Travis sped on, his moccasins making no sound on the ground. One of the coyotes gave tongue for the second time, the eerie wailing rising to a yapping which echoed from the rocks about them. Travis poised for a dive.
Another section of those artfully heaped branches had given way and a horse reared, its upflung head plainly marked against the sky. A blurred figure weaved back and forth before it, trying to control the mount. The stranger had his hands full, certainly no weapon drawn—this was it!
Travis leaped. His hands found their mark, the shoulders of the stranger. There was a shrill cry from the other as he tried to turn in the Apache’s hold, to face his attacker. But Travis bore them both on, rolling almost under the feet of the horse, sliding downhill, the unknown’s writhing body pinned down by the Apache’s weight and his clasp, tight as an iron grip, about the other’s chest and upper arms.
He felt his opponent go limp, but was suspicious enough not to release that hold, for the heavy breathing of the stranger was not that of an unconscious man. They lay so, the unknown still tight in Travis’ hold but no longer fighting. The Apache could hear Tsoay soothing the horse with the purring words of a practiced horseman.
Still the stranger did not resume the struggle. They could not lie in this position all night, Travis thought with a wry twist of amusement. He shifted his hold, and got the lightning-quick response he had expected. But it was not quite quick enough, for Travis had the other’s hands behind his back, cupping slender, almost delicate wrists together.
“Throw me a cord!” he called to Tsoay.
The younger man ran up with an extra bow cord, and in a moment they had bonds on the struggling captive. Travis rolled their catch over, reaching down for a fistful of hair to pull the head into a patch of clearer light.
In his grasp that hair came loose, a braid unwinding. He grunted as he looked down into the stranger’s face. Dust marks were streaked now with tear runnels, but the gray eyes which turned fiercely on him said that their owner cried more in rage than fear.
His captive might be wearing long trousers tucked into curved, toed boots, and a loose overblouse, but she was certainly not only a woman, but a very young and attractive one. Also, at the present moment, an exceedingly angry one. And behind that anger was fear, the fear of one fighting hopelessly against insurmountable odds. But as she eyed Travis now her expression changed.
He felt that she had expected another captor altogether and was astounded at the sight of him. Her tongue touched her lips, moistening them, and now the fear in her was another kind—the wary fear of one facing a totally new and perhaps dangerous thing.
“Who are you?” Travis spoke in English, for he had no doubts that she was from Earth.
Now she sucked in her breath with a gasp of pure astonishment.
“Who are you?” she parroted his question in a marked accent. English was not her native tongue, he was sure.
Travis reached out, and again his hands closed on her shoulders. She started to twist and then realized he was merely pulling her up to a sitting position. Some of the fear had left her eyes, an intent interest taking its place.
“You are not Sons of the Blue Wolf,” she stated in her heavily accented speech.
Travis smiled. “I am the Fox, not the Wolf,” he returned. “And the Coyote is my brother.” He snapped his fingers at the shadows, and the two animals came noiselessly into sight. Her gaze widened even more at Naginlta and Nalik’ideyu, and she deduced the bond which must exist between her captor and the beasts.
“This woman is also of our world.” Tsoay spoke in Apache, looking over their prisoner with frank interest. “Only she is not of the People.”
Sons of the Blue Wolf? Travis thought again of the embroidery designs on the jacket. Who had called themselves by that picturesque title—where—and when in time?
“What do you fear, Daughter of the Blue Wolf?” he asked.
And with that question he seemed to touch some button activating terror. She flung back her head so that she could see the darkening sky.
“The flyer!” Her voice was muted as if more than a whisper would carry to the stars just coming into brilliance above them. “They will come . . . tracking. I did not reach the inner mountains in time.”
There was a despairing note in that which cut through to Travis, who found that he, too, was searching the sky, not knowing what he looked for or what kind of menace it promised, only that the danger was real.
6
“The night comes,” Tsoay spoke slowly in English. “Do those you fear hunt in the dark?”
She shook her head to free her forehead from a coil of braid, pulled loose in her struggle with Travis.
“They do not need eyes or such noses as those four-footed hunters of yours. They have a machine to track—”
“Then what purpose is this brush pile of yours?” Travis raised his chin at the disturbed hiding place.
“They do not constantly use the machine, and one can hope. But at night they can ride on its beam. We are not far enough into the hills to lose them. Bahatur went lame, and so I was slowed. . . .”
“And what lies in these mountains that those you fear dare not invade them?” Travis continued.
“I do not know, save if one can climb far enough inside, one is safe from pursuit.”
“I ask it again: Who are you?” The Apache leaned forward, his face in the fast-fading light now only inches away from hers. She did not shrink from his close scrutiny but met him eye to eye. This was a woman of proud independence, truly a chief’s daughter, Travis decided.
“I am of the People of the Blue Wolf. We were brought across the star lanes to make this world safe for . . . for . . . the . . .” She hesitated, and now there was a shade of puzzlement on her face. “There is a reason—a dream. No, there is the dream and there is reality. I am Kaydessa of the Golden Horde, but sometimes I remember other things—like this speech of strange words I am mouthing now—”
“The Golden Horde!” Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the Blue Wolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythian art, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly. Tatars, Mongols—the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of the steppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across the plains of middle Europe and in old Russia where the Golden Horde had once ruled. The men of the Great Khans who had ridden behind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Tamerlane—!
“The Golden Horde,” Travis repeated once again. “That lies far back in the history of another world, Wolf Daughter.”
She stared at him, a sad and lost expression on her dust-grimed face.
“I know.” Her voice was so muted he could hardly distinguish the words. “My people live in two times, and many do not realize that.”
Tsoay had crouched down beside them to listen. Now he put out his hand, touching Travis’ shoulder.
“Redax?”
“Or its like.” For Travis was sure of one point. The project, which had been training three teams for space colonization—one of Eskimos, one of the Pacific Islanders, and one of his own Apaches—had no reason or chance to select Mongols from the wild past of the raiding Hordes. There was only one nation on Earth which could have picked such colonists.
“You are Russian.” He studied her carefully, intent on noting the effect of his words.
But she did not lose that lost look. “Russian . . . Russian . . .” she repeated, as if the very word was strange.
Travis was alarmed. Any Greater Russian colony planted here could well possess technicians with machines capable of tracking a fugitive, and if mountain heights were protection against such a hunt, he intended to gain them, even by night traveling. He said this to Tsoay, and the other emphatically agreed.
“The horse is too lame to go on,” the younger man reported.
Travis hesitated for a long second. Since the time they had stolen their first mounts from the encroaching Spanish, horses had always been wealth to his people. To leave an animal which could well serve the clan was not right. But they dared not waste time with a lame beast.
“Leave it here, free,” he ordered.
“And the woman?”
“She goes with us. We must learn all we can of these people and what they do here. Listen, Wolf Daughter,” again Travis leaned close to make sure she was listening to him as he spoke with emphasis—”you will travel with us into these high places, and there will be no trouble from you.” He drew his knife and held the blade warningly before her eyes.