Firehand

by Andre Norton

  building their confidence."

  "Quite true," Luroc agreed. He came to his feet. "I think I am probably

  not alone in wanting to see something of what you can do." He ordered

  one of his guards to have a target prepared for the strange warrior's use.

  There was no need to command that a bow and arrows be given to her as

  well. These, she would have herself, all well familiar to her hand, and she

  would require or want no others.

  Ashe fell into step beside Ross. "Is this necessary?" he inquired in a low

  voice.

  "Yes."

  Murdock turned his head slightly to conceal his smile. For once, he felt

  the older and considerably the more experienced of the two. Gordon was

  the fairest minded of men. He, Ross Murdock, could lay claim to no such

  virtue, and he remembered well the day that he and some of his fellow

  Time Agents had first been introduced to Eveleen Riordan. They had been

  a fine pack of thick-skulled young studs, and if they had known better than

  to openly voice either doubt or ridicule, none of them had been very

  friendly toward their new instructor in either mind or expression.

  The weapons expert had appeared to be completely unaware of their

  hostility, but she had acknowledged that they had good reason to want to

  see something of what she could do before putting themselves in her

  hands, even as he had done just now with the Sapphirehold Ton. Since

  they were on the pistol range at the time, she offered to fire a clip after

  they were done, although modern arms were not her specialty.

  The hand guns were not noted for great accuracy when fired from that

  distance, and each of the men's shots liberally peppered the face of their

  respective targets, most of them congregating gratifyingly near the

  centers. There had been knowing grins in plenty when the woman had

  checked her weapon and stepped forward to take her turn.

  The sense of superiority had left Ross and his eyes had narrowed when

  she raised the gun, steadying it with both hands. She was not holding it

  vertically but horizontally.

  She fired. The kick threw the heavy weapon to the side, then swung it

  back into place again for the next shot and for those following it until the

  full clip had been emptied.

  No bullet-spotted surface presented itself to the observers' eyes, just

  one wide, black hole dead in the middle of the bull's-eye. Three of the

  bullets had gone in one atop the other in its precise center.

  It seemed that Eveleen's father was an Army Sergeant, a career man

  with the old-fashioned idea that it was his duty to teach his children all he

  knew about his trade, his diminutive daughter as well as his strapping

  son.

  Murdock shook his head. She had been right, too, in her own

  estimation of her abilities. Compared with what she could do with archaic

  weapons and in unarmed combat, her knowledge of high-tech implements

  of slaughter was nothing spectacular at all.

  She had had no more trouble after that exhibition, certainly none once

  she began to prove herself as a superb teacher, but a lot of the men still

  held aloof from her personally, outside of the demands of cooperation put

  on them all by the Project. Ross was not one of those. He had soon come to

  like the slight woman, the more especially when he learned that her

  sometimes astonishing store of odd knowledge had been acquired through

  observation and private reading, even as his own had, and not from the

  classrooms of some fancy college…

  They had reached the training yard. A good crowd was present, the

  Time Agent saw, more than had been at the conference. Word of the

  demonstration must have spread.

  Eveleen was readying her bow. Murdock silently braced himself, hoping

  he had read these Sapphireholders rightly, that they would respond to the

  display of her prowess as had their fellow agents at home.

  He also hoped that she would not somehow flub the test. There was a

  trick to managing these oddly bent bows, though in trained hands, they

  could achieve remarkable distance and accuracy. It had taken them all

  some time to master this weapon.

  The first arrow flew and struck home. Another followed and another

  until he could have laughed aloud in his pride in his comrade's skill.

  The last bolt stood quivering amidst the mass of its fellows. For a

  moment there was no response, then a loud, enthusiastic cheering broke

  from the onlookers.

  Allran A Aldar approached her even as the woman stepped forward to

  retrieve her arrows. "Lieutenant EA Riordan?"

  She turned quickly. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

  "That trick you have of drawing and sighting in one motion…"

  "You'd like to learn it?"

  "I would," he averred, "and to have those under me learn it as well. I

  believe my father will want the whole garrison to master it."

  Eveleen smiled broadly. "It will be my greatest pleasure to teach you."

  7

  ROSS MURDOCK STROKED his doe's neck. The tension inevitable to

  these final minutes of waiting rippled through deer as well as rider and

  was at least as difficult for her to bear as it was for him.

  Lady Gay would not betray them, of course. She was as well broken to

  the demands of the war they waged as was the Time Agent himself. His

  pale eyes hardened. After a year of this life, they should all be accustomed

  to it.

  Because his enemies were as yet relatively distant, he permitted his

  mind to range back to the morning when the long-awaited confrontation

  had at last come.

  Sapphirehold's garrison had ridden forth in full pomp, supposedly to

  meet the Condor Hall forces coming against them as had all their

  neighbors defeated before them, save that their army was considerably

  larger and far better prepared than any of those others had been.

  They had known they were riding into danger and had traveled warily,

  with hidden, well-trained scouts ranging the lands all around. Thus it was

  that when they had reached the place Zanthor I Yoroc had chosen for their

  destruction, they knew that hill-fringed field for a trap and knew what

  their course must be to both activate it and escape its jaws.

  The defenders had seemed to rise to the bait of Condor Hall's own army

  ranged along the base of the long, low hill in front of them, but they did

  not engage fully, and when the erstwhile concealed mercenaries had

  suddenly crested the higher ground behind Zanthor's troops, the

  Sapphireholders had as abruptly drawn back once more and fled to the

  south in apparently total panic, their supposedly victorious enemies in full

  pursuit.

  The chase had lasted a full two hours, more than sufficient time to

  permit the work back at the keep to be completed. All the while, the

  escaping party steadily shrank in number until the last warriors had

  vanished into the wild hills among which they were riding as suddenly and

  completely as if Hawaika's Foanna had teleported them to another world.

  The Ton of Condor Hall had not bothered to order an immediate search

  for what he saw as a ragtag band of demoralized men who represented no

 
conceivable further threat to him, and had wheeled his army about to ride

  for and claim Sapphirehold's hall and cultivated lands.

  Smoking ruins and smoldering ash where pastures and crops had been

  were all that met his eyes when he reached the seat of Luroc I Loran's

  authority. The totality of that destruction, the utter ruthlessness of it, had

  frozen the heart in his breast, for he saw in it a shadow of the spirit firing

  those he had made his implacable foes.

  That chill had passed in the next moment, but not the realization of the

  change this move would force in his plans. The loss of the supplies he had

  intended to take from Sapphirehold effectively ended his hope of pushing

  through to the south and crushing the domains there this season. It was

  late in the year, already past the time when a commander could expect to

  keep large numbers of troops in the field. He would not be able to supply

  his army through the Corridor during the long winter months and he

  could not gamble on being able to seize sufficient goods in the south

  quickly enough to meet his forces' needs.

  It made no real difference to the outcome, he thought in the end with a

  mental shrug, apart from the annoyance of the delay and the regrettable

  necessity of feeding his hirelings throughout the winter. He would return

  in the spring to finish off any of the fugitives who did not bleed to death or

  starve on their cliffs or put them to the sword later if they fled south. In

  the meantime, he had accomplished his most immediate objective.

  Zanthor I Yoroc had never been particularly interested in this rough

  country the Sapphireholders called lowlands, not in itself, but in winning

  it, he had secured control over the Corridor, the single passage giving

  large-scale traffic access to the rich southern domains. Nothing but time,

  the few months until spring, stood between him and the possession of

  them now, or so he had believed in his moment of triumph.

  The Terran's lips curled into a cold smile. Zanthor had erred seriously

  in his assessment of the defender's position. Sapphirehold had not starved.

  Far from it. Both highland and lowland harvests were in and had been

  bountiful, and people, animals, and crops were well sheltered against the

  fierce mountain winter. They had only to plan their vengeance and finish

  preparing themselves to bring it to pass. Once they had settled themselves

  and had seen the few injured out of danger, Murdock had resumed

  training his army in this new kind of war, a style of battle so utilizing the

  rugged countryside around them that it became a veritable ally rather

  than merely a theater for their activities. Its value had quickly become

  apparent, and the garrison's warriors had taken readily to it, as did the

  rest of the domain's populace.

  To the off-worlders' relief, Sapphirehold's women had responded to

  their people's great need and had entered service beside their men. Most

  had soon established themselves as full equals. Indeed, when it was finally

  joined, they carried their war with a perfectly executed purpose and frigid

  fury that astonished not only their own menfolk but the Terrans as well.

  Full war command of the company was Murdock's. In the single great

  tragedy of that day of foiled treachery, Luroc had taken an arrow in the

  back and had fallen with brutal force from his leaping buck. It was Ross

  who had dismounted and lifted the ruler's battered, bleeding body across

  his own saddle and borne him out of the battle.

  The Ton had survived his wounds, but he was severely and permanently

  handicapped by them. Recognizing that he could lead no troops himself

  and acknowledging the debt he and his people owed this mercenary

  officer, he had formally given military control into his hands.

  Zanthor had all too soon learned that he was dealing with no handful of

  pitiful living skeletons but a force of strong, able fighters who not only

  shielded their strongholds with deadly efficiency but so persecuted those

  of his troops venturing upon Sapphirehold land that the invaders dared do

  so only in large, well-armed units, and few even of those could hope to pass

  through the domain without serious loss to Firehand's ever more deadly

  followers.

  Ross smiled again. He had quickly become known by that name both to

  his own comrades and to those upon whom they preyed. Murdock himself

  had been a little embarrassed at first, but Ashe had encouraged the

  notoriety from the start and, as usual, had proven right. It drew an aura of

  legend around him, a mystique encouraging to their supporters,

  disheartening to their foes. Zanthor I Yoroc depended upon his

  mercenaries, and anything that might unsettle them or lessen their

  contentment with him was to his enemies' advantage.

  If the Ton of Condor Hall had been disappointed in his hope of utterly

  crushing the Sapphirehold fighters, he was more seriously blocked in his

  desire for the same quick conquest of the southland as he had achieved

  the previous year amongst his northern neighbors. The domains he now

  sought to annex had not prospered as they had through the stupidity of

  their rulers. Surprise had given him his early, easy victories, and the

  forewarned southerners had no illusions as to their own inviolability.

  Sapphirehold's seemingly suicidal burning of its resources and the winter

  that had followed so close upon it had given them precious time, and when

  the invaders came, they found a strong confederation waiting to receive

  them under the very able command of Ton Gurnion I Carlroc of

  Willowlands, the most powerful of all the domains upon which Zanthor's

  greed had fixed.

  Late winter, spring, and summer had passed since the two armies had

  first met, long months filled with hardship and ever-escalating violence, as

  the forces of Condor Hall and the Confederacy opposing its advance

  grappled one with the other in the horror of total war.

  Ton Luroc had concurred with the off-worlders and had not permitted

  Sapphirehold to join formally with the southerners as most of his people

  had initially wished to do. They were too few to make a significant

  contribution if they allowed themselves to be swallowed in that great

  union of armies. The domain's leaders judged that they could better serve

  the south's cause and their own by fighting a very different kind of war,

  that for which they had begun to prepare themselves before Condor Hall

  had ever made its first treacherous advances.

  The land itself gave them their work and gave them, too, the

  opportunity to wreak real vengeance for all they had lost. Zanthor had not

  been able to strike at the southland without passing through the

  Sapphirehold lowlands and the single, narrow slit of the Corridor, and he

  was now forced to keep his army supplied through that same area.

  It was a large region in itself, although small in relation to the total of

  Luroc's lands, too large to be even partially garrisoned with any real effect,

  and it was rugged. Above all, it was intimately known to I Loran's warriors

  and the whole of it was potentially within reach of the daring, fast-riding

 
raiders operating out of the highlands.

  The partisan leader made good use of every opportunity offered him,

  whether to strike the supply trains moving south to the embattled

  invaders or to slash at troop columns again and again until they were

  either forced to retreat to their northern lair or else to continue on to the

  front.

  Even the Time Agents had not at first realized the extent of the

  importance their work would gain.

  The two mighty forces had begun their bloody contest about equally

  matched in strength and in resources, but as time went on, Zanthor I

  Yoroc found that maintaining his forces adequately was becoming an

  increasingly heavy strain, far more so than was the case among his

  opponents.

  The southern domains were rich and well managed, and others not

  actively involved in the war gave freely to their support, fearing what was

  likely to follow if the Confederacy were to fail.

  Condor Hall's empire did not enjoy the same solid base. The domain

  was a good one but could not begin to sustain its Ton's huge war effort by

  itself. The others he had conquered most assuredly could not. They had

  been raped in the first heady weeks of easy victory which had marked the

  opening of the war without regard to possible future difficulties, a wasting

  he now bitterly regretted but whose consequences he could not undo, not

  until peace gave him the time and resources to devote to their restoration.

  With his own holdings producing a bare third of his needs, Zanthor was

  compelled to import the remainder. At first, it had come readily from

  distant neighbors fearful of sparking his wrath, but as victory in the south

  seemed to draw no nearer, help became scantier and more grudgingly

  offered, and he had to pay well to fill his army's wants.

  Be that as it might, those needs had to be met and met promptly. He

  had bound his mercenaries to him through the liberal use of gold and the

  promise of rich southern holdings, but they were not willing to starve or

  freeze for his sake, not with their rewards as far from secured now as they

  had been the day they had given oath to him. The frequent, consistently

  effective raiding by the Sapphirehold forces was wearing enough on their

  morale without their falling into actual want because of it, and every

  wagon burned or stolen, every springdeer driven off to serve against them,