He might have said yes, but that didn't mean, Ross discovered, that he
was to be shipped off at once to early Britain. Ashe's "tomorrow" proved
to be several days later. The cover was that of a Beaker trader, and
Ross's impersonation was checked again and again by experts, making sure
that the last detail was correct and that no suspicion of a tribesman,
no mistake on Ross's part would betray him.
The Beaker 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. For
they lived by trade, leaving to Ross's own time the mark of their
far-flung "empire" in the beakers found in graves scattered in clusters
of a handful or so from the Rhineland to Spain, and from the Balkans to
Britain.
They did not depend only upon the taboo of the trade road for their
safety, for the Beakermen were master bowmen. A roving people, they
pushed into new territory to establish posts, living amicably among
peoples with far different customs--the Downs farmers, horse herders,
shore-side fisherfolk.
With Ashe, Ross passed a last inspection. Their hair had not grown long
enough to require braiding, but they did have enough to hold it back
from their faces with hide headbands. The kilt-tunics 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. Ashe's round cloak was the blue of
a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished wolf's
teeth alternating with amber beads. Ross's 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
cloak pin with a jet head.
He had no idea how the time transition was to be made, nor how one might
step from the polar regions of the Western Hemisphere to the island of
Britain lying off the Eastern. And it was a complicated business as he
discovered.
The transition itself was a fairly simple, though disturbing, process.
One walked a short corridor and stood for an instant on a plate while
the light centered there curled about in a solid core, shutting one off
from floor and wall. Ross 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
looked through the dying wall of light to where Ashe waited.
Quick and easy as the trip through time had been, the journey to Britain
was something else. There could be only one transfer point if the secret
was to be preserved. But men from that point must be moved swiftly and
secretly to their appointed stations. Ross, knowing the strict rules
concerning the transportation of objects from one time to another,
wondered how that travel could be effected. After all, they could not
spend months, or even years, getting across continents and seas.
The answer was ingenious. Three days after they had stepped through the
barrier of time at the outpost, Ross and Ashe balanced 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 yet well in the future.
Ashe slid a dugout into the water, and Ross climbed into that unsteady
craft, holding it against the side of the disguised sub until his
partner joined him. The day, misty and drizzling, made the shore they
aimed for a half-seen line across the water. With a shiver born of more
than cold, Ross dipped his paddle and helped Ashe send their crude boat
toward that half-hidden strip of land.
There was no real dawn; the sky lightened somewhat, but the drizzle
continued. Green patches showed among the winter-denuded trees back from
the beach, but the countryside facing them gave an impression of untamed
wilderness. Ross knew from his briefing that the whole of Britain was as
yet only sparsely settled. The first wave of hunter-fishers to establish
villages had been joined by other invaders who built massive tombs and
had an elaborate religion. Small village-forts had been linked from hill
to hill by trackways. There were "factories," which turned out in bulk
such fine flint weapons and tools that a thriving industry was in full
operation, not yet having been superseded by the metal imported by the
Beaker merchants. Bronze was still so rare and costly that only the head
man of a village could hope to own one of the long daggers. Even the
arrowheads in Ross's quiver were chipped of flint.
They drew the dugout well up onto the shore and ran it into a shallow
depression in the bank, heaping stones and brush about for its
concealment. Then Ashe intently surveyed the surrounding country,
seeking a landmark.
"Inland from here...." Ashe used the language of the Beakermen, and Ross
knew that from now on he must not only live as a trader, but also think
as 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. The two men were on their way to Outpost Gog, where
Ashe's first partner, the redoubtable Sanford, was playing his role so
well.
The rain squished in their hide boots, made sodden strings of their
cloaks, plastered their woven caps to their thick mats of hair. Yet Ashe
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 link trackways, its beaten
surface testifying to constant use.
Here Ashe turned eastward, 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 spirits
roving in the dark.
All the lore that had been pounded into him at the base began to make
some sense to Ross as he followed his guide, 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.
Ashe halted so suddenly that Ross almost plowed into him. But he was
alerted by the older man's attitude.
Something had been burned! Ross drew in a deep lungful of the smell and
then wished that he had not. It was wood--burned wood--and something
else. Since this was not possibly normal, he was prepared for the way
Ashe melted into cover in the brush.
They worked their way, sometimes crawling on their bellies, through the
wet stands of dead grass, taking full advantage of all cover. They
crouched at the top of the hill while Ashe 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 above, 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 a post. But all they now guarded was a desolation
from which came that overpowering stench.
"Our post?" Ross asked in a whisper.
Ashe nodded. He was studying the scene with an intent absorption which,
Ross knew, would impress every important detail upon his mind. That the
place had been burned was clear from the first. But why and by whom was
a problem vital to the two lurking in the brush.
It took them almost an hour to cross the valley--an hour of hiding,
casting about, searching. They had made a complete circle of the
destroyed post and Ashe stood in the shadow of a copse, rubbing clots of
mud from his hands and frowning up at the charred posts.
"They weren't rushed. Or if they were, the attackers covered their trail
afterward--" Ross ventured.
The older man shook his head. "Tribesmen would not have muddled a trail
if they had won. No, this was no regular attack. There have been no
signs of a war party coming or leaving."
"Then what?" demanded Ross.
"Lightning for one thing--and we'd better hope it was that. Or--"
Ashe's blue eyes were very cold and bleak, as cold and bleak as the
countryside about them.
"Or--?" Ross dared to prompt him.
"Or we have made contact with the Reds in the wrong way!"
Ross's 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 men 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 or prehistory he had gone to
earth. Had the Reds been searching, too, and was this first disaster
their victory?
The time traders had their evidence when they at last ventured into what
had been the heart of Outpost Gog. Ross, inexperienced as he was in such
matters, could not mistake the signs of the explosion. There was a
crater on the crown of the hill, and Ashe stood apart from it, eying the
fragments about them--scorched wood, blackened stone.
"The Reds?"
"It must have been. This damage was done by explosives."
It was clear why Outpost Gog could not report the disaster. The attack
had destroyed their one link with the post on this time level; the
concealed communicator had gone up with the blast.
"Eleven--" Ashe's finger tapped on the ornate buckle of his wide belt.
"We have about ten days to stick it out," he added, "and it seems we may
be able to use them to better advantage than just letting you learn how
it feels to walk about some four thousand years before you were born. We
have to find out--if we can--what happened here and why!"
Ross gazed at the mess. "Dig?" he asked.
"Some digging is indicated."
So they dug. Finally, black with charcoal smudges and sick with the
evidences of death they had chanced upon, they collapsed on the cleanest
spot they could find.
"They must have hit at night," Ashe said slowly. "Only at that time
would they find everyone here. Men don't trust a night filled with
ghosts, and our agents conform to local custom as usual. All of the post
people could be erased with one bomb at night."
All except two of them had been true Beaker traders, including women and
children. No Beaker trading post was large, and this one was unusually
small. The attacker had wiped out some twenty people, eighteen of them
innocent victims.
"How long ago?" Ross wanted to know.
"Maybe two days. And this attack came without any warning, or Sandy
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 even aware of it."
"What do we do now?"
Ashe looked at him. "We wash--no--" he corrected himself--"we don't! 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 to
whom I am known as an inhabitant of this post."
So, covered with dirt, they walked along the trackway toward the
neighboring village with a weariness they did not have to counterfeit.
The dog sighted or perhaps scented them first. It was a rough-coated
beast, showing its fangs with a wolflike ferocity. But it was smaller
than a wolf, and it barked between its warning snarls. Ashe brought his
bow from beneath the shelter of his cloak and held it ready.
"Ho, one comes to speak with Nodren--Nodren of the Hill!"
Only the dog snapped and snarled. Ashe rubbed his forearm across his
face, the gesture of a weary and heartsick man, smearing the ash and
grime into an awesome mask.
"Who speaks to Nodren--?" There was a different twist to the
pronunciation of some words, but Ross was able to understand.
"One who has hunted with him and feasted with him. The one who gave into
his hand the friendship gift of the ever-sharp knife. It is Assha of the
traders----"
"Go far from us, man of ill luck. You who are hunted by the evil
spirits." The last was a shrill cry.
Ashe remained where he was, facing into the bushes which hid the
tribesman.
"Who speaks for Nodren yet not with the voice of Nodren?" he demanded.
"This is Assha who asks. We have drunk blood together and faced the
white wolf and the wild boar in their fury. Nodren lets not others speak
for him, for Nodren is a man and a chief!"
"And you are cursed!" A stone flew through the air, striking a rain pool
and spattering mud on Ashe's boots. "Go and take your evil with you!"
"Is it from the hand of Nodren or Nodren's young men that doom came upon
those of my blood? Have war arrows passed between the place of the
traders and the town of Nodren? Is that why you hide in the shadows so
that I, Assha, cannot look upon the face of one who speaks boldly and
throws stones?"
"No war arrows between us, trader. _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, Ross recalled. The sound of thunder and
fire coming out of the sky at night--the bomb! Perhaps the very method
of attack on the post would defeat Ashe's attempt to learn anything from
these neighbors. The superstitions of the people would lead them to shun
both the site of the post and Ashe himself as cursed and taboo.
"If the Wrath of Lurgha had struck at Assha, would Assha still live to
walk upon this road?" Ashe prodded the ground with the tip of his
bowstave. "Yet Assha walks, as you see him; Assha talks, as you hear
him. It is ridiculous to answer him with the nonsense of little
children----"
"Spirits so walk and talk to unlucky men," retorted the man in hiding.
"It may be the spirit of Assha who does so now--"
Ashe made a sudden leap. There was a flurry of action behind the bush
screen and 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 bearded, wearing his thick mop of black hair in a round
topknot secured by a hide loop. He wore a skin tunic, now in
considerable disarray, which was held in place with a woven, tasseled
belt.
"Ho, so it is Lal of the Quick Tongue who speaks so loudly of spirits
and the Wrath of Lurgha!" Ashe studied his captive. "Now, Lal, 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 Sanfra, who was my brother, and those others of my
kin. I am Assha, and you know of the wrath of Assha and how it ate up
Twist-tooth, the outlaw, when he came in with his evil men. The Wrath of
Lurgha is hot, but so too is the wrath of Assha." Ashe contorted his
face in such a way that Lal squirmed and looked away. When the tribesman
spoke, all his former authority and bluster had gone.
"Assha knows that I am as his dog. 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 the place on the hill, 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?"
The shaggy head shook an emphatic negative. "Assha 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 crouched lower to the ground, his eyes darting to the bushes and the
freedom they promised, then back to Ashe's firmly planted boots.
"I am not a chief, Assha. 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 brush
which fringed the roadway. "Speak to Assha 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.
So urged, Lal mumbled sullenly, "It is said that there came a message
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 were cursed, and should be put to the spear should they
come here again----"
"This message--how was it brought? Did the voice of Lurgha sound in
Nodren's ear alone, or came it by the tongue of some man?"
"Ahee!" Lal lay 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 young woman, obviously of some
importance in her own group. Walking with a proud stride, her eyes
boldly met Ashe's. A shining disk hung about her neck on a thong, and
another decorated the woven belt of her cloth tunic. Her hair was bound
in a thread net fastened with jet pins.
"I greet Cassca, who is the First Sower." There was a formal note in
Ashe's voice. "But why should Cassca hide from Assha?"
"There has been death on your hill, Assha--" she sniffed--"you smell of
it now--Lurgha's death. Those who come from that hill may well be some
who no longer walk in their bodies." Cassca placed her fingers
momentarily on Ashe's outstretched palm before she nodded. "No spirit
are you, Assha, 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 matter of a message from Lurgha--" he prompted.
"It came out of the empty air in the hearing not only of Nodren, but
also of Hangor, Effar, and myself, Cassca. For 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, yet it is in the Great Mother
that the seed lies. Upon her business only women may go into the Inner
Circle." She gestured again. "But as we met to make 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
hill of the men-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?" Ashe asked quietly.
"Nodren said it was a hum and there was the dark shadow of Lurgha's bird
between him and the stars. Then came the smiting of the hill with
thunder and lightning, and Nodren fled, for the Wrath of Lurgha is a
fearsome thing. Now do the people come to the Great Mother's Place with
many fine offerings that she may stand between them and that Wrath."
"Assha thanks Cassca, who is the handmaiden of the Great Mother. May the
sowing prosper and the reaping be good this year!" Ashe said finally,
ignoring Lal, who still groveled on the road.
"You go from this place, Assha?" she asked. "For though I stand under
the protecting hand of the Mother and so 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."
He turned back the way they had come, and Ross fell in beside him as the
woman watched them out of sight.