The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Naginlta and Nalik’ideyu into retreat. He was startled, jarred by the new awareness of how much he had come to depend on the animals. Ordinarily, Travis Fox was not one to be governed by the wishes of a mba’a , intelligent and un-animallike as it might be. This was an affair of men, and coyotes had no part in it!
    Half an hour later Travis sat in the outlaw camp. There were fifteen Mongols in sight, a half dozen women and two children adding to the count. On a hillock near their yurts, the round brush-and-hide shelters—not too different from the wickiups of Travis’ own people—was a crude drum, a hide stretched taut over a hollowed section of log. And next to that stood a man wearing a tall pointed cap, a red robe, and a girdle from which swung a fringe of small bones, tiny animal skulls, and polished bits of stone and carved wood.
    It was this man’s efforts which sent the boom-boom sounding at intervals over the landscape. Was this a signal—part of a ritual? Travis was not certain, though he guessed that the drummer was either medicine man or shaman, and so of some power in this company. Such men were credited with the ability to prophesy and also endowed with mediumship between man and spirit in the old days of the great Hordes.
    The Apache evaluated the rest of the company. As was true of his own party, these men were much the same age—young and vigorous. And it was also apparent that Hulagur held a position of some importance among them—if he were not their chief.
    After a last resounding roll on the drum, the shaman thrust the sticks into his girdle and came down to the fire at the center of the camp. He was taller than his fellows, pole thin under his robes, his face narrow, clean-shaven, with brows arched by nature to give him an unchanging expression of scepticism. He strode along, his tinkling collection of charms providing him with a not unmusical accompaniment, and came to stand directly before Travis, eying him carefully.
    Travis copied his silence in what was close to a duel of wills. There was that in the shaman’s narrowed green eyes which suggested that if Hulagur did in fact lead these fighting men, he had an advisor of determination and intelligence behind him.
    “This is Menlik.” Kaydessa did not push past the men to the fireside, but her voice carried.
    Hulagur growled at his sister, but his admonition made no impression on her, and she replied in as hot a tone. The shaman’s hand went up, silencing both of them.
    “You are—who?” Like Kaydessa, Menlik spoke a heavily accented English.
    “I am Travis Fox, of the Apaches.”
    “The Apaches,” the shaman repeated. “You are of the West, the American West, then.”
    “You know much, man of spirit talk.”
    “One remembers. At times one remembers,” Menlik answered almost absently. “How does an Apache find his way across the stars?”
    “The same way Menlik and his people did,” Travis returned. “You were sent to settle this planet, and so were we.”
    “There are many more of you?” countered Menlik swiftly.
    “Are there not many of the Horde? Would one man, or three, or four, be sent to hold a world?” Travis fenced. “You hold the north, we the south of this land.”
    “But they are not governed by a machine!” Kaydessa cut in. “They are free!”
    Menlik frowned at the girl. “Woman, this is a matter for warriors. Keep your tongue silent between your jaws!”
    She stamped one foot, standing with her fists on her hips.
    “I am a Daughter of the Blue Wolf. And we are all warriors—men and women alike—so shall we be as long as the Horde is not free to ride where we wish! These men have won their freedom; it is well that we learn how.”
    Menlik’s expression did not change, but his lids drooped over his eyes as a murmur of what might be agreement came from the group. More than one of them must have understood enough English to translate for the others. Travis wondered about that. Had these men and women who had outwardly reverted to the life of their nomad ancestors once been well educated in the modern sense, educated enough to learn the basic language of the nation their rulers had set up as their principal enemy?
    “So you ride the land south of the mountains?” the shaman continued.
    “That is true.”
    “Then why did you come hither?”
    Travis shrugged. “Why does anyone ride or travel into new lands? There is a desire to see what may lie beyond—”
    “Or to scout before the march of