by Don Wilcox
“No, Miss Melinda and brothers, we mustn’t be misguided by the king’s act He postponed an unjust execution—yes. But don’t let that soften your feelings toward him. Why did he do it? Because he believes this fellow will help him find Miss Melinda. Not out of a sense of mercy.”
“You have good reason to be cautious, Nadoff,” Mazoweb reminded the leader. “By this time they’re on your trail for selling the jewels. They’ll guard your shop and arrest anyone who comes asking for you.”
“We’ve started the warnings circulating,” Nadoff said. “The time to strike is near at hand.”
“S-s-sh.”
Marcia could hear soft footsteps approaching. At a little distance the rescuers identified themselves. Nadoff stirred the coals. The dim light barely outlined them. Not two, but three.
Two of them were the members who had gone on the errand.
The third was the tall, broad-shouldered “slave” who had so narrowly missed his execution that afternoon.
King Arvo looked around at the strange group of people and knew that these were some of his less fortunate subjects. He was full of confused feelings about what had happened through this terrible day. He was burning over Nitti—Nitti, the traitor! He was gee leg so much red that this very firelight before his eyes was pale in comparison.
But these folks thought he was a slave. And they believed they had rescued him from a delayed execution.
Well, they were right on that count. It could have been murder tonight as easily as execution this afternoon.
They were talking about him. If he could only get his mind oft Nitti and the palace and listen to them. They were trying to get him to talk—to tell them the inside news from the palace.
And since he was too groggy to enter their discussions, they allowed him to lie there quietly, as relaxed as a sack of meal, warming his face at the low fire.
They were talking about him. About King Arvo. Words of hatred against the king.
The awfulness of his situation needled him. He came up on his elbows, looked around at their intense, determined faces. They were planning a rebellion! They had rescued him from the king I Prom himself! And they were going to make the king and Nitti pay for their crimes against the people! This was rare! His enemies confiding in him!
Then he rested his gaze upon the lovely peasant woman. She was speaking. That voice! That was Marcia Melinda!
Not dead? What had happened?
She was speaking to him. She was taking him to be the American slave. She was asking him to promise to help with the fight against the palace and later there would be a chance to go back to the earth—if they could win their battle against slavery!
He blurted, “You’re not dead!”
“Ah, he talks,” said the big, deep-throated leader they called Nadoff. “He’s coming out of it.”
“I’m not dead,” Marcia Melinda was smiling through her disguise. “So you knew what the king and Nitti tried? Well, they missed me. I parachuted down before they struck my air spinner. Later it crashed. But I was already on the ground unharmed.”
King Arvo exhaled in a deep breath of relief. “Thank the stars!” he mumbled It was if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He sat up. He stared at his slave clothes and passed his hand over his head. What a peculiar feeling, that American hair style which they had fixed on his head. The earth girl wouldn’t know his real identity. After all, she had seen that American for only a few minutes. He had given his name as Joe Peterson; she had asked to have him accompany her; and then as she was about to go, she had kissed him, rather tenderly, Arvo thought.
“And she thinks I’m Joe Peterson,” he said to himself. “She’s remembering our one minute of friendship.” Arvo took a curious delight in this thought . . . But he was alarmed by their talk of a revolt against the king.
“I knew you’d be ready to help,” Marcia was saying, “after all you’ve gone through.”
“You want me to help fight the king?” Again he looked.at his costume of slave rags. He swallowed hard.
“How about it?” Nadoff asked him pointedly. “Are you willing?”
“It’s a strange idea,” Arvo said uncertainly.
“There’s nothing strange about it. If you’ve been through as much as the average slave, you don’t need today’s narrow escape as an added argument. You must know how all the slaves feel. Haven’t you been beaten the same as the others?”
They started to examine his bare back for stripes of the whip, but he resisted, turning to the light. He was getting the idea, however, and he mumbled that he supposed he had been through as much as any of the slaves.
“I knew how you’d feel,” said Marcia. “Free American citizens don’t knuckle down to slave masters. What was your name—Joe?—Joe Peterson? You’re uncomfortable, aren’t you. Maybe the men can offer you a blanket. And food—are you hungry?
It wasn’t like the elaborate care he was used to at the palace, but it was the best they had to offer, and he was grateful—deeply grateful to be in the hands of friendly people.
Friendly? Only because they believed he was Joe Peterson. Suppose he told them the truth. Then they would be as eager to kill him as Nitti had become. They would win their revolt instantly by forcing him to grant their demands.
Or would he be able to summon a few squads of loyal Sashes and have them executed on the spot?
Executed? That word stabbed through King Arvo with an entirely new meaning. He had almost been on the receiving end. It had become an ugly word all at once. And it used to be such a convenient word.
They smothered their fire and gathered their camp things together. It was time to get on. Dawn mustn’t find them this close to the fortress grounds.
They hiked through the darkness. Marcia was at Arvo’s side, and they both stayed close within the small party. Arvo didn’t want to miss a word of what was being said.
“You’re not well,” Marcia had commented. “You don’t seem the same. But I can understand, after what you’ve been through.”
Yes, and if she had known who he was and what he was going through now—
The two men who had rescued him were speaking, telling of their long vigil around the palace waiting for a chance to slip in and pick up this “slave.” It seemed that they had watched the prime minister and the “king” all through the evening hours. But at length they had had an unaccountable piece of luck. Apparently someone had released this prisoner by mistake and moved him out onto the grounds—someone who looked like a cross between a boy and a frog, obviously one of the freakish victims of the lavender vine.
King Arvo couldn’t refrain from asking a question. “You say you watched the king?”
“Certainly we watched him.”
“What was he doing?”
“Talking with officials and townsmen and slavemasters around the conference table.”
“What did he tell them?”
“Practically nothing. He complained of a bad throat.”
Marcia, hiking along at Arvo’s side, touched his arm meaningfully. “He was probably waiting for Nitticello to give him the answers.”
“Oh, is that his way?” Arvo asked. “He’s always yielding to Nitticello,” Marica said. “If he ever did anything else, Nitti would probably turn the palace upsidedown.”
“The king must be very weak,” said King Arvo, feeling the uncertainty of walking into a nest of lightning.
Marcia answered carefully. “I’m not sure that it’s weakness. I’m afraid he began by being too kind and considerate, and Nitti knew how to take advantage right from the start. Frankly, there were many thing? about the king that I liked. He has a certain quiet strength, I believe, that he’s never used to advantage.”
The leader, Nadoff, cleared his throat. “Careful.”
“But I believe it,” said Marcia. “Haven’t I a right to say what I believe?”
“The king is our sworn enemy,” said Nadoff. “As long as there’s a slave in Karridonza I have no use
for the king. Look what he’s done to this poor fellow.”
“Stop,” King Arvo said. “Light a lantern. Please.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Nadoff asked. He stopped the party and someone lighted a lantern. “What’s wrong?”
“Hold the light up to my face,” Arvo said. “Look at me. I’m not Joe
Peterson. I’m not a slave. I’m the king.”
“What?” Nadoff gave a deep scowl. He was shaking his head slowly.
“Believe me, I’m King Arvo. I had to tell you. I couldn’t let you go on talking.”
Nadoff said, looking to Marcia, “Poor fellow! The strain has been too much.”
Some of the other men laughed, but Nadoff quieted them. He had seen an overwrought slave do this very same thing once before, he said. It was a tragedy—a mind snapping this way. “We’ll have to take care of him. “He’s not the same Joe Peterson,” Marcia said slowly, cutting him with her steady, penetrating eyes. “I don’t know . . .”
“Put out the light,” Nadoff said. “We’ve not time to loiter.” And they hiked on into the night.
CHAPTER XIV
They moved westward along the crest of the ridge above the valley. Dawn came. They descended into the shadows and kept going.
The day brought several perilous encounters with other travelers. Some, like themselves, were returning from the execution that didn’t happen. And if these parties were known to be in sympathy with the revolt, there were warm exchanges of plans and confidences.
But the reports came from all directions that groups of Sashes were out on a search for the “peasant woman” who had turned her gifts into cash for the benefit of rebels.
Scouts moved over the land in fortress air spinners, and Nadoff and the others were continually on the alert to hide Marcia and themselves whenever searchers came their way.
Marcia exchanged her peasant woman’s outfit for the clothing of a townsman, so there was less likelihood that scouts, flying over, would guess there was a woman in the party. She changed her make-up, and hid her hair under a cap.
But with the best of precautions, however, they couldn’t avoid the net completely. A court car rounded the comer, where the road passed through a wooded area, and it was on them before they could hide.
It was loaded with Sashes, looking tough and belligerent. The king gulped. He saw the number as the car approached. He knew the captain of the outfit. Was it possible that he himself wouldn’t be recognized?
Before he could get his wits together, Nadoff was snapping, “Down, you. Be tying my shoe. I’m your master.” The king obeyed. By the time the car came alongside, Nadoff, his back turned to the highway, was bending to direct the “slave.” Was tongue-lashing him, in fact. Cursing him. The king was stung by it all. He wasn’t used to being ordered around. But Nadoff knew what he was doing. He gave the king a slap across the head, and the king staggered back, more from surprise than pain.
It was just enough to distract the Sashes from their purpose; and later Nadoff explained that there was nothing that could divert Sashes so effectively as a slave-beating scene.
“They’ve done so much of it themselves that the sight of it draws them like a magnet. I hated to strike you, Joe Peterson. I know you’re sick and your mind’s a little dizzy. But you saw how it worked.”
It had worked. The Sashes had evidently never guessed but what Nadoff was a slave master. It was rebels they were looking for. They had stopped one of the straggling members of the party long enough to ask if they’d seen a girl disguised as a peasant woman, or if they knew a merchant named Nadoff. The answers had been elusive enough. And Marcia, trembling in her disguise as a man, had taken their glares without wincing. The car had backed up, and one of the Sashes had jumped out and given the king three sharp lashes with a whip. That had satisfied the lot of them, and they had driven on.
“I’ll have them in chains,” the king muttered to himself stubbornly as the party moved along.
“You can’t let a little whipping like that bother you,” Nadoff said. “Under that delusion yet? Still think you’re the king?”
“He may be the king,” Marcia said.
“No king is a king unless he’s wearing the official robes,” Nadoff said. “Joe Peterson, I’m not saying that you don’t have kingly qualities. But these Sashes aren’t impressed by men. They’re impressed by crowns. Just lucky for you they were looking for the girl and not an escaped slave.”
“We’re going to have to hide, aren’t we, your majesty?” Marcia asked, looking through him.
“Yes,” King Arvo said, smearing the bleeding lines across his side. “We’ll hide long enough for me to take a lesson in being a slave. There are several things about it that I need to know.”
CHAPTER XV
In the palace of the king’s fortress, high noon shone through the shiny glass windows and lighted the red goblet on the tray that had been set before Joe Peterson, “Acting King.”
Joe had decided not to drink the wine that had been served with his luncheon. When the attendant came in, Joe offered it to him, and the attendant downed it at one gulp and was very well pleased over the favor all day long.
Joe’s refusal of the wine was an index to his case of the jitters. He knew instinctively that something was about to happen.
“I damn well wish I could make something happen,” he said to himself. And he was thinking in terms of his temporary crown. It was a haunting sensation, being in power. But it wouldn’t last, he thought. Already Nitti had learned what a complete failure Joe had turned out to be, in the role of a puppet dangling on a string. The sore throat hadn’t kept Joe from talking. After the recent conferences with some of the townspeople, the rumor was going the rounds that three or four important citizens of the kingdom had discovered they would rather do business with the king than with the prime minister. “No, it can’t last long.”
He looked out the window. Six times this morning he had looked down at the ledge, wondering whether that lavender thing was there, invisible.
Twice he had actually reached down to the ledge and brushed his hands along the stone. Now he was tempted to try it again.
He slipped through the window and allowed his feet to dangle toward the ledge. . . Swish! His elbows skidded off the sill and he fell.
He tried to catch himself on the ledge. A mad scramble. His hands missed. They missed because he was being lifted.
He swung upward through the air, caught in the clutches of a power he couldn’t see.
He looked back at the receding palace. Under the noon sun the trail of lavender was barely visible. The vine was carrying him out over the valley. “Hi there, slave. How’s your majesty? Didn’t know you had company, did you?”
And there was Pudgy, sliding down what must have been an arm of the vine, though Joe couldn’t see it.
“Pudgy! Where are you taking me?”
“I’m taking myself down to the marshes. Come along?”
“No. Take me back.”
“Talk to the vine, don’t talk to me,” Pudgy answered. Then with a weird laugh right up the scale and down again, “Hey, don’t look so scared, you’re the king, you know.”
“That’s why I need to get back—”
“That’s why you need to go out and visit your people. So long, King.” The vine bent low, a hazy ribbon waving over the green marshes. Pudgy swooped over the surface, let go and dived into the water with a happy splash. Then Joe was being carried on, up and up, across the ridges to the west of the fortress. For the first time, after his many months of enslavement, he was getting a bird’s eye view of the kingdom.
After several minutes of riding westward, crossing under clouds that made the vine momentarily visible, he began to descend. It was like an Invisible slipperslide. He tried to hold on. The vine took that responsibility out of his hands. The substance was as steamy as a rope of cloud.
Down, down a long curved sloping course—and then the vine grew stouter and gathered around him lik
e pillows and bore him up just enough to break his fall.
Thump. His two feet struck the ground just below a low cliff. And there was Marcia Melinda!
She gave a little scream of fright. Then, “Oh, it’s you. You, I mean.” She was looking at his clothes, his royal boots, his medals, his false mustache and spade-shaped beard. “Or is it you?”
“It’s Joe, if you remember . . . Joe Peterson, the slave.”
“That’s what I meant. You see, I just talked with the king a minute ago and he was worrying because he didn’t have a royal costume. But where did you come from?”
He dodged the question long enough to give her the questioning eye of a guest who isn’t sure whether he should have dropped in. This was a hiding place, apparently—a small alcove in the low cliff. A few yards farther down were other depressions in the bank of stone, and he guessed, from the low mumble of voices in that direction, that a party of fugitives from justice had made camp here.
“Nice bit of scenery you have here,” he observed. “You’re far enough from the highway that you ought to be safe. Are you traveling alone? I mean you and the king?”
“I can trust you, Joe Peterson, can’t I?”
He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. He hoped to goodness she could trust him! He wasn’t telling her, but the very sight of her sent a wild thrill through him. She had beautiful hair, he thought. She was combing it when he barged in. She was dressed in the clothes of a townsman, but she looked wonderfully feminine to him.
“Of course, I can trust you,” she said. “After you saved the king’s life from Nitti, out there on the execution grounds—”
“Were you there?”
“I was hiding beyond the grounds, waiting.”
“How did you know it was I?”
“I didn’t until this very minute,” she said, looking intently at him. “You traded, of course! I should have known.”
“Nitti traded us. We hadn’t anything to say about it.”