Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley of Freetoon, hereditary huntress, wing leader of the crossbow cavalry and novice in the Mysteries, halted her orsper and peered through a screen of brush. Breath sucked sharply between her teeth.
She had come down the wooded mountain slope by a route circling south of town. The forest ended before her, as cleanly as if an axe had cut it, and the hills rolled away in a blaze of green and of red firestalk blossoms, down to the wide valley floor. Behind her and on either side the Ridge lifted, bending toward the north to form a remote blue wall; she could just see the snow on those peaks and the thin smoke of a volcano. Ahead, nearly on the horizon, was a line of trees and a metallic flash beneath low suns, telling where the Holy River poured into the sea.
Tall white clouds walked in a windy sky. At this time of day and year, when midsummer approached, both suns were visible. The first, Ay, was a spark so bright it hurt the eyes, sinking down the western heaven; the second, Bee, was a great gold blaze ahead of Ay, close to the edge of her world. Minos was waxing, huge and banded, in its eternal station a little south of the zenith. The moon Ariadne was a pale half-disc, shuttling swiftly away from the planet. By daylight the inmost moon Aegeus, tiny hurried star-point, was not visible . . . but the six hours of night to come would be light.
It was on the thing in the valley, five kilometers away where the foothills ended, that Barbara Whitley focused her gaze.
The thing stood upright, aflash with steel pride, like a lean war-dart, though it lacked fins. As a huntress and arbalester, the corporal was necessarily a good judge of spatial relationships, and she estimated its height as forty meters.
That was much smaller than the Ship of Father. But it was nearly the same shape if the hints dropped by initiates were truthful. And it must have come from the sky.
A chill went along her nerves. She was not especially pious: none of the Whitleys were, and keeping them out of trouble had been one reason or making them all huntresses in peacetime. But this was Mystery. They had always said it; they sang it in the rituals, and they told it to children on rainy nights when the fires leaped high on the barrack hearths . . .
Some day the Men will come to claim us.
The orsper shifted clawed feet and gurgled impatiently. The creak of leather and jingle of iron seemed thunder-loud to Barbara Whitley. "Father damn you, hold still!" she muttered, and realized with a shudder that her habit of careless profanity might call down wrath from the Men.
If this was the Men.
She could not see any movement about the dart thing. It rested quiet in the valley, and the stillness of it was somehow the most unnerving of all. When a gust of wind rustled the leaves above her, Barbara started and felt sweat cold under the leather cuirass.
Her hand strayed to the horn slung at her waist.
She could call the others. When the shining object had been seen descending this morning, with none who could tell what it was or just where it had landed, Claudia, the Old Udall, had sent out the whole army to search. She, Barbara, had chanced to be the one who found it. (Or was there such a thing as chance where the Men were concerned? Or was this a ship of the Men at all?) There must be others within earshot, perhaps already watching.
The Old Udall had given no specific orders. That was unlike her, but this was too unprecedented. There was, to be sure, an implication that the first scout to locate the unknown should report back immediately, but . . .
This might be a vessel of the Monsters. The Monsters were half folk-tale; it was said that they lived on the stars, and Men had dealings with them—sometimes friendly, sometimes otherwise.
A stray lock of rusty-red hair blew out from under Barbara's helmet and tickled her nose. She sneezed. It seemed to crystallize something in her.
Now that she thought about it, there must be Monsters in that ship, if it was a ship. The Men would arrive much more portentously, landing first at the Ship of Father and then at the various towns. And there would be haloes and such-like about them and creatures of metal in attendance . . . well, there ought to be. And prodigies—didn't the Song of Barbara One-Eye, in speaking of her own ancestress and the raid on Highbridge, say: "And Minos shall dance in the sky when the Men pass by?"
It wasn't a canonical epic, but it dealt with a Whitley, so it must hold more truth than the Udalls and the Doctors would admit. They were a lot of old hags anyway.
Corporal Barbara Whitley was rather frightened at the idea of Monsters—she felt her heart thump beneath the iron breastshields—but they were less awesome than Men. If she went meekly back to town, she knew exactly how Claudia Udall would take charge in her own important way. The army would be gathered and move according to tactics which were, well, simply rotten, like the time when it had been led directly into a Greendale ambush. And a mere corporal, even a wing leader, would be just nobody.
Barbara had never needed much time to reach her own decisions. She checked her equipment with rapid, professional care. The cuirass was on tight and the kilt-strips covered her thighs to the knee; below them, boots protected the calves and feet. Her morion was secure on her head, and the blue cloak firmly pinned. The axe at her saddle had been sharpened only yesterday; her dagger was keen and her lasso oiled. She cocked the repeating crossbow and tucked it in the crook of her left arm. Her right hand lifted the reins, and she clucked to the orsper.
It trotted forward, out of the woods and into the open, down the hill at the swift rocking pace of its breed. The blue-and-white feathers lay sleek and the great head, beaked and crested, with fierce yellow eyes, was sternly lifted. Barbara hoped she wouldn't have trouble—the orspers were brave enough when they understood conditions, but apt to squawk and run when something new appeared.
"Well, my girl," she said to herself, "here we go and Father knows what'll happen. I do hope it's only a crew of friendly Monsters." The Whitleys all had a way of speaking their thoughts aloud, another reason why they belonged to the noncom caste. A town chief or officer had to be more discreet.
The wind blew in her face, murmuring of the sea and the Ship whence it came. The sun Bee was almost in her eyes, so she began a circling movement to approach the dart-thing from the west. She imagined a hundred scouts watching her in admiration from the forest. But her fellow Whitley couldn't be among them—obviously—otherwise she'd be riding right along with her. A good thing, too! That little bitch Valeria aready had too much unearned credit.
Still no motion from the object—not a sound, not a stirring. Barbara grew quite convinced that there were Monsters aboard. Men would have come out long ago. And she could talk to a Monster—or fight it—at the worst, be killed by a thunderbolt, or whatever they used for weapons. Monsters had unknown powers, but they were still of this universe. Whereas Men . . .
Barbara had never thought a great deal about the Men. The songs and sayings she had had to learn had gone smoothly across her tongue without really penetrating her brain. "The Men are the males of the human race. We were coming to join the Men, but the Ship went astray because of our sins. The Men are taller and stronger than we, infinitely wiser and more virtuous, and they have hair on their chins and no breasts. . . ." She realized now that she had always vaguely thought of a Man as being like a very big woman, in fact, like her dimly remembered mother.
Once, when they were all little girls, Elinor Dyckman had tried to draw a picture of a Man, breastless and with hair on his face. The Dyckmans drew well, but the picture had been so silly that Barbara had broken into giggles.
Now, as she rode toward the ship, the memory returned and another unholy fit of humor came on her. She was laughing aloud, above all the tension and wariness, as she reached the vessel.
"Hoy, there!"
She cried it forth, and heard her voice faintly shivered back from polished metal. No answer. A flock of gray rangers went overhead, calling to each other, incredibly unconcerned.
"Hoy! Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley of Freetoon speaking! I come in peace. Let me in!"
The ship remained smugly silent. Barbara rode around it several times. There was a circular door in the hull, out of her reach and smoothly closed. She yelled herself hoarse, but there was not a word of reply, not a face in any of the blank ports.
Really, it was too much to bear!
She whipped the crossbow to her shoulder and fired a bolt at the door. The missile clanged off; it left no mark. The orsper skittered nervously, fluttering useless wings. For a moment Barbara was afraid of death in reply, but nothing happened.
"Let me in!" she screamed.
Now she was in a fuming temper. She loosed another futile bolt and blew her horn as loud as she could. A runner started from the long grass and dashed toward the river, its tail feathers wagging ridiculously. Barbara shot at it—a miss, and at such a range.
No wonder the stories said never trust a Monster!
Bee was very low now, the western clouds turning saffron and shadows marching across the valley. Ay was still high, but Ariadne had moved and Minos grown noticeably fuller. Streaks of mist floated above the forests of the eastern mountains.
The startled screech of the orsper jerked Barbara back to reality. There was someone running from the west.
Barbara could not see the person very well . . . yes, it had human form, it was not a Monster. On the other hand, it was not dressed like any townswoman she had ever heard of. It wore some kind of tunic; the legs were sheathed in cloth; there was a small packsack on the shoulders, and . . .
She spurred the orsper forward. "Hoy-aaah!" she called. "What in the name of ruin are you doing here?"
The stranger stopped. Barbara got near enough to see that it was a remarkably ugly person. The broad shoulders were not unpleasing, but the hips were grotesquely narrow. There was yellow hair cropped short, and a lean face with too much nose and chin, altogether too much bone and too little flesh.
Father! Maybe it was a Monster!
Thoughts runneled through her head as she dashed toward the being. It was certainly no member of any town, any family—she knew what all the five hundred families looked like, and while some were homely enough, none were so bad. Nor did any townsfolk on this side of Smoky Pass dress in that fashion. And it was approaching the ship . . . must have been looking around outside when she came, yes, that copse would have hidden it from her—and it was deformed!
She remembered from the old stories that Monsters had many shapes but some of them looked like deformed humans.
A single Monster!
Squinting into the sun-glare, Barbara saw that it had drawn something from a holster. A small tube, clutched in one hand and aimed at her . . . She whirled around to get the sun out of her eyes and saw that the crimson tunic was open at the neck, the chest was flat and hairy and there was thick hair on the arms . . .
Then she hardly had time to think. The Monster might or might not be peaceful. She couldn't simply down it with a crossbow bolt. At the same time, she wasn't going to be shot down herself like a sillyhead on its nest.
She released her grip on the bow and let it swing free from its shoulder strap. Her knees guided the leaping orsper and her hands whirled up the lariat.
The Monster stood there gaping. Its weapon tried to follow her skilled movements, the jumps and dashes meant to throw off an enemy aim. It took a deep breath and she heard words of her own language, but distorted, alien: "Cosmos in All, what's going on here?"
Then the lasso snaked out and fell around its body. The orsper sprang away, rope whirred through the hondo and the noose pinned arms to side.
Corporal Maiden Barbara Whittey galloped in triumph toward Freetoon, dragging the Monster behind her.