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"The arm will get better," he said. "The skin did not break. I can fight and
ride, though I cannot shoot a bow."
Temuchin hesitated a moment before he answered. 'We need every man that we
have. Do those things and you will return with us to the camp. We will ride as
soon as this man is buried." He turned to Jason.
"Ride in front with me," he ordered, "and do not make any stupid noise."
He apparently did not think much of Jason's soldiering ability, and Jason did
not feel like correcting him. "This place of the soldiers is what we are
looking for. The stoat clan has raided this country in the past, but with no
more than two or three men at a time as to send more moropes down is
dangerous. They avoid the soldiers and attack these farms. But they have
fought the soldiers and it is from them that I learned of the gunpowder. They
killed one soldier and took his gunpowder, but when I put fire to it, it
merely burned. Yet the stoats swear that it blew up, and others have said the
same and I do not doubt them. We will capture the gunpowder and you will make
it blow up."
"Take me to it," Jason said, "and I'll show you how it's done."
They blundered through the forest until well after midnight before their
prisoner tearfully admitted that he had lost his way in the darkness. Temuchin
beat him until he howled with pain then, reluctantly, ordered the men to rest
until morning. The rain had begun again and they sought what comfort they
could find under the dripping trees.
Jason had a bad taste in his mouth. It wasn't the dung-cooked food this time
or the filthy achalz, but the massacre at the farm. Get close to the trees and
you don't see the forest. He had been living with the nomads, living like a
nomad, and had become part of their culture. They were interesting people and,
since moving to Temuchin's camp, he had found them a warm, if not exactly the
galaxy's most humorous, people, and at least it was possible to get along with
them. They were honest in their own way and respected their own code of laws.
They were also cold-blooded murderers and killers. It did not matter that they
killed according to their own sets of values. This did not change the
situation. Jason could still see the sword thrusting into the infant and he
moved uncomfortably on the sodden leaves.
He had been among the trees and forgotten the forest. He had forgotten that
these people had slaughtered the first mining expedition and would relish
nothing better than doing the same to any other offworlders that they met. He
was a spy in their midst and he was working for their complete downfall.
That was more like it. He could live with himself as long as it was constantly
clear that he was just playing a role, not enjoying himself, and that all this
masquerading had some purpose. He had to wreck the social structure of these
nomads and see to it that the Pyrrans opened their mines in safety.
Alone in the wet night, chilled and depressed, it looked like a very dim
possibility. The hell with that. He twisted and attempted to get comfortable
and go to sleep but the images of the massacre kept interfering.
In your own way, Temuchin, you are a great man, he thought. But I am going to
have to destroy you. The rain fell remorselessly.
At first light they moved out again, a silent column through the fogshrouded
forest. The captive peasant chattered his teeth in fear until he recognized a
clearing and a path. Smiling and happy now, he showed them the correct way. A
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wad of his clothing was stuffed into his mouth so that he could not give any
alarm.
A crackling of broken twigs sounded ahead and there was the sound of voices.
The column stopped with instant silence and a sword was pressed against the
prisoner's neck. Nothing moved. The voices ahead grew louder and two men came
around a turning of the trail. They walked two, three paces before they were
aware of the motionless, silent forms so close to them in the fog. Before they
could act, a half dozen arrows had snuffed out their lives.
"What are those stick things they carry?" Temuchin said to Jason.
Jason slid to the ground and turned the nearest corpse over with his boot. The
man wore a lightweight steel breastplate and a steel helm; other than that, he
was unarmored, dressed in coarse cloth and leather. He had a short sword in
his belt and still clutched in his hand what could only have been a primitive
musket.
"It is what is called a 'gun,'" Jason said, picking it up. "It uses gunpowder
to throw a piece of metal that can kill. The gunpowder and metal are put down
this tube here. When this little lever on the bottom is pulled, this stone
throws a spark down into the gunpowder, which blows up and shoots the metal
out."
When Jason looked up, he saw that every man within hearing had his bow and
arrow aimed at his throat. He put the weapon down carefully and pulled two
leather bags from the dead soldier's belt and looked inside of them. "Just
what I thought. Bullets and cloth patches here-and this is gunpowder." He
handed the second bag up to Temuchin, who looked into and smelt it.
"There is not very much here," he said.
"It doesn't take very much, not for these guns. But there is sure to be a
bigger supply in the place where these men came from."
"That is what I thought," Temuchin said, and he waved the raiding party on as
soon as the arrows had been retrieved and the bodies relieved of their thumbs
and rolled aside. He took both muskets himself.
Less than a ten-minute ride along the trail brought them to the edge of a
clearing, a large meadow that flanked a smoothly flowing river. At the water's
edge stood a squat and solid stone building with a high tower in its center.
Two figures were visible at the top of the tower.
"The prisoner says that this is the place of the soldiers," said the officer
who had been translating.
"Ask him if he knows how many entrances there are," Temuchin ordered.
"He says that he does not know."
"Kill him."
A swift sword thrust eliminated the prisoner and his corpse was dumped into
the brush.
"There is only that one small door on this side and the narrow holes through
which bows and the gun things may be fired," Temuchin said. "I do not like it.
I want two men to look at the other sides of this building and tell me what
they see. What is that round thing above the wall?" he asked Jason.
"I don't know-but I can guess. It could be a gun, the same as these only much
bigger, that would throw a large piece of metal."
"I thought so, too," Temuchin said, and narrowed his eyes in thought. He
issued orders to two men, who turned and rode back along the trail.
The scouts dismounted and vanished silently into the underbrush. These men,
who had learned to conceal themselves in the apparently barren plains, could
disappear completely in the wooded cover. With a predator's patience, the
warriors, still mounted, waited silently for the scouts to come back.
"It is as I thought," Temuchin said when they had returned and reported to
him. "This place is well made and is built only for fighting. There is one
more door, the same size, on the other side by the water. If we wait until
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nightfall, we can take the place easily, but I do not wish to wait. Can you
fire this gun?" he asked Jason.
Jason nodded reluctantly, because he already had a very good idea what
Temuchin had in mind-even before he saw the two men returning with one of the
dead soldiers. Everyone fought in Temuchin's horde, even lute-playing
gunpowder experts. Jason tried to think of a way out of this fix, but he could
not, so he volunteered before he was drafted. It made no difference at all to
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