Haakon went on to relate how, at the time of the takeover a few days ago, he had seen a small army of the invaders come down one of the small rivers that emptied into the lake, and approach the castle. He estimated now that there had been about two hundred soldiers, in ten or twelve boats.
“You and your constabulary made no resistance?”
“We weren’t even called to duty before it was all over, the castle lost, and Honan-Fu dropped out of sight. Anyway, it would have taken us days to mobilize effectively.”
Ben fixed his eyes on the man in a steady gaze. “I think it’s time you got together now. Going by what you say yourself, there’s no huge army occupying the castle—not yet anyway. It could be retaken, if you didn’t advertise that you were coming.”
Haakon appeared to consider that. “Well—there could have been other troops arrive that I didn’t see. And I’m not one of the constabulary officers.”
“Then find your officers, man. Or choose new ones. Did you see what just happened to that family of fisher folk down there? Where is the rest of this constabulary now?”
“I don’t know. Scattered about.” Haakon obviously was beginning to regret that he had spoken so openly to these strangers on the subject. No, he had no idea as to where any boats could possibly be found now. The invaders had been gathering them all up.
“And where,” asked Zoltan, “can we find you if we should want to talk to you again?”
The man looked from one of them to the other. “They know me at Stow’s shop in Triplicane,” he said at last. The information was given out so reluctantly that Ben and Zoltan, exchanging glances, both believed it was the truth.
Presently, after making their informant a present of the single fish left over from their breakfast—a gift he accepted gratefully—and wishing him good luck, Ben and Zoltan walked on.
When the two were sure they were alone again, Zoltan asked: “We are going to keep on looking for a boat? Despite the evidence that there aren’t any available?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
“We could have a try ourselves at raising this constabulary that our friend talked about.”
Ben shook his head. “If they can’t raise themselves under these circumstances, we wouldn’t have much chance. We’re outsiders, strangers. They’d never be willing to trust us in time to do Mark any good.”
Zoltan trudged on another score of paces before he spoke again. “We could remain in hiding until night falls again, and then swim out to the castle on a couple of logs.”
“That’s crazy. But all right, we’re going to have to do something. And what we’re doing now is getting us nowhere.”
“Look out.”
The soldier who had just appeared on the slope ahead spotted them an instant after Zoltan had seen him. His bold command to halt was directed at their fleeing backs.
A moment later a whole squad of voices had joined in the clamor. There would certainly be pursuit. The two who fled had not much of a start, and each glance back showed soldiers coming on in energetic fashion. And now, to make matters worse, a couple of enemy flying scouts had ceased their observant high circling out over the water and joined in the chase across the land.
When these creatures, emboldened by their gathering numbers, dared to dive within range, Ben beat at them with his long staff and drove them off. After that the flyers stayed at a safe altitude, circling and cawing raucously to guide the soldiers in the right direction.
The chase went on, with the enemy gaining slightly. Their gasping quarry climbed a difficult rock slope, and clambered down another, getting a little farther ahead again.
Zoltan, when he had time and breath to spare, threw rocks and curses at the flyers, and prayed to all the gods and demons for a sling. But he had no sling, and none appeared.
The moments in which the two fugitives dared to pause for rest were rare. And now, slowly, they were being forced back in the direction of the town.
One of the flyers suddenly broke away from the circling flock above and flew in that direction.
“The people chasing us have signaled it to call for reinforcements,” Ben grunted. “They’ll try to pen us in between the patrol that’s following us and troops come out from the town.”
But no reinforcements appeared, and still the two Tasavaltans were not caught. The chase continued in zigzag course; the day wore on until the sun had turned past its high point. Here and there a rill of water, tumbling from broken rock, offered the fugitives a chance to get a drink. As for eating, they had no time.
Either the flyer had had trouble in locating a responsive officer in town, or the enemy were beset by other difficulties and had none readily available. All day long the hiding and chasing continued inconclusively. The sky turned gray, and a fine, misting rain began to fall.
At last Zoltan, crouched wearily in a dripping thicket, could say to Ben: “Another hour and it’ll be dark.”
And then somehow, at last, it was dark, and they were still alive and free. Now the chance existed for the two of them to slip away, get through the hills and on the road back to Tasavalta.
“Not that they mightn’t catch us tomorrow,” Zoltan qualified in a weary voice.
But Ben had a different idea. “I think that we ought to go into town instead.”
Zoltan raised an eyebrow, considering. “Well, they won’t be expecting us to do that.”
“No, they won’t. And there’ll be boats there, we can be certain of that much. Guarded, no doubt. But hanging around out here in the hills, we have small chance of staying alive, and no chance of accomplishing anything useful. I say it’s either go into town or head for home.”
“If we were going to run for home,” said Zoltan, “we would have done it long ago.”
* * *
At least the rain had stopped again, and their pursuers had apparently given up for the night. After an hour’s sorely needed rest, Ben and Zoltan ate such scraps of food as they still had with them, and then made their way slowly and cautiously toward Triplicane and into its streets.
But hardly had they got well in among the streets and houses when there sounded a renewed outcry and pursuit.
They ran again. A dark alley offered a moment’s respite, but there were all too few dark alleys in a town this size. Ben grunted. “We must split up, it’s our only chance.”
“And meet where?”
“At the castle on the island,” Ben answered grimly. “When we can. Or in the next world if there is one.”
Zoltan looked at Ben as if he would have said some kind of a farewell. But then he only nodded, and, with lots of running still in him, went dashing swiftly away.
Ah, youth, thought Ben with heartfelt envy. He slumped down quietly where he was in the shadows, and just sat there for a few moments regaining some breath and energy while he listened to see if Zoltan should make good at least a temporary escape.
Before distance had entirely swallowed the sound of the young man’s running steps, they broke off in an indeterminate scramble. Ben strained his ears, but he could hear nothing more. There were no cries of triumph, or other indication that Zoltan had been killed or taken.
He could, of course, proceed himself in the same direction and try to investigate. But, no, whatever had happened, the two of them had split up. One of them at least had to get out to Mark, on the island. The damned island; it was beginning to seem half a continent away.
When Ben moved again it was in the opposite direction from the one Zoltan had taken.
He went down the remaining length of the original dark alley, and then was pleasantly surprised to see the mouth of another one just across the street. After that alley there came another. When he had progressed for some distance in this fashion, he dared to cross a space of open moonlight. He was heading as best he could toward the water, where surely there would be boats, even if they were guarded.
Then again there were torches behind Ben, and voices, and he thought he heard a war beast snarling,
or perhaps it was only a dog. A good tracking dog would be bad enough. That was all he needed on his trail. He had to have the water now, and no question about it.
A street went by him, an alley, and then another street. And presently, now on the very edge of town, he found his way blocked by a high stone wall. As far as Ben could tell in the darkness, it extended for a long way in both directions.
Ben was much better at climbing walls than his bulky shape suggested. The mass of his huge body was very largely muscle, and now his great strength served him well, letting him support himself wedged in an angle of the wall, where enough little chips of stone were missing to give fingers and toes a purchase. Tall as the wall was, he got himself to the top of it and over.
It was almost a four-meter drop into complete darkness on the other side, but fortunately his landing was in soft grass.
He crouched there, listening for news beyond the weary thudding of his own heart, trying to tell whether or not his arrival had been noticed. So far there was no indication that it had. Silence prevailed, except for the usual night insects, and darkness extended almost everywhere. It was broken only by the concentrated glow of a couple of ornate lanterns that shone on latticework and barren vines a modest arrow-shot away.
Getting to his feet, Ben stole as softly as he could toward the lights. He saw now that the vines, leafless with autumn, wreathed and bound a summerhouse of latticework, built larger than a peasant’s cottage. The lanterns glowed inside.
Ben circled close to the arbor, meaning to go around it. He did not see the young lady in almost royal dress who was seated within, against all likelihood in the chill night, until she had raised her own eyes and looked directly at him.
“I see you,” she announced in a firm voice. “Come here and identify yourself.”
Chapter Twelve
When the soldiers sprang upon Zoltan in the streets of Triplicane they kept their weapons sheathed and were obviously determined to take him alive. His arms were pinned, and before he had the chance to draw his own weapons they were taken from him. He struggled fiercely as long as he thought he had the slightest chance of breaking away, but when he found himself in a completely hopeless position, he let his body go limp and saved his strength.
His captors, working with quiet efficiency, bound him firmly, while at the same time they took care to cause no serious injury. They had nothing to say to him beyond a few passing comments on his ancestry, but Zoltan gathered from the few words they spoke among themselves that they considered him a catch of some importance.
Bound hand and foot, and aching from the blows he had received during the struggle, he was carried through the streets and conveyed quickly to the docks. There a command post had been set up, and he heard a couple of officers exulting over his capture before one of them ordered him placed immediately in a small boat. From what Zoltan could hear of the officers’ conversation it was certain that they knew he was Prince Mark’s nephew.
The only consolation Zoltan could find was that Ben was not in the boat with him, and that the soldiers, from what he could overhear, were still pressing an urgent search for someone.
Whatever might have happened to Ben, it now appeared that he, Zoltan, was going to get to the island after all.
As soon as he had been tossed into the boat, Zoltan wriggled and turned until he was lying on his back near the prow, his head and shoulders sufficiently elevated to let him see out over the gunwales. He was facing the backs of six soldiers, who now bent to their oars, and the sergeant on the rear seat was facing Zoltan along the length of the boat.
At a word from the sergeant the backs of the rowers bent in unison, and oars squeaked in their locks. The lights of the docks and the town began to move away. Staring out over the darkening face of the lake, marked here and there by a few lonely sparks of fires upon its distant shores, Zoltan pondered a temporarily attractive scheme of trying to roll himself out of the craft once it was well out into deep water. If he could manage to drown himself, tied up as he was, he would at least have succeeded in avoiding interrogation.
The moon was coming up now, its light beginning to make things ghostly.
For two thirds of the distance to the castle, the boat made uneventful progress, the sergeant only now and then growling a command, the men rowing steadily and in near silence.
But at that point in the journey, just as the craft was about to pass between two of the smaller islands, Zoltan observed something strange. It was as if a piece of one of those islets, which was some forty meters or so distant, had detached itself from the main body—detached itself, and was now drifting silently through the gloom toward the boat. A tiny, moving islet, whitish in the darkness and the peculiar moonlight. His imagination suggested something out of a story of the far northern seas, a drifting floe of ice, which might perhaps be big enough to let a desperate man use it for a raft. Zoltan watched it as if hypnotized…
Because the appearance of the thing gradually convinced him that it was neither a drifting island nor a chunk of ice. It possessed too much mobility, and it changed shape. It was alive.
Zoltan had once seen a living dragon that was bigger than this mysterious object. But this was no dragon, though it had eyes. Eyes the size of plates, reflecting impossible colors from the night. And fur, a pale silvery mat that became visible for what it was, roaring a cascade of water back into the lake as the thing began to rise out of the shallowing water with the nearness of its approach.
For long seconds now every soldier in the boat had been aware of this bizarre apparition. One after another the men had ceased to row; and now, as if a signal had been given, they all started shouting at the same moment.
Their shouts had no effect. The furry mass was wet and dully glistening, and the moonlight seemed to play strange tricks of light within its surface as it rose higher and higher, the top of it now three meters above the lake. Atop the silvery form Zoltan could now distinguish an almost human head, manlike but gigantically magnified, supported upon almost human shoulders.
And now there were two arms. Limbs quite unbelievable in size, but there they were. And now one of those arms was reaching with its great hand for the boat.
Long moments had passed since the soldiers had ceased to row. Uttering cries and oaths, they had begun to scramble for their weapons. Now one of them, the sergeant, swung with an oar against that reaching hand; the wooden blow landed on a knuckle, with a sound of great solidity, and had not the least observable effect.
The huge, five-fingered hand was thickly covered with the same strange fur as the rest of the creature’s body. The hand was big enough to enfold a man’s whole body in its grasp, bigger probably, but still it was very human in its shape. And now it had clamped a hard grip on the nearest gunwale, and Zoltan could hear the planks of the boat’s side grind and groan and crunch together.
The boat was tipping now, the side held by the great hand rising, about to spill its contents into the lake on the side away from the silver monster.
By now most of the soldiers had their swords in hand. But they were too late to use them—if indeed such puny weapons could have done them any good. Everyone aboard the boat, Zoltan included, shouted aloud as it went over.
Zoltan had just time to close his mouth before the splash and grip of icy water claimed him. His bound feet touched bottom, less than two meters down, and he twisted his body in the water in an effort to stand erect, or at least float with his head up, so he could breathe. But he need not have made the effort. A hand as big as the one that had tipped the boat closed gently around his body, and he was lifted from the lake almost before its chill had had time to penetrate his clothing. He was able to catch one glimpse of the crew of military rowers, all floundering to swim or stand or cling to their capsized boat, the men in neck-deep water just starting to get their feet under them, before he was borne away.
He was being carried by the being who had overturned the boat, and who was now wading away from it through water no deeper th
an his thighs, though already quite deep enough to drown a man. The giant’s two columnar legs sent up their roaring wakes in alternation, making speed away from boat and islands into water that was deeper still; the bottom dropped off sharply here.
Meanwhile, one of the giant’s hands still cradled Zoltan, while the fingers of the other plucked with surprising delicacy at the cords that bound him. One after another, like withes of grass, those strings popped loose.
In the next moment Zoltan, his arms and legs now free, had been lifted up to ride like a child sitting on the giant’s furry shoulders, astride his neck. Meanwhile his savior, almost chest-deep in the lake now and rapidly getting deeper, continued to make impressive speed away from the shouted outrage of the soldiers surrounding their tipped boat.
By using both hands to cling to silvery fur, Zoltan managed to keep his seat. He delayed trying to speak; the noise made by the great body beneath him in its splashing passage would have drowned out any merely human shout. But presently the splashing quieted almost completely as the giant began to swim. Zoltan’s small additional weight upon his neck apparently made little difference to him in this effort.
At last, in the lee of another of the smaller islands, Zoltan was set down upon a sandy shore. The tipped boat was hundreds of meters distant now, and the castle even farther away, beyond the boat.
As soon as he had solid land under his feet again, the young man made a low bow to his rescuer. He said: “My lifelong gratitude, Lord Draffut.”
“You know me, then.” The giant still stood erect, surveying more distant events from his six-meter height; the voice from that great throat was manlike, except that it was deep as any dragon’s roar. Then he looked down. “But I do not recognize you.”
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