Then he caught at a block, found his feet, and climbed to the top of the island. He had expected to find traces of the flood. But what he faced now was a battlefield! Three dead men lay there, each with a war arrow in him, each lacking a right hand, Sorenson, Bokatan and Dagotag. By the signs, they had died early that morning, perhaps when he was making his struggle to get out of the cave.
His age old racial fear of the dead warred in him with the need to know what had happened and the necessity of providing a last service for these whose lives he had shared during the past strenuous days. Storm walked slowly forward and something else stirred, lifted a tawny head on which the fur was matted with red. The Terran sprinted to the side of the dune cat.
Surra whined. The ragged wound on her head was ugly, but, as Storm discovered thankfully, not dangerous. It looked much worse than it was and the attackers must have believed her dead. Not for the first time the Terran wished that the team had speech in common, as well as their trained rapport. He could only survey the scene and try to deduce what had happened.
It was his guess that Sorenson and the two Norbies had been cut off by the flood and had taken refuge on this hillock that was by far the highest in the vicinity. The attack had come later, after the end of the storm. And the attackers had thoroughly looted the camp, stripped the bodies—all weapons were gone.
Storm brought out his small personal aid kit and went to work on Surra, cleansing her wound. She allowed him to handle her, giving only a little protesting cry now and then. He worked as slowly as he could, trying not to think of that other task ahead of him. But with Surra comfortable he forced himself to it, though he could not repress shudders as he straightened out Sorenson’s contorted body and placed the dead Norbies on either side of the Survey man. There was nothing with which to dig graves, but he broke off pieces of the rubble, working with dogged determination, piling the loosened stones and earth over the three, while the sun turned the hillock into a steam bath.
Surra called before he had finished and Storm looked up to see her wavering to her feet. Baku was alive, and Surra, and back in the cave he had Rain and Hing. He knew little of Norbie war customs, but he did not believe that the Nitra—if it had been those wild tribesmen who attacked here—would linger. They might well believe that they had wiped out all members of the exploring party. He must get Surra to the higher land at the north of the valley, which meant using Rain. Storm spoke gently to the cat, planting in his mind the idea that he must go but would return soon which she would sense.
The water had fallen swiftly so that this time he swam only a few feet as he backtracked. He returned to the cave to discover that Hing had been busy on her own, using her particular talent—digging—perhaps in search of edible roots carried down in the earthslide. Because of her activities he was able to clear a path for Rain. There were iron rations among the supplies he had in the pack and purified water in his canteen. Rain trotted down to suck up a drink from the flood and tear avidly at the waterlogged grass.
Towing the stallion loaded with the supply pack, Hing riding on top, and Baku overhead, Storm came back to the vicinity of the hillock. The sullenly retreating waters had now bared a stretch of washed gravel and boulders against the cliff wall about half a mile ahead, and he chose that site for his temporary camp. Leaving the pack with Hing and Baku on guard, he splashed over to the mound.
Rain had accepted Surra from the start as a running companion. The cat on four feet was a familiar part of his everyday world. But whether the stallion would allow her as a rider was another matter. Storm, mounted, maneuvered the horse close to the mound, gentling Rain with hands and voice, and when the mount stood quietly, he called to the dune cat. She staggered to the edge of the drop and sprang, landing in front of the man with a sudden shock of weight.
Somewhat to the Terran’s surprise, Rain did not try to rid himself of the double burden. And Storm, with Surra draped awkwardly before him, headed the horse back through the roiled waters to the rapidly enlarging dry stretch beyond.
Once on the gravel bed Storm took stock of his supplies. Before leaving Irrawady Crossing he had pared his personal kit to bare essentials, depending upon Sorenson’s preparations for food rations. So what he had rescued from the mare was only a fraction of what they might need before they found a way out of the wasteland and gained some isolated settler’s holding or a temporary herd station. There were for weapons his stun rod, the bow the Norbies had given him, his belt knife. And for food, a packet of iron rations he had already drawn upon, a survival of his service days. He had his sleeping roll, the blanket from Terra, the small aid kit he had used for Surra, the torch, a hand heat unit with three charges, and a canteen. But he would have to boil his water from now on; the chemical purifiers had gone with the rest of the party’s supplies. However, Storm had done with far less when in the field and the team had learned to hunt game with dispatch and economy.
There was an oversized, rock-dwelling, distant cousin of a rabbit, which they had shot and eaten with good appetite on the trail, a deerlike browser, and the grass hens, which could be easily flushed out, though it took a number of them to satisfy a man. But all Arzoran animals moved with water, and he would have to make the riverfed plains before the big dry closed up the land.
Storm sat cross-legged by the bed of grass he had pulled for Surra’s resting. Hing muzzled against him, chittering mournfully to herself. Even the bag in which Ho had ridden was not to be found and she missed her mate. As the Terran stroked her coarse fur comfortingly, he studied the southern end of the valley. Between him and the gateway of the tunnel there was still a vast spread of water. He was walled off from that exit until the flood retreated still farther. Also—Storm pushed Hing down on his knees, reached for the vision lenses lying by him.
He swept that southern range, dissatisfied. There was something wrong there, though he could not decide just what it could be. He had a feeling that there had been a change in what he saw. His gaze traveled along the cliffs. There were places there where an active man could climb, but none where he could take Rain. No, unless there was a gateway in the north, then the tunnel remained their only exit. And to head north was to bore farther into the untracked wilderness.
To be alone was nothing new for Storm. In one way or another he had walked a lonely road for most of his life. And sometimes it was easier to live with his inner loneliness and just the team, than to exist in a human anthill such as the Center. But there was something in this valley that he had never met before, not on any alien, enemy-held planet where he had learned to live in peril, where every move might betray him to an enemy and yet not to quick, clean death. This thing clung to the mounds of rubble—to the walls of rock, and the Terran knew that he had not been greatly surprised to find only the dead waiting on the hillock. This was a place that invited death. It repelled his senses, his body. Had it not been that Surra could not yet travel far, Storm would be seeking a way out right now.
The Terran wanted a fire, not only to dry what was left of his clothing and gear and as a source of physical comfort against the chill of the coming waterlogged night, but because fire itself was his species’ first weapon against the unknown—the oldest, and the most heartening. Slowly he began to speak aloud, his voice rolling into the chants, the old, old songs meant to be a defense against that which stalks the night, words that he believed he could not remember, but that now came easily in the ancient and comforting rhythms.