The Buttoned Sky Part 5

He knew now, for she had just bitten him on the rump. He hoisted her a little higher and absently smacked her b.u.t.tocks. "Lie quiet, d.a.m.n you."

She lay quiet. He went on marveling at Jerran's commanding new presence, but said nothing. He was behind a born leader now.

Jerran said, "Priest, tell your G.o.ds to stop trying to get at my mind.

I've shut it off from 'em. You follow Ewyo."

The priest turned on his heel. The servants scuttled after their lord, and Rack sat down on a rock and pulled at his beard, looking thoughtful.

"I don't think it'd be overstating it," he said mildly, "to tell you two you're in trouble."

"So are the gentry, brother," Revel answered.

"That'll be seen. Well," Rack said, squinting his good eye, "I'll be seeing you. Or not, as the case may be."

"Come along," said Jerran, and walked off, followed by Revel with the Lady Nirea.

Ewyo had vanished. His servants, uncertain, were grouped under the ladder, and the priest was mounting up, his radiant robe billowing to show scrawny, hairless legs. The two G.o.ds lifted through the murk.

"Ewyo," said Revel, and Jerran interrupted. "Is gone. Did you expect to hold him captive, lad?" He shook his yellow skull. "Too much trouble for two men. Up you go."

Revel sprang at the ladder and was soon crowding the heels of the priest. That wors.h.i.+pful man reached the top of the ladder, turned and knelt and thrust his face into Revel's. It was a vicious face, hawk-nosed and mean. Now it barred his way, gloating openly.

"You're dog-meat, rebel. A shame to kill the Lady Nirea with you, but the G.o.ds order it." He reached out a hand and planted it firmly on Revel's face.

Hanging to the rung with his left hand, balancing the girl on the left shoulder, Revel shot up his right and gripped the priest's wrist and heaved up and back, ducking his head at the same time.

The robed man flew into s.p.a.ce with a screech.

"Look out below!" roared Revel, and, chuckling, he finished his climb and gave a hand to Jerran. "Where now?" From far below came the crunch of a carca.s.s landing at the foot of the ladders, on the lowest level of the mine shaft. "One less priest!"

"Follow me, lad," said Jerran, and dashed for the entrance. There was no G.o.d on duty there, but the two that had accompanied the priest were mounting into the b.u.t.toned sky.

The girl was light on his shoulder, a delicious burden, he thought. He hoped he could keep her. Just how, or where, he did not bother to consider. Things were moving too fast for plans, at least plans about women.

Jerran led him up over the crest of the hill above the mine. Beyond lay the uncharted forests of Kamden. He had hunted mink and set rabbit snares on the edges of it since boyhood, but had never seen its depths.

So far as he knew, no man had.

As they started toward the wood, the beat of hoofs became audible in the quiet countryside. Revel couldn't see the horses, but he began to run, easily and fast, with Lady Nirea bobbing and swearing on his shoulder.

Jerran kept pace.

Then they came up over the rim of the hill behind him, a pack of the gentry on their huge fierce stallions, with a couple of hundred-pound hunting dogs in advance, baying and yapping. The old terrifying viewing call rose: "Va-yoo hallo! Va-yoo hallo allo-allo!" Thousands of the ruck had heard the whooping cry moments before their grisly deaths. Revel tightened his grip on the perfect legs of Nirea, and pounded on. He'd ditch her if need be, but as long as he could hang on to her, by Orbs....

The forest was closer. He could pick out individual trees, oak and silver birch and poplar, standing thick in the matted carpet of thicket and trash. A broad trail opened to the left.

"That way," gasped Jerran, pointing.

"The horses can follow down that road!"

"Don't argue--d.a.m.n you--lad--just run!"

The gentry came yelling in their wake. A gun banged. Were they shooting at him? Not with the woman slung down his back. The priests might sacrifice a squire's daughter without a murmur, but no gentryman ever harmed a gentrywoman under any circ.u.mstances. It was likely a warning.

That was why they kept whistling the dogs back, too, for the enormous brutes could rip a human to scarlet rags in twenty seconds, and not even a squire's command stopped them once they'd tasted blood.

He had reached the trees and the wide path. He plunged into it, Jerran beside him; the older man was panting heavily now, but running as strongly as ever. "A little behind me, Revel," he husked out. "See you follow me close."

Jerran knew where he was headed ... Revel surrendered all initiative to him. The ground thundered beneath him to the pounding of the horses. He looked back as he ran. They were almost upon him, gay and gaudy in their scarlet, green, fawn and purple hunting clothes; their faces were bloodless, malevolent, and entirely without pity. Several of them carried guns, the long clumsy weapons handed down to them by their grandfathers from the time, a hundred years past, when gun-making was still a known art. Ramrods were fitted below the barrels and the muzzles flared like lilies. He'd back his new-found little guns of the Ancient Kingdom against any such heavy instrument.

Jerran dived into what seemed a solid ma.s.s of brambles. Revel s.h.i.+fted the girl and bent to follow; at that instant she grabbed the back of his thigh and wrenched with all her might. He had been carrying her too low again. The tug was just enough to throw him off balance, and rucker and lady sprawled on the forest pathway, entangled together, struggling frantically to rise, as the giant stallions of the gentry bore down upon them.

CHAPTER V

The pretty daughter of the squire, She came a-riding by; Of sunlight was her fine long hair, Of gray flint was her eye.

The Mink he takes her by the arm: "Now you must come with me!

We'll dwell a s.p.a.ce in the wild wild woods Beneath the great oak tree!"

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

Revel saw the lead horse, a piebald brute with hoofs like mallets, coming at him. The squire atop it was leaning down with the mane whipping his cheeks, smirking at Revel as he drove his steed forward.

He made the fastest decision of his life. He could roll and save himself, for he was quick as a lightning bolt; or he could keep hold of the wench and try to preserve them both.

He could never have told what prompted him to decide to save the Lady Nirea.

At any rate, he threw himself atop her, clamped his arms tight to her sides, and rolled, not toward the brambles, for it was too late for that, but to the center of the path. The piebald crashed by, swerving too late to clip him; the other horses came at him in a solid phalanx.

He yanked her up, gaining his own feet by an animal contraction of body.

As the heads of the nearest stallions reached him he slipped between them, holding her steady behind him, and praying to the Orbs (from force of lifetime habit) to preserve them for the next minute.

Without Nirea it would have been simple; holding her safe behind him while two lurching horses pa.s.sed, that made it the trickiest thing he'd ever done. As the squires' legs came abreast, one blink later, he took hold of one of them which was clad in tight blue breeches, and hauled down. Then he leaped forward between the horses' tails, twitching the woman after him with a jerk that almost tore the arm from her body.

The squire in the blue breeches toppled over, howling, and fell on the path. Revel yanked the Lady Nirea to one side as the ma.s.s of them swept by, and saw with satisfaction a stallion, trying not to step on the fallen squire, take a nasty tumble itself, flinging its rider ten feet ahead, where he was trampled by a couple of less cautious nags.

Other horses fell over the first one, and the gentry milled about, roaring b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l and death on everybody. The two hounds smelled blood and attacked the fallen squires, and Blue Breeches raced off into the woods, one of the ravening dogs at his heels.

Revel made for the other side, the brambles where Jerran had disappeared. He was hauling the girl behind him. A beef-faced squire on a pirouetting horse loosed off his gun at Revel, who s.n.a.t.c.hed a handgun from his belt and fired back. Both of them missed. A gentryman in tan and gold long-skirted coat leaped in front of the miner, the flared muzzle of his gun coming up toward Revel's breast.

Revel shot by instinct, without aiming. The man's face turned into a mess that looked like squashed raspberries. Revel stepped over his body and tried to plunge into the brambles, but he had lost the exact spot, and thorns barred the way.

Then, four feet down the road, Jerran's yellow face popped into view.

"Here, lad!"