Lewis & Glark | Time Traders | Book One | Chapter 6
He might have said yes. But that didn’t mean that he was to be flung back in time at once to early Kaanan, Lewis discovered.
Glark’s “tomorrow” proved to be several days later. The cover was that of a Boreal trader, and Lewis’ impersonation was checked again and again by experts, making sure that every last detail was correct and that no suspicion of a tribesman, no mistake on Lewis’ part would betray him.
The Boreal people were an excellent choice for infiltration. They were not a closely knit clan, suspicious of strangers and alert to any deviation from the norm, as more race-conscious tribes might be. They lived by trade, and their outpost was a trade hub for the various races scattered across Telaan Six, as well as those from technologically-advanced races from nearby planets.
The formal, written trade treaties would come much later, to solidify the spoken and handshake agreements that ruled trade on Telaan Six for centuries.
Boreal traders did not depend only upon the established safety of the trade roads. They were master archers. A roving people, they pushed into new territory to establish posts, living amicably among native and planetary immigrant peoples with far different customs, cultures and outward appearances.
With Glark’s help, Lewis passed a final inspection. Their hair had been braided and styled in a manner that was typical and familiar to their respective races at the time. Their kilt-tunics and animal hide coverings of coarse material, duplicating samples brought from the past, were harsh to the skin and poorly fitting. But the workmanship of their link-and-plate bronze belts, the sleek bow guards strapped to their wrists, and the bows themselves approached fine art.
Glark’s round cloak was the blue of a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished spider-wolf teeth alternating with amber beads. Lewis’ more modest position in the tribe was indicated not only by his red-brown cloak, but by the fact that his personal jewelry consisted only of a copper bracelet and a necklace that featured smaller amber beads and rodent teeth.
Lewis had no idea how the time transition was to be made, or how one might step from the polar regions of the North to the island continent of Kaanan further South and to the East. It was a complicated business as he discovered.
The time transition itself was a fairly simple, though disturbing, process. You entered a room with a large round platform and a manned bank of control panels to one side. The transporter portal on the wall and the platform spun up with swirls of light and energy. When the transport operator gave the word, you simply walked forward into the portal.
Lewis gasped for breath as the air was sucked out of his lungs. He experienced a moment of deathly sickness with the sensation of being lost in nothingness. Then he breathed again and walked through the fading wall of light toward Glark, who had transported moments before him.
Quick and easy as the trip through time had been, the journey South to Kaanan was something else. There could be only one remote transfer point if the secret was to be preserved. But beings from that point must be moved swiftly and secretly to their appointed outposts. Knowing the strict rules concerning the transportation of objects from one time to another, Lewis wondered how that travel could be effected. After all, they couldn’t spend months, or even years, getting across continents and seas to their various destinations.
The answer was ingenious. Three days after they had stepped through the barrier of time at the outpost, Lewis and Glark stood on the rounded back of a whale. It was a whale which would deceive anyone who did not test its hide with a harpoon, and whalers with harpoons large enough to trouble such a monster were still far in the future. On the journey South, Glark told Lewis that the whale was actually a machine covered in advanced polymers and hydraulics, with propellers underneath the surface which propelled it through the water. All a time traveler needed to do was input their destination into a small control panel near the mock blow hole, and the whale would head toward the required destination using a PPS system based on period maps. Pieces of the whale had been transported through time and the whole thing assembled near the transfer point.
The three day journey South had been uncomfortable but bearable. Lewis and Glark had slept in shifts, each taking turns at keeping watch for any random threats or obstacles. And a clever collection of materials and anchors allowed the person sleeping the ability to sleep without fear of sliding off the pretend whale into the deep, cold waters. A small pack of food kept them hungry but alive.
On the second night, while Glark was in the middle of a snoring sleep, a school of hundreds of lumenfish sided up to the whale. Even though his stomach grumbled and he felt so alone in time and space, he also felt fortunate to be seeing something so beautiful, that people in his time had never seen. He had read in school about lumenfish, but they had been extinct for hundreds of years. It was a magical sight that affected Lewis more than he expected.
“We are here,” Glark said, nudging Lewis awake on the early morning of the fourth day.
The whale had maneuvered and stopped next to a small wooden boat tied to a buoy. Glark and Lewis climbed into the unsteady craft, and Glark pushed them away from the pretend whale.
Misty and drizzling, the day made the shore they aimed for a blurry line across the water. With a shiver born of more than cold, Lewis dipped his paddle into the water and helped Glark send their crude boat toward that half-hidden strip of land. As he rowed, Lewis watched the whale make a wide turn and make its way into the fog in the direction they had come from, presumably on a three-day, automated journey back to the transition point, to await the next team to transport.
There was no real dawn. The sky lightened somewhat, but the drizzle continued. Green patches of trees were visible beyond the beach, but the countryside facing them gave an impression of untamed wilderness.
Lewis knew from his briefing that the whole of Kaanan was only sparsely settled at this point in time. The first wave of hunter-fishers to establish villages had been joined by other invaders — from on and off-planet — who built massive tombs and had elaborate religions. Small village-forts had been linked from hill to hill by crude dirt roads. There were “factories” which turned out flint-based weapons and tools in bulk. A thriving industry was in full operation, one that had not yet been superseded by the metal imported by the Boreal merchants. Bronze was still so rare and costly that only the leader of a village could hope to own a bronze weapon. Even the arrowheads in Lewis’s quiver were chipped of flint.
One of the off-planet races had introduced their robotic transport droids to Telaan Six. They had been met with everything from wonder to indifference by the native races. The technology behind them was so advanced that many natives viewed them as just another beast that could transport minerals, materials and crops…unaware of the incredible technology behind them.
Glark steered the small boat up onto the shore and ran it into a shallow depression in the bank. He and Lewis got out and heaped nearby stones and brush around and over it to conceal it. Glark then intently scanned the surrounding country, seeking a landmark.
“Inland from here,” Glark said in the native Boreal language.
Lewis knew that from now on he must not only live as a trader, but also think and speak like one. All other memories must be buried under the false one he had learned; he must be interested in the present rate of exchange and the chance for profit. He reminded himself that he and Glark were on their way to Kali Outpost, where Glark’s first partner, Maarn, was playing his role so well.
The rain squished in their hide boots, dampened the tie strings of their cloaks, plastered their woven caps to their thick mats of hair. Yet Glark bore steadily on across the land with the certainty of one following a marked trail. His self-confidence was rewarded within the first half mile when they came out upon one of the dirt roadways, its beaten surface testifying to constant use.
Here Glark turned toward the East, stepping up the pace to a ground-covering trot. The peace of the road held, at least by day. By night, only the most hardened and desperate outlaws would brave the harmful beings and spirits roving in the dark.
All the lore that had been pounded into him at the base began to make some sense to Lewis as he followed and watched Glark — sniffing strange wet smells from the brush, the trees, and the damp earth — piecing together in his mind what he had been taught and what he now saw for himself, until it made a tight pattern.
The track they were following sloped slightly upward, and a change in the wind brought to them a sour odor, blanking out all normal scents. Glark halted so suddenly that Lewis almost plowed into him. But he was alerted by the Bulkon’s change in attitude.
Something had been burned. Lewis drew in a deep lungful of the smell and then wished that he hadn’t. It was wood — burned wood — and something else. Since this didn’t seem normal or expected, he was prepared for the way Glark pulled him into the cover of the brush.
They worked their way, sometimes crawling on their bellies, through the wet stands of dead grass, taking full advantage of all available cover. They crouched at the top of the hill while Glark carefully parted the prickly branches of an evergreen bush to make them a window.
The black patch left by the fire, which had come from a ruin on the hill above and beyond the outpost, had spread downhill on the opposite side of the valley. Charred posts still stood like lone teeth in a skull to mark what must have once been one of the stockade walls of the outpost. But all they now guarded was a scene desolation and destruction from which came that overpowering stench.
“Kali Outpost?” Lewis asked in a whisper.
Glark nodded. He was studying the scene intently, to impress every important detail upon his mind. That the place had been burned was clear at first sight. But why and by whom was the question Lewis knew was prime on Glark’s mind.
It took them almost an hour to traverse the periphery of the valley — an hour of hiding, casting about, searching. They had made a complete circle of the destroyed post and Glark stood in the shadow of a thicket of birch trees, rubbing clots of mud from his hands and frowning at the charred outpost before him.
“They weren’t rushed,” Lewis ventured. “Or if they were, the attackers covered their trail afterward.”
Glark shook his head. “Tribesmen would not have muddled a trail if they had won. This was no regular attack. There are no signs of a war party coming or leaving.”
“Then what?” Lewis demanded.
“Possibly lightning, and we had better hope it was that. Or — ” Glark’s eyes were cold and bleak, as cold and bleak as the countryside about them.
“Or — ?” Lewis dared to prompt him.
“Or we have made contact with the Ones in the wrong way,” Glark replied.
Lewis’ hand instinctively went to the dagger at his belt. Little help a dagger would be in an unequal struggle like this. They were only two in a thin web of beings strung out through centuries of time with orders to seek out that which did not fit properly into the pattern of the past — to locate the enemy wherever in history they were. Had the Ones been on a similar search, and was this first disaster their victory?
The time traders had their evidence when they finally ventured into what had been the heart of Kali Outpost. Lewis, inexperienced as he was in such matters, couldn’t mistake the signs of the explosion. There was a crater in the center of the outpost that hadn’t been visible from a distance. Glark approached it, eying the fragments about them — scorched wood, blackened stone.
“The Ones?” Lewis asked.
“Must have been,” Glark replied. “This damage was done by advanced explosives.”
It was clear why Kali Outpost could not have reported the disaster. The attack had destroyed their one link with the post on this time level. The concealed communicator had been destroyed in the blast.
“Eleven — ” Glark’s finger tapped on the ornate buckle of his wide belt. “We have about ten days. We may be able to use them to better advantage than just letting you learn how it feels to walk around thousands of years before you were born. We have to find out, if we can, what happened here and why.”
Lewis gazed at the demolished outpost. “Dig?” he asked.
“Some digging is required,” Glark replied.
So they dug. After many daylight hours of digging, when their clothing and skin were smudged with charcoal, and they were sick with the gruesome evidence of death they had chanced upon, they collapsed on the cleanest spot of ground they could find.
“They must have attacked at night,” Glark said slowly. “Only at that time would they find everyone here. The natives don’t trust a night filled with ghosts, and our agents conform to local customs. Everyone here could be erased with one bomb at night.”
All except one of them had been true Boreal traders, including women and children. No Boreal trading post was large, and this one was unusually small. The attacker had wiped out some twenty people, nineteen of them innocent victims. Lewis thought to ask Glark about his partner, Maarn, who had been stationed here. But since it was likely Maarn had perished in the explosion, Lewis decided not to bring up the sensitive subject unless Glark brought it up first.
“How long ago did this happen?” Lewis wanted to know.
“Maybe two days,” Glark replied. “And this attack came without any warning, or Maarn would have sent a message. He had no suspicions at all. His last reports were all routine, which means that if they were on to him — and they must have been, judging by the results — he was not aware of it.”
“What do we do now?” Lewis asked.
“We wash — ” Glark replied, pausing to consider the question carefully. “No. We go to Nodren’s village. We are frightened, grief-stricken. We have found our kinsmen dead under strange circumstances. We ask questions of one who knows me as an inhabitant of this post.”
So, exhausted and covered with dirt and charcoal, they walked up, out of the valley and along the roadway toward the neighboring village with a weariness they did not have to counterfeit.
The dog saw or perhaps scented them first. It was a rough-coated beast, showing its fangs with the ferocity of a spider-wolf. But it was much smaller, and it barked between its warning snarls.
Glark stopped and brought his bow from beneath the shelter of his cloak and held it ready.
“I come from Kali Outpost to speak with Nodren — Nodren of the Hill,” Glark proclaimed.
The dog continued to bark and snarl. Glark rubbed his dirty forearm across his face, the gesture of a weary and heartsick man, smearing the ash and grime into an intimidating mask.
“Who asks to speak to Nodren?” a voice came from the bushes nearby. There was a different twist to the pronunciation of some of the words, but Lewis was able to understand.
“One who has hunted and feasted with him,” Glark replied. “The one who gave into his hand the friendship gift of the ever-sharp knife. It is Aasha of the traders.”
Aasha. Lewis had never asked Glark if he had a different name here. He assumed that he would also have a time-appropriate name, and wondered if he would be able to choose it, or if Glark would assign it to him.
“Go far from us, man of ill luck,” the voice from the bushes replied. “You who are hunted by the evil spirits!”
Glark remained standing in place, facing the bushes which hid the tribesman.
“Who speaks for Nodren yet not with the voice of Nodren?” Glark demanded. “This is Aasha himself who asks. We have drunk blood together and faced the white spider-wolf and the wild axxor in their fury. Nodren lets not others speak for him, for Nodren is a man and a chief!”
“And you are cursed!” the voice yelled. A stone flew through the air, striking a pool of dirty water and spattering mud on Glark’s boots. “Go and take your evil with you!”
“Is it from the hand of Nodren or Nodren’s protectors that doom came upon those of Kali Outpost?” Glark asked. “Have war arrows passed between the traders outpost and the town of Nodren? Is that why you hide in the shadows so that I, Aasha, cannot look upon the face of one who speaks boldly and throws stones?”
“No war arrows between us, trader,” the voice from the bushes replied. “We do not provoke the spirits of the hills. No fire comes from the sky at night to eat us up with a noise of many thunders. Lurgha speaks in such thunders. Lurgha’s hand smites with such fire. You have the Wrath of Lurgha upon you, trader! Keep away from us lest Lurgha’s wrath fall upon us also!”
Lurgha was the local storm god, Lewis recalled. The sound of thunder and fire coming out of the sky at night — the bomb! Perhaps the method of attack on Kali Outpost would defeat Glark’s attempt to learn anything from these neighbors. The superstitions of the people would lead them to shun both the site of the outpost and Glark himself as cursed and taboo.
“If the Wrath of Lurgha had struck at me, Aasha, would Aasha still live to walk upon this road?” Glark prodded the ground with the tip of his bow. “Yet Aasha walks, as you see him. Aasha talks, as you can hear him. It is ridiculous to answer him with the nonsense of little children.”
“Spirits walk and talk to unlucky men,” retorted the man in hiding. “It may be the spirit of Aasha who does so now — ”
Glark made a sudden lunge and leap toward the bushes. There was a flurry of action, then he reappeared, dragging into the gray light of the rainy day a wriggling captive, whom he bumped without ceremony onto the beaten earth of the road.
The man was balding and bearded, and wore a basic animal skin tunic, now dirty and disheveled, which was held in place with a woven, tasseled belt.
“So it is Lal of the quick tongue who speaks so loudly of spirits and the Wrath of Lurgha!” Glark studied the man sitting in the middle of the dirt road. “Since you speak for Nodren — which I believe will greatly surprise him — you will continue to tell me of this Wrath of Lurgha from the night skies and what has happened to Maarn, who was my brother, and those others of my kin. I am Aasha, and you know of the wrath of Aasha and how it ate up the outlaw Vorn when he came here with his evil men. The Wrath of Lurgha is hot, but so too is the wrath of Aasha.” Glark contorted his face in such a way that Lal squirmed and looked away. When the tribesman spoke,
“Aasha knows that I am as his dog,” Lal replied, all his former authority and bluster gone. “Let him not turn upon me his swift-cutting big knife, nor the arrows from his lightning bow. It was the Wrath of Lurgha which smote your outpost, first the thunder of his fist meeting the earth, and then the fire which he breathed upon those whom he would slay.”
“And this you saw with your own eyes, Lal?” Glark asked.
The shaggy head shook an emphatic negative. “Aasha knows that Lal is no chief who can stand and look upon the wonders of Lurgha’s might and keep his eyes in his head. Nodren himself saw this wonder — ”
“And if Lurgha came in the night, when all men keep to their homes and leave the outer world to the restless spirits, how did Nodren see his coming?”
Lal peered up from the ground, his eyes darting to the bushes and the freedom they promised, then back to Glark’s firmly planted boots.
“I am not a leader, Aasha,” Lal groveled. “How could I know in what way or for what reason Nodren saw the coming of Lurgha?”
“Fool!” A second voice, that of a woman, spat the word from the brushes which lined the other side of the roadway. “Speak to Aasha with a straight tongue. If he is a spirit, he will know that you do not tell him the truth. And if he has been spared by Lurgha — ” She showed her wonderment with a hiss of indrawn breath.
“It is said that there came a message,” Lal mumbled sullenly, “for one to witness the Wrath of Lurgha in its descent upon the outlanders. So that Nodren and the men of Nodren would truly know that the traders of Kali Outpost were cursed, and should be put to the spear should they come here again!”
“This message — how was it brought?” Glark demanded. “Did the voice of Lurgha sound in Nodren’s ear alone, or came it by the tongue of some Telaan being?”
“Ahrrgh!” Lal squirmed flat on the ground, his hands over his ears.
“Lal is a fool and fears his own shadow as it skips before him on a sunny day!” Out of the bushes stepped a middle-aged woman, obviously of some importance in her own group. Walking with a proud stride, her eyes boldly met Glark’s. A shining medallion hung about her neck on a thin leather rope, and another decorated the woven belt of her cloth tunic. Her dark hair was curly and flowed down over her simple but elegant robes.
“I greet Cassca, who is the First Sower,” Glark declared in a formal tone. “But why should Cassca hide from Aasha?”
“There has been a wave of death in your outpost, Aasha,” Cassca replied, stepping forward toward Glark. “You smell of it now. Those who come from there may well be some who no longer walk in their bodies.” Cassca briefly and gently touched Glark’s shoulder, then nodded. “No spirit are you, Aasha, for all know that a spirit is solid to the eye, but not to the touch. So it would seem that you were not burned up by Lurgha, after all.”
“This brutal message from Lurgha — ” Glark prompted.
“It came out of the empty air and was heard not only by Nodren, but also Hangor, Effar, and myself, Cassca. We stood at that time near the Old Place — ” She made a curious gesture with the fingers of her right hand. “It will soon be the time of sowing, and though Lurgha brings sun and rain to feed the grain, it is the Great Mother that makes the seed grow. Upon her business, only women may go into the Inner Circle.” She gestured again. “But as we met to offer the first sacrifice, there came music out of the air such as we have never heard, voices singing like birds in a strange tongue.” Her face assumed an awesome expression. “Afterward a voice said that Lurgha was angered with the Kali Outpost and those from afar, and that in the night he would send his Wrath against them, and that Nodren must witness this thing so that he could see what Lurgha did to those he would punish. So it was done by Nodren. And there was a sound in the air — ”
“What kind of a sound?” Glark asked quietly.
“Nodren said it was a hum and there was the dark shadow of Lurgha’s bird between him and the stars,” Cassca replied. “Then came the smiting of the outpost with thunder and lightning, and Nodren fled, for the Wrath of Lurgha is a fearsome thing. Now, the people come to the Great Mother’s Place with many fine offerings that she may stand between them and that Wrath.”
“Aasha thanks Cassca, who is the handmaiden of the Great Mother,” Glark said, bowing before Cassca. “May the sowing prosper and the reaping be good this year,” Glark said finally, ignoring Lal, who still groveled on the road.
“You go from this place, Aasha?” Cassca asked. “For though I stand under the protecting hand of the Mother and do not fear, yet there are others who will raise their spears against you for the honor of Lurgha.”
“We go, and again thanks be to you, Cassca,” Glark answered.
Glark turned and walked back the way they had come. Lewis fell in beside him as Cassca watched them walk over the hill until they were out of sight.
© 2024 Zen Brazen — All rights reserved
Based on Andre Norton’s Time Traders (public domain)
