"I didn't expect to. We'll walk until we reach the pass. I've got a
support camp set up there."
"Walk? This is impossible country for people on foot. There are
intransigent tribesmen all through this territory."
"How do you know?"
"How do I _know_? Why, everybody knows about them!"
The Barbarian looked at him thoughtfully, and with just the faintest
trace of amusement. "Well, if _everybody_ knows they're intransigent, I
guess they are. I guess we'll just have to hope they don't spot us."
Geoffrey was a little nettled by The Barbarian's manner. It wasn't,
after all, as if anybody claimed there were dragons or monsters or any
other such oceanic thing living here. This was good, solid fact--people
had actually come up here, tried to bring civilization to the tribes,
and failed completely. They were, by all reports, hairy, dirty people
equipped with accurate rifles. No one had bothered to press the issue,
because obviously it was hardly worth it. Geoffrey had expected to have
trouble with them--but he had expected to meet it in an armored vehicle.
But now that the mountains had turned out to be so far away, the
situation might grow quite serious. And The Barbarian didn't seem to
care very much.
"Well, now, lad," he was saying, "if the tribesmen're that bad, maybe
your friends the nobles won't dare follow us up here."
"They'll follow us," Geoffrey answered flatly. "I slapped Dugald's
face."
"Oh. Oh, I didn't understand that. Code of honor--that sort of thing.
All the civilized appurtenances."
"It's hardly funny."
"No, I suppose not. I don't suppose it occurred to you to kill him on
the spot?"
"Kill a _noble_ in hot blood?"
"Sorry. Code of honor again. Forget I mentioned it."
Geoffrey rankled under The Barbarian's barely concealed amusement. To
avoid any more of this kind of thing, he pointedly turned and looked at
the terrain behind them--something he ought to have done a little
earlier. Three tankettes were in sight, only a few miles behind them,
laboring down the slope of a hill.
And at that moment, as though rivetted iron had a dramatic sense of its
own, their tankette coughed, spun lazily on one track as the crankshaft
paused with a cam squarely between positions, and burned up the last
drops of oil and alcohol in its fuel tank.
* * *
Geoffrey and Myka crouched down in a brushy hollow. The Barbarian had
crawled up to the lip of the depression, and was peering through a clump
of weeds at the oncoming trio. "That seems to be all of them," he said
with a turn of his head. "It's possible they kept their speed down and
nursed themselves along to save fuel. They might even have a fuel waggon
coming up behind them. That's the way I'd do it. It would mean these
three are all we can expect for a few hours, anyway, but that they'll be
heavily reinforced some time later."
"That will hardly matter," Geoffrey muttered. Myka had found Dugald's
personal rifle inside the tankette. Geoffrey was rolling cartridges
quickly and expertly, using torn up charges from the turret cannon. He
had made the choice between a round or two for the now immobile heavy
weapon and a plentiful supply for the rifle, and would have been greatly
surprised at anyone's choosing differently. The Barbarian had not even
questioned it, and Myka was skillfully casting bullets with the help of
the hissing alcohol stove and the bullet mold included in the rifle kit.
There was plenty of finely ground priming powder, and even though
Geoffrey was neither weighing the charges of cannon powder nor measuring
the diameter of the cartridges he was rolling, no young noble of any
pretensions whatsoever could not have done the same.
The rub lay in the fact that none of this was liable to do them much
good. If they were to flee through the woods, there would certainly be
time for only a shot or two when the tribesmen found them. If the rifle
was to be used against the three nobles, then it was necessary, in all
decency, to wait until the nobles had stopped, climbed out of their
tankettes, equipped themselves equally, and a mutual ground of battle
had been agreed upon. In that case, three against one would make short
work of it.
The better chance lay with the woods and the tribesmen. It was the
better chance, but Geoffrey did not relish it. He scowled as he dropped
a primer charge down the rifle's barrel, followed it with a cartridge,
took a cooled bullet from Myka, and tamped it down with the ramrod until
it was firmly gripped by the collar on the cartridge. He took a square
of clean flannel from its compartment in the butt and carefully wiped
the lenses of the telescopic sight.
"Can I stop now?" Myka asked.
Geoffrey looked at her sharply. It had never occurred to him that the
woman might simply be humoring him, and yet that was the tone her voice
had taken. Truth to tell, he had simply handed her the stove, pig lead,
and mold, and told her to go to work.
He looked at her now, remembering that he'd been hurried and possibly
brusque. It ought not to matter--though it did--since she was hardly a
lady entitled to courtesy. She hardly looked like anything, after hours
crouched inside the tankette.
Her copper hair was smeared with grease, disarranged, and even singed
where she had presumably leaned against a hot fitting. Her clothes were
indescribably dirty and limp with perspiration. She was quite pale, and
seemed to be fighting nausea--hardly surprising, with the exhaust fumes
that must have been present in the compartment.
Nevertheless, her hair glinted where the sun struck it, and her
litheness was only accented by the wrinkled clothing. Over-accented,
Geoffrey thought to himself as he looked at the length of limb revealed
by her short trousers.
He flushed. "Of course. Thank you." He looked at the pile of finished
bullets. There were enough of them to stand off an army, provided only
the army did not shift about behind rocks and trees as the tribesmen
did, or was not equally armed, as the nobles would be. Yet, a man had to
try to the end. "You don't expect this to do much good," he said to the
woman.