“You’ve done it, fella. They’ll make drink-talk with us now, seein’ as how you’re a real warrior.”
Krotag’s camp supplied them with five experienced tracker-hunters and Larkin was well pleased, though it was plain the natives considered the stampede as an opportunity graciously arranged for their benefit by the Tall-Ones-Who-Drum-Thunder-in-the-Mountains as a means of adding to their clan wealth in horses.
Now as the riders and the Norbies worked in pairs to bring back the widely scattered animals, it became more and more apparent that Storm had been right in his suggestion that the stampede had been planned. Though even the natives found no identifiable traces of the raiders, it was clear that the horses had been separated into small bands and adroitly concealed in canyons and pocket valleys.
The clues to the identity of the stampeder or stampeders were so conspicuously absent that Storm heard some muttering to the effect that Krotag’s men, now virtuously engaged in hunting the mounts, might well have hidden them in the first place, so they could claim the stallion and the three or four footsore mares Larkin promised them for their services.
Storm wondered about that a day or so later as red dust churned up by trampling hoofs arose about him until he pulled to one side of the bunch he was helping to head in to the gather point. The Terran adjusted the scarf he had tied over nose and mouth, watching another rider who was a distant dot, yet plain because of his white horse. That was Coll Bister. And by all rights Storm owed Bister some gratitude, for it was he who had found and brought in Rain, the horse the Terran now rode. But the ex-Commando couldn’t find any liking for the man. He was one of those most outspoken against the Norbies and in addition he had shown covert hostility toward Storm, for no reason that the Beast Master could understand.
As usual the Terran had kept aloof in the herd camp, using his animals as an excuse for bedding down a little apart from the others. But his skill with horses had won him more ready acceptance than most off-world newcomers could claim. Larkin had turned over to him the breaking of additional mounts to take the place of work horses lost in the stampede, and the men not out on the hunt often gathered to watch him gentle them.
Had he wanted to, Storm might have enjoyed a favourite’s position. His particular gifts, his even temper, and his willingness to carry his share of the tedious herd work, were all qualities the riders could readily appreciate. They were willing to accept Storm’s reticence, which had hardened at the Centre into an encasing shell. To the frontiersmen that ancient planet on which their stock had first been bred was an exotic mystery. It was a great tragedy that Terra was now gone, and naturally a Terran would feel it deeply. The death of his home world tended to lend Storm something close to exiled majesty in Arzoran eyes.
Only with Larkin and Dort Lancin did Storm approach a relationship stronger than just the comradeship of the trail. Dort was teaching him finger-talk and pouring out for his benefit all the Norbie lore he himself had absorbed over the years, displaying toward the Terran the proprietorship of the instructor for an apt pupil. With Larkin the bond was horse, a subject on which both men could talk for hours at the night’s camp-fire.
So he knew Larkin and Dort and liked them in that pallid way that was the closest he was able to come to friendship with one of his own kind nowadays. But Bister was beginning to present a problem, one which he did not want to face. Not that Storm had any fear of physical combat should the other push his dislike that far. Bister bore all the signs of being a top bully, but in a fair fight – in spite of Bister outweighing and over-towering him – Storm was certain of victory.
In a fair fight – Storm’s tongue licked dust from his lips behind his scarf. Why had that thought crossed his mind? And why did it bother him just now to see Bister sitting there as if waiting for him to ride up?
Although Storm had never pushed a fight, neither had he ever directly avoided trouble when it was necessary to face it – not before. Why didn’t he want to come to grips with the problem Bister would present to him sooner or later?
Another rider drew level with Rain and a yellow hand lifted from a braided yoris hide hackamore to sign a greeting. Though the Norbie had followed Storm’s example and drawn a scarf over the lower half of his thin face, the Terran recognized Gorgol, youngest of the scouts Larkin had hired.
“Plenty dust –” The native made signs slowly out of courtesy for Storm’s beginner’s learning. “Ride dry –”
“Clouds – over mountain – does rain come?” Storm signalled back.
The Norbie’s head swung so he could look over his lean shoulder at the red rises now to the east.
“Rain comes – then mud –”
Storm knew that Larkin feared mud. Rain in these wastes, the heavy downpours of spring, could make a sticky morass of all level ground, producing dangerous quagmires.
“You bird totem warrior –” That was a statement, not a question. The Norbie youth rode with an easy grace, matching the pace of his smaller black and white mount to Rain’s stride until he cantered beside the Terran as if they were practising such a manoeuvre for some exhibition.
Storm nodded. Gorgol’s left hand went to a cord about his own neck on which hung two curved objects, black and shiny. There was a shy self-consciousness about the native as he dropped his hand again to sign:
“I no warrior yet – hunter only. Have been in high peaks and killed an evil flyer –”
Storm asked the proper question in return. “An evil flyer? I not of this world – I know not evil flyer –”
“Big!” The Norbie’s fingers spread to their farthest extent making the sign for great size. “Bird – evil bird. Hunt horse –hunt Norbie – kill!” His forefinger and thumb scissored in the emphatic sign for sudden and violent death, then rose again to tap the trophies swinging against the corselet which covered his breast.
Storm stretched out his hand in polite question and the boy pulled the thong from his neck, passing it to the Terran for examination. The objects strung on it were plainly a bird’s claws. And, using the length of Baku’s talons in relation to her thirty-four inches as comparison, the creature that had borne them must indeed have been huge, for each claw measured the length of Storm’s hand from wrist to the end of the longest finger. He returned the necklet to its proud owner.
“You great hunter,” Storm nodded vigorously to underline his finger statement. “Evil flyer must be hard to kill.”
Gorgol’s face might be half hidden by the scarf mask, but his whole person expressed pleasure as he answered.
“I kill for man deed. Not warrior yet – but hunter, yes.”
And well he might boast, Storm thought. If this boy had killed the monster he described while hunting alone – and the Terran had learned enough of Norbie customs from Dort to know that idle boasting was no part of native character – he had every right in the world to claim to be a hunter.
“You be frawn herder?” the Norbie continued.
“No. I have no land – no herd –”
“Be hunter. Kill evil flyer – kill yoris – trade their skins –”
“I stranger,” Storm pointed out, making the signs slowly as he launched bravely into expressing more complicated ideas. “Norbies hunt Norbie lands – off-world men do not so hunt –”
The hunting law was one of the few rigidly enforced by the loosely knit government of Arzor, as the Terran had been warned at the Centre and again at the space port. Norbie rights were protected. Herd riders could kill yoris or other predatory creatures attacking their stock. But any animal living in the mountains, or in the native-held sections of the plains was taboo as far as the settlers were concerned.