Wary of a trap, I hesitated, but the question seemed harmless, so I only
countered, "Have you been long in the Kharsa?"
"Several weeks."
"Trading?"
"No." He applied himself to the wine again. "I was searching for a
member of my family."
"Did you find him?"
"Her," said Kyral, and ceremoniously spat. "No, I didn't find her. What
is your business in Shainsa?"
I chuckled briefly. "As a matter of fact, I am searching for a member of
my family."
He narrowed his eyelids as if he suspected me of mocking him, but
personal privacy is the most rigid convention of the Dry-towns and such
mockery showed a sensible disregard for prying questions if I did not
choose to answer them. He questioned no further.
"I can use an extra man to handle the loads. Are you good with pack
animals? If so, you are welcome to travel under the protection of my
caravan."
I agreed. Then, reflecting that Juli and Rakhal must, after all, be
known in Shainsa, I asked, "Do you know a trader who calls himself
Sensar?"
He started slightly; I saw his eyes move along my scars. Then reserve,
like a lowered curtain, shut itself over his face, concealing a brief
satisfied glimmer. "No," he lied, and stood up.
"We leave at first daylight. Have your gear ready." He flipped something
at me, and I caught it in midair. It was a stone incised with Kyral's
name in the ideographs of Shainsa. "You can sleep with the caravan if
you care to. Show that token to Cuinn."
* * * * *
Kyral's caravan was encamped in a barred field past the furthest gates
of the Kharsa. About a dozen men were busy loading the pack
animals--horses shipped in from Darkover, mostly. I asked the first man
I met for Cuinn. He pointed out a burly fellow in a shiny red
shirtcloak, who was busy at chewing out one of the young men for the way
he'd put a packsaddle on his beast.
Shainsa is a good language for cursing, but Cuinn had a special talent
at it. I blinked in admiration while I waited for him to get his breath
so I could hand him Kyral's token.
In the light of the fire I saw what I'd half expected: he was the second
of the Dry-towners who'd tried to rough me up in the spaceport cafe.
Cuinn barely glanced at the cut stone and tossed it back, pointing out
one of the packhorses. "Load your personal gear on that one, then get
busy and show this mush-headed wearer of sandals"--an insult carrying
particularly filthy implications in Shainsa--"how to fasten a
packstrap."
He drew breath and began to swear at the luckless youngster again, and I
relaxed. He evidently hadn't recognized me, either. I took the strap in
my hand, guiding it through the saddle loop. "Like that," I told the
kid, and Cuinn stopped swearing long enough to give me a curt nod of
acknowledgment and point out a heap of boxed and crated objects.
"Help him load up. We want to get clear of the city by daybreak," he
ordered, and went off to swear at someone else.
Kyral turned up at dawn, and a few minutes later the camp had vanished
into a small scattering of litter and we were on our way.
Kyral's caravan, in spite of Cuinn's cursing, was well-managed and
well-handled. The men were Dry-towners, eleven of them, silent and
capable and most of them very young. They were cheerful on the trail,
handled the pack animals competently, during the day, and spent most of
the nights grouped around the fire, gambling silently on the fall of the
cut-crystal prisms they used for dice.
Three days out of the Kharsa I began to worry about Cuinn.
It was of course a spectacular piece of bad luck to find all three of
the men from the spaceport cafe in Kyral's caravan. Kyral had obviously
not known me, and even by daylight he paid no attention to me except to
give an occasional order. The second of the three was a gangling kid who
probably never gave me a second look, let alone a third.
But Cuinn was another matter. He was a man my own age, and his fierce
eyes had a shrewdness in them that I did not trust. More than once I
caught him watching me, and on the two or three occasions when he drew
me into conversation, I found his questions more direct than Dry-town
good manners allowed. I weighed the possibility that I might have to
kill him before we reached Shainsa.
We crossed the foothills and began to climb upward toward the mountains.
The first few days I found myself short of breath as we worked upward
into thinner air, then my acclimatization returned and I began to fall
into the pattern of the days and nights on the trail. The Trade City
was still a beacon in the night, but its glow on the horizon grew dimmer
with each day's march.
Higher we climbed, along dangerous trails where men had to dismount and
let the pack animals pick their way, foot by foot. Here in these
altitudes the sun at noonday blazed redder and brighter, and the
Dry-towners, who come from the parched lands in the sea-bottoms, were
burned and blistered by the fierce light. I had grown up under the
blazing sun of Terra, and a red sun like Wolf, even at its hottest,
caused me no discomfort. This alone would have made me suspect. Once
again I found Cuinn's fierce eyes watching me.
As we crossed the passes and began to descend the long trail through the
thick forests, we got into nonhuman country. Racing against the Ghost
Wind, we skirted the country around Charin, and the woods inhabited by
the terrible Ya-men, birdlike creatures who turn cannibal when the Ghost
Wind blows.
Later the trail wound through thicker forests of indigo trees and
grayish-purple brushwood, and at night we heard the howls of the catmen
of these latitudes. At night we set guards about the caravan, and the
dark spaces and shadows were filled with noises and queer smells and
rustlings.
Nevertheless, the day's marches and the night watches passed without
event until the night I shared guard with Cuinn. I had posted myself at
the edge of the camp, the fire behind me. The men were sleeping rolls of
snores, huddled close around the fire. The animals, hobbled with double
ropes, front feet to hind feet, shifted uneasily and let out long
uncanny whines.
I heard Cuinn pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of the
forest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him,
then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts of the clearing.
For a moment I thought nothing of it, thinking that he was taking a few
steps toward the gap in the trees where he had disappeared. I suppose I
had the idea that he had slipped away to investigate some noise or
shadow, and that I should be at hand.
Then I saw the flicker of lights beyond the trees--light from the
lantern Cuinn had been carrying in his hand! He was signaling!
I slipped the safety clasp from the hilt of my skean and went after him.
In the dimming glow of the fire I fancied I saw luminous eyes watching
me, and the skin on my back crawled. I crept up behind him and leaped.
We went down in a tangle of flailing legs and arms, and in less than a
second he had his skean out and I was gripping his wrist, trying
desperately to force the blade away from my throat.
I gasped, "Don't be a fool! One yell and the whole camp will be awake!
Who were you signaling?"
In the light of the fallen lantern, lips drawn back in a snarl, he
looked almost inhuman. He strained at the knife for a moment, then
dropped it. "Let me up," he said.
I got up and kicked the fallen skean toward him. "Put that away. What in
hell were you doing, trying to bring the catmen down on us?"
For a moment he looked taken aback, then his fierce face closed down
again and he said wrathfully, "Can't a man walk away from the camp
without being half strangled?"
I glared at him, but realized I really had nothing to go by. He might
have been answering a call of nature, and the movement of the lantern
accidental. And if someone had jumped me from behind, I might have
pulled a knife on him myself. So I only said, "Don't do it again. We're
all too jumpy."
There were no other incidents that night, or the next. The night after,
while I lay huddled in my shirtcloak and blanket by the fire, I saw
Cuinn slip out of his bedroll and steal away. A moment later there was a
gleam in the darkness, but before I could summon the resolve to get up
and face it out with him, he returned, looked cautiously at the snoring
men, and crawled back into his blankets.
While we were unpacking at the next camp, Kyral halted beside me. "Heard
anything queer lately? I've got the notion we're being trailed. We'll be
out of these forests tomorrow, and after that it's clear road all the
way to Shainsa. If anything's going to happen, it will happen tonight."
I debated speaking to him about Cuinn's signals. No, I had my own
business waiting for me in Shainsa. Why mix myself up in some other,
private intrigue?
He said, "I'm putting you and Cuinn on watch again. The old men doze
off, and the young fellows get to daydreaming or fooling around. That's
all right most of the time, but I want someone who'll keep his eyes open
tonight. Did you ever know Cuinn before this?"
"Never set eyes on him."
"Funny, I had the notion--" He shrugged, turned away, then stopped.
"Don't think twice about rousing the camp if there's any disturbance.
Better a false alarm than an ambush that catches us all in our blankets.
If it came to a fight, we might be in a bad way. We all carry skeans,
but I don't think there's a shocker in the whole camp, let alone a gun.
You don't have one by any chance?"
After the men had turned in, Cuinn patrolling the camp, halted a minute
beside me and cocked his head toward the rustling forest.
"What's going on in there?"
"Who knows? Catmen on the prowl, probably, thinking the horses would
make a good meal, or maybe that we would."
"Think it will come to a fight?"
"I wouldn't know."