It was Jamila who awakened me. Judging by how dark it was, either the moon wasn't up yet or it was clouded over. I remembered what had happened earlier, and somehow didn't want to be awake. "Let's go," she murmured. I swung my feet out of the bed with a bad feeling, an unwillingness to face this day.
We'd put our clothes back on after making love, so all I had to do was grope for my boots, pull them on and lace them, buckle on my sword, and grab my pack—making sure the Lizard gun was in it. When I was ready, I looked at Jamila standing by the window.
Without a word she climbed out, and down the ladder. I followed, feeling grim. There were scattered clouds, with stars showing through the gaps, and the sky in the east told me that the sickle moon, nearly a half-moon, had risen, but not yet above the hills. Which made it somewhat after midnight, maybe two or three o'clock.
And the ground was dry; it hadn't rained after all. We could have slept in the woods, saved ourselves a lot of trouble, and still had Paddy with us.
Jamila surprised me; she led me to the stable. One thing about your warrior muse; it knows about things you don't, and it'll change its mind as the situation changes. You've got to be willing to go along with it. We were going to take the horses after all. Inside the stable it was too dark to see much. We found the stableman by his snores, and Jamila hoisted him to his feet out of a sound sleep. I pressed the flat of my knife against his face, and he was as helpful as you could want. He lit a lamp, showed us which horses were ours, and which gear, and gave us the lead rope Jamila asked for.
Then I gripped his carotid, and when he went slack, I lowered him to the floor. I used the lead rope to tie him, while Jamila started bridling and saddling the horses. I wadded a cut-off bit of saddle blanket in his mouth and used his neckerchief to finish gagging him, then stuffed one of the Lizard's silver coins in his pocket for his trouble.
You might wonder why we didn't just kill him. Obviously it would have been simpler and a lot easier. For one thing, though, it wouldn't have been Christian. Also, a warrior's rules of conduct apply, and they're a lot different toward bystanders than toward combatants. That's one of the first things Soong teaches his novices. The properly trained warrior always tries to avoid killing or damaging the accidental bystander, unless it would clearly endanger his mission. Otherwise you get into penalty situations with God, and it's easy to go downhill from there. Even when you seriously harm a bystander out of necessity, you make amends afterward if you have a chance.
Unfortunately not many warriors and darn few soldiers know the rules. Which makes it hard on bystanders. It also limits the skill and satisfaction of the warrior, who is likely to go criminal sooner or later.
When the horses were ready, I checked my saddle girth and mounted. Jamila led off. We rode out through the village without seeing a light, and hearing only a few barking dogs. Once outside town, we nudged our horses into an easy trot. Pretty quickly the moon was above the hills, lighting the forest along the ridge on our left, the one feeing east.
We rode peacefully for about an hour. I still felt spooky about the coming day and what might happen, but being outside helped—outside and on the move.
Occasional creeks crossed the road, and we forded them. Then a sizable stream came down from the east, crossed by a bridge. Instead of riding over the bridge, Jamila rode her horse down the bank into the stream and we forded it. I wondered why. It occurred to me that whenever Jamila was in charge, my muse lay back and kept quiet. I told him silently that that was all right, as long as he let me know when he disagreed with hers.
On the other side of the river, we climbed back to the road again and jogged on. Minutes later I heard faintly a hollow booming in the night—horses' hooves on the bridge planks—and knew why we'd crossed the way we did. What a muse she had! Which is to say, what a warrior she was. Because your muses are really you, acting on another level; Bhatti'd said it more than once, and Soong too. When I'd ask how that could be, Bhatti'd laughed (he laughed a lot) and said we did it with mirrors.
Now my muse nudged me. Just ahead, forest crossed the road. I trotted my horse past Jamila's to establish first action, and rode into the woods. She followed without questioning. I doubled back a ways then, dismounted, and tied my reins to a stout sapling; she did the same.
"I'm going to ambush them with the Lizard gun," I told her, then jogged quietly to a position beside a huge old white oak that gave me a view of the road. She'd moved off somewhere to my left. Closer to the road, I thought, to prevent anyone from flanking me.
We only had about a two-minute wait. It turned out there were seven of them, trotting their horses briskly, saddle guns in hand, ready to shoot on sight. They probably thought we were farther ahead than we'd been, because they hadn't heard us cross the bridge. At about twenty meters I fired the Lizard gun, adjusting my aim by the thin line of light, and cut down six of them by sweeping the gun across them. The seventh, who'd been bringing up the rear behind the remounts, I picked off as he tried to wheel his horse and run. I'd shot their mounts, too, and hit three of their remounts. Couldn't help it with the angle of fire I had.
Seven of the ten horses I'd shot were alive. After I'd put them out of their pain with my sword, I looked at the bodies of the riders, taking off their helmets, shaking my head. Not one of them was alive. It had been so quick and easy, I couldn't quite have it like that. What kind of fight was this, where they didn't have a chance to close with me or shoot back?
On the other hand, seven of them had come out to find and kill two. Although they'd probably expected three: they wouldn't have known we'd gotten separated from Paddy. Whatever, they were dead now. And none were Lizards, not one. All of them had hair and all of them had bled dark sticky blood.
Jamila just stood saying nothing, letting me go through whatever I was going through. Whatever had me silent. I glanced eastward and broke it. "It's starting to get light," I said.
She nodded without speaking. We didn't bother much with the bodies. Some were under their horses, and for the others, we just straightened their limbs. Then we prayed briefly, silently, for their souls. After that we walked back to our horses and hit the road again.
When it was pretty much daylight, Jamila turned her horse aside, into forest that came down to the road there. We were both fighting sleepiness by then, and it seemed unlikely that the Lizards would have another party chasing us. As far as that was concerned, it seemed to me they could hardly know yet that the first group hadn't killed us.
No, I told myself, you're trying to talk yourself into something. They've got magic, or whatever you want to call things like the airboat and Lizard gun. If the Lizards could find and pick up the body of the one I killed back at Kings Town, what was to keep them from finding this last seven? Or finding me in the woods?
I shrugged it off. I didn't know all their powers, but I didn't know their limitations either. And we had to sleep sometime. So if Jamila's muse told her to take to the woods and take a nap, and mine wasn't adamant against it, then I'd go along with it.
We ended up on the ridge crest, which was pretty wide. In places the trees were sparse, with lots of rock outcropping and lots of brush for the horses to pick their way through and around. But mostly the timber was too thick for much undergrowth. Meanwhile we seemed to have lost our sleepiness. The morning was getting hot fast, and that by itself gave an advantage to riding through shady forest instead of down a road through mostly open fields.
We kept riding north and east, coming upon an occasional cattle driveway crossing the ridge at some saddle. There was a kind of pine that was different than we had at home, with soft, fine, bluish needles. And something else a little like a pine but with tiny short needles that were dark green and flat. And leaf-trees with bark that was light blue-gray, hard and pebbly smooth. And more sugartrees than I'd ever seen, along with others that had smooth golden bark with little curly shreds. And some trees that, if they were black cherry the way they looked, ran bigger than cherry did back in Mizzoo. It seemed to me it'd be neat to know these Allegheny woods.
Among the blue-gray trees there were little pale stalks growing, with flowers but no leaves. And mushrooms that might be good to eat or might be poisonous; I'd never gotten to know mushrooms with any confidence. And...
I became aware that Jamila had gotten quite a bit ahead of me, and had stopped to wait. When I looked at her, her mouth was a thin line, her eyes about three-fourths angry. At me.
"If I was a Lizard," she said, "I could have ridden up to you and you'd never have noticed till I'd cut your throat."
My flash of indignation died before it more than started, and a wave of chills ran over my hide. Jamila was right. My nature-boy muse, which should be standing by to assist my warrior muse, had taken over instead. And for that to happen, I'd first had to put my warrior muse on the shelf. I dusted him off and reinstated him. Nature boy, I thought, this isn't the time or the place.
"Thanks for the reminder," I said to Jamila.
About noon we came to a dense grove of the pinelike trees in a shallow saddle. They looked forty meters tall. Their shade was heavy, and we decided it was a good place for a nap. After picketing our horses in a little wind gap a couple dozen meters away, where they could browse on twig ends, we sat down on a log together, where the shade was darkest, and ate. We didn't talk much, but sat close enough that now and then our shoulders would touch, or our elbows. After gnawing on bread and cheese and some of the strong sausage we'd bought, we lay down a few meters apart and went to sleep with our boots on.
I'm not sure how long I slept; maybe the better part of an hour. And I'm not sure what woke me; maybe a stick snapped or a horse snorted. I'd barely had time to pick up my sword and get to my feet, when a net came spinning. I dodged and slashed, cutting it, sweeping it away from me. Someone jumped me from behind, pinning my arms. I hit him hard in the face with the back of my head, elbowed his ribs, stomped his foot, jabbed back with my fingers into his balls, and twisted, all in about a second, all without losing my sword. Doubled over and stumbling, he tried to get clear, and I slashed at him, feeling contact but nothing very solid. There was a pistol shot. I felt the ball strike the right side of my butt like a burning hammer, and I ran! Ran down the ridge with long desperate bounds, the sounds of two more pistol shots behind me.
I didn't stop for maybe a hundred and fifty meters—not until it struck me that I hadn't seen or heard Jamila. She was back there, or had been. Till then I hadn't been thinking, just acting, riding my muse the way I'd been trained. I pulled up gasping for breath, knelt behind a fallen tree I'd hurdled, and peered back over it where a stout branch jutted to hide my head. Nothing moved that I could see or hear.
Shit! No Lizard gun, no pack—and no swordbelt, which meant no purse or knife, or scabbard for my sword. And no horse. I was aware of warm blood sticky on my right leg, in my pants. Jamila could have been captured or killed, or she might, like me, have gotten away—maybe even unwounded. I hadn't heard her yell, but then, I hadn't yelled either, so far as I knew.
They'd thrown a net at me, and that poor dumb sucker had tried to rassle me down! That meant they wanted me alive if possible. But someone hadn't hesitated to shoot, either, though he may have been trying just to hobble me.
I looked around. I'd run down the east slope of the ridge, the side away from the road. Probably our attackers had come along the top, following us. I wondered if they had a tracker. It seemed likely, although horses are a lot easier to track than a man. I could track horses.
Even if they didn't have a tracker, somebody should have followed me down the ridge. I waited for a couple of minutes, for some sign of him. Nothing. I picked up a stick, a broken chunk of limb, flipped it off downhill and plainly heard it hit. No one moved or made a sound.
Well, shit! I stood up, ready to throw myself down again at the first sign of danger. Still nothing, so I started back up the ridge, circling a bit to my right. Climbing was harder on my wounded butt than running downhill had been, and it was starting to hurt pretty badly, but I was still mobile, about as mobile as before. Which seemed to mean that the ball hadn't hit bone, that it was a flesh wound.
I'd go back to where they'd jumped me, although it felt as if they'd be gone when I got there. If they were, they were a mighty sorry pack, with some feeble alibis to deliver when they got home. Maybe I could figure out whether they'd caught Jamila, or killed her, or what. And what direction they'd gone. Then I'd either follow them, or circle ahead and try to ambush them.
Maybe they were waiting to ambush me. It didn't feel like it, though. They'd figure I was a kilometer gone by now. But if there was an ambush ... I had my sword, but they had pistols, surely swords as well, and probably a Lizard gun—mine at least. On the other hand, they wanted me alive, it seemed like—while I'd be happy to have them dead. I'd only seen one of them—the one who'd grabbed me—but I had a confused impression of at least two more. And at least three shots had been fired, which meant at least three pistols.
But if they hadn't bagged me before, when they'd taken me by surprise, and in my sleep at that, they weren't warriors at all. And while I was wounded, so was at least one of them. And I'd be surprised if Jamila hadn't killed, or at least injured, one or more of them.
I reminded myself too that guys who aren't real warriors tend to rely an awful lot on guns if they have them. They tend to shoot without maneuvering, without getting in close. And a pistol gets wildly inaccurate beyond twenty meters, unless it has a rifled barrel, which most don't. A lot of guys have a hard time hitting anything even at ten. Even an unrifled musket isn't accurate farther than thirty, forty meters, although rifled muskets are getting common in some districts.
That's the kind of stuff that ran through my mind while I snuck up the ridge. My warrior muse must have been blushing at all the internal monologue, the rationalizing. Or maybe not. Maybe just then I needed to do that.
No one was there when I got to where they'd jumped me—leaving blood behind, and no sign at all of Jamila, unless some of the blood was hers. I wondered again how they'd found us. Because tracking is slow. And I wondered where they all came from! I mean—there were the ones that came so close to getting us at the inn the evening before—Jamila had killed or wounded one of them. And I'd killed seven on the road earlier today. Now here were these! Where were they all from? And who was giving the orders? Lizards?
I took off, following their trail, trotting and listening, eyes peeled. No more stuff was running through my mind now. All eyes and ears; all business. After only a few minutes I saw movement ahead, heard someone swear at a horse. I moved faster, and at a break in the slope got a look. There were three of them in the saddle and two bodies tied over horses. None of them was Jamila. Two bodies! She must have killed them; I was pretty sure I hadn't, any of them. But I would! I fell away to my right then and took off downhill, keeping timber and ground breaks between us till I was sure I'd gotten past them. I was down on the toe of the slope now. Between trees I could glimpse an open field ahead.
I'd have to be careful. They'd be looking ahead, and there was a good risk I'd be seen, depending on how alert they were. I scuttled along till I saw them picking their way through a brushy blowdown opening, then waited behind a big old yellowbark, sword in hand.
Their security was nonexistent and their muses asleep. And they were talking as they rode, not in Merkan. The first was riding right past me when I jumped him—took his leg off above the knee—then leaped at the next while the first horse screamed and reared. The second man was slow! His horse was shying, but by the guy's expression, he hadn't even realized what was happening. I took his leg off too. The third was about ten meters behind, and I never had a chance at him. He put heels to his horse and took off galloping. He was bound to have had a pistol, but one arm just hung, and he was handling the reins with the other hand. Probably the guy my sword had bitten, up on the hill.
I watched him go, hoping he'd fall off, or get knocked off by a limb. At my best I wasn't up to running down horses, and I'd started to shake like a leaf, feeling suddenly weak. I realized I'd lost quite a lot of blood. The first two horses had taken off too; both would be more or less wounded by the strokes I'd given their riders.
When the shakes were past, I went over and looked at the men I'd delimbed; both were already dead. And I thought I'd lost blood! The ground where they lay was covered with it, soaked with it. The first had the Lizard gun cross-slung on his back, and I took it off. I could hardly believe they wouldn't have tried to track us down with a weapon like that. Unless something was wrong with it. Aiming at a tree, I pressed the stud. Nothing happened. I looked it over to see if there was some device on it, other than the trigger, that maybe had to be set some certain way before it would work. There was a sort of sliding button on the side; I moved it and tried again. Still nothing. Maybe it was out of whatever made it work, or maybe it was broken.
I tossed it aside and turned my attention to the two horses with bodies tied across them. They'd trotted off a little ways and stood watching me skittishly. There was no indication that either body they carried held life.
I considered hiking back up the ridge, to see if I could track Jamila, but as weak as I felt now, I couldn't confront the climb. Instead I checked the two guys I'd killed, took the swordbelt from the bigger of them, and the purses from both. One guy had a scabbard my sword would fit in, so I took belt and scabbard, cleaned my blade on his shirt, and sheathed it. I also took his belt knife.
The one that seemed to have been the leader had something in a shirt pocket that I thought was probably a radio; it definitely resembled what my masters had shown us. I left it. I didn't see any good it could do me.
The horses were ambling down toward the clearing now, and I followed. They stopped at the field—it was planted with potatoes—to graze on the grassy margin, and one of them let me go up to her. I tied her reins to a sapling, cut the body loose, and took its purse. And my pack; its straps were fastened through rings in the saddle skirt.
The other horse, a gelding, let me cut its corpse loose, too. The only sign I found of Jamila was the men she'd killed, one dead by a sword blow, the other with a pistol! I didn't find her sword or even her pack, and I told myself she'd surely gotten away.
There was food in the saddlebags, and ponchos tied behind. I transferred the food to my pack and fastened the pack to the rings in the saddle skirt. Then I untied the mare and, gritting my teeth, pulled myself into the saddle. I didn't have the strength to walk much farther, and I couldn't stay where I was.
I nudged her with my heels and we started along the edge of the field, toward the road. The fact that I could sit in a saddle at all told me I didn't have a pistol ball in my buttock.
I had a choice ahead of me. I could ride to the next village, take a room at the inn, and lay over a few days, maybe find a medic there to clean the wound. But people would talk; word would spread. Or I could stop at the next hamlet and see if one of the farmers would put me up. Again people would talk, but word might not spread beyond the hamlet. In either case I could get hog-tied or murdered by someone hoping for a reward.
As I rode, it seemed to me I was holding up pretty well, so I decided to hang tough and see if I could reach the next county. They probably spoke a different language there, and there was a lot less traffic, sometimes a lot less trust, between counties.
About four kilometers farther I came to a village, PERIGEUX according to the sign. It was on a crossroad that went over the side ridges, and in the center of the village, where the roads crossed, another sign had OTAVI TOWN 8 carved into it. Otavi Town. They were bound to talk a different language in a place named Otavi than in villages called Perigueux and Bergerac, and I told myself I had enough strength left to ride eight more kilometers.
So I turned east toward the next valley.
I made it over the ridge and saw a bigger one ahead between me and Otavi. Suddenly I felt weak and dizzy. I clung to the horse's neck for a minute, till my eyes focused again, then gritted my teeth and rode on. In the narrow bottom, between the two ridges, was a pretty little creek running through the forest. I knew I'd overreached, couldn't make it much farther, that if I tried, I'd pass out and fall off. So I turned the mare upstream at the ford and, hanging on to her neck again, waded her about a hundred meters through the hardwoods, till we came to a grove of the dark, pine-like trees with little on the ground but moss and dead needles.
Getting off without falling off was the hard part. I almost fainted from the pain when I swung my leg over the saddle. Feet on the ground, I had to cling to saddle and mane for a minute till my head stopped spinning, and when I let go, my knees gave way, sending me sprawling. I was lucky the mare was calm and patient.
It took me a minute to get up again, but I managed to gather some strength from somewhere and picketed the mare in a grassy glade close by, then hobbled her for insurance. Then I stumbled back into the grove, prayed briefly on my knees, lay down on my stomach and passed out.