Verrill was still well short of his destination when he heard a rider
behind him: a horse blowing and wheezing, ridden nearly to death, yet
carrying on. He wheeled about. It was Falana who had overtaken him.
"You little idiot, go back home!"
"I won't."
"You will, and now."
"Yes, if you carry me back."
"What's the idea? You know I'm coming back, and you know there's a lot
of trouble ahead, where I'm bound for."
"I'm going anyway."
And then her horse collapsed. Verrill had no magic to restore it to
life. "Now I can't go back," she announced, contentedly, as though she
had foreseen this decisive detail.
She mounted up and rode behind him.
From time to time, Verrill halted, and cocked an ear. Thus far, he had
heard no firing. He had seen no signal fires on the crests that were
dark against the stars. The way became harder, and until moon-rise,
difficult to pick.
When the first half-glow whitened the limestone slopes and the high
snowcaps, the mountain world became a maze of illusion and shifting
glamour.
Finally, Verrill's horse sniffed the air, and would have whinnied,
had he not checked him in time. As he paused, he wondered whether
Falana's presence, the night he had saved Kwangtan, would be sufficient
precedent for her accompanying him into the field; or whether instead
suspicion would be aroused.
He had reined in at the edge of a deep shadow. Before he could make up
his mind, Falana said, "Turn around and see--I've got it."
As he twisted about, the horse shifted, moving out of the shadow and
into light strong enough for him to see the ruby she had in her hand.
It collected enough of the glow to pulse and flame as though in its own
right. One good look he got, and then she had knotted it again into the
end of her scarf and thrust it securely between her breasts.
"I'm going with you to the home of the gods," Falana said, "and if
they, your people, don't like me, they can do what they want with me.
But I'm going."
However she had made away with the gem, there would be the devil to pay
when Kwangtan missed it. His exclamation of dismay made her add, "He
won't make any trouble. He smothered under his sheepskin robe."
Verrill preferred not to ask whether she meant that the invalid had
himself done this, accidentally, or whether, aroused by her prowling,
his protest had been stifled, quickly and silently, by a solid armful
of a woman who knew precisely what she had to do to save herself.
Instead of being horrified by a very logical suspicion, he dismissed
the query: for in either event, he had no longer any choice concerning
Falana. She had made the bond so strong that wherever he went, he would
take her. There was no more clash between him and Dawson. The bond
that had attached him to Linda had been cut. Whether by smothering the
fire priest, or merely robbing the fire god, Falana had done well for
herself.
After a silence, he said, "There's someone just ahead. My horse scented
them. Whoever they are, they may have caught some sign of us. You get
down and wait. The sight of you is likely to make the outposts think
I'm leaving the tribe. And now is no time for suspicion!"
"I know another way around, and out," Falana said. "A hard trail, but
we can make it."
"Whoever's ahead, up there, might start wondering. All I have to do is
go ahead and identify myself, and then go my way."
"You can make some excuse for coming back this way," she said, and
slipped to the ground. "I'll wait."
* * * * *
He rode on, at a walk. Ten to one, Falana had smothered Kwangtan, not
out of malice, but simply because he would have kept her from following
Verrill. Since Verrill could not reject her, he had to accept the act
as his own, however heavy the burden. He shrank from the very suspicion
of the deed, and at the same time, his eyes were tear-blinded from
realization of her devotion, so much more reckless than any Venusian
woman's could have been.
A horse whinnied. Verrill's mount answered. And before Verrill could
hail the dimly-discerned rider, revealed when he rounded a sharp curve,
he knew that this was an ambush; the recognition between horses had
come because the animals ahead had been stolen from Ardelan's herd.
Despite his disadvantage, knowledge came before he had made himself too
good a target.
That split-second sensing gave him a chance with his pistol. He spurred
in, shooting. A wild shot grazed him. The enemy stampeded, as though
from the sudden fear that they had tricked themselves; it was as though
his boldness had convinced them that he had a large party at his back.
[Illustration: Verrill spurred in, shooting....]
In half a dozen hoofbeats, he was through. One horse was down, and
struggling. Something thumped into the ravine, far below. There was a
brief shower of rocks, and the diminishing clatter of hoofs.
Only two had lain in wait: and one was bound for home.
Verrill reined in sharply, and called to Falana. She answered, and
knowing it was all over, came toward him at a walk.
Verrill was badly shaken. Falana, knowing that he would be, was giving
him a welcome moment to himself. This was his first taste of combat.
The enemy, sprawled among the rocks, groaned and cursed, as though
shock had until that moment held him unable to make a sound. This was
something familiar to Verrill, for in his way, he was now a doctor in
fact--a man was a man, whether friend or enemy. And this one, being a
man he had wounded, evoked his response more readily than had Kwangtan.
Verrill dismounted. The man in the shadows mumbled and choked; the
man's horse lay dead; and approaching his own handiwork shook Verrill's
composure. Worse yet, he should not dally. No telling who might have
heard the shots, who might be hurrying to the scene. But he could not
abandon a patient, though this might become a dangerous business, with
the Fire of Skanderbek taken from the shrine--
Three sounds blended. Verrill understood each, but too late.
"Now see if you'll get the ruby!" the patient challenged, triumphantly,
and fired.
Venusian accent and intonation; pistol blast; and then, as Dawson,
unwounded, bound up to take Verrill's horse, came the third sound:
Falana's cry.
Her approach, afoot, had tricked Dawson. She was on him from the rear
before he sensed his danger. He swayed, he choked, and he would have
flung her aside, but for the knife with which she finished him. Stab
and slash; and he was dead before she could crawl free of him to go to
Verrill.
Dawson, living with the enemy tribe, had learned raiding tricks,
and had known how to tempt an enemy by offering hope of plunder.
By feigning a mortal wound, he had played the game as his brothers
in raiding would have played it: and at the most he could not have
hoped for more than a horse, and the weapons of the supposedly greedy
and reckless one whose loot hunger had driven out ordinary caution.
Moonlight on Verrill's face had given Dawson his moment of triumphant
recognition--and then, sudden death which he might otherwise have
avoided.
The irony of all this passed through Verrill's mind during the moments
which elapsed before he could recover sufficiently from shock to speak.
Teeth chattering from the deadly chill which took hold of him, he said,
"Physician, heal thyself."
He knew he was beyond mending. He knew also that he had long drawn-out
hours of agony ahead of him. Falana knew, without being told, that she
would soon be alone; that she would never board the long gleaming shell
on the take-off ramp of the trading-post to go with him to the home of
the gods. Since he was shivering, she wrapped a shawl about him, and
waited for him to tell her what else to do.
* * * * *
The shift of the moon thinned the shadows that had tricked first one
and then another of those who had met in that rocky angle. Verrill
pointed to the kit, and told her how to load the hypo. He had done this
himself, many times, for those he knew he could not save. They lasted
just as long, but avoided consciousness and pain. This had won him
esteem. And now he was to learn how good his work had been.
His vision began to play tricks, and his memory also, but he was sure
that the white orb shimmering, rising from behind a distant crest,
was Venus, beginning her term as morning star. Seen through that thin
mountain air, Venus was an expanding splendor, and memories danced:
memories of Linda, blurred with the memories of all other Venusian
women, perfumed and sleek and all bejewelled. They were shapes of the
mind, rather than a semblance to the eye; for at the same time, he saw
clearly where he was, and who was beside him. And he was glad that it
was Falana.
Falana peeled off her jacket and blouse. She cut a long strand of hair,
and despite the biting wind that lashed her from shoulder to hip, she
shaped a loop, using two long hairs to suspend the Fire of Skanderbek
from about her throat.
She knelt, posed by sure instinct, head flung back, and the monstrous
ruby all ablaze against her white skin. The lower end of the six-sided
crystal barely dipped into the shadow of her breasts.
The Venusian images of memory were blotted out, and with them, the
great white orb as well. Falana became all women in one, yet remaining
all the while wholly herself.
Verrill's face, or her own instinct, told her when to end the tableau.
She slipped into her jacket and went into the shadow beside him. She
caught him in her arms, to pillow him better than had the rocks and the
saddle-bags that had softened them. And then Verrill went on his long
road, and entirely content, for he had in his way done with the Fire of
Skanderbek as he had planned.
Not long after sunrise, a handful of Ardelan's men came along from the
new valley. They had routed the raiders. Somewhere, they told Falana,
there had been several shots, which had alerted them.
"The shots Verrill fired," they concluded, having seen and understood
from the face of things.
She gave them no time to wonder about her presence. "He was going to
stay for days and days with the people Ardelan was sending into the new
valley. I made him take me with him. So I was here when he killed his
enemy, the one with whom he had a feud."
Despite their grief at losing their doctor, the mountaineers forgot
none of their ways. Methodically, they took the gear from the dead
horse, and stripped the dead enemy, leaving nothing but vulture
bait. And among the things they found in his clothes was the Fire of
Skanderbek.
"The gods told Verrill," Falana said. "But not all, and not in time.
Only enough to send him where he would meet the thief."
They studied his face, and one said, "It is clear that the gods
welcomed him when he took their road."
Later, Ardelan himself joined them. He heard, he saw, and then he said,
"We will bury Verrill by those others who have guarded the Fire of
Skanderbek. He saved many lives for us, as Skanderbek did in the old
days."
And this was done, with no one wondering at Kwangtan's death. Some
said that the spirit of the priest had guided Verrill to overtake the
looter. Falana heard the legend grow, and could not tell what Ardelan
really thought. Whatever his thought, the chief kept it to himself,
until, days later, he said to Falana, "Verrill's son will be a great
man among us, to watch the Fire of Skanderbek, and teach us the way of
the gods."
Which seemed reasonable enough to Falana, who had command of more
miracles than any man.