Revel saw the lead horse, a piebald brute with hoofs like mallets, coming at him. The squire atop it was leaning down with the mane whipping his cheeks, smirking at Revel as he drove his steed forward.

He made the fastest decision of his life. He could roll and save himself, for he was quick as a lightning bolt; or he could keep hold of the wench and try to preserve them both.

He could never have told what prompted him to decide to save the Lady Nirea.

At any rate, he threw himself atop her, clamped his arms tight to her sides, and rolled, not toward the brambles, for it was too late for that, but to the center of the path. The piebald crashed by, swerving too late to clip him; the other horses came at him in a solid phalanx. He yanked her up, gaining his own feet by an animal contraction of body. As the heads of the nearest stallions reached him he slipped between them, holding her steady behind him, and praying to the Orbs (from force of lifetime habit) to preserve them for the next minute.

Without Nirea it would have been simple; holding her safe behind him while two lurching horses passed, that made it the trickiest thing he'd ever done. As the squires' legs came abreast, one blink later, he took hold of one of them which was clad in tight blue breeches, and hauled down. Then he leaped forward between the horses' tails, twitching the woman after him with a jerk that almost tore the arm from her body.

The squire in the blue breeches toppled over, howling, and fell on the path. Revel yanked the Lady Nirea to one side as the mass of them swept by, and saw with satisfaction a stallion, trying not to step on the fallen squire, take a nasty tumble itself, flinging its rider ten feet ahead, where he was trampled by a couple of less cautious nags.

Other horses fell over the first one, and the gentry milled about, roaring bloody hell and death on everybody. The two hounds smelled blood and attacked the fallen squires, and Blue Breeches raced off into the woods, one of the ravening dogs at his heels.

Revel made for the other side, the brambles where Jerran had disappeared. He was hauling the girl behind him. A beef-faced squire on a pirouetting horse loosed off his gun at Revel, who snatched a handgun from his belt and fired back. Both of them missed. A gentryman in tan and gold long-skirted coat leaped in front of the miner, the flared muzzle of his gun coming up toward Revel's breast.

Revel shot by instinct, without aiming. The man's face turned into a mess that looked like squashed raspberries. Revel stepped over his body and tried to plunge into the brambles, but he had lost the exact spot, and thorns barred the way.

Then, four feet down the road, Jerran's yellow face popped into view. "Here, lad!"

At that instant Lady Nirea gave a wrench and freed herself from Revel's grip. He whirled and leaped and snatched down, catching the collar of the silver gown. Her momentum carried her forward, but the dress stayed in his hand ripped completely off. He went after her—she was falling now—and caught her, though the atmosphere seemed to be composed equally of gentry and rearing stallions.

Then he turned, carrying her slung over one arm, and managing to reach Jerran's anxious-looking head by knocking down one squire and kicking another in the groin, he dived into the bushes. The Lady Nirea squalled shrilly as the thorns gashed at her soft skin. But Revel blundered on into the bramble patch.

Jerran led him through what seemed impenetrable thickets, following a route that must have been marked, though Revel could not see how. Behind them, the gentry howled and loosed off their guns, but the brambles defeated them, for Revel caught no sounds of pursuit. A scream that thrilled up and choked off must have been the unfortunate Blue Breeches.

Revel looked up, thinking of the globes; he could see the sky in many places through the tangle, but realized that it was probably a thick green solid floor to a watcher from above. A god would have to come very low to see anything moving beneath it.

The woman said bitterly, "For Orbs' sake, at least carry me in some fashion that won't expose quite so much of me to the thorns!" She paused and added as an after-thought, "You mudhead!"

He hitched her around and held her curled to his chest, faintly conscious of the smooth body, but concentrating on protecting her from harm; he thought suddenly that he was treating her as if she'd been a ruck woman, instead of one of the gentry, the loathed and feared squirarchy. Was he putting too much importance on the physical attractions that had made him take her?

Jerran was leading him now along a tunnel-like passage of twined, arched shrubbery that made them stoop low. "It'd help if you walked, Lady," he said.

"You may not have noticed it, miner, but I have on just one slipper, and it doesn't have a heel." She scowled up at him. "And when I say one slipper, I mean that's all."

"You look fine," he grinned. "No silk and satin looks as attractive as your own pelt, my lady."

They traveled for upwards of half an hour, sometimes down forest lanes that allowed free passage, other times through thickets that ripped their flesh and slowed them to a swearing, sweating crawl. Always there was a screen above them of natural growth, shielding them from the buttoned sky.

At last before them there opened a huge amphitheater of the forest, a hollow with gently sloping sides, covered by a gigantic roof of twined willow wands and twigs. Jerran said, gesturing upward, "That's the biggest piece of camouflage we ever did! The top of it is planted with grass and scrub, rooted in square sods of earth cut from the woods' floor in many places. From above it looks like a round hill rising out of the trees. Took us a year to perfect it."

"Jerran, who is 'us' and—"

"Why, lad, the rebels."

Revel stared at the little man. Could Jerran, the straw-colored stringy fellow he'd worked beside all these years, the quiet one who'd preached serenity and dragged him out of a hundred brawls, could he be a rebel? Fantastic....

The rebels were the anonymous elite of the ruck. They were the malcontents of their society, men whose intellects could not swallow the dreary bromides of the priests, who felt savage indignation against the cruel gentry and the bright, all-mighty globes. It was said that they formed an organization in Dolfya and other cities, these rebels, and that to them could be laid the sabotaging of the coal and diamond mines, the gentry slain in accidents that looked too pat, and the constant aura of uneasy discontent that pervaded the shebeens and all such illegal gathering places of the ruck.

The rebels were highly romantic figures, but Revel had always considered them mythical, for who could think of resisting the condition of Things As They Are? Songs were sung about them over the turf fires, in the squat little huts of the people, and by vagabonds who roamed the countryside by night. The rebels went by fanciful names, as rebels of the people always do; and the one most sung of, most whispered about, in Dolfya at least, was the Mink, who seemed to be a kind of promised savior who would come (soon, always soon) with punishments for the gentry and liberation for the ruck.

So Revel stared at Jerran, mouth agape, and repeated stupidly, "The rebels?"

"Aye, lad! Didn't you ever guess?"

"Orbs, no!"

"Why'd you think I kept stopping your fights in the shebeen?"

"Because you were a pacifist."

The small man shook with laughter. "One, there's nothing I love so much as a good brawl. Two, a brawl might bring the orbs or the gentry to our hidden drink-house, and that'd be bad. Three, a man who's a rebel must appear not to be one, even to men he believes he can trust. Four, I've had my eye on you ever since I came from Hakes Town, and didn't want you murdered in a drunken scrimmage. So five, though I hated to do it, I had to preserve you from raging and quarreling until all that brute force and honest fury could be turned to real account for us."

"I can't take it in," Revel said helplessly. "It's as though the heroes of the Ancient Kingdom that we sing about, Rob-'em-Good and Jonenry and Lynka, had met me here. I never believed in rebels, truly, Jerran."

"Why should you? We haven't done anything big yet. We've been searching and waiting for a leader."

Revel snapped his fingers. "The Mink!"

"Yes, the Mink." Jerran looked at him oddly, head cocked like a small yellow bird. "He hasn't come yet, but he will."

Revel looked around him. The amphitheater was dim, lit only by the sunlight that managed to creep in from the forest around it; for no illumination fell from the sodded roof. It must be capable of holding hundreds of men. "How many are you?" he asked.

"Some four thousand and three hundred." There was pride in the man's voice. "After today, Revel, we shall be uncountable thousands. Now the gods have been torn down."

"Not torn down."

"Torn down," repeated Jerran firmly, "from their false 'untouchable' eminence. You've shown the world that the globes can be slain as easily as hares."

"They can still rise into the buttoned sky, and rule from there."

"We'll find ways," grunted Jerran impatiently. "False gods that can die can be lured down by trickery—or we can find a way to go up to the buttons."

"That's insane," said Revel, and would have amplified it, but at that moment the girl spoke.

"When you are quite ready, Squire Revel, I wonder if you'd kindly set me down?"

He had forgotten her, slung over his shoulder like a slain doe. Hastily he slipped her off and set her on her feet. She was like a forest nymph, one of those legendary wild women who haunted the trees near towns and lured men to their death; tall and whitely lovely, her stark naked body shone against the greensward with a perfection that made Revel's throat constrict.

Then she doubled up a fist and hit him in the eye.

"You lout!" said the gorgeous creature. "Can't you at least get me something to wear?"

"I can have clothes for you in two minutes, Lady Nirea," said Jerran. "Man's clothes, I'm afraid. No woman has ever seen the meeting place before you."

"Man's clothes—rucker's clothes," she said caustically. "If I'd known what—"

Then her words were muffled by a terrible sound, a noise as of the earth exploding beneath them. Nothing moved, yet they had the sensation of being shaken intolerably by a giant blast of wind. The roar dwindled away, reluctant to cease, and Revel said, "What is it?"

"Come on," said Jerran urgently, "we'll go to the dome and see."

"The dome?"

"The roof of the sanctuary," barked Jerran impatiently. "It holds the weight of a score of men without quivering. We build slowly, but well." He sprinted away.

"The girl!" yelled Revel.

Jerran called over his shoulder, "If she's fool enough to risk woods lions and the bears, let her go!"

Revel stared at Nirea. Then he chuckled. "No gentrywoman could find her way home from this maze-center. You'll wait." He followed his friend.

They shinned up a tree on the edge of the clearing, and jumped to the rim of the dome, which never even swayed beneath their impact. Revel saw it stretch up before him like a grassy hill, and marveled at the rebels' artistry. Shortly they were standing on the crest, and he was clutching at Jerran's arm.

"Orbs above! Look there!"

On the horizon lay a tremendous cloud of gray-black smoke, like the reeking smudge of a forest fire; above it rose another and more ominous cloud, this tinged with red and of mushroom shape.

Revel was speechless, but Jerran ripped out a curse that would have curled the hair of a squire's neck.

"The Globate Credo," he said. "You've proved it wrong in one respect, but there's terrible proof of its truth in another." He spat. "If I figure right, that cloud's hanging over the eastern quarter of Dolfya Town, where none but the ruck lives; and every soul that lived there is dead as last week's dinner."

"The Credo?" said Revel haltingly.

"Sure. Vengeance of the gods comes swift and without warning, below the twin clouds, with a sound of volcanoes. Nobody ever knew what that meant ... till now."