Hypnotic! Hosteen recognized the danger. His own people could produce-or had produced ages ago-spells as a part of their war chants and dances, spells to send men out to kill with a firm belief in the invincibility of their “medicine.” This was not a pattern unique to Arzor.
He tried a misstep to break the pattern of the march. And perhaps because he had been indoctrinated during his Service training against just such traps, the Terran succeeded in part-or was succeeding-until the mountain came alive in answer to those with whom he marched.
That was what appeared to happen. Was it sound-vibration pitched too high or too low for human ears to register except on the very border of the senses? Or was it mental rather than physical? But it was as if all the bulk of earth and rock exhaled, breathed, stirred into watchful wakefulness. And Hosteen knew that this was something totally beyond his experience, perhaps beyond the experience of any off-worlder-unless Widders had met this before him.
Beat, beat-in spite of his efforts of mind, will, and squirming body held tight in the vice grip of the warriors who marched with him-Hosteen could only resist that enchantment feebly. That he was able to recognize and fight it at all was, he thought, a slender defense. Beat, beat-feet, drums- And again the mountain sighed -sighed or drew in a breath of anticipation-which? This was no earth and rock but a beast crouched there waiting, such a beast as no human could imagine.
The stench of the burned stuff was stronger. Then there was a last crescendo from the united drums-a roll of artificial thunder echoing and reechoing from the heights. They stopped and stood where they were, facing upslope toward the unseen top of the mountain. Then, as the drums had acted as one, so did the torch bearers move, stamping their lights into the earth, leaving them all in the dark, with only the far stars pricking the cloudless sky.
There was not a sound as the last echoes of the drumbeats died. Would the beast who was the mountain make answer? Hosteen’s imagination presented him with a picture of that creature-sky-high-waiting- Waiting as Surra could wait, as Baku could wait, with the great patience that man has lost or never had, the patience of the hunter.
The waiting Norbies-the waiting mountain-and waiting prisoners-
Again that breath, that sound that could not be heard, only felt with each atom of his tense body.
Then-
Lightning-great, jagged, broken blades of lightning stabbing up into the sky, lighting the slope. It played about the round knob that Hosteen saw for the first time clearly as the crest of the mountain-knob, one part of his mind remaining undazzled told him, that was too round to be natural. A crown of lightning about the rock head of a crouching beast. Then-the whips of blazing light cracked down, cut and fired, and the smoke of those fires carried to the waiting throng. Crack, lash-but behind that was no natural force but intelligent purpose. Hosteen was sure of that as he stood blinded by the flashes.
Xik-this could not be Xik. The installations that must govern this display were no Xik flamers, nor anything he had seen or heard of on other worlds. Yet Hosteen’s mind balked at associating this weapon for horrible destruction with the same civilization that had produced the beauty of the Cavern of the Hundred Gardens.
As swiftly as it had begun, it was over. Brush was in flames at widely separated places on the upper slopes, but the fires did not spread far. And now the drums began once again their marching tap. Hosteen’s guards pushed him ahead. However, this time the bulk of the villagers remained where they were, only the local Chief, his guards, the Drummer, and their captives climbed anew.
Once more they passed the burned frame of the ‘copter. The recent fiery lashes must have struck it again, for the tail assemblage was now a molten mass, glowing as the metal slowly cooled. Past the ‘copter-on and up-
Gorgol, Surra, Baku-had they somehow escaped both the nets of the natives and the lightning? Hosteen tried to call again, only to meet that curious deadness in response, as if there had never been any way he could communicate with those intelligent brains so different from his own.
“LB just ahead,” Logan called out.
Hosteen sniffed the sickly sweet smell of decay-decay of vegetable and animal matter-the sacrifices, if sacrifices they were meant to be. And were he and Logan now being taken to join those? The Terran knew a trick or two he could use at the last, even with his arms bound-
The slaughtered horse was visible in the flicker of a dying brush fire, behind it the shape of the LB. And as Logan had reported, there were no signs of a fatal crash landing. The escape boat might have been set down as easily as if it landed on the mountainside by directing radar. Survivors? Or had the survivors already gone the path he and Logan were traveling?
Hosteen so expected a battle at the site of the LB that he was startled when they did not pause there. The Drummer tapped, blew a puff of the prayer fluff in the direction of the craft, but they did not approach it.
No-the mountain was still waiting. And again in Hosteen’s imagination it took on the semblance of a slightly somnolent yet watchful animal-yet an animal with a form of intelligence.
Up again-and now the slope was steeper, rougher, so that Hosteen and Logan were hauled and dragged by their guards’ ropes, struggling to keep their feet at times. Once
Hosteen went to his knees and refused to respond to the tugging, striving to combine his need for a breathing spell with the chance for a look about.
Since they had left the LB, they had crossed several of the burned furrows, but these were of an earlier date, since they did not smoke. And now more and more rocky outcrops broke through the vegetation carpeting the slopes. The brush was loft behind, and they were surrounded by rock. There was a narrow cleft where they felt their way up a niche stair, the prisoners scraped along painfully by their guards.
The cleft brought them to a ledge almost wide enough to be termed, a small plateau. In the rock of the cliff that backed it was a dark opening. But this was not their goal, for the party struck eastward to the right, following the width of ledge around a gentle curve Hosteen judged to be the base of the mountain’s dome crest, though that must still climb some hundreds of feet above.
Daylight was coming, and he hoped the strange immunity that protected the village and the valley held here, too-that they need not fear the rising of the sun. Or was that to furnish the manner of their ending, death by exposure to the fury of its rays on a sacred mountain?
Already they were out of sight of the cave opening, and here the ledge extended from curving cliff wall to an edge that overhung a frightening drop to unguessed depth. The smooth path under his boots reminded Hosteen of another mountain road that had appeared to run from nowhere to nowhere in the heights at the mountain of the Garden. That had been a relic of the Sealed Cave civilization, and on it Hosteen had nearly met death in the person of the Xik aper, the last of his breed on Arzor.
The ledge road ended as if sheared off by a giant knife stroke. To their left was the circle of another doorway into the cliff wall-but this was sealed by what appeared a smooth slate of rock. The Drummer sounded his ritual signal-perhaps in salute to whatever power he deemed lurked behind that barrier.
And when the echo of that died away, the Chief of the village took the captives’ arms belts from the guard. With deliberation he broke the blades of their long hunting knives and showed his familiarity with the use of stunners by crushing their barrels with a rock ax the Drummer produced. Having destroyed, the outlanders’ weapons, he whistled, and two of the guards went into action.
Planting palms flat against the surface of the closed door, they exerted full strength, straining muscles on arms and shoulders.
The barrier gave, split vertically apart. Into that opening the Chief tossed the ruined weapons, the belts of the prisoners. And then the two captives were thrust forward with such force that they hurtled helplessly into a thick dark against which the light of day at their backs made little impression.
CHAPTER TEN
Hosteen brought up against an unseen wall with force enough to bruise flesh, to drive breath out of his body in a gasping grunt. He was on his knees, trying to regain both breath and balance when Logan crashed into him, and they both went to the rock surface under them. There was absolute darkness now. The Norbies must have resealed the cave.