The Iron Breed (52 page)

Now that the time had come to release the captives, Ayana found herself hesitant. The manifest anger in the male's expression—But they were weak, helpless, and she was armed—

With the stunner ready in her right hand, she spun the lock with her left. The door opened.

They were gathered just within as if ready to bolt for freedom, the three cat-people to the fore, the dog-person behind. Ayana heard hisses—a rumble of growl. She did not want to use the stunner, it might plunge them all straight back into captivity.

“No—” But they could not understand her, of course. However she babbled on as if they could. “Friend—friend!”

Their ears were flat to their skulls, their fangs exposed, their hands up with claws extended. If they came at her she would have no recourse but to shoot.

“Friend—”

A louder growl in answer. Ayana moved aside, retreated slowly, step by step, leaving a clear path between them and the door through which Tan and the Rattons had earlier brought her. Though she still held the stunner at ready, she waved them on in a gesture she hoped they would understand.

They moved slowly, stiffly, but gave no sign of pain. They moved with their heads turned toward her, their eyes watching. Then they reached the door and were gone, though for a moment or two she could still hear the shuffle of their feet.

Ayana breathed a sigh of relief. Her waiting was done. Now she must make good her own escape. She went for the last time to the huddle of the Ratton party, giving the Rattons a dose of stunner ray and then laid the weapon in Tan's lax hand.

He groaned and she jerked back as if he had made to seize her. He must be close to waking. She must get away fast—Ayana turned and ran, stopping only by the renewer to catch up her kit, following the path of the released captives.

She was afraid to use her torch. Luckily there seemed to be a very dim light here, enough to show the way. She must concentrate on the route she had tried to memorize when they brought her in. But first the Extend pills. Her chest hurt as she breathed after that last spurt of speed. Ayana groped within the kit. Two ought to be enough. She mouthed the tablets.

They were bitter and she had trouble swallowing them dry. But she hurried on even before they worked, so she was in another passage when that aching fatigue lifted. Ayana felt not only completely rested, but alert of mind, able to do anything. The euphoria which was a side effect of such a large dose of Extend gripped her and she forced herself to remember that this feeling of superb well-being was only illusionary.

This passage—had they come this way? But they must have—The trouble was that one of these ways looked exactly like another. Where had they left Jacel? She had tried to establish landmarks on the way in but had found few. And there were several places of forking corridors. She must remember—she must!

She had no warning. Out of some shadowed way she had not even glanced into, they sprang. Furred arms closed about her thighs as one attacker struck with force enough to crash her to the ground.

17

Furtig studied their captive. So—this was a Demon! Though a female, not a warrior. But still a Demon and as such to be feared. He heard a soft hiss of breath. Eu-La, somewhat accustomed now to the wonders of the legendary lairs, had moved beside him and with her Liliha. While behind them came two of the In-born males carrying a box with a coil of wire laid on its cover.

The Demon was awake. When they had taken her captive, she had fallen heavily and struck her head, so they had taken her easily enough before she could reach for weapons. And now here came Jir-Haz, to whom they owed the capture itself.

“You can do this?” Furtig asked Liliha. “Speak to the Demon in her own tongue?”

“We hope to do this thing. By listening to Demon voices on their tapes we can understand their words. But we cannot make those same noises ourselves. But perhaps with this”—she laid a proprietary hand upon the box—“we can twist our speech enough for her to understand our questions.”

But the Demon spoke first. She had been looking from one to the other of them, first in what Furtig relished as open fear (thus proving that the warriors of the People could strike fear even into Demons) and now with something close to appeal. For she spoke to Liliha, at first so fast and in such a gabble of sound, Furtig could make little of it.

However, Liliha, her ears attuned from very young years to the teaching machines, did sort out enough of those uncouth noises to make sense.

“She wishes to know where she is—and who we are.” Then, the In-born having set one end of the wire into the box, Liliha took up a disk fastened to the other and held it close to her mouth, speaking slowly and carefully into it.

“This is the lair of Gammage. We are the People.”

It was weird, for they could hear Liliha's words. But also there was a secondary gabble, like a blurred echo following.

The Demon's face was so strange, so unlike that of a rational being that one could hardly hope to learn anything from her expression. But Furtig dared to imagine she was surprised.

“Speak slowly,” Liliha was continuing. “We can understand Demon speech, but our tongues cannot twist to answer it.”

He saw the Demon's tongue tip on her lower lip. She could not move; they had bound her after peeling off her coverings. For it seemed that the Demons had no fur but wore loose outer skins to be stripped off.

“You—are—cats—” Even he could understand those queerly accented words.

“Cats? No, People,” Liliha corrected her. “Why come you here?”

“What—are—you—to—do—with—me?” The Demon looked beyond Liliha to Jir-Haz. “He—was—in—the—healing—chamber. I—let—him—go—”

“Who knows a Demon's purpose?” Jir-Haz demanded of them all. “Yes, I was healed, as was Tiz-Zon, and A-San and the Barker. After we were near to death, she had the Rattons put us there. That they might return us to life and then once more rend us for their pleasure! Is that not so, Demon?” He leaned closer to hiss at her.

“I—could—have—killed—” the Demon said. “But—I—let—him—go.”

“That is the truth?” Liliha asked Jir-Haz.

His tail lashed. “We told our story to the Elders. Yes, she let us go. Doubtless that the Rattons might have the sport of once more hunting us! Why else would a Demon heal our bodies and then release us?”

Liliha spoke into the disk. “Jir-Haz says that you did this for the Rattons, that they might once more torment our people. Such was what the Demons did in the old days.”

“The Rattons—” The Demon's face was flushed. She tried to loose her hands, struggled against the ties. “I—was—with—the—Rattons—against—my—will—”

“There was another Demon, a male,” Jir-Haz cut in. “He was not with her when she came to look in upon us during the healing. Nor was he there when she loosed us. Ask her concerning him!”

Liliha relayed the question. The Demon lay still as if she knew the folly of battling those bonds.

“I—left—him—with Shimog. I—put them all—to sleep so I might—escape and your—people also—”

“Why?” Liliha asked, almost, Furtig thought, as if she could believe what must be a false answer. For why should a Demon turn against one of her own kind to aid the People? No, she was false and would betray them if they believed her.

“Because—I saw Shimog and—what—they had done to—your people. I am a healer of—hurts not one to give them!”

“All Demons are false!” burst out Jir-Haz. “The other Demon, the Rattons, stayed out of sight that she might play friend and later point out our trail.”

But Furtig had been thinking, and Jir-Haz's last accusation bothered him.

“When you captured this one,” he asked, “was she not alone? Were there any Rattons or the other Demon with her?”

“Yes,” Liliha added. “If she was alone, why was that so, supposing that she hunted you? Your story is that you had sent A-San ahead, and the Barker had gone his own way. She had three trails to follow, which did she seek?”

Jir-Haz's tail twitched. “None,” he said slowly. “The Demon was taking a fourth way, going from our part of the lairs. And it is true she was alone. Also, after we had taken her we waited for a space, but none followed.”

“So, we can believe that this Demon was not hunting you. She was alone when she watched you in the healing chamber, she was alone when she opened the door of that and bid you go. These are all the truth?”

“It is so,” Jir-Haz acknowledged.

“Then what you yourself saw and report being so much the truth, must we not begin to believe that this Demon was not engaged in any hunt devised by Rattons, and that perhaps she too speaks the truth?”

“But she is a Demon!” Jir-Haz protested.

For the first time Eu-La broke silence. She had gone to stand close beside the bed on which they had laid the Demon.

“She does not look like one who kills. See—” Eu-La leaned over to set claw-tip to the Demon's middle. “She is all softness, easily torn. And, though like all Demons she is large, yet I do not believe that our warriors need look upon her as an ever-ready enemy. If she loosed Jir-Haz and the others from the Rattons, perhaps she had some reason. Why not ask her? She said she heals not harms, ask her how she does this and why. And how she came among the Rattons—”

“Also, to some purpose,” Furtig cut in “ask her why she came to the lairs and if more Demons are on the way.” Of course the answer to that might not be true, but it would do no harm to ask it.

He wished Gammage was here. Of them all, certainly the Ancestor was best-suited to deal with a Demon and weigh truth against not-truth. But the lair leader had departed to a truce flag meeting with the Barkers—since that hard-voiced people had sent a message and a flag to stand beside the first, thus agreeing to the meet. The second Barker, whom this Demon had freed, was he another scout of the same pack? And if so was he now making his way back to his people? What influence would his report have on the negotiations?

Slowly the Demon answered their questions. Yes, she had come from the sky—she was one of four—

All that they knew. So they were learning nothing. But when they questioned her about the Rattons—then they could not check her story. She had come from the ship at a call for help from one of her companions. She had found him injured and had treated him. Then the other, the Ratton friend (if anyone could friend that scum) had ordered her to treat a Ratton leader, had threatened her if she did not.

The longer Furtig listened to her halting, slowly spoken words, the easier it was to understand them. And somehow they sounded true. In spite of Jir-Haz, his own inborn distrust of Demons, everything, he could not say this was false. When she spoke of Shimog, the very tone of her voice (now that he was more familiar with it) bore out her aversion to the Ratton leader. But it was Liliha who brought home with a question the strange point in the whole tale.

“So they told you that Rattons were the comrades of Demons? But we have not learned it so. In fact, it is recorded that until the final days when the Demons went mad, Rattons were enemies to all. My people, the Barkers—we once lived in friendly company with Demons. Then the evil which the Demons themselves wrought seized upon them. They turned against all other living creatures, hunted them—”

“This evil.” There was such urgency in the Demon's voice as made them all stare. “What manner of evil? I tell you—we came searching for the reason we left this world, why my people long ago lifted to the stars and then hid all mention of the past from us. Tell me, if you know, why did they go? What happened to them here, to you—to this place?”

She looked from side to side as if begging one or another to answer. Such was the power of the emotion which flowed from her that Furtig believed in her wholly—that she had come seeking just what she said. Liliha did not answer at once. She spoke to Furtig:

“Cut her loose!”

His hand slipped into fighting claws in obedience. Then he hesitated. Jir-Haz growled warningly. It would seem that he still clung to his suspicions.

“Loose her,” Liliha repeated. “What do you fear?” she asked Jir-Haz. “Look, she has no weapons, not even claws. Do you believe she can overcome us all?”

Furtig went forward and, seeing his hand so armed, the Demon shrank back with a cry, trying to free herself before he could reach her. Liliha spoke swiftly.

“He will not harm you, he comes to loose you.”

She quieted then, and he cut swiftly through the cords.

“What would you do with me?”

“We can show you better than we can tell. Come.”

So they brought the Demon to the room of learning, and there Liliha started the tape readers, those records which had given them the information concerning the last days of the Demons. Though these were faulty and lacking in many details, as if those who had made them had lost the skill to do so properly. Afterward Liliha explained even more of the traditions of the People and of what Gammage and the In-born had learned. But that took some time. And Furtig was not long a part of it. He had other duties, and it was true that the Demon female did not need such guarding—she was weaponless and surrounded by Choosers who were certainly as keen-eyed as any warrior.

There was still the matter of the Demon male and the Rattons. How deep into Ratton territory they dared send their own scouts was a question to bother even Dolar. But before night their numbers began to be augmented by an inflow of People. Not Furtig's as yet, but Ku-La's forces.

What these brought with them, as well as their weapons and supplies, was information, some bits held from the days of the Demons, some gathered by investigation in those parts of the northeastern lairs where Gammage's explorers had never done any real searching. Once their Choosers and younglings were established in the safe heart of Gammage's territory, their warriors spread out to join the In-born and the handful of newcomers such as Furtig.

Reports came in now from questing scouts. The Demon who had been injured had crawled out of the tunnels, gone back to the grounded ship, which was always under observation. The ship itself was sealed, no hatch open. It was as if the two within it held it as a fort against attack. On the other hand the fourth Demon, he who had joined the Rattons, had also been sighted.