Beast Master's Planet: Omnibus of Beast Master and Lord of Thunder (Beastmaster) (8 page)

“Where do I meet you to move out?” the Terran asked quickly.

“East of town, by the river ford—that grove of yarvins, about five—”

“I’ll be there,” Storm promised and then spoke to Larkin. “I’ll keep Rain and the mare as you suggest. We’ll settle for the auction price of the others when I get back.”

Larkin was grinning happily as the Survey man left. “Keep your eyes open around the Peaks, son, and stake a good stretch of land.
Give us three-four years and we’ll have us some colts that’ll beat anything even imported from Terra! That pack mare—she’s the best of the lot for a rough trip, steady old girl. Any of your kit you want to store, just leave it in the wagon, I’ll see to it—”

Storm was too impatient to wonder at Larkin’s helpfulness. He wanted to be out of sight before Quade came away from the improvised corral. But escape was not to be so easily achieved. It was Ransford who hailed him.

“Storm!” That shout was so imperative the Terran dared not ignore it and waited for the other to come up. “Look here, kid, Quade told me about your being jumped by a knife-man in town—what kind of trouble are you in anyway?”

“None—that I know of—”

But the other was frowning. “I tried to find out somethin’ about that rider you put to sleep—but nobody knew him. Sure it wasn’t him waitin’ for you?”

“Might have been—I just sighted a shadow with a knife—never saw his face.” Storm longed to get away. Quade was dismounting and he was sure the settler would join them.

“I put Dort to askin’ around some,” Ransford continued. “He knows men in about nine-tenths of the outfits here for the auction. If anyone is out to get your hide, he’ll hear about it—then we can take some action ourselves—”

Why was everyone so interested in his affairs? Storm wanted desperately, at that moment, to snake Rain out of the picket lines, call his team, and ride off alone into the wilderness. He did not want such solicitude, in fact it scraped raw some nerve he had not known he possessed. He asked nothing but to be left alone, to go his own way. Yet here was Larkin—and Ransford—and Dort—and even the Norbie, Gorgol, all with splendid little plans, or concern, or helpful hints for him. Storm could not understand why—any more than he knew why Bister wanted to make trouble for him.

“If anyone is gunning for me,” he returned as well as he could without betraying his rising irritation,” it won’t do him any good after tomorrow morning. I’ve signed up as scout for a Survey expedition and am leaving town.”

Ransford gave a sigh of relief. “That’s usin’ your head, kid. Maybe
this hothead got a skinful of tharman juice last night and when he sobers up he’ll have forgotten all about it. Which way you headed?”

“To the Peaks.”

“The Peaks—” That echo came from Quade. Then the settler added in a language Storm had never thought to hear another speak again:

“Where do you ride, man of the Dineh?”

“I do not understand you,” Storm answered in galactic one-speech.

Quade shook his head, his blue eyes measuring Storm astutely.

“You are Terran,” he switched to the common tongue of the space-ways, “but also you are Navajo—”

“I am Terran—now a man of no planet,” Storm replied shortly. “I do not understand you.”

“I think that you do,” Quade countered, but there was no abruptness in that, only a kind of regret. “I overheard you saying that you had signed on as a scout with an expedition into the Peak country. That’s good land down there—look it over. My son has a holding in that district.” His eyes dropped to his hands, twisting his reins. “If you see him—” But Quade did not finish that sentence, ending with another suggestion altogether. “I’d like him to meet you—you are Terran and Navajo. Well, good luck, Storm. If you ever need anything, try my range.” His foot was already in the stirrup and he swung into the saddle, moving off before the Terran could answer—if he had wanted to.

“If you do see Logan,” Ransford broke the silence, “I hope he’s not in trouble up to his chin. That boy’s as hard to ride herd on as a pack of yoris! Pity—Quade’s the easiest man livin’ to rub along with—if you’re straight and doin’ your job right. But he and his own kid can’t be together more’n a week before fire’s bustin’ out all over the range! Nobody can understand why. Logan Quade’s crazy about huntin’, and he lives with the Norbies a lot. But the kid never did a crooked thing in his life and he’s as decent as his old man. They just can’t seem to live together. It’s a shame, ’cause Quade is proud of the boy and wants his son for a partner. If you hear anything good about the kid, tell Quade when you come back—it’ll mean a lot to him—and he’s taken a big likin’ to you, too. Well, good luck, kid—sounds
as if you’ve got yourself a good deal. Survey pays well and you can turn their write-off in for an import permit or somethin’ like.”

Storm was disturbed. He wanted none of the information Ransford had supplied. What did Quade’s personal affairs matter to him? In that second brief encounter with his chosen enemy he felt he had lost some advantage he needed badly as a bolster for the future. He had accepted Quade, the enemy, but this other Quade was infringing more and more on his carefully built-up image. He hurried about his preparations for the trip, thankful for the occupation.

Surra sat on his left, the meerkats snuffled, poked, and pried under and around his busy hands as Storm sorted, piled, and made up two packs of his personal belongings. One he must leave with Larkin, the other comprised the kit he would need on the trail. There remained now just one small bundle to explore.

He had left that roll to the last, doubly reluctant to slit the waterproof covering sewed about it on another world, keeping its contents intact for two years. Now Storm sat quietly, his hands resting palm down upon the package, his eyes closed, exploring old roads of memory—roads he had managed to avoid exploring at the Center. As long as he did not cut the waxed cord, as long as he did not actually see what he was sure must be inside—just so long was he in a way free of the last acceptance of defeat—of acknowledging that there was never to be any return.

What did these men of another race here in camp—or those in the town—or those at the Center who had watched him so narrowly for months—that Commander who had so reluctantly stamped his freedom papers—what did any of them know of the voices of the Old Ones and how they could come to a man? How could they understand a man such as his grandfather—a Singer learned in ancient ways, following paths of belief these other races had never walked, who could see things not to be seen, hear things that no others could hear?

Between Storm and the clear beliefs of his grandfather—that grandfather who had surrendered him to schooling as a government ward only under force—there was a curtain of white man’s learning. Good and bad, he had had to accept the new in gulps, unable to pick
and choose until he was old enough to realize that behind the outer façade of acceptance he could make his own selection. And by that time it was almost too late, he had strayed far from the source of his people’s inner strength. Twice after he had been taken away by the authorities, Storm had returned to his people, once as a boy, again as a youth before he left Terra on active service. But then always between him and Na-Ta-Hay’s teaching there had been the drift of new ways. Fiercely opposed to those, his grandfather had been almost hostile, grudging, when Storm had tried to recapture a little of the past for himself. Yet some of it had clung, for now there sang through his mind old words, older music, things half-remembered, which stirred him as the wind from the mountains whipped him outwardly, and his lips shaped words not to sound again on the world from which this bundle had been sent.

Slowly, Storm sawed through the tough cord. He must face this now. The outer wrappings peeled off, and Ho and Hing crowded in with their usual curiosity, intrigued by the strange new smells clinging to the contents.

For there were scents imprisoned here—he could not be imagining that. The tightly woven wool of the blanket rasped his fingers, he saw and yet did not want to see the stripes of its pattern, red, white, blue-black, serrated concentric designs interrupting them. And to its tightly creased folds clung the unmistakable aroma of the hogan—sheep smell, desert smell, dust and sand smell. Storm sucked it into his lungs, remembering.

He shook out the blanket, and metal gleamed up at him as he thought it might. Necklace—blue-green of turquoise and dull sheen of silver—ketoh bracelet, concha belt—all masterpieces of the smith’s art—the ceremonial jewelry of a Dineh warrior. Old, old pieces he had seen before, made by brown fingers, dust long before he had been born—the designs created by the artists of his race.

Seeing those, Storm knew he had been right in his surmise. Not only had Grandfather somehow known—but he had found it possible to forgive the grandson who had walked the alien way—or else he could not resist this last mute argument to influence that grandson! It might have been his own death that Na-Ta-Hay had foreseen—or perhaps the death of his world. But he had sent this legacy to his
daughter’s son, striving to keep alive in the last of his own blood a little of the past he had protected so fiercely, fought so hard to hold intact against the push of time and the power of alien energy.

And now out of the night did there come a faint sound of a swinging chant? That song sung for the strengthening of a warrior?

“Step into the track of the Monster Slayer.

Step into the moccasins of him whose lure is the extended bowstring,

Step into the moccasins of him who lures the enemy to death.”

Storm did not put the contents of this last packet with the things to be left in Larkin’s care. He took up the jewelry, running his fingers across the cool substance of silver, the round boss of turquoise, slipping the necklace over his head where it lay cold against his breast under his shirt. The ketoh clasped his wrist. He rolled the concha belt into a coil to fit into his trail bag.

Then he got to his feet, the blanket folded into a narrow length resting on his shoulder. He had never worn a “chief” blanket in all his life, yet its soft weight now had a warm and familiar feel, bringing with it the closeness of kinship—linking the forgotten hands that had woven it to Hosteen Storm, refugee on another world, lost to his people and his home.

Lost! Dumbly Storm turned to face the east, toward the mountain ranges. He threw his hat down on the blanket roll, baring his head to the tug of the wind from those high hills, and walked forward through the night, doubly lighted by the two small moons, coming out over a little rise that could not even be named “hill.” He sat down, cross-legged. There had always been a strong tie between the Dineh and their land. In the past they had chosen to starve in bad times rather than be separated from the mountains, the deserts, the world they knew.

He would not remember! He dared not! Storm’s hands balled into fists and he beat them upon his knees, feeling that pain far less than the awaking pain inside him. He was cut off—exiled—And he was also accursed, unless he carried out the purpose that had brought him
here. Yet still there was this other hesitation in him. Without realizing it, he reverted to age-old beliefs. He must have broken his warrior’s magic. And so he could not meet Quade until he was whole again, once more armed against the enemy—the time was not yet ripe.

How long he sat there he did not know. But now there were streaks of orange-red in the mauve sky. It was not the same promise given by the sun to Terra, but with it came the feeling that his decision had been rightly made.

Storm faced the band of growing color, raising his arms and holding up into that light first his bared knife and then his stun rod—the arms of a warrior—to be blessed by the sun. He pointed them first at the life-giving heat in the sky and then at the earth, the substance from which the Faraway Gods had fashioned the People in the long ago. He had not the right, as had a Singer, to call upon those forces he believed existed, and possibly, this far from the land of the Dineh, the Faraway Gods could not, would not listen. Yet something within Storm held the belief that they could and did.

“Beauty is around me—

This one walks in beauty—

Good is around me—

This one walks in beauty—”

Perhaps the words he recalled were not the right ones, perhaps he did wrong to pre-empt the powers of a Singer. But he thought that the Old Ones would understand.

CHAPTER SIX

T

he wind that had drawn Storm to this little height died away. With a soft, coaxing whine Surra pressed against his leg and bumped her head against the hand that had dropped from his knife hilt. He heard the chittering of the meerkats in the grass. Above, a perfectly shaped black silhouette on the dawn sky, Baku mounted to greet the new day in the freedom of the upper air. Storm breathed deeply. His feeling of loss and loneliness dimmed as he returned to the trail camp to make his farewells.

A short appraisal of Sorenson’s preparations told the Terran that the Survey man was as competent as Larkin about the details of packing. The party was a small one: Sorenson himself, the settler pack master, Mac Foyle, and three Norbies, among whom Storm was not too surprised to find Gorgol. He raised his hand in greeting to the young native hunter, as he led his pack mare along to be lined with the others.

Foyle eyed this addition to the train with some astonishment, for the meerkats clung to the top of the mare’s pack and in addition she bore an improvised perch rigged for Baku. Surra trotted on her own four paws, well able to match the ambling pace of the pack animals.

“Those are a couple of tricky riders you got there,” Foyle hailed the Terran. “What are they, young fella? Monkeys? I heard tell of monkeys but I’ve never seen ’em.”

“Meerkats,” supplied Storm.

“From Terra, eh?” Foyle tested a lashing, looked over the mare’s rig with approval, and then brought up his own riding horse. “Smart lookin’ little tykes—what are they good for?”