by Andre Norton
Though she had snapped off the beamer at once, there was enough grayish light for her to grope aloft. And she reached the upper story none too soon. She was no more than into the bedroom when she heard voices, the tramping of feet below. No more taking chances. She had already been far too reckless. Roane squeezed between the head of the bed and the cold of the wall, her hands covering her nose against the putrid scent of the bed stuffs.
She could not see now—the wood before her had no cracks. But she could hear. The newcomers did not speak Basic, of course. But her briefing had given her a working knowledge of the Reveny tongue. And now she began to pick up words. They were coming up the stairs, how many she could not tell, though she tried hard to distinguish voices and number of footsteps. Now and again there was a metallic clang as if something had struck the wall, followed by exclamations she could not translate but thought were curses.
They moved out into the chamber and she could hear their speech plainly now.
“—ride on in this? Are you empty between the ears?”
“—not like it—” The second voice was hardly above a mumble.
“Back of my hand to him then! I tell you, this is as safe a place to keep her as the underway at Keveldso. Dump her in the bed there, snap this leash on her, and we can wait out the rain below. Think you she can turn herself into a snake maybe to get out one of those windows? And with us sitting nice and easy down here she is not going to come tripping down the stairs and do a flit. Nor is she going to slip this here leash neither. That is made of good sword steel and the collar’s made to hold one of His Grace’s direhounds. Try it, go ahead, try it, man.” There came the sound of metal clinking. “We snap this right around her throat, so. Now she cannot get away withouten this key, and that goes right here on my belt latching. I weren’t a hound help for nothing, not that I weren’t glad to get away from those kennels neither!”
“He will not like—”
“Would he like it more if we was squashed into a jelly by some tree coming down on us? You saw what happened to Larkin. Made you sick, didn’t it just? Maybe he has plans for this little bird, but those don’t include having her smashed up—not just yet. He said to see she kept on breathing, and he said that firm, as you heard him.”
“Yes—” But it seemed to Roane that agreement was made with reluctance. Once more she heard the clink of metal, then a laugh, and the first speaker continued:
“Nobody is going to break that. She’s as well tethered as if she was half walled in this place. Come away and let her lie. Better do nothing to rouse her up; she is enough trouble limp. She was a fighting cor-cat before Larkin gave her that little love tap.”
Tramp of feet, the sound of them on the stairway. Roane dared to breathe more deeply. The fetid odor of the bedding was worse, as the settling of the captive within its box had stirred up the nasty remains. How long would she have to hide? And could she stay where she was at all? That stench made her sick. She wished she had not eaten the E-ration in spite of her hunger.
There was no sound in the room, though any slight one would be covered by the rising wind. The dying of the storm seemed to have been only a lull. It was getting worse again. From the words of the men she was sure that whoever they left here was unconscious. And she must have more air or she would be sick. She could slip along the wall, gain the open beyond the bed by one of the windows. It did not matter that rain was blowing in again; she must have the clean wind on her face.
But Roane moved with due caution, stopping every few inches to listen. And when she finally got from behind the headboard she froze to watch the head of the stair. There was a faint glow of light from below. They must have brought a lantern with them. But the room was dusky with thick shadows.
She took another step, heard the rattle of metal, tensed again, turning her head to look at the bed. A dark figure arose from the muck which filled it. And the smell aroused by that stirring brought a coughing, quickly muffled, as if the cougher was trying very hard to subdue those racking spasms.
Another flash of the revealing lightning burst. There was a girl in the bed, holding both hands over her mouth and nose, her shoulders shaking. And over those muffled hands her eyes were wide open, looking straight into Roane’s.
CHAPTER 3
ROANE MOVED without any conscious volition, at least afterward she could remember none. When she was thinking again she found herself face down in the stinking morass of the bed, a struggling body pinned under her. One of her hands was across the girl’s mouth, and Roane was using her own weight to try to subdue the other’s struggles.
There was a sharp pain in Roane’s gagging hand and she snatched it away instinctively. The girl had bitten her. But the shrieks she feared might follow did not come. Instead the other spoke in a low voice:
“Why try to smother me, you dolt?”
Roane jerked away, nursing her bitten hand. She fumbled her beamer out of its belt loop, set it on low, and turned it on. And with her hand about it for a shield, she held it full upon the other.
The pale face caught in that light was streaked with black smears; dark hair tumbled about it. Below the determined chin was a broad metal collar, and from that a chain stretched into the dark. The girl caught at the collar with both hands, worried at it, though she continued to stare straight at the light as if seeking Roane behind it.
“If you are not one with the offal below,” she said in a whisper, “then who are you?”
“I came here to shelter from the storm,” Roane said evasively, in a whisper even more constrained. “I heard them bringing you and I hid.”
“Where?” The girl asked that eagerly as if the answer held some desperate meaning for her.
Roane switched the light so it touched the headboard as a pointer. “Behind that. There is space enough.”
“But where you were does not tell me who you are,” the girl returned sharply. “I am the Princess Ludorica!” And there was a note in her voice which canceled out the dirt streaks on her face, the clinging stench, the collar that confined her.
Roane looked at that collar, and in her a small spark of anger flared. By all the urging of her training she should leave here right now. She could use that niche ladder. By the strongest oaths known to her people she was pledged not to make any contacts. Revenian quarrels were no concern for off-worlders. The old laws on noninterference were strictly enforced. And yet—that collar—
“I am not of Reveny,” she said, evading once again, striving to keep her answer as low as she could.
“Thus making this matter none of your affair?” the Princess snapped. “What are you then, a Vordainian spy? Or perhaps a smuggler from over-border? He who will not reveal his face nor speak his name cannot thereafter be troubled if we see him as a walking evil.” She repeated the last as if she quoted some saying. “Can you be bought? My offer will be very high—”
Roane wondered at the calm control of the Princess. Instead of sitting in this odorous box with a chain and collar making her fast, she might have been at ease in her own palace, save that she held her voice to a whisper. And now Roane saw that what she had first thought another smear of grime across the side of the girl’s chin was the darkening of a large bruise. Now and then Ludorica did hesitate between one word and the next, as if she found speaking somewhat difficult.
“Who are those men below?” Roane had a question of her own. That they had so dared mishandle the heiress to Reveny’s throne meant they were not common criminals. And the more she learned of what lay behind this, the better she could plan what to do. Though she already knew she could not turn her back on Ludorica.
“Since I had to play the swooning female, that they use me with less alertness, I did not see too much of them. They wear foresters’ jerkins, I do not believe honestly. And how I came into their hands—” She shrugged and the chain tightened, the collar jerked, bringing a choking cough from her. “That I do not know. I went peacefully to sleep in my bed in Hitherhow. When I awoke I was lying
in a bumping cart on a forest track with the rain pouring like to drown me. Doubtless that restored my wits. Then the storm struck us full, bringing down a tree. The cart took the brunt of that to the fore. I gather that he who drove it had no further interest in the matters of this world. They pulled me out and brought me here.
“I do not think you are a Vordainian,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “If you are a smuggler, you will be given full pardon, with a good purse added to it. Get me loose of this”—she pulled at the collar again—“and guide me to the post at Yatton.” She still stared ahead as if she could see Roane clearly.
When the off-world girl did not answer, the Princess set her lips tightly together for an instant and then added:
“It would seem you also have no reason to wish to be discovered by those below. Let this then be a case of your enemy is my enemy, so a truce between us for this one battle.” Again she appeared to be quoting. “Your speech is strange, you are not of Reveny, and you have not the inflection of Vordain, nor the tongue clicks of Leichstan. Unless you are some mercenary from the north—No matter, get me free and you can rest easy on the gratitude of Reveny for your future, and that is no small thing!” There was pride in her voice, and once more Roane could forget where they were and that she fronted a prisoner and not one seated on a throne.
After all, what could some aid matter? She had already interfered, by merely being here and letting the Princess know it. If she left now, always supposing that she could climb to freedom by the wall way, the Princess, in anger at being abandoned, might call her captors, or Roane, trapped above in some manner, could be discovered. But if she were able to get the Princess away, she could contrive to lose her in the woods. Let the Princess then believe that she was a smuggler, too deeply involved in some criminal activity to be more than wary.
The Princess seemed to think her a man, perhaps because she had glimpsed, by the lightning flash, Roane’s coverall and cropped hair.
“All right.” Roane gave grudging consent. “But that collar—” She leaned over to train the beamer first on the band around the Princess’s throat, and then along the chain to where it had been fastened about one of the bedposts. There was a lock, but she could see no way of forcing it.
Which left the bedpost or the chain itself. Her hand went to a tool on her belt. To use that again went against all she had been trained and taught. It was odd, one part of her mind observed as she drew that rod out of its loop: the longer she stayed here, the more it seemed right and proper that she do as Ludorica wanted—as if the desire of the Princess awoke a companion response from her.
Roane hunched over, trying not to breathe in the fumes of the debris, held the rod out in the beamer’s small gleam, thumbing the right setting. Then she touched the rod to the chain as far from the Princess as she could reach. There was a flash of light. Roane pushed the cutter back in her belt, gave the chain a quick jerk. It broke. She heard a small sound like a sigh from the Princess.
“You will have to wear the collar yet awhile,” Roane whispered. “I dare not cut that so close to your neck.”
“That I am free in so much is something to give thanks for. But there are still the men below. If you have a dagger—how do you—”
Ludorica had balled the chain up in one hand so it might make no noise as she moved. She reached the edge of the bed box, swung out to the floor, as Roane was doing on the opposite side. The Princess’s white robe, or once-white robe, billowed around her. One of her braids of hair had come undone and the long locks, tufted with debris from the bed, hung about her shoulders. She clawed out the filthy rags with a small shudder of disgust as Roane joined her.
The off-world girl surveyed the Princess’s clothing doubtfully. The only way out was up that toe-and-finger-hold stair, and surely the Princess could not climb it wearing all those folds of cloth. Bringing her charge (for now Roane accepted the responsibility which followed her never-clearly-faced choice) around to the back of the bed, she flashed the beamer on the holes and explained their hope. But facing it now, she found the future more dubious.
“Lend me your dagger!” Ludorica whispered. “Oh”—she made a sound close to laughter—“I do not mean to fight my way free below. But I cannot climb in this.” She gave an impatient tug to the robe.
“I do not have a dagger—” Roane returned.
“No dagger? But how then do you protect yourself?” the Princess asked wonderingly.
What Roane did produce was a belt knife, and the Princess seized upon it eagerly, slashing her full skirt front and back, cutting strips to bind the pieces to her legs in a grotesque copy of Roane’s coverall. Before she returned the knife to its owner she tested its point on the ball of her thumb.
“This is like to a forester’s skinning tool, yet different still,” she commented. “You have not spoken your name—nor shown me your face—”
She caught Roane off guard as her hand shot out, her fingers closing around the wrist which supported the beamer. The impetus of that attack worked. Before Roane could dodge, the other had focused that light to fully illuminate its owner.
Roane broke the other’s grip, but too late. The Princess had had a good look at her, and being quick-witted as she was, she must have noted a lot. Roane was developing some awe of the other. A girl who had been dragged from her bed, brought to this place, chained up like a hound, assaulted by Roane herself, yet who managed to keep a level head, ask for aid, argue logically on her own behalf—Such was no common person, on Clio or off. And Roane wondered if under the same circumstances she would have done as well.
“You are not a man!” The beamer turned floorward between them, having done its work. “Yet your manner of dress—that I have not seen before. And your hair—so short. You are indeed strange. Perhaps the legends are true after all. If—if—” For the first time there was a tremor in the Princess’s voice. “If you are one of the Guardians then answer me true—it is my right for I am of the Blood Royal, the next Queen Regnant of Reveny—if you are a Guardian, what has become of the Ice Crown?”
To Roane her plea was a mixture of command and petition, and it meant nothing. But a sound from below did. During their struggle on the bed and their escape from it, the storm had been dying; now they could hear the men moving below.
Roane caught at the Princess’s hand as she switched off the beamer. If the men were coming for their captive, there was little they could do in their own defense. Back in camp were stunners; Roane longed for one now. But those had not been unpacked, since they had no need to fear any forest animal with the distorts on. And those of the team were well aware they were not to be turned against any native here unless in the very last recourse. She had the knife—which the Princess still held—and the tool she had used to break the chain, nothing else.
Hand-linked, they stood very still to listen. The room had grown lighter. Perhaps they would not need the beamer. Roane drew the Princess to the head of the bed and behind it. The sooner they proved whether or not the holes led to freedom, the better.
“Climb!” She shoved Ludorica ahead of her and hoped the Princess could do just that. As the other faced the wall, raised her hands to the niches, Roane crouched so she could watch the top of the stair. It was too bad that they could not bar that way—say, shift the chest across it. But one good look at that told her that such a feat was impossible.
It seemed that the Princess’s breathing, the faint scratching of her fingers and toes (for she was barefoot), were very loud. Roane strained to catch any answering sound from below.
The Princess was now well above the level of the headboard, straining to reach the shadowy crisscross of the upper beams. Roane started after her. It was, she decided, about equal to climbing a steep slope, save that she took each lift with the fear of at any moment being caught. Her breath rasped harshly in her own ears and she tried to control that fear, thinking not of what might happen but of what she must do in the next moment and the next.
“There is
a place of flooring here,” the Princess called down in a whisper, “and, I think, a door. This must be an overreach—”
What the other might mean, Roane had no idea, but she was heartened to know that her companion seemed to recognize something well known to her. Then Roane’s hand, reaching for the next niche, scraped a solid surface and she pulled herself out on a platform laid across the junction of two beams.
“There is a door to the roof. I have drawn its bolt,” the Princess told her. “But it may take us both to hit it. It must be a very long time since this was last opened.”
They crouched shoulder to shoulder on their knees, their four hands flat over their heads against a wooden surface. The dry dust they so raised sifted into Roane’s face and hair, but she closed her eyes to it and said—
“Now!”
At first it seemed that that barrier had been firmly cemented by time. Then there was a giving which led to a greater exercise of strength. A crack of light grew wider as they strained. And, as if some further fastening gave way, the door lifted with a rush. Fresh, rain-wet air blew in upon them.
Roane drew herself up and out, turning to lend a hand to the Princess, who was making an effort to follow. They were on the roof of the tower in the full open. Around them ran a waist-high parapet. And it was day, though the rain clouds hung heavy above. Roane dropped the door into place. That they had bettered their case much was doubtful. Unless they could stay here in hiding until the men below left—which she thought was a very slim chance.
But the Princess was crawling on hands and knees around the parapet, stopping now and then to run her hands over its surface, almost as if she were in search of something she was sure she would eventually find. Even as Roane watched she paused and her fingertips outlined a space first on the parapet and then on the surface under it.