Storm knew of only one, much as he disliked it, the cave into which Rain had blundered during the cloudburst. That lay to the east of the pass they now threaded, perhaps a mile from the gravel bed. Surely the water had fallen well below its entrance now. Water – Storm ran a dry tongue over drier lips and turned his thoughts resolutely from the subject of water.
There would be no time to rest in the camp – just gather together their few supplies and mount the stranger on Rain, then get moving at once. And now Gorgol’s try for horses no longer seemed so reckless. If successful, it would make very good sense. That is – if the poor brutes hadn’t been run until they were almost foundered. Mounts could mean the difference between disaster and safety for the fugitives.
“You’re – not – Norbie –” Though the words came in slow pauses from those cut and battered lips, they startled Storm. He had been unconsciously considering his companion as so much baggage that had to be supported and tended, but that had no individual will. To be addressed intelligently by the stranger surprised him.
The face half-turned to his was a mass of cuts and bruises, so well painted with dried blood that it was hard to guess at the fellow’s normal features. Nor did Storm realize that his own attempt at camouflage war paint did almost as well to make him equally a mystery.
“Terran –” He replied with the truth and heard a little gasp from the other, which might have been in answer to that statement or because the stranger stumbled and slapped one dangling hand inadvertently against an outcrop.
“You – know – who – they – are –?”
Storm needed no better identification for that “they”. “Xiks!” he returned tersely, using the very unflattering service term for the invaders.
The explosive sound of that word was echoed by the walls of the pass, but above it sounded the pounding of hoofs. Since Surra had given no warning, Gorgol must have been successful. Storm drew the stranger back against the wall and waited.
It would have taken an expert horseman to see any value in the three animals that picked their way down the slope, their heads hanging, the marks of dried foam on them, their eyes glazed. None could be called upon for any great effort now, save that of keeping on its feet and moving. But Gorgol strode after them, the ivory of his horns glowing in the growing light of the morning as he held his head high in this small triumph. He clapped his hands together, the small report loud enough to turn the weary shuffle of his charges into a limited trot. Then leaving them to drift on downslope to the outer valley, he came to help Storm with his charge.
“You have had good hunting!” the Terran congratulated him.
“No time – or hunting – would have been better. The Butchers are foolish – few horses are left to them now – but still they do not try to round them up –” Gorgol replied before he used his hands for the purpose of aiding the injured man.
With the Norbie to take half the burden, the three covered the rest of the distance to the floor of the valley in better time. The horses, too exhausted to graze, stood with drooping heads, while Rain cantered up, full of interest, to inspect the newcomers. Beside the overdriven trio the stallion was a fine sight as he stood, pawing at the sod with one forehoof, the wind pulling at his red mane and forelock.
“That – is – all – horse!” The battered stranger had come to a halt, half-braced against his supporters, but the eyes in his pulped face were all for Rain.
Think you can stick on him?” questioned Storm. “Sorry, fella, but we’ll have to keep moving for a while.”
“Can – try –”
Together Norbie and Terran boosted their rescued man up on the nervous stallion. He tried to crook his fingers into the mane for a hold and failed. And Storm, seeing for the first time the condition of those fingers, snapped a few sharp and biting words in the native tongues of at least two worlds.
There was a ghost of an answering laugh from the other. “All that and more,” he mouthed. They play pretty rough, those Xiks of yours, Terran. Once – a long time ago – I thought I was tough –”
He slumped so suddenly that Storm could not have saved him from falling off Rain’s back. But the Norbie moved more quickly.
“He is hurt –”
Storm did not need to be told that. That way –” he pointed.
“Beyond the mound where Dagotag and the others lie – a cave in the cliff wall –”
Gorgol nodded, steadying the stranger’s now limp body while Storm went ahead, Rain obediently following him.
They located the cave and Storm left the stranger with the Norbie and Hing, then rode back to collect their supplies. On the return trip he was accompanied by Surra and hazed before him the horses from the other valley, knowing that the two mares and the yearling colt would be protected by Rain. And with the stallion alert they would not stray too far from the new camp after they recovered their normal strength.
Gorgol met him at the cave entrance with news he had not expected – which a week earlier would have been exciting.
This Sealed Cave once.” Taking Storm by the arm, the native drew him farther in to point out the unmistakable marks of tools on roof and walls. He waved his hand toward the darkness beyond. “Hidden place – go far in –”
Would the Norbie refuse to stay here now, Storm wondered wearily. The Terran was too exhausted himself to care. Knowing that if he so much as sat down he would not be able to fight off sleep, Storm packed in the supplies and then went to look at the stranger. Stretched out on the floor of the cave, his head pillowed on a blanket roll, the Arzoran seemed to have shrunk in a curious way. His bruised face rested against the blanket, his breath caught a little now and then as if he were a child who had cried himself to sleep.
Storm sent Gorgol for water to be boiled over the fire the native had built, and laid out the supplies from the aid kit. Then delicately, with all the gentleness he could muster, he went to work, first to wash away the blood from those battered features, and then to assess the rest of the stranger’s injuries. The other moaned once or twice under the Terran’s ministrations, but he did not come to full consciousness.
At the end of a good half-hour’s work Storm drew a deep breath of relief. Judging by Xik standards, they had hardly started to use their unpleasant methods of breaking a prisoner. It would be several days before the stranger would have full use of his hands, the lash weals on his back and shoulders would also be tender at least that long, and his face would display a rainbow-coloured mask for some time. But there were no bones broken, no disabling wounds.
Leaving his patient as comfortable as possible, Storm went down to the lake, stripped, washed from head to foot, coming back to roll up in a blanket and sleep with the complete surrender of sodden exhaustion.
A tantalizing smell pulled him at last out of the mazes of a dream in which he ran across gradually rising mountains in pursuit of an Xik ship that, oddly enough, fled on human legs and twice turned to look at him with the face of Brad Quade. And he sat up to see Gorgol toasting grass hens on peeled spits over a fire. The process was watched with close attention by a mixed audience of Hing, Surra, and the stranger, now very much aware of his surroundings and sitting up backed by a brace of saddle pad and supply boxes.
Outside it was night, but they saw little of that save a patch of sky framing a single star, for the barrier once left by the landslip had been partly restored to mask their camp from anyone who did not have Baku’s powers of elevation. And Baku, as if Storm’s thought had once more summoned her, stirred now on a perch on the top of that barrier where she sat staring out on the valley.
But it was the rescued stranger who drew most of Storm’s attention. He had been too tired, too absorbed in the task at hand when he had worked over the other, to really look objectively at the man whose wounds he tended. Now, in spite of the bruises, the bandages and the battering, he noted something that brought him upright, betraying surprise as much as Hosteen Storm could ever register it.