Lord of Thunder Part 6

And on the last night only Gorgol's knowledge of the outback had saved them. All water gone, the Norbie had searched the ground on hands and knees, literally smelling out a clue, until he scooped the soil from a small depression. He buried there a hollow reed with a twist of dried gra.s.s about its tip, sucking at the other end with an effort that left him gasping, until after a half hour of such labor he brought liquid up from the source he alone suspected.

Surra whined, nudged against Hosteen, her nostrils expanding as she took in the scents arising from this oasis of the wild. At least to the cat, this was no hallucination, and Hosteen was willing to rely upon her senses sooner than upon his own. Gorgol opened a small pouch on his warrior belt and brought out a pencil-shaped object. He pressed it against one finger tip to leave a small dot of glowing green. Then he drew marks crisscross on his hollow cheeks, in no pattern Hosteen could see, that glowed, making of half his face a weird mask. He held the crayon out to the Terran.

"We go in peace, so this we must do-"

"For the wild men?"

"Not so. For them we must continue to watch. But for Those-Who-Drum, now we bear the marks of peace in their sight."

Hosteen took the soft stick, applied to his own skin a netting of lines, and pa.s.sed it along to Logan. To every race their customs, and he was willing to follow Gorgol's lead here. The paste on his face stung a little and left the skin feeling drawn and tight.

Although they were now painted for peace, they entered the valley with the caution of raiders. Hosteen guessed that in spite of peace poles pa.s.sed between age-old enemies, Gorgol's distrust of the wild and rumored cannibal tribes, whose hunting territory this was, still guided his actions, Baku had flown ahead to the water. Surra padded down the slope before them, blending, in the twilight, with the vegetation, until Hosteen could only follow her movements when she chose to establish mind contact with him. The cat was alert and wary, though she had found nothing suspicious. Now the men followed her, keeping to cover as much as possible.

If there was native life in this valley, it would locate not too far from the water. Yet, water they themselves must have and soon. The heat clung on the upper slope, harsh on their parched bodies. Then Hosteen noted that Gorgol was catching at the headed stems of tall gra.s.s, crushing them in his hands and holding the resultant ma.s.s to his lips, chewing, spitting. The Terran followed the Norbie's example. He discovered the moisture so gained was a bitter juice, but it eased the dryness of his mouth.

As they went, he looked about them, trying to guess which of the mountains within sight could be that on which Widders had located the LB. The fix from the camp com had guided them here-but now they would have to find the actual wreckage- Hosteen tensed. His hand went up in a gesture to freeze both of his companions. Surra had given warning. Between them and the water were strange natives. The three flattened against the ground, and now the Terran regretted the luminous paint on their faces, which might be a source of betrayal.

So far, the others did not suspect their presence. Surra stalked them as they moved steadily along to the south. Hosteen made contact with Baku and knew that the eagle, in turn, would pick up the enemy party.

There were small night sounds. The creatures of the tall gra.s.s had not yet gone into Dry Time burrows. Their squeakings and chirpings were loud in Hosteen's ears when he lay on the ground, acutely aware of every small noise, every movement of bush or gra.s.s clump. But this was the old, old game the Terran had played so many times during the war years when eyes, noses, keener natural senses than his own, had formed the scouting team, he being the director of activities.

Now, the party of natives had been trailed out of range. The three again had an open path to the water. Hosteen's signal sent them skulking from one piece of cover to the next, working their way through the steadily increasing gloom to the lake-for lake was what Baku reported that body of water to be.

They arrived at the edge of growth of reeds and endured silent torment when insects closed in in a stinging, biting fog. But it was worth that painful, slow progress through mud and slime-coated growing things to plunge their hands into water, scoop up the warm, odorous, and oddly tasting liquid, not only to drink but also to freshen their dehydrated and peeling skins.

Revived, they shared the sustenance tablets brought for emergency rations.

"That mountain-" Logan said. "We'll have to find the right one."

"It is there." To their surprise Gorgol finished his signs with an a.s.sured point to the north. "Medicine-and the fire-" But he did not explain that.

Hosteen remembered the night when he had stood in the yard of the Peak holding and watched that flash of light to the north, the flash that had been accompanied by the vibration in the air. That seemed like a long time ago now, and he was visited by an odd reluctance to set out for the mountain Gorgol had set as their goal.

Filling their canteens, they left the lapping waters of the lake, continuing around its perimeter, with Baku aloft in the bowl of the night sky and Surra ranging in a wide pattern back and forth across the line of their advance.

Twice more they took cover to escape Norbie parties. And it was in the last quarter of the night that they began to climb. Bulking big before them so that it cut away the stars was a mountain.

Sound came, first as a faint thumping, then in an ever increasing roll. Drums! Drums with the same compelling power as the small one Ukurti had carried but with far greater range. Logan came up level with Hosteen.

"Village-" He raised his voice to be heard over that roll.

Eastward, Hosteen believed. And he trusted that the drums meant some ceremony was in progress, a ceremony that would keep the villagers safely occupied at home for the few precious hours remaining of the sheltering night.

Surra located the 'copter, her report bringing them to the flattened area of burned-over ground in which lay the twisted, fire-warped framework of the off-world flyer. And not too far away was the half-charred body of the pilot, a burned stump of arrow still protruding from between his shoulders.

"We haven't much time until daybreak. Widders spoke of a cave. We'll separate and look for that," Hosteen said.

Together with Surra, they fanned out from the burned ground upslope. Long lines of vegetation ash ridged that rise, puzzling Hosteen by the uniformity of their width and the straight thrust of their lengths. It was almost as if an off-world flamer had been used here- The Xik? Another holdout group hidden in this remote and forbidden land, just as that other had been when he and Logan had stumbled into their secret base? Those Xiks had used a flamer in their all-out attempt to get Logan when he escaped, destroying their stolen horse herd recklessly in the hope of finishing off one man who could blow wide open their concealed operations on this frontier world. Yes, it was conceivable that another Xik Commando force would be holed up here.

The flamed furrow came to an end abruptly. Here was blackened earth, vegetation charred into powder, and there normal gra.s.s, a bush standing high, swaying a little in the predawn wind. Had the flames been aimed up from below, then? But Hosteen had pa.s.sed nothing in a direct line with the destroyed 'copter and these fire scores that could have produced them. If it wasn't a flamer-then what? Hosteen skirted a bush and began again his hunt for any cave opening, though half mechanically, his mind still partly occupied with the riddle of the fire.

An eye-searing flash lashed the ground only yards ahead, and he stumbled back as flames crackled and bushes flared into torches in the night. Another breakout of the same fire to his left sent Hosteen south and east, running with the fire licking at his heels. He had never seen anything like this before, but the certainty grew, as he fled before the reach of the long red tongues, that the blazes were being used with a purpose, and that purpose- In spite of the heat waves at his back, a chill held the Terran. He was being herded! Someone or something was using a whip of fire to drive him, just as a plains rider used a stock whip to control a stray from the frawn herd.

He stumbled on, striving to pick a way over the now well-lighted ground to avoid any misstep that would leave him the helpless prey of the rage behind him. A small gorge opened ahead, and the Terran made a running leap to cross it, coming down in a panting heap on the far side. When he would have struggled to his feet once more, an arrow quivered deep in the earth by his right hand in blunt warning.

Hosteen hunched together, drawing his feet under him, preparing to spring for freedom if he saw a chance. A ring had closed about him, not of fire but of natives. Unlike the Norbies of the lowlands, these warriors were shorter, closer to Terran build. Their horns were charcoal-black arcs over their skulls, and the same black had been used to draw designs on their faces, not with the aimless crisscross lines that Gorgol had used for peace paint but in intricate and careful patterns.

If he had had a chance in those first few seconds for an attempt at defense or escape, he had lost it now. Whirling out of the flickering half light came one of the native hunters' most effective weapons-a cord net made of the tough, under the surface roots of the ya.s.sa plant, soaked in water until the mesh was greasy slick. Once enmeshed in that, even a fighting yoris was helpless, as helpless as Hosteen Storm at this moment.

Ignominiously packaged, he was transported downslope to a village, a village that was no collection of skin-covered tents, like those of the nomad Norbies he had known, but of permanent erections with heavy logs rolled shoulder high to form walls, above them a woven wattle of dried vine and reed, with high-peaked thatched roofs.

Out of nowhere had come a Drummer, a medicine man wearing a feather tunic and cloak but in a vivid metallic green, the tunic crossed on the breast with a zigzag, sharp-angled strip of red. And the drum he thumped, as he led the procession carrying the prisoner through the village, was also red. Torches were set up along the way, their flames burning a strange, pale blue. Then Hosteen was out of the open, staring up into the shadows of one of the peaked roofs, as he was dumped roughly on a beaten earth floor.

House-or was it more temple? He tried to a.s.sess the meaning of what he saw. There were no sleep rolls in evidence, but in the center of the one huge room was a pit in which burned a fire of the same blue as the torches. And there were cords pa.s.sing from one to another of the heavy support timber columns the length of the building, lines on which hung bark and shriveled things, together with round objects- A Thunder House! And those were raid trophies-the heads and hands of dead enemies! Hosteen had heard of that practice as being usual among the Nitra clans. But this building was larger, older, far more permanent than any Nitra wizard tent. The Terran tried to remember every sc.r.a.p of information he had been able to garner about the Nitra and to apply it to what he could see about him now.

Those warriors who had brought him in were settling down about the fire pit, pa.s.sing from one to the other a bowl that probably held the mildly intoxicating clava juice, and they showed signs of staying for some hours to come.

The clan Drummer had taken his place on the stool to the north, keeping up a little deep, grumbling sound on his knee drum. That, too, followed the custom of the outer-world tribes-the northern stool for him who drums for the Thunder Ones; the southern stool, still vacant here, for the head Chief of the village or clan.

Hosteen closed his eyes, fixed mind and will on contact with the team, but to no avail. There was nothing-no trace of Surra or Baku-along the mental lanes. He had never quite been able to gauge the range to which his silent command call could reach in relation to either eagle or cat. But this present silence was more than worrying. It carried with it an element of real fear. A man who depended heavily upon the support of a cane could fall helplessly when that cane was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hand.

The Terran swallowed, as if he could swallow down his rising uneasiness. Had he, through the years, become so wholly identified with the team, so dependent upon them, that he would be a cripple when they did not answer his call? That thought bit deep, so deep he was hardly aware of the Thunder House and those in it until a commotion by the door made him open his eyes and turn his head as well as he could in the confines of the net.

Another party of natives brought a second prisoner, and the Drummer now beat out a heavy tattoo that needed no translation, so filled with triumph was its sound. A minute later the tangled and still struggling captive was dumped beside Hosteen, the lines of his net made fast to the same pillars that held the Terran.

"Hosteen!"

He could barely make out Logan's features, marked still with smears of the luminous paint.

"Here. Gorgol with you?"

"No, haven't seen him since we split up. There was a fire all around, and I blasted out ahead of that. Ran right into this net-they had it strung up waiting between two trees."

Organization, Hosteen granted them that, very efficient organization. Did they have Widders stowed away somewhere here, too? And what was the purpose of their mountain firetrap? Just to capture anyone trying to get up in the heights?

"One thing." Logan broke through the other's mental speculation. "Just before that brush fire walled me off, I saw it."

"It?"

"The LB-it must have been the LB. And from the look I had, it didn't crash when it landed-at least it wasn't smashed up any to show."

"You didn't get a chance to examine it closely though?"

"No," Logan admitted. "Something else queer-"

"That being?"

"There was stuff piled all around it-spears, bowls, hides. And somebody had killed a horse, left it lying with its throat cut and its skull bashed in, right up against the boat-Not too long ago, either."

"Sacrifices."

"Could be. Because the LB came out of the sky, d'you suppose? They can't have seen s.p.a.ce ships back here."

"Maybe-but then why attack the 'copter when it came in for a landing," countered the Terran. "If they had no experience with sky craft, one kind could be cla.s.sed with the other. Unless-"

Unless, his mind raced, they did know the difference between an object from s.p.a.ce and one merely traversing Arzoran skies.

"They could have contact with the plains, know the difference between flyers and s.p.a.ce ships." Logan was thinking in the same direction.

Or, Hosteen's suspicions suggested, they could have contact with s.p.a.cers. The fire weapon still posed a puzzle past his present ability to solve.

"This is a Thunder House." Logan had been surveying his surroundings.

"I noticed some similarities with Nitra customs," Hosteen returned. "See anything you know?"

Logan was the expert on native Arzor. Perhaps he could pick up some clue to their future or their captors' intentions. Norbie clans were fond of ritual and tied by custom. There could be a pattern here that would fit with what Logan knew.

"They keep some Nitra ways," his half-brother agreed. "The two stools, north and south, the east and west doors. And-watch that hunter coming in. See how he walks in and out among the pillars and not in a straight line? To do that would mean he was boasting before the powers. Their Drummer, he's going into action now-watch!"

In the eerie light of the blue fire, the Drummer was still : pounding his knee drum with two fingers, keeping up a barely audible tap of sound. With the other hand, he had tossed into the air above the fire pit two small white things that floated and soared upward on a puff of the warmer air until they were lost in the gloom of the roof.

"Prayer feathers-or rather fluff," Logan explained. "Those warrior trophies are the same as Nitra, too." He regarded with wry distaste the display of dried hands and skulls. "That's the same way the blue horns hang them-"

"But does the Nitra Drummer do that?" demanded Hosteen sharply.

The medicine man had risen from his stool and put down his drum. Now he stood by the fire, the gaze of all the seated natives centered upon him. From the neck fold of his tunic he pulled a cord from which hung a tube some twelve inches long. It glistened not only with the reflection of the fire but also seemingly with a radiance of its own.

With ceremony the Drummer pointed this to the four points of the compa.s.s beginning at the north. And then he aimed one end directly at the air over the fire pit.

A fine spray spread from the end of the tube, carrying glittering, jeweled motes into the air. The motes gathered and formed an outline composed of tiny, spinning gems.

"A five-point star!" Logan cried out.

But already the design was changing, the motes spinning, reforming, this time into a triangle, and then a circle, and finally a shaft that plunged straight down into the fire pit and was gone.

"No Nitra does that!" Logan breathed.

"Nor a Norbie either," Hosteen replied grimly. "That's an off-world thing, of a kind I have never seen before. But I'll take blood oath it isn't native to Arzor!"

"Xik?" Logan demanded.

"I don't know. But I have a suspicion it won't be long before we find out."

CHAPTER NINE.

Hosteen tried to flex cramped muscles within the coc.o.o.n of net that held him. The night was gone, and none of their captors had so much as come into the quarter of the Thunder House where he and Logan were tethered. Yes-the night was gone.

Daylight struck in places through the thatch and walls of the upper part of the medicine house, but the heat was no greater than it would have been in grazing season on the plains. Within the valley, the Big Dry did not exist at all!

"Sun-but no heat-" he heard Logan mumble. "That lake-"

"Couldn't control the weather," Hosteen countered. They had rivers on the plains, sources of water that did not fail, yet there living things still must take cover during the day.

"Something does," Logan returned obstinately.

Something did. What could control weather? There was one place on-or rather in-Arzor where there was controlled weather and controlled vegetation-the garden mountain into which Logan and Hosteen had blundered on their flight from the Xik-where the Sealed Cave people had set out growing things from a hundred different planets and left them to flourish for centuries. Controlled weather-that was not Xik, that was Sealed Cave knowledge!

"The Sealed Caves-" Hosteen repeated aloud.

"But this is in the open, not in a cave!" Logan's thoughts marched with his. "How could they control the open?"

"How did they fashion that cavern?" Hosteen asked. "But if there are more remains of that civilization here, it could explain a lot."

"The 'medicine,' you mean?"

"Yes, and maybe those tricky air currents that have defeated Survey exploration in here."

"But the Norbies have always avoided the Sealed Caves."

"In the outer Peaks they have, but here we can't be sure the same taboo holds. We can't even be sure than somewhere on Arzor, it might be right here, the Old Ones themselves don't exist still. Don't the legends say that they retired to some of the caves and sealed the openings behind them-eventually to issue forth again in the future?"

Hosteen did not quite believe that, though. That some wild Norbies were exploiting Sealed Cave knowledge-that was possible. That the mysterious and long-gone forerace among the stars could linger on here directing the activities of a primitive tribe or tribes-no, somehow that did not fit. The men, or creatures, who had designed and created the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens could have nothing in common with warriors who kept skulls and right hands of their defeated enemies to adorn their temples. There was a contradiction in mental processes there.

Again Logan's thoughts followed the same path. "I'd rather believe the Norbies were heirs," he said slowly.

"Unworthy ones, I think. Maybe the answer lies on that mountain."

"We'll probably never get a chance to learn it," Logan's reply was bleak. "I think we were cut out of the herd to supply some spectacular touches to a big Drum Feast."

Hosteen had long ago reached the same conclusion. And his struggles against his bonds had proved to him the folly of trying to beat the Norbie system of confining prisoners.

One could only fall back on the rather grim thought that as long as one was still alive, there was a small measure of hope.

"Listen!" Logan's head bobbed up as he tried vainly to raise himself a few inches from the floor.

Drums were sounding, more than one now, with a pause between each roll. Hosteen, listening intently, thought he could distinguish a slightly different note in each one of those short bursts.

Norbies had been in and out of the Thunder House all morning, but now a large party entered from the south. Then came a thin, wiry native, his black horns tipped with red, a shoulder plate necklace, not of yoris teeth but of small and well-polished bones, covering most of his chest. He took the Chief's stool.

Hosteen's view of the scene was from floor level, but he sighted the second party entering from the west, a peace pole held up ostentatiously. Drummer and Chief walked behind that. When a second and then a third such delegation arrived through the western door, Hosteen realized this was not a gathering of a clan but a meeting of tribal representatives, and from tribes once enemies.

Five, six such delegations now, a handful of warriors ranked behind each chief and medicine man. The seventh-Hosteen started-Krotag and Ukurti led that.