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
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,