* * * * *
Darkover is a civilized planet with a fairly high standard of living,
but it is not a mechanized or a technological culture. The people don't
do much mining, or build factories, and the few which were founded by
Terran enterprise never were very successful; outside the Terran Trade
City, machinery or modern transportation is almost unknown.
While the other men checked and loaded supplies and Rafe Scott went out
to contact some friends of his and arrange for last-minute details, I
sat down with Forth to memorize the medical details I must put so
clearly to the trailmen.
"If we could only have kept your medical knowledge!"
"Trouble is, being a doctor doesn't suit my personality," I said. I felt
absurdly light-hearted. Where I sat, I could raise my head and study the
panorama of blackish-green foothills which lay beyond Carthon, and
search out the stone roadways, like a tiny white ribbon, which we could
follow for the first stage of the trip. Forth evidently did not share my
enthusiasm.
"You know, Jason, there is one real danger--"
"Do you think I care about danger? Or are you afraid I'll
turn--foolhardy?"
"Not exactly. It's not a physical danger, Jason. It's an emotional--or
rather an intellectual danger."
"Hell, don't you know any language but that psycho double-talk?"
"Let me finish, Jason. Jay Allison may have been repressed,
overcontrolled, but you are seriously impulsive. You lack a
balance-wheel, if I could put it that way. And if you run too many
risks, your buried alter-ego may come to the surface and take over in
sheer self-preservation."
"In other words," I said, laughing loudly, "if I scare that Allison
stuffed-shirt he may start stirring in his grave?"
Forth coughed and smothered a laugh and said that was one way of putting
it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said, "Forget it,
sir. I promise to be godly, sober and industrious--but is there any law
against enjoying what I'm doing?"
Somebody burst out of the warehouse-palace place, and shouted at me.
"Jason? The guide is here," and I stood up, giving Forth a final grin.
"Don't you worry. Jay Allison's good riddance," I said, and went back to
meet the other guide they had chosen.
And I almost backed out when I saw the guide. For the guide was a woman.
She was small for a Darkovan girl, and narrowly built, the sort of body
that could have been called boyish or coltish but certainly not, at
first glance, feminine. Close-cut curls, blue-black and wispy, cast the
faintest of shadows over a squarish sunburnt face, and her eyes were so
thickly rimmed with heavy dark lashes that I could not guess their
color. Her nose was snubbed and might have looked whimsical and was
instead oddly arrogant. Her mouth was wide, and her chin round, and
altogether I dismissed her as not at all a pretty woman.
She held up her palm and said rather sullenly, "Kyla-Raineach, free
Amazon, licensed guide."
I acknowledged the gesture with a nod, scowling. The guild of free
Amazons entered virtually every masculine field, but that of mountain
guide seemed somewhat bizarre even for an Amazon. She seemed wiry and
agile enough, her body, under the heavy blanket-like clothing, almost as
lean of hip and flat of breast as my own; only the slender long legs
were unequivocally feminine.
The other men were checking and loading supplies; I noted from the
corner of my eye that Regis Hastur was taking his turn heaving bundles
with the rest. I sat down on some still-undisturbed sacks, and motioned
her to sit.
"You've had trail experience? We're going into the Hellers through
Dammerung, and that's rough going even for professionals."
* * * * *
She said in a flat expressionless voice, "I was with the Terran Mapping
expedition to the South Polar ridge last year."
"Ever been in the Hellers? If anything happened to me, could you lead
the expedition safely back to Carthon?"
She looked down at her stubby fingers. "I'm sure I could," she said
finally, and started to rise. "Is that all?"
"One thing more--" I gestured to her to stay put. "Kyla, you'll be one
woman among eight men--"
The snubbed nose wrinkled up; "I don't expect you to crawl into my
blankets, if that's what you mean. It's not in my contract--I hope!"
I felt my face burning. Damn the girl! "It's not in mine, anyway," I
snapped, "but I can't answer for seven other men, most of them mountain
roughnecks!" Even as I said it I wondered why I bothered; certainly a
free Amazon could defend her own virtue, or not, if she wanted to,
without any help from me. I had to excuse myself by adding, "In either
case you'll be a disturbing element--I don't want fights, either!"
She made a little low-pitched sound of amusement. "There's safety in
numbers, and--are you familiar with the physiological effect of high
altitudes on men acclimated to low ones?" Suddenly she threw back her
head and the hidden sound became free and merry laughter. "Jason, I'm a
free Amazon, and that means--no, I'm not neutered, though some of us
are. But you have my word, I won't create any trouble of any
recognizably female variety." She stood up. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd
like to check the mountain equipment."
Her eyes were still laughing at me, but curiously I didn't mind at all.
There was a refreshing element in her manner.
* * * * *
We started that night, a curiously lopsided little caravan. The pack
animals were loaded into one truck and didn't like it. We had another
stripped-down truck which carried supplies. The ancient stone roads,
rutted and gullied here and there with the flood-waters and silt of
decades, had not been planned for any travel other than the feet of men
or beasts. We passed tiny villages and isolated country estates, and a
few of the solitary towers where the matrix mechanics worked alone with
the secret sciences of Darkover, towers of glareless stone which
sometimes shone like blue beacons in the dark.
Kendricks drove the truck which carried the animals, and was amused by
it. Rafe and I took turns driving the other truck, sharing the wide
front seat with Regis Hastur and the girl Kyla, while the other men
found seats between crates and sacks in the back. Once while Rafe was at
the wheel and the girl dozing with her coat over her face to shut out
the fierce sun, Regis asked me, "What are the trailcities like?"
I tried to tell him, but I've never been good at boiling things down
into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell
silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the trailmen and
their world.
Nature seems to have a sameness on all inhabited worlds, tending toward
the economy and simplicity of the human form. The upright carriage,
freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color-sensitivity of retinal
rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental
nurture--these things seem to be indispensable to the growth of
civilization, and in the end they spell _human_. Except for minor
variations depending on climate or foodstuff, the inhabitant of Megaera
or Darkover is indistinguishable from the Terran or Sirian; differences
are mainly cultural, and sometimes an isolated culture will mutate in a
strange direction or remain, atavists, somewhere halfway to the summit
of the ladder of evolution--which, at least on the known planets, still
reckons homo sapiens as the most complex of nature's forms.
The trailmen were a pausing-place which had proved tenacious. When the
mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for
existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease
for them, but evolved _homo arborens_; nocturnal, nystalopic humanoids
who lived out their lives in the extensive forests.
The truck bumped over the bad, rutted roads. The wind was chilly--the
truck, a mere conveyance for hauling, had no such refinements of luxury
as windows. I jolted awake--what nonsense had I been thinking? Vague
ideas about evolution swirled in my brain like burst bubbles--the
trailmen? They were just the trailmen, who could explain them? Jay
Allison, maybe? Rafe turned his head and asked, "Where do we pull up for
the night? It's getting dark, and we have all this gear to sort!" I
roused myself, and took over the business of the expedition again.
But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack
animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear
together--when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to
Kendricks' heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the
truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me ... myself yet not
myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I
slept, who would I be when I woke?
* * * * *
We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow
and unbridged; the river Kadarin, traditionally a point of no return for
humans on Darkover. The river is fed by ocean tides and we would have to
wait for low water to cross. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and
beyond the forests the slopes of the Hellers, rising upward and upward;
and their every fold and every valley was filled to the brim with
forest, and in the forests lived the trailmen.
But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies
and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them; we must deal
with the Old One of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my
boyhood years.
From time immemorial, the trailmen--usually inoffensive--had kept strict
boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling
men. They never came beyond the Kadarin. On the other hand, almost any
human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game
for attack.
A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the
trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in
return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for
drugs. In return, the trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest
lands without being molested. But other humans, venturing into trailman
territory, ran the risk of merciless raiding; the trailmen were not
bloodthirsty, and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they
attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be
stripped and plundered of everything portable.
Travelling through their country would be dangerous....
* * * * *
The sun was high before we struck the camp. While the others were
packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla
the task of readying the rucksacks we'd carry after the trails got too
bad even for the pack animals, and went to stand at the water's edge,
checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts
between peak and peak.
The men were packing up the small tent we'd use in the forests, moving
around with a good deal of horseplay and a certain brisk bustle. They
were a good crew, I'd already discovered. Rafe and Lerrys and the three
Darkovan brothers were tireless, cheerful and mountain-hardened.
Kendricks, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on
to follow orders, and I felt that I could fall back on him. Strange as
it seemed, the very fact that he was a Terran was vaguely comforting,
where I'd anticipated it would be a nuisance.
The girl Kyla was still something of an unknown quantity. She was too
taut and quiet, working her share but seldom contributing a word--we
were not yet in mountain country. So far she was quiet and touchy with
me, although she seemed natural enough with the Darkovans, and I let her
alone.
"Hi, Jason, get a move on," someone shouted, and I walked back toward
the clearing squinting in the sun. It hurt, and I touched my face
gingerly, suddenly realizing what had happened. Yesterday, riding in the
uncovered truck, and this morning, un-used to the fierce sun of these
latitudes, I had neglected to take the proper precautions against
exposure and my face was reddening with sunburn. I walked toward Kyla,
who was cinching a final load on one of the pack-animals, which she did
efficiently enough.
She didn't wait for me to ask, but sized up the situation with one
amused glance at my face. "Sunburn? Put some of this on it." She
produced a tube of white stuff; I twisted at the top inexpertly, and she
took it from me, squeezed the stuff out in her palm and said, "Stand
still and bend down your head."
She smeared the mixture efficiently across my forehead and cheeks. It
felt cold and good. I started to thank her, then broke off as she burst
out laughing. "What's the matter?"
"You should see yourself!" she gurgled.
I wasn't amused. No doubt I presented a grotesque appearance, and no
doubt she had the right to laugh at it, but I scowled. It hurt.
Intending to put things back on the proper footing, I demanded, "Did you
make up the climbing loads?"
"All except bedding. I wasn't sure how much to allow," she said. "Jason,
have you eyeshades for when you get on snow?" I nodded, and she
instructed me severely, "Don't forget them. Snowblindness--I give you my
word--is even more unpleasant than sunburn--and _very_ painful!"
"Damn it, girl, I'm not stupid!" I exploded.
She said, in her expressionless monotone again, "Then you _ought_ to
have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket,"
she handed me the tube of sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on
some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off
without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd
come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp.
Forth had said almost the same thing....
I told off the Darkovan brothers to urge the pack animals across the
narrowest part of the ford, and gestured to Corus and Kyla to ride one
on either side of Kendricks, who might not be aware of the swirling,
treacherous currents of a mountain river. Rafe could not urge his edgy
horse into the water; he finally dismounted, took off his boots, and led
the creature across the slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding close to
Regis Hastur, alert for dangers and thinking resentfully that anyone so
important to Darkover's policies should not be risked on such a mission.
Why, if the Terran Legate had (unthinkably!) come with us, he would be
surrounded by bodyguards, secret service men and dozens of precautions
against accident, assassination or misadventure.
All that day we rode upward, encamping at the furthest point we could
travel with pack animals or mounted. The next day's climb would enter
the dangerous trails we must travel afoot. We pitched a comfortable
camp, but I admit I slept badly. Kendricks and Lerrys and Rafe had
blinding headaches from the sun and the thinness of the air; I was more
used to these conditions, but I felt a sense of unpleasant pressure, and
my ears rang. Regis arrogantly denied any discomfort, but he moaned and
cried out continuously in his sleep until Lerrys kicked him, after which
he was silent and, I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed the least affected
of any; probably she had been at higher altitudes more continuously than
any of us. But there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
However, no one complained as we readied ourselves for the final last
long climb upward. If we were fortunate, we could cross Dammerung before
nightfall; at the very least, we should bivouac tonight very near the
pass. Our camp had been made at the last level spot; we partially
hobbled the pack animals so they would not stray too far, and left ample
food for them, and cached all but the most necessary of light trail
gear. As we prepared to start upward on the steep, narrow track--hardly
more than a rabbit-run--I glanced at Kyla and stated, "We'll work on
rope from the first stretch. Starting now."
One of the Darkovan brothers stared at me with contempt. "Call yourself
a mountain man, Jason? Why, my little daughter could scramble up _that_
track without so much as a push on her behind!"
I set my chin and glared at him. "The rocks aren't easy, and some of
these men aren't used to working on rope at all. We might as well get
used to it, because when we start working along the ledges, I don't want
anybody who doesn't know how."
They still didn't like it, but nobody protested further until I directed
the huge Kendricks to the center of the second rope. He glared viciously
at the light nylon line and demanded in some apprehension, "Hadn't I
better go last until I know what I'm doing? Hemmed in between the two of
you, I'm apt to do something damned dumb!"
Hjalmar roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a
3-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices and amateurs. I
expected Kendricks' temper to flare up: the burly Spaceforce man and the
Darkovan giant glared at one another, then Kendricks only shrugged and
knotted the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Lerrys
about looking down from ledges, and we started.
The first stretch was almost too simple, a clear track winding higher
and higher for a couple of miles. Pausing to rest for a moment, we could
turn and see the entire valley outspread below us. Gradually the trail
grew steeper, in spots pitched almost at a 50-degree angle, and was
scattered with gravel, loose rock and shale, so that we placed our feet
carefully, leaning forward to catch at handholds and steady ourselves
against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed
against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the
Darkovan brothers--Vardo, I thought--was behind me, separated by ten or
twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he
stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly
true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was
better to work unroped; then a slip bothered no one but the slipper.
But I was finding out what I wanted to know--what kind of climbers I had
to lead through the Hellers.
Along a cliff face the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a
foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet and covered with
loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced
climber--a foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway.
Kendricks made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his
turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The
amateurs--Lerrys Ridenow, Regis, Rafe--came across without hesitation,
but I wondered how well they would have done at a less secure altitude;
to a real mountaineer, a footpath is a footpath, whether in a meadow,
above a two-foot drop, a thirty-foot ledge, or a sheer mountain face
three miles above the first level spot.
After crossing the ledge the going was harder. A steeper trail, in
places nearly imperceptible, led between thick scrub and overhanging
trees, thickly forested. In spots their twisted roots obscured the
trail; in others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt.
We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush which would have
been nothing to a trailman, but which made our ground-accustomed bodies
ache with the effort of getting over or through them; and once the track
was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood, borne down
on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst. We had to work
painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rockslide, which we could
cross only one at a time, crab-fashion, leaning double to balance
ourselves; and no one complained now about the rope.
Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the
slope.
At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my
eyes, the shadow of a shadow. The fourth time I saw it, I called softly
to Kyla: "See anything?"
"I was beginning to think it was my eyes, or the altitude. I saw,
Jason."
"Look for a spot where we can take a break," I directed. We climbed
along a shallow ledge, the faint imperceptible flutters in the brushwood
climbing with us on either side. I muttered to the girl, "I'll be glad
when we get clear of this. At least we'll be able to see what's coming
after us!"
"If it comes to a fight," she said surprisingly, "I'd rather fight on
gravel than ice."
* * * * *
Over a rise, there was a roaring sound; Kyla swung up and balanced on a
rock-wedged tree root, cupped her mouth to her hands and called,
"Rapids!"
I pulled myself up to the edge of the drop and stood looking down into
the narrow gully. Here the narrow track we had been following was
crossed and obscured by the deep, roaring rapids of a mountain stream.
Less than twenty feet across, it tumbled in an icy flood, almost a
waterfall, pitching over the lip of a crag above us. It had sliced a
ravine five feet deep in the mountainside, and came roaring down with a
rushing noise that made my head vibrate. It looked formidable; anyone
stepping into it would be knocked off his feet in seconds, and swept a
thousand feet down the mountainside by the force of the current.
Rafe scrambled gingerly over the gullied lip of the channel it had cut,
and bent carefully to scoop up water in his palm and drink. "Phew, it's
colder than Zandru's ninth hell. Must come straight down from a
glacier!"
It did. I remembered the trail and remembered the spot. Kendricks joined
me at the water's edge, and asked, "How do we get across?"
"I'm not sure," I said, studying the racing white torrent. Overhead,
about twenty feet from where we clustered on the slope, the thick
branches of enormous trees overhung the rapids, their long roots
partially bared, gnarled and twisted by recurrent floods; and between
these trees swayed one of the queer swing-bridges of the trailmen,
hanging only about ten feet above the water.
Even I had never learned to navigate one of these swing-bridges without
assistance; human arms are no longer suited to brachiation. I might have
managed it once; but at present, except as a desperate final expedient,
it was out of the question. Rafe or Lerrys, who were lightly built and
acrobatic, could probably do it as a simple stunt on the level, in a
field; on a steep and rocky mountainside, where a fall might mean being
dashed a thousand feet down the torrent, I doubted it. The trailmen's
bridge was out ... but what other choice was there?
I beckoned to Kendricks, he being the man I was the most inclined to
trust with my life at the moment, and said, "It looks uncrossable, but I
think two men could get across, if they were steady on their feet. The
others can hold us on ropes, in case we do get knocked down. If we can
get to the opposite bank, we can stretch a fixed rope from that snub of
rock--" I pointed, "and the others can cross with that. The first men
over will be the only ones to run any risk. Want to try?"
I liked it better that he didn't answer right away, but went to the edge
of the gully and peered down the rocky chasm. Doubtless, if we were
knocked down, all seven of the others could haul us up again; but not
before we'd been badly smashed on the rocks. And once again I caught
that elusive shadow of movement in the brushwood; if the trailmen chose
a moment when we were half-in, half-out of the rapids, we'd be
ridiculously vulnerable to attack.
"We ought to be able to get a fixed rope easier than that," Hjalmar
said, and took one of the spares from his rucksack. He coiled it, making
a running loop on one end, and standing precariously on the lip of the
rapids, sent it spinning toward the outcrop of rock we had chosen as a
fixed point. "If I can get it over...."
The rope fell short, and Hjalmar reeled it in and cast the loop again.
He made three more unsuccessful tries before finally, with held breath,
we watched the noose settle over the rocky snub. Gently, pulling the
line taut, we watched it stretch above the rapids. The knot tightened,
fastened. Hjalmar grinned and let out his breath.
"There," he said, and jerked hard on the rope, testing it with a long
hard pull. The rocky outcrop broke, with a sharp crack, split, and
toppled entirely into the rapids, the sudden jerk almost pulling Hjalmar
off his feet. The boulder rolled, with a great bouncing splash, faster
and faster down the mountain, taking the rope with it.
We just stood and stared for a minute. Hjalmar swore horribly, in the
unprintable filth of the mountain tongue, and his brothers joined in.
"How the devil was I to know the _rock_ would split off?"
"Better for it to split now than when we were depending on it," Kyla
said stolidly. "I have a better idea." She was untying herself from the
rope as she spoke, and knotting one of the spares through her belt. She
handed the other end of the rope to Lerrys. "Hold on to this," she said,
and slipped out of her blankety windbreak, standing shivering in a thin
sweater. She unstrapped her boots and tossed them to me. "Now boost me
on your shoulders, Hjalmar."
Too late, I guessed her intention and shouted, "No, don't try--!" But
she had already clambered to an unsteady perch on the big Darkovan's
shoulders and made a flying grab for the lowest loop of the trailmen's
bridge. She hung there, swaying slightly and sickeningly, as the loose
lianas gave to her weight.
"Hjalmar--Lerrys--haul her down!"
"I'm lighter than any of you," Kyla called shrilly, "and not hefty
enough to be any use on the ropes!" Her voice quavered somewhat as she
added, "--and hang on to that rope, Lerrys! If you lose it, I'll have
done this for nothing!"
She gripped the loop of vine and reached, with her free hand, for the
next loop. Now she was swinging out over the edge of the boiling rapids.
Tight-mouthed, I gestured to the others to spread out slightly
below--not that anything would help her if she fell.
Hjalmar, watching as the woman gained the third loop--which joggled
horribly to her slight weight--shouted suddenly, "Kyla, quick! The loop
_beyond_--don't touch the next one! It's frayed--rotted through!"
Kyla brought her left hand up to her right on the third loop. She made a
long reach, missed her grab, swung again, and clung, breathing hard, to
the safe fifth loop. I watched, sick with dread. The damned girl should
have told me what she intended.
Kyla glanced down and we got a glimpse of her face, glistening with the
mixture of sunburn cream and sweat, drawn with effort. Her tiny swaying
figure hung twelve feet above the white tumbling water, and if she lost
her grip, only a miracle could bring her out alive. She hung there for a
minute, jiggling slightly, then started a long back-and-forward swing.
On the third forward swing she made a long leap and grabbed at the final
loop.
It slipped through her fingers; she made a wild grab with the other
hand, and the liana dipped sharply under her weight, raced through her
fingers, and with a sharp snap, broke in two. She gave a wild shriek as
it parted, and twisted her body frantically in mid-air, landing asprawl
half-in, half-out of the rapids, but on the further bank. She hauled her
legs up on dry land and crouched there, drenched to the waist but safe.
[Illustration: The rope swung perilously, threatening to dash her on the
rocks.]
* * * * *
The Darkovans were yelling in delight. I motioned to Lerrys to make his
end of the rope fast around a hefty tree-root, and shouted, "Are you
hurt?" She indicated in pantomime that the thundering of the water
drowned words, and bent to belay her end of the rope. In sign-language I
gestured to her to make very sure of the knots; if anyone slipped, she
hadn't the weight to hold us.
I hauled on the rope myself to test it, and it held fast. I slung her
boots around my neck by their cords, then, gripping the fixed rope,
Kendricks and I stepped into the water.
It was even icier than I expected, and my first step was nearly the
last; the rush of the white water knocked me to my knees, and I
floundered and would have measured my length except for my hands on the
fixed rope. Buck Kendricks grabbed at me, letting go the rope to do it,
and I swore at him, raging, while we got on our feet again and braced
ourselves against the onrushing current. While we struggled in the
pounding waters, I admitted to myself; we could never have crossed
without the rope Kyla had risked her life to fix.
Shivering, we got across and hauled ourselves out. I signalled to the
others to cross two at a time, and Kyla seized my elbow. "Jason--"
"Later, dammit!" I had to shout to make myself heard over the roaring
water, as I held out a hand to help Rafe get his footing on the ledge.
"This--can't--wait," she yelled, cupping her hands and shouting into my
ear. I turned on her. "_What!_"
"There are--_trailmen_--on the top level--of that bridge! I saw them!
They cut the loop!"
Regis and Hjalmar came struggling across last; Regis, lightly-built, was
swept off his feet and Hjalmar turned to grab him, but I shouted to him
to keep clear--they were still roped together and if the ropes fouled we
might drown someone. Lerrys and I leaped down and hauled Regis clear; he
coughed, spitting icy water, drenched to the skin.
I motioned to Lerrys to leave the fixed rope, though I had little hope
that it would be there when we returned, and looked quickly around,
debating what to do. Regis and Rafe and I were wet clear through; the
others to well above the knee. At this altitude, this was dangerous,
although we were not yet high enough to worry about frostbite. Trailmen
or no trailmen, we must run the lesser risk of finding a place where we
could kindle a fire and dry out.
"Up there--there's a clearing," I said briefly, and hurried them along.
* * * * *
It was hard climbing now, on rock, and there were places where we had to
scrabble for handholds, and flatten ourselves out against an almost
sheer wall. The keen wind rose as we climbed higher, whining through the
thick forest, soughing in the rocky outcrops, and biting through our
soaked clothing with icy teeth. Kendricks was having hard going now, and
I helped him as much as I could, but I was aching with cold. We gained
the clearing, a small bare spot on a lesser peak, and I directed the two
Darkovan brothers who were the driest to gather dry brushwood and get a
fire going. It was hardly near enough sunset to camp; but by the time we
were dry enough to go on safely, it would be, so I gave orders to get
the tent up, then rounded angrily on Kyla.
"See here, another time don't try any dangerous tricks unless you're
ordered to!"
"Go easy on her," Regis Hastur interceded, "we'd never have crossed
without the fixed rope. Good work, girl."
"You keep out of this!" I snapped. It was true, yet resentment boiled in
me as Kyla's plain sullen face glowed under the praise from the Hastur.
The fact was--I admitted it grudgingly--a lightweight like Kyla ran less
risk on an acrobat's bridge than in that kind of roaring current. That
did not lessen my annoyance; and Regis Hastur's interference, and the
foolish grin on the girl's face, made me boil over.
I wanted to question her further about the sight of trailmen on the
bridge, but decided against it. We had been spared attack on the rapids,
so it wasn't impossible that a group, not hostile, was simply watching
our progress--maybe even aware that we were on a peaceful mission.
But I didn't believe it for a minute. If I knew anything about the
trailmen, it was this--one could not judge them by human standards at
all. I tried to decide what I would have done, as a trailman, but my
brain wouldn't run that way at the moment.
The Darkovan brothers had built up the fire with a thoroughly reckless
disregard of watching eyes. It seemed to me that the morale and fitness
of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and
around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze
and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right.
Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had
been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about
her feat of acrobatics.
We had made camp on the summit of an outlying arm of the main ridge of
the Hellers, and the whole massive range lay before our eyes, turned to
a million colors in the declining sun. Green and turquoise and rose, the
mountains were even more beautiful than I remembered. The shoulder of
the high slope we had just climbed had obscured the real mountain massif
from our sight, and I saw Kendricks' eyes widen as he realized that this
high summit we had just mastered was only the first step of the task
which lay before us. The real ridge rose ahead, thickly forested on the
lower slopes, then strewn with rock and granite like the landscape of an
airless, deserted moon. And above the rock, there were straight walls
capped with blinding snow and ice. Down one peak a glacier flowed, a
waterfall, a cascade shockingly arrested in motion. I murmured the
trailman's name for the mountain, aloud, and translated it for the
others:
"The Wall Around the World."
"Good name for it," Lerrys murmured, coming with his mug in his hand to
look at the mountain. "Jason, the big peak there has never been climbed,
has it?"
"I can't remember." My teeth were chattering and I went back toward the
fire. Regis surveyed the distant glacier and murmured, "It doesn't look
too bad. There could be a route along that western _arete_--Hjalmar,
weren't you with the expedition that climbed and mapped High Kimbi?"
The giant nodded, rather proudly. "We got within a hundred feet of the
top, then a snowstorm came up and we had to turn back. Some day we'll
tackle the Wall Around the World--it's been tried, but no one ever
climbed the peak."
"No one ever will," Lerrys stated positively, "There's two hundred feet
of sheer rock cliff, Prince Regis, you'd need wings to get up. And
there's the avalanche ledge they call Hell's Alley--"
Kendricks broke in irritably, "I don't care whether it's ever been
climbed or ever will be climbed, we're not going to climb it now!" He
stared at me and added, "I hope!"
"We're not." I was glad of the interruption. If the youngsters and
amateurs wanted to amuse themselves plotting hypothetical attacks on
unclimbable sierras, that was all very well, but it was, if nothing
worse, a great waste of time. I showed Kendricks a notch in the ridge,
thousands of feet lower than the peaks, and well-sheltered from the
icefalls on either side.
"That's Dammerung; we're going through there. We won't be on the
mountain at all, and it's less than 22,000 feet high in the
pass--although there are some bad ledges and washes. We'll keep clear of
the main tree-roads if we can, and all the mapped trailmen's villages,
but we may run into wandering bands--" abruptly I made my decision and
gestured them around me.
"From this point," I broke the news, "we're liable to be attacked. Kyla,
tell them what you saw."
* * * * *
She put down her mug. Her face was serious again, as she related what
she had seen on the bridge. "We're on a peaceful mission, but they don't
know that yet. The thing to remember is that they do not wish to kill,
only to wound and rob. If we show fight--" she displayed a short ugly
knife, which she tucked matter-of-factly into her shirt-front, "they
will run away again."
Lerrys loosened a narrow dagger which until this moment I had thought
purely ornamental. He said, "Mind if I say something more, Jason? I
remember from the 'Narr campaign--the trailmen fight at close quarters,
and by human standards they fight dirty." He looked around fiercely, his
unshaven face glinting as he grinned. "One more thing. I like elbow
room. Do we have to stay roped together when we start out again?"
I thought it over. His enthusiasm for a fight made me feel both annoyed
and curiously delighted. "I won't make anyone stay roped who thinks he'd
be safer without it," I said, "we'll decide that when the time comes,
anyway. But personally--the trailmen are used to running along narrow
ledges, and we're not. Their first tactic would probably be to push us
off, one by one. If we're roped, we can fend them off better." I
dismissed the subject, adding, "Just now, the important thing is to dry
out."
Kendricks remained at my side after the others had gathered around the
fire, looking into the thick forest which sloped up to our campsite. He
said, "This place looks as if it had been used for a camp before. Aren't
we just as vulnerable to attack here as we would be anywhere else?"
He had hit on the one thing I hadn't wanted to talk about. This clearing
was altogether too convenient. I only said, "At least there aren't so
many ledges to push us off."