The Lady Gwen might protect him. Run, then, run to her and clasp her knees to beg for mercy for his family. He was a lost man, but the Lady Gwen might spare his sisters- Gwen ran to the entrance of her tent when she heard the explosions. She was in time to see the balloon shoot up and break loose and Murphy’s heroic try at catching it. She sent one of the Guardsmen off to bring Sergeant McCleve for the injured man and another to get Sergeant Elliot. He was going to be needed, if only to make her feel that she knew what she was doing until she really did. Then she turned back into the tent, to dismiss her scribe and pull on her cloak.
Thus there was only one Guardsman on duty outside the tent when Therrit ran up and threw himself at Gwen’s feet. The Guardsman tried to pull him away but he clutched her knees. “Lady, lady, save me! Lord Corgarff wants my blood, but I only followed him for gold. My family will starve if they do not—”
“Wait!” said Gwen. His babbling was making it impossible for her to think. “Lord Corgarff paid you to let the balloon go?”
“Yes.”
“Now he wants to kill you, to keep from talking?”
“Yes. If you save me, I will tell—”
“There’s that damned dung-spawned traitor now!” came from outside the tent. Gwen jumped back and nearly fell as the man clutched her skirt.
“Let go, you fool!”
“Lord Corgarff, the Lady Gwen has—” began the Guardsman.
“The Lady Gwen will not protect a traitor, unless the High Rexja’s bought her too!”
“You cannot pass, lord-ahhhggghhh!” and the sound of steel into flesh and against bone.
The Guardsman’s fidelity to his oath bought the fugitive the time to crawl under the table, the scribe the time to crawl out of the tent, and Gwen the time to puli out her pistol. She could barely hold the .45 with two hands, but she had it aimed at the door when Corgarff charged through.
The sight of a star weapon in a woman’s hands stopped him for a moment. “Lady Gwen, put that away. You have drawn it in the cause of an evil—”
“I heard what you think, Corgarff,” she said. After she was sure both her hands and her voice would stay steady, she went on, “I will protect this man until he has told me everything—”
Corgarff’s cry was an animal’s. Fortunately his first slash was wild. His sword hacked into the tent pole. He was raising it for a cut at Gwen’s head when Elliot’s voice came from outside.
“Freeze, you son of a bitch!”
In desperation Corgarff whirled to slash at Elliot. Sergeant Major Elliot laughed as he jumped back out of range.
“Don’t kill him!” Gwen shouted.
“No problem.” Elliot’s Colt blasted twice and Corgarff screamed as the slugs ploughed into his thigh and leg. He took a step forward, then started to fall. Elliot slammed the pistol alongside his head to make sure he went down all the way.
“Is it over?” Gwen asked.
“So far,” Elliot said. “‘Cept we might lose this one.” He raised his voice. “Send for the corpsmen!”
Gwen held the tent pole to keep from falling. Elliot caught her before she brought the tent down on top of them, then led her to a chair and checked her pistol. “Miss Tremaine, you really ought to practice more with that. You had the safety on. He’d have run you through before you could fire a shot.”
“Really?” Gwen started to laugh at the silliness of her own remark, then caught herself before she lost control. “Get McCleve and more Guardsmen. Make sure nobody we don’t know gets near these two until we’ve talked to them. I mean nobody, Sergeant Major.”
Elliot automatically snapped to attention. He knew when an officer was speaking. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Thank you. And we’ll want messengers to go to the Garioch and Drantos.” She swallowed. “Is there anything I’ve left out?”
“Not that I know of, Ma’am.” He bent over Corgarff. “But this one’s going to need first aid, or he’ll bleed to death before McCleve gets here. Those forty-fives tear a man up some.”
“All right. You stand guard. No one comes in, Sergeant. I’ll try to help him.”
What lay under Corgarff ‘s bloody clothing was as bad as Gwen expected. Somehow she managed to go to work on it. After a while she found it was no harder than cutting up onions and green peppers for a homemade pizza. Maybe she was finally adapting to living in the Middle Ages. She’d have to, or spend half her time in her room and the other half being sick to her stomach.
9
This is it, Larry Warner thought. Jesus Christ. Come all the way here on a mucking flying saucer, and get killed in a hot-air balloon. Jesus H. Christ.
The balloon continued to rise. The air inside was cooling, so that it had lost part of its lift, but the balloon’s slightly flattened shape gave additional lift from the updrafts. Warner huddled in the bottom of the basket while he worked this out. Eventually he got up the nerve to look over the edge at the ground below.
It was hard to judge his ground speed. He tried to estimate distances between farms as he passed over them, timing his passage with his watch as he swept across the valley below. It was difficult because there were few roads, and nothing was square. Tran was a planet of horse-and centaur-carts, not automobiles.
After several attempts he got the same result twice. He was probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour, much faster than the best any rescue party could do. If he stayed up no more than an hour, he’d be nearly a day’s ride from the University. The only hope he had for quick rescue was to come down on top of someone friendly—which wasn’t very likely, because he had no control over altitude.
He could rise—a little—by dropping ballast, but as for bringing the balloon down before the hot air cooled and it lost lift—well, that was what rip panels were for, in balloons back on Earth. In theory, he could climb up the netting and slash at the cloth with a knife, to let out some of the hot air. One look at all the empty air between him and the ground cured him of the notion. He wasn’t that desperate yet.
The best course looked to be letting the balloon cool naturally. He could slow its fall if necessary by dropping ballast, rather than by lighting up the fire. Meanwhile he would pull up the rope and make a big loop in the end. He hoped he remembered enough of his Boy Scout knot-tying to make one which would hold. That would give people on the ground a better hold on the rope.
Then—wait until he passed low enough over a village for the rope to reach the ground. Throw the rope out, shout to the people, and hope they would understand what he was saying. It would still take luck, but not as much as bringing the balloon down by himself. It was going to take luck to live through this. He’d have to be very lucky to save the balloon for the campaign.
Moving cautiously, with one hand always gripping the rigging, Warner made a complete scan around the balloon. When he looked to the north-northwest, he let out a yell which would have scared any seagulls within a half a mile. Then he took the names of most of Tran’s gods in vain.
He’d completely forgotten about the Labyrinth Range, a tangle of jagged peaks and dense thickets at the head of the Saronic Gulf. They got their name because few who tried finding a path through them ever got out the other side. Sensible people preferred to go around either end of the range.
Warner wouldn’t have any choice. The range was a good seventy miles from end to end, and there was no way at all to steer a free balloon. He would have to go over.
How high? One task of the University was mapping Tran; they were the only geodetic survey the planet had. He’d sent a team of locals out with a crude transit to measure mountain heights—And if he remembered right, the Labyrinth Range was three thousand meters high.
Nine thousand feet. More than that. A lot higher than he was just now. Twice as high, maybe.
Would it be better to try to land? No. Not in this wind. Neither he nor the balloon would live through the experience. I’ll just have to go over, he thought. Be still, my heart— Tain’t funny, another part of him said, but he ignored that. Better to laugh, and not think about it. He looked down once more to be sure, and decided. The ground was already rising into the foothills of the Labyrinths. He’d have to get up to ten thousand feet and stay there for at least an hour. The Labyrinths were thirty miles across at their widest point. If he came down anywhere inside them, he’d freeze or starve to death before they found him, if anyone could be persuaded to go looking, and assuming he was lucky enough to survive landing on a glacier…