The riddle of Ruhkarv had drawn him three years earlier. While men had prowled the upper layers of the underground citadel, they had found nothing except bare corridors and chambers. The Council had willingly granted Fauklow permission to try out the recaller, with prudent contracts and precautions about securing to Korwar the possession of any outstanding finds that might result from the use of his machine. But the real answer had been a bloody massacre, the details of which were never made public. Men who had worked together for years as a well-running team had seem ingly, by the evidence, gone stark mad and created a horror.
“If the recaller worked,” Rerne answered, “it did so too well. The mop-up crew did not locate it—so the thing must have been planted well down. And no one hunted it there. It was shorted anyway as soon as we guessed what had happened. Ah—there is our beacon.”
Through the gathering twilight the quick flash of a ground light shone clearly. Rerne circled, set the flitter down neatly on a pocket of landing field within a fringe of towering tree giants that effectively shut off the paling gold of the sky except just over the heads of the disembarking men. The fussel on Troy’s wrist fanned wings and uttered a new cry, not guttural in the throat, but pealing up a range of notes.
Rerne laughed. “To work, eh, feathered brother? Wait until the dawning and we shall give you strong winds to ride. That is a true promise.”
Two men stepped from between the trunks of the tree wall. Like Rerne, they were leather-clad, and in addition one had a long hunting bow projecting beyond his shoulder. They glanced briefly at Troy but had more attention for the bird on his wrist.
“From Kyger’s.” Without other greeting Rerne indicated the fussel. “And this is Troy Horan who has the manning of him.”
Again each of the foresters favored him with a raking glance that seemed, in an instant’s space, to classify him.
“To the fire, to the fireside, be welcome.” The elder of the two gave a strictly impersonal twist to what was evidently a set formula of welcome. Troy was aware that in this world he was an interloper, to be tolerated because of the man who brought him.
And while he had long known and accepted Tikil’s evaluation of the Dipple dwellers, yet here this had a power to hurt, perhaps the more so because of the different attitude Reme had shown. Now the Hunter came to his aid again.
“A rider from Norden,” he said quietly with no traceable inflection of rebuke in his voice, “will always be welcome to the fireside of the ‘Donerabon.’ “
But inside Troy there was still a smart. “Norden’s plains have no riders now.” He pointed out the truth. “I am a Dippleman, Gentle Homo.”
“There are plains in a man’s mind,” Rerne replied obscurely. “Leave the fussel uncaged if he will ride easy. We shelter in the Five League Post tonight.”
There was a trail between the trees ringing in the landing clearing, firm enough to be followed in the half-light. Yet Troy was certain that the three men of the Wild ranger patrol could have found it in the pitch-darkness. It led steadily up slope until outcrops of rock broke through the clumps of brush and the thinning stands of trees, and they came out on a broad ledge hanging above the end of a small lake.
The lodge was not set on that ledge, but in the cliff wall backing it. For some reason the men who patrolled this wilderness had sought to conceal their living quarters with as much cunning as if they were spies stationed behind enemy lines. Once past the well- hidden doorway, Troy found himself in a large room that served as general living quarters, though screened alcoves along the back wall served for bunk rooms.
There was no heating unit. But a broad platform of stone with an upper opening in the rock roof supported smouldering wood, wood that gave off a spicy, aromatic fragrance as it was eaten into ashes. A flooring of wooden planks had been fitted over the rock beneath their boots, and here and there lay shaggy pelts to serve as small rugs while on the walls were shelves holding not only the familiar boxes of reading tapes, but bits of gleaming rock, some small carvings. Brilliant birdskins had been pieced together in an intricate patchwork pattern to cover six feet of the opposite wall.
It was very far removed from Tikil and the ways of Tikil. But in Troy old memories stirred again. The homestead on Norden had not been quite so rugged, but it had been constructed of wood and stone by men who relied more upon their own strength and skill of hands than upon the products of machines.
The fussel called and was answered from one of the alcoves—not in its own cry, but with a similar note. Troy’s other hand shot out to imprison the legs of the hawk before it could fly. But the fussel, stretching out its red-patched neck, its black crest quivering erect, merely uttered a deeper, rasping inquiry. Rerne strode forward, pushed aside the screen. There were three perches in the alcove, one occupied by a bird very different from the one Troy bore.
Where the fussel was sunlit fire, this was a drifting shadow of smoke. Its round head was crestless, but the tufted ears stood erect, well above the downy, haze-gray covering on the skull. Its eyes were unusually large and in the subdued light showed dark as if all pupil. In body it was as large as the fussel, its powerful taloned claws proclaiming it a hunter, as did the tearing curve of its beak.
Now it watched the fussel steadily, but showed only interest, no antagonism. One of the foresters presented a gloved wrist, and it made a bounding leap to that new perch.
“An owhee,” Rerne said. “They will willingly share quarters with a fussel.”
Troy had heard of the peerless night-hunters but had not seen one before. He watched the ranger take it to the door of the lodge and give it a gentle toss to wing away in the twilight. And a moment later they heard its hunting call: “OOOooowheeee!”
Reme nodded at the perches and Troy went to let the fussel make a choice. After a moment of inspection, the bird put claw on the end one and settled there, waiting for Troy to offer him his evening bait.
He who Hew the owhee and his partner of the resident staff did not linger after Rerne, Troy, and their kit were in the lodge house. Each forest ranger had a length of trail to patrol by night as well as by day. They said very little, and Troy suspected that it was his presence that kept the conversation to reports, questions, and answers. He tended the fussel and tried to keep out of the way.
But when both had gone and Reme brought out a pack of Quik-rations, they settled by the fire, which the Hunter poked into renewed life. There were no chairs, only wide, thick cushions of hide stuffed with something that gave forth a pleasant herbal smell when crushed beneath one’s weight.
As they shared the contents of the food pack, the Hunter talked and Troy listened. This was the stuff of the other’s days—the study of the Wild, the policing of it after a fashion, not to interfere with nature, only to aid her where and when they could, to make sure that the natural destruction wrought by man himself wherever and whenever he came into new territory did not upset delicate ecological balances.
There were stands of fabulous woods that could be cut—but only under the supervision of the Hunting Clans. There were herbs to be sought for the healing fraternities of other worlds, studies made of the native animals. The Wild was a storehouse to which the Clans held the keys—keeping them by force if necessary. In the tree-filled valleys, on the spreading plains yet farther to the east, battles had been fought between poachers and guardians. And only because Korwar had been proclaimed a pleasure planet did the Clans have the backing to keep the looters out. Most of this Troy knew, vaguely, but now Rerne spoke of times and places, named names.
The story was absorbing, but Troy was no child to be beguiled by stories. He began to wonder at the reason for Rerne’s talkativeness.
“There is no carbite on Korwar,” Rerne continued. “But let its equal be found here—and let the barriers against mineral exploration go down—“
“Is there any chance of that happening?” Troy ventured, suddenly aware that he, too, was now thinking as a partisan, ready to protect the Wild against willful destruction. Something in him was stirring sluggishly, pressing bonds he himself had welded into place as a self-protection. Like the hawk, he wanted to test his wings against a free and open sky.