Keepersmith
Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine – Spring 1979
(1979)*
Randall Garrett & Vicki Ann Heydron
illustrated by Karl Kofoed

	Earthbird Class: Small (96m) destroyers of tremendous power, with hulls having a full 2 mm of endurium plating, and manned primarily with fighting personnel, these ships were designed, not for space warfare, as the larger craft were, but to board and destroy the Snal-things in their hidden deep-space nests wherever they were found.

-

	Keepersmith stood in the doorway of Keepershome and faced the three people who had come through the chilly morning at his command.

	He was a big Man, with wide shoulders and a tough-muscled body that had been hardened by the same heat and pressure that forged raw steel into Smithswords.

	"I am leaving," he said quietly.

	Only Hollister, eldest of the three, understood.

	The aged Macson, whose eyes reflected craftiness but little wisdom, said, "Of course you're leaving! The thaw has begun and your Ironhunt was due several days ago. I was just saying to Yarma—"

	"Never mind, Macson," said Yarma. Almost as tall as Keepersmith, Yarma's brawn had slipped and puddled around his waist, but his brain was active and he sensed some little of what Keepersmith meant. "When will you be back, Keepersmith?"

	"Before the first snow," Keepersmith answered in his deep voice. "I will return when I can."

	And then they all understood.

	Keepersmith was clothed as usual for an Ironhunt, in a fur garment which covered his torso but left his arms and legs free, and fur boots thong-wrapped to his knees. At his left side hung his own great sword, the finest ever forged. At his right, in its own holster, was Ironblaster, the legacy of the Hawk.

	All that was normal: the sword for his own protection, and Ironblaster, which only the Keepersmith could use, which he held in trust for the future when the Hawk would return for his people, and which was the only instrument that could draw iron from stone.

	But the heavy pack was not normal. Strapped to his back, it was usually empty when he left and full of iron when he returned, but now it was obviously already loaded with supplies.

	"Where are you going?" asked Hollister.

	"South," said Keepersmith tersely.

	Macson blinked. "For how long?"

	"For as long as it takes."

	"But—you can't do that!" Macson's voice seemed to break, but he cringed back as Keepersmith's dark gaze flashed to his face. "I—I mean, you have duties here!"

	"Joom will remain," said Keepersmith evenly. "He is skilled and has iron enough. He will serve you well. And as for duty, it is my duty to go."

	After a moment's silence, Hollister said, "Something has happened."

	Keepersmith's hard face softened as he looked at the old woman. To Hollister would fall the great burden of leadership once he had gone. Macson and Yarma were useful as leaders only if she led them.

	"Perhaps. I cannot say for sure. That is why I must go. To be sure. Joom knows the Reading, and I have left Writing with him which tells why I must go. If I have not returned by snowfall, he will read the Writing in your presence."

	"And then?" Hollister looked at him steadily with her wise old eyes.

	"Then Joom will be Keepersmith, and another decision must be made."

	Yarma looked troubled. "Leave Ironblaster." His voice quavered a bit under Keepersmith's gaze, but he continued. "If there is a chance you won't return, you must leave it."

	"No. If I leave it, there is less chance I will return. I am Keeper until my death." Without another look, he walked away from the home he had known since he was apprenticed to the last Keepersmith at only ten summers.

	Half a day from the village, Keepersmith was still walking steadily through the slowly warming foothills. The air was fresh and slightly chill, and the ground laced with small furious rivulets from the melting snow that came from the mountains behind him, but already there were loudbirds and a touch of budding green in the branches of the hedgelike vecca trees that covered these lower hillsides.

	At noon he rested briefly and ate. He drank from one of the icy streams and was on his way again, moving steadily south. The ground grew more level, and the rivulets of water more scarce. When he paused at dusk, he filled a skin with water, and ate sparingly.

	The night was clear, and well-lit by Gemni, the double moon, and this was still familiar land, land he had travelled often.

	Near midnight he saw a flickering light ahead. He moved quietly to the edge of a stand of tall thran trees and looked out into a small clearing. A last rocky ridge extended here from the mountain range, and under an overhanging cliff some four meters high a small campfire was burning.

	Beyond the fire, with his back to the stone wall, sat a scaled creature with four Man-like limbs. He sat motionless, staring with shining eyes which protruded from a delicately boned, chinless face. Firelight reflected from the webwork of scales that was his skin, sending up a sheen that made his skin look wet.

	How he likes the fire, Keepersmith thought. I believe that it was good to teach them about fire. But should we give them the secret of forced fire? Could we trust even Liss with that power?

	Deliberately, he stepped out from the trees, and the eyes of the creature lifted from the fire directly to him. "Sssmith." The soft voice blended with the fire noises.

	Keepersmith walked to the fire, squatted down beside it, and put aside his pack.

	"Where is it, Liss?" he asked.

	The Razoi picked up a bundle from the ground near him and reached into it with a long-fingered hand. The object he handed Keepersmith gleamed in the firelight.

	It was a handweapon much like Ironblaster but smaller, and the control knobs along the side were not the same.

	The Razoi, unfamiliar with both weapons, could not see the differences. "It iss the ssame, Sssmith," said Liss, looking across the fire. "The ssame metal as Ironblasster."

	"Yes," agreed Keepersmith, "much the same."

	"You ssaid that two dayss ago," Liss reminded him. "Why did you ssend me away sso ssoon?"

	"Don't be offended, friend. I could not explain then. I cannot explain yet, but—" Keepersmith turned the thing in his hands so that the firelight highlighted the Writing on the controls:

	Kill—Stun.

	And across the butt:

	I. S. S. Hawk.

	"This is not for everyone to see. It is important and I must understand it before I tell anyone else about it."

	"Tell me about it, Sssmith."

	Keepersmith looked up from the shiny thing in his hand and considered the being across the fire. He was a Razoi, one of the oldest of a long-lived race, a member of the tall northern tribe which had for many Man generations lived across the high mountains from the valley where the Men lived.

	Keepersmith had met Liss when he was a boy, walking for pleasure in the hills above the Smithy. The Razoi had appeared from behind a group of boulders and had called to him. The boy, frightened because he had heard so much evil of this kind of creature, nonetheless had stood his ground—but the Razoi had only talked to him. In halting Man language he had spoken of friendship, of learning, of sharing.

	"You will be leader," Liss had said, and the boy knew then that the Razoi had lain in wait not for any Man, but only himself. And it impressed him, as not even learning the Writing had done, that he would one day have to lead the Men on this world.

	"You will learn," said Liss. "Teach uss. Teach me and I will teach them. We will not fight you."

	Then Liss had come down from the hillside to stand in front of him. They had been of a size, the gangly, already muscular thirteen-summer boy and the slim and ageless Razoi. Liss had raised his weapon, a wooden staff with a stone axe at one end and the other sharpened to a point, and had laid it down at the feet of the boy.

	"I will khome again. Remember."

	Then Liss had walked into the brushy hillside and the boy had stared after him, still speechless.

	Liss had come again ten summers later, as the new Keepersmith walked those same hills in wordless grief, struggling to accept not only the loss of a man who had been a father to him, but what that loss meant—the heavy responsibility fallen now to his own shoulders. Keepersmith had accepted the Razoi's friendship then and had not yet regretted it.

	The village did not approve when this one Razoi left the guarded trading compound to visit Keepersmith outside—always outside—the Smithy. They suspected, but couldn't forbid, that Liss sometimes went along on ironhunts, and had watched while Ironblaster melted into a mountainside. But they did not know that Liss asked only for what Keepersmith could give, and in turn gave him something the lonely boy and the solemn man could never know otherwise—the companionship of an equal.

	Another ten summers had passed, and, in all that time, Keepersmith had never spoken to Liss of the Hawk or the heritage of Men. He had sensed that it was this knowledge Liss really wanted, but would not ask for fear of offending Keepersmith. The Razoi had been the enemies of Man in the past, and though Keepersmith trusted Liss, they were too different. They would never truly understand one another. And the secrets of the Hawk had been guarded by Keepersmiths for generations. Could he be the one to reveal them to a Razoi?

	If it weren't for Liss, I'd never have seen this....

	Suddenly he lifted Ironblaster from its place at his belt and set both things beside the fire.

	Ironblaster was much larger than the other object, but it was obvious that they belonged together. Their shapes were roughly similar and the bright glow of the fire lit up the matching inscriptions: I. S. S. Hawk.

	"Ssee, Sssmith, it iss sso like Ironblasster. But it is ssilent, while Ironblasster roarss. What doess it mean?"

	"It is a message from the Hawk," Keepersmith answered. "A message I do not understand. Liss, what do you know of how Men came to be here?"

	"Only that one day they were here. They ran up from the ssouth, purssued by dussteaterss. And they sslew my people, and we fought to live. They drove uss out of our valley and tookh it for themssel-vess."

	Keepersmith could not conceal his surprise, and Liss smiled grimly. "Ssome things do not need Writing to be remembered."

	"Those Men had no choice, Liss. They had a duty—to the Hawk."

	"And what iss the H-hawk?" asked Liss, hesitating over the unfamiliar word.

	"Not all Men agree about that, Liss. Some believe that the Hawk is a god, a mighty being who cast us out of the sky to punish us for something we did. Others say that such talk is only superstition, and the Hawk does not exist at all."

	"And you, Sssmith? What do you ssay?"

	"I know the truth, Liss, or as much as the Writing can tell me. This world is only one of many—there are hundreds of others, surrounded by something called space, where there is no air to breathe. The Hawk is a ship which could travel between those worlds. It brought my ancestors to this world ...

	"And then left them here."

	"Why?"

	"Not even those who made the Writing knew that. But they were sure of one thing—the Hawk would return for them. The first Keepersmith, who spoke for the Hawk, said that we must keep all the knowledge we had, so that when the Hawk did return we would be ready."

	"Ready?" asked Liss.

	"To leave," answered Keepersmith, so lost in his own musing that he did not see the spasm which crossed Liss's face. "The Hawk will take us all away from your world, Liss. It will be yours once again."

	Keepersmith reach over and picked up the small object. "This may be the signal we have been waiting for. Or it may not. I must know for certain; I must go to where it was found."

	"I found it on the belt of one of the ssouthern—" He used a word in his own language, and the contempt in his voice was unmistakable. "Before he died, he told me where he found it."

	"Can you take me there?"

	"Yess."

	Keepersmith put the small thing in his pack and holstered Ironblaster. Then he stretched out beside the fire.

	The Razoi stretched out too, as near the fire as he could get without scorching himself. They lay there in silence for a few moments, and then Keepersmith spoke.

	"Are your people bitter, Liss?"

	"Ssome of them. But we have akhssepted it. Our livess are better for your potss and your cloth. And now for your fire. My tribe iss ssettled now in our valley—we would not wissh to move again."

	"Why do the southern tribes raid and kill?"

	"There iss only one ssouthern tribe left. They fight and sslay bekhausse—" the closest the Razoi could come to the Man's "k" sound was a throat-clearing noise, "they have always done it. They are sstupid. They are our enemiess too."

	"If we must go now, Liss—will you be glad to have us gone?"

	The other was quiet for so long that Keepersmith was afraid he had already fallen into the odd open-eyed sleep of his kind. But at last the soft voice came sibilantly across the fire.

	"No. You and I, Sssmith, we have made our own beginning. You are teaching me and I will teach my people. We will both be sstronger for it.

	"And I would misss you, Sssmith."

-

	That dawn and the many that followed found them moving, Liss in the lead and setting a steady, moderate pace. The passing of time and the changing character of the land made the terrain greener, but less inviting than Keepersmith's mountain valley.

	For here, where there was plenty of game and adequate water and little effort needed to grow half-wild crops, there was also continual danger. Pockets of Men had drifted down from the mountains and settled here in a territory that was still claimed by the Razoi as their own.

	In places where a single Man village lived in uneasy truce with its nearest Razoi neighbors, both were in constant fear of the southern tribe. Thought to be desert-based and so called "dusteaters" by the Razoi, they were shorter than the northern breed and of slightly different coloring, but they were broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, and ferocious fighters. They struck northward in small bands and then retreated to the safety of the southern desert. They were raiders and bandits, hated by everyone.

	Yet the common enemy was not enough to unite the plains peoples into the kind of peace that Keepersmith and Liss shared. The raids only made the Men more suspicious of their neighbors, regardless of their different appearance. A Man travelling with a Razoi was not only unusual—he might be viewed as traitorous.

	So Liss and Keepersmith avoided any settlements as they moved southward. They camped one evening beside a clear placid stream lined almost down to the water with broad-leaved fera trees. Keepersmith picked one of its fruits, but the orange hue and crisp skin of the small ellipsoid told him that it was still in its second phase and would be poisonous to a Man. So he rested against the thick trunk of the tree and ate some dried meat while Liss put aside his pack and staffaxe and dived soundlessly into the stream.

	Keepersmith watched the shiny green forehead bobbing up every few seconds until it disappeared around an upstream bend. Then he bent over and took the small thing Liss had brought to him out of his pack. He reflected, as he did so, on the importance of the material from which the pack had been made.

	The alth was a large carnivore which was hunted for food by the northern Razoi. Its thick skin, virtually indestructible once shaped and properly cured, had been the first basis of trade between Liss's people and the shivering human refugees who had fled northward.

	The southward tribes could not stand the cold, but alth skins made the climate livable for Liss's people. They covered cave mouths and the doors of earthern huts, and made warm sleeping nests for the families. They lasted so well that the Razoi had more than they needed, and the Men needed them badly.

	But the Men had nothing to trade.

	Had it not been summer when the Men reached their valley, they would not have survived. For it took weeks of experimenting and failing before they struck the right mixture and the right process to manufacture a tradable item—a glazed jug which would store water, so necessary to the Razoi through winter and drought.

	But trade began in time, and by winter the Men had cured enough alth skins to clothe themselves and make their primitive shelters bearable. And one Man had carefully split squares of the thick hide into supple, thin layers. She had rebound them with a hide thong and begun the Writing.

	The Writing was knowledge, and it was the very heart of Keepersmith's life. It contained all the knowledge the Hawk had left with them, and all the things they had learned on their own. The pottery formula. All the useless designs and the one successful one for a loom to weave the fibery grainflowers into coarse cloth. The secret of forced fire and the agonizing story of how they tried and failed, that first winter, to forge steel.

	And the Writing told of that next summer's hardship, when only Ironblaster saved them from being overrun by wave after wave of southerners returning to fight in the warmer weather. A passage from that section had special meaning for Keepersmith as he held the metal thing:

-

	All the guns are gone now, broken by stone axes or clubs or, bless them, by dying men who would not have them reach the three-fingered hands of our enemies.

	The Blaster is all we have left now of the Hawk's equipment, but its explosive effect makes it useless at short range. We have weapons, but they are not much better than the Razoi's, and we are only learning to use them. The Razoi are skilled and strong and savage, and we are all weak and hungry.

	Winter will be here soon, and we will have some rest from attack. We have managed to store some food—dried meats and some wild grain. Some of us will survive this second winter, but we will all die next summer if we don't have some kind of short-range weapon more effective than the ones the Razoi carry.

	I see only one choice for us. I must take the Blaster with me now, before winter sets in, and hunt out some iron deposits. Then, through the winter, I will try again to forge a workable steel weapon—a sword. That will give us longer reach, and a cutting edge. It may be enough of an advantage.

	I am leaving secretly, because I know there are those among us who would see only that I am leaving the settlement undefended. They would not understand, as I do, that if I don't go we have only one bleak winter ahead of us. If I do go, and I am successful, we may live to see the Hawk return.

	I pray that it may be so.

-

	There was no doubt in Keepersmith's mind that the object he held was one of the "guns" the Writing referred to. It said little about them, except that they operated on the same principle as Ironblaster, and Ironblaster was described and diagrammed in detail.

	He heard a splashing sound, and looked up to see Liss climbing out of the water some twenty meters downstream, carrying three large fish. He twisted the head off each one and placed the heads carefully on the bank. Then he squatted down and began to eat the fish in small, delicate bites, thoroughly chewing all the bones except the backbone. He would be a long time at his meal.

	Keepersmith looked back at the gun in his hand. Now was the time.

	A sharp twist removed half of the butt and revealed a latch which, when pressed, lifted off another section. Keepersmith examined the interior of the gun, comparing it to his knowledge of Ironblaster.

	Similar, but far from identical. The Bending Converter was much smaller. The Converter used a process which Keepersmith did not entirely understand. He knew that it took common water and converted it into helium and oxygen. But he was not certain why it created the power which, focussed through the barrel of Ironblaster, created enough heat to melt mountains.

	He knew what the energy of Ironblaster could do. Fired at a living thing, tree or Razoi or ... Man, the water in the target turned instantly to high-temperature steam, causing a tremendous explosion. Ironblaster was not a weapon that could be used at close range.

	But in the gun which Liss had brought, there was a different sort of apparatus. The power created by the Bending Converter was apparently channelled electrically through a vibrator which changed the tremendous electrical energy into ultra-sonic vibrations and focussed it down the short barrel of the gun.

	That much he knew from the Writings.

	He frowned in concentration, trying to remember the Writings about Ironblaster.

	The reserve energy cell broke water down into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen was discharged as a waste product, and the hydrogen converted into helium in the Bending Converter. Ironblaster's reservoir held a good mouthful of water, but there was no reservoir in the smaller weapon. But the Bending Converter was obviously there, and so far as Keepersmith knew, its fuel was—had to be—water. Where, then, did the water come from?

	Again he searched his memory. The little vents in the rear of the barrel told him they took in air and condensed the water from the air.

	And then he suddenly knew what this weapon was. It was something that Ironblaster had never been designed for. It required only the power it could draw from the moisture in the air, and it could kill enemies at close range.

	He looked again at the switch on the side.

	Kill. Stun.

	It was not even necessarily designed to kill. Again his probing eyes looked at the mechanism in the open butt. This weapon should, like Ironblaster, be self-fueling and self-operating. Then why wasn't it? There were stains on the butt which indicated the gun had been used as a club—surely even a southern Razoi would have figured out how to use it properly if it were still working.

	Carefully, reverently, he drew Ironblaster from the holster at the right side of his belt and opened it in the way that only he knew how. Yes, they were similar. Not identical, but similar. He traced the thin lines of Ironmaster's circuits and compared them with the smaller, thinner lines of the strange weapon.

	It took time, but finally he saw the break. A tiny black scratch across the engraved circuit.

	He knew how that could be healed, but would it restore the gun to full efficiency? Without the tools and equipment at hand, there was no way to find out.

	His concentration was broken by a scream.

	He dropped the gun and sprang away from the tree, looking downstream to where Liss had made his meal. He saw that the Razoi had finished and, according to his habit, had been burying the fish remnants, head and backbone, each at the base of a tree. The scream had come from the creature which had dropped out of the tree above him and clubbed him as the bodies met.

	Keepersmith now saw the attacker stand up and whirl to face the unconscious Razoi. It lifted something in both arms above its head, and he could see the gleam of steel....

	"No!" he shouted, and ran down the bank, drawing his sword. The figure jerked around, the sword still held high. It was a woman, dressed in a cloth tunic and wearing a sword harness. Her face was an ugly mask of hatred.

	"A Man," she said. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it carried infinite menace. "A Man defending this filth. Defend yourself, then!"

	She was barely ten centimeters shorter than he, and fast, strong and skilled. He saw that the moment her strong right wrist whipped her Smithsword up for a direct slash downward. It was all he could do to parry the blow without killing her.

	Her steel rang against his, slid toward his wrist, and he flipped it off the quillions. He had barely time to recover before her slash came in toward his waist.

	His parry was almost too late, because she snapped her sword in mid-swing toward his legs. He fended off the slash, but rather than counterattack, he leaped backward.

	"Peace!" he called. "We are not enemies!"

	But he could tell from the fighting glaze in her dark eyes that she did not even hear him. He had to leap back again as her sword came up in a swoop toward his crotch.

	As it passed him he leaped in and swung up his own sword with the flat turned, slapping her hand against the grip. Her weapon spun crazily away and half-buried itself in the soft turf near the river.

	She faced him defiantly, shaking her injured hand, ready for the deathblow. When it didn't come at once, she glanced at where her sword lay.

	"Don't think of it," Keepersmith said. "Sit down and keep still."

	She did, and he saw her clearly for the first time. Her face and limbs were dirty and scratched, her long black hair a filthy, matted mane, her sandals badly worn. But there was still spirit in the eyes that watched him as he moved sideways, his sword still drawn, to where Liss was trying to sit up.

	"Are you all right, Liss?"

	"Mosstly," said the Razoi, rubbing the back of his head and watching the woman.

	"Why did you try to kill my friend?" Keepersmith asked the woman.

	"Your friend1? What kind of Man calls a Razoi his friend?"

	"I do," he answered, quiet power in his voice. "I am called Keepersmith."

	All the hatred drained from her face, and amazement took its place. "Keepersmith!" She looked at him, and he could tell that she was comparing the Man before her to everything she had heard about him. He wondered if she would challenge him, but evidently there were few Men on the plains of his stature. There was sullen respect in her voice, as she asked, "What are you doing this far south and—" She glanced at Liss. "—in such company?"

	"It is not for me to answer you," he said sternly, and she dropped her eyes. "I ask you again, why did you attack my friend?"

	"He is Razoi."

	"That is no answer."

	She raised her eyes to his face. "It is answer enough for me."

	"But not for me!"

	For a moment more she hesitated. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and seemed to shrink as her defiance faded and weariness washed over her.

	"A band of Razoi raided my village," she told them. "I was in the fields, planting. Hilam, my husband, was working on the house—the rains were heavy last winter, and he wanted to build a new roof all made of wood.

	"Hilam had insisted that I take the sword to the fields. He said the village was well enough defended, but... he was wrong. I heard the alarm and rushed back—but they were already gone. I found Hilam...." Her voice broke, and Keepersmith did not urge her. After a moment she went on.

	"I found my husband dead in the doorway of our house. And beside him ... our son. Six summers only, and Thim had his wooden training sword in his hand ..."

	She straightened up, and looked at Keepersmith. "I swore vengeance for the death of my family, and for days I have been on their trail. Last night I got this far. They watered here, but I was too tired to go further. I slept in that tree, and when I woke and saw a Razoi here, it seemed he had to be one of them ..."

	Suddenly Liss spoke up, his voice angrier than Keepersmith had ever heard it. "You thought I was a ssouthern dussteater?" He stood up, but Keepersmith forestalled whatever he had planned to do.

	"Liss—be still, please, she does not understand." Then to the woman, "The southern Razoi are his enemies, too. In my mountains there is peace between Men and Razoi. And this is Liss, my friend."

	They both looked at Liss, whose usually unreadable face was working heavily as he struggled to conquer his resentment. "I have never killed a Man," he said at last. "And I would not kill a child." He turned away, finished burying the fish remnants, and dived into the stream.

	The two Men watched him go, then the woman stood up and faced Keepersmith. "Help me," she said. 

	"I have my own path to follow."

	"But you are Keepersmith, the Voice of the Hawk, who watches over us." The reverence in her voice told him what she believed about the Hawk. "Give me back my sword and help me destroy the scum who killed my family!"

	"No," he said. Her sorrow touched him, but he could not yield to her pleading. He was not, he reminded himself, an ordinary Man. "The Hawk has another duty for me.

	"But take your sword, in any case." He picked it up off the ground, and held it by the blunted lower third of the blade. As he offered her the hilt, he said, "I do not approve, but if vengeance will be some comfort for your loss, I will not forbid it."

	She gripped the handle of the sword, but still he held it. Her eyes questioned him.

	"I want your promise that you will not use this against Liss."

	She looked startled, as though she wondered if Keepersmith had read her mind. "He is truly your ... friend?"

	"I have said it."

	"Then ... I will not harm him. I swear it."

	He released the sword, and she sheathed it with trembling hands.

	"How long since you have eaten?" he asked.

	She shrugged. "A day. Two."

	He gestured toward the stream. "Bathe and rest for this day. I can spare you some food."

	She hesitated. "The stream—" she began. "The Razoi is there." When he said nothing, she continued heatedly, "I swore not to harm him—I have heard no answering promise!"

	"Liss!" Keepersmith called. The Razoi appeared from the stream almost at the woman's feet. She stepped aside as he came ashore.

	"I heard," he said. He faced the woman, standing closer to her than she obviously liked. "You need not fear me. Sssmith is my friend, and your enemiess are mine alsso. If it will easse your mind, I will sstay out of the sstream while you bathe."

	Keepersmith and Liss walked back to their camp in silence. Keepersmith was digging in his pack for the food when a sharp cry of pain from the Razoi made him whirl around.

	"What did you learn?" Liss asked, holding out the fragments of the small gun. "What did you learn by breakhing it?"

	"I did not break it, Liss. It was already broken inside. That is what I learned." He took the pieces and snapped them back together, then offered the gun to Liss. He accepted it, balancing it in his hand.

	"You give me only what iss worthlesss, ass ussual," he said. The bitterness in his voice surprised Keepersmith.

	"Liss..."

	"I have never ssaid it, Sssmith. Not before thiss. But that one—" He jerked his head downstream. "—to her I am no better than the dussteaters who sslew her people.

	"You have ssaid I am your friend. Yet you do not trusst me either. You are the ssame."

	"No, Liss!" But the words stung.

	"Then why did you give me fire, but none of the ssecret wayss Man can usse it? Why may I watch Ironblasster workh, but never be sshown how it workhss?

	"Sssmith, do you believe I would usse Ironblasster againsst you?"

	Keepersmith felt a tightness in his stomach. How would he have felt in Liss's place? He could not speak; he shook his head.

	"Then sstop giving me only what we khannot usse. Teach usshow to makhe potss and sswordss. How to kheep that knowledge and give it to our children. Teach uss the Writing!"

	Liss was holding the gun out toward Keepersmith, clutching it desperately. His whole body was tense, his voice pleading. "Sssmith, you ssay thiss thing may mean you and your people will leave. We have sshared our world with you—sshare your learning with uss. Sssmith, do not leave uss ass you found uss!"

	Keepersmith laid down the food and went over to his friend. In all their long acquaintance they had never touched except by accident but now, deliberately, he placed his hands on the Razoi's shoulders. They were cool and still damp from the stream.

	"How often have I said that I cannot speak for only myself in these matters? The fate of all Men rests with me.

	"But I swear this to you, Liss. If Men are to leave your world at last, I will do everything in my power to see that the Razoi are taught all our knowledge before we leave."

	"And if there iss no messsage in thiss metal thing? Will it sstill be as it wass? Dribbless of nothingss for the Rassoi?"

	Liss's anguish crystallized the decision Keepersmith had been delaying for twenty summers.

	"Then I will try to persuade the others that you can be trusted with more fire knowledge. Please understand, Liss, that is our most important secret; in that I would have to obey their wishes.

	"But I will teach you Writing. I give you my promise. Whatever happens, I will teach you Writing."

	The scaled face turned up toward Keepersmith.

	"You know I have wanted thiss."

	"Yes. You have been very patient. And you have been a good friend."

	He released Liss, picked up the food, and walked downstream to where the woman was dressed again and sitting on the bank. They sat silently together while she ate. When she had finished, she said, "I will come with you."

	"What?" Keepersmith had been staring thoughtfully at the stream, planning how to keep his promise to Liss.

	"I said I will come with you."

	"Why?"

	"They have too long a start. And there is nothing to go back to."

	"But you don't know where we are going."

	"It doesn't matter. You said it is an errand in the service of the Hawk—perhaps this was all ... arranged by the Hawk himself so that I would be willing to help you."

	"The Hawk," Keepersmith said quietly, "takes no responsibility for the actions of Razoi. You are here by accident,"—but for a brief moment he wondered—"and if you wish to come with me, it is your free choice and no fate decreed by the Hawk."

	"Then by my free choice," she said, looking directly at him from a face made younger for being clean, "I will go with you."

	Keepersmith looked back at the camp, where Liss was stretched out in the last patch of sunlight.

	"He travels with us."

	She followed his gaze.

	"I have sworn not to harm him."

	"It is not enough. You must trust him."

	She hesitated only a moment before answering, "It is you I trust. But since you speak for him, then I trust him also."

	Keepersmith nodded, and stood up to return to the campsite. "We move on at first light."

	They travelled faster now, each in a separate silence. Liss led the little column and Marna brought up the rear, and both were glad of the great wall of Keepersmith between them.

	Keepersmith's packed food was soon running low, and they had to pause, sometimes for a day at a time, to hunt and to gather the ferafruit that was already ripe in the warmer southern climate. They were never far from a river or stream, so that Liss was well fed. They might have asked him to catch more fish than he needed so that they could share his meal, but they respected his horrified aversion to cooked fish. So the Men snared small game and grazed the edible plants.

	It was near dusk of a day so long that Keepersmith knew midsummer was very close when Liss halted abruptly. The tense attitude of his body warned them as no word could do, and Keepersmith and Marna melted into the brush at either side of the rough trail. Liss moved cautiously forward and inspected something on the ground, half-concealed by a bed of fork-leaved creepers. Then he straightened up and waved them forward.

	When they stood beside him they saw what he had seen—a brownish-green hand covered with dried and flaking scales.

	They dragged the body out into the clear. It was a southern Razoi. His angular face had shrunk to fit the skull, and the finely scaled body was totally dehydrated.

	"How long has he been dead?" Keepersmith asked Liss.

	"It iss hard to tell," answered the Razoi. "One of my people would lookh likhe thiss only a few hourss after death. But thesse ssouthern dussteaterss need lesss water. He hass been dead for many dayss."

	"Then they are far enough ahead of us," said Keepersmith.

	"For a time," said Liss.

	"What does that mean?" demanded Marna. "This is one of the raiders who attacked my village." She touched one of the emaciated legs with her sandalled foot. "I recognize his two-toed track. Are we following them, after all?"

	"Not following," said Liss. "But we are going to the ssame plasse they are."

	"Why?"

	"On the Hawk's business," stated Keepersmith, "and I'm impatient to get it done. Liss," he gestured toward the ugly body, "do you want to bury him?"

	"A dussteater?"

	"Then there is no need to linger."

	He started off down the partially cleared, winding track they had been following for some days, leaving Liss and Marna to come after him at their own speed.

	The demanding march had dulled the edge of Mama's suspicion and Liss's resentment, so that they walked now barely a meter apart in comfortable silence.

	"Why don't you want to bury him?" Marna asked suddenly.

	"Why sshould I?" came the answer over Liss's shoulder.

	"But your people bury their dead, I have seen it ..." She stopped abruptly as Liss whirled around to face her.

	"He is a dussteater," he hissed. "He is not one of my people. Do you sstill not see the differensse between uss?"

	Startled by the sudden confrontation, Marna held back the sharp words that came so readily to her tongue. Instead she said awkwardly, "I—I am trying to learn, Liss. I have promised Keepersmith to trust you, and I—" to her surprise, she meant it, "I do. But it's hard to trust someone you don't know."

	There was a long silence as Liss's bright, wet-looking eyes stared at her steadily. Then he said, "I know what it iss to be denied knowledge. Assk what you will—I will try to ansswer. But let us sstay with Sssmith."

	They walked on together, hurrying for a time to make up the few moments lost. When they could see Keepersmith's broad back a few meters ahead of them once again, they slowed their pace.

	"About the burying ..." began Mama.

	"Yess. We bury dead things to bring them to life again."

	"You mean like the fish, to—uh—"

	"Fertilisse the ssoil?" He smiled at her look of surprise, revealing the double ridge of serrated bone that served him as teeth. "It is only the term that I learned from Sssmith. We have alwayss known that buried dead flessh feedss the living thingss near it.

	"But we do it for another reasson—to free the sspirit of the dead thing to return again."

	Marna frowned in concentration. "How does burying the body of a thing—?"

	"It is all one. When the flessh returnss to new growth, the sspirit returnss too. But if the flessh is abandoned, the sspirit is trapped in the dead flessh and it diess."

	"But if you believe that—"

	"Yess?"

	"Leaving that one unburied is a horrible revenge—worse than even I would ask."

	The scaled shoulders shrugged. "It iss their own khusstom. It iss one markh of their ssavagery. And it iss why they have dwindled while my people have grown."

	"But you did not abandon him out of respect for his custom?"

	"No," Liss answered. "I wanted hiss sspirit to die. I would desstroy them all if I khould."

	"I know my reasons, Liss. But why do you hate them so?"

	"I hate them because they are sskhavengers, and live on the workh of otherss, and never give anything to the earth.

	"I hate them bekhause they have been our enemiess ssince before the first Men khame here.

	"I hate them," he turned to look at her, "bekhause they made you hate me."

	He increased his pace and moved ahead of her until he was halfway between her and Keepersmith.

	She watched the iridescent scales on his back as they moved with his sinuous walk, and said softly, "I don't, Liss. Not now."

-

	A few nights later, they had camped beside a stream, and on Liss's advice had foregone their fire. They had lost the tracks of the southerners, and could not be sure where they were.

	Keepersmith sat on a log at the edge of the water, chewing the last of their ferafruit. Something splashed nearby and he looked up to see Marna climbing out of the river. A softer splash upstream drew his attention, and in the bright silver light of the full moons, he saw Liss's shiny head appear and sink again.

	"You're not afraid to swim with him now," he said, as the woman pulled her light woven tunic over her head.

	"No," she answered, sitting beside him and leaning over to wring the water from her long black hair. "But I don't understand him, either. Or you."

	"Me?"

	"You are Keepersmith, our leader. And here you are further south than Men have gone for generations. Can't you tell me at least where we are going?"

	"I gave you the chance to go your own way," he reminded her.

	"And I reject it now as then," she answered hotly. Then more calmly, "But I am walking totally blind. Liss knows more than I do."

	"And you resent that?"

	She started to speak, paused, and began again. "A season ago I would have given you good and valid reasons why I did not resent it."

	"And now?"

	"Now I am free to admit that I do."

	Suddenly Keepersmith laughed. His rich voice rumbled out over the water, bringing Liss to the surface nearby.

	"Sssss!" At the quiet sound the laughter stopped instantly. "You are ssometimess a fool, Sssmith!"

	Keepersmith's voice was choked and hardly above a whisper. "You are right, my friend. But it has been so long since I laughed." He cleared his throat. "Marna has asked me why we are here, Liss."

	"Then tell her," came the crisp answer. "Ssoftly." He ducked back under the water and was gone.

	A moment later, Keepersmith handed Marna the small gun. She accepted it gingerly, astonished at the lightness and the cool touch of the metal.

	"What is it?" she asked.

	"Call it—a small Ironblaster. But it doesn't work." She lifted her eyes to his face with sudden understanding. "The Words say that Ironblaster was the gift of the Hawk. This ...?"

	"I don't know," he said grimly. He turned the gun in her hands so that the bright moonlight shone down on the inscription.

	"This writing is the mark of the Hawk, but—"

	She interrupted him, growing more excited as the implications struck her. "Has He ... Is it time ... oh, Keepersmith!"

	"I have said it. I don't know what it means!"

	He took the gun from her, gripped it tightly as doubt washed across her face.

	"But—you are Keepersmith! The Ironfinder! You taught my village Smith the Words, but you alone knew the Writings! You speak for the Hawk! If you don't know—"

	"Then who does?" he finished for her. "No one does. But I am supposed to. It could mean whatever I say it means. But this time I cannot lie."

	"Lie?"

	He stood up and walked a few steps along the bank. "I have shocked you. Yes, I lie.

	"When a Man asks a question, he needs an answer. Two Men each claim that this varipig is his, or that newborn boychild isn't. Someone must decide for them.

	"When is it best to plant—this day or that? Which fields should lie fallow? How many pots should we have for next season's trading?

	"An answer. A judgment. I have always offered my best judgment, but they—Macson, Yarma, Hollister, the others who have been leaders in the seasons since I became Keepersmith—they believe that the Hawk speaks through me."

	He turned toward where she sat motionless. The fluid reflections from the river water danced across their faces. Keepersmith's was grim with strain.

	"I have never spoken of this before, but I say it now: If the Hawk speaks though me, I cannot tell it. I have borne this burden alone.

	"If this," he raised the hand with the gun in it, "is a signal of the Hawk's return, the I welcome it! For it will mean the end of—"

	His head turned sharply at the splashing sound, but not before three-fingered hands had grabbed the ankle and thigh of the leg nearer the river, and unbalanced him. He toppled awkwardly sideways, and slapped loudly into the river.

	The water churned furiously, and Keepersmith heaved himself out of the water. He stood on the floor of the river bed and tried to shake off the small yellow-green Razoi clinging to his shoulders and pinning his arms.

	At the first sound, Marna had leaped across the small clearing to where she had left her sword when she went to bathe. Two Razoi rushed out from the forest and blocked her before she could reach it. She spun around and fled into the trees across the clearing.

	It was dark under the vine-woven trees. The Razoi who followed her could see better than she, but she was bigger and faster. She swung up to the lowest limb of the nearest tree, waited until they had passed beneath, then dropped to the ground and ran back to the clearing.

	Keepersmith was half on the bank. His arms and shoulders were bleeding badly, but his right arm was free and his sword in his hand.

	She caught up her sword and whirled to face the two who had followed her. They were shorter than Liss, but wider. Their shoulders bulged with muscles, and they knew how to use their staffaxes. They rushed at her simultaneously, bringing down the axeheads in vicious overhead strokes.

	She blocked the one on her right, accepting all the power of the blow on the blunted edge of her sword near the hilt. At the same time she twisted to the right. The second axehead struck harmlessly in the grass, but swept up in a wide horizontal swing aimed at her waist. She turned her wrist to let the first wooden staff slide off the tip of her sword, and jumped backward just in time.

	Then she realized she had done exactly what they wanted her to do. Keepersmith's back was unguarded!

	The Razoi in the river were struggling to pull him into the water again, where they had at least some advantage. Three yellow-green bodies were floating downstream, already almost totally submerged. But three more still clung to Keepersmith, one of them pinning his left arm in such a way that Keepersmith couldn't strike at him effectively without injuring himself.

	The two Razoi Marna had been fighting turned as one and ran for Keepersmith, staffaxes raised and already moving downward.

	Marna charged after them, drawing from her body every ounce of speed it held. Too far!

	With a last lunge she threw herself under the feet of one of them. He stumbled and went down, and the axe flew away from his hand. He surged to his knees and launched himself bare-handed at her. The weight of his compact body struck her and pinned her to the ground before she could stop rolling and get her sword free.

	Through her own desperate struggle, she saw that the second Razoi had reached Keepersmith, and the deathblow was even then on its way down....

	A streak of green flashed between Keepersmith and the southern Razoi, and suddenly Liss was there, his staff braced and blocking that powerful blow. The sight brought her new strength as she fought the scaly creature who was trying to fasten his ridged jaws in her throat.

	She brought her elbow up under the chinless, snouted face, and pushed. For a straining few seconds he resisted, then his clutching grip was broken and he was propelled off her.

	As he staggered backward, her sword came up from the ground in a clean arc and sliced through his neck.

	Liss had forced the smaller Razoi toward the trees. She whirled around to see him back into the broad trunk of a fera. In that brief instant of surprise, Liss turned his staff from its cross-brace and jabbed the sharpened point downward. The southerner cried out once and sank dead to the ground.

	Keepersmith had killed another of the attackers. The last two knew they were beaten, and as Liss and Marna ran toward Keepersmith, they released him and dived for the deep water in the middle of the river.

	Marna halted at the shore and helped an exhausted and bleeding Keepersmith to pull himself all the way out of the water.

	Liss dropped his staff and dived after the fleeing Razoi. In a few moments one of them floated to the surface a few meters downstream. Liss returned with the other one and half-dragged him out of the water. He threw the southerner down on the bank with a hissing curse.

	"Why did they attack us?" asked Keepersmith.

	"You are Men, and we are nearing their sstronghold. That alone would be enough reasson."

	"You say that as if it is not the only one," said Marna.

	"They know who you are, Sssmith," Liss said. "They know that the Men would be eassier prey without you. And they wanted your sswordss."

	"They know me? How?"

	"Bekhausse they know me, and there iss only one Man who would be with me." He turned to his prisoner, cutting off their questions. "None of the otherss esskhaped. But this one will lead uss where we musst go."

	Keepersmith looked at him in surprise. "You told me you knew where it was."

	"No," Liss corrected him. "I do know where it iss—in a valley in the ssouthern mountainss. But there is only one entransse to the valley, and it iss well hidden. I ssaid that I khould lead you there."

	"And if you hadn't captured a dusteater to find the entrance for you? How had you planned to lead us through the hidden entrance?"

	"I planned," Liss answered steadily, "to khapture a dussteater to find the entransse."

	And now it was Marna who laughed, a clear mellow sound, and Keepersmith joined her.

-

	Soon after that the ground began to rise sharply. They marched faster, stopping only briefly. The southern Razoi maintained a surly silence except when Liss addressed him directly. Then he answered with fear and grudging respect in his ugly scaled face.

	Keepersmith and Marna had dressed their wounds with mud and herb poultices, which dried and cracked off within two days, leaving only faint red lines in their skin.

	As soon as the land left the level, the ground began to dry out and it wasn't long before they were trudging through a rising, stone-littered desert. Keepersmith had never been this far south, and he asked Liss about the terrain.

	"Thesse mountainss are the ssame as ourss. They run from our valleyss far to the wesst, then turn back ssouthward. The wind bringss the rainfall from the ssouth and easst, and the mountainss sstop it here. Beyond the mountainss iss dessert. No Rassoi hass ever khrossed it."

-

	Besides being much drier, these mountains were higher and more forbidding than Keepersmith's. The little party was climbing steadily toward one great sheer cliff which stood out above a group of smaller hills.

	At last Liss paused, stopping their prisoner with a sharp word. 

	"The entransse to their valley iss here ssomewhere," he told them. 

	"Then let's rest before we go in," suggested Marna. "We have been running on little food, and you need some water, Liss."

	The Razoi did indeed look uncomfortable. The dry dusty heat had made the Men sweat profusely, but it was not the heat but the dusty air that affected Liss. His skin was dried out until the tiny scales looked separate and brittle, and he was breathing raspily.

	But he said, "No. I thankh you, Marna, but there must be water in the valley if even thiss," he gestured toward their prisoner and used the Razoi word Keepersmith had heard before, "khan survive."

	When he heard that word applied to him, the southern Razoi cried out and threw himself at Liss, his clawed hands reaching for the taller one's throat.

	Liss was ready for him. He stepped aside and grabbed one of the arms, spinning the southerner off balance. Then he whipped his other arm around the stocky yellowish neck and applied pressure. He grabbed up his staff and flipped it around so that its point was aimed at one of the creature's eyes. He hissed something in his own language, barely loudly enough for his captive to hear it. After a moment the snouted head nodded very slightly.

	Liss released him and let him fall to the ground.

	"He needed more perssuassion," said Liss. "He will lead uss now."

	The southerner stood up, rubbing his throat, and led the way off to the left. For several minutes he wound in and out of the rocks. Then suddenly he darted away.

	Liss was right after him, and the two Razoi disappeared into the maze of rocks. The Men could hear clattering stones and the sounds of a struggle, but could not be sure of their direction.

	Then they heard a high-pitched cry, and in a few moments Liss appeared, panting heavily. "Thiss way."

	They followed him, and paused for a moment beside the dead body of the Razoi prisoner.

	"He tried to get through and warn the otherss," Liss said. "I give him honor for that." He looked at Marna. "When it iss over, I will bury thiss one."

	Behind them was a narrow crack in what seemed to be an otherwise solid wall of stone. Liss's slim body slipped through it easily, but the two Men had to literally scrape themselves through the rough-edged opening. Beyond it was a space large enough for Keepersmith and Marna to walk upright, a short corridor which ended in sunlight. They looked out into the valley.

	It was an awesome place.

	It was roughly triangular, and it stretched before them for several hundred meters. At its far end loomed the mountain that had been their landmark. It towered over the valley a kilometer high, and it seemed perfectly smooth along the top half of its face. The valley widened and sloped sharply upward to meet the mountain until it seemed, crazily, that it was the valley which braced up and supported that vast ominous cliff.

	Fed by the little rainfall the cliff drained off the passing clouds, and by underground springs which carried the melting snow from the high regions further west, the floor of the valley was green. But the growth was wild, untended.

	Keepersmith's practiced eye could see that the valley could support no more than three hundred Razoi, and even that number would require an unusually large stock of fish in the one surface river. It ran the length of the valley and fed into an opening in the mountainside, not twenty meters from where they stood.

	They did not expect to find sentries—the concealed entry was protection enough for the valley. Still they moved cautiously toward the river, and Marna and Keepersmith stood watch while Liss dived gratefully into the water. When he climbed out again a few moments later, his skin was already returning to its natural luminous green.

	"Now, Liss," asked Keepersmith. "We are here. Where is the metal room?"

	Marna started, but did not interrupt. Soon enough she would have answers.

	Liss pointed toward the cliff.

	"You ssee where the valley rissess and khlimbss the fasse of the mountain?" Keepersmith nodded. "The dussteaters live in holess along that lowesst ridge. Above their holess the way iss ssteeper, but sstill possible. Below the khrest of that nekhsst ridge—" They followed his directing arm, tracking the way with their eyes. "You ssee that darkh sspot? It iss the mouth of a khave. Insside iss where he found the ssmall Ironblasster-like thing."

	"In the metal room."

	"Yess."

	They moved off along the edge of the valley. They had worked their way almost to the foot of the slope when a whistling sound cut through them. Marna made an odd noise and slumped to the ground.

	Suddenly twenty southern Razoi came pouring down from the ridge. Above them, protected by the edge of the ridge, others were shouting and swinging strips of hide which cast stones at them.

	"Back up the side of the slope!" shouted Keepersmith as he drew his sword ... and Ironblaster. Liss did not hesitate, but bent down to the ground and with surprising strength lifted Marna in his arms and went scrambling back up the rocky hillside they had just left. Rocks from the slings rained around them, but his route was fast and erratic, and he made it to the shelter of a group of tall rocks.

	There he left Marna. With a word of apology, he took her sword and slid back down to Keepersmith.

	The rain of rocks stopped near Keepersmith, for the southerners did not want to disable their own fighters. But he was hard pressed in personal combat, surrounded by waist-high, snarling Razoi and their deadly axes. He needed all his skill merely to defend himself, and even so his living attackers already had to step over dead ones to get at him.

	Liss burst into the fray like a whirlwind. Even in that turbulent moment, Keepersmith gained a new understanding. For the sword Liss held was no more strange to him than his own staffaxe. He used it everywhere to its greatest advantage. How long had he been studying it, waiting to own his first sword?

	Taken aback by the suddenness and unexpected nature of Liss's attack, the southerners fell back momentarily.

	"Break it off, Liss," called Keepersmith. "There are too many of them."

	"Then you musst usse Ironblasster!" Liss shouted in return. "Go! I will hold them!"

	There was no time for Keepersmith to argue his friend's sacrifice. Keepersmith turned and ran down the center of the valley, luring some of the southern Razoi after him. His long legs easily outdistanced them, and as he ran, he pulled a pair of goggles out of their pocket near Ironmaster's holster, and put them on. The lenses had come with Ironblaster from the Hawk.

	Wearing them, he turned and raised Ironblaster, and the pursuing Razoi stumbled to a panicked stop.

	Even at this range, Keepersmith could not use Ironblaster on the Razoi themselves. The explosion of the water in their bodies, turned instantly into superheated steam by Ironmaster's tremendous power, would consume him.

	Through the goggle lenses, Keepersmith saw the valley exactly as it had been. But the sun ... the sun high overhead was a molten black disc.

	He glanced quickly at the mountain towering over him. Along the third and final ridge, the coloring of the rock was different, and all his experience told him that the formation was unstable. If he could disturb it enough to jar loose a landslide ...

	Sick at heart for what he was doing, sorry for the death he would cause but seeing no other way out, and knowing full well that he might be destroying the very answers he sought, Keepersmith aimed Ironblaster at the middle of that third rise of land, some twenty meters below the dark opening which Liss had told him was the entrance to the metal room.

	"NOW, Liss!" he warned, and Liss dived away from the southern fighters, who had been startled motionless by the giant voice echoing through the valley. He ran for the shelter of rocks where he had left Marna. He knelt beside her and pressed his face into the rock, covering his head with his arms.

	Marna stirred, and moaned. Liss hissed urgently. "Your eyess! Khover your eyess!"

	She sat up and looked out into the valley. She saw Keepersmith standing in the clear, aiming Ironblaster upward ...

	With a cry of terror, she copied Liss.

	And Ironblaster roared.

	The valley shook with the thunder of it, and Keepersmith could not hear the cries of pain. Every southern Razoi in the valley went instantly blind as Ironblaster's lightning reached up to drag down the mountain.

	To Keepersmith it was a clean, straight black line that stretched upward to the face of the mountain. Where it struck, a small black sun bloomed, and moved across the ridge at Keepersmith's command.

	To Marna, who raised her head to look in brief, careful glimpses out into the valley, that black line was a searing bolt of light. She did not know, as Keepersmith did, that Ironblaster had been designed primarily for use at great distance in airless space, not to waste a part of its terrible energies heating atmosphere to blinding incandescence. She only knew that the passing filled her mind with fire, and she did not dare to look to where it struck the rock.

	The black sun crept along the mountainside, melting a shallow groove in its wake. Then it died.

	Keepersmith lowered Ironblaster and removed his goggles.

	But the thunder still rang in the valley, rumbled in the stone itself, beneath their feet, all around ... above ...

	"Liss!" Keepersmith shouted. "Marna! Run this way!"

	The two figures scrambled down to the valley floor and ran desperately away from the shaking wall which towered above them. They reached Keepersmith. He turned and ran with them.

	For Ironblaster had indeed disturbed the balance of the mountain. Along the narrow groove, vertical cracks were snaking downward, shaking the lower ridge and breaking off great monoliths which toppled outward and skidded down the hillside, dragging loose surface shale with it.

	The three ran to the end of the valley, then they turned to watch as the massive weight of the second ridge sagged downward with a thunder not even Ironblaster could match, crushing and collapsing the tiny caves where the southerners had lived.

	As the ground slipped away below the gaping, smoking wound, the ridge above it slowly shattered. Great crumbs of rock caromed wildly downward, setting off new landslides until the entire surface of the newly formed, unstable slope was in motion again.

	Of this the watchers could only guess from the deafening, ground-shaking noise. For the tortured mountainside had vomited a great cloud of dust to shield its dying.

	The sound diminished slowly, and at last there was utter silence. Taking its own time, a gentle breeze blew the dust clouds away.

	And when the dust had cleared, the three of them could only stare for long minutes.

	Up there, in the mountainside, above where Keepersmith had made his cut with Ironblaster, the thousands of tons of rock had slid away to reveal a vast metal wall curving outward from the cliff face. Its silver-gray, dusty surface gleamed dully in the sunlight, stretching nearly a hundred meters along the rocky face, and standing over a third as high.

	There was one small, doorlike opening in it.

	At last Keepersmith turned to Liss. "That is not the metal room the southerner spoke of."

	"No," answered Liss. "He ssaid that it wass ssmall, barely ass tall ass you and very sshallow. That—"

	There was so much awe in his voice that he could not continue.

	"That," echoed Keepersmith, "must be the answer I have been sent here to find."

	"Sshall we go with you?" asked Liss, his eagerness so plain that Keepersmith turned a face full of pain to him.

	"Not this time, Liss. It is a secret I must understand alone—at least for now."

	There were many things he wanted to say to these people who had shared his food and his peril for a long, wild summer. But he merely turned away and began to climb toward the giant shining secret that waited above him.

	Liss and Marna watched as his huge figure grew smaller. They suffered helplessly as Keepersmith toiled his way up to the first ridge and then to the second, often falling, always getting up again.

	At last the toy Man stood beside the dark opening in the metal wall. He stepped into it, and disappeared. For several minutes they watched anxiously, but when nothing happened, they relaxed their vigil and rested on the ground beside the mud-choked river.

	A loud metallic sound rang through the valley, and Marna leaped to her feet, screaming.

	"The opening is gone, Liss! I can't even tell where it was! Liss—the thing has swallowed Keepersmith!"

	Liss, too, was disturbed. But he had known this Man longer than the woman had. So he calmed her as best he could. "He knowss what he iss doing, your Kheepersssmith. He will be backh. And he ssaid it—it iss a thing he musst do alone. We khan't help him now. We musst wait."

	"Wait?" She realized that it was indeed their only choice. "Of course, we must wait for him, Liss. Wait and watch."

-

	Just after the sun rose on the third day, the door in the small metal wall opened and Keepersmith stepped out. The door closed again behind him.

	He walked back to them out of the dawn, carrying a black box and a small gray metal container. His powerful frame had thinned and his face was drawn and weary, but in his eyes there was a new wisdom.

	"We are going back," he said.

	Liss and Marna stared at him.

	"Tell uss," said Liss. "Pleasse tell uss."

	Keepersmith opened his mouth, but hesitated. Liss turned bitterly away.

	"It iss the ssame," he said. "I am a Rassoi!"

	"No, Liss." Marna reached out and touched Liss's arm lightly. "I am a Man, and the secrets of the Hawk are not for me either. Only the Keepersmith can know them."

	Suddenly Keepersmith spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. "No more." They waited.

	"All Men must know what I have learned here. We have lived in the shadow of error for centuries.

	"The Hawk is not a god, Marna. It is only a machine which carried Men through the space between planets—" His eyes looked through them and they knew he was seeing something in his mind, a memory carried out of the place of secrets.—"between stars.

	"The Hawk brought our people here; that much is true. But it will never return. Because it never left.

	"That—" he said, gesturing toward the great metal wall shimmering in the new sunlight, "That is the Hawk!"

	"I don't understand," wailed Marna. "Why—?"

	"They didn't understand either, Marna. Our ancestors were warriors. Ironblaster found its true destiny here, for it was built for killing! The Hawk landed, and some of the Men took Ironblaster and went out into this world searching for their enemies. They came back—and the Hawk was gone."

	Liss gestured with one three-fingered hand toward the distant metal wall. "But you jusst ssaid ..."

	"That was the error. It didn't leave. It was just that our people could not find it when they returned.

	"It must have happened suddenly. One Man was still in the airlock—that was the small metal room, Liss. The door leading into the ship was closed and locked. The outer door was open.

	"And then the whole mountainside, disturbed perhaps by the shock of the Hawk's landing, at last gave way and slid down to bury the Hawk from the sight of Men. There may have been others outside. If so, they have been buried under that rock for centuries.

	"There were only two on the ship itself, the Man in the airlock and one other, sealed helplessly inside. This Man was hurt, and she died soon after—but she has left us this." He held up the metal cylinder. "It is a kind of Writing. A speech Writing. It tells much, and there is even more to learn."

	He did not mention the two long racks of Ironblasters that he had seen within the ship; that was knowledge that could be held until later.

	"And our ancestors were the fighting Men who had been sent away from the Hawk?"

	"Yes, and they too left a Writing. The one that we have lived by. They believed that their ship had flown off for some reason, but would return when it could. They wanted us to be ready when it came back. We have been waiting for centuries," his voice tightened, "for a machine that has been buried at our feet!"

-

	Out of the silence that followed came Marna's voice. "What—what will you do?"

	"I will tell them the truth. Whatever fate brought me here, I have learned the lesson of the Hawk."

	"And what iss that, Sssmith?"

	"That the waiting is truly at an end. In a sense, the Hawk has returned, and now we must save ourselves. We must stop merely surviving and begin to grow." Again he held up the black box and the cylinder. "With these we can start to learn all the lost knowledge of the Hawk."

	He looked deliberately at Liss.

	"We will all learn."

	"Your people," whispered Liss. "Will they agree?"

	"They will," said the big man as he stepped between his friends and led the way out of the Valley of the Hawk. 

	"I am still Keepersmith."

The End