The Complete Margaret of Urbs

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  Hull gripped his bow and set feather to cord. He knew well enough that the plan was to permit the enemy to pass unmolested until their whole line was within the span of the ambush. And now, far down the way beyond the cut, he saw dust rising. Joaquin Smith was at hand.

  Then—the unexpected! Suddenly through the trees to his right, brown-clothed, lithe little men were slipping like charging shadows, horns sounding, whistles shrilling. The woods runners of the Master! Joaquin Smith had anticipated just such an ambush!

  Instantly Hull saw the weakness of his forces. They were ten thousand, true enough, but here they were strung thinly over a distance of two miles, and now the woods runners were at a vast advantage in numbers, with the main body approaching. One chance! Fight it out, drive off the scouts, and retire to the woods. While the army existed, even though Ormiston fell, there was hope.

  He shouted, strung his arrow, and sent it flashing through the leaves. A bad place for arrows; their arching flight was always deflected by the tangled branches. He slung bow on shoulder and gripped his sword; close quarters was the solution!

  Then—the second surprise! The woods runners had flashed their own weapons, little blunt revolvers.[5] But they sent no bullets; only pale beams darted through the leaves and branches, faint blue streaks of light. Sorcery?

  Hull learned its meaning instantly. His sword grew suddenly scorching hot in his hands, and a moment later the queerest pain he had ever encountered racked his body. A violent, stinging, inward tingle that twitched his muscles and paralyzed his movements. A brief second and the shock ceased, but his sword lay smoking in the leaves, and his steel bow had seared his shoulders. Around him men were yelling in pain, writhing on the ground, running back into the forest depths.

  Yet apparently no man had been killed. Hands were seared and blistered by weapons that grew hot under the blue beams, bodies were racked by the torture that Hull could not know was electric shock, but none was slain. Hope flared again, and he ran to head off a retreating group.

  “To the road!” he roared. “Out where our arrows can fly free! Charge the column!”

  For a moment the group halted. Hull seized a yet unheated sword from someone, and turned back.

  Below in the cut was the head of the column, advancing placidly. He glimpsed a silver-helmeted, black-haired man on a great white mare at its head, and beside him a slighter figure on a black stallion. Joaquin Smith! Hull roared down the embankment toward him. Four men spurred instantly between him and the figure with the silver helmet. A beam flicked; his sword scorched his skin and he flung it away.

  “Come on!” he bellowed. “Here’s a fight!”

  Strangely, in curious clarity, he saw the eyes of the Empire men, a smile in them, mysteriously amused. No anger, no fear—just amusement. Hull glanced quickly behind him, and knew finally the cause of that amusement, No one had followed him; he had charged the Master’s army alone!

  Deserted! Abandoned by those for whom he fought. He roared his rage to the echoing bluffs, and sprang at the horseman nearest him.

  The horse reared, pawing the air. Hull thrust his mighty arms below its belly and heaved with a convulsion of his great muscles. Backward toppled steed and rider, and all about the Master was a milling turmoil where a man scrambled desperately to escape the clashing hoofs. But Hull glimpsed Joaquin Smith sitting statuelike and smiling on his great white mare.

  He tore another rider from his saddle, and then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the slim youth at the Master’s side raise a weapon, coolly, methodically. For the barest instant Hull faced icy green eyes where cold, passionless death threatened. He flung himself aside as a beam spat smoking against the dust of the road.

  “Don’t!” snapped Joaquin Smith, his low voice clear through the turmoil. “The youth is splendid!”

  But Hull had no mind to die uselessly. He bent, flung himself halfway up the bluff in a mighty leap, caught a dragging branch, and swung into the forest. A startled woods runner faced him; he flung the fellow behind him down the slope and slipped into the shelter of leaves.

  “The wise warrior fights pride,” he muttered to himself. “It’s no disgrace for one man to run from an army.”

  CHAPTER V

  Black Margot

  HULL found File Ormson in the group that started across town to where the road from Norse elbowed east to enter. Hull had outsped the leisurely march of the Master, for there at the bend was the glittering army, now halted. Not even the woods runners had come into Ormiston town, for there they were too, lined in a brown-clad rank along the edge of the wood-lots beyond the nearer fields.

  They had made no effort, apparently, to take prisoners, but had simply herded the terrified defenders into the village. Joaquin Smith had done it again; he had taken a town without a single death or at least with no casualties than whatever injuries had come from bursting rifles and blazing powder.

  Suddenly Hull noticed something. “Where are the Confederation men?” he asked sharply.

  File Ormson turned gloomy eyes on him. “They’ve fled.” He scowled, then smiled. “You’re a brave fool, Hull. Think not hard of us. Those fiendish ticklers tickled away our courage. But they can kill as well as tickle; when there was need of it before Memphis they killed quickly enough.”

  Down the way there was some sort of stir. Hull descried the silver helmet of the Master. He dismounted and faced someone; it was—yes, old Marcus Ormiston. He left File Ormson and shouldered his way to the edge of the crowd that circled the two.

  Joaquin Smith was speaking.

  “And,” he said, “all taxes are to be forwarded to N’Orleans, including those on your own lands. Half of them I shall use to maintain my government, but half will revert to your own district. You are no longer eldarch, but for the present you may collect the taxes at the rate I prescribe.”

  Old Marcus was bitterly afraid.

  “My—my lands?” he whined.

  Joaquin Smith turned away indifferently, placed foot to stirrup, and swung upon his great white mare.

  Tall as Hull himself, more slender, but with powerful shoulders, he seemed no older than the late twenties, or no more than thirty at most, though that was only the magic of Martin Sair, for more than eighty years had passed since his birth in the mountains of Mexico. His bronzed body was like the ancient statues Hull had seen in Selui. and he looked hardly the fiend that most people thought him.

  He rose forward, and a dozen officers followed.

  A voice, a tense, shrieking voice sounded behind Hull.

  “You! It is Hull! It’s you!” It was Vail, teary-eyed and pale. “They said you were—” She broke off sobbing, clinging to him, while Enoch Ormiston watched sourly.

  He held her. “It isn’t as bad as it might be,” he consoled. “He wasn’t as severe as I feared.”

  “Severe!” she echoed. “Do you believe those mild words of his, Hull? First our taxes, then our lands, and next it will be our lives—or at least my father’s life. Don’t you understand? That was no eldarch from some enemy town, Hull. That was Joaquin Smith. Joaquin Smith! He and Black Margot and their craft! Look there!”

  He spun around. For a moment he saw nothing save the green-eyed youth who had turned death-laden eyes on him at Eaglefoot Flow mounted on the mighty black stallion. Youth? He saw suddenly that it was a woman—a girl, rather. Eighteen—twenty-five? He couldn’t tell. The sunset fell on a flaming black mop of hair, so black that it glinted blue—an intense, unbelievable black.

  Like Joaquin Smith she wore only a shirt and very abbreviated shorts. There was a curious grace in even the way she sat the idling steed, one hand on its haunches, the other on withers, the bridle dangling loose.

  “Black Margot!” Hull whispered. “Brazen! Half naked! What’s so beautiful about her?”

  As if she heard his whisper, she turned suddenly, her emerald eyes sweeping the crowd about him, and he felt his question answered. Her beauty was starkly incredible—audacious, outrageous.

 
Those eyes met Hull’s, and it was almost as if he heard an audible click. He saw recognition in her face, and she passed her glance casually over his mighty figure. If she acknowledged his gaze at all, it was by the faintest of all possible smiles of mockery as she rode coolly away toward Joaquin Smith.

  “She—she smiled at you, Hull!” gasped Vail. “I’m frightened.”

  His fascination was yielding now to a surge of hatred for Joaquin Smith, for the Princess, for the whole Empire. It was Vail he loved, and she was being crushed by these. An idea formed slowly as he stared down the street where Joaquin Smith had dismounted and was now striding into the little church. He heard an approving murmur sweep the crowd. That was simply policy, the Master’s worshipping in Ormiston church, a gesture to the crowd.

  He lifted the steel bow from his back and bent it. The spring was still in it. “Wait here!” he snapped to Vail, and strode up the street toward the church.

  Outside stood a dozen Empire men, and the Princess idled on her great black horse. He slipped across the churchyard, around behind where a tangle of. vines stretched toward the roof. He pulled himself hand over hand to the eaves, and thence to the peak.

  He crept forward to the base of the steeple. Now he must leave the peak and creep precariously along the steep slope around it. He reached the street edge and peered cautiously over.

  The Master was still within. Against his will he glanced at Black Margot, and even put cord to feather and sighted at her ivory throat. He could not loose the shaft.

  Below him there was a stir. Joaquin Smith came out and swung to his white horse. Now was the moment. Hull rose to his knees, hoping that he could remain steady on the sharp pitch of the roof. Carefully, carefully, he drew the steel arrow back.

  There was a shout. He had been seen, and a blue beam sent racking pain through his body. For an instant he bore it, then loosed his arrow and went sliding down the roof edge and over.

  He fell on soft loam. A dozen hands seized him, dragged him upright, thrust him out into the street. He saw Joaquin Smith still on his horse, but the glistening arrow stood upright like a plume in his silver helmet, and a trickle of blood was red on his cheek.

  But he wasn’t killed. He raised the helmet from his head, waved aside the cluster of officers, and with his own hands bound a white cloth about his forehead. Then he turned cool gray eyes on Hull.

  “You drive a strong shaft,” he said, and then recognition flickered in his eyes. “I spared your life some hours ago, did I not?”

  Hull said nothing.

  The conqueror turned away. “Lock him up,” he ordered coolly. “Let him make whatever preparations his religion requires, and then—execute him.”

  Above the murmur of the crowd Hull heard Vail Ormiston’s cry of anguish. He turned to smile at her.

  “I’m sorry,” he called gently. “I loved you, Vail.” Then he was being thrust away down the street.

  He was pushed into Hue Helm’s stonewalled tool shed. Hull drew himself up and stood passively by the door, before which stood two grim Empire men.

  One of them spoke. “Keep peaceful, Weed,”[6] he said in his N’Orleans drawl. “Go ahead with your praying.”

  “I do nothing,” said Hull. “The mountainies believe that a right life is better than a right ending, and right or wrong a ghost’s but a ghost anyway.”

  The guard laughed. “And a ghost you’ll be.”

  “If a ghost I’ll be,” retorted Hull, turning slowly toward him, “I’d sooner turn one—fighting!”

  He sprang suddenly, crashed a mighty fist against the arm that bore the weapon, thrust one guard upon the other, and overleaped the tangle into the dusk. As he spun to circle the house, something very hard smashed viciously against the back of his skull.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Hairiers

  FOR a brief moment Hull sprawled half stunned, then his muscles lost their paralysis and he thrust himself to his feet, whirling to face whatever assault threatened. In the doorway the guards still scrambled, but directly before him towered a rider on a black mount, and two men on foot flanked him. The rider, of course, was the Princess, her green eyes luminous in the dusk as she slapped a short sword into its scabbard. It was a blow from the flat of its blade that had felled him.

  She held now the blunt weapon of the blue beam. “Stand quiet, Hall Tarvish,” she said. “One flash will burst that stubborn heart of yours forever.”

  Perforce he stood quiet, his back to the wall of the shed.

  She spoke again, letting her glance flicker disdainfully over the two appalled guards. “The Master will be pleased,” she said contemptuously, “to learn that one unarmed Weed outmatches two men of his own cohort.”

  “But your Highness,” the nearer men faltered, “he rushed us unexpect—”

  “No matter,” she cut in, and turned back to Hull. For the first time now he really felt the presence of death as she said coolly, “I am minded to kill you.”

  “Then do it!” he snapped.

  “But I think also,” she resumed, “that your living might amuse me more than your death, and”—for the first time there was a breath of feeling in her voice—“God knows I need amusement!” Her tones chilled again. “I give you your life.”

  “Your Highness,” muttered the cowed guard, “the Master has ordered—”

  “I countermand the orders,” she said shortly, and then to Hull, “You are a fighter. Are you also a man of honor?”

  “If I’m not,” he retorted, “the lie that says I am would mean nothing to me.”

  She smiled coldly.

  “Well, I think you are, Hull Tarvish. You go free on your word to carry no weapons, and your promise to visit me this evening in my quarters at the eldarch’s home.” She paused. “Well?”

  “I give my word.”

  “And I take it. Away, all of you!” she ordered. She rode off toward the street.

  Hull let himself relax against the wall with a low “Whew!” Sweat started on his cold forehead, and his mighty muscles felt weak.

  He wanted to find Vail, to use her cool loveliness as an antidote for the dark poison of the beauty he had been facing. And then, at the gate, he drew back suddenly. A group of men in Empire garb came striding by, and among them, helmetless and with his head bound, moved the Master.

  His eyes fell on Hull.

  “You again!” he said. “How is it that you still live, Hull Tarvish?”

  “The Princess ordered it.”

  The frown faded. “So,” said Joaquin Smith slowly, “Margaret takes it upon herself to interfere somewhat too frequently. I suppose she also freed you?”

  “Yes, on my promise not to bear arms.” There was a curious expression in the face of the conqueror.

  “Well,” he said almost gently, “it was not my intention to torture you, but merely to have you killed for your treason. It may be that you will soon wish that my orders had been left unaltered.” He strode on into the eldarch’s dooryard.

  Hull hurried toward his room beside File Ormson’s shop, and there, tragic-eyed and mist-pale, he found Vail Ormiston. She was huddled on the doorstep with Enoch holding her against him.

  Vail looked up with uncomprehending eyes, stared for a moment without expression, and, then, with a little moan, crumpled and fainted.

  She was unconscious only a few moments, scarcely long enough for Hull to bear her into his room. There she lay now on his couch, clinging to his great hand, convinced at last of his living presence.

  “I think,” she murmured, “that you’re as deathless as Joaquin Smith, Hull. Tell me—tell me how it happened.”

  He told her. “Black Margot’s to thank for it,” he finished.

  Enoch cut in. “Here’s one for the Harriers, then,” he said sourly. “The pack needs him.”

  “The Harriers?” Hull looked up puzzled. “Oh, Hull, yes!” said Vail. “File Ormson’s been busy. The Harriers are what’s left of the army—the better citizens of Ormiston. The Master’s magic
didn’t reach beyond the ridge, and over the hills there’s still powder and rifles. And the spell is no longer in the valley, either. One of the men carried a cup of powder across the ridge, and it didn’t burn.”

  The better citizens, Hull thought smiling. She meant of course those who owned land and feared a loss of it such as Marcus Ormiston had suffered. But aloud he said only, “How many men have you?”

  “Oh, there’ll be several hundred with the farmers across the hills.” She looked into his eyes. “I know it’s a forlorn hope, Hull, but—we’ve got to try. You’ll help, won’t you?”

  “Of course. But all your Harriers can attempt is raids. They can’t fight the Master’s army.”

  “I know. I know it, Hull. It’s a desperate hope.”

  “Desperate?” said Enoch suddenly. “Hull, didn’t you say you were ordered to Black Margot’s quarters this evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—see here! You’ll carry a knife in your arm-pit. Sooner or later she’ll want you alone with her, and when that happens, you’ll slide the knife quietly into her ruthless heart! If you’ve courage!”

  “Courage!” he growled. “To murder a woman!”

  “Black Margot’s a devil!”

  Hull scowled. “I swore not to bear weapons.”

  “Swore to her!” snapped Enoch. “That needn’t bind you.”

  “My word’s given,” said Hull firmly. “I do not lie.”

  Vail smiled. “You’re right,” she whispered, and as Enoch’s face darkened, “I love you for it, Hull.”

  “Then,” grunted Enoch, “if it’s not lack of courage, do this. Lure her somehow across the west windows. We can slip two or three Harriers to the edge of the woodlot, and if she passes a window with the light behind her—well, they won’t miss.”

  Vail’s blue eyes pleaded. “That won’t be breaking your word, Hull. Please. She’s a sorceress. Please, Hull.”