Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  Charley nodded, seeing her logic. This was the Kudaan Wastes, for Pete's sake! Who would a Governor govern, and why? But an Akhbreed noble who had both official standing and criminal connections out here, with no other authority around, would be an ideal ally for Klittichorn. Damn it, if they just didn't think she was Sam this would be all suddenly very simple!

  So they continued on, moving well past the cutoff, although Boday noted that here and there breaks in the rugged landscape showed distant groves and greenery, and more than once they passed small, expertly engineered gates like the tiny locks of a miniature canal leading to under the trail culverts that obviously sent water to that far-off but lush-looking region. They were too far for Charley to see the groves, but the irrigation canals were unmistakable and she took Boday's word for the rest. Whoever that guy was, he was smart and he had smart people working for him, too. The odds were that the community over there was entirely self-supporting, but that made it doubly dangerous. They would be their own masters, paying only lip service to any central authority, and open to all sorts of influences.

  After a while, Boday looked up, studying the vegetation that covered the river bank, and pointed. "Boday is starved!" she exclaimed. "And, look! Some of these trees and bushes have ripe fruit! They must be wild offspring of those farms, carried here by the winds!"

  "Mistress, we fall more back if we eat," Charley noted in the only way she could.

  "Bah! You can see that this canyon runs a very long way, and it is too late in the day for anyone to think of climbing out, so they are not going to climb out today. They, too, must eat, must make camp or reach a destination. If we do not eat ourselves we will be in no condition to do what must be done later."

  There was no arguing with that logic, although Charley couldn't help but wonder what the hell they could do if they caught up to the riders. At least back at the rock arch she'd had guns and a well-armed and well-staked-out ally above, and she'd had eyesight well enough to use them. What were they going to do? Take on all those armed and dangerous guys with rocks?

  Much of the fruit was overripe, but enough was still good or at least edible that they couldn't really complain. Charley managed to polish off two medium-sized alu, which was a lavender-colored fruit shaped like a bottle that looked inside a lot like pink apple and tasted more like a super-sweetened pear. The two of them stuffed her, although she'd eaten next to nothing for more than a day. She hadn't had much of an appetite since taking on this courtesan look, but she knew that she should be hungrier after this kind of fast and exercise than she was. Still, she felt neither sick nor particularly weak or dizzy and she was probably less tired than she should have been, so perhaps she was worrying too much. She was much more afraid of losing her eyesight than starving to death, anyway.

  Boday ate well. That had been part of Sam's problem back in Tubikosa, really. Boday was the kind of person who ate all the good things in huge quantities and then complained that she could never gain any weight.

  After a while, though, Boday picked up a last alu and got up. "Come, little butterfly! We wish to see if we can catch them before night, although Boday would kill to just sleep for ten or twelve hours!"

  The shadows were getting long and the sun low before they got close. Boday put out a hand and stopped Charley. "Habadus!" she hissed. "Lots of them!"

  It wasn't a word Charley knew, but the root indicated some sort of bird. She couldn't see but so far, but she strained at the sky and thought she could see some kind of dark, blurry movement. "What . . . ?"

  "Carrion-eating birds. This is not good."

  Vultures! They were some kind of vultures, these habadus. Giant suckers, too, if she could make out anything of them.

  Following Boday's lead, they inched forward, a bit off the trail and using what cover they had, until they could see just what the big birds were feeding upon. Charley had a sudden fear that it was going to be very familiar bodies, and she almost didn't want to know for sure.

  You could smell the death from here, all torn and rotting in the sun. Boday checked the whole thing out carefully, then stood up. "Come. There is nothing left living here except the birds, and even though they are as big as you are they will flee us. They have no stomach for living things." She paused a moment, then added, "Well, at least their Tubikosan relatives do not."

  Thanks a lot, Charley thought sourly. There was cross-pollution, particularly of vegetation and birds, among many of the worlds of Akahlar, but there were vultures and there were vultures.

  Between the flapping of enormous wings and the birdlike cries of protest, they walked among the scene of carnage and even Charley could see the very gory details and found them sickening.

  Two dead horses, but no sign of the others. Lots of human bodies, though. Six, all male, stripped as naked as could be, their bodies and heads ripped open and mutilated, the blood merging into drying pools nearby. It was impossible to tell what damage had been done by the birds and what by the attackers, but it made no difference in the end.

  "No bridles on the dead horses, no saddles or packs, the men stripped clean. These are the ones from whom we fled, little one. There is no doubt of that. And one of those poor horses is the very one Boday was riding! Pity. They were attacked suddenly, massacred, and stripped clean of everything of even the slightest value or use. If any had gold teeth they most certainly do not now. Boday is surprised they didn't skin them, too."

  Charley felt as if she was going to be sick. "Sam . . . ?" she managed, moving out of the midst of the carnage.

  "No. Rest easy, my pretty one! Boday will know if Sam dies. We are linked by potion and spell. No, since only the men died, it is probable that she and the others were taken by the attackers." Boday was suddenly very clinical and deliberative. "The blood and condition of the bodies put this at at least two hours ago. The attackers, they were very efficient, I think."

  Charley was away from it. It helped, but not much. "Does Mistress think the—governor—did this?" She was beginning to have confidence enough to attempt a few needed words, as badly mauled as they might be.

  "No, hardly, pretty one. They had our horses and probably their own since they would need to bring weapons and such. None of the men appears shot. Arrows, spears, that son of thing. Not the sort that professionals would use, and if it were this governor, as Boday presumes you were attempting to say, they would have passed us on the way back. Nor were these the governor's men, Boday would wager. They had on plain black uniforms, not blue with gold, but they were uniforms all the same and thieves and scoundrels do not wear uniforms. They were army, but not this army. That was why they were attacked. The attackers had license to do what they would with invaders and how could this governor complain?"

  "Yes, Mistress, but—where do they go?"

  "Good question," Boday admitted. "Not back or there would have been a real racket. Not east, because that would take them into this governor's domain and they would probably at least have to share the booty. West is the river—far too deep here for horses. So—we continue!"

  Charley nodded sadly and they got up and left the scene of carnage, none too soon for Charley's taste. It seemed to inspire Boday, though. She kept muttering, "Boday wishes she had some charcoal and paper. Such inspiration she is getting from all this! Such violence, such suffering, such travails she has already undergone! If this keeps up much longer, Boday will ultimately be acclaimed the greatest artist of her times!"

  Yeah, Charley thought dejectedly. If the great Boday lives to paint it. At least I don't have to worry that she's one of those artists who goes crazy. She was insane before we ever met her.

  The canyon was growing dark, the shadows long, and still they hadn't come upon anything still living except for a few insects and some distant birds circling high in the ever-deepening blue sky. It was hot and quiet, so quiet that only the sounds of their own movement and the rush from the swift-flowing river broke the stillness in the land and air.

  Suddenly the rocks to their rig
ht erupted with forms and fierce cries. Before either woman could even see who or what was there they were overtaken and pushed roughly to the ground. Boday gave a good struggle; as two pinned her arms she managed to twist and kick another in the groin, twist away, and start in fiercely on her attackers. Charley had no such skills and reflexes and not much strength left, either. They had her quickly pinned facedown and then her arms were roughly brought behind her and tied with some strong, tight cord, and someone else pulled on her hair to make her face come up and then slipped a noose over her head.

  They had to work hard for Boday, but there were too many of them and they were too strong for her in the end, and she suffered the same fate in the end.

  Charley tried to look up and see just who or what their captors were, but once she caught sight of them she didn't want to look anymore.

  They were as ragtag a bunch of filth as she'd ever seen; smelly, dirty, in torn and rumpled clothing, and not a normal-looking one in the bunch. There were eight of them, all well armed and tough as nails. One was huge and hunchbacked, his face contorted, and he snorted and dribbled from his twisted lower lip. Charley instantly dubbed him the Hunchback of Notre Dame even if he didn't look much like a football player.

  Another was tall, muscular, with a tremendous, flowing bright red beard and nasty, close-set eyes above a pug nose, but he walked real funny and his arms and hands—well, they weren't normal. Thick, blue-gray and shiny, the arms terminated in a really nasty-looking set of lobsterlike claws.

  The others were no better. They had all been human once, but all now had very different and inhuman parts to them. One was a sort of cyclops with weird hands that had three thick, curved fingers like a claw machine at the fire carnival. Another had tentacles growing from his back, and still another had a face that would have looked better on a toad. In fact, after seeing them all, the hunchback looked very normal and comforting indeed.

  Redbeard with the claws was obviously the leader. With both women tied and held down, he walked slowly up to them and looked each over.

  "Well, now, this is a pretty catch, and all decorated nice and fine like, they's gift-wrapped or something. Who the hell are you, girls, and what in the name of the Nine Dark Hells are you doin' out here stark naked?"

  Boday managed to look up. "Do you really think the designs are pretty? You are obviously a man of good taste to appreciate the handiwork of Boday!"

  Charley groaned.

  Redbeard turned to her. "And who might this Boday be?"

  "She who speaks with you is Boday!" the artistic alchemist responded proudly, totally disregarding her circumstances.

  Redbeard looked a bit taken aback by her attitude. "All right, Boday, so who else be you and why are you here?"

  "We were flooded in a wagon train disaster, then taken by brigands who had their fun with us, then escaped to here only to be split up running from those dead men back there who stole what supplies we had. We seek our companions whom the men in black captured."

  "These companions be men?"

  "No, of course not! A young woman and two small girls."

  "Weren't no females with that crew," Redbeard responded. "Your friends probably wound up in the clutches of that bastard crazy Duke. We got your horses, though, and your booty, and now we got you. Both of you now get up and shut up! We's goin' for a little walk. Them's good nooses on your pretty necks, now, so don't make no sudden moves or you'll strangle yourselves. Now, we don't want'a kill you or damage them pretty bodies, but Hooton, there, he's an expert at the science of the noose. A little jerk just so and he can shatter your voice boxes, and we don't need your voices. And any real trouble and he's got a way of fixin' them so you don't strangle all the way but just a little, so's you don't get so much blood to the brain. I seen 'em after a few hours of his treatment. You don't have enough sense left to remember what clothes was and you might needs some help feedin' yourself, but your bodies'll be just fine. So—shut up, do what you're told, and no tricks!" Shit!, Charley thought sourly. Back into the fire again, and this time getting farther and farther from Sam. Damn! Damn! Damn! Why didn't we go to that governor? Damn you, Boday! The horses were about a half mile farther down the trail, held a bit off the track and upwind so that they hadn't made a sound. Their own horses and the lone narga were among them, still loaded with stuff. Four more ragtag and deformed nasties held them, waiting. It seemed that Redbeard simply couldn't conceive of six uniformed men with no protection just marching in here, particularly past the Imperial Governor's turnoff. He'd been convinced that more were following behind, and he wanted to make very sure what he was up against rather than risk fleeing with the loot with soldiers in hot pursuit. Now, though, he felt his wait rewarded in a different way.

  Neither Charley nor Boday was allowed to ride; Redbeard didn't trust them, even naked and tied, on the backs of their own horses. They walked along at a steady pace, trying to adjust so that those strangely tied nooses didn't have much chance to tighten up. The gang made all sorts of lewd and lustful comments about them but did not try to touch them or in fact do much of anything to them. Clearly Redbeard was an authority to be feared.

  They reached a point where the river bent slightly, and two riders came forward and stopped at the water's edge, checking for something unknown. Then they rode right into the river, the horses sinking only slightly into the water, and came up on the other side with their riders not even wet.

  "Now you, ladies, and don't slip," Hooton said in a low, menacing tone. "Right at this point it's right shallow with just sand and mud and small rocks there at certain times of day like now. Other times it's a killer. Just go on across."

  It was an unpleasant balancing act, shallow though it was. The mud and rocks were slippery, the muck just under the surface felt just awful, and while it wasn't all that bad for Boday, tall as she was, it wasn't all that shallow for Charley at just a little over five feet tall. She felt tense, and the noose pulling at her throat all the way, and when she made it to the other side she gave a gasp of relief.

  The others now followed without any trouble, and then the whole group turned not farther up but rather to the left, back the way they'd come. They went back down perhaps a thousand yards, then reached a rocky outcrop that seemed so solid that it blocked passage along that shore. A rider reached up and did something that couldn't be seen in the gloom, and the rock seemed to shift and the earth to shake a bit, and when it was done there was a narrow passage revealed in the rock itself. It wasn't wide enough for more than one horse and rider at a time, single file, and it seemed to go on for an eternity in near-total darkness.

  They emerged for a moment, the lack of river noise meaning that they were now well away from the river, and the last man in the gang rode through, then stopped, and again did something that caused the same rumbling and the fissure to close with a nasty-sounding finality. It was a good way to escape if you needed to block pursuit, Charley realized. Even if you were tricked and they tried to follow, they'd be crushed along the way. Still, the mere fact that Redbeard had waited showed that they didn't want to have to rely on that trick. Ignorance on the part of their enemies that the passage even existed was far better long-term protection than just using it as a means of escape.

  They went down a bit into the rocky jumble of the Kudaan landscape, hurrying a bit because of the growing darkness. Here and there they shouted some strange words and were answered by others, showing that this trail was well guarded. Charley's heart sank. Even if, somehow, she escaped this crew, how the hell would she ever get away, elude all of those guardians who knew the territory perfectly, and survive? These were dangerous men; fugitives holed up in the Wastes and living a different and primitive kind of life beyond the reach of any law. Men with no place to go, nothing to lose, and with nothing at all to hold them back.

  Now, at last, a great glob of total darkness loomed ahead, and they suddenly stopped. Hooton, the toad-faced one, slid off his horse and came up to them. "Now you just walk right in front
of me," he told them, "and keep your neckwear slack."

  It was a tunnel of some sort—no, a cave. There was a blast of cool air coming from it, and as they entered they descended, although they couldn't see a thing. Hooton, however, could, and he kept giving them quick directions.

  "Turn left. That's right. Ten paces forward, then left again. Fine. Now ahead until I tell you to stop. Now—right turn."

  It went on for some time, made no easier by the fact that some of the mounted horses were ahead of them and leaving the usual horse droppings.

  Within several minutes, neither Charley nor Boday had any idea of where they were or how they'd gotten there. It wasn't merely one cave, it was a network of interlocking caves going off in all directions including down, and between the darkness and the differences in the dark tunnels only one who knew exactly where he or she was and, perhaps, could see or read the hidden markings, would find their way in—or out.

  Suddenly all was noise and light. It was the lights of thousands of torches rather than anything in nature, and the reverberant cacophony of great numbers of people and animals. The scene seemed to go on and on below them. Charley could see only the lights but the noise and smells were overwhelming. She realized that they had now entered some grand cave on the order of the Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns or even bigger. A giant cave, far underground, that held not tourists but a town.