It was the name they had given him, the half-human aboriginals who had
raised him in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury.
"A stranger," said the leader, and smiled. He pointed at the dead Camar
and asked, "Did you slay him?"
"He was my friend," said Stark, "I was bringing him home to die."
Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader,
"He was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thord! And he has not been
robbed." He proceeded to take care of that detail himself.
"A stranger," repeated the leader, Thord. "Bound for Kushat, with a man
of Kushat. Well. I think you will come with us, stranger."
Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking him, he did not resist
when the tall Thord plundered him of all he owned except his
clothes--and Camar's belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gun
Thord flung contemptuously away.
One of the men brought Stark's beast and Camar's from where they were
tethered, and the Earthman mounted--as usual, over the violent protest
of the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved out
from under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.
For the rest of that night, and through the next day and the night that
followed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and
chew on their rations of jerked meat.
To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the
North country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and
commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched
these wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough.
To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimmer where the
barrier wall of the polar pack reared up, gigantic against the sky. The
wind blew, down from the ice, through the mountain gorges, across the
plains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose,
broken monoliths of stone. Stark remembered the vision of the talisman,
the huge structure crowned with eerie darkness. He looked upon the ruins
with loathing and curiosity. The men of Mekh could tell him nothing.
Thord did not tell Stark where they were taking him, and Stark did not
ask. It would have been an admission of fear.
In mid-afternoon of the second day they came to a lip of rock where the
snow was swept clean, and below it was a sheer drop into a narrow
valley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up and
down as far as he could see, were men and beasts and shelters of hide
and brush, and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand,
they camped under the cliffs, and their voices rose up on the thin air
in a vast deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of the
plains.
A war party, gathered now, before the thaw. Stark smiled. He became
curious to meet the leader of this army.
They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped down
the cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls.
They came in among the shelters of the camp.
Here the snow was churned and soiled and melted to slush by the fires.
There were no women in the camp, no sign of the usual cheerful rabble
that follows a barbarian army. There were only men--hillmen and warriors
all, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle.
They came out of their holes to shout at Thord and his men, and stare at
the stranger. Thord was flushed and jovial with importance.
"I have no time for you," he shouted back. "I go to speak with the Lord
Ciaran."
Stark rode impassively, a dark giant with a face of stone. From time to
time he made his beast curvet, and laughed at himself inwardly for doing
it.
They came at length to a shelter larger than the others, but built
exactly the same and no more comfortable. A spear was thrust into the
snow beside the entrance, and from it hung a black pennant with a single
bar of silver across it, like lightning in a night sky. Beside it was a
shield with the same device. There were no guards.
Thord dismounted, bidding Stark to do the same. He hammered on the
shield with the hilt of his sword, announcing himself.
"Lord Ciaran! It is Thord--with a captive."
A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within.
"Enter, Thord."
Thord pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at his
heels.
* * * * *
The dim daylight did not penetrate the interior. Cressets burned, giving
off a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor of
packed snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was no
adornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table, both dark with age
and use, and a pallet of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed to
be a heap of rags upon it.
In the chair sat a man.
He seemed very tall, in the shaking light of the cressets. From neck to
thigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunic
of leather, dyed black. Across his knees he held a sable axe, a great
thing made for the shearing of skulls, and his hands lay upon it gently,
as though it were a toy he loved.
His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before
only in very old paintings--the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of
Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman
visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it
sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.
The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not upon
Thord, but upon Eric John Stark.