The Buttoned Sky Part 8

"All the while I was doing those things this morning," muttered Revel, "I had the feeling I'd done them before. I must have been remembering the old ballad, for by Orbs, the acts do fit!"

"That minor blasphemy begins to annoy me," said Jerran seriously. "It's like saying 'by the man I killed yesterday.' We've got to revise our swearing habits."

"Why not subst.i.tute _Revel_ or _Mink_ for _Orb_?" asked the girl harshly. "Our Revel who dwells in the b.u.t.toned sky," she added, with a malevolent sneer.

"Ah, go to sleep, both of you," said Jerran. "Tomorrow we start to plan--really plan--to overthrow the gentry."

"And the priests," said Revel fiercely, "and the G.o.ds!" He almost believed that somehow they could climb into the air and destroy the G.o.ds in their red and blue b.u.t.tons. He lay down, one hand vised on the woman's wrist, and though he felt he should never sleep that night, being far too excited, in three minutes he was snoring mightily.

He woke some time later with the p.r.i.c.kling feeling of danger on his skin. He opened his eyes and saw red, literally a red mist that obscured the world. Then his head began to open and shut, open and shut, and he knew he had been hit a h.e.l.l of a blow on the forehead, and there was blood in his eyes.

Groping for his pick, that had lain next his left hand, he missed it; then he recalled the girl, reached out for her, found she was gone too.

He drew the back of his arm over his eyes and cleared the gore a trifle.

"Jerran?" he said quietly. No answer.

Blinking, he saw the vast meeting place empty, lit by the blue lanterns.

He rolled his head and there, its point buried deep in the sward an inch from his right ear, was his pick. He sat up. Jerran lay a dozen feet off, looking very dead indeed, with his thin hair matted with blackening blood.

Instinctively he tore the pick out of the ground. It was buried so deep that only a very strong hand could have sent it in; not the girl, he thought, somehow relieved that she hadn't done it. No, a miner's blow alone might have done it, for the earth was packed solid as oak's wood by untold mult.i.tudes of rebels' feet.

Wait a minute, he said to himself: this is all wrong. That blow should have opened my skull like a walnut. It missed me by a fraction--either the aim was poor, or else d.a.m.ned good. I could have struck such a blow, sure to miss where I wished to, but not even many miners could duplicate it.

Had the enemy missed, then walloped him with another weapon and left him for dead? Gingerly he felt the wound on his head. It was healing already, a tap that might have laid him out for a few hours, but would never have slain him.

He glared at the pick in his hand. Then he brought it up and in the combined light of the blue lanterns and the dawn filtering in from the woods, he squinted at the handle.

Where his own pick bore the crude carving of a mink (he had taken the beast as his symbol a long time ago, another sign of his ident.i.ty), this one had a jumble of grooves meant to represent a woods lion.

This wasn't Revel's pick--it was his brother Rack's!

Caught in an appalling dream that was the hardest reality he'd ever faced, he pored over the pickax, scanned the motionless form of his friend Jerran, then goggled foolishly at nothing in particular as he thought of his situation, stranded in a place he could not escape from alone, with many half-formed plots in his head but no way to carry them out. Between him and Dolfya, and the other rebels, lay miles of tangled forest no man, be he ever so skillful at woodscraft, could penetrate without the knowledge of a route; thousands of the ruck were depending on him to lead them, and he couldn't even lead himself home.

"If you're the Mink, Revel m'lad," he said aloud, "it's time you came up with a brilliant idea!"

And there wasn't a scheme in his head.

CHAPTER VII

The haughty maid has left the Mink, She finds her father's place; The squire has looked her in the eye: "Now what a fox to chase!"

He's called in all his friends and kin, And dealt out guns and sh.e.l.ls; He's sworn an oath to catch the Mink By all the seven h.e.l.ls!

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

Lady Nirea was puffing and blowing and clawing her way through endless miles of creepers, thorns, and brushwood. She wished Revel were carrying her now, even if it meant the loss of her clothing again. Now she appreciated what a job he'd done, for naked though she'd been, not half as many scratches had marred her skin on their first journey.

Ahead of her, the giant called Rack was doing his best to break trail for her; and in front of him, with a rope under his arms which the red-bearded man held tightly, went Dawvys, her father's servant.

As she understood the tale from Rack's few sentences, growled out in a voice that reeked with hatred of somebody, whether herself or Revel or whom she couldn't tell, he had caught Dawvys just emerging from the forest and made him lead the way back to the domed glade. Ewyo the squire had sent Rack out for her, and Rack was evidently all a rucker should be--faithful, reverent, and obedient to the least command of the gentry.

She remembered waking, Revel's strong hand still clamped on her wrist, and seeing this walleyed brute just aiming a swing of a pick at his brother's head. She had screamed, and Rack had missed. She wondered whether he had meant to hit at all. There was already a b.l.o.o.d.y gash on Revel's scalp, and the little yellow man, Jerran, lay quite still with red trickling out of his head.

Then Rack had picked up Revel's pick and disengaged the grip of his hand (was it as cold and lifeless as she'd thought? could the Mink be dead?) from her wrist, and booted Dawvys out on the trail.

That had been hours ago. They were still b.u.mbling through the forest, although the sun was high.

"He's leading us wrong," she panted. "Don't trust him. He's an important rebel."

"He wants to live as badly as we do, Lady. He'll take us home."

And sure enough, they had come shortly to the rim of the woodland. She swayed and nearly collapsed. "Give me your arm, rucker," she said. "I give you permission to touch me."

His arm was like stone, supporting her along the road to Dolfya's outskirts where her father's mansion lay. After a few minutes he dropped the rope that held Dawvys. "d.a.m.n," he said loudly, "he will get away!"

and bent to retrieve it. Dawvys leaped off like a pinched frog, and Rack said grimly, "No use to chase that one, he can sprint faster than a dozen hulks like me."

"You let him go," said Nirea.

He turned his blue eye on her. "That is as you see fit to believe, Lady."

She would turn him over to her father's huntsman, she thought. Or would she? He'd saved her ... was this grat.i.tude in her mind? It was a foreign emotion. Wait and see, she told herself; don't fret now. She was very tired.

They came to the house of Ewyo, a sprawling erection of field stone and ancient brick dug from distant ruins of another time. No one could make bricks like that now. She touched the gate in the wall and instantly a dozen hounds, gaunt and savage, came leaping from the lawns. Recognizing her, they fawned, and she opened the gate. "Come in," she said. He grunted and obeyed, eyeing the dogs.

In the library of the house, which contained more than twenty priceless books allowed her ancestors by the G.o.ds, she met her father, the squire Ewyo. He scowled up at Rack.

"You bring this rucker, this miner, into the library, Nirea?"

Not a word of greeting, she thought, not a single expression of relief at her safety. For the first time she began to contrast the manners of the gentry with those of Revel. He was rough, true, and crude and inclined to glory in his animal strength, and he had made love to her, to boot; but if he had found her after thinking her dead, by the Orbs!

he wouldn't have snarled out something about an unimportant convention!

"The man saved me at great risk, and killed his own brother doing it,"

she said coldly. She would not mention Dawvys at all. Not now! "He deserves a reward, Ewyo, and not harsh words from you."

He slapped his high sleek boots with a hunting crop. He was a burly, beefy-looking man, nothing like the lean tough Mink. She felt a sense of revulsion. She turned to Rack and stared at the big face, scarred by whipping branches, firm and fearless, as hard as the heart of a mountain. "Go home and get some sleep, Rack," she said kindly. "You'll hear from me later."

"I have no home, Lady," he answered. "The G.o.ds destroyed our part of the town yesterday."

Ewyo snorted, "Dawvys can give him a bed for now in the servants' huts.

Dawvys!"

It was on her tongue to say that Dawvys wouldn't be likely to answer his bawl, but the man appeared in the doorway, spruce and clean, with only a few scratches to tell of his activities. "Yes, Lord Ewyo?"