in the aftermath of a raid to permit such squandering of precious time.
Now…
He was just pulling on his boots when Gordon's knock announced his
presence.
Ross looked up at him a little crossly. "Have you spy-holed this place?"
"Not at all," he replied cheerfully. "I was just glancing through the
paperwork on your desk and heard you stirring."
The war captain's eyes swept his quarters and then returned to his
partner. Everything was in its usual place, his gear restored to battle
condition, yet Ashe had ridden the same mission with him and had
unquestionably spent most or all of last night with the wounded. His
strength, or, rather, his staying power, seemed almost superhuman. Still,
it could be abused. "It seems that I've managed to take advantage of you
again."
The other smiled and shook his head. "Not at all. I'd slept a little the
previous night. You'd held the watch."
The younger man steeled himself. Fear was a burning spear in his
heart, although his friend's easy manner reassured him somewhat. Gordon
would surely not be speaking so lightly now if death had claimed any more
of the wounded or if its grim shadow lay on Eveleen Riordan. "Were there
any fatalities during the night?"
"No. There won't be now. Even Jorcan is past his crisis."
"Eveleen?" he asked, unable to restrain himself any longer.
His terror was apparent to the other. Gordon's fingers pressed into his
shoulder. "She's all right, Ross. There's no more danger."
Murdock's eyes closed. He had braced himself for disaster, but relief
threatened to overwhelm him, and it was a moment before he could trust
himself to speak. "Thanks, Gordon," he whispered.
He drew a deep breath and collected himself. "She's conscious?"
"Our Lieutenant has been awake over an hour already," Ashe informed
him.
"Why wasn't I called?" he demanded angrily.
"Because, hard as this life can be, I'd prefer not to be severed from it for
a while longer. Neither Ton Luroc nor our fair comrade would have looked
kindly upon me had I roused you before you'd slept yourself out."
"She can have visitors?"
"Naturally." He eyed Ross critically. "Since this much time has lapsed
already, you might want to take a little more to eat and polish yourself up
a bit. If you show up looking like you do at the moment, she'll take it that
she's definitely not long for the world, whatever my assurances to the
contrary, or else she'll think that something awful's happened. Besides, she
needs time herself. Marri's still helping her get fixed up."
Murdock's fear returned in full force. "What do you mean helping her?
What's wrong?"
Gordon laughed. "Calm down! She's stiff and sore as hell. You'd be, too,
if a springdeer had just crashed down on top of you."
Ross flushed but accepted the rebuke with good grace. "After breakfast,
then… Are the rest up?"
"A few. Most're still sleeping, or were when I came in."
"Anything to report?"
The archeologist shook his head. "No. There was no other action while
we were gone, and nothing of significance happened here. Everything on
the desk can afford to stay there a while longer."
The war captain waited until he felt a decent amount of time had
elapsed before going at last to the cabin occupied by his chief officer.
He paused for a moment in the door of the single room comprising the
small dwelling, although Eveleen had been quick in granting him leave to
enter.
She was sitting up in her bed, her back supported by pillows, her
magnificent hair spread out like a veil around her. Seen thus, she seemed
more like the distant, royal daughter of some powerful Ton than the fiery
and able partisan officer beside whom he had lived and fought these last
fierce months. She also looked vulnerable and impossibly fragile.
He willed himself to overcome that last feeling and moved into the
chamber, all the while studying his Lieutenant intently.
Her small face was still too pale, making the eyes seem even larger and
more luminous, but it was quite unmarked.
shirt serving as her bed robe fastened tightly to the throat, and even so, he
could see a finger of dark brown extending up the right side of her neck
from beneath the collar. He shuddered in his heart at the sight of it,
knowing how easily such a bruise might have become a break.
She read his thoughts and laughed. "I'm told I shall live, Firehand.
Come here and sit down if you have the time."
The man was quick to obey, drawing up the chair already placed by the
bed so that she need not strain or turn to look at him. "How do you feel?"
"Sore."
Her hand went to her hair. The movement was oddly slow, as if it
troubled her greatly to make it. "I couldn't even have managed this if it
hadn't been for Marri's help."
"That'll pass off soon."
"I sincerely hope so!" she responded with no little feeling. "She'll give
me no peace until it does."
"You'll just have to court patience, Lieutenant," he told her
unsympathetically.
"I don't seem to have much choice in the matter."
He smiled at her expression. "It won't be for long. I hadn't expected to
find you looking so well. Or so pretty," he added, believing she would be
pleased to hear that after having suffered what could all too easily have
been at least a temporarily disfiguring accident. "You're quite beautiful,
you know."
The woman laughed. "From the neck up. The rest of me makes quite
another vision!"
Her expression softened suddenly, and she held out her hands to him.
"There's no way for me to thank you for what you did, Ross."
His fingers closed over hers. "Having you warm and alive before me is
thanks enough, Eveleen Riordan." Murdock's grasp tightened. "I said I had
no wish to see you in danger. Now I realize how much I meant it."
He felt embarrassed and carefully lowered her hands, slowly, so as not
to further jar already tormented muscles. He released her but kept his
fingers close to hers. "Lieutenant Riordan, as a favor to your commanding
officer, the next time you decide to fall off a springdeer, please don't insist
on bringing him down on top of you."
She responded, as he had intended, with a grimace and an exaggerated
shudder. "No fear of that, Lady Fortune willing!"
Her bright eyes fixed him. "Well, Captain Firehand, what did we gain
for all our trouble?"
He described the contents of the wagons.
Eveleen smiled to hear that report. She was no less aware of the value
and significance of those goods than he was and would have entered into a
detailed discussion of their future course had her chief permitted.
Murdock rose to his feet. He feared to tire her by remaining too long
and already thought her face seemed a little more pinched than it had
been when he had come in. "That'll hold. Rest for now. A few days will give
us both time to consolidate our thoughts. We can talk about it t
hen."
She had to content herself with that, and after learning the fate of their
other comrades and exacting his promise to return as soon as his duties
permitted, she bade the gray-eyed man farewell.
17
THE TERRAN WOMAN remained in her quarters that day and the
next but after that felt sufficiently free of stiffness and discomfort to
return to her normal duties, all save combat, which neither Murdock nor
Ashe would permit this soon after her fall. Sapphirehold was not so
desperate for warriors as to require or chance that.
There would have been no need for her to ride even had the opposite
been true. The days following the raid were quiet with no activity from
Condor Hall and nothing to call the partisans away from their mountains
save the seemingly endless patrols scouring the lowlands.
They used the time well. There was work to be done in the camp which
had been, if not neglected, at least not given its proper attention while the
press of battle had been so heavy upon them. Both this place and the
watch posts guarding the few passes were examined and refitted where
necessary to meet the assaults of the fast-approaching winter, whose bite
was now to be felt, at times keenly, in the sharp, high wind, and care was
taken that those in the noncombatants' village lacked for nothing that
might be provided to ensure their comfort and safety.
The officers met frequently as well. Ross had not merely been offering
Eveleen comfort when he had promised to speak with her within a matter
of days. All knew that the closing weeks of this year and, to an even greater
extent, the opening ones of that to come would be crucial to the war's
outcome. As far as was possible, they wanted to anticipate their enemies'
moves and lay their own plans for countering them.
There was opportunity in plenty for rest, too, thrice welcome after the
weeks of strain and almost constant effort just gone.
The war captain was no less glad of those hours of ease than were the
soldiers he commanded. He passed many of them with Ton Luroc, whose
company he thoroughly enjoyed, and many more with Gordon and
Eveleen.
Especially with Eveleen. Once he had recognized and acknowledged his
feelings for her, he had begun to look at her, to study her, with different
eyes. What he found left him both amazed and not a little ashamed that he
had remained oblivious to it all for so long.
Eveleen Riordan had always been closely guarded about her deeper
thoughts and feelings, he realized now. She had to make her way in a
world quicker to challenge than to welcome her, and she had set her
defenses early both to shield herself and to keep her strengths and plans
concealed before those who might conceivably be prepared to use too
intimate knowledge of her against her.
Like everyone else willing to observe and judge her fairly, he had not
been long in recognizing her competence, her courage, her good humor
and ready wit, her gentleness both as a companion and a woman, but she
had always before screened much of her inner life, most of what went on
behind the facade she chose to present to the universe around her, and he
had allowed himself to remain all but blind to its very existence.
Now, she was drawing back some of those thick veils. He began to see a
little and guess more of this hidden part of his comrade and chief officer,
glimpses of a strange, bright spirit that ever more powerfully intrigued
him. He wanted to delve its depths, even though instinct warned him that
he would never be able to fathom them completely.
Eveleen was helping him. Such was the trust that she was giving him
that she who was so proud and independent acknowledged her need for
closeness in this alien world and time. She went so far as to permit him to
see when shadows occasionally weighed her heart, although of these
shadows, she never spoke directly.
Darkness seemed to grip the weapons expert almost openly on the
afternoon she first took to the saddle again after her accident.
Ross did not at first press her, but he began to worry as time went on
without any brightening in her attitude. There was something troubling
her, and he wondered if it might not be nervousness over traveling
mounted again. A fall such as she had taken could readily have induced
fear.
By all appearances, Eveleen Riordan seemed quite free of any such
difficulty. She sat Spark easily, with no sign of tension, but that might too
easily be meaningless. The weapons expert's courage and iron control were
sufficient to mask even stark panic.
Perhaps it was not this at all, but whatever twisted in her heart and
mind, he longed to bring her ease, if only that of companionship and
sharing.
"You're doing fine," the man began tentatively.
"Yes. There's only a little soreness left."
She looked at him suddenly. "You thought I might be afraid to ride? Is
that why you just about ordered me to let you come with me?"
He flushed. "The possibility had occurred to me," he confessed. "I didn't
mean to insult you."
"You haven't," she assured him quietly.
The brown eyes remained on the war captain. Their expression was
grave and also tender. "You're quite a man, Ross Murdock."
She tossed her head then so that the long braid confining her hair
danced upon her shoulders. "We've come a long way. Let's top that rise
there and then rest a while."
So saying, she put Spark into a quick canter that moved them well in
front of her companion.
He asked similar speed of Lady Gay, but the buck had a good lead on
them and reached his goal before they again came up to him.
The two riders dismounted, letting their reins hang down as a signal to
their animals that they were free to browse but were not to stray from this
area.
It was a beautiful and rather unusual place. The crest of one of the
lower peaks, it was unlike most of its fellows in the range in being quite
narrow, no more than seven yards across at its crown.
Murdock mounted the rise to its crest. His heart swelled when he gazed
out over the incredible world below him.
All that a wild and unutterably fair nature could create in such an area
was there in front of him: mountains, hills, sharp, deep valleys, well nigh
all thickly forested save where an odd patch of moorland or cliff or
waterway broke the expanse of the trees.
Lakes were a common feature of the region, small in surface area but
incredibly deep and blue like liquid sapphires—it was from their
abundance and startling color that the domain had taken its name. They
were cold enough to give pain to anyone drinking their clear waters too
quickly. The streams feeding them ran free and fast, frequently erupting
into rapids or dropping suddenly into almost too beautiful falls.
Beyond all this, framing it, were the higher spires of the range, many of
them forever bearing brilliant, cruel crowns of ice.
The Time Agent knew this place well. He had come here often since he
had discovered it early la
st spring, had come to think through a difficult
maneuver, had come when the need for peace or beauty or grandeur was
on him, had come more rarely in happiness and in hope, and always, he
had found what his spirit sought.
He had never spoken of its existence and had never heard any other
mention it, and although he realized his Sapphireholders must have
known of it as well, he had always secretly hoped none of his comrades was
touched by this mountain crest as he was.
Now, however, he found he did not grudge the exquisite woman beside
him even this, that, on the contrary, he wanted to lay it before her as one
would lay a precious jewel at the feet of a goddess.
He turned to her and then smiled. The same exaltation he experienced
in this place was on her as well. What he wished to offer, Eveleen Riordan
already knew.
More than that. He realized with a start that in suggesting they rest
here, she had been giving it to him.
"You come here often?" he asked.
Her nod did not surprise him. "You're no stranger to it yourself,
Firehand?"
"No."
An air of quiet gravity settled over her, and she gave a little sigh. "This
really will be our last winter up here?"
"Very likely."
He studied her intently. "Don't you want peace?"
The surprise in her expression gave him her answer even before she
spoke. "With all my heart! These people need to be able to live and work
like they used to do. They're ordinary folk, you know, most of them,
however good they are at this business fate's forced on them."
"You're good at it, too."
The woman nodded briskly. "I know the weapons, and Zanthor I Yoroc
is an enemy easy to hate. Every blow I strike cuts into his heart's desire. I
just wish they could slash into his heart itself."
"Why, Eveleen?" he asked softly, startled by the vehemence with which
she had spat that last out. "This isn't our war, not really."
She looked at him, her eyes grave, measuring him, before she made her
decision to respond with the truth. "I'm making up," she told him, "doing
for these people what I can't do for my own."
Eveleen walked a few steps away from him and fixed her eyes on the
panaroma below. "Ever since I learned about the Project, that time travel
is not only possible but accomplished fact, I've wanted to go back, undo
the centuries of wrong my race has suffered."