Was the castle empty, then? Unguarded? Larry looked down to the courtyard, in frustration. He was at least thirty feet above the bricks; a thirty-foot fall might not kill him if he landed on grass, but on stone . . . ? The castle wall was smooth below him for at least ten feet; with the use of both hands, he might well have managed a foothold on the ledge below. With one hand tied behind his back, he might as well have tried to walk a tightrope to the nearest mountain peak.
He let himself slide down to the floor again. Doubtless they had left someone here . . . possibly only the feeble old man who brought Larry’s food.
If he had a weapon . . .
They had left him his pocketknife; but the main blade was broken, and the magnetized blade remaining was less than two inches long. The furniture in the room was all old and too heavy to be broken up for a club of any sort. If he could somehow manage to club the man over the head when next he came in . . . .
There seemed nothing from which he could improvise even a simple weapon. With both hands, he might have thrown his jacket at the old man and managed to smother him with it. They seemed to be guarding against the Comyn telepathic tricks, but they had not tried to guard against ordinary attack . . . and yet there was nothing in the room that could be used as a weapon.
He sat, scowling, considering, for a long time. If he could have smashed the window, perhaps a long splinter of glass might serve.
He heard shuffling footsteps down the hall, and a thought—almost too late!—occurred to him. He dropped to the floor and, with his one free hand, fumbled to unlace his boot. It was heavy, a Darkovan riding-boot, and if it struck the man on the back of the head—
But it was slow work with one hand and before he had it off, a key moved in the lock, the door came open in one burst, as if the man had stood back and licked it open without coming inside. Then the man appeared in the door. He had a tray with food balanced in one hand; the other held a long, wicked-looking riding whip. He held it poised to strike, saying in his barbarous dialect, “None of your tricks, boy!”
Larry jerked off the boot, clumsily with his right hand, and hurled it at the man’s head.
As soon as he had thrown it, he knew that the throw, with the wrong hand, would go wild: he saw the old man start slightly, the dishes on the tray clashing together. The whip, as if with a life of its own, flicked out and wrapped round Larry’s free wrist with a stinging slap; the man jerked the whip free, laughing harshly.
“I thought you might have some such little trick,” he jeered, raised the whip again and brought it down, not very hard, across Larry’s shoulders. Tears started to Larry’s eyes, but really it was more of a warning than a blow—for Larry knew that a blow with such a whip, given seriously, would cut through his clothes and an inch into the flesh.
“Want some more?” the man asked, with a grin.
Furious with frustration, Larry bent his eyes on the ground.
The man said good-naturedly, “Eat your dinner, lad. You don’t try any tricks and I won’t hurt you—agreed? No reason we can’t get along very nicely while the Master is away—is there?”
When the man had gone, Larry turned dispiritedly to the tray. He didn’t feel like eating; yet he had eaten so little in the last four days that he was tormented with hunger. The final ignominy was that he couldn’t even get his boot on with one hand. He took the dishes off the tray, listlessly. Then he raised his eyebrows; instead of the usual dried meat strips and coarse bread, there was some sort of grilled fish smoking hot and a cup of the same chocolate-like drink he had had in the Trade City.