This must have been the drum which had sounded through the night after his fight with the boar. A signal—! He could not resist other experimental thumps—and then tried out the rhythm of one of his own mountain hunting songs. But this strong music was more eerie than any from the flute or the three- and four-stringed harps his people knew.
As the frightening rumble died away Lura flowed in, her eyes uncannily aglow, haste and urgency expressed in every dark hair on her head. He must come with her and at once. Fors dropped the drum and reached for his bow. Lura stood by the door, her tail tip flicking. •^ She went down the steps in two bounds and he went after her, not sparing his leg. The mare was standing in the shallows of the lake undisturbed. Lura glided on, between trees and bushes and into the thick depths of the wood. Fors followed at a slower pace, not being able to move so quickly through the green obstruction.
But before he had gone out of sight of the lake he heard it—a faint moaning cry, almost a sigh, which had been wrung out of real suffering. It arose to a hoarse croak, framing muffled words he did not understand. But human lips had shaped them, he was sure of that. Lura would not have guided him to one of the Beast Things.
The gabble of strange words died away into another moan which seemed to rise out of the ground before him. Fors shied away from an expanse of dried grass and leaves which lay there. Lura had dropped to her belly, reaching out with a forepaw to feel delicately of the ground, not advancing into the small clearing.
One of the pits which he had found throughout the city was Fors’ first thought—at any rate a hole of some sort. Now he could see a break through at the opposite end of this cleared space. He started to edge around, treading on the half-exposed roots of trees and bushes and holding on firmly to anything which looked sturdy.
From the torn gap in the mat of dried grass and brush rose a sickening stench. Trying to spare his leg he went to his knees and peered into the dusk below. What he saw there set his stomach to churning.
It was a wicked trap—that pit—a trap artfully constructed and skillfully concealed with the matted covering. And it held its victims. The small deer had been dead for days, but the other body which, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw writhe weakly, must have lain there for a shorter time. The blood on the impaled shoulder still ran free.
Sharp-pointed stakes had been set in the earth at the bottom, pointing upward to catch and hold the fallen for a tortured death. And the man who half hung, half lay there now had escaped that death by less than six inches.
He had struggled to free himself, as the gaping wound in his own flesh testified, but all his strength had not brought his loose. Fors measured the space between the stakes and then looked around for a good-sized tree. This would not be easy— It did not take long to fetch what was left of his climbing rope and make a noose in it. The man in the pit looked up with glazed eyes. Whether he could see or understand what his rescuer was planning Fors did not know. He fastened the end of the cord to an arrow and shot the line over the branch which hung the closest to the trap.
To make one end of the rope fast to the tree took only an instant. Then, with the other in his hand, Fors lowered himself cautiously over the edge of the pit, using his elbows to break his speed as he slipped down to the smeared stakes. Black flies rose in a noxious cloud and he had to beat them off as he reached the side of the prisoner. The belt about the fellow’s middle was tight enough and he knotted the rope.
The way out of the pit was more difficult, since the makers had fashioned it with every precaution against that very operation. But a landslide at one end gave some footing and Fors fought his way back to the top. It was plain that whoever had set that pitfall had not visited it for some time and Fors left the sentry duty to Lura.
This was going to be nasty business, but it was the only way he could see of saving the sufferer below. He untied the rope end on the tree and twisted it about his wrists. Lura came without being summoned and seized the dangling tip in her jaws. Together they gave their weight to a quick jerk which was answered by a wild scream of agony. But Fors did not lessen the steady pull and Lura matched him step by step as he crept back.
Out of the black hole rose the lolling head and bloody shoulders of the stranger. When he swung clear Fors made fast the rope and hurried back to pull the limp body away from the edge of the fiendish mantrap. His hands were slippery with blood before he got the unconscious man free. He could not carry the fellow, not with his bad leg. Also he must weigh more than Fors by forty pounds. For, now that he lay in the sunlight, Fors recognized him as the dark-skinned hunter of the island. But his big body was flaccid and his face greenish white under its brown pigment. At least the blood was not spurting from that wound—no artery had been touched. He must get the stranger back to the museum where he could see to the ugly tear-There was a crashing in the brush. Fors hurled himself for the bow which lay where he had dropped it. But it was Lura who came out, urging the mare before her. The scent of blood made the mare roll her eyes and circle away, but Fors wanted no nonsense now and Lura was of a like mind. She walked up to the horse and gave several low snarls. The mare stood still, sweating, her eyes showing white. But she did not rear as Fors somehow got his patient across her back.
Once back in the shelter of the museum he gave a sigh of relief and rolled the stranger-onto his blanket. The other’s eyes were open again and this time with the light of reason in their dark brown depths. The hunter was very young. Now that he was so helpless this was plain. He could not count many more years than did Fors himself—in spite of his big frame and wide, well-muscled shoulders. He lay in quiet patience watching Fors make a fire and prepare the salve, but he said nothing, even when the mountaineer went to work with his crude surgery.
The stake had passed through the skin of the shoulder, tearing a wicked gouge, but, Fors saw with relief, breaking no bones. If infection did not develop the stranger would recover.
His handling of that torn flesh must have caused the stranger agony but he made no sound, although when Fors finished at last beads of bright crimson showed along the other’s lower lip. He made a gesture with his good hand toward the pouch at his belt and Fors unfastened it. He selected with fumbling fingers a small bag of white material and pushed it into his rescuer’s hand, jerking his thumb at the pannikin of water Fors had used during his surgery. There was a coarse brownish meal in the bag. Fors drew fresh water, shook in a little of the stuff and set it back on the fire. His patient nodded and smiled weakly. Then he stabbed himself in the chest with a forefinger and said: “Arskane—”
“Fors,” and then pointing to Lura the mountaineer added, “Lura.”
Arskane nodded his head and added a sentence in a deep, almost rolling voice which had a drum note in it. Fors frowned. Some of those words—yes, they were like his own speech. The accent, though, was different—there was a slurring of certain sounds. He tried in his turn.
“I am Fors of the Puma Clan from the Smoking Mountains—” He tried gestures to piece out meaning.
But Arskane sighed. His face was drawn and tired and his eyes closed wearily. Plainly he could not make the effort for coherent speech now. Fors’ chin rested on the palm of his hand and he stared into the fire. This was going to alter his own plans drastically. He could not go away and leave Arskane alone, unable to fend for himself. And the big man might not be able to travel for days. He would have to think about this.
The boiling water began to give off a fragrant odor-new to his nostrils but enticing. He sniffed the steam as the water turned brown. When the liquid was quite dark he took a chance and pulled the pan off to cool. Arskane stirred and turned his head. He smiled at the steam arising from the water and gestured that when it was ready he would drink.
This, then, must be the medicine of his own people. Fors waited, tested it with a cautious finger tip, and then raised the dark head on his arm, holding the pan to those bitten lips. Half the liquid was gone before Arskane signed he had enough. He motioned for Fors to try too, but a single bitter mouthful was enough to satisfy the mountaineer. It tasted far worse than it smelled.
For the rest of the afternoon Fors was busy. He hunted with Lura, bringing back the best parts of a deer they surprised at the end of the lake, and some of the quail flushed out of the grass. He added an uncounted number of armloads to the stack of firewood. There were berries, too, won from a briary thicket. And, when at last he threw himself down beside the fire and stretched out his aching leg, he was so tired he thought that he could not move again. But now they were provisioned for more than one day ahead. The mare had shown a tendency to wander off, so he shut her into one of the long corridors for the night.
Arskane was awake again after the fitful feverish sleep of the afternoon, and he watched as Fors prepared the birds for broiling. He ate, but not as much as Fors offered. The mountaineer was worried. There might have been poison upon those trap stakes. And he had nothing with which to combat that. He heated up the bitter brown water and made Arskane drink it to the dregs. If there was any virtue in the stuff the big man needed all its help now.
As it grew dark Fors’ patient fell asleep again but his attendant hunched close to the fire, even though the
