The Mink he seeks the gentrylass;He eyes the gods above;He laughs their might to scorn, the whileHe hunts his highborn love.A fearsome lion bars the way,The Mink he cannot pass;He lifts his pick with fearful rage,And blood besmears the grass!—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The Mink he seeks the gentrylass;He eyes the gods above;He laughs their might to scorn, the whileHe hunts his highborn love.
A fearsome lion bars the way,The Mink he cannot pass;He lifts his pick with fearful rage,And blood besmears the grass!
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
Revel was plowing through the brush like a wound-crazed bear. Jerran came behind, shouting directions, for Revel's impatience would not be stilled enough for him to follow anyone, especially the small Jerran, whose head rang, he said, from the skull-cracking blow he'd been given by Rack, and who was slowed as a consequence.
Revel got farther and farther in advance, tearing with his pick at vines and creepers, trampling small trees, making enough noise for seven men. Dimly he remembered much of the trail hereabouts, and at last he was so far ahead of Jerran that he couldn't hear him.
He came into a tiny glade, ceilinged with branches of the oaks. Across its width, some twenty feet from him, a huge woods lion lay above the torn corpse of a man. One of the rebels from the meeting, thought Revel, who wasn't so lucky as most. The lion looked up and growled.
Its mane was long and bur-tangled, black as sin; its body seven hundred pounds of muscle and bone, was longer than Revel was tall. He greeted it joyously, a foe to grapple with at last!
It came to its feet, challenge on challenge rumbling in its massive chest. He drew a gun, then stuck it back. His hands ached for work, more work than the pulling of a trigger. He ported his pickax. "Come along, old monster," he said. "We'll see how a mink and a lion can mix it!"
It stalked two steps, gathered itself for a leap; he didn't wait, but sprang forward to meet it. The lion rose, checking its pounce with surprise, for surely no man had ever chargeditbefore. The pick swung down as it struck sideways at Revel, catching it in one shoulder, tearing the flesh like dough. It screeched, clawing for him.
One of the scimitar claws caught his side, gashing shirt and skin. Revel whirled, yelling, flung himself on the animal's back, grabbed a handful of mane with his left hand, and buried the pick in the center of the woods lion's skull. The carcass lost its stiffness, sagged and fell, leg bones cracking like gun shots as the tremendous body came down upon them. Revel sprang to one side, lighting on his feet.
"Not bad," said Jerran drily, coming into the glade. "If you're quite through, Revel, we might be going along?"
"I had to find out if I'm really the Mink," explained Revel, retrieving his pick from the splintered bone of the lion's head. "The Mink could slay a woods lion with one blow, it says in the ballads. This fellow took me two blows."
Jerran said, his face twisted, "Damn you, don't get cocky on me! You're important now, no dirty miner, but a leader! If you haven't got the brains to lead, at least keep still, follow my orders, and be a figurehead. But don't take chances for the fun of it, because your lousy hulk may be the salvation of man, despite yourself!"
Revel hung his head. Jerran looked at him a moment. "Nerves, that's it, and excitement, and eagerness to do something with your big hands. You're young, and I shouldn't expect strict attention to duty of you. But Ido, blast it! Now march!"
When they had traversed the forest, they emerged a little west of Dolfya, on a stretch of dirt road bordered by maples. The lane seemed deserted. Here and there in the buttoned sky were the bright dots of gods passing back and forth between their abodes. Jerran led him purposefully down the road.
Suddenly a man came bursting out from the maples and ran headlong into them, knocking the small man back into Revel's arms. It was Dawvys, clothing disheveled, mouth agape with running. "They are after me!" he panted. "Ewyo sentenced me to the hounds. I ran, but they're after me!"
Revel hauled out his pick. "Look there," he said, jerking his head upward. "Concentration of orbs above us."
"They point the way for the squires," grunted Jerran. "I don't hear the dogs, though."
"Ewyo wants me alive."
"He won't get you!"
"Will I not?" Ewyo himself had stepped quietly out from the trees, directly in their path. In puce velvet, a great trumpet-mouthed gun in his hands, he stood beefy and menacing before them. "Do you tell me I won't, Revel the Mink?" He chuckled icily at the looks of amazement. "D'you think I wouldn't have rucker spies? D'you think we don't know about your foolish hideaway in the forest, and couldn't clap our hands down on all of you in an hour if we wished to?" Two more squires, tall and red-faced and prominently armed, came out behind him, "Gentles," said Ewyo with mock politeness, "I give you Revel, the Mink, and two minor henchmen."
Revel lifted his pick and came forward, roaring defiance. Ewyo's gun thrust out at his belly. "Don't die now," said the big squire pleadingly. "I want you for a fox, Revel."
Jerran snatched a handgun from his belt. One of the squires loosed off at him instantly, the slug striking the handgun more by accident than design, sending it spinning as Jerran howled and gripped his numbed fingers.
"Nice shooting, Rosk," said Ewyo. Revel still stood with his pick raised, wondering what his chances of a swipe at Ewyo would be. "Put it down," said the squire. "Drop it!"
"Drop it, Revel," said Jerran. The Mink did so, and Rosk picked it up.
"Come along," said Ewyo then. "I have some excellent torture rooms I'd like you to inspect. Personally!" With a grin like a weasel's, he motioned them through the maples. Several others of the gentry came up, and the three rebels were surrounded and marched off to the great house of Ewyo of Dolfya.
The room was large, of field stone, set below the house like a mole's den; portions of the walls were black with age-old soot, from what hellish fires Revel did not like to guess, and the rafters were grimed and looked like axe-blades, darkened with dry blood, ready to fall upon him. One wall had thongs hanging from it, beside a nine-lashed whip hanging on a post. Candles illumined other instruments, the purpose of all of which was torture.
"Strap him to the wall," said Ewyo. Two of his servants did so; they were evil-faced ruckers, fat with good living in the squire's huts. Rosk, the lean-jawed, red-cheeked squire who was Ewyo's closest friend, said, "Shall I flay a part of him? The left hand, say, or one foot so he'll be slow in the hunt?"
"No. I want him hale and hearty." Revel breathed easier. "The gods want to do something, though. I'm not sure what. I have my orders." Ewyo took a seat by the wall, gestured his servants out. As the door closed behind them, a hideous yell echoed in the vault.
Ewyo said comfortably, "They are taking the hide off the back of Dawvys, in the next chamber. They'll split his fingernails, too, and perhaps take off an ear. He's the least important of you upstarts, and I don't care if he's as slow as a slug tomorrow."
Revel thrashed impotently in the leather straps.
Rosk studied the face of the Mink. He opened his gash of a mouth to say something, and Revel spat accurately into it. "I wish it were my pick," he said, as the squire sputtered and backed off.
"Let be, Rosk," said Ewyo, smiling a little. "He'll pay for it tomorrow." Rosk wiped his lips as the burly squire cocked his head, listening to an unseen command. Then he walked over, opened the door, and let in another yelp of agony, followed by a pair of golden orbs, with their attendant zanphs.
The globes floated down to the level of the Mink's face, and his skin prickled at the nearness of the energy aura. What now? The long feelers came darting out, touching his eyelids, his cheeks, and Revel winced, expecting a searing burn. There was only the tingle. They could regulate the energy, then, burning an opponent only when necessary. But how loathsome their nearness was, to a sane and enlightened man who had discarded the creed of their god-hood!
Now their minds came probing into his. Automatically he erected the rampart of innocuous thoughts. Yet the probing continued; he could feel it as a tangible finger of force, needling here, thrusting in there, pressing aside the thoughts that meant nothing, feeling out not only his true thoughts, but his memories, his unconscious hopes, the very traits of character which made him what he was and of which he was scarcely aware.
This was no casually suspicious probing, such as an orb might give a man as it passed him in the mine. This was a brutal wrenching of brain-stuff that would not be denied. He felt it go into his rebellious brain, poke and pry, ferret out all he remembered and believed. All the conceit washed out of Revel the Mink. All the scorn he had felt for these creatures turned to fear, and the bitter hatred increased a thousandfold. And he knew that they felt it as it happened.
At last the feelers drew back, and the orbs lifted toward the rafters. Their zanphs lay watching them, and the two squires stood up uncertainly. Then Rosk said in a hollow, unreal voice, "This man is to be guarded closely. He must not be allowed to escape. It would be better if he were killed now, rather than kept for the hunt. He is the most dangerous rebel we have ever found."
The Mink realized that the gods were using Rosk as a dummy, speaking through his lips.
Ewyo said, looking at the globes, that burnt with a dull golden radiance in the upper gloom, "It would be better if he were hunted down. He is the 'Savior' the ruck has been waiting for all these years, they think, and if we slew him in this chamber, his death would never be believed. He should be hunted before the whole town, and torn to pieces by the dogs."
The globes, through Rosk's lips, said, "That is so. Hunt him, then; but if he escapes, you die and your family's status is reduced to that of the lowest rucker's." They floated toward the door, which Ewyo hastened to open for them. The sound of Dawvys' groans came in, and Revel strained again at his bonds.
Ewyo's pale eyes darted toward him. "What a fox you'll make," he gloated. "We'll run you in my own lands, which are the best for the game in all this country. We'll run you naked, I think, and allow the ruck to gather on the hills and watch you scuttle from afar. Their precious savior! A naked, frightened, harried rabbit, instead of a bold fighting mink! How'll they likethat? How much talk of treason will there be for the next ten years, afterthat? Precious little, Revel of the Ruck!"
He called his servants. "Take him and bind him with two dozen thick thongs, and have twenty men sit in a circle round him all night. Give him plenty of food and water—by Orbs, give him a beaker of my wine! We'll have a fox tomorrow to remember for a lifetime!"
And now the squire has trapped the Mink,And now he sets him free,And now the Mink is hunted downOn hill and vale and lea.He pants and gasps, his legs grow weak,His eyes with sweat are blind;In squire's halloo and hound's mad barkHe hears his death behind!—Ruck's Ballad of the Mind
And now the squire has trapped the Mink,And now he sets him free,And now the Mink is hunted downOn hill and vale and lea.
He pants and gasps, his legs grow weak,His eyes with sweat are blind;In squire's halloo and hound's mad barkHe hears his death behind!
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mind
They took Revel to the top of a hill just behind Ewyo's mansion. He was stripped to the buff, but on his feet were stout sandals of horsehide in triple thickness, so that he could run well and give them a good hunt. On the crest they untied him, and he stood naked in a ring of the horsed gentry, rubbing his wrists and glaring at them. Beside him were Jerran and the mutilated Dawvys, who both wore their customary shirts and trousers.
Running his eyes over the squirachy, Revel saw with a strange thrill of horror the Lady Nirea, on a deep-chested roan stallion, as cool and distant as the moon ... and as beautiful, he thought bitterly. Well, but hadn't he had her? He, a rucker born had loved this woman of the gentry! Let her watch him die—small compensation that would be!
He bowed to her. "May you be in at the death," he said clearly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her face go white.
"Give the Mink his fangs," said Ewyo. The burly squire was all in scarlet silk and purple velvet, with white calfskin boots on his thick legs. At his command, Rosk threw the tall rebel a belt with two holsters, in which were thrust two short iron daggers. "By rights you should go without, Mink," said Ewyo, "but it's more sport to chivvy a fox with a bite in him. Now, you have till the count of three hundred."
"Five hundred is customary," interrupted Nirea.
"Three is plenty for the savior of the ruck. Hold your tongue, Lady." He leaned over his steed's head. "Three hundred, Mink, and then we come after you. Your course is down this hill and straight away toward the sea. Don't try to escape the straight, either, because the hills are rimmed with guards who'll blow your guts out if you cross the line; and some thousands of your slimy kin are clustered on those hills to watch their hero die." He nodded to the woman beside him, a blonde wench with vicious amber eyes. "Begin the count, Jann."
The blonde said loudly, "One, two, three—" and at the third word Revel was off, running like a slim brown stag down the slope of the hill. Behind him came Dawvys and Jerran. The little man cried, "Don't wait, Revel lad. Save yourself if you can. Remember you're the Mink!"
"I wish to Orbs I wasn't," he growled, and hit the bottom, skimmed over a patch of raw rocks and struck the green beyond. As he ran he buckled the belt around his waist, with a knife hanging on each hip. He had not expected these, and though Ewyo thought he'd lose only a hound or two, Revel intended to take at least a pair of squires with him into the unknown....
He was a fine runner. By the time Lady Jann had counted two hundred and fifty, he was half a mile down the straight, which was a belt of land some quarter of a mile wide and twenty long, ending above the sea on a cliff's edge. As the squire had said, he would not be able to break off the straight, for guards and packed mobs lined it and a naked man would be far too conspicuous heading toward them.
Now he thought of his two comrades in ill fortune. Neither of them was a runner of any caliber. Should he wait and help them?
Selfishness saidno—and unselfishness saidno, for wasn't his first duty to the ruck, not to his friends? Didn't he owe it to humanity to save himself? And besides, he was a lusty young buck, and didn't want to die.
But he glanced back, slowed, waited till the two had come panting up to him, and thrusting an arm around each waist, ran them forward with him, ignoring their protests.
They came to a coppice of elms, grown thick with brambles and cluttered with deadwood. It covered perhaps an acre. Revel ploughed into it, cursing as the thorns stabbed his naked hide. Too late he realized he should have skirted it. In the rare quarter-seconds when the branches were not snapping or the brush whipping noisily aside from their progress, he could hear the faint barking of the great hounds; even, he thought, the whoops of the excited gentry as they started down the hill on their fiery stallions. He pictured Nirea, her slate-hued eyes gleaming, her creamy skin aflush as she leaned forward eagerly for the first sight of the Mink. Damn her!
Abruptly the earth slanted off to the right, so that Revel, who was still pushing Dawvys and Jerran, went headlong into a patch of nettles, losing his balance at the unexpected dip and shoving both companions down on their faces. Dawvys rolled, yelping at the pain of scratches on fresh wounds, then vanished with a howl. Revel crouched, staring, unbelieving. In a moment the head of the plump rucker came up out of the earth.
"What in Orbs' names—"
"It's a pit," said Dawvys. "It was covered with trash." His eyes were wide and frightened. "Go on, Revel. I can't run another step."
The Mink thought swiftly. Dawvys was right, he could run no longer. Quickly Revel shoved the man's head down, threw several branches and bushes across the mouth of the pit, began to disguise it, talking as he worked.
"Lie down and be very still, old fellow. Jerran and I will make enough of a trail for the hounds to follow, and only bad luck will discover you to them. If we escape, we'll come back tonight for you." The pit was camouflaged, looked like a mound of trash beside the trail. Revel murmured a good-bye, and went plunging on through the coppice to the other side, Jerran following him nimbly with the strength of second wind.
Now they could truly run, for Jerran, though forty-two, was no antique; and Revel had the thews of a woods lion. The way before them was smooth, grass cropped close by the sheep of Ewyo, gently rolling mounds one after another so that skimming down one slope gave them impetus to dash up the next. A faint cheer came to them from the left. The ruck was on their side.
Perhaps if I die well enough, thought Revel, my death may spark a revolt, and so count for something. He felt at the hilt of the iron daggers. Just give me Ewyo, he prayed to whatever higher powers there might be; just let me have one thrust at Ewyo the Squire!
From the crest of the highest hill he looked back, as Jerran sucked for breath. The gentry were just topping a rise some half mile behind. Not bad! But the dogs were much closer. They had gone through the coppice without discovering Dawvys; now, with any luck, they never would.
Revel ran on. His feet thudded on rock, slithered on grass, shuffled through the mire of a narrow swampland. Here trees slashed at him, there a woodchuck sprang out of his path and made him stumble with sudden panic. His chest labored, drawing in air; his legs pumped and ached. Then he came to a river.
It was some ten yards broad, with a swift current. He said to Jerran, "If we can make headway against that current, land up-stream on the other side, we may have a chance."
The runty yellow man shook his head. "Look up," he gasped. Above them soared a score of globes, plainly marking their position for the gentry.
"The filthy schemers," growled Revel. "The foul cheats! They call this a game, yet 'tis as easy for them as it would be to shoot at us in a small sealed room!" He bent down. "Get on my back, little one." Jerran climbed on, and Revel grasped his legs, told him to hang tight around his neck, and leaped into the river.
Only thirty feet across, it was yet quite deep, and Revel sank like a dropped rock. When the water above his head was so opaque that he could not distinguish anything save a dull mirky lightness, he struck out downstream. For a full minute he swam with the current, then began to rise, Jerran clinging weakly to his neck. The Mink thanked his Orbs—no, not them, but whatever brought him luck—that he was one of the few ruckers who had taught himself to swim....
He had gone farther by swimming than he might have running, for the current was like a demon with a thousand legs, all speeding it on and carrying him with it. His head lifted clear of the waters in the center of the stream, and Jerran behind him broke into coughs and gurgles. Revel looked for globes, and saw them upriver, lifting and falling uncertainly. He said, "Take a breath!" did so himself, and sank again. This time he stayed under for the space he could have counted fifty, then rose again near the far bank.
He was among trees, birch and poplar and evergreen, that grew to the water's brink. He struggled ashore, carrying a limp Jerran, and fell with his burden beneath a single giant oak, which sheltered him from the buttoned, all-seeing sky.
"Rest a while, Jerran. We've put plenty of distance behind us."
Yet when he stood up and gave his friend a hand, five minutes later, he could already hear the baying of hounds.
A touch of panic threaded down his spine—not the panic that flared and died when a woodchuck startled him, but the panic of any hunted creature who, do what he may, still hears the pursuers close behind him. The sound of the howls told him the dogs had crossed the river. He looked up, but saw no orbs. No dog scents a man two miles off. Who had betrayed them? Or were the gentry presuming that they must have crossed?
He broke trail for Jerran through a section that a great bear would have found hard going, all vines and tough saplings and snake holes that sunk beneath his sandaled feet. His body was by this time a hatched network of pain and scarlet stripes, oozing blood.
He had expected the mass of impeding vegetation to be a thin patch at best, but it went on and on, and the trees thinned so that the sky was open above them. It was a matter of time only till the globes spotted him. The hounds were louder. Once he heard the shout of a man, thin and high in the distance.
At last he was on solid, uncluttered ground again. He looked down at his skin, wondering if it would ever be smooth and whole again. His body had been gouged, gashed, torn, disfigured.
"Va-yoo hallo! Va-yoo hallo-lo-lo-lo-lo!" The terrible cry rang behind him, and turning, he saw two horsemen cresting a hill to the side of the patch of bad ground.
Then it dawned on him how they had been followed; for behind the stallioned squires rose the hills, which bordered the straight hunting course, and on them showed small dots of color, the keen-eyed watchers of the gentry. No matter where he ran on this long narrow coursing ground, there would be eyes upon him.
At least the ravening dogs were not nearby. He picked up Jerran, tucked him under one arm, and dashed for the shelter of the evergreen woods before him. The hoofs of the horses pounded behind. He dodged in among the pines, and the mournful call lifted—"Gone to earth! Go-ho-hon to earth!"
"Damn you, put me down!" rasped Jerran. "Am I a child, to be carted like this?" Revel dropped him. They skittered from tree to tree, and then a charging horse was on them, and Jerran was rolling aside, bleating with fear of the hoofs, while Revel turned and stood foursquare in the path. As the stallion all but touched him, he jumped aside, jumped back, so that the head of the beast passed him but the rider was struck and clutched and hurled from his saddle, losing his trumpet-gun as he fell. The Mink was sitting astride him before he could bounce up, and two ruthless hands took him by the throat and tore out his jugular. The second rider at that instant drew rein behind them, and lifted his own gun for a quick shot.
Jerran hurled a rock. It took the squire on the head, spilled him out of his saddle, and the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
"Two guns, by Orbs!" crowed Revel, gathering them up. "And two horses!" He put a foot into the stirrup of the second one, but it shied madly at the touch of a bloody, naked man; dashed forward, startling the other, and together they vanished among the trees. "Hell!" said Jerran, taking one of the guns; "nothing gained but two bullets, Mink."
"Two bullets is two more slain squires. Come on!"
The evergreens gave out shortly, and they were in a valley channeled by sluggish rivulets and grown with noxious weeds and clumps of coarse grass. Some distance away, a priest walked slowly, head bent, his double scalp lock flopping down over the radiant blue-green robe. Above him, apparently in communion with him, hung a golden globe.
Revel shifted his gun up and took aim at the orb. He must risk a shot, rather than a god's exposure of his whereabouts. The priest looked up, saw him, yipped in surprise, and the orb shot up ten feet just as Revel fired.
One bullet wasted. Jerran fired as the echoes of the Mink's shot racketed away, and the priest crumpled in on himself, a glittering sack of dead meat.
"You fool!" said Revel, with a brief, pithy anger. "The man I could have stabbed or broken in two. The sphere is beyond us now." It was slanting up an invisible incline, faster than he had ever seen one travel before. "Come on," he snarled. "We've got to travel!" He threw away the useless gun and ran for his life.
Behind him, to left and then to right, rose the calls. Hoofs thundered, dogs baying out afresh as they sighted their quarry, and the valley filled with sound and horses, dogs and men. Over and over the calls rang, and the air above the fugitives was filled with watching gods. Revel ran as he had never believed he could run, and the calls, the calls, the calls beat upon his eardrums....
The pretty daughter of the squire,She gallops down the hill;The blood of gentry pounds so fierce,'Tis like to make her ill!Thinks she, I've come to see his death,The man who did me shame!And then she spies him limping there,All stripped and torn and lame....—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The pretty daughter of the squire,She gallops down the hill;The blood of gentry pounds so fierce,'Tis like to make her ill!
Thinks she, I've come to see his death,The man who did me shame!And then she spies him limping there,All stripped and torn and lame....
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The squire was clad in a sky-blue velvet coat, long and loose with a row of big silver buttons down the front, a cabbage rose on each flared lapel, a thick fall of silver lace over an olive-green weskit, lime breeches in white calf boots. His blunderbuss was tilted carelessly up over one crooked elbow, for he trusted to the iron-shod hoofs of his hunting stallion to smash the rebel into the muck of the valley. He was a portly, floridly handsome man of some thirty summers, and he would not live to see the sun rise again.
Revel turned at bay. He was just under the overhang of a short cliff, on his right hand a swamp, on his left a pack of approaching hounds, and before him the squire on his upreared horse. He had just boosted Jerran up to the cliff's edge, and the little man was scrambling away, calling to him to follow; but there was no purchase for his fingers, and the thing was too high to jump, at least in the brief moment he had. So he was brought to bay.
The Mink drew his daggers, his fangs of Ewyo's more or less generous bestowal. The horse poised an instant before bringing its mallet-hoofs down on his head, and Revel leaped in and thrust—hands together, knuckles pressed tight, so that the blades drove deep into the flesh just below the rib cage of the stallion, their points not two inches apart. Revel jerked them apart and out, and the horse contorted and writhed together in a thrashing heap and came down, its blood hissing out from a foot-long gash. The squire, unable to realize what was happening, fell sideways on top of the Mink, who stabbed upward blindly as he rolled away from the dying horse. The squire took one dagger in the groin of his spotless lime breeches, the other just under a silver button above his heart. The world shut out for him in pain and terror and a loud, broken screech.
Revel fought out of the tangle of limbs and crumpled corpse, shot to his feet in time to meet the charge of a pair of slavering hounds. He knew he was done now, there was no more running for the Mink, and he cursed his fate even as he blessed whatever power had sent him so many gentry to be pulled down with him. The dogs leaped, one died in mid-air and the other carried him down once more, its lean teeth snapping off a patch of hide and muscle from his shoulder as its guts poured free of its body through a frantically-given wound. Revel was up again, shaking himself, grappling with a third hound whose knowledge of men made it wary of his blades. It hauled away as he slashed at it, lunged for his throat, caught an ear instead, and coughed out its life as it was flung over his shoulder in time for him to run the next dog through the skull as it sailed at him.
He was bleeding like a punctured sack of wine, though the wounds were far from mortal. One ear lobe was gone, his left shoulder felt as though it had been scalded by boiling pitch, and his whole frame was stiffening somewhat from the myriad tiny cuts it had received. Revel was in his glory, although he counted his life in seconds now. The whole pack was not in the valley, these four dogs had not run with it, and only men remained. Yet above were the orbs, to take a hand if he should prove too mighty for the gentry's handling.
A squire galloped up, jumped from his saddle and came at the Mink. Revel blinked blood from his eyes.
"Rosk!" he said, grinning. Now the gods were kind!
The lean-jawed squire halted twenty feet away, presenting his gun to the Mink's breast. "A fine fox," he said admiringly, "a damned fine fox, but too vicious for the hounds. Die, Mink!"
"Damned if I will," said Revel, flinging himself forward and down. The gun roared harmlessly as Rosk, startled, tugged on the trigger. Revel went up to stab for the man's belly, but a warning tremor of the ground gave him pause; a stallion was thundering down on him from the left. He flicked a glance at it. A great roan, with the Lady Nirea up, and coming straight for him.
She would run him down? He bared angry teeth—but she was going to miss him! She was galloping between him and Rosk! She was....
She was stretching down a hand to him, her face twisted with hope and fear and—friendship!
Instinctively he slapped her wrist with his palm as she hurtled past, jerked his legs up and was carried off by the rocketing roan. As he writhed into the saddle behind her, she screamed.
"Help, oh help! He has attacked me!"
The bi—no, the clever girl, by Orbs! Helping him, she was yet saving her own reputation and life, making it seem that he had leaped astride her mount as she was carried by him. No squire could have seen that helping hand, for they were all on the opposite side of her. A vast hullabaloo went up from their ranks.
"Throw me off, you fool," she hissed at him, twisting round and pretending to strike him. "Throw me off!"
He reached past her, hauled on the reins, brought the animal back on its heels, pitched her off unceremoniously, winked broadly at her and found time for a leer as her riding skirt hoisted unladylike as she sat up; then he rammed heels to the brute and was off on a run for his life. Guns banged behind him, slugs tore the air inches from his bowed back. Let 'em shoot, curse them, he had a chance now!
The cliff of reed-laced muck dwindled, and he turned the roan and leaped him up to the higher level of ground. Then he turned and went charging back the way he had come, quick eyes searching for his comrade.
"Jerran! Jerran, you scuttling mouse, where are you?"
Bangwent a musket.
"Here, Revel!" The little straw-colored man popped out of a bush in his path. He bent as Nirea had, gave the rebel a hand up behind him. Then he swerved the horse and went off through the oaks, while the gentry cursed and raved and came after as best they could.
"Discomfortable riding, this, without pants. Ouch! Where shall we head, ancient one?" Revel asked grimly.
"The way we're going. There, see that hill? Up and over that, and we're on a straight path for the forests of Kamden."
Revel was jolted nearly out of his battered hide by the unfamiliar jounce and rock of the steed; but he knew he could stick on it till night if he had to. The only enemies that fretted him now were the golden spheres. You could not distance a god simply by mounting a horse.
"Look up," he said, watching the path. "Are there gods?"
"Yes, but high, following us. They mark our way."
"Let them! Jerran, at nightfall we head for the mine. Our mine, and our cavern."
"You can't go there, you drooling baby, you'd find an army of globes, priests, gentry, and zanphs. They'll be crawling all over the things in that cave, especially after you took guns from it! What is it that draws you there?"
"A metal chest—ouch—I've been thinking of for a long time. Jerran, what's 'suspended animation'?"
"Why?"
"Nirea kept muttering it to herself in the cave. I think she read it on the chest."
"Suspended," mused Jerran. "Temporarily halted. Animation, life. Life held in check? Movement stopped for a time?"
"That's it."
"Love of freedom, lad, what's it?"
Revel, glancing up at the soaring spheres, said half to himself, "Man of the 21st century. Century's a hundred years. Twenty-first? John R. Klapham, atomic something ... suspended animation. John sounds like a name. Rest of it, enigmas, but...."
"Watch out!" yelled Jerran, turning against his back. "A god comes at us."
"How good are you at throwing knives?"
"As good as the next rebel. Damned good."
"Take one from my belt, and see if you can spit it in the air. If it touches you, you'll be a frizzled-up cinder in a wink."
He felt the knife leave his holster, there was a pause, then Jerran said under her breath, "Blast this horse—ugh—got it!"
They were almost at the crest of the hill now. None of the ruck watched the chase from here, for it was far from Ewyo's house and none had expected Revel and Company to come so far. There were guards, though: three squires sitting their quiet horses on the brow of the hills, a hundred yards apart. They watched the roan with its double burden beat up toward them, then blinked and peered as they saw that the foremost rider was naked.
"Va-yoo," said one uncertainly, then, realization hitting him, "va-yoo hallo! Here he comes!"
He came, and the squires bunched to meet him; he aimed his horse's head for their center, they split off wildly at the last instant, and he was through them before they could draw guns from the saddle boots. A crack behind him was the first one speaking tardily, and the roan leaped forward, touched into fury by the slug's creasing its withers. Jerran said calmly, "I'm hit in the leg. Let me see. A flesh wound, no matter. Ride, lad!"
"The globes are our only worries now," said Revel exultantly.
"And they're some worries, for they descend even now at us."
He looked up, and saw that it was true. A multitude of the radiant gods were dropping from their buttons, and the forest of Kamden with its sprawling borders and its secret, protective darknesses lay half a mile before the Mink.
Almost he would rather have died by a squire's bullet than a pseudo-god's fierce energy blast. He recalled the feelers that had touched his face yesterday, the searing heat of the aura that before that had crisped off the hair above his ear. It was a filthy way to die.
The roan, strongest of all the gentry's horses, was easily distancing them all. But it could not distance a down-slanting globe.
Revel the Mink committed his soul to whatever might receive it, and dug in his heels for a last desperate gallop.
The ruckers all have heard the callThe Mink has sounded clear;They come from near, they come from far,To fight the squire and sphere.He arms them all with stolen guns,With horses, pikes, and fire;He sends them all abroad to huntThe savage-stallioned squire!—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The ruckers all have heard the callThe Mink has sounded clear;They come from near, they come from far,To fight the squire and sphere.
He arms them all with stolen guns,With horses, pikes, and fire;He sends them all abroad to huntThe savage-stallioned squire!
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
As night fell, Lady Nirea left her father's house by the servants' door. She was dressed in the miner's clothes she had worn the previous day, and carried a gigantic portmanteau, so heavy she could scarcely lift it.
In the bag were her favorite gowns, numbering sixteen; two coats she especially loved; some bracelets set with diamonds—the rarest gem of any, for though they were mined extensively throughout the country, the globes took all but a very few for their own mysterious purposes—and an antique golden chain she'd inherited from her grandmother; some personal effects, paint for her lips and such frivolities; a trumpet-mouthed gun with the stock unmounted, together with as much ammunition as she could find; and lastly, four books from her father's secret chamber.
These last were all in the curious run-together printing, three of them labelled "Ledger and Record Book" and the fourth with "God-Feeding" on its cover. The fourth was far older than the others, indeed, the oldest book Nirea had ever seen.
Ewyo lay drunk in a deep chair in his library; he would sleep now till nearly the middle of the night, when he'd wake up and howl for another bottle. Jann she had not seen for hours. The servants, being ruckers, did not count. Her escape from the mansion was going to be simple.
In the stables, Lady Nirea ordered her second best horse, another roan stallion, saddled and laden with the portmanteau on a special rack attached to the rear of the cantle. The usual trappings, the fancy reins and broidered saddlecloths, she had the stableman leave off; she didn't want to call attention to the fact that she was Ewyo's daughter.
When the roan was ready, she mounted, and turning to the stableman, a young rucker with shifty eyes and a shy, retiring chin, she asked steadily, "Are you a rebel?"
"Me? No, Lady! Do I look crazy?"
"You look sneaky, but smart enough." She leaned over the saddlebow toward him. "Tell me the truth. Don't be afraid, you fool. I am the Lady of the Mink." It was a title she uttered proudly now. Nirea of Dolfya had been forced to think this day, and it had changed her greatly.
The stableman backed off a little, his pasty face writhing with tics. "My Orb, Lady, I don't know what you're thinking of! You, Ewyo's girl, calling yourself such a name—"
Her roan was trained to the work she now put him to; a number of times she'd used him for it in the streets of Dolfya, just for sport, out of boredom. Now she pricked his ribs with the point of her sharp-toed shoes, just behind the foreleg joints, and said, "At 'em, boy!" The tall beast reared up and danced forward, hoofs thrashing the air. The stableman shrieked, took a step back, and threw up his arms as one iron-shod hoof smashed into his face. Then the roan was doing a kind of quick little hop on his body, and red blood ran out over the packed-earth floor.
"If you were a rebel, you were too craven about it to be much good to your people," Nirea said, looking at the body. "If you weren't, then your mouth is shut concerning me." She wheeled the roan and trotted out of the stable.
By the gate in the wall a tall figure waited, white in the early moon's light.
"Jann!" said Nirea, with surprise and fear. Her older sister had always bullied her; Nirea was unable to wholly conquer the dread of this amber-eyed, sharp-eared woman. Jann stood with one hand on the gate, her high breasts and lean aristocrat's profile outlined against the dark black-green of the woods behind her. Now she turned her head to look up at Nirea.
"What in the seven hells are you doing in that rucker's outfit? Where are you going?"
"None of your business. Get out of my way."
Jann stepped forward and grasped the bridle at the roan's mouth. "Get down here, you young whelp. I'm going to beat you—and then hand you over to Ewyo to see what's to be done with you."
Nirea never knew, though afterwards she thought of it often, whether she touched her horse's ribs deliberately or by accident. All she knew was that suddenly he had thrown his forequarters up into the air, that Jann was screaming, twisting aside, that the roan was smashing down....
Jann lay on the grass, and her profile was no longer aristocratic; nor were her breasts smooth and sleek and inviolate.
Nirea sobbed, dry-eyed, turned the roan away, leaned over to push open the gate, and cantered off down the silent road, numb with horror, yet conscious of a small thrill of gratification, somewhere deep in her feral gentrywoman's soul. Nineteen years of knuckling under to Jann, of taking insults and cuffs and belittling, were wiped out under the flashing hoofs of her roan stallion.
Now where should she ride? She was a rebel herself, molded into one by her father's actions and her memories of the Mink. If he were dead, that great chocolate-haired brute, then she would simply ride straight away from Dolfya until she found a place to live, and there plan at leisure. But if he were alive, then she would be his woman.
She touched the horse to a gallop, and sped toward the only place she could think of where she might get news of him: the mines.
Someone scuttled off the road before her; she reined in, peered unsuccessfully into the darkness, and called softly, insistently, "If you're a rucker, please come out! Please come here!"
A rustle in dry brush was her answer. She tried a bolder tack. "It's the Lady of the Mink who commands it!"
After a moment a man stepped onto the road from a clump of bracken. Red were his hair and beard in the moon, and the white walleye stared blindly. Fate, chance, the gods—no, not the false, horrible globes, but whatever gods there might be elsewhere—had crossed her path with Rack, the giant whom she trusted more than any other rucker.
"Rack!" she called quietly. "Come here, man."
He was at her stirrup. "What are you doing, Lady?" His voice was anxious:
"I'm joining the rebels, big man. Where can I find the Mink?"
"I don't know. Lady, are you mad? The rebels are saying that the gods are overthrown and there will be gentry blood running all over Dolfya by noon tomorrow. They're out of their heads."
"No, Rack, they're honest men fighting a hideous corruption." She told him rapidly what she'd seen in her father's room. "I don't know exactly what it means, 'but it's bad—degrading, horrible! I don't want to be a gentrywoman any longer. I—I'm the Mink's girl. Listen," she said, leaning over to him, "he took me two days ago, and Revel is my man, hell or orbs notwithstanding. Now where is he?"
"I've heard he's alive," said Rack slowly. "I thought he would be; he's too tough to kill. Where he is, no one knows."
"Do the rebels trust you?"
"No." His face turned up to hers, honest and bewildered. "I'm of two minds.... I serve the gods, as any sane man must, but I have seen things...."
"So have I. Rack, come with me. We must find the Mink."
He bit his lip. Then he took hold of her stirrup. She thought he was going to pull her off, and edged her toes forward toward the signal points of her roan; but he merely said, "I'll hang on to this and run. Go ahead, Lady."
She tapped the horse to a canter, feeling better than she had in hours. Rack was a servant (say rather an ally) worth four other men.
"Head for the mines," grunted Rack. Her own idea. Surely it must be worth something. Soon they were coming into the coal valley. God-guards shone with an eerie and now-abominable golden light at the various entrances. "Which is Revel's?" she asked.
"Up there. He wouldn't be there, but if I can get past the guard, and there's no reason I should be stopped, there are men on our level, the fourth down, who might know about him. There's no other place to check. I don't know the meeting places. I have never been a rebel." He seemed to brood darkly for a minute, then added, "Before!"
They hobbled the horse in a nook of upended rocks, and she hid the portmanteau under some brush. They walked to the mine, she now remembering the location by certain landmarks, and Rack said, "There's no god showing. That's strange."
"I'll go with you as far as I can. If we do meet a god, I can explain myself mentally; after all, I'm of the gentry. I'm not in danger."
"I hope not." He helped her up the shelf, and they walked furtively into the tunnel. No sign of anything—till Rack stumbled over the corpse of a zanph. Bending, Nirea saw beyond it the sack and draining ichor of a globe.
"The rebels have been here!"
"Aye." He straightened, his white eye shining in the light of a distant lantern. "How can a god die?" he asked, in a child's puzzled tone. "Lady, no god ever died before. They don't die—'tis in the Credo. How can these rebels slay them?"
"Maybe no one ever tried before. Come on." She hurried to the ladders. Blue-tinged, mouth agape and eyes upturned without sight, there lay a priest, half over the lip of the shaft. He had been de-throated by a pickax.
"This looks like Revel's ferocious work," said Rack. "I hope he's alive. Yes, I do hope so."
"When I last saw him, riding off hell-for-leather on my nag, he was extremely alive, mother-naked and covered with blood but as alive as I am this instant." She went down the ladder hand under hand past three levels, swung off at the fourth. Another dead man lay at her feet; this was a squire, a youngish man in plum and scarlet, very brutally slain by a pick-slash in the brain. It was a man she knew, and momentarily she felt herself a traitor to her kind; then she thought of Ewyo's vices, corruptions, and she snorted defiantly. His gun, its stock remounted and a shell rammed home, was in her hand. She went forward, striding like a man ... and a man who knew what he meant to do.
The end of the tunnel was illuminated vividly by many blue lanterns, and presented to their startled eyes an horrific scene of carnage. The dead lay in piles, in one and twos and fours, their brains splashed on the walls, their guts smeared across the floor, their skulls cloven and their bodies rent. Ruckers lay here, miners and gentry-servants. Squires wallowed lifeless in pools of their highborn blood. Snake-headed zanphs clawed in their rigor at the dead flesh of priests, of rebels, of squires. Here and there lay the vacant sacks that had been gods. At Nirea's feet stretched a man built like Revel, who mightbeRevel, for his face was gone, burnt away by the touch of the terrible orb-aura at full strength. No, she realized even as she swayed back, it was not he, for this man's body was unscarred, and Revel must be looking like a skinned hare if he yet lived.
What a brawl this must have been! She was about to speak to Rack when she heard a familiar voice, booming brazenly out in the silence of the mine. It came from the black hole at the end of the tunnel.
"Then a whole line of them came down at us, faster than a squire can put a horse over a hurdle, and the forest yet a good half mile away! I had one dagger left, and my trusty small Jerran up behind me. The squires were ashooting, but ineffectively, and the roan was carrying us well and truly; but here came the gods, may they boil in my mother's cook-pot in Hell!
"I looked wildly for something to beat 'em off with, for as you've seen, a touch of their radiance burns your flesh from your bones if they wish it so. Well! The only thing on the whole cursed nag is the scabbard in which a squire keeps his long gun. It's a thing some three feet long or over, of light metal, covered with satin and velvet and silk. I tore it from its moorings, and as the globes came at me, I stood up in the stirrups, naked as your hand, and started to swat 'em. Jerran leaning forward past me, guiding the stallion, for his reach is not half mine."
"Brag and bounce!" said a voice that was surely Jerran's. Lady Nirea grinned and walked toward the cavern.
"So I swatted, I beat at them, I swiped and almost fell, I did the work of twenty men—don't shake your head, Jerran, you know 'tis not brag!—for half a mile, and not one globe touched a hair of our heads! They came at the last from all sides, like a swarm of angered bees, and one burnt the horse so that he streaked even faster; which saved our necks, for my arm was nearly dead by then.
"I tell you, there is one protection only against these things, and that is quickness: for let one come within a few inches of you, and you are a dead man."
Nirea stepped into the cave.
"I thought you were a dead man, Revel the Mink," she said quietly, still with the ghost of her grin.
He stared at her, while the men in the place turned and sprang up and stood uncertainly, looking from her to their leader. He was dressed in miner's clothing again, and his skin was a perfect fright of scars and scabs and half-closed wounds. But he was whole, barring part of an ear, and he was smiling as only he could smile. "Here, men of the ruck, is the woman you owe my life to. Here is—" he cocked an eyebrow quizzically—"here is, I think I can say, the Lady of the Mink."
"Here she is," said Nirea, and was stifled and crushed in a great bear-hug. "And here's Rack, your brother, who I think may be rebel material."
"I think so," said Rack heavily, staring at Revel with his good eye. "If you want me, brother."
"Gods, yes! We need every man we can get this night. Did you note the slaughter beyond?"
"We did see a corpse or two."
"I think we kept that secret, for two of my fellows stood on the ladders and slew the gods who tried to pass. But it will soon be discovered, and the gods will do to this place what they did to eastern Dolfya, unless we can fight them some way. I think I have a clue to help us. What that is I'll show you now."
"Revel, dearest," she said, "are you all right?"
"Of course, thanks to you. Now to business."
"Rack must go to my horse above for things I brought."
"Go then, Rack. Wait—first give me that pick you've got there. I think it's mine." Rack handed it over, a little shamefacedly, and Revel gave him the one tucked in his own belt. "I've missed this girl.... The chest I want to search is still here, though the gentry have carried off a great deal from the cavern."
"Wait a minute," said Nirea fiercely. "You'd better do a few things before you start experimenting and searching. You'd better have a plan, and send men out to spread word of it among your people! There are thousands of them out there, ready to pounce at your word, to rise against the squires and priests, and take their chances of gods' vengeance. You'd better send out the word that the Mink is leading them to war. Otherwise, you'll have an army that's ineffectual and headless, that can be cut to pieces in twenty-four hours. For most of them think you're dead—the gentry spread the word."
Jerran said, quietly so that only the girl and Revel heard him, "I think I named the wrong person. I think Lady Nirea is the Mink!"
Revel laughed grimly, "Haven't I been busy? Haven't I sent a troop for Dawvys in his hole in the coppice, and another to say in the lanes and shebeens that I'm alive? Here, Vorl, Sesker, and you three, get out! Steal horses from the mansions' stables, and spread the news. We rise tonight! Whether or not I find what I seek, we rise! If we all perish in a god-blast, still we rise! When you've enough men, attack the gentry's homes, beginning at Dolfya's center and spreading out. Put every horse available on the road to Korla and Hakes Town and every village within knowledge. If they look scared, show 'em a dead god! Take those out there—stick 'em on the ends of pikes, carry 'em through the streets with torches to show 'em off! Kill every globe you can reach, send the corpses out for the ruck to see! There's our banner, our fiery cross—a dead god on a pike!"