CHAPTER 11
It was well, Nosh thought, as she shouldered her pack some days later, that she was already trail tried. Once or twice her thoughts flitted to that other deadly march into the Ryft. But since then there had been the journeying with Dreen and the confidence she had gained from what she had learned—not only from the priestess—but from her own endeavors. She still kept company with the healer, standing ready to aid when he had any need of help. So she was to travel now with the slow-moving train of varge supported stretchers.
The hill company that was left split into two—one portion to travel with the wounded, the other bringing up the rear. To her satisfaction that dour and unpleasant Kryn was attached to the latter while Hasper commanded the fore. She had not met with such outward suspicion and hate—not since she could remember— though there was that dark time deep buried which she flinched from recalling.
He was right in that her talent must have drawn the attack which had blasted this company. As Dreen had pointed out—power drew power. And if that other was already perhaps seeking, it had quickly made her touch a goal at which to aim that blow. She wondered what had become of the message stones—they were probably well buried—let them remain so for safety’s sake.
They were following now a rough trail which had to be cut for the passage of the varge-borne litters leaving a track easy enough to be followed. But there was no way one could take men suffering broken limbs with any stealth. As it was Layon and she were called upon time and again to make sure that the ties holding those bodies in place had not shifted, ready with drinks of herb thickened water to give as much freedom from pain as they could.
At least one anxiety had been eased—that fever which had threatened to devour Jarth had finally left his broken body. He was very weak but knew them and understood what they were doing, agreeing at once with the decision which had been made.
The weather, which had been cloudy, now turned against them and rain began to fall, a rain which had some of the ice of sleet in it. They piled over and around the injured all the robes and cloaks which could be found, men shivering in that steady falling water without any covering that the others might be given all the comfort possible.
Rain also made the way they followed slippery. Only the pace that the ponderous varges went, at almost less than a man’s walking speed, planting each hoof firmly, kept them from a disastrous slip. Lighter-footed, faster mounts would have had to be led by their dismounted riders through this. But for even the varges the pull against the clinging mud was hard and they had to have frequent halts to rest the blowing beasts.
It was during one of these that Nosh, assured her aid was not at need, cut to the edge of their way and found a small hollow beneath a dead tree which had been kept from measuring its length against the ground because its branches embraced and laced with those of its nearest fellow. She allowed herself some mouthfuls of dried laster flesh, chewing the stringy stuff with vigor to make sure she extracted the small existing flavor and moistening it enough to swallow. Her hunger had brought her here but as she chewed she was suddenly aware of something else.
Cold as the rain had chilled her flesh, Nosh felt a growing warmth between her breasts. She pulled apart the lacing of her jerkin far enough to be able to touch that hair bag in which rode the Finger. Yes, it was warm—rapidly exuding not only heat but a glow of light.
At first she hunched in upon herself. What would follow? Another blasting out of nowhere? Thinking that she scuttled away, putting the tree which had sheltered her, and more and more room, between her and that sorry procession halted on the trail. She wanted no harm to come through her again.
As Nosh crawled, fearing to rise to her feet now lest she be sighted and her danger understood, she suddenly felt the wet, fern-grown soil give way under the hand she had put out to steady herself. With a cry she had not time to check, she tumbled forward down a slope into a narrow ravine cutting almost hidden through this land.
Her fall ended with force as she brought up against a rock and she whimpered. But under her other hand, through the hair veil which held it, the crystal Finger flared as might a new-lit torch. And that flare was answered!
Somehow Nosh pulled herself to the other side of the rock. The hand which helped to draw herself came down on something hard, which cracked under her weight, slight as that was. She felt the scrape of a sharp edge of something across her flesh.
A bone! There was no mistaking what protruded, lying in two pieces now where her weight had broken it. And there were more. She who had been nurtured in the dull death of the Ryft felt no dismay as she stared down to trace the outline, tumbled though the bones were, of a skeleton—sighting at last what was not another smaller rock but the dome of a weather-darkened skull.
But it was what lay within that tangle of bones which made her totally unconscious now of the remains. There lay a twin to what she carried—a second crystal Finger!
Swiftly she caught it up, pried open the drawstring bag, eagerly comparing it to the one she carried. It was a little longer than her first find but no two fingers on a hand were the same length, so that was only the way of nature.
Working with infinite care not to break the bag Dreen had woven, she got both of the Fingers into hiding, now aware of a crashing near the cut edge of the ravine. They must have heard her cry and come in search. But this was a secret of her own and one she was not about to share. She made very sure the two Fingers were completely hidden before she raised her voice and called— to see the last one she wished to find her so—that Kyrn—staring down, his expression one of disgust—or so she deemed it. A moment later he was joined by one of the armsmen and together they dropped a rope by the use of which she was able to reach the top.
That the rear guard had caught up with them was a factor which bothered the whole company. It was so plain that they must match their pace to the slowness of the varges, and also keep touch between the two parties.
Nosh gave no explanation as to what had happened, save that she had thought to see a pacer hen and hoped to add it to their supplies. Kryn had grunted before he left to gather his party and hold them while the varge train got into a floundering move once more.
Her good fortune in finding the Finger led to memories she had tried to wall out—as she had earlier ones. She did not want to think of Dreen as she had last seen her, resting in death on the bier the torches were already setting a-smolder. It seemed to her bleakly as she kept to the slow pace beside one of the varges, where she could watch the man swung in the litter between the two animals, that whenever she had found a stable friend in this dreary world, the end was that she was left alone again.
Now, resolutely, she pushed her thoughts into another channel. How had this Finger come among the bones she had stumbled upon? Dreen had said that those who served Lyr and had remained alive after the fragmentation of the Hands had taken the Fingers and scattered that they might preserve those precious pieces for the future. Had one of those priestesses—or priests—come this way, been slain, and left without burial? If the Finger had been carried in any bag, that had long since rotted away. But now she knew this much—that what she carried would eventually lead her to another—and in time—if she herself was not lost to the quest—to all of them.
It took them nearly twenty days of marching along that rude trail before they found their way down a last slope and could see the edge of the western plains lands. The last few nights in the Heights had been perilously chilly, and they had lost another of the injured during that painful trek.
Lord Jarth still lived, but in the last two days he had lapsed into something which was not a normal sleep, nor even unconsciousness. For his eyes were open at times, though if anyone strove to get his attention, he remained unanswering, blank of expression. Layon called upon all his skills and Nosh was able to supply some bits of lore from Dreen’s teaching. At least they had kept the lord and the other three injured men still alive.
It was near to sunset when they we
re joined by a guide from the advance party, who had already marked the best way down the slope, and so they came to Dast.
There were crude buildings there—their walls largely formed of rocks fitted roughly together with a banding of dried mud rounding outward from around the stones it was meant to anchor. The roofs were saplings cut and then fitted together with an overmasking of what was a mixture of mud and the long prairie grass. But this was better than they had dared to hope for.
Jarth and the other injured men were settled in the largest of these shelters, which had been cleaned by the advance guard, of the debris left by the various merchant caravans of the past season. There had been four of those, according to markings left on one wall block, and the last two had spoken of trouble from raiders.
“Outlaws…” Hasper was considering those abbreviated messages. “But who? We found no sign of such. And certainly we do not prey on the caravans and never have.”
“We are overmountain from the movements of the Templers and the king’s forces. What we saw of them were heading south not west.” Kryn had brought in the rear guard with the welcome news that none of their back trail scouting had turned up any evidence that they were being followed.
“Look here…” Hasper traced some last scratched signs with a fingertip. “Warning—and it lies under the listing of the last caravan. Note how each added in their own fashion from the reports of general travel, water, forage for animals and the like—running down to this. This last one speaks mainly of trouble. Two guards shot from an ambush and a try at a night raid, beaten off by the caravan.
“We made contact earlier in the season with Balisas— his sign is by this second record. All was well then. But after that last, another warning. It is late in the season and no trailwise merchant would willingly linger, even if the bargains were greater than he expected. These deal mainly with the Zandu of the northwest—furs— some jade rock—once in a while tusks of a Qerna bull. Light stuff—but worth enough to make the trip pay, long and hard as it is. They are more heavily laden going in than out—for they carry weapons, cloth, salt to trade. If there was a fifth caravan—what has become of it? The mountain passes into Zandu country must already be snowed in.”
However, the fate of unknown merchants was not their present concern—rather work on the shelters to make that housing as secure as they could before the first snowfall. The varge ate steadily, welcoming the prairie grass, brown-dried as it was. After the nature of their kind they were building up as speedily as they could those rolls of fat which would keep them going over the lean times when fodder might be sparse.
Six of the men were told to hack at that same grass, bring it to thicken the thatch of the roofs. Water drawn from the great well which centered their settlement was mixed with earth into thick mud to be tramped and pounded down over that grass. Kern took two of the varges and two men and headed back up the way they had come, returning with mountains of dried wood lashed on the complaining beasts—and they made such a trip there often, taking each time different animals.
They had lost so much, but there were hunters out too. Fresh hides were pegged down, to be scraped clean and softened as best as possible. Nosh, having inspected with a critical eye the tufts of grass, began to sort over each bundle brought in and laid aside certain lengths. Her serpent skin cloak, near long worn to nothing, was her pattern and she essayed now to copy that weaving after a fashion.
She took her full share of the cooking, the nursing, even of mixing the mud. There was no division here between the labor of man and woman—men scraped at the hides and, in spare moments, turned scraps into footgear. She gave a hand where it was most needed.
However, in those moments free of general duty she set doggedly to weaving with her grass, one layer, another, until she had a strange-looking garment—like an oblong with a hole in the middle. That slipped over the head and then the narrowing of each side left free enough the arms, but the long fore and back panels could be belted in. Once on, the garment could be stuffed breast and back with loose grass. She found it warmer almost than the hide clothing she had been wearing and Layon, seeing her in it, immediately wanted one for himself. So Nosh found herself excused from all else so that she could weave for them all.
In search of longer and tougher grass she would venture farther from the pocket of settlement and discovered then that the prairie was not as smooth a land as it looked to be—there were gullies, and once she found a dried stream course.
Squatting down there she wiped her sweaty, earth-stained hands with a tuft of the grass and looked to the gravel of that long-dried bed. Her hands were scraped and raw, cut in places by tough grass edges. But… her talent was still with her. She had no warning from the crystals she carried but her fingers closed unerringly on a piece of water-worn stone that showed, as she turned it around, a green glow. Jade… her studies with Dreen made her sure of that.
How far it might have been borne along by the vanished floods she could not tell—she had never heard of the stone being found anywhere but in the northwest. But where there was one piece there might be another. Her grass gathering forgotten for the moment, she swept her hands slowly across the drifts of gravel.
In the end Nosh harvested four pieces, the other three smaller than the first water-worked pebble but worth, she was sure, the labor of her hunt. She was about to go farther upstream when she heard that cry…
It was more moan than call and she had some time locating its source but at last she found a dead mount, arrows in its flanks, and beside it a woman—or rather a girl, she saw as she turned her over. There was a wound in the rider’s shoulder, the shaft of another arrow, though broken, still protruding from the flesh. And the stranger’s whole upper garment was sticky with blood.
As Nosh tried to examine that wound the girl’s eyes opened; she stared in terror at the other and tried to jerk away.
“Vor—Vor—” her voice shrilled.
“I give help,” Nosh tried awkwardly to reassure her find. “You lose blood—I must bind as I can until you are at Dast…”
She loosened her belt and pulled off the grass garment. Somehow she must get that on the stranger as a binding against that blood flow. She had nothing else here to serve.
The girl screamed as she worked, threw out an arm to beat her off. Then she fainted and Nosh finished her hasty binding. She had no way of getting her to Dast without help and that she must get as soon as possible. Starting on a dead run, she headed for the refuge. Soon enough she was back, Layon on her heels, his arm crooked about some hastily caught up lengths which could be used for bandaging.
The girl still lay as Nosh had left her and Layon went about his business with dispatch while she gave him what aid she could. Three of the others had come pounding out to see what had happened and Layon dispatched two of them back to Dast for one of the litters on which their own injured had been transported.
“She is of a caravan,” the healer reported as he worked. “Hers is city clothing from the south. Ah, may she remain still unknowing while we get this out.” He was touching the stub of arrow gingerly. “This is fresh….”
“Hunted?” asked Nosh and got quickly to her feet. The gully walls were high here; there might be those even now on the trail of the stranger and close enough to bring danger not only to the prey who had escaped them but also to those who would succor her.
However, it seemed that the third man who had come up must have already been aware of that possibility, for he put a call whistle to his lips and blew a sharp, high note well understood in the code the outlaws had set for themselves.
The tall grass, Nosh thought swiftly, might cover the advance of any who were canny enough to crawl. It grew in places as high as a varge’s thick shoulder. But certainly the weaving of the grass stems if any so advanced, would give them away to men as keen-eyed as those who would answer that call.
If there had been any follower close on the heels of the wounded girl, he held off and lay in hiding now. Nosh saw t
he well-armed men of the day guard scatter outward in a fan behind which they carried the caravan girl back to the shelter. If she had regained consciousness, she gave no sign of it. Nosh glanced around once to see one of the armsmen behind them shouldering the saddle and equipment of the dead mount.
As they settled their discovery on one of the pallets within the shelter Hasper came hurriedly in. The girl’s white face was turned aside as Layon had settled her as best he could to work on her wounded shoulder. Hasper squatted down on the other side, looking from her to Layon and back again and at last turning his head in Nosh’s direction.
“Where did you find her?” he demanded.
Nosh spoke of the gully of the dried stream. And added:
“She was greatly afraid and when she saw me she called out ‘Vor.’ ”
“Vor…” he repeated. “But that cannot be so. There are no Vor this far north—unless there is much going wrong about which we do not know. And Vor are no enemies to the traders…. They are not a friendly people save with the Mimians—but that they would attack a caravan… How long?” He shot that question at Layon.
“It could not have been long—she could not have ridden far and her mount was badly shot—it would not have kept going for long.”
Hasper’s face tightened grimly. “So. If there are those who are preying on a caravan near here, then they are such as are no friends to us either.”
He was gone and a moment later Nosh heard again the code whistle, this time sounding assembly. But that had hardly died away before there was a shouting. She saw Lord Jarth jerk on the pallet across the hut, try to lift himself, and she was instantly beside him in restraint.
“No, Lord Jarth. You must not move….”
For the first time in many days he looked up and she saw recognition in his eyes as if the din had drawn him back from that far place where he had been hovering.