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SIX

It was definitely time to graduate from the kel Deroop/Rostik Academy of Language and Ethnology. Not that we were all that fluent. And what we had was a mixture of Provençal and Norman French. But I felt as if I could get along with it just fine, and the linguistics program agreed.

Now it was time to get our parents back.

There was no question about it: The place where dad was was one of their male religious communities, a monastery. And mom was in a convent, which was kind of the same thing but for women. These were probably the safest places around unless the people there decided you were a demon or a wizard.

We still didn't have any idea why they were in there or how they got there, which was a weak point in our planning. Deneen agreed with me: It was awfully unlikely that they'd gone there on their own. They wouldn't even have known there were such places. And neither of us could believe they'd separated from each other on purpose.

No, whatever had happened to put them there had been out of their control. They probably didn't even know where each other was, didn't know the language, and were worrying a lot, although neither was much for worrying. Dad's style was to make a plan and carry it out. Mom seemed more likely to wait, see what happened, and take advantage of the opportunities.

About two hours before dawn, Deneen put me down in a field less than a mile from the monastery. I carried my pack, to look like a genuine foot traveler. The moon had gone down and it was really dark, so we'd killed all lights before landing except for the fluorescent instrument lights on the console. It was chilly when I got out, and the grass was wet with dew. Dimly I could make out the monastery, dark beneath the stars, and started walking toward it.

My stomach felt nervous and I wished I could use the cutter's bathroom again. Here I was, alone in the dark, headed for a big stonewalled enclosure. Once I was inside, Deneen would have a hard time rescuing me if I got in trouble. And in there, in the middle of a bunch of people, my stunner wouldn't be much insurance if they rushed me.

Deneen had wanted to have the next piece of action, and argued that she should get mom out first. But I talked her out of it on two counts. One, it was clear that on Fanglith, women were considered inferior to men. She'd have a harder time than I would in getting people to do what she wanted, regardless of how smart she was. And two, Arno had indicated that the convent might keep women there who didn't want to be there. Neither of us wanted her getting locked up.

So here I was, walking through the field, getting my feet wet and feeling scared.

Standing at the foot of it, the wall looked higher and more forbidding to me than it had from two miles up. And after I got there, I had to walk quite a way around it before I came to the gate. It had a big metal knocker that I raised and let fall with a hard "clop," three times. In half a minute or so, a little window opened in the door, and dimly I could see a face through it.

"What do you want?" the face asked.

I told him I was a foreigner from faraway Evdash (I'd dropped the India idea entirely), that I wanted a place to rest, and would like to talk with the abbot after he was up. I didn't tell him how far away Evdash was. I didn't want anyone to think I was possessed by a demon. Brother Girard had told me about seeing someone flogged until the demon came out of him. That would be a long flogging if there wasn't any demon to come out and you didn't know how to fake it.

Anyway, the gate watchman disappeared, and nothing happened for about eight or ten minutes. I'd started wondering whether to knock again. It looked like they were going to ignore me. Then the little window opened again, and I had the idea that it was a different person looking out at me this time. There was also a flickering sort of dull reddish light, as if someone were holding a torch.

After a few seconds the door opened, and a stockily built man stepped out with the torch. He looked me over for ten or fifteen seconds, then stepped aside and, gesturing, told me to go in ahead of him.

Inside he took me across a courtyard paved with square stone slabs fitted closely together. Like the wall, the building we went into was made of big stone blocks mortared together, and it occurred to me that they didn't have machinery to build any of this—not power machinery, anyway. People had probably cut out these squared-off blocks of stone with hand tools—cut them just so, to fit. And I supposed that men and animals must have moved them there and stacked them one on top of another to build these straight, tall walls.

Inside the building, I was taken down a short corridor lit by a couple of torches in wall brackets. At its end was a big room about eighty feet long and half as wide. It smelled kind of like the hayloft back home on Evdash, and a little like the way the monks had smelled, and Arno. Like bodies that hadn't been washed since the last time they got caught in the rain or swam a river. The room was lit by what little starlight came in through the windows, and by the torch my guide carried. All I could see were bodies sleeping on little piles of straw on the floor, with their clothes on, or at least their robes.

"Sleep here," my guide told me. "The abbot will no doubt see you after lauds." Then, taking his torch with him, he went back out the door, leaving me in the dark.

"After lauds," he'd said. I didn't have any idea what lauds was or were—maybe another word for sunrise. And somehow I'd gotten the idea that I was very interesting to him. It wasn't anything he'd said; he'd hardly said anything. Probably more than anything it was the way he'd looked me over when he'd opened the gate. I wondered if it had anything to do with my wearing a jumpsuit. Dad had probably arrived in a jumpsuit.

Whatever, I thought. Sleeping was the quickest way to make time pass, and it made more sense than standing there trying to figure stuff out without any data. I walked around in the room, being careful not to step on anyone, until I found an unoccupied place with some straw, back in a corner. I raked it together in my own little heap—a stone floor wasn't my idea of a bed—rolled out my sleeping bag on top of it, lay down and closed my eyes. I wondered if I'd have any trouble falling asleep, particularly with the snoring all around, but it probably didn't take me more than a couple of minutes.

It seemed like I'd only slept a short while before a big bell bonged loudly from somewhere, waking me up. Dawnlight was filtering through dirty windows. My roommates began to get up, yawning and groaning, and I wondered if I was supposed to get up, too. Being still sleepy, I decided to stay where I was until someone in authority told me what to do.

The monks didn't have any beds to make, and they already had their clothes on from the day before, so in about a minute most of them were out of the room. A couple of them looked at me before they left, as if wondering whether they should get me up. Then they left, too, and I went back to sleep again.

The next thing I knew, one of them was leaning over shaking me. "It's time for breakfast," he said. He stood there watching curiously as I rolled and tied my sleeping bag and stowed it in my pack. Like the monks, I didn't have to dress because I hadn't taken off my clothes, or even the stunner, communicator, and sheath knife from my utility belt. I hadn't wanted to risk losing any of them.

There were about eighty monks sitting in the dining hall when we went in. The tables were made out of planks, and so were the benches. When we reached the serving kettle, I was given a ladleful of some coarse gruel in a wooden bowl, with a slice of some dark, strange-smelling bread, and a chunk of cheese on a square wooden plate. There wasn't any sweetener or juice or milk, or anything like that.

But I wasn't really paying much attention to any of those things just then, because I'd spotted my dad sitting at one of the tables halfway across the room. He hadn't seen me because his back was to me, but he was easy to recognize. In this room of gray robes and shaved skulls, he was still wearing his jumpsuit and all his hair. My eyes were on him all the way to the kettle, and I decided to go over to him as soon as I'd been served.

I wondered if they'd try to stop me. They didn't. In fact, as soon as I'd been given my food, my guide led me over to sit at the same table as dad, across from him a few places down. By that time I'd realized that no one in the whole room was talking. Apparently the rule was that you didn't talk at mealtimes.

But I didn't need to say anything to get dad's attention. He saw me as soon as I came around the end of the table, and his head jerked up. He looked more than surprised; he looked as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I couldn't help grinning, and nodded to him as I sat down. I wanted him to know I spoke the language, so I said quietly to my guide, "Is it all right to talk at the table?"

The man shook his head sharply.

I was hungry and ate fast, even though the food didn't taste very good to me. But dad had a big head start and finished first. He had a guide, too, or in his case, more of a keeper, and as soon as he was done, they got up. I got up, too. My guide put his hand firmly on my arm as if to stop me, and when dad saw it, he shook his head, warning me to sit back down. Then he left. Both his stunner and his blast pistol were on his utility belt.

When my guide and I had finished eating, I was led back out into the corridor. "Where did you find that man?" I asked him. "The one dressed like me."

"You know him?" he asked.

"Yes. I knew him in our homeland. His name is Klentis."

He nodded. " 'Klentis' is all we could understand when he arrived. He is just beginning to learn Provençal, and knows no Latin or French or German, or anything else that anyone here has ever heard before. He was brought to us by Lord Guignard. He is not a Christian, we are sure of that, but neither does he seem to be Saracen or Jew, because he cheerfully eats pork."

"Our homeland is Evdash," I said. "In Evdash they have not yet heard of the Christ. When may I speak to Klentis?"

"Probably later. He works in the shop; he uses tools very skillfully. He carries certain of his own always with him on his belt, though I do not know what they do."

We went outdoors into the courtyard, and he motioned to a bench by the wall of the building. "Wait here and do not wander around," he said. "The latrine is there." He pointed at a low narrow building about twenty feet long, into which a monk was just then hurrying. My nose made it very clear what latrine meant.

"I must be able to find you quickly when the abbot is ready to see you," he finished.

Then he left, and I went over and used the latrine. The smell, I told myself, would take some getting used to. Afterward I went back to the stone bench again, to wait as I'd been told. The bench was on the east side of the main building, but the sun wasn't high enough yet to shine over the surrounding wall, so the stones were still chilly from the night. After looking around and seeing no one near, I took the communicator from my belt and held it close to my mouth.

"Deneen," I murmured in Evdashian, "this is Larn. Talk quietly; I don't want anyone to hear us. Do you receive me? Over."

"I sure do, Larn. Is anything wrong? Have you seen dad yet? Over."

"Everything's okay," I told her. "I just don't want anyone to know I'm talking to someone. Especially someone that no one can see but who talks back. I saw dad a few minutes ago, and he saw me, but we haven't had a chance to talk to each other yet. He looks all right, though. He even has a blast pistol and a stunner on his belt, so he's not a prisoner.

"Now listen. Keep an eye open down here. If you see the two of us together and I wave my arm around over my head, land beside us as quickly as you can and open the door. There's plenty of room to land here in the courtyard, and we'll be in a hurry. But if I don't signal, stay up out of sight.

"The first thing I want to do is find out from dad what's going on here. It may be that he needs to stay here for a while for some reason. You got all that? Over."

She repeated it back to me and we ended off. Then I just sat there looking the place over and thinking that this might not be as hard as I'd been afraid it would be.

I wondered where we'd be in a few hours. It depended on how long it took to get mom back. We might even be outsystem by afternoon, heading for somewhere the political police didn't know about. Some old colony world. Or maybe we'd go back to Evdash, to some community where we weren't known. That was probably the last thing the Federation would expect.

The sun edged up over the wall and shone warmly on me. If the bench hadn't been so hard, I might have laid down on it and slept some more. Then my guide came back out. A couple of other monks were with him—husky, both of them—and suddenly I wasn't feeling optimistic anymore. Somehow I got the distinct feeling that everything wasn't all right after all. But all he said was that the abbot would see me now.

He led me back inside and down a couple of corridors, the two burly monks following close behind. All three of them were tense, not to mention me. We turned a corner and there was dad with two big monks standing by him, too. When we came to them, my guide knocked on a door and announced himself as Brother Justus, with the stranger. A deep voice told us to come in.

We did, all of us. Inside was a room like a study. A grim-faced man wearing a white robe stood behind a table. He was holding a silver cross out in front of him in my direction, as if warding something off with it. A worried-looking monk sat next to him, with a big feather poised in one hand and what looked like paper in front of him. Several other monks stood by.

But I didn't pay much attention to any of them, because there was Arno sitting there, wearing his hauberk, with his right hand on his sword hilt. He was smiling a little, his eyes alert.

"Grab their arms," said Arno, and right away the monks grabbed us. He came over and took both the communicator and the stunner off my belt. Then he took the stunner off dad's, too, along with the blast pistol.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Quiet, demon!" snapped the abbot. His round face had hard little eyes. "You were in the courtyard, speaking with Satan! One of the brothers heard and saw you through the window above your head, and hurried to me with the news. This good knight was with me, and promised to help."

He sounded very smug and pleased with himself, now that he had us corralled and disarmed. Besides the abbot, three monks stood also holding silver crosses in our direction—one on each side and one behind. I guess they felt that would keep us controlled, but meanwhile other monks still held our arms.

I wasn't an expert on the subject, but I knew that Satan was supposed to be the god of evil, while angels were the assistants of the good god. So I answered, "Sir, I have never spoken with Satan! It was an angel I talked with, not Satan."

As soon as I'd said it, the abbot's face went from a look of triumph, to caution. "An angel?" he said. "But you are not even a Christian. You as much as said so yourself to Brother Justus."

"Good sir," I said, hoping this was going to make sense to him, "certain angels are assigned to take care of people who are not yet Christians. Who do you think brought me here from faraway Evdash? And set me on the ground last night outside your wall? It was the angel Deneen."

I glanced at dad, who was expressionless but watchful, then at Arno, who looked very interested. I think Arno was curious about how I'd talk my way out of this.

The abbot just stood there; he didn't know what to believe. I'd learned from the brothers along the road that Satan was supposed to be a tricky liar, and I suppose that's what the abbot was thinking about: that Satan was a tricky liar and his demons would be, too. But then I remembered something else they'd told me: Satan was supposed to live inside the planet, as if it were hollow, while angels lived out in space somewhere, on a planet called Heaven.

"Look," I said, "let me have my prayer amulet and ask the angel to come down from Heaven for you to see. You know that Satan could not come down from Heaven."

I hoped he knew that; I hoped I had it right.

His face got thoughtful, and I could see he was tempted to try it, but he was afraid. So I made it easier for him. "Or let this knight hold the amulet near my mouth," I added. "He can hold it while I talk to the angel."

He looked at Arno, who nodded. Even so, the abbot stared at me for about ten long seconds more before he spoke again. Finally he said "Do it," and I could feel the monks' grips tighten on my arms.

I didn't call Arno by name. He apparently hadn't told the abbot that he knew me, and it felt right to leave it that way. First I told him to be very careful of the amulet, as it had been given to me by the angel. I knew he wouldn't believe it, but I hoped the abbot would. Then I told him about the operating switch. He would push it to one position to transmit. When I said "over," he was to push it to the opposite position so we could near the angel's answer. When I said "out," he was to switch it to the intermediate position, which turned it off.

Then I had him hold it in front of my face to transmit. The monks were gripping me so hard that it hurt.

"Deneen, angel of God," I said in Provençal, "this is Larn. Can you come down where the abbot can see your Heavenly boat? I beseech you to answer me. Over."

As soon as I said "over," Arno switched to receive. Deneen didn't answer; the voice that came out of the communicator was a man's. And it wasn't in Provençal at all, or even Evdashian—it was in Federation Standard.

"Klentis kel Deroop, you are under arrest, along with your family and any other traitors you may have with you. Any further radio transmissions must be in Standard so we can understand. I am in a police corvette, standing off the planet with detection gear. Unlike the situation at Evdash, we can assume here that any vessel seeking to depart is yours. If you attempt to escape, we will destroy you without hesitation.

"There are three armed chasers in the atmosphere right now, and we have your position coordinates. So remain where you are, rebel. Do not attempt to run. We will pick you up momentarily."

The abbot's eyes were wide and round. "Surely an angel would speak in Latin," he said, "and that was not Latin."

It was Arno who answered him. Obviously the knight was still interested in becoming the King of Sicily and all that, which would require our help, of course, or at least our cutter. "That was Aramaic," he lied, "the language of the Holy Land. I've heard the Byzantine merchants speaking it in the south of Italy, but I understand little more than a score of words in it. Of what was said here, all I caught was, 'Are you being well treated?' "

I tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. I had him push the switch to transmit again. I'd send using Standard this time. It was important that the locals not understand, while I had to be sure that the Federation people understood fully. I needed them to think that I had the cutter here at the monastery coordinates, so they wouldn't pay attention to people on foot or horseback.

"Deneen," I said, "do not transmit. I repeat: do not transmit. I assume you heard the message from the political police just now. Go to the opening where I let you out to question the Norman. I repeat: the opening where I let you out so you could question the Norman. Travel under cover of the trees, and when you get there, sit at the edge of the opening, where you can't be seen from above. We'll drop in and pick you up there. And do not, I repeat, do not acknowledge this message. Klentis out."

When I said "out," Arno switched off the communicator.

The idea, of course, had been for her to fly to the opening and wait for us. We'd get there any way we could. She'd heard the police order; I was sure she'd understand what I meant, even with the way I'd reversed it.

As soon as I'd said "out," I stood there staring hard toward the ceiling for about half a minute, with my mouth half open, as if listening to something none of the others could hear. I even nodded a couple of times. Finally the abbot spoke, looking pale.

"What happened?" he asked. "Why didn't the angel answer?"

I gestured at him as if he were interrupting, and pretended to listen for another ten seconds. Then I looked at him again.

"He did answer," I said, "but not out loud. He prefers to speak directly into my mind, and has prepared me so I can hear him that way. It's much faster. He talked out loud before so you could hear him and know that he's watching over me.

"He wants us to leave here, to go at once to the Holy Land. This knight he commands to travel with us as our escort."

The abbot stared at me without saying anything for a few seconds. He looked sober but still suspicious. "The angel sounded angry," he said.

"Of course he's angry. He's angry because we are being held prisoner. And if you would," I added, "let me have your holy cross. The cross of an abbot will surely help keep us safe along the dangerous road as we go about the business the angel has given us to do."

Brother Girard had told me that a demon could not tolerate the touch of a cross. It would make them shrivel and die.

"Brother Odo," said the abbot, "free his wrist but hold firmly to his arm and shoulder." The monk holding my right hand shifted his grip to my bicep, and the abbot handed the cross to me, watching intently through narrowed eyes. I raised it to my lips and, tilting my face upward, kissed the cool silver while the abbot stared.

The abbot looked very sober as he decided. "Let them free," he said to the monks. "Let them both free."

"And sir knight," I said to Arno, "return the amulets that the angel gave us."

That took Arno by surprise. It wasn't what he'd had in mind, but he couldn't think of any good way to refuse, under the circumstances. He'd played along with me to the point where he'd look bad if he refused. So he gave us back our things.

"Thank you," I said, and turned to the abbot. "And thank you for your hospitality and your Christian help. And for taking care of my friend Klentis while he was here. God bless you!"

Then I didn't say any more. I'd done a good job of bluffing, but as ignorant as I was about things, it would be easy to say the wrong thing and get us back into trouble with these people. We were in enough trouble now with the political police.

But Arno wasn't done yet. "And your reverence," he said, "it isn't necessary that the foreigners have destriers like mine to ride upon. I'm sure that the angel of God will be content if you provide them with good saddle mounts, and some monks' robes against the cold of the mountain passes."

* * *

Arno was an ally all right, at least for the time being. But I was glad our sidearms were on our belts and not on his. Dad and I were standing just inside the stable, watching a monk put saddles and bridles on horses for us. Arno was taking care of his own horse. I guess he figured no one else would do it quite as well as he would. Then a monk shouted in the courtyard, and I stepped to the door to look out.

Somehow I knew what I'd see, and sure enough, passing slowly about a thousand feet overhead was a chaser craft, considerably smaller than a family-model cutter. But she'd be armed with a heavy-caliber rapid-fire blaster in her nose. As soundlessly as it flew, it was only luck that one of the monks had noticed it. Now several were staring up at it, following his pointing arm. It would give them something to talk about here, that was for sure, and if the abbot still had any doubts, this would settle them.

Two minutes later we were on our horses, and the chaser was out of sight somewhere. We were about to test our luck. The stable master told us our horses' names—La Rous and Lou Blonde. Arno's horse was named Hrolf, after the founder of the Norman duchy, I learned later. As we rode out into the countryside and down the dusty road, I started bringing dad up to date on Deneen and Bubba and me.

But not till I told him we'd found out where mom was. I could really see him change when I told him that. He wasn't someone who would worry much about anything. But where mom was concerned, he did worry after all. Mainly, I suppose, because there was nothing he could see to do about it. Now he gave me a kind of one-sided grin, and didn't try to say anything for a couple of minutes; he just reached over and gripped my hand.

When I was done telling him all that had happened to us, he told me what had happened to them. It was pretty wild. Like Deneen and I, they'd flown around looking over the planet for a few days. At one time the rebel group he'd belonged to had talked about establishing a base here. That had been fifteen years earlier. If anyone had ever tried to set one up, though, it wasn't here now—not operational, anyway. And apparently the idea had been leaked to the political police.

Anyway, dad and mom didn't take long to realize that Fanglith wasn't what they'd hoped it might be. But they decided to spend a few hours on the ground before they left, breathing air that hadn't been through the cutter's recycling system a few thousand times, air that smelled like grass and flowers and resinous trees. They'd landed in a mountain meadow just a little below timberline, where there wasn't any sign of people, or anything else that seemed threatening, for miles and miles.

After a few minutes, Cookie, our felid, decided it was safe to go out, and inched down the ramp toward the grass and flowers of the meadow. Once he was there, though, he'd gotten into the spirit of things and began romping around, chasing some kind of jumping insect and generally acting crazy.

Meanwhile, dad had found that there were fish in the little brook flowing through the meadow, and both he and mom went fishing. After a while the sun had gone down, and mom decided she'd better get Cookie back into the cutter before it got dark. But fat or not, Cookie refused to be caught. He'd been shut in too long. So mom followed the silly creature toward the edge of the forest, a couple of hundred feet away, and dad had finally gotten one of the local fish to try an artificial version of an Evdashian silver bug.

That's when he heard mom scream, and he saw that two locals had grabbed her and were dragging her toward the trees. He'd sprinted to the cutter, grabbed his blast pistol, and went charging off toward where they had just reached the edge of the woods. Dad's still pretty athletic, and he was super mad, of course, with his adrenal gland on high. Two more of the locals were waiting with bows in their hands for him to get closer, and he blasted both of them. It must have shocked the others half to death to see them go down with blood and flesh bursting out of their bodies.

But dad didn't get to see their expressions, because just then he caught one of his feet in what must have been the hole of some small animal, and he fell down hard. It not only knocked the wind out of him, but he twisted his knee. He probably wasn't down for more than a few seconds, he told me, but when he got back up to limp toward the forest, he couldn't see anyone except the two dead guys he'd shot.

But he could see tracks—scuff marks in the dead tree needles on the ground. It was still light enough for that. So he kept going as fast as he could. He was limping pretty badly, but they were having to either drag mom or carry her.

Finally it was too dark to see tracks. But they'd started out by angling along a side ridge that slanted down from the mountain. And when they got to the ridge crest, they'd pretty much followed it. So when he couldn't see their tracks anymore, he just kept going along the crest. He figured they might stop and camp along the way somewhere—that they wouldn't expect him to keep coming in the dark—and if they camped, he might see their fire or smell the smoke.

But he didn't. He just hobbled along until morning, and when daylight finally came, he'd come out into farmland in a valley. He had no idea where the cutter was from there, except that it was way uphill somewhere, miles away, and his knee was swollen and painful. So when he saw some people working in a field, he limped over to them, and one of them took him to the little hamlet where they lived. Someone there apparently went and told the local landlord then, because pretty soon two curious knights came and took him to the castle. The head man quickly realized he didn't speak or understand anything they said, and the next thing dad knew, the two knights had taken him to the monastery and left him.

It was amazing to me that no one had tried to rob him. He was alone, injured, and as far as they could see he was unarmed. I guess there are some people that casual crimes just don't hardly happen to.

We didn't see the chaser anymore that day. As we rode, Arno and I passed the time teaching dad more Provençal and Norman French; he'd gotten a start on Provençal at the monastery. Finally, after several hours of steady riding, we came to the place on the road where I'd met Arno the day before, and we turned off there to enter the forest.

And there came Bubba out of the woods; he'd been watching for us. Of course Deneen had realized what I meant with my weird, inverted instructions. She'd sent him to watch for us, in case we missed the turnoff. Dad and I jumped down from our horses and met him, and he and dad had quite a reunion.

Bubba's a little much for some people when they first meet him. A hundred and twenty pounds of carnivore can seem a little much, especially when it's as hard and physical looking as Bubba. But he didn't faze Arno. It turns out that the Normans are great for big dogs. Hardly ever that big, but big. What really got Arno's attention was when we'd talk to Bubba and he'd seem to talk back.

I explained to him about Bubba—how he could talk and also read people's minds. Arno looked pretty sober at that, as if he needed to be careful what he thought about.

But Bubba wasn't paying any attention to Arno. He and dad were too busy horsing around. Then all of a sudden Bubba jumped back and his head went up. He whirled around with a bark of "come on," and took off running hard into the woods. He didn't stop to explain, but the way he said it, we knew he wasn't playing; something serious was happening at the cutter. Dad and I got back in our saddles and started after him.

I wasn't that much of a rider, and neither was dad, but we rode through the woods as fast as we dared. Arno got the idea quickly, and he was a lot better on a horse. In fact, he was super expert. Even with all his knightly gear (he'd dropped his lance), and as big and heavy as Hrolf was, they were out of sight ahead in half a minute, Hrolf dodging through the trees and jumping over fallen timber, Arno ducking under low branches, sticking in the saddle as if he'd been glued there.

Even on horses, though, it took too long to get to the opening. It was uphill all the way, mostly not very steep, but steep enough that before long the horses slowed to a canter and then a trot. When we got there, the cutter was gone. We could see where it had sat in the grass and where the chaser had put down against it. Dad said it had undoubtedly used a field jammer so Deneen couldn't take off, slapped a screamer against the hull to scramble her nervous system, then disrupted the magnetic lock to get in.

I felt pretty awful. Double awful, because we'd not only lost Deneen, we'd lost the cutter, too.

"You've been to the other cutter," dad said to Bubba. "Can you find it again?"

That's impossible, I thought. We flew there and we flew away, and we've been all over the place since then. But even while the thought was forming, Bubba answered.

"Bubba not find it," he said, "Bubba just go to it. Not need to find it."

So we started. I'd already been saddle sore when we ran into Bubba. I'd ridden quite a bit when I was twelve and thirteen, but not much at all since then. So the three and a half hours on the road from the monastery had been quite a lot for me. To then spend nine more hours riding cross-country turned into torture.

Part of it was kind of hairy, too, on really steep slopes with no trails, where if the horse fell, you probably wouldn't stop sliding and rolling until you hit a tree or big boulder somewhere. But Bubba seemed to know where it was safe to ride. And if dad didn't moan about a sore rear end, I sure as heck wasn't going to. I might wince a lot, but I wasn't going to complain.

Actually, the mountains were so beautiful that some of the time I forgot how sore I was. They were really something. And now and then we got to rest our poor butts, where it was so steep, or the ground so treacherous, that we got out of the saddle and led our horses. That could be tough, too, grinding up some steep slope until your thighs burned. Arno did it with a hauberk on—it came below his knees and must have weighed twenty pounds or more. To which you could add his broadsword; he'd slung his helmet on the pommel of his saddle. We all sweated when we hiked uphill, but Arno sweated most of all.

If it had been me, I'd probably have taken all that stuff off and just let the horse carry it. But not Arno. He told me a Norman was no Saracen or Lombard. He'd never let himself be surprised with his armor off.

I was glad dad was there. Whenever I'd look at him, he'd smile at me. It was something that he could smile, after all that had happened.

And now he could make the decisions, which took a lot of pressure off me.

To Bubba, our trek seemed like just a pleasant hike in the woods. He must have walked and trotted twice as far as we rode and walked, scouting on ahead and off to the sides looking for passable routes. And all the while he was grinning, with his tongue lolling out. He was in wolfish glory. Sure we were in deep trouble, and he'd fight or even die for his family, but meanwhile, he'd enjoy what there was to enjoy.

I'll always be a better person for knowing Bubba.

Finally, we angled along a forested ridge where the trees weren't as thick or as big as they had been. We were close to timberline. "Down there," Bubba said when we reached the crest and looked down the other side.

I didn't know how he could be so sure. All I could see were trees, cutting off any view of the canyon below.

"Is anyone down there?" I asked. "We don't want to run into an ambush."

"Not down there," he answered. Then he gestured upward with his head. "And not up there. Not for long way, anyhow."

Because it was steep, and dad and I were rumpsprung, we got off and led our horses down. In the canyon, the sun was behind a ridge, but it was still daylight when we came out into the meadow and saw the cutter ahead—the one mom and dad had come in. When we got there, the first thing I did was pick up and pocket the key card Deneen had hidden in the grass. Then dad moved the cutter tight up against the trees on the south edge of the meadow. It would be in the shade there all day long. Deneen had spotted it from the sun glinting on it; he didn't want Federation agents to do the same thing if we slept late.

After that he fixed a meal—we were suddenly starved—and listened on the cutter's radio for any traffic between the police corvette and the chasers. The radio in the cutter could be tuned to a lot of wave bands, including the various government channels. All we could get on our belt communicators was the citizen's channel.

But he didn't get anything interesting; he hardly got anything at all. I talked with Arno, recording again, mostly about the Normans—how they lived and trained and what they thought about different things. For the warrior class—he called it the nobility—fighting was the thing, fighting and conquering, and they trained really hard from little kids on.

And they considered themselves the greatest people in the world. I guess it's not too unusual for a people to think they're the best.

By then it was getting pretty dark, and dad said we might as well get a good night's sleep. Arno slept outside—his choice—and that surprised me. But I didn't question him about it; I didn't want to risk changing his mind. I'd sleep more peacefully if he were where he couldn't possibly get our weapons.

I'd have thought he'd worry, though, about us taking off and leaving him. Maybe he did it to protect his horse. Bubba had mentioned finding the scent tracks of what smelled like large carnivores, and Arno had said there were two kinds—bears and wolves.

Or maybe he was afraid we might kill him when he went to sleep. Although if we were the kind of people to do that, we could have shot him any old time, outdoors or in.

Dad slept on the deck in the control room where he could hear anything that might come in on the radio. Bubba kept him company. I went to sleep in one of the two sleeping cabins and never woke up once until morning.

 

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Framed