Storm Over Warlock

A >> Andre Norton >> Storm Over Warlock

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Throgs? Tensely the Terran waited for some reaction from the wolverines.
He was sure that if the aliens had followed him, both animals would give
warning. Save when they had gone wild upon hearing that strange wail
from the camp, they avoided meeting the enemy.

But from all sounds the animals had not stopped feeding. So the other
was no beetle-head. On the other hand, why would Thorvald so advertise
his coming, unless the need for speed was greater than caution? Shann
drew taut the mooring cord, bringing out his knife to saw through that
tough length. A figure passed the three-sprig signal, ran onto the raft.

"Lantee?" The call came in a hoarse, demanding whisper.

"Here."

"Cut loose. We have to get out of here!"

Thorvald flung himself forward, and together the men scrambled up on the
raft. The mangled carcass plunged into the water, dislodged by their
efforts. But before the wolverines could follow it, the mooring vine
snapped, and the river current took them. Feeling the raft sway and
begin to spin, the wolverines whined, crouched in the middle of what now
seemed a very frail craft.

Behind them, far away but too clear, sounded that eerie howling, topping
the sigh of the night wind.

"I saw----" Thorvald gasped, pausing as if to catch full lungfuls of air
to back his words, "they have a 'hound!' That's what you hear."

5. PURSUIT

As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped downstream at a steadily
increasing pace, for the current had them in hold. The wolverines
pressed close to Shann until the musky scent of their fur, their animal
warmth, enveloped him. One growled deep in its throat, perhaps in answer
to that wind-borne wail.

"Hound?" Shann asked.

Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the poles they
had readied to help control the raft's voyaging. The current carried
them along, but there was a need for those lengths of sapling to fend
them free from rocks and water-buried snags.

"What hound?" the younger man demanded more sharply when there came no
immediate answer.

"The Throgs' tracker. But why did they import one?" Thorvald's
puzzlement was plain in his tone. He added a moment later, with some of
his usual firmness, "We may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound
means an attempt to take prisoners----"

"Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I mean?"

Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied to that.
"They could have brought a hound here just on chance that they might
miss one of us in the initial mop-up. Or, if they believe we are
natives, they could want a specimen for study."

"Wouldn't they just blast down Terrans on sight?"

Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald's head shake in negation.

"They might need a live Terran--badly and soon."

"Why?"

"To operate the camp call beam."

Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of Survey
procedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of the aliens.

"The settler transport?"

"Yes, the ship. She won't planet here without the proper signal. And the
Throgs can't give that. If they don't take her, their time's run out
before they have even made a start here."

"But how could they know that the transport is nearly due? When we
intercept their calls they're pure gibberish to us. Can they read our
codes?"

"The supposition is that they can't. Only, concerning Throgs, all we
know is supposition. Anyway, they do know the routine for establishing a
Terran colony, and we can't alter that procedure except in small
nonessentials," Thorvald said grimly. "If that transport doesn't pick up
the proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call in
the patrol escort ... then exit one Throg base. But if the beetle-heads
can trick the ship in and take her, then they'll have a clear five or
six more months here to consolidate their own position. After that it
would take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will
require a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and
an important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and
Kulkulkan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could eventually
cut us right out of this quarter of the galaxy."

"So you think they want to capture us in order to bring the transport
in?"

"By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical move--_if_ they know
we are here. They haven't too many of those hounds, and they don't risk
them on petty jobs. I'd hoped we'd covered our trail well. But we had to
risk that attack on the camp.... I needed the map case!" Again Thorvald
might have been talking to himself. "Time ... and the right maps--" he
brought his fist down on the raft, making the platform tremble--"that's
what I have to have now."

Another patch of light-willows stretched along the river-banks, and as
they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance they could see each
other's faces. Thorvald's was bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behind
them as if he expected at any moment to see a Throg emerge from the
surface of the water.

"Suppose that thing--" Shann pointed upstream with his chin--"follows
us? What is it anyway?" Hound suggested Terran dog, but he couldn't
stretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation between
Throg and any mammal.

"A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with a few other
grisly touches, is about as close as you can get to a general
description. And that won't be too accurate, because like the Throgs its
remote ancestors must have been of the insect family. If the thing
follows us, and I think we can be sure that it will, we'll have to take
steps. There is always this advantage--those hounds cannot be controlled
from a flyer, and the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging.
So we won't have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its masters in
rough country, we can try to ambush it." In the dim light Thorvald was
frowning. "I flew over the territory ahead on two sweeps, and it is a
queer mixture. If we can reach the rough country bordering the sea,
we'll have won the first round. I don't believe that the Throgs will be
in a hurry to track us in there. They'll try two alternatives to chasing
us on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect valley, and
since there are hundreds of valleys all pretty much alike, that will
take some time. Or they can attempt to shake us out with a dumdum should
they have one here, which I doubt."

Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throg's dumdum weapon
were anything but pretty.

"And to get a dumdum," Thorvald continued as if he were discussing a
purely theoretical matter and not a threat of something worse than
death, "They'll have to bring in one of their major ships. Which they
will hesitate to do with a cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now
is the section we should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate of
this current is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on this
side of the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land is
bare. Let them send a ship over and we could be as visible as if we were
sending up flares----"

"How about taking cover now and going on only at night?" suggested
Shann.

"Ordinarily, I'd say yes. But with time pressing us now, no. If we keep
straight on, we could reach the foothills in about forty hours, maybe
less. And we have to stay with the river. To strike across country there
without good supplies and on foot is sheer folly."

Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on land,
combing from their flyers. With a desert.... Shann put out his hands to
the wolverines. The prospect certainly didn't seem anywhere near as
simple as it had the night before when Thorvald had planned this escape.
But then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points which were
not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials? Shann wanted to
ask, but somehow he could not.

After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke, roused
out of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and so deeply impressed in a
picture on his mind that he was confused when he blinked at the
riverbank visible in the half-light of early dawn.

Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now gliding past
him as the raft angled along, he should have been fronting a vast skull
stark against the sky--a skull whose outlines were oddly inhuman, from
whose eyeholes issued and returned flying things while its sharply
protruding lower jaw was lapped by water. In color that skull had been a
violent clash of blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at the
riverbank, seeing transposed on it still that ghostly haze of bone-bare
dome, cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged jaws. That skull was a
mountain, or a mountain was a skull--and it was important to him; he
must locate it!

He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The wolverines
stirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued to sleep, curled up
beyond, the pole still clasped in his hands. A flat map case was slung
by a strap about his neck, its thin envelope between his arm and his
body as if for safekeeping. On the smooth flap was the Survey seal, and
it was fastened with a finger lock.

Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown at the
spaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were hollows in his
cheeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges beneath his eye
sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the skull of Shann's dream.
His face was grimed, his field uniform stained and torn. Only his hair
was as bright as ever.

Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not doubting
that he must present an even more disreputable appearance. He leaned
forward cautiously to look into the water, but that surface was not
quiet enough to act as a mirror.

Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of weight, Shann
studied the territory now about them. He could not match Thorvald's
inches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer, but
standing, he could sight something of what now lay beyond the rising
banks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlands
around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender in
color. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration and
poor soil. The earth showing between those clumps was not of the usual
blue, but pallid, too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along the
stream's edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into
the desert Thorvald had promised.

Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough in the sky to
sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those distant
mountains, mountains whose feet on the other side were resting in sea
water. He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separate
from its fellows.

Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he had seen
in his dream was real, that it was to be found on Warlock, persisted.
Not only was it a definite feature of the landscape somewhere in the
wild places of this world, but it was also necessary for him to locate
it. Why? Shann puzzled over that, with a growing uneasiness which was
not quite fear, not yet, anyway.

Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines became growly. Shann
sat down, one hand out to the officer's shoulder in warning. Feeling
that touch Thorvald shifted, one hand striking out blindly in a blow
which Shann was just able to avoid while with the other he pinned the
map case yet tighter to him.

"Take it easy!" Shann urged.

The other's eyelids flicked. He looked up, but not as if he saw Shann at
all.

"The Cavern of the Veil----" he muttered. "Utgard...." Then his eyes did
focus and he sat up, gazing around him with a frown.

"We're in the desert," Shann announced.

Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart, looking to
the faded expanse of the waste spreading from the river cut. He stared
at the mountains before he squatted down to fumble with the lock of the
map case.

The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not try to
move about too freely on the raft, greeting Shann with vocal complaint.
He and Thorvald could satisfy their hunger with a handful of
concentrates from the survival kit. But those dry tablets could not
serve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with more knowledge than he
had possessed a week earlier. This was not hunting land, but there
remained the bounty of the river.

"We'll have to feed Taggi and Togi," he broke the silence abruptly. "If
we don't, they'll be into the river and off on their own."

Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map skin,
again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His eyes moved
from Shann to the unpromising shore.

"How? With what?" he wanted to know. Then the real urgency of the
situation must have penetrated his mental isolation. "You have an
idea--?"

"There's those fish we found them eating back by the mountain stream,"
Shann said, recalling an incident of a few days earlier. "Rocks here,
too, like those the fish were hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of
them here."

He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft in shore, to
spare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungry
wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the animals for the officer's
whim.

However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of the main
pull of the current, sending it in toward the southern shore in the lee
of a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled ashore, the wolverines
after him, sniffling along at his heels while he overturned likely
looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with the
rudimentary legs were present and not agile enough even in their native
element to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of the
river shallows. There was also a sleek furred creature with a broad flat
head and paddle-equipped forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which
Taggi appropriated before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In
fact, the wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bank
before the Terran could coax them back to the raft.

As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the river. It
was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough spikes of
things pushing through the parched ground like flayed fingers, their
puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethystine coloring of
Warlock's growing things. Under the climbing sun that whole stretch of
country was revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled, and
then began to interest him.

He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking out toward
the waiting mountains. The officer turned as Shann urged the wolverines
to the raft, and when he jumped down the drop to join them, Shann saw he
carried a map strip unrolled in his hand.

"The situation is not as good as we hoped," he told the younger man.
"Well have to leave the river to cross the heights."

"Why?"

"There're rapids--bending in a falls." The officer squatted down,
spreading out the strip and making stabs at it with a nervous finger
tip. "Here we have to leave. This is all rough ground. But lying to the
south there's a gap which may be a pass. This was made from an aerial
survey."

Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could go wrong.
Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from aloft, but
there might be unsurmountable difficulties at ground level which were
not distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorvald had planned this journey
as if he had already explored their escape route and that it was as open
and easy as a stroll down Tyr's main transport way. Why was it so
necessary that they try to reach the sea? However, since he had no
objection to voice except a dislike for indefinite information, Shann
did not question the other's calm assumption of command, not yet,
anyway.

As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann studied his
companion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties lying before
them. Yet he did not seem in the least worried about their being able to
win through to the sea--or if he was, his outer shell of unconcern
remained uncracked. Before their first day together had ended, the
younger Terran had learned that to Thorvald he was only another tool, to
be used by the Survey officer in some project which the other believed
of primary importance. And his resentment of the valuation was under
control so far. He valued Thorvald's knowledge, but the other's attitude
chilled and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnership
of work.

Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place? And why had it
been necessary for him to risk his life--perhaps more than his life if
their theory was correct concerning the Throgs' wish to capture a
Terran--to get that set of maps from the plundered camp? When he had
first talked of that raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill
their daily needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signs
Thorvald was engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he,
Shann, suddenly stopped being the other's obedient underling and
demanded a few explanations here and now?

Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he would not get any
information out of Thorvald that the latter was not ready to give, and
that such a showdown, coming prematurely, would only end in his own
discomfiture. He smiled wryly now, remembering his emotions when he had
first seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if the officer ever considered
the likes, dislikes--or dreams--of one Shann Lantee. No, reality and
dreams seldom approached each other. Dreams....

"On any of those shoreline maps," he asked suddenly, "do they have
marked a mountain shaped like a skull?"

Thorvald thrust with his pole. "Skull?" he repeated, a little absently,
as he so often did in answer to Shann's questions unless they dealt with
some currently important matter.

"A queer sort of skull," Shann said. Just as vividly as when he had
first awakened, he could picture that skull mountain with the flying
things about its eye sockets. And that, too, was odd; dream impressions
usually faded with the passing of waking hours. "It has a protruding
lower jaw and the waves wash that ... red-and-purple rock----"

"What?"

He had Thorvald's complete attention now.

"Where did you hear about it?" That demand followed quickly.

"I didn't hear about it. I dreamed of it last night. I stood there right
in front of it. There were birds--or things flying like birds--going in
and out of the eyeholes----"

"What else?" Thorvald leaned across his pole, his eyes alive, avid, as
if he would pull the reply he wanted out of Shann by force.

"That was all I remember--the skull mountain." He did not add his other
impression, that he was meant to find that skull, that he _must_ find
it.

"Nothing...." Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly, with a visible
reluctance. "Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil--a wide green
veil--strung across it?"

Shann shook his head. "Just the skull mountain."

Thorvald looked as if he didn't quite believe that, but Shann's
expression must have been convincing, for he laughed shortly.

"Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!" he commented. "No,
your skull doesn't appear on any of our maps, and so probably my cavern
does not exist either. They may both be smoke screens----"

"What--?" But Shann never finished that query.

A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which held the
river, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which coasted down into
the water as a gray haze, coating men, animals, and raft, and sighing as
snow sighs when it falls.

Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted by the
miles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying that long
ululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorvald grinned
mirthlessly.

"The hound's on trail."

He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current. Shann,
chilled in spite of the sun's heat, followed his example, wondering if
time had ceased to fight on their side.

6. THE HOUND

The sun was a harsh ball of heat baking the ground and then, in some odd
manner, drawing back that same fieriness. In the coolness of the eastern
mountains Shann would not have believed that Warlock could hold such
heat. The men discarded their jackets early as they swung to dip the
poles. But they dared not strip off the rest of their clothing lest
their skin burn. And again gusts of wind now drove sand over the edge of
the cut to blanket the water.

Shann wiped his eyes, pausing in his eternal push-push, to look at the
rocks which they were passing in threatening proximity. For the slash
which held the river had narrowed. And the rock of its walls was naked
of earth, save for sheltered pockets holding the drift of sand dust,
while boulders of all sizes cut into the path of the flowing water.

He had not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even than their
efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed
of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said as
much and Thorvald nodded.

"We're approaching the first of the rapids."

"Where we get off and walk around," Shann croaked wearily. The dust
gritted between his teeth, irritated his eyes. "Do we stay beside the
river?"

"As long as we can," Thorvald replied somberly. "We have no way of
transporting water."

Yes, a man could live on very slim rations of food, continue to beat his
way over a bad trail if he had the concentrate tablets they carried. But
there was no going without water, and in this heat such an effort would
finish them quickly. Always they both listened for another cry from
behind, a cry to tell them just how near the Throg hunting party had
come.

"No Throg flyers yet," Shann observed. He had expected one of those
black plates to come cruising the moment the hound had pointed the
direction for their pursuers.

"Not in a storm such as this." Thorvald, without releasing his hold on
the raft pole, pointed with his chin to the swirling haze cloaking the
air above the cut walls. Here the river dug yet deeper into the
beginning of a canyon. They could breathe better. The dust still sifted
down but not as thickly as a half hour earlier. Though over their heads
the sky was now a grayish lid, shutting out the sun, bringing a portion
of coolness to the travelers.

The Survey officer glanced from side to side, watching the banks as if
hunting for some special mark or sign. At last he used his pole as a
pointer to indicate a rough pile of boulders ahead. Some former
landslide had quarter dammed the river at that point, and the drift of
seasonal floods was caught in and among the rocky pile to form a prickly
peninsula.

"In there----"

They brought the raft to shore, fighting the faster current. The
wolverines, who had been subdued by the heat and the dust, flung
themselves to the rocks with the eagerness of passengers deserting a
sinking ship for certain rescue. Thorvald settled the map case more
securely between his arm and side before he took the same leap. When
they were all ashore he prodded the raft out into the stream again,
pushing the platform along until it was sucked by the current past the
line of boulders.

"Listen!"

But Shann had already caught that distant rumble of sound. It was
steady, beating like some giant drum. Certainly it did not herald a
Throg ship in flight and it came from ahead, not from their back trail.

"Rapids ... perhaps even the falls," Thorvald interpreted that faint
thunder. "Now, let's see what kind of a road we can find here."

The tongue of boulders, spiked with driftwood, was firmly based against
the wall of the cut. But it sloped up to within a few feet of the top of
that gap, more than one landslide having contributed to its fashioning.
The landing stage paralleled the river for perhaps some fifty feet.
Beyond it water splashed a straight wall. They would have to climb and
follow the stream along the top of the embankment, maybe being forced
well away from the source of the water.

By unspoken consent they both knelt and drank deeply from their cupped
hands, splashing more of the liquid over their heads, washing the dust
from their skins. Then they began to climb the rough assent up which the
wolverines had already vanished. The murk above them was less solid, but
again the fine grit streaked their faces, embedding itself in their
hair.

Shann paused to scrape a film of mud from his lips and chin. Then he
made the last pull, bracing his slight body against the push of the wind
he met there. A palm struck hard between his shoulders, nearly sending
him sprawling. He had only wits enough left to recognize that as an
order to get on, and he staggered ahead until rock arched over him and
the sand drift was shut off.

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