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, manoeuvred 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 river-fed 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. King 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 travelled 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 Centre. 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 defence 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.
Baku, perched on a stone outcrop yards above Storm’s head, stirred. Surra raised her chin from her paws, her fox ears pricked. Storm drew his stun rod. His back was against the cliff wall, he had a shielding boulder on his right – only two sides to cover. With the other hand he worked his knife out of its sheath. Any attack would have to be hand to hand. Had a bowman stalked them the arrow would be already freed from its cord. And his stun ray could take care of a charge –
“Eruoooooo!” That call was low, echoing, and it was one he had often heard and could not repeat.
Storm did not relax vigilance, but neither did he press the control button of the ray, as a figure, which was hardly more than a flitting form against shadows gathering in this part of the valley where the western sun was already cut off by the cliffs, came running toward him. Gorgol, his right arm pressed to his chest, reached the gravel beach and dropped on the edge of Surra’s bed. His left hand moved in limited signs which Storm had to watch carefully to translate.
“Enemy – after flood – kill – all dead –”
“It is so,” Storm returned. “Let me see to your wound, warrior.”
The Terran pushed the young native back against the barricade boulder and examined the hurt hurriedly in the fading light. Luckily for the Norbie the arrow had gone cleanly through, and as far as Storm could judge none of the treacherous, glassy barbs had broken off in the flesh. He washed it with the last of the purified water and bound it up. Gorgol sighed and closed his eyes. The Terran brought out a block of concentrated ration, broke off a portion and pushed it into the Norbie’s good hand.
When Gorgol opened his eyes again Storm signed the all-important question.
“Nitra gone? Or still here?”
Gorgol shook his head in a determined negative. “No Nitra –” With the ration block clenched between his teeth, he moved his one set of fingers. “Not Nitra kill – not Norbies –”
Storm sat back on his heels, his eyes sweeping out over the mound-studded desolation. For an instant or two his vague fears of this place merged in a flash of imagination – the Sealed Cave people? Or some inimical thing they had left here on guard? Then he smiled wryly. Those men on the mound had been killed by arrows, the wound he had just tended was left by the same weapon. His racial superstitions were at war with all the scientific learning of his lost home-world.
“Not Norbies?”
“No Norbie, no Nitra –” Storm had made no mistake in his first reading of Gorgol’s signs. Now the native moved his other arm stiffly, forced his right hand to add to the authority of his left. “Faraway men come – your kind!”
But the arrows? That ritual mutilation of the dead –?
“You see them?”
“I see – I on cliff ledge – water high, high! Men come at end of rain – they wear this’ – he tapped the yoris hide corselet protecting his own torso – “like Norbie – carry bows – like Norbie –but not Norbie. Think Mountain Butchers – steal horses – steal frawns – kill – then say Norbie do. Mark dead like Norbie. They shoot – Gorgol fall like dead – only first Gorgol kill one!” His eyes gleamed brightly. “Gorgol warrior now! But too many –” He spread all his fingers to spell the size of the other party. “So when arrow find Gorgol he fall back – be dead – they no climb up to see whether really dead or no –”