Daybreak—2250 A.D.

11. DRUMS SPEAK LOUDLY

“No! Friend—I am friend—” Fors gabbled the words wildly. But they were words the lizards did not recognize and the silent and menacing advance did not falter.

What stopped them was something else—a hissing from some point on the slope behind the helpless mountaineer. It was as if the giant grandfather of all snakes coiled there, resentful of the disturbance. To the lizards the hissing had meaning. They halted almost in midstep, their threadlike tongues flickering in and out, their ragged top crests stiff and upright, pulsing dark red.

Stones rattled down the hill. Fors tried desperately to turn his head to see what or who was coming. Lura’s struggles increased in violence and he wondered if he could roll to that knife which lay just out of reach. Though his hands were dead and numb he might be able to saw through the cat’s bonds.

One of the lizards drew ahead of the rest of the pack, but its thorn spear was still at “ready.” The scaled throat swelled and an answering hiss sounded. That was replied to promptly and afterward came three words which set the captive’s heart to pounding.

“Can you move?”

“No. And watch out! Poison thorns set in balls—on the ground—”

“I know.” The answer was calm. “Keep still—”

Arskane hissed for the third time. The lizards drew back, leaving their leader alone, alert and on guard. Then Arskane was there, stooping to slash the bonds of both captives. Fors tried to lever himself up with dead arms which refused to obey him.

“Can—not—make—it—”

But Arskane was rubbing at the puffed and swollen ankles and the torture of reviving circulation was almost more than the mountaineer could bear without screaming. It seemed only a second before Arskane hauled him to his feet and pushed him toward the back slope.

“Get up there—”

That order had an urgency which made Fors climb in spite of himself, Lura dragging up ahead. He dared not waste the time to look back, he could only put all his strength to the task of getting up to the top.

If the way had been steeper he might never have made it. And as it was Arskane caught up to him and pulled him along the last few steps. From the southerner’s arm hung Fors’ knife belt with knife and sword both in their sheaths—he had waited to retrieve that.

along with the larger grass under his feet and then he slumped down where water sprayed his parched skin. He did not know how much time passed before he roused enough to know that Arskane was trying to pour some broth down his throat. He swallowed eagerly until his eyes closed against his will and he drifted off again. “How did you get us out?” Fors lay at ease, hours later. Under him a mat of ferns and leaves seemed almost unbelievably soft and Arskane hunched on the other side of the fire fashioning a shaft for a short hunting spear. “It was easy enough—with the Beast Things gone. I will tell you this with a straight and truthful tongue, brother.” The southerner’s teeth flashed white and amused in his dark face. “Had those yet breathed, then this venture might well have ended otherwise.

“When I awoke in this wood and found you gone I at first thought that you were hunting—for food or water or both. But I was not happy in my mind—not happy at all. I ate—here are rabbits, fat and foolish and without fear. And yonder there in the brook. So did my unease grow, for with food and drink so near I knew that you would not have gone from me and remained so long a time. So I went back along our trail—”

Fors studied the hands lumped on his chest, the hands which were still purplish and blue and which hurt with a nagging pain. What would have happened if Arskane had not gone back?

“That trail was very easy to follow. And along it I found the place where the Beast Things had lain in hiding to strike you down. They did nothing to cover their tracks. It is in my mind that they fear very little and see small need for caution. So came I at last to the valley of the lizards—”

“But how did you stop their attack?” Arskane was examining a pile of stones he had culled out of the brook, weighing them in his hands and separating them into two piles. The smoothed spear shaft he had set aside.

“The lizard folk I have seen before. In my own land— or the land we held before the shaking of the mouuntains drove us forth—there was such a colony. They marched across the desert from the west one year and made a settlement in a gulch a half day’s journey from the village of my people. We were curious about them and often watched them from a distance. At last we even traded— giving them bits of metal in return for blue stones they grubbed out of the earth—our women having a liking for necklaces. I do not know what I said back there—I think it was only that my imitation of their speech surprised them so that they let us go.

“But it was well we got out of that place with all speed. The poison ball is their greatest weapon. I have seen them use it against coyote and snake. They wish only to be left alone.”

“But—but they are almost—almost human—” Fors told of the gleaners and the sacrifice they had made for their clan.

Arskane laid out three stones of equal size and girth. “Can we then deny that they have a right to their valley? Could we show equal courage, I wonder?” He became busy with some thin strips of rabbit skin, weaving them into a net around each rock. Fors watched him, puzzled.

Just overhead there was a break in the mass of tree tops and as he lay back flat he could see blue sky and part of a drifting white cloud. But this morning there was a chill tooth to the wind—summer was going. He must get back to the Eyrie soon-Then he remembered what had happened to the Star pouch and his puffy fingers dug into the stuff he lay upon. There was no use in returning to the mountain hold now. When the Beast Things had destroyed his proof they had finished his chance of buying his way back into the clan. He had nothing left except what Arskane had brought out of the lizard valley for him—his knife and sword.

“Good!”

Fors was too sunk to turn his head and see what had brought that note of satisfaction into his companion’s voice. Arskane did not have anything to worry about. He would go south and find his tribe, take his place among them again—

“Now we shall have food for the pot, brother—” Fors frowned but he did look around. The southerner stood there tall and straight and around his head he whirled a queer contraption that, to the mountaineer, seemed of no use at all. The three stones in their rabbit skin nets had been fastened to thongs of hide and the three thongs tied together with one central knot. This knot Arskane gripped between his fingers as he sent the stones skimming in a circle. Having tested it he laughed at Fors’ bewilderment.

“We shall be moving south, brother, and in the level fields this will do very well, as I shall show you. Ha, and here now is dinner—”

Lura walked up to the fire carrying a young pig. She dropped her burden and with an almost human sigh plumped down beside the kill to watch Arskane butcher it skillfully.

Fors ate roasted pork and began to wonder if his lot was as hopeless as he had thought it to be. The Beast Things were dead. He might lie up until his full strength returned and then make a second visit to the city. Or if he did not dally there would still be time to reach the Eyrie and lead an expedition before winter closed in. He licked rich grease from his fingers and planned. Arskane sang the tune of mournful notes Fors had heard him hum at the fishing lake. Lura purred and washed her paws. It was all very peaceful.

“There faces us now,” Arskane said suddenly, “the problem of clothes for you—”

“It faces me,” Fors corrected him sleepily. “Unfortunately my wardrobe was left to amaze the lizards. And, strangely enough, I do not find in me any desire to reclaim it from them—”

Arskane tightened the knots on the ball and cord weapon. “There you may be wrong, my friend. A visit to the lizard valley—keeping to a safe distance, of course-might serve us very well.”

Fors sat up. “How?”

“Five of the Beast Things died there. But how many followed us into the Blow-Up land?”

Fors tried to remember the size of the party he had spied upon. How large had it been? He could not truthfully say now, but he did have a disconcerting suspicion that there had been more than five in it. If that were so— why were they lingering here so close to the edge of the Blow-Up? His feet were good enough to enable him to put some miles between himself and the desolate waste which now lay only a half mile beyond them.

“Do you think that the lizards may have added to their bag?”

Arskane shrugged. “Now that they have been warned, perhaps they have. But we need the spoil they took. Your bow is gone, but those arrowheads would be useful—”

“Useful to the extent of daring the thorns?”

“Maybe.” And Arskane fell to cross questioning him as to how much of his equipment the Beast Things had destroyed.

“Everything of value to me!” Fors’ old feeling of helpless inadequacy closed in upon him. “They ripped the Star pouch to shreds and burned my notes and may—”

“There are the arrowheads,” persisted Arskane. “Those were not burned.”

Since he seemed to mean it when he urged such an expedition Fors began to believe that the southerner had some purpose of his own in mind. He himself saw no reason to return to the lizard valley. And he was still protesting within him when they came to the top of the rise down which Arskane had gone to the rescue. Lura had refused to accompany them any farther than the edge of the Blow-Up and they had left her there pacing back and forth, her flattened ears and moving tail emphatic arguments against such foolishness.

They stood looking down at a wild scene which almost turned Fors’ stomach. He gulped and balled his puffed fingers into fists, so that the pain took his attention. The lizards might live upon the grass of the terraces but it appeared that they were also meat eaters and they were now making sure of the supply chance had brought them.

Two of the Beast Things were already but skeletons and the pack of the valley’s inhabitants were fast at work on the others, a line of laden porters tramping up to the cave entrances while their fellows below swung tiny knives with the same skill with which the martyrs had earlier wielded their sickles.

“Look there—to the left of that rock—” Although Arkane’s touch made pain shoot along the length of his arm Fors obediently looked.

There was a pile of stuff there. Fors identified the remnants of his leggings and a belt such as was worn by the Beast Things. But a glint of color just beyond the haphazard pile of loot was more interesting. It stood in a tiny hollow of the wall—three blue rods—just about a finger high—familiar-Fors’ puzzlement vanished. Those rods—they were the little figures he had brought from the museum in the Star pouch. Now they were set up—and before the feet of each was a pile of offerings!

They were gods. And with a sudden shock of illumination he knew why the lizard folk did them honor.

“Arskane! Those figures—there in that hollow—they are the ones I brought from the museum—and they are making offerings to them—worshiping them!”

The southerner rubbed his hand down his jaw in the familiar gesture which signified puzzlement. Then he fumbled in the traveling pouch at his own belt and brought out a fourth figure.

“They do it, don’t you see—because of this!” Fors indicated the small head of the carving. Although the figure was human the head was that of a hook-billed bird of prey.

“One of those figures down there has the head of a lizard—or at least it looks like a lizard!”

“So. And thus—yes—I can see it!”

Arskane started down the slope and from his lips came the hissing cry he had used before. There was a flicker of movement. Fors blinked. The workers were gone, had melted into the cover of the rocks leaving the floor of the valley deserted.

The southerner waited, with a hunter’s patience, one minute, two, before he hissed again. He was holding out between two fingers the bird-headed statue and its blue glaze was sharp and clear. Perhaps it was that which drew the lizard leaders from their cover.

They came warily, gliding around stones so that only the most intent watcher could sight them. And, Fors also saw with apprehension, they had their thorn spears with them. But Arskane was well above the line where those balls of clay had fallen. And now he put the blue figure down on the ground and retreated with long-legged strides uphill.

It was the statue which drew them. Three came together, flitting along with their peculiar scuttle. When they were within touching distance of the figure they stopped, their heads darting out at strange angles, as if to assure themselves that this was no trap-bait.

As one of them laid a paw upon the offering, Arskane moved, not toward them but in the direction of the pile of loot. He went cautiously, examining the ground by inches, paying no outward attention to the lizards. They stood frozen where they were, only their eyes following him.

Deliberately and methodically the southerner turned over what lay there. When he came back he carried Fors’ boots and what was left of the “mountaineer’s clothing, passing the lizards as if they were not there. After he had passed by the leader grabbed the blue figure and darted away around a rock, his two fellows almost treading on his tail. Arskane came up slope with the same unhurried pace but there were beads of rrioisture across his forehead and cheeks.

Fors sat down and worked the boots over his sore feet. When he got up he looked once more into the valley. The workers were still skulking in their holes but there were now four instead of three blue figures standing in the rock shrine.

The next day they started south, leaving the queer Blow-Up land well behind them. And the second day they were deep in open fields where patches of self-sown grain rippled ripely under the sun.

Fors paused, half over a stone wall, to listen. The sound he had caught was too faint and low pitched for thunder, and it kept within the boundaries of a well-deHned rhythm. “Wait!”

As Arskane stopped Fors realized where he had heard that before—it was the voice of a signal drum. And when he said so Arskane dropped down beside the stones, putting his ear to the ground. But the message ended too soon. The southerner got to his feet again, frowning.

“What—?” ventured Fors.

“That was the recall. Yes, you were right and it was a talking drum of my people and what it said is all bad. Evil comes now upon them and they must call back all spears to stand in defense of the clan—”

Arskane hesitated and Fors plunged.

“I am not a spearman, or now even a bowman. But still I wear a sword at my belt and I possess some skill in handling it. Shall we go?”

“How far?” he added another question some breathless minutes later. Arskane had taken him at his word and the steady lope which the southerner had set as their pace was easier matched by Lura’s four feet than Fors’ two.

“I can only guess. That drum was fashioned to summon across the desert country. Here it may be farther from us than it sounds.”

Twice more that day they heard the summons rumble across the distant hills. It would continue to sound at intervals, Arskane said, until all the roving scouts returned. That night the two sheltered in a grove of trees, but they did not light a fire. And before daylight they were on the trail once more.

Fors had not lost his sense of direction but this was new country, unknown to him from any account of the Star Men. The trip across the Blow-Up land had taken them so far off the territory on any map he had ever seen ±hat he was entirely lost. He began to wonder privately if he could have returned to the Eyrie as he had so blithely planned, or made that trip without retracing his way through the city. This land was wide and the known trails very, very few.

On the third day they came to the river, the same one, Fors believed, he had crossed before. It was swollen with rain and they spent the better part of the day making a raft on which to cross. The current tore them off their course for several miles before they could make the leap ashore on the opposite side.

At sunset they heard the drum again and this time the throbbing was close to thunder. Arskane seemed to relax, he had had his proof that they were heading in the right direction. But as he listened to the continued roll, his hand went to the hilt of his knife.

“Danger!” He was reading the words out of the beat. “Danger — death — walks — danger — death — in — the — night—”

“It says that?”

He nodded. “The drum talk. But never before have I heard it speak those words. I tell you, brother, this is no common danger which sets our drums to such warnings. Listen!”

Arskane’s upheld hand was not neded for Fors had caught the other sound before his companion had spoken. That light tap-tap was an answer, it was less carrying that the clan signal, but it was clear enough.

And again Arskane read the message: “Uran here-coming—That is Uran of the Swift Arm, the leader of our scouts. He ventured west as I came north at the faring forth. And—”

Once more the lighter sound of a scout’s drum interrupted him.

“Balakan comes, Balakan comes. Now,” Arskane moistened his lips, “there remains only Noraton who has not replied. Noraton—and I who cannot!”

But, though they waited tensely for long minutes, there was no other reply. Instead, after the period of silence, the clan signal broke again, to roll across the open fields, continuing so at intervals through the night.

They paused only to eat at dawn, keeping to the steady trot. But now the drum was silent and Fors thought that quiet ominous. He did not ask questions. Arskane’s scowl was now permanent and he pressed on almost as if he had forgotten those who ran with him.

For smoother footing they took to one of the Old Ones’ roads which went in the right direction and when it turned again moved into a game trail, splashing through a brook Lura took with a single bound. Deer flashed white tails and were gone. And now Fors saw something else. Black shapes wheeled across the sky. As he watched one broke away and drifted to earth. He caught at Arskane’s swinging arm.

“The death birds!” He dragged the southerner to a stop. Where the death birds fed there was always trouble.