Storm Over Warlock

A >> Andre Norton >> Storm Over Warlock

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

It was for their protection that he returned to digging, though he no
longer tried to pry up the shell. Taggi leaped to the top of that dome,
sweeping paws downward to clear its surface, while Togi prowled around
its circumference, pausing now and then to send dirt and gravel
spattering, but treading warily as might one alert for a sudden attack.

They had the creature almost clear now, though the shell still rested
firmly on the ground, and they had no notion of what it might protect.
It was smaller, perhaps two thirds the size of the one which Thorvald
had fashioned into a seagoing craft. But it could provide them with
transportation to the mainland if Shann was able to repeat the feat of
turning it into an outrigger canoe.

Taggi joined his mate on the ground and both wolverines padded about the
dome, obviously baffled. Now and then they assaulted the shell with a
testing paw. Claws raked and did not leave any marks but shallow
scratches. They could continue that forever, as far as Shann could see,
without solving the problem in the least.

He sat back on his heels and studied the scene in detail. The excavation
holding the shelled creature was some three yards above the high-water
mark, with a few more feet separating that from the point where lazy
waves now washed the finer sand. Shann watched the slow inward slip of
those waves with growing interest. Where their combined efforts had
failed to win this odd battle, perhaps the sea itself could now be
pressed into service.

Shann began his own excavation, a trough to lead from the waterline to
the pit occupied by the obstinate shell. Of course the thing living in
or under that covering might be only too familiar with salt water. But
it had placed its burrow, or hiding place, above the reach of the waves
and so might be disconcerted by the sudden appearance of water in its
bed. However, the scheme was worth trying, and he went to work doggedly,
wishing he could make the wolverines understand so they would help him.

They still prowled about their captive, scrapping at the sand about the
shell casing. At least their efforts would keep the half-prisoner
occupied and prevent its escape. Shann put another piece of his raft to
work as a shovel, throwing up a shower of sand and gravel while sweat
dampened his tattered blouse and was salt and sticky on his arms and
face.

He finished his trench, one which ran at an angle he hoped would feed
water into the pit rapidly once he knocked away the last barrier against
the waves. And, splashing out into the green water, he did just that.

His calculations proved correct. Waves lapped, then flowed in a rapidly
thickening stream, puddling out about the shell as the wolverines drew
back, snarling. Shann lashed his knife fast to a stout length of
sapling, so equipping himself with a spear. He stood with it ready in
his hand, not knowing just what to expect. And when the answer to his
water attack came, the move was so sudden that in spite of his
preparation he was caught gaping.

For the shell fairly erupted out of the mess of sand and water. A
complete fringe of jointed, clawed brown limbs churned in a
forward-and-upward dash. But the water worked to frustrate that charge.
For one of the pit walls crumbled, over-balancing the creature so that
the fore end of the shell lifted from the ground, the legs clawing
wildly at the air.

Shann thrust with the spear, feeling the knife point go home so deeply
that he could not pull his improvised weapon free. A limb snapped claws
only inches away from his leg as he pushed down on the haft with all his
strength. That attack along with the initial upset of balance did the
job. The shell flopped over, its rounded hump now embedded in the watery
sand of the pit while the frantic struggles of the creature to right
itself only buried it the deeper.

The Terran stared down upon a segmented under belly where legs were
paired in riblike formation. Shann could locate no head, no good target.
But he drew his stunner and beamed at either end of the oval, and then,
for good measure, in the middle, hoping in one of those three general
blasts to contact the thing's central nervous system. He was not to know
which of those shots did the trick, but the frantic wiggling of the legs
slowed and finally ended, as a clockwork toy might run down for want of
winding--and at last projected, at crooked angles, completely still. The
shell creature might not be dead, but it was tamed for now.

Taggi had only been waiting for a good chance to do battle. He grabbed
one of those legs, worried it, and then leaped to tear at the under
body. Unlike the outer shell, this portion of the creature had no proper
armor and the wolverine plunged joyfully into the business of the kill,
his mate following suit.

The process of butchery was a bloody, even beastly job, and Shann was
shaken before it was complete. But he kept at his labors, determined to
have that shell, his one chance of escape from the Island. The
wolverines feasted on the greenish-white flesh, but he could not bring
himself to sample it, climbing to the heights in search of eggs, and
making a happy find of a niche filled with the edible moss-fungi.

By late afternoon he had the shell scooped fairly clean and the
wolverines had carried away for burial such portions as they had not
been able to consume at their first eating. Meanwhile, the
leather-headed birds had grown bold enough to snatch up the fragments he
tossed out on the water, struggling for that bounty against feeders
arising from the depths of the lagoon.

At the coming of dusk Shann hauled the bloodstained, grisly trophy well
up the beach and wedged it among the rocks, determined not to lose his
treasure. Then he stripped and washed, first his clothing and then
himself, rubbing his hands and arms with sand until his skin was tender.
He was still exultant at his luck. The drift would supply him with
materials for an outrigger. One more day's work--or maybe two--and he
could leave. He wrung out his blouse and gazed toward the distant line
of the shore. Once he had his new canoe ready he would try to make the
trip back in the early morning while the mists were still on the sea.
That should give him cover against any Throg flight.

That night Shann slept in the deep fog of bodily exhaustion. There were
no dreams, nothing but an unconsciousness which even a Throg attack
could not have pierced. He roused in the morning with an odd feeling of
guilt. The water hole he had scooped in the valley yielded him some
swallows tasting of earth, but he had almost forgotten the flavor of a
purer liquid. Munching on a fistful of moss, he hurried down to the
shore, half fearing to find the shell gone, his luck out once again.

Not only was the shell where he had wedged it, but he had done better
than he knew when he had left it exposed in the night. Small things
scuttled away from it into hiding, and several birds arose--scavengers
had been busy lightening his unwelcome task for that morning. And
seeing how the clean-up process had gone, Shann had a second
inspiration.

Pushing the thing down the beach, he sank it in the shallows with
several rocks to anchor it. Within a few seconds the shell was invaded
by a whole school of spiny-tailed fish, that ate greedily. Leaving his
find to their cleansing, Shann went back to prospect the pile of raft
material, choosing pieces which could serve for an outrigger frame. He
was handicapped as he had been all along by the absence of the vines one
could use for lashings. And he had reached the point of considering a
drastic sacrifice of his clothing to get the necessary strips when he
saw Taggi dragging behind him one of the jointed legs the wolverines had
put in storage the day before.

Now and again Taggi laid his prize on the shingle, holding it firmly
pinned with his forepaws as he tried to worry loose a section of flesh.
But apparently that feat was beyond even his notable teeth, and at
length he left it lying there in disgust while he returned to a cache
for more palatable fare. Shann went to examine more closely the
triple-jointed limb.

The casing was not as hard as horn or shell, he discovered upon testing;
it more resembled tough skin laid over bone. With a knife he tried to
loosen the skin--a tedious job requiring a great deal of patience, since
the tissue tore if pulled away too fast. But with care he acquired a few
thongs perhaps a foot long. Using two of these, he made a trial binding
of one stick to another, and experimented farther, soaking the whole
construction in sea water and then exposing it to the direct rays of the
sun.

When he examined his test piece an hour later, the skin thongs had set
into place with such success that the one piece of wood might have been
firmly glued to the other. Shann shuffled his feet in a little dance of
triumph as he went on to the lagoon to inspect the water-logged shell.
The scavengers had done well. One scraping, two at the most, would have
the whole thing clean and ready to use.

But that night Shann dreamed. No climbing of a skull-shaped mountain
this time. Instead, he was again on the beach, laboring under an
overwhelming compulsion, building something for an alien purpose he
could not understand. And he worked as hopelessly as a beaten slave,
knowing that what he made was to his own undoing. Yet he could not halt
the making, because just beyond the limit of his vision there stood a
dominant will which held him in bondage.

And he awoke on the beach in the very early dawn, not knowing how he had
come there. His body was bathed in sweat, as it had been during his
day's labors under the sun, and his muscles ached with fatigue.

But when he saw what lay at his feet he cringed. The framework
of the outrigger, close to completion the night before, was
dismantled--smashed. All those strips of hide he had so laboriously
culled were cut--into inch-long bits which could be of no service.

Shann whirled, ran to the shell he had the night before pulled from the
water and stowed in safety. Its rounded dome was dulled where it had
been battered, but there was no break in the surface. He ran his hands
anxiously over the curve to make sure. Then, very slowly, he came back
to the mess of broken wood and snipped hide. And he was sure, only too
sure, of one thing. He, himself, had wrought that destruction. In his
dream he had built to satisfy the whim of an enemy; in reality he had
destroyed; and that was also, he believed, to satisfy an enemy.

The dream was a part of it. But who or what could set a man dreaming and
so take over his body, make him in fact betray himself? But then, what
had made Thorvald maroon him here? For the first time, Shann guessed a
new, if wild, explanation for the officer's desertion. Dreams--and the
disk which had worked so strangely on Thorvald. Suppose everything the
other had surmised was the truth! Then that disk _had_ been found on
this very island, and here somewhere must lie a clue to the riddle.

Shann licked his lips. Suppose that Thorvald had been sent away under
just such a strong compulsion as the one which had ruled Shann last
night? Why was he left behind if the other had been moved away to
protect some secret? Was it that Shann himself was wanted here, wanted
so much that when he at last found a means of escape he was set to
destroy it? That act might have been forced upon him for two reasons: to
keep him here, and to impress upon him how powerless he was.

Powerless! A flicker of stubborn will stirred to respond to that implied
challenge. All right, the mysterious _they_ had made him do this. But
they had underrated him by letting him learn, almost contemptuously, of
their presence by that revelation. So warned, he was in a manner armed;
he could prepare to fight back.

He squatted by the wreckage as he thought that through, turning over
broken pieces. And, Shann realized, he must present at the moment a
satisfactory picture of despondency to any spy. A spy, that was it!
Someone or something must have him under observation, or his activities
of the day before would not have been so summarily countered. And if
there was a spy, then there was his answer to the riddle. To trap the
trapper. Such action might be a project beyond his resources, but it was
his own counterattack.

So now he had to play a role. Not only must he search the island for the
trace of his spy, but he must do it in such a fashion that his purpose
would not be plain to the enemy he suspected. The wolverines could help.
Shann arose, allowed his shoulders to droop, slouching to the slope with
all the air of a beaten man which he could assume, whistling for Taggi
and Togi.

When they came, his exploration began. Ostensibly he was hunting for
lengths of drift or suitable growing saplings to take the place of those
he had destroyed under orders. But he kept a careful watch on the animal
pair, hoping by their reactions to pick up a clue to any hidden watcher.

The larger of the two beaches marked the point where the Terrans had
first landed and where the shell thing had been killed. The smaller was
more of a narrow tongue thrust out into the lagoon, much of it choked
with sizable boulders. On earlier visits there Taggi and Togi had poked
into the hollows among these with their usual curiosity. But now both
animals remained upslope, showing no inclination to descend to the water
line.

Shann caught hold of Taggi's scruff, pulling him along. The wolverine
twisted and whined, but he did not fight for freedom as he would have
upon scenting Throg. Not that the Terran had ever believed one of those
aliens was responsible for the happenings on the island.

Taggi came down under Shann's urging, but he was plainly ill at ease.
And at last he snarled a warning when the man would have drawn him
closer to two rocks which met overhead in a crude semblance of an arch.
There was a stick of drift protruding from that hollow affording Shann a
legitimate excuse to venture closer. He dropped his hold on the
wolverines, stooped to gather in the length of wood, and at the same
time glanced into the pocket.

Water lay just beyond, making this a doorway to the lagoon. The sun had
not yet penetrated into the shadow, if it ever did. Shann reached for
the wood, at the same time drawing his finger across the flat rock which
would furnish a steppingstone for anything using that door as an
entrance to the island.

Wet! Which might mean his visitor had recently arrived, or else merely
that a splotch of spray had landed there not too long before. But in his
mind Shann was convinced that he had found the spy's entrance. Could he
turn it into a trap? He added a piece of drift to his bundle and picked
up two more before he returned to the cliff ahead.

A trap.... He revolved in his mind all the traps he knew which could be
used here. He already had decided upon the bait--his own work. And if
his plans went through--and hope does not die easily--then this time he
would not waste his labor either.

So he went back to the same job he had done the day before, making do
with skin strips he had considered second-best before, smoothing,
cutting. Only the trap occupied his mind, and close to sunset he knew
just what he was going to do and how.

Though the Terran did not know the nature of the unseen opponent, he
thought he could guess two weaknesses which might deliver the other into
his hands. First, the enemy was entirely confident of success in this
venture. No being who was able to control Shann as completely and ably
as had been done the night before would credit any prey with the power
to strike back in force.

Second, such a confident enemy would be unable to resist watching the
manipulation of a captive. The Terran was certain that his opponent
would be on the scene somewhere when he was led, dreaming, to destroy
his work once more.

He might be wrong on both of those counts, but inwardly he didn't
believe so. However, he had to wait until the dark to set up his own
answer, one so simple he was certain the enemy would not suspect it at
all.

11. THE WITCH

There were patches of light in the inner valley marking the
phosphorescent plants, some creeping at ground level, others tall as
saplings. On other nights Shann had welcomed that wan radiance, but now
he lay in as relaxed a position as possible, marking each of those
potential betrayers as he tried to counterfeit the attitude of sleep and
at the same time plan out his route.

He had purposely settled in a pool of shadow, the wolverines beside him.
And he thought that the bulk of the animal's bodies would cover his own
withdrawal when the time came to move. One arm lying limply across his
middle was in reality clutching to him an intricate arrangement of small
hide straps which he had made by sacrificing most of the remainder of
his painfully acquired thongs. The trap must be set in place soon!

Now that he had charted a path to the crucial point avoiding all light
plants, Shann was ready to move. The Terran pressed his hand on Taggi's
head in the one imperative command the wolverine was apt to obey--the
order to stay where he was.

Shann sat up and gave the same voiceless instruction to Togi. Then he
inched out of the hollow, a worm's progress to that narrow way along the
cliff top--the path which anyone or anything coming up from that sea
gate on the beach would have to pass in order to witness the shoreline
occupied by the half-built outrigger.

So much of his plan was based upon luck and guesses, but those were all
Shann had. And as he worked at the stretching of his snare, the Terran's
heart pounded, and he tensed at every sound out of the night. Having
tested all the anchoring of his net, he tugged at a last knot, and then
crouched to listen not only with his ears, but with all his strength of
mind and body.

Pound of waves, whistle of wind, the sleepy complaint of some bird.... A
regular splashing! One of the fish in the lagoon? Or what he awaited?
The Terran retreated as noiselessly as he had come, heading for the
hollow where he had bedded down.

He reached there breathless, his heart pumping, his mouth dry as if he
had been racing. Taggi stirred and thrust a nose inquiringly against
Shann's arm. But the wolverine made no sound, as if he, too, realized
that some menace lay beyond the rim of the valley. Would that other come
up the path Shann had trapped? Or had he been wrong? Was the enemy
already stalking him from the other beach? The grip of his stunner was
slippery in his damp hand; he hated this waiting.

The canoe ... his work on it had been a careless botching. Better to
have the job done right. Why, it was perfectly clear now how he had been
mistaken! His whole work plan was wrong; he could see the right way of
doing things laid out as clear as a blueprint in his mind. A picture in
his mind!

Shann stood up and both wolverines moved uneasily, though neither made a
sound. A picture in his mind! But this time he wasn't asleep; he wasn't
dreaming a dream--to be used for his own defeat. Only (that other could
not know this) the pressure which had planted the idea of new work to be
done in his mind--an idea one part of him accepted as fact--had not
taken warning from his move. He was supposed to be under control; the
Terran was sure of that. All right, so he would play that part. He must
if he would entice the trapper into his trap.

He holstered his stunner, walked out into the open, paying no heed now
to the patches of light through which he must pass on his way to the
path his own feet had already worn to the boat beach. As he went, Shann
tried to counterfeit what he believed would be the gait of a man under
compulsion.

Now he was on the rim fronting the downslope, fighting against his
desire to turn and see for himself if anything had climbed behind. The
canoe was all wrong, a bad job which he must make better at once so that
in the morning he would be free of this island prison.

The pressure of that other's will grew stronger. And the Terran read
into that the overconfidence which he believed would be part of the
enemy's character. The one who was sending him to destroy his own work
had no suspicion that the victim was not entirely malleable, ready to be
used as he himself would use a knife or a force ax. Shann strode
steadily downslope. With a small spurt of fear he knew that in a way
that unseen other was right; the pressure was taking over, even though
he was awake this time. The Terran tried to will his hand to his
stunner, but his fingers fell instead on the hilt of his knife. He drew
the blade as panic seethed in his head, chilling him from within. He had
underestimated the other's power....

And that panic flared into open fight, making him forget his careful
plans. Now he _must_ wrench free from this control. The knife was moving
to slash a hide lashing, directed by his hand, but not his will.

A soundless gasp, a flash of dismay rocked him, but neither was his gasp
nor his dismay. That pressure snapped off; he was free. But the other
wasn't! Knife still in fist, Shann turned and ran upslope, his torch in
his other hand. He could see a shape now writhing, fighting, outlined
against a light bush. And, fearing that the stranger might win free and
disappear, the Terran spotlighted the captive in the beam, reckless of
Throg or enemy reinforcements.

The other crouched, plainly startled by the sudden burst of light. Shann
stopped abruptly. He had not really built up any mental picture of what
he had expected to find in his snare, but this prisoner was as weirdly
alien to him as a Throg. The light on the torch was reflected off a
skin which glittered as if scaled, glittered with the brilliance of
jewels in bands and coils of color spreading from the throat down the
chest, spiraling about upper arms, around waist and thighs, as if the
stranger wore a treasure house of gems as part of a living body. Except
for those patterned loops, coils, and bands, the body had no clothing,
though a belt about the slender middle supported a pair of pouches and
some odd implements held in loops.

Roughly the figure was more humanoid than the Throgs. The upper limbs
were not too unlike Shann's arms, though the hands had four digits of
equal length instead of five. But the features were nonhuman, closer to
saurian in contour. It had large eyes, blazing yellow in the dazzle of
the flash, with vertical slits of green for pupils. A nose united with
the jaw to make a snout, and above the domed forehead a sharp V-point of
raised spiky growth extended back and down until behind the shoulder
blades it widened and expanded to resemble a pair of wings.

The captive no longer struggled, but sat quietly in the tangle of the
snare Shann had set, watching the Terran steadily as if there were no
difficulty in seeing through the brilliance of the beam to the man who
held it. And, oddly enough, Shann experienced no repulsion toward its
reptilian appearance as he had upon first sighting the beetle-Throg. On
impulse he put down his torch on a rock and walked into the light to
face squarely the thing out of the sea.

Still eying Shann, the captive raised one limb and gave an absent-minded
tug to the belt it wore. Shann, noting that gesture, was struck by a
wild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowing
for the alien structure of bone, the nonhuman skin; this creature was
delicate, graceful, in its way beautiful, with a fragility of limb which
backed up his suspicions. Moved by no pressure from the other, but by
his own will and sense of fitness, Shann stooped to cut the control line
of his snare.

The captive continued to watch as Shann sheathed his blade and then
held out his hand. Yellow eyes, never blinking since his initial
appearance, regarded him, not with any trace of fear or dismay, but with
a calm measurement which was curiosity based upon a strong belief in its
own superiority. He did not know how he knew, but Shann was certain that
the creature out of the sea was still entirely confident, that it made
no fight because it did not conceive of any possible danger from him.
And again, oddly enough, he was not irritated by this unconscious
arrogance; rather he was intrigued and amused.

"Friends?" Shann used the basic galactic speech devised by Survey and
the Free Traders, semantics which depended upon the proper inflection of
voice and tone to project meaning when the words were foreign.

The other made no sound, and the Terran began to wonder if his captive
had any audible form of speech. He withdrew a step or two then pulled at
the snare, drawing the cords away from the creature's slender ankles.
Rolling the thongs into a ball, he tossed the crude net back over his
shoulder.

"Friends?" he repeated again, showing his empty hands, trying to give
that one word the proper inflection, hoping the other could read his
peaceful intent in his features if not by his speech.

In one lithe, flowing movement the alien arose. Fully erect, the
Warlockian had a frail appearance. Shann, for his breed, was not tall.
But the native was still smaller, not more than five feet, that stiff V
of head crest just topping Shann's shoulder. Whether any of those
fittings at its belt could be a weapon the Terran had no way of telling.
However, the other made no move to draw any of them.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14