There was silence beyond the wall; then the priest croaked, "He has a gun. Certainly this is more than a matter of a kidnapped daughter, Ewyo!"
Jerran's voice rose in a laugh. "It is, Lord Ewyo, it is!"
What the hell did the old fellow mean? Revel shrugged. He'd learn later. Now was the time for action.
Going to the prostrate girl, he slung her over his shoulder, a limp light weight. The tattered silver gown flapped as he walked to the hole.
"Stand back," he cried. "I'm bringing your daughter to you, Squire!"
Another zanph showed its horrible reptilian head; he blasted it out of existence with another shot. There were outcries from the squire and his servants, and the priest rumbled, "Sacrilege!"
Rack's head showed between the rocks. "Calm down, boy," he said, his staring walleye gleaming in the lantern light. "You've been living too fast—"
"Not fast enough, Redbeard. Out of the way!"
Rack slowly withdrew, and after kicking a few more boulders from his path, Revel stooped and went out into the tunnel.
"At him!" croaked the priest, a thin man in a radiant blue-green robe, the double scalp lock waving like twin plumes on his shaven head. "Pull him down!"
"Ewyo dies if I'm touched," said Revel coolly, pointing the handgun at the squire's belly.
"Kill him—with that little thing?" said the priest. His voice seemed to come out of the ground, not from such a gaunt frame as his. "You bluff, rucker."
"Look at your zanphs if you think so." He glared at them. There was Ewyo, burly in peach satin and white silk, his long-skirted coat pushed back from a lace shirt, skin-tight pants held by knee-high black boots, a cabbage rose thrust into his cocked hat. There was the priest, lean and savage beneath two hovering globes. Three servants of the squire, Jerran and Rack made up the rest.
"Come here, Jerran," he ordered. Smiling lazily, the little man ambled over. "Take a couple of these miniature guns from my belt. They're loaded. You point them—"
"I can use a gun," said Jerran, "though I never had my hands on one this size."
"They came to us from the Ancient Kingdom," Revel told him.
"Ah," said Jerran, nodding as he pulled two guns from the big man's waistband. "I thought they might have. The ballads say they used such weapons. Everyone carried 'em." He faced the squire, and his small body appeared to swell and toughen as he went on. "Lord Ewyo, please to precede us with your servants and that feather-brained priest. We'll go to the ladders."
Ewyo grunted. Orders from a rucker, to him,him, the greatest landholder in Dolfya! But after another glance at the mutilated zanph, he turned and walked down the tunnel.
"Wait a minute," said Revel, but Jerran turned to him with a face as hard and ruthless as a woods lion's. "Shut up, lad," he said. "I'll handle 'em. You just tend to the wench. She's awake, in case you didn't know."
He knew now, for she had just bitten him on the rump. He hoisted her a little higher and absently smacked her buttocks. "Lie quiet, damn you." She lay quiet. He went on marveling at Jerran's commanding new presence, but said nothing. He was behind a born leader now.
Jerran said, "Priest, tell your gods to stop trying to get at my mind. I've shut it off from 'em. You follow Ewyo."
The priest turned on his heel. The servants scuttled after their lord, and Rack sat down on a rock and pulled at his beard, looking thoughtful.
"I don't think it'd be overstating it," he said mildly, "to tell you two you're in trouble."
"So are the gentry, brother," Revel answered.
"That'll be seen. Well," Rack said, squinting his good eye, "I'll be seeing you. Or not, as the case may be."
"Come along," said Jerran, and walked off, followed by Revel with the Lady Nirea.
Ewyo had vanished. His servants, uncertain, were grouped under the ladder, and the priest was mounting up, his radiant robe billowing to show scrawny, hairless legs. The two gods lifted through the murk.
"Ewyo," said Revel, and Jerran interrupted. "Is gone. Did you expect to hold him captive, lad?" He shook his yellow skull. "Too much trouble for two men. Up you go."
Revel sprang at the ladder and was soon crowding the heels of the priest. That worshipful man reached the top of the ladder, turned and knelt and thrust his face into Revel's. It was a vicious face, hawk-nosed and mean. Now it barred his way, gloating openly.
"You're dog-meat, rebel. A shame to kill the Lady Nirea with you, but the gods order it." He reached out a hand and planted it firmly on Revel's face.
Hanging to the rung with his left hand, balancing the girl on the left shoulder, Revel shot up his right and gripped the priest's wrist and heaved up and back, ducking his head at the same time.
The robed man flew into space with a screech.
"Look out below!" roared Revel, and, chuckling, he finished his climb and gave a hand to Jerran. "Where now?" From far below came the crunch of a carcass landing at the foot of the ladders, on the lowest level of the mine shaft. "One less priest!"
"Follow me, lad," said Jerran, and dashed for the entrance. There was no god on duty there, but the two that had accompanied the priest were mounting into the buttoned sky.
The girl was light on his shoulder, a delicious burden, he thought. He hoped he could keep her. Just how, or where, he did not bother to consider. Things were moving too fast for plans, at least plans about women.
Jerran led him up over the crest of the hill above the mine. Beyond lay the uncharted forests of Kamden. He had hunted mink and set rabbit snares on the edges of it since boyhood, but had never seen its depths. So far as he knew, no man had.
As they started toward the wood, the beat of hoofs became audible in the quiet countryside. Revel couldn't see the horses, but he began to run, easily and fast, with Lady Nirea bobbing and swearing on his shoulder. Jerran kept pace.
Then they came up over the rim of the hill behind him, a pack of the gentry on their huge fierce stallions, with a couple of hundred-pound hunting dogs in advance, baying and yapping. The old terrifying viewing call rose: "Va-yoo hallo! Va-yoo hallo allo-allo!" Thousands of the ruck had heard the whooping cry moments before their grisly deaths. Revel tightened his grip on the perfect legs of Nirea, and pounded on. He'd ditch her if need be, but as long as he could hang on to her, by Orbs....
The forest was closer. He could pick out individual trees, oak and silver birch and poplar, standing thick in the matted carpet of thicket and trash. A broad trail opened to the left.
"That way," gasped Jerran, pointing.
"The horses can follow down that road!"
"Don't argue—damn you—lad—just run!"
The gentry came yelling in their wake. A gun banged. Were they shooting at him? Not with the woman slung down his back. The priests might sacrifice a squire's daughter without a murmur, but no gentryman ever harmed a gentrywoman under any circumstances. It was likely a warning. That was why they kept whistling the dogs back, too, for the enormous brutes could rip a human to scarlet rags in twenty seconds, and not even a squire's command stopped them once they'd tasted blood.
He had reached the trees and the wide path. He plunged into it, Jerran beside him; the older man was panting heavily now, but running as strongly as ever. "A little behind me, Revel," he husked out. "See you follow me close."
Jerran knew where he was headed ... Revel surrendered all initiative to him. The ground thundered beneath him to the pounding of the horses. He looked back as he ran. They were almost upon him, gay and gaudy in their scarlet, green, fawn and purple hunting clothes; their faces were bloodless, malevolent, and entirely without pity. Several of them carried guns, the long clumsy weapons handed down to them by their grandfathers from the time, a hundred years past, when gun-making was still a known art. Ramrods were fitted below the barrels and the muzzles flared like lilies. He'd back his new-found little guns of the Ancient Kingdom against any such heavy instrument.
Jerran dived into what seemed a solid mass of brambles. Revel shifted the girl and bent to follow; at that instant she grabbed the back of his thigh and wrenched with all her might. He had been carrying her too low again. The tug was just enough to throw him off balance, and rucker and lady sprawled on the forest pathway, entangled together, struggling frantically to rise, as the giant stallions of the gentry bore down upon them.
The pretty daughter of the squire,She came a-riding by;Of sunlight was her fine long hair,Of gray flint was her eye.The Mink he takes her by the arm:"Now you must come with me!We'll dwell a space in the wild wild woodsBeneath the great oak tree!"—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The pretty daughter of the squire,She came a-riding by;Of sunlight was her fine long hair,Of gray flint was her eye.
The Mink he takes her by the arm:"Now you must come with me!We'll dwell a space in the wild wild woodsBeneath the great oak tree!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
Revel saw the lead horse, a piebald brute with hoofs like mallets, coming at him. The squire atop it was leaning down with the mane whipping his cheeks, smirking at Revel as he drove his steed forward.
He made the fastest decision of his life. He could roll and save himself, for he was quick as a lightning bolt; or he could keep hold of the wench and try to preserve them both.
He could never have told what prompted him to decide to save the Lady Nirea.
At any rate, he threw himself atop her, clamped his arms tight to her sides, and rolled, not toward the brambles, for it was too late for that, but to the center of the path. The piebald crashed by, swerving too late to clip him; the other horses came at him in a solid phalanx. He yanked her up, gaining his own feet by an animal contraction of body. As the heads of the nearest stallions reached him he slipped between them, holding her steady behind him, and praying to the Orbs (from force of lifetime habit) to preserve them for the next minute.
Without Nirea it would have been simple; holding her safe behind him while two lurching horses passed, that made it the trickiest thing he'd ever done. As the squires' legs came abreast, one blink later, he took hold of one of them which was clad in tight blue breeches, and hauled down. Then he leaped forward between the horses' tails, twitching the woman after him with a jerk that almost tore the arm from her body.
The squire in the blue breeches toppled over, howling, and fell on the path. Revel yanked the Lady Nirea to one side as the mass of them swept by, and saw with satisfaction a stallion, trying not to step on the fallen squire, take a nasty tumble itself, flinging its rider ten feet ahead, where he was trampled by a couple of less cautious nags.
Other horses fell over the first one, and the gentry milled about, roaring bloody hell and death on everybody. The two hounds smelled blood and attacked the fallen squires, and Blue Breeches raced off into the woods, one of the ravening dogs at his heels.
Revel made for the other side, the brambles where Jerran had disappeared. He was hauling the girl behind him. A beef-faced squire on a pirouetting horse loosed off his gun at Revel, who snatched a handgun from his belt and fired back. Both of them missed. A gentryman in tan and gold long-skirted coat leaped in front of the miner, the flared muzzle of his gun coming up toward Revel's breast.
Revel shot by instinct, without aiming. The man's face turned into a mess that looked like squashed raspberries. Revel stepped over his body and tried to plunge into the brambles, but he had lost the exact spot, and thorns barred the way.
Then, four feet down the road, Jerran's yellow face popped into view. "Here, lad!"
At that instant Lady Nirea gave a wrench and freed herself from Revel's grip. He whirled and leaped and snatched down, catching the collar of the silver gown. Her momentum carried her forward, but the dress stayed in his hand ripped completely off. He went after her—she was falling now—and caught her, though the atmosphere seemed to be composed equally of gentry and rearing stallions.
Then he turned, carrying her slung over one arm, and managing to reach Jerran's anxious-looking head by knocking down one squire and kicking another in the groin, he dived into the bushes. The Lady Nirea squalled shrilly as the thorns gashed at her soft skin. But Revel blundered on into the bramble patch.
Jerran led him through what seemed impenetrable thickets, following a route that must have been marked, though Revel could not see how. Behind them, the gentry howled and loosed off their guns, but the brambles defeated them, for Revel caught no sounds of pursuit. A scream that thrilled up and choked off must have been the unfortunate Blue Breeches.
Revel looked up, thinking of the globes; he could see the sky in many places through the tangle, but realized that it was probably a thick green solid floor to a watcher from above. A god would have to come very low to see anything moving beneath it.
The woman said bitterly, "For Orbs' sake, at least carry me in some fashion that won't exposequiteso much of me to the thorns!" She paused and added as an after-thought, "You mudhead!"
He hitched her around and held her curled to his chest, faintly conscious of the smooth body, but concentrating on protecting her from harm; he thought suddenly that he was treating her as if she'd been a ruck woman, instead of one of the gentry, the loathed and feared squirarchy. Was he putting too much importance on the physical attractions that had made him take her?
Jerran was leading him now along a tunnel-like passage of twined, arched shrubbery that made them stoop low. "It'd help if you walked, Lady," he said.
"You may not have noticed it, miner, but I have on just one slipper, and it doesn't have a heel." She scowled up at him. "And when I say one slipper, I mean that'sall."
"You look fine," he grinned. "No silk and satin looks as attractive as your own pelt, my lady."
They traveled for upwards of half an hour, sometimes down forest lanes that allowed free passage, other times through thickets that ripped their flesh and slowed them to a swearing, sweating crawl. Always there was a screen above them of natural growth, shielding them from the buttoned sky.
At last before them there opened a huge amphitheater of the forest, a hollow with gently sloping sides, covered by a gigantic roof of twined willow wands and twigs. Jerran said, gesturing upward, "That's the biggest piece of camouflage we ever did! The top of it is planted with grass and scrub, rooted in square sods of earth cut from the woods' floor in many places. From above it looks like a round hill rising out of the trees. Took us a year to perfect it."
"Jerran, who is 'us' and—"
"Why, lad, the rebels."
Revel stared at the little man. Could Jerran, the straw-colored stringy fellow he'd worked beside all these years, the quiet one who'd preached serenity and dragged him out of a hundred brawls, could he be a rebel? Fantastic....
The rebels were the anonymous elite of the ruck. They were the malcontents of their society, men whose intellects could not swallow the dreary bromides of the priests, who felt savage indignation against the cruel gentry and the bright, all-mighty globes. It was said that they formed an organization in Dolfya and other cities, these rebels, and that to them could be laid the sabotaging of the coal and diamond mines, the gentry slain in accidents that looked too pat, and the constant aura of uneasy discontent that pervaded the shebeens and all such illegal gathering places of the ruck.
The rebels were highly romantic figures, but Revel had always considered them mythical, for who could think of resisting the condition of Things As They Are? Songs were sung about them over the turf fires, in the squat little huts of the people, and by vagabonds who roamed the countryside by night. The rebels went by fanciful names, as rebels of the people always do; and the one most sung of, most whispered about, in Dolfya at least, was the Mink, who seemed to be a kind of promised savior who would come (soon, always soon) with punishments for the gentry and liberation for the ruck.
So Revel stared at Jerran, mouth agape, and repeated stupidly, "The rebels?"
"Aye, lad! Didn't you ever guess?"
"Orbs, no!"
"Why'd you think I kept stopping your fights in the shebeen?"
"Because you were a pacifist."
The small man shook with laughter. "One, there's nothing I love so much as a good brawl. Two, a brawl might bring the orbs or the gentry to our hidden drink-house, and that'd be bad. Three, a man who's a rebel must appearnotto be one, even to men he believes he can trust. Four, I've had my eye on you ever since I came from Hakes Town, and didn't want you murdered in a drunken scrimmage. So five, though I hated to do it, I had to preserve you from raging and quarreling until all that brute force and honest fury could be turned to real account for us."
"I can't take it in," Revel said helplessly. "It's as though the heroes of the Ancient Kingdom that we sing about, Rob-'em-Good and Jonenry and Lynka, had met me here. I never believed in rebels, truly, Jerran."
"Why should you? We haven't done anything big yet. We've been searching and waiting for a leader."
Revel snapped his fingers. "The Mink!"
"Yes, the Mink." Jerran looked at him oddly, head cocked like a small yellow bird. "He hasn't come yet, but he will."
Revel looked around him. The amphitheater was dim, lit only by the sunlight that managed to creep in from the forest around it; for no illumination fell from the sodded roof. It must be capable of holding hundreds of men. "How many are you?" he asked.
"Some four thousand and three hundred." There was pride in the man's voice. "After today, Revel, we shall be uncountable thousands. Now the gods have been torn down."
"Not torn down."
"Torn down," repeated Jerran firmly, "from their false 'untouchable' eminence. You've shown the world that the globes can be slain as easily as hares."
"They can still rise into the buttoned sky, and rule from there."
"We'll find ways," grunted Jerran impatiently. "False gods that can die can be lured down by trickery—or we can find a way to go up to the buttons."
"That's insane," said Revel, and would have amplified it, but at that moment the girl spoke.
"When you are quite ready,SquireRevel, I wonder if you'd kindly set me down?"
He had forgotten her, slung over his shoulder like a slain doe. Hastily he slipped her off and set her on her feet. She was like a forest nymph, one of those legendary wild women who haunted the trees near towns and lured men to their death; tall and whitely lovely, her stark naked body shone against the greensward with a perfection that made Revel's throat constrict.
Then she doubled up a fist and hit him in the eye.
"You lout!" said the gorgeous creature. "Can't you at least get me something to wear?"
"I can have clothes for you in two minutes, Lady Nirea," said Jerran. "Man's clothes, I'm afraid. No woman has ever seen the meeting place before you."
"Man's clothes—rucker's clothes," she said caustically. "If I'd known what—"
Then her words were muffled by a terrible sound, a noise as of the earth exploding beneath them. Nothing moved, yet they had the sensation of being shaken intolerably by a giant blast of wind. The roar dwindled away, reluctant to cease, and Revel said, "What is it?"
"Come on," said Jerran urgently, "we'll go to the dome and see."
"The dome?"
"The roof of the sanctuary," barked Jerran impatiently. "It holds the weight of a score of men without quivering. We build slowly, but well." He sprinted away.
"The girl!" yelled Revel.
Jerran called over his shoulder, "If she's fool enough to risk woods lions and the bears, let her go!"
Revel stared at Nirea. Then he chuckled. "No gentrywoman could find her way home from this maze-center. You'll wait." He followed his friend.
They shinned up a tree on the edge of the clearing, and jumped to the rim of the dome, which never even swayed beneath their impact. Revel saw it stretch up before him like a grassy hill, and marveled at the rebels' artistry. Shortly they were standing on the crest, and he was clutching at Jerran's arm.
"Orbs above! Look there!"
On the horizon lay a tremendous cloud of gray-black smoke, like the reeking smudge of a forest fire; above it rose another and more ominous cloud, this tinged with red and of mushroom shape.
Revel was speechless, but Jerran ripped out a curse that would have curled the hair of a squire's neck.
"The Globate Credo," he said. "You've proved it wrong in one respect, but there's terrible proof of its truth in another." He spat. "If I figure right, that cloud's hanging over the eastern quarter of Dolfya Town, where none but the ruck lives; and every soul that lived there is dead as last week's dinner."
"The Credo?" said Revel haltingly.
"Sure.Vengeance of the gods comes swift and without warning, below the twin clouds, with a sound of volcanoes.Nobody ever knew what that meant ... till now."
The pretty daughter of the squire,She mourned and would not eat;The Mink he tried to tempt herWith barley bread and meat."O no, O no, you rebel cur,I'll never eat nor drink,Till father's hall I see again!Till death has trapped the Mink!"—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The pretty daughter of the squire,She mourned and would not eat;The Mink he tried to tempt herWith barley bread and meat.
"O no, O no, you rebel cur,I'll never eat nor drink,Till father's hall I see again!Till death has trapped the Mink!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
There were seven hundred silent men in the amphitheater of the forest, and more came in each minute, slipping from the trees without a sound, taking seats on the sloping grass. Miner's lanterns, the marvelous contraptions that hung in the shafts beside the veins of coal or pockets of diamonds, glowing with a dull penetrating radiance, had been filched from the mines one by one over years, and now illumined the strange hall like blue glowworms spaced around a pit.
Revel sat, uneasy, on the sward in the center, at the bottom of the bowl; beside him were Jerran and Dawvys, the small rebel's cousin who served in the house of Ewyo the squire. There also was the Lady Nirea, dressed in a miner's plain short-sleeved shirt and unornamented pants, but looking as delectable to Revel as she had in the silver gown. She had not spoken to him since the great bang and the twin clouds, but his mind was so full that he didn't care.
He had killed gods. This had brought his whole world down in ruins, shaken his belief in all he had ever been taught by the priests.
He had killed gentrymen, squires whom no breath of trouble from the ruck had ever disturbed. This had made the myths of rebellion very real to him, very possible; and then Jerran had admitted to being a rebel himself.
The east quarter of Dolfya had been wiped out, as Jerran had guessed; men from the town, coming in after dusk, had confirmed it. The place for a square mile was level, featureless, without sign that thousands of people, women and shopkeepers, brewers and doctors, shebeen hosts and small craftsmen and thieves and vegetable-growers, had lived there just this morning. They were all gone into the smoke of the double cloud.
His own mother was dead, then, and perhaps Rack, if the big red man had gone home.
He had taken a squire's daughter and made love to her, love that was returned if only for a brief time; and afterwards he had shot down zanphs with his new-found guns and plummeted a priest to destruction.
So now where was he? Among rebels, certainly, but mentally, where did he stand? Did he espouse the cause of the rebels? He nodded to himself. Of course. Their cause was the ruck's, and Revel was a man of the ruck. He had given the rebels a terrific boost with his god-killing, too. As word went round of it, he could see faces turn toward him, marveling, awe-struck, respectful.
And what was he to do? Become a vagabond, probably, living by night, skulking in the forest edges, passing from town to town hoping he could find a place where the gods had not heard of him, so he might settle down and eventually become a miner again. Mining was all he knew.
He felt for his pick, tucked into his trousers at the back. For all the new handguns, with their ammunition that made hash of a head or a belly, he still preferred his pick. It was the weapon of a man.
He took out a gun from his belt and stared at it. Then he asked Nirea, "What is this called, the curved metal you pull to shoot?"
She glanced over haughtily. "The trigger. Any dolt knows that."
"I wish you'd be nicer. I don't mean to harm you."
"You touched me, and more. I'm dreaming of your torture. Leave me alone."
Jerran stood up. The rebels, who had been buzzing and talking in low tones, quieted until Revel could hear the rabbits hopping in the underbrush beyond the amphitheater.
Jerran began to speak. He told them the whole story of the day, of the gods' death and all. Murmurs and exclamations arose, and he hushed them with a gesture.
"Many of us," he said, "though rebels, have owed allegiance to the gods. Our quarrel has been only with the gentry, whose useless existence and awful power over us are a constant irritation. They who hunt us as 'foxes'—who kill us if we touch them—we have seen are only men like ourselves, women like our women." He pointed to Nirea. "There's a gentrywoman; is she different in body from our wives? Not by so much as a mole!"
"I didn't see any moles," whispered Revel to the girl. She turned red in the face and clamped her teeth together.
"Is her mind different, superior? It's eviller, cruder, more ferocious, maybe, but no whit better than our own! Why then should her kind have power over us?"
The amphitheater roared to the angry yells of rebels. Jerran waved his hand again. "That's been our quarrel with the established way of things in the world. We've hoped for weapons to fight the gentry, and prayed for guidance from the gods. Now we know that the gods are mortal too! They can die! Then they aren't gods, not if gods are the supreme beings we've all been taught! They flee from a miner's pick? Then, by Orbs, they're craven cowards, not fit to be worshipped!"
A hush, then another roar.
"I said we'd waited. The biggest need was a leader, a man of brains and guts and power. We've sung of him for centuries, made up stories of him, songs about him." Jerran paused dramatically. He flung out a finger at the mob. "Who will he be?"
The answer almost broke Revel's eardrums.
The Mink! The Mink! The Mink! The Mink!
"He's here! He's come, from the bowels of the ruck, from the mines, from the people, as he was to come! Already he's done some of the acts the saga-makers put into the Ballad of the Mink!"
Revel frowned. Jerran hadn't told him that the Mink had come at last. The small yellow-faced man went on.
"He's the greatest trapper of mink in Dolfya—his family sleeps under blankets of the little beasts' hides. His own hair is the shade of a mink's pelt, as was foretold. He's as swift and deadly and cunning as the oldest mink alive. He's slain gods and priests, and taken toll of the gentry. I've worked beside him for years, and know his mind and heart have always been ours, though he lived in ignorance of us."
The light, a lurid incredible light, began to dawn on Revel.
Jerran's voice rose to a shriek as the rebels muttered stupefaction. "I tell you I know this is the man we've waited for, us and our fathers and their father's fathers before them! Rebels of Dolfya, I show you—Revel, the Mink!"
The shouts that had come before were murmurs to the chorus of stentorian bellows which assaulted Revel's ears now. The woman turned and said something to him, her fine face disdainful, but the words were lost in the tumult. A dozen men surged down and lifted him to their shoulders and paraded him round, while hands reached up to touch him and wave greeting to him.
It was the beginning of a celebration he had never seen the like of, a festival occasion that included a great dinner of boar and deer meat and stolen gentry's wine, over which much vague planning was done; and it ended only when the last rebel had left to sneak homeward, and he and the girl were left alone with Jerran.
"Sleep now, lad," Jerran said, grinning. "You're exhausted. It isn't every day a man finds himself a savior."
"But the Mink—I, the Mink?" He still had not entirely accepted it.
"I think so ... and if I care to call you the Mink, no one can contradict me."
"All the while I was doing those things this morning," muttered Revel, "I had the feeling I'd done them before. I must have been remembering the old ballad, for by Orbs, the acts do fit!"
"That minor blasphemy begins to annoy me," said Jerran seriously. "It's like saying 'by the man I killed yesterday.' We've got to revise our swearing habits."
"Why not substituteRevelorMinkforOrb?" asked the girl harshly. "Our Revel who dwells in the buttoned sky," she added, with a malevolent sneer.
"Ah, go to sleep, both of you," said Jerran. "Tomorrow we start to plan—really plan—to overthrow the gentry."
"And the priests," said Revel fiercely, "and the gods!" He almost believed that somehow they could climb into the air and destroy the gods in their red and blue buttons. He lay down, one hand vised on the woman's wrist, and though he felt he should never sleep that night, being far too excited, in three minutes he was snoring mightily.
He woke some time later with the prickling feeling of danger on his skin. He opened his eyes and saw red, literally a red mist that obscured the world. Then his head began to open and shut, open and shut, and he knew he had been hit a hell of a blow on the forehead, and there was blood in his eyes.
Groping for his pick, that had lain next his left hand, he missed it; then he recalled the girl, reached out for her, found she was gone too. He drew the back of his arm over his eyes and cleared the gore a trifle. "Jerran?" he said quietly. No answer.
Blinking, he saw the vast meeting place empty, lit by the blue lanterns. He rolled his head and there, its point buried deep in the sward an inch from his right ear, was his pick. He sat up. Jerran lay a dozen feet off, looking very dead indeed, with his thin hair matted with blackening blood.
Instinctively he tore the pick out of the ground. It was buried so deep that only a very strong hand could have sent it in; not the girl, he thought, somehow relieved that she hadn't done it. No, a miner's blow alone might have done it, for the earth was packed solid as oak's wood by untold multitudes of rebels' feet.
Wait a minute, he said to himself: this is all wrong. That blow should have opened my skull like a walnut. It missed me by a fraction—either the aim was poor, or else damned good. I could have struck such a blow, sure to miss where I wished to, but not even many miners could duplicate it.
Had the enemy missed, then walloped him with another weapon and left him for dead? Gingerly he felt the wound on his head. It was healing already, a tap that might have laid him out for a few hours, but would never have slain him.
He glared at the pick in his hand. Then he brought it up and in the combined light of the blue lanterns and the dawn filtering in from the woods, he squinted at the handle.
Where his own pick bore the crude carving of a mink (he had taken the beast as his symbol a long time ago, another sign of his identity), this one had a jumble of grooves meant to represent a woods lion.
This wasn't Revel's pick—it was his brother Rack's!
Caught in an appalling dream that was the hardest reality he'd ever faced, he pored over the pickax, scanned the motionless form of his friend Jerran, then goggled foolishly at nothing in particular as he thought of his situation, stranded in a place he could not escape from alone, with many half-formed plots in his head but no way to carry them out. Between him and Dolfya, and the other rebels, lay miles of tangled forest no man, be he ever so skillful at woodscraft, could penetrate without the knowledge of a route; thousands of the ruck were depending on him to lead them, and he couldn't even lead himself home.
"If you're the Mink, Revel m'lad," he said aloud, "it's time you came up with a brilliant idea!"
And there wasn't a scheme in his head.
The haughty maid has left the Mink,She finds her father's place;The squire has looked her in the eye:"Now what a fox to chase!"He's called in all his friends and kin,And dealt out guns and shells;He's sworn an oath to catch the MinkBy all the seven hells!—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The haughty maid has left the Mink,She finds her father's place;The squire has looked her in the eye:"Now what a fox to chase!"
He's called in all his friends and kin,And dealt out guns and shells;He's sworn an oath to catch the MinkBy all the seven hells!
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
Lady Nirea was puffing and blowing and clawing her way through endless miles of creepers, thorns, and brushwood. She wished Revel were carrying her now, even if it meant the loss of her clothing again. Now she appreciated what a job he'd done, for naked though she'd been, not half as many scratches had marred her skin on their first journey.
Ahead of her, the giant called Rack was doing his best to break trail for her; and in front of him, with a rope under his arms which the red-bearded man held tightly, went Dawvys, her father's servant.
As she understood the tale from Rack's few sentences, growled out in a voice that reeked with hatred of somebody, whether herself or Revel or whom she couldn't tell, he had caught Dawvys just emerging from the forest and made him lead the way back to the domed glade. Ewyo the squire had sent Rack out for her, and Rack was evidently all a rucker should be—faithful, reverent, and obedient to the least command of the gentry.
She remembered waking, Revel's strong hand still clamped on her wrist, and seeing this walleyed brute just aiming a swing of a pick at his brother's head. She had screamed, and Rack had missed. She wondered whether he had meant to hit at all. There was already a bloody gash on Revel's scalp, and the little yellow man, Jerran, lay quite still with red trickling out of his head.
Then Rack had picked up Revel's pick and disengaged the grip of his hand (was it as cold and lifeless as she'd thought? could the Mink be dead?) from her wrist, and booted Dawvys out on the trail.
That had been hours ago. They were still bumbling through the forest, although the sun was high.
"He's leading us wrong," she panted. "Don't trust him. He's an important rebel."
"He wants to live as badly as we do, Lady. He'll take us home."
And sure enough, they had come shortly to the rim of the woodland. She swayed and nearly collapsed. "Give me your arm, rucker," she said. "I give you permission to touch me."
His arm was like stone, supporting her along the road to Dolfya's outskirts where her father's mansion lay. After a few minutes he dropped the rope that held Dawvys. "Damn," he said loudly, "he will get away!" and bent to retrieve it. Dawvys leaped off like a pinched frog, and Rack said grimly, "No use to chase that one, he can sprint faster than a dozen hulks like me."
"You let him go," said Nirea.
He turned his blue eye on her. "That is as you see fit to believe, Lady."
She would turn him over to her father's huntsman, she thought. Or would she? He'd saved her ... was this gratitude in her mind? It was a foreign emotion. Wait and see, she told herself; don't fret now. She was very tired.
They came to the house of Ewyo, a sprawling erection of field stone and ancient brick dug from distant ruins of another time. No one could make bricks like that now. She touched the gate in the wall and instantly a dozen hounds, gaunt and savage, came leaping from the lawns. Recognizing her, they fawned, and she opened the gate. "Come in," she said. He grunted and obeyed, eyeing the dogs.
In the library of the house, which contained more than twenty priceless books allowed her ancestors by the gods, she met her father, the squire Ewyo. He scowled up at Rack.
"You bring this rucker, this miner, into the library, Nirea?"
Not a word of greeting, she thought, not a single expression of relief at her safety. For the first time she began to contrast the manners of the gentry with those of Revel. He was rough, true, and crude and inclined to glory in his animal strength, and he had made love to her, to boot; but if he had found her after thinking her dead, by the Orbs! he wouldn't have snarled out something about an unimportant convention!
"The man saved me at great risk, and killed his own brother doing it," she said coldly. She would not mention Dawvys at all. Not now! "He deserves a reward, Ewyo, and not harsh words from you."
He slapped his high sleek boots with a hunting crop. He was a burly, beefy-looking man, nothing like the lean tough Mink. She felt a sense of revulsion. She turned to Rack and stared at the big face, scarred by whipping branches, firm and fearless, as hard as the heart of a mountain. "Go home and get some sleep, Rack," she said kindly. "You'll hear from me later."
"I have no home, Lady," he answered. "The gods destroyed our part of the town yesterday."
Ewyo snorted, "Dawvys can give him a bed for now in the servants' huts. Dawvys!"
It was on her tongue to say that Dawvys wouldn't be likely to answer his bawl, but the man appeared in the doorway, spruce and clean, with only a few scratches to tell of his activities. "Yes, Lord Ewyo?"
"Take this rucker and find a bed for him. Jump!"
"Yessir." Dawvys, a plump fellow with no hint of his enormous endurance in his look, motioned Rack out of the library.
Ewyo said, "Well! How are you, Nirea? Your sister Jann and I have been worrying."
"I'm all right."
"Did you suffer indignities at the hands of that crazy miner?"
He looked like a damned red-faced bear, she thought, and surprised herself by saying, "Revel treated me with—with much consideration."
"Huh! Wouldn't have thought it. You want to sleep?"
"Don't bother about me," she said, turning. "Get on with your pressing business, father." She went to her room and lay down on the satin-sheeted bed without even removing the tattered rucker's clothes. For a long while she lay there, thinking. Then she did a thing that no one could ever have convinced her she'd do till that day. She changed into a sheer black gown, after bathing of course, and slipped downstairs to her father's private room.
She had never been in it, no one but Ewyo had; she had no clear notion of what she was looking for. But an army of questions warred in her mind, and it seemed to her that there were secrets she must discover: answers which she had never looked for, explanations for things she had always taken for granted.
For instance, she thought, turning the handle slowly and without noise, why were the gentry the gentry? Why did the gods allow almost anything to her kind, when the ruck had no rights? She shook her head. All her breeding said she was mad, yet she opened the door of the private room and walked in.
Dawvys whirled from where he had been bending over a huge leather-bound book on a table. His face was white, but it cleared of panic when he saw her.
"The Lady Nirea moves silently."
"What are you doing here?" she asked sharply.
"The same thing you mean to do, Lady. I'm seeking the answers to certain problems."
"Can a rucker read minds like a globe?"
He laughed. "It was an obvious guess, Lady."
"And have you found answers, Dawvys?"
He sighed. "I cannot read, as the Lady knows. No rucker reads."
She watched his face a moment. "Stay here," she said. "Ican read."
"The Lady of the Mink is kind," he said, bowing. The title did not shock her. Strangeness on strangeness!
The book was full of queer writing, like none she had ever seen. Instead of letters that each stood alone, the letters were joined, each word being a unit without a break; and they seemed to stand up a little from the page, not being sunken into the paper as all printing was that she had seen.
With difficulty she read a few sentences.
"This day the third in the month of Orbuary I did feed the gods, more than forty of them in the morning and twenty after eating. I am so weak I can hardly hold this pen."
"What does it mean?" asked Dawvys.
"I don't know." She flipped a page. "This day did hunt the fox, he being a strong untiring trapper who was found with forbidden ale cached in his house, and chased him over eight mile before he went to earth in a spinney, where the dogs found him and tore him to bits. Afterwards did feed nine gods, who have drained me so I cannot see but in a fog," she read aloud.
"That's your father speaking," whispered Dawvys, "He hunted a trapper last month."
"But how is it down here, if it was Ewyo? The books were made many years before my grandfather was born. No one makes books now. The art is lost."
"Nevertheless, I think Ewyo made this one himself. Unless it's a prophecy of the gods." He turned the book over. "What does it say on the outside?"
She read it with cold grue inching up her back. "Ewyo of Dolfya, His Ledger and Record Book."
"Then he did make it."
"How? How could he? The art is lost!"
"Many things the ruck believed have been proved false in these last hours," Dawvys said. "Perhaps the gentry's beliefs are equally wrong."
She left the book and went to a desk by the oiled-paper window. A drawer was partly open. Inside was a big heap of dandelions, thick grasses, and wild parsley. She remembered Jerran's taunt, "Your father eats dandelions!"
"Dawvys, why are these here?"
"I don't know, Lady. I gather them and the squire eats them, but why, I can't say."
There was a sound at the door. Dawvys sprang toward the brocaded hangings, too late; Ewyo thrust in his head, black rage on his features.
"What in the seven hells are you doing here, Nirea?"
The habits of a lifetime couldn't be overcome by a day in the presence of the Mink. She said quickly, "I saw Dawvys come in, father, and followed him."
"Oh. Good for you. Dawvys, report yourself to the huntsman for a fox!"
Dawvys bowed and went out. She breathed freely; he would escape, and still she'd saved herself. What Ewyo might have done to her, she didn't know, but she feared him when he was roused.
She yearned to ask him about the book and the weeds, but didn't dare. She passed him and went to the resting room, where she occupied a chair for an hour, blankly pondering the tottering of her universe.
At last she stood up. She was a gentrywoman, she had guts in her belly. Why shouldn't she ask her father questions? Before she could think about it and grow scared, she went searching, and ran across her sister Jann.
Jann was twenty-four, a tall ash-blonde woman with snaky amber eyes and pointed ears who lorded it over the household.
"Have you seen Ewyo?"
"He's in the private room."
She headed for it, and Jann ran to catch at her arm. "You can't disturb him there!"
"I've been in it before."
Jann clawed at her. "You haven't! Even I was only there once...."
"Even you. My, my." Nirea walked on, Jann tugging at her futilely. "I have to talk to him."
"Stop! Damn you, you whelp, you can't—"
With precision and force, Nirea socked her sister in the left eye. Then she strode down the hall and knocked on the door of the private room and immediately went in.
The sight that greeted her, completely incomprehensible, was still as revolting and horrifying a thing as she had ever seen. Her father lay back in a big armchair, relaxed and half-asleep to judge from his hanging arms and barely open eyes. A curious sound, a kind of brrm-brrm, came from his chest.
Resting on his throat was a golden globe. Two of its tentacles were pushed almost out of sight into his nostrils, two more dipped into his gaping mouth. The remaining four waved slowly above the squire's face.
Nirea screamed.
The globe floated upward, slowly, grudgingly. Its tentacles withdrew from the squire. Ewyo stirred and opened his pale eyes to glare at her. A flush of hideous fury spread up his cheeks. He struggled to his feet and lurched over and slapped her face, so that she ceased to scream and fell against the wall, moaning. The squire stood over her.
"You meddlesome bitch, I ought to have you cut up for the hounds!"
"In the name of the Orbs," she said, whimpering, "what were you doing?"
He grimaced at her like a madman. "You're not supposed to be told till you're twenty, and you don't do it yourself till you reach twenty-eight."
"Do it myself."
"Certainly." He gave a humorless snort of laughter. "D'you think we don't pay for the privilege of being gentry, you fool? Now leave me alone!" He lifted her and flung her at the door. The golden sphere hovered motionless in the air. "Never speak of what you saw, and never ask another question of me till your twentieth birthday ... if you live to reach it!"
She fumbled the door open and staggered into the hall, and wept there with awful tearing sobs, while her sister Jann looked at her and giggled hysterically.