She made a little low-pitched sound of amusement. "There's safety in numbers, and--are you familiar with the physiological effect of high altitudes on men acclimated to low ones?" Suddenly she threw back her head and the hidden sound became free and merry laughter. "Jason, I'm a free Amazon, and that means--no, I'm not neutered, though some of us are. But you have my word, I won't create any trouble of any recognizably female variety." She stood up. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to check the mountain equipment."
Her eyes were still laughing at me, but curiously I didn't mind at all. There was a refreshing element in her manner.
We started that night, a curiously lopsided little caravan. The pack animals were loaded into one truck and didn't like it. We had another stripped-down truck which carried supplies. The ancient stone roads, rutted and gullied here and there with the flood-waters and silt of decades, had not been planned for any travel other than the feet of men or beasts. We passed tiny villages and isolated country estates, and a few of the solitary towers where the matrix mechanics worked alone with the secret sciences of Darkover, towers of glareless stone which sometimes shone like blue beacons in the dark.
Kendricks drove the truck which carried the animals, and was amused by it. Rafe and I took turns driving the other truck, sharing the wide front seat with Regis Hastur and the girl Kyla, while the other men found seats between crates and sacks in the back. Once while Rafe was at the wheel and the girl dozing with her coat over her face to shut out the fierce sun, Regis asked me, "What are the trailcities like?"
I tried to tell him, but I've never been good at boiling things down into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the trailmen and their world.
Nature seems to have a sameness on all inhabited worlds, tending toward the economy and simplicity of the human form. The upright carriage, freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color-sensitivity of retinal rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental nurture--these things seem to be indispensable to the growth of civilization, and in the end they spell human. Except for minor variations depending on climate or foodstuff, the inhabitant of Megaera or Darkover is indistinguishable from the Terran or Sirian; differences are mainly cultural, and sometimes an isolated culture will mutate in a strange direction or remain, atavists, somewhere halfway to the summit of the ladder of evolution--which, at least on the known planets, still reckons homo sapiens as the most complex of nature's forms.
The trailmen were a pausing-place which had proved tenacious. When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved homo arborens; nocturnal, nystalopic humanoids who lived out their lives in the extensive forests.
The truck bumped over the bad, rutted roads. The wind was chilly--the truck, a mere conveyance for hauling, had no such refinements of luxury as windows. I jolted awake--what nonsense had I been thinking? Vague ideas about evolution swirled in my brain like burst bubbles--the trailmen? They were just the trailmen, who could explain them? Jay Allison, maybe? Rafe turned his head and asked, "Where do we pull up for the night? It's getting dark, and we have all this gear to sort!" I roused myself, and took over the business of the expedition again.
But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear together--when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to Kendricks' heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me ... myself yet not myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I slept, who would I be when I woke?
We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow and unbridged; the river Kadarin, traditionally a point of no return for humans on Darkover. The river is fed by ocean tides and we would have to wait for low water to cross. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and beyond the forests the slopes of the Hellers, rising upward and upward; and their every fold and every valley was filled to the brim with forest, and in the forests lived the trailmen.
But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them; we must deal with the Old One of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my boyhood years.
From time immemorial, the trailmen--usually inoffensive--had kept strict boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling men. They never came beyond the Kadarin. On the other hand, almost any human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game for attack.
A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for drugs. In return, the trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest lands without being molested. But other humans, venturing into trailman territory, ran the risk of merciless raiding; the trailmen were not bloodthirsty, and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be stripped and plundered of everything portable.
Travelling through their country would be dangerous....
The sun was high before we struck the camp. While the others were packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla the task of readying the rucksacks we'd carry after the trails got too bad even for the pack animals, and went to stand at the water's edge, checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts between peak and peak.
The men were packing up the small tent we'd use in the forests, moving around with a good deal of horseplay and a certain brisk bustle. They were a good crew, I'd already discovered. Rafe and Lerrys and the three Darkovan brothers were tireless, cheerful and mountain-hardened. Kendricks, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on to follow orders, and I felt that I could fall back on him. Strange as it seemed, the very fact that he was a Terran was vaguely comforting, where I'd anticipated it would be a nuisance.
The girl Kyla was still something of an unknown quantity. She was too taut and quiet, working her share but seldom contributing a word--we were not yet in mountain country. So far she was quiet and touchy with me, although she seemed natural enough with the Darkovans, and I let her alone.
"Hi, Jason, get a move on," someone shouted, and I walked back toward the clearing squinting in the sun. It hurt, and I touched my face gingerly, suddenly realizing what had happened. Yesterday, riding in the uncovered truck, and this morning, un-used to the fierce sun of these latitudes, I had neglected to take the proper precautions against exposure and my face was reddening with sunburn. I walked toward Kyla, who was cinching a final load on one of the pack-animals, which she did efficiently enough.
She didn't wait for me to ask, but sized up the situation with one amused glance at my face. "Sunburn? Put some of this on it." She produced a tube of white stuff; I twisted at the top inexpertly, and she took it from me, squeezed the stuff out in her palm and said, "Stand still and bend down your head."
She smeared the mixture efficiently across my forehead and cheeks. It felt cold and good. I started to thank her, then broke off as she burst out laughing. "What's the matter?"
"You should see yourself!" she gurgled.
I wasn't amused. No doubt I presented a grotesque appearance, and no doubt she had the right to laugh at it, but I scowled. It hurt. Intending to put things back on the proper footing, I demanded, "Did you make up the climbing loads?"
"All except bedding. I wasn't sure how much to allow," she said. "Jason, have you eyeshades for when you get on snow?" I nodded, and she instructed me severely, "Don't forget them. Snowblindness--I give you my word--is even more unpleasant than sunburn--and very painful!"
"Damn it, girl, I'm not stupid!" I exploded.
She said, in her expressionless monotone again, "Then you ought to have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket," she handed me the tube of sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp.
Forth had said almost the same thing....
I told off the Darkovan brothers to urge the pack animals across the narrowest part of the ford, and gestured to Corus and Kyla to ride one on either side of Kendricks, who might not be aware of the swirling, treacherous currents of a mountain river. Rafe could not urge his edgy horse into the water; he finally dismounted, took off his boots, and led the creature across the slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding close to Regis Hastur, alert for dangers and thinking resentfully that anyone so important to Darkover's policies should not be risked on such a mission. Why, if the Terran Legate had (unthinkably!) come with us, he would be surrounded by bodyguards, secret service men and dozens of precautions against accident, assassination or misadventure.
All that day we rode upward, encamping at the furthest point we could travel with pack animals or mounted. The next day's climb would enter the dangerous trails we must travel afoot. We pitched a comfortable camp, but I admit I slept badly. Kendricks and Lerrys and Rafe had blinding headaches from the sun and the thinness of the air; I was more used to these conditions, but I felt a sense of unpleasant pressure, and my ears rang. Regis arrogantly denied any discomfort, but he moaned and cried out continuously in his sleep until Lerrys kicked him, after which he was silent and, I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed the least affected of any; probably she had been at higher altitudes more continuously than any of us. But there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
However, no one complained as we readied ourselves for the final last long climb upward. If we were fortunate, we could cross Dammerung before nightfall; at the very least, we should bivouac tonight very near the pass. Our camp had been made at the last level spot; we partially hobbled the pack animals so they would not stray too far, and left ample food for them, and cached all but the most necessary of light trail gear. As we prepared to start upward on the steep, narrow track--hardly more than a rabbit-run--I glanced at Kyla and stated, "We'll work on rope from the first stretch. Starting now."
One of the Darkovan brothers stared at me with contempt. "Call yourself a mountain man, Jason? Why, my little daughter could scramble up that track without so much as a push on her behind!"
I set my chin and glared at him. "The rocks aren't easy, and some of these men aren't used to working on rope at all. We might as well get used to it, because when we start working along the ledges, I don't want anybody who doesn't know how."
They still didn't like it, but nobody protested further until I directed the huge Kendricks to the center of the second rope. He glared viciously at the light nylon line and demanded in some apprehension, "Hadn't I better go last until I know what I'm doing? Hemmed in between the two of you, I'm apt to do something damned dumb!"
Hjalmar roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a 3-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices and amateurs. I expected Kendricks' temper to flare up: the burly Spaceforce man and the Darkovan giant glared at one another, then Kendricks only shrugged and knotted the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Lerrys about looking down from ledges, and we started.
The first stretch was almost too simple, a clear track winding higher and higher for a couple of miles. Pausing to rest for a moment, we could turn and see the entire valley outspread below us. Gradually the trail grew steeper, in spots pitched almost at a 50-degree angle, and was scattered with gravel, loose rock and shale, so that we placed our feet carefully, leaning forward to catch at handholds and steady ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers--Vardo, I thought--was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; then a slip bothered no one but the slipper. But I was finding out what I wanted to know--what kind of climbers I had to lead through the Hellers.
Along a cliff face the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet and covered with loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced climber--a foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway. Kendricks made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The amateurs--Lerrys Ridenow, Regis, Rafe--came across without hesitation, but I wondered how well they would have done at a less secure altitude; to a real mountaineer, a footpath is a footpath, whether in a meadow, above a two-foot drop, a thirty-foot ledge, or a sheer mountain face three miles above the first level spot.
After crossing the ledge the going was harder. A steeper trail, in places nearly imperceptible, led between thick scrub and overhanging trees, thickly forested. In spots their twisted roots obscured the trail; in others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt. We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush which would have been nothing to a trailman, but which made our ground-accustomed bodies ache with the effort of getting over or through them; and once the track was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood, borne down on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst. We had to work painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rockslide, which we could cross only one at a time, crab-fashion, leaning double to balance ourselves; and no one complained now about the rope.
Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the slope.
At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eyes, the shadow of a shadow. The fourth time I saw it, I called softly to Kyla: "See anything?"
"I was beginning to think it was my eyes, or the altitude. I saw, Jason."
"Look for a spot where we can take a break," I directed. We climbed along a shallow ledge, the faint imperceptible flutters in the brushwood climbing with us on either side. I muttered to the girl, "I'll be glad when we get clear of this. At least we'll be able to see what's coming after us!"
"If it comes to a fight," she said surprisingly, "I'd rather fight on gravel than ice."
Over a rise, there was a roaring sound; Kyla swung up and balanced on a rock-wedged tree root, cupped her mouth to her hands and called, "Rapids!"
I pulled myself up to the edge of the drop and stood looking down into the narrow gully. Here the narrow track we had been following was crossed and obscured by the deep, roaring rapids of a mountain stream.
Less than twenty feet across, it tumbled in an icy flood, almost a waterfall, pitching over the lip of a crag above us. It had sliced a ravine five feet deep in the mountainside, and came roaring down with a rushing noise that made my head vibrate. It looked formidable; anyone stepping into it would be knocked off his feet in seconds, and swept a thousand feet down the mountainside by the force of the current.
Rafe scrambled gingerly over the gullied lip of the channel it had cut, and bent carefully to scoop up water in his palm and drink. "Phew, it's colder than Zandru's ninth hell. Must come straight down from a glacier!"
It did. I remembered the trail and remembered the spot. Kendricks joined me at the water's edge, and asked, "How do we get across?"
"I'm not sure," I said, studying the racing white torrent. Overhead, about twenty feet from where we clustered on the slope, the thick branches of enormous trees overhung the rapids, their long roots partially bared, gnarled and twisted by recurrent floods; and between these trees swayed one of the queer swing-bridges of the trailmen, hanging only about ten feet above the water.
Even I had never learned to navigate one of these swing-bridges without assistance; human arms are no longer suited to brachiation. I might have managed it once; but at present, except as a desperate final expedient, it was out of the question. Rafe or Lerrys, who were lightly built and acrobatic, could probably do it as a simple stunt on the level, in a field; on a steep and rocky mountainside, where a fall might mean being dashed a thousand feet down the torrent, I doubted it. The trailmen's bridge was out ... but what other choice was there?
I beckoned to Kendricks, he being the man I was the most inclined to trust with my life at the moment, and said, "It looks uncrossable, but I think two men could get across, if they were steady on their feet. The others can hold us on ropes, in case we do get knocked down. If we can get to the opposite bank, we can stretch a fixed rope from that snub of rock--" I pointed, "and the others can cross with that. The first men over will be the only ones to run any risk. Want to try?"
I liked it better that he didn't answer right away, but went to the edge of the gully and peered down the rocky chasm. Doubtless, if we were knocked down, all seven of the others could haul us up again; but not before we'd been badly smashed on the rocks. And once again I caught that elusive shadow of movement in the brushwood; if the trailmen chose a moment when we were half-in, half-out of the rapids, we'd be ridiculously vulnerable to attack.
"We ought to be able to get a fixed rope easier than that," Hjalmar said, and took one of the spares from his rucksack. He coiled it, making a running loop on one end, and standing precariously on the lip of the rapids, sent it spinning toward the outcrop of rock we had chosen as a fixed point. "If I can get it over...."
The rope fell short, and Hjalmar reeled it in and cast the loop again. He made three more unsuccessful tries before finally, with held breath, we watched the noose settle over the rocky snub. Gently, pulling the line taut, we watched it stretch above the rapids. The knot tightened, fastened. Hjalmar grinned and let out his breath.
"There," he said, and jerked hard on the rope, testing it with a long hard pull. The rocky outcrop broke, with a sharp crack, split, and toppled entirely into the rapids, the sudden jerk almost pulling Hjalmar off his feet. The boulder rolled, with a great bouncing splash, faster and faster down the mountain, taking the rope with it.
We just stood and stared for a minute. Hjalmar swore horribly, in the unprintable filth of the mountain tongue, and his brothers joined in. "How the devil was I to know the rock would split off?"
"Better for it to split now than when we were depending on it," Kyla said stolidly. "I have a better idea." She was untying herself from the rope as she spoke, and knotting one of the spares through her belt. She handed the other end of the rope to Lerrys. "Hold on to this," she said, and slipped out of her blankety windbreak, standing shivering in a thin sweater. She unstrapped her boots and tossed them to me. "Now boost me on your shoulders, Hjalmar."
Too late, I guessed her intention and shouted, "No, don't try--!" But she had already clambered to an unsteady perch on the big Darkovan's shoulders and made a flying grab for the lowest loop of the trailmen's bridge. She hung there, swaying slightly and sickeningly, as the loose lianas gave to her weight.
"Hjalmar--Lerrys--haul her down!"
"I'm lighter than any of you," Kyla called shrilly, "and not hefty enough to be any use on the ropes!" Her voice quavered somewhat as she added, "--and hang on to that rope, Lerrys! If you lose it, I'll have done this for nothing!"
She gripped the loop of vine and reached, with her free hand, for the next loop. Now she was swinging out over the edge of the boiling rapids. Tight-mouthed, I gestured to the others to spread out slightly below--not that anything would help her if she fell.
Hjalmar, watching as the woman gained the third loop--which joggled horribly to her slight weight--shouted suddenly, "Kyla, quick! The loop beyond--don't touch the next one! It's frayed--rotted through!"
Kyla brought her left hand up to her right on the third loop. She made a long reach, missed her grab, swung again, and clung, breathing hard, to the safe fifth loop. I watched, sick with dread. The damned girl should have told me what she intended.
Kyla glanced down and we got a glimpse of her face, glistening with the mixture of sunburn cream and sweat, drawn with effort. Her tiny swaying figure hung twelve feet above the white tumbling water, and if she lost her grip, only a miracle could bring her out alive. She hung there for a minute, jiggling slightly, then started a long back-and-forward swing. On the third forward swing she made a long leap and grabbed at the final loop.
It slipped through her fingers; she made a wild grab with the other hand, and the liana dipped sharply under her weight, raced through her fingers, and with a sharp snap, broke in two. She gave a wild shriek as it parted, and twisted her body frantically in mid-air, landing asprawl half-in, half-out of the rapids, but on the further bank. She hauled her legs up on dry land and crouched there, drenched to the waist but safe.
The Darkovans were yelling in delight. I motioned to Lerrys to make his end of the rope fast around a hefty tree-root, and shouted, "Are you hurt?" She indicated in pantomime that the thundering of the water drowned words, and bent to belay her end of the rope. In sign-language I gestured to her to make very sure of the knots; if anyone slipped, she hadn't the weight to hold us.
I hauled on the rope myself to test it, and it held fast. I slung her boots around my neck by their cords, then, gripping the fixed rope, Kendricks and I stepped into the water.
It was even icier than I expected, and my first step was nearly the last; the rush of the white water knocked me to my knees, and I floundered and would have measured my length except for my hands on the fixed rope. Buck Kendricks grabbed at me, letting go the rope to do it, and I swore at him, raging, while we got on our feet again and braced ourselves against the onrushing current. While we struggled in the pounding waters, I admitted to myself; we could never have crossed without the rope Kyla had risked her life to fix.
Shivering, we got across and hauled ourselves out. I signalled to the others to cross two at a time, and Kyla seized my elbow. "Jason--"
"Later, dammit!" I had to shout to make myself heard over the roaring water, as I held out a hand to help Rafe get his footing on the ledge.
"This--can't--wait," she yelled, cupping her hands and shouting into my ear. I turned on her. "What!"
"There are--trailmen--on the top level--of that bridge! I saw them! They cut the loop!"
Regis and Hjalmar came struggling across last; Regis, lightly-built, was swept off his feet and Hjalmar turned to grab him, but I shouted to him to keep clear--they were still roped together and if the ropes fouled we might drown someone. Lerrys and I leaped down and hauled Regis clear; he coughed, spitting icy water, drenched to the skin.
I motioned to Lerrys to leave the fixed rope, though I had little hope that it would be there when we returned, and looked quickly around, debating what to do. Regis and Rafe and I were wet clear through; the others to well above the knee. At this altitude, this was dangerous, although we were not yet high enough to worry about frostbite. Trailmen or no trailmen, we must run the lesser risk of finding a place where we could kindle a fire and dry out.
"Up there--there's a clearing," I said briefly, and hurried them along.
It was hard climbing now, on rock, and there were places where we had to scrabble for handholds, and flatten ourselves out against an almost sheer wall. The keen wind rose as we climbed higher, whining through the thick forest, soughing in the rocky outcrops, and biting through our soaked clothing with icy teeth. Kendricks was having hard going now, and I helped him as much as I could, but I was aching with cold. We gained the clearing, a small bare spot on a lesser peak, and I directed the two Darkovan brothers who were the driest to gather dry brushwood and get a fire going. It was hardly near enough sunset to camp; but by the time we were dry enough to go on safely, it would be, so I gave orders to get the tent up, then rounded angrily on Kyla.
"See here, another time don't try any dangerous tricks unless you're ordered to!"
"Go easy on her," Regis Hastur interceded, "we'd never have crossed without the fixed rope. Good work, girl."
"You keep out of this!" I snapped. It was true, yet resentment boiled in me as Kyla's plain sullen face glowed under the praise from the Hastur.
The fact was--I admitted it grudgingly--a lightweight like Kyla ran less risk on an acrobat's bridge than in that kind of roaring current. That did not lessen my annoyance; and Regis Hastur's interference, and the foolish grin on the girl's face, made me boil over.
I wanted to question her further about the sight of trailmen on the bridge, but decided against it. We had been spared attack on the rapids, so it wasn't impossible that a group, not hostile, was simply watching our progress--maybe even aware that we were on a peaceful mission.
But I didn't believe it for a minute. If I knew anything about the trailmen, it was this--one could not judge them by human standards at all. I tried to decide what I would have done, as a trailman, but my brain wouldn't run that way at the moment.
The Darkovan brothers had built up the fire with a thoroughly reckless disregard of watching eyes. It seemed to me that the morale and fitness of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right. Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about her feat of acrobatics.
We had made camp on the summit of an outlying arm of the main ridge of the Hellers, and the whole massive range lay before our eyes, turned to a million colors in the declining sun. Green and turquoise and rose, the mountains were even more beautiful than I remembered. The shoulder of the high slope we had just climbed had obscured the real mountain massif from our sight, and I saw Kendricks' eyes widen as he realized that this high summit we had just mastered was only the first step of the task which lay before us. The real ridge rose ahead, thickly forested on the lower slopes, then strewn with rock and granite like the landscape of an airless, deserted moon. And above the rock, there were straight walls capped with blinding snow and ice. Down one peak a glacier flowed, a waterfall, a cascade shockingly arrested in motion. I murmured the trailman's name for the mountain, aloud, and translated it for the others:
"The Wall Around the World."
"Good name for it," Lerrys murmured, coming with his mug in his hand to look at the mountain. "Jason, the big peak there has never been climbed, has it?"
"I can't remember." My teeth were chattering and I went back toward the fire. Regis surveyed the distant glacier and murmured, "It doesn't look too bad. There could be a route along that western arête--Hjalmar, weren't you with the expedition that climbed and mapped High Kimbi?"
The giant nodded, rather proudly. "We got within a hundred feet of the top, then a snowstorm came up and we had to turn back. Some day we'll tackle the Wall Around the World--it's been tried, but no one ever climbed the peak."
"No one ever will," Lerrys stated positively, "There's two hundred feet of sheer rock cliff, Prince Regis, you'd need wings to get up. And there's the avalanche ledge they call Hell's Alley--"
Kendricks broke in irritably, "I don't care whether it's ever been climbed or ever will be climbed, we're not going to climb it now!" He stared at me and added, "I hope!"
"We're not." I was glad of the interruption. If the youngsters and amateurs wanted to amuse themselves plotting hypothetical attacks on unclimbable sierras, that was all very well, but it was, if nothing worse, a great waste of time. I showed Kendricks a notch in the ridge, thousands of feet lower than the peaks, and well-sheltered from the icefalls on either side.
"That's Dammerung; we're going through there. We won't be on the mountain at all, and it's less than 22,000 feet high in the pass--although there are some bad ledges and washes. We'll keep clear of the main tree-roads if we can, and all the mapped trailmen's villages, but we may run into wandering bands--" abruptly I made my decision and gestured them around me.
"From this point," I broke the news, "we're liable to be attacked. Kyla, tell them what you saw."
She put down her mug. Her face was serious again, as she related what she had seen on the bridge. "We're on a peaceful mission, but they don't know that yet. The thing to remember is that they do not wish to kill, only to wound and rob. If we show fight--" she displayed a short ugly knife, which she tucked matter-of-factly into her shirt-front, "they will run away again."
Lerrys loosened a narrow dagger which until this moment I had thought purely ornamental. He said, "Mind if I say something more, Jason? I remember from the 'Narr campaign--the trailmen fight at close quarters, and by human standards they fight dirty." He looked around fiercely, his unshaven face glinting as he grinned. "One more thing. I like elbow room. Do we have to stay roped together when we start out again?"
I thought it over. His enthusiasm for a fight made me feel both annoyed and curiously delighted. "I won't make anyone stay roped who thinks he'd be safer without it," I said, "we'll decide that when the time comes, anyway. But personally--the trailmen are used to running along narrow ledges, and we're not. Their first tactic would probably be to push us off, one by one. If we're roped, we can fend them off better." I dismissed the subject, adding, "Just now, the important thing is to dry out."
Kendricks remained at my side after the others had gathered around the fire, looking into the thick forest which sloped up to our campsite. He said, "This place looks as if it had been used for a camp before. Aren't we just as vulnerable to attack here as we would be anywhere else?"
He had hit on the one thing I hadn't wanted to talk about. This clearing was altogether too convenient. I only said, "At least there aren't so many ledges to push us off."
Kendricks muttered, "You've got the only blaster!"
"I left it at Carthon," I said truthfully. Then I laid down the law:
"Listen, Buck. If we kill a single trailman, except in hand-to-hand fight in self-defense, we might as well pack up and go home. We're on a peaceful mission, and we're begging a favor. Even if we're attacked--we kill only as a last resort, and in hand-to-hand combat!"
"Damned primitive frontier planet--"
"Would you rather die of the trailmen's disease?"
He said savagely, "We're apt to catch it anyway--here. You're immune, you don't care, you're safe! The rest of us are on a suicide mission--and damn it, when I die I want to take a few of those monkeys with me!"
I bent my head, bit my lip and said nothing. Buck couldn't be blamed for the way he felt. After a moment I pointed to the notch in the ridge again. "It's not so far. Once we get through Dammerung, it's easy going into the trailmen's city. Beyond there, it's all civilized."
"Maybe you call it civilization," Kendricks said, and turned away.
"Come on, let's finish drying our feet."
And at that moment they hit us.
Kendricks' yell was the only warning I had before I was fighting away something scrabbling up my back. I whirled and ripped the creature away, and saw dimly that the clearing was filled to the rim with an explosion of furry white bodies. I cupped my hands and yelled, in the only trailman dialect I knew, "Hold off! We come in peace!"
One of them yelled something unintelligible and plunged at me--another tribe! I saw a white-furred, chinless face, contorted in rage, a small ugly knife--a female! I ripped out my own knife, fending away a savage slash. Something tore white-hot across the knuckles of my hand; the fingers went limp and my knife fell, and the trailman woman snatched it up and made off with her prize, swinging lithely upward into the treetops.
I searched quickly, gripped with my good hand at the bleeding knuckles, and found Regis Hastur struggling at the edge of a ledge with a pair of the creatures. The crazy thought ran through my mind that if they killed him all Darkover would rise and exterminate the trailmen and it would all be my fault. Then Regis tore one hand free, and made a curious motion with his fingers.
It looked like an immense green spark a foot long, or like a fireball. It exploded in one creature's white face and she gave a wild howl of terror and anguish, scrabbled blindly at her eyes, and with a despairing shriek, ran for the shelter of the trees. The pack of trailmen gave a long formless wail, and then they were gathering, flying, retreating into the shadows. Rafe yelled something obscene and then a bolt of bluish flame lanced toward the retreating pack. One of the humanoids fell without a cry, pitching senseless over the ledge.
I ran toward Rafe, struggling with him for the shocker he had drawn from its hiding-place inside his shirt. "You blind damned fool!" I cursed him, "you may have ruined everything--"
"They'd have killed him without it," he retorted wrathfully. He had evidently failed to see how efficiently Regis defended himself. Rafe motioned toward the fleeing pack and sneered, "Why don't you go with your friends?"
With a grip I thought I had forgotten, I got my hand around Rafe's knuckles and squeezed. His hand went limp and I snatched the shocker and pitched it over the ledge.
"One word and I'll pitch you after it," I warned. "Who's hurt?"
Garin was blinking senselessly, half-dazed by a blow; Regis' forehead had been gashed and dripped blood, and Hjalmar's thigh sliced in a clean cut. My own knuckles were laid bare and the hand was getting numb. It was a little while before anybody noticed Kyla, crouched over speechless with pain. She reeled and turned deathly white when we touched her; we stretched her out where she was, and got her shirt off, and Kendricks crowded up beside us to examine the wound.
"A clean cut," he said, but I didn't hear. Something had turned over inside me, like a hand stirring up my brain, and....
Jay Allison looked around with a gasp of sudden vertigo. He was not in Forth's office, but standing precariously near the edge of a cliff. He shut his eyes briefly, wondering if he were having one of his worst nightmares, and opened them on a familiar face.
Buck Kendricks was bone-white, his mouth widening as he said hoarsely, "Jay! Doctor Allison--for God's sake--"
A doctor's training creates reactions that are almost reflexes; Jay Allison recovered some degree of sanity as he became aware that someone was stretched out in front of him, half-naked, and bleeding profusely. He motioned away the crowding strangers and said in his bad Darkovan, "Let her alone, this is my work." He didn't know enough words to curse them away, so he switched to Terran, speaking to Kendricks:
"Buck, get these people away, give the patient some air. Where's my surgical case?" He bent and probed briefly, realizing only now that the injured was a woman, and young.
The wound was only a superficial laceration; whatever sharp instrument had inflicted it, had turned on the costal bone without penetrating lung tissue. It could have been sutured, but Kendricks handed him only a badly-filled first-aid kit; so Dr. Allison covered it tightly with a plastic clip-shield which would seal it from further bleeding, and let it alone. By the time he had finished, the strange girl had begun to stir. She said haltingly, "Jason--?"
"Dr. Allison," he corrected tersely, surprised in a minor way--the major surprise had blurred lesser ones--that she knew his name. Kendricks spoke swiftly to the girl, in one of the Darkovan languages Jay didn't understand, and then drew Jay aside, out of earshot. He said in a shaken voice, "Jay, I didn't know--I wouldn't have believed--you're _Doctor Allison_? Good Lord--Jason!"
And then he moved fast. "What's the matter? Oh, hell, Jay, don't faint on me!"
Jay was aware that he didn't come out of it too bravely, but anyone who blamed him (he thought resentfully) should try it on for size; going to sleep in a comfortably closed-in office and waking up on a cliff at the outer edges of nowhere. His hand hurt; he saw that it was bleeding and flexed it experimentally, trying to determine that no tendons had been injured. He rapped, "How did this happen?"
"Sir, keep your voice down--or speak Darkovan!"
Jay blinked again. Kendricks was still the only familiar thing in a strangely vertiginous universe. The Spaceforce man said huskily. "Before heaven, Jay, I hadn't any idea--and I've known you how long? Eight, nine years?"
Jay said, "That idiot Forth!" and swore, the colorless profanity of an indoor man.
Somebody shouted, "Jason!" in an imperative voice, and Kendricks said shakily, "Jay, if they see you--you literally are not the same man!"
"Obviously not." Jay looked at the tent, one pole still unpitched. "Anyone in there?"
"Not yet." Kendricks almost shoved him inside. "I'll tell them--I'll tell them something." He took a radiant from his pocket, set it down and stared at Allison in the flickering light, and said something profane. "You'll--you'll be all right here?"
Jay nodded. It was all he could manage. He was keeping a tight hold on his nerve; if it went, he'd start to rave like a madman. A little time passed, there were strange noises outside, and then there was a polite cough and a man walked into the tent.
He was obviously a Darkovan aristocrat and looked vaguely familiar, though Jay had no conscious memory of seeing him before. Tall and slender, he possessed that perfect and exquisite masculine beauty sometimes seen among Darkovans, and he spoke to Jay familiarly but with surprising courtesy:
"I have told them you are not to be disturbed for a moment, that your hand is worse than we believed. A surgeon's hands are delicate things, Doctor Allison, and I hope that yours are not badly injured. Will you let me look?"
Jay Allison drew back his hand automatically, then, conscious of the churlishness of the gesture, let the stranger take it in his and look at the fingers. The man said, "It does not seem serious. I was sure it was something more than that." He raised grave eyes. "You don't even remember my name, do you, Dr. Allison?"
"You know who I am?"
"Dr. Forth didn't tell me. But we Hasturs are partly telepathic, Jason--forgive me--Doctor Allison. I have known from the first that you were possessed by a god or daemon."
"Superstitious rubbish," Jay snapped. "Typical of a Darkovan!"
"It is a convenient manner of speaking, no more," said the young Hastur, overlooking the rudeness. "I suppose I could learn your terminology, if I considered it worth the effort. I have had psi training, and I can tell the difference when half of a man's soul has driven out the other half. Perhaps I can restore you to yourself--"
"If you think I'd have some Darkovan freak meddling with my mind--" Jay began hotly, then stopped. Under Regis' grave eyes, he felt a surge of unfamiliar humility. This crew of men needed their leader, and obviously he, Jay Allison, wasn't the leader they needed. He covered his eyes with one hand.
Regis bent and put a hand on his shoulder, compassionately, but Jay twitched it off, and his voice, when he found it, was bitter and defensive and cold.
"All right. The work's the thing. I can't do it, Jason can. You're a parapsych. If you can switch me off--go right ahead!"
I stared at Regis, passing a hand across my forehead. "What happened?" I demanded, and in even swifter apprehension, "Where's Kyla? She was hurt--"
"Kyla's all right," Regis said, but I got up quickly to make sure. Kyla was outside, lying quite comfortably on a roll of blankets. She was propped on her elbow drinking something hot, and there was a good smell of hot food in the air. I stared at Regis and demanded, "I didn't conk out, did I, from a little scratch like this?" I looked carelessly at my gashed hand.
"Wait--" Regis held me back, "don't go out just yet. Do you remember what happened, Doctor Allison?"
I stared in growing horror, my worst fear confirmed. Regis said quietly, "You--changed. Probably from the shock of seeing--" he stopped in mid-sentence, and I said, "The last thing I remember is seeing that Kyla was bleeding, when we got her clothes off. But--good Gods, a little blood wouldn't scare me, and Jay Allison's a surgeon, would it bring him roaring up like that?"
"I couldn't say." Regis looked as if he knew more than he was telling. "I don't believe that Dr. Allison--he's not much like you--was very concerned with Kyla. Are you?"
"Damn right I am. I want to make sure she's all right--" I stopped abruptly. "Regis--did they all see it?"
"Only Kendricks and I," Regis said, "and we will not speak of it."
I said, "Thanks," and felt his reassuring hand-clasp. Damn it, demigod or prince, I liked Regis.
I went out and accepted some food from the kettle and sat down between Kyla and Kendricks to eat. I was shaken, weak with reaction. Furthermore, I realized that we couldn't stay here. It was too vulnerable to attack. So, in our present condition, were we. If we could push on hard enough to get near Dammerung pass tonight, then tomorrow we could cross it early, before the sun warmed the snow and we had snowslides and slush to deal with. Beyond Dammerung, I knew the tribesmen and could speak their language.
I mentioned this, and Kendricks looked doubtfully at Kyla. "Can she climb?"
"Can she stay here?" I countered. But I went and sat beside her anyhow.
"How badly are you hurt? Do you think you can travel?"
She said fiercely, "Of course I can climb! I tell you, I'm no weak girl, I'm a free Amazon!" She flung off the blanket somebody had tucked around her legs. Her lips looked a little pinched, but the long stride was steady as she walked to the fire and demanded more soup.
We struck the camp in minutes. The trailmen band of raiding females had snatched up almost everything portable, and there was no sense in striking and caching the tent; they'd return and hunt it out. If we came back with a trailmen escort, we wouldn't need it anyway. I ordered them to leave everything but the lightest gear, and examined each remaining rucksack. Rations for the night we would spend in the pass, our few remaining blankets, ropes, sunglasses. Everything else I ruthlessly ordered left behind.
It was harder going now. For one thing, the sun was lowering, and the evening wind was icy. Nearly everyone of us had some hurt, slight in itself, which hindered us in climbing. Kyla was white and rigid, but did not spare herself; Kendricks was suffering severely from mountain sickness at this altitude, and I gave him all the help I could, but with my stiffening slashed hand I wasn't having too easy a time myself.
There was one expanse that was sheer rock-climbing, flattened like bugs against a wall, scrabbling for hand-holds and footholds. I felt it a point of pride to lead, and I led; but by the time we had climbed the thirty-foot wall, and scrambled along a ledge to where we could pick up the trail again, I was ready to give over. Crowding together on the ledge, I changed places with the veteran Lerrys, who was better than most professional climbers.
He muttered, "I thought you said this was a trail!"
I stretched my mouth in what was supposed to be a grin and didn't quite make it. "For the trailmen, this is a superhighway. And no one else ever comes this way."
Now we climbed slowly over snow; once or twice we had to flounder through drifts, and once a brief bitter snowstorm blotted out sight for twenty minutes, while we hugged each other on the ledge, clinging wildly against wind and icy sleet.
We bivouacked that night in a crevasse blown almost clean of snow, well above the tree-line, where only scrubby unkillable thornbushes clustered. We tore down some of them and piled them up as a windbreak, and bedded beneath it; but we all thought with aching regret of the comfort of the camp gear we'd abandoned. The going had gotten good and rough.
That night remains in my mind as one of the most miserable in memory. Except for the slight ringing in my ears, the height alone did not bother me, but the others did not fare so well. Most of the men had blinding headaches, Kyla's slashed side must have given her considerable pain, and Kendricks had succumbed to mountain-sickness in its most agonizing form: severe cramps and vomiting. I was desperately uneasy about all of them, but there was nothing I could do; the only cure for mountain-sickness is oxygen or a lower altitude, neither of which was practical.
In the windbreak we doubled up, sharing blankets and body warmth: I took a last look around the close space before crawling in beside Kendricks, and saw the girl bedding down slightly apart from the others. I started to say something, but Kendricks spoke, first. Voicing my thoughts.
"Better crawl in with us, girl." He added, coldly but not unkindly, "you needn't worry about any funny stuff."
Kyla gave me just the flicker of a grin, and I realized she was including me on the Darkovan side of a joke against this big man who was so unaware of Darkovan etiquette. But her voice was cool and curt as she said, "I'm not worrying," and loosened her heavy coat slightly before creeping into the nest of blankets between us.
It was painfully cramped, and chilly in spite of the self-heating blankets; we crowded close together and Kyla's head rested on my shoulder. I felt her snuggle closely to me, half asleep, hunting for a warm place; and I found myself very much aware of her closeness, curiously grateful to her. An ordinary woman would have protested, if only as a matter of form, sharing blankets with two strange men. I realized that if Kyla had refused to crawl in with us, she would have called attention to her sex much more than she did by matter-of-factly behaving as if she were, in fact, male.
She shivered convulsively, and I whispered, "Side hurting? Are you cold?"
"A little. It's been a long time since I've been at these altitudes, too. What it really is--I can't get those women out of my head."
Kendricks coughed, moving uncomfortably. "I don't understand--those creatures who attacked us--all women--?"
I explained briefly. "Among the people of the Sky, as everywhere, more females are born than males. But the trailmen's lives are so balanced that they have no room for extra females within the Nests--the cities. So when a girl child of the Sky People reaches womanhood, the other women drive her out of the city with kicks and blows, and she has to wander in the forest until some male comes after her and claims her and brings her back as his own. Then she can never be driven forth again, although if she bears no children she can be forced to be a servant to his other wives."
Kendricks made a little sound of disgust.
"You think it cruel," Kyla said with sudden passion, "but in the forest they can live and find their own food; they will not starve or die. Many of them prefer the forest life to living in the Nests, and they will fight away any male who comes near them. We who call ourselves human often make less provision for our spare women."
She was silent, sighing as if with pain. Kendricks made no reply except a non-committal grunt. I held myself back by main force from touching Kyla, remembering what she was, and finally said, "We'd better quit talking. The others want to sleep, if we don't."
After a time I heard Kendricks snoring, and Kyla's quiet even breaths. I wondered drowsily how Jay would have felt about this situation--he who hated Darkover and avoided contact with every other human being, crowded between a Darkovan free-Amazon and half a dozen assorted roughnecks. I turned the thought off, fearing it might somehow re-arouse him in his brain.
But I had to think of something, anything to turn aside this consciousness of the woman's head against my chest, her warm breath coming and going against my bare neck. Only by the severest possible act of will did I keep myself from slipping my hand over her breasts, warm and palpable through the thin sweater, I wondered why Forth had called me undisciplined. I couldn't risk my leadership by making advances to our contracted guide--woman, Amazon or whatever!
Somehow the girl seemed to be the pivot point of all my thoughts. She was not part of the Terran HQ, she was not part of any world Jay Allison might have known. She belonged wholly to Jason, to my world. Between sleep and waking, I lost myself in a dream of skimming flight-wise along the tree roads, chasing the distant form of a girl driven from the Nest that day with blows and curses. Somewhere in the leaves I would find her ... and we would return to the city, her head garlanded with the red leaves of a chosen-one, and the same women who had stoned her forth would crowd about and welcome her when she returned. The fleeing woman looked over her shoulder with Kyla's eyes; and then the woman's form muted and Dr. Forth was standing between us in the tree-road, with the caduceus emblem on his coat stretched like a red staff between us. Kendricks in his Spaceforce uniform was threatening us with a blaster, and Regis Hastur was suddenly wearing Space Service uniform too and saying, "Jay Allison, Jay Allison," as the tree-road splintered and cracked beneath our feet and we were tumbling down the waterfall and down and down and down....
