"I'll get them," said Hal.
He went off through the trees. The Command had just gotten underway once more as he rejoined it; and none of its exhaustion-numbed members bothered to ask why he untied the donkey carrying Child's tent and personal equipment, and led it toward the rear of the moving column.
Reaching the end of the line of people and beasts, he kept going. When vegetation hid him at last from sight of the rearguard, he cut off into the brush and trees once more. A short way back, he found Child sitting where he had been left, and boosted him on top of the load the animal carried.
The donkey dug its hooves in under the double burden, and refused to be led. Hal let the older man off again, and led the animal alone to the little bluff. On top, it was ideal for a single marksman, its surface sloping backward from the edge of the almost vertical, vegetationless face that looked back in the direction the Militia would come. Hal unloaded Child's gear, set up the tent, and laid out food, water and the rest of the equipment within its dry interior. Then, with the donkey's load lightened considerably, he led it back down to where Child still waited.
This time, when the older man was lifted onto its back, the donkey made no objection; and Hal led it back up to the top of the bluff. He spread a tarp before the tent, just back from the lip of rock and earth overhanging the vertical slope, then helped Child down onto it.
"This, if necessary, I could still do myself," he said, as Hal put him on the tarp, "but what strength I have, I need."
Hal only nodded. He brought logs, rocks and tree branches to make a barricade just behind the lip, through which Child could shoot with some sort of protection against return fire.
"They'll try to circle you as soon as they realize you're alone," said Hal.
"True," Child smiled a little, "but first they will stop; and then talk it over before they come again; and when they do come, finally, still they will be cautious. By that time, I need only hold them a little while for the day to end."
Hal finished laying out the final things, the weapons, a water jug, and some dried food, beside the man who lay on the tarp, his eyes already focused upon the distance beyond the firing gap Hal had left in the barricade. Done, Hal lingered.
"Go," said Child, without looking up at him. "There's nothing more for thee to do here. Thy duty is at the Command."
Hal looked at him for a second more, then turned to go.
"Stop," Child said.
Hal turned back. The older man was looking away from the firing aperture and up at him.
"What is thy true name, Howard?" Child asked.
Hal stared at him.
"Hal Mayne."
"Look at me, Hal Mayne," Child said. "What dost thou see?"
"I see…" Hal ran strangely out of words.
"Thou seest," said Child, in a stronger voice, "one who has served the Lord God all his life in great joy and triumph and now goeth to that final duty which by divine favor is his alone. Thou wilt tell the Command and Rukh Tamani this, in just those words, when thou returnest to them. Thou wilt testify exactly as I say?"
"Yes," said Hal. He repeated the message Child had given him.
"Good," said Child. He lay gazing at Hal for a second longer. "Bless thee in God's name, Hal Mayne. Convey to the others that in God's name, also, I bless the Command and Rukh Tamani and all who fight or shall fight under the banner of the Lord. Now go. Care for those whose care hath been set in thy hands."
He turned to fix his eyes once more on the forest as seen through the firing slot in his barricade. Hal turned away also, but in a different direction, leaving James Child-of-God upon a small rise in a rain-saddened wood, awaiting his enemies - solitary, as he had always been; but also, as he had always been, not alone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
It took Hal the better part of an hour to catch up with the Command. Rukh had changed the direction of its march, as Child had suggested; everyone there going off in different directions to regather later at an appointed destination. It required almost twenty minutes for Hal, circling, to pick up their new trail. After that he went swiftly; but still nearly sixty minutes had gone by when at last he caught up with them. In that last half-hour, for the first time since he had left Earth, his mind dropped into certain orderly channels; standing back from the present situation as a detached and independent observer, to coldly chart and weigh its elements. James Child-of-God's last words had had the effect of making the path of Hal's own duty very clear before him; and with that his mind was set free to a hard, practical exercise of the intellect, to which all three of his tutors had trained him, but which until now he had ignored under his involvement in the life of the people around him. Now, however, under the slow abrasion of exhaustion and fever, followed by the final assault of Child's self-sacrifice, his personal emotions vanished from the equation like mist from a mirror, leaving what they all faced, clear and hard in its true dimensions.
As a result, when he at last rejoined the column of the Command, he looked at the men and women trudging along with different eyes. These people were not merely worn out - they were at the furthest stretch of all the extra strength which will and dedication could give them. It might well be that Rukh herself could never be defeated and would never surrender; but these more ordinary mortals who marched and fought under her orders had been used to the near-limits of what was physically and mentally possible to them.
He reached the head of the column and saw at a glance that Rukh had not yet faced this - and would not, could not face it. Like Child, she had an extra dimension of self-use possible to her that ordinary mortals did not have; and she had no real way to appreciate their limits or the fact that these about her now were now very close to them.
Walking at the head of the column, she turned her head to look at him as he came up.
"You did what you could for him?" she asked in a neutral voice. Her face was without expression.
"He sent a message," said Hal. "He asked me what I saw; and when I couldn't answer, he told me that what I saw was one who had served the Lord God all his life in great joy and triumph and went now to that final duty which by divine favor was his alone. He asked me to tell you all this."
Rukh nodded as she marched, still without expression.
"He also asked my true name," Hal went on, "and when I told him it was Hal Mayne, he blessed me by it in God's name. He told me as well to convey to the rest of you that in God's name also he blessed the Command and Rukh Tamani and all who fight or shall fight under the banner of the Lord."
She looked away from him at that and walked in silence for a long minute. When she spoke again, it was still with head averted, but in the same perfectly level voice.
"The Command now lacks a Lieutenant," she said. "Temporarily, I'm going to assign that officer's duties jointly to you and Falt."
He watched her for a second as they walked together.
"You remember," he said, "that Barbage's real interest is in me. It's possible that if I were seen to be going away from the rest of you - "
"We talked about that. The Commands don't work that way."
"I hadn't finished," he said. "By tomorrow noon you'll have enough of a lead on the Militia to make some things possible. What I was going to suggest was to let Falt take over the duties of First Officer; and while you're moving forward tomorrow, and even yet today, let me start to slip the loaded donkeys, one by one, off from the line of march. The trail left by the Command will still pull the troops after it; and eventually I'll have all the donkeys away from the rest of you."
"Leaving them to be found one by one by the Militia, once they pick up our trail again?"