Arskane still lay belly down beside him, his head pillowed on an arm. There was an angry red brand left by a burn on his shoulder—a drifting piece of wood must have struck there. And beyond Fors could see floating on the current other evidence of the fire—half-consumed sticks, the battered body of a squirrel with the fur charred from its back.
Fors retrieved that before the water bore it on. Half-burned squirrel was a rare banquet when a man’s stomach was making a too intimate acquaintance with his backbone. He laid it out on the rock and worried off the skin with the point of the spear he had clung to through the night.
When he had completed that gory task he shook Arskane awake. The big man rolled over on his back with a sleepy protest, lay staring a moment into the sky, and then sat up. In the light of the day his battered face was almost a monster’s mask mottled with purple brown. But he managed a lopsided grin as he reached for the bits of half-raw meat Fors held out to him.
“Food—and a clear day for traveling ahead of us—”
“Half a day only,” Fors corrected him, measuring the length of sun and shadow around them.
“Well, then, half a day—but a man can cover a good number of miles even in a half day. And it seems that we cannot be stopped, we two—”
Fors thought back over the wild activity of the past days. He had lost accurate count of time long since. There was no way of knowing how many days it had been since he had left the Eyrie. But there was a certain point of truth in what Arskane had just said—they had not yet been stopped—in spite of Beast Things, and Lizard folk, and the Plainsmen. Even fire or the Blow-Up land had not proved barriers—
“Do you remember what once I said to you, brother—back there when we stood on the field of the flying machines? Never again must man come to warfare with his own kind—for if he does, then shall man vanish utterly from the earth. The Old Ones began it with their wicked rain of death from the sky—if we continue—then we are lost and damned!”
“I remember.”
“Now it lies in my mind,” the big man continued slowly, “that we have been shown certain things, you and I, shown these things that we may in turn show others. These Plainsmen ride to war with my people—yet in them, too, is the thirst for the knowledge that the Old Ones in their stupid waste threw away. They breed seekers such as the man Marphy—with whom I find it in my heart to wish friendship. There is also you, who are mountain bred—yet you feel no hatred for me or for Marphy of the Plains. In all tribes we find men of good will—”
Fors licked his lips. “And if such men of good will could sit down together in common council—”
Arskane’s battered face lit up. “My own thoughts spoken from your lips, brother! We must rid this land of war or we shall in the end eat each other up and what was begun long and long ago with the eggs of death laid by our fathers from the sky shall end in swords and spears running sticky red—leaving the land to the Beast Things. And that foulness I shall not believe!”
“Cantrul said that his people must fight or die—”
“So? Well, there are different kinds of warfare. In the desert my people fought each day, but their enemies were sand and heat, the barren land itself. And if we had not lost the ancient learning perhaps we might even have tamed the burning mountains! Yes, man must fight or he becomes a soft nothing—but let him fight to build instead of to destroy. I would see my people trading wares and learning with those born in tents, sitting at council fires with the men of the mountain clans. Now is the time we must act to save that dream. For if the people of the tents march south in war they shall light such a fire as we or no living man may put out again. And in that fire we shall be as the trees and grass of the fields—utterly consumed.”
Fors’ answer was a grim stretch of ash-powdered skin which in no way resembled a smile. “We be but two, Arskane, and doubtless I am proclaimed outlaw, if the men of the Eyrie have noted my flight at all. My chance of gaining a hearing at their councils was destroyed by the Beast Things when they burned my city records. And you—?”
“There is thus much, brother. I am a son of a Wearer of the Wings—though I am youngest and least of the family clan. So perhaps some will listen to me, if only for a space. But we must reach the tribe before the Plainsmen do.”
Fors tossed a cleaned bone into the water below. “Heigh-ho! Then it is foot slogging again. I wish that we might have brought one of those high-stepping pacers out of the herds. Four legs are better than two when there is speed to consider.”
“Afoot we go.” But Arskane could not suppress an exclamation of pain as he got to his feet and Fors could see that he favored the side where the shoulder wound still showed red. However, neither made any complaint as they jumped down from the ledge and plodded on through the ravine.
Arskane was dreaming a dream and it was a great dream, Fors thought, almost with a prick of real envy. He himself drew bow cord against the Beast Things without any squeamishness, and he could fight with everything in him when his life was at stake as it had been when they were cornered by the Plainsmen. But he took no joy in slaying—he never had. As a hunter he had killed only to fill his belly or for the pots of the Eyrie. He did not like the idea of notching an arrow against Marphy or of standing against Vocar with bare swords—for no good reason save a lust to battle—
Why had the men of the Eyrie drawn apart from their kind all these years? Oh, he knew the old legends—that they were sprung from chosen men and women who had been hidden in the mountains to escape just such an end as tore their civilization into bloody shreds. They had been sent there to treasure their learning—so they did, and tried to win more.
But had they not also come to believe themselves a superior race? If his father had not broken the unwritten law and married with a stranger, if he himself had been born of pure clan blood within the walls of the Eyrie—would he think now as he did? Jarl—his father had liked Jarl, had held him in high respect, had been the first to give him the salute when he had been raised to the Captaincy of the Star Men. Jarl!—Jarl could speak with Marphy and they would be two quick minds talking—hungrily. But Jarl and Cantrul—no. Cantrul was of a different breed. Yet he was a man whom others would follow always—their eyes on that head, held high, with its startling plume of white hair—a battle standard.
He himself was a mutant, a thing of mixed strains. Could he dare to speak for anyone save himself? At any rate he knew what he wanted now—to follow Arskane’s dream. He might not believe that that dream would ever come true. But the fight for it would be his battle. He had wanted a star for his own—the silver star which he could hold in his two hands and wear as a badge of honor to compel respect from the people who had rejected him. But Arskane was showing him now something which might be greater than any star. Wait—wait and see.
His feet fell easily into the rhythm of those two words. The stream curved suddenly when it issued out of the ravine. Arskane pulled himself up the steep bank by the help of bushes. Fors gained the top in the same moment and together they saw what lay to the south. A dense column of smoke mushroomed into the sky of late afternoon.
For one startled minute Fors thought of the prairie fire. But surely that had not spread here, they had passed the line of burning hours back. Another fire, and a localized one by the line of smoke. One could take a route leading along the row of trees to the right, snake through the field of tangled bushes beyond where red fruit hung heavy and ripe, and reach the source without being exposed to attack.
Fors felt the rake of berry thorns on his flesh, but at the same time he crammed the tartly sweet fruit into his mouth as he crawled, staining his hands and face with dark juice.