“A watcher on the heights,” she whispered. “He has been there for the better part of an hour.”
Brant looked and saw the mounted man looming in dark silhouette against the glitter of a thousand stars. His jaw tightened and his face went grim.
“Who can it be?” he muttered under his breath, but the Martian woman heard his words.
“Someone who scouts for a greater number,” she said tersely. “But I know not for what purpose.”
“Bandits? Raiders? Outlaws?”
She shrugged. “Mayhap, O Brant.”
He thought to himself: Or slavers.
But it didn’t make sense to him, not completely. Slavers or bandits would have no particular reason to risk their guns for so small a party of travelers.
“Shall we wake the others?” Zuarra asked in low tones.
Brant shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said gruffly.
Beside Brant’s brace of power guns and Zuarra’s long knife, they had only Will Harbin’s twin laser rifles wherewith to defend themselves against attack by the natives.
There were now two riders on the ridge above them.
“Who do you think they are, Jim?” asked Harbin. Brant said nothing, merely shrugged. There was no way to hazard a guess as to the identity of the riders. They could be anybody.
The thing was, there were no native clans encamped in these parts so near the southern pole.
The older man inquired of Agila his opinion. But the guide only made the Martian gesture that was equivalent to a shrug, voicing no opinion. He looked nervous and tense to Brant’s eyes, but the big man said nothing.
Suoli squeaked and fluttered nervously. Brant asked of Zuarra if she thought the riders were scouts of her people. He knew that if the Moon Hawk nation had discovered that the two women staked out to die had been set free by the hand of a f’yagh they might resent the interference enough to come after them. But somehow he doubted it. As did Zuarra.
“At this season, they are encamped to the north,” she said tonelessly, “in regions about Khorahd. Nor are such as Zuarra and Suoli important enough to merit pursuit, O Brant.”
Brant had thought as much, himself. Still and all, it did no harm to ask.
By moonrise the two riders had left the high ridge and were nowhere to be seen. Nor was there any further sign of them that night, although Harbin, Agila and Brant stood guard, each in turn, while the women slept.
With dawn, the travelers held a brief council, trying to decide what to do for their own protection. Brant pointed out that now that their camp had been discovered, they were exposed to danger. It would seem that the scouts had ridden back to join a larger force, but whether or not this force was interested in pursuing and attacking them was an unanswerable question.
No one had any better idea to present, so for the moment they decided to remain in their present camp, simply standing guard day and night against the chance of attack.
Neither that day nor all that next night, nor the following day did the unknown riders show themselves again. The travelers began to relax, seeming to have little enough to fear.
“Perhaps they were but travelers such as we,” suggested Zuarra over a frugal meal, “alert and wary in these untraveled regions, but uninterested in attacking us.”
Brant shrugged, saying nothing. But it was true than bandits or raiders would normally have little interest in so small a party as were they. And few native clans would risk the liarthsider power guns with so little to gain. After all, there were only three men, two women and three beasts… .
“Maybe it would be better to break camp under cover of darkness and move farther south,” suggested Doc Harbin. Brant thought about it briefly.
“Maybe, Doc,” he grunted. “But we have a secure position here, with our back to the steep cliffs. They can hardly come at us down the cliffs, for their beasts would find them hard to negotiate, and we could fire from below while their hands were busy guiding the beasts down. On the other hand, if they came after us while we were on the run, they would have us at a disadvantage.”
The older man nodded thoughtfully. “And, for that matter, why should they come at us at all, since we have done them no harm?” he said.
Brant agreed.
But he noticed the guilty flush that darkened the sullen features of Harbin’s guide.
For some reason, the man seemed afraid, did Agila.
But … why?
8 Watching Eyes
When they rose with dawn and left their tents to scan the ridgeline far above, it was empty. Whoever it had been that had spied upon their camp the night before had evidently moved on. Perhaps they had been mere travelers, after all.
But somehow Brant doubted it. Pessimist that he was, he had always found that when you anticipate the worst you are seldom surprised. But he said nothing of this to the others.
They busied themselves with the morning tasks, tending to the lopers, preparing a meal. And they were an oddly uncommunicative group, Brant had to notice. Agila performed his duties in a sullen manner, avoiding all eyes; Zuarra seemed lost in her own thoughts, while little Suoli kept timidly to herself and stayed out of her “sister’s” way as much as possible.
Even Harbin had little enough to say. He became lost in the pleasant occupation of fossil-hunting in the loose shale which lay heaped at the foot of the crumbling cliffs, and that afternoon he kept to his tent, sorting and classifying his finds.
Taking the lopers, Brant and Agila went hunting. It took them an hour and a little more to find a rock lizard, which they slew and skinned before returning to their encampment. While they were doing this, Brent scanned the ridgeline—it had become a habit, almost automatic, to do this by now.
And he saw four watchers. They were trying not to be seen, crouched low on the ridge, dark hooded robes blending with the harsh stone. Perhaps he would not have seen them at all had not the sunlight momentarily reflected from a glass lens.
The watchers were using binoculars… .
All the rest of that day Brant felt the nape-hairs on his neck prickle under the scrutiny of those watching eyes far above. If the unknown watchers were raiders, outlaws, enemies of whatever nature, from the vantage of their height they could pick the members of the encampment off one by one with a laser rifle.
If they were armed with energy weapons, that is. Which they undoubtedly were. Brant’s thin lips twisted in a slight, sour and cynical grin: Colonial Administration law made it the highest of crime to sell guns to the natives, but the law was difficult, nearly impossible, to enforce. And Brant had run guns to more than a few of the native princelings in his time.
It would be a bitter irony if one of those guns were to slay him now, he thought with grim humor.
The women had prepared the evening meal earlier than usual. After they were through eating and had tended to the beasts, Brant sought out Harbin for a conference. He found the scientist still hunched over his fossils, examining them through a lens and from time to time making a brief entry in the small black notebook he carried.
“Doc, you got a minute?” he asked.
“Certainly. As a matter of fact, I could use a break,” the older man remarked, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He gave Brant a shrewd glance. “What’s up?”
Brant shrugged. “Small council of war,” he said. Then, as the older man listened without comment, Brant told him about the watchers on the height.
“Four of them now,” grunted Harbin, rubbing his lean jaw. “Who do you suppose they are, Jim?”
“No idea,” Brant admitted. “But they’re up to no good, that’s for sure. Ordinary travelers wouldn’t have hung around ever since last night, just to keep an eye on us… .”