Ignominiously packaged, he was transported downslope to a village, a village that was no collection of skin-covered tents, like those of the nomad Norbies he had known, but of permanent erections with heavy logs rolled shoulder high to form walls, above them a woven wattle of dried vine and reed, with high-peaked thatched roofs.
Out of nowhere had come a Drummer, a medicine man wearing a feather tunic and cloak but in a vivid metallic green, the tunic crossed on the breast with a zigzag, sharp-angled strip of red. And the drum he thumped, as he led the procession carrying the prisoner through the village, was also red. Torches were set up along the way, their flames burning a strange, pale blue. Then Hosteen was out of the open, staring up into the shadows of one of the peaked roofs, as he was dumped roughly on a beaten earth floor.
House-or was it more temple? He tried to assess the meaning of what he saw. There were no sleep rolls in evidence, but in the center of the one huge room was a pit in which burned a fire of the same blue as the torches. And there were cords passing from one to another of the heavy support timber columns the length of the building, lines on which hung bark and shriveled things, together with round objects-
A Thunder House! And those were raid trophies-the heads and hands of dead enemies! Hosteen had heard of that practice as being usual among the Nitra clans. But this building was larger, older, far more permanent than any Nitra wizard tent. The Terran tried to remember every scrap of information he had been able to garner about the Nitra and to apply it to what he could see about him now.
Those warriors who had brought him in were settling down about the fire pit, passing from one to the other a bowl that probably held the mildly intoxicating clava juice, and they showed signs of staying for some hours to come.
The clan Drummer had taken his place on the stool to the north, keeping up a little deep, grumbling sound on his knee drum. That, too, followed the custom of the outer-world tribes-the northern stool for him who drums for the Thunder Ones; the southern stool, still vacant here, for the head Chief of the village or clan.
Hosteen closed his eyes, fixed mind and will on contact with the team, but to no avail. There was nothing-no trace of Surra or Baku-along the mental lanes. He had never quite been able to gauge the range to which his silent command call could reach in relation to either eagle or cat. But this present silence was more than worrying. It carried with it an element of real fear. A man who depended heavily upon the support of a cane could fall helplessly when that cane was snatched from his hand.
The Terran swallowed, as if he could swallow down his rising uneasiness. Had he, through the years, become so wholly identified with the team, so dependent upon them, that he would be a cripple when they did not answer his call? That thought bit deep, so deep he was hardly aware of the Thunder House and those in it until a commotion by the door made him open his eyes and turn his head as well as he could in the confines of the net.
Another party of natives brought a second prisoner, and the Drummer now beat out a heavy tattoo that needed no translation, so filled with triumph was its sound. A minute later the tangled and still struggling captive was dumped beside Hosteen, the lines of his net made fast to the same pillars that held the Terran.
“Hosteen!”
He could barely make out Logan’s features, marked still with smears of the luminous paint.
“Here. Gorgol with you?”
“No, haven’t seen him since we split up. There was a fire all around, and I blasted out ahead of that. Ran right into this net-they had it strung up waiting between two trees.”
Organization, Hosteen granted them that, very efficient organization. Did they have Widders stowed away somewhere here, too? And what was the purpose of their mountain firetrap? Just to capture anyone trying to get up in the heights?
“One thing.” Logan broke through the other’s mental speculation. “Just before that brush fire walled me off, I saw it.”
“It?”
“The LB-it must have been the LB. And from the look I had, it didn’t crash when it landed-at least it wasn’t smashed up any to show.”
“You didn’t get a chance to examine it closely though?”
“No,” Logan admitted. “Something else queer-“
“That being?”
“There was stuff piled all around it-spears, bowls, hides. And somebody had killed a horse, left it lying with its throat cut and its skull bashed in, right up against the boat-Not too long ago, either.”
“Sacrifices.”
“Could be. Because the LB came out of the sky, d’you suppose? They can’t have seen space ships back here.”
“Maybe-but then why attack the ‘copter when it came in for a landing,” countered the Terran. “If they had no experience with sky craft, one kind could be classed with the other. Unless-“
Unless, his mind raced, they did know the difference between an object from space and one merely traversing Arzoran skies.
“They could have contact with the plains, know the difference between flyers and space ships.” Logan was thinking in the same direction.
Or, Hosteen’s suspicions suggested, they could have contact with spacers. The fire weapon still posed a puzzle past his present ability to solve.
“This is a Thunder House.” Logan had been surveying his surroundings.
“I noticed some similarities with Nitra customs,” Hosteen returned. “See anything you know?”
Logan was the expert on native Arzor. Perhaps he could pick up some clue to their future or their captors’ intentions. Norbie clans were fond of ritual and tied by custom. There could be a pattern here that would fit with what Logan knew.
“They keep some Nitra ways,” his half-brother agreed. “The two stools, north and south, the east and west doors. And-watch that hunter coming in. See how he walks in and out among the pillars and not in a straight line? To do that would mean he was boasting before the powers. Their Drummer, he’s going into action now-watch!”
In the eerie light of the blue fire, the Drummer was still : pounding his knee drum with two fingers, keeping up a barely audible tap of sound. With the other hand, he had tossed into the air above the fire pit two small white things that floated and soared upward on a puff of the warmer air until they were lost in the gloom of the roof.
“Prayer feathers-or rather fluff,” Logan explained. “Those warrior trophies are the same as Nitra, too.” He regarded with wry distaste the display of dried hands and skulls. “That’s the same way the blue horns hang them-“
“But does the Nitra Drummer do that?” demanded Hosteen sharply.
The medicine man had risen from his stool and put down his drum. Now he stood by the fire, the gaze of all the seated natives centered upon him. From the neck fold of his tunic he pulled a cord from which hung a tube some twelve inches long. It glistened not only with the reflection of the fire but also seemingly with a radiance of its own.
With ceremony the Drummer pointed this to the four points of the compass beginning at the north. And then he aimed one end directly at the air over the fire pit.
A fine spray spread from the end of the tube, carrying glittering, jeweled motes into the air. The motes gathered and formed an outline composed of tiny, spinning gems.
“A five-point star!” Logan cried out.
But already the design was changing, the motes spinning, reforming, this time into a triangle, and then a circle, and finally a shaft that plunged straight down into the fire pit and was gone.
“No Nitra does that!” Logan breathed.
“Nor a Norbie either,” Hosteen replied grimly. “That’s an off-world thing, of a kind I have never seen before. But I’ll take blood oath it isn’t native to Arzor!”
“Xik?” Logan demanded.
“I don’t know. But I have a suspicion it won’t be long before we find out.”
CHAPTER NINE
Hosteen tried to flex cramped muscles within the cocoon of net that held him. The night was gone, and none of their captors had so much as come into the quarter of the Thunder House where he and Logan were tethered. Yes-the night was gone.
Daylight struck in places through the thatch and walls of the upper part of the medicine house, but the heat was no greater than it would have been in grazing season on the plains. Within the valley, the Big Dry did not exist at all!
“Sun-but no heat-“ he heard Logan mumble. “That lake-“