When the captive Argens stumbles and his guard nudges him:
"Rage exploded. I wheeled about, yanked his knife from the sheath, and slashed." (XII, p. 84)
Long story short: Argens escapes and re-joins his allies. This happens sometimes in Poul Anderson novels. Anderson liked his action-adventure fiction and inserted it into narratives where maybe it need not have happened or could have happened off-stage. See Climaxes And Escapes - and there is a rescue from a hospital in The Boat Of A Million Years that I discussed somewhere else on the blog and might find later.
Escaping by grabbing a guard's knife, stabbing with it, running off and evading pursuit is kind of a weak link in the plot of a novel because how often is that possible? - and it could so easily end differently. It should not be allowed to happen too often.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I recall you hesitating over the plausibility of how Flandry escaped from the Ardazirho in HUNTERS OF THE SKY CAVE. I think a bold, skilled, experience agent like Flandry could make such escape seem possible. But Argens was no Flandry, or Valland, so escape for him might be less likely.
Ad astra! Sean
Take a look at some real-life examples.
Winston Churchill's escape from Boer captivity, for example.
Or his participation in the charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman(*), where about half the British deaths in that battle took place.
The Lancers fell into a trap -- they thought they were charging a thin line of mounted Dervish stragglers, but there was a shallow 'wadi', a dry watercourse, just behind them packed with Mahdist warriors.
So the Lancers had to plow through the mass, fighting with lance and saber, the same cold steel the Dervishes had.
(Once they got through they dismounted and used their magazine-carbines, and saw the Dervishes off.)
Churchill had injured his arm, and he used a Mauser magazine pistol instead of his sword.
He -nearly- died in both escapades -- and if he had, the history of the 20th century would have been completely different!
Say what you like about Churchill, he was a very brave man. After the fiasco at the Dardanelles in WW1, he spent some considerable time as a battalion commander on the Western Front -- which was just as dangerous as being an infantry private, btw.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Astonishing, how many "near misses" Churchill dodged! I agree, he was a very brave man, as was, alas, Hitler. Think of how many times Adolf escaped death on the Western Front in WW I. If either or both of them had died before rising to power, think of how different our history would have been!
Ad astra! Sean
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