He had spent literally thousands of hours in practicing knife-throwing. He had cast knives of many kinds at many distances from many angles, even while standing on his head. He had forced himself to engage in severe discipline; he had
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thrown knives until he began to think he was breathing knives and the sight of one made him lose his appetite.
The unending hours, the sweat, frustration, and discipline paid off. The knife went into the Seller’s throat, and the Beller fell over backward. The beamer lay on the ground.
Kickaha threw himself at the weapon, picked it up, saw that, though not of a familiar make, it was operated like the others. A little catch on the side of the butt had to be depressed to activate the weapon. The trigger could then be pulled; this was a slightly protruding plate on the inner side of the butt.
The Beller in the rear of the craft was swinging the big projector around toward Kickaha. Its ray sprang out whitely and dug a smoking swath in the ground; it struck a mound of buffalo, which burst into flames. The projector was not yet on full-power.
Kickaha did not have to shoot the Beller. A ray struck the Beller from the side, and he slumped over. Then the ray rose and fell, and the craft was cut in half. The others in the cockpit had already been struck down.
Kickaha rose cautiously and shouted, “Anana! It’s me! Kickaha! Don’t shoot!”
Presently Anana’s white face came around the hillock of shaggy, horned carcasses. She smiled at him and shouted back, “It’s all right! I got all of them!”
He could see the outflung hand of the Belter who had been approaching her. Kickaha walked toward her, but he felt apprehensive.
Now that she had a beamer and a craft—part of
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a craft, anyway—would she need him?
Before he had taken four more steps, he knew that she still needed him. He increased his pace and smiled. She did not know this world as he did, and the forces against her were extremely powerful. She wasn’t going to turn on such a valuable ally.
Anana said, “How in Shambarimen’s name did you manage to live through all that? I would have sworn that you had been cut off by the herd and that the Half-Horses would get you.”
“The Half-Horses were even more confident,” he said, and he grinned. He told her what had happened. She was silent for a moment, then she asked, “Are you sure you’re not a Lord?”
“No, I’m human and a mere Hoosier, though not so mere at that, come to think of it.”
“You’re shaking,” she said.
“I’m naturally high-strung,” he said, still grinning. “You look like you’re related to an aspen leaf, yourself.”
She glanced at the beamer, quivering in her hand, and smiled grimly. “We’ve both been through a lot.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for, for chris-sakes,” he said. “Okay, let’s see what we have here.”
The Tishquetmoac men were small figures in the distance. They had begun running when Anana had started beaming, and they evidently did not plan on returning. Kickaha was glad. He had no plans for them and did not want to be appealed to for help.
Anana said, “I played dead, and I threw a spear at him and killed him. The Bellers in the craft were
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so surprised that they froze. I picked up the beamer and killed them.”
It was a nice, clean, simple story. Kickaha did not believe it. She had not been helped by a disturbance, as he had, and he could not see how she could have gotten up and thrown a spear before the beamer went into action. The Beller was pierced in the hollow of the throat with the spear, but there was little blood from the wound, and there was no wound that could have been made by a beamer. Kickaha was certain that a close investigation would find a small hole bored through the corpse somewhere. Probably through the armor too, because the Beller wore chain mail shirt and skirt and a conical helmet.