The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

  “If you’re the Mink, Revel m’lad,” he said aloud, “it’s time you came up with a brilliant idea!”

  And there wasn’t a scheme in his head.

  CHAPTER VII

  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 se
en.

  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.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Mink he seeks the gentrylass;

  He eyes the gods above;

  He laughs their might to scorn, the while

  He hunts his highborn love.

  A fearsome lion bars the way,

  The Mink he cannot pass;

  He lifts his pick with fearful rage,

  And blood besmears the grass!

  —Ruck’s Ballad of the Mink

  * * * *

  Revel was plowing through the brush like a wound-crazed bear. Jerran came behind, shouting directions, for Revel’s impatience would not be stilled enough for him to follow anyone, especially the small Jerran, whose head rang, he said, from the skull-cracking blow he’d been given by Rack, and who was slowed as a consequence.

  Revel got farther and farther in advance, tearing with his pick at vines and creepers, trampling small trees, making enough noise for seven men. Dimly he remembered much of the trail hereabouts, and at last he was so far ahead of Jerran that he couldn’t hear him.

  He came into a tiny glade, ceilinged with branches of the oaks. Across its width, some twenty feet from him, a huge woods lion lay above the torn corpse of a man. One of the rebels from the meeting, thought Revel, who wasn’t so lucky as most. The lion looked up and growled.

  Its mane was long and bur-tangled, black as sin; its body seven hundred pounds of muscle and bone, was longer than Revel was tall. He greeted it joyously, a foe to grapple with at last!

  It came to its feet, challenge on challenge rumbling in its massive chest. He drew a gun, then stuck it back. His hands ached for work, more work than the pulling of a trigger. He ported his pickax. “Come along, old monster,” he said. “We’ll see how a mink and a lion can mix it!”

  It stalked two steps, gathered itself for a leap; he didn’t wait, but sprang forward to meet it. The lion rose, checking its pounce with surprise, for surely no man had ever charged it before. The pick swung down as it struck sideways at Revel, catching it in one shoulder, tearing the flesh like dough. It screeched, clawing for him.

  One of the scimitar claws caught his side, gashing shirt and skin. Revel whirled, yelling, flung himself on the animal’s back, grabbed a handful of mane with his left hand, and buried the pick in the center of the woods lion’s skull. The carcass lost its stiffness, sagged and fell, leg bones cracking like gun shots as the tremendous body came down upon them. Revel sprang to one side, lighting on his feet.

  “Not bad,” said Jerran drily, coming into the glade. “If you’re quite through, Revel, we might be going along?”

  “I had to find out if I’m really the Mink,” explained Revel, retrieving his pick from the splintered bone of the lion’s head. “The
Mink could slay a woods lion with one blow, it says in the ballads. This fellow took me two blows.”

  Jerran said, his face twisted, “Damn you, don’t get cocky on me! You’re important now, no dirty miner, but a leader! If you haven’t got the brains to lead, at least keep still, follow my orders, and be a figurehead. But don’t take chances for the fun of it, because your lousy hulk may be the salvation of man, despite yourself!”

  Revel hung his head. Jerran looked at him a moment. “Nerves, that’s it, and excitement, and eagerness to do something with your big hands. You’re young, and I shouldn’t expect strict attention to duty of you. But I do, blast it! Now march!”

  When they had traversed the forest, they emerged a little west of Dolfya, on a stretch of dirt road bordered by maples. The lane seemed deserted. Here and there in the buttoned sky were the bright dots of gods passing back and forth between their abodes. Jerran led him purposefully down the road.

  * * * *

  Suddenly a man came bursting out from the maples and ran headlong into them, knocking the small man back into Revel’s arms. It was Dawvys, clothing disheveled, mouth agape with running. “They are after me!” he panted. “Ewyo sentenced me to the hounds. I ran, but they’re after me!”

  Revel hauled out his pick. “Look there,” he said, jerking his head upward. “Concentration of orbs above us.”

  “They point the way for the squires,” grunted Jerran. “I don’t hear the dogs, though.”

  “Ewyo wants me alive.”

  “He won’t get you!”

  “Will I not?” Ewyo himself had stepped quietly out from the trees, directly in their path. In puce velvet, a great trumpet-mouthed gun in his hands, he stood beefy and menacing before them. “Do you tell me I won’t, Revel the Mink?” He chuckled icily at the looks of amazement. “D’you think I wouldn’t have rucker spies? D’you think we don’t know about your foolish hideaway in the forest, and couldn’t clap our hands down on all of you in an hour if we wished to?” Two more squires, tall and red-faced and prominently armed, came out behind him, “Gentles,” said Ewyo with mock politeness, “I give you Revel, the Mink, and two minor henchmen.”