The Mink has fought till nearly blind,
Till almost deaf and dumb;
Till all his strength is waned away,
And all his senses numb.
At last his foemen give before
His pick as swift as fire;
Before him now there stands alone
The cruel, and savage squire!
--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
With thirty men at his back, Revel went down the valley at a crouch;
slipped up the rock shelf to the eastern entrance of the great mine of
Rosk, protected from the gentry's view by a chance outcropping of shale,
and went into the darkness. The tunnel he sought was on the second
level. He dropped down the ladder, unhooked a blue lantern to guide his
way, and followed the narrow tunnel west.
Behind him the pad-pad of his weary men lifted muffled echoes, and he
tried to set such a pace as would take them swiftly to the hill above
the squires, yet not tire them further nor wind them before the battle.
In the intense gloom he distinguished another lantern far ahead. As he
approached, it appeared to move toward him. Was someone carrying it?
He tensed himself and swung the pick a little; but when the priest
hurled himself at the Mink, bearing him back against Jerran, the Mink
was caught by surprise. It had been no lantern, but the priest's glowing
robe!
Revel's reflexes were still, if not hair-trigger, at least very quick.
This was a tough priest, though, a lean hardbitten man, with a fanatical
long face that shoved itself into Revel's and clicked its teeth a
quarter-inch short of his nose. The fellow's arms were tight about him,
as they rolled sideways against the rock, Revel straining to bring his
pick into play, clutching tight to the lantern, while the priest flailed
hands like knobby boulders against the Mink's nape and head. A blow of
his knee, and Revel doubled up, gasping; struck out blindly with the
lantern, caught the fellow in the belly, and made him curl up in his
turn, choking for breath. Jerran and the others were blocked by Revel,
and growled encouragement.
Revel straightened, nauseated and weak. The priest came at him. Revel
raised his pickax and swung it--pain stabbed into his legs and belly--he
bent involuntarily in the middle of his swing--and what should have been
a neat spitting of the holy man's skull became a messy job of
disemboweling. The fellow died gurgling, picking futilely at his spilt
entrails. Revel crawled over him and went on once more, his troops
behind him.
At the western entrance to Rosk's mine, he peered out for the first sign
of the highborn enemies. A thrill of panic touched him as he saw they
were not where they had been; then, poking his head into the dawn, he
saw them advancing in a slow line toward the rise where his four men
were raising shouts and taunts.
Orbs, he thought exultantly, here's a piece of luck! We'll take them in
the back!
He slipped down the shelf, gesturing his men on. Running silently, he
came within a yard of a squire in green and gold; then halted and
cleared his throat loudly. The squire, startled, looked back.
"Ewyo!" he shrieked, whirling. "It's the Mink!"
"Come from Hell to slay you," said Revel between his teeth, and dealt a
blow with his pick that clove the gentryman from brow to breastbone. The
line of men had swiveled, and now shots rang out; at such close range
even their guns could not miss. Half a dozen rebels fell, screaming.
And now the weary Revel was a brazen-throated fiend, brandishing his
pick, roaring, scalping one and braining the next, destroying with fresh
vigor dredged up from the pits of his free soul. For now he had a
strange certainty that the gods were done, and if he died in this moment
he died emancipated.
Joy brought him strength such as he had never had. These squires,
running off, loading their guns feverishly, firing, clubbing their
weapons to stand and fight, what chance had they against him? He looked
for Ewyo, but could not find him. _Let him not be dead_, he prayed. And
then there was Rosk.
Rosk, red of visage, narrow of jaw, bloody about the thin mean mouth,
facing him over a thrust-out gun. Revel jumped aside, but Rosk did not
fire, only following him with the musket muzzle. "Don't bounce, Mink,"
he grated. "Stand and look around you. Your men are falling faster than
autumn leaves."
* * * * *
Revel glanced behind, and at that instant Rosk fired. It was a
treacherous trick, and by poetic justice it was his last. The ancient
gun, overheated by long use, could not take the overcharge of powder in
the shell. It blew up, its barrel twisting into twin spirals of metal,
its stock driving back into the guts of the squire, fragments of hot
iron spraying his face and chest. Rosk had no time to howl, but went
down like a lightning-struck birch. Revel felt the slug, or a piece of
the shattered gun, burn along his cheek.
What was one more wound atop the uncounted number he had? The Mink
laughed, turning to his men.
Of the thirty, Rack and Jerran and one other remained. Each was engaged
with a squire, his two friends grappling without weapons, the miner
swinging a pick against a clubbed gun. All the others were dead or
dying. Ewyo must be dead somewhere in the valley, or else he had not
been here at all.
Revel hurried tiredly to the nearest combatants, let his pick go licking
out over Jerran's small shoulder, tore off half the head of the squire.
Rack crowed triumphantly as he throttled his man. The miner had won his
fight. They were finished.
The four of them limped toward the hill of John's machine.
Then there came a pounding of hoofs on greensward behind them. Revel
turned. It was a lone rider, galloping furiously down upon them. He saw,
with an incredulous gasp, that it was Ewyo of Dolfya.
"Go on," he said urgently. "Leave me, comrades."
"You young _fool_," barked Jerran. But he took Rack's arm and pulled the
giant forward, leaving Revel standing alone with his face toward Ewyo.
The stallion was pulled up short, and Ewyo stared down at him. "I hoped
I would get here in time," he said.
"You're late. Your world is broken, Ewyo." Revel realized as he said it
that he was fatigued to the point of not giving a damn whether he lived
or not. Still there was a yearning to fight this devil on horseback.
"Shoot, Ewyo. I shall kill you all the same."
Ewyo raised his gun, hesitated, then said, "Is there only myself, then,
and you, Mink, in all the world?"
"In all the world, Ewyo."
"Will you give me a pick?"
Revel started. "You are no miner. You can't fight with a pickax."
"I can fight with anything I can hold." He threw the gun on the grass.
"Give me a pick," he commanded, leaping from his nag.
* * * * *
Revel stooped and took up the weapon of a dead man. It was a good pick,
with a longer handle than the Mink's own. He reached it out to Ewyo,
holding it by the head, and the squire took it and stepped back a pace.
"When you're ready, Mink."
"Now, Ewyo."
They circled each other, warily watching the eyes and arms of the enemy.
"Why didn't you shoot me?" asked Revel in wonder.
"Too unsporting," growled the beefy squire, his pale eyes squinting with
strain. "A gentleman doesn't take advantages."
Revel laughed. It was too ridiculous a statement to merit an answer. He
made a feint, Ewyo parried skillfully. Then the squire brought his pick
down in a looping arc. His reach was as long as Revel's, and the pick
gave him an advantage. Revel jumped back, slashed sideways and missed.
They circled.
"The gods will win out," grunted Ewyo.
"Their day is done. We are aided by the Ancient Kingdom."
"Superstition! Things have always been as they are."
Slash, hack, parry and retreat. "Not as they are now, Squire Ewyo."
Ewyo dropped his guard, Revel came in to gut him. Too late he saw the
trick, and Ewyo's pick sliced across his shin, a shallow cut that nicked
the bone. He jabbed with the flat of the blade, struck Ewyo in the
chest, and jerking his pick sidewise and back, tore velvet coat and
satin weskit and drew blood. Ewyo cried out.
Revel summoned his strength and began a series of flashing swings, which
Ewyo parried frantically, backing across the grass. Blood spurted from
cheek and hand as the rebel's deadly weapon glinted dully in blurred
movement before the squire's eyes.
Then the squire rallied, and his power being greater than Revel's now,
if his skill were less, he drove the Mink back in turn.
There came a blow that turned the pick in Revel's hands, sending its
point down to the side; Revel recovered, but the squire threw up his arm
and brought down his blade with such force that the off-balance Mink
could not turn it wholly. It sliced over his ribs, drove through the
flesh of his hip.
Pain so hideous as to make him dizzy and ill knifed the Mink. In that
moment he knew if he did not make one superb effort he was done.
Conquering agony, he swung up the pick before Ewyo could recover from
the vicious downswing. With a noise like a rock hurled into a rotten
melon, the pick tore through cloth and flesh to lodge in Ewyo's belly,
half its head buried in the screaming squire.
Ewyo tore it from the Mink's hands as he fell, and writhed about it,
curled like a stricken serpent.
The Mink dropped to one knee beside him, head bowed with nausea and
relief. "You were a brave man, you bastard."
Ewyo, strong in his fashion as Revel in his, stiffened his body so that
he could look straight up at his killer. "Not--especially brave," he
ground out. "You see--Mink--I had no--ammunition--for the gun...."
His pale eyes filmed over, and Revel staggered off, leaving him for the
crows and worms of the valley.
* * * * *
When he had come, dragging himself like a wounded stag up the rock
shelf, they stared at him in silence for a long minute. Lady Nirea at
last said, "But you are dying, Revel!"
"Not for a good many years," he grinned.
Jerran said, "Aye, cut him a thousand times and he'll make fresh blood
from that valiant heart!"
John called, "Look there, Mink!" Down the dawn wind rode half a dozen
golden orbs, high enough to be out of reach of their picks, low enough
to observe them. Revel gritted, "Blast 'em!"
"You can always shoot later, son. Let's hear what they want."
Reluctantly Revel waved a crimsoned hand to stop his gunmen. The globes
halted a few feet above the machine. Fingers of thought pried into the
Mink's head, and automatically up went his screen.
Then the cerebral prying ceased. John murmured, "They're talking to me."
Revel watched the silent exchange of thoughts. What if the obscene
things got hold of John's mind. Anxiously he scanned the strong face for
signs of fading will. At last he could stand it no longer, and was about
to order a volley, when John said, "I think that's it, Mink."
"What happened?" they all asked eagerly.
"The things parleyed. They see they can't get close enough to smash the
machine--that last explosion was a desperate try at crashing a saucer
with a bomb ready to trip, and it didn't work--so they want to talk. I
gave 'em a skinful." He chuckled. "Told 'em there were men of my time
wakening all over the world, with machines to defeat them totally; they
know whom they're dealing with now, and they're going to talk it over.
Mink, that's the end of the gods, with luck! They won't face a force of
twenty-first century scientists. They haven't got it, they just haven't
got it."
"But they'll discover that you lied," said Nirea. "They'll get the
thrower, sooner or later, and then we're at their mercy again."
"I didn't lie, girl. All over this hemisphere there are caves like the
one I came from, with scientists held in suspension, plenty of machines
from our time, and knowledge that will bring your world out of these
Dark Ages into another Renaissance! I have the locations in the papers
that were interred in the casket under me, and we'll send parties out
today to find 'em. This is a new world dawning this morning." He leaned
over and kissed her enthusiastically, and Revel, who would have split
another man down the brisket for that, did not mind at all. "Your globes
are done, Mink. The gentry and the priests will be easy prey. You can
probably scare them into surrender after last night."
Jerran said, "Here be men on horses, Mink." Revel turned and saw a great
cavalcade of stallioned men sweep down the valley, and in a moment of
great joy saw that they were all ruckers, carrying dead gods on pikes
and singing the Ballad of the Mink as they came.
The Lady Nirea was in his arms, kissing his lips that were caked with
three kinds of blood; and Revel the Mink forgot the pain in his torn
body, the utter weariness of brain and muscle, and everything else
except what was good and sweet and wonderful.
* * * * *
Three months had passed, and the leaders of the successful rebellion of
Earth were sitting in a drinking-house (legal now) downing toasts to
various people and events. Revel and his wife Nirea sat at the head of
the board, and down the sides ranged their friends and lieutenants: the
giant Rack and the tiny Jerran, Dawvys and a dozen others, with John
Klapham at the foot.
"To the end of the globes," said John, his tongue a trifle thick by now.
"By gad, you brew potent stuff in these times! To the gods' finish!"
They drank that standing, roaring it out gleefully.
Revel said, "It was a sight to see, that--thousands upon thousands of
buttons, all sweeping into the sky and vanishing into dots and then
nothing ... and here's to the gentry they took with 'em!"
"How many went?" asked Nirea, though she knew as well as he.
"Seven thousand and four hundred and ten, squires and their ladies,
electing to travel out of the world for promised power in another!"
Revel grinned wolfishly. "And here's to the priests who weren't allowed
to go, and so have become miners and know what it is to sweat!"
Rack stood up, looming gigantic above them. "Here's to the men awakening
now all over this country--the men of the Ancient Kingdom!"
"And the things they can teach us," added Jerran.
"And a toast to the most important of those things--the art of tobacco
growing!" shouted John gaily.
They sat down after that, and Revel said to John affectionately, "If it
hadn't been for you, friend, we'd still be ruckers and worse. You gave
us a new world."
"Rot. I gave you a technical skill--you furnished the brains, brawn and
motivating force, a legend come to life. I was only one more weapon in
your hand."
Lady Nirea touched the Mink's arm tenderly. "We'll all be weapons in
your hands now, Revel. Tools to make a civilization again--to make the
last verse of the old song come true."
"Let's sing it," said Dawvys, a little in his cups by now. "Let's all
sing it loud."
"The gods have flown beyond the sky,
The priests toil underground;
The gentry's curse is lifted free,
And all our foes are downed....
"Now over all the Mink he reigns,
And gone are rank and caste;
The ruck is lifted from the mire--
And we are free at last!"
* * * * *
They finished the rousing song and looked expectantly at the Mink; but
he had borne back Lady Nirea on the bench and was kissing her with
enormous warmth, so that even a prophetic song, written about him ages
before he was born, could not tear loose from him the only chains that
would ever bind him again--the wrought-steel, invisible, shatter-proof
shackles of Nirea's love.