by Джеффри Лорд
The man howled wordlessly and threw himself face down in the sand. Then, as Cayla stepped over toward him with the whip ready, he suddenly sprang up and lunged at her. One huge hand was already clutching at the hilt of her dagger when one of the guards whipped up his pike and hurled it like a spear straight at the officer’s back. It caught him just below the shoulder blades and drove clear through him and out his chest, narrowly missing Cayla’s leg as it did so. She jumped back as the man toppled forward and lay without a twitch.
«Good eyes and a good hand, there, sailor,» she said to the guard. «Two extra gold pieces for you from my personal share.» Two gold pieces, Blade knew, were enough to satisfy most of a sailor’s wants for the better part of a year. He was not surprised when the guard gaped and grinned and stammered his thanks.
Now the guards brought the last prisoner forward-the fort commander’s daughter, the only woman among the prisoners. Cayla’s expression as she watched the girl made Blade uneasy, and the silky note in her voice as she spoke made him swallow and wait for whatever was coming in a cold sweat.
He did not have long to wait. The girl’s name was Dynera, and now that her father was dead, she had no family left. None? No one who might pay a ransom?
«Please-I–I-no. My mother-she was descended from Count Prasin the Fourth. But she was an orphan. All I had was my f-f-father,» and she burst into tears.
Blade saw Cayla’s eyes flare at the mention of the Count and shuddered. Prasin the Fourth had been the greatest of all the persecutors of the Cult. The poor girl had just signed her own death warrant, and now the snake would strike.
«Prasin the Fourth? Indeed, child, you come from a high lineage! The present count-you are sure he will not consider a ransom, for your mother’s sake if not your own?»
«N-n-no. My mother’s parents were-were out of favor at c-c-court, and-«
«Then I say you lie! And I will prove it on your body!» Whap-crack the whip slashed across the girl’s face. She screamed and clapped her hands to her cheeks. Cayla stepped close until she loomed over the girl and glared down at her. «By the Law of the Woman’s Duel, you can prove that you are what you say by besting me in equal combat. We will even release you without ransom.» At those words, the girl looked up, with the beginnings of hope in her eyes. «Yes, freedom! Would you rather fight for it, or shall I have you spread-eagled here on the sand and turned over to my crew before you die?» The girl blanched and murmured:
«I will fight.»
«Good!» There was an unholy lust in that one word. «Your weapons?»
The girl looked around her, the expression in her eyes reminding Blade even more than before of a trapped bird. «I–I’ll take a sword.» Blade had to close his eyes for a moment to fight off the nausea. The girl had probably never handled any weapon more lethal than a fruit knife in her life. Yet here she was taking up a sword to fight one of the deadliest women Blade had ever seen. She would have no chance-no chance to do anything except provide a few minutes’ obscene pleasure for Cayla and the more loutish among the pirates.
Cayla did not put off her pleasure. One of the pirates threw the girl a sword and she picked it up and waved it a couple of times. Blade saw that she was quite as inexperienced as he had suspected. But then he remembered that sometimes the rank amateur, by doing the unexpected, can defeat the professional who is trained only in dealing with other professionals. Blade of course had no hope that with Cayla dead the girl would be released. Her death would still be slow and agonizing. But with Cayla dead, at least all her monstrous plans would fall with her, and his own situation would be much simpler.
Cayla did nothing to prepare herself for the fight beyond kicking off her boots and knotting a sweat band around her head. Then she stepped forward into the thirty-foot square of sand marked out with ropes strung from oars. From her side, the girl stepped forward, the sword held out in front of her as though it were a snake that might turn and bite her.
«Be you ready?» Cayla called out, in the formal Duel query.
The girl stammered, «R-ready.»
Cayla raised her weapons-the whip and the foot-long, razor-edged dagger. But she did not dart forward. Blade knew that if she had done so, she could have had the girl dead on the sand in a matter of seconds. She was going to play with the poor creature. His stomach churned, but he kept it under control by a great effort.
Now the girl rushed in, the sword swinging wide and whistling around. She had strong wrists, at least. But Cayla was cat-quick, ducking the wild stroke and coming up, not with the dagger but with the whip full force across the girl’s stomach. She gasped and jumped back.
Now Cayla came in, the dagger flashing up and out in a stroke deliberately timed to whistle past the girl’s cheek and rip her ear. Blood trickled again. Cayla danced aside from the girl’s wild return slash, darted in again, and this time the dagger slashed the shoulder of the girl’s blouse open without touching the skin below. The girl blushed as the blouse drooped down, half-baring one breast, but made no effort to strip the rest of the blouse off. Instead, she rushed Cayla again, the sword fanning the air in front of her. The pirate woman used neither dagger nor whip this time. She dropped backward onto her hands and kicked out with both feet as the girl came within range. Both feet slammed into Dynera’s stomach and the girl gasped explosively and sat down with a thump. Before she could rise, Cayla was up again, pinning her sword arm to the ground with one foot. Cayla reached down and laid the whip across the hand holding the sword. It opened and the sword lay on the sand. Cayla kicked it away without taking her eyes off the girl.
After that, Blade’s memory stopped recording the details of the fight. All he remembered afterwards was that it went on and on and on, with far too many of the pirates cheering wildly. It went on until the girl lay in the sand naked, bloody, dead.
Cayla stood up, threw her dagger and whip down on the bloody sand, and came toward Blade. «Well fought,» he managed to croak. He could not have reached out to her or touched her to become King of Royth. He barely managed to avoid vomiting until he had made his way some fifty paces into the forest and was out of sight of the beach and the people on it.
He was completely empty, not only internally but emotionally, when he got to his feet and became conscious of somebody standing behind him. His sword was out and he was whirling around to strike before he recognized Tuabir.
«Well, Master Blahyd. Our lady fiend has had her fun for this trip. Your own lady is safe for the moment.»
«My lady?»
«Aye, the Lady Alixa. If you’re watchful of Cayla when she casts an eye on Alixa, you’ll see what’ll give you no pleasure. And one of these days you may well see her challenging your lady to use her the way she used that poor girl today.»
The idea would have made Blade sick again, if there had been anything left inside him. As it was, he only shook his head helplessly.
«Ah well, it’ll be some time before Cayla wants her fun again. Maybe between now and then you can think of something to do about it.»
CHAPTER 12
The obvious thing to do about Cayla was to kill her. Blade thought about that all during the four weeks it took the squadron to beat its way back to Neral. It was a tedious and grueling trip, the last week spent fighting against almost continuous westerly gales which several times blew them out of sight of the island. When the squadron finally landed, too sea-tossed and weary to properly appreciate the welcome laid on for them, Blade was no nearer a solution than he had been the night the squadron sailed from its refuge.
The problems were mostly caused by Cayla’s own sharp wits. She had noticed more of Blade’s reaction to the duel than he would have had her notice. The night afterwards she calmly informed him that of course he could kill her any time he wished; and perhaps he would get away with it. She was not so popular among the Captains that they would really exert themselves to catch her murderer, particularly if the circumstances were uncertain. But she did have a respectable number of friends and al
lies, and these would ensure that Alixa and Brora both died soon and unpleasantly, whatever happened to her. And she might challenge Alixa and put her down in a way that would make Dynera’s death look pleasurable by comparison, if she judged Blade was plotting against her.
If Blade had only had himself to worry about, he would probably have run Cayla through on the spot and taken his chances. But he could not and would not throw away his companions’ lives along with his own, so he held his hand and his peace. But he made no pretense of being able to share Cayla’s bed after the duel. He would much rather have slept in a nest of cobras.
When they finally reached Neral the situation worsened. Perhaps Cayla had not been popular before, but now that she had conceived and carried out the most daring and profitable raid the Brotherhood had to its credit for the past three years, her stock soared. So did Blade’s, fortunately. He had, after all, fought heroically and led the counterattack on the Tramian infantry that had saved the whole expedition. But the lion’s share of the glory was Cayla’s, and Blade saw far too many of those who had previously avoided her begin to cluster around what they saw to be a rising star in the Brotherhood. She was now much closer to being unassailable.
Blade had ample leisure to contemplate this fact, because winter gales were closing the seas to honest commerce and pirate raiding alike. It had been more than two generations since the half-legendary Dystronos of Cral led five ships across the winter seas in the teeth of wind and snow to plunder shipping in the very High Port of Royth itself. On the occasional calm and clear day, ships would indeed make their way out through the passage to exercise their men at the oars and help them keep their sea legs, but none went out of sight of Neral. Even with this precaution, two galleys attempting a night passage of the reefs to avoid being caught at sea by a gale took the ground and were pounded to pieces, drowning better than a hundred and fifty men.
Many of the pirates spent their winters in debauchery, spending whatever gains they had made during the season of raiding and inevitably ending up the next spring penniless, if not in fact many silver bits in debt to the brothels and shopkeepers. Blade, however, spent his enforced leisure maintaining his proficiency in arms, memorizing charts and sailing instructions for all parts of the Ocean, and, very rarely, roaming about the northern end of the island. He had to face the fact that the only way to safety for him and his companions lay in escaping from Neral entirely. By the time spring came, he meant to be ready.
And it was important for more than the three of them to make their escape in spring. All the evidence he had gathered and put down in a secret set of ciphered notes told him that Indhios’ plots were going to come to fruition next spring or summer as well, and he had to reach Royth and carry the warning, somehow.
Seeing that sharing her bed revolted him, and recognizing that sex had never given her much influence over him in any case, Cayla consented to his taking quarters of his own. He was not yet ranked as a Captain (although she planned to have him promoted in time for the spring voyages), so Blade took a three-room apartment in one of the more expensive boarding houses on the terrace below. Cayla visited him occasionally to take a cup of hot wine and enlarge on her plans for the future.
At other times, Alixa came to him. It had come hard for this sensual young noblewoman to sleep alone when Cayla had dragged Blade off for her own purposes and pleasures. Now, wasting no further time in jealousy after her initial flare of rage, she returned to him, visiting his quarters as often as she could find Brora, Tuabir or some trustworthy sailor chosen by them to escort her through the dark streets of the pirate city. She never stayed more than an hour or two, for Blade was by no means certain that Cayla was not in fact giving both him and Alixa enough rope to hang themselves. Their lovemaking was intense and sometimes exultant, but always crammed into too short a time for either of them. Gradually, Blade came to wonder whether Cayla had in fact abandoned her claims to him as her Companion.
Then came a night in the dead of winter. «Dead» indeed-as Blade stood at the window and stared out into the darkness, it seemed that the whole world was in fact dead. No moon, no stars, no wind or snow, nothing moving below in the street. Only a single yellow puddle of light from a lamp hanging from someone’s front door. It would be easy for Alixa to reach the house, and once she was there they would finally have the whole night ahead of them. Blade was much too lusty a man to tolerate having his pleasures in rationed installments.
He was so busy anticipating his pleasures that he almost ignored the knock on the door. Even then, he had to move down the stairs cat-footed to avoid waking the other mates and factors and shopkeepers who shared the house. Opening the door, he saw Alixa’s face grinning into his from her blue hood, and behind her Brora, his face strained, his eyes roving watchfully, frost on his brown beard and hair. He took Alixa’s outstretched hand and led her up the stairs, Brora following at a discreet distance, his hand never far from the hilt of his cutlass.
She was urgent and tumultuous in her lovemaking that night, more than ever before, gasping and crying out with each climax, and so stimulating Blade every time she felt him flagging that he reached new heights of his own. In time, it was sheer exhaustion that led them to collapse, limp and sweat-glazed, amid the tangled sheets.
Sleep was just beginning to drift over Blade when he heard a rattle and a bang from above. Somebody or something was climbing down through the roof hatch. He reached out of bed to pluck his sword from the floor and his dagger from its boot sheath, but did not light the lantern, murmuring to Alixa, «Don’t move.»
Feet sounded on the attic stair. He heard Brora draw his sword and step in front of the door; then the attic door burst open with a crash. A moment later the door into his own rooms flew inward off its hinges. Before it had hit the floor, Blade had rolled out of the bed on the far side, so that he was invisible from the doorway.
Cayla charged into the room with a cutlass flashing in one hand and her whip cracking in the other. «Whore!» she shouted, with a note of indignation in her voice that sounded grotesquely false to Blade. «Bed with my Companion, will you? Accept my Challenge, or die here in your foul bed!» Alixa played her part well, moaning and shivering wordlessly as she clasped the bedclothes about her. Cayla darted across the room, raising her whip, and as she did so Blade sprang to his feet and slashed at her in a deadly overhand stroke that should have split her like a salted fish.
Instead, his feet tangled in the fallen blankets as he rose, throwing him off balance, and the sword whistled harmlessly down past Cayla and hit the floor with a tremendous clang. Cayla sprang back, and Esdros, with more courage than craft, charged in. Blade had only to raise the sword point and let the young Captain spit himself on it. He went down with a gurgle and a scream. Blade jerked his sword free and turned to face Cayla.
But that lady saw no place in her plans for a fair duel against Blade. She backed out of the door at almost the same furious pace at which she had entered, Blade hard after her. As he charged through the door the two bravos who had Brora trapped in an angle of the corridor turned to face him, not fast enough to do themselves much good but fast enough for their mistress to vanish down the main stairs. Blade’s massive fist smashed into the face of the first bravo, hurling him backward onto the other’s sword. Both went down, and before either could rise Brora had thrust twice, and both stayed down.
«Master Blahyd,» said the sailor, «I think we were best thinkin’ to take our leave.» Blade nodded.
«Brora, go and barricade the stairs to keep anyone from coming up until we’re ready to leave.» He darted into the bedroom. «Alixa. Put on some warm clothing and get stout shoes and a dagger.» She scrambled out of bed and began rummaging through his clothing chests. As tall as she was, she could wear his clothing with little difficulty.
A new uproar of feet and voices sounded on the stairs below as the rest of the tenants woke up and took notice. Blade heard Brora’s voice bellowing, «An affair of the Brotherhood! Send for a Captain Councill
or!» Sending for one of the Brotherhood’s ruling body as a trouble-shooter would effectively keep prying eyes and ears busy for a few more minutes. Blade joined Alixa at the clothing chests and began his own hurried dressing.
They left the house through the same roof hatch that Cayla and her party had used, dropping down to the street level as soon as they had reached the next roof. Once the alarm was given, anybody seen clambering across the rooftops would be a marked man, and they could move faster along the streets anyway. So far there was no sign of alarm-the streets were as dark and silent as before.
Blade gambled on their having at least a few minutes before the hunt began and took the most direct route up the slope to the road that led toward the Mountain. If they passed safely over the Mountain and reached the northern end of the island, they would at least have room to run and dodge.
They passed the sentries at the entrance to the Captains’ street without difficulty, walking slowly, like any three sailors returning from a carousal. Blade and Alixa kept their hoods pulled low over their faces, which were better known than Brora’s.
A long flight of stone stairs led from the Captains’ street up the slope to the rim of the great bowl and the road around its rim. As they climbed higher, the great sullen dark mass of the port and harbor spread out farther and farther below them, faint yellow and red specks marking where a party or dockyard work was going on late.
They were more than two-thirds of the way up the stairs when suddenly half a dozen smoky orange fires began spitting sparks in the darkness below, and twenty furiously beaten gongs began to clamor. It became a greater effort than before to hold to walking pace, but all the more important. They still had to get past the sentries at the top of the stairs, a least, while attracting a minimum of attention.