The Forerunner Factor (10 page)

“You still have to cross the desert and you cannot carry enough supplies. Your brother went with one of the wandering folk and only one of those would go—he never came back.”

“All true.” He nodded, the sand catching in his black hair as his head moved. “However, it is not in my family to leave one of their own lost. There will be ways to fight even the desert, my lady—”

“Why do you call me that?” she suddenly demanded. “I am no kin to any of the High Lords. I am Simsa—”

“But not a Burrower, I think,” he answered her.

She scowled at the rock. Before she could make answer to that, there was more splashing in the water. They huddled down behind the rock watching though the zorsals had given no warning.

The same girls who had brought the boat were coming back. Their basket thongs cut deeply into their thin shoulders near bowing them over like old women. Again, paying no attention to the upper part of the cove or the rocks behind which the two hid, they proceeded to down those baskets, scoop out armloads of weed and then dump unto the sand closely woven hampers which they left lying, as they reloaded their much lightened burdens to make off again.

There were other visitors during the afternoon, each bringing baskets, some large, some small. The last came after twilight. Lustita herself in an oared boat containing six jars near as tall as Simsa herself, but empty. These the fisherwoman told them could be filled with water at a spring a short distance to the north. She accepted the last two bars, but before she left she offered a half warning:

“There is trouble in the city—the guards have been out.” She spat noisily into the heavy wash of wave. “They have not yet come beyond the north gate. But there has not been such a boiling up since the underwater spirits set the big run of the gar when I was a little maid.”

Thorn looked to the girl as the woman tramped away. “I take it that we have been missed—”

“You
have been missed!” she corrected him sharply.

“I think—”

But what he thought was never to be uttered then for both zorsals on the cliffs above took wing and came fluttering and wheeling down. Simsa did not need their hooting cries, through the deepening dusk, to know that they had sighted more than just the usual coming and going along the coast. The starman seized her hand. She had only time to catch up Zass before he pulled her towards the boat, half threw her on board, told her harshly to stay where she was.

He had brought out a long pole and braced it against the rocks. His shoulders tensed in what she could see was a great effort, he pushed them out, away from the narrow cove. They were in the open sea beyond when she caught a wink of lights on the cliff top, saw one of those on its way down, and understood that the chase had not been dropped, that somehow they had been traced.

Simsa did not like the sea. She found the pitching and rolling of the small boat terrifying, though she would not have allowed her companion to guess at her fear. Nor did she linger when they tied up again, but unbidden helped him to fill the water jars, transport them down and stow them with special care. He had already, during the day, stowed to the best advantage the rest of their small cargo of supplies, and at the time had called her attention to the fact that Lustita had included both fishing lines and a small net in their equipment.

The zorsals settled together on the edge of the small casing over the middle part of the deck which was the only protection against wind and spray. While the off-worlder stepped the small mast, set a triangle of sail to catch the night wind. He took the tiller, and swung the craft north while Simsa crouched under the shelter and wished herself back in the Burrows, ragged, hungry, but with safe and solid land under her two feet.

She had never meant to come this far. It had been her firm intention to bid the alien good fortune and hide out perhaps in the fishing village, even if it cost her most of her gains. But events had all come so suddenly, she was left with no choice—not for now.

However, she decided firmly, as the boat scudded along its way and queasiness made her hate her body, she would never go into the desert! Let this witling of an off-worlder take sight of his hills and tramp off to bake to death among them, she would stay with the boat when that hour came and somehow find a way back. She began to enlarge upon that plan. One could claim to be the survivor of a ship wreck, she thought, even if she knew so little of the sea that she might not deceive any true sailor. Yes, that was it—a traveler from over-seas—wrecked—

She would have plenty of time, maybe days of it, to plan her story. And, being Simsa, she would think up a very good one. After all, it was only zorsals that could make her true identity known. Those should be happy enough to return to a free life in the wilds, leaving her to play the role she decided upon. Settling her crossed arms upon her drawn up knees, the girl rested her chin upon them and busied herself with plans, so hoping to forget the unpleasant churning in her middle.

6

The sun threw a burning blight over the land. Simsa had covered as much of her skin against those rays as she could, smearing on fat she had skimmed from one of the jars of fresal soup they had eaten early during the voyage. As she drew herself up to stand beside the off-worlder on a baked rock, which radiated heat as might a cook hole, she knew how impossible were the plans this Thorn had made and added to all during that nightmare of a sea journey. Let him go out into that white hot furnace and frizzle into cinders, she would take her chance with the sea again, as horrible as that had been. Even at the thought of what she had endured the past two days while they had been tossed about by what her companion had persisted in calling a “fresh wind” made her nurse her empty and sore stomach with hands that were cracked and bleeding from the salt water and rope burns—for, as untrained as she was, she had had to lend her strength to their battle against the power of wind and wave.

Before them stretched such a forsaken land as might have been painted as a lesson to discourage any traveler. There were drifts of sand, their white surface spread under this sun to sear the eyes. When there was no sand, rock, worn and scraped by wind-driven grit for more seasons than a man could count, made reefs on land as toothed and forbidding as those reefs through which they had somehow found a way at sea. There was nothing which could live there—

Only, the off-worlder was not surveying the deadly land which stretched forth from the very foot of the cliff up which they had found their way. Instead, he had slipped from one of the loops upon his belt a set of distance glasses which had been folded into themselves, opened them and tinkered with their setting. Now, by their aid, he surveyed the country beyond where heat haze shimmered. Here and there in the middle distance, a spume of sand arose, as if by the bidding of an unseen enemy, to whirl and dance. By squinting between the fingers with which she had quickly shaded her eyes, Simsa could just make out a vague line across the far horizon. The Hard Hills perhaps. Not that she cared.

She turned her back determinedly upon the whole threat of the land and had begun to edge toward the descent from that lookout, when an exclamation from her companion stopped her. When she glanced up, she saw that he now pointed those distance glasses not toward the distant goal but rather downward toward the desert land itself.

“That is the way—”

“What way?” Even two words seemed to crack her lips.

“Our road!” He folded the glasses back, was fitting them into their loop. Simsa was too worn to argue with a madman. If he thought he had found some road, let him take it and be gone. She had been caught too long in the trap of his plans and must free herself before she lost what energy she had left.

Now she asked no questions, merely swung over and began the crawl down the cliff side to the bay where their boat, bearing the signs of its rough passage, rocked in what small waves found their way past the reefs to this pocket which was nearly as narrow and hidden as the one that Lustita had chosen for the outset of this miserable voyage.

As the girl neared the narrow strip of hard pebbles (there was no sand on this side of the cliff), which lined the shore, she averted her eyes from what had greeted her when she made the first awkward leap from boat to shingle. There lay evidence of what this dread coast could do. Still, the off-worlder had not shown the slightest dismay when he had viewed it.

Two withered, shrunken bodies, or the remains of such, had been somehow wedged between the rocks. Or had they crawled there during their last spurt of life energy to find their own tombs? A few faded, colorless rags still clung to the blackened, shrunken flesh. Simsa was glad that the heads had fallen forward so that she need not look upon what long-ago death had made of their faces; there were no birds here, no crabs or other sea spawned vermin, to clean their bones. Rather they had simply blackened under that sun to fearsome representations of what seemed to be more demons than once-living men.

Now Thorn again passed them without a glance, striding along the sliding pebbles which were quick to shift under his boots so that he balanced as he went, heading farther north. When he scrambled over the rocks guarding the other end of this small bay, she pulled herself to her feet to follow. Somehow, she could not remain where she was—along with those blackened things which she was ever aware were at her back, whether she looked in their direction or not.

Her feet slipped and slid so in the sandals that she had made patches of covering for both sandal and skin from parts of a rent sail she had found stored on the boat, twisting the thick stuff and knotting it as tightly as she could. Also, she picked her way with care, having no desire to fall. She was a fool—it would be better to crawl back under the closed part of the ship where the zorsals whimpered now and then. Though she had emptied a hamper and made them a kind of nest away from the sun, she could do nothing more to spare them the heat.

This scramble over the rocks brought her a fall which scraped a good strip of skin from the side of one hand. She could no longer suppress her misery as she had sworn to do. Forcing herself to the edge of the water to dip her hand in the harsh smart of the sea, she whimpered like the zorsals, allowing herself that small outlet for her emotions. The off-worlder was far enough ahead now that he certainly could not hear her for she had determined from the first that he would have no complaint from her.

There was another indentation of the coast beyond the rocks where she had slipped, a much wider beach in the shape of a triangle, its point running landwards between the walls of the cliff. Thorn was just disappearing into that point and, even as she squatted, nursing her smarting hand against her breast, he disappeared entirely. There must be some break or cave—

The thought of a cave and what it might mean as a refuge from the sun drew her on with a return of strength she could not have believed earlier she could summon. Thus she stumbled and wavered across the sand where Thorn’s prints were formless depressions.

Only, this was not the cave she had longed for—rather a cleft leading inwards, a break in the desert floor which might, in some very long time ago, have furnished a bed for a river. If this thrice-cursed land had ever held any water at all.

There was the same sand and gravel for footing, but the rock walls on either side where sheer here, offering no holds, Simsa thought, that one might use to reach the surface of the land above. While out of the cut came a breath of fire worse than any the sun had dealt already, as if the cleft was a furnace meant to draw the worst of the heat and hold it.

Even Thorn must have found it too much, for he was returning, having gone only a short distance inland. To her surprise, he was smiling and there was a spring in his step as if he had come upon a well all ringed about with greenery, water gushing forth to run headlong. Simsa wondered for a moment or two if the off-worlder had indeed been driven mad by the heat and the barrenness of this part of the world. She had heard tales of the desert madness and how travelers were led astray there by images of that which had never existed.

“We have our road!” he told her.

“There?” He was mad. She edged away from him crab fashion, refusing to take her eyes from him lest his insanity take a murderous turn and he savage her.

“There!” he agreed, to her continued horror. Then he must have read the thought behind her expression for he added quickly:

“Not by day, no. But at night—then it will be different. I did not come here without knowledge of such travel. There is coolness at night in such a land as this. The sea wind carries moisture with it and that condenses against the rocks. We can go this way—taking water and food with us—you shall see. I have done this on other worlds.”

Simsa shut her mouth. There was no use in raising any argument. If he said they could sprout wings and fly inland, then she must agree with him for this moment. He believed he spoke the truth and she wanted no part of any struggle with him. It was enough for now that he was willing to return to the boat, come into the poor shade they could find there, though he did not stretch out to lie panting, only half-conscious, as she was forced to do; her efforts had brought an end to even that wiry strength she had developed over the years of her Burrow life.

During the latter part of the day, she either slept or else lost consciousness, she was never sure just which. Only that, for a while, she had watched him ripping loose part of the ship’s planking and, using ropes he wet in the sea and then knotted about these boards, pushing that knotted portion out into the sun to dry hard and stiff.

Once or twice, she wavered into enough wakefulness to want to protest his so battering a ship she fully intended to use for her own escape. Only, before she could summon either the strength or the words to do so, she lapsed once more into that daze of misery.

There came an end to the day at last. The sun crawled down the cloudless sky and a broad banner of color touched the waves far out, sending a last glare into her smarting eyes as she drew herself over to give water to the zorsals whose plaintive cries had become so faint a croaking that alarm had shaken her into action.