CHAPTER 3
Roane moved without any conscious volition, at least afterward she could remember none. When she was thinking again she found herself face down in the stinking morass of the bed, a struggling body pinned under her. One of her hands was across the girl’s mouth, and Roane was using her own weight to try to subdue the other’s struggles.
There was a sharp pain in Roane’s gagging hand and she snatched it away instinctively. The girl had bitten her. But the shrieks she feared might follow did not come. Instead the other spoke in a low voice:
“Why try to smother me, you dolt?”
Roane jerked away, nursing her bitten hand. She fumbled her beamer out of its belt loop, set it on low, and turned it on. And with her hand about it for a shield, she held it full upon the other.
The pale face caught in that light was streaked with black smears; dark hair tumbled about it. Below the determined chin was a broad metal collar, and from that a chain stretched into the dark. The girl caught at the collar with both hands, worried at it, though she continued to stare straight at the light as if seeking Roane behind it.
“If you are not one with the offal below,” she said in a whisper, “then who are you?”
“I came here to shelter from the storm,” Roane said evasively, in a whisper even more constrained. “I heard them bringing you and I hid.”
“Where?” The girl asked that eagerly as if the answer held some desperate meaning for her.
Roane switched the light so it touched the headboard as a pointer. “Behind that. There is space enough.”
“But where you were does not tell me who you are,” the girl returned sharply. “I am the Princess Ludorica!” And there was a note in her voice which canceled out the dirt streaks on her face, the clinging stench, the collar that confined her.
Roane looked at that collar, and in her a small spark of anger flared. By all the urging of her training she should leave here right now. She could use that niche ladder. By the strongest oaths known to her people she was pledged not to make any contacts. Revenian quarrels were no concern for off-worlders. The old laws on noninterference were strictly enforced. And yet—that collar—
“I am not of Reveny,” she said, evading once again, striving to keep her answer as low as she could.
“Thus making this matter none of your affair?” the Princess snapped. “What are you then, a Vordainian spy? Or perhaps a smuggler from over-border? He who will not reveal his face nor speak his name cannot thereafter be troubled if we see him as a walking evil.” She repeated the last as if she quoted some saying. “Can you be bought? My offer will be very high—”
Roane wondered at the calm control of the Princess. Instead of sitting in this odorous box with a chain and collar making her fast, she might have been at ease in her own palace, save that she held her voice to a whisper. And now Roane saw that what she had first thought another smear of grime across the side of the girl’s chin was the darkening of a large bruise. Now and then Ludorica did hesitate between one word and the next, as if she found speaking somewhat difficult.
“Who are those men below?” Roane had a question of her own. That they had so dared mishandle the heiress to Reveny’s throne meant they were not common criminals. And the more she learned of what lay behind this, the better she could plan what to do. Though she already knew she could not turn her back on Ludorica.
“Since I had to play the swooning female, that they use me with less alertness, I did not see too much of them. They wear foresters’ jerkins, I do not believe honestly. And how I came into their hands—” She shrugged and the chain tightened, the collar jerked, bringing a choking cough from her. “That I do not know. I went peacefully to sleep in my bed in Hitherhow. When I awoke I was lying in a bumping cart on a forest track with the rain pouring like to drown me. Doubtless that restored my wits. Then the storm struck us full, bringing down a tree. The cart took the brunt of that to the fore. I gather that he who drove it had no further interest in the matters of this world. They pulled me out and brought me here.
“I do not think you are a Vordainian,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “If you are a smuggler, you will be given full pardon, with a good purse added to it. Get me loose of this”—she pulled at the collar again—“and guide me to the post at Yatton.” She still stared ahead as if she could see Roane clearly.
When the off-world girl did not answer, the Princess set her lips tightly together for an instant and then added:
“It would seem you also have no reason to wish to be discovered by those below. Let this then be a case of your enemy is my enemy, so a truce between us for this one battle.” Again she appeared to be quoting. “Your speech is strange, you are not of Reveny, and you have not the inflection of Vordain, nor the tongue clicks of Leichstan. Unless you are some mercenary from the north—No matter, get me free and you can rest easy on the gratitude of Reveny for your future, and that is no small thing!” There was pride in her voice, and once more Roane could forget where they were and that she fronted a prisoner and not one seated on a throne.
After all, what could some aid matter? She had already interfered, by merely being here and letting the Princess know it. If she left now, always supposing that she could climb to freedom by the wall way, the Princess, in anger at being abandoned, might call her captors, or Roane, trapped above in some manner, could be discovered. But if she were able to get the Princess away, she could contrive to lose her in the woods. Let the Princess then believe that she was a smuggler, too deeply involved in some criminal activity to be more than wary.
The Princess seemed to think her a man, perhaps because she had glimpsed, by the lightning flash, Roane’s coverall and cropped hair.
“All right.” Roane gave grudging consent. “But that collar—” She leaned over to train the beamer first on the band around the Princess’s throat, and then along the chain to where it had been fastened about one of the bedposts. There was a lock, but she could see no way of forcing it.
Which left the bedpost or the chain itself. Her hand went to a tool on her belt. To use that again went against all she had been trained and taught. It was odd, one part of her mind observed as she drew that rod out of its loop: the longer she stayed here, the more it seemed right and proper that she do as Ludorica wanted—as if the desire of the Princess awoke a companion response from her.
Roane hunched over, trying not to breathe in the fumes of the debris, held the rod out in the beamer’s small gleam, thumbing the right setting. Then she touched the rod to the chain as far from the Princess as she could reach. There was a flash of light. Roane pushed the cutter back in her belt, gave the chain a quick jerk. It broke. She heard a small sound like a sigh from the Princess.
“You will have to wear the collar yet awhile,” Roane whispered. “I dare not cut that so close to your neck.”
“That I am free in so much is something to give thanks for. But there are still the men below. If you have a dagger—how do you—”
Ludorica had balled the chain up in one hand so it might make no noise as she moved. She reached the edge of the bed box, swung out to the floor, as Roane was doing on the opposite side. The Princess’s white robe, or once-white robe, billowed around her. One of her braids of hair had come undone and the long locks, tufted with debris from the bed, hung about her shoulders. She clawed out the filthy rags with a small shudder of disgust as Roane joined her.
The off-world girl surveyed the Princess’s clothing doubtfully. The only way out was up that toe-and-finger-hold stair, and surely the Princess could not climb it wearing all those folds of cloth. Bringing her charge (for now Roane accepted the responsibility which followed her never-clearly-faced choice) around to the back of the bed, she flashed the beamer on the holes and explained their hope. But facing it now, she found the future more dubious.
“Lend me your dagger!” Ludorica whispered. “Oh”—she made a sound close to laughter—“I do not mean to fight my way free below. But I cannot climb in this.” She gave an impatient tug to the robe.
“I do not have a dagger—” Roane returned.
“No dagger? But how then do you protect yourself?” the Princess asked wonderingly.
What Roane did produce was a belt knife, and the Princess seized upon it eagerly, slashing her full skirt front and back, cutting strips to bind the pieces to her legs in a grotesque copy of Roane’s coverall. Before she returned the knife to its owner she tested its point on the ball of her thumb.
“This is like to a forester’s skinning tool, yet different still,” she commented. “You have not spoken your name—nor shown me your face—”
She caught Roane off guard as her hand shot out, her fingers closing around the wrist which supported the beamer. The impetus of that attack worked. Before Roane could dodge, the other had focused that light to fully illuminate its owner.
Roane broke the other’s grip, but too late. The Princess had had a good look at her, and being quick-witted as she was, she must have noted a lot. Roane was developing some awe of the other. A girl who had been dragged from her bed, brought to this place, chained up like a hound, assaulted by Roane herself, yet who managed to keep a level head, ask for aid, argue logically on her own behalf—Such was no common person, on Clio or off. And Roane wondered if under the same circumstances she would have done as well.
“You are not a man!” The beamer turned floorward between them, having done its work. “Yet your manner of dress—that I have not seen before. And your hair—so short. You are indeed strange. Perhaps the legends are true after all. If—if—” For the first time there was a tremor in the Princess’s voice. “If you are one of the Guardians then answer me true—it is my right for I am of the Blood Royal, the next Queen Regnant of Reveny—if you are a Guardian, what has become of the Ice Crown?”
To Roane her plea was a mixture of command and petition, and it meant nothing. But a sound from below did. During their struggle on the bed and their escape from it, the storm had been dying; now they could hear the men moving below.
Roane caught at the Princess’s hand as she switched off the beamer. If the men were coming for their captive, there was little they could do in their own defense. Back in camp were stunners; Roane longed for one now. But those had not been unpacked, since they had no need to fear any forest animal with the distorts on. And those of the team were well aware they were not to be turned against any native here unless in the very last recourse. She had the knife—which the Princess still held—and the tool she had used to break the chain, nothing else.
Hand-linked, they stood very still to listen. The room had grown lighter. Perhaps they would not need the beamer. Roane drew the Princess to the head of the bed and behind it. The sooner they proved whether or not the holes led to freedom, the better.
“Climb!” She shoved Ludorica ahead of her and hoped the Princess could do just that. As the other faced the wall, raised her hands to the niches, Roane crouched so she could watch the top of the stair. It was too bad that they could not bar that way—say, shift the chest across it. But one good look at that told her that such a feat was impossible.
It seemed that the Princess’s breathing, the faint scratching of her fingers and toes (for she was barefoot), were very loud. Roane strained to catch any answering sound from below.
The Princess was now well above the level of the headboard, straining to reach the shadowy crisscross of the upper beams. Roane started after her. It was, she decided, about equal to climbing a steep slope, save that she took each lift with the fear of at any moment being caught. Her breath rasped harshly in her own ears and she tried to control that fear, thinking not of what might happen but of what she must do in the next moment and the next.
“There is a place of flooring here,” the Princess called down in a whisper, “and, I think, a door. This must be an overreach—”
What the other might mean, Roane had no idea, but she was heartened to know that her companion seemed to recognize something well known to her. Then Roane’s hand, reaching for the next niche, scraped a solid surface and she pulled herself out on a platform laid across the junction of two beams.
“There is a door to the roof. I have drawn its bolt,” the Princess told her. “But it may take us both to hit it. It must be a very long time since this was last opened.”
They crouched shoulder to shoulder on their knees, their four hands flat over their heads against a wooden surface. The dry dust they so raised sifted into Roane’s face and hair, but she closed her eyes to it and said—
“Now!”
At first it seemed that that barrier had been firmly cemented by time. Then there was a giving which led to a greater exercise of strength. A crack of light grew wider as they strained. And, as if some further fastening gave way, the door lifted with a rush. Fresh, rain-wet air blew in upon them.
Roane drew herself up and out, turning to lend a hand to the Princess, who was making an effort to follow. They were on the roof of the tower in the full open. Around them ran a waist-high parapet. And it was day, though the rain clouds hung heavy above. Roane dropped the door into place. That they had bettered their case much was doubtful. Unless they could stay here in hiding until the men below left—which she thought was a very slim chance.
But the Princess was crawling on hands and knees around the parapet, stopping now and then to run her hands over its surface, almost as if she were in search of something she was sure she would eventually find. Even as Roane watched she paused and her fingertips outlined a space first on the parapet and then on the surface under it.
“We are favored by fortune,” she said. “There is indeed an overreach here.”
Roane went to look over the parapet. Some distance away the edge of the cliff backing the tower jutted out. The girl tried to measure the distance between that and the tower. But it was too far to hope for a crossing—lacking a jump belt of her own civilization. Yet the Princess was now brushing at the roof, sweeping away the debris left by years of wind sowing.
“Ah—here!”
She had crawled some distance back from the parapet, and now she dug away at what seemed to Roane an ordinary crack between those slabs of stone which made up the roof. “Your knife—give it to me! This must be loosed.”
Again Roane believed that Ludorica knew what she was about. She passed over the blade, nor did she voice the protest she felt when the Princess rammed its point into the crack.
Small rolls of black were gouged out, the Princess smearing them away with her hand. Now Roane could see that the break was much wider than it had first looked, so that a few minutes’ work cleared a recess wide enough for Ludorica to get her fingers into. She motioned impatiently to Roane—
“Move back—over there. This may take some time; the packing is very old. But these were meant for escape means during the first Nimp invasions and I have never seen one yet which would not answer. Though I must find the lock stone.”
She moved her hand back and forth, manifestly working her fingers within the crack. Then, even as the trap door had given, there was a thin grating sound and the stone block moved, sliding as a drawer toward the parapet. A whole section of that, as wide as the moving slab, sank out and forward as if on invisible hinges.
“Help me—” the Princess panted.
Roane scrambled to the opposite side of the slab, pushed at it. It slid on and on, passing out over the now horizontally leveled section of parapet to form a narrow bridge which did not quite touch that rocky spur beyond but came close to closing the gap.
The Princess sat back on her heels, panting with effort, her dirty face flushed. “We must be quick; these do not hold long—”
Roane did not try to take that narrow path on her feet but crawled on hands and knees, and was careful to keep her eyes to the tongue of stone which she must traverse. There was a giddy sensation in her head. She had never been fond of heights, though she had fought that fear through the wandering years of her life. This was the worst test she had yet faced.
She reached the end of the slab. There was still open space between its end and the ledge. She jumped, landing heavily on the stone. Then she stood ready, holding out her hands, to aid the Princess.
It was lucky that she did, for just as Roane took firm grip of the wrists the other girl held out to her, the stone tongue trembled, moved, backed toward the tower. She was just in time to jerk Ludorica to safety. The slab rolled into place, the parapet arose, and their bridge was gone.
“Now—for Yatton—” The Princess was trying to order the remnants of her robe. She took a step and then gave a sharp exclamation, holding up a bare foot to brush at its sole.
Roane thought of her own plans—to aid the Princess and then fade away into the woods, leaving the other to go where she chose. Now she discovered that she could not desert her companion. The rain was chill and the Princess was barefoot. How long would it be before those men in the tower found their captive gone? And then—how long before they ran her down again?
“Where is this Yatton of yours?” Roane demanded impatiently. The only alternative would be to take the Princess back to camp, and she could foresee only outright disaster in that. Either way she was in deeper trouble with every passing moment.
“Two leagues—nearer three.” The Princess raised her other foot to brush at it. “To speak the truth, I do not believe I can walk that without shoes. It would seem my feet are too tender for such wayfaring.”
“We cannot be too far now from Hitherhow.”
The Princess, having brushed her feet, was now busied in coiling the collar chain about her slender shoulders in a strange and ugly necklace. “I do not return to Hitherhow—not until I am sure—”
“Sure of what?”
“Of how I could be lifted from my bed there so easily with no guard’s hand raised to prevent it.” She eyed Roane bleakly, and then her eyes focused on the off-world girl far more searchingly.
“You—you are surely not one of us. But a Guardian would not have needed to climb that wall stair, cross a safety bridge. A Guardian, by all the old tales, needs merely to desire a thing and it becomes so. I do not know what you are, and you will not tell me who—”
“I am Roane Hume.” Roane had not meant to say that. It was again an odd compulsion to tell the truth which moved in her before she was aware. “I am not of Reveny, but I think I have proved I mean you no harm.”
“Roane Hume,” the Princess repeated. “Your name, too, is strange. But this is a time of many things which are not as they once were.” She had continued to eye Roane closely, but now she smiled and held out her hand.
And when she did so Roane experienced a melting inside her. It was as if no one had ever really smiled at her before, asking her aid, not demanding it impatiently. And her own well-tanned hand caught those whiter, if dirty, fingers and squeezed them for an instant before she remembered again that she, least of all on this world, had any right to commit herself in friendship, or even in a fleeting companionship.
“You pay no homage. In this you are like a Guardian,” commented the other. “Is it that where you come from there is no difference between those of the Blood Royal and others?”
“Something of that sort,” admitted Roane cautiously.
“I do not believe that one of Reveny could live easily in such a strangely ordered place,” the Princess began and then laughed, put her fingers to her lips as if she would catch back those frank words. “I mean no disrespect to your customs, Roane Hume. It is only that, bred in one pattern, I find such a different one bewildering.”
“We have no time to discuss it.” Roane fought back her own desire to ask questions, to know more of Ludorica. “If you cannot return to Hitherhow, and it is impossible to reach Yatton, then where will you go?” She must be on her way, but still she could not abandon the Princess.
“You have come from somewhere.” The Princess seized upon the very solution Roane dreaded. She had no idea what Uncle Offlas might do if she turned up at the camp with this bedraggled fugitive. That the end would be drastic, she could guess. But there did seem to be nothing else left to do.
“I will take you there then.” Her voice sounded harsh and cold in her own ears. She tried to think of some other way. There was one feeble hope. She might discover a hiding place in the woods, leave Ludorica there, get supplies, clothing, footwear for her, and eventually start her off to her own people. A project in which there were as many chances for failure as she had fingers and toes. But there was nothing else—
Now she turned to study what she could see of the tower and the woods. That they would be tracked she had no doubt. Therefore she must leave as devious a trail as possible. At the same time she must give the Princess as good a chance of escape as she could.
“We must head that way—” She gestured north, away from the camp. The detour would buy them time.
They climbed down from the ledge and the Princess must go slowly. Finally Roane took her supply bag, dumped its contents into the front of her coverall, slit it with the knife, and bound the halves about her companion’s feet. That done, they were able to march at a better pace.
The rain continued to fall steadily, if not with the force of the storm, and the Princess was shivering. Roane had a new worry. Immunized as she was through the arts of her own civilization, she was aware that those without such medical protection must be highly susceptible to exposure. What if Ludorica became ill, what if—Their future was far too full of such ifs. Roane should lead her directly to camp. Only the stern conditioning of Uncle Offlas kept her intent on leaving a confused trail which might ward off disaster.
But, she realized at last, Ludorica could not stand much more. Though the Princess made no complaint, she lagged behind. Twice Roane returned, having missed her, to find her charge leaning against a tree, holding to the bole as if she were lost without support. And finally she must half carry her along.
It was then they came to one of the stony hills Roane recognized as a landmark. On its side was a raw new gash. And there was the smell of burnt, smoldering wood. Lightning must have struck and, in so striking, started a landslide.
Where that had passed now gaped a hole. The slide must have uncovered a cave, or at least a deep crevice. Here was shelter and Roane brought the Princess to it.