“What’ll I do with her?” Don demanded. “Aüi! She bit me!”
“Into one of the bedrooms,” John snapped. “We’ll tear up some bedclothes and bind her. Quick. They’ll all be returning. There could be more, any minute.”
They dragged the struggling Thompson lass into a nearby bedroom, gagged and bound her with torn bedsheets, then returned to the anteroom.
Don said unhappily, “For all we know, your lass will be the last to come. Perhaps she won’t come at all. Possibly she works in the community kitchen. Who knows? Perhaps she has duties elsewhere.”
“She’ll come,” John said.
However, two more innocents turned up before Alice of the Thompsons. And each was treated in similar wise to the first.
Don muttered, “We can’t tie up the whole Clann Thompson. Besides, we’ve got to get out of here, before the corridors are swarming with clannsmen. I wish I’d never let you talk me out of my claidheammor.”
But then she entered.
Like all the others, her eyes widened in first reaction to the presence of men—albeit in the correct kilts of the Thompsons—in the quarters of the unwed of the clann. But then the second realization came, that these were strangers and not kyn. And then, recognition.
“John!” she gasped. And then, as a good lass must, her had darted for the short skean at her side, and she drew deep breath to scream for her clannsmen.
John grabbed her, growling in despair, “Alice, Alice! I’ve come for you.”
Don caught up some of the torn bed clothing. “All very good, but the lass is no slink, and the proof is there before us. Slip this into her mouth.”
“I can’t gag my bride,” John said in indignation.
“Oh, you can’t? Well, I can!” Don snarled. “She’ll have the whole building down on us!” He deftly gagged the girl. “You take her,” he said. “I’ve been bitten enough this night. Not to speak of being kicked until I’m black-and-blue.”
John took her up and slung her over his shoulder, murmuring apologetically and quite senselessly. Don opened the door, darted looks up and down the corridor.
“Let’s go!” he said. “Fast!”
As quickly as carrying a kicking girl would allow, they started down the corridor toward the ladder. They rounded a corner and ran into the arms of a clannsman in his middle years. Don straightarmed him and kicked him in the side of the head even as he fell. John hurried on with his burden, but Don stopped long enough to grab out his coup stick and strike the man.
“I count coup,” he hissed, before following after his companion.
They reached the ladder by which they had entered the longhouse, and John started up it, one hand holding the girl to his shoulder, the other on the ladder rungs. Alice had let off kicking, at least temporarily, perhaps in fear of causing a fall, but perhaps in subconscious wish that the escapade succeed.
There came a shout of rage from down the corridor.
Don groaned. “Quickly,” he yelled. The fat was now in fire.
They scrambled up the ladder, and John headed for where they had left the grapple and line.
When Don reached the roof he turned, grabbed his coup stick and slashed with it across the face of the Thompson clannsman immediately behind. The other, encumbered with his drawn claidheammor and wishing to evade the ultimate insult, fell backward, taking three or four of his fellows along with him to the floor beneath.
Don half-yelled, half-laughed down at them, even as he hauled up the ladder. “I count coup!” He got out of the way just a split second before a carbine barked from below. He turned and scurried after John and his burden.
Not bothering to utilize the rope, Don grabbed the edge of the roof and swung over. He hesitated a moment, then dropped, hit on his feet, fell backward with a grunt of pain, jumped to his feet again and stared upward into the dark.
“Quickly!” he yelped. “They’ll be on us in moments.”
He could see a shape being lowered down, and when “she was near enough, he grabbed her about the legs. John had tied the rope beneath her armpits.
She began kicking again as soon as he had hold of her, and all his instinct was to clip her one; however, he didn’t want to answer to John, later on, in regard to that.
“Hush!” he snarled. “Are you daft? Do you think this is child’s play? If we are caught this night, John and I will hang in Caithness square before dawn.”
John dropped from above. A carbine barked from somewhere.
They started hurrying up the hill, the girl on her feet now. John had whipped the gag from her mouth. It meant nothing at this stage. The pursuit was on, and all bets were down.
Don hissed at her, “Run, lass. Those carbines cannot distinguish you from us.”
And run she did, John keeping immediately behind her, attempting to shield her body from the slugs that tore the air. She had hiked her skirts up, and now her white legs flashed in the night. Happily for their escape, it was a superlatively dark night by now.
They could hear horses behind them, and John groaned. “Faster, lass,” he called to her.
Don had gone on ahead as rapidly as he could. They heard him shout something to Dewey, and then came the rattle of his harness as he strapped sword and skean about his waist and dragged his carbine from its saddle sheath. He came charging back again.
“Onto the horses,” he yelled. He fired back the way they had come, threw the carbine’s breech, jammed another shell into the gun, fired again.
John was boosting Alice of the Thompsons onto the back of one of the horses. Dewey, in the saddle, was firing and reloading as rapidly as he could throw carbine breech. John’s orders against shedding blood this night were obviously being ignored by his desperate companions.
John vaulted into his own saddle and struck the rump of Alice’s beast sharply. “Let’s go!” he yelled.
Don, shouting the battle halloo of the Clarks, came scrambling up the hill. He leaped into his saddle and hurried after the others, laughing now in full glee.
He called after Dewey, “Wait until the bards sing this at the next muster.”
Dewey, slightly behind John and Alice and still firing back over his shoulder, shouted his own claim’s halloo but made no attempt to answer. They rode hard into the night, and behind them they could hear the pursuit. By this time, the revenge minded Thompsons must have realized that this was but a very small group and not a large raiding party to be approached respectfully.
It was a matter now of whose horses were freshest. Had the Thompson clannsmen taken the time to secure fresh horses, or had they taken up the pursuit on the animals they had just ridden in from Aberdeen? If their horses were fresh, then the four would be overtaken, for in spite of their spare war steeds, it had been a two day ride, with little rest.
Dewey and Don had dropped slightly behind to fight a rear guard action, but now they pulled up closer.
Dewey called, “John!”
John turned in his saddle and looked back. His two companions were behind, but Don’s face was pale, and he reeled in his saddle.
John blurted, “Don!”
Don grinned at him, then grimaced. “I’ve taken a slug in my side,” he said.
Chapter Five
By morning they had shaken the pursuit, at least temporarily, and stopped at a waterhole both for the animals and to inspect Don of the Clarks’ wound.
Alice of the Thompsons, though she avoided the eyes of the obviously lovelorn John, cooperated. It was somewhat unseemly, for her abduction was not quite complete yet, nor would it be until they got her safely back to Aberdeen.
They stretched Don out on a cloak, and with her own stean she cut away his clothing at the point the carbine slug had entered and also where it had emerged. No bone had been shattered, but it was an ugly wound and he was pale, having lost considerable blood during the night’s pounding ride.
Being a clannsman, he allowed himself not even a groan ns she worked on him, but several times he winced involuntarily.
It was no time for feminine shame. She lifted the skirt of her gown and tore a long strip from her undergarment. John and Dewey stood anxiously to the side, staring down at their wounded companion. They had seen carbine hits before, and this one boded no good.
Alice worked deftly. She, too, had seen men torn in combat in the past. Indeed, she had lost all her immediate male kyn in such fray.
Finally she came to her feet. She turned, and for the first time she looked into John’s face. “He should rest,” she said. “And he shouldn’t be moved for a time.”
John of the Hawks shook his head. “For the moment, we have shaken them. But they must have a dozen troops scouring the heath, and we are barely over the line into the preserves of Aberdeen.”
Her voice level, Alice said, “The proof is there before you. He should not be moved. Leave him here with me, and I will await them. I pledge on the honor of the Clann Thompson that he will not be killed but taken into our clann as a servant.”
“And stripped of my kilts and made a clannsless one?” Don snorted. He rolled to one side and struggled to get to his feet. Dewey bent and helped him.
“Tie me to my steed,” Don ground out. “I’ll make it.”
John rode on one side of him, Dewey the other, and they took up the way again to Aberdeen.
As they neared the main gate, they could hear the conch sound.
Dewey groaned, “You forgot to change. You’re still wearing the kilts of the Clann Thompson!”
They were already within carbine range.
Dewey dashed forward, desperately, his hands high above his head. He alone among them wore the kilts of a clanns-man of Aberdeen.
By the time John, Alice and Don had arrived at the gate, the warder and his men had been sufficiently warned to do no more than boggle at them. Never before had they seen proud clannsmen, fellow phyletics, attired in the kilts of another phylum. Never, for that matter, had they seen a bride literally stolen.
But John had no time now for explanations or reflecting in glory, though surely the criers would shout this to the housetops, far into the day.
He snapped, “Don of the Clarks is sore wounded. Hurry him to his bedel.”
Four men untied the wounded clannsman from his saddle and, as gently as ever they could, carried him away. They ignored his shame. Don of the Clarks had long since fainted.
John looked after him for a long moment In dismay but then shook his head. First, he had other duty.
He turned to Alice and said, “Lass, I will take you to be presented to the Sachem of the Clann Hawk.”
She could do nothing but abide by the correct procedure. She followed after him. Phyletics, both male and female, adult and child, watched their progress to the long-house of the Hawks, and largely eyes were wide, and many looked askance.
Word had evidently gone on before them, since when they knocked at the door of the quarters of the sachem, they were immediately bidden to enter, and Robert of the Hawks stood there in his living room. Several of the members of his immediate family were also there, eyes wide, but he dismissed them, a bit curtly.
He ignored Alice and looked John directly in the eye. John failed to quail. “I present Alice of the Thompsons, whom I have honorably stolen to be my bride.”
“Honorably! You have then, without doubt, paid the brideright to her kyn!”
John said doggedly, “It is not against the bann. For long years I approached the Clann Thompson through their sachem at the yearly meetings of the Dail. And always I was refused. I read deep into the Holy Books and all accounts that have come down to us from the misty years and before.”
Robert, Sachem of the Hawks, was interested. “And what did you find there?”
“That in the old days, before the Keepers of the Faith had devised upon the present method of paying brideright, and thus eliminating much shedding of blood, clannsmen were wont to steal their brides at point of claidheammor, and it was not against the bann to do so.”
“But it is against the bann now!”
John looked him in the eye. “No. It is not against the bann. At most it is unseemly and not meet, but it is not against the bann, and I have had great provocation.”
The sachem thought about it. He said finally, “I will consult the Keepers of the Faith and the clann bedel and will inform you of our decision later. And now”—he turned to Alice of the Thompsons—“until you have been taken by John as his bride—if that is allowed to happen—you will be a servant lass.” He added, his voice more kindly, “I will take you into my own family, and my wife will make you at home and show you your light duties. Perhaps Hawk has been shamed by your abduction, and you will be returned to your kyn.”
She said evenly, “If I am returned to my kyn, I will be shamed and undoubtedly stripped of my clann position, for I failed to attempt my life upon being stolen.”
His voice was still kindly. “I will mention that aspect to the Keepers of the Faith,” he said. “However, I am sure you were seized by force and hence could not honorably take your own life.”
Alice was a well brought up lass and knew how to conduct herself before a sachem. She said, “I submit to Robert of the Hawks.”
It was unseemly now for John of the Hawks to speak further to her. He saluted his chief and turned to go.
But Robert said, a different tone in his voice, “A moment, John. What transpired? I suspect, if the Keepers of the Faith report that all is well and that the bann has not been broken, that the bards will sing this exploit.”
Avoiding the eyes of Alice, since her clannsmen had been shamed in the events, John said, “As soon as the Dail had adjourned, I, with Dewey of the Hawks and Don of the Clarks, rode by back routes to Caithness. While Dewey guarded the horses, Don and I scaled the walls and—”
“You entered Caithness!”
“Yes. And hid ourselves in the quarters of Alice of the Thompsons until she appeared. We then seized her and made our escape, Don of the Clarks counting coup upon three of her kyn and I counting second coup on one.”
“Counting coup at such a time! How many, then, did you find it necessary to kill? Aüi, the vendetta will rage this year. I must triple the guard on the herds before the day is out.”
John said, “We spilled no blood, thinking it not meet under the circumstances. At least we spilled none in Caithness, though perhaps Dewey and Don did whilst covering our retreat.”
Robert stared at him, though he himself had long been a man of action. He said, “The bards will certainly long sing this exploit. I have never heard, in their oldest praise, of such an event.”
John said, “With your permission, Robert, I shall now go to Don of the Clarks, who was badly wounded in the fray.”
“Aüi, lad, hurry. I know how close you are.” Robert turned to Alice. “Come now, and I will present you to my good wife. You have no fear in this longhouse, Alice of the Thompsons.”
“I have no fear,” she said, and let her eyes follow John as he left, which was slightly unseemly but only amused Robert of the Hawks, who was himself married to a lass of Caithness, though not a Thompson. Perhaps his wife was acquainted with Alice…
John stared down at Don of the Clarks, who was sprawled on a cot in his quarters in the Clark longhouse. The bedel was there, as was Sally, but the two young children had been hustled from the room.
Don’s face was flushed and had a thin, drawn look that was bad.
The bedel said, “I fear the fleshrot.”
Sally held the back of her right hand to her mouth.
John said, “It is too early to know that.” There was accusation in his tone.
The bedel shook his head. He was an old man, well versed in medicine. At least, as well versed as any in Aberdeen. “I am not sure, but I fear. The wound should have been cleaned more promptly and better, and the spider dust should have been applied.”
We had no time even to boil water. The Thompsons were in pursuit.”
The bedel shrugged.
Don got out, “It is not important. I will be up and around before the day is through. The Thompsons do not dispose of Don of the Clarks quite so easily.”
John reached down and mussed the other’s hair fondly. “That they don’t, Don,” he murmured. “I promise that.”
Don fell into a sleep, and John, not wishing to leave him, drew to one side of the room with the bedel, while Sally sat at her husband’s side. She was a slight girl and now infinitely worried, as she had occasion to be; one seldom recovered from the fleshrot.
John of the Hawks whispered, “What has happened with the strangers since we have been gone?”
The bedel scowled. “Bertram of the Fowlers took the soma.”
“And?”
“And within twenty-four hours his sight has become that of a twenty-five year old clannsman.”
John sucked in air—not that he was greatly surprised.
The bedel said, “Nor is that all. The gnawing pain in his belly is gone. For the first time in long months, it is gone. The guru used some mystic term ‘cancer,’ which not even we bedels and Keepers of the Faith understand. But whatever, the pain is gone.”
“And what else has occurred?” John of the Hawks could sense what was coming, but he must know.
“Bertram has been cast down from the post of Bedel of the Fowlers, and his kilts have been stripped from him, and he is now a clannless one. However, he cares not, no more than Robert of the Fieldings cares, and he was once the boldest raider of Aberdeen.”
“I know,” John said. “What else?”
“Others take the soma, or say they will, and there is great talk against the strangers amongst the Keepers of the Faith and the younger clannsmen, though the women and those elderly enough to feel the burdens of age and sickness speak largely for them.”
John thought about it. “And what do the younger men wish to do with the men from Beyond?”
The bedel said in disgust, “What can be done? Obviously, the guru, at least, is a holy man. He performs miracles.”
“He performs medicine,” John growled. “While we of Caledonia have remained stationary with our banns and our traditions, they have advanced in every direction. The so-called miracles of the guru are simply medicine far in advance of what we know in Aberdeen, or in any phylum, for that matter.”
The Space Barbarians Page 10
