Firehand

by Andre Norton

  give passage to a few deermen and yet be easily defended by equally few.

  The Condor Hall warriors had both courage and skill under arms. They

  neither sued for quarter nor gave it, and it was a long, bloody time before

  the partisans at last began to batter down their defense, longer still before

  they could work their way along the line of wagons, most of which had

  been turned to block the road.

  Every foot of ground was bitterly contested, but at last, the two

  Sapphirehold forces met, trapping the few remaining defenders between

  them.

  There was no call to surrender, no suit for peace. The surviving

  invaders fought grimly on, determined to sell their already lost lives as

  dearly as possible.

  The flow of battle brought the three Sapphirehold leaders near one

  another as they struggled to bring down the handful of invaders still under

  arms, Eveleen and Allran so close that they might have served as

  shieldbearers for one another in a different kind of warfare, the

  commander a few yards from the other two.

  The weapons expert fought like a spirit of retribution, a cold, precise

  fury ever hunting the hot blood of those who sought to rip land and life

  from the people she had come to love. It was always thus with her, and the

  partisans had not long begun their war before Condor Hall's warriors had

  learned to hate and fear her terrible skill and the intelligent courage

  driving its use even as they hated and feared her more famed leader.

  The one she now faced recognized her. He would have preferred to

  engage some other, lesser foe, but, since fate had given this task to him, he

  was determined to come away from it with her life on his sword even

  though he must perish soon himself. He believed his skill to be the equal of

  that, however good she might be.

  He lunged, intending the thrust to be a feint to draw her guard and

  open her to a second, more deadly stroke.

  His springdeer slipped as his arm drove forward. The blade, instead of

  streaking toward the woman, pierced the neck of her mount.

  Comet reared in pain and terror, then fell heavily, throwing his rider

  and pinning her beneath him.

  Allran felled his opponent as the agent's wardeer gave his

  death-scream. He turned in time to see Comet go down.

  With a cry of rage, he swung at the invader who had done this thing,

  striking him full in the breast. So fierce was his thrust that the sword

  pierced him through the breadth of his body, and the mortally stricken

  warrior was flung from the saddle as if he had been hit by a catapult-fired

  stone, taking his bane-weapon with him.

  The Lieutenant leaped to the ground. There was no danger now in this

  area, except for the terrible, crushing weight upon Eveleen's fragile body.

  Several of the other partisans, also freed from combat by the fall of

  their final opponents, raced to his aid. Together, they raised the slain

  wardeer and drew the Terran free.

  Murdock's opponent crumpled before a thrust that had seemed no

  more than a flickering quiver of his blade. One more invader remained,

  but Gordon and another of the Sapphireholders moved in to take him

  before their commander could offer challenge, and he found himself free

  at last of death's grim shadow.

  He turned to scan the suddenly quiet battlefield.

  Ross paled as though fatally stricken himself. Allran was nearby on his

  right, bending over the still form of a woman. Her chestnut hair pinned in

  its golden net and the starkly white, wrenchingly fair features were all too

  clearly visible to him. Several of the others were with them, but his eyes

  were so fixed on the two Lieutenants that he could not have named them.

  Shock seemed to freeze the heart in his breast. Not this, he thought,

  desperate with fear and anguish. Anything to him, but not this. Not

  Eveleen.

  Lady Gay reached the pair in a moment.

  Murdock was out of the saddle before the doe had ceased to move.

  The kneeling man looked up. His face was grim. Grief and anger at his

  own helplessness were etched on it. "Comet fell on her. She has just ceased

  to breathe…"

  "Get out of there!" The Time Agent flung himself on Eveleen, all but

  hurtling the other aside.

  He covered her mouth with his, pinching her nose with his left hand so

  that none of the air he forced into her should escape that way.

  He felt her chest expand, paused, drove the air from it, filled her lungs

  again. Ten minutes went by. Twenty. He was growing exhausted himself

  when he thought he heard a soft moan.

  Imagination?

  Ross sat back on his heels. No, her breasts rose of their own accord.

  Before he could move to aid her further, Eveleen's eyes opened to look

  into his. They were puzzled and unfocused for a moment but then widened

  in horror as memory returned to her.

  "Gently!" he said quickly. "It's all over now."

  "Comet?" she asked faintly after a brief silence.

  "Gone. He died almost instantly. I'm sorry for that."

  "You wronged him," she whispered. "This wasn't his fault…"

  "I know," the man responded, "but be quiet now. Please. Gordon's here.

  Let him look you over."

  She nodded her assent, and the commander arose, giving place to his

  partner.

  Ross found everything in good order, as he had known would be the

  case.

  The frenzied activity that always followed a capture was still much

  evident, for the convoy was a large one, and each wagon had to be

  carefully searched and all possible stores loaded on the captured deer. The

  remainder would have to be burned, although he hated to let it go; the

  wagons were too slow, too cumbersome, to risk traveling with them

  himself.

  The wounded claimed a great deal of attention. There were many both

  among Sapphirehold's warriors and the invaders, a number of whom had

  been stricken three and four times before giving over.

  Some of the injured hung between life and death, and Ashe had been

  forced to devote his first attention to these rather than to Eveleen.

  Murdock had fought off her initial peril, and the withdrawal of Gordon's

  aid in the immediate aftermath of the battle would have cost the lives of a

  number of the others. Only when he had finished with them had he been

  able to relieve Ross and concentrate on the injured Terran.

  Once the commander had assured himself that there appeared to be no

  unanticipated difficulties in the aftermath of their victory, he sought out

  Allran and drew him aside. "I'm sorry for the way I used you back there."

  The Lieutenant shook his head. "Forget it. What you did, I should

  already have been doing."

  "And so would you have done had I given you another moment. Shock

  freezes us all. It was only some kind of instinct that moved me so quickly."

  The other smiled faintly. "Eveleeni has reason to praise that instinct."

  "If she's not hurt inside," he responded bleakly. "She won't have gained

  much if she's only to die slowly now instead of painlessly, as would have

  been the case if I hadn't intervened."

  That thought ha
d been in the Sapphireholder's mind as well, and he

  nodded glumly. "Perhaps Gordon will be able to give us his verdict

  shortly."

  Ashe came to them a little while later. He could tell them nothing

  definite. It was his belief that the Lieutenant had not suffered any

  permanent or grave injury, nothing, in fact, beyond an incredible bruising,

  that shock and weight had been responsible for the failure of her lungs,

  not any damage sustained by them. He was almost certain there had been

  no breaking or crushing of bone, but more, he simply did not know. Only a

  much closer examination than he was able to give her and several days of

  careful observation would tell him what he needed to learn. Until then,

  until her body had proven itself sound, she must be regarded as one of the

  more gravely wounded despite her protests that she was fit to ride or to

  fight as need demanded.

  15

  AT LAST, THE partisans were ready to depart. They divided as was

  their custom, some going south with the bulk of their spoil and the

  captives, most returning to the highlands, bringing with them what they

  desired of the captured stores and, of course, their own wounded.

  The shock of the accident was not quick to release Eveleen, and she was

  more than content to ride the litter despite her words to the contrary, a

  fact not lost upon her commander to his ever-increasing concern.

  It was the worst journey Ross Murdock had known in a long time, that

  return to base, as bad in its way as the terrible flight downriver in Terra's

  past with the Baldies close on his heels. He had known fear then and

  despair and physical pain and exhaustion. Now, his lash was uncertainty

  and a dread so sharp that he could have become sick with it had the

  strength of his will been less.

  The Sapphirehold force pressed on hour after hour, long after darkness

  had fallen. With so many of their party incapacitated, a number of them

  totally, Murdock had no desire to meet with a company of the enemy

  following after them to avenge either the herd or the convoy. Only when

  the weariness of his warriors and mounts threatened to become a danger

  in itself did he finally permit a halt.

  Dawn brought no easing to his heart. One of the wounded had died

  during the night, and another remained stable but very close to death.

  Gordon's report on Eveleen's condition was essentially the same, but he

  was more guarded in giving it. She was having pain, a considerable

  amount of it, and he could not as yet say whether it was born of the

  tremendous battering she had taken or from more grievous cause,

  although he hastened to assure his comrades that he had found no other

  symptoms of internal injury, which by rights should be revealing

  themselves if anything existed to spark them.

  Ross's head lowered as Gordon spoke. He tried to allow himself to be

  reassured, but his despair only increased. Ashe really was good, a near

  miracle worker to the minds of their Dominionite allies, but comrades had

  died despite him, men and women who would have lived had they had a

  real doctor or a proper hospital in which he could treat them. The same

  lack could all too easily kill Eveleen Riordan within the next few hours or

  days.

  The partisans started again with the first light, not slackening pace

  even when they entered the highlands once more, nor did they halt a

  second time until they were within their home camp.

  Ross waited only long enough to see that his wounded were settled

  before going to Luroc to make his report.

  As was his wont, the Ton did not interrupt his war captain during his

  account, nor did he speak at once after it was completed. Murdock had

  left little for him to question, and, in truth, he would have been loath to

  press for further detail now even had he wanted it. The warrior looked

  totally spent.

  The agent was sitting in his usual place. His head was lowered, and his

  shoulders were uncharacteristically bowed with the weight of his

  weariness and with something that was akin to defeat. "I brought you a

  costly victory," he said suddenly after a long pause, speaking with

  apparent difficulty. "We have eleven slain and forty wounded, twenty-four

  of them seriously even—if Eveleeni proves not to be so. Those are the

  heaviest casualties we've suffered since taking to these mountains."

  The gray eyes seemed utterly stripped of life when he raised them. "I

  should have guessed what that convoy would do and allowed for it in my

  planning. It was the very course I myself would've followed had I been in

  their place. If you no longer want me as your commander, I'll resign…"

  "Do not be a fool! Do you imagine yourself Life's Queen's equal that you

  should ever be able to read the minds of men? You succeed quite often

  enough in doing it, or in seeming to do so."

  I Loran looked at him then and sighed. "Your pardon, Rossin. You have

  enough riding you without my adding to your burdens."

  Ross compelled himself to straighten. "You're right. I was being the

  fool, and yet, I can't but grieve over our losses both personally and because

  we can so ill afford them. It's a commander's duty to keep such to a

  minimum, and right now, I can feel only my failure to do that."

  "Without cause, as your own reason must tell you. Naturally, we suffer

  for those who have gone down, but we must expect losses when we deal

  with Condor Hall's own warriors rather than with mercenaries. Zanthor

  has them too filled with tales of the revenge we shall exact upon them and

  their kin in the event of Confederate victory for it to be otherwise. Your

  party met with a large number of them and paid the cost of taking them, a

  cost far lower than might well have been expected.

  "As for Eveleeni's fall," he added shrewdly, "that was accident, beyond

  any human controlling. Save that a sword caused it, she could as readily

  have gone under her deer in the training field or during a supposedly quiet

  ride."

  The black eyes gentled. "It is you who gave her a chance at life."

  "That means nothing if…"

  "It means everything."

  Ross's head bent once more but raised again in the next moment.

  "Thank you for that," he said quietly.

  The Terran gave his companion a wan smile as he literally willed the

  depression to lift from him. "You make a strong advocate, Ton Luroc."

  "I must be to argue down so unbending an opponent. Firehand meets

  with no such condemnation from others as he levels against himself on

  occasion."

  The pale eyes twinkled now. "I've heard Luroc I Loran speak as harshly

  of himself."

  "And have named him a buck's tail to his face! At least, I have never

  gone so far with you… Ah well, have I not said before that we are both

  stubborn men?"

  The Sapphireholder settled back in his chair. "No one in Gurnion's

  camp will be minded to slight you when your latest donation arrives." He

  shook his head. "That convoy was a prize even beyond the gold. Blankets,

  winter clothing, medical supplies, foods designed to sustain men and

  beasts in bitter weather—
all costly material, and much of it is not readily

  procurable. Zanthor will be hard pressed to assemble another shipment

  like it in any reasonable time, and all the while, he will be galled by the

  knowledge that he will have no better guarantee of getting it through to

  his army when he does put it together than he did with this first lot."

  "He must try." Murdock sat forward. "I've been thinking, Ton. Suggest

  to Ton I Carlroc when you next meet that he keep his army at least

  partially active during the coming winter while the weather permits it at

  all. Continue striking the invaders, even if just to the extent of annoying

  them and forcing them to use more of their stores. The more unsettled we

  can keep them during the winter, the less able they'll be to meet a full

  assault come spring."

  "That is sound," the older man agreed, "but I want you there to press

  your argument yourself. We meet in council in a fortnight, and with the

  crisis coming upon us, Sapphirehold's war commander should be present

  along with the others, particularly since we now have mercenaries to face

  as well."

  The Time Agent nodded. "It would be best to coordinate our efforts as

  much as possible," he agreed.

  The energy was draining out of Ross again now that their more

  pressing business was finished, and all the weight he had borne earlier

  returned to crash his spirit.

  He glanced at the door. "With your leave, Ton Luroc, I'd like to see how

  Eveleeni's doing…"

  "You have my leave to go to bed… No, I try to restrain myself from

  issuing orders to you, but upon this, I do insist. The call to battle could

  come again at any moment. You are but poorly fitted to lead warriors now

  and will be less so in a few hours' time, perhaps incapable of it altogether,

  if you waste the chance to rest now. Besides," he added bluntly, "there is

  nothing you can do."

  Murdock stiffened.

  Luroc half softened, half laughed. "You do not like to hear that, my

  Friend, but the truth of it remains all the same… Go to bed. Good news or

  bad, it will reach you quickly enough when it breaks."

  16

  THE TIME AGENT slept like one dead, and when he did at last awake,

  he saw by the position and intensity of the light streaming into his room

  that it was already past noon.

  He sat up with an oath. Even normally, there was too much to be done