Lewis & Glark | Time Traders | Book One | Chapter 17
Lewis lay on his back, gazing up at the laced hides which stretched to make the tent roofing.
Following his defeat of Annar, the tribesmen — at the direction of Foscar — had beaten and battered him so that he could barely stand. His body felt like one huge aching bruise, and he had lost interest in the future.
Only the present mattered, and it was a dark one. He might have fought Annar to a standstill, but in the eyes of Foscar and the tribe, that accomplishment didn’t warrant release. He deduced that he continued to breathe only because they wanted to exchange him for the reward offered by the aliens from out of time, an unpleasant prospect to contemplate.
His wrists were tied together with the rope going behind his back. His ankles were bound together. He could turn his head from side to side, but any further movement was impossible. He ate only bits of food dropped into his mouth by a dirty-fingered slave, a hunter captured from another tribe who happened to be in the path of their migration.
“Taker of axes,” Annar said, poking her toe into his ribs.
Lewis bit back the grunt of pain which answered that rude bid for his attention. He saw standing over him in the dim light Annar’s face and was savagely glad to note the discolorations about her right eye and along the jaw line, the marks left by his own skinned knuckles.
“Warrior princess,” Lewis returned hoarsely, with a mixture of scorn and sarcasm.
“How you dare,” she replied. “To clip a sharp tongue is a good thing.”
Annar’s hand, holding a knife, swung into his limited range of vision. The chief’s daughter grinned as she knelt down beside the helpless prisoner. Lewis knew a thrill of fear worse than any pain. She might be about to do just what she hinted.
Instead, the knife swung up and Lewis felt the sawing at the ropes about his wrists, enduring the pain in the raw gouges they had cut in his flesh. He knew that his arms were free, but to draw them down from over his head was almost more than he could manage. He lay quiet as Annar cut at the ropes around his ankles.
“Up!” Annar demanded.
She pulled at his tender wrists and helped him to his feet. The moment he was standing, she let go of him and he stumbled forward and crashing forward to the dirt ground on his face. Hot anger welled up in him at his own helplessness.
Annar summoned two men who dragged Lewis out of the makeshift tent into the open where a group of men had assembled around a fire. A debate was in progress, sometimes so heated that the speakers fingered their knife or ax hilts when they shouted their arguments. Lewis couldn’t understand their language, but he was sure that he was the subject under discussion. And it was clear from his silence and folded arms that Foscar had the deciding vote and had not yet given the nod to either side.
Lewis sat crumpled on the ground where the men had dumped him, rubbing his smarting wrists. He was so weary in mind and beaten in body that he wasn’t really interested in the fate they were planning for him, or in planning an escape. He was content merely to be free of the ropes, and outside in the fresh air.
He didn’t know how long the debate lasted. But after a while, Annar came to stand over him with a message.
“Your chief, he give many good things for you,” Annar whispered. “Foscar take you to him.”
“My chief is not here,” Lewis repeated wearily, making a protest he knew they would not heed. “My chief sits downstream waiting for me. He will be angry if I do not come. Let Foscar fear his anger.”
“You run from your chief,” Annar replied, laughing. “Your chief will be happy with Foscar when you are again back with him. You will not like that, seems.”
“I will not,” Lewis agreed, quietly.
Lewis spent the rest of that night back in the tent under the watchful gaze of a guard, who had the humanity not to bind him again.
In the morning, he was allowed to feed himself, and he fished chunks of venison out of a stew with his unwashed fingers. In spite of the messiness, it was the best food he had eaten in days.
He was mounted on one of the shaggy zebrelles, a rope run under the beast’s belly in a loop binding one foot to the other. Fortunately, his hands were loosely bound so he was able to grasp the animal’s coarse, wiry mane and keep his balance. The bridle rope of his mount was passed to Tulka, who rode ahead. Annar rode beside him with only half an eye for the path of her own horse and the balance of her attention for the prisoner.
They headed Northeast, with the mountains as a sharp green-and-white goal against the morning sky. Lewis was fairly certain that they were headed in the general direction of the hidden One village, which he was sure the aliens had destroyed.
Lewis glanced to the side and saw Annar run her hand through her long hair as she rode. In the morning light, under the shade of the forest canopy, he had a newfound realization of her beauty. Even with her face still bruised from their skirmish, she was pretty. And riding the zebrelle, at the pace of a brisk trot, she actually did look like a princess warrior — even though he had given her the title sarcastically the day before.
She looked strong. And in that moment, he was reminded of Lara, who he hadn’t thought about in what seemed like a lifetime ago now. It was like a locked corner of his mind was unlocked, and memories from a different life that had been bound up were suddenly released. He recalled how they had met, how strong and beautiful she was, how things had been so good for a while — and how he had messed things up and lost her in the end.
Lara had called him a “child”, and she was probably right. He had been young — he still was — and had no business being in a relationship. He was barely able to take care of himself, never mind give her what she needed. Could you blame her for wanting to be with someone stable, someone not caught up in any number of questionable pursuits? He wondered what she would think if she could see him now — time traveling, surviving outside the city, trying to do something good for someone besides himself for a change.
Lewis was surprised and shaken by the flood of nostalgia as he rode along the path atop the zabrelle. It took some time and effort to push all these feelings, thoughts and memories back into the corner of his mind and lock them up.
Foscar and a couple others rode far enough ahead that Lewis felt safe talking to Annar. He decided to distract himself from his own thoughts and try and find out something about the nature of the contact which had been made between the aliens and Foscar’s tribe.
Something that might help save his life.
“How Foscar find other chief?” he asked Annar.
“Your chief come our camp,” she replied. “Talk with Foscar. Two, three moons past.”
“How talk with Foscar?” Lewis asked. “With hunter talk?”
“He talk to Foscar, us,” she replied. “We hear right words, not woods creeper talk. He speak to us good.”
Lewis was puzzled. How could the alien out of time speak the proper language of a primitive tribe some thousands of years removed from his own era? Were the aliens also familiar with time travel? Did they have their own stations of transfer? Yet their fury with the Ones had been hot. This was a complete mystery.
“This chief. He look like me?” Lewis prompted.
“He wear covering like you,” she replied. “Shiny.”
“But was he like me? Like us?” persisted Lewis. It seemed important at that moment to make clear to at least one of the tribesmen that he was physically different from the man who had put a price on his head, who was to buy him.
“Not like,” Tulka spoke over his shoulder from atop the zabrelle ahead. “You look like hunter people. Hair, eyes. Strange chief no hair on long head. Eyes not like — ”
“You saw him too?” Lewis demanded eagerly.
“I saw, Tulka responded. “I ride to camp, they come so. Stand on rock, call to Foscar. Make magic with fire, jumping fire. They point little spear and fire come out of the ground and burn. They say burn our camp if we do not give them man. We say, not have man. Then they say many good things for us if we find and bring man.”
“But they are not my people,” Lewis declared. “He not my chief. You see, I have hair like you, eyes like you. I am not like them. They are bad — ”
“You may be taken in war by them. Chief own you,” Annar said. “Chief want you back, it is so.”
Having studied the customs of the Boreal people, and those of this age, Lewis knew that what she was saying was true. In times of conflict, it was normal for tribes to take captives, and trade for their release, as if they were a piece of property. Lewis just never imagined back when he was studying at the base that he would be the subject of his studies.
“My people strong too, much magic,” Lewis pushed. “Take me back down river to real chief and they pay much — more than stranger chief.”
Both Annar and Tulka were amused.
“Where? Down river, how far?” asked Tulka.
Lewis jerked his head back toward the direction they came from. “Some moons away — ”
“Some moons!” repeated Annar jeeringly. “We ride back some moons, maybe many moons where we not know the trails. Maybe no people there, maybe nothing down river. All things you say with split tongue so that we not give you back to chief. We go this way not even one moon — find chief, get good things. Why we do hard thing when we can do easy?”
What argument could Lewis offer in reply to the simple logic of his captors? For a moment he raged inwardly at his own helplessness. But long ago he had learned that giving away to hot fury was no good unless one did it deliberately to impress, and then only when one had the upper hand.
Now, totally alone, bound to a zebrelle, with no weapon — Lewis had no hand at all.
For the most part, they kept to the open path, where Lewis, Glark and Maarn had kept to wooded areas on their journey through this same territory. They approached the mountains from a different angle, and though he tried, Lewis saw no familiar landmarks. If by some miracle he was able to free himself from his captors, he could only head due West and hope to reunite with the river.
At midday, their party made camp in a grove of trees by a spring. The weather was as unseasonably warm as it had been the day before. Bull-gnats, brought out of cold-weather hiding, attacked the stomping zebrelles and surrounded Lewis. He tried to keep them off with swings of his bound hands, but their bites drew blood.
Having been pulled from his mount, he remained fastened to a tree with a noose about his neck while the tribesmen built a fire and broiled strips of deer meat.
Foscar seemed in no hurry to get on. After they had eaten, the men continued to lounge at ease, some even dropping off to sleep in the afternoon shade. When Lewis counted heads, he learned that Tulka and another man had both disappeared, possibly to contact and the aliens, give them advance notice of the party’s arrival.
It was midafternoon before the scouts reappeared, as unobtrusively as they had gone. They went before Foscar with a report which brought the chief over to Lewis.
“We go. Your chief waits,” Foscar declared.
Lewis raised his swollen, bitten face and made his usual protest. “Not my chief!”
“He say so,” Foscar shrugged. “He give good things to get you back. So, he your chief.”
Once again, Lewis was boosted on his mount, and bound. But this time the party split into two groups as they rode off. He was with Annar again, just behind Foscar, with two other guards bringing up the rear. Tulka and the rest of the men, leading their mounts by their bridle ropes, melted into the trees.
Lewis watched that quiet withdrawal speculatively. It suggested that Foscar didn’t trust those he was about to do business with, that he was taking certain precautions of his own. Lewis tried to see how that distrust could in any way be an advantage for him, but failed. He would have to keep his eyes and ears open as the situation unfolded, and look for that advantage.
They rode at a pace hardly above a walk into a small open meadow narrowing at the East. Then for the first time, Lewis was able to place himself. They were at the entrance to the valley of the One’s village, about a mile away from the narrow throat above which Lewis had lain to spy and had been captured, as he had come from the North over the spurs of rising ridges.
Lewis’ and Annar’s zebrelles jerked forward as Foscar drove his heel into the ribs of his own mount, sending them at a brisker pace toward the neck of the valley.
There was several shiny blotches ahead. More than one of the aliens were waiting.
Lewis caught his lip between his teeth and bit down on it hard. He had stood up to the Ones, to Foscar’s tribesmen. But he shrank from meeting these aliens again, with an odd fear that the worst the men of his own species could do would be but a pale shadow to the treatment he might meet at their hands.
Foscar slowed and halted his galloping mount to sit facing the handful of aliens.
Peering out from behind Annar, Lewis counted four aliens. They seemed to be talking, though there was still a good distance separating them and the shiny suits.
A long moment passed before Foscar’s arm raised to summon Annar and the party guarding Lewis. Annar kicked her horse to a trot, towing Lewis’ mount behind, the other two men thudding along cautiously behind them. Lewis noted that they were both armed with spears which they carried to the side as they rode forward.
They were perhaps three-quarters of the way to join Foscar, and Lewis could see plainly the bald heads of the aliens as their faces turned in his direction. Then the aliens attacked.
One of them raised a weapon whose shape was familiar to Lewis. A laser rifle.
Lewis cried out in an attempt to warn Foscar, who had only an ax and dagger which were both still sheathed at his belt. The blast from the laser rifle pierced the chief’s body before he could understand what was happening. His zebrelle bucked in fright. Foscar toppled, limp to the ground, and remained face down and motionless.
Annar yelped a cry of defiance and despair. She jerked on the reins of her zebrelle, sending it rearing on its hind legs. Then, dropping her hold on the bridle rope of Lewis’ mount, she whirled and set off in a wild dash for the trees to the left.
A spear sliced across Lewis’ shoulder, ripping at the shiny fabric, as his zebrelle whirled to follow the Annar’s, taking him out of danger of a second attack.
Lewis clung to his zebrelle’s mane with both hands. His greatest fear was that he might slip from the saddle pad, and since he was tied by his feet, lie unprotected, hanging and helpless exposed to those powerful legs and dashing hoofs. Somehow, he managed to cling to the zebrelle’s neck while the animal galloped on.
Had Lewis been able to grasp the dangling bridle rope, he might have had a slim chance of controlling the beast. But as it was, he could only hold on and hope.
Then a laser blast and a brilliant fire, as vivid as the flames which had eaten up the One’s village, burst from the ground a few yards ahead, sending his zebrelle wild. There was more fire and the zebrelle changed course through the rising smoke.
Lewis realized that the aliens were trying to cut him off from the thin safety of the forest. But why they didn’t just shoot him as they had Foscar?
The smoke of the burning grass was thick, cutting between him and the forest. Could the smoke provide cover behind which he could hope to escape both parties?
The fire was sending the zebrelle back toward the waiting aliens. Lewis heard a confused shouting in the smoke. Then his mount made a fortunate miscalculation. Spinning around again, a tongue of fire licked too close. His zebrelle screamed and dashed forward blindly straight between two of the blazes and away from the aliens.
Lewis coughed, almost choking, his eyes watering as the stench of singed hair thickened the smoke. But amazingly, he had been carried out of the fire zone and was headed back into the meadowland.
Mount and captive rider were in the upper end of the meadow when another zebrelle cut in from the left, matching speed to the uncontrolled animal to which Lewis clung. It was one of Foscar’s tribesmen. The wild race slowed to a gallop and the other rider, in a daring and skillful move, leaned from his seat to catch the dangling bridle rope, bringing the runaway against his own steady beast.
Shaken and still coughing from the smoke and unable to sit upright, Lewis held to the mane. The gallop slowed to a rocking pace and finally came to a halt, both zebrelles snorting loudly.
Singed patches of skin covered the legs of the zebrelles. But Lewis sat unaffected, the shiny metallic suit having protected his legs from heat or burns.
Having made his capture, the Foscar’s tribesman seemed indifferent to Lewis, looking back instead at the wide curtain of grass smoke, frowning as he studied the swift spread of the fire. Muttering to himself, he pulled the bridle rope and brought Lewis’ zebrelle to follow in the direction from which they had come less than a half hour earlier.
Lewis tried to think. The unexpected death of their chief might well mean his own, should the tribe’s desire for vengeance now be aroused. On the other hand, there was a faint chance that he could now better impress them with the thought that he was indeed of another clan and that to aid him would be to work against a common enemy.
But, ironically, it was hard to see what would happen in the future and plan clearly. The confrontation which had ended with Foscar’s murder had brought Lewis a little time. He was still a captive — but at least he was captive of a lower-level tribesmen and not the aliens.
Lewis decided not to try to talk to his present guard, who towed him toward the Western sun of late afternoon.
They halted at last in that same small grove where they had rested at noon. The tribesman fastened the beasts to a tree and then walked around to inspect the animal Lewis had ridden. With a grunt he untied the rope connecting Lewis’ feet and allowed him to climb down while he further examined the both the zebrelle’s legs.
Thick handfuls of cool mud from the side of the spring were brought and plastered over the seared patches of skin. Then, having rubbed down both animals with handfuls of dry grass, the man came over to Lewis, pushed him back to the ground, and studied his left leg.
While the tribesman’s thighs were protected by crude leather chaps, Lewis should also have been scorched where the flames had hit. Frowning, the tribesman examined him for a burn, but couldn’t see even the faintest discoloration of the strange metallic fabric.
Lewis remembered how the aliens had strolled unconcerned through the burning village. As the suit had insulated him against the cold of the ice, so it would seem that it had also protected him against the fire, for which he was thankful. His escape from injury was a puzzle to the tribesman, who, failing to find any trace of burn on him, left Lewis alone and went to sit well away from his prisoner as if he feared him.
They didn’t have long to wait. One by one, those who had ridden in Foscar’s party gathered at the grove.
The very last to arrive were Annar and Tulka, the body of their chief draped over the hind quarters of his daughter’s zebrelle. The faces of both were smeared with dust. When the others sighted the body, they too rubbed dust into their cheeks, reciting a string of words and going one by one to touch the dead chieftain’s right hand.
Annar, resigning her burden to the others, slid from her tired mount and stood for a long moment, her head bowed. Then she gazed straight at Lewis and came across the clearing to stand next to and over him. The girlishness which had been a part of her when he had fought Lewis at Foscar’s command was gone. Her eyes were merciless as he leaned down to speak, shaping each word with slow care so that Lewis could understand the promise —
“Foscar goes to his burial fire,” Annar declared. “And he shall take a servant with him beyond the sky — to run at his voice, to shake when he thunders. Dog, you shall run for Foscar beyond the sky, and he shall have you forever to walk upon as a man walks upon the soil. I, Annar, swear that Foscar shall be sent to the chiefs in the sky in all honor. And that you, dog, shall lie at his feet in that going.”
As she walked away from him, returning to the others who stood in reverence in front of he slain father — there was no doubt in Lewis’ mind that she meant every word she spoke.
© 2024 Zen Brazen — All rights reserved
Based on Andre Norton’s Time Traders (public domain)
