Planet of Adventure Omnibus (7 page)

“You are no
longer Traz Onmale; you are Traz.”

The boy
seemed to shrink, to lessen in stature. “Very well,” he said in a subdued
voice. “I do not care to die.” He looked around the camp. “We must go afoot. If
we try to harness leap-horses they will scream and gnash their horns. You wait
here. I will fetch cloaks and a parcel of food.” He departed, leaving Reith
with the emblem of Onmale.

In the light
of the moons he looked at it and it seemed to stare back at him, issuing orders
of baleful import. Reith dug a hole in the ground, dropped in Onmale. It seemed
to shiver, give a soundless shriek of anguish; he covered the gleaming emblem,
feeling haunted and guilty, and when he rose to his feet his hands were shaking
and clammy, and sweat trickled down his back.

Time passed:
an hour? Two hours? Reith was unable to estimate. Since arriving on Tschai his
time sense had gone awry.

The moons
slid down the sky; midnight approached, passed; night sounds came in off the
steppe; a faint high-pitched yelping of nighthounds, a great muffled belch. In
the camp the fires dwindled to embers; the mutter of voices ceased.

The boy came
silently up behind him. “I’m ready. Here is your cloak and a pack of food.”

Reith was
aware that he spoke in a new voice, less certain, less brusque. His black hat
seemed strangely plain. He looked at Reith’s hands and briefly around the shed,
but made no inquiry concerning the Onmale.

They slipped
off to the north, climbed the hillside so as to walk along the ridge. “We’ll be
easier for the night-hounds to see,” muttered Traz, “but the. attanders keep to
the shadows of the swales.”

“If we can
reach the forest, and the tree where I hope my harness still hangs, we’ll be
considerably safer. Then...” He paused. The future was a blank expanse.

They gained
the crest of the hill and halted a moment to rest. The high moons cast a wan
light across the steppes, filling the hollows with darkness. From not too far
to the north came a series of low wails. “Down,” hissed Traz. “Lie flat. The
hounds are running.”

They lay
without moving for fifteen minutes. The eerie cries sounded again, toward the
east. “Come,” said Traz. “They’re circling the camp, hoping for a staked child.”

They struck
off to the south, up and down, avoiding the dark swales as much as possible. “The
night is old,” said Traz. “When light comes the Emblems will trail us. If we reach
the river we can lose them. If the marshmen take us, we’ll fare as badly, or
worse.”

For two hours
they walked. The eastern sky began to show a watery yellow light, barred by
streaks of black cloud, and ahead rose the loom of the forest. Traz looked back
the way they had come. “The camp will be astir. The women will be
fire-building. Presently the magicians will come to seek out the Onmale. That
would have been me. Since I am gone the camp will be in turmoil. There will be
curses and shouts: high anger. The Emblems will run to their leap-horses, and
be off pellmell!” Once more Traz searched the horizons. “They’ll be along soon.”

The two
walked, and reached the edge of the forest, still dark and dank and pooled with
night shadows. Traz hesitated, looking into the forest, then back across the
steppes.

“How far to
the bog?” asked Reith.

“Not far. A
mile or two. But I smell a berl.”

Reith tested
the air and detected an acrid fetor.

“It might be
only the spoor,” said Traz in a husky voice. “The Emblems will be here in a
very few minutes. We’d best try to reach the river.”

“First the
ejection harness!”

Traz gave a
fatalistic shrug, plunged into the forest. Reith turned a last look over his
shoulder. At the far dim edge of vision a set of hurrying black specks had
appeared. He hurried after Traz, who moved with great care, stopping to listen
and smell the air. In a fever of impatience Reith pressed at his back. Traz
speeded his pace, and presently they were almost running over the sodden
leaf-mold. From far behind Reith thought to hear a set of savage boots.

Traz stopped
short. “Here is the tree.” He pointed up. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” said
Reith with heartfelt relief. “I was afraid it might be gone.”

Traz climbed
the tree, lowered the seat. Reith snapped open the flap, with drew his
hand-gun, kissed it in rapture, thrust it in his belt.

“Hurry,” said
Traz anxiously. “I hear the Emblems; they’re not far behind.”

Reith pulled
forth the survival pack, buckled it on his back. “Let’s go. Now they follow at
their own risk.”

Traz led the
way around the bog, taking pains to conceal the signs of their passage,
doubling back, swinging across a twenty-foot finger of black muck on a hanging
branch, climbing another tree, letting it bend beneath his weight to carry him
sixty feet away to the opposite side of a dense clump of reeds. Reith followed
each of his ploys. The voices of the Emblem warriors were now clearly audible.

Traz and
Reith reached the edge of the river, a slow-flowing flood of black-brown water.
Traz found a raft of driftwood, dead lianas, humus, held together by living
reeds. He pushed it off into the stream. Then he and Reith hid in a nearby
clump of reeds. Five minutes passed; four of the Emblem Men came crashing
through the bog along their trail, followed by a dozen more, with catapults at
the ready. They ran to the river’s edge, pointed to the marks where Traz had
dislodged the raft, searched the face of the river. The mass of floating
vegetation had drifted almost two hundred yards downstream and was being
carried by a swirl in the current to the other bank. The Emblems gave cries of
fury, turned and raced at top speed through the murk and tangle, along the bank
toward the drifting raft.

“Quick,”
whispered Traz. “They won’t be fooled long. We’ll go back along their tracks.”

Back away
from the river, across the bog and once more into the forest, Traz and Reith
ran, the calls and shouts at first receding to the side, then becoming silent,
then once again raised in a sound of furious exultation. “They’ve picked up our
trail once again,” gasped Traz. “They’ll be coming on leap-horses; we’ll never-”
He stopped short, held up his hand, and Reith became aware of the acrid
half-sweet fetor once again. “The berl,” whispered Traz. “Through here ... Up
this tree.”

With the
survival pack dangling at his back Reith followed the boy up the oily green
branches of a tree. “Higher,” said Traz. “The beast can lunge high.”

The berl
appeared: a lithe brown monster with a wicked boar’s-head split by a vast
mouth. From its neck protruded a pair of long arms terminating in great horny
hands which it held above its head. It seemed to be intent on the calls of the
warriors and paid no heed to Traz and Reith other than a single swift glance up
toward them. Reith thought he had never seen such evil in a face before. “Ridiculous.
It’s only a beast...”

The creature
disappeared through the forest; a moment later the sound of pursuit halted
abruptly. “They smell the berl,” said Traz. “Let’s be off.”

They climbed
down from the tree, fled to the north. From behind them came yells of horror, a
guttural gnashing roar.

“We’re safe
from the Emblems,” said Traz in a hollow voice. “Those who live will depart.”
He turned Reith a troubled glance. “When they go back to the camp there will be
no Onmale. What will happen? Will the tribe die?”

“I don’t
think so,” said Reith. “The magicians will see to that.”

Presently
they emerged from the forest. The steppe spread flat and empty, drenched in an
aromatic honey-colored light. Reith asked, “What is to the west of us?”

“The West
Aman and the country of the Old Chasch. Then the Jang Pinnacles. Beyond are the
Blue Chasch and the Aesedra Bight.”

“To the
south?”

“The marshes.
The marsh men live there, on rafts. They are different from us: little yellow
people with white eyes. Cruel and cunning as Blue Chasch.”

“They have no
cities?”

“No. There
are cities there”-Traz made a gesture generally toward the north-”all ruined.
There are old cities everywhere along the steppes. They are haunted, and there
are Phung, as well, who live among the ruins.”

Reith asked
further questions regarding the geography and life of Tschai, to find Traz’s
knowledge spotty. The Dirdir and Dirdirmen lived beyond the sea; where, he was
uncertain. There were three types of Chasch: the Old Chasch, a decadent remnant
of a once-powerful race, now concentrated around the Jang Pinnacles; the Green
Chasch, nomads of the Dead Steppe; and the Blue Chasch. Traz detested all the
Chasch indiscriminately, though he had never seen Old Chasch. “The Green are
terrible: demons! They keep to the Dead Steppe. The Emblems stay to the south,
except for raids and caravan pillage. The caravan we failed to loot skirted far
south to avoid the Greens.”

“Where was it
bound?”

“Probably
Pera, or maybe to Jalkh on the Lesmatic Sea. Most likely Pera. North-South
caravans trade between Jalkh and Mazuun. EastWest caravans move between Pera
and Coad.”

“These are
cities where men live?”

Traz
shrugged. “Hardly cities. Settled places. But I know little, only what I have
heard the magicians say. Are you hungry? I am. Let us eat.”

On a fallen
log they sat and ate chunks of caked porridge and drank from leather flasks of
beer. Traz pointed to a low weed on which grew small white globules. “We’ll
never starve so long as pilgrim plant grows ... And see yonder black clumps?
That is watak. The roots store a gallon of sap. If you drink nothing but watak
you become deaf, but for short periods there is no harm.”

Reith opened
his survival pack: “I can draw water from the ground with this sheet of film,
or convert sea-water with this purifier ... These are food pills, enough for a
month .... This is an energy cell ... A medical kit ... Knife, compass,
scanscope ... . Transcom ...” Reith examined the transcom with a sudden thrill
of interest.

“What is that
device?” asked Traz.

“Half of a
communication system. There was another in Paul Waunder’s pack, which went with
the space-boat. I can broadcast a signal which will bring an automatic response
from the other set and give the other set’s location.” Reith pushed the
Find
button. A compass arrow swung to the northwest; a counter flashed a white 6.2
and a red 2. “The other set-and presumably the space-boat-is 6.2 times 10 to
the second, or 620 miles northwest.”

“That would
be in the country of the Blue Chasch. We knew that already.”

Reith looked
off to the northwest, ruminating. “We don’t want to go south into the marshes,
or back into the forest. What lies to the east, beyond the steppes?”

“I don’t
know. I think the Draschade Ocean. It is far away.”

“Is that
where the caravans come from?”

“Coad is on a
gulf which connects to the Draschade. Between is all of Aman Steppe, the Emblem
Men and other tribes as well: the Kite-fighters, the Mad Axes, the Berl Totems,
the Yellow Blacks and others beyond my knowledge.”

Reith
considered. His space-boat had been taken by the Blue Chasch into the
northwest. Northwest therefore seemed the most reasonable direction in which to
fare.

Traz sat
dozing, chin on his chest. Wearing Onmale he had demonstrated a bleak unrelenting
nature; now, with the soul of the emblem lifted from his own, he had become
forlorn and wistful, though still far more reserved than Reith thought natural.

Reith’s own
eyelids were drooping with fatigue: the sunlight was warm; the spot seemed
secure ... What if the berl should return? Reith forced himself to wakefulness.
While Traz slept he repacked his gear.

TRAZ AWOKE.
HE turned Reith a sheepish look and rose quickly to his feet.

Reith arose;
they set forth: by some unspoken understanding into the northwest. The time was
middle morning, the sun a tarnished brass disc in the slate sky. The air was
pleasantly cool, and for the first time since his arrival on Tschai Reith felt
a lifting of the spirits. His body was mended, he had recovered his equipment,
he knew the general location of the scout-boat: immeasurable improvement over
his previous situation.

They trudged
steadily across the steppe. The forest became a dark blur behind them:
elsewhere the horizons were empty. After their midday meal they slept for a
period; then, awakening in the late afternoon, they went on into the northwest.

The sun
dropped into a bank of low clouds, casting an embroidery of dull copper over
the top. There was no shelter on the open steppe; with nothing better to do
they walked on.

The right was
quiet and still; far to the east they heard the wailing of night-hounds but
were not molested.

The following
day they finished the food and water from the packs which Traz had supplied and
began to subsist on the pods of pilgrim plant and sap from watak roots: the
first bland, the second acrid.