The Buttoned Sky Part 7

artistry. Shortly they were standing on the crest, and he was clutching at Jerran's arm.

"Orbs above! Look there!"

On the horizon lay a tremendous cloud of gray-black smoke, like the reeking smudge of a forest fire; above it rose another and more ominous cloud, this tinged with red and of mushroom shape.

Revel was speechless, but Jerran ripped out a curse that would have curled the hair of a squire's neck.

"The Globate Credo," he said. "You've proved it wrong in one respect, but there's terrible proof of its truth in another." He spat. "If I figure right, that cloud's hanging over the eastern quarter of Dolfya Town, where none but the ruck lives; and every soul that lived there is dead as last week's dinner."

"The Credo?" said Revel haltingly.

"Sure. _Vengeance of the G.o.ds comes swift and without warning, below the twin clouds, with a sound of volcanoes._ n.o.body ever knew what that meant ... till now."

CHAPTER VI

The pretty daughter of the squire, She mourned and would not eat; The Mink he tried to tempt her With barley bread and meat.

"O no, O no, you rebel cur, I'll never eat nor drink, Till father's hall I see again!

Till death has trapped the Mink!"

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

There were seven hundred silent men in the amphitheater of the forest, and more came in each minute, slipping from the trees without a sound, taking seats on the sloping gra.s.s. Miner's lanterns, the marvelous contraptions that hung in the shafts beside the veins of coal or pockets of diamonds, glowing with a dull penetrating radiance, had been filched from the mines one by one over years, and now illumined the strange hall like blue glowworms s.p.a.ced around a pit.

Revel sat, uneasy, on the sward in the center, at the bottom of the bowl; beside him were Jerran and Dawvys, the small rebel's cousin who served in the house of Ewyo the squire. There also was the Lady Nirea, dressed in a miner's plain short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt and unornamented pants, but looking as delectable to Revel as she had in the silver gown. She had not spoken to him since the great bang and the twin clouds, but his mind was so full that he didn't care.

He had killed G.o.ds. This had brought his whole world down in ruins, shaken his belief in all he had ever been taught by the priests.

He had killed gentrymen, squires whom no breath of trouble from the ruck had ever disturbed. This had made the myths of rebellion very real to him, very possible; and then Jerran had admitted to being a rebel himself.

The east quarter of Dolfya had been wiped out, as Jerran had guessed; men from the town, coming in after dusk, had confirmed it. The place for a square mile was level, featureless, without sign that thousands of people, women and shopkeepers, brewers and doctors, shebeen hosts and small craftsmen and thieves and vegetable-growers, had lived there just this morning. They were all gone into the smoke of the double cloud.

His own mother was dead, then, and perhaps Rack, if the big red man had gone home.

He had taken a squire's daughter and made love to her, love that was returned if only for a brief time; and afterwards he had shot down zanphs with his new-found guns and plummeted a priest to destruction.

So now where was he? Among rebels, certainly, but mentally, where did he stand? Did he espouse the cause of the rebels? He nodded to himself. Of course. Their cause was the ruck's, and Revel was a man of the ruck. He had given the rebels a terrific boost with his G.o.d-killing, too. As word went round of it, he could see faces turn toward him, marveling, awe-struck, respectful.

And what was he to do? Become a vagabond, probably, living by night, skulking in the forest edges, pa.s.sing from town to town hoping he could find a place where the G.o.ds had not heard of him, so he might settle down and eventually become a miner again. Mining was all he knew.

He felt for his pick, tucked into his trousers at the back. For all the new handguns, with their ammunition that made hash of a head or a belly, he still preferred his pick. It was the weapon of a man.

He took out a gun from his belt and stared at it. Then he asked Nirea, "What is this called, the curved metal you pull to shoot?"

She glanced over haughtily. "The trigger. Any dolt knows that."

"I wish you'd be nicer. I don't mean to harm you."

"You touched me, and more. I'm dreaming of your torture. Leave me alone."

Jerran stood up. The rebels, who had been buzzing and talking in low tones, quieted until Revel could hear the rabbits hopping in the underbrush beyond the amphitheater.

Jerran began to speak. He told them the whole story of the day, of the G.o.ds' death and all. Murmurs and exclamations arose, and he hushed them with a gesture.

"Many of us," he said, "though rebels, have owed allegiance to the G.o.ds.

Our quarrel has been only with the gentry, whose useless existence and awful power over us are a constant irritation. They who hunt us as 'foxes'--who kill us if we touch them--we have seen are only men like ourselves, women like our women." He pointed to Nirea. "There's a gentrywoman; is she different in body from our wives? Not by so much as a mole!"

"I didn't see any moles," whispered Revel to the girl. She turned red in the face and clamped her teeth together.

"Is her mind different, superior? It's eviller, cruder, more ferocious, maybe, but no whit better than our own! Why then should her kind have power over us?"

The amphitheater roared to the angry yells of rebels. Jerran waved his hand again. "That's been our quarrel with the established way of things in the world. We've hoped for weapons to fight the gentry, and prayed for guidance from the G.o.ds. Now we know that the G.o.ds are mortal too!

They can die! Then they aren't G.o.ds, not if G.o.ds are the supreme beings we've all been taught! They flee from a miner's pick? Then, by Orbs, they're craven cowards, not fit to be wors.h.i.+pped!"

A hush, then another roar.

"I said we'd waited. The biggest need was a leader, a man of brains and guts and power. We've sung of him for centuries, made up stories of him, songs about him." Jerran paused dramatically. He flung out a finger at the mob. "Who will he be?"

The answer almost broke Revel's eardrums.

_The Mink! The Mink! The Mink! The Mink!_

"He's here! He's come, from the bowels of the ruck, from the mines, from the people, as he was to come! Already he's done some of the acts the saga-makers put into the Ballad of the Mink!"

Revel frowned. Jerran hadn't told him that the Mink had come at last.

The small yellow-faced man went on.

"He's the greatest trapper of mink in Dolfya--his family sleeps under blankets of the little beasts' hides. His own hair is the shade of a mink's pelt, as was foretold. He's as swift and deadly and cunning as the oldest mink alive. He's slain G.o.ds and priests, and taken toll of the gentry. I've worked beside him for years, and know his mind and heart have always been ours, though he lived in ignorance of us."

The light, a lurid incredible light, began to dawn on Revel.

Jerran's voice rose to a shriek as the rebels muttered stupefaction. "I tell you I know this is the man we've waited for, us and our fathers and their father's fathers before them! Rebels of Dolfya, I show you--_Revel, the Mink!_"

The shouts that had come before were murmurs to the chorus of stentorian bellows which a.s.saulted Revel's ears now. The woman turned and said something to him, her fine face disdainful, but the words were lost in the tumult. A dozen men surged down and lifted him to their shoulders and paraded him round, while hands reached up to touch him and wave greeting to him.

It was the beginning of a celebration he had never seen the like of, a festival occasion that included a great dinner of boar and deer meat and stolen gentry's wine, over which much vague planning was done; and it ended only when the last rebel had left to sneak homeward, and he and the girl were left alone with Jerran.

"Sleep now, lad," Jerran said, grinning. "You're exhausted. It isn't every day a man finds himself a savior."

"But the Mink--I, the Mink?" He still had not entirely accepted it.

"I think so ... and if I care to call you the Mink, no one can contradict me."