Saunders, so rigid that she quivered, drew in a breath through her teeth. Blaise stood with his feet braced and his thin arms loose at his sides, conscious of his slipping blanket. He gave no outward sign of fear of the giant approaching him. Instinctively Saunders stepped half in front of Blaise and raised her hands, assuming the open posture of Institute kiamee fighting.
Infuriated, Blaise glared at her and said, “Stand away from me, Saunders, or by Demos I’ll break your neck.” The fury in his tone apparently penetrated, for she blinked and looked back at him in amazement.
Blaise flared. “Never step in front of me again. Do you hear? Back off, Saunders.”
Slowly she obeyed, her scarlet face clashing with the orange flame of her hair. The soldiers stirred slightly, but did not lower their arms until the blue-cloaked figure halted before Blaise. Then one soldier detached himself from the rest and, drawing a short slim rod of an opaque crystalline substance from his wide belt, stood by Saunders with the rod pointed at her. Blaise eyed that weapon for a long moment in open speculation before turning his gaze coolly to the one before him.
The giant spoke in a deep, throbbing voice that reverberated in the crowded stone cell. When Blaise merely stared at him with an uplifted eyebrow, he thrust a gloved hand beneath the dark blue cloak and brought out a thick golden medallion, dangling it in the air by a silken-looking white cord.
“Does this speak in your way?” boomed a deep voice in an archaic form of High Standard.
Startled by so advanced a translator in the hands of this barbaric-looking figure, Blaise hid his reaction by inclining his head in a bow. He did not dare attempt a more formal show of respect lest he lose his already shaky balance.
“It does,” he said, and listened to the medallion reflect his words in a rapid blur of inflected syllables. He frowned. Inflections were the most complicated aspect of languages to learn, especially since a mistake could so quickly prove fatal.
“You are…n’ka Ruantl.” The silver-marked mask turned to regard Saunders, who was staring at him wide-eyed. “And you…n’dl Ruantl. Not of Ruantl at all, nor of Anthi.”
It was said as a statement, but Blaise nodded. “This is correct. We come from a different planet.”
For a long tense minute there was silence. Then the other said, “Speak to this question, n’ka: In your place of origin are there people who say Ruantl and talk of it? Is Ruantl a world known to you?”
Blaise shook his head. When this brought no reaction, he said firmly, “No. We know of this planet as only a number on a star chart, and no interest is taken in it.”
That brought a stir among the soldiers, and the tall figure lowered the medallion for a moment as though discouraged. Then he silenced the soldiers with a gesture and lifted the translator once again.
“I have seen your ship. It is small but of an advanced design. Are you knowledgeable in the working of it?”
“Yes,” said Blaise, ignoring Saunders’s frantic head-shake. “I am the navigational officer and she is the helmsman.”
“Understood. This is pleasing to us. We have waited long for n’ka such as you to come to Ruantl.” There was a decided note of satisfaction in the creature’s sonorous voice. He stepped nearer, towering over Blaise. “I am Picyt, First Honored of the House of Kkanthor, and sworn to blood in the service of the goddess Anthi.” As he spoke he brought the fingertips of his left hand to his mask in a quick gesture of respect. “She whom I serve has smiled upon you, n’ka, for the Bban’jen who summoned us to this citadel told us you walked to the hand of death.”
Blaise had begun to feel as though he were still headed that way, but he managed a nod and a vestige of a smile that did not reach his wary eyes. “I am Blaise Omari,” he said, conscious of a foolish urge to speak his true, original name. “And she is—”
“Major Ryhi Saunders, SIS Forerunner, codex number 997R412,” she snapped.
Picyt curled one long finger around the curving edge of the translator. “There is a use for you, a thing we will ask of you…later,” he said slowly, his voice so deep it almost seemed to awaken an answering vibration in Blaise’s chest. “Will you be cooperative to our wishes?”
“No,” snapped Saunders.
“We might be,” said Blaise with a hard look at her. “What is it you want of us, Picyt?”
“Later,” said Picyt, lowering the translator. Making an unidentifiable sound behind his mask, he whirled and strode out between the line of soldiers, raising his hand as he did so. “An,” he snapped curtly, and vanished into the shadows beyond.
“Omari, you dirty—”
“Quiet,” said Blaise, keeping his eyes warily on the soldiers. What had Picyt called them? The Bban’jen. He savored that name beneath his breath, his pale eyes narrowing as one stepped toward him, drawn rod in hand. Blaise moved in obedience to its sharp wave, keeping his hands visible and still as he walked unsteadily between the silent lines of Bban’jen. Behind him came the sound of a brief scuffle and a stifled cry from Saunders. Blaise, very conscious of the intent soldiers around him, did not so much as turn his head. He knew Saunders could take care of herself.
The Bban’jen closed ranks about him in dark silence, and they all moved with even steps down a dusty tunnel, unlit save by the dim glow of torchlight. Blaise stumbled over a stone, bruising his bare foot. He cursed, hopping slightly, and a gloved hand with the strength of a vise reached out of the shadows to grip his arm above the elbow. Blaise jerked involuntarily against the touch, but when it did not release him he was secretly grateful for the support.
He stumbled again and would have fallen but for the hand on his arm. Hauled to his freezing feet, Blaise merely stood in place, shivering.
“An,” said the soldier, tugging on his arm.
Blaise shook his head, trying to get his breath, which the frosty air kept snatching from his sore lungs. The soldiers crowded about him in the cramped passageway, muttering among themselves, half seen and faceless in the gloom. Gasping for more air in this narrow, stuffy place, Blaise glanced up into the masked face of the man grasping his arm and stiffened as he glimpsed a glow of incandescent yellow light through the mesh eye guards. In the gloom all their eyes were glowing, some yellow, others red. A new, intense note entered their low, gruff voices.
“Omari?” asked Saunders, who’d been shoved out of the way against the stone side of the passageway. “What are you doing?”
“Quiet,” he said, gripped by an inexplicable uneasiness. The moment of rest had helped; he had his breath back and was about to straighten up when a whiff of that putrid odor, hot and sickening, assailed his nostrils. Even as he reeled in disgust, the soldier grasping his arm jerked him close and drew a knife with a curved, serrated blade of wicked green metal.
“Cha’hoi,” he hissed into Blaise’s ear, and drove the blade hard.
Blaise reacted with reflexes honed sharp by years of the roughest in-fighting. Twisting his body, he felt the knife miss its mark by a hairbreadth. He slammed his weight into his attacker, setting his foot between the other’s as he struck upward, hard, from beneath his man’s knife arm. The soldier grunted but hung on to his weapon, preventing Blaise’s swift grab for the rod in his belt. He tried to spin free of Blaise to gain space to attack again, but Blaise had already anticipated that move. Compensating for the other’s size, Blaise ducked, parried with a swift hand chop, and took hold of his opponent, sending him sprawling in the dust. The knife clattered across the stone floor as a profound silence stretched over the passageway, broken only by the sound of Blaise’s harsh panting.
The musk odor of the Bban nearly overpowered him now, and his half-healed chest threatened to collapse with every breath he dragged into his lungs. Dashing the sweat from his eyes, he eyed the motionless soldiers, all ten of them, then stepped toward the knife as its owner groggily started to pick himself up. His mask apparently had been loosened in the fall, for he paused on his knees to readjust its placement. Blaise bent for the knife in one swift moti
on. With a snarl the Bban let fall his mask in order to seize Blaise’s wrist as his fingers came within an inch of the polished leather hilt.
For the space of a heartbeat they stared at each other. To Blaise it seemed an eternity. The first sight of an unmasked Bban branded itself upon his memory. Hammered plates of thick scarred skin formed the rough planes of that hairless oblong face. The eyes glowed yellow in twin lights of phosphorus above a nose that was but a slit of bone and cartilage. Double-hinged and powerful, the lower jaw was similar in design to an insect’s mandible. This was clicking now, fast and furiously, as the Bban narrowed his burning eyes and gathered his long body to spring.
“Cha’hoi!”
One of the watching soldiers raised the cry, barking it out on a wild, keening note that sent a chill racing along Blaise’s spine. But he kept his eyes on the unmasked Bban, dodging as the creature leaped. Blaise’s straining fingers barely closed on the knife hilt, and as the Bban thudded a blow across the base of his neck that seemed to separate his head from his body, Blaise twisted with a jerk and rammed the blade into the Bban’s breastbone. To his dismay, however, the point skidded across the Bban’s chest, ripping the black tunic, but not penetrating. And he was losing strength. He could feel it ebbing away like water slipping down a drain. The Bban’s hands closed around his throat to snap his neck. Gritting his teeth, Blaise struck with the knife again, aiming this time for those glowing eyes. The blade plunged deep with a sickening thud and scrape, sending hot fluid spurting over Blaise’s hand. The Bban screamed horribly, arching back in a wild twist of agony, his hands clawing at his face. Then he fell, heavily, and moved no more.
Expecting the rest of the soldiers to jump him now, Blaise forced himself quickly to his knees. By sheer willpower he kept the dancing gray flecks from completely blurring his vision. Thus he faced them, the black-cloaked Bban’jen, who stood before him in a half ring, one holding a struggling Saunders pinned against the wall. Panting so hard that each breath rattled in his throat, awakening old pain, and conscious of the sweat dripping steadily into his eyes, Blaise looked around with a defiant hot-eyed glare and spat gritty dust from his mouth.
The cries of “Cha’hoi” had ceased abruptly with the death of his opponent. Now one tall lean soldier stepped forward, his booted feet raising tiny puffs of dust as they moved soundlessly across the stone floor.
Still kneeling, with his fists clenched white in an effort to contain the agony in his chest, Blaise watched him come with a sinking heart. By sheer grit and will he had won once. He knew he could not win a second time. Facing defeat, Blaise swallowed down the sour taste of it and managed somehow to get to his feet. His trembling legs braced to hide their weakness, he faced his approaching death with a bleak eye and a total lack of expression.
The soldier kept coming until he was scarcely inches from Blaise, close enough for him to hear the faint breaths from within the mask and to see a thin band of scarlet emblazoned upon the throat of the black tunic. He stood there for a moment, staring at Blaise, who felt consciousness slip. In anger he grabbed it back, refusing to take the easy way to death. Then, with that amazing quickness of movement that Blaise had noted was common among the Bban’jen, the soldier bent and jerked the knife from the body of his fallen comrade to hold it aloft, wet and glistening in the flicker of torchlight. Blaise held his breath, expecting this action to rouse all of them to fury. Even Saunders ceased her struggles against her captor and subsided, her face a white blur in the shadows.
But instead the soldier seized Blaise’s left hand and forced open the fist Blaise had made of it. He wiped the blade clean upon Blaise’s palm, smearing the flesh with the dark, sticky blood. As Blaise grimaced in revulsion, disgusted to find that his hand now stank with the putrid musk of the dead Bban, the soldier picked up the discarded mask and yanked free the cloak from his fallen comrade’s shoulders. He thrust both at Blaise with such force that he had no choice but to accept them.
He frowned as the soldier stepped back and gave a preemptive order. When Blaise made no move, the soldier repeated his command with a fierce gesture.
“Do what he wants, Omari!” shouted Saunders. “Take the thing’s clothes.”
Blaise stared down at the dead Bban, his stomach crawling at the sight of that horrible face and the thought of yet a worse body inside the black uniform. Then he remembered that he was cold and naked and in no position to be squeamish. Steeling himself, he knelt by the man and stripped him with an efficiency born of frequent practice. When he was finished, dressed, and standing in the heavy black clothes that were too large for him, he gripped the mask in his hands, staring down at the skeletal white corpse at his booted feet in a final moment of revulsion. Then, at an impatient gesture from one of the Bban’jen, he fitted the mask into place beneath the heavy cowled hood, his fingers clumsy with the fastenings as his nostrils flared at the musk stench still lingering inside. But he got it on and stood waiting, his gloved hands at his sides.
The Bban’jen formed ranks around them again. This time Saunders was put beside him.
“An,” said the leader bearing the torch, and with silent, booted feet they walked on through the tunnel, leaving the dead Bban in the dust and darkness without a second glance.
“Well!” said Saunders in a low voice, rubbing her wrists gingerly. Dirt streaked the side of her face, and her lip was cut at the corner. “I didn’t think you had that much in you. At least you’ve got their respect now.”
He glanced at her impatiently through the meshed eye guards of the mask. “I know it was a test of some kind, Saunders,” he said wearily, not having much breath left for talking. “I’m not a fool.”
She met his gaze quickly. “You think it was on Picyt’s order? But why?”
He shrugged, his steps lagging a bit. “Either that, or they’re animal enough to attack anything that shows signs of weakness. Think what you like. But, Saunders…”
“Yes?”
“If the chance comes, go for the rods they carry, not the knives. One way or another we’re getting out of here.” His jaw set with determination. “Be ready.”
She nodded, for once giving no argument. “I will.”
Chapter 3
Afterward Blaise recalled only a dim impression of that walk through long dark tunnels, some of which were so narrow that the sheer weight of stone all around seemed to be crushing down. Tiny passageways like crawl spaces fingered off from the main tunnel, and now and then some unseen thing rustled away into dusty shadows or panted behind tumbled stones as it watched them go by. Eventually the tunnel flared into a broad space with a square hole cut through the center of the stone floor. The torch was thrust at it, and the bluish-orange light flared bright as though caught by a rush of air, throwing illumination partway into the hole to reveal narrow, treacherous steps. Fighting off the feeling that he was descending into a yawning throat, Blaise balanced himself carefully, staying on his feet only by willpower strengthened with fear kindled in sharp bursts whenever he faltered and a masked face swung intently his way.
He had decided that Bban’jen intelligence was on a par with that of a clever pack of animals. He could not help but doubt that moment of respect paid him when he had defeated the soldier. And he grew certain that if he did not hold himself together somehow and keep moving, another would lose control and attack him. So, sliding his left sleeve along the rough surface of the wall, Blaise forced himself on quivering legs down the uneven steps, his sight hampered by the mask and the poor light. The reek of musk was fading, or else he was becoming used to it, for now and then he caught whiffs of other scents of warmth and age and the mustiness of rotting leather.
The descent was much shorter than he had expected, and it ended in a chamber that seemed to have been hewn out untold ages ago. Who had done it? he wondered, glancing at the polished places of stone where the touch of countless hands had worn away the roughness. It was damp here as well, making the chill more penetrating. Across the chamber rose another serie
s of steps, these wider but equally as steep as the first. Longing just to be able to throw himself flat and never get up again, Blaise dragged in a deep breath and then another, dreading the climb before him.
“Can you make it?” asked Saunders in a whisper that echoed off the ancient stone.
“Yes,” he said, gritting his teeth as the Bban’jen started up in double file. It was all he could do to bend his knees and drag up one leg and then the other. His muscles had softened to water, and his head spun every time he raised his eyes. For a moment he floated; then an impatient nudge from one of the guards behind brought him back to reality to struggle on to the next step.
“Saunders,” he said in a voice that grated. “Put your hand against the small of my back. They won’t notice in these shadows, and by Demos, don’t let me lose consciousness.”
With a grumble she placed her strong hand as he had asked, and the extra bit of support helped immeasurably.
“Why don’t you forget your pride and let someone drag you up?” she asked.
“Because,” he retorted, gulping for air and resenting the waste of breath required to answer her, “I’m not sure they wouldn’t slit my throat and leave me here rather than go to the trouble. Damn!” He staggered off-balance, and only Saunders’s steadying hand saved him from swaying over the edge of the steps to a long fall. “Thanks,” he said, gasping.
The Children of Anthi: Anthi - Book One Page 4