Nothing yet. A few fires down there, a few moving torches. Blade ran to the trapdoor. It was light, of wood, and there was no way to secure it from above. He moved the trapdoor a few inches and flung himself on his belly, listening. Voices. Far below. Voices bellowing orders and a tramp of feet and clatter of arms. They were coming. The leather-men had wasted no time.
Torches began to flare in the mountains around him. From the nearest peak, higher than his tower, he saw four lights appear and move in signal. The alarm was out. Go, Blade!
He ran back to the balloon. It was straining at the rawhide leash. Blade disengaged the tube from the chimney and thrust an arm through his knotted holding straps. The spear was in his right hand. He reached and began to saw the restraining line apart just as the trapdoor was flung aside and armed men burst onto the pillar top with a vast hoarse shouting. The line snapped. The balloon leaped upward with a jerk that nearly tore Blade's arm from its socket. The wind caught it and sucked it away to the south. A flung spear missed Blade by a foot and an arrow hissed into the balloon and hung there.
Blade gained altitude fast, but not fast enough. As he was swept away to the south on a freshening wind, a jagged snow-capped peak loomed just ahead. He was below it. His left arm was cramped, painful, and as he was about to shift the spear and use his right arm for support, he saw the familiar silhouette of a leather-man leave the peak and come gliding straight at the balloon. Blade tensed, the spear still in his right hand and ready for thrusting.
The leather-man must have meant to fly into the grotesque smoke-leaking bag that hurtled toward him. He did not understand a balloon and he was afraid, but the torch signals had bid him to stop this thing. To fight it. He tried to obey.
He could not control his crude, bat-winged frame of wood. He missed the bag and flew into Blade. The shock nearly dislodged Blade, and for a moment his feet became entangled in the armature. The leather-man, his arms helplessly pinioned into the wingstraps, glared at him, then shrieked as Blade put the spear-dagger into his throat. Blade kicked free of the contraption and watched it fold and break and spiral down to crash.
He was past the last high peak now and the balloon was still rising. He traveled in the absolute silence that only a balloonist knows. He tucked the spear under his arm and hung on grimly. His arms were already weary, cramping, painful. It became very cold. He wore only his leather battle kilt and a crude woven shirt given him by Lisma. The pain in his hands and arms continued to grow, and for the first time the thought came that perhaps he did not have the strength to see it through. He flexed his fingers and changed grips constantly. If his hands went numb, if his great biceps cramped too badly. .
The moon slid behind a solid bulwark of dark cloud. Blade skimmed along in darkness, a weird and frightening sensation. He might at any moment dash his brains out against a cliff, or any jutting fang of rock could tear the balloon to shreds.
He could bear the pain in his arms no longer. He tried to work a leg up to get a foot through the straps. It was cold. Sweat dried in a frigid glaze on his body. One of the straps pulled loose from the skins.
Blade felt it go. His heart skipped a beat. He swung sideways, down a few inches, off center and so pulling the balloon askew and causing it to leak at a greater rate. Smoke billowed into his face. He was no longer rising as the air in the balloon chilled and lost its buoyancy. He began to sink.
Another strap pulled free of the skins. Blade lurched and dropped and for a moment he thought the last two straps would go. They held. By now the balloon was tilted on its side and losing altitude rapidly. The moon was still hidden and Blade could see nothing in the void below.
Not one fire gleamed, he saw no torch, he was alone in cold and blackness.
Down. The balloon was deflating fast and the speed of his fall increased. He could not gauge his rate of fall, but judged that if he struck anything solid now he was a dead man. At best he would be maimed and crippled. The Hitts would find him and feed him to the vultures yet.
Down-down- The balloon was little more than a shrunken pouch trailing after him in the plunge. It had some braking effect, but not enough to save him.
The moon peered out of cloud again and Blade saw the water just before he struck it. He landed flat out and was hurt and stunned. He made a great splash. He loosed his hold on the straps and kicked away from the balloon and trod water while he got his senses back. He breathed deep and felt himself for broken bones and found none. He swam back to the balloon and pressed out air pockets with his feet until it filled and sank. Then he swam for the shore, for a glint of beach some five hundred yards distant.
Blade crawled onto rough shingle and lay gasping. The long confinement had sapped his strength. But there was no rest for him now. The night was before him-he doubted he had been in the air for more than half an hour-and there was much to do. He must get his bearings, find a hiding place, make decisions. He had escaped his prison, but he had not escaped his peril.
He had nothing. No food, no water, no weapon. He was lightly clad, barefoot, drenched and shivering. And lost.
The bulbous eye of the moon mocked him. Blade shook a fist at it and went looking. For the nonce he did not fear encountering human enemies; nothing stirred about him, no night birds or animals, nothing but the soft wash of surf. This latter encouraged him. The water was salt and it moved and high water was marked plainly on the beach. Tides. It must be the channel. But which side of it?
Bit by bit he explored and found that his cove was roughly triangular and slashed well back into tall cliffs. There were great jumbles of boulders and weird rock formations and there must be caves in which to hide if he must. At the moment a cave, and a fire, were vastly appealing. And food. Blade shivered and grinned and forgot it. He had no food and no means of making a fire, even if he were foolhardy enough to show a beacon to every enemy within eyeshot. He took off his shirt, Lisma's present, and wrung it out as best he could and put it on again and went looking.
The moon had wheeled away and was beginning to wane when he saw the dark thing lying at the edge of the water. Blade approached it cautiously, though without fear, and saw that it was a dead man. A corpse near rotted away. Fish had been at it, maybe animals, and he had to kneel by it and look closely before he made it out to be a Zirnian soldier. One of the thousands who had died on the beach, or the bridge, and had floated far eastward with current to strand on this lonely beach.
The undercloth had rotted away, but the armor was still in fair enough condition, albeit the leather sodden and the metal rusted. Best of all, to Blade, was the sword. It was still in the scabbard. As Blade tugged it away, he saw the arrow still in the bony cage of ribs-the man had died before he could draw sword.
He donned the armor, which fitted well enough with some stretching at the jointures, and plunged the sword into sand to cleanse it. He buckled the weapon about him and felt immensely better. There was no helmet and he did not complain-his luck had been good this night.
Blade searched up and down the cove for something to eat. Clams, mussels, anything at all. He could have eaten a raw horse. He found nothing, but, finally, a cave formed by two tilting boulders. Into this he retired and slept.