Northan grinned and picked up a harpoon. “Not nearly good
enough,” he said. “If that target was a wolf, he'd be tearing you in half by now.”
He turned, casually hurled his weapon and it slammed home dead center of the target, hurrying its barbs. We moved to the target together. “Now that was a cast,” Northan chuckled.
He tugged at the shaft of his harpoon but it was stuck fast. Lifting a foot to the target, he strained. Still the harpoon would not come. He grunted, shrugged, stepped back. I caught hold of both weapons, one in each hand, placed a knee against the target and pulled the harpoons free in a snapping of leather thongs. Northan's face went gray, then darkened over. Before he could speak I said, “That wolf you mentioned might not find me such easy meat, Northan. Perhaps, seeing you weaponless, he'd turn on you instead.”
It was just a small incident, but word of this second encounter spread as rapidly as the story of our confrontation on the snow-ship. Whitey had warned me on more than one occasion that the warlord would bring me down if he could, and having seen Northan's face as he strode angrily from the exercise cave I could only agree.
Still, I had things other than the strutting warlord to worry about.
As the weeks passed I grew almost to envy Tracy. She was with Armandra almost every day, learning the royal routine and speedily becoming the Woman of the Wind's constant companion along with Oontawa. When she was not with Armandra, Tracy spent most of her time with Jimmy. I noticed the strong bond developing between them and was pleased.
And if any member of my team was in his element, surely it was Jimmy Franklin. Apart from Tracy's attentions, he was now in a position to study the old tribes as they had really been. The Nootka and Micmac, Chimakua and Algonquin, Huron and Ojibwa, Onondaga, Chilkat, Mohawk and Tlingit; all of the northern tribes of old were represented, and Jimmy must surely have felt that he was now among the ancestors of his race.
I had asked him about the plateau's Indians, about their weapons. Why had I seen no single trace of the traditional bow and arrow? It all had to do with the nature of Borea and its people, he told me. In a world where alien, elemental powers were used as super-weapons, mere bows could easily be made useless. Temperatures could be sent down to a point where bowstrings, and even the wooden bows themselves, would break at the slightest pressure Arrows could simply be
blown aside. On the other hand, spears, harpoons and handaxes were less susceptible to such forces.
And it was Jimmy, too, who first learned the legends of the plateau, myths that went back for something like five thousand years and maybe more. These tales had it that at a time forgotten in the dim mists of immemorial lore, Ithaqua had been prisoned in the bowels of the plateau. This had followed an act of defiance against the Elders Gods, when he had waged war on the early civilized races of Earth, striding the skies across all the dawn world and ravaging far and wide. The Wind-Walker was imprisoned thus for thousands of years before finally being released (or escaping, the legends were confused on that point) but ever since then he had been leery of the plateau, his one-time prison.
When I heard of this legend I couldn't help but tie certain facts up together. Strangely enough, Tracy featured strongly in these reckonings of mine. The fact, for instance, that my sister was the only one of all the plateau's people who possessed a positive defense against the Snow Thing; and likewise that she knew no fear when confronted with that forbidden tunnel deep in the bowels of the plateau, the tunnel, whose almost physical emanations held all others back.
What lay at the other end of that dark shaft, and was it necessarily dangerous to the People of the Plateau? Tracy's star-stones, after all, were only injurious to us because we had been touched with the contamination of Ithaqua. And while we were naturally wary of the things, still they were far more dangerousâindeed lethalâto the Wind-Walker himself and his minions. Was it possible that the secret of the tunnel was that which Ithaqua also feared, the thing that held him back from destroying the plateau itself and all of its people?
Once, with Whitey, I stood at the entrance to that dark shaft, and both of us felt the thrust of forces that bade us go away or face an indefinite but very real doom. It was not only fear but a wall, a barrier real as any wall of bricks and mortar.
When I asked Whitey what he made of it, he said, “I don't really know, Hank. I feel much the same as Tracy, I guess. On the one hand this place gives me the creepsâI don't know what's going to jump out at me, you know? but on the other hand I feel, well, that the whole future of, oh, of
everything
is tied up at the far end of this tunnel.”
“Is that a hunch?”
“Yes, a strong one, but don't ask me to explain it. You couldn't get me down this shaft anyhow, not even for a ticket back to Earth!”
By the end of the second month I was more or less sure that Armandra had been spying on me mentally. Whether or not she was getting any clear mental pictures I did not really know; I had made no effort to project any thoughts in her telepathic direction. Nevertheless, and despite my suspicions, I stuck to my own promise not to look into her mind, though I admit that I was tempted.
Toward the end of the month, however, her prying had become so intense that I could feel her with me at almost any time in any given twenty-four hour period. At the same time I was being teased by Tracy whenever she saw me. She swore that Armandra's interest in me knew no bounds, that the Woman of the Winds had sucked her dry of all facts concerning me and my life before Borea! And I believed Tracy, for she made me promise not to repeat anything she told me; Armandra did not want me to know of her interest in me. She was no common woman to throw herself at a man.
Still, Armandra's constant presence on the borders of my mind bothered me considerably (there are things a man might want to keep secret; emotions, fears and ambitions he might not want to disclose),
and
so I determined to teach her a lesson if her peeking continued. It was when I had awakened from the middle of a nightmare in which I had fought to free Armandra from her father's swollen fingers, discovering her presence there at the edge of my surfacing awareness, that I found my opportunity.
“Very well,”
I spoke to her deliberately with my mind.
“I don't know what you seek in my thoughts, Armandra, but if it is thisâ”
and here I projected a vivid and exceptionally erotic scene concerning the two of us, a perfectly natural fantasy which until then I had forced myself to keep out of my mind,
“âthen now you know!”
For a moment longer she was with me and I sensed sudden, explosive outrage, and something else, before she was gone. I waited a minute or two longer but the ether was completely free of telepathic influences. Later I awakened again to find strange, gentle little winds caressing my body and ruffling my hair where I lay upon my bed of furs. And I knew where they came from, for beyond my stone window the gray and white Boreal scene was calm and quiet.
And so things stood for perhaps a further week, so that it was a few
days into the third month when Oontawa came to bring me Armandra's invitation to the Choosing of a Champion, when a suitable mate would be found from among all the men of the plateau. I say Oontawa came with an invitation, and yet I was ready to go before she and the others of my small party brought me the news. Armandra had already uttered these words in my mind:
“Now you can come to me, Hank Silberhutte, if you want me!”
Simply those few words and yet every nerve in my body was suddenly energized and fires I had only guessed to exist raced in my blood, however unnaturally cold that blood might be. She had called to me, and I would go to her, yes. But on my terms.
We made our way quickly to the Hall of the Elders, and as we went Oontawa told me things I would need to know. I knew of the ritual Choosing of a Champion, but did not know the finer details of the rite. It appeared that since women were slightly in the minority, most of them were sought after as prizes by the unmarried men. Therefore a girl would usually make known to her favorite that she intended to choose a champion, and he in turn would pick a close male friend who he could trust to accept his challenge. When the girl offered herself publicly, her lover would then have to put himself forward for acceptance or rejection, and offer a challenge to anyone else who fancied the girl. His friend would then step forward and a short fight would ensue in which the “usurper” would be “beaten.” That was the way the ritual usually went. Usually.
This time it would be different. For one thing it was Armandra choosing a champion. For another she had made no approachesâno physical approaches, at leastâto any of the plateau's males. Finally, Northan had long made known his ambition to take Armandra to wife. If any man challenged his right to the Woman of the Winds, the warlord would be merciless.
We entered the Hall of the Elders to find its amphitheater tiers of seats already filled to capacity. Young men of all the tribes jostled each other nervously just within the door, elbow to elbow with Eskimo warriors, pure whites, and mixtures of varied background and lineage. We pushed through to a clear space where I saw that a tight circle had been chalked round the base of the dais.
At the head of the dais Armandra stood, head bowed as the ritual demanded, for she must make no sign to any man in the assembly that
she favored him. She was absolutely beautifulâwhite as the fine furs that concealed little of the perfection of her body, the fur boots that hid the imperfection of her feetâa gorgeously carved candle of flesh crowned with the living fire of her hair.
Across the hall, in a ring of his own admirers and cohorts stood Northan, powerfully armored in the manner of a warlord. Yet forbidding as his armor was, the black scowl he directed all round him would surely be even more of a deterrent to anyone foolish enough to cross him in this matter.
For the moment no one in Northan's party had seen me, and from the oily smiles on the faces of his companions I could tell that they expected no interference. Well, let them expect what they would. My chill blood had been fired; Armandra meant so much to me now that death itself would be almost preferable to the thought of her in the warlord's arms.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I felt Armandra's mental fingers probing. They brushed me, lingered as if to make certain of my identity, then withdrew. She trembled where she stood, then, without looking up, she spoke.
“This woman now offers herself as wife and seeks a champion. Who will fight for me, for the glory of the plateau and its people?”
Her words were hardly out before Northan stepped forward, climbed the dais steps and took Armandra's arm. Immediately the blood raced faster in my veins. Now Northan saw me; his hot eyes lingered on me for a second, then contemptuously flicked by me to sweep the hall. There was complete silence. It seemed as if the entire assembly held its breath, waiting for the warlord to speak. And he did.
“I Northan, her champion, claim this woman, to fight for her, for the glory of the plateau and its people. Is there a man to challenge my right? His voice itself was a threat, a promise of violent, certain death to anyone who challenged him. I felt a movement beside me in the crush of people and held back, waiting to see what this disturbance could be.
A young brave was moving forward, hawk-featured and proud, Hushed with reckless excitement. Before he could reach the forward edge of the crowd a friend caught hold of him, whispering urgently, fearfully into his ear. Their eyes went to Northan where he stood watching them, an ugly grin twisting his face. Suddenly the grin
dropped away and his lips hardened. His eyes bored into those of the young brave and their message was perfectly clear. So as to make it even clearer, the warlord spoke again.
“Let any challenger come forward now, and let him know that Northan fights to the death!”
Suddenly white, the young brave stepped back and quickly disappeared in the crowd, his nerve broken. Northan's grin returned and again his fierce eyes, swept the hall. And still I waited, for I knew that the ritual demanded that a challenge be made. In threatening a fight to the death, surely the warlord had put paid to any plans he might previously have made for one of his own men to take up the challenge.
Then that which I had waited for happened; Armandra's thoughts rushed in upon me. I stared at her and slowly her head lifted. She gazed straight into my eyes.
“If you hold back much longer, Hank Silberhutte, the council might declare me Northan's woman without the ritual being fully completed. They are eager to have me wed.”
“I hold back for one reason only, Armandra, and you know that reason. I would be no mate to crawl to you when you fancied me, to father your children and then be pensioned off with a seat on the Council of Elders If I'm to be a husband then I will be a husband, not some sort of privileged lapdog!”
Now the elders of the council had moved forward to stand at the foot of the dais. They turned outward, facing the crowd. Armandra's anger flooded into my mind for an instant before she cried out;
“Oh, you fool! Do you not know why I dared not let you look into my thoughts? I am a woman, Hank Silberhutte, but a woman can have thoughts as lustful as any man!”