Deathsport
Page 4
He watched the horse move forward for a moment, then ran forward himself on soundless feet to the bottom of the slide, thence up the slide, without the displacement of a single stone, so fleet of foot was he, until he was on the edge of the cliff above the ravine itself.
His horse had now disappeared, even from his own sight, as he spotted the three men below him now, farther down the ravine in their ambush positions. He allowed himself the unwonted luxury of a small smile, knowing that he would surprise them more than they had intended to surprise him. He crouched down, coiling himself up like a human spring, then leapt forward and down, out into the space above his ambushers.
The rushing wind of his fall jerked the hood back from his face and allowed his great mane of hair and shaggy beard to fly free in the wind that his dive had created. His eyes were on fire with the light of the battle that was to come and, with his teeth bared, the cry of a Guide warrior welled up from deep within his very soul as he landed with an easy grace in the midst of the surprised men.
There was no single moment of hesitation in his smooth and fluid movements. He sprang up the moment he landed and whirled round, drawing his Whistler in one graceful ballet of movement. Before any of the three Enforcers could react enough to raise their dart guns, the great sword had done its charnel work. All that the men heard was the whistle of the great sword and then their screams of death were carried away through the hot air, up the bluff to where Ankar Moor could only wait in frustrated ignorance of the success or failure of his ambush.
Kaz Oshay swung round again, ready to leap on his horse as it rounded the bend, but another sound made him turn and this time he saw five more men dressed in the black uniforms of the Enforcers charging up the base of the ravine, the same strange weapons in their hands, poised at the ready to fire at him.
As he took a stance to wait for them, another lesson of the code sprang into his mind:
“It is only the fool who rushes into sacrifice.”
As they ran towards him, the men raised their weapons and fired, making him weave and dodge, as the strange little darts that they fired zipped past him to embed themselves uselessly in the sandstone wall of the gully. Then, as they came close to him, he made a leap that seemed to defy gravity itself, pushing himself upwards until he landed atop one of the rocky outcrops. Two similar jumps took him into the labyrinth of crags and gullies that were in the rocks above.
Once he was assured of his safety, after the jumps had taken him out of reach of his enemies, he replaced the Whistler in its scabbard and drew the anti-matter gun he kept at his belt. This was no time for close hand-to-hand combat, not until he understood the purpose of the strange weapons with which his enemies were attacking him.
He crouched down, listening to their movements as they tried to scale the rocks after him, climbing cautiously as they searched among the outcroppings. If his ears did not deceive him, the five he had seen had been joined by more enemies. If so, he was flattered that his enemies should think of him as so hard a man to take. The odds against him were growing and he readied himself for the fray:
“Be calm, be patient. All anger is held inside you.”
He remained where he was for the moment, perfectly still, his mind repeating the same instructions over and over again. From one corner of his eye he caught the sign of a slight movement down a nearby gully in the rock. He crouched down, spinning round in that direction and levelled the anti-matter blaster as his enemy came into cautious view, his own dart weapon at the ready.
Kaz fired and the Enforcer’s scream died in his throat as he was blasted up off the rock and out of existence in this world. Another sound came from behind him and he spun round again. Another shot and one more of his enemies was floating, atomised, through space for eternity.
But his defence had given away his position. The others would be able to locate him now, perhaps pin him down. He did not feel that he was in an easily defensible position. He ran down the gully that his first enemy had come up and jumped up and out into space, landing like a cat further down the ravine, all the time making towards the plain where his stallion would be waiting for him, now behind a lower crag, and, for the moment, relatively safe from his enemies.
Then he spotted a widening fissure in the rocks close to him and he ducked quickly down it and moved forward, running in parallel with the gully. In his mind there echoed more teaching from the code:
“Like the sand in the wind, keep moving, always keep moving.”
High on the ridges above, safely away from the disastrous line of battle, Ankar Moor was becoming impatient and angry. He was frustrated by being able to follow so little of the action below, but he had seen and heard enough to understand that his men were definitely on the losing side so far and he was cold with impotent rage that all his training still left them helpless against one lone man.
He was close to shrieking out his rage as he spoke into the small microphone suspended above the mouth slit in his mask:
“Now flush him out carefully. Do not charge him. If you charge in there after him, then you haven’t a chance. The only way to get him there is to kill him and I want him alive.”
He put the special field glasses back to his eye slits but Kaz Oshay was not in his line of vision.
The hunted man still moved cautiously forward, his back pressed against the solid crag, moving towards a point where the fissure split into two. That junction would be his point of decision. He halted in his progress, silent, his breathing shallow so as not to give him away. Without looking he was aware that a man was moving above him, but, as he made a sudden glance upwards, gun at the ready, he saw that the man could not yet see him or he the man. For the moment he would be safe if he continued his forward progress with the same caution that he had shown before.
He started to carry out this plan, then froze again as an Enforcer appeared at the cleft in the fissure ahead of him. There was an agonising moment of indecision, but Kaz knew that he must fire or be lost, the fight over, even though it would alert the man above him. He raised his weapon, keeping himself ready to spring. The Enforcer disappeared before he had seen the Guide, leaving just the remains of his scream of death hanging in the air.
From above, the other man cried out and leapt down towards him. Kaz Oshay swivelled round, crouched down on one knee and just managed to avoid the dart the man fired. He raised his own weapon and the man was vaporised before he hit the ground.
Now Kaz moved quickly forward to the cleft in the fissure. Ahead and below was the open ground of the plain and he was already able to see his proud grey stallion waiting for him, some distance out in the plain, on the flat away from the mouth of the canyon.
Behind him came the sounds of renewed pursuit and it took him no time at all to make his decision:
“Until a better place, a better time . . .”
With that thought from the code in his head, he ran forward and down, going out into the open and towards his waiting stallion. The men who were following him and trying to flush him out spotted him at once and he was forced to zig-zag, avoiding a hail of the deadly darts as he went swiftly towards the animal.
At last he was crossing the final piece of open ground, far ahead of them. And then tragedy struck. One of the Enforcers drew his anti-matter blaster and the proud beast suddenly reared on its hind legs, whinnied loudly, then disappeared forever from the solid world.
There was no time for sadness or regret in the mind of Kaz Oshay as he saw his only friend and trusted companion blasted into eternity. The only thought he could afford to have now was for his own safety. He continued his zig-zag run past the point where the animal had been only seconds before.
High on the crags, Ankar Moor could see the object of his hunt now. He stood up out of cover and shouted into the microphone:
“Machines, start up. Come out and take him now.”
Even at this great distance, Kaz Oshay caught the echo of the shouted words in his ear and paused for a second: Machines? It was
not a word he knew in the world of freedom and movement. The word itself he had heard before, but only in connection with the running of the Cities. Out here, it was not a word that had any meaning.
And then there came a great roar of sound and out from their hiding place came the Enforcers astride the great gleaming Death Machines that Sarnoff had built. The machines roared and surged forward, great roaring iron horses that Kaz Oshay had never seen the like of before, coming straight towards him, the men aboard them holding the same guns his former adversaries had fired.
Even as he stared at them in frozen amazement, the machines roared up the brow of a small hillock close to him and took to the air for a moment before landing and roaring forward again.
Suddenly, he was galvanised into action. He made a last minute desperate leap to pass over them, a greater leap than he had ever made before under the pressure of battle. But his reactions were just too late. The men raised their guns and fired at the swiftly ascending figure of their prey. This time their darts found their target and Kaz was enveloped in immediate unconsciousness, falling back down on to the sand.
As the Enforcers who were still left alive after their encounter in the gully raced up, their weapons at the ready, the four on the Death Machines roared to a halt, surrounding the inert form of their enemy.
An Enforcer sergeant dismounted from his huge metal steed and gave a quick order. At once, two of the survivors of the foot battle picked up Kaz Oshay the Guide and, carrying him gently, for they had orders not to damage him if it could be avoided, deposited him on the rear of one of the Death Machines, tying him down like a hunted and killed animal.
Only when this was done did the sergeant pay attention to the voice that was roaring into his transceiver and spoke into his own microphone:
“Yes, Sir.”
Ankar Moor was anxiously awaiting a report of success or failure:
“You’ve got him?”
“Yes, Sir, strapped down now, Sir.”
Ankar Moor was satisfied by the capture but not by the manner in which it had been accomplished:
“That was a miserable performance. How many of our men are lost?”
The sergeant made a quick tally:
“Seven, Sir.”
The leader was contemptuous:
“You are useless to me.”
The sergeant was used to such talk:
“Yes, Sir.”
But Ankar Moor had already broken off the transmission. The sergeant, relieved that he was not in for a longer roasting, rapped out his orders to the survivors. Hastily the Enforcers who were on foot took up passenger positions on the Death Machines and, when they were aboard, the journey back to their base at Helix City began.
High above them, Ankar Moor mounted his own machine. He wanted to be back in the City before any of the Guides were brought in. It had been a poor morning’s work and he could only hope that Polna and the other group who had gone out were going to have better luck. At least he had the satisfaction of not having lost any of the machines. They were in short supply and more valuable than men at the moment.
He had given Polna an easier assignment that his own. A trade caravan had left Helix City that morning for the lengthy journey to Triton. He knew that, just outside the area of the domes, the caravan would be joined by two Guides who had agreed to guard the traders on their journey. Perhaps Polna had already overtaken the column and captured it. He hoped and prayed so. He needed as many of the Guides as he could get for the next phase in the plan he and the Lord Zirpola had conceived.
Still, the man they had captured had been strong and good. He would make a good victim for the Death Sport games.
The column that formed the caravan en route to Triton was moving slowly down the bed of a wide canyon that went past the great cliff caves where many hundreds of the Mutants were reputed to dwell. It was a nerve-racking part of the journey. There were about twenty Statemen making the trip, each dressed in the jallaba-like robe that was the best wear for travel through the desert, offering as it did the best protection from the broiling sun. For many of the travellers, it was the first time they had ever left the confines of their home City and they were nervous of everything they saw in this vast, spacious world outside.
The column was going forward in silence, each man and woman in it watching the cave openings in the cliffs for any sign of a Mutant or a group who might attack them. Only two members of the column sat erect, proud and unafraid, on their magnificent stallions. One rode at the head of the column, the other brought up the rear. Both were Ranger Guides—and both were women. Their cloaks were white and they wore them with the hoods up.
Riding at the head of the column, tense in spite of her impression of calm as she watched the cliffs, for she knew that the Mutants were watching them, was Deneer. She was a tall, powerful, straight-backed young woman, with dark piercing eyes. Impatient that her line of vision was impaired by the hood, she let it fall back and shook out her proud cascade of blonde hair. She had a dazzling beauty.
At once there came to her a faint and strange sound that had been muffled by the folds of the cloak. It was a sound that none of the City Statemen in the party could yet hear, a far off whine, a sound that she could not remember ever having heard before.
Her first reaction was to glance up at the sky to see if she could detect any other sign of the coming of a Flash Wind, with the cloud of death it carried with it; that would mean the party would have to shelter by the cliffs, a dangerous situation with the Mutants about. There was no other sign that she could discern, but in that moment the sound became loud enough for her to be able to pinpoint its direction. Whatever threat it brought with it was coming at them from the rear of the column.
She lifted herself up in the saddle and turned to look towards the rear of the column and Adriann, the Guide who was escorting the column with her. Tall and rail-thin, Adriann locked eyes with her fellow Guide, took the message from her and shook her head imperceptibly to show that she was also unable to place the sound except in direction, but agreed that it was a sign for danger. There was little out in the wastelands that could not be explained and was for good.
Adriann was older than her fellow Guide Deneer. She was also a mother and her first thought was for the young child who rode by her side on a small pony. The child was a blonde miniature of herself, destined to become a Guide in her own right one day, but for the moment just her mother’s small child, as anxious and frightened as any young girl would be when hearing a strange sound she had never heard before.
Adriann felt her fear and leaned down to smile reassuringly at her:
“Karissa, it will be all right if you stay close to me.”
The little girl looked up at her mother with trusting eyes, then patted her pony’s neck as a form of self-comfort, for she had seen the troubled look on the older woman’s face.
At the head of the column, Deneer was still turned in the saddle, looking back hard down the canyon in the direction from which they had come. Abruptly, a decision taken, she wheeled her horse and trotted back down the line, her face a picture of calm assurance, as she rode by, to any of the Statemen who looked upon it. None of them could yet hear the strange sound and took nothing amiss. Their nervousness was still a concern for the possible threat from the cliffs.
She joined her fellow Guide at the rear of the column, smiling down at Karissa, who returned the smile shyly. As she came alongside, she pulled the jallaba aside a fraction to touch the hilt of her Whistler, as if just for luck, and Adriann returned the signal by doing the same. Karissa saw the action and knew what it meant, but her mother had assured her that everything would be well, so she maintained her lack of concern to all outward appearances.
Now the sound was loud enough for some of the Statemen to catch and those who heard it began turning their heads, then asking their neighbours to listen for it.
Deneer said:
“You do not recognise it?”
Adriann shook her head:
Deneer nodded:
“That must be it. It must be a machine.”
The noise was getting closer with every second that passed. Now it was like the insistent buzzing of a bee. Soon, whatever danger it gave portent of would be in sight. Time enough then to decide what action to take. All they could do for the moment was wait.
Others were waiting to find the source of the sound and what it might mean to them. At the entrance to one of the larger caves, high up in the cliffs that overlooked the caravan route, other beings had heard the dull hum and wondered if it was to be a danger to them. The leader of the tribe of Mutants to whom these great caves were home lay in a hollow of wind-worn rock at the entrance to the cave, watching the caravan of Statemen below. It was a small group only, but to the men who watched it, it represented food and comfort for a long time. Some of the travellers looked distinctly plump even from this distance.
The Mutant glanced round at his followers, twittering at them in a strange high-pitched tone, making the reed-like sounds that are the main form of communication between such people. Some of them have brains that are whole enough to allow them folk-memories of language, but most do not. Their lives were, as they are now, short and unpleasant and there was no need for them to assimilate anything more complicated.
The leader held his entitlement by virtue of his size and strength. He was by far the largest of those who crowded at the cave entrance, almost human in looks, in fact. The others were misshapen in one way or another, many of them with the blue broken skin of the Mutants of the North. But there was one characteristic that was common to them all, and indeed to all Mutants that were ever seen then or now—their eyes, which bulged from their sockets like great, watery eggs. They also shared another peculiarity—the double row of razor-sharp teeth from which the poisonous saliva oozed constantly.