The roar of laughter died as the fellow scrambled up from the stone
floor with a snarl, but Jayn's husky voice cut across the silence to
avert trouble.
She keeps a tight guide rope, thought Yorgh, and tried to smooth things
over by telling one of his stories.
He thought the company about the table seemed impressed at the tale
of his latest adventure in the desert, but it might have been the
flickering light of the torches.
"I think you must have taken that from an old legend," said Ueln. "We,
too, have half-remembered stories of people who rode out from the
shrine in self-moving wagons, in the old days when there were more men
in The World."
"What shrine?" asked Yorgh, for it was a tale he had not heard,
although he knew it was widely told of the Raydowers that they held
mysterious beliefs.
"On the mountain top," said Ueln. "You might have seen it any morning
when you went with us to swim--"
He stopped abruptly, and Yorgh was aware of a peculiar hush around the
table. Then Jayn quickly asked him to describe again how the Hunters
made their powerful horn bows famous for their loud twang and swift
arrows, and how they got such strength without making them as long as
the wooden ones of the mountain people.
Yorgh answered sketchily, not failing to notice Ueln shrug defiantly
under the severe stares of several diners near him at the great table.
After the dinner, Jayn called upon some of her girls to sing. Since the
procedure had been much the same on previous nights, Yorgh deliberately
showed little enthusiasm until he found an opportunity to beg Jayn
herself to sing for them.
The Raydower with the neatly curled brown mustache who had paid her
this compliment on preceding evenings, as Yorgh had carefully noted,
glared and muttered something about "nomad upstarts." Jayn smiled at
Yorgh more warmly than he liked, but he had to admit to himself that
she sang well.
The next morning, returning from the small lake in which the men swam,
he asked Ueln for permission to walk about the village.
"Jayn didn't act as if she would mind my seeing something of it," he
jabbed the Raydower.
The latter grunted.
"I heard her whispering to you last night, after the singing, thank
you," he growled. "She can be nice when she likes. Oh, all right! But
don't let one of my riders catch you on the trail to the pass!"
Yorgh grinned and parted from the group to stroll through the narrow
paths between the stone houses and their small gardens. After half an
hour, by which time the heat of The Star was beginning to lend the
alleys the least touch of fragrance, he had the outline of the village
well in mind.
He strolled on casually, until he succeeded in coming up behind the
shrubbery bordering the space in back of Jayn's big house. There he
loitered for some time, until he saw a trio of kitchen maids carry out
wooden buckets of dirty water. One of them wore a soiled and bedraggled
blue dress.
Yorgh rustled the bushes hiding him. Vaneen looked sharply about, and
he parted the branches an instant.
The girl said something to the other wenches, and they went inside,
leaving her to empty the buckets. She carried one pair over toward
Yorgh as if to water the shrubbery.
When these were empty, she brought the next pair closer, and stepped
around the bush behind which he stood.
"How are you?" asked Yorgh, thinking that she looked like a
fish-cleaning woman among the Sea People.
She stared hard at his fine new clothes, and scowled.
"Some people know how to wheedle the best side of the tent for
themselves!" she said bitterly. "What did you do to get that pretty
tunic from her?"
"Not what you would be jealous to think about," retorted Yorgh.
"_Yet_," he added to tease her.
"You look funny in that fur collar," snapped Vaneen. "Does it have a
copper ring under the fur--with a place to fasten on the chain?"
"Ueln gave it to me," said Yorgh, deciding that it was time to smooth
things over. "Listen--it may soon be time to get out of here. Do they
lock you in at night?"
"No," said Vaneen. "They just told me what would happen to me if I went
out on the streets at night, so I don't."
"Could you sneak out here tonight ... say about the time Kloto sets?"
Vaneen peered hopefully at his expression, and nodded.
"I have thought of a place to run to," said Yorgh. "It might work."
The girl's brown eyes filled with sudden tears.
"Yorgh, if this is one of your stories--"
"Sssh!" he hushed her, slipping an arm about her shoulders. "You've
been out too long already. Meet me tonight, here!"
He slipped back into the pathway and hurried off. Vaneen's tears made
him uncomfortable and he tried hard not to feel guilty. She had been
having a miserable time, no doubt, but had he any choice but to make
himself pleasant to Jayn?
* * * * *
That evening he was careful to let himself be seen with Jayn whispering
frequently in his ear during the story-telling. She was beginning to
hint that he might like to stay in the village for good, but Yorgh's
expressions suggested much more.
Later, after dark, he crept cautiously into the hall with a short
length of bed slat tucked in his belt. He had not been allowed a knife
except at meals. As he padded to the foot of the stone stairs, a shadow
detached itself from the wall near the main door. Yorgh sensed rather
than saw the spear that reached out a moment later to prod him just
below the ribs.
"Sssh! Quietly!" he whispered. "Jayn expects me."
The guard grunted, but lowered his spear as if far from surprised.
Before he could think the matter over further, Yorgh made a show of
enlisting his aid.
"She teased by not saying which is her room," he claimed, snickering
sheepishly. "She is having her joke with me because I said I would be
man enough to find it."
"Such a joke is only the beginning, friend," the guard assured him. "Up
the opposite stairs and to the end of the hall. Come, I will point the
way."
"Slowly," pleaded Yorgh. "I don't see as well in the dark as you
people."
He saw clearly enough, however, to note that the man wore only a woolen
cap, with no leather to protect his head. Yorgh struck him a chopping
blow with the piece of slat.
He caught the spear in one hand, though he almost fumbled it in the
dark, and dropped his weapon as quietly as possible to catch the
sagging body in his other arm.
I'd better store him out of the way, he thought, heaving the man onto
his shoulder.
He crept back up the stairs with his burden, having one nervous moment
when he opened the wrong door to the tune of several raucous snores.
The sweat itched on his forehead by the time he got the door quietly
closed and made sure the next was the one to his own room.
He left the guard comfortably bound, and gagged with a strip of
blanket, and traversed the stairway for the third time, wearing a good
bronze knife in his belt. Near the door, he groped about until he found
the spear and his club. The latter he thrust again into his waistband.
The door made little noise, though it sounded to Yorgh like the
bleating of a dozen wollies. Once in the dark street, he padded quickly
around the corner of the building, moving with assurance gained from
counting the steps in daylight. He left the spear in the grass there,
lest it embarrass him later by rattling against something.
A hiss from the bushes halted him in his tracks, until Vaneen whispered
his name.
"Good!" Yorgh whispered back, reaching out to touch her arm. "Are you
cold? Then, let's move. Be very quiet till we get out of the village!"
He led the way through some of the narrower alleyways and they sneaked
out of the sleeping village by way of someone's garden. When they had a
little distance, Yorgh returned to the trail.
"Where are we going?" asked Vaneen.
"I saw the trail this morning, a little beyond the pond. It must lead
to the shrine they talk of, up the mountain. I could see marks on the
cliff like steps, when I looked through the trees."
"Oh! They talked about that shrine in the kitchen when they thought I
wasn't listening," volunteered the girl. "They said Ueln was wrong to
mention it before you."
"Did they say what it is?"
"No, except that no one ever goes there, and the old stories say the
Raydowers were set here to guard it."
"So no one goes there! Good! That's what I hoped for."
Yorgh set off briskly along the path, intent upon not missing the
junction with the trail he wanted. Even so, in the dark, he would have
gone past, had not a voice spoken out sharply.
"Who's there?"
Yorgh froze, so promptly that Vaneen bumped into him.
"Ueln," he answered with the first name that came to him.
Then he saw a darker patch move among the bushes.
Who'd have thought they'd be strict enough to keep a sentry on the
trail? he thought.
"You lie!" charged the sentry, overcoming his hesitation. "You are
twice Ueln's size--ah, I know you now, Hunter! Ho--Kansi!"
Yorgh drew his club and hurled it at where he thought the man's head
would be. There was a smack of wood as the other instinctively raised
the shaft of his spear before his face.
* * * * *
Then Yorgh was upon him, bearing him savagely to the ground. One big
hand seized the mountain man's throat. When he grabbed at it with both
of his own, Yorgh's other fist rose and fell like a hammer.
The hunter stood up, listening. Then, stooping swiftly, he groped at
the sentry's belt and handed the man's knife to Vaneen.
"We must move fast now," he warned her in an undertone. "I do not like
the idea of this 'Kansi' he called to knowing where we are."
"I think someone shouted from the village also," whispered the girl.
"Come, then!" said Yorgh, and plunged into the entrance of the trail to
the cliff.
Within a short distance, it became a steep grade. Yorgh prudently
slowed to save their legs for the real climb ahead. A moment later, he
congratulated himself for doing this, for they came upon the other
sentry leaning on his spear where the bushes opened to form a clearing
at the foot of a stone stairway.
"Stay here!" Yorgh breathed with his lips touching Vaneen's ear. "I'll
try to creep around behind him."
"I can do better than that," whispered the girl, pushing against his
arm to force him behind a shrub.
Yorgh swore luridly to himself when he discovered that the plant was
armed with sharp thorns the size of arrowheads, but it was too late to
protest.
"Kansi ..." called Vaneen softly.