To their right stood bales of straw trussed with rope. One had been cut open and half its contents taken. Roane laid down the beamer to attack that, spreading out the rest for a rough bed on the floor as fast as she could.
As they laid Imfry on that she brought out the medic kit. No time to test her remedies. The more she saw the gray-white of that face, the less she liked it. Now it was her turn to give orders. “Room!” Her hands—she looked at her dirty, scratched fingers. “Here—” She picked up a spray tube. “You—” She held it out to the nearest man. “Press this down, carefully now—it must not be wasted.”
Roane bathed her hands in the antiseptic vapor. “Enough!” She held them away from any touch which would infect them again. “Ease his shirt away from that wound. No—use the spray first—on this—” She pointed to another tube to be prepared.
Then, taking it, she carefully dribbled a few drops of its contents over that stain. With the tips of her fingers she urged the fabric gently away from the flesh to which it had been glued. “Now—tear it!”
As the contaminated cloth came away from an angry-looking wound, where blood still oozed sluggishly, Roane went to work with all the skill she had, spraying—twice with antibiotics, and then with Swiftheal—before applying a final sealing of plasta-flesh with double care, since it might be put to unusual tests before this journey was finished.
She sat back then to consider the remaining contents of her kit. Examination had assured her that the fall had not brought broken bones. It was the extra strain upon his wound which had sent him into the present state of unconsciousness. Certainly the longer he could rest, the better chance the plasta-flesh had for a firm closing. She thought it best not to try to arouse him.
The air of the hut was thick with the stench of the direhounds and the decaying meat. Roane was so hot she pulled off her hood, loosened the lacing on her tunic. For the first time she had a chance to inspect her comrades in hiding. Both men had now relaxed against the bales of straw.
One was familiar—the other strange. But she put name to the one who had supported Imfry’s head during that escape.
“You are Sergeant Wuldon. You went with us to Gastonhow.”
He was older than the Colonel, it seemed to her, though it was difficult to judge ages on alien worlds. But his brown hair had a wide strip of silver over each ear. His face was as weathered as Imfry’s had been before the sickly gray tint had overlaid that healthier hue. And there was a small puckered dot in the flesh of his chin, slightly to one side, like a misplaced cleft.
“Ysor Wuldon, yes, m’lady.”
“You came to save him.” She made that a statement rather than a question. Wuldon nodded.
“We had hopes. There were a few in Hitherhow ready to give us some aid. The Duke is not greatly loved. But they would not promise too much—and we would have failed, m’lady, without you.”
Roane leaned back against one of the bales, raised her hands to brush straying hair out of her eyes. The smell, the heat made her feel ill, and again she wondered at her actions, as if that part of her which was the old Roane now stirred from captivity to view with dismay what had happened. This odd sense of being two persons added to her growing state of misery. She gulped, trying to subdue nausea, and feared that soon she would lose control.
The other man stirred restlessly. “This stink—” he muttered. “No garden of turl lilies,” agreed Wuldon. “But out there—” he jerked a thumb to indicate the enclosure of the direhounds— “we have about the best sentries we could wish for.”
Roane swallowed again. “How long—” She found she could not complete that, but Wuldon had no trouble in understanding. Only he could not be reassuring with his answer.
“Who knows? Until nightfall, if we are lucky and they follow that false trail. If they can be drawn into the hunting preserve our men can lead them astray and lose them. Then we can move out. But with the Colonel as he is—” He shook his head.
“How is he, Lady?” the other man asked. “You have him fixed good enough to ride if we can move out? We cannot go far if we have to lug him.”
There was a dissenting growl from the Sergeant, but the other man faced him squarely. “That is the truth and you know it. Me, I am liege man to mlord. My own mother’s sister fostered him when his lady mother died. Do you think I would say no to getting him free? Did I when you and Haus came asking? But we cannot carry him. He has to be able to ride. It is a long way to the hills.”
“They will outlaw-horn him,” the Sergeant said slowly. “Then how much help can he claim anywhere in Reveny? Best over the border. He would not be the first good man driven to that, and he has a sword worth selling—if not in Leichstan, the Isles of Marduk welcome mercenaries—”
“Thank you for the testimony, Wuldon.” The voice was low, strained, and it startled them.
The Colonel’s eyes were open. There was even a little color in his sunken cheeks.
“What a smell!” He sniffed. “Direhound! But where in Reveny—” He moved as if to rise but the Sergeant had clamped a big, gentle hand down on his uninjured shoulder, holding him where he was.
“Haus’s idea, sir. We are in the hound hut at Hitherhow.”
“The hound hut!” Imfry repeated. “Out of one cage, into another. But I must say that for all the smells, I find this one easier than the last. But—how did you plan—this—”
“Well, we did not—not together, sir. I saw them bring you out of that hole in the ground and Spetik and I split up and went to where we thought we could get help. He came to Hitherhow and talked to Mattine and Haus. There were some men in the village who were willing to risk a little. Though they were not going too far, being a bit mindful of their necks.”
“For which you cannot blame them, Wuldon. Treason is not a crime one wants to aid. Spetik, and Mattine here—Haus, and you— Then what else did you do?”
“Well, I went back to the post. There were four or five of the men ready to see what we could do. So—we left—” The Colonel frowned. “Deserted?” he demanded. Sergeant Wuldon grinned. “Better say ‘detached duty’—serving with our commanding officer. No man had named you different then. Nor have we been personally told so since.”
Imfry’s frown disappeared. “You heard it loud and clear in Hitherhow.”
“No, sir. Ever since I was caught in that rock fall last year, sir—when you dropped down on a rope and pulled me free— well, I have not heard too clear at times. I did not hear anything about your not being my commanding officer.” “Impaired hearing can take you out of the service, Sergeant.” “It has, Colonel. If anything is said to Reddick—it has.” Imfry laughed, but sobered quickly. “If we are taken, no such flimsy arguments will get you out of a hanging—or worse.”
“Then we shall take care we are not caught, sir. But we did come here, me, Haffner, Spetik, Rinwald, Fleech. They got duo-corns, best mounts in the stables, and stood ready to either ride or set a false trail. But we did not know just how we could get to you. She did that in the end.” He nodded at Roane. “You were a part of this?” Imfry asked.
“Of their plans, no. I came—I came because I had to. It was my interference which began everything. I could not let it end so because of my meddling. But we could not have made it without your men.”
“It is very strange.” The Colonel’s eyes rested steadily upon her. “From the first I knew that you held some fate in your hands, though that it was mine, I did not guess. I thought it was the Princess’s.”
He stirred again. “Odd, all the pain is gone.” He looked at his wound, where the plasta-nesh had taken on the hue of the skin around it.
“What did you do to me, anyway?” he asked Wuldon.
“The lady did it, from her own supplies.”
“She seems good at a great many things,” commented the Colonel. “Wuldon, you would not have such a thing as a saddle bottle of water about you?”
“Sorry-”
“That is all right.”
Roane forced herself to move. The fetid air and heat made her weak. But she found one of the E ration tubes, turned the twist cap and held it out to him.