Magda felt panic grip and drag at her, a physical sensation like a cramp along her leg muscles. She hurried back to her horse, ordering herself sternly to be calm. I’m armed. I’ve been combat-trained since I was sixteen, and first knew I was going into Intelligence. On any other world, she knew, she would have been expected to take this kind of chance routinely, man or woman. Here she’d been sheltered by Darkovan custom.
If it came to a fight-she laid her hand on her knife for a moment, trying to reassure herself-it would be better to make a stand in the pass. She could defend herself better there than on the down slopes. But need it come to a fight? Terran agents were trained to avoid confrontations when possible. And she would have bet that even Free Amazons didn’t go around looking for trouble.
Suddenly she knew that she could not, could not force herself to make a stand here and face them. She commanded herself to stay here and think it through, but even while she tried to form her thoughts clearly she was guiding her horse away down the slope, down the trail, hurrying and urging it more, she knew, than a good rider would ever do (there was a mountain proverb of her childhood, “On a steep road let your horse set the pace”), yet she knew she was almost racing downhill, hearing small stones slip and slide beneath the horse’s hooves.
It was not long before she realized she could not go on like this; if one of her animals should fall and break a leg she would be afoot and stranded. She drew the horse to a stop, patting its heaving sides in apology. What’s wrong with me, why did I run away like that? Behind her, the road to the pass lay bare and unoccupied. Maybe they weren’t following me at all. … But she felt the vague unease, the “hunch” she had learned, in years of successful agent work, always to trust; and it said, loud and clear: run, hide, disappear, get lost. The woman who had trained her, far away on another world, had said: “Every good undercover agent is a little psychic. Or they don’t survive long in the service.”
Now what? She couldn’t outrun them, burdened as she was with luggage and pack animal. Sooner or later they would come up with her, and then it would come to a fight.
She looked at the ground, covered with melting snow and mud, an amorphous trampled brownish mess. Lucky. In new snow they’d see my tracks … and see where I left the trail, which would be worse . . .. But in the running, muddy water and slush all tracks vanished as fast as they were made. She turned aside from the road, leading the animals through a small gap in the trees; turned back to obliterate, with a quick hand, the marks in the snow where she had crossed the edge; led them some distance from the road and tethered them in a thick grove of evergreens, where they could not be seen.
Then she slipped back, found a concealed vantage point where she could conceal herself between tress and underbrush, and gnawed nervously on some dried fruit as she waited to see the success of her trick.
It was nearly an hour before the riders she had seen came down the slopes, hurrying their mounts as much as they could in the mushy trail underfoot. But neither of them even glanced in Magda’s direction as they hurried past. When they were out of sight, she crawled shakily from her hiding place. She noted peripherally that her knees were weak and trembling, and that the palms of her hands were clammy and wet.
What’s the matter with me? I’m not behaving like a trained agent-or even like a Free Amazon! I’m behaving like a-like a bunny rabbit!
And why am I panicking now, anyway? I did the sensible thing. Any of our agents, man or woman, on any world, in that situation, would have done just what I did. Kept out of trouble. .
Yet she knew, no matter how she tried to rationalize it, that her flight had not been a considered thing, based on her standing orders to avoid a fight where possible. It had been, quite simply, a rout. 7 panicked. That’s the long and short of it. I panicked, and I ran.