The Time Traders Part 8

So, covered with dirt, they walked along the trackway toward the neighboring village with a weariness they did not have to counterfeit.

The dog sighted or perhaps scented them first. It was a rough-coated beast, showing its fangs with a wolflike ferocity. But it was smaller than a wolf, and it barked between its warning snarls. Ashe brought his bow from beneath the shelter of his cloak and held it ready.

"Ho, one comes to speak with Nodren--Nodren of the Hill!"

Only the dog snapped and snarled. Ashe rubbed his forearm across his face, the gesture of a weary and heartsick man, smearing the ash and grime into an awesome mask.

"Who speaks to Nodren--?" There was a different twist to the p.r.o.nunciation of some words, but Ross was able to understand.

"One who has hunted with him and feasted with him. The one who gave into his hand the friendship gift of the ever-sharp knife. It is a.s.sha of the traders----"

"Go far from us, man of ill luck. You who are hunted by the evil spirits." The last was a shrill cry.

Ashe remained where he was, facing into the bushes which hid the tribesman.

"Who speaks for Nodren yet not with the voice of Nodren?" he demanded.

"This is a.s.sha who asks. We have drunk blood together and faced the white wolf and the wild boar in their fury. Nodren lets not others speak for him, for Nodren is a man and a chief!"

"And you are cursed!" A stone flew through the air, striking a rain pool and spattering mud on Ashe's boots. "Go and take your evil with you!"

"Is it from the hand of Nodren or Nodren's young men that doom came upon those of my blood? Have war arrows pa.s.sed between the place of the traders and the town of Nodren? Is that why you hide in the shadows so that I, a.s.sha, cannot look upon the face of one who speaks boldly and throws stones?"

"No war arrows between us, trader. _We_ do not provoke the spirits of the hills. No fire comes from the sky at night to eat us up with a noise of many thunders. Lurgha speaks in such thunders; Lurgha's hand smites with such fire. You have the Wrath of Lurgha upon you, trader! Keep away from us lest Lurgha's wrath fall upon us also."

Lurgha was the local storm G.o.d, Ross recalled. The sound of thunder and fire coming out of the sky at night--the bomb! Perhaps the very method of attack on the post would defeat Ashe's attempt to learn anything from these neighbors. The superst.i.tions of the people would lead them to shun both the site of the post and Ashe himself as cursed and taboo.

"If the Wrath of Lurgha had struck at a.s.sha, would a.s.sha still live to walk upon this road?" Ashe prodded the ground with the tip of his bowstave. "Yet a.s.sha walks, as you see him; a.s.sha talks, as you hear him. It is ridiculous to answer him with the nonsense of little children----"

"Spirits so walk and talk to unlucky men," retorted the man in hiding.

"It may be the spirit of a.s.sha who does so now--"

Ashe made a sudden leap. There was a flurry of action behind the bush screen and he reappeared, dragging into the gray light of the rainy day a wriggling captive, whom he b.u.mped without ceremony onto the beaten earth of the road.

The man was bearded, wearing his thick mop of black hair in a round topknot secured by a hide loop. He wore a skin tunic, now in considerable disarray, which was held in place with a woven, ta.s.seled belt.

"Ho, so it is Lal of the Quick Tongue who speaks so loudly of spirits and the Wrath of Lurgha!" Ashe studied his captive. "Now, Lal, since you speak for Nodren--which I believe will greatly surprise him--you will continue to tell me of this Wrath of Lurgha from the night skies and what has happened to Sanfra, who was my brother, and those others of my kin. I am a.s.sha, and you know of the wrath of a.s.sha and how it ate up Twist-tooth, the outlaw, when he came in with his evil men. The Wrath of Lurgha is hot, but so too is the wrath of a.s.sha." Ashe contorted his face in such a way that Lal squirmed and looked away. When the tribesman spoke, all his former authority and bl.u.s.ter had gone.

"a.s.sha knows that I am as his dog. Let him not turn upon me his swift-cutting big knife, nor the arrows from his lightning bow. It was the Wrath of Lurgha which smote the place on the hill, first the thunder of his fist meeting the earth, and then the fire which he breathed upon those whom he would slay----"

"And this you saw with your own eyes, Lal?"

The s.h.a.ggy head shook an emphatic negative. "a.s.sha knows that Lal is no chief who can stand and look upon the wonders of Lurgha's might and keep his eyes in his head. Nodren himself saw this wonder----"

"And if Lurgha came in the night, when all men keep to their homes and leave the outer world to the restless spirits, how did Nodren see his coming?"

Lal crouched lower to the ground, his eyes darting to the bushes and the freedom they promised, then back to Ashe's firmly planted boots.

"I am not a chief, a.s.sha. How could I know in what way or for what reason Nodren saw the coming of Lurgha----?"

"Fool!" A second voice, that of a woman, spat the word from the brush which fringed the roadway. "Speak to a.s.sha with a straight tongue. If he is a spirit, he will know that you do not tell him the truth. And if he has been spared by Lurgha...." She showed her wonderment with a hiss of indrawn breath.

So urged, Lal mumbled sullenly, "It is said that there came a message for one to witness the Wrath of Lurgha in its descent upon the outlanders so that Nodren and the men of Nodren would truly know that the traders were cursed, and should be put to the spear should they come here again----"

"This message--how was it brought? Did the voice of Lurgha sound in Nodren's ear alone, or came it by the tongue of some man?"

"Ahee!" Lal lay flat on the ground, his hands over his ears.

"Lal is a fool and fears his own shadow as it skips before him on a sunny day!" Out of the bushes stepped a young woman, obviously of some importance in her own group. Walking with a proud stride, her eyes boldly met Ashe's. A shining disk hung about her neck on a thong, and another decorated the woven belt of her cloth tunic. Her hair was bound in a thread net fastened with jet pins.

"I greet Ca.s.sca, who is the First Sower." There was a formal note in Ashe's voice. "But why should Ca.s.sca hide from a.s.sha?"

"There has been death on your hill, a.s.sha--" she sniffed--"you smell of it now--Lurgha's death. Those who come from that hill may well be some who no longer walk in their bodies." Ca.s.sca placed her fingers momentarily on Ashe's outstretched palm before she nodded. "No spirit are you, a.s.sha, for all know that a spirit is solid to the eye, but not to the touch. So it would seem that you were not burned up by Lurgha, after all."

"This matter of a message from Lurgha--" he prompted.

"It came out of the empty air in the hearing not only of Nodren, but also of Hangor, Effar, and myself, Ca.s.sca. For we stood at that time near the Old Place...." She made a curious gesture with the fingers of her right hand. "It will soon be the time of sowing, and though Lurgha brings sun and rain to feed the grain, yet it is in the Great Mother that the seed lies. Upon her business only women may go into the Inner Circle." She gestured again. "But as we met to make the first sacrifice there came music out of the air such as we have never heard, voices singing like birds in a strange tongue." Her face a.s.sumed an awesome expression. "Afterward a voice said that Lurgha was angered with the hill of the men-from-afar and that in the night he would send his Wrath against them, and that Nodren must witness this thing so that he could see what Lurgha did to those he would punish. So it was done by Nodren.

And there was a sound in the air----"

"What kind of a sound?" Ashe asked quietly.

"Nodren said it was a hum and there was the dark shadow of Lurgha's bird between him and the stars. Then came the smiting of the hill with thunder and lightning, and Nodren fled, for the Wrath of Lurgha is a fearsome thing. Now do the people come to the Great Mother's Place with many fine offerings that she may stand between them and that Wrath."

"a.s.sha thanks Ca.s.sca, who is the handmaiden of the Great Mother. May the sowing prosper and the reaping be good this year!" Ashe said finally, ignoring Lal, who still groveled on the road.

"You go from this place, a.s.sha?" she asked. "For though I stand under the protecting hand of the Mother and so do not fear, yet there are others who will raise their spears against you for the honor of Lurgha."

"We go, and again thanks be to you, Ca.s.sca."

He turned back the way they had come, and Ross fell in beside him as the woman watched them out of sight.

CHAPTER 6

"That bird of Lurgha's--" said Ross, once they were out of sight of Ca.s.sca and Lal, "could it have been a plane?"

"Sounds like it," snapped his companion. "If the Reds have done their work efficiently, and there's no reason to suppose otherwise, then there is no use in contacting either Dorhta's town or Munga's. The same announcement concerning the Wrath of Lurgha was probably made there--to their good purpose, not ours."

"Ca.s.sca didn't seem to be overly impressed with Lurgha's curse, not as much as the man was."

"She is the closest thing to a priestess that this tribe knows, and she serves a G.o.ddess older and more powerful than Lurgha--the Mother Earth, the Great Mother, G.o.ddess of fertility and growth. Nodren's people believe that unless Ca.s.sca performs her mysteries and sows part of the first field in the spring there won't be any harvest. Consequently, she is secure in her office and doesn't fear the Wrath of Lurgha too much.

These people are now changing from one type of worship to another, but some of Ca.s.sca's beliefs will persist clear down to our day, taking on the coating of 'magic' and a lot of other enameling along the way."

Ashe had been talking as a man talks to cover up furious thinking. Now he paused again and turned toward the sea. "We have to stick it out somewhere until the sub comes to pick us up. We'll need shelter."

"Will the tribesmen be after us?"