Firehand # with Pauline M. Griffin

by Andre Norton

  The frown did not leave I Loran's expression. "You ask a great deal on the weight of your party's word alone, Captain."

  "Benefit only can come to you for following his suggestions," Ashe told him smoothly.

  As he had anticipated, the other looked startled. "How so, Healer?"

  "If our warning proves accurate, as we fear and know it must, you shall have preserved your people, your stock and crops, and your portable possessions. Not only will you have salvaged your fighters, but you'll have multiplied their number several times over, and you'll have so positioned them that they'll be able to make a major contribution to the defeat of your enemy."

  "Truly spoken," the Dominionite man said dryly, "but if these mercenary hordes of which you speak fail to materialize, I shall have made myself a merry jest for half the domains on this island."

  "On the contrary, Ton I Loran. You'll still profit well. Anyone who laughs will show himself to be the fool." The archeologist leaned back, clasping his hands before him. Ross half smiled, recognizing a glimmer of his old trader technique… "At the very least, you'll gain two harvests, and you'll have established fields and farms in the highlands, including the necessary dwellings and outbuildings. Should you want to continue using them, if only for pasturing your stock, it would be a relatively simple matter to move willing families up to take charge of them."

  The blue eyes grew grave. "Less concrete but perhaps even more important, whether we're right or wrong, you'll have bound your folk to you with a loyalty that would send them through a wall of flame for your sake since you took such care to save them before the full scope of the danger threatening Sapphirehold was even definitely established."

  Luroc nodded. His eyes fixed once more on Murdock. "You will teach my people, Sapphirehold's men, women, and children, how to fight this strange kind of war?"

  The agent's mouth twisted as he suddenly recalled Terra's history and the countless generations of little ones whose lives had been blighted by her eternal conflicts. "The adults," he responded a bit sharply. "We'll leave the rest be."

  It had not been a studied answer, but he could feel a change, a warming, in those around him. These were not men who sought war, even those who served in the domain's garrison. They wanted only to work at their various professions and protect their own, and it sat well with all of them that this strange fighter cared that their children, at least, should be shielded as much as possible from what he believed was soon to come.

  "I'll show you the kind of fighting I mean. Lieutenant EA Riordan will handle the basic weapons instruction."

  That last was met with looks of incredulity on every side. It was not so much her sex that sparked the reaction, he knew… No one attained rank, or survived at all, as a mercenary without being well able to use the tools of the profession… It was quite simply her size. Dominion's people were big. Every one of the men around them was tall and powerfully muscled in proportion, with a stocky, solid build that magnified the impression of great bulk. Gordon and he looked no more than adolescents among them. Eveleen Riordan seemed like a young girl barely on the threshold of physical womanhood. He could hardly even blame these strangers for doubting her abilities as they obviously did.

  The weapons expert had come to the same conclusion. She smiled at Luroc. "I've taught arms use," she explained, "and so am the most logical choice to deal with the instruction of beginners. It's your farmers and artisans that I'll be teaching, after all. The warriors of your garrison already know how to manage a bow and sword and would have no interest in coming to me." She stopped, as if struck by a sudden thought. "Unless we have some different technique or manner of usage that they might like to learn. We come from a distance and may have skills unfamiliar here."

  Murdock studied her speculatively. It had come to him that Eveleen fought most of her battles thus, with diplomacy, often accompanied by an air of not entirely manufactured shyness or even diffidence at times. It was a skill he had best acquire. Fast. One did not win friends and allies by stripping men, or women, either, of their pride and standing among their own.

  He took up the argument once more. "Previous teaching experience aside, I specifically want Lieutenant EA Riordan to handle the weapons training. Your folk will be conscious of their lack of experience even after they achieve technical competence with their arms. They couldn't be otherwise knowing they'll have to go up against hardened mercenaries. Eveleeni's small and slight and stands as living testimony of what can be accomplished despite the lack of size and enormous strength. It's my hope that Sapphirehold's people will be able to carry that lesson over to their own case as well."

  The agent leaned back in his chair, much as Gordon had done earlier. "It's a given that she's got the necessary skills, but you do have a right to see some proof of the fact. Let's go to your training yard and let her send a quiver of arrows into a target."

  Allran A Aldar frowned. "You want her to shoot against my men?"

  "No, only to show you that she can shoot."

  Eveleen turned to the Sapphireholder. "What would be the purpose in a competition, Lieutenant?" she asked. "I have no reason to try to best your men, if I could, and I know those I'm supposed to teach are novices. Why should I want to make less of them? It certainly wouldn't do much toward building their confidence."

  "Quite true," Luroc agreed. He came to his feet. "I think I am probably not alone in wanting to see something of what you can do." He ordered one of his guards to have a target prepared for the strange warrior's use. There was no need to command that a bow and arrows be given to her as well. These, she would have herself, all well familiar to her hand, and she would require or want no others.

  Ashe fell into step beside Ross. "Is this necessary?" he inquired in a low voice.

  "Yes."

  Murdock turned his head slightly to conceal his smile. For once, he felt the older and considerably the more experienced of the two. Gordon was the fairest minded of men. He, Ross Murdock, could lay claim to no such virtue, and he remembered well the day that he and some of his fellow Time Agents had first been introduced to Eveleen Riordan. They had been a fine pack of thick-skulled young studs, and if they had known better than to openly voice either doubt or ridicule, none of them had been very friendly toward their new instructor in either mind or expression.

  The weapons expert had appeared to be completely unaware of their hostility, but she had acknowledged that they had good reason to want to see something of what she could do before putting themselves in her hands, even as he had done just now with the Sapphirehold Ton. Since they were on the pistol range at the time, she offered to fire a clip after they were done, although modern arms were not her specialty.

  The hand guns were not noted for great accuracy when fired from that distance, and each of the men's shots liberally peppered the face of their respective targets, most of them congregating gratifyingly near the centers. There had been knowing grins in plenty when the woman had checked her weapon and stepped forward to take her turn.

  The sense of superiority had left Ross and his eyes had narrowed when she raised the gun, steadying it with both hands. She was not holding it vertically but horizontally.

  She fired. The kick threw the heavy weapon to the side, then swung it back into place again for the next shot and for those following it until the full clip had been emptied.

  No bullet-spotted surface presented itself to the observers' eyes, just one wide, black hole dead in the middle of the bull's-eye. Three of the bullets had gone in one atop the other in its precise center.

  It seemed that Eveleen's father was an Army Sergeant, a career man with the old-fashioned idea that it was his duty to teach his children all he knew about his trade, his diminutive daughter as well as his strapping son.

  Murdock shook his head. She had been right, too, in her own estimation of her abilities. Compared with what she could do with archaic weapons and in unarmed combat, her knowledge of high-tech implements of slaughter was nothing spectacular at all.<
br />
  She had had no more trouble after that exhibition, certainly none once she began to prove herself as a superb teacher, but a lot of the men still held aloof from her personally, outside of the demands of cooperation put on them all by the Project. Ross was not one of those. He had soon come to like the slight woman, the more especially when he learned that her sometimes astonishing store of odd knowledge had been acquired through observation and private reading, even as his own had, and not from the classrooms of some fancy college…

  They had reached the training yard. A good crowd was present, the Time Agent saw, more than had been at the conference. Word of the demonstration must have spread.

  Eveleen was readying her bow. Murdock silently braced himself, hoping he had read these Sapphireholders rightly, that they would respond to the display of her prowess as had their fellow agents at home.

  He also hoped that she would not somehow flub the test. There was a trick to managing these oddly bent bows, though in trained hands, they could achieve remarkable distance and accuracy. It had taken them all some time to master this weapon.

  The first arrow flew and struck home. Another followed and another until he could have laughed aloud in his pride in his comrade's skill.

  The last bolt stood quivering amidst the mass of its fellows. For a moment there was no response, then a loud, enthusiastic cheering broke from the onlookers.

  Allran A Aldar approached her even as the woman stepped forward to retrieve her arrows. "Lieutenant EA Riordan?"

  She turned quickly. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

  "That trick you have of drawing and sighting in one motion…"

  "You'd like to learn it?"

  "I would," he averred, "and to have those under me learn it as well. I believe my father will want the whole garrison to master it."

  Eveleen smiled broadly. "It will be my greatest pleasure to teach you."

  7

  ROSS MURDOCK STROKED his doe's neck. The tension inevitable to these final minutes of waiting rippled through deer as well as rider and was at least as difficult for her to bear as it was for him.

  Lady Gay would not betray them, of course. She was as well broken to the demands of the war they waged as was the Time Agent himself. His pale eyes hardened. After a year of this life, they should all be accustomed to it.

  Because his enemies were as yet relatively distant, he permitted his mind to range back to the morning when the long-awaited confrontation had at last come.

  Sapphirehold's garrison had ridden forth in full pomp, supposedly to meet the Condor Hall forces coming against them as had all their neighbors defeated before them, save that their army was considerably larger and far better prepared than any of those others had been.

  They had known they were riding into danger and had traveled warily, with hidden, well-trained scouts ranging the lands all around. Thus it was that when they had reached the place Zanthor I Yoroc had chosen for their destruction, they knew that hill-fringed field for a trap and knew what their course must be to both activate it and escape its jaws.

  The defenders had seemed to rise to the bait of Condor Hall's own army ranged along the base of the long, low hill in front of them, but they did not engage fully, and when the erstwhile concealed mercenaries had suddenly crested the higher ground behind Zanthor's troops, the Sapphireholders had as abruptly drawn back once more and fled to the south in apparently total panic, their supposedly victorious enemies in full pursuit.

  The chase had lasted a full two hours, more than sufficient time to permit the work back at the keep to be completed. All the while, the escaping party steadily shrank in number until the last warriors had vanished into the wild hills among which they were riding as suddenly and completely as if Hawaika's Foanna had teleported them to another world.

  The Ton of Condor Hall had not bothered to order an immediate search for what he saw as a ragtag band of demoralized men who represented no conceivable further threat to him, and had wheeled his army about to ride for and claim Sapphirehold's hall and cultivated lands.

  Smoking ruins and smoldering ash where pastures and crops had been were all that met his eyes when he reached the seat of Luroc I Loran's authority. The totality of that destruction, the utter ruthlessness of it, had frozen the heart in his breast, for he saw in it a shadow of the spirit firing those he had made his implacable foes.

  That chill had passed in the next moment, but not the realization of the change this move would force in his plans. The loss of the supplies he had intended to take from Sapphirehold effectively ended his hope of pushing through to the south and crushing the domains there this season. It was late in the year, already past the time when a commander could expect to keep large numbers of troops in the field. He would not be able to supply his army through the Corridor during the long winter months and he could not gamble on being able to seize sufficient goods in the south quickly enough to meet his forces' needs.

  It made no real difference to the outcome, he thought in the end with a mental shrug, apart from the annoyance of the delay and the regrettable necessity of feeding his hirelings throughout the winter. He would return in the spring to finish off any of the fugitives who did not bleed to death or starve on their cliffs or put them to the sword later if they fled south. In the meantime, he had accomplished his most immediate objective.

  Zanthor I Yoroc had never been particularly interested in this rough country the Sapphireholders called lowlands, not in itself, but in winning it, he had secured control over the Corridor, the single passage giving large-scale traffic access to the rich southern domains. Nothing but time, the few months until spring, stood between him and the possession of them now, or so he had believed in his moment of triumph.

  The Terran's lips curled into a cold smile. Zanthor had erred seriously in his assessment of the defender's position. Sapphirehold had not starved. Far from it. Both highland and lowland harvests were in and had been bountiful, and people, animals, and crops were well sheltered against the fierce mountain winter. They had only to plan their vengeance and finish preparing themselves to bring it to pass. Once they had settled themselves and had seen the few injured out of danger, Murdock had resumed training his army in this new kind of war, a style of battle so utilizing the rugged countryside around them that it became a veritable ally rather than merely a theater for their activities. Its value had quickly become apparent, and the garrison's warriors had taken readily to it, as did the rest of the domain's populace.

  To the off-worlders' relief, Sapphirehold's women had responded to their people's great need and had entered service beside their men. Most had soon established themselves as full equals. Indeed, when it was finally joined, they carried their war with a perfectly executed purpose and frigid fury that astonished not only their own menfolk but the Terrans as well.

  Full war command of the company was Murdock's. In the single great tragedy of that day of foiled treachery, Luroc had taken an arrow in the back and had fallen with brutal force from his leaping buck. It was Ross who had dismounted and lifted the ruler's battered, bleeding body across his own saddle and borne him out of the battle.

  The Ton had survived his wounds, but he was severely and permanently handicapped by them. Recognizing that he could lead no troops himself and acknowledging the debt he and his people owed this mercenary officer, he had formally given military control into his hands.

  Zanthor had all too soon learned that he was dealing with no handful of pitiful living skeletons but a force of strong, able fighters who not only shielded their strongholds with deadly efficiency but so persecuted those of his troops venturing upon Sapphirehold land that the invaders dared do so only in large, well-armed units, and few even of those could hope to pass through the domain without serious loss to Firehand's ever more deadly followers.

  Ross smiled again. He had quickly become known by that name both to his own comrades and to those upon whom they preyed. Murdock himself had been a little embarrassed at first, but Ashe had encouraged the
notoriety from the start and, as usual, had proven right. It drew an aura of legend around him, a mystique encouraging to their supporters, disheartening to their foes. Zanthor I Yoroc depended upon his mercenaries, and anything that might unsettle them or lessen their contentment with him was to his enemies' advantage.

  If the Ton of Condor Hall had been disappointed in his hope of utterly crushing the Sapphirehold fighters, he was more seriously blocked in his desire for the same quick conquest of the southland as he had achieved the previous year amongst his northern neighbors. The domains he now sought to annex had not prospered as they had through the stupidity of their rulers. Surprise had given him his early, easy victories, and the forewarned southerners had no illusions as to their own inviolability. Sapphirehold's seemingly suicidal burning of its resources and the winter that had followed so close upon it had given them precious time, and when the invaders came, they found a strong confederation waiting to receive them under the very able command of Ton Gurnion I Carlroc of Willowlands, the most powerful of all the domains upon which Zanthor's greed had fixed.

  Late winter, spring, and summer had passed since the two armies had first met, long months filled with hardship and ever-escalating violence, as the forces of Condor Hall and the Confederacy opposing its advance grappled one with the other in the horror of total war.

  Ton Luroc had concurred with the off-worlders and had not permitted Sapphirehold to join formally with the southerners as most of his people had initially wished to do. They were too few to make a significant contribution if they allowed themselves to be swallowed in that great union of armies. The domain's leaders judged that they could better serve the south's cause and their own by fighting a very different kind of war, that for which they had begun to prepare themselves before Condor Hall had ever made its first treacherous advances.