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

by Geoff St. Reynard

  “Two bullets is two more slain squires. Come on!”

  * * * *

  The evergreens gave out shortly, and they were in a valley channeled by sluggish rivulets and grown with noxious weeds and clumps of coarse grass. Some distance away, a priest walked slowly, head bent, his double scalp lock flopping down over the radiant blue-green robe. Above him, apparently in communion with him, hung a golden globe.

  Revel shifted his gun up and took aim at the orb. He must risk a shot, rather than a god’s exposure of his whereabouts. The priest looked up, saw him, yipped in surprise, and the orb shot up ten feet just as Revel fired.

  One bullet wasted. Jerran fired as the echoes of the Mink’s shot racketed away, and the priest crumpled in on himself, a glittering sack of dead meat.

  “You fool!” said Revel, with a brief, pithy anger. “The man I could have stabbed or broken in two. The sphere is beyond us now.” It was slanting up an invisible incline, faster than he had ever seen one travel before. “Come on,” he snarled. “We’ve got to travel!” He threw away the useless gun and ran for his life.

  Behind him, to left and then to right, rose the calls. Hoofs thundered, dogs baying out afresh as they sighted their quarry, and the valley filled with sound and horses, dogs and men. Over and over the calls rang, and the air above the fugitives was filled with watching gods. Revel ran as he had never believed he could run, and the calls, the calls, the calls beat upon his eardrums....

  CHAPTER X

  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, watch
ing 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.

  CHAPTER XI

  The ruckers all have heard the call

  The Mink has sounded clear;

  They come from near, they come from far,

  To fight the squire and sphere.

  He arms them all with stolen guns,

  With horses, pikes, and fire;

  He sends them all abroad to hunt

  The savage-stallioned squire!

  —Ruck’s Ballad of the Mink

  * * * *

  As night fell, Lady Nirea left her father’s house by the servants’ door. She was dressed in the miner’s clothes she had worn the previous day, and carried a gigantic portmanteau, so heavy she could scarcely lift it.

  In the bag were her favorite gowns, numbering sixteen; two coats she especially loved; some bracelets set with diamonds—the rarest gem of any, for though they were mined extensively throughout the country, the globes took all but a very few for their own mysterious purposes—and an antique golden chain she’d inherited from her grandmother; some personal effects, paint for her lips and such frivolities; a trumpet-mouthed gun with the stock unmounted, together with as much ammunition as she could find; and lastly, four books from her father’s secret chamber.

  These last were all in the curious run-together printing, three of them labelled “Ledger and Record Book” and the fourth with “God-Feeding” on its cover. The fourth was far older than the others, indeed, the oldest book Nirea had ever seen.

  Ewyo lay drunk in a deep chair in his library; he would sleep now till nearly the middle of the night, when he’d wake up and howl for another bottle. Jann she had not seen for hours. The servants, being ruckers, did not count. Her escape from the mansion was going to be simple.

  In the stables, Lady Nirea ordered her second best horse, another roan stallion, saddled and laden with the portmanteau on a special rack attached to the rear of the cantle. The usual trappings, the fancy reins and broidered saddlecloths, she had the stableman leave off; she didn’t want to call attention to the fact that she was Ewyo’s daughter.

  When the roan was ready, she mounted, and turning to the stableman, a young rucker with shifty eyes and a shy, retiring chin, she asked steadily, “Are you a rebel?”

  “Me? No, Lady! Do I look crazy?”

  “You look sneaky, but smart enough.” She leaned over the saddlebow toward him. “Tell me the truth. Don’t be afraid, you fool. I am the Lady of the Mink.” It was a title she uttered proudly now. Nirea of Dolfya had been forced to think this day, and it had changed her greatly.

  The stableman backed off a little, his pasty face writhing with tics. “My Orb, Lady, I don’t know what you’re thinking of! You, Ewyo’s girl, calling yourself such a name—”

  Her roan was trained to the work she now put him to; a number of times she’d used him for it in the streets of Dolfya, just for sport, out of boredom. Now she pricked his ribs with the point of her sharp-toed shoes, just behind the foreleg joints, and said, “At ‘em, boy!” The tall beast reared up and danced forward, hoofs thrashing the air. The stableman shrieked, took a step back, and threw up his arms as one iron-shod hoof smashed into his face. Then the roan was doing a kind of quick little hop on his body, and red blood ran out over the packed-earth floor.

  “If you were a rebel, you were too craven about it to be much good to your people,” Nirea said, looking at the body. “If you weren’t, then your mouth is shut concerning me.” She wheeled the roan and trotted out of the stable.

  By the gate in the wall a tall figure waited, white in the early moon’s light.

  “Jann!” said Nirea, with surprise and fear. Her older sister had always bullied her; Nirea was unable to wholly conquer the dread of this amber-eyed, sharp-eared woman. Jann stood with one hand on the gate, her high breasts and lean aristocrat’s profile outlined against the dark black-green of the woods behind her. Now she turned her head to look up at Nirea.

  “What in the seven hells are you doing in that rucker’s outfit? Where are you going?”

  “None of your business. Get out of my way.”

  Jann stepped forward and grasped the bridle at the roan’s mouth. “Get down here, you young whelp. I’m going to beat you—and then hand you over to Ewyo to see what’s to be done with you.”

  * * * *

  Nirea never knew, though afterwards she thought of it often, whether she touched her horse’s ribs deliberately or by accident. All she knew was that suddenly he had thrown his forequarters up into the air, that Jann was screaming, twisting aside, that the roan was smashing down....

  Jann lay on the grass, and h
er profile was no longer aristocratic; nor were her breasts smooth and sleek and inviolate.

  Nirea sobbed, dry-eyed, turned the roan away, leaned over to push open the gate, and cantered off down the silent road, numb with horror, yet conscious of a small thrill of gratification, somewhere deep in her feral gentrywoman’s soul. Nineteen years of knuckling under to Jann, of taking insults and cuffs and belittling, were wiped out under the flashing hoofs of her roan stallion.

  Now where should she ride? She was a rebel herself, molded into one by her father’s actions and her memories of the Mink. If he were dead, that great chocolate-haired brute, then she would simply ride straight away from Dolfya until she found a place to live, and there plan at leisure. But if he were alive, then she would be his woman.

  She touched the horse to a gallop, and sped toward the only place she could think of where she might get news of him: the mines.

  Someone scuttled off the road before her; she reined in, peered unsuccessfully into the darkness, and called softly, insistently, “If you’re a rucker, please come out! Please come here!”

  A rustle in dry brush was her answer. She tried a bolder tack. “It’s the Lady of the Mink who commands it!”

  After a moment a man stepped onto the road from a clump of bracken. Red were his hair and beard in the moon, and the white walleye stared blindly. Fate, chance, the gods—no, not the false, horrible globes, but whatever gods there might be elsewhere—had crossed her path with Rack, the giant whom she trusted more than any other rucker.

  “Rack!” she called quietly. “Come here, man.”

  He was at her stirrup. “What are you doing, Lady?” His voice was anxious:

  “I’m joining the rebels, big man. Where can I find the Mink?”

  “I don’t know. Lady, are you mad? The rebels are saying that the gods are overthrown and there will be gentry blood running all over Dolfya by noon tomorrow. They’re out of their heads.”