The Mink! The Mink! The Mink! The Mink!
"He's here! He's come, from the bowels of the ruck, from the mines, from the people, as he was to come! Already he's done some of the acts the saga-makers put into the Ballad of the Mink!"
Revel frowned. Jerran hadn't told him that the Mink had come at last. The small yellow-faced man went on.
"He's the greatest trapper of mink in Dolfya—his family sleeps under blankets of the little beasts' hides. His own hair is the shade of a mink's pelt, as was foretold. He's as swift and deadly and cunning as the oldest mink alive. He's slain gods and priests, and taken toll of the gentry. I've worked beside him for years, and know his mind and heart have always been ours, though he lived in ignorance of us."
The light, a lurid incredible light, began to dawn on Revel.
Jerran's voice rose to a shriek as the rebels muttered stupefaction. "I tell you I know this is the man we've waited for, us and our fathers and their father's fathers before them! Rebels of Dolfya, I show you—Revel, the Mink!"
The shouts that had come before were murmurs to the chorus of stentorian bellows which assaulted Revel's ears now. The woman turned and said something to him, her fine face disdainful, but the words were lost in the tumult. A dozen men surged down and lifted him to their shoulders and paraded him round, while hands reached up to touch him and wave greeting to him.
It was the beginning of a celebration he had never seen the like of, a festival occasion that included a great dinner of boar and deer meat and stolen gentry's wine, over which much vague planning was done; and it ended only when the last rebel had left to sneak homeward, and he and the girl were left alone with Jerran.
"Sleep now, lad," Jerran said, grinning. "You're exhausted. It isn't every day a man finds himself a savior."
"But the Mink—I, the Mink?" He still had not entirely accepted it.