The cell was clean, but the bars were stout and the lock unpickable, at least with any means the travelers had to hand. The guards in the corridor had no words in common with the prisoners and ignored their efforts at communication. Hakan bemoaned his lot.
After a restless night, Marko and Hakan were led out at sunrise, with their wrists tied behind them. At the scaffold, they found High Priest Ndovu awaiting them.
“I thought that such gifted outsiders as yourselves deserved spiritual consolation at the highest level,” he said. “Let us join in a prayer to Laa, the merciful, the compassionate.”
During the prayer, the executioner kept testing the edge of his ax with his thumb. Halran’s teeth chattered audibly. Marko miserably felt that there was something he could say that would avert their fate, only he could not quite think what it was. Ndovu droned:
“… and so, as your heads fall, may your souls fly to the realms above with the speed of a bolt from a crossbow”
“Sir!” cried Marko. “Listen to me!”
“Yes, my son?”
“Look, you hold it against us for inventing the balloon, don’t you?”
“Yes. I explained that.”
“Well, if we invented something that would help you to keep outsiders away, wouldn’t that make up for it?”
“Hm,” said Ndovu. “What have you in mind?”
“If it works, will you let us go?”
“I cannot promise that; the cabinet and the supreme court would have to concur.”
“Well, ask them.”
The executioner spoke. “Holy Father, I cannot stand around all morning. I have my orders.”
Ndovu said: “Well, I will grant you a one-day reprieve on my own authority; we are a just people. But this had better not be a ruse, merely to gain a few days of life.” He spoke to the guards, who led Marko and Halran back to their cell. When they were alone again, Halran said: “What is this, Marko? I hope you were not merely bluffing. If you were, they may find some more lingering finish for us.”
“I hope I wasn’t, either. It was that last remark of his, about crossbow bolts.”
“Well?”
“These people have the crossbow, just as ours do. It struck me that, if we could make an oversized crossbow, mounted on some sort of frame or pedestal, it could shoot bolts the size of spears, and much farther than any ordinary missile weapon.”
“What were the purpose? These folk seem militaristic enough without our adding to their arsenal.”
“Some of these supercrossbows, mounted around the coasts of this island, should discourage unwanted visitors.”
Halran mused: “I seem to remember something in the old literature about such a device. It was called a ‘gun’ or a ‘catapult.’ As I remember, however, it discharged with a flash and a clap of thunder and hurled a ball of metal.”
“We have none of these legendary weapons, but the Afkans have plenty of good, strong wood to make a big crossbow from.”
So it came to pass that, a few days later, Marko Prokopiu and Boert Halran stood again on the northern shore of Afka, watching a squad of Afkan soldiers inflate their balloon. The high priest said:
“I should have liked you to remain until your shooter was completed and tested. I have enjoyed our conversations and the news you have brought of the outside world. Luckily, I am deemed holy enough”Ndovu smiled faintly“not to have my soul endangered by intercourse with cursed ones.”
“Thank you, Holy Father,” said Halran.
Ndovu continued: “Colonel Mkubwa is sure that, having grasped the principle of your device, he can, with the help of our skilled craftsmen, complete it himself. The Kabaka is anxious to get you off our sacred soil, lest you steal out and impregnate our women. It is a common belief that all paleskins are superhumanly lusty and incorrigibly lecherous.”
“Now it is you who flatter us,” said Halran.
When the balloon was filled, and Marko and Hal-ran climbed into the basket, the high priest called out: “Laa be with you!” and waved. The mild southeast breeze carried the balloonists off Afka in the direction of Lann. Halran said:
“I have never been strong for priests; but, of the Afkans, Ndovu seemed the most human of the lot. It would not do to tell him so, though. He wouldn’t take it as a compliment.”
9
Marko said: “Damn it, Boert, can’t you learned men do something about the speed of the wind? Last time, it got us in trouble by blowing twice as fast as expected. This time it bids fair to do the same by blowing only half as fast.”
Muphrid lay low on the western horizon. Ahead, already in shadow, lay the island of Mnaenn.
Halran sighed and shrugged. “At this rate, the convention will be half over before we can get there. We have a choice of either descending on Mnaenn, or continuing on northwestward and alighting in the sea when our fuel and ballast give out, some time tonight. Would you prefer the latter?”
Marko sighed in his turn. “I suppose not. The witches will probably want to kill us, too, as the Afkans did. They may have something more refined and lingering than a quick chop.”
“We talked our way out of the last one,” said Halran. “It is not inconceivable that we can do the same with this.”
“Yes? You know the old saw about taking a jug to the fountain one time too many. I don’t get inspirations like that often.”
“We do what we can, not what we would.” Halran busied himself with the valve cord. Marko heard the hiss of escaping air. The balloon sank.
The last rays of Muphrid turned scarlet, then purple, as the island waxed before them. The horizon rose to occlude the disk of the luminary.
Towards the center of the island, a group of structures came into view in the twilight. Dominating the group was a domed building of sacerdotal monumentality. Around the houses stretched the plateau, an irregular surface broken by a few dwarf stupas, mostly growing between patches of cultivation.
Marko said: “Doctor, I’m not sure the wind will take us over the top of that table land. It may take us to the left of the island.”
“I am not positive, either,” replied the philosopher. “If I knew definitely that we should miss the cliffs, I should set us down in the water and try to swim to the landing place.”
He pointed to a tiny stretch of beach, whence a path cut in the cliffside led about halfway up the cliffs. There it ended on a ledge. Directly above the ledge, on the edge of the cliff, Marko saw what looked like a rope ladder rolled up on a reel. -He stared down at the water, where choppy waves smashed against the base of the cliff, and said:
“I was the best swimmer in Skudra, but I don’t think I could live through that. That water’s rougher than it looks from up here.”
“We don’t realize the force of the wind, because we move with it. If we can alight on the top, fine. If I see we cannot, I will set us down in the water. Perhaps we can work our way around over the talus when the surf subsides.”
Marko still looked doubtfully at the surf, since little talus showed above the waves. He said:
“I hope the balloon decides to do one thing or the other. I should hate to pull the rip cord and then miss the edge by a foot.”
“Prepare to pull,” said Halran, valving air.
Marko grasped the cord. He stared fascinated as the cliff rose towards them and the land opened out. The course of the balloon was tangent to the curve of this edge. A yard to the right, and they would be safe on the mesa; a yard to the left, and they would tumble off into the smother a hundred yards below.