Mack Reynolds - The Space Barbarians

They dragged the struggling Thompson lass into a nearby bedroom, gagged and bound her with torn bedsheets, then returned to the anteroom.

Don said unhappily, “For all we know, your lass will be the last to come. Perhaps she won’t come at all. Possibly she works in the community kitchen. Who knows? Perhaps she has duties elsewhere.”

“She’ll come,” John said.

However, two more innocents turned up before Alice of the Thompsons. And each was treated in similar wise to the first.

Don muttered, “We can’t tie up the whole Clann Thompson. Besides, we’ve got to get out of here, before the corridors are swarming with clannsmen. I wish I’d never let you talk me out of my claidheammor.”

But then she entered.

Like all the others, her eyes widened in first reaction to the presence of men—albeit in the correct kilts of the Thompsons—in the quarters of the unwed of the clann. But then the second realization came, that these were strangers and not kyn. And then, recognition.

“John!” she gasped. And then, as a good lass must, her had darted for the short skean at her side, and she drew deep breath to scream for her clannsmen.

John grabbed her, growling in despair, “Alice, Alice! I’ve come for you.”

Don caught up some of the torn bed clothing. “All very good, but the lass is no slink, and the proof is there before us. Slip this into her mouth.”

“I can’t gag my bride,” John said in indignation.

“Oh, you can’t? Well, I can!” Don snarled. “She’ll have the whole building down on us!” He deftly gagged the girl. “You take her,” he said. “I’ve been bitten enough this night. Not to speak of being kicked until I’m black-and-blue.”

John took her up and slung her over his shoulder, murmuring apologetically and quite senselessly. Don opened the door, darted looks up and down the corridor.

“Let’s go!” he said. “Fast!”

As quickly as carrying a kicking girl would allow, they started down the corridor toward the ladder. They rounded a corner and ran into the arms of a clannsman in his middle years. Don straightarmed him and kicked him in the side of the head even as he fell. John hurried on with his burden, but Don stopped long enough to grab out his coup stick and strike the man.

“I count coup,” he hissed, before following after his companion.

They reached the ladder by which they had entered the longhouse, and John started up it, one hand holding the girl to his shoulder, the other on the ladder rungs. Alice had let off kicking, at least temporarily, perhaps in fear of causing a fall, but perhaps in subconscious wish that the escapade succeed.

There came a shout of rage from down the corridor.

Don groaned. “Quickly,” he yelled. The fat was now in fire.

They scrambled up the ladder, and John headed for where they had left the grapple and line.

When Don reached the roof he turned, grabbed his coup stick and slashed with it across the face of the Thompson clannsman immediately behind. The other, encumbered with his drawn claidheammor and wishing to evade the ultimate insult, fell backward, taking three or four of his fellows along with him to the floor beneath.

Don half-yelled, half-laughed down at them, even as he hauled up the ladder. “I count coup!” He got out of the way just a split second before a carbine barked from below. He turned and scurried after John and his burden.

Not bothering to utilize the rope, Don grabbed the edge of the roof and swung over. He hesitated a moment, then dropped, hit on his feet, fell backward with a grunt of pain, jumped to his feet again and stared upward into the dark.

“Quickly!” he yelped. “They’ll be on us in moments.”

He could see a shape being lowered down, and when “she was near enough, he grabbed her about the legs. John had tied the rope beneath her armpits.

She began kicking again as soon as he had hold of her, and all his instinct was to clip her one; however, he didn’t want to answer to John, later on, in regard to that.

“Hush!” he snarled. “Are you daft? Do you think this is child’s play? If we are caught this night, John and I will hang in Caithness square before dawn.”

John dropped from above. A carbine barked from somewhere.

They started hurrying up the hill, the girl on her feet now. John had whipped the gag from her mouth. It meant nothing at this stage. The pursuit was on, and all bets were down.

Don hissed at her, “Run, lass. Those carbines cannot distinguish you from us.”

And run she did, John keeping immediately behind her, attempting to shield her body from the slugs that tore the air. She had hiked her skirts up, and now her white legs flashed in the night. Happily for their escape, it was a superlatively dark night by now.

They could hear horses behind them, and John groaned. “Faster, lass,” he called to her.

Don had gone on ahead as rapidly as he could. They heard him shout something to Dewey, and then came the rattle of his harness as he strapped sword and skean about his waist and dragged his carbine from its saddle sheath. He came charging back again.

“Onto the horses,” he yelled. He fired back the way they had come, threw the carbine’s breech, jammed another shell into the gun, fired again.

John was boosting Alice of the Thompsons onto the back of one of the horses. Dewey, in the saddle, was firing and reloading as rapidly as he could throw carbine breech. John’s orders against shedding blood this night were obviously being ignored by his desperate companions.

John vaulted into his own saddle and struck the rump of Alice’s beast sharply. “Let’s go!” he yelled.

Don, shouting the battle halloo of the Clarks, came scrambling up the hill. He leaped into his saddle and hurried after the others, laughing now in full glee.

He called after Dewey, “Wait until the bards sing this at the next muster.”

Dewey, slightly behind John and Alice and still firing back over his shoulder, shouted his own claim’s halloo but made no attempt to answer. They rode hard into the night, and behind them they could hear the pursuit. By this time, the revenge minded Thompsons must have realized that this was but a very small group and not a large raiding party to be approached respectfully.

It was a matter now of whose horses were freshest. Had the Thompson clannsmen taken the time to secure fresh horses, or had they taken up the pursuit on the animals they had just ridden in from Aberdeen? If their horses were fresh, then the four would be overtaken, for in spite of their spare war steeds, it had been a two day ride, with little rest.

Dewey and Don had dropped slightly behind to fight a rear guard action, but now they pulled up closer.

Dewey called, “John!”

John turned in his saddle and looked back. His two companions were behind, but Don’s face was pale, and he reeled in his saddle.

John blurted, “Don!”

Don grinned at him, then grimaced. “I’ve taken a slug in my side,” he said.

By morning they had shaken the pursuit, at least temporarily, and stopped at a waterhole both for the animals and to inspect Don of the Clarks’ wound.

Alice of the Thompsons, though she avoided the eyes of the obviously lovelorn John, cooperated. It was somewhat unseemly, for her abduction was not quite complete yet, nor would it be until they got her safely back to Aberdeen.

They stretched Don out on a cloak, and with her own stean she cut away his clothing at the point the carbine slug had entered and also where it had emerged. No bone had been shattered, but it was an ugly wound and he was pale, having lost considerable blood during the night’s pounding ride.

Being a clannsman, he allowed himself not even a groan ns she worked on him, but several times he winced involuntarily.