by Джеффри Лорд
Then Neena screamed, «Blade, the stolof!» Before Blade could move, a ribbon fell across his back and left shoulder. Blade whirled and saw at once that Desgo's stolof had made a fatal mistake. It had come too close.
Before the creature could rear back and pull Blade off his feet, Blade closed in. He dashed straight between the forelegs and thrust over the dripping mandibles, squarely into the center of the three glaring red eyes.
The stolof jerked convulsively and let out a hissing scream. Foul-smelling yellowish fluid gushed out of the wound, stinging where it fell on Blade's skin. He stepped back.
Neena stood in front of the other stolof now, waving a dripping sword at it, shrieking curses. The stolof seemed paralyzed, its master silent and its comrade (or mate?) dying. There were no other soldiers in sight on the ground, and only a few on the wall. Blade had no doubt where all the others had gone. The fire he'd set was now roaring up in a solid wall of flame a quarter of a mile long, sweeping steadily toward King Furzun's palace.
The few soldiers still in sight were manning the gate, though, and there were archers among them. Blade scanned the area for some other way over the walls, and his eyes fell on the stolof facing Neena. It stood almost next to the wall, and rose halfway up it.
Blade snatched up a fallen spear and dashed toward the creature. He came in from the side, drove the spear point into the ground, and pole-vaulted up onto the stolof's back. For a moment he had to fight not to slide right off again. Then he braced himself and shouted.
«Neena! Here!»
The princess heard him, turned, and sprang toward the stolof. Blade bent down as she leaped, heaving her up beside him on the creature's back. Before its sluggish wits could react to what was happening, Blade practically threw Neena up onto the walkway of the city wall. As the stolof started to move, Blade caught the railing and heaved himself up after Neena.
He'd held onto his spear, and it was a good thing that he had. Someone in the gate tower shouted, and someone else let fly with an arrow. It came uncomfortably close. Before the archer could shoot again, Blade picked him out from among his comrades and hurled the spear. It was a long shot, but Blade's eye and arm had a machine's precision tonight. The archer staggered as the spear drove into his thigh just below his armor, then toppled back against the tower railing. It gave with a crack and he vanished from sight with a scream, to land with a splash in the water-filled ditch below.
Blade turned and sprang up onto the outer railing of the wall. Neena joined him. The darkness beyond the ditch looked friendly and welcoming. Neena squeezed Blade's hand briefly, then they both leaped out and down, aiming for the far side of the ditch.
It was a long jump and a long drop, but they both landed safely. Blade felt as though every bone in his body and all the teeth in his mouth had been jarred loose from one another. But he sprang instantly to his feet and helped Neena up. In a few more seconds they were on the move, heading away from the city into that friendly darkness at a dead run.
They ran and they ran and they ran. Gradually the roar of the flames, the trumpets and drums of the soldiers, the shouts of angry or frightened people faded behind them. Gradually the forest grew thicker around them and behind them. Even the glow of the great fire faded away. They ran on, with no sound but their footsteps, their breathing, and the chirrr of night insects.
They ran on, until finally neither of them could have gone a step farther if all the stolofs in Trawn had been at their heels. Blade barely had the strength to find a concealing clump of bushes and carry Neena to it. Then he lay down beside her and let sleep take him.
It was a more pleasant sleep than he'd known since he'd entered this dimension. For the first time he was free.
Chapter 14
The jungle awoke the next morning in a hideous uproar of bird cries, animal howls, the squalling and squealing of apes, the clak and drone of insects. The uproar jerked Blade up out of sleep like an alarm signal. Neena awoke more slowly, sat up and listened without even opening her eyes, then lay back down and drifted off to sleep again. Either her trained ears hadn't caught anything in all the uproar that might mean danger, or she was too exhausted to care.
Blade let her sleep and listened more carefully himself. After a while he could pick out fifty or sixty distinct sounds from the jungle around him. None of them sounded at all human, or like the chittering of a stolof on the hunt.
Blade decided that Neena had the best idea, and lay down again. Here they had a good hiding place, and their night's run must have given them a good many miles' head start on any possible pursuit. If they spent the day here, they could be out again after dark, rested, refreshed, and far better prepared to face anything they might meet. Blade stretched out, closed his ears to the jungle sounds, and drifted off to sleep.
He awoke with the sun well down in the sky and the light creeping through the bushes already turning red. Neena was wide awake, combing leaves and debris out of her hair.
They ate sour greenish white berries from a trailing vine and drank at a small stream nearby. Neena took bearings on the setting sun. Then they went back under the bush and waited until darkness settled down over the forest.
«The stolofs can see and sense equally well by day or by night,» she said. «The same is not true of their masters. Those of Trawn fear the forests by night. In a way, they are wise to do so. At night the forests of Gleor can be deadly to one who knows them not. I, on the other hand-«
«-have been at home in them since you were three years old?» Blade finished the sentence for her.
Neena laughed. «No, I was not allowed into the forest until I was nine. I have still spent ten years learning its ways. That is ten years more than most of the warriors of Trawn. Against ill luck there is no defense. Otherwise I think we shall come safely to my last camp, and then to the lands of Draad.»
«Why your camp? Why not go straight home?»
«Blade, perhaps you wish to show how strong you are by roaming the forests of Gleor naked and practically unarmed. I have no such desire. In that camp I left spears, bows, clothing and boots, bottles for water, even some dried meat. There is also Kubona.» Her face turned hard. «I cannot give her vengeance now, although she shall have it sooner or later. I can give her bones proper burial, and her spirit the prayers to speed its passing.»
They left their hiding place as soon as it was fully dark. Neena led the way for a few hundred yards through a nightmarish tangle of vines and underbrush, to thoroughly confuse their trail. Then she swung west, onto a well-beaten animal trail, and once on the trail settled down to a steady trot.
They kept going all night, with only one short stop for rest and water and one short detour around a small hunters' camp. Shortly before dawn they drank again from a muddy pool and ate the meat of several fallen koba nuts. Then they scrambled forty feet up a spreading tree, found a perch screened by its long trailing leaves, and went to sleep.
For three more days and three more nights this pattern repeated itself. Once they found a pool large enough for them to bathe. Blade pulled a foot-long fish out of that pool, but Neena took one look at it and threw it back.
«A ti-ter fish,» said Neena briefly. «Our hunters use the fluid from its liver and bladder to poison their arrows.»
Another time they had to spend an hour of darkness perched high in a tree. At the foot of the tree a seventy-foot snake was curling up to sleep off a meal. When the snake hadn't moved for an hour, Blade and Neena crept down the tree and slipped silently away into the darkness.
Blade got a good look at the snake as they slipped past it. Its mouth was six feet wide, large enough to swallow a stolof or two or three men at one gulp.
On the fourth morning they did not seek out a hiding place for the day. Instead Neena took another set of bearings on the sun, then led the way off to the north.
«I think we shall be reaching the camp today,» she said. «It will be easier to find it by day than by night, even for me.»
«What about our friend
s from Trawn?»
«There is not much danger from them any more, I think. We are beyond where the hunters usually go. Anyone who has been chasing us from the city itself is certainly at least a day's march behind us.»
Neena followed as straight a course as the jungle would let her until just before noon. Then she stopped and began casting back and forth like a hunting dog, looking for the marks she'd left to show the way back to the camp. As she did that, Blade kept his eyes roaming back and forth, scanning the jungle around them. Neena's contempt for the soldiers and hunters of Trawn made her willing to assume that they were all many miles away. Blade, stubbornly cautious, refused to share that assumption.
The day moved on toward noon. Neena led the way deeper and deeper into a particularly grim and gloomy stand of trees. Here there was nothing but centuries-old forest giants, their high canopies so thick that the forest floor underneath was perpetually dark and almost lifeless. The heat had a deadly, airless quality to it. Blade began to feel as though he was back in the ash pit under the Hearth of Tiga, slaving away in the stifling darkness.
Blade soon lost track of time. He was beginning to lose track of distance when suddenly Neena gave a sharp, wordless cry, almost a squeal. For a moment Blade wondered if she'd been bitten by a snake. She stiffened, then seemed about to dash wildly forward. He caught her arm. She let out her breath in a long sigh, then raised her other arm and pointed. Blade followed her gesture with his eyes and saw a huge hollow tree, gray and moss grown, split open on one side.
They had reached Neena's camp. Another part of their escape lay behind them. Only one more part lay ahead of them, and that should be the easiest one of all.
Blade and Neena stood side by side for another moment. Then they both broke into a run toward the hollow tree.
The weapons and gear lay well inside the dark hollow, further concealed under piles of leaves and vines.
«Kubona and I didn't want anyone from Trawn stumbling on them, of course,» she said. «We also didn't want any of our own hunters from Draad finding them. I wasn't supposed to be this far out into the forest on my own.»
Blade said nothing, and tried to keep his face straight. Apparently he wasn't entirely successful. Neena looked at him, then sighed.
«All right,» she said. «There's no need to look at me that way. I know what you're thinking, and what you'd like to say. You're right, I'll admit it, so you can keep quiet. I'll have enough to listen to from my father when we get home.»
«No doubt,» said Blade, in a carefully neutral voice.
Neena shrugged. «I suppose I deserve at least some of it. Certainly it was my fault that Kubona was killed. But I suspect my father will be so happy that I'm home safe that he won't say too much. Queen Sanaya, on the other hand-«
«Your mother?»
«My-no, let's just call her my father's chosen wife.» The chill in Neena's voice was unmistakable.
«Not much love lost between you and Sanaya, I gather?»
«Not enough for her to really regret my being carried off and enslaved in Trawn. She-«Neena hesitated, as if uncertain how much she should say, then went on quickly. «She is only three years older than I. My father married her two years ago, in the hope of getting from her more children, sons above all.»
«You are King Embor's only heir?»
«There is my sister Jana. But she is only eleven, and my father does not care much for her. My mother died bearing her.»
«Is there a law against women ruling in Draad?»
«There is no law, but it has not happened for two centuries. There are many of the warriors and clan chiefs who would be happier under the rule of a man. They say that a man will be a better leader in war against Trawn.»
Blade frowned. «They are not thinking very clearly.»
Neena spat on the forest floor and slammed her fist against the bark of the tree. «They are damned fools! Trawn will move against us much sooner than they think. If Sanaya were to conceive tonight, we would have war before her son was able to walk. Even if he has time to grow to the age of a warrior, he will only die with the rest of us if he can do nothing about the stolofs.»
She sighed. «Ah, well, Sanaya will bear that son sooner or later. She comes from a line where the women are always fertile. Then perhaps she will have less time to intrigue with her friends or worry about me.»
There was everything Neena had promised in the camp, although the dried meat had developed worms. Blade was almost hungry enough to cut off the worm-infested portions and eat the rest, but not quite. Not when they would have fresh roast meat in a few more hours.
Neena's first concern, however, was final rites for Kubona, putting her body or at least her spirit to rest. «Those swine of Desgo's just left her lying like a piece of meat when they'd finished with her,» Neena said. There was a note of killing rage in her voice, so that even Blade felt uncomfortable for a moment. «The gods alone know what may have been by there since our fight. Well, we shall do our best.»
The place of the fight and Kubona's death lay another two miles away, on the far side of the thick stand of trees. Neena led the way swiftly through the shadows, and they reached the river bank by midafternoon.
The skeletons of two of the soldiers from Desgo's band still lay bleaching in grass now grown a foot high around them. Neena and Blade searched carefully, hoping to turn up Kubona's more delicate bones somewhere. They found nothing that could have been her. Even her clothing and weapons had vanished.
«Perhaps a party from Draad found her and took her back for burial,» said Blade.
Neena shrugged. «Perhaps. The odds are long against it. The hunters of Draad come forth more often and travel farther than those of Trawn. But the forests of Gleor are large, so it is still hard for them to find what they are not seeking.
«No, I think the beasts have given Kubona a forest burial. That is all she can hope to have, and we cannot hope to change what the gods have sent her.» Neena sat on the grass, cross-legged, her chin in her hands and her eyes cast down on the ground.
After a moment she smiled and stood up. «Perhaps it has been for the best after all. Kubona was a huntress and the daughter of many hunters. Her soul belonged to the open air and the great forests. Now her body does also. Perhaps the gods knew what they were doing.» She turned toward the patch of grass where Kubona had died. «Here we are, my comrade. Here we are, alive, to wish you peace now and avenge you when the chance comes.»
Neena was speaking so intensely that Blade had the uncomfortable feeling she was speaking to a real presence-or at least to a presence that was real to her. He did not believe in ghosts, or that anything in this sunlit clearing could do him and Neena any harm. Rather, he felt that he was an unwanted intruder on a farewell that ought to have been private.
Before Blade could move, Neena rose and turned to him. Her arms were still raised, but now they reached out toward him, beckoning him to come closer. As though pulled by invisible strings, Blade did so.
He came within Neena's reach, and her arms went around him. Her body swayed forward and pressed hard against his. She had embraced him and he had embraced her before, many times. It had always been an embrace that a sister might have given a brother, or a brother a sister. This time it was different. Weeks of captivity, weeks of endurance, the tension and violence of their escape, their trek through the forests of Gleor-bit by bit, all these things had forged a bond between Blade and Neena. Now they had the time, the place, and the strength to complete that bond.
Neena's hands crept down and around, to stroke the inside of Blade's thighs. His own hands slipped to the front of her tunic and began undoing the lacing. The leather opened; his fingers crept inside and slid around the superb curves of her small neat breasts, over her suddenly firm nipples. Neena's lips quivered, drifted open, pressed warmly and wetly against Blade's.
Blade finished undoing the lacing of her tunic and pulled it from her body. Now she was bare to the waist. He bent down, his lips joining his hands in roa
ming up and down her body, over throat, shoulders, breasts, the smooth, flat stomach. He kissed each nipple, felt them harden still further against his searching lips, heard Neena moan softly, deep in her throat.
He would have started on the lacing of her trousers then, but her hands got there first. She pushed her trousers down her long slim legs. They wadded and tangled around her ankles and caught on her boots. She pushed and shoved and heaved at them, half cursing, half laughing in frustration and passion and impatience all mixed together. Finally she threw herself on her back, arms spread wide, hair fanning out on the grass. She could raise her legs, but she could not spread them. They were locked together at the ankles by her tangled trousers as effectively as they had been by Lord Desgo's hobbling cords. She kicked furiously, tried to sit up, then fell over backward and lay there choking and gasping with laughter until she was too weak to even raise her head.
Blade stripped off his own loincloth and stood naked in the sunlight, staring down at Neena. Her eyes widened as she took in the whole magnificent maleness of his powerful body. He knelt, jerked off her boots with two swift motions that made her gasp, then slid her trousers off and threw them aside. Now her legs could slide apart in a single fluid motion.
In another equally fluid motion Blade was balancing himself on his arms above her. Neena's lips moved in wordless demands that he enter her, that they join. He held himself above her for another moment, until her hands reached up and grabbed his hair and beard. She jerked his head downward so hard that for another moment sharp pain almost drove away his desire.
Easily Blade lowered himself, gently but firmly he entered Neena. Her eyes widened until Blade could see the whites, then flickered shut. Her mouth opened in another, very different sort of gasp, then hungrily sought his again.
She was silent for a little while after that, but her body spoke more than loud enough. Her lips devoured his, her arms went around him and her nails raked up and down his back, her legs clamped tightly around him. She gripped him tightly in every way she could manage, by everything she could reach or touch or take into herself. She seemed to be afraid that if she loosened any part of her grip for a single moment, Blade would float away and their joining would be incomplete.