He looked at the crystal, forcing himself to hold it. But he turned away from the fire so that some of the light died slowly out of it and the quivering witch-fires were a little dimmed.
Imagination, he told himself. One might hear anything in a place like this. One might see anything…
Only still the crystal glowed, as though it might be taking life from his own living hands now that the fire was denied it. And the inner facets called his gaze down to dim depths that stretched into somewhere that was not space, into time perhaps, or…
The tiny voices spoke again, scratching, chittering spider-sounds coming from a million miles away where no ear could possibly hear them. But Stark heard them. He heard them this time just long enough to recognize a certain thing about them, and then he yelled and flung the crystal from him in blind atavistic fear, because suddenly he knew that wherever it came from and however it had gotten to Kushat, no human man had made it.
It fell into the banked snow by the doorway, vanishing without a sound. Stark stood shivering violently, and then in a minute or two he began rather uncertainly to curse himself for an idiot. The voices were gone again and he stretched his hearing, trying to catch them and reassure himself that they had been only his oversensitive capacity to find strange gods and evil spirits with every step he took. The primitive aboriginal was still very close under his skin. He knew and recognized it, finding it often a curse and only sometimes a blessing. The naked boy who had run with Tika and Old One among the haunted rocks on the edge of Darkside had been playing tricks again with Eric John Stark.
He stood still, cataloguing the sounds, the many shadings of the wind blowing far, blowing near, the chafing of the snow, Camar’s breathing…
But Camar’s breathing had stopped.
Stark went to him and knelt down, rather wishing now that he could retract his promise and knowing it was too late. He crossed Camar’s hands in the ritual posture and then drew the tattered edge of his cloak across his face. He rose and gave Camar the gesture of farewell, and then turned to where he had thrown the talisman. He was on his knees groping for it in the drifted snow when one of the beasts tethered outside the tower started up from its sleep with a shrill hissing. Motionless he listened, and heard it answered.
Working desperately, Stark probed the icy drift with his fingers, felt the smooth oval of the talisman and plucked it out, placing it in the boss of Camar’s belt. He closed it and clasped the belt around his waist, and then, not hurrying now, he found the small flask that lay with his gear beside the fire and took a long pull at it.
Then he waited.
They came silently on padded feet, the rangy mountain brutes moving daintily through the rubble of the sprawling ruin. Their riders too were silent, tall men with fierce eyes and russet hair. They wore leather coats, and each man carried a long straight spear.
There were a score of them around the tower in the windy gloom. Stark did not bother to draw his gun. He had learned very young the difference between courage and idiocy.
He walked out toward them, moving slowly lest one of them be startled into spearing him, yet not slowly enough to denote fear. And he held up his right hand and gave them greeting.
They did not answer him. They sat their restive mounts and stared at him, and Stark knew that Camar had spoken the truth.
These were the riders of Mekh, and they were wolves.
II
Stark waited, until they should tire of their own silence.
Finally one demanded, “Of what country are you?”
He answered, “I am called N’Chaka, the Man-Without-a-Tribe.”
This was the name his foster-folk had given him, the half human aboriginals who had found him orphaned and alone after an earthquake wiped out the mining community that had been his home; the folk who had raised him, in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury’s Twilight Belt. It still seemed to Stark to be his true name.
“A stranger,” said the leader, and smiled. He pointed to the dead Camar and asked, “Did you slay him?”
“He was my friend,” said Stark. “I was bringing him home to die.”
Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader, “He was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thord! And he has not been robbed.” He proceeded to take care of that detail himself.
“A stranger,” repeated the leader, Thord. “Bound for Kushat, with a man of Kushat. Well, I think you will come with us, stranger.”
Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking him, he did not resist when the tall Thord plundered him of all he owned except his clothes and Camar’s belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gun Thord flung contemptuously away.
One of the men brought Stark’s beast and Camar’s from where they were tethered and the Earthman mounted, as usual over the violent protest of the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved out from under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.
For the rest of that night and through the next day and the night that followed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and chew on their rations of jerked meat. And to Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the North country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched these wild mountains and barren plains. Not even the present had reached them. The past held pride enough.
Far to the north, below the horizon, the polar pack made a glimmering white blink on the sky, and at night there were the cold flames of the aurora to burn out the stars. The wind blew down from the ice, through the mountain gorges, across the plains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose, broken monoliths of stone, of unknown history and unguessed purpose. The men of Mekh could tell Stark nothing about them, though they seemed to prefer to avoid them.
Thord did not make any mention to Stark about where they were taking him, or why, and Stark did not ask. It would have been an admission of fear. Since there was nothing else he could do at the moment he exercised the patience of the chained beast, and simply waited. But there were times when he found it difficult. Camar’s belt sat uncomfortably at his middle. He kept thinking about the talisman and wondering how much of its strangeness was his own imagination and how much was real, and it made for uneasy thinking. All he wanted now was to get as quickly as possible to Kushat and be rid of the thing. And he cursed Thord and his riders, silently but with great viciousness.
In mid-afternoon of the second day they came to a lip of rock where the snow was swept clean, and below it was sheer drop into a narrow valley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up and down as far as he could see, were men and beasts and shelters of hides and brush, and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand, they camped under the cliffs and their voices rose up on the thin air in a vast deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of the plains.
A war party, gathered now, before the thaw. Stark smiled. He became curious to meet the leader of this army.
They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped down the cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls. They came in among the shelters of the camp.
Here the snow was churned and soiled and melted to slush by the fires. There were no women in the camp, no sign of the usual cheerful rabble that follows a barbarian army. There were only men, hillmen and warriors all, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle.
They came out of their holes to shout at Thord and his men, and stare at the stranger. Thord was flushed and jovial with his own importance.