pounding her on the back. The treatment was rougher than Wingfield would have liked, but was soon rewarded with a hearty belch. The female sim began to rock Joanna, much as Anne would have.
Wingfield pointed to his daughter, to himself, and then back in the direction of Jamestown. As best he could, he pantomimed taking Joanna home. When he was done, he folded his arms and waited expectantly, trying to convey the attitude that nothing but going along with his wishes was even conceivable.
Had he hesitated, faltered for an instant, he would have lost everything. As it was, that aura of perfect confidence gave him his way. None of the sims moved to stop the female when it came forward and set Joanna in his arms.
He bowed to it as he might have to a great lady of the court, to the sim he had fought as to an earl. Holding Joanna tightly to him, he backed slowly toward the brush where his companions waited. He expected the tableau to break up at any moment, but it held. The sims watched him go, the firelight reflecting red from their eyes.
He was close to the place from which he had come when Caleb Lucas said from the bushes, 'Splendidly done, oh, splendidly, Edwardi' His voice was a thread of whisper; none of the sims could have heard it.
'Aye, you have the girl, and good for you.' Henry Dale did not try to hold his voice down. Indeed, he rose from concealment. 'Now to teach the vermin who stole her the price of their fol y.' He aimed a pistol at the sims behind Wingfield.
'No, you fool!' Lucas shouted. He lunged for Dale at the same moment the sims cried out in fear, fury, and betrayal.
Too late, the pistol roared, belching flame and smoke. The lead ball struck home with a noise like a great slap. The sim it hit shrieked, briefly.
With a lithe twist, Dale slipped away from Caleb Lucas.
His hand darted into his boot-top for his other pistol. The second shot was less deliberately aimed, but not a miss. This time the screams of pain went on and on.
By then Wingfield was among the bushes. Behind him, the sims were boiling like ants whose nest has been stirred with a stick. Some scrambled for cover; others, bolder, came rushing after the Englishman.
A stone crashed against greenery mere inches from his head.
'No help for it now,' Henry Dale said cheerfully, bringing up his crossbow. The bolt smote a charging sim square in the chest. The sim staggered, hands clutching at the short shaft of death. It pitched forward on its face.
More rocks flew. Wingfield turned to one side, to try to shield Joanna with his body.
Allan Cooper got to his feet. 'God damn you to hel for what you make me do,' he snarled at Dale. He fired one pistol, then a second, then his crossbow.
A sharpened stone tore Wingfield's breeches, cut his thigh. Had it hit squarely, it would have crippled him. The sims were howling like, lost souls, lost angry souls. Dale was right, no help for it now, Wingfield saw. His pistol bucked when he fired one-handed. He did not know whether he hit or missed. In a way, he hoped he had missed. That did not stop him from drawing his other gun.
'You purposed this all along, Henry,' he shouted above the din.
'Aye, and own it proudly.' Dale dropped another sim with a second crossbow bolt. He turned to kick Caleb Lucas in the ribs. 'Fight 'em, curse you! They'll have the meat from your bones now as happily as from mine.'
'No need for this, no need,' Lucas gasped, swearing and sobbing by turns. But whether or not that was true, he realized, as Wingfield had, that there was no unbaking a bread. His pistols barked, one after the other.
But the sims on their home ground were not the skulking creatures they were near Jamestown. Though half a dozen lay dead or wounded, the rest, male and female together, kept up the barrage of stones. Their missiles were not so deadly as the Englishmen's, but they loosed them far more of often.
One landed with a meaty thud. Allan Cooper, his face a mask of gore, crumpled slowly to the ground.
He turned to Wingfield, who was struggling to fit another bolt into his weapons groove. 'Go on!' he shouted. 'You have what you came for.
I'll hold the sims. As you say, I am to blame here.'
'But, '
Dale whipped out his rapier. Its point flickered in front of Wingfield's face. 'Gal Aye, and you, Caleb. I promise, I shal give the brutes enough fight and chase to distract 'em from you.'
He sprang into the clearing, rushing the startled sims. One swung a stout branch at him. Graceful as a dancer, he ducked, then thrust out to impale his attacker. The sim gave a bubbling shriek; blood gushed from its mouth.
'Gal' Dale yelled again.
Without Joanna, Wingfield would have stood by the other Englishman no matter what he said. When she squalled at the rough treatment she was getting, though, he scrambled away into the woods. Lucas fol owed a few seconds later.
For as long as they could, they looked back at Henry Dale. After that first one, no sim dared come within reach of his sword. He stayed in the clearing for what seemed an impossibly long time, stones flying al around him.
At last he turned. 'Catch me if you can!' he shouted, brandishing his rapier. Wingfield saw how he limped as he ran; not every stone had missed. Dale dashed through the undergrowth, going in a different direction from his comrades and making no effort to move quietly. His defiant cries rang through the night. So did the sims' bellows of rage as they pursued him.
'You make for home,' Caleb Lucas urged Wingfield. 'I will give Henry such help as I may.'
'They will surely slay you,' Wingfield said, but he knew he would not hold Lucas back. Had their positions been reversed, he would not have wanted the youngster to try to stop him.
