World of Tiers 03 - A Private Cosmos by Philip Jose Farmer

Author:Philip Jose Farmer [Farmer, Philip Jose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-02T20:08:31+00:00

A PRIVATE COSMOS

137

ranges and half an hour of reconnoitering brought them to the little hill on top of which was the village of the Hrowakas.

Kickaha felt as if a warlance had driven into his skull. The tall sharp-pointed logs that formed the wall around the village were gone. Here and there, a blackened stump poked through the ashes.

The great V-roofed council hall, the lodge for bachelor warriors, the bear pens, the horse barns, the granary storage, the smokehouses, and the log-cabin family dwellings—all were gone. Burned into gray mounds.

It had rained the night before, but smoke rose weakly from a few piles.

On the hillside were a dozen widely scattered charred corpses of women and children and the burned carcasses of a few bears and dogs. These had been fleeing when rayed down.

He had no doubt that the Black Bellers had done this. But how had they connected him with the Hrowakas?

His thoughts, wounded, moved slowly. Finally, he remembered that the Tishquetmoac knew that he came from the Hrowakas. However, they did not know even the approximate location of the village. The Hrowaka men always traveled at least two hundred miles from the village before stopping along the Great Trade Path. Here they waited for the Tishquetmoac caravan. And though the Bear People were talkers, they would not reveal the place of their village.

Of course, there were old enemies of the Bear People, and perhaps the Bellers had been informed by these. And there were also films of the village and of Kickaha, taken by Wolffand stored in his palace. The Bellers could have run these off

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