Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  Calmly Shirl walked to where Grimes was sprawled in the mud, helped him to his feet.

  “She will not bother you again, John,” she said cheerfully.

  “But how did you . . . ?”

  He did not have to finish the question. The New Alicians had their telepathic moments.

  “We did more than just sharpen the discs,” she told him. “We used the grinding wheels and we . . . shaped them. Put in curves. Like boomerangs.”

  “But how did you know what to do?”

  “We . . . We just knew.”

  Together they walked up the hillside, through the pouring rain, the others straggling after them. They came to the boulder from behind which Hephastia had been shooting. The sight of the fat woman’s body was not quite as bad as Grimes had feared it would be; the downpour had already washed away most of the blood. Even so decapitation, or near decapitation, is never a pretty spectacle. Grimes looked away hastily from the gaping wound in the neck with the obscenely exposed raw flesh and cartilage. The rest of the body was not so bad. It looked drained, deflated, like a flabby white blimp brought to Earth by heavy leakage from its gas cells. Her dead hands still held the rifle. Grimes took it from her. It was a 10mm automatic, as issued to Federation military forces. It was set to Single Shot. There should have been plenty of rounds left in the magazine but there were not. Hephastia—or somebody—had neglected to replace it after some previous usage.

  Grimes counted the remaining cartridges.

  There were only five.

  By this time the others had joined them.

  “I’ve a rifle,” said Grimes unnecessarily, “but only five rounds.”

  “There are weapons and ammunition a-plenty in the house,” said Brasidus.

  “Just what I had in mind,” said Grimes.

  He led the way up the hillside.

  He covered the retreat, loosing off all five of the remaining rounds to deter a sally from the open door. The other women must have recovered, were firing from chinks in the heavily shuttered windows. After Grimes’s warning burst they seemed to be reluctant to show themselves—much to the disgust of Shirl and Darleen.

  “So,” said Maggie, “what now?”

  “We follow the river,” said Grimes. “From what I can remember of the maps there are sizable towns on its lower reaches.”

  “On foot?” squealed Fenella.

  “You can try swimming if you like,” said Grimes, “but I’d not recommend it with the river the way it is now.”

  Chapter 29

  They were cold and they were wet and they were hungry.

  Vividly in Grimes’s memory was the smell of the cellar from which they had rescued Brasidus—the cheeses, the smoked and spiced sausages, the pickles. If only he had known that they were to be denied access to Krait he would have seen to it that they commenced what promised to be a very long walk well-provisioned and -armed.

  Surprisingly Brasidus was not much help. Grimes had hoped that the Archon would have some idea of the geography of this area, would be able to guide them to some other village where there would be an inn, would be capable of finding for them the easiest and shortest route to the nearest town.

  “But you’re the ruler of this world!” said Grimes exasperatedly.

  “That does not mean, friend John, that I know, intimately, every square centimeter of its surface, any more than you are familiar with every smallest detail of a ship that you command.”

  “I always do my best to gain such familiarity,” grumbled Grimes.

  They trudged on, the roaring torrent on their right, towering rocky outcrops, among which a few stunted trees struggled for survival, on their left. Grimes maintained the lead, with Maggie and Brasidus a little behind him, then Fenella, then Shirl and Darleen, the only ones with any sort of effective medium-range weaponry, as the rear guard. It was not likely that they would be followed but it was possible.

  They trudged on.

  They were no longer so cold; in fact they were sweating inside their heavy coveralls. The rain was easing. Now and again, briefly, the high sun struck through a break in the clouds.

  But they were still hungry.

  Grimes called a halt in the shelter of an overhanging cliff. He managed to light his pipe. (And how much tobacco was left in his pouch? He should have refilled it from a large container of the weed that Shirl had found for him in one of the officer’s cabins aboard Krait.) Fenella had an almost full packet of cigarillos and, grudgingly, allowed Maggie to take one. Neither Brasidus nor the New Alician girls smoked.

  Shirl and Darleen strayed away from the shelter, saying that they were going back up the trail a little to see if there were any signs of pursuit. Grimes let them go. He knew that they were quite capable of looking after themselves.

  “And now,” he said, “I’ll put you in the picture, Brasidus. Prepare yourself for a shock.”

  “Ellena? Has anything happened to her?”

  “On the contrary.” Grimes laughed bitterly. “On the contrary. She’s the one who’s been making things happen. To begin with, she used your abduction as an excuse for seizing power.”

  Brasidus was not as shocked as Grimes had feared that he would be.

  “She is a very shrewd politician, John, as I have known for quite awhile. And there has to be a strong hand at the helm during my forced absence. There are so many squabbling factions . . . .”

  “But does she want you back?” asked Grimes brutally. “Oh, she didn’t want you hurt but she did want you out of the way, does want you out of the way until she’s firmly in the saddle. If she does allow you to come back it will be only as a sort of Prince Consort to her Queen Hippolyte.”

  Brasidus shook his head dazedly. Then, at last, “You are trying to tell me that she is responsible for my abduction?”

  “Yes,” stated Grimes.

  There was a long silence, broken eventually by the Archon.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “It does make sense, a quite horrible sort of sense. She is ambitious. She does really believe that she is a reincarnation of Queen Hippolyte. Her Amazon Guards are a formidable military force. Oh, I have sneered at them, as what man on this world has not, but, in my heart of hearts I have respected them. Those women back in the village were not Amazon Guards, had they been we should never have gotten out alive. They were no more than criminals whom somebody . . . .”

  “Ellena,” said Fenella.

  “All right. Merely criminals hired by Ellena to do a job.”

  “Or loyal Party members,” said Maggie, “following orders. Ellena’s orders.”

  “Ellena, Ellena, always Ellena!” Brasidus got to his feet, began to pace up and down. “Always it comes back to Ellena.”

  “I’m afraid that it does,” said Grimes.

  “I should have known. As a ruler, as Archon, I have failed my people.”

  “Not yet,” Grimes told him. “There are still people loyal to you.”

  They were interrupted by Shirl and Darleen. The two New Alicians were dragging something over the wet ground, something that might have been a very large snake had it not been equipped with eight pairs of legs. It was minus its head and the blood that dripped from its neck was an unpleasant yellow in color.

  “Lunch,” announced Shirl.

  “Surely that thing is not edible,” complained Fenella.

  “It is,” Brasidus told her, cheering up. “It is a delicacy. Draco, we call it. Broiled, with a fruit sauce . . . .”

  Using their sharpened discs Shirl and Darleen lopped off the short legs of the draco, gutted and skinned it, throwing the offal into the river. Grimes tried to start a fire, using as fuel twigs broken from nearby bushes. But it was a hopeless task. All vegetation, even that in the partial shelter of the rock overhang, was thoroughly saturated and stubbornly refused to burn. If they had had an operating laser pistol at their disposal . . . . But they did not.

  With a convenient flat rock as a table the New Alicians went on with their butchering. They sliced t
he flesh into wafer-thin slices. They gestured to Grimes that he should take the first bite.

  He did. It wasn’t bad, not unlike the sashimi that was a favorite meal of his when he could get it. It would have been vastly improved by a selection of dipping sauces but, he decided as he chewed, there were times when one couldn’t have everything. Maggie joined him at the “table,” then Fenella. Shirl and Darleen were already eating heartily. Only Brasidus hung back. (He, of course, was untraveled, had not sampled local delicacies on worlds all over the Galaxy.)

  “Try some,” urged Grimes. “It’s not bad.”

  “But it’s not cooked.”

  “You must eat something,” insisted Maggie, womanlike.

  He forced himself to make a meal that obviously he did not enjoy.

  Grimes ordered that the remains of the draco be thrown into the river. Now that the rain had ceased the day had become unpleasantly warm and already the meat was becoming odorous.

  They pushed on down the mountainside.

  It was early evening when they came to a village, larger than the one from which they had taken Brasidus. There was one short street, with low houses on either side of it. There was what looked like a small temple—to which deity of the Greek pantheon? wondered Grimes; it seemed to be of fairly recent construction—and, across the road from it, what was obviously an inn.

  They entered this building, Brasidus in the lead.

  There were several customers, all of them roughly dressed men, seated on benches at the rough wooden tables. These looked curiously at the intruders. There was the innkeeper, a grossly fat individual whose dirty apron strained over his prominent belly.

  “Greetings, lords,” he said. “What is your pleasure?”

  “Wine,” said Brasidus. “Bread. Hot meat if you have it.”

  “That indeed I have, lord. There is a fine stew a-simmering in the kitchen that would be fit for the Archon himself.”

  “Then bring it.”

  He bustled out, returned with a flagon of wine and six mugs, went out again for the platter of bread and individual bowls and spoons, and a last time for a huge, steaming pot from which issued a very savory smell.

  “Eat well, my lords,” he said. Then, “Have you been out in the storm?”

  “We have,” said Brasidus around a mouthful of stew.

  “The weather was never like this when I was a boy. It’s all these offworlders coming down in their ships, disturbing the clouds. Time was when there were only two ships a year, the ones from Latterhaven . . . .”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes, thinking that he had better make some contribution to the conversation.

  “And what is the uniform that you are wearing, lords? Forgive my curiosity but we have so few visitors here. You have guns, I see. Would you be some sort of police officers?”

  “We are in the Archon’s service,” said Brasidus, not untruthfully.

  “Indeed? Would it be impertinent of me to inquire which branch?”

  “It would.”

  This failed to register and the innkeeper rattled on.

  “There are so many new branches these days. I’ve even heard tell that in Sparta City there’s a women’s army, and according to the last News we watched they’re taking over. Troublous times, lords, troublous times. I’d not be surprised to learn that it’s the women behind the vanishment of the Archon. We’re old-fashioned folk here in Calmira. There are women here now, of course, but they know their places. They’d never come into the tavern. The temple’s for them.”

  Fenella made an odd snorting noise.

  “But it’s getting quite dark, isn’t it? It’s all this weather we’re having these days. I’ll give you light to eat by; the power was off most of the day but it’s back on now . . .”

  He went to the switch by the door, clicked it on. The overhead light tubes were harshly brilliant. He returned to the table, stared at his guests, at Maggie, at Fenella, at Shirl and Darleen.

  “You . . .” he sputtered. “Women!” he spat.

  “So what?” asked Fenella coldly.

  “But . . . . But never before in my inn . . . .”

  “There has to be a first time for everything,” she said.

  He turned appealingly to Brasidus. “Had I known I’d never have admitted you.”

  “You know now,” said Grimes. “And now you know, what can you do about it?”

  The men at the other tables were stirring restively. There were mutterings of, “Throw them out! Throw them out!”

  “Not before I’ve finished my meal,” said Grimes.

  “Throw them out!” It was more than just a muttering now.

  Grimes put his spoon down in the almost empty bowl, took careful stock of the opposition. There were fourteen men, big men, not young but not old. They looked tough customers and, in the right (or wrong) circumstances, nasty ones. Of course, despite the numerical odds, there was little doubt as to what the outcome of a scuffle would be. Although there was no ammunition for the rifle, although the laser pistols were useless until recharged, there were still the stunguns, ideal for use in a situation such as this. And there were the two specialists in unarmed combat, Shirl and Darleen.

  But . . . .

  But one at least of the men might escape from the inn, might run to the Town Constable who, surely, would have some means of communication—radio or land line—with the nearest big town. And then Ellena would soon learn that her husband, with his low friends, was running around loose and that the failure of his guards to maintain communication with the Palace was due to more than storm damage.

  “All right,” he said to the innkeeper, “we’ll go. But rest assured that a full report of this business will be made to the proper authorities.”

  “Then go,” said the man. “But first . . . .”

  He thrust a dirty piece of paper, the bill, under Grimes’ nose. Grimes glanced at it. He did a mental conversion of obols into credits. He would have been charged less for a meal for six persons in many a four-star restaurant on many a world. Then he realized that, in any case, he could not pay. His wallet, with money and credit cards, was with the clothing that he had left aboard Krait when he changed into coveralls.

  “Do you have any money on you?” he asked Maggie.

  She shook her head.

  “Fenella?”

  “Back aboard the ship. Nothing here.”

  “Shirl? Darleen?”

  “No.”

  “Are you paying, or aren’t you?” demanded the innkeeper.

  “You will have to send the bill to the Palace,” Brasidus told him. “It will be honored.”

  “Check it first,” said Grimes nastily.

  “Send the bill to the Palace?” demanded the innkeeper. “What do you take me for? Who’ll be in charge at the Palace by the time it gets there, the postal services being what they are these days? Tell me that.”

  A good question, thought Grimes.

  He said, “If you insist, we’ll leave security.”

  “What security?”

  Another good question.

  His wrist companion? wondered Grimes. No. It was too useful, with many more functions than those of a mere timekeeper. The same could be said for the instrument that Maggie was wearing on her left wrist. The ammunitionless rifle or the dead laser pistols? Again no. What police officer would cheerfully pass his weapons over to civilians in payment of a tavern bill? And, in any case, the laser pistols were clearly marked as Federation property.

  He looked at the others around the table. A gleam of precious metal caught his eye.

  He said, “I’ll have to ask you for your watch, Fenella.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll be able to reclaim it after the bill’s been paid.”

  “If it’s ever paid.”

  “In which case you will be fully compensated.”

  Fenella extended her left hand. The innkeeper looked covetously at the fabrication of gold and precious stones thus displayed.

  “Buy
ing time with time,” she said.

  “I shall insist on a receipt,” said Grimes.

  One was reluctantly given, on a scrap of paper as dirty and as rumpled as the bill.

  Then Grimes, Brasidus and the women went out into the gathering dark.

  Chapter 30

  Some distance downstream from the village they found a deserted hut.

  It must once have been, suggested Brasidus, the abode of a goatherd. (The indigenous six-legged animals that had been called goats by the original colonists had been largely replaced, as food animals, by the sheep and cattle imported from Earth.) There was just one room, its floor littered with animal droppings and the bones of various small creatures that had been brought into this shelter by various predators to be devoured at leisure, that now crackled unpleasantly underfoot. By the flare of Maggie’s and Fenella’s lighters, set at maximum intensity, it was possible to take stock. There was, leaning against the wall, a crude beson. Shirl took this and began to sweep the debris out through the open door. There was a fireplace, and beside it what had once been a tidy pile of cut wood, now scattered by some animal or animals.

  Grimes instructed Darleen to use the cutting edge of one of her discs to produce a quantity of thin shavings from one of the sticks. He laid a fire. The shavings took fire immediately from his match and the blaze spread to the thicker sticks on top. Too late he thought that he should have checked the chimney to see if it was clear but he need not have worried. The fire drew well. Although the night was still far from cold the ruddy, flickering light made the atmosphere much more cheerful.

  They all sat down on the now more-or-less clean floor.

  Grimes lit his pipe, estimating ruefully that he had barely enough tobacco left in his pouch for four more smokes. Maggie and Fenella made a sort of ritual of sharing a cigarillo. Shirl and Darleen sniffed disdainfully.

  Maggie said, “Now what do we do? We’re on the wrong side of this world with no way of getting back to Sparta City. We’re wearing clothing that, as soon as the weather warms up, will be horribly uncomfortable and that, in any case, makes us conspicuous. We have no money . . .”