hours in the arms court, tired to weakness, near dizzy when he tried to turn his full sight on anyone. Yet—there was much to be done.
Somehow he got on his feet and went back to Zurzal. The Zacathan had managed to use his growing left arm and hand to lever himself to a sitting position and now he stretched that small fist of immature fingers toward the scanner.
Jofre looked beyond. The man he had burned down lay in a patch of charred tundra grass—the flitter near him. They had three captives on their hands—perhaps it might be well to put the medic in bonds too—and they had the flitter.
But suppose they were to load their prisoners and themselves on that? He was no flitter pilot, he doubted very much that Taynad had such training—and certainly Zurzal, even if he knew how to manage the controls, could not do so now. Also, supposing that fortune was to favor them very wildly, and they managed to make the flight back to the port—that might well mean they would simply be walking into a trap. On Lochan he could not help but believe that they were without any friends.
Something dangerous and foolhardy might be done using at least the leader of this expedition as a bargaining point but at present Jofre could not see his way into such a maze. He would have to know the value of his captive and whom he was going to have to bargain with. Certainly none of the prisoners would voluntarily supply h
im with that information.
It was now the time to reckon up just what their resources were. He looked to Taynad still cradling the Jat, though he noted that she kept one hand near her blaster and one eye on the medic, who appeared very busy fitting various things into the bag on the ground between them.
So sweeping was Jofre’s gaze that he caught sight again of that wave of Skrem out of the chasm. Their bodies were still inert. But how they could handle the stass he could not tell. Perhaps, being of another species, they were dead when exposed to even the low wave Zurzal’s weapon used.
Also he saw but four in the Guild squad. Certainly no one else had issued from the flitter to counter his attack, nor had a weapon set within the craft been used to burn him down. But that did not mean that there could not be some nasty surprise waiting there.
Jofre spoke to the girl. “Those Skrem—if they rise again—”
She nodded briskly. “I shall watch, Shadow. There is also the flitter—”
“Which I shall see to now.” Jofre glanced to the Zacathan, who now sat with his back against one of the rocky mounds. It was plain Zurzal had reached that position with an effort which left him panting, but his eyes were open and aware.
The two in bonds still lay quiet. Now Jofre moved in on the medic. Best make sure.
“Hands behind,” he ordered.
“You haven’t a chance—” The other set his bag aside and did place his hands behind his back. “They are going to come looking for us. Praspar”—he jerked a nod towards the chained man—“is to broadcast in a measured time. If they don’t hear from him—” He shrugged.
Jofre did not answer. He had sacrificed most of his girdle to be torn into strips and he made use of those well. No one was going to slip out of those.
His first assay must be to the flitter. Taynad could watch the chasm and the fringe of bodies at the edge of that. Were there any stirring she would sound the alarm.