Gorgol back –!
Again the power beam slapped the earth, making eyes ache with its burst of force. Horses wheeled, ran back from that horror – but the three leaders had gotten through. And had one of them carried a rider? Gorgol – Where was the Norbie – and Surra? To be caught out there was to be in peril not only from the crack of the lightning flash, but also from the horses now racing in a mad frenzy. There was no possible hope of capturing any one of them.
Storm set himself to watch the play of the beam, trying to judge the farthest extent of its reach. Unless the operator was purposely keeping it keyed to a low frequency, it did not touch near the ship, nor hit the terraced slopes behind the Terran. If the Norbie would only return, they could climb to safety. Storm, as resourceful as he was, had a very healthy respect for the weapons of the enemy.
The slaps of the beam were coming closer together, cutting in a regular fan pattern from their source. It would appear that the operator of the machine was now under orders to work over the whole meadowland between the western wall of the mountain and the ship. The Terran’s hands jerked toward his ears as the terrible tortured scream of an animal in dire pain answered one flash. They must be deliberately cutting down the horses! The use of the lash had not been just to stop their getaway!
Were the Xiks sacrificing their own animals to get any Norbies who might be trying to round up the runaways? That form of sadistic revenge went well with the character of the enemy as he knew it. Storm fought down his wave of rage, made himself stand and watch that slaughter, adding it to the already huge score he had long ago marked up against the breed of alien men out there, if you could even deem them ‘men”.
Horses continued to die and Storm could not control the shudders that answered each agonized cry from the meadow. Surra! Surra and Gorgol. He did not see how they could escape unless they already had won to the terraces.
King cried, digging her claws into his skin, her shivering body pressed tight to his chest. Then Storm jumped backward and – in a moment – felt immense relief when soft warm fur pressed against him and Surra’s rough tongue rasped his flesh. He fondled her ears in welcome and then caught out in the dark, his fingers scraping across yoris hide – Gorgol’s corselet.
The Norbie swung around, only a very dimly seen bulk, bringing his other side against the Terran. He was half-supporting another body, slighter, shorter than his own. Storm’s hand was on frawn skin fabric in rags, on flesh, on a belt like his. The rescued one was no tribesman, but someone in settler dress.
Storm located that other’s dangling arm and hitched it across his shoulders so that now Gorgol and he shared the weight between them. As they made their way onto the first terrace the limp stranger roused somewhat and tried to walk, though his stumbling progress was more of a hindrance than a help to his supporters.
They struggled up two terraces, pausing for breath at forced intervals. The clamour in the meadow was stilled now, though the force beam still beat methodically back and forth. Nothing lived there – it could not – yet it seemed the Xiks were not yet satisfied.
A third terrace, one more and they would be on a level with the pass. The stranger muttered, and once or twice moaned. Though he did not seem fully conscious and had never replied coherently to Storm’s questions, he was more steady on his feet and obeyed their handling docilely.
To climb the terraces and then to force one’s way along them was a difficult task. And had not the vegetation proved to be thinner near the upper rim of the valley they might have been held to a dangerously slow pace. The sky was grey when they reached the edge of the plateau where the dead yoris had lain. Surra glided back to give the alert. There was danger standing between them and the pass.
If he could be sure that only a Norbie opposed them, Storm would have given the big cat the order she wanted and let her clear the way. But an Xik outlaw armed with a slicer or some other of their ghastly array of weapons was more than the Terran would let her risk meeting. Storm signed caution to Gorgol to take to cover, working his way on to the pass alone.
Again Surra’s acute hearing had saved them. There was a guard stationed there right enough. And he had holed up, well protected in a rock niche, taking a position from which he could sweep the whole approach. There was no advancing until he was somehow picked out of that shell. Storm squatted behind a rock of his own and studied the field. It was plain to him now that the outlaws had been willing to sacrifice their horse herd to insure the death of someone. And a quick process of elimination suggested that that someone was the stranger Gorgol had rescued. He might even be the same man the Norbie had seen earlier in Xik hands, on the day they had accounted for the Survey party.
Doubtless every way out of the valley was now under guard. The next logical move for the enemy would be to start a careful combing of the terraces, driving their prey toward one of the known exits and so straight into the blaster sights of the men stationed there. It was a systematic arrangement that Storm, though it was used against him now, could approve as an example of good planning. But then the Xik forces could never be accused of stupidity.
Who was this stranger – that his recapture was of such great importance? Or was it a case like that of the murder of the Survey people – a killing ordered because no one who knew of this base could be allowed to escape? The why was not important now. What was important was that Storm and those with him win past this check point before that drive started down in the valley or before the one man now ahead could be reinforced.
He had one good trick left. If it worked! Storm’s head went down until it rested on his crooked arm. He closed his eyes to the plateau. But he held in his mind the picture of the enemy guard in his rock post – making it as vivid as he could. Clinging to that image, the Terran drew upon that other sense he had never tried to name, launching a demanding call. Surra he was sure of. Hing could be controlled only by hand and voice, her sly mind touching his on the far edge of the band that united the team. But Baku – now he must reach the eagle. She would be up in the air at dawn, cruising for sight of him. If he could attract her by that unvoiced call –!
That tenuous thing that he could not rightly call power but which tied him to cat, eagle, and meerkats, centred now on that one purpose. For so long they had been united in their life and efforts that surely the bond had been strengthened until he could rely upon it now for the only help that would mean anything to them. Baku – come in, Baku! Storm sent that strong soundless call up into the grey-mauve sky, a sky he did not see except as a place that might hold a wheeling black eagle.
11
Baku – Storm’s will became a cord – a noose tossed high in the lighting heavens to find and draw down that wide-winged shape. Once before, more than a Terran year earlier, he had summoned the great eagle to a similar task and she had obeyed, with all the power in her fearless body and those raking talons. Now – could he do it again?
Surra crowded against him, he could feel through fur and flesh the tension of the cat’s nervous body, as if she had joined her untamed will to his, strengthening his calling. Then the dune cat growled, so almost noiselessly that Storm felt rather than rightly heard that warning.
The Terran raised his head from his arm, opened his eyes to the morning sky. It seemed to him that he had been using his will for hours, but the space of time could not have been more than a few moments. The Xik guard was still there, still half-crouched by one of the rocks he had chosen for his improvised fort, staring downslope, slightly to Storm’s left.
“Ahuuuuuuu!” That cry might have been a scream from the furred throat of one of Surra’s large kin. Once it had been the war shout of a desert people, now it summoned the team to battle.
The strike of a falcon or eagle is a magnificent piece of precision flying. It is also one of the most deadly attacks in the world. The guard at the pass could have had a second of apprehension, but only a second, before those talons closed in his flesh, the beak tore at his eyes, and the wings beat him close to senselessness.
Storm sped from one side, Surra from the other. The attack was all over in moments. And the Terran stripped from the other’s body those weapons that would go a long way to insure the safety of his own party. Then he dragged the body of the guard along to thrust it into a crevice where it would lie hidden unless there were a detailed search. No man would now recognize the badly torn features, but Storm did not need to see that faintly green skin, the welling blood that was a different colour from his own, to identify the species of the dead man. The Xiks were humanoid – perhaps more so in appearance than the Norbies, setting aside such small differences as colour of skin and texture of hair. But there was a kinship of feeling between the horned and hairless Norbies and the Terran-descended settlers, which could never exist between man and Xik. So far no common meeting ground with the ruthless invaders had been discovered, in spite of patient search. And though they could and did mouth
