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XI

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ALL THAT DAY they walked, through the trails of the forest. Now and again, from the corner of theireyes, they caught a glimpse of movement, but they saw not a sign of a trailman. They slept that nighthearing sounds overhead, but now without fear, knowing that the yellow garlands would protect them intrailman country.

So far neither of them had spoken of their escape. There was no need for words between them now. But when, on the second day—a day clouded and sunless, with a promise of rain—they sat to eat theirmeal of berries and the odd fungus the trailmen had shown them, which grew plentifully along these paths, Kennard finally spoke.

“You know, of course, that there will be fires. Houses will burn. Maybe even woods will burn. They’re

not human.”

“I’m not so sure,” Larry said thoughtfully. “Among the Terrans, they would be called at least humanoid.

They have a culture.”

“Yet was it safe to give them fire? I would never have dared,” Kennard said, “not if we died there. For more centuries than I can count, man and nonhuman have lived together on Darkover in a certain balance. And now, with the trailmen using fire—” He shrugged, helplessly, and Larry suddenly began to see the implications of what he had done. “Still,” he said stubbornly, “they’ll learn. They’ll make mistakes, there will be mis-uses, but they will learn. Their pottery will improve as it is fired. They will, perhaps, learn to cook food. They will grow and develop. Nothing remains static,” he said. He repeated the Terran creed, “A civilization changes—or it dies.”

Kennard’s face flushed in sudden, sullen anger, and Larry, realizing that for the first time since his rescuethey were conscious of being alien to one another, knew something else. Kennard was jealous. He hadbeen the rescuer, the leader. Yet Larry had saved them, where Kennard would have given up because hefeared change. Larry had taken command —and Kennard, second place.

“That is the Terran way,” Kennard said sullenly. “Change. For better or worse, but change. No matter

how good a thing is—change it, just for the sake of change.”

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Larry, with a growing wisdom, was silent. It was, he knew, a deeper conflict than they could everresolve with words alone; a whole civilization based on expansion and growth, pitted against one basedon tradition. He felt like saying, “Anyhow, we’re alive,” but forbore. Kennard had saved his life manytimes over. It hardly would become him to boast about beginning to even the score.

That evening they came to the edge of the trailmen’s rain forest and into the open foothills again—bare,trackless hills, unexplored, rocky, covered with scrubby brush and low, bunchy grass. Beyond them laythe mountain ranges, and beyond that—

“There lies the pass,” Kennard said, “and beyond it lies Hastur country, and the home of Castle Hastur. We’re within sight of home.” He sounded hopeful, even joyous, but Larry heard the trembling in his voice. Before them lay miles of canyons and gullies, without road or track or path, and beyond that lay the high mountain pass. The day was dim and sunless, the peaks in shadow, but even at this distance Larry could see that snow lay in their depths.

“How far?”

“Four days travel, perhaps, if it were open prairie or forest,” Kennard said. “Or one day’s ride on a

swift horse, if any horse could travel these infernal arroyos.”

He stood frowning, gazing down into the mazelike network of canyons. “The worst of it is, the sun isclouded, and I find it hard to calculate the path we must follow. From here to the pass we must travel duewestward. But with the sun in shadow—” He knelt momentarily, and Larry, wondering if he werepraying, saw that instead he was examining the very faint shadow cast by the clouded sun. Finally he said, “As long as we can see the mountain peak, we need only follow it. I suppose”—he rose, shruggingwearily—“we may as well begin.”

He set off downward into one of the canyons. Larry, envying him his show of confidence, stumbled afterhim. He was weary and footsore, and hungry, but he would not show himself less manly than Kennard.

All that day and all the next they stumbled and scrambled among the thorny, rocky slopes of the barrenfoothills. They went in no danger of hunger, for the bushes, so thorny and barren in appearance, werelush with succulent berries and ripening nuts. That evening Kennard snared several small birds who werefeeding fearlessly on their abundance. They were out of trailmen country now, so that they dared to makefire; and it seemed to Larry that no festive dinner had ever tasted so good as the flesh of these nuttybirds, roasted over their small fire and eaten half-raw and without salt. Kennard said, as they satcompanionably munching drumsticks, “This place is a hunter’s paradise! The birds are without fear.”

“And good eating,” Larry commented, cracking a bone for the succulent marrow.

“It’s even possible that we might meet a hunting party.” Kennard said hopefully. “Perhaps some of the men from the Hastur country beyond the mountains hunt here—where the game roams in such abundance.”

But they were both silent at the corollary of that statement. If no one hunted here, where the hunting wasso splendid, then the mountain pass that lay between them and safety must be fearsome indeed!

The third day was cloudier than the last, and Kennard stopped often to examine the fainter and faintershadows and calculate the sun’s position by them. The land was rising now; the gullies were steeper andmore thorny, the slopes harder to scramble up. Toward that evening a thin, fine drizzle began to fall, and

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even Kennard, with all his skill, could not build a fire. They gnawed cold roast meat from the night

before, and dampish fruits, and slept huddled together for warmth in a rock-lined crevasse.

All the next day the rain drizzled down, thin and pale, and the purplish light held no hint of sun orshadow. Larry, watching Kennard grow ever more silent and tense, could not at last contain his anxiety. He said, “Kennard, we’re lost. I know we’re going the wrong way. Look, the land slopes downhill, andwe have to keep going upward toward the mountains.”

“I know we’re going downhill, muffin-head,” snapped Kennard, “into this canyon. On the other side the

land rises higher. Can’t you see?”

“With this rain I can’t see a thing,” said Larry honestly, “and what’s more, I don’t think you can either.”

Kennard rounded on him, suddenly furious: “I suppose you think you could do better?”

“I didn’t say that,” Larry protested, but Kennard was tensely trying to find a shadow. It seemed completely hopeless. They were not even sure of the time of day, so that even the position of the sun would have been no help, could they have seen a shadow; this damp, darkish drizzle made no distinction between early afternoon and deep twilight.

He heard Kennard murmur, almost in despair, “If I could only get a sight of the mountain peak!”

It was the first time the Darkovan boy had sounded despair, and Larry felt the need to comfort andreassure. He said, “Kennard, it’s not as bad as all that. We won’t starve here. Sooner or later the sunwill shine, or the rain will stop, and the pass will be before us clearly. Then any one of these little hilltopswill show us our right direction. Why don’t we find a sheltered place and just wait out the rainstorm?”

He had not expected instant agreement, but he was not prepared for the violence, the fury with whichthe Darkovan boy rounded on him.

“You damned, infernal, bumbling idiot,” he shouted, “what do you
 
think
 
I’d do if it was only me? Do you think I can’t have sense enough to do what any ten-year-old with sense enough to tie his own bootlaces would do in such a storm? But with you—”

“I don’t understand—”

“You wouldn’t,” shouted Kennard. “You never understand anything, you damned—
 
Terranan
 
!” For the first time in all their friendship, the word on his lips was an insult. Larry felt his blood rise high in return. Kennard had saved his life; but there was a point beyond which he could not rub it in any further.

“If I have so little sense—?”

“Listen,” Kennard said, with suppressed violence, “my father gave his surety to the
 
Terranan
 
lords for your safety. Do you think you can simply disappear? Your damned Terrans who can never let any man live his own life or die his own death? No, damn it. If you visit my people—and you vanish and are killed—do you suppose the Terrans will ever believe it was accident and not a deep-laid plot? You head-blind Terrans without even telepathy enough to know when a man speaks truth, so that your fumbling insolent idiots of people dared—they
 
dared
 
!—to doubt that my father, a lord of the Comyn and of the Seven Domains, spoke truth?

“It’s true, I rescued you for my own honor and because we had sworn friendship. But also because,

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unless I brought you safely back to your people, your damned Terrans will be poking and prying, searching and avenging!” He stopped. He had to. He was completely out of breath after his outburst, his face red with fury, his eyes blazing, and Larry, in sudden terror, felt the other’s rage as a murderous, almost a deadly thing. He realized suddenly that he stood very close to death at that moment. The fury of an unleashed telepath—and one too young to have control over his power —beat on Larry with a surge of power like a ship. It rolled over him like a crashing surf. It pounded him physically to his knees.

He bent before it. And then, as suddenly as it had come, he realized that he had strength to meet it. Heraised his eyes gravely to Kennard and said aloud, “Look, my friend” — (he used the word
 
bredu
 
) “—Idid not know this. I did not make my people’s laws, no more than you caused the feud that set thebandits on our hunting party.” And he was amazed at the steady force with which he countered thefurious assault of rage.

Slowly, Kennard quieted. Larry felt the red surges of Kennard’s fury receding, until at last the Darkovanboy stood before him silent, just a kid again and a scared one. He didn’t apologize, but Larry didn’texpect him to. He said, simply, “So it’s a matter of time, you see, Lerrys.” The Darkovan form of Larry’sname was, Larry knew, tacit apology. “And as you care for your people, I care for my father. And this isthe first day of the rainy season. I had hoped to be out of these hills, and through the passes, before this. We were delayed by the trailmen, or we should be safe now, and a message of your safety on its way toyour father. If I had the starstone still—” he was silent, then shrugged. “Well, that is the Comyn law.” Hedrew a deep breath. “Now, which way did you say you thought was west?”

“I didn’t say,” Larry said, honestly. He did not know until much later just how rare a thing he had done; he had faced the unleashed wrath of an Alton and a telepath—and been unharmed. Later, he remembered it and shook in his shoes; but now he just felt relieved that Kennard had calmed down.

“But,” he said, “there’s no point in going in circles. All these canyons look exactly alike to me. If we had a compass—” He broke off. He began to search frantically in his pockets. The bandits had not taken it from him because the main blade was broken. The trailmen had not even seen it. As a weapon it was worthless. He had not even been able to use it to help Kennard clean and gut the birds they had eaten.

But it had a magnetized blade!

And a magnetized blade, properly used, could make an improvised compass…

The first turn-out of his pockets failed to find it; then he remembered that during their time with thetrailmen, fearing they might regard any tool, however small, as a weapon, he had thrust it into his medicalkit. He took it out, and snapped the magnetized blade off against a stone, then tested it against the metalof the broken main blade. It retained its magnetism.‘ Now if he could only remember how it was done. Ithad been a footnote in one of his mathematics texts in childhood, half forgotten. Kennard, meanwhile,watched as if Larry’s brain had snapped, while Larry experimented with a bit of string and finally, lookingat Kennard’s long, square-cut hair, demanded, “Give me one of your hairs.”

“Are you out of your wits?”

“No,” Larry said. “I think I may be
 
in
 
them, at last. I should have thought of this from the beginning. If I could have taken a bearing when the sun was still shining, and we had a clear view of the pass ahead of us, I’d know—”

Without raising his head, he accepted the hair which Kennard gave him gingerly, as if he were humoringa lunatic. He knotted the hair around the magnetized blade and waited. The blade was tiny and light,

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hardly bigger than the needles which had been the first improvised compasses. It swung wildly for a few

moments; stopped.

“What superstitious rigamarole—” Kennard began, stopped. “You must have something on your mind,”

he conceded, “but what?”

Larry began to explain the theory by which the magnetic compass worked; Kennard cut him short.

“Everyone knows that a certain kind of metal—you call it a magnet—will attract metal. But how can this

help us?”

For a moment Larry despaired. He had forgotten the level of Darkovan technology—or lack of it—andhow could he, in one easy lesson, explain the two magnetic poles of a planet, the theory of the magneticcompass which pointed to the true pole at all times, the manner of taking a compass direction andfollowing? He started, but he was making very heavy weather of explaining the magnetic field around aplanet. To begin with, he simply did not have the technological vocabulary in Darkovan—if there wasone, which he doubted. He was reminded of the trailman chief calling fire “the red thing which eats thewoods.” He felt like that while he tried to explain about iron filings and magnetic currents. Finally he gaveup, holding the improvised compass in one hand.