Men were coming—out of the village. That weapon—did Imfry still have it? She tore at the front of his tunic, trying to find it. But there was nothing and the strangers were upon them.
She aimed a blow, had her hand caught in a tight grip.
“Friends!”
The man who had her arm pulled her up and away from the Colonel. Two others were at the side of the fallen man, lifting him between them. Then Roane’s guide drew her along at a half-running pace, while the two carrying Imfry matched that as well as they could. They were past the houses, into a clot of shadowed shrubbery before she fairly caught her breath. She heard the stamp of duocorn hoofs against the turf and they came into a clearing where four men were mounted, holding on checking reins animals manifestly fresh and ready for the trail.
“Ride!” ordered the man with Roane.
The duocorns wheeled under spurring, pounded off to the south. But the men in her party pushed back into the shadows.
“Haffner knows these trails. He will lead them a good chase,” commented one of Imfry’s bearers with satisfaction.
“He had better,” said his fellow. “We shall need all the time we can win. Help with the Colonel, he’s bleeding bad. Needs looking to as soon as we can get him hid.”
CHAPTER 14
THE MEDIC KIT! There was the slim chance that its drugs might not aid one born on Clio. But if they could—
“Please.” Roane moved in the grip of the man who had pulled her into this temporary safety. “I have that which will aid him. Let me—”
“Well enough. But we cannot remain here. There is a chance they may not be misled by that false trail. To the hound hut, Mattine.”
Dawn was well upon them, but it appeared that these men knew what they were about. Even burdened with the Colonel they melted into the brush with fluid ease, while Roane’s guide drew her through openings she herself could not distinguish.
This was not quite one of those hidden brush-and-tree-walled roads, rather a slot in the earth along which they trotted. Roane could hear the heavy breathing of the two carrying Imfry as she followed on their heels and the other man served as a rear guard.
That journey seemed very long, though it could not have been so in either time or distance. Then the bearers halted, and the man behind Roane wriggled through what again appeared a thick wall of brush. Roane tried to get a good look at Imfry.
His head lay against one of his bearers, and his eyes were closed. There was a sticky patch on his shirt.
“Let me—I can help him—” She tried to edge closer, but the man who supported Imfry hunched his shoulder as a barrier.
“Not yet!” His whisper was fierce. “Quiet!”
She huddled, listening. There were sounds. Noises which came, she thought, more from animal than human throats. Then she did catch a voice.
“Ha, Brighttooth, Rampage, Roarer—down—sit! And you, Shrew, Surenose—quiet! Eat, drink, and be quiet!”
The brush screen trembled as their guide returned. All three men wore their hoods pulled well about their faces, so Roane saw little of them save the thrust of their chins. But there was an air of authority in this man.
“Take these.” He had some strips of material in his hands.
From them—Roane’s nose wrinkled in disgust—steamed a nauseating stench. The last thing she wanted to do was touch those rags. But she was given no choice. One of the men supporting Imfry accepted three of the strips, hung one about his own neck and draped one on his fellow and one over the Colonel, while the fourth was thrown in her direction. Reluctantly, her hand shrinking from contamination as she took it, she picked it up.
“Our key to the kennels. I do not think we shall be disturbed there. At least not for a while. Now—before they cast in this direction, let us move!”
They pushed out into a cleared space. There stood a tall fence made of stakes set firmly in the ground, tops sharpened into points. Tall as those were, Roane caught sight of a roof pitch beyond. There was a gate not too far away and their guide went directly to it, drawing a bar which was weighty enough to lock a keep.
Those carrying Imfry crossed the open at a shambling run, as if they were putting forth their best effort to get their burden quickly into hiding, and Roane trailed them. The gate slammed behind her and she heard the bar thud into place, so fastened by the man who had led them. But her eyes were for what lay within.
Direhounds! Like the duocorns, they were not native to Clio but had been imported. And she did not know any planet, save perhaps one of the inner worlds supporting an exotic zoo, which allowed the import of Loki direhounds. Deceptively they were not large, nor ferocious to look at, though the odor given off by their spotted hides could choke one. Their maned heads were down as they tore at chunks of meat.
As the human party moved toward the hut in the center of the pen, two swung around, making no sound, their black lips wrinkling back to bare the double rows of green-scummed fangs. And there was a hot and terrible hate in their eyes.
One took a step and then a second, moving to intercept the men, who had halted, visibly bracing themselves. Then those fringed ears, which had been flattened to narrow skulls as the creatures sniffed the air, went up as if they had caught a familiar sound or their noses some usual scent. Roane held closer to her that rag she had so disdained. It was indeed a key here.
The leading direhound gave a last sniff, turned away to a clay-smeared chunk of meat, its companion copying its action. The men moved on, though it was very hard for Roane not to turn and walk backward as they passed among the gorging animals, the sensation that they would be attacked from the rear so weighed on her.
“The door—open the door—” one of Imfry’s supporters ordered.
She edged past the men, still watching the direhounds with small, distrustful side glances, to push. The door opened readily and they entered into darkness and the stench of the animals, even worse in these confined quarters. Involuntarily she snapped on the beamer.
Along one side of the small room hung joints of meat, blackened and evil-smelling. Above those was a series of narrow shelves on which crowded stoppered containers. From spikes driven into the other walls dangled whips, leashes, collars, and muzzles massive enough to imprison a direhound’s fangs.
To their right stood bales of straw trussed with rope. One had been cut open and half its contents taken. Roane laid down the beamer to attack that, spreading out the rest for a rough bed on the floor as fast as she could.
As they laid Imfry on that she brought out the medic kit. No time to test her remedies. The more she saw the gray-white of that face, the less she liked it. Now it was her turn to give orders.
“Room!” Her hands—she looked at her dirty, scratched fingers. “Here—” She picked up a spray tube. “You—” She held it out to the nearest man. “Press this down, carefully now—it must not be wasted.”
Roane bathed her hands in the antiseptic vapor. “Enough!” She held them away from any touch which would infect them again. “Ease his shirt away from that wound. No—use the spray first—on this—” She pointed to another tube to be prepared.
Then, taking it, she carefully dribbled a few drops of its contents over that stain. With the tips of her fingers she urged the fabric gently away from the flesh to which it had been glued.
“Now—tear it!”
As the contaminated cloth came away from an angry-looking wound, where blood still oozed sluggishly, Roane went to work with all the skill she had, spraying—twice with antibiotics, and then with Swiftheal—before applying a final sealing of plasta-flesh with double care, since it might be put to unusual tests before this journey was finished.
She sat back then to consider the remaining contents of her kit. Examination had assured her that the fall had not brought broken bones. It was the extra strain upon his wound which had sent him into the present state of unconsciousness. Certainly the longer he could rest, the better chance the plasta-flesh had for a firm closing. She thought it b
est not to try to arouse him.
The air of the hut was thick with the stench of the direhounds and the decaying meat. Roane was so hot she pulled off her hood, loosened the lacing on her tunic. For the first time she had a chance to inspect her comrades in hiding. Both men had now relaxed against the bales of straw.
One was familiar—the other strange. But she put name to the one who had supported Imfry’s head during that escape.
“You are Sergeant Wuldon. You went with us to Gastonhow.”
He was older than the Colonel, it seemed to her, though it was difficult to judge ages on alien worlds. But his brown hair had a wide strip of silver over each ear. His face was as weathered as Imfry’s had been before the sickly gray tint had overlaid that healthier hue. And there was a small puckered dot in the flesh of his chin, slightly to one side, like a misplaced cleft.
“Ysor Wuldon, yes, m’lady.”
“You came to save him.” She made that a statement rather than a question. Wuldon nodded.
“We had hopes. There were a few in Hitherhow ready to give us some aid. The Duke is not greatly loved. But they would not promise too much—and we would have failed, m’lady, without you.”
Roane leaned back against one of the bales, raised her hands to brush straying hair out of her eyes. The smell, the heat made her feel ill, and again she wondered at her actions, as if that part of her which was the old Roane now stirred from captivity to view with dismay what had happened. This odd sense of being two persons added to her growing state of misery. She gulped, trying to subdue nausea, and feared that soon she would lose control.
The other man stirred restlessly. “This stink—” he muttered.
“No garden of turl lilies,” agreed Wuldon. “But out there—” he jerked a thumb to indicate the enclosure of the direhounds—“we have about the best sentries we could wish for.”
Roane swallowed again. “How long—” She found she could not complete that, but Wuldon had no trouble in understanding. Only he could not be reassuring with his answer.
“Who knows? Until nightfall, if we are lucky and they follow that false trail. If they can be drawn into the hunting preserve our men can lead them astray and lose them. Then we can move out. But with the Colonel as he is—” He shook his head.
“How is he, Lady?” the other man asked. “You have him fixed good enough to ride if we can move out? We cannot go far if we have to lug him.”
There was a dissenting growl from the Sergeant, but the other man faced him squarely. “That is the truth and you know it. Me, I am liege man to m’lord. My own mother’s sister fostered him when his lady mother died. Do you think I would say no to getting him free? Did I when you and Haus came asking? But we cannot carry him. He has to be able to ride. It is a long way to the hills.”
“They will outlaw-horn him,” the Sergeant said slowly. “Then how much help can he claim anywhere in Reveny? Best over the border. He would not be the first good man driven to that, and he has a sword worth selling—if not in Leichstan, the Isles of Marduk welcome mercenaries—”
“Thank you for the testimony, Wuldon.” The voice was low, strained, and it startled them.
The Colonel’s eyes were open. There was even a little color in his sunken cheeks.
“What a smell!” He sniffed. “Direhound! But where in Reveny—” He moved as if to rise but the Sergeant had clamped a big, gentle hand down on his uninjured shoulder, holding him where he was.
“Haus’s idea, sir. We are in the hound hut at Hitherhow.”
“The hound hut!” Imfry repeated. “Out of one cage, into another. But I must say that for all the smells, I find this one easier than the last. But—how did you plan—this—”
“Well, we did not—not together, sir. I saw them bring you out of that hole in the ground and Spetik and I split up and went to where we thought we could get help. He came to Hitherhow and talked to Mattine and Haus. There were some men in the village who were willing to risk a little. Though they were not going too far, being a bit mindful of their necks.”
“For which you cannot blame them, Wuldon. Treason is not a crime one wants to aid. Spetik, and Mattine here—Haus, and you—Then what else did you do?”
“Well, I went back to the post. There were four or five of the men ready to see what we could do. So—we left—”
The Colonel frowned. “Deserted?” he demanded.
Sergeant Wuldon grinned. “Better say ‘detached duty’—serving with our commanding officer. No man had named you different then. Nor have we been personally told so since.”
Imfry’s frown disappeared. “You heard it loud and clear in Hitherhow.”
“No, sir. Ever since I was caught in that rock fall last year, sir—when you dropped down on a rope and pulled me free—well, I have not heard too clear at times. I did not hear anything about your not being my commanding officer.”
“Impaired hearing can take you out of the service, Sergeant.”
“It has, Colonel. If anything is said to Reddick—it has.”
Imfry laughed, but sobered quickly. “If we are taken, no such flimsy arguments will get you out of a hanging—or worse.”
“Then we shall take care we are not caught, sir. But we did come here, me, Haffner, Spetik, Rinwald, Fleech. They got duocorns, best mounts in the stables, and stood ready to either ride or set a false trail. But we did not know just how we could get to you. She did that in the end.” He nodded at Roane.
“You were a part of this?” Imfry asked.
“Of their plans, no. I came—I came because I had to. It was my interference which began everything. I could not let it end so because of my meddling. But we could not have made it without your men.”
“It is very strange.” The Colonel’s eyes rested steadily upon her. “From the first I knew that you held some fate in your hands, though that it was mine, I did not guess. I thought it was the Princess’s.”
He stirred again. “Odd, all the pain is gone.” He looked at his wound, where the plasta-flesh had taken on the hue of the skin around it.
“What did you do to me, anyway?” he asked Wuldon.
“The lady did it, from her own supplies.”
“She seems good at a great many things,” commented the Colonel. “Wuldon, you would not have such a thing as a saddle bottle of water about you?”
“Sorry—”
“That is all right.”
Roane forced herself to move. The fetid air and heat made her weak. But she found one of the E-ration tubes, turned the twist cap and held it out to him.
“Suck this,” she said. “It is about half moisture, so it ought to help.” She brought out two more, offered them to the men. They examined them curiously.
“How about you, m’lady?” the Sergeant asked.
Roane made a hard business of swallowing. “I cannot—it makes me sick. If you will—Please, Sergeant”—her voice became more urgent—“the kit—push it to me.”
She thought that she would not be able to make it in time, but she hunted with one hand among the containers, came up with a capsule she broke between her palms, bending her head to sniff and sniff again of the reviving fumes. But she had too few of those to waste them. If they were here long, how could she stand it? Conditioned she might be to withstand alien worlds, alien odors, alien foods—there were some strains which her body could not take and it seemed she was meeting them now in this prison-like hut.
“I will have to go soon.” She raised her head when the vertigo subsided a little and she was temporarily the mistress of her body. “They do not know me here—I ought to go safely.”
“Do not believe that, m’lady,” Wuldon returned. “With the Colonel free they will look thrice at any stranger. You leave this place and the first one to see you will call for the guard. Every man, woman, and child in Hitherhow will be glad to help run down a stranger—if only to turn the Duke’s men away from sniffing at their own doors.”
“Exactly right.” The Colonel’s voice was str
onger, had back that sure note which had once troubled her with its assumption that his way was the only right one. “And where would you go? Or will your people come looking for you?”
She shook her head, and then wished that she had not made that gesture, for it left her dizzy. “That is the last thing they would do. I broke orders to come here. They will believe anything that happens to me is richly deserved.”
“What kind of talk is that?” the Sergeant asked. “No one would turn his back on a lady who had come to help—”
“There must be a good reason,” Imfry cut in. “Sometime, Lady Roane, I would like to hear it. Now—I will admit that to stay here any longer than is absolutely necessary is something we all cannot do. Have you any plans, Sergeant?”
“Haus may have. He brought us here to wait. And he knows Hitherhow. Also—they know him, well enough not to go throwing any trouble in his way. It is good to be the only man who can really handle direhounds; keeps everyone on his toes seeing as how Haus stays happy and in good health. Of course, they could shoot them all to get to us. Maybe the Duke might do just that if he knew we were here. But the belief would be that those devil animals would not let us inside the gate, which would be the truth if Haus had not given us a key through their power of scent.”
“Listen!” Imfry ordered.
Once more Roane could hear the loud grunting of the hounds.
“Someone’s coming!” Sergeant Wuldon, weapon in hand, crossed with a silent tread Roane would have believed impossible for such a powerful man, to stand at the door of the hut. He hunched a little, apparently finding a crack through which he could see something of the outside.
“Haus!” The name was a hiss of whisper and then Wuldon added, “alone.” But he did not reholster his weapon and Mattine moved, if not as noiselessly, to the other side of the door frame. Roane watched from the apathy of her discomfort.
“Soooooo.” The voice of the man outside rang on a crooning note. “Good boy—brave—brave—Easy, girl, there is enough for all—mind your manners.”
If she had not known what sort of beasts did roam without, Roane would have believed them the gentlest and most agreeable of pets. People did have odd tastes, as who should know better than she, who had been exposed to a variety of worlds and customs—but to find a man who dealt unreservedly with direhounds!