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 Mink
By 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. "_I_ can 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.