“We shall be moving south, brother, and in the level fields this will do very well, as I shall show you. Ha, and here now is dinner—”
Lura walked up to the fire carrying a young pig. She dropped her burden and with an almost human sigh plumped down beside the kill to watch Arskane butcher it skillfully.
Fors ate roasted pork and began to wonder if his lot was as hopeless as he had thought it to be. The Beast Things were dead. He might lie up until his full strength returned and then make a second visit to the city. Or if he did not dally there would still be time to reach the Eyrie and lead an expedition before winter closed in. He licked rich grease from his fingers and planned. Arskane sang the tune of mournful notes Fors had heard him hum at the fishing lake. Lura purred and washed her paws. It was all very peaceful.
“There faces us now,” Arskane said suddenly, “the problem of clothes for you—”
“It faces me,” Fors corrected him sleepily. “Unfortunately my wardrobe was left to amaze the lizards. And, strangely enough, I do not find in me any desire to reclaim it from them—”
Arskane tightened the knots on the ball and cord weapon. “There you may be wrong, my friend. A visit to the lizard valley—keeping a safe distance, of course, might serve us very well.”
Fors sat up. “How?”
“Five of the Beast Things died there. But how many followed us into the Blow-Up land?”
Fors tried to remember the size of the party he had spied upon. How large had it been? He could not truthfully say now, but he did have a disconcerting suspicion that there had been more than five in it. If that were so—why were they lingering here so close to the edge of the Blow-Up? His feet were good enough to enable him to put some miles between himself and the desolate waste which now lay only a half mile beyond them.
“Do you think that the lizards may have added to their bag?”
Arskane shrugged. “Now that they have been warned, perhaps they have. But we need the spoil they took. Your bow is gone, but those arrowheads would be useful—”
“Useful to the extent of daring the thorns?”
“Maybe.” And Arskane fell to cross questioning him as to how much of his equipment the Beast Things had destroyed.
“Everything that is of value to me!” Fors’ old feeling of helpless inadequacy closed in upon him. “They ripped the Star pouch to shreds and burned my notes and map—”
“There are the arrowheads,” persisted Arskane. “Those were not burned.”
Since he seemed to mean it when he urged such an expedition Fors began to believe that the southerner had some purpose of his own in mind. He himself saw no reason to return to the lizard valley. And he was still protesting within him when they came to the top of the rise down which Arskane had gone to the rescue. Lura had refused to accompany them any further than the edge of the Blow-Up and they had left her there pacing back and forth, her flattened ears and moving tail emphatic arguments against such foolishness.
They stood looking down at a wild scene which almost turned Fors’ stomach. He gulped and balled his puffed fingers into fists, so that the pain took his attention. The lizards might live upon the grass of the terraces but it appeared that they were also meat eaters and they were now making sure of the supply chance had brought them.
Two of the Beast Things were already but skeletons and the valley’s inhabitants were fast at work on the others, a line of laden porters tramping up to the cave entrances while their fellows below swung tiny knives with the same skill with which the martyrs had earlier wielded their sickles.
“Look there—to the left of that rock—” Although Arskane’s touch made pain shoot along the length of his arm Fors obediently looked.
There was a pile of stuff there. Fors identified the remnants of his leggings and a belt such as was worn by the Beast Things. But a glint of color just beyond the haphazard pile of loot was more interesting. It stood in a tiny hollow of the wall—three blue rods—just about a finger high—familiar—
Fors’ puzzlement vanished. Those rods—they were the little figures he had brought from the museum in the Star pouch. Now they were set up—and before the feet of each was a pile of offerings!
They were gods. And with a sudden shock of illumination he knew why the lizard folk did them honor.
“Arskane! Those figures—there in that hollow—they are the ones I brought from the museum—and they are making offerings to them—worshiping them!”
The southerner rubbed his hand down his jaw in the familiar gesture which signified puzzlement. Then he fumbled in the traveling pouch at his own belt and brought out a fourth figure.
“They do it, don’t you see—because of this!” Fors indicated the small head of the carving. Although the figure was human the head was that of a hook-billed bird of prey.
“One of those figures down there has the head of a lizard—or at least it looks like a lizard!”
“So. And thus—yes—I can see it!”
Arskane started down the slope and from his lips came the hissing cry he had used before. There was a flicker of movement. Fors blinked. The workers were gone, had melted into the cover of the rocks leaving the floor of the valley deserted.
The southerner waited, with a hunter’s patience, one minute, two, before he hissed again. He was holding out between two fingers the bird-headed statue and its blue glaze was sharp and clear. Perhaps it was that which drew the lizard leaders from their cover.
They came warily, gliding around stones so that only the most intent watcher could sight them. And, Fors also saw with apprehension, they had their thorn spears with them. But Arskane was well above the line where those balls of clay had fallen. And now he put the blue figure down on the ground and retreated with long-legged strides uphill.
It was the statue which drew them. Three came together, flitting along with their peculiar scuttle. When they were within touching distance of the figure they stopped, their heads darting out at strange angles, as if to assure themselves that this was no bait for a trap.
As one of them laid a paw upon the offering, Arskane moved, not toward them but in the direction of the pile of loot. He went cautiously, examining the ground by inches, paying no outward attention to the lizards. They stood frozen where they were, only their eyes following him.
Deliberately and methodically the southerner turned over what lay there. When he came back he carried Fors’ boots and what was left of the mountaineer’s clothing, passing the lizards as if they were not there. After he had passed by the leader grabbed the blue figure and darted away around a rock, his two fellows almost treading on his tail. Arskane came up slope with the same unhurried pace but there were beads of moisture across his forehead and cheeks.
Fors sat down and worked the boots over his sore feet. When he got up he looked once more into the valley. The workers were still skulking in their holes but there were now four instead of three blue figures standing in the rock shrine.
The next day they started south, leaving the strange Blow-Up land well behind them. And the second day they were deep in open fields where patches of self-sown grain rippled ripely under the sun.
Fors paused, half over a stone wall, to listen. The sound he had caught was too faint and low pitched for thunder, and it kept within the boundaries of a well-defined rhythm. “Wait!”
As Arskane stopped Fors realized where he had heard that before—it was the voice of a signal drum. And when he said so Arskane dropped down beside the stones, putting his ear to the ground. But the message ended too soon. The southerner got to his feet again, frowning.
“What—?” ventured Fors.
“That was the recall. Yes, you were right and it was a talking drum of my people and what it said is all bad. Evil comes now upon them and they must call back all spears to stand in defense of the clan—”
Arskane hesitated and Fors plunged.
“I am not a spearman, or now even a bowman. But still I wear a sword at my belt and I possess some skill in handling it. Shall we go?”
“How far?” he added another question some breathless minutes later. Arskane had taken him at his word and the steady lope which the southerner had set as their pace was easier matched by Lura’s four feet than Fors’ two.