The Buttoned Sky Part 20

"Nothing doing there. The G.o.ds are sitting on the horizon. Have you a thought?"

"See that mine?" He pointed with his gory pick. "Isn't that the western entrance of the great mine of Rosk?"

Jerran took his bearings. "It is."

"Then the other entrance is back yonder, and through it we can traverse the mine and come out that hole-above the squires."

Jerran nodded. "The best plan under the circ.u.mstances. Let's go."

Rack said, "I come too."

"Yes, all of us save four men," agreed Revel. "They must stay here to create noise and pretend to be forty people. Give us ten minutes, and the squires will find that mine shaft erupting death all over them!"

CHAPTER XV

The Mink has fought till nearly blind, Till almost deaf and dumb; Till all his strength is waned away, And all his senses numb.

At last his foemen give before His pick as swift as fire; Before him now there stands alone The cruel, and savage squire!

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

With thirty men at his back, Revel went down the valley at a crouch; slipped up the rock shelf to the eastern entrance of the great mine of Rosk, protected from the gentry's view by a chance outcropping of shale, and went into the darkness. The tunnel he sought was on the second level. He dropped down the ladder, unhooked a blue lantern to guide his way, and followed the narrow tunnel west.

Behind him the pad-pad of his weary men lifted m.u.f.fled echoes, and he tried to set such a pace as would take them swiftly to the hill above the squires, yet not tire them further nor wind them before the battle.

In the intense gloom he distinguished another lantern far ahead. As he approached, it appeared to move toward him. Was someone carrying it?

He tensed himself and swung the pick a little; but when the priest hurled himself at the Mink, bearing him back against Jerran, the Mink was caught by surprise. It had been no lantern, but the priest's glowing robe!

Revel's reflexes were still, if not hair-trigger, at least very quick.

This was a tough priest, though, a lean hardbitten man, with a fanatical long face that shoved itself into Revel's and clicked its teeth a quarter-inch short of his nose. The fellow's arms were tight about him, as they rolled sideways against the rock, Revel straining to bring his pick into play, clutching tight to the lantern, while the priest flailed hands like k.n.o.bby boulders against the Mink's nape and head. A blow of his knee, and Revel doubled up, gasping; struck out blindly with the lantern, caught the fellow in the belly, and made him curl up in his turn, choking for breath. Jerran and the others were blocked by Revel, and growled encouragement.

Revel straightened, nauseated and weak. The priest came at him. Revel raised his pickax and swung it--pain stabbed into his legs and belly--he bent involuntarily in the middle of his swing--and what should have been a neat spitting of the holy man's skull became a messy job of disemboweling. The fellow died gurgling, picking futilely at his spilt entrails. Revel crawled over him and went on once more, his troops behind him.

At the western entrance to Rosk's mine, he peered out for the first sign of the highborn enemies. A thrill of panic touched him as he saw they were not where they had been; then, poking his head into the dawn, he saw them advancing in a slow line toward the rise where his four men were raising shouts and taunts.

Orbs, he thought exultantly, here's a piece of luck! We'll take them in the back!

He slipped down the shelf, gesturing his men on. Running silently, he came within a yard of a squire in green and gold; then halted and cleared his throat loudly. The squire, startled, looked back.

"Ewyo!" he shrieked, whirling. "It's the Mink!"

"Come from h.e.l.l to slay you," said Revel between his teeth, and dealt a blow with his pick that clove the gentryman from brow to breastbone. The line of men had swiveled, and now shots rang out; at such close range even their guns could not miss. Half a dozen rebels fell, screaming.

And now the weary Revel was a brazen-throated fiend, brandis.h.i.+ng his pick, roaring, scalping one and braining the next, destroying with fresh vigor dredged up from the pits of his free soul. For now he had a strange certainty that the G.o.ds were done, and if he died in this moment he died emanc.i.p.ated.

Joy brought him strength such as he had never had. These squires, running off, loading their guns feverishly, firing, clubbing their weapons to stand and fight, what chance had they against him? He looked for Ewyo, but could not find him. _Let him not be dead_, he prayed. And then there was Rosk.

Rosk, red of visage, narrow of jaw, b.l.o.o.d.y about the thin mean mouth, facing him over a thrust-out gun. Revel jumped aside, but Rosk did not fire, only following him with the musket muzzle. "Don't bounce, Mink,"

he grated. "Stand and look around you. Your men are falling faster than autumn leaves."

Revel glanced behind, and at that instant Rosk fired. It was a treacherous trick, and by poetic justice it was his last. The ancient gun, overheated by long use, could not take the overcharge of powder in the sh.e.l.l. It blew up, its barrel twisting into twin spirals of metal, its stock driving back into the guts of the squire, fragments of hot iron spraying his face and chest. Rosk had no time to howl, but went down like a lightning-struck birch. Revel felt the slug, or a piece of the shattered gun, burn along his cheek.

What was one more wound atop the uncounted number he had? The Mink laughed, turning to his men.

Of the thirty, Rack and Jerran and one other remained. Each was engaged with a squire, his two friends grappling without weapons, the miner swinging a pick against a clubbed gun. All the others were dead or dying. Ewyo must be dead somewhere in the valley, or else he had not been here at all.

Revel hurried tiredly to the nearest combatants, let his pick go licking out over Jerran's small shoulder, tore off half the head of the squire.

Rack crowed triumphantly as he throttled his man. The miner had won his fight. They were finished.

The four of them limped toward the hill of John's machine.

Then there came a pounding of hoofs on greensward behind them. Revel turned. It was a lone rider, galloping furiously down upon them. He saw, with an incredulous gasp, that it was Ewyo of Dolfya.

"Go on," he said urgently. "Leave me, comrades."

"You young _fool_," barked Jerran. But he took Rack's arm and pulled the giant forward, leaving Revel standing alone with his face toward Ewyo.

The stallion was pulled up short, and Ewyo stared down at him. "I hoped I would get here in time," he said.

"You're late. Your world is broken, Ewyo." Revel realized as he said it that he was fatigued to the point of not giving a d.a.m.n whether he lived or not. Still there was a yearning to fight this devil on horseback.

"Shoot, Ewyo. I shall kill you all the same."

Ewyo raised his gun, hesitated, then said, "Is there only myself, then, and you, Mink, in all the world?"

"In all the world, Ewyo."

"Will you give me a pick?"

Revel started. "You are no miner. You can't fight with a pickax."

"I can fight with anything I can hold." He threw the gun on the gra.s.s.

"Give me a pick," he commanded, leaping from his nag.

Revel stooped and took up the weapon of a dead man. It was a good pick, with a longer handle than the Mink's own. He reached it out to Ewyo, holding it by the head, and the squire took it and stepped back a pace.

"When you're ready, Mink."

"Now, Ewyo."

They circled each other, warily watching the eyes and arms of the enemy.