Within the structures, used only during these times, lay kitchens, bedrooms, dressing rooms, and all the facilities the overlords would need. The rear door opened and more sacrifices were thrust in at the points of swords. An overlord in mail gripped my arm. He jerked me back from the bars.
“This way, rast. And quietly.”
I followed him. We left the cage and, with six other guards, walked along the stone corridor. I understood then that someone who knew me had sent these men. Seven guards, overlords all, had been considered essential. Along the corridors guards and sacrifices moved, with personal slaves, pampered pets of the palace household, scurrying about their business. They would never be allowed into the great halls at this time.
The leem I had carried had managed to rake one of his clawed pads down my chest. The blood oozed. The seven guards were overlords of the second class. Their drooping moustaches were extravagantly long. They carried their swords naked in their hands. They had been told about me. We entered a high, narrow room, hung with brilliant tapestries depicting the hunt of Galliphron when he discovered the succulence of a vosk rasher grilled over an open fire. The guards went out; they backed away from me and the last I saw of them was the tips of their swords. The other door opened and the Princess Susheeng entered.
She looked pale, the spots of color burning in her cheeks. Her manner was frightened, wild, inflamed, jerky.
“Drak — Drak! I saw you-” She bit her lip, staring at me. I regarded her calmly. She held out a gray slave breechclout and a tunic embroidered with the black and green device of the overseer of the balass. Beneath her arm she carried the balass stick. She was still clad all in red, and her bosom heaved uncontrollably. Her eyes were large and hypnotic upon me.
“Why, Susheeng?” I asked.
“I could not see you die thus! I do not know — do not ask me. I cannot explain. Hurry, you calsany!”
I put on the gray slave clothes. I took the balass. I did not strike her with it.
“You must hide until Genodras returns-”
“It would be better, Susheeng, if I left now, would it not?”
“Ah, Drak! Cannot you stay, even now! Even after I have risked-”
“I thank you, Princess, for what you have done.” I looked at her. She was exceedingly beautiful, in her lush overblown way. “I think you have forgiven me for what happened in the Palace of the Emerald Eye.”
“No!” She flamed at me. “I have offered you everything! Yet you ridiculed me. Oh, how I rejoiced when those two cramphs betrayed you to my brother! How I thought I would glee in your death, in agony! But
— but-”
“Who?”
She shrugged those full shoulders, pouting. “It does not matter. Two cramphs of workers. They have been condemned now-”
“Who!”
My face must have worked its usual havoc. She shrank back. “Two overseers of the balass -
Pugnarses, I believe, and Genal-”
“No!” I said. I felt the hurt, the agony, there, that I had never felt when a sword bit, when a leem’s claws struck.
She saw that. Triumph spurred her on. “They betrayed you! Pugnarses, because the fool thought to wear the mail and sword of an overlord! And the other, because Pugnarses talked him into it, made him out of jealousy of a girl-”
“Holly!” I said.
“Yes,” she said, the venom biting. “A disgusting girl — cramph, Holly, who even now awaits my brother’s pleasure.”
“And the two — Pugnarses and Genal?” Again she moved those rounded shoulders, indifferent to their fates. She had always taken what she wanted; she still believed she could take me if she tried hard enough. “They are to be sacrifices. It is just. They presumed.”
“Just! Is that Magdaggian justice?”
“What do you, a Kov of Vallia, know of Magdaggian justice?”
I gripped her shoulder.
“I would like to find those two-”
“To kill them? To take your revenge?” She let me grasp her and swayed into me, clasping me in her arms. “Ah, no, Drak. No! Let them go. Escape. I have it all arranged. When Genodras returns and the world is green once again — then we can ride!”
“Where to? Sanurkazz?”
She shook her head against my chest. “No. I have wide estates. No one will question the Princess Susheeng. I will create a new identity for you, my Drak. We can return to Magdag. I have wealth enough for us both, and to spare-”
I had had, for the moment, enough of new identities.
She had been clever in not attempting to find a hauberk of width enough to encompass those shoulders of mine, and an overseer of the balass was nicely balanced to move about the megalithic complex without question within the hierarchical structure. I moved to the door. My face was set.
“Where are you — Drak! No! Please — NO! ”
“I thank you for your help, Susheeng. I do not blame you for what you are. That is not of your manufacture.” I opened the door. “If you wish to call the guards, that is your privilege.”
She ran to me, caught the gray slave tunic. Outside, a guard detail passed with a sacrifice screaming between them.
“Drak! I will come with you!”
We went out together. She preceded me, as was proper, and she led me through the maze of corridors, avoiding the halls from which floated the horrid sounds of the rituals. There was nothing I could do for those men of Zair now, here in a hive of mailed Magdaggian might. But my blood boiled and my heart thumped the quicker, and I had to hold myself very stiff and straight as we passed those men of Magdag. Genal and Pugnarses were chained together in a cell, awaiting their call to the sacrificial games. They looked miserable and woebegone and defeated. I was glad to notice they did not look frightened. They had had time to think, chained naked in a Magdag dungeon.
They saw me over the shoulder of the guard. Their eyes popped and they would have spoken out and so betrayed me once again had I not struck the guard on his chin, above the opened ventail. I took his keys and his sword.
I stood looking at them, as Susheeng hovered uncertainly at the door, peering with frightened eyes into the corridor. I shook the keys before them.
“Stylor-” Genal swallowed. He looked sick. “If you are going to kill us, do it now. I deserve it, for I betrayed you.”
Pugnarses, in turn, swallowed. He stared at the sword as a man stares at a snake. “Strike hard, Stylor.”
“You pair of fools!” I said. I spoke fiercely, hotly, angrily, feeling all the hurt in me. “You betrayed me because of Holly. Did you not see the pile of corpses — of our own men? The group leaders dead, the glorious revolution finished?”
“We-” croaked Genal.
“I persuaded Genal,” said Pugnarses. “I wanted to be an overlord! I thought they would believe two of us more than one alone. I must take the blame, Stylor-”
“And see what the men of Magdag do in return, how they repay your treachery!” My face, I could see, made them believe all was over for them. “I can understand either of you doing anything for love of a girl, and I suppose you thought she must choose one of you! Betraying a rival is a small thing to a man so obsessed with a girl. But you betrayed everyone and everything we worked and struggled for. You betrayed more than me, Stylor!”
I lifted the sword. Both of them stared at me, unflinching.
I reached across with the keys, threw down the sword, and snapped open the locks.
“Now,” I said. “Old vosk heads. We fight!”
But first — there was Holly.
I handed the sword to Susheeng. She hesitated. A party of guards moved past a cross corridor. I motioned to them. “A shout, Princess, and how do you explain this?”
She flung herself around, taking the sword, and almost, I believe, the impulse to cut us down mastered her. Then she led us on. The swing of her hips as she walked ahead of us made a fascinating sight
“Wait here,” she said outside her brother’s palatial apartments within the meg
alith. “I will bring the girl.”
When she had gone, Pugnarses said: “Can we trust her?”
Genal said: “We have to. She, and Stylor, are our only hope.”
“And when we get back to the warrens,” I said, “what is to become of her then?”
Genal looked at me, and away. He felt his disgrace keenly. Pugnarses, uncharacteristically, said: “At another time, Stylor, I would have counseled: ‘Kill her!’ But I do not think you will do that.” He eyed me.
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“But she loves you.”
“She believes so. She will get over it.”
“And — Holly?”
“Holly,” I said, “is a sweet child. But my love lies far away from here, in another land, and I remain here only because it is a stricture laid on me. As soon as I have finished my work, then — then, believe me, I shall leave Magdag and all its evil ways far behind me!”
I spoke with a passion that forced them to believe. Holly, following Susheeng meekly, came out then, and she saw me and the color flooded her cheeks.
I merely said: “Hurry, Princess.”
There was no time, as I saw it, for a traumatic and emotional outbreak. I wanted to get back to the warrens. We all knew what would happen as soon as Genodras reappeared in the sky above Kregen and the overlords of Magdag were freed from their superstitious imprisonment in the megalithic complexes.
Susheeng, it was clear, still believed she could persuade me to accede to her plan. To her it would appear the only sensible plan, indeed, the only and inevitable one.
Why would a man, a Kov of Delphond, choose to return to a stinking rasts’ nest of workers and slaves?
We hurried through the corridors. Truth to tell, I was beginning to think we would break clear away without trouble.
“This way,” panted Susheeng. “Up this narrow staircase lies a bridge and then a descent to the outside. I dare not venture out while Genodras is gone from the sky. We can wait.”
I did not say anything to that. I would not wait.
At the top of that steep flight of stairs, walled with enameled tiles depicting fantastic birds, animals, and beasts, two mailed guards were descending. Torchlight struck back from their mail. Between them they marched a captive, a fresh sacrifice for the ritual games. He was haggard, bearded, filthy. But I recognized him. I moved aside to let them pass.
But Rophren, that certain Rophren who had been first lieutenant aboard Pur Zenkiren’s Lilac Bird and had failed in the rashoon, recognized me too.
A shout lifted from the foot of the stairs. More torches spattered lurid orange light upon the brilliant tiles.
“Hai! Princess! Princess Susheeng — that man is Stylor! They are escaped slaves! They are dangerous!”
I took the first guard’s sword away and chopped him over the back of the neck. He pitched forward and tumbled all the way to the bottom. Pugnarses and Genal dealt with the second guard, who joined the first in a tumbled heap at the feet of his comrades. They started up.
“Run!” screamed Susheeng.
We now had three long swords.
Rophren reached out a hand.
His haggard face looked uplifted, lightened. He squared his shoulders with a gesture at once instinctive and defiant.
“Lahal, Pur Dray,” he said. His voice sounded thick, drugged. “Give me a sword. I would be pleased to exchange hand blows with these Zair-benighted rasts of Magdag. You go on and take the women with you.”
He knew I could not do that. But he meant it. I looked at him.
“Lahal, Rophren,” I said.
“I am of the Red Brethren of Lizz,” he said proudly, with a lift of his head. “I wished to be a Krozair of Zy, but the rashoon stopped all my hopes there. Give me the sword. I will die here, and none will pass until I am dead.”
“I believe you, Rophren. I will stay with you.”
I reached for the long sword Susheeng held. She was looking at me with a wild light in her eyes and she shrank back. “What-?”
Rophren took the sword. He hefted it. The mailed overlords of Magdag were hurrying up the stairs toward us. “It is good to feel a sword in my fist again,” he said. “I have been captive too long.” He laughed then, and swung the blade. “Stay, as you will, Pur Dray, my Lord of Strombor, you who are a Krozair of Zy. It will be a great fight. Stay and you, a Krozair, may see how a Red Brother of Lizz can die!”
Susheeng was staring at me with all of horror and hell in her eyes. “A Krozair,” she whispered. “You — the Lord of Strombor!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My Vosk-Helmets greet the overlords of Magdag
Truth to tell, all during this imprisonment in the colossal structures of Magdag where I was a sacrificial victim in the ritual games to insure the return of Genodras, I had been half hoping against all reason that the workers and slaves of the warrens would continue our plans, would mount the attack despite the catastrophic loss of their leaders. If ever there was a need for them to put in an appearance, it was now. Even while the Princess Susheeng shrank back from me, her face a white mask of fury and despair, a seething agony of acrimony I could well understand impelling her to turn from me at last and finally, the mailed men ran up the flight of stairs.
“A Krozair!” she said. Her fists struck again and again at my chest. “A pest-ridden rast of a Sanurkazz pirate! The vilest Sanurkazzian Krozair of them all, Pur Dray Prezcot, the Lord of Strombor!” She was laughing and shrieking now, mad and wild with the frenzy that tore her. Holly came up and took her shoulders and wrenched her away. Holly’s face was as blanched and set as those of Pugnarses and Genal. To them it was inconceivable that an escaped galley slave hiding in the warrens might be a Krozair. Krozairs, they knew, fought to the death.
“They come,” grunted Rophren. He had wanted to be a Krozair of Zy, and his crisis of nerves during the rashoon had blasted his hopes. But the Red Brethren of Lizz were a renowned order. He had redeemed himself; he would die well. I do not subscribe to the view that a single act of courage can wash out all a man’s crimes, as is so often said; but Rophren, for me, had committed no crime save that of being unfit to be a sailor.
We stood, Rophren, Pugnarses, and I, with our long swords eager to smite down on the coifs of the advancing overlords. We fought. There were only ten of them and in accounting for five of them I felt I had betrayed my comrades, for Pugnarses was wrestling his sword out of the cranium of one while Genal struggled hand-to-hand with another who sought to cut down Pugnarses from the side — and Rophren was down, on his knees, bending over with his life’s blood bubbling through his fingers. But there were ten dead overlords littering the stair.
We stepped back from the carnage. Pugnarses, with a curse, kicked the bodies down the steps. I knelt by Rophren. He tried to smile. “Say Lahal and Remberee for me to Pur Zenkiren,” he whispered, and so died.
Pugnarses and Genal were collecting the swords.
“Why burden yourself with them?” I asked. Susheeng was vomiting all over those brilliant tiles. I knew it was not because she had seen men die.
“We can give them to the slaves!” snapped Pugnarses. “They will fight-”
“As you have just done, Pugnarses? With your blade wedged in your opponent’s head? The skill, Pugnarses, the skill.”
He swore vilely, bitterly, but he kept the swords.
I approached the Princess Susheeng. She looked up. Her cheeks were stained with tears, vomit slicked on her ripe lips.
“Will you stay here, Princess? You will be safe, for none know now how we escaped.”
I felt sorry for her. She had suffered exceedingly; and now she had discovered that the man for whom she conceived she bore a lifelong love had turned, at a single disastrous stroke, into a hereditary enemy. Truly, I think she had suffered enough.
“And are you truly Pur Dray, Krozair, the Lord of Strombor?”
“I am.” Did I speak boastfully? I do not think so. Did I speak pridefully? Ah, the
re, I think I did.
“How can I love a man of Zair?” she wailed.
“You do not love me, Susheeng-”
“Have I not proved it?” she flashed back at me.
I could not answer that. There was no answer.
Holly made a small movement, and I turned, and she stood there, clad in the gray slave breechclout, with a sword in her little fist. “We had best be going, Stylor.”
“Yes,” I said. I turned back. “Susheeng — try not to think ill of me. You do not understand the compulsions that drive me. I am not as other men. I do not love you — but I think you have touched a chord in me.”
She stood up. In that moment, with the tears and the vomit smearing her face, her hair unbound and disarrayed, she looked as close to a human being as I had ever seen her. I thought, then, that if she had the luck to fall in love with the right man she would turn out well. But that is something not of that pressing moment when we stood on the stairs with their florid tiles, in the megalith of Magdag.
“I cannot go with you into the warrens, Drak,” she said.
“No. I did not expect you to. Try to think well of me, Susheeng, for red and green will not always be in conflict.” I bent and kissed her. She did not move or respond. I suspect that she was trying to hate me, then, and failing. Her emotions had been drained from her, her will power exhausted. “Go down to your friends, Susheeng. As long as we live, we will not forget this moment.”
She started to walk down the steps. She moved like a mechanical doll of Loh struts, jerkily, almost tottering at each step. She halted. She looked up. “You will all be killed when Genodras returns to the sky.” The words seemed hardly to mean anything to her. “Remberee, Kov Drak.”
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