The Keeper

The Keeper, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: The Keeper
Author: Henry Beam Piper
Release Date: September 20, 2006 [EBook #19338]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Venture Science Fiction, July 1957. Extensive research did
not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

Evil men had stolen his treasure, and Raud set out with his deer rifle and his great dog
Brave to catch the thieves before they could reach the Starfolk. That the men had
negatron pistols meant little--Raud was the Keeper....

THE KEEPER

by H. BEAM PIPER
* * * * *

When he heard the deer crashing through brush and scuffling the dead leaves, he stopped
and stood motionless in the path. He watched them bolt down the slope from the right
and cross in front of him, wishing he had the rifle, and when the last white tail vanished
in the gray-brown woods he drove the spike of the ice-staff into the stiffening ground and
took both hands to shift the weight of the pack. If he'd had the rifle, he could have shot
only one of them. As it was, they were unfrightened, and he knew where to find them in
the morning.
Ahead, to the west and north, low clouds massed; the white front of the Ice-Father
loomed clear and sharp between them and the blue of the distant forests. It would snow,
tonight. If it stopped at daybreak, he would have good tracking, and in any case, it would
be easier to get the carcasses home over snow. He wrenched loose the ice-staff and
started forward again, following the path that wound between and among and over the
irregular mounds and hillocks. It was still an hour's walk to Keeper's House, and the
daylight was fading rapidly.
Sometimes, when he was not so weary and in so much haste, he would loiter here,
wondering about the ancient buildings and the long-vanished people who had raised them.
There had been no woods at all, then; nothing but great houses like mountains, piling up
toward the sky, and the valley where he meant to hunt tomorrow had been an arm of the
sea that was now a three days' foot-journey away. Some said that the cities had been
destroyed and the people killed in wars--big wars, not squabbles like the fights between
sealing-companies from different villages. He didn't think so, himself. It was more likely
that they had all left their homes and gone away in starships when the Ice-Father had
been born and started pushing down out of the north. There had been many starships,
then. When he had been a boy, the old men had talked about a long-ago time when there
had been hundreds of them visible in the sky, every morning and evening. But that had
been long ago indeed. Starships came but seldom to this world, now. This world was old
and lonely and poor. Like poor lonely old Raud the Keeper.
He felt angry to find himself thinking like that. Never pity yourself, Raud; be proud. That
was what his father had always taught him: "Be proud, for you are the Keeper's son, and
when I am gone, you will be the Keeper after me. But in your pride, be humble, for what
you will keep is the Crown."
The thought of the Crown, never entirely absent from his mind, wakened the anxiety that
always slept lightly if at all. He had been away all day, and there were so many things
that could happen. The path seemed longer, after that; the landmarks farther apart. Finally,
he came out on the edge of the steep bank, and looked down across the brook to the
familiar low windowless walls and sharp-ridged roof of Keeper's House; and when he

came, at last, to the door, and pulled the latchstring, he heard the dogs inside--the soft,
coughing bark of Brave, and the anxious little whimper of Bold--and he knew that there
was nothing wrong in Keeper's House.
The room inside was lighted by a fist-sized chunk of lumicon, hung in a net bag of thongs
from the rafter over the table. It was old--cast off by some rich Southron as past its best
brilliance, it