Spock Messiah

CHAPTER TWELVE

From the point where the caravan stood, the road ran in switchbacks down a steep hill. At the bottom stretched the smoking ruins of a small village. Kirk sat unmoving for a long minute. Nothing stirred below. Finally, he released the brake and guided the caravan down the twisting road, stopping at last at a half-open gate in the stockade that surrounded the village.

It creaked slightly on its hinges, swinging slowly forward and then back as it was caught by gusts of wind. Hanging from it, pinioned grotesquely, was the spear-skewered body of a young Androsian in military dress. Several more bodies stood in military array against the palisade walls on each side of the gate, held erect by swords, their own swords, which had been pounded through their chests into the wood behind like giant nails.

Kirk tapped the reins and the caravan moved slowly through the gate. As the wind blew it almost shut again, the blank eyes of the dead man pinned to the portal seemed to follow them accusingly.

They moved along a deserted street into a small central square. Around it were smoldering ruins that once had been barracks and store houses. Hacked bodies lay where they had fallen, already enveloped by buzzing clouds of flies.

Kirk halted by a central well which was ringed by a meter-high parapet. Propped against it, hands and feet bound behind them, were a dozen headless bodies. Chekov climbed down and peered over the edge at the blood-tinged water only a meter below.

“Their eyes are open,” he said, “and they all seem to be looking up. I thought when you died your eyes closed like when you are going to sleep.”

“Not when you die that way,” McCoy said. He had to help Chekov back into the wagon.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Sara murmured.

Kirk knew what she was thinking. One impulsive act—and this!

“Let’s get out of here,” he said harshly. “There’s nothing we can do about what happened here. But maybe we can stop any more of it from happening.” He pulled the neelots to one side to swerve around a corpse sprawled in the middle of the street, gashed throat gaping at the sky like a horrible second mouth.

“Jim,” McCoy said suddenly, “do you notice anything odd about all of this?”

The other shook his head. “There was no quarter given, and they cut the throats of all the wounded. But taking prisoners isn’t the hill way.”

“Tap deeper into your Beshwa memories, Jim. During all the years your dop traded among the clans, did he ever encounter anything like a funeral service?”

Kirk frowned, searched back through alien memories, and then shook his head. “No, come to think of it I wonder why?”

“My dop,” McCoy said, “was with a group of hillmen once when an old chief dropped dead—coronary, I imagine. They just walked away and left him crumpled on the ground. When my dop asked why, they said that what the spirit left behind was just dead meat which had no connection with the person that had been. That’s what’s odd about this Hillmen have always left their dead where they fell, but this time they took their dead with them. And there must have been a number of them. The lads here didn’t just stand like sheep and let themselves be slaughtered.”

“It must be Spock’s doing,” Kirk replied. “The cultural changes are already beginning.”

The gate at the north side of the village was also open, and they went through it and shortly reached a fork. The good road veered west into a canyon. The one that continued on north was little better than a cart track.

“Which way?” McCoy asked.

“Straight ahead,” Kirk said. “The one to the left goes up a canyon to the smelter. No point in checking up there. There’d be more of the same. About a kilometer ahead we should hit the east-west migration trail. We swing left there.” He turned in his seat. “You, back there. If we run into any hillmen, we know nothing about what happened back there. Say that we came from the northeast.” Scott and the rest nodded. After what they had just seen, nobody felt in a conversational mood, especially Ensign George.

The migration trail wasn’t an actual road but rather a wide track that ran along the bottom of a shallow valley; occasional rings of blackened stone marked places where hill clans and their herds had camped for the night during their annual migrations. Kirk breathed a sigh of relief as they moved westward, making good time over the relatively smooth ground. With luck, he thought, they would reach the Messiah’s encampment sometime the next day.

They had only proceeded for a short distance when a warning cry came from Scott, who had jumped out of the wagon a few minutes before and was jogging alongside to exercise his cramped legs.

“Clansmen behind us! They’re turning in from the road that leads back to the village.”

Kirk swung the caravan half around and looked back along the trail. A party of riders, spear points glittering in the sun, was coming out of the canyon mouth that opened onto the trail a kilometer or so back. Behind them came a long line of heavily laden carts and several more riders, leading neelots bearing some kind of a burden.

“A raiding party,” Kirk said. “They must have hit the smelter while the main group took the village and destroyed the bridge.”

Suddenly, the riders in front broke into a gallop, leaving the main column behind as they came riding up the trail toward the caravan.

“It looks like we’re about to have company,” Kirk said quietly. “Everybody stay in character. Think Beshwa, act Beshwa, be Beshwa. Your dops will let you know how to behave. Sara, duck around the far side and get into the wagon. Stay there until I tell you to come out.”

As the hillmen came galloping up, Kirk and the rest got down and stood in a line alongside the wagon, palms outstretched in greeting and bowing from the waist.

This greeting wasn’t returned. Instead, as the masked neelot riders pulled to a halt, spears were lowered until their barbed points were only centimeters from the chests of Kirk and the rest.

“Beshwa greetings, honorable warriors,” Kirk said with a welcoming smile. “Once again we move among your hills in search of trade, unmasked men with open hearts who bear no arms. If you return to your tents, may we join you? It will be good to camp again with old friends from the hills. We have new songs, new tales, and new wares. The first two are free, and the last is brought more for friendship than for profit.”

There was no softening of the red eyes that glared down through mask eye slits. One of them turned to a rider who sat to one side, a black banner with a white circle flapping from his lance.

“Are these to be killed?”

The clansman addressed said, “Tram Bir ordered that all who were not of the folk were to be slain. Behead them.”

Kirk stepped forward. “An act worthy of warriors,” he said scornfully. “We bear no arms. When you ride home with our heads, will you boast of the fierce battle you had taking them?”

“All strangers are to die. It has been ordered,” replied the first clansman.

“But we aren’t strangers. Every summer since the time before there was time, we have come trading in these hills. Did your chief list the Beshwa among those who were to taste your steel?”

“No,” said the rider slowly, “but—”

“Then take us to him,” Kirk interrupted. “If we are to die, we are to die; but let it be at his words, once he sees who we are.”

There was a silence that seemed to last an eternity. Finally, the rider shrugged. “I will ask his son. I would not have the blood of Beshwa or women on my hands, unless it was so ordered.”

The rider turned his neelot and galloped back along the trail to the main column, which was now only a few hundred meters away. Its leader was slumped forward in his saddle. A rough bandage was wrapped around his hooded head and the right side of his battle cloak was blood-soaked. Behind him stretched a long procession of wagons, piled high with rough-cast iron ingots. On each side rode warriors, some also bandaged, some of them leading neelots with dead warriors trussed to them.

There was a momentary conversation, and then the rider trotted back.

“Alt says to take you to Tram Bir.” He beckoned to two of the mounted tribesmen. They dismounted from their neelots and came over. “Bind them and put them in their wheeled house.”

Chekov was first. He started to struggle as his arms were trussed behind his back, but he subsided when Kirk gave him a warning hiss. Then his feet were tied and he was dragged to the back of the van. One of the clansmen pulled open the rear door and peered inside.

“Hey, Chief,” he yelled. “Come look what I found. There’s a woman in here.” He jumped inside the van and dragged Sara out into the light. “A pretty one, too,” he said, running his eyes over her curves. “How about putting the others up front in the wagon and letting me ride back here?”

The leader shook his head. “Alt’s orders were to take them to his father unharmed. Tie the girl and put her back with the rest.” Grumbling, the hillman complied.

Kirk was the last to be dumped through the door. It was then slammed shut.

McCoy let out his breath in a long whew. “That was a close one,” he said. “But at least Chekov kept his mouth shut for a change.”

“Where do we go from here?” Sara asked.

“Wherever they want to take us,” Kirk replied. “I don’t think we have much choice in the matter.” The caravan lurched and began to roll forward on the trail. “At least we’re going in style,” McCoy added. “We seem to have acquired a chauffeur.”

They jolted along for half an hour, and then the caravan came to a stop. Somebody barked a command from the outside, and the rear door was pulled open. Hillmen reached in, dragged them out, and tossed them roughly on the ground. Kirk struggled to a sitting position, blinking as his eyes accustomed themselves to the outside brightness, and looked around.

Off to one side, at least a hundred neelots were staked out, several with dead bodies tied to their backs. Groups of hillmen were squatting around small fires, roasting chunks of dried meat on green sticks. A short distance from the caravan, Kirk saw a squat, bandylegged figure whose hood and battle cloak bore the distinctive markings of a clan chief. He stood with his hands behind his back, staring off into the distance, seemingly oblivious to the bustle around him. The leader of the party that brought the Beshwa caravan in went over to him, saluted, and said something. The chief glanced at the bound captives and then back along the trail at the approaching carts and their escorts.

“Good,” he grunted. “They bring more spearstone than I expected. The Messiah will be pleased. How many dead?”

“Six. Those plains sheep have sharp teeth.”

“My son, did he fight well?”

“Like a man of twice his years. He killed four before a spear thrust brought him down. We wanted to bring him back in a cart, but he insisted on riding with the rest.”

“And these?” The chief gestured toward Kirk and the rest.

“Beshwa. We found them on the trail.”

“I know they’re Beshwa, idiot. Why were they brought here?”

“Alt ordered it. He said that perhaps the Messiah’s order didn’t apply to them. Beshwa have always been allowed to move freely through the hills.”

“What has been, is past,” the chief said harshly. “They are not of our blood. Kill them.”

“The woman, too?”

Tram Bir nodded. As he turned to go, a stocky warrior beside him who wore the markings of a sub-chief held out a restraining hand and whispered something. The chief shrugged.

“Bring that one here,” he ordered, pointing at Sara. Two hillmen jerked her to her feet and dragged her forward. Tram Bir eyed her critically. “She has a pretty face, Greth, but there doesn’t seem to be much meat on her bones.”

The sub-chief gave a coarse laugh. “Well see,” he said, and drew a razor-edged dagger from a sheath.

Kirk fought to keep control, frantically searching the memory of his Beshwa dop for some scrap of information about clan ways that could be used to stay the hillman’s blade. Suddenly, he thought he had something. Superstition might work where argument wouldn’t

“Azrath!” he boomed in as deep a voice as he could manage, lifting his face to the sky. “Azrath, hear! They would harm your handmaiden!”

“What is this nonsense?” Tram Bir demanded in an irritated voice.

“She has been consecrated to Azrath. The power she draws from him will shield us all from harm. Why do you think the Beshwa bear no arms? Why do robber clans let the Beshwa pass in peace?” Kirk fixed his eyes directly on Tram Bir’s. “If you touch our sister, Azrath’s wrath will follow you and your children and your children’s children. Your seed will be cursed until the end of time.”

“That might have been true once,” Tram Bir said coldly. “But we no longer fear foreign gods. We are the chosen of the Messiah.”

“And your sister is to be chosen by the son of the chief—if he likes what he sees,” Greth added in a mocking voice. He lowered his knife into the vee neck of Sara’s short leather tunic, edge out, and slashed down suddenly. She struggled futilely against the hard grip of grinning guards on each side, as the chiefs son pulled her slit garment open and exposed her shapely body to his father’s eyes.

“See,” he said, “there’s lots of meat on those bones.”

“Not enough for my taste,” Tram Bir said, “but you can take her back with you if you want to. Just see that you dispose of her before we leave for the gathering in the morning. As for those—” he gestured toward the male captives—”cut their throats.”