The Forerunner Factor (9 page)

“For how long does this coast of Dead Men continue?”

Simsa shrugged, though she knew he could not see such a gesture. “Forever, perhaps. No man has ever in my hearing spoken of an end. There are long reefs out to sea which can claw open the hull of a boat as easily as Zass can crack a ver-rat bone between her teeth. Men do not bear north, unless the sea itself turns against them with some storm. Those who do are never seen again.”

“However, if one goes far enough along the coast, one can come northward to the same general latitude as the Hard Hills. Yes, it might be done!” he suggested.

“By spirits who have conveniently left their bodies behind them!” Simsa retorted.

“North, you say—” He was moving away. Not even waiting to see if she was coming, too. Simsa seethed. He had pulled her into this black trouble and now she must agree to this new utter folly he suggested, at least a portion of it, or be left to confront too many enemies on too many levels of the city which had always been her home and given her what small security she had known.

She spat out several burning and bitter words, the vilest in her vocabulary, stooped and picked up Zass to set her on the usual shoulder perch, and then went after him with the two other zorsals taking once more to the air. At least with them for scouts, she need not fear a surprise attack.

Nor did the off-worlder wait for her to catch up. He took her so much for granted did he, that he was sure she would follow? The girl would have given anything to be able to take off in the opposite direction. She debated, as she went, whether she could just have made some kind of a case for herself by heading back to the starport and betraying him to his fellows. At least her chances of not being drawn in herself would be better with the starcrew then with any of the Lord Arfellen’s men.
That
was wisdom as she had learned it in her Burrower years. Why then was she prowling along behind this stranger, half committed to his plans? Because she had no real answer to that question, Simsa was angry with herself, ready to lash out at the first chance she was given to unload this tangle of emotions she could not form into decent and regular order.

They were beyond the refuse heaps now and she breathed heavily of the cleaner sea air. The starman, she noted, in the slowly graying light rising over the sea itself was hurrying. Also, he was walking with long strides where the waves washed to erase his tracks. Simsa halted for a moment, pulled off her sandals, and followed his lead again, feeling the rise of the water about her bare feet and ankles, soaking the ends of her tight trousers where they were bound about her shins.

The fishing village showed lights ahead. Simsa, with extra-long strides, caught up with her companion, pulling his arm.

“Their boats go out before dawn,” she told him. “The haverings run then. If you do not want half the world to know what you desire to do, for the present you will wait.”

He slowed for a step or so and looked down at her. In this very faint light, she could see his face only as a light blur and she thought perhaps he might not be able to see her at all. Until she remembered her hair and dropped her hold on him to hastily draw out a length of head cloth, binding that into a secure head covering.

“Wait for what?” he asked. “If we want to have a boat—”

“You will not deal with the Headman,” she retorted, knotting her scarf with a last twist, made so viciously tight because of her perturbation that she could have cried out in pain. “Let the men go. It is with the House mistress of the Headman that any bargain should be made. Lustita—if she is still ruling in that house—will always have the final word.”

“You know her?”

“A little. She had some dealings with the Old One once or twice. She is a woman who likes a heavy purse in her sleeve, and not having it known to her man that she carries such. You wait here. I shall see—” She had taken a step or two past him and then she looked back curiously.

“How do you know that I am not going to cry up those who will hold you for Lord Arfellen?” she asked.

“That you ask me that—No, I do not fear betrayal, Lady Simsa. You have had good chances in plenty to do that several times this night and have not taken them.”

“You trust too easily and too much!” The wrath she had been holding so long broke then. She could have screamed at him. “Had I been taken with you, what story could I have told which would have saved me? Me, the lowest of what Lord Arfellen would deem harbor scum? You must not trust me—nor anyone.”

“Wait—” He had unsealed the front of his tightly fitting uniform. Now he tossed her a small bag which she caught without thinking. “If your Headman’s woman wants pay—give it to her. Ask in return a boat—a small one, which I must see before the bargain is complete—also provisions. Sweeten her with part of this and promise her more only when all is ready.”

The bag was heavy—though so small. No bits of silver in that, Simsa was sure. She said nothing but went, grim-faced as she padded along on the sand. So he thought so little of her warning that he put this in her hands? She hated him hotly for slighting her so, making it now impossible for her to do anything but her best to carry out his insane plan. She would get him his boat—if she possibly could—and what he wanted in it—but that would be the end. This village was as far away as they would continue to travel together.

The sun was well up, lighting a narrow tongue of the sea which formed a cove hardly large enough to run the small craft into shoreward. Simsa sat on her heels well shadowed by rocks with Zass on a tall, weed-draped stone near her, dividing her attention between the labors of the off worlder and the cliff above where their two other zorsals taking up sentry posts, intent, the girl trusted, on both land and sea approaches to this hideout.

She was sure after the first few moments of her trafficking with Lustita that this had not been the first such transaction which the House mistress had conducted. She had looked at the trade bar stamped with the seal of the Metal Guild, weighed it in one large red hand, then had demanded:

“For what?” Bluntly, as if Simsa merely was bargaining for a catch of spaeels.

“For a boat, foremost, a seaworthy one,” the girl had answered as tersely, “later—he who sent this will ask for the rest.”

The woman’s small eyes had narrowed until they seemed no larger than the pits of varc fruit buried in an oversized brown pudding. Then she had nodded.

“Well enough. Go to where there are two standing rocks on the cliff. Those look like fingers raised in a scorn sign. Wait there—”

She had scooped the single bar up with a hand large enough to hold the whole of it. Though Simsa was certain that she herself had been recognized as the fetch-and-carry for the Old One, nothing in Lustita’s eyes, voice, or expression revealed that. She felt a little easier in her mind, certain that she had read this woman aright.

They had gone inland, twice creeping flat on their bellies to round ends of cultivated garden fields, but had reached the appointed rendezvous well before the sun was high. Nor had they been there long before Lustita, walking easily in spite of a huge basket making a shoulder burden which could weigh as much as a small man, rounded the point of that narrow inlet. She had a rake in one hand, was methodically harvesting streamers of the dark red weed, which, when dried, could be ground into powder and sold for fertilizer on those same fields past which they had earlier crawled.

Simsa arose from behind the rocks just long enough for the fisherwoman to sight her, then ducked down again. Without missing a single strand of the weed, Lustita reached them, though Simsa had to call on patience to wait out her arrival.

Lustita gave a grunt, resting her leaking basket on a rock top, leaning back against the same support. The off-worlder stood face to face her, but did not come completely out of hiding. There was no change on the woman’s stolid face.

“A boat—she said—” Lustita gave the slightest of nods towards Simsa. “What else then?”

“What all is needful to get that same boat along the coast.” He spoke the straight trade language with its different inflections of speech, but Lustita had enough dealings in Kuxortal to understand. “Provisions, water—charts of the shoreline—”

Her scanty eyebrows slid up. “Why not bargain for a High Lord’s own shallop?” she returned. “Boat, yes, that can be done. Frankis has been drunk once too often, his house mistress would be glad to earn a bit, and also teach him a lesson. He lies now in the watch house where he tends a smarting back for having landed too good a blow on a Guild guard, so he shall not be free for ten tens of days—maybe still longer. Provisions—yes, those can be gathered, a few here, a few there. And there will be no questions if they are brought together so. Charts—” she grinned showing gaps between big yellowed teeth, “we have none such. Our men carry their sea-lore in their heads—and beat it into their sons when the time comes. A sore back makes a lad remember very well. If you would take to the sea it will be by your own fortune and none borrowed from us.”

“Very well.” Simsa suspected that the off-worlder had really not expected much different an answer.

“I have one bar of trade metal,” Lustita continued. “Shall we say five more?”

“Shall we say a thousand?” Simsa countered. Caution made her object. Pay the first toll mentioned and they would arouse the woman’s interest in them to the point where she might consider she could perhaps deal even more profitably with others. There was only the situation of their village which linked the river traders with the sea farers, the fisherfolk were not too much in awe of the guilds. Even the laws of Kuxortal did not touch them, save when, as the unlucky Frankis, they fell into trouble within the city itself.

Lustita shrugged and her basket wavered a little. “Those who would purchase help cannot keep fast hand on the purse,” she commented. “Well enough—make it four then. But less than that I shall not go. It will take time—though the boat will come first.”

“How much time?” the starman wanted to know.

“A day—maybe part of the night. Things done in caution cannot be hurried. You shall have full measure. Give me half more now—”

Reluctantly, Simsa obeyed the nod of the alien and slid two more of the bars from the purse which she kept carefully concealed within her sleeve. Lustita must not be able to see the size or weight of that.

Though she had expressed not the slightest surprise upon discovering that one of those with whom she must bargain was an off-worlder, her outward indifference could mean little. Simsa did not trust her, though she believed from what she knew of the fisherwoman’s dealings with the Old One that the woman was close mouthed in her own way. And she owed no service to the guild men.

The boat had arrived even as she promised, propelled by two bare-legged, bare-armed girls, who also had weed baskets with them. They had tied up the craft, scrambled out, shouldered their baskets and went on their way, carefully never raising their eyes from what they did, splashing off as if well pleased to be done with a bothersome task.

Simsa continued to sit behind her rock, watching the off-worlder carefully inspect the craft. It was not made for far sailing, though it had a single mast. She guessed it used mainly for coast traveling when the spaeels came inshore to lay their eggs and that it would not last long in storm-tossed open water. But the way the starman went about his examination impressed her in spite of herself. It was evident that he was familiar with boats not unlike this one, no matter on what strange other world he had gained such knowledge. When he at last came back to her hidden cranny, he flung himself down with a sigh as if some small part of a heavy burden had slipped from him.

“It is a stout craft,” he commented, “with a shallow draw—such as can well go exploring along the coast—”

“A coast with teeth such as you have never seen—hard rock teeth!” she retorted. “And what if you do spy your Hard Hills inland? They will be well back from the coast—you will have no way of reaching them. You could not carry food and water to make such a trip and, even if you reached the Hills, you would only die there.”

“Lady Simsa,” he rolled over on his back, flinging one arm up to half shadow his face and screen his eyes from the sun, which had found its way into their cranny, “what legends do they tell of this Hard Hills country?”

She cupped up a handful of sand, allowed the fine grit to shift away through loose-locked fingers. “What they always say of the unknown—that there is death waiting there. Oh, they talk of treasure waiting too, but no man is mad enough to go hunting it. That is no bargain to be sought.”

“Yet I have seen things which came out of those Hills—strange and wondrous things—”

Simsa stared at him. “Where? Not in Kuxortal!” She could be emphatic about that. Such tales would have filtered down the city long since—even to the Burrows.

“I have seen such on another world,” he told her. “When the starships found this world, there was no landing field at Kuxortal. Ships came and went before the Guilds even knew that they had planeted here.”

Which could be true, she decided, for the land was large and they had certain knowledge only of those parts the traders traveled.

“One such ship landed in the midst of what you call the Hard Hills. The cargo it brought back was such that the least man aboard her was wealthy beyond dreams—”

The girl was very still. Wealth beyond the dreams of the starmen! What could that buy one—even one out of the Burrows with no name, no kin, perhaps the Guilds sniffing at her heels?

“Your brother sought that?” No wonder Lord Arfellen was alerted if this story was true. No Guild Lord ever had enough in the way of treasure to be beyond
his
dreams!

“Yes—not the treasure for itself though—but for the knowledge which lay with it. The ship which returned had certain other finds.”

“If a ship could land there once—why not again?” she demanded with instant suspicion.

“Their landing was a forced one. In getting free there was great difficulty—they were very lucky—it would not be tried a second time. But I have all the information my brother had, I know near where to look. I am not quite the fool you have been thinking me—Lady Simsa.”