“My uncle is busy elsewhere, old man. And you will seek no more.”
Zarin slashed his reins at his horses and charged. Jahan flicked his reins to move his team to one side as the hurtling chariot passed and deftly sliced his ruby-handled sword through the leather harness which secured the passing horse team to Zarin’s chariot. Almost effortlessly, he ducked Zarin’s wild sword swing in the same moment. With only one side of the harness still intact, Zarin’s chariot was out of his control. His half-freed horse team could only succeed in swinging round and tipping him out.
Jahan wheeled his horses, bringing his chariot round and to a stop. Swiftly he tightened the reins and lashed them twice around the front bar of his chariot. With their heads pulled high, the frightened pair flailed at the air with their front hooves, but then settled at a standstill. Jahan stepped down from the open back of the chariot with his sword in hand.
Zarin had struggled to his feet. Somehow he had clung to his sword and now he charged at Jahan, swinging lustily. It was crude, hacking swordplay and Jahan was a master of the blade. The old Warmaster stoutly blocked each swing in turn, and as Zarin weakened and faltered, he moved from defence to attack. His blade hammered at Zarin’s, knocking it left and right and then sweeping it away altogether. Zarin watched his blade sail high and vanish, and then looked down at his suddenly empty hand. When he looked up again, the point of the ruby-hilted sword was aimed at his throat.
Jahan scowled and hesitated, and then slowly lowered his blade. “I give you your life,” Jahan said slowly, “in honour of your father who was once a good friend of Karakhor. Take Kanju out of this war. Your warriors have no place here.”
“Perhaps not—” Zarin’s voice was a dust and fear-dried croak. “But I must honour another father now. I am also a prince of Maghalla. My wife is the daughter of Sardar. My honour will not allow me to leave this battlefield.”
For a moment, Zarin stared into the face of death, but Jahan would not go back on his own word. He sighed heavily as he lowered his sword and climbed back into his waiting chariot. “At least you are no coward,” he said in parting. “But if we meet again I will kill you.” He un-wrapped his reins, slapped up his horses, and drove back into the fray.
For the younger princes of Karakhor, the battle was both terrifying and frustrating. Terrifying for there was blood and death all around, frustrating because they were hemmed in on all sides by Jahan’s hand-picked guard captains and guards. From the relative safety of their chariots, they could hurl their javelins and shoot their arrows over the heads of their protectors, but as yet none of them had drawn a blade to face an enemy. Jahan had them guarded too well.
The chariots of Nirad and Ramesh had stopped side by side, their proud pennants of the silver boar and the silver panther flying together in the rising dust. The adult champions of Maghalla scorned to challenge them, while the ring of Karakhoran shields and steel surrounded them, breaking every wave of Maghallan foot soldiers. However, they could not avoid all risks, and eventually a chariot pushed through the enemy forces carrying a Maghallan prince only a few years older than themselves.
He stood straight and slender under the banner of a blue leopard’s head. His arm shield bore the same insignia and there was a long spear in his right hand. His eyes were as long-lashed as a girl’s and yet they gleamed with a fierce hatred as he taunted them through reddened lips. “I am Udaya,” he shouted shrilly. “Udaya, the son of Kamar. Come forth, monkey-dung of Karakhor. Come and face me if you dare.”
Ramesh and Nirad exchanged affronted glances.
“I am the oldest,” Nirad said furiously. “I will face him.”
“Only by a few months,” Ramesh objected. “His blood is mine.”
Their senior guard captain was between them, his restraining hands hauling back on the traces of both their chariot teams. The fighting around them had stopped as the foot soldiers awaited the outcome and there was a sudden hush over that part of the battlefield. The guard captain had a delicate balance to keep, but he knew his duty and stood his ground. “No, my lords,” he objected. “This could be a trap to draw you from my protection.”
Nirad looked around and saw no other banners and no more chariots. The foot warriors of both sides were parting to give room and Udaya was alone.
The son of Kamar pointed his spear at his enemies and laughed at them. “Go home, monkey-dung princes. If you dare not fight, then sneak back behind your walls and go suckle with your mothers.”
More laughter roared up from the warriors of Maghalla, and Nirad was provoked.
“He is mine,” Nirad yelled at Ramesh. Then he slapped with the free end of his reins at the guard captain’s wrist, forcing the man to let go. He drew himself up to his full height and lashed at the rumps of his horses as the pair surged forward. Immediately Udaya flicked his spear up and back and then hurled it forward with all his strength. Nirad saw it coming and swept his shield arm up to block and cast the weapon aside. Udaya urged his own horses forward and the two chariots crashed alongside each other. Nirad was attempting to draw his sword as he was flung forward, losing his balance and falling between the locked chariots. With a numbing crack, his head struck the hard rim of Udaya’s chariot wheel and he tumbled senseless to the ground. With a cry of triumph, Udaya jumped from his own chariot, drawing his sword and aiming for a death lunge.
Ramesh had followed through, only reining back when he realized that Nirad would reach Udaya first. The law of single combat would not allow him to intervene while they were evenly matched, but now that Nirad was helpless, Ramesh was unleashed. Swift as the panther that was his battle emblem, Ramesh leapt from his chariot and sprang forward. His sword, drawn at last, parried that of Udaya and forced the prince of Maghalla back.
They fought savagely, two young fighting cocks with their blood pumping hot and fierce in their veins. Udaya was older, slightly taller and with a little more experience, but the few weeks of practice that had been given to Ramesh had all been under the severe guidance of Jahan and in fighting skills they were evenly matched. They circled each other with clashing blades, each one cheered on by their own warriors, but slowly Ramesh began to weaken. Udaya was the stronger, while Ramesh had only just recovered from his near brush with death.
Udaya scented victory and attacked harder. Twice he left his guard open in order to make what he hoped would be a killing stroke. Each time, Ramesh was unable to take the advantage, but the one thing Jahan had imprinted on his brain was never to lower his own guard. Ramesh was tiring but his defence was rock solid and each time he turned the killing blow. Udaya lost patience and made a third whirlwind attack, ending in another desperate thrust that should have skewered his opponent. “Keep your guard up,” Jahan had said, “and eventually you will know all you need to know about your enemy.” Ramesh had that knowledge now and with the third attack, he made no attempt to parry Udaya’s blade. Instead he stepped neatly to one side and made his own final thrust. His sword point pierced Udaya just below the breastbone with all the last power of his shoulder behind it.
For a moment Ramesh could only stand there, gasping, with the dead weight of Udaya hanging on his sword blade. Nirad still sprawled unconscious on the earth beside them. Then their guard captain shouted an order and they were surrounded again by the warriors of Karakhor. Immediately the battle was raging around them once more, but for the moment their part in it was over.
So it went on for the rest of that long, bloody day, and at nightfall, the armies once more drew apart to drop wearily by their own tents and campfires, and to count the awful cost of the day’s grim work. In Karakhor, there was joy and thanksgiving for the victory of Devan over Durga and the sense that Kara-Rashna had been partially avenged. There was also praise for Ramesh for his first triumph in single combat. Ramesh basked in the heavy backslapping and the smiling congratulations of his peers and his elders. In saving the life of his half-brother, he felt that he had partially atoned for the folly of his ill-fated tiger hunt which had
cost the lives of so many of his friends. Only Rajar sulked and offered him no acknowledgement, but safe inside his own rich glow of pride, Ramesh hardly noticed.
There was, however, one other bad sign which hung like an omen of disfavour from the gods over the great palace and the holy temples of Karakhor. The High Priest Kaseem had spent all day in his bedchamber, locked in a deep motionless coma from which no one had been able to awaken him. His wrinkled face was as white as the sheet beneath him. He barely breathed and his heartbeat was almost stopped. Despite the prayers and the sacrificial smoke with which they had surrounded him, his brother priests all feared that he must be on the very point of death.
The night was calm over the mouth of the Black Swamp River. The stars were brilliant and two of the three moons were already up and shining. Where the river joined the ocean and the waves broke, there was a distant line of silvered white foam, a low wall of breakers and a soft growl of tumbling sound. For this part of this wild, almost pre-historic world, it was a rare night of lonely beauty, a night for stargazers and lovers. However, Zela would have much preferred a normal night of howling storm and darkness. There was no cover on a night such as this, and although their skimmer was painted in a camouflage pattern of grey and jet black swirls, she knew that it was still reflecting a metallic gleam of moonlight. If an alert Gheddan patrol ship flew overhead, they could not be missed.
With the ocean in sight, she slowed the skimmer, turned it in the widening river mouth and pointed the bows upstream. She eased down the power so that there was just enough thrust to hold them against the current.
“We are to return into Ghedda?” Kananda asked uncertainly from the seat behind her.
“No,” Zela said with a smile. “We have to hold our position here and wait.” She flicked the switch of the craft’s main communicator and leaned forward to speak into the mouthpiece mounted onto the control panel in front of her. “This is Z-K-One. We are in position and waiting.” She waited for a silent count of ten then repeated the short message before switching off the communicator.
After a minute Kananda said doubtfully, “They make no answer.”
“Alpha and Ghedda both have technology which can overhear radio transmissions and locate their point of origin,” Zela told him simply. “That is why we keep such calls to a minimum. I made one call when we first reached the skimmer to let Antar know that we were on our way. This call tells them we are here. It should be enough. Our rescue ship should be cruising in close orbit somewhere above the river-mouth.”
They all stared upward through the clear glass of the control hood. Jayna was leaning close against Kananda. She had slept on his shoulder for most of the long journey down river but now she was awake again. The drugs in the skimmer’s medical pack had helped her and now she was pain-free, but she was still hurt and weak. All three of them were silent, watching and waiting.
The river journey had frayed their nerves. Twice they had bumped scaled monsters that had snapped and thrashed as they passed and now they felt vulnerable holding motionless against the river’s flow. It was deep enough here to hide creatures that might be as big as the skimmer itself. The dangers below occupied their minds almost as much as the dangers above. They knew that in a high state of war readiness, the Gheddans would almost certainly increase their guard patrols. Also, with no evidence of bodies in their crashed rotor-flyer, it would not take too much logical reasoning to work out that if they had survived the desert then the river might offer them their best means of escape. The Gheddans were not stupid and the risks were still high.
“Perhaps you should call again,” Kananda said at last. “Your friends have not heard us.”
“They know which frequency we are on. If they are close enough, they will have heard us. If not, we must give them more time before we try again.”
Kananda was doubtful. Sometimes she used words he still couldn’t understand. There was nothing on his world or in his language to which they could be related. He wanted to ask what the word “frequency” meant, but then Jayna squeezed his hand.
“This spy business involves a lot of waiting. Be patient, Kananda.”
Kananda tried to be patient but it was not something he was good at. The long hours of being cramped in the tiny cockpit had been irksome. He wanted to move and stretch his muscles. Jayna sensed the tension inside him and again squeezed his hand. He felt irritated by the small intimacy and then uncomfortable when Zela looked back at him and smiled.
Time dragged as they searched the heavens. There was nothing but the stars and constellations. Kananda thought that he could again pick out Earth but he was not sure. A bank of thin clouds had slowly moved into that quarter of the sky. He began to wonder what would happen next if no rescue came. He knew that the skimmer drank fuel like a thirsty camel and that there was not enough of it left to take them back up-river. They were stranded here at the mouth of this evil swamp, trapped between the desert and the sea. Then, just as his black thoughts reached their lowest ebb, the communicator speaker crackled and a disembodied voice came through.
“Z-K-One, we have you on-screen now. Time to go, Commander. Take off now.”
Zela, who had every move mapped out in her mind, automatically spun her control wheel to face the skimmer downstream. The current caught it and flung them forward, and she slammed the power up to maximum. Within seconds they were hurtling toward the white wall of breakers where the river met the sea.
Kananda jumped and again searched the sky. Jayna, who knew where to look, half-turned in her seat to point back and upward. Kananda turned his head and saw that one of the stars in the vast canopy was moving, a quick-silver gleam coming up fast behind them like a falling meteor. The pilot of the Super-Fighter/Strato-bomber was using the river as his guide and as the rescue craft lost height, the skimmer craft was rising up to meet it. The river and the sea dropped away below them, and like a giant silver bird, the larger aircraft loomed above them.
Zela’s gaze was fixed on the control screen in front of her, which now showed the underside of the huge bomber in close detail. She matched the pre-agreed speed and height and waited, trusting the pilot above to make the final adjustments. The gap between them narrowed and slowly the bomb bay doors slid open and the magnetic clamps emerged and extended downward.
Kananda was suddenly aware of how a fish must feel when it realized that it was about to be snatched in the talons of an eagle. He watched, mesmerized, through the canopy as the clamps came closer, and then there was a sudden jolt and a bang as they locked on to the skimmer. A red light flashed on Zela’s control panel and an audible signal sounded in shrill warning.
“We have you, Commander,” said the voice from the speaker.
Zela cut her engines dead and the skimmer hung fast in the clamps. “All power disengaged,” she reported calmly.
The clamp arms pulled them up into the belly of the Strato-bomber and the steel doors slid smoothly shut below them. As soon as the doors were closed, the parent craft was aiming her nose back at the stars, accelerating and climbing as fast as she was able.
As they unbuckled their harness straps, Zela slid back the canopy hood above their heads. All three of them climbed out thankfully and Kananda stood for a moment to savour air that was marginally more fresh and tasted only slightly of oil and grease, which was an improvement on swamp stink. Then Zela quickly led the way forward.
They found Antar on the flight deck. The tall, gold-bearded Alphan stood behind the pilot and co-pilot, looking over their shoulders at their flight screens. He acknowledged the three new arrivals briefly and then indicated the screens as they all gathered round to watch. The centre of the two screens each showed an electronically generated green image of their own aircraft, while in the upper left hand corner of the screens two smaller red fighter images were descending fast to meet them.
“Gheddans,” Jayna said. Her voice held a note of alarm and Kananda tensed.
“A fighter patrol,” Zela agreed. “No more than we sho
uld expect.” She cast a questioning glance at Antar who seemed unconcerned. The flight crew were also complacent and seemed content to watch whatever might develop.
“All the communication traffic we have monitored shows that you three have stirred up a nest of stinging hornets,” Antar said. “So it was almost a certainty that they would pick us up the moment we broke radio silence and that there would be some attempt at intervention. It seemed prudent to come prepared.”
As they watched, two green fighter images dropped down from the top centre of the screens and executed sweeping scissor turns to pass swiftly between the two red fighters and their own green bomber. Suddenly the screens were filled with streaking lines of fire.
The two pilots seemed content to watch their screens, but Antar and the others had now turned their heads to look through the cockpit window, which gave a partial view of the star-bright blackness of the night sky. Kananda followed the line of their expectant gaze and saw a bright fireball of red and yellow flame that burst like the unfolding of some terrible galactic flower. The flash hurt his eyes and he flinched and turned away.
When he blinked and looked back at the screen, he saw that one of the Gheddan ships had vanished from a direct hit. The flickering red streaks that marked the missile launches continued to criss-cross the top corner of the screen and then one of the Alphan ships also disappeared. Another sunburst filled the heavens beyond their left wing. Finally there was a third flash and the second Gheddan ship vanished from the screens. It was over in a very few minutes, and the surviving Alphan fighter took up an escort position off their wing as they climbed high and headed for home.
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