The Game of Stars and Comets (14 page)

Yet there was no pause in the boom of drum or drums, no answering move in the shadows to indicate that the drummer was aware of strangers. And Kade knew that he must investigate the source from which that beat came.

He dismounted from the mare, tethered her by her reins, sure her sisters would not drift too far away. Then, trusting in the fighting powers of the stallion, Kade chose to ride the stud on, drawn by that rolling sound.

Luckily a measure of light still held. The horse struck into an easy canter which took them out over a stretch of bare earth pocked with scrubby plants, an abrupt contrast to the more luxuriant foliage of the upper slope. They came into a draw gouged out by some seasonal water gush but now dry, firm and smooth enough to ape a leveled road. The stallion's canter lengthened into a gallop. The horse shied as one of the long-legged wingless birds erupted from the right. But when the Klorian creature ran on straight ahead, Kade's mount appeared to accept that burst of speed from its strange racing companion as a goad and the stride of those powerful legs lengthened once again.

The drums were loud now, a continuous, thunderous roll. And perhaps they acted upon the horse with some of the same impact of which Kade was himself aware. But the man kept his head and tried to control his mount as a glow ahead told him he must be approaching the site of activity.

Running yards ahead of the stallion the bird uttered a mewling cry, gave a contorted sidewise leap which warned Kade. He loosened rein again, kicked the stallion into a bound, flattened himself as close as he could to the horse's back. There had been a shadow crouched in the dry water course, a figure which arose in a spring. The horse leaped and that shadow fell away with a cry of terror.

Now when Kade pulled at the reins he found that the horse was past obedience. Given time he might bring the stallion back under control, but for a time the Terran could only keep his seat and wait for this fury to run itself out.

Kade thrust his knees under the loose foreband of the pad, riding as had his ancestors during the excitement of a buffalo hunt on a world half the galaxy away, reasonably sure he would not lose his seat. As horse and rider rounded a curve in the stream bed, the glow brightened, shooting heavenward in two pillars of light.

Without his rider's urging, the stallion began now to curb his headlong rush as he drew closer to the fires, coming at last to an abrupt halt. As the horse reared, voicing a tearing scream, Kade knew his precautions against being thrown had been well taken.

And he guessed in part what might lie ahead for he would never forget that stench, a whiff of which came nauseous and pungent through the softer odor of smoke and burning wood. Somewhere behind the hazy gleam of those twin fires was a susti, either alive, or very recently dead.

At first those fires dazzled his eyes. Then, as the stallion advanced in an odd, sidling way, with suspicion and wariness in every move, the Terran caught the weird scene in its entirety.

Here some freak of nature had hollowed an almost perfect horseshoe-shaped amphitheater, three slopes rising from a bare floor of sand, the fourth open to the gorge down which Kade had come.

An audience filled those slopes, movement pulsated around the bend of the horseshoe with here and there a down-covered Ikkinni face brought into momentary sharpness as the flame pillars wavered. Yes, there was an audience; more natives than Kade had ever seen gathered in one place before. He pulled at the reins, to discover that the stallion would still not obey. Unless he dismounted he was going to be carried on into the channel of light between the fires.

Kade drew the bone knife, knowing the uselessness of that weapon against the spears which would meet him now.

With rein and voice he appealed to the stallion, hopelessly. For the horse was still sidling ahead, hooves moving in a dance of small advances, smaller retreats. Then the arched neck went down and a front hoof tore up a fountain of gravelly sand.

A figure moved at a point midway between the fires but still yards away from the two in the gorge. And Kade saw the focus of this entire assemblage.

An Ikkinni stood there, equipped with net and spear, though he held the net in his hands and the spear lay on the earth with one of his feet set upon its shaft. Kade's attention, caught by the wink of fire on that weapon's point, located a round ring of cord about the ankle of the waiting native; something he remembered well. This was a prisoner, his feet bound even as Kade's had been in the deserted camp. A captive and yet armed with the weapons of his people, tethered by his feet—

And the smell of susti!

The stallion advanced, his head still held at an awkwardly low angle, as if he were nosing out a trail which existed a foot or so above ground level. The steps the horse took were small, mincing, and Kade felt the roll of muscle between his own knees, sensed the power for attack building up there.

It was then that horse and rider must have been sighted for the first time. A cry, eerie, piercing, sounded from some point high up on the slope to Kade's left. He heard a chorus of answering hoots from the other half-seen sections of the amphitheater. The Ikkinni prisoner turned, crouching, and Kade saw him full face. Nor was he in the least surprised to see that the captive was Dokital.

How the former post slave had come here Kade did not know, but that he had been set in his present position for the amusement or edification of enemies of his own species was apparent. And the nature of the peril to be faced was more evident with every breath of tainted air which Kade drew.

Nor did the Terran doubt that the animal he bestrode had indeed been conditioned, either by nature or by off-world techniques, to seek out and attack the source of such a stench, a living susti.

The stallion continued his seemingly awkward advance toward Dokital. And the cries which had heralded the appearance of horse and rider abruptly died away. Nor did any spectator move to interfere with either Kade or his mount. Perhaps, thought the Terran savagely, taking fresh grip on his wholly inadequate bone knife with fingers which were sweat-sticky, they had settled to watch their entertainment increased threefold.

Dokital, after his first startled glance at the newcomers, half-turned from them again, his whole stance betraying preparation for action as he stared beyond the fires to the rounded curve of the horseshoe, plainly expecting danger from that direction.

The stallion was well into the firelight and Kade debated as to the wisdom of dismounting. He had seen the animal in successful action against one of the weird bat-things, and the weight of a rider might handicap the four-legged fighter. Loosening his knees from the pad, he leaned forward and stripped hackamore and reins from the horse's head. The head was up now, nostrils distended, small flecks of foam showing in frothy patches about the angle of the half open jaw.

Kade leaped down, landing a stride's distance from Dokital. The Ikkinni's right hand, fingers grasping the net ready for a cast, made a small gesture which the Terran could interpret neither as a welcome nor a refusal of aid, merely recognition.

Why he chose to stand with the native who by all evidence had left him helpless to face the same danger they were about to meet here, Kade could not have explained. Maybe it was that having been brought here by the stallion, manifestly eager for the coming fight, his warrior ancestors would not allow him any retreat.

The stallion halted, turned as the two men, to face the same curve of earth and stone. Now Kade could make out a barricade, a crosshatch of timber stakes. As that moved, the horse screamed such a vocal defiance as was echoed in ear-shattering sound from the walls of the bowl. Dokital crouched, the net coiled at his hampered feet. Kade, breathing faster, held his knife in readiness. With the three of them to face at once, one susti should be partly at a disadvantage.

The crude door was jerking upward, to display a dark hole, ragged enough about the edges to suggest a natural mountain cave. And the stench was now a choking wave of corruption, setting Kade to gagging.

How long would they have to wait? He remembered those dragging minutes back at the camp before the attack when he had been able to see his foe. Here at least, they knew the direction from which attack would come. Yet nothing save that overpowering odor had issued from the cave hole.

The drums, which had died to nothing since Kade's entrance, broke out in a wild beat. They must be stationed, the Terran thought, near the top of the amphitheater. The heavier roll on his left was balanced by a quick staccato tapping from the right. And that din would now drown out even the stallion's cries.

But the horse did not neigh, no longer tossed his head. He was as intent upon that hole as a feline might be at the hiding place of legitimate prey.

Maybe the beat of drum was acting as either an irritant or a summons. For the susti flashed out of hiding, not in the clumsy, wing-furled crawl with which its fellow had approached Kade, but in a leap which bore it into the air, wings beating.

For a startled second Kade believed the creature was more intent upon gaining the freedom of the night skies, than upon attacking its intended victim or victims. But if the susti was a captive, it was also trained in its role. For though that first flight carried it past the three in the arena, on to the throat of the gorge, it banked widely, its wings momentarily blotting out the streaming columns of firelight, to fly back.

The three were saved only by the peculiarity of the enemy's hunting habits. Had it roved falconlike, pouncing on its prey from aloft, horse and men might have had little chance. But the susti had to kill such large opponents on the ground. So the glide of its return brought it down in a swoop as it headed for the horse. Perhaps it had fought with tethered Ikkinni sacrifices before and had the rudimentary intelligence to choose from the three the prey which appeared the easiest to subdue.

Only the stallion whirled with the agility of a veteran warrior and the susti missed its strike, while the hooves swung until one thudded against a leather wing, knocking the flyer off course. Those wings tried to beat, to raise the heavy body. Kade had to leap to avoid the sweep of one threshing surface.

Then the susti came to earth behind them, and horse and men turned to face the thoroughly enraged creature.

Dokital's net lashed out
not in a cast to entangle the susti—he could not have managed such a feat alone—but to cut whip fashion across that pointed snout, flick punishment at the bulbous eyes. The thing squealed—the thin shriek partially drowned by the thunder of the drums and yet piercing enough to reach their ears through the din—gave way a step or two, an advantage the bound Ikkinni could not follow up.

But the stallion was not tied, nor was Kade. And now the Terran stooped, twisted the spear from Dokital's foothold before the native could stop him. With that in one hand and his knife in the other he circled to the right, trying to flank the creature.

And the horse, as if the animal caught a thought from the man, trotted back, came around to get behind the susti. One man against that horror would have had little chance, but the three who faced it now reduced the odds drastically.

Dokital lashed again, coming to the end of his ankle straps, striving to keep the susti occupied, occupied and grounded where they had the better of the battlefield. The beat of the drums reached a wild crescendo, deafening the men in the arena. Kade saw the stallion's open mouth, knew the horse was screaming, yet he could hear nothing of that equine rage. And the pounding beat was making him dizzy, attacking him with snaps of vertigo.

As yet the Terran saw no chance for a telling thrust against the susti. The creature used its wings as shields, holding him at a distance. And a spear's throw under one of those flapping barriers was beyond his skill. Kade watched for the opportunity to stab into some part of that obscene body, but the stallion went into action.

Using the same tactics followed before with such excellent results, the horse came up behind the susti and struck out, aiming for the hunched back of the creature. But, as if it had sensed that onslaught, the bat-thing clapped wings and those sharp-shoed weapons struck fruitlessly against leather edges, sliding off without harm. As the stallion went to his knees, Kade rushed in, the haft of the spear braced between arm and ribs—thrusting with all the strength of his body to ram the point home.

He felt the queer sensation of the head tearing into flesh and then a blow struck him, flattening him to the ground. Dazed, gasping for breath, he watched one of those hooked-wing claws curl over him, and brought up his knife hand in feeble defense.

There was no cutting edge on that improvised dagger, it had been made to stab. And somehow he held it point up against that wing paw as it beat down. The needle tip he had ground into being skewed between fine bones, the force of that blow drove his own hand back against his chest with crushing brutality. But the wing snapped up and Kade rolled free.

Dokital had enmeshed one wing and the darting head of the susti in the widest folds of his net, and was bent almost bow-shaped as he fought to hold fast. Kade got to the other side, caught the straining cords. In the firelight they could see the dance of the spear haft in the side of the threshing creature. But the wing which was free beat wildly, its wounded claw-paw grabbing for the two men.

The horse charged, head down, mouth wide open, using teeth against the hide of the thing's back, tearing loose both pelt and flesh. And in a second rush he used hooves once again, this time landing squarely on the chosen goal between the hunched shoulders.

So driven to the ground the susti pulled Kade with it, tore the net from Dokital's hold. However, for the men, the fight was over. Brought shoulder to shoulder by the susti's struggles they half supported each other as the stallion, with the lightning swift action of his kind, smashed the thing as he had smashed its fellow, days earlier. And handicapped by its wounds the Klorian terror was now an easy kill.