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?"
_Bang_ went 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.