by David Drake
"The lizardmen?" asked Dennis. "I hadn't expected that. There aren't any trails leading to Rakastava—quite unusual, you know."
He grimaced internally, knowing that he was emphasizing his status as the only expert on the jungle in the room—in order to keep from open embarrassment at his lack of sophistication in the ways of this wonderful place.
"That is," he amended for his conscience' sake, "no trails by the way I came."
"Well, we do some trading," Conall continued, looking more worried than Dennis' mild comment seemed to call for. "Well. In any case, we have a herd that we like to pasture outside the walls. But, ah, none of us here are really comfortable in the—"
Conall's face grew pale as he remembered something beyond what was before him in the room. "None of us feel comfortable outside Rakastava, that is. If you think you'd be able to do this, Prince Dennis, lead the herd to its pastures...?"
"Of course," the youth said. "For that matter, I can milk them, if you'd like me to. We had some goats in Emath, though cows only rarely for the problem of fodder."
There was a catch, but no one in Rakastava was going to tell him what it was. He'd learn for himself.
Between Aria's warmth close to his right elbow, and Gannon smirking from beyond the king, there was no way Dennis was going to permit himself to sound frightened.
"Fine, then, that's settled," said Conall. The older man seemed relaxed for the first time since Dennis had seen him. "First thing in the morning, then. Perhaps my daughter will point you on the way?" He leaned forward to look at Aria.
"I will not," said the princess toward her plate of food.
"I'll be the boy's guide, then," said Gannon. "First thing in the morning, princeling."
"I'll be ready," said Dennis.
For anything, his mind added and his eyes promised.
CHAPTER 29
The wall opened into a door. Dawnlight beyond looked like a curtain in contrast to the pure radiance from the walls of the cow byre. The cows began to lurch forward in the one-at-a-time, dominoes-falling, manner of their kind.
"Well, there's your trail," Gannon said. His voice sounded thick, because he was holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. "Just follow it. I'm getting out of this stinking place."
The large, low room in which the cows were stabled was as clean as every other part of Rakastava, though the odor of the animals permeated the air. Dennis blinked at the King's Champion, trying to decide whether the man was serious or just flaunting his "greater culture."
Gannon certainly didn't look well; but the dinner of the night before was turning into a morose drinking party when Dennis left it to sleep away the weariness of the jungle. Perhaps the smell of living things turned Gannon's stomach, but the cloyingly sweet wine the champion slurped down might have more bearing on the way he felt now.
"Drink brings all manner of illness to the body," Chester said primly.
Gannon snatched the kerchief away from his lips. "What did you say?" he blazed at Dennis.
"Is there good water to drink out there?" the youth said calmly as the cows shouldered their way by the men. There didn't seem to be any point in explaining that Chester was more than a mobile decoration; and anyway, the knowledge wouldn't make Gannon less angry about the comment.
"How would I know?" Gannon muttered, slightly mollified. "The cows eat and drink, I suppose."
He looked again at Dennis, realizing suddenly that the youth carried only his sword. "That is..." Gannon said. "That is—someone will bring your lunch out to you. Yes."
Dennis was cold with the certainty that something was wrong. His elbows pressed his new garments tightly to his ribs. "That won't be necessary," he said. "I'm used to the jungle, you know."
His eyesight blurred despite the clarity of the artificial light. It would feel good to be out in the fresh air and daylight.
"None of you really do anything, do you?" Dennis said, voicing the insight that had suddenly surprised him.
"Don't be a fool, boy!" Gannon snapped. "We all have our duties. I'm here with you, aren't I?"
"Yes," the youth said. "But you're courtiers—not traders or fishermen or anything. And it's not even for a real king, for Conall. You're courtiers for Rakastava itself."
Gannon's face grew still. His right hand dropped to his swordhilt and lifted the weapon enough that polished steel glinted above the lip of the scabbard. The handkerchief, caught between hand and pommel, fluttered absurdly.
Dennis balanced himself on the balls of his feet. His hand didn't move to his own great sword, but he could dive away to the right if Gannon attacked and then—
Gannon shot his weapon back home in its sheath. His lifted his hand, noticed the kerchief—and flung it aside in displaced fury. "Don't talk about what's not your business, boy!" he said. "I warn you."
"Fine," Dennis said, turning and putting his hand on the warm, shaggy flank of the last of the herd. It bleated in bovine surprise, but there was nowhere to go except forward at the speed of the animal ahead. "I'll be back at nightfall, then."
Chester followed Dennis. If the King's Champion tried to say anything further, his words were lost as the door flowed shut behind them.
Dennis did feel better outside. It was as though the huge mass of Rakastava had been pressing on his chest all the time he was in the city. Beneath all the magic and luxury lay a tension that was concealed until he got beyond the range of its power.
But the folk of Rakastava never stepped more than a few yards from their palace-city.
"If you trust your enemy," Chester said, "you will curse the result in the end."
"I don't trust him," Dennis said. He shivered in the warm air. "Chester, I don't trust any of them. Except maybe... The girl seems to be different. Nicer, in a way...?"
Chester said nothing.
"Don't you think?" Dennis insisted.
"It is through woman that both good and evil came to mankind," the robot quoted.
"All right, all right," Dennis said. "It's not something that you can do for me."
He rubbed Chester's carapace with his knuckles; the curve of a tentacle caressed the back of his hand.
There were forty cows and a dozen calves in the herd; all of them short-horned and white with black markings. The way to the pasture was unmistakeable: the beasts had trampled a path through the jungle.
The trail was muddy, green with droppings, and only a foot wide on the ground. Higher up, the cows' wide hips and rib cages had worn the vegetation away to a comfortable distance.
Among the familiar plants was a vine that Dennis didn't remember having seen before. It had a thin, purplish stem; small leaves; and broad, black-pointed thorns. He kept a careful eye out for strands that had crept near enough to snag him—but though the vine was common just off the trail, it didn't come threateningly close.
Dennis laughed. "I suppose if I tear up these clothes, the cabinet will give me another set," he said.
"It is not for your clothes you should be cautious, Dennis," Chester said, "but rather for yourself."
"Oh, I'll heal too," the youth remarked gaily. It felt good to be out of—out of sight of, even—the brown pile of Rakastava.
Dennis began to whistle a tune; the tune the tavern girl had been singing when he passed on the way to get the Founder's Sword.
The pasture, a broad stretch of sunlit grassland, was as obvious as the path leading to it.
Dennis had never seen anything like it. There were grassed plots in Emath Village, jealously guarded by their owners—and generally of approximately the same dimensions as a doorway. Beyond those small holdings, greenery meant the jungle rather than grass.
Here was grass on the scale of the jungle: a strip a quarter-mile wide that undulated on out of sight between walls of trees and clogging brambles. The cows had already cropped away a broad swath close to the trail from Rakastava, but the portion a few hundred yards beyond was knee-high and a lush green that looked delicious even to Dennis.
Scat
tering now, the herd ambled to its food—each cow choosing the tuft that its great brown eyes thought most tasty. They let Dennis and Chester come within a few feet of them—if the companions walked slowly. A closer approach sent the cows bolting some yards further, to stare back doubtfully at the unfamiliar figures.
Dennis paused, breathing fresh air and feeling the direct sun. It was going to be scorching here at midday, when the dew burned off and the light plunged straight down with no shadows.
He frowned at the black and white backs straggling away from him and each other.
"Chester?" he asked. "How are we going to get them back to the stables in the evening? They won't let us get close to them."
"They will return of themselves, Dennis," the robot said quietly, "to be milked by the machines of Rakastava so that the weight of their udders will not pain them."
Dennis looked at his companion in puzzlement. "But they didn't need me to drive them here, either," he said. "They knew the way..."
He shrugged. "Well, maybe they just wanted somebody here to guard the cows. They're afraid of the jungle, after all."
"They are afraid of many things, Dennis," Chester said. "And who is it to say they are wrong?"
"Let's go get ourselves some breakfast," the youth said. He sauntered on a slanting course toward the jungle—rather than try to follow the forebodings that Chester seemed determined to rouse.
"Crocodiles eat their portion of the fools who roam, Dennis," the robot said.
"What's a crocodile, Chester?" Dennis asked with a little more interest than he had intended to display.
"There are no crocodiles on this Earth, Dennis," Chester replied.
The youth grimaced.
He wondered idly how the pasture was kept in grass. Grass survived hard use better than broader-leafed greenery, so heavy cropping by animals would keep the jungle from reclaiming the open area... but a few score cows weren't by themselves enough to achieve that here. Perhaps the folk of Rakastava mowed it occasionally.
Perhaps Rakastava itself extended a brown, slick-textured pseudopod that sheared away the vegetation.
"Fah!" Dennis said loudly. "I'm away from the place for now."
As he got nearer, he saw that the jungle was making small inroads already. Plants with coarse, colorful leaves spiked up several yards into the grass—springing from deep-buried roots. Vines trailed surreptitiously across the pasture edge, ready to snag Dennis' foot if he placed it carelessly.
There was a boulder, gray and as big as a house, lying not far ahead at the jungle margin. The grass in front of it had been trampled down.
Dennis glanced over his shoulder. None of the cows had wandered in this direction. The boulder didn't seem to be a salt lick or—
He was walking forward and his head was moving, turning toward the boulder, but the boulder moved also. Half of its front—it was bigger than he'd thought—slid aside in a rippling motion.
It was a hut of lichen-gray leaves woven onto a wicker framework. Something shifted across the opening from within.
This has to be a boulder, humped and gray and rolling out through the doorway toward me...
The humped thing straightened onto two of its six legs. Its eyes were faceted red glints. The remainder of the body was gray and yellowish and fish-belly white.
The creature was alive and half again as tall as Dennis. Its jointed legs had spikes and knife-sharp edges of chitin. They glittered as the creature flexed them with scissoring clicks.
"It's time and past time," the creature said, "that Conall remembered that he owes more than beef to feed Malbawn."
CHAPTER 30
Dennis drew his sword. His whole body was trembling.
Malbawn's voice was deep and breathy; the plates of its beak flexed sideways as it spoke.
"Run, Chester," the youth whispered.
All Dennis could remember was the corpse of the Wizard Serdic lurching toward him as it drew the sharpened pole from its body. Dennis had run then, and he wanted to run now—
But there was no escape from nightmare.
He would face Malbawn with his star-metal sword; face the creature striding through the grass on saw-edged limbs, nine feet tall and armored in chitin. The inexorable certainty of the corpse had taught Dennis never to run from fear.
It was only intellectually that he could grasp the fact that Malbawn would kill him. He knew that, but he'd never been killed before and the concept had no emotional reality.
The creature paused when its human quarry didn't flee as expected. Malbawn's head was a flat triangle with the beak on its forward point and the fiery eyes behind to either side. The four raised limbs moved slowly, like the claws of crabs fencing in the water.
They had triple-bladed pincers: a pair of long claws folding in opposition to a single spike.
"My sword's star-metal!" Dennis shouted in sudden bravado. He moved the blade slightly in its on-guard position so that the sunlight ran across the well-honed edge. "I'll hack you to bits!"
Malbawn gave a cackling laugh. It dropped its middle pair of legs to the ground and rushed Dennis.
Dennis cut at the creature's head without any attempt at subtlety. A yellow-gray forearm blocked the sword with a ringing crash.
Dennis shifted back. His right palm quivered with the shock of impact. There was a notch in the blade of the Founder's Sword. Malbawn's forearm feinted toward him, uninjured.
Dennis circled slowly, keeping his sword at mid-chest. The creature lifted onto its hind legs, waving the other limbs slowly. They spanned three yards or more from tip to clawed tip. It was like fencing practice for Dennis, but instead of one of his father's retainers he was facing a creature that—
Malbawn dropped into a four-legged charge again.
Icy and prepared, Dennis thrust with the precision of light glancing from the facets of a crystal. He was using his speed and skill instead of just his strength. Despite Malbawn's attempt to parry, the point of the Founder's Sword clanged into the center of the creature's chest.
The steel slid away without marking the chitinous plastron. Malbawn's wide-spread arms closed like the spring-loaded jaws of a trap.
Dennis ducked, but he was off-balance and the saw-toothed limbs slammed toward him from either side. One of them raked the back of his head and left shoulder.
An acrid odor hung over Malbawn, making Dennis gag as he grappled with the huge creature. The beak dipped toward him as the two middle legs lifted off the ground. Their pincers flared.
Dennis flung himself backwards, pushing with his left hand against the limb that had struck him. He expected the spiked arm to resist like a tree trunk or a cliffside, too massively powerful to notice Dennis' merely human efforts. But the youth's arm was stronger than that of the monster he fought, for all the other's size and horrid looks...
Malbawn gave a gurgle of frustration. It lurched forward again without first rising onto its hind legs.
Dennis breathed through his open mouth. The left side of his head felt cold as his blood evaporated in the open air. He supposed his ear had been torn off. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything but cold and the searingly hot air he drew into his lungs.
There was another bright nick in his swordblade where a set of Malbawn's pincers had closed on it.
Malbawn lumbered only a few steps toward Dennis as the youth back-pedaled. The creature didn't seem able to move quickly. It paused and waved its right foreleg. The sharp chitin was streaked with Dennis' blood.
Dennis thrust, handling the Founder's Sword as if it were a fencing foil. His body made a smooth, straight line from his left foot to the point crushing into the joint of Malbawn's bloody foreleg.
Dennis knew the blade had gone home even before the creature screamed. He could feel his metal grate into the soft tissue between plates of armor. Malbawn rushed forward, but its own movement completed the work of destruction. The pincers thrashed convulsively; then the whole forelimb flopped, held to the body only by a scrap of the gristly c
onnective tissue that permitted Malbawn's joints to bend.
Malbawn's remaining foreleg swiped at Dennis. Instead of dodging back as he had done before, the youth ducked and let the muscles of his back absorb the blow as he thrust at the lowest joint—ankle joint—of the creature's right hind leg.
The spiked arm struck Dennis like a falling tree, driving out his breath in a grunt of pain. He'd underestimated how much it would hurt.
The middle legs reached for his torso as the forelimb squeezed him against the yellow-gray plastron. He chopped his sword pommel at the joint of the limb holding him—felt it crunch and felt Malbawn release him as the hind leg his point had severed gave way.
Greenish fluid oozed from Malbawn's damaged joints. The grass was spattered with it; so were Dennis' hands and clothing. The creature staggered onto its three good legs. Its beak opened and closed, but the only sound it made were clicks and a soft hissing.
"I'll hack you to bits!" Dennis heard himself repeat in a hoarse, horrible voice.
Malbawn tried to sidle away. It lowered its left foreleg to the ground so that the middle limb on that side could take a step backwards. The damaged joint collapsed under the weight. Dennis moved in, thrusting between the chitinous ridges of the creature's neck and torso.
Malbawn threw all its mass forward, lurching at Dennis like the rolling boulder he had at first thought it. The left forelimb swung at him, its last segment hanging loose like the end of a flail. It struck him across the side of the head, turning his whole universe into heat and bright, roaring pulses...
CHAPTER 31
The blaze of white warmth cooled to sunlight and pain. Dennis had fallen forward, his knees on the ground and his torso sprawled against Malbawn.
One of Malbawn's middle legs was prodding at Dennis with the disconnected sluggishness of a windmill with broken vanes. Sharp nodules on the back of the pincers left a line of bloody welts over the youth's ribs every time they struck him.