The Terran did not know just what brought him awake with the old, instant awareness of his Service days. His head, resting on earth, might have picked up the vibration of a distant tread. He levered himself up in the cubby he shared with Logan, hearing the restless movements of the horses. A mind cast for Surra told him that the cat was either not in range or deliberately refusing to answer. But the patches of sky he could see were those of early evening. And somewhere beyond, there were riders approaching.
Hosteen’s hand went out to cover Logan’s mouth as the younger settler slept on his back, bringing him to silent wakefulness. In answer to the question in the other’s eyes, the Terran motioned to the outer chamber.
Together they crawled out among the horses to discover Gorgol before them, his hand gripping the nose of his own mount to discourage any welcoming nicker. That told Hosteen what he wanted to know. With his free hand he signed, “Enemy?” and was answered by a vigorous assent from the Shosonna.
They were certainly not in any good position to meet an attack. To get the horses up out of the burrow again was a difficult task at best, and to be jumped while so employed—Hosteen made a mind cast for Surra. He was sure the cat had already left the djimbut burrow. Baku must have flown on to the cache and be waiting there for them. She had not returned the evening before, and her wings made her free from the toilsome march the rest must take. But with Surra one part of the team was still in reach.
“Who—?” He turned to Gorgol for enlightenment.
“Wild ones.”
“The peace poles are up,” Logan’s hands protested.
Gorgol tossed his head in the equivalent of a human shrug.
“These may be far-back ones—they want horses.”
The Shosonna and other lowland tribes had their own methods of recruiting their studs. Their young men hiring out as herd riders, their yoris hunters, could trade for the horses they wanted to build up clan herds. For the wild Norbies of the high country, envious of their fellows but fearful of venturing down to contact the settlers, there was another way of acquiring the wonder animals to which the Arzoran native-born had taken with the same ease and fierce joy that Hosteen’s own Amerindian ancestors had welcomed the species when the Europeans introduced them to the western continental plains. The wild ones were horse thieves of constantly increasing skill.
And to such thieves, the trail of this party must have been a heady inducement. Any experienced tracker crossing their traces would know that four riders had a total of nine horses with them, counting the pack horses and extra mounts—a windfall not even the raising of a peace pole could save. And here the enemy could simply wait them out with lack of water as the lever to pry them from their refuge.
Which left only Surra. Hosteen said as much, and Gorgol twittered to Kavok before he signed:
“The furred one is not here. Kavok saw her go when the sun was still a sky bead. Perhaps she is beyond your call—”
Hosteen leaned against the now crumbling wall of the burrow, closed his eyes, and threw all his strength and energy into one long call, noiseless, quick, and, he hoped, far reaching enough to touch minds with the cat.
With the snap of one pressing an activating button on a com and receiving an answer, he made the break-through. There were the few moments of seeming to see the world slightly askew and weirdly different—which told him that they had made contact. Then he gave his instructions and had agreement from Surra. Distance meant little to her, and her form of reckoning was not that of a man. He could not tell how far she now was from the wrecked burrow nor how long it would take her to track down the enemy, waiting out there, and deliver the counterstroke that could mean the difference between life and death for those underground. But before she went into action, she would report.
“Surra is movin’ in?” Logan asked in a half whisper.
Hosteen nodded. The strain of making that contact was still on him. Gorgol’s head was up, his finely cut nostrils expanded.
“They are all about us,” he reported.
“How many?” Hosteen demanded.
The smooth head, its ivory horns seeming to gleam in the gathering twilight, swung in a slow side-to-side motion before the Norbie answered:
“Four—five—” He flicked one finger after another as he located the raiders with his own kind of built-in radar. “Six—”
That finger count reached ten before it stopped. Cramped as they were in this earth bottle, those odds seemed impossible. Kavok had no arm room to use his bow. And while Logan and Hosteen had stunners and Gorgol another that had been Hosteen’s gift on their first war path months earlier, the weapon of the settlers was a defensive device for which one had to see a good target.
Surra was ready!
Hosteen signed a warning. Kavok had dropped his useless bow, drawn his knife. Leaving the horses, they pushed to the foot of the improvised ramp down which they had brought those animals in the early morning.
“Now!” Hosteen’s lips writhed in an exaggerated movement that he knew Gorgol would recognize at the time his order flashed to the waiting cat.
Surra’s shrill, ear-splitting scream tore the air. In answer came the terrified neighing of horses, not only from behind but also from the opening ahead. They heard the drum of racing hoofs and the high twittering of Norbie cries.
Hosteen broke for the ramp. Outside, he rolled behind a rock, then pulled himself up to survey the ravine. Surra yowled again, and he saw a figure with blue-dyed horns stand recklessly out in the open fitting arrow to bow cord. The Terran thumbed his stunner button and beamed the narrow ray for the skull wearing those blue horns. The Norbie wilted to the ground in a lank fold-up of long, thin arms and legs.
Another broke from cover, thrusting into the open, his head turned on his shoulders, his whole body expressing his terror as Surra’s head and forequarters rose into view. The cat ducked back into cover as Hosteen fired again. Surra was doing her part—driving the wild tribesmen into the waiting fire like the expert she was in this form of warfare.
CHAPTER SIX
Gorgol stooped above one of the still Norbies and lifted the head from the gravel by a painted horn.
“Nitra,” he identified.
Kavok thrust a booted toe under another of the attackers and rolled him over.
“They still live—” he commented, fingering his knife as he surveyed the limp body, his thoughts as plain as if he had shouted them aloud in Galactic basic.
Warrior trophies were warrior trophies. On the other hand, these unconscious enemies, now flat on sand and gravel or looped over the rocks where they had been stun-rayed as they tried to evade Surra, were by custom the property of those who had brought them down. Hosteen, Logan, and Gorgol had the sole right to collect horn tips to display at a Shosonna triumph drumming.
“Let them remain so,” Hosteen signed to both Norbies. “The peace poles are up. If the Nitra break the laws of Those-Who-Drum-Thunder, do the Shosonna also work evil?”
Kavok thrust his knife back into its sheath. “What then do we? Leave these to recover from your medicine fire so that they may trail us to try again?”
“The cool of night will be gone and the sun rising before they wake from their sleep,” the Terran answered. “And we take their horses. They must make day refuge in the burrow or die. I do not think they will try to follow us.”
“That is true,” Gorgol agreed. “And also it is right that we do not break the peace. Let us be on our way that we may find your water place before we greet the sun.”