Andre Norton - Time Traders

“Lightning for one thing—and we’d better hope it was that. Or—” Ashe’s blue eyes were as cold and bleak as the countryside about them.

“Or—?” Ross dared to prompt him.

“Or we have made contact with the Russians 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 the 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 Russians 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, eyeing the fragments about them—scorched wood, blackened stone.

“The Russians?”

“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 evidence 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 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, traders. 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. After a flurry of action behind the bush screen, he reappeared, dragging into the gray light of the rainy day a wriggling captive, whom he dumped 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. His skin tunic, now in considerable disarray, 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 bluster had gone.

“Assha knows that I am 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?”