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 s.p.a.ceport 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 s.p.a.ceport 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 alt.i.tudes 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 pa.s.ses 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 lat.i.tudes. At night we set guards about the caravan, and the dark s.p.a.ces and shadows were filled with noises and queer smells and rustlings.
Nevertheless, the day"s marches and the night watches pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l 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 c.o.c.ked 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."
He surveyed me for a moment without speaking. "And if it did?"
"We"d fight." Then I sucked in my breath, for Cuinn had spoken Terran Standard, and I, without thinking had answered in the same language. He grinned, showing white teeth filed to a point.
"I thought so!"
I seized his shoulder and demanded roughly, "And what are you going to do about it?"
"That depends on you," he answered, "and what you want in Shainsa. Tell me the truth. What were you doing in the Terran Zone?" He gave me no chance to answer. "You know who Kyral is, don"t you?"
"A trader," I said, "who pays my wages and minds his own affairs." I moved backward, hand on my skean, braced for a sudden rush. He made no aggressive motion, however.
"Kyral told me you"d been asking questions about Rakhal Sensar," he said. "Clever. Now I, for one, could have told you he"d never set eyes on Rakhal. I--"
He broke off, hearing a noise in the forest, a long eerie howl. I muttered, "If you"ve brought them down on us--"
He shook his head urgently. "I had to take that chance, to get word to the others. It won"t work. Where"s the girl?"
I hardly heard him. I was hearing twigs snap, and silent sneaking feet.
I turned for a yell that would rouse the camp and Cuinn grabbed me hard, saying insistently, "Quick! Where"s the girl! Go back and tell her it won"t work! If Kyral suspected--"
He never finished the sentence. Just behind us came another of the long eerie howls. I knocked Cuinn away, and suddenly the night was filled with crouching forms that came down on us like a whirlwind.