One of the Oplytes raised an arm, squeezing upon the
yoke of its thrustible, directing the designator beam ahead. Upon a black-brown slant of new-fallen earth, they saw a form rise from under a light covering of soil. Shaking, spitting, brushing dirt from its eyes, it seemed not to know it stood over a pair of similar bodies which would never raise themselves again.
"/ say, s-stop there, you!" Donol found himself too confused to think of anything more forceful. Both Oplytes had their thrustibles aimed at the man who, for all he could tell, might have been his brother or his father. The slow-moving dirty figure turned, glancing at the bodies lying nearby as if seeing them for the first time, and raised an arm in gesture of surrender.
"T'other's broke, methinks." It was a gravel voice, an unmistakable peasant accent, although nothing bom among the mountains and forests of Skye. "Don't y'be killin' me, sonny, givin' up as I plainly be." Donol felt himself relax a trifle, he and the Oplytes stepping forward a few paces. In the relief washing through his body at not having to subdue the man, it did not occur to him to wonder about the other fallen figures. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted. "Ye*d be ain of Islay, ben't ye?"
"Yes," Donol replied, "I would." He had the discomfiting sense of being inspected. The cornered man's gaze went up and down his body, from one Oplyte to the other where they stood with weapons ready to strike or deflect.
"Meguess that's that, then." Of a sudden, the wretch before them nodded, ^nned, fisted his weapon hand, and shoved it beneath his chin. The scarlet beam underlit his face in a hideous manner—^just before that face disappeared in an up-blasted cloud of blood and disrupted flesh.
Chapter XI: Death at Dawning
Even as he prepared himself for death—continuing, nevertheless, the struggle to free his arm from whatever entangled it—something within the warrior heart which was Robret the Islay's decided to deal death instead.
"Desist, bandit!" The Hanoverian cried out the words with an earnestness which, had his opponent but known what to listen for, bordered close upon an odd sort of desperation. "Desist and live, I tell you!"
Only the Islay's decades of training and inborn indomitable pride kept him from making it, "I beg you!" It had not been, in truth, so much a shout of offered mercy, although the desire he held dearest was not to add another life to his account, as the direst of warnings. Irresistible forces, deep-grained and dormant within him, were seeking release. Yet the only answer he received was another burst of §-field energy, thrust in mortal fear and murderous anger at the lawful Drector-Hereditary of Skye.
Even so, it is one thing to give offers and another to make delivery upon them. For all his fears and merciful intentions, the Islay was discovering (as before, upon countless occasions) that he could neither resign himself to oblivion, either his own or that of his enemy, nor yet prevent an unlooked-for but inexorable killing. It was, he knew, an ancient conflict within him, deadly in potential to anyone for whom survival hung upon decisive action. Still, the wordless argument was worn smooth as a river stone with the passage of years and the letting of much blood. And experience speaking—as it must—louder than intentions, the conflict could be resolved in one manner only.
Thus, despite any charitable limits he had set himself— firstly because he had never in his life delivered a mortal
blow with a light heart, also because he desired an infonna-tive word with this would-be assassin—through no choice of his own, he began to bear harder upon the man, working him faster, watching his vain struggle to regain the initiative, while he, the Islay, tried in simple to save the idiot from himself. Still, if need be, it was the other fellow who would die this starry evening.
Round they danced through darkness upon dew-damp grass, in and out of churned soil which came close to being mud. The elder Islay, no longer a young man, found himself beginning to tire. This did not frighten him as it might many another, but served as a sign, bidding him realize the moment had arrived, all best wishes to the contrary, to put an end to folly. Nor breath had he remaining to warn the other fellow further, nor time to speak again in offer of charity or quarter. Reflex followed stimulus.
"Ceo!" he groaned with disappointment, seeing, almost as a detached witness to the exercise of his own deadly skill, the spectacle peculiar to a fight with thrustibles between two talented opponents. Adroit with counterthrust and secondary field as both combatants were, no blow could tell between them unless placed as this one had been. It appeared, he thought, as if the other had stumbled, full-faced, upon the gruesome stub of an invisible tree branch, or been struck upon the bridge of the nose by a well-centered hammer. Reflex demanded a successful coup be followed with another for effect.
It appeared, he thought, continuing to seek metaphors less terrible than the grim reality before him, as if one of the fragile masques popular upon Hanover had been crushed in from the nose by careless packing in a sailing chest. To the Islay, his perceptions speeded by adrenaline pumping in his arteries, it seemed he could see his weapon's §-wavefront sinking deeper until, no longer able to bear the titanic pressures imposed upon it, the bandit's head exploded in a night-blackened fog of blood and pureed brains. He let his arm drop to his side. The fight was over and, with it, his hope of unraveling the mystery of the ambush upon the wherry which had borne his sons— his sons —(safe, as it had turned out, did they survive this evening's mischief) to him.
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The bandit's truncated body, streaming blood, dead before it had stopped thrusting at him, pitched over with a splash onto the muddy ground.
Heart hammering, lungs heaving, the Islay, far gone in pain and conscious at the moment of his years, would have given much to follow its example, to throw himself upon the cool, soggy grass until vision cleared and ears stopped ringing. Yet he could not allow himself the briefest respite. Minutes ago (it seemed like hours to him), he had been distracted by annihi-lative flares upon the other side of the roadcut, and, he believed, one other far below. He must somehow drag himself onward in case young Robret needed help.
Sweat broke from his hairline, blinding him further, and poured down the back of his neck. Heat radiated from his face as if he had been sunburnt. Summoning every particle of energy and moral strength remaining to him, he rose from the half slump he had assumed, and took a first step forward.
Robbie, lad, you are not getting a bit younger, thought one isolated comer of his mind which at all times remained detached and amused. He took a second step. A third. Farcing about is for the young men, he lectured himself. If you intend dying in bed, you must give up this nonsense. You are a responsible married man again, already past the proper age to settle down —a fourth step found his strength beginning to return— and by the Ceo's privates, before this evening I had reason to believe I had done!
Now, his blood still singing from exertion, still chiding himself for what he deemed a foolish weakness for adventure, the Islay knew only his duty. Growing stronger with each step, he staggered the short distance to the bandit's smoking corpse, knelt with a heartfelt groan which spoke for every muscle in his body, and stripped the thnistible off its already-cooling arm. Too dangerous and powerful were these things to be left lying round. Rising with the same eloquent noise, he seized the dripping carcass by the heel-cuff and began dragging it down the slope into the bed of the roadcut where it could be watched over by others. It was, he was grateful to realize, less difficult a task than he had anticipated. He was quicker to regain his breath and composure than he
had expected. It paid, he thought, to stay in shape.
Finding none to meet him at the bottom, he left the body upon a heap of stones, crossed the cut, and had taken the first leg-straining, reluctant step upward, when he heard a familiar voice below him and to one side.
"Father?"
He stopped. "Donol, is it?"
"Aye, Father. No need to climb, unless more bodies you wish to collect."
Without thinking, Islay tossed the ex
tra thrustible to his son and stepped down to meet him. "I see. How fares your brother?" Donol was quiet a long moment, as if wrestling with conflicting thoughts. "Well?"
"Father, I greatly fear that something terrible has happened..."
Flare and noise of canceling thrusts came to the draywherry across the klomme separating it from the roadcut. Those aboard ceased their chatter, glancing with varying apprehension at one another. They remained seated at the rear—perhaps in deference to Morven who could not take himself toward the bow as it was clear his daughter and their two guests wished to do—and peered forward into the glare-illumined night, straining to make out what was happening with the Islays who had left them behind. Annihilative Ught flared harsh again, this time upon the opposing promontory, followed in a heartbeat by the booming, echo-chased, which was all the muffling dampness of the night permitted passage of.
Left behind with the others, as if he were as useless as they, and no son to his father, Arran was furious. Even his patience, unusual in depth and span for a boy his age, had exhausted itself. Trusting the preoccupied adults (so-called, he thought with a mental sneer) to continue ignoring him, he arose from the chair he had so long occupied behind the inert steering pedestal, grateful that the draywherry had been powered down. The resulting darkness served his purpose well.
Sidling to the left, out of the others' field of view, remaining close beside the starboard wall rather than walking
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down the center aisle toward them, he ambled with a painstaking indifference aftward, toward the open hatch-ladder. Against the small chance he should be noticed, he played the part of the bored and restless little boy which, to a degree, he was, the difference being that most bored and restless little boys would have lacked the purpose which the darkness and distraction served.
He reached a point abaft of the cluster of grown-ups and crossed to the center where the hatch-ladder yawned, its free end resting a measure and a half below upon the ground. Here, he thought without pausing in his progress, was a case in point and vindication, and why he thought of grown-ups as "so-called." Had he been in charge, with his guests, his father-in-law, his bride aboard to worry over, unarmed and unprotected (except, he snorted, by a twelve-year-old to whom the task had been delegated as a sop to keep him from underfoot), this access would have been secured before he went achasing bandits. Arran meant no conscious criticism of his father. He suspected such instruction had been issued, only to be neglected by his brothers, their blood up for the hunt.
Now he squatted, as if in a trench, within the well formed by the open ramp, eyes level with the wherry's deck. With a final glance at the passengers, grateful for their preoccupation, and for the virtual invisibility which adult minds could be relied upon to lend a child of twelve, he crept the rest of the way down the ladder and into the night.
Outside, it was quiet. Beneath the smooth-curved wirewoven belly of the craft, the air was damp—his second-best tunic stuck to his skin like a workshirt—wrapped in the stillness anticipatory of dawn. Arran was not surprised to discover it felt no different once he had made his shuffling, hunched-over way from under the damaged vehicle and stood up to his modest but more comfortable full height in the greenway.
Yet, as his father was releaming at this moment, anticipation is never quite the same as realization. Insufficient light filtered down from haze-masked stars and moonring to see by, even had he known where he was going and what he intended once he got there. Even this faint aid failed him
before long. Not far from the wherry, he caught a toe and stumbled over something in his path. He fell hard, desperate to stifle a cry of surprise and pain. Lying quiet a moment, feeling foolish and ashamed, he struggled to hold back tears, biting his lower lip as he had heard was useful in the effort. This proved not to be the case, but only added to the pain of abraded knees and elbows, although several deep breaths regained for him a measure of composure.
Another moment passed. Arran picked himself up, invulnerable to injury as boys are wont to be, and upon this account mostly unhurt. He discovered he had his right hand wrapped about a stout stick, half his height in length and almost as big as his wrist, with peeling bark and jagged ends where it had broken off. It was not from the earlier explosion, for the wood was dry, horn-hard, weather-seasoned to his touch. Perhaps, he thought, he had misgauged his luck. Although dried by the elements, the object in his hand had a certain encouraging heft. He swung it a couple of times to get the feel, making it whoosh with menace through the air, and remained satisfied with his find. What was even better, he thought with boyish viciousness, several projections where smaller branches had been stubbed off gave it teeth of a sort. It was a better weapon than the empty hands he had started with.
This time, he gave the places where he put his feet more than casual consideration, and had soon reached the spot where the greenway plunged into the utter blackness of the roadcut, the sides of which swooped toward twin crests where small, fierce battles had just been fought. By this time his eyes had adjusted to all but the darkness of the cut itself. As he heard voices coming to him from a fair distance to one side, he ducked backward into the dew-damp and scratchy but concealing embrace of a nearby bush.
"Bother!" At least Arran believed that was the word he had heard uttered. It seemed a niggardly sort of epithet for a woodsrunning bandit, hissed between clenched teeth and tinged with considerable fear. A pause, and it was answered by a second voice, further away, unrecognizable in the distance, colored with fatigue and caution, rather than fear.
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"Trouble, is it?"
"I say bother! No need to climb, 'less more bodies you wish to collect/'
Panic swept through Arran. He heard the clatter of metal tossed from one of the speakers to the other. Loot, perhaps, something which had belonged to his father or one of his brothers? Perhaps one of their thrustibles?
"I see," the second voice responded in a rumbling whisper Arran could scarce make out, although he began to discern shadows in the direction it came from. They were between him and the road, his only avenue back to the draywherry. "How fare the others?"
Quiet reigned a long moment. Arran did not wait for a reply which, with proper understanding, might have allayed his apprehension, but crept from the bush toward the right-hand crest. Perhaps they would not look for him there if everyone, as the first voice had implied, was dead. He had to make sure of that before anything else. But how to get back and warn the draywherry?
Arran's concern increased with each measure he climbed from the greenway. With every step he imagined greater terrors following upon his heels. Gone from his mind was every thought of caution. By the time he reached the summit, he was running, leaping, by chance or some remnant survival instinct missing every obstacle in his path. A moment arrived when he discovered he had left his wind-fallen weapon behind in the bush. He sobered, stopped his hysterical, dangerous plunge through the dark, and threw himself upon the ground so as not to present an inviting, silhouetted target.
He gasped in shock: his run had brought him to the brink. One foot hung in space and he could hear the fall of dislodged gravel. Also a voice: "Father?" It was his brother, below and to one side where only empty space should be, sounding weak and injured, or perhaps just waking up.
"Robret!" Arran's reply was a whisper in unconscious imitation of the voices he had heard below.
"Arran? Is it you, Arran? What—"
"Quiet!" the younger ordered and in contradiction, "Where are you?"
Robret took a while replying. "I have fallen over a cliff.
Not far, judging by your voice. I have been hanging for the longest time from a tree root. I believe I was unconscious, although how I managed to hang—"
"Quiet!" Again the issued order, his older brother's obedience instantaneous and unquestioning. "Someone is behind me,'* cautioned the youngest of the Islay brothers, "at the least, two of them. I do not know how, Robret, but I shall get you u
p somehow."
Thinking that a large stick like the one he had abandoned might be useful in pulling his brother up the face of the roadcut and to safety—he gave no thought as to where he would acquire the strength to use it, although he ought to have, Robret outweighing him as he did by twenty keys—Arran rose, cautious as could be, intending to creep into the trees which stood a dozen paces away. The boy's knees had not quite straightened when, in a heart-stopping instant, he felt a broad, powerful hand descend upon his shoulder.
"Arran!" As if by a miracle, the voice was his father's. "What in the name of the Ceo," it demanded, "are you doing up here?"
Chapter XII: A Fiery Salute
A logfire of common hardpine and rarer spicewood roared in the room-sized hearth of the Great Hall of the Holdings. It cast but scant additional light upon a colorful and crowded scene already well lit by great curve-topped windows which had constituted Robret the Islay's—rather his late wife Glynnaughfem's—first and only major alteration to the building.
At the opposite side of the gigantic, high-beamed chamber, across what seemed hectares of parqueted and mirror-polished floor, broad trestle tables creaked under a glittering load of wedding presents with which they had been heaped.
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Gold Arran saw, and silver, plates and goblets, services and samovars, contributed by less wealthy (or less pretentious) well-wishers. Richer gifts were here as well, of gleaming platinum and rhodium and osmium, beaten, spun, turned, cast, carven into a myriad of artifacts of varying beauty and utility. All bore, somewhere upon their elaborated forms, the modified arms of the family Islay.
Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 10