Nolan’s eyes were cold, his mouth grim as he faced Travis.
“And how can we fight him—?”
“There is a wall—a wall you cannot see—about him,” Lupe broke in. “When I would strike at him, I could not!”
“A man with invisible protection and a gun,” Jil-Lee took up the argument. “How would you deal with him, younger brother?”
“I don’t know,” Travis admitted. Yet he also believed that if they withdrew, left the Russian here to be found by his own people, the enemy would immediately begin an investigation of the southern country. Perhaps, pushed by their need for learning more about the Apaches, they would bring the helicopter in over the mountains. The answer to all Apache dangers, for now, lay in the immediate future of this one man.
“He is hurt, he cannot go far on foot. And even if he calls the ‘copter, there is no landing place. He will have to move elsewhere to be picked up.” Travis thought aloud, citing the thin handful of points in their favor.
Tsoay nodded toward the rim of the ravine. “Rocks up there and rocks can roll. Start an earthslide . . .”
Something within Travis balked at that. From the first he had been willing enough to slug it out with the Russian, weapon to weapon, man to man. Also, he had wanted to take a captive, not stand over a body. But to use the nature of the country against the enemy, that was the oldest Apache trick of all and one they would have to be forced to employ.
Nolan had already nodded in assent, and Tsoay and Jil-Lee started off. Even if the Russian did possess a protective wall device, could it operate in full against a landslide? They all doubted that.
The Apaches reached the cliff rim without exposing themselves to the enemy’s fire. The Russian still sat there calmly, his back against the rock, his hands busy with his equipment as if he had all the time in the world.
Then suddenly came a scream from more than one throat.
“Dar-u-gar!” The ancient war cry of the Mongol Hordes.
Then over the lip of the other slope rose a wave of men—their curved swords out, a glazed set to their eyes—heading for the Amerindians with utter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, his shaman’s robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of some oversized predatory bird. Hulagur . . . Jagatai . . . men from the outlaws’ camp. And they were not striving to destroy their disabled overlord in the vale below, but to wipe out the Apaches!
Only the fact that the Apaches were already sheltered behind the rocks they were laboring to dislodge gave them a precious few moments of grace. There was no time to use their bows. They could only use knives to meet the swords of the Tatars, knives and the fact that they could fight with unclouded minds.
“He has them under control!” Travis pawed at Jil-Lee’s shoulder. “Get him—they’ll stop!”
He did not wait to see if the other Apache understood. Instead, he threw the full force of his own body against the rock they had made the center stone of their slide. It gave and rolled, carrying with it the rest of the piled rubble. Travis stumbled, fell flat, and then a body thudded down upon him, and he was fighting for his life to keep a blade from his throat. Around him were the shouts and cries of embroiled warriors; then all was silenced by a roar from below.
Glazed eyes in a face only a foot from his own, the twisted panting mouth sending gusts of breath into his nostrils. Suddenly there was reason back in those eyes, a bewilderment which became fear . . . panic . . . The Tatar’s body twisted in Travis’ hold, striving now not to attack, but to win free. As the Apache loosened his grip the other jerked away, so that for a moment or two they lay gasping, side by side.
Men sat up to look at men. There was a spreading stain down Jil-Lee’s side and one of the Tatars sprawled near him, both his hands on his chest, coughing violently.
Menlik clawed at the trunk of a wind-twisted mountain tree, pulled himself to his feet, and stood swaying as might a man long ill and recovering from severe exertion.
Insensibly both sides drew apart, leaving a space between Tatar and Apache. The faces of the Amerindians were grim, those of the Mongols bewildered and then harsh as they eyed their late opponents with dawning reason. What had begun in compulsion for the Tatars might well flare now into rational combat—and from that to a campaign of extermination.
Travis was on his feet. He looked over the lip of the drop. The Russian was still in his place down there, a pile of rubble about him. His protection must have failed, for his head was back at an unnatural angle and the dent in his helmet could be easily seen.
“That one is dead—or helpless!” Travis cried out. “Do you still wish to fight for him, Shaman?”
Menlik came away from the tree and walked to the edge of the drop. The others, too, were moving forward. After the shaman looked down he stooped, picked up a small stone, and flung it at the motionless Russian. There was a crack of sound. They all saw the tiny spurt of flame, a curl of smoke from the plate on the Russian’s chest. Not only the man, but his control was finished now.
A wolfish growl and two of the Tatars swung over, started down to the Russian. Menlik shouted and they slackened pace.
“We want that,” he cried in English. “Perhaps so we can learn—”
“The learning is yours,” Jil-Lee replied. “Just as this land is yours, Shaman. But I warn you, from this day do not ride south!”
Menlik turned, the charms on his belt clicking. “So that is the way it is to be, Apache?”
“That is the way it shall be, Tatar! We do not ride to war with allies who may turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to a machine the enemy controls.”
The Tatar’s long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. “You are a wise man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed—”
“We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there,” Jil-Lee replied somberly.
Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behind them before they halted to examine and cover their wounds.
“We go.” Nolan’s chin lifted, indicating the southern route. “Here we do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place.”
Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him.
“Go—?” he repeated.
“Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who are governed by a machine?”
“No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains.”
“Why?” This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives. “We have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Russian is dead. He will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared. Thus, if we remain south from now on, we are safe. And this fight between Tatar and Russian is none of ours. What do you seek here?”
“I must go again to the place of the towers,” Travis answered with the truth. But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval—now a full row of Deklays.
“Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the night we waited above the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars and are also controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into a weapon against us—your clansmen!” Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile.
Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which he was becoming more conscious by the minute. There was a reason for those towers, perhaps a reason important enough for him to discover and run the risk of angering his own people.
“There may be this—” Nolan’s voice was remote and cold, “you may already be a piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we do not want you among us.”
There it was—an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay’s motiveless disapproval had carried. Travis was troubled. The family, the clan—they were important. If he took the wrong step now and was outlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would indeed be a lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from the tribe—men such as the infamous Apache Kid who had killed and killed again, not only white men but his own people. Wolf men living wolves’ lives in the hills. Travis was threatened with that. Yet—up the ladder of civilization, down the ladder—why did this feverish curiosity ride him so cruelly now?