Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7]
Page 21
One of the larger iron-barred gates swung up. Those bars were thick, and strong, and closely set. They had need to be.
I waited with the djangir in my fist, positioned halfway between the stake and the barred opening. I had not spoken to Delia. She had not spoken to me. We knew all there was to say to each other at a moment like this. I waited, then, poised and ready, for the first bosk to rush out, horns lowered.
A boloth emerged onto the silver sands of the arena.
A boloth!
Huge, impossible, sixteen legs, eight tusks, a massive monster of destruction, standing there with his bunch of whiplash tails swatting flies, staring, with his rapacious mouth half open so that its red darkness glistened and its rows of jagged teeth glinted in the Suns of Scorpio.
A boloth!
Impossible, inhuman, unstoppable.
And I—armed with a little shortsword!
There was only one thing to be done.
Without a shout, without a whoop, in a silent and feral rush I charged for the monster. I knew there was no hope; but then, my way is never to give up until they throw the grave-dirt upon me, and even then I'll likely as not claw up, cursing them all to the Ice Floes of Sicce.
The belly of the boloth, bright yellow, stood as high as my head. His green sides towered above that, and his gray rhinoceros-hide back lofted above. He just stood there, for they are slow beasts, savage when roused—and I was going to rouse him now!
I skipped aside as I neared him, away from the gravel-dredger mouth. The eight tusks formed a barrier of bristling ivory. I thought of the shorgortz and I thought of the Ullgishoa, and then I thought only of this boloth.
My spring carried me past his lowered head, so that I could get a grip on his flap-ears, like those of an African elephant, if four times the size; but, unlike an elephant, there was no deadly weakness behind those ears where a thrust might do his business for him. And, remember, he had three hearts!
Up I clawed and lifted the djangir high and so plunged it down into his right eye.
The mess that spurted had no power to sicken me. It proved that fifty percent of his vision had gone. He reacted with a frenzied bellowing scream, for the boloths have no trunk and therefore he could not trumpet out his pain. But he screamed and bellowed and that massive head shook and I went up in the air and head over heels and so came down flat on my back. Only that old training in the disciplines of unarmed combat enabled me to break the violence of that fall.
The boloth stared about, shaking his head, stamping his feet, lashing his tails about. He continued to bellow. For him, the world had gone dark on his right-hand side. But—disaster—the djangir had remained firmly embedded in that vast ruined eye! I cursed by all the foulest Makki-Grodno oaths I knew; I had to get that djangir back, for, puny as it was, it had already served nobly and must do so again, before that left eye saw the slim form of Delia wrapped in her silver chains.
The bellowing ceased and the boloth turned his head in a peculiar and meaningful way. I saw his nostrils quivering, for he had four of them, and their blackly red edges shivered as he sniffed. Abruptly the whole amphitheater fell silent. The boloth could hear me well enough as I slid on the sand; but he could smell! And, in that silence, I heard the voice of Delia, lifted to me.
“Dray! They have smeared me with scented ointment!"
And I cursed most horribly that devil-queen of Huringa.
I might put out the other eye of the boloth with my bare hands, as I would—I would!—but still the beast would take the scent from my beloved and so charge full upon her. One gulp, one single snap of those gigantic jaws, and all I cared about or loved on two worlds would be gone forever.
And so, as I stood there on the sand, knowing that this vast beast must soon sniff that treacherous scent smeared upon Delia's naked body, I saw that I must express to her a final caress of love. I turned my back to the beast that threatened the lives of Delia and myself and ran away from it. I ran straight toward the balass stake. The uproar from the amphitheater changed into a shocked upheaval of disbelief.
Delia hung in her chains, glorious, desirable, and altogether wonderful. Gently, I reached up and caressed her naked body. I stroked her shoulders and arms and waist and thighs, and every now and then I rubbed my hands over my own naked body. The touch of her stung me through with a whiplash electric bolt of exquisite agony.
“Oh, my Dray..."
“Remember what I have told you, my Delia. Remember the twins, Drak and Lela. But, remember, always, that I love only you of all women in two worlds."
Then I ran back toward the boloth.
He picked the scent smeared upon my body sniffing through those four nostrils and he charged. For that short mad dash a boloth runs faster than a totrix. At the last instant I skipped aside and he thundered past, his legs rising and falling in that smooth complicated rhythm. There was no chance to spring on his back. Next time, when he was slower...
The next time his charge carried him perilously near the central stake, and I had to race toward him, shouting and waving my arms, and all that battery of tusks nearly upended me. He had taken his breather with his three hearts pumping and he charged again. I leaped for his ear, got a grip, got my hand around the djangir hilt, but the pus and mucus slimed it so that I lost it and so fell, winded, to the sands of the arena.
This could not go on.
When I look back upon that brilliant scene, what I have to tell you now never fails to straighten my spine, to make me relish the love and honor between man and man, man and woman. The crowd sensed the boloth was approaching the final kill. He stood obstinately shaking his head in which the djangir remained embedded, too short to do more than darken his eye, and his whiplash tails flickered ready for the next charge. Then...
The roaring from the benches now drowned reason. An abrupt and astonished howling tore from all those thousands of throats there in the tiered Jikhorkdun.
I stared at the red corner.
Four figures ran out onto the silver sand of the arena.
I knew them all.
First ran Naghan the Gnat. In his hand he carried—oh, may Zair be praised over all of Kregen as I praised him in that moment! Naghan must have been there when we crashed in the voller. He ran on his spindly legs toward me and he carried high that great Krozair longsword all gleaming in the suns-light. The scabbard was belted to his waist, and he carried that magnificent Krozair brand all naked and ready.
Following him ran Tilly, my little golden-furred Fristle fifi, and with her ran Oby, that young rascal who dreamed of becoming a kaidur. This deserved the accolade!
And then, also, ran Balass the Hawk, clad in gilded iron of a kaidur's harness, with shield and thraxter and stuxcal, and his massive kaidur helmet was open so I could see his face. Why?
I could guess the scenes taking place at that moment in the queen's box. Foaming, she would be shrieking her orders—and—here came the results!
Crossbow bolts hissed into the sand around the flying figures of my friends. My friends! It was impossible. I cannot recall that scene without the most painful surge of emotions, a feeling that of all men I did not deserve such friendship.
Tilly ran one way and Oby ran the other, making a wide circuit of the arena. They carried jars, and a liquid, rich and darkly purple, spilled upon the sand as they ran.
Naghan the Gnat checked, poised, hurled. The longsword flew through the air. I took it out of the thin air by the hilt. That hilt was Zair-guided into the palm of my hand, and it smacked there with a rich and satisfying thwunk of flesh and hide-grip. I sprang for the boloth. The great beast swung its head and its nostrils quivered.
“Get out of it, Naghan the Gnat!” I yelled as I charged. He needed no second bidding. They had it all worked out. He took to his heels to run for cover and a crossbow bolt ricocheted up from the sand and sliced across that running heel and so laid him low. He lay, the wind knocked out of him.
I reared up to the boloth and dodged a vicious swipe of th
at battery of tusks and was able to slice off one of the nostrils. His lips were more darkly red when I had finished.
I sprang back and cast a quick glance behind. Balass the Hawk had flicked his faceplate down, and the sheer mask of metal with its breaths and sights covered his dark eager face.
No time, no time for thoughts. I swung to the beast and it was laying about itself, seeking that scent, seeking to puzzle out in that sluggish brain what was going on. For Tilly and Oby were spilling lavish quantities of that alluring scent upon the sand of the arena, in wide circles, decoying the olfactory senses of the beast, confusing it. I breathed hard for the safety of the two as they ran so fleetly, the little golden-furred Fristle girl and the reckless scamp of a boy, running as the crossbow bolts sprouted and gouted from the sand. Truly, one does not have to be Krozair to dodge a quarrel!
“Hai Jikai!” I roared it out ferociously, joyously, as I leaped in once more upon that super-mammoth beast. Screaming his anger and fury, his outer tusk grazed past my leg as I leaped and curled the balanced longsword in and so took out another nostril, and sprang back. Now I knew I would not fail, and to the Ice Floes of Sicce with what might come after!
This was a High Jikai! This made a hyr-Kaidur look the mean and base thing that is the heart and core of the Jikhorkdun as practiced then in Hyrklana. For the true Jikai lay with my friends, with Naghan and Tilly and Oby, with Balass.
The Krozair longsword sliced into the boloth and I leaped and sprang and so cut it to pieces, and the bewildering scents spread by Oby and Tilly worked most subtly and wonderfully upon the poor creature, for it merely pandered in its brute strength and hideousness to the evil hungers of the queen and her people. I saluted it as I took its other eye out. For now I thought the crossbow bolts would thicken about me into such a storm that a whole regiment of Krozair longswords could not keep them out.
I heard Delia yelling. She was not screaming. I was, at the time, leaping down from the boloth and hoping the poor beast would have sense enough to roll over, and not force me any further to hack it into pieces.
“Dray!” Delia shouted, her beautiful voice strong and firm and without a hint of panic. “Hurry, my heart! Hurry!"
I landed on the sand and whirled; the vast bulk of the boloth stood between me and the central balass stake. From below the queen's box files of her mercenaries were running out. The front ranks carried shields, high, and following them ran the crossbowmen. They had formed as though for battle, in ranks, and their shields formed that wall through which a wild and naked barbarian can seldom ever cut his way.
There was no sign at all of Tilly or Oby or Balass. The oncoming guardsmen, precise in their dress, aligned, thraxters and stuxes ready, the crossbowmen following on, bore down on me.
Again I heard Delia's voice: “Hurry, Dray, my darling!” I looked up. A voller from the Air Service of Hyrklana slanted down, and the faces of her crew showed over the side. With her flew a number of the queen's aerial cavalry astride their mirvols. I saw three mirvollers abruptly crumple up and fall in a wide spinning from the sky.
The mercenaries advanced. There was one quick way to get back to the central stake and there make the final stand, as Delia was calling me to do. I turned again for the boloth to jump up and claw my way over his back and leap down on the other side, for he was down on his knees now, his belly sagging, and there was no way under him. Then I noticed the guardsmen in their military formation, dressed for battle, were heading at a slant that would take them past the boloth and me. They were running with their military pace straight for the central stake, out of my sight, hidden beyond the boloth!
I yelled, then. I screamed at the cowardly assassins to fight me, and not bring all their armored might against a lone girl, naked and chained to a stake. The crowd noise was now so great that nothing else could be heard, even the sound of the armored men, the sound of my breathing, the hissing grunts from the boloth.
And then ... !
And then I saw another wonder and, if anything, it was more wonderful than the first. But, no, that is not so. For the actions of Tilly and Oby and Naghan and Balass could have brought them nothing but death. And what I saw now came from men who wanted nothing to do with death—at least, with their own death.
For the neatly ordered ranks of the guards swayed, and writhed, and collapsed. Guards were falling in droves. And then I saw the sleeting rain of the steel-tipped clothyard shafts, and so I knew why Delia was calling to me to hurry.
I went up and over that poor old boloth like a steeplechaser at the first fence. I poised for just a second, looking down.
An airboat of a style unfamiliar to me hung a yard or so above the sand. But I knew the men who manned her! I saw their great Lohvian longbows bending in that smooth and precise rhythm, and the deluge of shafts that soared to pierce through with bodkin accuracy and penetration. I saw, also, the varters lining her sides angled upward, and loosing bolt after bolt toward the Hyrklanan Air Service vollers. And, the aerial cavalry astride their mirvols were not left out of that continuous pelting rain of destruction that sheeted from the airboat.
The voller was the largest I had seen up to that time. Her petal shape had been drawn out into a towering construction of terraced power, long and beamed, three-decked forward, four-decked aft. The varters spat and clanged and the bowmen loosed and she looked like a snarling demon of the skies. And—from every flagstaff floated the yellow cross on the scarlet field, that flag of mine warriors call Old Superb!
I roared out once, a mighty "Hai! Jikai!"
Then I was leaping down from the destroyed boloth and feeling that familiar genuine pity for a noble beast done to death to please the debased whims of people who should know better. His three hearts pumped more slowly now as his bright blood poured out upon the silver sands of the arena, and he gave a last long mournful hooting, very distressing. But what else could I have done, there in the Jikhorkdun beneath the Suns of Scorpio?
Delia waited for me aboard the voller. I knew Seg and Inch and Turko had had adventures. Seg waved an arm to me, in between shooting. Inch flailed his Saxon-pattern ax about, cursing, I could so easily guess, that he could not get into close action. Korf Aighos, too, was there, jumping up and down, brandishing that monstrous Sword of War of the Blue Mountain Boys. He would be longing for a fast looting trip to bring him final satisfaction. Away up forward Tom ti Vulheim controlled his band of Valkan Archers, putting shaft after shaft down in the dense defensive pattern. I could have strolled up to the voller. Then I saw Obquam of Tajkent, that flying Strom who disliked the volroks, and I understood he had been that slender flying figure I had seen, and also how Seg and Inch had found me.
Nothing could be heard save the beast roar from the crowd. Not even the shrieks of the wounded and dying as those cruel steel birds tore into them and their crossbows and shields spilled into the blood-drenched sands of the arena.
I wondered what Queen Fahia was thinking.
Halfway there I stopped. Naghan the Gnat lay on the sand, his heel wet with blood. He waved at me and his lips moved. I guessed what he was saying, for a crossbow quarrel at random chunked into the sand beside us.
“Sink me!” I said aloud, although no one could hear. “I'll not leave Naghan the Gnat!"
I scooped him up and a bolt hissed past and so I did not walk, out of concern for Naghan, but raced to the voller and bundled him up onto the deck, where eager hands grasped him. I took a grip of the side, a brass-bound lenk coaming near a varter platform, and the airboat shot into the sky. For a lurid instant I hung there, dangling by one hand, for the other grasped the Krozair longsword which I would as lief hold on to as to the voller carrying us to safety. Wind whipped past. With a wriggle and a squirm, and with Seg and Inch hauling at my wrists, I came aboard.
As I stood up a shadow flicked over me, and I swung around, and there was Turko the Shield, at my back, and a last despairing try sent a crossbow bolt clattering harmlessly from the massive shield Turko lifted over me.
A Hyrklanan Air Service voller shot past, ripped and torn, her crew strewn across her decks with the clothyard shafts feathered into them.
“By Zim-Zair, my friends!” I cried. “You are most welcome!"
Delia clasped me and Korf Aighos cast a swirling scarlet cloak about her glowing nakedness and I laughed and drew her close beneath that flame of friendly scarlet.
Seg Segutorio smiled very merrily upon us, his reckless blue eyes and dark hair very dear to me. “We would have been here sooner, with the good aid of Obquam, but our airboat broke down. We had to take this fine new flier from some onkers who wanted to imprison us and take us to Hamal."
Inch was standing on his head, looking very serious, and we laughed but respected him and his taboos, and gave him room.
“Tom ti Vulheim!” I roared up at that massive fore-deck. “Come down here and shake my hand!"
Korf Aighos produced golden goblets of refreshing wine.
“Seg and Inch, old comrades!” I cried. “Korf Aighos and Turko the Shield! Now we have an armorer with us in Naghan the Gnat. And a hyr-kaidur in Balass the Hawk. And, also—"
“And also, dear heart, a saucy Fristle fifi!"
“Aye! And also a rascal who will now aspire beyond the kaidur dreams of the Jikhorkdun. Oby, you imp of mischief! Let go—” But with a screech and a clang the varter with whose mechanism Oby had been tinkering loosed. Everyone gave a great cheer.
“A parting shot to a rast's nest!"
Oh, yes, as we lifted high and higher and sped far and fast from that reeking blood-fouled arena of silver sand in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana, I saw before me a great and dazzling future. One day, one day, Zair willing, I would return and perhaps, if the people were willing, cleanse the Jikhorkdun.
Now the future opened out bright with that promise. For no ominous clouds boiled about our path and no supernatural winds contemptuously hurled us back as they had done when I had previously tried to escape from Huringa. I knew why the Star Lords had prevented my going before, for then I had been in the past relative to the freeing of Migla, and had I returned I might have met myself—so that I had been forced to wait in the Jikhorkdun until my two presents once again merged.