Part 2

Lifa was silent for a moment before her muted harsh mirth sounded. He felt Nard Rost's fingers squeeze his arm approvingly.

"Better yet," she agreed. "I cheat them of both slaves and his new mate." She peered at Besan. "Where does your tribe live?"

"In Rhilg," he told her. "In the city of the inner cone."

With an awed gasp the woman drew a well-whetted knife from within her garment and started hacking at the dried bindings of the galling wooden yoke.

"I will be dressed like the aristocrats," she whispered. "Shiny cloth, sparkling rings, polished leather, jewels. Then I can laugh at Detch."

The last strand of Nard Rost's collar finally being loosed, they slipped into the hidden opening through which the woman had come. The deeper shadows and two heaped-up bundles of dried rushes and grass that they left behind should cover their escape for a time, Besan told himself.

They followed a low, narrow corridor that twisted along a path parallel with the cliff.

"Detch, and the chief alone know of this way," she confided. "Using it they can listen to the conversation of any of the caves and learn who is disloyal. Or they can kill those who sleep within."

"Nice people for in-laws, Besan," Nard Rost jibed.

Besan grunted. "How far to the cave of the--of Detch?" he demanded.

"Here it is," Lifa said, sliding a slab aside. "Won't Detch be surprised!"

Besan pushed through the opening. He was in the rear of a large cave cut into many low-walled chambers by irregular sections of fallen rock. There was a reddish flicker of flames on the walls and roof from the front of the cave. Toward this he made his way.

Beside the fire, huddled in a little pile of _cratur_-hide blankets, was Relsa. She was alone.

Besan hurried to her and explained in a few brief words that he had made a bargain with Lifa. Then he started to lead her back toward the cave's hidden exit.

* * * * *

The curtains rasped at the entrance and Detch was in the cave. Besan dropped the girl's hand and his eyes darted around the firelit circle of the nearby walls. There were pegs driven into rocky crevices and from them hung short sword knives and hatchets. Other pegs supported a lethal assortment of heavy hunting spears and small bows for birds and rodents.

Besan jerked two of the sword knives from their pegs, his fingers familiar with their ridged leather grips from the required classes in fencing at Rhilg University.

"Is there meat cooked?" roared Detch.

He shook his ugly head, his pig's eyes blinking.

"Where are you?" he demanded. "Come out before I beat you again."

"Here," cried Besan, and flung himself at the giant.

In that instant a hot fire seemed to consume the chill in his bones and he felt no more fear. Detch's startled oath and his own sword knife came out together. Their blades clicked.

It was Besan's first encounter with unshielded blades. One of his weapons went spinning in that first swift onslaught and then the practiced skills of his fencing class came to his defense.

He turned the hacking sword and his own blade ripped across Detch's hairy chest. The pain drew a cry from the big savage's throat and his sword knife slashed more furiously. And already the cave was filled with the choking foul haze that was the defense of all Saaaran humanoids.

Detch roared for aid. In a few moments others of the tribe would be coming and they would be trapped. Besan drove his blade through the clumsy guard of the bigger man into the hairy chest.

Detch went down. Besan wiped his streaming eyes and darted toward the cave's rear entrance where Relsa Dav and the others were waiting.

"Good work, boy," said Nard Rost exultantly. "I hoped that you'd prove I was right."

_Right about what?_ Besan wondered, as he helped roll the slab back into its appointed slot.

Nor were they any too soon. From the cave they had so recently quitted there sounded startled cries and shouts of rage. If Detch were not dead they would soon have a party of warriors on their heels.

Lifa hurried before them, leading the way. Once she stopped in a storeroom and tucked several small bags of _goorn_ dust into her garment's inner pouch. To her it meant wealth and, although Besan told her Garro law forbade possession of the narcotic, she did not throw it away.

They emerged at last in the valley above the caves and beyond the barrier of logs at its upper end. A dense thicket of thorny brush shielded the entrance and sheltered them from the leathery-winged _wadts_ cruising overhead, as they pushed westward toward Rhilg.

* * * * *

Morning found them in a region of rocky gulches and vegetation choked streams but a score of Terran miles from the Rhilg Hills. Far ahead the majestic black cone of Rhilg lifted above the heaped-up jumble of wooded hills and ridges.

But between them and the opposite hills the tide of maddened _denars_ flooded onward as they had two days before. They could only hope to find a hiding place until the stampeding herds were gone, a useless plan for they had caught glimpses of a trailing party of warriors several times.

"If we could only find an impregnable position," Nard Rost told them, "until help can reach us."

"You reached them at last?" demanded Besan, tapping Nard Rost's bracelet broadcaster.

The instructor nodded. "About ten minutes ago. Signals are very faint but they're sending a dirigible. By midday probably."

"Besan," said Relsa Dav tensely, "to the right!"

Lifa whirled and her hand stole inside her scanty garment to where the sacks of _goorn_ dust and her knife rested.

A smaller rift, a miniature gorge snaking down into the gulch they followed, lay revealed. And sprinting down its rocky floor came four well-armed warriors of the pursuing band! In a matter of seconds they would be blocking the trail ahead.

Besan looked ahead and at the rocky slope to their left. A steep trail, a brushy wet-weather watercourse, led upward to the gulch's bare rim.

"Quick," he ordered. "Up with you!"

They scrambled upward, the girls ahead and Nard Rost after them. The savages realized that they had been seen and their shouts boomed through the air to their fellows behind.

The watercourse climbed yet more steeply so they were forced to pull themselves upward by projecting roots and branches. A moment later they stumbled, one by one, over the lip of the little gulch and paused to catch their breath.

They had reached a table-like flat of some sixty odd feet across. At either end jumbled rocks sloped gradually downward and directly opposite a higher sheer escarpment blocked progress. Their only escape lay to the right, away from their pursuers.

Besan led the way. He chose a course through the broken rocks that tried their wasted strength least. Yet he knew that before long they must halt and attempt to make a stand--

Suddenly he halted and the sword knife was in his hand.

A menacing elephantine shape loomed up in his path, a reddish-haired bearlike _cratur_. And behind the foremost _cratur_ a half dozen others jammed the way!

He turned--and saw the snowy-striped heads of the savage warriors already entering the rocks. They were trapped.

Lifa pushed at him. Her purple eyes were blazing.

"Drive them out of the way!" she cried. "One whiff of your scent and they will scatter."

Besan groaned. His tank of scent lay back in the cave village of Detch.

"I can't," he confessed swiftly. "I am--I was born without scent glands."

Lifa's eyes were scornful. She clawed him aside and pushed forward, laying down an acrid barrage that split the lumbering _craturs'_ living wall apart. They pushed through into the more open ground beyond the rocks.

Besan's eyes leaked but his brain was busy. If the _craturs_ could only be used to stop the savages....

"Give me the _goorn_ dust," he told Lifa.

"I'll give you nothing," she screeched hoarsely. "I want nothing to do with a freak like you. I'll find a new mate." She turned to run toward the southern hills.

Besan spun her about and ripped the bags of _goorn_ dust from their hiding place. Lifa snarled, her nails raked his face, and then her knife slashed at his forearm. The Earthman chopped his hand down on her wrist and the knife jarred free.

"Take her," he told Nard Rost and Relsa.

Back toward the _craturs_ he ran until he was within throwing distance of them. As he ran he untied the sacks, and once within range started tossing them accurately at the shaggy red heads of the bearlike monsters.

The _goorn_ dust acted swiftly, deadening their senses and, at the same time rousing their notoriously short tempers to a feverish peak. For the moment they would pay no heed to the obnoxious natural weapon of the striped men.

At that moment the pursuing warriors came into sight and darted in among the milling brutes. The _craturs_ roared and sprang upon them.

Besan turned and raced back toward the others.

Lifa was gone. She had twisted free from Nard Rost and Relsa and headed southward into the jungle-clad gorges and hills there. And directly ahead a faint trail dipped down into a tree-grown valley on the road to Rhilg.

"We must hurry," he said urgently, and then became aware of Relsa's eyes staring at his bleeding arm.

The blood welling from it was red--the purple coloring had been absorbed and he had not renewed it. He shrugged. Now she would know he was not a Garro--as would Nard Rost. That meant execution as a spy or shipment back to a System planet and amnesia.

Of course he could escape into the jungle before the dirigible came, but that would mean leaving Relsa and Nard Rost unprotected. He shook his head. His decision was made. He faced them proudly.

* * * * *

But Relsa was not regarding him with the disgust Lifa had shown. Instead her eyes were shining; her lips parting in a glad cry. Unbelieving, he turned to Nard Rost. The weary purple eyes smiled. There was no hatred or disgust here.

Relsa came into his arms, sobbing. "You're Terran too!" she cried.

Nard Rost turned. For the moment they were safe. He found a flat boulder.

"We've known all along, Besan," he said to the dazed Earthman. "Your smell is different. But race or smell mean nothing to us if you have courage." He paused. "And are level-headed under stress."

"That you have proved, even as Relsa's parents proved they were fit citizens of Saaar. With your race's greater knowledge to aid us Saaar can rebuild its cities and resume its rightful place among worlds."

Nard Rost was studying the distant horizon where the great cone of Rhilg loomed. Now he turned to see why Besan Wur had said nothing. He tugged at an earlobe and chuckled. They were not listening.

"Silly custom," he grunted and started wearily off down the trail toward the plain.