Then they heard an angry shout. «There they are, the bastards!» Six riders spurred their horses out from behind the farm buildings toward the field.

Chapter 20

Blade's first instinct was to turn and dive into whatever cover the standing grain offered. Then he realized this would be futile. The horsemen could easily ride them down even in the grain, or circle around and get between them and the forest. There was also the possibility of a lucky shot with their bows.

Then Blade realized that the horsemen were neither Maghri nor Goharan soldiers. They wore the same sort of farmers' and small merchants' clothing he'd been seeing since he landed. All of them had bows, but only one of them had a sword. The others had woodsman's axes or short throwing spears with barbed heads. Rebels?

Blade stood up, waved his arms, held up empty hands, and shouted, «Ho! Hold your fire! We're friends to Riddart and to free Mythor!»

Two of the men reined in their horses and nocked arrows, then the others did the same. Blade wondered if he'd made a mistake that might be his last. Then Khraishamo rose and strode forward to stand beside Blade, roaring at the top of his lungs: «You fools! This is the Man from the Future, Richard Blade of England! Kill him, and nothing will save you from the fury of his people!»

Khraishamo's Sarumi accent was still thick enough so that Blade wasn't entirely sure the riders understood all the words. However, they did understand the anger in his voice and recognized him as a Sarumi. Seeing one of the Pirate Folk in human company this far inland was unusual enough to make them hold their arrows out of sheer curiosity.

Blade used the moment's pause to look at the men again. Yes, they were definitely local men, on the stocky, ugly little horses the Goharans used for back-country riding. Then he spoke.

«I am the Man from the Future, as Khraishamo says. I want to speak to Riddart.»

«Riddart's dead,» said a gray-haired man in the middle. He looked at his comrades. «I'm his brother Gribbon. Any of you ever hear of a-Man from the Future?»

Most shook their heads, but one rider nodded slowly. «Think I did. Heard a story on the waterfront, last time I was in town. Man came out o' the air, onto a ship. Blue Swallow, I think. Fought a bunch of Bloodskins, then went up north to the City.»

Blade smiled. «That's exactly how it happened. I'm the man, and this is Khraishamo, the Sarumi chief I captured in the battle. He can tell you-«

«We'll not hear any damned Bloodskin!» said one man, and others nodded. Khraishamo muttered angrily, until Blade gripped his arm and whispered in his ear.

«Easy, friend. It's not worth a fight and getting killed, at least until we know who these people are.»

Blade himself was rapidly getting into the mood to pick a fight with somebody, so he sympathized with Khraishamo's anger. Ever since he'd fallen into Kloret's hands, he'd been jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, then back again. Now he'd tramped miles in search of friends, to find only a mystery he didn't like. If these people didn't turn out to be rebels, he and his friends might not see another sunrise. Neither would some of the men facing him.

«All right,» said Gribbon. «I give the orders here now. You come on in, both of you, and we'll see what's what.»

«We've got a third one back in the woods,» said Blade. «A woman, a friend of Riddart's. Can I bring her in?»

The man nodded and pointed to three of his riders. «Go with him. Shoot if he gives you a wrong look or isn't telling the truth.» The three men rode toward Blade, who turned and started plodding back toward the forest without waiting for them. He found that it was as hard to lift his feet as if they'd been encased in lead boots.

Blade felt considerably better a few hours later. The hospitality Gribbon showed even to strangers was respectable, almost generous. It was far ahead of anything Blade, Khraishamo, or Rhodina had enjoyed since reaching Shell Island.

They were given stew, bread, dried fruit, and ale-all they could eat and drink. It took more than storms or wars to make a Goharan forget his hospitality to guests. Then they had baths, with hot water and strong-smelling gritty soap, and put on clean clothing.

After that they were separated. Two of the servant girls led Rhodina off to a bed in their quarters, while armed men led Blade and Khraishamo to a store room. The room was more than half filled with sacks of grain and sides of smoked meat. Blade also recalled that he'd seen other well-filled store rooms and sheds around the farm. Gribbon's people had laid in far more food than they could ever use themselves, probably far more than they'd produced themselves.

He pointed at the sacks. «Harvest good?»

The men looked at him sharply, and one nodded. «Best in years,» he said.

Another added: «Lucky, too. We got it all in before the storm.»

Then the men left, locking and barring the door from the outside. Blade and Khraishamo had a candle, a jug of water, a bucket, and nothing to do but wait for their host to make up his mind who they were and what should be done with them.

Blade leaned back against the piled sacks. «Where do we go from here, I wonder?» he said, half to himself.

«To sleep, if you've got the brains of a fish,» said Khraishamo wearily. The pirate was not only tired, the ale he'd taken with dinner had affected him more than Blade. The Sarumi seldom used alcohol.

«If I had the brains of a fish here, I'd eat them,» said Blade. «I was just asking myself, are we among friends or enemies?»

Khraishamo looked up at the ceiling. «I wouldn't shut a friend up in a room like this, myself.» Blade had to agree. There was no window, and the door was made of solid planks several inches thick. The walls were stone, and the ceiling was more planks held up by beams as thick as Blade's body. Short of using dynamite, the only way out of this room was through the locked door.

«On the other hand,» Khraishamo went on, «I wouldn't feed and bathe an enemy like he did.» He shrugged. «Maybe he can't be sure what we are. So he's holding us until somebody comes along to tell him.»

«Either that, or he thinks we're lying but can't do enough harm to be worth worrying about.» Blade rather hoped his guess was the correct one. If Khraishamo was right, the three of them would be well treated but carefully guarded. If they were considered harmless and more or less ignored, they might find a chance to slip away. It would be dangerous here if the Maghri in Kloret's pay did come storming down on the farm. The filled store rooms hinted that the rebels were gathering in force, but they could hardly be strong enough yet to meet the force of Maghri Blade had seen.

If the worst happened, Blade knew he himself could plunge into the wilderness and survive there until it was time to return to Home Dimension. But that would mean leaving Khraishamo and Rhodina behind-so forget that, he told himself. The Three Musketeers of Shell Island would stand together, win, lose, or die. That was one certainty in all the confusion spreading across this Dimension.

Now that he'd settled this in his mind, the best thing was to go to sleep. In one corner of the room was a pile of empty sacks. Blade divided the pile in two and gave half to Khraishamo. Before Blade could spread out his own sacks, the pirate was sprawled on his, snoring like a distant thunderstorm.

When Blade awoke, he thought at first that a real thunderstorm had come to join Khraishamo's snores. Certainly there was a tremendous din from outside, loud enough to penetrate even the solid stone walls. Then he started picking out individual noises. In the next moment he was completely awake and on his feet.

Outside, horses were neighing, fists pounded on doors, feet thudded on the ground, and men and women were shouting, both in Goharan and in another language Blade couldn't make out. A distant rumble growing rapidly louder told of more horsemen riding up at a gallop. Blade found himself listening for the crackle of flames, then realized he'd heard enough already.