Jann lay on the grass, and her profile was no longer aristocratic; nor were her breasts smooth and sleek and inviolate.

Nirea sobbed, dry-eyed, turned the roan away, leaned over to push open the gate, and cantered off down the silent road, numb with horror, yet conscious of a small thrill of gratification, somewhere deep in her feral gentrywoman's soul. Nineteen years of knuckling under to Jann, of taking insults and cuffs and belittling, were wiped out under the flashing hoofs of her roan stallion.

Now where should she ride? She was a rebel herself, molded into one by her father's actions and her memories of the Mink. If he were dead, that great chocolate-haired brute, then she would simply ride straight away from Dolfya until she found a place to live, and there plan at leisure. But if he were alive, then she would be his woman.

She touched the horse to a gallop, and sped toward the only place she could think of where she might get news of him: the mines.

Someone scuttled off the road before her; she reined in, peered unsuccessfully into the darkness, and called softly, insistently, "If you're a rucker, please come out! Please come here!"

A rustle in dry brush was her answer. She tried a bolder tack. "It's the Lady of the Mink who commands it!"

After a moment a man stepped onto the road from a clump of bracken. Red were his hair and beard in the moon, and the white walleye stared blindly. Fate, chance, the gods—no, not the false, horrible globes, but whatever gods there might be elsewhere—had crossed her path with Rack, the giant whom she trusted more than any other rucker.

"Rack!" she called quietly. "Come here, man."

He was at her stirrup. "What are you doing, Lady?" His voice was anxious:

"I'm joining the rebels, big man. Where can I find the Mink?"

"I don't know. Lady, are you mad? The rebels are saying that the gods are overthrown and there will be gentry blood running all over Dolfya by noon tomorrow. They're out of their heads."

"No, Rack, they're honest men fighting a hideous corruption." She told him rapidly what she'd seen in her father's room. "I don't know exactly what it means, 'but it's bad—degrading, horrible! I don't want to be a gentrywoman any longer. I—I'm the Mink's girl. Listen," she said, leaning over to him, "he took me two days ago, and Revel is my man, hell or orbs notwithstanding. Now where is he?"

"I've heard he's alive," said Rack slowly. "I thought he would be; he's too tough to kill. Where he is, no one knows."

"Do the rebels trust you?"

"No." His face turned up to hers, honest and bewildered. "I'm of two minds.... I serve the gods, as any sane man must, but I have seen things...."

"So have I. Rack, come with me. We must find the Mink."

He bit his lip. Then he took hold of her stirrup. She thought he was going to pull her off, and edged her toes forward toward the signal points of her roan; but he merely said, "I'll hang on to this and run. Go ahead, Lady."

She tapped the horse to a canter, feeling better than she had in hours. Rack was a servant (say rather an ally) worth four other men.

"Head for the mines," grunted Rack. Her own idea. Surely it must be worth something. Soon they were coming into the coal valley. God-guards shone with an eerie and now-abominable golden light at the various entrances. "Which is Revel's?" she asked.

"Up there. He wouldn't be there, but if I can get past the guard, and there's no reason I should be stopped, there are men on our level, the fourth down, who might know about him. There's no other place to check. I don't know the meeting places. I have never been a rebel." He seemed to brood darkly for a minute, then added, "Before!"

They hobbled the horse in a nook of upended rocks, and she hid the portmanteau under some brush. They walked to the mine, she now remembering the location by certain landmarks, and Rack said, "There's no god showing. That's strange."

"I'll go with you as far as I can. If we do meet a god, I can explain myself mentally; after all, I'm of the gentry. I'm not in danger."

"I hope not." He helped her up the shelf, and they walked furtively into the tunnel. No sign of anything—till Rack stumbled over the corpse of a zanph. Bending, Nirea saw beyond it the sack and draining ichor of a globe.

"The rebels have been here!"

"Aye." He straightened, his white eye shining in the light of a distant lantern. "How can a god die?" he asked, in a child's puzzled tone. "Lady, no god ever died before. They don't die—'tis in the Credo. How can these rebels slay them?"

"Maybe no one ever tried before. Come on." She hurried to the ladders. Blue-tinged, mouth agape and eyes upturned without sight, there lay a priest, half over the lip of the shaft. He had been de-throated by a pickax.

"This looks like Revel's ferocious work," said Rack. "I hope he's alive. Yes, I do hope so."

"When I last saw him, riding off hell-for-leather on my nag, he was extremely alive, mother-naked and covered with blood but as alive as I am this instant." She went down the ladder hand under hand past three levels, swung off at the fourth. Another dead man lay at her feet; this was a squire, a youngish man in plum and scarlet, very brutally slain by a pick-slash in the brain. It was a man she knew, and momentarily she felt herself a traitor to her kind; then she thought of Ewyo's vices, corruptions, and she snorted defiantly. His gun, its stock remounted and a shell rammed home, was in her hand. She went forward, striding like a man ... and a man who knew what he meant to do.

The end of the tunnel was illuminated vividly by many blue lanterns, and presented to their startled eyes an horrific scene of carnage. The dead lay in piles, in one and twos and fours, their brains splashed on the walls, their guts smeared across the floor, their skulls cloven and their bodies rent. Ruckers lay here, miners and gentry-servants. Squires wallowed lifeless in pools of their highborn blood. Snake-headed zanphs clawed in their rigor at the dead flesh of priests, of rebels, of squires. Here and there lay the vacant sacks that had been gods. At Nirea's feet stretched a man built like Revel, who might be Revel, for his face was gone, burnt away by the touch of the terrible orb-aura at full strength. No, she realized even as she swayed back, it was not he, for this man's body was unscarred, and Revel must be looking like a skinned hare if he yet lived.

What a brawl this must have been! She was about to speak to Rack when she heard a familiar voice, booming brazenly out in the silence of the mine. It came from the black hole at the end of the tunnel.

"Then a whole line of them came down at us, faster than a squire can put a horse over a hurdle, and the forest yet a good half mile away! I had one dagger left, and my trusty small Jerran up behind me. The squires were ashooting, but ineffectively, and the roan was carrying us well and truly; but here came the gods, may they boil in my mother's cook-pot in Hell!

"I looked wildly for something to beat 'em off with, for as you've seen, a touch of their radiance burns your flesh from your bones if they wish it so. Well! The only thing on the whole cursed nag is the scabbard in which a squire keeps his long gun. It's a thing some three feet long or over, of light metal, covered with satin and velvet and silk. I tore it from its moorings, and as the globes came at me, I stood up in the stirrups, naked as your hand, and started to swat 'em. Jerran leaning forward past me, guiding the stallion, for his reach is not half mine."

"Brag and bounce!" said a voice that was surely Jerran's. Lady Nirea grinned and walked toward the cavern.

"So I swatted, I beat at them, I swiped and almost fell, I did the work of twenty men—don't shake your head, Jerran, you know 'tis not brag!—for half a mile, and not one globe touched a hair of our heads! They came at the last from all sides, like a swarm of angered bees, and one burnt the horse so that he streaked even faster; which saved our necks, for my arm was nearly dead by then.

"I tell you, there is one protection only against these things, and that is quickness: for let one come within a few inches of you, and you are a dead man."

Nirea stepped into the cave.

"I thought you were a dead man, Revel the Mink," she said quietly, still with the ghost of her grin.

He stared at her, while the men in the place turned and sprang up and stood uncertainly, looking from her to their leader. He was dressed in miner's clothing again, and his skin was a perfect fright of scars and scabs and half-closed wounds. But he was whole, barring part of an ear, and he was smiling as only he could smile. "Here, men of the ruck, is the woman you owe my life to. Here is—" he cocked an eyebrow quizzically—"here is, I think I can say, the Lady of the Mink."

"Here she is," said Nirea, and was stifled and crushed in a great bear-hug. "And here's Rack, your brother, who I think may be rebel material."

"I think so," said Rack heavily, staring at Revel with his good eye. "If you want me, brother."

"Gods, yes! We need every man we can get this night. Did you note the slaughter beyond?"

"We did see a corpse or two."

"I think we kept that secret, for two of my fellows stood on the ladders and slew the gods who tried to pass. But it will soon be discovered, and the gods will do to this place what they did to eastern Dolfya, unless we can fight them some way. I think I have a clue to help us. What that is I'll show you now."

"Revel, dearest," she said, "are you all right?"

"Of course, thanks to you. Now to business."

"Rack must go to my horse above for things I brought."

"Go then, Rack. Wait—first give me that pick you've got there. I think it's mine." Rack handed it over, a little shamefacedly, and Revel gave him the one tucked in his own belt. "I've missed this girl.... The chest I want to search is still here, though the gentry have carried off a great deal from the cavern."

"Wait a minute," said Nirea fiercely. "You'd better do a few things before you start experimenting and searching. You'd better have a plan, and send men out to spread word of it among your people! There are thousands of them out there, ready to pounce at your word, to rise against the squires and priests, and take their chances of gods' vengeance. You'd better send out the word that the Mink is leading them to war. Otherwise, you'll have an army that's ineffectual and headless, that can be cut to pieces in twenty-four hours. For most of them think you're dead—the gentry spread the word."

Jerran said, quietly so that only the girl and Revel heard him, "I think I named the wrong person. I think Lady Nirea is the Mink!"

Revel laughed grimly, "Haven't I been busy? Haven't I sent a troop for Dawvys in his hole in the coppice, and another to say in the lanes and shebeens that I'm alive? Here, Vorl, Sesker, and you three, get out! Steal horses from the mansions' stables, and spread the news. We rise tonight! Whether or not I find what I seek, we rise! If we all perish in a god-blast, still we rise! When you've enough men, attack the gentry's homes, beginning at Dolfya's center and spreading out. Put every horse available on the road to Korla and Hakes Town and every village within knowledge. If they look scared, show 'em a dead god! Take those out there—stick 'em on the ends of pikes, carry 'em through the streets with torches to show 'em off! Kill every globe you can reach, send the corpses out for the ruck to see! There's our banner, our fiery cross—a dead god on a pike!"