The Buttoned Sky Part 21

"Why didn't you shoot me?" asked Revel in wonder.

"Too unsporting," growled the beefy squire, his pale eyes squinting with strain. "A gentleman doesn't take advantages."

Revel laughed. It was too ridiculous a statement to merit an answer. He made a feint, Ewyo parried skillfully. Then the squire brought his pick down in a looping arc. His reach was as long as Revel's, and the pick gave him an advantage. Revel jumped back, slashed sideways and missed.

They circled.

"The G.o.ds will win out," grunted Ewyo.

"Their day is done. We are aided by the Ancient Kingdom."

"Superst.i.tion! Things have always been as they are."

Slash, hack, parry and retreat. "Not as they are now, Squire Ewyo."

Ewyo dropped his guard, Revel came in to gut him. Too late he saw the trick, and Ewyo's pick sliced across his s.h.i.+n, a shallow cut that nicked the bone. He jabbed with the flat of the blade, struck Ewyo in the chest, and jerking his pick sidewise and back, tore velvet coat and satin weskit and drew blood. Ewyo cried out.

Revel summoned his strength and began a series of flas.h.i.+ng swings, which Ewyo parried frantically, backing across the gra.s.s. Blood spurted from cheek and hand as the rebel's deadly weapon glinted dully in blurred movement before the squire's eyes.

Then the squire rallied, and his power being greater than Revel's now, if his skill were less, he drove the Mink back in turn.

There came a blow that turned the pick in Revel's hands, sending its point down to the side; Revel recovered, but the squire threw up his arm and brought down his blade with such force that the off-balance Mink could not turn it wholly. It sliced over his ribs, drove through the flesh of his hip.

Pain so hideous as to make him dizzy and ill knifed the Mink. In that moment he knew if he did not make one superb effort he was done.

Conquering agony, he swung up the pick before Ewyo could recover from the vicious downswing. With a noise like a rock hurled into a rotten melon, the pick tore through cloth and flesh to lodge in Ewyo's belly, half its head buried in the screaming squire.

Ewyo tore it from the Mink's hands as he fell, and writhed about it, curled like a stricken serpent.

The Mink dropped to one knee beside him, head bowed with nausea and relief. "You were a brave man, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Ewyo, strong in his fas.h.i.+on as Revel in his, stiffened his body so that he could look straight up at his killer. "Not--especially brave," he ground out. "You see--Mink--I had no--ammunition--for the gun...."

His pale eyes filmed over, and Revel staggered off, leaving him for the crows and worms of the valley.

When he had come, dragging himself like a wounded stag up the rock shelf, they stared at him in silence for a long minute. Lady Nirea at last said, "But you are dying, Revel!"

"Not for a good many years," he grinned.

Jerran said, "Aye, cut him a thousand times and he'll make fresh blood from that valiant heart!"

John called, "Look there, Mink!" Down the dawn wind rode half a dozen golden orbs, high enough to be out of reach of their picks, low enough to observe them. Revel gritted, "Blast 'em!"

"You can always shoot later, son. Let's hear what they want."

Reluctantly Revel waved a crimsoned hand to stop his gunmen. The globes halted a few feet above the machine. Fingers of thought pried into the Mink's head, and automatically up went his screen.

Then the cerebral prying ceased. John murmured, "They're talking to me."

Revel watched the silent exchange of thoughts. What if the obscene things got hold of John's mind. Anxiously he scanned the strong face for signs of fading will. At last he could stand it no longer, and was about to order a volley, when John said, "I think that's it, Mink."

"What happened?" they all asked eagerly.

"The things parleyed. They see they can't get close enough to smash the machine--that last explosion was a desperate try at cras.h.i.+ng a saucer with a bomb ready to trip, and it didn't work--so they want to talk. I gave 'em a skinful." He chuckled. "Told 'em there were men of my time wakening all over the world, with machines to defeat them totally; they know whom they're dealing with now, and they're going to talk it over.

Mink, that's the end of the G.o.ds, with luck! They won't face a force of twenty-first century scientists. They haven't got it, they just haven't got it."

"But they'll discover that you lied," said Nirea. "They'll get the thrower, sooner or later, and then we're at their mercy again."

"I didn't lie, girl. All over this hemisphere there are caves like the one I came from, with scientists held in suspension, plenty of machines from our time, and knowledge that will bring your world out of these Dark Ages into another Renaissance! I have the locations in the papers that were interred in the casket under me, and we'll send parties out today to find 'em. This is a new world dawning this morning." He leaned over and kissed her enthusiastically, and Revel, who would have split another man down the brisket for that, did not mind at all. "Your globes are done, Mink. The gentry and the priests will be easy prey. You can probably scare them into surrender after last night."

Jerran said, "Here be men on horses, Mink." Revel turned and saw a great cavalcade of stallioned men sweep down the valley, and in a moment of great joy saw that they were all ruckers, carrying dead G.o.ds on pikes and singing the Ballad of the Mink as they came.

The Lady Nirea was in his arms, kissing his lips that were caked with three kinds of blood; and Revel the Mink forgot the pain in his torn body, the utter weariness of brain and muscle, and everything else except what was good and sweet and wonderful.

Three months had pa.s.sed, and the leaders of the successful rebellion of Earth were sitting in a drinking-house (legal now) downing toasts to various people and events. Revel and his wife Nirea sat at the head of the board, and down the sides ranged their friends and lieutenants: the giant Rack and the tiny Jerran, Dawvys and a dozen others, with John Klapham at the foot.

"To the end of the globes," said John, his tongue a trifle thick by now.

"By gad, you brew potent stuff in these times! To the G.o.ds' finis.h.!.+"

They drank that standing, roaring it out gleefully.

Revel said, "It was a sight to see, that--thousands upon thousands of b.u.t.tons, all sweeping into the sky and vanis.h.i.+ng into dots and then nothing ... and here's to the gentry they took with 'em!"

"How many went?" asked Nirea, though she knew as well as he.

"Seven thousand and four hundred and ten, squires and their ladies, electing to travel out of the world for promised power in another!"

Revel grinned wolfishly. "And here's to the priests who weren't allowed to go, and so have become miners and know what it is to sweat!"

Rack stood up, looming gigantic above them. "Here's to the men awakening now all over this country--the men of the Ancient Kingdom!"

"And the things they can teach us," added Jerran.

"And a toast to the most important of those things--the art of tobacco growing!" shouted John gaily.

They sat down after that, and Revel said to John affectionately, "If it hadn't been for you, friend, we'd still be ruckers and worse. You gave us a new world."

"Rot. I gave you a technical skill--you furnished the brains, brawn and motivating force, a legend come to life. I was only one more weapon in your hand."

Lady Nirea touched the Mink's arm tenderly. "We'll all be weapons in your hands now, Revel. Tools to make a civilization again--to make the last verse of the old song come true."

"Let's sing it," said Dawvys, a little in his cups by now. "Let's all sing it loud."

"The G.o.ds have flown beyond the sky, The priests toil underground; The gentry's curse is lifted free, And all our foes are downed....

"Now over all the Mink he reigns, And gone are rank and caste; The ruck is lifted from the mire-- And we are free at last!"