The Buttoned Sky Part 10

"I've been in it before."

Jann clawed at her. "You haven't! Even I was only there once...."

"Even you. My, my." Nirea walked on, Jann tugging at her futilely. "I have to talk to him."

"Stop! d.a.m.n you, you whelp, you can't--"

With precision and force, Nirea socked her sister in the left eye. Then she strode down the hall and knocked on the door of the private room and immediately went in.

The sight that greeted her, completely incomprehensible, was still as revolting and horrifying a thing as she had ever seen. Her father lay back in a big armchair, relaxed and half-asleep to judge from his hanging arms and barely open eyes. A curious sound, a kind of brrm-brrm, came from his chest.

Resting on his throat was a golden globe. Two of its tentacles were pushed almost out of sight into his nostrils, two more dipped into his gaping mouth. The remaining four waved slowly above the squire's face.

Nirea screamed.

The globe floated upward, slowly, grudgingly. Its tentacles withdrew from the squire. Ewyo stirred and opened his pale eyes to glare at her.

A flush of hideous fury spread up his cheeks. He struggled to his feet and lurched over and slapped her face, so that she ceased to scream and fell against the wall, moaning. The squire stood over her.

"You meddlesome b.i.t.c.h, I ought to have you cut up for the hounds!"

"In the name of the Orbs," she said, whimpering, "what were you doing?"

He grimaced at her like a madman. "You're not supposed to be told till you're twenty, and you don't do it yourself till you reach twenty-eight."

"_Do it myself._"

"Certainly." He gave a humorless snort of laughter. "D'you think we don't pay for the privilege of being gentry, you fool? Now leave me alone!" He lifted her and flung her at the door. The golden sphere hovered motionless in the air. "Never speak of what you saw, and never ask another question of me till your twentieth birthday ... if you live to reach it!"

She fumbled the door open and staggered into the hall, and wept there with awful tearing sobs, while her sister Jann looked at her and giggled hysterically.

CHAPTER VIII

The Mink he seeks the gentryla.s.s; He eyes the G.o.ds above; He laughs their might to scorn, the while He hunts his highborn love.

A fearsome lion bars the way, The Mink he cannot pa.s.s; He lifts his pick with fearful rage, And blood besmears the gra.s.s!

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

Revel was plowing through the brush like a wound-crazed bear. Jerran came behind, shouting directions, for Revel's impatience would not be stilled enough for him to follow anyone, especially the small Jerran, whose head rang, he said, from the skull-cracking blow he'd been given by Rack, and who was slowed as a consequence.

Revel got farther and farther in advance, tearing with his pick at vines and creepers, trampling small trees, making enough noise for seven men.

Dimly he remembered much of the trail hereabouts, and at last he was so far ahead of Jerran that he couldn't hear him.

He came into a tiny glade, ceilinged with branches of the oaks. Across its width, some twenty feet from him, a huge woods lion lay above the torn corpse of a man. One of the rebels from the meeting, thought Revel, who wasn't so lucky as most. The lion looked up and growled.

Its mane was long and bur-tangled, black as sin; its body seven hundred pounds of muscle and bone, was longer than Revel was tall. He greeted it joyously, a foe to grapple with at last!

It came to its feet, challenge on challenge rumbling in its ma.s.sive chest. He drew a gun, then stuck it back. His hands ached for work, more work than the pulling of a trigger. He ported his pickax. "Come along, old monster," he said. "We'll see how a mink and a lion can mix it!"

It stalked two steps, gathered itself for a leap; he didn't wait, but sprang forward to meet it. The lion rose, checking its pounce with surprise, for surely no man had ever charged _it_ before. The pick swung down as it struck sideways at Revel, catching it in one shoulder, tearing the flesh like dough. It screeched, clawing for him.

One of the scimitar claws caught his side, gas.h.i.+ng s.h.i.+rt and skin. Revel whirled, yelling, flung himself on the animal's back, grabbed a handful of mane with his left hand, and buried the pick in the center of the woods lion's skull. The carca.s.s lost its stiffness, sagged and fell, leg bones cracking like gun shots as the tremendous body came down upon them. Revel sprang to one side, lighting on his feet.

"Not bad," said Jerran drily, coming into the glade. "If you're quite through, Revel, we might be going along?"

"I had to find out if I'm really the Mink," explained Revel, retrieving his pick from the splintered bone of the lion's head. "The Mink could slay a woods lion with one blow, it says in the ballads. This fellow took me two blows."

Jerran said, his face twisted, "d.a.m.n you, don't get c.o.c.ky on me! You're important now, no dirty miner, but a leader! If you haven't got the brains to lead, at least keep still, follow my orders, and be a figurehead. But don't take chances for the fun of it, because your lousy hulk may be the salvation of man, despite yourself!"

Revel hung his head. Jerran looked at him a moment. "Nerves, that's it, and excitement, and eagerness to do something with your big hands.

You're young, and I shouldn't expect strict attention to duty of you.

But I _do_, blast it! Now march!"

When they had traversed the forest, they emerged a little west of Dolfya, on a stretch of dirt road bordered by maples. The lane seemed deserted. Here and there in the b.u.t.toned sky were the bright dots of G.o.ds pa.s.sing back and forth between their abodes. Jerran led him purposefully down the road.

Suddenly a man came bursting out from the maples and ran headlong into them, knocking the small man back into Revel's arms. It was Dawvys, clothing disheveled, mouth agape with running. "They are after me!" he panted. "Ewyo sentenced me to the hounds. I ran, but they're after me!"

Revel hauled out his pick. "Look there," he said, jerking his head upward. "Concentration of orbs above us."

"They point the way for the squires," grunted Jerran. "I don't hear the dogs, though."

"Ewyo wants me alive."

"He won't get you!"

"Will I not?" Ewyo himself had stepped quietly out from the trees, directly in their path. In puce velvet, a great trumpet-mouthed gun in his hands, he stood beefy and menacing before them. "Do you tell me I won't, Revel the Mink?" He chuckled icily at the looks of amazement.

"D'you think I wouldn't have rucker spies? D'you think we don't know about your foolish hideaway in the forest, and couldn't clap our hands down on all of you in an hour if we wished to?" Two more squires, tall and red-faced and prominently armed, came out behind him, "Gentles,"

said Ewyo with mock politeness, "I give you Revel, the Mink, and two minor henchmen."

Revel lifted his pick and came forward, roaring defiance. Ewyo's gun thrust out at his belly. "Don't die now," said the big squire pleadingly. "I want you for a fox, Revel."

Jerran s.n.a.t.c.hed a handgun from his belt. One of the squires loosed off at him instantly, the slug striking the handgun more by accident than design, sending it spinning as Jerran howled and gripped his numbed fingers.

"Nice shooting, Rosk," said Ewyo. Revel still stood with his pick raised, wondering what his chances of a swipe at Ewyo would be. "Put it down," said the squire. "Drop it!"

"Drop it, Revel," said Jerran. The Mink did so, and Rosk picked it up.

"Come along," said Ewyo then. "I have some excellent torture rooms I'd like you to inspect. Personally!" With a grin like a weasel's, he motioned them through the maples. Several others of the gentry came up, and the three rebels were surrounded and marched off to the great house of Ewyo of Dolfya.

The room was large, of field stone, set below the house like a mole's den; portions of the walls were black with age-old soot, from what h.e.l.lish fires Revel did not like to guess, and the rafters were grimed and looked like axe-blades, darkened with dry blood, ready to fall upon him. One wall had thongs hanging from it, beside a nine-lashed whip hanging on a post. Candles illumined other instruments, the purpose of all of which was torture.