Boker indicated the ship. "In there. We have trouble, Flay. The ship has broken her intestines. Look." He reached over and with Kettrick's help exhibited a heavy socketed bar that had been leaning against the tripod gear. One end was snapped off. "Can you forge us a thing like this? If not, we are your guests till the next ship comes."
Flay sat silent for a moment, considering the bar. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. The thick beard masked his face and his eyes were blank and pale, narrowed under heavy brows.
"Have you the missing piece?" he said at last.
"We have." Kettrick held it up. He had broken it off himself with a sledge. They did not really need the bar. They had two more like it in stores. It had seemed a good idea to make Flay think they did need it, just in case.
"Our forges," said Flay, "are second to none. We will make you a bar."
"Good," said Kettrick. "How soon?"
"A week," said Flay. "Are you in great haste?"
"Haste?" said Boker. "In this tub?" he laughed.
Kettrick said, "A week is fine. It will take us at least that long to fix the damage this did when it broke."
"Then," said Flay, "let us go into the city."
He beckoned forward two led beasts. While Kettrick and Boker mounted, other men strapped the broken bar to a third animal. Kettrick spoke briefly to Chai and she came up close beside his mount, frightening it into what was almost animation. The cavalacade went thumpeting off toward the hills.
The "city" lay in a sheltered valley. Compared to Ree Darva it was not much, either in size or beauty. But it had its own uniqueness. It was the only city on a whole planet, just as Flay's people were the only population.
Thawyn had been a dying world for a long, long time, and throughout the centuries her peoples had been cramped into smaller and smaller areas, fighting for survival there, fighting for warmth and arable land. Long ago the weak, the lazy, the tender-minded, the numerically or militarily inadequate, had either perished or taken their remnants thankfully to other planets when the advent of Darvan ships gave them that literally heavensent alternative.
Flay's people had held out, and now they had a planet all their own. Firgals, they called themselves, meaning in their own tongue The Ultimate Ones, and they intended to ride their world proudly to its end, refusing to leave the sacred soil where their ancestors were buried, and whence their seed was sprung.
From the crest of the hill above the town it was possible to see why they were so resolute about staying.
The lines of the opening valley guided the eye onward and outward until presently it was lost in the vastness of grasslands that rolled on to the horizon, red-gold under the huge red sun. In the spring they were green like a green ocean. Great herds of animals grazed on this richness. Here and there were lines of trees along a river bed, or isolated clumps that gave the cattle shelter. The shadowy, whale humps of distant ridges rose out of the grass and away behind them rose the smoke of little hamlets or scattered steadings. At the farthest reach of vision, hanging like dreams in the dusky sky, were the high peaks of mountains wrapped in eternal snow.
They stopped on the crest of the hill, to look over over this their world, and Flay looked up at the old red sun as a man looks at his father.
"He will last out my time," said Flay, "and the time of my youngest children's grandchildren, and they tell me perhaps a thousand or two years beyond. Why should a man worry longer than that?"
"Why, indeed?" said Kettrick, and they rode down into the city.
The houses were more like warrens of stone, some of them sunk into the ground like windowed storm cellars, others one or two or even three stories high, all huddled together as though for warmth and mutual assistance against snow and bitter winds, clambering in rows up and down the hills, thrusting their backsides into the slopes behind them. Chimneys poured up smoke. The most sheltered places were not for human habitation but for winter pens and cave shelters for stock. Shaggy creatures of various breeds and sizes clattered or rooted about in the straggling lanes. There were forges and tanneries, industries of various sorts geared to the materials and the needs at hand. It was the Firgals' boast that they were completely self-sufficient.
"We do not need the traders," Flay had told Kettrick on his first landing here. "We would live just as well if none of you ever came again." Kettrick had found that this was true, and he thought they were a very wise people.
The wisdom of their insistence on staying here was another matter, but that was their own business. And perhaps it was not as foolish as it seemed. Here they had the pick of what there was. On another world, they would have to fit themselves to what was left after others had already settled their order of dominance. Kettrick thought that any planet that took the Firgals in would live to regret its generosity.
People passing in the streets looked at Kettrick and Boker with polite unconcern. Meanwhile, Kettrick was chafing with impatience, sweating to ask Flay whether the last ship had been Seri's, and resolutely forcing himself to silence. These were not the little butterfly people of Gurra. One wrong word could finish Grellah's voyage right here and now.
Of course the Firgals might not be involved at all with Seri and the Doomstar. But Kettrick thought there had been an odd note to Flay's question about their being in a hurry.
The cavalcade began to break up. The parts of the broken bar were taken off to one of the forges. Flay halted in front of a three-storey dwelling, one of a long rambling line, its back wall melting into the hill behind it. They dismounted and went inside.
The room within was low and smoke-smelling, the blackened roof beams close over Kettrick's head. Low doorways led into other chambers at the back and at either end, and on to still other chambers. Flay's clan inhabited a considerable stretch of housing, and it seemed to Kettrick that the clan had grown since he had been here last.
Flay's brawny wives and daughters and daughters-in-law and their innumerable young swarmed about busily. From one room came the mingled clacking of looms and female tongues. In another place a group of youngsters were carding wool, making a game out of it with a singsong chant and much laughter, and another group, slightly older and stronger, took turns thumping at a churn. The one who first made butter got a special reward, and the children kept shouting, "Let me, it's my turn!" The older boys and the men were out with the stock now, or gathering fuel, or working in the forges or the tannery or some other industry. Four old women sat by a fireplace spinning yarn, their dark faces strong as weathered wood, their voices cheerful. Only the very little children tumbled about the floors like puppies with nothing to do.
Flay steered the two outlanders through the rooms and up a narrow flight of stairs that turned upon itself at right angles, requiring some nimble footwork. The upper levels were quieter. In a room with little shuttered windows Flay motioned them to seats in comfortable hide-frame chairs, and set a tall clay bottle and cups before them on a table.
Kettrick resisted the impulse to gulp down the fiery liquor. It was not proper manners. Even so, the warming sips steadied his nerves. The Firgals didn't fool around with effete wines and the like. They lived a hard life in a hard world, and when they wanted a drink they wanted a drink. They made the best whiskey in the Cluster, and kept it, being too short on grains for export.
"Well," said Flay, "and welcome." He filled their cups again and then said quite casually, "Seri didn't tell us you were back, Johnny."
Kettrick made a show of being surprised. "Seri? Seri Otku, who used to be my partner? Has he been here?"
"Only a day and a half ago."
"Well," said Kettrick, "if that isn't a strange coincidence!" He was afraid to pick up his cup, much as he wanted the drink. He was afraid his hand would shake.