The war captain shivered violently. Someone was holding a frigid cloth to his face.
He tossed his head to rid himself of the tormenting thing and opened his eyes.
Gordon was beside him. He looked tired and strained, and there was an open fear on him which he now strove to conceal.
"How are we doing?" Ross was pleased that his voice, though weak, was at least steady. It sounded strange to his ears, as if he heard it through some kind of aural fog.
"Quite well. We're just ending a short break now. By riding through the night, we should be home by this time tomorrow."
"Any sign of the invaders?"
"None."
"My wound?" he asked after a brief pause.
"Bad enough," Ashe answered evenly, "but not so serious as we first supposed. You've got a high fever, and that could prove more dangerous to you than your actual injuries if it gets much worse."
"I'm able to ride now, at least slowly. Let me have Lady. I can make my way back at my own pace…"
Gordon's eyes flashed in sudden fury, but then he laughed. "You read too many adventure novels back home, Friend. We're not going to let you ride off to a solitary death in sacrifice for us all. Besides, that's not necessary."
Murdock sighed, knowing there would be no moving his partner.
He had to try. "Gordon, some of those men escaped. They recognized me, and they'll soon spread the word that Firehand has been seriously wounded and must still be within their power of taking. Half Condor Hall's army'll be out in force after us if they aren't already."
Eveleen joined the pair at that point. She sat beside them. "Hunting and capturing are two different matters," she informed him in a tone that brooked no argument.
He nodded, as if in defeat. "At least, you might give me something to ease the pain.
The woman laughed then and bent to kiss him. "So you can force your own body into slaying you? I think not, Firehand. Anyway, I doubt it would work. I don't believe your injuries are that severe, especially since they haven't worsened under the motion of the litter. You'd only succeed in making yourself dreadfully sick."
"You can't make any speed while I'm with you!" he argued desperately. "I know enough of wounds to realize that. Am I to see you all killed, to be the cause of it?"
Ashe smiled down on him. "Not a chance. We're as safe now, or nearly as safe, as if we were in the midst of our own camp. Listen to the noise of the deer around us! We're with a goodly company. Scouts are combing all the country about to carry warning if the enemy should approach, and skirmish patrols are riding near on every side to challenge and delay any who might be so foolish as to appear.
"Condor Hall-born warriors may be famed for fighting with a fanatic's zeal, but all their fury is nothing to that which we're prepared to show now. We'll defend our own, my Friend. Believe that, and rest easy."
"It might all be for nothing," he whispered, reassured almost despite himself.
"Then you'll at least die at home, with whatever comfort we can provide for you," Eveleen told him quietly.
As she had done to silence him before, she pressed her fingers to his lips. "Shut up now, and don't let me hear any more talk about dying. I'm not about to surrender you, Firehand, not even to that grim Lord."
Ross was conscious of a strange, swaying movement, its rhythm occasionally broken by unpredictable jerks or drops that wrung a moan or a cry of protest from him, however the weak control he still possessed over his body tried to quell it.
At times, he would be puzzled or totally disoriented but then would force himself to concentrate.
He rode in a deer litter. It was not the first time he had traveled thus, but on that other occasion, he had been able to fix himself to his position, consider his unit's needs. Now, it was hard to focus his thoughts at all, impossible to hold them any length of time…
It was cold, bitterly cold. Not all these blankets they had piled on him seemed able to hold it away from him, as if it originated within his own flesh rather than in the sleet now lashing down in a continuous storm.
Once, maybe twice, he thought he felt heat. There was far too much of it. His body poured sweat, and he struggled against the weight of his coverings until powerful arms restrained him.
Those warm spells, if he had not dreamed them entirely, did not last long, and he was more than glad to feel the end of them and have the cold sweep back over him once more.
Gradually, the troubling episodes came less frequently. A deep oblivion rose up to take him, and he drifted down into it, secure at last from discomfort and from the sharp talons of pain.
25
THE TIME AGENT lay perfectly still. His body was at ease. There was no motion, no movement at all. He was resting on a comfortable bed. Pillows supported him at an angle steeper than that at which he was wont to sleep, a measure to help keep his lungs clear. The air around him was wonderfully warm.
A muted light reached his lid-veiled eyes. It teased him, and in the end, he opened them.
He frowned. This was not his chamber.
"So you wake at last!"
He turned his head.
Luroc was sitting beside him. The Ton moved swiftly to adjust the pillows so that the injured man might sit higher. "Easy. You are in my cabin."
"Why?" he asked.
"It is the warmest and most comfortable in the camp… You had us all very worried this last week, Rossin."
"A week? So long?"
He nodded. "Yes. Until the fever left you this morning, we were in doubt as to whether you would live."
A strangely strong sense of loss filled him when he suddenly realized that neither Eveleen nor Gordon was present.
I Loran seemed to read his thought. "I just sent your comrades to get some rest. Between commanding our war effort and nursing our illustrious wounded, they are both about spent."
The ruler chuckled. "Do not scowl so! You cannot expect everything to hold still because you have been put out of it for a time. As a matter of fact, those hunting you have provided our people with some excellent targets."
"They shouldn't have wasted themselves here…"
"You could have kept away had one of them been hurt, I suppose?"
Murdock was visibly growing tired, and I Loran pushed his chair back, away from the bed. "No more for now. It is near midnight. Eveleeni will see you tomorrow and will give you as full a report as Healer O Ashean declares you are able to hear. In the meantime, you are to rest. We all fought a hard battle to save you, and I am not about to risk setting you back again by overtaxing you."
Recovery did not come quickly. The wound itself closed in good order, but the fever returned twice more, each time stripping away whatever the war captain had regained of strength, and the winter was well spent before he had at last been permitted to return to his own quarters.
In truth, he had not pressed to leave the Ton's cabin. It was warm there, and he seemed no longer able to tolerate cold. Any cold. Even now, long after the other effects of the wound had begun to vanish, he could still bear no touch of chill. So severe was his reaction against it that unless it lessened again with the passage of time, significantly lessened, Ross feared he would be forced to limit his long-term activities either to the far south here or to hot paradise worlds like Hawaika, venturing into other climates only for short, summer assignments.
Murdock put that thought from him. He had to trust that this blight would eventually leave him as the fever had finally done. In the meantime, he could only endure it as best he might, that and conceal his continuing discomfort from his companions.
Save in this one respect, he had reason in plenty to be pleased. His own strong constitution had reasserted itself, and he had regained both the flesh he had lost and his wonted energy, which had so far deserted him that he had for the most part been content to remain docile under his attendants' commands.
Not, the Terran thought with a grin, that protest would have done him much good. His comrades had been determined that he shou
ld be fully whole again before resuming command over his troops, and no amount of impatience on his part would have turned them from that.
By all Time's levels, though, it was good to feel well and ready to take up his life once more. For a while there, after the second return of the fever, he had thought no future remained to him but that of an invalid.
He put that fear, which had been bitterly strong in its time, out of his mind, as well. It was an unpleasant memory, but at least it had failed to materialize into fact.
He had not even missed ,a great deal of actual fighting. If his blade had remained long months in its scabbard, so had those of his comrades. There had been raiding in the three weeks following his wounding, but then the winter had settled down in its full fury. It had been a bad one, as the signs had indicated would be the case, with heavy snow and week upon week of brutally low temperatures. Nothing had moved either on the slopes or in the lowlands.
The coming of spring ended that enforced truce.
As soon as the Corridor became passable again, the invaders started pushing materiel south, and the Sapphireholders swept down from their eyrie to counter them. Murdock had led four of those raids with such effect that, whatever Zanthor I Yoroc might wish or will to the contrary, both Confederates and the invader's own warriors knew Firehand was neither dead nor frightened from his work, and some doubted that he had ever been stricken down at all.
The war captain broke from his reverie. A springdeer had just come into the camp, galloping hard.
Perhaps he only imagined it, but he always thought there was a certain sound in the hoofbeats of a mount whose rider brought word of a potential target not present at other times, and that elusive note seemed to ring from these.
Ross did not wait for the courier to draw rein before his cabin, but crossed that part of the floor separating him from the door in three swift strides. He threw it open.
A scout, right enough. Marri.
The woman was just dismounting when he reached her.
"You have news?" It was hardly necessary to inquire. The still sharp air might have brought the red to her cheeks, but the excitement in eye and expression did not arise out of any such cause.
"I do, Captain. Deermen, a large column of them."
"Pack train?"
She shook her head. "No. They have drays with them, but only enough to carry supplies for maybe a couple of weeks."
"Going south?"
"They were, and traveling fast."
"You say the column is long?"
"One hundred warriors plus officers."
He pursed his lips. "They could as easily divide, remain in the lowlands to harry us."
"I doubt that is their intent, Captain. Their composition is strange, apparently very heavy with officers. That is why I spoke of them separately from the others."
"Apparently?"
"Cover was not good. We dared not draw too close to them."
Ross glanced at his chief Lieutenant, who was standing beside him along with the rest of his officers. "Command change for the front maybe?"
"Possibly," she agreed. "Very possibly. Zanthor must be getting itchy for victory again. He's known little of it since the first year."
Murdock turned back to the scout. "Were the warriors mercenaries, Marri, or his own?"
"Condor Hall men to the last, and fine looking even for those from what we could tell."
He thanked her, then turned to those with him. "Eveleeni's division and mine ride. Allran, head for the Corridor. I want to be sure nothing's slipped through if this is just a lure. Korvin, strengthen the passes. It's not likely, but I can't risk that one of them may be their target. The rest of you, stay here. Keep yourselves ready to ride if you should receive summons from any of us, leaving a double guard with the camp. Have couriers ready to bring word at once if anything else develops."
Allran A Aldar frowned at these orders. "It is a big column. Perhaps you should bring another division with you."
"I'll play it as it comes. If necessary, I'll call for help, but I can't afford to leave ourselves open to any smart moves on Zanthor's part. He knows better than we do that he's nearing the end of his strength. If he's going to pull his cause out of the fire, he's got to do it now. We'll have to be able to meet any plot he hatches, or we could lose a lot of ground." For a moment, his voice turned bleak. "Maybe we could lose the whole lot."
26
THE PARTISANS RODE hard, following the line Marri had told them any additional couriers would take. So mobile a target, one whose purpose was unknown, could change its course at any moment.
The enemy column kept to its original path, holding to the center of the lowlands as far as possible from the flanking mountains, always maintaining as rapid a pace as possible without exhausting their mounts.
Although gentler than the great peaks themselves, the countryside through which they traveled was rough enough in its own right and grew even more so as the lowlands narrowed into the Funnel. Cover was good, and the partisan leaders were at last able to move in close to their foes.
It was an impressive company by any standards. There was a military perfection to the warriors' movements not often found in domain-based units, and they bore themselves and their arms with the quiet assurance of proven veterans.
There was pride in them, too. These were the men who had made Zanthor's early conquests, forging for him an empire strong enough to enable him to maintain the mercenary columns now carrying his war. It was no fault of theirs that these same hirelings had failed to hold the momentum they had established.
Murdock's attention fixed on the officers.
His eyes narrowed. Marri had been right. The column was top-heavy with them.
If they were its commanders, they were its charge as well; they rode in the center, protected by the warriors all around them, and that lot were no cowards, whatever their other failings.
The majority of the invading domain's leaders were known to the partisans and he concentrated on identifying those before him. The men chosen to carry this mission might well give a clue to its purpose, although he felt fairly certain now that they were to either change or strengthen the command structure of the army in the south.
That was a daring move to make when dealing with mercenaries, who could be volatile in the extreme in the face of any threat to their position or prerogatives, but it had been done before, sometimes with good result. As long as contracted payments were made in due time, the Ton of Condor Hall might well succeed in accomplishing his will.
That thought caused the agent's frown to deepen. Troops so led could prove far more formidable opponents than Gurnion's commanders were now expecting to meet.
He stiffened. One caught his gaze, a broad-shouldered man, thick of neck with very dark, slightly curling hair—he bore his helm in his hand—and the dark shadow of a beard on his face although the day was still comparatively young.
Zanthor I Yoroc.
A curse, whispered but bitter, sounded on his left. No word, not so much as the drawing of a breath, issued from the woman holding the place at his right.
Ross glanced at her, and the heart chilled within him. Eveleen Riordan stood perfectly still, more like a marvelous statue than a living being. Her gaze was fixed on the would-be conqueror, and never had he imagined that hatred of this intensity could exist in any member of his species, in any being fashioned by the hand of the Great Creator.
It did not mar her as he knew he had been marred a moment before. No line of her face was altered by it, yet it burned through her, emanated from her, terrible beyond all conception in its controlled stillness. If the will of a Terran could slay, Zanthor of Condor Hall would be crumbling to ashes in this moment.
Ross gave the signal to withdraw, and the five partisans silently moved back, away from the rapidly advancing column.
They were not long in reaching their comrades. The news that the invader Ton was near and within their potential grasp brought a low growl of mingled rage and e
xultation from the assembled warriors, but their commander would allow no move against Zanthor, not yet.
It was Ross's intention to strike his enemies just as they were forming their evening's camp, when the most men were dismounted and least prepared for combat and the guards, if out at all, would not be fully settled into their watching. He had not forgotten the prowess of Condor Hall soldiers or what it had cost his own command in their last encounter.
It was not just his people that he wanted to spare, either. By coming at Zanthor's warriors as he intended, more of them could probably be felled with less-than-fatal strokes than would be the case if they were attacked as the alert, battle-ready unit the column had revealed itself to be. Murdock had no more love than did Gurnion I Carlroc for the needless slaughter of valiant men.
The Sapphirehold partisans timed their arrival carefully so that their charge could begin at the moment their chief had indicated.
Ross's mouth was a hard line. The attack would not be quite as effective as he had originally hoped. The Condor Hall commander had not so settled his force as to render it easy for the taking. His position was high although well sheltered, readily defensible, and holding the surrounding area under its view. If the partisans were able to strike as planned and do so quickly, they should still be able to conquer. If the charge were delayed or if their presence came somehow to be suspected before it began, they would be forced to storm the enemy position as if it were a fort, or else to retreat.
It would be the latter, whatever their eagerness to take Zanthor. Sapphirehold did not have the troops to squander in costly frontal assaults. Harrying tactics had served them well through all this campaign and would serve them here if needs be until they could find a position from which to attack again in force. With luck, one of the archers might be able to pick I Yoroc off from ambush even if they were unable to join open battle.
The war captain turned in his saddle to look upon his own warriors, studying them so intently for several seconds that they felt his scrutiny and glanced toward him in both amazement and discomfort.
He had to be certain their hate was in control. If it were not, it could betray them all.