“You have had good hunting!” the Terran congratulated him.
“No time – or hunting – would have been better. The Butchers are foolish – few horses are left to them now – but still they do not try to round them up –” Gorgol replied before he used his hands for the purpose of aiding the injured man.
With the Norbie to take half the burden, the three covered the rest of the distance to the floor of the valley in better time. The horses, too exhausted to graze, stood with drooping heads, while Rain cantered up, full of interest, to inspect the newcomers. Beside the overdriven trio the stallion was a fine sight as he stood, pawing at the sod with one forehoof, the wind pulling at his red mane and forelock.
“That – is – all – horse!” The battered stranger had come to a halt, half-braced against his supporters, but the eyes in his pulped face were all for Rain.
Think you can stick on him?” questioned Storm. “Sorry, fella, but we’ll have to keep moving for a while.”
“Can – try –”
Together Norbie and Terran boosted their rescued man up on the nervous stallion. He tried to crook his fingers into the mane for a hold and failed. And Storm, seeing for the first time the condition of those fingers, snapped a few sharp and biting words in the native tongues of at least two worlds.
There was a ghost of an answering laugh from the other. “All that and more,” he mouthed. They play pretty rough, those Xiks of yours, Terran. Once – a long time ago – I thought I was tough –”
He slumped so suddenly that Storm could not have saved him from falling off Rain’s back. But the Norbie moved more quickly.
“He is hurt –”
Storm did not need to be told that. That way –” he pointed.
“Beyond the mound where Dagotag and the others lie – a cave in the cliff wall –”
Gorgol nodded, steadying the stranger’s now limp body while Storm went ahead, Rain obediently following him.
They located the cave and Storm left the stranger with the Norbie and Hing, then rode back to collect their supplies. On the return trip he was accompanied by Surra and hazed before him the horses from the other valley, knowing that the two mares and the yearling colt would be protected by Rain. And with the stallion alert they would not stray too far from the new camp after they recovered their normal strength.
Gorgol met him at the cave entrance with news he had not expected – which a week earlier would have been exciting.
This Sealed Cave once.” Taking Storm by the arm, the native drew him farther in to point out the unmistakable marks of tools on roof and walls. He waved his hand toward the darkness beyond. “Hidden place – go far in –”
Would the Norbie refuse to stay here now, Storm wondered wearily. The Terran was too exhausted himself to care. Knowing that if he so much as sat down he would not be able to fight off sleep, Storm packed in the supplies and then went to look at the stranger. Stretched out on the floor of the cave, his head pillowed on a blanket roll, the Arzoran seemed to have shrunk in a curious way. His bruised face rested against the blanket, his breath caught a little now and then as if he were a child who had cried himself to sleep.
Storm sent Gorgol for water to be boiled over the fire the native had built, and laid out the supplies from the aid kit. Then delicately, with all the gentleness he could muster, he went to work, first to wash away the blood from those battered features, and then to assess the rest of the stranger’s injuries. The other moaned once or twice under the Terran’s ministrations, but he did not come to full consciousness.
At the end of a good half-hour’s work Storm drew a deep breath of relief. Judging by Xik standards, they had hardly started to use their unpleasant methods of breaking a prisoner. It would be several days before the stranger would have full use of his hands, the lash weals on his back and shoulders would also be tender at least that long, and his face would display a rainbow-coloured mask for some time. But there were no bones broken, no disabling wounds.
Leaving his patient as comfortable as possible, Storm went down to the lake, stripped, washed from head to foot, coming back to roll up in a blanket and sleep with the complete surrender of sodden exhaustion.
A tantalizing smell pulled him at last out of the mazes of a dream in which he ran across gradually rising mountains in pursuit of an Xik ship that, oddly enough, fled on human legs and twice turned to look at him with the face of Brad Quade. And he sat up to see Gorgol toasting grass hens on peeled spits over a fire. The process was watched with close attention by a mixed audience of Hing, Surra, and the stranger, now very much aware of his surroundings and sitting up backed by a brace of saddle pad and supply boxes.
Outside it was night, but they saw little of that save a patch of sky framing a single star, for the barrier once left by the landslip had been partly restored to mask their camp from anyone who did not have Baku’s powers of elevation. And Baku, as if Storm’s thought had once more summoned her, stirred now on a perch on the top of that barrier where she sat staring out on the valley.
But it was the rescued stranger who drew most of Storm’s attention. He had been too tired, too absorbed in the task at hand when he had worked over the other, to really look objectively at the man whose wounds he tended. Now, in spite of the bruises, the bandages and the battering, he noted something that brought him upright, betraying surprise as much as Hosteen Storm could ever register it.
Because beneath the bruises, the bandages, the temporary alterations left by Xik treatment, Storm knew those features. He was facing now not just one of his own general human kind, but a man – a very young man – of his own race! Somehow – by some strange juggling of fate – he was confronting across this dusky cave another of the Dineh.
And the other’s eyes, the only part of him that was not Dineh – those startling blue eyes – were focused back on the Terran with the same unwavering look of complete amazement. Then the swollen lips moved and that other asked his question first:
“Who, in the name of Seven Ringed Thunders, are you?”
“Hosteen Storm – I am Terran –” He repeated his former self-introduction absently.
The other raised a bandaged hand clumsily to his own jaw and winced as it touched the swelling there.
“You won’t believe this, fella,” he said apologetically. “But before I took this workin’ over, you an” I looked somethin’ alike!”
“You are of the Dineh –” Storm slipped into the tongue of his boyhood. “How did you come here?”
The other appeared to be listening intently, but when Storm was finished, he shook his head slowly.
“Sorry – that’s not my talk. I still don’t see how I got me a part-twin on Terra. Nor how he turned up to help pull me out of that mess back there. Enough to make you think the smoke drinkers know what they’re talkin’ about when they say dreams are real –”
“You are —?” Storm, a little deflated by the other’s refusal to acknowledge a common speech, asked in a sharper tone.
“Sorry – there’s no mystery about that. I’m Logan Quade.”
Storm got up, the firelight touching to life the necklace on his breast, the ketoh on his wrist as he moved. He did not know, and would not have cared, what an imposing picture he made at that moment. Nor could he guess how the eagerness mirrored in his face a moment earlier had been wiped away, to leave his features set and cold.
“Logan – Quade –” he repeated without accent, evenly. “I have heard of the Quades –”
The other was still meeting his gaze with equal calmness though now he had to look up to do so.
“You and a lot of others – including our friends back yonder. They seemed to like Quades just about as much as you do, Storm. I can understand their dislike, but when did a Quade ever give you a shove, Terran?”