Chapter VI

Verrill was still well short of his destination when he heard a rider behind him: a horse blowing and wheezing, ridden nearly to death, yet carrying on. He wheeled about. It was Falana who had overtaken him.

"You little idiot, go back home!"

"I won't."

"You will, and now."

"Yes, if you carry me back."

"What's the idea? You know I'm coming back, and you know there's a lot of trouble ahead, where I'm bound for."

"I'm going anyway."

And then her horse collapsed. Verrill had no magic to restore it to life. "Now I can't go back," she announced, contentedly, as though she had foreseen this decisive detail.

She mounted up and rode behind him.

From time to time, Verrill halted, and cocked an ear. Thus far, he had heard no firing. He had seen no signal fires on the crests that were dark against the stars. The way became harder, and until moon-rise, difficult to pick.

When the first half-glow whitened the limestone slopes and the high snowcaps, the mountain world became a maze of illusion and shifting glamour.

Finally, Verrill's horse sniffed the air, and would have whinnied, had he not checked him in time. As he paused, he wondered whether Falana's presence, the night he had saved Kwangtan, would be sufficient precedent for her accompanying him into the field; or whether instead suspicion would be aroused.

He had reined in at the edge of a deep shadow. Before he could make up his mind, Falana said, "Turn around and see--I've got it."

As he twisted about, the horse shifted, moving out of the shadow and into light strong enough for him to see the ruby she had in her hand. It collected enough of the glow to pulse and flame as though in its own right. One good look he got, and then she had knotted it again into the end of her scarf and thrust it securely between her breasts.

"I'm going with you to the home of the gods," Falana said, "and if they, your people, don't like me, they can do what they want with me. But I'm going."

However she had made away with the gem, there would be the devil to pay when Kwangtan missed it. His exclamation of dismay made her add, "He won't make any trouble. He smothered under his sheepskin robe."

Verrill preferred not to ask whether she meant that the invalid had himself done this, accidentally, or whether, aroused by her prowling, his protest had been stifled, quickly and silently, by a solid armful of a woman who knew precisely what she had to do to save herself. Instead of being horrified by a very logical suspicion, he dismissed the query: for in either event, he had no longer any choice concerning Falana. She had made the bond so strong that wherever he went, he would take her. There was no more clash between him and Dawson. The bond that had attached him to Linda had been cut. Whether by smothering the fire priest, or merely robbing the fire god, Falana had done well for herself.

After a silence, he said, "There's someone just ahead. My horse scented them. Whoever they are, they may have caught some sign of us. You get down and wait. The sight of you is likely to make the outposts think I'm leaving the tribe. And now is no time for suspicion!"

"I know another way around, and out," Falana said. "A hard trail, but we can make it."

"Whoever's ahead, up there, might start wondering. All I have to do is go ahead and identify myself, and then go my way."

"You can make some excuse for coming back this way," she said, and slipped to the ground. "I'll wait."

* * * * *

He rode on, at a walk. Ten to one, Falana had smothered Kwangtan, not out of malice, but simply because he would have kept her from following Verrill. Since Verrill could not reject her, he had to accept the act as his own, however heavy the burden. He shrank from the very suspicion of the deed, and at the same time, his eyes were tear-blinded from realization of her devotion, so much more reckless than any Venusian woman's could have been.

A horse whinnied. Verrill's mount answered. And before Verrill could hail the dimly-discerned rider, revealed when he rounded a sharp curve, he knew that this was an ambush; the recognition between horses had come because the animals ahead had been stolen from Ardelan's herd.

Despite his disadvantage, knowledge came before he had made himself too good a target.

That split-second sensing gave him a chance with his pistol. He spurred in, shooting. A wild shot grazed him. The enemy stampeded, as though from the sudden fear that they had tricked themselves; it was as though his boldness had convinced them that he had a large party at his back.

In half a dozen hoofbeats, he was through. One horse was down, and struggling. Something thumped into the ravine, far below. There was a brief shower of rocks, and the diminishing clatter of hoofs.

Only two had lain in wait: and one was bound for home.

Verrill reined in sharply, and called to Falana. She answered, and knowing it was all over, came toward him at a walk.

Verrill was badly shaken. Falana, knowing that he would be, was giving him a welcome moment to himself. This was his first taste of combat.

The enemy, sprawled among the rocks, groaned and cursed, as though shock had until that moment held him unable to make a sound. This was something familiar to Verrill, for in his way, he was now a doctor in fact--a man was a man, whether friend or enemy. And this one, being a man he had wounded, evoked his response more readily than had Kwangtan.

Verrill dismounted. The man in the shadows mumbled and choked; the man's horse lay dead; and approaching his own handiwork shook Verrill's composure. Worse yet, he should not dally. No telling who might have heard the shots, who might be hurrying to the scene. But he could not abandon a patient, though this might become a dangerous business, with the Fire of Skanderbek taken from the shrine--

Three sounds blended. Verrill understood each, but too late.

"Now see if you'll get the ruby!" the patient challenged, triumphantly, and fired.

Venusian accent and intonation; pistol blast; and then, as Dawson, unwounded, bound up to take Verrill's horse, came the third sound: Falana's cry.

Her approach, afoot, had tricked Dawson. She was on him from the rear before he sensed his danger. He swayed, he choked, and he would have flung her aside, but for the knife with which she finished him. Stab and slash; and he was dead before she could crawl free of him to go to Verrill.

Dawson, living with the enemy tribe, had learned raiding tricks, and had known how to tempt an enemy by offering hope of plunder. By feigning a mortal wound, he had played the game as his brothers in raiding would have played it: and at the most he could not have hoped for more than a horse, and the weapons of the supposedly greedy and reckless one whose loot hunger had driven out ordinary caution. Moonlight on Verrill's face had given Dawson his moment of triumphant recognition--and then, sudden death which he might otherwise have avoided.

The irony of all this passed through Verrill's mind during the moments which elapsed before he could recover sufficiently from shock to speak. Teeth chattering from the deadly chill which took hold of him, he said, "Physician, heal thyself."

He knew he was beyond mending. He knew also that he had long drawn-out hours of agony ahead of him. Falana knew, without being told, that she would soon be alone; that she would never board the long gleaming shell on the take-off ramp of the trading-post to go with him to the home of the gods. Since he was shivering, she wrapped a shawl about him, and waited for him to tell her what else to do.

* * * * *

The shift of the moon thinned the shadows that had tricked first one and then another of those who had met in that rocky angle. Verrill pointed to the kit, and told her how to load the hypo. He had done this himself, many times, for those he knew he could not save. They lasted just as long, but avoided consciousness and pain. This had won him esteem. And now he was to learn how good his work had been.

His vision began to play tricks, and his memory also, but he was sure that the white orb shimmering, rising from behind a distant crest, was Venus, beginning her term as morning star. Seen through that thin mountain air, Venus was an expanding splendor, and memories danced: memories of Linda, blurred with the memories of all other Venusian women, perfumed and sleek and all bejewelled. They were shapes of the mind, rather than a semblance to the eye; for at the same time, he saw clearly where he was, and who was beside him. And he was glad that it was Falana.

Falana peeled off her jacket and blouse. She cut a long strand of hair, and despite the biting wind that lashed her from shoulder to hip, she shaped a loop, using two long hairs to suspend the Fire of Skanderbek from about her throat.

She knelt, posed by sure instinct, head flung back, and the monstrous ruby all ablaze against her white skin. The lower end of the six-sided crystal barely dipped into the shadow of her breasts.

The Venusian images of memory were blotted out, and with them, the great white orb as well. Falana became all women in one, yet remaining all the while wholly herself.

Verrill's face, or her own instinct, told her when to end the tableau. She slipped into her jacket and went into the shadow beside him. She caught him in her arms, to pillow him better than had the rocks and the saddle-bags that had softened them. And then Verrill went on his long road, and entirely content, for he had in his way done with the Fire of Skanderbek as he had planned.

Not long after sunrise, a handful of Ardelan's men came along from the new valley. They had routed the raiders. Somewhere, they told Falana, there had been several shots, which had alerted them.

"The shots Verrill fired," they concluded, having seen and understood from the face of things.

She gave them no time to wonder about her presence. "He was going to stay for days and days with the people Ardelan was sending into the new valley. I made him take me with him. So I was here when he killed his enemy, the one with whom he had a feud."

Despite their grief at losing their doctor, the mountaineers forgot none of their ways. Methodically, they took the gear from the dead horse, and stripped the dead enemy, leaving nothing but vulture bait. And among the things they found in his clothes was the Fire of Skanderbek.

"The gods told Verrill," Falana said. "But not all, and not in time. Only enough to send him where he would meet the thief."

They studied his face, and one said, "It is clear that the gods welcomed him when he took their road."

Later, Ardelan himself joined them. He heard, he saw, and then he said, "We will bury Verrill by those others who have guarded the Fire of Skanderbek. He saved many lives for us, as Skanderbek did in the old days."

And this was done, with no one wondering at Kwangtan's death. Some said that the spirit of the priest had guided Verrill to overtake the looter. Falana heard the legend grow, and could not tell what Ardelan really thought. Whatever his thought, the chief kept it to himself, until, days later, he said to Falana, "Verrill's son will be a great man among us, to watch the Fire of Skanderbek, and teach us the way of the gods."

Which seemed reasonable enough to Falana, who had command of more miracles than any man.