Lewis & Glark | Time Traders | Book One | Chapter 7
“That bird of Lurgha’s,” said Lewis, once they were out of sight of Cassca and Lal, “could it have been some kind of airplane or ship? Something they built here in this time?”
“It is possible,” snapped Glark. “If the Ones have done their work efficiently, then there is no use in contacting the other nearby towns. The same announcement concerning the Wrath of Lurgha was probably made there — to their purpose, not ours.”
“Cassca didn’t seem to be overly impressed with Lurgha’s curse,” Lewis offered. “Not as much as the man was.”
“She is the closest thing to a priestess that this tribe knows,” Glark replied. “She serves a goddess older and more powerful than Lurgha — the Great Mother, the goddess of fertility and growth. Nodren’s people believe that unless Cassca performs her mysteries and sows part of the first field in the Spring, there won’t be any harvest. Consequently, she is secure in her position and doesn’t fear the Wrath of Lurgha too much. These people are now changing from one type of worship to another. But some of Cassca’s beliefs will persist clear through to our day, taking on the coating of ‘magic’ and a lot of other enameling along the way.”
Glark had been talking as someone talks to cover up furious thinking. Now he paused again and turned toward the sea. “We have to stick it out somewhere until the whale returns to pick us up. We’ll need shelter.”
“Will the tribesmen be after us?” Lewis asked.
“They may well be, Glark replied. “Let the right men get to talking up a holy extermination of those upon whom the Wrath of Lurgha has fallen, and we could be in for plenty of trouble. Some of those tribesmen are trained hunters and trackers, and the Ones may have planted an agent to report the return of anyone to our outpost. We’re about the most important time travelers out, because we know the Ones have appeared on this timeline.”
Lewis kept close to Glark’s side as they made their way down a winding path with an occasional view of the ocean in the distance. He kept quiet, sensing that Glark had more to say on the matter.
“They must have a large post here, too, or they couldn’t have sent an airplane or ship to raid out outpost, Glark continued. “You can’t build a time transport large enough to take through a considerable amount of material. Everything used by us in this age has to be assembled on this side. And the use of machines — beyond those transport droids that have been brought here by off-planet trade partners and are familiar to the natives — are limited to where they cannot be widely seen. Luckily, large sections of Telaan Six at this point in time are mostly wilderness and unpopulated in the areas where we operate the base posts. So if the Ones have a plane or ship, it was put together here, and that means a big post somewhere.”
Again Glark was thinking aloud as he pushed ahead of Lewis off the path and into the fringes of the forest. “Maarn and I scouted this territory pretty well last Spring. There is a cave about half a mile to the west; it will shelter us for tonight.”
Glark’s plans would probably have been easily accomplished if the cave had been unoccupied. Without incident, they came down through the forest into a hollow through which trickled a small stream, its banks laced with a thin edging of ice. At Glark’s direction, Lewis collected an armload of firewood. He was no woodsman and his prolonged exposure to the chilling drizzle made him eager for even the very rough shelter of a cave, so eager that he plunged forward carelessly. His foot came down on a slippery patch of mud, sending the firewood tumbling, and him sprawling onto his back.
There was a growl, and a white bulk rushed him. His heavy cloak, rucked up about his throat and shoulders, saved his life — for only stout cloth was caught between those fangs.
With a startled cry, Lewis rolled, struggling to unsheathe his dagger. A white-hot flash of pain scored his upper arm. The breath was driven out of him as a fight raged over his prone body; he heard grunts, snarls, and was severely pommeled. Then he was free as the bodies broke away.
Shaken, he got to his knees. A short distance away the fight was still in progress. He saw Glark straddle the body of a huge white spider-wolf, his legs clamped about the animal’s haunches, his hooked arm under the beast’s head, forcing it up and back while his dagger rose and sank twice in the ferocious creature’s neck.
Lewis held his own weapon ready. He leaped from a half crouch, and his dagger sank cleanly home into the spider-wolf’s ribs. One of their blows must have reached the creature’s heart. With a bleating, tortured cry, the spider-wolf rolled onto its side and convulsed. Then it was still.
Glark squatted near it, methodically driving his dagger into the moist soil to clean the blade. A red rivulet trickled down his thigh where the lower edge of his kilt-tunic had been ripped up to the link belt. He was breathing hard, but otherwise he was as composed as always.
“These sometimes hunt in pairs at this season,” he observed. “Be ready with your bow — ”
Lewis strung his with the cord he had been keeping dry within the breast folds of his tunic. He fitted an arrow to the string, grateful to be a passable marksman. The slash on his arm stung in protest as he moved, and he noted that Glark didn’t try to get up.
“Bad?” Lewis indicated the blood now thickening into a stream along Glark’s thigh.
Glark pulled away the torn tunic and exposed a nasty looking gash on the outside of his hip. He pressed his palm against the gaping wound and motioned Lewis to scout ahead. “See if the cave is clear. We can’t do anything until we know that.”
Reluctantly, Lewis followed the stream until he found the cave, a snug-looking nook with an overhang to keep it dry. The unpleasant smell of a lair hung about the entrance. He picked up a nearby rock, chucked it into the dark opening, and waited. The stone rattled as it struck an inner wall, but there was no other sound. A second stone from a different angle followed the first, with the same results. Lewis was now fairly certain that the cave was unoccupied. Once they were inside with a fire going at the entrance, they could hope to keep it free of intruders. A little heartened, he ventured upstream back to where he had left Glark.
“No male?” Glark asked as Lewis approached him. “This is a female. Her belly is plump with unborn offspring.” He nudged the dead white spider-wolf with his toe. His hands held a pad of rags against his hip, and his face was shaded with pain.
“Nothing in the cave,” Lewis replied. He laid aside the bow and kneeled to examine Glark’s thigh wound. His own slash was more of a smarting graze, but this tear was deep and ugly.
“Second plate — belt — ” Glark got the words out between clenched teeth. Lewis clicked open the hidden recess in Glark’s bronze belt to bring out a small silicone packet. Glark made a wry face as he swallowed three of the capsules Lewis had found inside.
“Let us hope that works,” Glark commented a little bleakly. “Now come here, let me see your scratch. Spider-wolf bites can be a nasty business.”
After both were bandaged as well as possible, with anti-septo capsules headed toward their stomachs, Lewis helped Glark limp down along the edge of the stream to the cave. He left Glark outside the entrance while he cleaned up the floor of the cave, and then made the Bulkon as comfortable as he could on a bed of bracken ferns. The fire Lewis had longed for was built. As long as no threats appeared at the entrance of the cave, they could finally relax for a moment.
A while later, Lewis ventured back outside and tested his archery skills by taking down a crow. He wrapped the crow in clay and tucked it under the hot coals of the fire to be roasted.
They had surely had bad luck, Lewis thought. But they were now undercover, had a fire, and food of sorts. His arm ached, sharp pain shooting from fingers to elbow when he moved it. Though Glark made no complaint, Lewis gauged that the Bulkon’s discomfort was far worse than his own, and he carefully hid all signs of his own twinges.
They ate the crow salt-less, and with their fingers. Lewis was starving and licked his fingers clean after each greasy bite. Afterward, Glark leaned back onto the improvised bed of ferns. He took in Lewis’ gaunt and worried expression in the half light of the fire.
“We are about a kilometer from the ocean here,” Glark said. “There is no way of raising our base now that Maarn’s installation is gone. I’ll have to stay put for a while, since I can’t risk losing any more blood. And you’re not too good in the woods — ”
Lewis accepted that valuation with a new humbleness. He had taken down the crow, but he had missed the first three times and only scored the hit on the fourth. He was very aware that if it had not been for Glark, he and not the white spider-wolf would have died in the valley. Yet a strange shyness kept him from trying to put his thanks into words. The only kind of amends he could make for Glark’s pain was to provide hands, feet, and strength for the Bulkon who did know what to do and how to do it.
“We’ll have to hunt, for more than birds,” Lewis ventured.
“Venison, or zebrelle,” Glark said. “But the marsh at the mouth of this stream provides a better hunting ground than inland. If the spider-wolf laired here very long, she has already frightened away any large game. But it isn’t the matter of food which bothers me — ”
“It’s being tied up here,” Lewis filled in for him with some daring. “But look Glark, I’ll take orders. I’ll do whatever you say. This is your territory, and I’m the noob.”
“Noob,” Glark repeated. “What is a noob?”
“A noob,” Lewis replied. “Like new — someone who is new at something. How old are you anyway?” Louis braced himself for a negative reaction, or silence from Glark. They had never talked about anything personal, and Louis wondered if he had crossed a line.
“I am only one hundred and sixty six annuals,” Glark replied. “You are twenty one annuals, which I read in your data. Bulkons who are twenty one are worthless balls of spit and excrement.”
“Humans who are one hundred and sixty six are dead,” Lewis said with a smile, which elicited a toothy grin and a deep chuckle from Glark. So, there actually was a sense of humor under that tough exterior, Lewis thought.
“Anyway, you tell me what to do, and I’ll do it the best that I can,” Lewis concluded. He glanced up to find Glark surveying him intently, but with a hint of newfound empathy.
“The first thing to do is get the spider-wolf’s hide,” Glark said briskly. “Then bury the carcass. You’d better drag it in here to work on it. If her mate is hanging around, he might try to attack you.”
Why Glark should think it necessary to acquire the spider-wolf skin puzzled Lewis, but he asked no questions. His skinning task took much longer than it would take someone with skill and experience. Lewis had to wash himself off in the stream before piling stones over the corpse in temporary burial.
When he pulled his bloody hide back to the cave, Glark lay with his eyes closed. Lewis sat on his own pile of bracken ferns and tried not to notice the throbbing ache in his arm.
Lewis must have laid back onto the ferns at some point and fallen asleep. He woke up some time later to see Glark tending to the dying fire from their store of firewood. Angry at himself, Lewis quickly moved toward Glark and took the piece of firewood from his hand.
“Lay back and rest,” Lewis demanded. “This is my job. I didn’t mean to fail you.”
Surprisingly, Glark settled back onto the ferns without a word, leaving Lewis to sit by the fire — one he was very glad to have a moment or so later when a wailing howl sounded downwind. If this was not the white spider-wolf’s mate, could it be another of her kin who prowled the upper reaches of the small valley?
The next day, having provided Glark with a supply of firewood, and gotten some real sleep as Glark sat watch of the cave entrance, Lewis went to try his luck in the marsh. The thick drizzle which had hung over the land the day before was gone, and he ventured out into a clear, bright morning. Though the breeze had an icy snap, it was just good to be alive, out of the confined cave and in the open.
Lewis tried to put to use all the woodlore he had learned at the arctic base. But it was one thing to learn something academically and another to put that learning into practice. He was uncomfortably certain that Glark would not have found his various attempts very compelling.
The marsh was a series of pools between rank growths of leafless willows and coarse tufts of grass, with small hills of firmer soil rising like islands. Moving from hill to hill with caution, Lewis spotted on one of the distant hills a thin trail of white smoke, and a small dark structure which seemed like it could be a crude hut. Why someone would choose to live in the midst of such country he could not guess, though it might be merely the temporary camp of some hunter.
Lewis also saw thousands of small birds feeding greedily on the dried seed of the marsh grasses, paddling in the pools, and sending up a clamor that would drive a man mad.
Lewis had reason to be proud of his marksmanship that morning. He had in his quiver perhaps half a dozen of the lighter shafts made for shooting birds. In place of the finely chipped and wickedly barbed flint points used for heavier game, these were tipped with needle-sharp, light bone heads. He had a string of four birds looped together by their feet in no time. The flocks rose at each hit and retrieval, only to quickly settle again to feast.
Then he took down a plump hare that stared at him brazenly from a nearby clump of tall grass. The hare kicked back into a pool in its death struggle. When Lewis left his cover to retrieve the hare, he stood up, dagger out and ready, to greet the man who parted the bushes to watch him.
For a long minute, Lewis stared into the man’s eyes and noted his bedraggled and tattered dress. The kilt-tunic smudged with mud, scorched and charred along one edge, was styled like his own. The man was bald, unlike the look and style of the local tribesman. Most strikingly, his skin was teal and he had intricate blue tattoos on his forehead and slander hands — just like Hodaki and his partner Feng at the base.
Lewis, his dagger still ready, broke the silence first. “I am a believer in the fire and the fashioned metal, the climbing sun, and the moving water.” He repeated the recognition speech of the Boreal traders.
“The fire warms by the grace of the Great Mother, the metal is fashioned by the mystery of the smith, the sun climbs without our aid, and who can stop the water from running?” The stranger’s voice was hoarse. Now that Lewis had time to examine him more closely he saw the dark bruise on his exposed shoulder, the raw red mark of a burn running across the man’s broad chest.
Lewis dared to test his theory concerning the man.
“I am of the kin of Assha,” Lewis declared. “We returned to the outpost — ”
“Glark!” the man exclaimed.
Not “Assha” but “Glark”! Lewis, though reasonably sure of of the man’s identity, was still cautious. “You are from the outpost, that Lurgha smote with thunder and fire?”
The man sat down on the log which had been his cover. The burn across his chest was not his only brand. Lewis noticed another red stripe, puffed and fiery looking, which swelled the calf of one leg. The man studied Lewis closely, and then his fingers moved in a sign which to the uninitiated native of this time might have been one for the praising of a god or warding off of evil — but which to Lewis was the “thumbs up” of his own age and time.
“Maarn?” Lewis asked, his hopes high.
The man shook his head. “I am Jools in this time. But yes, Maarn in ours. Where is Glark?”
He might really be what he seemed, Lewis thought. But on the other hand, he could be a One spy. Lewis had not forgotten Joven.
“What happened?” Lewis parried one question with another.
“Bomb,” the man replied. “The Ones must have found us, and we didn’t have a chance. We weren’t expecting any trouble. I’d been down to see about a missing burden donkey and was about halfway back up the hill when it hit. When I came to I was all the way down the hill with beams of lumber on top of me. The rest …well, you saw the outpost, didn’t you?”
Lewis nodded. “What are you doing here?”
The man who claimed to be Maarn spread his hands in a tired little gesture. “I tried to talk to Nodren, but they stoned me away. I knew that Glark was coming through and hoped to reach him when he hit the beach, but I was too late. Then I figured he would pass here to make contact with the whale, so I was waiting it out until I saw you. Where is Glark?”
It all sounded logical enough. Still, with Glark injured, Lewis was taking no chances. He pushed his dagger back into its sheath and picked up the hare. “Stay here,” he told the man, “I’ll be back — ”
“But — wait!” the man yelled. “Where’s Glark, you young fool? I have to talk to him!”
Lewis bolted from the marsh. He was sure that the stranger was in no shape to race after him, and he would lay a muddled trail before he returned to the cave valley. If this man was a One plant, he would have to reckon with one who had already met Joven Nave.
The laying of that muddled trail took time. It was past midday when Lewis returned to Glark, who was sitting up by the mouth of the cave by the fire, using his dagger to fashion a crutch out of a length of sapling. He surveyed Lewis’ catch of birds and the hare with approval, but lost interest in the promise of food as soon as Lewis reported his meeting in the marsh.
“Maarn — “ Glark said. “Teal skin, tattoos like Hodaki and Feng? But younger, closer to your age?”
“Yes,” Lewis replied.
“Small chip broken off a front tooth — upper right?” Glark asked.
Lewis shut his eyes to visualize the man. Yes, there had been a small break on a front tooth. He nodded.
“That’s Maarn,” Glark confirmed. Lewis saw a touch of emotion in Glark’s face, as he realized his partner who he thought was dead was still alive. “You did the right thing not bringing him here without being sure it was him. What made you so cautious? Joven?”
Lewis nodded again. “And what you said about the Ones planting someone here to wait for us.”
“Good judgement,” Glark concluded. “The man you met is Maarn for sure. Can you bring him here?”
“He seems able to walk well enough to get here, despite his injuries,” Lewis replied.
“Odd that Cassca didn’t tell us about him,” Glark pondered. “Unless she thought there was no use causing trouble by admitting they had driven him away. You going now?”
“Might as well,” Lewis replied. “He didn’t look too comfortable. And I’ll bet he’s hungry.”
Lewis headed back to the marsh, but this time no thread of smoke spiraled into the air. Lewis hesitated. The shelter on the small hill was surely the place where Maarn had taken shelter. Should he work his way out to it now? Or had something happened to the man while he was gone?
Again that sixth sense of impending disaster, which is perhaps bred into some men, alerted Lewis. Why he turned suddenly and backed against the trunk of a bushy willow tree, he could not have explained. However, because he did so, the loop of hide rope meant for his throat hit his shoulder harmlessly. It fell to the ground, and he stamped one boot down on it then quickly gave it a quick and forceful jerk. The surprised man who held the other end was brought sprawling to the ground.
“Aaaagh!” the old man yelled and squirmed.
Lewis had seen that manic face before. Instinctively, his martial arts training from the base kicked in. His knee came up against the man’s arm, jarring it so hard that it sent the flint knife he had been holding with a splash into the nearby marsh water.
“Lal of the town of Nodren,” Lewis declared. “What do you hunt here, Lal?”
“Traders!” Lal’s voice was weak, but passionate.
Lal tried to struggle against Lewis’ hold but the effort was futile. Gripping him by the nape of the neck, Lewis dragged Lal to the other side of the willow tree. Luckily, there was no marsh water cupped there, for Maarn lay in the bottom of that dip, his arms tied tightly behind him and his ankles lashed together with no thought for the pain of his burned leg.
© 2024 Zen Brazen — All rights reserved
Based on Andre Norton’s Time Traders (public domain)
