The Mink he couches underground,
Beneath the earth he lies;
He hears the fox's mournful yell,
And knows he must arise.
"Too many lads have hunted been,
Too many women slain!"
The Mink he takes his pick in hand
To end the gentry's reign.
--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The Lady Nirea thought a moment--she never attacked any new problem
without thinking beforehand--and then she began to struggle. This rucker
who had her over his shoulder, with a death-grip on her legs and her
head hanging down his back, was plainly insane. No man of his low
position was _ever_ insane enough to actually harm a squire's daughter;
so if she kicked and bit, he would either drop her or--
Well, it was the "or." He reached up and slapped her on the rear. Hard.
She opened her eyes wide. No one had ever before dared to touch her
there. She thought again, and bit him on the side.
He was carrying her up the rocks toward the mine now. Surely there would
be a god-guard on duty there? She had often seen one in place at the
entrance, as she rode through the valley. Yes, peering upside-down under
his arm, she saw the golden glow. Then he was shifting her a little,
setting his muscles, and--great Orbs! He struck the god full in the
middle with his miner's pick. This man, this astounding brute with
chocolate-colored hair and a body like a wild woods lion, had dared kill
four gods in as many minutes. Perhaps she shouldn't be as certain of her
inviolability as she'd been till now.
"You triple-damn fool," she said, making her voice husky so it wouldn't
squeak, "the globes are watching."
"They always are." What a strong voice the beast had.
"They see you going into the mine. D'you think you're safe here?"
"Where I'm going, there's a chance," he said. His body moved lithely
beneath her. She clutched him around the ribs as they began to descend a
ladder. Blackness, tinged with blue, lay below. She felt her scalp
prickle with terror.
The little man, Jerran, said from somewhere above, "Kill all the gods we
meet, lad; I'll hide or bring the bodies. And keep your emotions
controlled, or they'll follow our scent like zanphs on the trail of a
runaway."
"Did the globes follow us?" asked the big man, whose name was Rebel or
something like it.
"They were coming down again as I ducked in. Hurry it up."
The swift plunge into the mine speeded. She deliberately worked herself
up to silent panic, giving the gods a spoor to chase.
Now they were traveling on the level, and from the reflection of yellow,
the brisk jerk of his arm, and the pulpy squish, she knew he had met and
slain another globe. Was he inhuman, a visitor from beyond the world,
such as were told of in the ancient ballads? Certainly no man was ever
this bold!
"Here's the end," said Jerran. "Set the wench down, she can't get away.
Hurry!"
She was rudely plumped onto a pile of coal. She looked at her silver
gown and shuddered. Her flailing legs had ripped it from hem to
midthigh; the coal was staining it irrevocably.
"When I catch that horse," she thought, half aloud, "I'll beat him.
Tossing me into all this!"
* * * * *
They were pulling down rocks from the wall; now a black hole appeared.
The small man jumped up to a boulder and snatched down a blue mine
lantern. "Take this, Revel." That was it, Revel. An odd name, a rather
nice one. The ruck ordinarily had such awful names, Jark and Dack and
Orp. Revel. Not bad. It fitted the big lusty-looking brute.
He came over. "Never mind picking me up," she said icily. "I can walk."
She peered into the hole, winced, and clambering over the rocks, losing
a heel from one of her slippers, she entered their secret cavern.
Revel climbed in after her. Jerran was already piling rocks back into
the breach. The lantern looked faint and incapable of lighting a chimney
corner, but its blue radiance was deceptive, for the farthest reaches of
the place were cast into a moonlight sort of glow. She gazed around,
unable to take it in, seeing nothing at first but giant shapes of
mystery, unknown things in stacks and in tumbled heaps, figures like
grotesque statues, all lined in rows the length and breadth of the giant
cavern.
The cave itself was square, perhaps a hundred feet to a side. It must
have taken scores of miners months of work to hew it out of the rock.
Unwilling to show interest, she still had to ask, "When did you make
this?"
"We didn't make it, Lady. We found it. No man alive made this place."
"How do you know?"
"The miners would know it. We broke through the wall only yesterday."
"What are these things?"
"You know as much as I do." He was looking at her in the way her father
sometimes looked at rucker serving women, as though she had no clothes
on at all. She had little modesty, society was lax when it came to such
things as clothing, and frequently she had ridden the streets of Dolfya
Town in a suit of transparent silk that made the ruck gape and blush;
but this very personal scrutiny made her shield her breasts with one arm
as she stared back at him.
"I've changed my mind about you," she said pleasantly.
"Yes?" Did the swine look eager?
"I have ... you won't be hunted by the pack. You'll be flayed alive,
inch by inch, with white-hot needles of iron, starting with your feet
and working upward. And I'll watch."
He laughed. "You _are_ a wench," he said admiringly. Then he turned and
appeared to forget her as he began to inspect the contents of the
cavern. After a moment she wandered off to look at them herself.
Nearest lay a long wooden chest, on which were arranged certain
contrivances that looked like guns, except that they were short, no more
than a foot long; they had triggers and barrels and small curved stocks,
so they must be guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long.
She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly
they were cached inside it.
Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of
almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen
anything like it--like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of
the oiled paper in her father's windows. A sheet of this substance in a
window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in
Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a
piece of air.
* * * * *
There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing
on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very
slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father's library, but
this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she
felt two hard hands on her waist.
"Get your stinking paws off me," she said, without moving.
She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the
chest.
"What are they?"
She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know they
_were_ guns: _American handguns of 1940-1975 period_, it said. She
couldn't let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he'd
attack the gentry themselves, for hadn't he slain innumerable gods
already?
"They are children's toys," she said. "I don't know what sort of
children would be interested in such weird-looking things."
"Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?"
She shook her head; the term was new to her.
"The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient
Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and
people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here
then." His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker,
screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something.
"The people of that far-off time,
They carried little guns;
They had so much more freedom
Than we who are their sons."
He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. "These are toy guns, yes.
The writing says they are guns for children."
"Maybe the toys of those children worked," he said looking at her.
"You talk nonsense."
He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then
raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into
bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the
small things from its place, he examined it closely.
"No toy, Lady Nirea," he grunted. "You lied to me."
"I didn't! Can _you_ read the writing?" she asked sourly.
"No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it." He
tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. "You can
show me how to use them later."
She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin
tingling, she said, "Play the squire, miner, you don't have long to do
it!"
"They won't find this hole."
"I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she
told him.
* * * * *
Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very
hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her
wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.
A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What
is it?" he said. "Read for me."
She looked at the printing on the front. _Dynamo_ she spelt out, and
shrugged. "A name I don't know."
"If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with
it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying."
"I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her
on. "What's this?"
The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words
were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "_Man of the 21st
century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and--_"
"Never mind." He left the big shining case, which was oblong and
featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her
gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: _Held in
suspended animation._ What could the words mean?
They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand.
Here and there were ordinary objects--plates, hides of animals under the
near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck
vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles--but in the main it was a
place of mystery.
"The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin,
"put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it
could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number
of keen brains."
"Nobody has more than one brain," she snapped.
He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was
totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put
a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through
her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal,
that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused
in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.
His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came
near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not
fight the instinct that racked her.
It's a strange place for passion, she thought dazedly; an unknown
cavern, full of antique wonders never heard of on earth, filled with a
blue haze, and only she and the tall fierce rucker....