by Andre Norton
Half dazed, he tried to see any other survivors. As the mist cleared further, Ramsay bent over the one man he had found. Dedan lay there, his scorched clothing also stained with blood. Around the officer’s neck still hung the command whistle.
If the others had sense enough to take out their ear plugs— But had they after the vibrators blew? Ramsay could only hope that a few had done so. He snatched off the chain, brought the tube to his lips, though he knew none of the coded calls. Perhaps just this familiar sound would lead any survivors to fight their way in his direction. Ramsay blew lustily. The discordant note he made must have carried through the inferno raging up the walls of the ridge.
No use waiting any longer in this exposed position. He had no idea if he might outpace the flamers with Dedan as a burden. But he could try. He lifted the Captain and began to move in and out, retreating toward the land end of this crest of jumbled rock.
As a figure loomed out of the mist, Ramsay, steadying his needle gun, ready to fire, just in time became aware of the other’s crested hood. One of the Company. The man stumbled slowly along, and behind him wavered three others. Ramsay raised his arms, beckoned.
A moment later Dedan was being carried between two of them, Ramsay and the others playing rear guard. No one else came out of that hell below. Under their feet the ridge arose as they advanced. There was better cover, larger blocks of reddish stone that could stand between them and the flames. Also the fog was fast dissipating, so they could better choose their path ahead.
The man by Ramsay was Rahman. One arm hung limp, and there was the scarlet print of a burn on his cheek. He muttered as he came, his eyes fixed, as if he did not really see Ramsay, instinct only keeping him moving toward an improbable safety.
Those ahead, supporting Dedan, halted. Ramsay impatiently waved them on. In reply one shook his head determinedly. Ramsay drew nearer to Rahman, touched his shoulder. The man winced, showing a drawn face with empty eyes. He just stood there, staring, when Ramsay signaled him to cover. Finally the mercenary had to be pushed into a hollow so Ramsay could join those ahead. The third man in their pitiful rear guard stepped with more alertness behind the same rock that sheltered Rahman.
“What is the matter?”
“They’ve got someone stationed upslope there. He just took a look down to see the fun,” one of the men answered bitterly. “If he can get at us, we’ll be fried like all the rest!”
Ramsay followed the pointing finger of his informant. Yes! He caught sight of a sleeved arm. The enemy must be very confident that they had little to fear from any of their victims who might possibly try to escape in this direction.
One man with a flamer? Or a whole guard here? Ramsay rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. He was no real soldier. That seemingly easy victory over the assassin had been a fluke. Then he had had no time to think out any move; he had merely reacted, and fast, to an attack. This was different. His mind had already closed to what lay behind. To think about that did no good. However, there was in him a stubborn determination to escape with this handful of men, to live as long as he could in order to make someone pay for the ghastly death of men who had welcomed him as a comrade.
“Have you sighted more than one?” he demanded, his own eyes searching for any hint of a possible second sniper.
“No, but he does have one of those flamers—I saw the mouth of it when he hitched it up.”
“If there is only one, and they might believe one was enough to keep us bottled up here—” Ramsay was thinking aloud. “All right. You stay right where you are. There is only one way to handle this if he has a flamer.”
None of them still carried the rifles that shot the exploding bullets. Ramsay had lost his own when the explosion hit. However, if he could move up close enough to get at that sentry—
He stripped off his overtunic and belt, nothing left to catch on any rocks. Clad in the tight-fitting gray undergarment, he hoped to match the mottled surface hue of the ridge. Ramsay moved out, flitting to the left and up the ridge.
From one outcrop to another he raced as fast as he could, his palms sweating, his mouth dry, expecting any moment to be swept with flesh-crisping flame. So far he had escaped notice. Now—over the highest point of the ridge and down. If he had judged his distance rightly, he must, at this point, be behind the sentry. Perhaps overconfidence in this disastrous effect of the new weapons would make the enemy less alert.
Ramsay was almost certain there was only one man. At least, though he stopped his advance several times and studied the landscape carefully, he could pick up no sight of another. And that one opponent was now revealed fully to him.
Crouching between two rocks, Ramsay drew off his boots. He must take no chance of making any sound. Moving as lightly forward as his bruised and aching body would allow, he leaped.
Ramsay’s hand chopped so expertly at his throat that the sentry did not even cry out. He dropped, a dead man; perhaps he was not even aware that any attack had come. Ramsay caught the flamer, then arose, cautiously, to his full height, so that those in hiding out there would see and know the way was clear.
Ramsay remained where he was, alert for any sign of movement, ready to cover his comrades’ advance with the flamer should a challenge arise. He could hear a ragged shouting, still see the flames wasting the lower ridge. There, however, some of the fog clung, enough to make him heartily glad, for it hid what must be the horrors there.
“The Captain—he can’t go on much longer,” panted the same man who had pointed out the sentry to Ramsay as they drew level with his guard post. “Nor us either—”
“Do any of you know this country?” Ramsay asked.
His only answers were shaken heads.
“Arluth—” Rahman, his eyes no longer blank, but his face twisted with pain, wedged the hand of his limp arm in to the front of his belt. “If the Marchers got our message, they’ll come riding right in—to that!” He indicated the battlefield behind without looking directly. None of them had, and Ramsay believed that the sight of it sickened them beyond endurance, hardened mercenaries though they were.
“Is there any kind of road inland, one the Marchers will take? I know you said this is country you are not familiar with, but do you know anything about it at all?” He appealed to them. Dedan lay at his feet, eyes closed, moaning a little now and then.
Again shaken heads answered him. They could not go on much farther; that was the truth. Not one of them lacked burns or other wounds. Rahman was not the only one kept on his feet by sheer willpower. Also, sooner or later someone was going to come hunting the sentry left here. And when he did, the chase would be up.
A sudden thought came to Ramsay as he glanced down at the body. A broken neck among these rocks might seem an accident. However, to stage such a scene would mean abandoning the weapon. He surveyed the ground about them. It could be set up—and success might be their only chance. Catching the body under the arms, he dragged the dead man a little to the left. Then he took the flamer, to drop it a pace or two farther on, as if it had fallen so from the enemy’s hands.
“What are you doing that for?” Rahman lurched closer.
“He has a broken neck. There’s no wound on him.” Ramsay nodded at his victim. “Suppose he fell when he came up here? See, he is wearing clumsy boots, not footwear made for climbing around rocks.”
“But the flamer,” protested one of the other men. “With that we’d have a better chance to fight ourselves.”
“Without it we may well have a better one,” Ramsay pointed out. “If that was missing, its loss would be a sure sign that someone escaped from back there.”
He could see by their change of expression that they understood what he aimed to do. And he wondered if they would agree. After all, he had no official command among them. The Second was dead. He had been standing within touching distance of the vibrators when they were blasted. Any one of these men might challenge his assumption of leadership at the moment.
However, Rah
man had a tight grin. “You think fast, Arluth. I’d say this gives us a shadow of a chance. We are lucky.” He looked about. “You can’t leave any prints on such ground, at least none that sort can read. But we’d better watch as we go. And the sooner we do that the better.”
As they started on, Ramsay lingered to give a last searching survey to his carefully arranged “accident.” He found himself rubbing his hands up and down the tunic one of the men had brought along, as if he must wipe from his flesh the feel of that death blow. Resolutely he pushed that out of memory. He had struck to save his own life, and the lives of those stumbling ahead of him. He had never slain a man before. But somehow this killing held no meaning for him—not after the flaming death among the rocks.
Their small party had to move very slowly. And they took turns, except for Rahman, who could not use his left arm, in carrying Dedan. However they were now well above the dangerous level of the beach, crossing a cliff top. Ahead a strip of green seemed to offer promise. Ramsay thought of water when he saw that, and moved his stick-dry tongue about in a mouth that seemed filled with salt.
All this shifting about might well kill Dedan, but they had no choice. It was necessary to get as far as they might from the scene of the massacre before any search for possible survivors began.
With much time and effort they got Dedan down the steep side of another rocky drop and then pulled into a green pocket where trees provided cover. Rahman fell rather than lowered himself to the ground. His face was a greenish shade under the dark hue of his skin. But the others took first-aid kits from their belts, while Ramsay struggled on under the trees seeking water, until he discovered a small spring-fed pool.
At the sight he flung himself forward, buried his whole face in the water. The raw burns on his face stung as he gulped several mouthfuls. Then he rinsed out his belt canteen, refilled it to the brim, and lurched back to their small and beaten company.
That they had lived through the massacre seemed now something hardly to be believed. He had a curious feeling that, having done just that, they were in some way immune to further disaster. Though, he reminded himself of that fatal carelessness of the enemy sentry, they dared not relax any vigilance.
ELEVEN
Rahman’s arm was broken. Ramsay set the bone as best he could between splints whittled from one of the saplings that gave them cover in this pocket. But Dedan’s burns were too serious for him to treat. It was Melvas who went hunting through the grass until he found a flesh-leafed plant which he jerked triumphantly out of the soil. After washing the leaves in the pool, he crushed them into a thick mass between two strips of bandage from the field kits.
This was, he stated, a native remedy for burns known to his own province. At least it would reduce the inflammation and pain. They spread-eagled Dedan on his stomach, and, with infinite care, Ramsay and Arjun worked to strip off the charred remains of the officer’s tunic and undergarment. Ramsay had to fight rising nausea. Surely Dedan could not be still alive! Yet he was, and moaned feebly as they worked.
When the burns were as bare as they could lay them, Melvas, the mass in the bandage between both his hands, squatted to squeeze carefully from what he held in a thin green jelly, spreading that as evenly as he could over the tortured flesh. The shoulders and backs of the upper arms were the worst, but in the end Melvas had them covered with the stuff, which dried quickly, leaving a glazed surface.
Dedan’s moans ceased. At first Ramsay feared that the young officer had died under their clumsy treatment. But he was still breathing slowly, as if now under the influence of some strong narcotic. Melvas studied the Captain’s face, raised an eyelid to see the eye.
“He sleeps,” the soldier announced. “Now, for the rest of you—”
They all had burns, but none as bad as those Dedan had suffered. Ramsay found that the stuff Melvas applied to his own burns brought a release from pain which he would have not thought possible.
Having tended their hurts, they sat back, Dedan lying at their feet, and glanced at each other. At last their attention centered on Ramsay. And, for the first time, except when he had grunted under their treatment, the last man spoke.
“I served in Renguld under Nidud—before I joined with this company. Your face, stranger, suggests to me an odd thought.”
“My face?” Ramsay repeated. Perhaps it was some action of the herb on his burns, but he felt slow of wit, drugged with fatigue.
“Your face. There is one—was one—who is like enough to you to look back from any mirror,” the soldier continued.
With effort Ramsay recalled the man’s name: Sydow. He had been a Leader of Ten, but not one who had shown interest in the unarmed combat lessons. An older man, he judged, and more conservative.
“That other is reported dead—and is now buried,” Sydow continued. “Then who are you who wears his face? Prince Kaskar—”
They watched him now, as hounds might center upon a fox unfortunate enough to have approached their kennel.
“I am not Kaskar.” Ramsay made his voice as emphatic as he could. “However, there are those who would set me in Kaskar’s place,” he improvised. “That is why I wore a Feudman’s mask and left Lom—”
“Ochall would pay much for you—” Rahman commented. “To have a Kaskar, whether or not he was the real one— The High Chancellor wants nothing more in this life at present.”
“I begin to wonder”—Melvas now took up in question—“whether it was your presence among us that brought an end to our company.”
Their concentrated stares grew hard, menacing. Ramsay wondered if they would turn upon him now to relieve their own misery. A suggestion such as Melvas made could set them at his throat!
“There are Eyes and Ears all over Lom,” Arjun added. “You need only to have been seen in our company for a message to be sent to Lynark. Yes, it is possible, very possible!”
Ramsay did not like the expressions that were beginning to show on their drawn faces. At the moment they sought a scapegoat on whom to unload the bitterness of their defeat, all that fury blazing in them as they thought of the ridge and those left there. He could understand that, but he had no mind to be such a sacrifice.
“Your Captain”—he spoke again with such force as he could summon—“told me that any wanted man, once he took troop oath, was one of you. I am not Kaskar, and if I am one who had to flee Lom because I wear a face like unto his, is that any fault of mine? Save your wrath for those who caught us with their fog and fire. Ask yourselves”—his mind began now to awake from the daze of that sudden accusation—“did pirates ever have flamethrowers or this obedient fog before? Are you sure they were pirates?”
Sydow blinked. There was a murmur from Rahman.
“The scout—he reported—pirates.”
“Or perhaps men dressed as pirates,” Ramsay supplied promptly. “In the tales I have heard of battles with Lynark raiders, no man has mentioned fog or flame—”
Sydow nodded. “That is the truth. Unless their chiefs have made some new deal with the Merchants of Norn, they would not have such weapons. I have never heard tell of these before. So—” Again his gaze narrowed as he stared straight at Ramsay. “If they were not pirates, then who are they?”
“I do not know. But think you—I met with your Captain only a short time before sailing. Could any message concerning me have brought this enemy into the field, so well equipped, in as short a time as the length of our voyage, with the additional information as to just where we would land?”
Ramsay was taking a chance now; he did not know what methods of quick communication this world might have. Sydow stirred, there was a reluctance in his expression, as if he had been made to face a fact he did not care to acknowledge.
“Such weapons,” he answered slowly, “must have been brought secretly from Norn. Had they been used before by any force, the news of it would have reached the Council in Ulad. These must be of the banned—only those risking outlawry would handle them. While to transport such in s
ecret—” He shook his head. “No, I cannot say, Arluth, that they were turned on us because of you, when I consider the matter.”
Ramsay noticed that he was no longer “stranger,” that Sydow now used the name by which he passed, a step toward closer understanding.
“Why would anyone wish to keep you from your engagement with the Thantant?” Ramsay persisted.
“Now that is a good question.” Rahman shifted his shoulders where they rested against a boulder, as if his arm pained him. “Our commitment with the Thantant was simple enough. We all voted on it before signing. We are—were—to reinforce the sea beach patrol against raiders. It is—was—an ordinary enough engagement. The Thantant needed experienced men to patrol; his are used only for seasonal field service. They are not professionals, but are called up for six months or a year, and then returned to their homes and their work. It is ever so in Olyroun. The only real enemy they ever have to face is the pirates. But those have been growing bolder and stronger of late. Instead of one or two ships slipping in to strike and be away with what loot they can garner by a surprise attack, they have appeared twice in sizable fleets—”
“Yes,” Sydow interrupted. “And that is unlike those of Lynark. Their commanders seldom serve together except in a very loose confederacy. They are too independent to yield much authority to any one man. I wonder—”
“Wonder what?” Ramsay prompted as Sydow did not continue.
“Wonder whether Ochall has not stirred the pot in that direction. It is common knowledge that he must have the mines of Olyroun in order to exchange the ores for the products out of Norn which he wants. There is the prospect of marriage between the Duchess and the Heir, true enough. But Ochall would rather have Olyroun under his thumb entirely, not through the agency of any woman, especially one whom it is well known he mistrusts. Suppose he put into practice arming those of Lynark and urging on them such raids as they would be only too willing to try, with the proper weapons, thus draining the forces of Olyroun. Then, in the end, he need have no fear of any rising, should he proceed against that land—”