Star Soldiers (11 page)

"Meaning that if they do come here, it's because they
can
hunt?"

Kana could only nod in agreement. As arid as the country seemed to be, it must harbor life—enough life to attract the bylls.

Since a fire was out of the question—they dared show no lights—the scouts huddled together behind the wall of their temporary fort. The mountains cut off the light of the sinking sun. In the gloom Kana found himself listening—for what he did not know.

The wind rose again to swoop and wail. But through their hours of travel the Terrans had become so accustomed to its moans that they no longer heeded it. In one of the infrequent intervals of quiet, when the mountain blasts died, Kana listened again. Had he heard—? But nothing stirred beyond the wall.

They slept in fitful snatches, two of their number on watch in turn. Kana was dreaming when an elbow in his ribs brought him into full wakefulness and Soong's sibilant whisper warmed his ear.

"Look!"

Up and far ahead was a wink of light—a light which flickered to prove that it was no star. And to its left—another! Kana used the lenses. Those were fires right enough—beacons! In all he counted five. And beacons on those heights could only mean that someone was alert to the Terran invasion of this mountain territory. Not the royalists—the flames were not the blue of Llor torches. As he watched one winked and disappeared, then it blinked out again—off and on—in a pattern. There was no mistaking the meaning of that—signals! Would that exchange of information lead to such a one-sided battle as had taken place in the arena they had crossed that day?

"Signals!" Bogate was awake and watching also. "They must have spotted us!"

Kana heard rather than saw the veteran scramble over the wall. A moment later a growl from the dark relayed the other's displeasure. Kana climbed the barrier to look back along the route they had come. He saw then what had brought that grunt out of Bogate. High on the cliffs which walled the canyon was a speck of light. But they had no more than sighted it than it disappeared, not to be seen again. An answer to the signal ahead?

The veteran cleared his throat with a rasp. "Maybe that was `orders received.' " He parroted the official phrase. "Soong, use the speecher. Tell Hansu about those signals—"

"Well," he added a few moments later, "the show must be over for tonight—"

He was right, three of the fires ahead were gone, and the two remaining seemed to be dying. Kana shivered as icy fingers of wind pried within his coat. Were they going to walk into trouble?

"Camp answered," Soong reported out of the dark. "They saw a fire a little ahead of them, but not the others. Told 'em about the byll, too. They're at this end of the bone valley."

"Good enough. Turn in. We'll go on tomorrow."

In the morning Bogate chose the southern fork of the old river for exploration. Since Tharc lay to the south, it was logical to head in that direction. Whether the presence of byll in the other valley influenced his decision, or the fact that the fires they had watched had been to the north were points he did not discuss with the rest of the scouts.

Their new path was clearer of rock slides than any they had found so far and within a half mile Kana noticed an upward slope. They were climbing at last, instead of burrowing at the bottom of rock-walled slashes.

But they had not been an hour on their way before they came upon their first trace of the mountaineers. Luckily their experience with the byll had made them overly cautious and they were constantly alert to any faint indication of the abnormal. Larsen, who was in the lead, stopped abruptly at the edge of a wide, smooth expanse of sand. When Bogate came up the scout pointed to a curious depression in the center of the strip.

Kana, recalling one of Hansu's warnings about the Cos, spoke first:

"Might be a trap—"

Bogate looked from the recruit to the depression. Then he walked away to choose a stone, under the weight of which he staggered, waddling up to plop his burden onto that smooth surface.

There was a crack. Sand and stone together rushed down into a gaping hole. Kana inched up to look. What he saw made his insides twist as his imagination leaped into action. It was a trap, all right, a vicious, deadly trap. And the captive who fell into it would die a lingering death on the spikes artfully planted below.

The Terrans exchanged few words as they crept around the edge of the pit. On the other side Soong reported on the speecher, informing the Horde of this new risk.

From then on their progress slowed to a crawl. Not only must they watch for bylls, but every smooth patch of ground underfoot became suspect. They tested three more such stretches by Bogate's method, to have the last open again into darkness, this time a darkness from which such a frightful stench arose that they made no attempt to examine it closer.

"Do we now journey straight to someone's front door?" Soong shifted the weight of the speecher from one hip to the other.

"If we do—he's the sort who doesn't welcome visitors." Kana's attention was divided between the cliffs which walled in the stream bed and its flooring—death might come suddenly from either direction. And
he
was the AL man—the one supposed to contact the opposition. But none of the training he had known prepared him for a situation such as this—bare mountains which showed no signs of life—and these unmanned defenses against invaders. You couldn't contact an enemy who wasn't there. The Cos—if Cos they were—plainly pinned their faith on the devices of the weak or few in number—devices which would kill at a distance without involving too closely those who used them. If he could only bring about a meeting, convey to the mountaineers the idea that the Horde, winding its way into their jealously guarded territory, had no quarrel with them—on the contrary was now arrayed against their own ancient enemy, the Llor.

He was reasonably sure that any Cos spying on them would be stationed on the heights. And when the scouts took their break at the end of an hour's advance, he approached Bogate with a plan of his own. The veteran surveyed the tops of the cliffs uneasily.

"I dunno—" He hesitated. "Yeah, if they're spyin' they're up there—I'll grant you that. But they may be miles away—and we can't lie around waitin' for you to prowl, huntin' for somethin' which maybe ain't there. We'll see later—"

Kana had to content himself with that half promise. But the country offered an argument on his behalf not many minutes later. They rounded a curve and found themselves fronted with a wall of rock down which the vanished river must once have crashed in spectacular falls. Bogate waved to Kana.

"Well, here's a place where somebody's gotta climb. Suppose you do it and see what you find. Take Soong with you."

They shucked off their packs, taking only their rifles, and began the ascent—not up the water-worn face of the falls but along the relatively rough cliff to the left. After he finished this enlistment, Kana thought as he crept fly-wise from handhold to handhold, he would be qualified for service with a crack mountaineering Horde.

When they reached the top they faced west again. Here once more was the bed of the stream, but it was narrower than in the canyon below. And not too far ahead the somberness of the rock was broken by patches of yellow-green vegetation which promised moisture.

"There is something—" Soong pivoted slowly, studying the landscape.

Kana sensed what bothered his companion. He, too, felt as if they were under observation. Together they surveyed every foot of the rocky terrain. Nothing moved and the wind tore at them, whirling dust devils before it over the edge of the falls. They were alone in a dead world—and yet something watched! Kana knew it by a twitching between his shoulder blades, a cold crawling which roughened his skin with nervous tension. They were being watched—with a detached, non-human curiosity.

"Where is it?" Soong's voice came plaintively between the howls of the wind.

Kana knelt in the sand and brought out his number one package for trade contact. He selected a bare stretch of stone and laid out upon it the pieces he believed flashy enough to catch the eye and pin the attention of any native. Then he pulled Soong with him to the far left, picking out concealment well above the stream bed.

As the minutes passed Kana began to wonder if his nerves had misled him. The gold chain, the handful of bright stones drew the weak sunlight to make a flashing pool of fire which would have attracted the attention of any watcher, would have brought him out of cover had he been of any race the Terrans knew.

"Lord of Space!" Soong's voice hissed between his teeth.

Something had moved at last. A shadow floated with liquid, feline grace between two rocks and stood above the trade station. Kana's breath caught. A ttsor! That greenish fur—treasured by the Llor for mantles of state—could not be mistaken. The round skull with its large brain case, the fringed ears— A tail, able to grasp and hold, whipped around and selected the gold chain from the display, holding it up before the large yellow eyes. The ttsor sniffed at the rest of the collection, using the giant thumb claw of one paw to spread then around, and dropped the chain. It was not interested in what had no food value.

Kana's hand shot out to depress the barrel of Soong's rifle.

"It won't attack—don't shoot!"

The ttsor stiffened, its body tense, its head pointed upstream. Then in an eye wink it was gone and they saw it speeding away, up out of the river bed to the heights.

A sound reached them above the moan of the wind—a muffled roar Kana could not identify. He looked upstream. Then he whirled and grabbed for Soong, dragging him back from the lower part of the valley which was now a deadly trap. Together they ran for the cliff. Kana saw the white faces of those below turned up to him. Soong fired into the air—the three spaced warning signals—and Kana waved his arms trying to urge the others back against the canyon walls. His message must have made sense for they scattered and ran—some to one side and a few to the other. How many made it he did not have a chance to see before the black wall of water poured over the lip of the falls to hide the scene in a wild welter of spray.

The flood arose to lap at Kana's boots, lashed at him with spray. Shoulder to shoulder with Soong he wedged himself between anchoring rocks. Again the unseen mountaineers had used nature to defend their country, had turned loose this flood to rid their land of invaders. Soong was busy with the speecher trying to warn the Horde marching along the path of disaster.

Out of the foam below broke the head and shoulders of a man fighting his way to safety, tugging a weaker struggler behind. They groped to the air and clung, braced against boulders, as the waters dashed over them. And across the canyon Kana thought he saw another dark figure reach safety. Did only three survive?

With Soong he angled down the wall and helped drag Bogate and the half-conscious Larsen out of the grip of the flood. Shivering, the four wedged themselves on a narrow ledge, only a foot or so above the stream which showed no signs of shrinking. Bogate shook his head, as if to clear away some mist as tangible as the spray still drenching them.

"Somebody musta pulled a cork," Larsen commented between coughs.

"D'you see anything up there?" Bogate wanted to know.

"Just a ttsor. It gave us warning of the flood. If it hadn't been for that, we'd have been caught—"

"And so would we." Larsen pulled at the sodden collar of his coat. "This is a booby trap to end 'em all. What about the boys downstream?"

"Sent 'em a message," Soong answered. "Whether they got it in time—" There was no need for him to complete that sentence.

A faint hail came from across the canyon and they sighted a waving arm. Bogate carefully levered himself to his feet.

"Hooooah!" His bull roar rang out.

There was a welcome answer, three of them. But there was no way to cross the turbulent river and join forces. So they began to travel back toward the forks in two parties, the water between. Kana and Soong still had their rifles but their packs were gone. The chill air stiffened the wet clothing on the Combatants' shivering bodies. At the sinking of the sun they crouched in a hollow between two pinnacles of rock where the worst of the wind blasts were fended off, and so spent the night. Once a mournful, lowering call echoed down from the peaks. Kana took it for the hunting cry of a ttsor. But the presence of that lion-like creature here argued that, for all its apparent barrenness, there was life to be found in the badlands. For the ttsors ate not only meat but fruit and grains—perhaps here they raided the mountainside villages of the Cos.

If the Combatants slept that night it was under the drug of sheer exhaustion. And when Kana roused with the coming of light his legs and arms were so painfully cramped that he had to pinch and beat life back into his numb limbs. But across the canyon one of the other refugees waved a salute from a headland.

They began again that creeping journey along the jagged teeth of the heights. Below the river still spun, flicking around the old slides. And, even as Kana watched, a section of the cliff wall, undermined, gave way—tossing rocks and clay out into the current. So warned, they back-tracked from the rim. But here, for every mile of progress east, they traveled almost as much over or around obstacles, skirting side chasms, flanking butts and peaks. It was snail journeying and their hands left smears of blood on the stone. Even the incredibly tough Ciranian reptile hide of their boots showed scars and scratches.

And a fear which none mentioned rode them. That morning when Soong had tried to reach the Horde with the speecher he had raised no answer. At every rest interval while they panted in the thin air, he bent over the obstinate machine, fingering the keys with relentless energy, but never getting a faint click in reply.

Kana thought he knew what had happened, his imagination painting a very stark picture. The Horde had come up the river bed—to meet head on that flood, speeding even more as the ground sloped. The Terran force must have been caught, to be swept away to as final an end as the older Llor army had met in the valley of bones!