LITMIR.BIZ

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Half-cocking with the double-action and thumbing the hammer back the rest of the way, he shot the man with the musket, which went off into the ceiling. A man behind him caught a crossbow quarrel in the forehead and pitched forward, dropping a long pistol unfired.

      Shifting the Colt to his left hand, he caught up the sword the first man had dropped. Double-edged, with a swept guard, it was lighter than it looked, and beautifully balanced. He stepped over the body of the first man he had shot, to be confronted by a swordsman from outside, trying to get over the other two. For a few moments they cut and parried, and then he drove the point into his opponent’s unarmored face, then tugged his blade free as the man went down. The boy, who had gotten hold of the dropped pistol, fired past him and hit a man holding a clump of horses in the road. Then he was outside, and the man with the halberd along with him, chopping down another of the party. The father followed; he’d gotten the musket and a powder-flask, and was reloading it.

      Driving the point of the sword into the ground, he holstered his Colt and as one of the loose horses passed, caught the reins, throwing himself into the saddle. Then, when his feet had found the stirrups, he stooped and retrieved the sword, thankful that even in a motorized age the State Police taught their men to ride.

      The fight was over, at least here. Six attackers were down, presumably dead; two more were galloping away. Five loose horses milled about, and the two young men were trying to catch them. Their father had charged the short musket, and was priming the pan.

      This had only been a sideshow fight, though. The main event was a half-mile down the road; he could hear shots, yells and screams, and a sudden orange glare mounted into the night. While he was quieting the horse and trying to accustom him to the change of ownership, a couple more fires blazed up. He was wondering just what he had cut himself in on when the fugitives began streaming up the road. He had no trouble identifying them as such; he’d seen enough of that in Korea.

      There were more than fifty of them—men, women and children. Some of the men had weapons: spears, axes, a few bows, one musket almost six feet long. His bearded host shouted at them, and they paused.

      “What’s going on down there?” he demanded.

      Babble answered him. One or two tried to push past; he cursed them luridly and slapped at them with his flat. The words meant nothing, but the tone did. That had worked for him in Korea, too. They all stopped in a clump, while the bearded man spoke to them. A few cheered. He looked them over; call it twenty effectives. The bodies in the road were stripped of weapons; out of the corner of his eye he saw the two women passing things out the cottage door. Four of the riderless horses had been caught and mounted. More fugitives came up, saw what was going on, and joined.

      “All right, you guys! You want to live forever?” He swung his sword to include all of them, then pointed down the road, to where a whole village must now be burning. “Come on, let’s go get them!”

      A general cheer went up as he started his horse forward, and the whole mob poured after him, shouting. They met more and more fugitives, who saw that a counter-attack had been organized, if that was the word for it. The shooting ahead had stopped. Nothing left in the village to shoot at, he supposed.

      Then, when they were within four or five hundred yards of the burning houses, there was a blast of forty or fifty shots in less than ten seconds, and loud yells, some in alarm. More shots, and then mounted men came pelting toward them. This wasn’t an attack; it was a rout. Whoever had raided that village had been hit from behind. Everybody with guns or bows let fly at once. A horse went down, and a saddle was emptied. Remembering how many shots it had taken for one casualty in Korea, that wasn’t bad. He stood up in his stirrups, which were an inch or so too short for him to begin with, waved his sword, and shouted, “Chaaarge!” Then he and the others who were mounted kicked their horses into a gallop, and the infantry—axes, scythes, pitchforks and all—ran after them.

      A horseman coming in the opposite direction aimed a sword-cut at his bare head. He parried and thrust, the point glancing from a breastplate. Before either could recover, the other man’s horse had carried him on past and among the spears and pitchforks behind. Then he was trading thrusts for cuts with another rider, wondering if none of these imbeciles had ever heard that a sword had a point. By this time the road for a hundred yards in front, and the fields on either side, were full of horsemen, chopping and shooting at one another in the firelight.

      He got his point in under his opponent’s arm, the memory-voice of a history professor of long ago reminded him of the gap in a cuirass there, and almost had the sword wrenched from his hand before he cleared it. Then another rider was coming at him, unarmored, wearing a cloak and a broad hat, aiming a pistol almost as long as the arm that held it. He swung back for a cut, urging his horse forward, and knew he’d never make it. All right, Cal; your luck’s run out!

      There was an upflash from the pan, a belch of flame from the muzzle, and something hammered him in the chest He hung onto consciousness long enough to kick his feet free of the stirrups. In that last moment, he realized that the rider who had shot him had been a girl.

      Three

       Table of Contents

      I

      Rylla sat with her father at the table in the small study. Chartiphon was at one end and Xentos at the other, and Harmakros, the cavalry captain, in a chair by the hearth, his helmet on the floor beside him. Vurth, the peasant, stood facing them, a short horseman’s musketoon slung from his shoulder and a horn flask and bullet-bag on his belt.

      “You did well, Vurth,” her father commended. “By sending the message, and in the fighting, and by telling Princess Rylla that the stranger was a friend. I’ll see you’re rewarded.”

      Vurth smiled. “But, Prince, I have this gun, and fireseed for it,” he replied. “And my son caught a horse, with all its gear, even pistols in the holsters, and the Princess says we may keep it all.”

      “Fair battle-spoil, yours by right. But I’ll see that something’s sent to your farm tomorrow. Just don’t waste that fireseed on deer. You’ll need it to kill more Nostori before long.”

      He nodded in dismissal, and Vurth grinned and bowed, and backed out, stammering thanks. Chartiphon looked after him, remarking that there went a man Gormoth of Nostor would find costly to kill.

      “He didn’t pay cheaply for anything tonight,” Harmakros said. “Eight houses burned, a dozen peasants butchered, four of our troopers killed and six wounded, and we counted better than thirty of his dead in the village on the road, and six more at Vurth’s farm. And the horses we caught, and the weapons.” He thought briefly. “I’d question if a dozen of them got away alive and hale.”

      Her father gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’m glad some did. They’ll have a fine tale to carry back. I’d like to see Gormoth’s face at the telling.”

      “We owe the stranger for most of it,” she said. “If he hadn’t rallied those people at Vurth’s farm and led them back, most of the Nostori would have gotten away. And then I had to shoot him myself!”

      “You couldn’t know, kitten,” Chartiphon told her. “I’ve been near killed by friends myself, in fights like that.” He turned to Xentos. “How is he?”

      “He’ll live to hear our thanks,” the old priest said. “The ornament on his breast broke the force of the bullet. He has a broken rib, and a nasty hole in him—our Rylla doesn’t load her pistols lightly. He’s lost more blood than I’d want to, but he’s young and strong, and Brother Mytron has much skill. We’ll have him on his feet again in a half-moon.”

      She smiled happily. It would be terrible for him to die, and at her hand, a stranger who had fought so well for them. And such a handsome and valiant stranger, too. She wondered who he was. Some noble, or some great captain, of course.

      “We

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