Ardor on Aros by Andrew J. Offutt Read Free Book Online

to Vardor slavery, which is about the same difference.
    I began to bounce forward, seven-league-boots style. I had done very little of it in my three days’ traveling. True, it eats up the distance. But despite the fact that I could leap far, I was still jumping. Just how long do you think you’d last if you tried to make a journey by jumping? Whether you could spring three feet or thirty wouldn’t make much difference. You’d still wear yourself out, and need a lot of two commodities I didn’t have in addition to rest: food and water.
    I was already gasping. I knew I wouldn’t make it. They were regarding her in silence, their homely, gray faces shadowed and sharp-etched by their cowls.
    “You have much of value,” the one still wearing his bow on his back says in a growly voice, and my spine writhes. He laughs. “This idiot would spoil it with an arrow. Not Ard,” he says, thumbing his robed chest. “I am not so stupid as Oth. Put down your weapons. We will share food with you, and perhaps help you on your way, if it does not take us out of ours.”
    Our bluffs cross like swords There is no way out. We cannot part in peach, having seen each other. Besides, I am female, on foot, and armed only for close combat, while they have mounts and arrows. I wait, wondering if they will decide to shoot, to come in for me on slookback, or dismount and take me from either side. It makes little difference. I have no place to go and cannot hope to overcome two of them. Kro Kodres has the Ring; Kro Kodres is not coming, although I broadcast, just in case.
    They swing down and start in, Oth (“oath”) going around one boulder to come at me from the opposite direction. They will try to take me alive. After all, Ard said, I have much of value. Why am I too weak to slay myself?
    I startle Ard by advancing, sword and dagger ready. He blinks at my bravura, raising his own blade. I show him a trick or two, learning quickly that I am better with a sword than he.
    These people, I saw in my mind, had barely begun any scientific sword-to-sword defense. Besides, when you’re eight feet tall and about one-third animal, you rely more on size and strength than on brains and dexterity. But just as she started to settle down, smiling, to carve up the monster, she heard the other Vardor behind her. She played the only card she had. Not an ace maybe, but it was at least a queen against that pair of jacks! She charged. Taken aback, he dodged her extended blade, and she rushed past, listening to their echoed cries. For a moment they were so dumbstruck that they stood and stared with open mouths, rather than rushing after her.
    Which was when I stumbled and fell sprawling. Lying there gasping, I found I could not rise. I was exhausted. What use would I be to that gutsy girl anyhow, in this condition? I hadn’t even the breath to yell. No, I’d be dead in a moment. I realized what I had to do: lie there. If she escaped—wonderful. If she didn’t—well, they didn’t intend killing her anyhow. I’d have to let then have her, while I tried to get up enough strength to reach those rocks and be of some value. Besides, it was coming on for darkness. They’d use her, then sleep.
    And then I’d move on. One hungry, exhausted man against two monsters has to think sensibly, heroic or not, like it or not. Playing Galahad, rushing in as I had been before the fall knocked some sense into me, would have accomplished exactly zero. One dead hero.
    Meanwhile she was racing for their mounts. Howling, the Vardors started loping after her. She was going to make it! She had a foot up into the stirrup of Oth’s slook, grasping the big saddle horn with one hand. No go; she had to pause and sheath her sword, and I sweated with her as she grabbed that saddle horn with both hands. She swung up and into the great bucket of a saddle, seized the beast’s reins, and pulled on one of them, telling him to vamoose.
    All this I saw through her eyes, and I felt her elation