“Suck this,” she said. “It is about half moisture, so it ought to help.” She brought out two more, offered them to the men. They examined them curiously.
“How about you, m’lady?” the Sergeant asked.
Roane made a hard business of swallowing. “I cannot—it makes me sick. If you will— Please, Sergeant”—her voice became more urgent—”the kit—push it to me.”
She thought that she would not be able to make it in time, but she hunted with one hand among the containers, came up with a capsule she broke between her palms, bending her head to sniff and sniff again of the reviving fumes. But she had too few of those to waste them. If they were here long, how could she stand it? Conditioned she might be to withstand alien worlds, alien odors, alien foods—there were some strains which her body could not take and it seemed she was meeting them now in this prison-like hut.
“I will have to go soon.” She raised her head when the vertigo subsided a little and she was temporarily the mistress of her body. “They do not know me here—I oughbto go safely.”
“Do not believe that, m’lady,” Wuldon returned. “With the Colonel free they will look thrice at any stranger. You leave this place and the first one to see you will call for the guard. Every man, woman, and child in Hitherhow will be glad to help run down a stranger—if only to turn the Duke’s men away from sniffing at their own doors.”
“Exactly right.” The Colonel’s voice was stronger, had back that sure note which had once troubled her with its assumption that his way was the only right one. “And where would you go? Or will your people come looking for you?”
She shook her head, and then wished that she had not made that gesture, for it left her dizzy. “That is the last thing they would do. I broke orders to come here. They will believe anything that happens to me is richly deserved.”
“What kind of talk is that?” the Sergeant asked. “No one would turn his back on a kdy who had come to help—”
“There must be a good reason,” Imfry cut in. “Some time, Lady Roane, I would like to hear it. Now—I will admit that to stay here any longer than is absolutely necessary is something we all cannot do. Have you any plans, Sergeant?”
“Haus may have. He brought us here to wait. And he knows Hitherhow. Also—they know him, well enough not to go throwing any trouble in his way. It is good to be the only man who can really handle direhounds; keeps everyone on his toes seeing as how Haus stays happy and in good health. Of course, they could shoot them all to get to us. Maybe the Duke might do just that if he knew we were here. But the belief would be that those devil animals would not let us inside the gate, which would be the truth if Haus had not given us a key through their power of scent.” “Listen!” Imfry ordered.
Once more Roane could hear the loud grunting of the hounds.
“Someone’s coming!” Sergeant Wuldon, weapon in hand, crossed with a silent tread Roane would have believed impos- sible for such a powerful man, to stand at the door of the hut He hunched a little, apparently finding a crack through which he could see something of the outside.
“Haus!” The name was a hiss of whisper and then Wuldon added, “alone.” But he did not reholster his weapon and Mattine moved, if not as noiselessly, to the other side of the door frame. Roane watched from the apathy of her discomfort.
“Soooooo.” The voice of the man outside rang on a crooning note. “Good boy—brave—brave— Easy, girl, there is enough for all—mind your manners.”
If she had not known what sort of beasts did roam without, Roane would have believed them the gentlest and most agreeable of pets. People did have odd tastes, as who should know better than she, who had been exposed to a variety of worlds and customs—but to find a man who dealt unreservedly with dire-hounds!
“It takes many kinds of men, m’lady, to make a nation.” The Colonel might have read her thoughts, if not her expression. “There is”—his voice dropped to a whisper she could barely hear—”much to be said between the two of us. I know not why you came—but to you my—”
“Wait until you are free. Ill luck can come from too early thanksgiving.” She had never been superstitious before, but now, uneasy as she was inwardly, she could understand primitive natives who feared to invoke wrong powers, tempt retaliation from ill luck.
“Until another time, then. But, believe me, we shall have you forth as soon as we can—”
She looked at him steadily, a dull wonder in her. He spoke now as if she were the one to be concerned about, when he was the hunted man.
The door opened and the man who had led them here entered, dropping a heavy sack, which added another sickening odor of dog meat, on the floor with a thud. “How is he—” he was beginning, when the Colonel spoke up.
“Come see for yourself, man! Your pets have played guard well.”
“M’lord.” Haus crossed the small room in a couple of strides, knelt, and laid his hand palm down on the one the Colonel held out to him, bowing his head for a moment as if the gesture was a small but solemn ceremony.
“It has been a long time, Haus.”
“One can forget the toll of years, m’lord, when there is good reason. Now”—he sat back on his haunches so that his face was more or less on a level with that of the man he spoke to—”there is a plan, desperate, but the best which can be done for now. They have sent to Urkermark for his orders. Luck has so far served us in two ways. First, when the badge of Hitherhow fell in the courtyard, it brought down the Marshal of the West. He still lies unconscious and they do not know when, or if, he will come to his senses. Colonel Scharn got a broken collar bone and a bad scrape on the head, so he’s not been much use in leading any hunt.
“While the other—this Colonel Onglas—has been fluttering around without much more wits than the least of my pack out there. He put most of the guard to searching the village, routing folks out of their homes to ask questions and seek for traitors.
“Two hours ago he demanded the direhounds. Some of the patrolmen found the tracks and he wanted to set the hounds to those.”
Roane heard the men around her exclaim over that. “Yes.” Haus nodded. “I told you he had the wits of a peckfowl! I told him how a coursing such as that would end. Even I could not hold them to any set trail which was not that of a spaybuck or a. roffer. So—he ordered me to make identification scent.”
“He is plain mad!” burst out the Sergeant. “Using what?”
“He has straw out of the cell they kept you in, m’lord, and some of the rags they used on your arm when they brought you in. It would be enough, and he will see that I do it. He is sending down guards to watch.”
“Here? Then what-” Wuldon began.
“They will not come in, never fear. But I told him the truth, that even direhounds cannot pick up a hunted man’s trail if he is mounted. So he is having a duocorn killed and the carcass brought here, too.”
“A duocorn! Let your pets sniff that and they will turn on any like beast—even those of the hunters,” Imfry observed. “He is truly insane.”
“He is fear-mad, I think, m’lord. He does not dare face the Duke with no better news than he has now. But I told him straight facts, and others listened, if he did not. Never mind about the straw and rags. I can doctor those. But it goes against my liking to make a duocorn into bait. The hounds could head straight for the stables. And why should innocent beasts suffer? Only there are those with him, lesser officers, who have their heads screwed on. One of them is going to Colonel Scharn right now, sure he can get that order countermanded. But—this is what I rightfully want to say, Colonel—that dead duocorn they are bringing down—I think that will get you out of here.” “Keep talking, Haus. This is beginning to interest me.” Haus nodded. “Like the old days along the border when the Nimps were raiding. Yes, m’lord, I thought you would remember. They deliver this duocorn, but none of them is going to risk his neck to push the cart inside that gate. So I fetch it in, with Sergeant Wuldon here—”