The Horse Barbarians tds-3 Read online

  “I know,” Clon said, standing slowly. He was a hulking, burly man with a thick and protruding brow ridge. The weight of this bony ledge must have been balanced by even thicker bone in the skull behind, leaving room for only the most minuscule of brain cavities. His reflexes were excellent, undoubtedly short-circuited in his spinal column like some contemporary dinosaur, but any thoughts that had to penetrate his ossified cranium emerged only with the most immense difliculty. He was the last person Jason expected to answer.

  “I know,” Clon repeated. “We kill them all. Then they don’t bothei us.”

  “Thanks for the suggestion,” Jason said calmly. “Your chair’s righi behind you, that’s it. Your suggestion is a sound Pyrran one, Pyrran also in the fact that you want to apply it to a second planet even thougb it failed on the first one. Attractive as it may look, we shall not indulgc in genocide. We shall use our intelligence to solve this problem, fbi our teeth. We are trying to open this world up, not close it forever What I propose is an open camp, the opposite of the armed laager th John Company men built. If we are careful, and watch the surrounding countryside carefully, we should not be taken by surprise. My hope is that we will be able to contact the locals and find out what they have against miners or off-worlders, and then try to change their minds. If anyone has a better suggestion fot a plan of action, let me know now. Otherwise, we land as close to the original site as we can and wait for contact. Our eyes are open, we know what happened to the first expedition, so we will be very careful that it doesn’t happen to us.”

  Finding the original mine site was very easy. A year’s slow growth of the sparse vegetation had not been enough to obscure the burned scar on the landscape. The abandoned heavy equipment showed clearly on the magnetometer, and the Pugnacious sank to the ground close by. From above, the rolling steppe had appeared to be empty of life, and it looked even more so once they were down. Jason stood in the open airlock and shivered as the first blast of dry, frigid air hit him, the grass rustling to its passing, while grains of sand hissed against the metal of the hull. He had planned to be first out, but Rhes happened to knock against him as Kerk came up so that the gray-haired Pyrran slipped by and leaped to the ground.

  “A lightweight planet,” he said as he turned slowly, his eyes never still. “Can’t be over x G. Like floating, after Pyrrus.”.

  “It’s closer to i. 5G,” Jason said, following him out just as warily. “But anything is better than 2G.”

  The first landing party, ten men in all, emerged from the ship and carefully surveyed the area. They stayed close enough to be able to call to one another, yet not so close that they blocked each other’s vision or field of fire. Their guns stayed in their power holsters and they walked slowly, apparently indifferent to the frigid wind and blown sand that reddened Jason’s skin and made his eyes water. In their own, strictly Pyrran way, they were enjoying themselves after the forced relaxation of the voyage.

  “Something moving 200 meters to the southeast,” Meta’s voice spoke in their earphones. She was one of the observers at the viewports in the ship above.

  They spun and crouched, ready for anything. The undulating plain still appeared to be empty, but there was a sudden hissing as an arrow arced toward Kerk’s chest. His gun sprang into his hand and he shot it from the air as calmly and efficiently as he would have dispatched an attacking stingwing. Another arrow flashed toward them and Rhes stepped aside so that it missed him. They all waited, alert, to see what would happen next.

  An attack, Jason thought, or is it just a diversion? It can’t be possible so soon after our arrival, that any kind of concerted attack could be launched. Yet, why not?

  His gun jumped into his hand and he started to wheel about just as hard pain slammed into his head. He had no awareness of falling, just a sudden and complete blackness.

  4

  Jason did not enjoy being unconscious. A red, cloying pain engulfed him and, barely rational, he had the feeling that, if he could only wake up all the way, he could take care of everything. For some reason he could not understand, his head was rocking back and forth, adding immeasurably to the agony, and he kept wishing it would stop, but it did not.

  After what must have been a very long time, he realized that, when he was feeling the pain, he must be conscious, or very close to it, and he should use these periods most advantageously. His arms were secured in some manner, he could feel that even if he could not see them, but they still had some degree of movement. The bulk of the power holster was there, pressed between his arm and his side, but the gun would not leap into his hand. His groping fingers eventually found out why when they contacted the ragged end of the cable that connected the gun with the holster.

  His shattered thoughts groped for understanding with the same disconnected numbness as had his fingers. Something had happened to him; someone, not something, had hit him. Taken his gun away. What else? Why couldn’t he see anything? Anything other than a diffuse redness when he tried to open his eyes. What else was gone? His equipment belt, surely. His fingers fumbled back and forth at his waist but could not find it.

  They touched something. In its separate holder the medildt still remained on the back of his hip. Careful not to hit the release button, if it slipped out of his hand, it was gone, he pressed the heel of his hand up against the device until his flesh contacted the actuating probe. The analyzer buzzed distantly and he never felt the stab of the hypodermic needles through the all-pervading agony in his head. Then the drug took effect and the pain began to seep away.

  Without the overriding presence of the pain, be could concentrate that small remaining part of his cOnsciousness on the problem of his eyes. They could not be opened: something was sealing them shut. Something that might or might not be blood. Something that probably was blood considering the condition of his head, and he smiled at his success in completing this complicated line of thought.

  Concentrate on one eye. Concentrate on right eye. Squeeze tight shut until it hurt, pull with lids to open. Squeeze shut again. It worked, the pulling, squeezing, tears, dissolving, and he felt the lids start to part stickily.

  The white-burning sun shone directly into his eye and he had to blink and look away. He was moving backward across the plains, a jarring and uneven ride, and there was something like a grid not too far from his face. The sun touched the horizon. That was important, he kept telling himself, to remember that the sun touched the horizon directly behind him, or perhaps a little bit to the right.

  Bight. Setting. A little to the right. The medikit’s drugs and the traumatic shock were pushing him under again. But not yet. Setting. Behind. To the right.

  When the last white glimmer dropped behind the horizon, he closed the tortured eye and this time welcomed unconsciousness.

  The sharp pain in his side made a far stronger impression and Jason rolled away from it, trying to scramble to his feet at the same time. Something hard and unyielding bruised his back and he dropped onto all fours. It was time to open his eyes, he decided, and he brushed at his sealed eyelids and managed to unglue them. One look convinced him that he had been far happier with them shut, but it was too late for that now.

  The voice belonged to a big, burly man who clutched a two-meterlong lance, with which he had been prodding Jason’s ribs. When he saw that Jason was sitting up with his eyes open, he pulled back the lance and leaned on it, examining his captive. Jason understood their relative positions when he realized that he was in a bell-shaped cage of iron bars, the top of which just cleared his head when he was sitting down. He leaned against the bars and studied his captor.

  He was a warrior, that was clear, arrogant and self-assured, from the fanged animal skull that decorated the top of his padded helm to the needle-sharp prickspurs on the heels of his knee-high boots. A molded breastplate, apparently made of the same kind of material as his helm, covered the upper half of his body and was painted in garish designs around the central figure of an unidentifiable animal. In addition to th
e lance, the man had an efficient-looking short sword slung, without scabbard, through a thong on his belt. His skin was tanned and wind-burned, glistening with some oily substance and, standing upwind of Jason, he exuded a rich and unwashed animal odor.

  “I” the warrior shouted, shaking the lance in Jason’s direction.

  “That’s a pretty poor excuse for a language!” Jason shouted back.

  “I” the man answered, in a shriller voice this time, accompanied with sharp clicking sounds.

  “And that one is not much better.”

  The man cleared his throat and spat in Jason’s general direction. “Bowab you,” he said, “you can speak the in-between tongue?”

  “Now that’s more like it. A broken-down and corrupt form of standard English. Probably used as some sort of second language. I suppose that we’ll never know who originally settled this planet, but one thing is certain, they spoke English. During the Breakdown, when communication was cut off between all the planets, this fine world slipped down into dog-eat-dog barbarism and must have generated a lot of local dialects. But at least they kept the memory of English, debased though it is, as a common language among the tribes. It’s just a matter of speaking it badly enough to be understood.”

  “What you say?” the warrior growled, shaking his head over Jason’s incomprehensible burble of words.

  Jason tapped his chest and said, “Sure, me speak in, between tongue just as good as you speak in, between tongue.”

  This apparently satisfied the warrior because he turned and pushed his way through the throng. For the first time, Jason had a chance to examine the passing men who had just been a blur in the background before. All males, and all warriors, dressed in numerous variations on a single theme. High boots, swords, half armor and helms, spears and short bows decorated in weird and colorful patterns. Beyond them and on all sides were rounded structures colored the same yellowish gray as the sparse grass that covered the plains. Something moved through the crowd, and the men gave way to a swaying beast and rider. Jason recognized the creature from the description given by the survivors of the massacre, of the mounts that had been ridden during the attack.

  It was homelike in many ways, yet twice as big as any horse, and covered with shaggy fur. The creature’s head had an equine appearance, but it was disproportionately tiny and set at the end of a moderately long neck. It had long limbs, especially the forelegs, which were decidedly longer than the hind legs, so that its back sloped downward from the withers to the rump, terminating in a tint, fficking tail. The strong, thick toes on each foot had sharp claws that dug into the ground as the beast paced by, guided by the rider who sat just behind the forelimbs at the highest point on the humped back.

  A harsh blast on a metallic horn drew Jason’s attention and he turned to see a compact group of men striding toward his cage. Three soldiers with lowered lances led the way, followed by another with a dangling standard of some kind on a pole. Warriors with drawn swords walked alertly, surrounding the two central figures. One of them was the lancejabber who had prodded Jason to life. The other, a head taller than his companions, had a golden helm and breastplate inset with jewels, while curling horns sprouted from both sides of his helm.

  He had more than that, Jason saw when he approached the cage. The look of the hawk, or a great jungle cat secure in his rule. This man was the leader and he knew it, accepted it automatically. He, a warrior, leader of warriors. His right hand rested on the pommel of his bejeweled but efficient-looking sword while he stroked the sweep of his great red mustachios with the scarred knuckles of his left hand. He stopped close to the bars and stared imperiously at Jason, who tried, but failed, to return the other’s gaze with the same intensity. His cramped position inside the cage and his battered, scruffy appearance did not help his morale.

  “Grovel before Temuchin,” one of the soldiers ordered, and buried the butt end of his lance in the pit of Jason’s stomach.

  It might have been easier to grovel, but Jason, bent double with the pain, kept his head up and his eyes fixed on the other.

  “Where are you from?” Temuchin asked, his voice so used to command that Jason found himself answering at once.

  “From far away, a place you do not know.”

  “Another world?”

  “Yes. Do you know about other worlds?”

  “Only from the songs of the jongleurs. Until the first ship came down, I did not think they were true. They are.”

  He snapped his fingers and one of the men handed him a blackened and twisted recoilless rifle. “Can you make this spout fire again?” he asked.

  “No.” It must have been one of the weapons of the first expedition.

  “What about this?” Temuchin held up Jason’s own gun, its cable dangling where it had been torn from his power holster.

  “I don’t know.” Jason was just as calm as the other. Let him just get his hands on the gun. “I will have to look at it closely.”

  “Burn this one, too,” Temuchin said, throwing the gun aside. ‘Their weapons must be destroyed by fire. Now tell me at once, other-world man, why do you come here?”

  He’d make a good poker player, Jason thought. I can’t read his cards and he knows all of mine. Then what should I tell him? Why not the truth?

  “My people want to take metal from the ground,” he said aloud. “We harm no one, we will even pay—”

  “No.” There was a flat finality to the sound. Temuchin turned away.

  “Wait, you haven’t heard everything.”

  “It is enough,” he said, halting for a moment and speaking over his shoulder. “You will dig and there will be buildings. Buildings make a city and there will be fences. The plains are always open.” And then he added in the same flat voice.

  “Kill him.”

  As the band of men turned. to follow Temuchin, the standard-bearer passed in front of the cage. His pole was topped with a human skull and Jason saw that the banner itself was made up of string after string of human thumbs, mummified and dry, knotted together on thongs.

  “Wait!” Jason shouted at their retreating backs. “Let me explain. You can’t just do this—”

  But, of course, he could. A squad of soldiers surrounded the cage and one of them bent underneath it and there was the rattling of chains. Jason cowered back as the entire cage swung up on creaking hinges, and he clutched at the bars as the soldiers reached for him.

  He sprang over them, kicking one in the face as he went by and crashed into the soldiers beyond. The results were a foregone conclusion, but he made the most of the occasion. One soldier lay sprawled on the ground and another sat up holding his head when the rest carried Jason away. He cursed them, in six different languages, even though his words had as much effect on the stolid, expressionless men as had his blows.

  “How far did you travel to reach this planet?” someone asked.

  “Ekinortul” Jason mumbled, spitting out blood and the chipped corner of a tooth.

  “What is your home world like? Much as this one? Hotter or colder?” Jason, being carried face down, twisted his head around to look at his questioner, a gray-haired man in ragged leather garments that had once been dyed yellow and green. A tall, sleepy-eyed youth stumbled after

  him dressed in the same motley, though his were not so completely obscured by grime.

  “You know so many things,” the old man pleaded, “so you must tell me something.”

  The soldiers pushed the two men away before Jason could oblige by telling him some of the really pithy things that came to mind. With so many men holding him, he was completely helpless when they backed him against a thick iron pole set firmly in the ground and tore at his clothing. The metalcloth and fasteners resisted their fingers until one of them produced a dagger and sawed through the material, ignoring the fact that he was slicing Jason’s skin at the same time. When his clothing had been pulled open to his waist, Jason was bleeding from a dozen cuts and was groggy from the mauling he had taken. He was pushed
to the ground and a leather rope lashed around his wrists. Then the soldiers went away.