by Brian Daley
Nor were the newcomers to be discommoded by stoppage or search; at the blast of the patrolman’s horn, the sentries cleared the passage and traffic stood to either side of the road to make way for King’s business.
The view of the chasm far below, with its carpet of jungle, was a dizzying sight for most of them. The gates of the city proper, enormous valves of metal set in gleaming walls, stood open as evidence of Freegate’s peaceful posture. Within them, an officer of the metropolitan Watch sat horse, behind him two score of mounted men with coats of plates and pennoned lances carried butt-in-rest.
“What transpires?” he bellowed at the procession, which drew here to a halt.
“King’s business,” responded the captain of patrollers, and the Prince saw that this was formulaed challenge-and-answer.
“Specifically?”
“The thaumaturge Andre deCourteney, whom I recognize from his previous visit here, and his entourage for audience with the King.”
“Return to your duties, if you please; I shall conduct them to His Highness.”
The patroller rendered a salute, a raising of his flattened right hand, and was saluted in return. He then wheeled his horse and set off to the west, with his men behind him.
The watch officer addressed Andre. “My lord deCourteney, the King is at the hunt, but his sister, the Princess, will certainly wish to receive you at the palace.”
Springbuck thought to intrude but decided not to; Andre must have reasons for not acknowledging his presence.
They resumed their way again with metropolitan Watchmen taking up the positions vacated by the border troops and brazen cymbals replacing the blaring horn to clear their path. They clattered through well-kept streets on wide cobblestones, passing shops, inns, countinghouses, temples, vendors’ booths and homes. The palace, seat of the Freegate Kings, stood a short ride from the gates. Encompassed by a dazzling wall, it wasn’t nearly as extensive as Earthfast. Storerooms, armories and a capacious cistern were located beneath it, and relatively few troops were quartered there. They reined in near the broad, chalk-white steps leading to the main doors of the palace. A groom stood nearby holding the ornate bridle of a graceful dun mare, the majordomo personally seeing to the arrangement of its riding tack. The officer explained his mission to that worthy, who came before Andre and addressed him with much deference and dignity.
“Eminent sir, the King is at the hunt, whither her Radiance the Princess Katya plans to go straightway to join him.”
“We will wait here then,” said Andre, “and I shall speak with her when she arrives.” Again, the Prince wondered that the wizard did not demand an audience in the throne room with more formality. But Andre disliked the obligatory graces of royalty with their circuitous language and formal dithering, and the outdoors suited his taste well enough.
The majordomo hurried away as Van Duyn craned his neck to study the royal palace. It was a graceful structure and, like the wall surrounding it and most of the rest of the city, light and fair. There were many windows, balconies and terraces to it; scarcely architecture conceived with thought of war. The monarchs of Freegate must have implicit trust in the might of their outer fortifications and fighting men, he thought. At the top of the building was a large windmill. Van Duyn had noticed a number of them since coming to the city and wondered about their use.
The American’s gaze, by some coincidence, went to the double doors just as a young woman appeared at the threshold; she was plainly the Princess Katya, for the majordomo bustled in her wake. Van Duyn sucked in his breath as she stepped into the light, stricken as so many had been by their first look at her.
She was tall, extremely so, with long, show-girl legs, full hips and a slim, supple waist. Her shoulders were limber and athletic, and her white-gold hair was caught up in a single hawser-like queue, bound with thongs. Her features were finely molded—a sensitive coral mouth, long nose and flaring dark eyebrows over violet eyes. She was in hunt clothes of glossy leather, britches with attached boots and a halter to contain full breasts. Low at her hips, a belt supported a brace of knives strapped down to either thigh. She was eating the last fragments of meat from a brochette. As she paused to toss it to the majordomo, Van Duyn studied the arresting profile.
She faced back to speak to them and he found her voice quite pleasant and orotund. “Welcome, Andre.” She smiled, and it was as though the day had become brighter and warmer. “You have come with a considerably larger retinue this tune, if in obvious haste. It’s always enjoyable to have you visit us with your—” She hesitated for an instant, and when she continued, her voice was tinged with amusement. “—your darling little sister.”
Gabrielle’s carriage stiffened, and she scorned even the curtest of acknowledgments. Meeoowww! thought Van Duyn.
“I have other companions of no small prestige,” Andre was saying. “This gentleman is Edward Van Duyn, who comes from far away and even farther. And here is our leader, His Highness, Springbuck, of Coramonde Ku-Mor-Mai.”
Katya betrayed no surprise as the Prince doffed his plumed war mask and bowed politely in the saddle, returning his courtesy with an inclination of her head and a wider smile. Springbuck was gratified with Andre’s reference to him as leader and Protector Suzerain. His vision was sufficient to permit him to study the Princess fairly well at this distance. The wizard had told him that, on seeing her for the first time, some of Reacher’s blood brothers from the Howlebeau had instantly named her Sleethaná, after the beautifully dangerous albino snow leopardess of the steppes. Springbuck understood their reference immediately. She had an elemental appeal, conveying wild, free, supreme self-reliance.
“Ah, yesss,” she said, and he saw the feline eyes inspect him and felt his heart beat speed up. “The Prince—no, His Highness, you said? The Ku-Mor-Mai-in-exile is your title then?”
He shifted in his saddle and responded as casually as he could. “Madam, I am Surehand’s heir and have been in exile since I passed the merestone on the border of our two lands.”
She laughed. “Exile? On the run, you mean, but more of that later. My brother will want to hear. It took you all long enough to get here, though. We shall go; you, Van Duyn and the deCourteneys and I to join Reacher at the hunt. That is, unless any of you feel too fatigued to come?” She spoke her last sentence gazing guilelessly into Gabrielle’s eyes. The sorceress returned the look with hauteur and Springbuck hoped that she was not about to unleash some horrible spell in a fit of pique.
Instructing her servants to see to the other members of the party, Katya leaped lithely into the saddle, spurred her mount and was away, the others trailing behind in varying amounts of proficiency. Without escort or entourage, they galloped through the streets; and though the people didn’t bend knee or otherwise abase themselves at her passing, many called gay greetings with obvious affection for their spectacular Princess. Van Duyn had the thought that the Snow Leopardess probably never received any overly familiar or rude halloos; she struck him as being quite capable of defending her dignity against all comers. He speculated as to whether her brother would turn out to be a self-conscious twerp dominated by a bossy older sister. It would fit the pattern in a case like this, with an elder, female Tarzan sort of sister.
They raced through the city and the gate at the opposite side of town from the stone bridgeway, then past areas of open drill field and military exercise lots. On uncluttered ground, Springbuck gave Fireheel his head. The long-legged gray, with the grace and speed of small desert breeds and the size and endurance of northern bloodlines, surged forward; after a short but fierce contest for passage, Fireheel gained the lead from the Snow Leopardess, who was urging her mount determinedly. Her single braid stood out behind her in the wind as she shouted and laughed for the pure joy of competition, while they tore past cultivated fields and farmers stopped to straighten from their toil and watch. The others’ horses were not up to this race, being fatigued, and the exclusive duel was resolved when Springbuck got a sufficient lead to bring Fireheel to a co
mplete stop and turn before she could draw even with him.
She, too, drew rein. “Why did you stop?” she demanded. “I was about to cajole my girl into another try at that gray brute; it hurts her to see anyone’s hooves in her face.”
The Prince again removed his mask. “I merely stopped to give you and the rest a chance to catch up. After all, I don’t know the land around here and I didn’t want to get so far ahead as to become lost all alone.”
She laughed at his gibe, no discreet titter but a fullblown roar, her head thrown back. “Aye, the plateau lands are big enough to get lost in; twelve miles long and nigh eight wide.”
Springbuck spied the others coming up behind. “It could not be a natural formation then, I suppose.”
“In part, but it was altered back before the Great Blow fell. The stone bridgeway was narrowed some, I guess, and the jungle in the chasm is part natural, part man-made. And of course, the jungle itself was fostered and stocked.”
“Stocked?”
“Surely. No one goes down there, and there are numerous stories about what lives there, but when the dragons of the waste waged war on the city over one hundred years ago and were repulsed with runic bolts whose art is lost now, some that were wounded fell to the treetops below to be dragged down into them by something which men never saw or identified.” They were riding stirrup and stirrup now, like old friends, as the other three caught up and fell in behind. Springbuck was thinking of her story, remembering Chaffinch, a small dragon. What could possibly prey on such as that?
“Interesting,” he said. “I’d never heard that yarn.”
“No? What sort of Prince doesn’t trouble to inform himself on the doings of neighbor-states?”
He glanced over his shoulder for help. Andre and Van Duyn were looking on with some amusement, but Gabrielle stared poisoned daggers at him. “Actually,” he replied lamely, “I had to spend a good deal of time studying the affairs and history of Coramonde, so diverse and complex are they.”
Van Duyn moved up even with them. “Your Radiance,” he said smoothly, “please tell me more about your country, since I, too, am in ignorance. I’m particularly interested in your free trade system.”
The Snow Leopardess’ attention was effectively diverted. While the American feasted on the sight and sound of her, the Prince fell back and rode next to Gabrielle, who was busily ignoring the existence of everyone on the road. Andre moved up to the spot vacated by the Prince, the better to hear Katya. The son of Surehand leaned close to the red-haired enchantress and whispered, “It was only a horserace. I just didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of beating us all.”
Her eyes stayed fixed coldly ahead but, without, turning, she reached out and grasped his wrist in one white hand with a grip of surprising strength.
“You’re a puppy and a fool, who chases tomgirls,” she hissed softly, but the pressure of her hand was not that of anger.
“Your knives,” the scholar was saying, exhibiting more charm to the Princess than Springbuck had seen him employ in all the time he’d known him. “They are unusual weapons for a woman to use. I notice that you’ve a long and a short one on each side. Why is this?”
“Ha! The bigger ones, that are canted backward so that I may take them quickly, these are combat knives, infighting knives. The smaller ones are throwing daggers, and I wear them so that I may have either type of blade in either hand if I will. But here, what is this strange thing you have across your saddle bow?”
Van Duyn hefted the M-1. “It’s a rifle, a weapon of my people, unlike anything you have here.”
They rode through some patches of undergrowth into a series of thickets and glades. To her companions the Snow Leopardess said, “A farmer hereabouts brought in a brace of wild swine, hoping to domesticate them, the idiot. They savaged him and broke free early today and it is them we hunt.”
A man arrayed in green livery approached them on foot, a hunting bow held with arrow nocked.
“What word, huntmaster?” called Katya.
“His Highness even now closes on the beasts,” came the reply. “And as always he will not use spear or bow but wears his steppeman’s gear and courses with the very hounds, leaping along among them. He picked up the swine spoor before they did and now drives his prey this way. I think I may have a shot at them before too long.”
With a crow of delight the Snow Leopardess jumped to the ground. “No, huntmaster,” she said. “I have had to attend to matters of state while my brother hunted. Fairness says that I should get the kill and not he. Stand by our guests.” And so saying, she reached to her saddle and drew forth a boar-spear-bladed sword, one with a straight blade which was circular in cross section for most of its length. It widened at the end into a broad, heavy spearhead with a bar to fend off impaled prey. It was, the Prince reflected, a weapon to be used only by the most daring and capable of hunters; any falter or miscalculation would mean maiming or death. Just as he was considering violating etiquette by suggesting that the Princess allow the bowman out front, Van Duyn dismounted and, taking his rifle in hand, walked over to stand near her.
“If you miss, perhaps I’ll get a chance to show you how this thing works,” he said, holding up the Garand.
She smiled savagely but with an air of camaraderie, and told him, “I don’t miss.”
The baying of the dogs came nearer, accompanied by the shouts of their trainers. The group waited in various states of tension for long minutes. When Gabrielle would have dismounted, the Prince instructed her to stay ahorse. She looked at him in a way he could not interpret, but complied.
A crashing in the undergrowth brought them around. The boar, a five-hundred-pounder, broke from cover across the clearing from them. To Van Duyn it resembled nothing so much as a porcine locomotive. It ground to a halt when its tiny, insane red eyes fell upon them. It lingered for a moment, razor-sharp hooves tearing up the turf, then gathered itself to charge as the Snow Leopardess braced herself.
The American threw his rifle to his shoulder. His first look at this terrifying animal, with its long, froth-covered tusks ripping the air in search of a yielding target, decided him; there was no question of going after such a hydrophobic monster with a sword. But as he made to bring it into his sights, another figure sprang from the brush with an ear-shattering battle cry.
Van Duyn had only a fleeting glance at the man who threw himself at the rampaging boar. He was short, a fair-haired, deeply tanned fellow who was well muscled and yet moved easily as he eluded a murderous rip of the foam-flecked tusks. He was barefoot and wore gauntlets and a loin clout, and had no weapon that the American could see.
Van Duyn raised his M-1 again, certain that the man, whom he took to be Reacher, would meet a painful death if he didn’t act. He found, however, that as the monarch feinted and dodged to avoid the boar’s rushes, Katya showed no sign of concern for her brother’s safety, but waved her sword and bawled encouragement.
The baying, grown steadily louder, reached a crescendo as two sleek hounds burst on the scene. The boar found itself in the midst of three enemies now, all nipping or feigning at him as he spun and slashed. Then he made a fatal move; facing the man, he felt a tug at his rear as one of the dogs took a fierce bite at his rump. He swung his head viciously, mad from incessant baitings. In that instant, the King darted in, lifting his left hand and bringing it down in a terrific blow to the weighty collar of gristle protecting the wild swine’s neck.
As its front legs buckled, the beast dropped to its knees, stunned as if by the slam of a sledgehammer. Then it surged wildly in an effort to regain its feet. The King’s hand moved again, more swiftly than the onlookers could see or fully appreciate, gripping the boar’s snout and pulling up and back, drawing the throat taut. The hunter’s right hand, fingers clawed and flashing, swept in a blindingly fast rake across the exposed target, and blood fountained. He jumped clear of the death throes.
With the exception of the Princess, all were speechless at the speed and po
wer of the triumphant King of Freegate. Van Duyn, standing on the extreme left of the company as Katya clapped her hands and cheered, was first to catch a glimpse of a brown blur breaking from the foliage on his left. It was the second wild hog, bearing down on the King, who was apparently unaware of its approach behind him. The American took no time to yell a warning or check to see if the huntsman could get in a shot with his bow; he brought up the Garand and fired in one programmed motion. His hours of painstaking practice served him well, and he never again regretted the inconvenience and sore shoulder that range time had cost him prior to his second departure from his home cosmos. The boar stopped as if it had hit a wall. The heavy slug, moving at 2800 feet per second, caught it just behind its head, pitching it sideways.
The rifle’s effect on the people of Freegate was nearly as drastic. Reacher, who had pivoted and dropped into guard to face the second swine just before Van Duyn had fired, gazed from the dead quarry to its slayer in calm curiosity, head tilted inquisitively. The huntmaster had dropped his bow and, screwing his eyes shut, clapped his hands to his ears with a scream of fear. The Snow Leopardess whirled and brought her sword up with a hiss of surprise which dissipated almost immediately. Like her brother, she glanced from carcass to scholar and smoking weapon.
“Remarkable,” she breathed after a moment. “How far away will it kill?”
He didn’t answer, since Reacher joined them at that juncture. Save Katya and Springbuck, all bowed in courtesy. Without touching it, Reacher examined the M-1 with much interest. Close up, his diminutive size was more obvious. At age twenty-four, he was no more than five feet four or so, but muscled like a panther, his legs long and shoulders wide for his height, and they’d already been shown his astounding quickness and brawn. He’d destroyed the boar in sport, without qualm.
“You should know,” Katya said almost huffily to Van Duyn, “that my brother was aware of the second beast’s proximity; his senses are the equal of his prowess.”
Springbuck was studying his royal host, now that the man was close enough for the Prince to make him out without difficulty. He knew from the first moment that he’d never be able to match this King in sheer fighting ability and predatory keenness.