He was reasonably sure that any Cos spying on them would be stationed on the heights. And when the scouts took their break at the end of an hour's advance, he approached Bogate with a plan of his own. The veteran surveyed the tops of the cliffs uneasily.
"I dunno—" He hesitated. "Yeah, if they're spyin' they're up there—I'll grant you that. But they may be miles away—and we can't lie around waitin' for you to prowl, huntin' for somethin' which maybe ain't there. We'll see later—"
Kana had to content himself with that half promise. But the country offered an argument on his behalf not many minutes later. They rounded a curve and found themselves fronted with a wall of rock down which the vanished river must once have crashed in spectacular falls. Bogate waved to Kana.
"Well, here's a place where somebody's gotta climb. Suppose you do it and see what you find. Take Soong with you."
They shucked off their packs, taking only their rifles, and began the ascent—not up the water-worn face of the falls but along the relatively rough cliff to the left. After he finished this enlistment, Kana thought as he crept fly-wise from handhold to handhold, he would be qualified for service with a crack mountaineering Horde.
When they reached the top they faced west again. Here once more was the bed of the stream, but it was narrower than in the canyon below. And not too far ahead the somberness of the rock was broken by patches of yellow-green vegetation which promised moisture.
"There is something—" Soong pivoted slowly, studying the landscape.
Kana sensed what bothered his companion. He, too, felt as if they were under observation. Together they surveyed every foot of the rocky terrain. Nothing moved and the wind tore at them, whirling dust devils before it over the edge of the falls. They were alone in a dead world—and yet something watched! Kana knew it by a twitching between his shoulder blades, a cold crawling which roughened his skin with nervous tension. They were being watched—with a detached, non-human curiosity.
"Where is it?" Soong's voice came plaintively between the howls of the wind.
Kana knelt in the sand and brought out his number one package for trade contact. He selected a bare stretch of stone and laid out upon it the pieces he believed flashy enough to catch the eye and pin the attention of any native. Then he pulled Soong with him to the far left, picking out concealment well above the stream bed.
As the minutes passed Kana began to wonder if his nerves had misled him. The gold chain, the handful of bright stones drew the weak sunlight to make a flashing pool of fire which would have attracted the attention of any watcher, would have brought him out of cover had he been of any race the Terrans knew.
"Lord of Space!" Soong's voice hissed between his teeth.
Something had moved at last. A shadow floated with liquid, feline grace between two rocks and stood above the trade station. Kana's breath caught. A ttsor! That greenish fur—treasured by the Llor for mantles of state—could not be mistaken. The round skull with its large brain case, the fringed ears— A tail, able to grasp and hold, whipped around and selected the gold chain from the display, holding it up before the large yellow eyes. The ttsor sniffed at the rest of the collection, using the giant thumb claw of one paw to spread then around, and dropped the chain. It was not interested in what had no food value.
Kana's hand shot out to depress the barrel of Soong's rifle.
"It won't attack—don't shoot!"
The ttsor stiffened, its body tense, its head pointed upstream. Then in an eye wink it was gone and they saw it speeding away, up out of the river bed to the heights.
A sound reached them above the moan of the wind—a muffled roar Kana could not identify. He looked upstream. Then he whirled and grabbed for Soong, dragging him back from the lower part of the valley which was now a deadly trap. Together they ran for the cliff. Kana saw the white faces of those below turned up to him. Soong fired into the air—the three spaced warning signals—and Kana waved his arms trying to urge the others back against the canyon walls. His message must have made sense for they scattered and ran—some to one side and a few to the other. How many made it he did not have a chance to see before the black wall of water poured over the lip of the falls to hide the scene in a wild welter of spray.
The flood arose to lap at Kana's boots, lashed at him with spray. Shoulder to shoulder with Soong he wedged himself between anchoring rocks. Again the unseen mountaineers had used nature to defend their country, had turned loose this flood to rid their land of invaders. Soong was busy with the speecher trying to warn the Horde marching along the path of disaster.
8 —DEATH BY THE WATER—DEATH BY FIRE
Out of the foam below broke the head and shoulders of a man fighting his way to safety, tugging a weaker struggler behind. They groped to the air and clung, braced against boulders, as the waters dashed over them. And across the canyon Kana thought he saw another dark figure reach safety. Did only three survive?
With Soong he angled down the wall and helped drag Bogate and the half-conscious Larsen out of the grip of the flood. Shivering, the four wedged themselves on a narrow ledge, only a foot or so above the stream which showed no signs of shrinking. Bogate shook his head, as if to clear away some mist as tangible as the spray still drenching them.
"Somebody musta pulled a cork," Larsen commented between coughs.
"D'you see anything up there?" Bogate wanted to know.
"Just a ttsor. It gave us warning of the flood. If it hadn't been for that, we'd have been caught—"
"And so would we." Larsen pulled at the sodden collar of his coat. "This is a booby trap to end 'em all. What about the boys downstream?"
"Sent 'em a message," Soong answered. "Whether they got it in time—" There was no need for him to complete that sentence.
A faint hail came from across the canyon and they sighted a waving arm. Bogate carefully levered himself to his feet.
"Hooooah!" His bull roar rang out.
There was a welcome answer, three of them. But there was no way to cross the turbulent river and join forces. So they began to travel back toward the forks in two parties, the water between. Kana and Soong still had their rifles but their packs were gone. The chill air stiffened the wet clothing on the Combatants' shivering bodies. At the sinking of the sun they crouched in a hollow between two pinnacles of rock where the worst of the wind blasts were fended off, and so spent the night. Once a mournful, lowering call echoed down from the peaks. Kana took it for the hunting cry of a ttsor. But the presence of that lion-like creature here argued that, for all its apparent barrenness, there was life to be found in the badlands. For the ttsors ate not only meat but fruit and grains—perhaps here they raided the mountainside villages of the Cos.
If the Combatants slept that night it was under the drug of sheer exhaustion. And when Kana roused with the coming of light his legs and arms were so painfully cramped that he had to pinch and beat life back into his numb limbs. But across the canyon one of the other refugees waved a salute from a headland.
They began again that creeping journey along the jagged teeth of the heights. Below the river still spun, flicking around the old slides. And, even as Kana watched, a section of the cliff wall, undermined, gave way—tossing rocks and clay out into the current. So warned, they back-tracked from the rim. But here, for every mile of progress east, they traveled almost as much over or around obstacles, skirting side chasms, flanking butts and peaks. It was snail journeying and their hands left smears of blood on the stone. Even the incredibly tough Ciranian reptile hide of their boots showed scars and scratches.
And a fear which none mentioned rode them. That morning when Soong had tried to reach the Horde with the speecher he had raised no answer. At every rest interval while they panted in the thin air, he bent over the obstinate machine, fingering the keys with relentless energy, but never getting a faint click in reply.
Kana thought he knew what had happened, his imagination painting a very stark picture. The Horde had come up the river bed—to meet he
ad on that flood, speeding even more as the ground sloped. The Terran force must have been caught, to be swept away to as final an end as the older Llor army had met in the valley of bones!
So vivid was this picture that, as they approached the fork, Kana lagged behind, unwilling to look for the debris of such destruction. But Soong's shout of discovery drew him against his will.
One of the light carts was jammed into the rocks just below them, twisted almost out of shape. Bogate's wide shoulders sagged as he hunched perilously over to view the wreckage. As they stared at the evidence which blighted their hopes, a wild shout drew their attention across to where those on the other side of the river were excitedly pointing behind them at the other fork. Bogate straightened, his lusty strength coming back.
"Maybe some of 'em made it!"
Two of the scouts on the other side had disappeared, but the third continued to wave.
"The problem of getting across remains," Larsen pointed out. "We can't swim that—"
"We got across the other river, didn't we?" Soong demanded. "What we did once we can do again."
They could do anything now! The knowledge that some of the Horde must have escaped was a stimulant which sent them to perch on stones just above water level while Bogate lowered one of the rifles, stock first, to test the pull of the river, only to have it almost ripped out of his grasp.
Across the water a knot of men appeared, among them Hansu. They were burdened with coils of rope and split into two groups, leaving one directly across from the marooned scouts. The Blademaster and the others went upstream, uncoiling rope as they clambered above the water line.
Here the gap, through which the water must enter the wider bed, was deeper and narrower than at any other point along its sweep from the falls. Hansu's men fastened the rope end to an unwieldy bundle and tossed it into the flood. Soong and Bogate, rifles ready, lay belly down on the rocks. The bundle flashed downstream and they plunged their rifles in to capture it. There was a breathless instant when it seemed that it might escape—then all four of them had it and the rope end it brought them was safely in their hands, linking them to the party across the river.
To fight through those few feet of water was a nightmare of effort. In his turn Kana brought up against a half-sunken rock with force enough to make his head swim with pain. Then hands reached out to drag him in. Coughing up brackish water, he lay on a spit of gravel until they pulled him to his feet. The rest of the trip to the other valley was a mechanical obeying of orders, of being led. And he did not really rouse until he found himself lying on his back, a pack under his head, while Mic and Rey stripped off his soaked clothing and rubbed him down with a blanket.
Mic scowled. "What'd you do up there—blow a dam?"
"Sprung a trap—I think," Kana sputtered the words over a cup of hot brew Rey thrust upon him. There was a fire blazing not too far away and the glow of warmth within and without his shivering body was pure luxury.
"So. Well, we have one of the trappers—"
Kana's eyes followed Mic's finger. Across the fire squatted a figure neither Llor nor Terran. About four feet tall, the creature was almost completely covered with a thick growth of gray-white hair. About its loins was a brief kilt of supple ttsor fur and it wore a thong necklet from which depended several thumb claws of the same felines. Even more expressionless than the less woolly Llor, the prisoner stared unblinkingly into the fire and paid little or no attention to his surroundings.
"Cos?"
"We think so. We caught him feeding a signal fire up on the cliffs night before last. But so far we haven't been able to get anything out of him. He doesn't answer to trade talk, and even Hansu's Llor can't bring an answer out of him. We pull him along, he sits when we stop—he won't eat—"
As he talked Mic opened his pack and pulled out spare clothing while Rey contributed more. Kana gratefully donned the donations, watching his own clothes steam before the fire.
"Good thing our warning reached you in time—"
Mic did not quite meet his eyes. "The flood caught five of the men—a cart got hung up on a rock and they were working to free it. Then we lost three crossing the first river and a couple when the fur faces jumped us later—"
"The Llor followed you?"
"Part way. They faded out when we reached the bone valley. I suppose that gave them an idea of what they could expect. Anyway they chased us in and there's no going back that way—unless we want to fight the whole nation. The rebels are all loyal royalists now and only too ready to attack the nasty Terran invaders—" There was a bitter undertone to that.
"What's it like up ahead?" Rey wanted to know.
Swiftly Kana outlined what he had seen. As he spoke their faces grew bleak. But before he had finished Hansu strode up to the fire.
"See any Cos signs above the falls before that water came?" the Blademaster demanded.
"No, sir. We saw nothing but a ttsor and it gave us the alarm. I'd laid out a trade packet on a rock because we felt as if we were being watched. The ttsor came down to look it over and then—"
But Hansu was staring across the flames at the captive Cos. "All we need to know is locked up in that round skull over there—if we could just pry it out. But he won't eat our food, he won't talk. And we can't keep him until he starves. Then they would have good reason to strike back at us."
The Blademaster went around to stand beside the prisoner. But the white-wooled pygmy never changed position nor gave any indication that he was aware of the Terran commander. Hansu went down on one knee, slowly repeating some words in the sing-song speech of the Llor. The Cos did not even blink. Kana reached for the trade packets he had carried so long, made a hasty selection, and passed on a small package of sugar and a stone-set wrist band.
Hansu held the gemmed circlet into the light before the sullen captive, turning it so that the stones flashed. The offering might have been totally invisible as far as the Cos was concerned. Nor when the sugar cake was held within sniffing distance did he make any move to investigate. To him the Terrans and their gifts did not exist.
"He's a stone wall and we're up against him," Hansu said. "We can only—"
"Let him go, sir, and hope for the best?" Kana's X-Tee training suggested that.
"Yes." Hansu stood up and then pulled the Cos to his feet. Compelling the captive by his great strength, the Blademaster marched the pygmy to the edge of the Terran camp and a good hundred yards beyond. There he released the mountaineer's arm and stepped away.
For a long space the Cos remained exactly where he had been left—he did not even turn his head to see if they were watching him. Then, with a skittering movement, the speed of which left the Combatants agape, he was gone, vanishing at the far side of the canyon. Somewhere a stone rattled, but they saw nothing of the trail he took.
The Horde camped there for that night and, though they watched the mountains ahead and the cliffs walling them in, there were no more signal fires.
"Maybe," Mic suggested hopefully, "uncorking that river was their biggest gun. When they saw that it didn't work, they went into hiding, to let us gallop by—"
"We don't know how their minds work," Kana warned. "To some species—take ours for example—a failure such as that is merely a spur to try again. To another type it would signify that their Gods, or Fate, or whatever Power they believe in, is opposed and they should forget the whole project. The future may depend upon that Cos we freed and the report he makes. But we shall have to be prepared for anything."
Soon after the march began the next morning they passed the site where the byll had been killed. The carcass had been torn apart and largely devoured by unseen scavengers in the night. But the severed head, with its toothed bill gaping, was a grim warning. One of the duties of the flankers was to keep close watch against sneak attacks from the carnivorous birds.
Close to mid-day they came upon a pool fed by water seeping through the left canyon wall, perhaps from the river flowing down the other fork. Here they fill
ed their canteens after purifying the liquid and washed some of the dust from their hands and faces. This grit, borne by the wind, was in their mouths as they ate, inflamed their eyes, and sifted down between clothing and skin to prove a minor torture.
Alert to the danger which might come from above, the scouts reported a second major attack before it got underway. The Cos, relying upon methods which had served them well in the past, sent boulders crashing down. But none of the rough missiles killed, for those who attempted to so bombard the winding snake of the Horde's advance were picked off by sharpshooting flankers and woolly bodies crashed along with the rocks while others fled. Ahead, on a mesa-like formation, was a rude fortification which so commanded their line of march that the Terrans dared not try to pass.
This time the Cos made no attempt to hide their presence. With the coming of evening beacons blazed in the fort—forming a barrier of light about it much as the camp lamps of the Combatants had done for them on the plains. There could be no storming this from below. Facing the Horde the rise to the mesa top was steep and an ominous row of boulders ready for use fringed the rim. Hansu whistled for a gathering.
"We have to take that fort," he began baldly. "And there's only one way in—from the top." He took off his helmet and threw into it black and white pebbles. "Lot-choice—"