by Джеффри Лорд
Blade hefted the short-handled axe, assessing the balance. Perhaps it wasn't used for throwing, but that didn't mean it couldn't be. The balance seemed right. He took two steps back, to give himself room then his arm rose and swung back. The warrior rushed forward, Blade's arm also snapped forward, and the axe flashed through the air and squarely into the warrior's chest. Its weight and the razor-sharp edge buried it deep. Blood oozed from around it. The warrior stood for a moment as if turned to stone, his eyes staring blankly down at the thing in his chest. Then his knees gave and he plunged forward on his face. Blade stepped forward, picked up the fallen man's axe, and again faced his enemies.
Some of the warriors were still cursing angrily, but others were muttering uncertainly. Blade's quick disposal of four of them had certainly made an impression. Even the ones who were shaking their fists at him did so from a safe distance, and he did not notice any of them moving in to the attack.
Then the chief priest joined the warriors. There was nothing to distinguish him from the other priests except his manner-but when he gave orders, they were obeyed. Blade could not make out what the man was saying, but he could once again recognize the tone. Crisp and angry, but well controlled, the priest was telling the warriors not to be such children as to let one man frighten them off. As the priest went on, Blade saw some of the warriors begin to edge in toward him. No doubt those were the ones who wanted whatever glory lay in being the first to obey the priest's orders. Well and good, thought Blade. Let them win all the glory they want. And he stepped forward to meet them.
He was up with the first man while the other's eyes were still widening in surprise. Then the eyes went blank and closed forever as Blade's sword slashed down through a pitifully clumsy guard, deep into the man's neck. His head dangling on one side, he fell. Blade sprang forward, over the spreading pool of blood, feinted with his sword at the second man, then chopped his left arm off with the axe. The man screamed and reeled back, raising his spouting arm high. Several of his fellows found the sound and sight too much for their fragile new courage, and backed away. The priest's angry shouts rose higher still, and Blade could now make out his words.
«You are picked warriors sworn to serve Ayocan, sworn to obey his priests. But one man stands against you. One man, who has polluted the sacred shores and broken the trees of life and death and slain your comrades among the Holy Warriors! One man, who will make a mighty sacrifice to Ayocan!»
The priest's words made Blade understand his situation better but like it much less. So they were going to sacrifice him to Ayocan-whoever or whatever that was. Did that mean they were going to try to capture him alive? Possibly, but he couldn't count on it.
Those thoughts ran through his mind in seconds and left him clear-headed and alert, ready to continue his attack. The warriors who had been backing away from around him stopped at the priest's words. But Blade was upon them before they could get up the nerve to launch their own attack.
He broke their line by throwing his axe again. This time his target got his sword up in time. The axe struck the bronze blade with a terrific clang, glanced off, sailed into the air, and smashed into a priest's face. Not the chief priest's, unfortunately, only one of his underlings. The man screamed and collapsed, clawing at his smashed and bloody face. The chief priest gave a scream of quite another kind and jumped up and down in a burst of rage.
«Take him, you pigs! Take him, you turtle turds! Take him, take him, take him!» The man's face was dark with fury. For a moment Blade wondered if he were going to fall down in a fit.
But the chief priest did not fall down. Then the warriors attacked and Blade had no more attention to spare for the man. The warrior that had deflected the axe came at him, whirling both sword and axe like the arms of a windmill. That was more spectacular than useful. Blade launched a feint at the man's left side, then whipped his own sword high over his head and brought it down on the man's right shoulder. His arm half-severed, the warrior staggered. Once more Blade plucked an axe out of its owner's failing hand. This time he swung it hard to smash in the man's skull.
The man behind the first warrior tried a slash at Blade, but his sword would not reach. Blade's would, and the warrior reeled back, dropping sword and axe and clutching his stomach to keep the gaping wound there from spilling out all his guts. Blade whirled as he heard footsteps behind him, whirled fast enough to deflect a sword blow with his axe and slash his attacker across the chest. The cut was long but not deep enough to kill, and the man kept on coming. His axe whistled down at Blade's head, but Blade's arm came up and smashed the attacker's elbow, so that his hand opened and let the axe fall. A second later Blade's sword slashed again, deep into the man's thigh, and this time he did stop and go down onto the blood-soaked ground.
The extra time taken in killing the last warrior had let several others get around Blade's flanks. He had to back away again. He realized as he did that if these warriors could ever launch a mass rush at him, they would have him. Did they have some tradition of fighting one at a time, or did they want to wear him down and take him alive? Blade hoped it was the second. If they took him prisoner, he could always look for a chance to escape. But that was no reason to not go on making things expensive for them. A quick slash at a warrior who was crowding too close, and another man down with a leg streaming blood. The chief priest howled again.
Slash with the sword, lopping off limbs, opening chests and stomachs. Deflect blows with the axe, or use it to smash skulls and collarbones into bloody fragments. Scream war cries that made some of the enemy stop and stare-stop and stare for a few seconds too long. Hear the chief priests gibbering with rage as the Holy Warriors of Ayocan went down one by one, sometimes two by two, to litter the ground.
Before long Blade could no longer distinguish one exchange of blows from another, or keep track of his opponents. In spite of his iron endurance, his breath was rasping in and out of his sweat-soaked chest. His sword seemed to weigh a hundred pounds and his axe fifty. One man could not kill two hundred, no matter how much better he might be than any one of them. The enemy's warriors saw him beginning to flag and slow, and rushed in, still one or two at a time. They were too bold and Blade was still too fast, and more dead or wounded men joined the ones already on the ground. Blade stood with a circle of dead around him, in some places piled two or three deep. He could not get out of that circle any more, for the Holy Warriors were all around him. But when they tried to get at him, they were slowed by having to climb over the bodies of their comrades. And no matter how little they were slowed, it was still too much. The voice of the hysterical chief priest grew hoarse and raw.
But that voice finally pushed the warriors forward in a mass rush at Blade. So many of them came forward at once that they got in each other's way. Some stumbled over the bodies and Blade slashed at others, but there were still too many of them coming at him. They pressed in around him, now swinging the flats of their swords and axes. This cost them more men as Blade leaped and whirled and struck with the last of his strength. But eventually an axe blow smashed across his right wrist, and his sword slipped out of numb fingers.
Now a warrior rushed in on Blade's disarmed right side before he could shift his axe, and grappled Blade around the waist. Blade had enough strength left to bring his knee up into the man's groin. He screamed and jerked, but clung. Blade raised his left arm, to smash the man down with his axe, but a dozen hands clutched at the raised arm and pulled it down. Blade jerked and kicked and bellowed like a bull. Then an axe head smashed down on his skull, cold and hard and brutal. He sagged back into the arms reaching to grab him and hold him, as everything around him swirled away into blackness.
Chapter 4
When Blade awoke, he was lying on his back on a cool damp surface that swayed under him. Above him was solid blackness. For a moment he had the unnerving thought that he had gone blind from the blow on the head. Then he realized that he was lying under a heavy canopy in the bottom of one of the canoes. He could hear the
splash-clunk of the paddles and the high sing song of somebody calling the stroke.
He felt as though he had been run through a cement mixer filled with large rocks. His head ached, his wrists and ankles were bound with rope tied so tight it gouged the flesh, and he had purple bruises and red welts all over his body. He was also still naked. But at least he was alive. The Holy Warriors and priests of Ayocan had captured him, and now they were taking him to be sacrificed to their god.
Several hours passed, with the sound of the paddles and the calling of the stroke continuing without a break. Blade began to feel uncomfortably hungry and thirsty. More hours passed, and then Blade heard the stroke speed up. The motions of the canoe became livelier. In fact, they became so lively that Blade rolled around in the damp wood of the bottom, adding new bruises to the ones from the battle of the night before.
Before he could wonder for very long what was going on, the stroke-caller shouted out a single sharp cry, and the paddles suddenly stopped. A moment later a long rolling, grating sound came from underneath, and the whole canoe shook and vibrated as it ran up on the shore. Blade slid forward on his bare rear end for several feet, ending up with a number of splinters stuck in his skin and his feet sticking out from under the canopy.
Now that they had reached land, Blade suddenly became the center of attention. Half a dozen warriors snatched off the black canopy, grabbed him, and hoisted him out of the canoe. They lowered him onto a litter of dark blue leather slung between heavy carved wooden poles. Then a contingent of priests shouldered their way through the crowd of Holy Warriors and surrounded the litter. At a shouted signal eight of the priests hoisted Blade up on their shoulders and set off at a trot.
Hands and feet still bound, Blade bounced about wildly in the litter. Several times he wondered if he were going to bounce right out and fall to the ground, adding more bruises to his battered frame. But gradually the priests got in step, or perhaps the path smoothed out underfoot. Now Blade was able to get a better look at his surroundings.
All nine canoes were drawn up on another gravel beach, this one at the end of a long, narrow bay. Bay? Blade took a second look. To his left stretched the wide blue horizon of the lake. But to his right the «bay» ran off into the plain in a winding, narrow channel that seemed to go on endlessly until it went out of sight. It looked more like the entrance to a river flowing out of the lake.
The canoes were drawn up at one end of the beach in a close-packed line. The warriors were still climbing out and gathering in ragged clusters at the bow of each canoe. The priests who were not carrying Blade's litter had gathered separately in front of a cluster of low, blue wooden sheds, painted with more white signs. From a hole in the largest shed's roof, a thick column of yellow-orange smoke rose straight into the calm air, pale in the bright daylight.
Blade felt the litter begin to tilt under him again and heard the priests begin to breathe harder: He looked ahead, and saw that they were climbing up the side of a broad conical mound. Although it was made of the same dreary blue-gray earth and stone as the rest of the plain, its regular outlines told Blade that it was artificial. As they climbed higher up its side, Blade could not help being amazed by its size. Five hundred feet wide at the base and at least a hundred feet high from top to bottom. The amount of labor involved in building this thing must have been incredible. He wondered what purpose it served. He could see only a small hut made of stone slabs on top of the mound, hardly large enough to house a self-respecting peasant.
Atop the mound, the priests lowered the litter to the ground and stood unashamedly gasping for breath. One of them went over to the door of the stone hut. A large set of chimes was hanging there, made of slabs of polished stone three feet long and a good six inches thick. The priest picked up a wooden mallet with a padded leather head and began beating out a complicated rhythm on the hanging stones. Blade was surprised to hear the stones giving off a solid reverberating brrrroooom when struck, instead of merely a dull clunk.
The priest reached the end of his rhythm and began repeating it. Before he was halfway through the repetition, the door of the hut slid open, the bronze reinforced stone slab rumbling aside on polished bronze runners. Two more priests came out of the hut, blinking like owls as they stepped into the full daylight. Along with the priests came a powerful blast of hot air, laden with a bewildering and disagreeable mixture of odors. Smoke, cooking, rotting garbage, human filth, unknown spices all poured out together, making Blade's nostrils wrinkle in protest and disgust. The priests, however, seemed not to notice it. The eight litter-bearers, who had caught their breaths now, came over to the litter and again hoisted it into the air. As they carried Blade into the hut, he got a better look at the white-painted carvings on its walls. All showed the same thing, in various poses and sizes-the figure of a man, with the head and wings of a bat. Ayocan? thought Blade. Then the smelly darkness inside the hut swallowed him up.
Before Blade's eyes recovered, the litter tipped up violently as the priests plunged down a steep flight of stairs-at such an angle, in fact, that Blade almost sailed right off the litter. He had momentary visions of plummeting down the dark staircase and reaching the bottom long before the priests-and breaking every bone in his body in the process.
They reached the bottom of the stairs safely, just as Blade's eyes adjusted to the dimness around him. The stairs came out into a long vaulted corridor, dimly lit by oil lamps hung on bronze brackets set in the walls. The lamps burned with the now familiar yellow-orange tinge, their oily smoke blackening the stones and adding to the thickness of the air. At intervals along the walls stood reliefs and statues of the man-bat, all painted white.
The priests carried the litter down the corridor at their usual brisk trot, then swung left into a smaller passage and along it. In a few moments they came up to another stoneslab door. This one rumbled open as they approached it, without any signal.
In the section of the warren beyond this door the ceilings were still lower, the light still dimmer, the stonework still blacker with grease and strange hideous molds, and the smells thicker than ever. They were thick enough to make Blade gag, although the priests still seemed to take no notice. And then he stiffened, as his nose detected a fleeting but sinister whiff of an unpleasantly familiar odor.
It was the sap of the bushes by the lake, the sap with its mysterious narcotic properties, the sap of the bushes that the priests of Ayocan had gathered in such numbers. Somewhere in this underground warren it was being stored or used in large amounts. For what? There were any number of things a religious cult might want a narcotic for, some of them almost innocent, many others not at all so. Considering how the priests and warriors of the cult of Ayocan behaved, Blade doubted if their uses for anything or anybody would be very innocent.
There were sounds as well as smells filling this part of the cult's-temple? headquarters? monastery? Blade didn't know, and wasn't entirely sure he really wanted to know. But he was determined to find out as much as he could, even if he wasn't going to live long enough to get any use out of it. The habit was too deeply ingrained in him by twenty years of Home Dimension field missions and Dimension X trips. And there was always the possibility that he might find out something that would help him live longer.
So he listened carefully to the sounds floating through the smelly darkness, and tried to identify them. The clink of chains, the tramp of guards' feet, the sound of slops being emptied, occasional human voices. Some of the voices were chanting in the familiar rhythm of prayers to Ayocan, some were barking orders-and some were sobbing, moaning, and even screaming in rage or pain or despair. Blade felt a chill at those last sounds. The purposes of the priests of Ayocan definitely did not sound innocent.
Now they were passing doors made of bronze or stout wooden bars instead of stone slabs, with heavy cross-bars and ropes holding them closed. As the priests swept the litter along the corridor, Blade saw what lay behind those doors. Like the screams, the sights gave him an unpleasant chilling sens
ation.
Men, chained to the walls, but jerking at their chains, staring wide-eyed, drooling and moaning like idiots. Were they idiots, or were they drugged? Other men-no, not quite men, eunuchs, with thick wads of once white bandages showing that they had become eunuchs only recently. Some of them were boys who had never even been men, and now never would be. Still other men, chained only by the leg, screaming and hurling themselves against man-shaped dummies, hitting them, kicking them, slashing them with swords. Some of these last men wore masks that concealed their whole heads, white masks in the shape of a bat's head.
And women. They were the worst. Most of them were young, most of the young ones were at least pretty, but none of them showed any life in their eyes or in the way they sat. Naked and chained, they sat or lay slumped against the wall, eyes staring blankly at nothing. Unlike the men, most of whom were matted with grime and filth, the women were all as clean as new-laid eggs, their hair long and well kept. But their ankles showed the scars of their chains, and some of their backs showed deep, half-healed welts from savage beatings. Blade did not know why the priests of Ayocan saw fit to maintain this private inferno of theirs. But every bit of it that he saw worsened his impression of them.
Finally his bearers came to a portion of the corridor where the ceiling was so low that the damp stones were sailing past only a few inches above Blade's nose. Then they stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a wooden bar clinking against metal. The litter moved forward again a few feet. Finally the priests set it down. Blade managed to move his head enough to realize that he was in a cell, whitewashed floor and ceiling and walls all around him except at the entrance. That entrance was closed by a hinged grill of stout bronze bars.
Seven of the priests hastily backed away from the litter and out through the arched door of the cell. The eighth, obviously as nervous as a snake charmer trying to charm his first snake, bent over the litter. He held a long-bladed bronze knife in his left hand, and with it he attacked the bindings at Blade's wrists and ankles. Eventually the priest worked his way through those bindings. Then quickly he shoved the knife in his belt and sprang back through the door before Blade could move a muscle. The grill swung shut and a stout wooden cross-bar dropped into place with a solid slunk.