The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

there, while he went to McNeil’s aid. It was well into the afternoon before they came up the stream and saw the fire before the cave.
    “Macna!” Ashe hailed Ross’s companion with the native version of his name. “And Lal. But what do you here, Lal of Nodren’s town?”
    “Mischief.” Ross helped McNeil within the cave and to the pile of brush which was his own bed. “He was hunting traders as a present for Lurgha.”
    “So—” Ashe turned upon the tribesman—“and by whose word did you go hunting my kinsman, Lal? Was it Nodren’s? Has he forgotten the blood bond between us? For it was in the name of Lurgha himself that that bond was made—”
    “Aaaah—” The tribesman squatted down against the wall where Ross had shoved him. Unable to hide his head in his arms, he brought his face down upon his knees so that only his shaggy topknot of hair was exposed. Ross realized, with stupefaction, that the little man was crying like a child, his hunched shoulders rising and falling with the force of his sobs. “Aaaah—” he wailed.
    Ashe allowed him a moment or two of noisy grief and then limped over to grasp his topknot and pull up his head. Lal’s eyes were screwed tightly shut, but there were tears on his cheeks, and his mouth twisted in another wail.
    “Be quiet!” Ashe shook him, but not too harshly. “Have you yet felt the bite of my sharp knife? Has an arrow holed your skin? You are alive, and you could be dead. Show that you are glad you live and continue to breathe by telling us what you know, Lal.”
    The woman Cassca had displayed a measure of intelligence and ease at their meeting upon the road. But it was very plain that Lal was of different stuff, a simple man in whose head few ideas could find house room at one time. And to him the present was all black. Little by little they dragged the story out of him.
    Lal was poor, so poor that he had never dared dream of owning for himself some of the precious things the hill traders displayed to the wealthy of Nodren’s town. But he was also a follower of the Great Mother’s, rather than one who made sacrifices to Lurgha. Lurgha was the god for warriors and great men; he was too high to concern himself with such as Lal.
    So when Nodren reported the end of the hill post under the storm fist of Lurgha, Lal had been impressed only to a point. He was still convinced it was none of his concern, and instead he began thinking of the treasures which might lie hidden in the destroyed buildings. It occurred to him that Lurgha’s Wrath had been laid upon the men who had owned them, but perhaps it would not stretch to the fine things themselves. So he had gone secretly to the hill to explore.
    What he had seen there had utterly converted him to a belief in the fury of Lurgha and he had been frightened out of his simple wits, fleeing without making the search he had intended. But Lurgha had seen him there, had read his impious thoughts.…
    At that point Ashe interrupted the stream of Lal’s story. How had Lurgha seen Lal?
    Because—Lal shuddered, began to cry again, and spoke the next few sentences haltingly—that very morning when he had gone out to hunt wild fowl in the marshes Lurgha had spoken to him , to Lal, who was less than a flea creeping upon a worn-out fur rug.
    And how had Lurgha spoken? Ashe’s voice was softer, gentle.
    Out of the air, even as he had spoken to Nodren, who was a chief. He said that he had seen Lal in the hill post, and so Lal was his meat. But not yet would he eat him, not if Lal served him in other ways. And he, Lal, had lain flat on the ground before the bodiless voice of Lurgha and had sworn that he would serve Lurgha to the end of his life.
    Then Lurgha had told him to hunt down one of the evil traders who was hiding in the marshes, and bind him with ropes. Then he was to call the men of the village and together they would carry the prisoner to the hill where Lurgha had loosed his wrath, and there they would leave him. Later they might return and take what they found there and use it to bless the fields at sowing time, and all would be well with Nodren’s village. And Lal had sworn that he would do as Lurgha bade, but now he could not. So Lurgha would eat him up—he was a man without hope.
    “Yet,” Ashe said even more gently, “have you not served the Great Mother all these years, giving to her a portion of the first fruits even when the yield of your one field was small?”
    Lal stared at him, his woebegone