The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

helicopter might carry, Menlik and his riders would accompany them.
    There it was, just as Menlik had foretold: The wasp from the open country was flying into the hills. Menlik, on his knees, struck flint to steel, sparking the fire they hoped would draw the pilot to a closer investigation.
    The brush caught, and smoke, thick and white, came first in separate puffs and then gathered into a murky pillar to form a signal no one could overlook. In Travis’ hands the grip of the gun was slippery. He rested the end of the barrel on the rock, curbing his rising tension as best he could.
    To escape any caller on the flyer, the Tatars had remained in the valley below the Apaches’ lookout. And as the helicopter circled in, Travis sighted two men in its cockpit, one wearing a helmet identical to the one they had seen on the Red hunter days ago. The Reds’ long undisputed sway over the Mongol forces would make them overconfident. Travis thought that even if they sighted one of the waiting Apaches, they would not take warning until too late.
    Menlik’s bush fire was performing well and the flyer was heading straight for it. The machine buzzed the smoke once, too high for the Apaches to trust raying its blades. Then the pilot came back in a lower sweep which carried him only yards above the smoldering brush, on a level with the snipers.
    Travis pressed the button on the barrel, his target the fast-whirling blades. Momentum carried the helicopter on, but at least one of the marksmen, if not all three, had scored. The machine plowed through the smoke to crack up beyond.
    Was their caller working, bringing in the Mongols to aid the Reds trapped in the wreck?
    Travis watched Menlik make his way toward the machine, reach the cracked cover of the cockpit. But in the shaman’s hand was a bare blade on which the sun glinted. The Mongol wrenched open the sprung door, thrust inward with the tulwar, and the howl of triumph he voiced was as worldless and wild as a wolf’s.
    More Mongols flooding down…Hulagur…a woman…centering on the helicopter. This time a spear plunged into the interior of the broken flyer. Payment was being extracted for long slavery.
    The Apaches dropped from the heights, waiting for Menlik to leave the wild scene. Hulagur had dragged out the body of the helmeted man and the Mongols were stripping off his equipment, smashing it with rocks, still howling their war cry. But the shaman came to the dying smudge fire to meet the Apaches.
    He was smiling, his upper lip raised in a curve suggesting the victory purr of a snow tiger. And he saluted with one hand.
    “There are two who will not trap men again! We believe you now, andas , comrades of battle, when you say you can go up against their fort and make it as nothing!”
    Hulagur came up behind the shaman, a modern automatic in his hand. He tossed the weapon into the air, caught it again, laughing—disclaiming something in his own language.
    “From the serpents we take two fangs,” Menlik translated. “These weapons may not be as dangerous as yours, but they can bite deeper, quicker, and with more force than our arrows.”
    It did not take the Mongols long to strip the helicopter and the Reds of what they could use, deliberately smashing all the other equipment which had survived the wreck. They had accomplished one important move: The link between the southbound exploring party and the Red headquarters—if that was the role the helicopter had played—was now gone. And the “eyes” operating over the open territory of the plains had ceased to exist. The attacking war party could move against the ship near the Red settlement, knowing they had only controlled Mongol scouts to watch for. And to penetrate enemy territory under those conditions was an old, old game the Apaches had played for centuries.
    While they waited for the signals from the peaks, a camp was established and a Mongol dispatched to bring up the rest of the outlaws and all extra mounts. Menlik carried to the Apaches a portion of the dried meat which had been transported Horde fashion—under the saddle to soften it for eating.
    “We do not skulk any longer like rats or city men in dark holes,” he told them. “This time we ride, and we shall take an accounting from those out there—a fine accounting!”
    “They still have other controllers,” Travis pointed out.
    “And you have that which is an answer to all their machines,” blazed Menlik in return.
    “They will send against us