“I came for you,” said Kta. “You are also of Elas, though you cannot continue our rites or perpetuate our blood. When the Methi struck at you, she struck at us. We are of one house, you and I. Until one or the other of us is dead, we are left hand and right. You have no leave to go your way. I do not give it.”
He spoke as lord of Elas, which was his right now. The bond Mim had forged reasserted itself. Kurt bowed his head in respect.
“Where shall we go now?” Kurt asked. “And what shall we do?”
“We go north,” said Kta. “Light of heaven, I knew at once where you must go, and I am sure the Methi does; but it would have been more convenient if you had brought your ship to earth in the far north. The Ome Sin is a closed bottle in which the Methi’s ships can hunt us at their pleasure. If we cannot escape its neck and reach the northern seas, you and I are done, my friend, and all these brave friends who have come with me.”
“Is Bel here?” Kurt asked, for about him he saw many familiar faces, but he feared greatly for t’Osanef and Aimu if they had elected to stay in Nephane. T’Tefur might carry revenge even to them.
“No,” said Kta. “Bel is Sufaki, and his father needs him desperately just now. For all of us that have come, there is no way back, not as long as Djan rules. But she has no heir, and being human—there is no dynasty. We are prepared to wait.”
Kurt hoped silently that he had not given her one. That would be the ultimate bitterness, to ruin these good men by that, when he had brought them all to this pass.
“Break camp,” said Kta. “We start—”
Something hissed and struck against flesh, and all the camp exploded into chaos.
“Kta!” a man cried warning, and went down with a feathered shaft in his throat. About them in the dawn-dim clearing poured a horde of howling creatures that Kurt knew for his own kind. One of the nemet pitched to the ground almost at his feet with his face a bloody smear, and in the next moment a crushing blow across the back brought Kurt down across him.
Rough hands jerked him up, and his shock-dazed eyes looked at a bearded human face. The man seemed no less surprised, stayed the blow of his ax, then bellowed an order to his men.
The killing stopped, the noise faded.
The human put out his bloody hand and touched Kurt’s face, his hair-shrouded eyes dull and mused with confusion. “What band?” he asked.
“I came by ship,” Kurt answered him. “By starship.”
The Tamurlin’s blue eyes clouded, and with a snarl he took the front of Kurt’s nemet garb and ripped it off his shoulder, as though the nemet dress gave the lie to his claim. But then there was a cry of awe from the humans gathered around. One took his sun-browned arm and held it up against Kurt’s pale shoulder and turned to his comrades, seeking their opinion.
“A man from shelters,” he cried, “a ship-dweller.”
“He came in the ship,” another shouted, “in the ship, the ship.”
They all shouted the ship, the ship, over and over again, and danced around and flashed their weapons. Kurt looked around at the carnage they had made in the clearing, his heart pounding with dread at seeing one and another man he knew lying there. He prayed Kta had escaped: some had dived for the brush.
He had not. Kta lay on his face by the fire, unconscious—his breathing was visible.
“Kill the others,” said the leader of the Tamurlin. “We keep the human.”
“
No!
” Kurt cried, and jerked ineffectually to free his arms. His mind snatched at the first argument he could find. “One of them is a nemet lord. He can bring you something of value.”
“Point him out.”
“There,” Kurt said, jerking his head to show him. “Nearest the fire.”
“Let’s take all the live ones,” said another of the Tamurlin, with a look in his eyes that boded no good for the nemet. “Let’s deal with them tonight at the camp—”
“
Ya!
” howled the others, agreeing, and the chief snarled a reluctant order, for it had not been his idea. He took command of the situation with a sweep of his arm. “Pick them all up, all the live ones, and bring them. We’ll see if this man really is from the ship. If he isn’t, we’ll find out what he really is.”
The others shouted agreement and turned their attention to the fallen nemet, Kta first. Him they shook and slapped until he began to fight them again, and then they twisted his hands behind him and tied him.
Two other nemet they found not seriously hurt and treated in similar fashion. A third man they made walk a few paces, but he could not do so, for his leg was pierced with a shaft. One of them kicked his good leg from under him and smashed his skull with an ax.
Kurt twisted away, chanced to look on Kta’s face, and the look in the nemet’s eyes was terrible. Two more of his men they killed in the same way, and at each fall of the ax Kta winced, but his gaze remained fixed. By his look they could as well have killed him.
15
The ship rested as Kurt remembered it, tilted, the port still open. About it now were camped a hundred of the Tamurlin, hide-clothed and mostly naked, their huts of grass and sticks and hides encircling the shining alloy landing struts.
They came running to see the prizes their party had brought, these savage men and women and few starveling children. They shouted obscene threats at the nemet, but shied away, murmuring together when they realized Kurt was human. One of the young men advanced cautiously—though Kurt’s hands were tied—and others ventured after him. One pushed at Kurt, then hit him across the face, but the chief snatched him back, protective of his property.
“What band is he from?” one of them asked.
“Not from us,” said the chief. “None of ours.”
“He is human,” several of the others argued the obvious.
The chief took Kurt by the collar and pulled, taking his
pel
down to the waist, pushed him forward into their midst. “He’s not ours, whatever he is. Not of the tribes.”
Their reaction was near to panic, babbling excitement. They put out their filthy hands, comparing themselves with him, for their hides were sun-browned and creased with premature wrinkles from weather and wind, with dirt and grease ground into the crevices. They prodded at Kurt with leathery fingers, pulled at his clothing, ran their hands over his skin and howled with amusement when he cursed and kicked at them.
It was a game, with them running in to touch him and out again when he tried to defend himself; but when he tired of it and let them, that spoiled it and angered them. They hit, and this time it was in earnest. One of them in a fit of offended arrogance pushed him down and kicked him repeatedly in the side, and the lot of them roared with laughter at that, even more so when a little boy darted in and did the same. Kurt twisted onto his knees and tried to rise, and the chief seized him by the arm and hauled him up.
“Where from?” the chief asked.
“Offworld,” said Kurt from bloodied lips. He saw the ship beyond the chief’s shoulder, a sanctuary out of his own time that he could not reach. He burned with shame for their treatment of him, and for the nemet’s eyes on these his brothers, these shaggy, mindless, onetime lords of the earth. “That ship brought me here.”
“The Ship,” the others took it up. “The holy Ship! The Starship!”
“This is
not
the Ship,” the chief shouted them down and pointed at it, his hand trembling with passion. “The curse-sign on it—this man is not what the Articles say.”
The Alliance emblem. Kurt had forgotten the sunburst emblem of the Alliance that was blazoned on the ship. They were Hanan. He followed the chief’s pointing finger, wondering with a sickness at the pit of his stomach how much of the war these savages recalled.
“A starman!” one of the young men shouted defiantly. “A starman! The Ship is coming!”
And the others took up the howl with wild-eyed fervor, the same ones who had lately thrown him in the dust.
“The Ship, ya, the Ship, the Ship, the machines and the armies!”
“They are coming!”
“Indresul Indresul! The waiting is over!”
The chief backhanded Kurt to the ground, kicked him to show his contempt, and there was a cry of resentment from the people. A youth ran in—for what purpose was never known. The chief dropped the boy with a single blow of his fist and rounded on the leaders of the dissent.
“And I am still captain here,” he roared, “and I know the Articles and the Writings, and who will come and argue them with me?”
One of the men looked as if he might, but when the captain came closer to him, he ducked his head and sidled off. The rebellion died into sullen resentment.
“You’ve seen the sign,” said the captain. “Maybe the Ship is near. But this little thing isn’t what the Writings predict.” He looked down at Kurt with threat in his eyes. “Where are the machines, the Ship as large as a mountain, the armies from the star-worlds that will take us to Indresul?”
“Not far away,” said Kurt, setting his face to lie, which was never a skill of his. “I was sent out from Aeolus to find you. Is this how you welcome me? That will be the last you ever see of Ships if you kill me.”
The captain was taken aback by that answer.
“Mother Aeolus,” cried one of the men, though he called it Elus, “the great Mother. He has seen the Great Mother of All Men.”
The captain looked at Kurt from under one brow, hating, just the least part uncertain. “Then,” he said, “what did she say to you?”
The lie closed in on him, complex beyond his own understanding. Aeolus—homeworld—confounded with the nemet’s Mother Isoi, Mother of Men: nemet religion and human hopes confused into reverence for a promised Ship. “She—lost you,” he said, gathering himself to his feet. They personified her: he hoped he understood that aright. “Her messenger was lost on the way hundreds of years ago, and she was angry, blaming you. But she has decided to send again, and now the Ship is coming, if my report to her is good.”
“How can her messenger wear the mark of Phan?” the captain asked. “You are a liar.”
The sunburst emblem of the ship. Kurt resisted the impulse to lose his dignity by looking where the captain pointed. “I am not a liar,” said Kurt. “And if you don’t listen to me, you’ll never see her.”
“You come from Phan,” the captain snarled, “from Phan, to lie to us and turn us over to the nemet.”
“I am human. Are you blind?”
“You camped with the earthpeople. You were no prisoner in that camp.”
Kurt straightened his shoulders and looked the man in the eyes, lying with great offense in his tone. “We thought you men were supposed to have these nemet under control. That’s what you were left here to do, after all, and you’ve had three hundred years to do that. So I had no real fear of the nemet and they were able to surprise me some time ago and take my weapons. It took me this long to escape from Nephane and come south. They hunted me down, with orders to bring me back to Nephane alive, so naturally they did me no harm in that camp, but that doesn’t mean the relationship was friendly. I don’t particularly Iike the nemet, but I’d advise you to save these three alive. When my captain comes down here, as he will, he’s going to want to question a few of the nemet, and these will do very well for that purpose.”
The captain bit his lip and gnawed his mustache. He looked at the three nemet with burning hatred and spit out an obscenity that had not much changed in several hundred years. “We kill them.”
“No,” Kurt said. “There’s need of them live and healthy.”
“Three nemet?” the captain snarled. “One. One we keep. You choose which one.”
“All three,” Kurt insisted, though the captain brandished his ax. It took all his self-possession not to flinch as the weapon made a pass at him.
Then the captain whirled the weapon in a glittering arc at the nemet, purposely defying him. The humans murmured, eyes glittering like the metal itself. The ax passed within an inch of Kta and of the next man.
“Choose!” the captain cried. “You choose, starman. One nemet. We take the other two.”
The howling began to be a moan. One of the little boys shrieked in glee and ran in, striking all three nemet with a stick.
“Which one?” the captain asked again.
Kurt kept his sickness from his face, saw Kta look at him, saw the nemet’s eyes sending a desperate and angry message to him, which he ignored, looking at the captain.
“The one on the left,” Kurt said. “That one. Their leader.”
One of the two nemet died before nightfall. The execution was in the center of camp, and there was no way Kurt could avoid watching from beginning to end, for the captain’s narrow eyes were on him more than on the nemet, watching his least reaction. Kurt kept his own eyes unfocused as much as possible, and his arms folded, so that his trembling was not evident.
The nemet was a brave man, and his last reasoned act was a glance at Kta—not desperate, but seeking approval of him. Kta was standing, hands bound: the lord of Elas gave the man a steadfast look, as if he had given him an order on the deck of their own ship; and the nemet died with what dignity the Tamurlin afforded him. They made a butchery of it, and the Tamurlin howled with excitement until the man no longer reacted to any torment. Then they finished him with an ax. As the blade came down, Kta’s self-control came near to breaking. He wept, his face as impassive as ever, and the Tamurlin pointed at him and laughed.
After that the captain ordered Kurt taken to his own shelter. There he questioned him, threatening him with not quite the conviction to make good the threats, accusing him over and over of lying. The captain was a shrewd man. At times there would come a light of cunning into his hair-shrouded eyes, and he doggedly refused to be led off on a tangent. Constantly he dragged the questioning back to the essential points, quoting from the versified Articles and the Writings of the Founders to argue against Kurt’s claims.
His name was Renols, or something which closely resembled that common Hanan name, and he was the only educated man in the camp. His power was his knowledge, and the moment Renols ceased to believe, or ceased to fear, then Renols could dispose of Kurt with lies of his own. The captain was a pragmatist, capable of it; Kurt was well certain he was capable of it.