“But you!”
“If I am to die, then this is as well a way to go as any other.” I shooed him away and the doors squealed as they opened further. To the stable slaves in their gray slave breechclouts I said: “When I give you leave — run! Hide! These evil men do not desire to kill you!”
“Aye, master,” they wailed, thrusting with their lean naked arms, the sweat running down their lined faces.
I stripped off the gorgeous Lohvian robes with their rich and encumbering embroidery. Against a long sword the cloth mass I bundled around my left arm would be useless, but these flying men used long and thin swords — not rapiers — and I could perhaps deflect them enough to strike back. From a natural nostalgia I had selected a brilliant scarlet loincloth and I own I felt a thrill of the old pride in the color nerve me — vain young words and feelings, to my shame!
Also, I kicked off the elegant sandals provided by my Lohvian hosts in Hiclantung. The long swords we had picked up here and there on our travels had not been the great long sword of the Krozairs — but Zenkiren had graciously given me a real Krozair long sword when we had parted in Pattelonia. Its handle was a full four fists’ width in length, perfectly balanced for single-handed work, deadly when counterpoised by the left fist beneath the pommel with all that leverage that could be exerted. It was, perhaps, when wielded by a practiced and expert two-handed swordsman even faster than a single-hander — I knew this, yet I needed some protection for my left arm initially, and I could wield the sword two-handed even with the embroidered cloth bundled about my left arm.
“Now — go!”
With frightened shrieks the stable slaves scampered away from the doors and vanished into the shadows.
I poised, ready, and I felt the night breeze upon my naked chest and thighs, the floor hard and firm beneath my feet, the grip of the Krozair sword in my fist.
Yes — my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains — if I was to die then this was the way I would go. The doors smashed back.
Like an indigo tide the assassins poured in and I met them headlong, with a bestial roar that stopped them in their tracks. I was among them, smiting, thrusting, before they were aware, and they recoiled as though from some inhuman monster of legend.
“Hai!” I roared, leaping and slashing. “Hai, Jikai!”
We were too close-packed for them to bring the mighty Lohvian longbows into action. I swung the sword in economical strokes now, aiming for targets, smiting them to the ground. Twice I was able to wrest the thin sword from the grip of a surprised man, and, leaping forward, grasp him about the throat with my left hand and, after throttling him, hurl him back among his fellows. How long I might have gone on thus I do not know. Not forever, that is certain. But then I heard a high-pitched, cracking voice from the interior of the corthdrome.
“Dray!”
And I knew Hwang and the Queen had reached the door to the windlass room. For an exit I surged into the nearest man, hoisted him over my head, flung him horizontally into the men jostling to get in through the doors over the bloodied bodies of their comrades. Swiftly, then, for I did not relish this part, I turned and ran. I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, turned and ran. But I ran with a set purpose. I reached the foot of the stairs before they had recovered and I went up in gigantic leaping strides that must surely have confused those men of Kregen who had never witnessed an Earthman’s muscles exerting their full power against the fractionally weaker gravity of their planet. Halfway up I judged to be the moment of danger, and a yell from Hwang from above confirmed that. I swung about, the Krozair sword lifted, and I beat away the arrows as we used to do in those strict and demanding disciplines on the island of Zy in the Eye of the World.
Up again, and a turn, and more arrows to be dodged or beaten away with sword or robes, and up yet again.
Now the indigo-haired men were at the foot of the stairs and were racing up, their swords slivers of steely glitter in the torchlight. They wanted the Queen; they would dare anything for that end. At the top I struck sideways an arrow that would have found Hwang, and then we were through the small lenk door.
I slammed it and barred it. I breathed deeply and easily, aware of the sweat shining on my chest and thighs, runneling down between the ridged muscles. Blood dripped thickly from my sword and gobbets and gouts of it matted the hair on my chest.
“You-” stammered Queen Lilah of Hiclantung.
A new and stronger roaring began outside the barred door and the first few blows upon its stout lenk wood were the only ones. We could hear, distantly, the shouting of men and the clash of steel.
“The guards!” exclaimed Hwang. His face radiated a fresh and sudden confidence. “We are saved!”
I grunted.
I put my hand to the bar.
Queen Lilah stood, and I could see the heaving tumult of her bosom thrusting now against the concealing stiff brocade. “Dray-” she began, then, again: “Dray Prescot?”
I looked at her, eyes on a level with eyes.
“You have witnessed what few have ever seen,” I told her, unaware then of the irony of it. “You have seen Dray Prescot run from his foes. Now I go back to settle with them.”
Of course — that evil and fascinating blood fever was upon me then. I lifted the bar.
She put a small white hand on my arm.
“No, Dray Prescot. There is no need. The guards will deal with those rasts of assassins. But — I would not wish you wounded now, perhaps killed.”
“You would have me skulk behind a locked door?”
She shook her head angrily, her dark eyes filled with a reflected torchlight that made of them a dazzlement and a glory.
“I would have you live, Dray Prescot — and do not forget, I am the Queen! My word is law! You would do well not to cross me, Dray Prescot — stranger!”
“I agree — and I would do even better to obey my own wishes!”
And I lifted the bar and opened the door and ran down the stairs.
Chapter Twelve
The Queen of Pain
“Oh, Dray Prescot!” said Thelda. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you!”
We stood in the sunny morning room of the villa and Thelda regarded me with her head on one side, her ripe red lips pursed up and her hands on her hips. She wore a scarlet — because she thought that would please me — breechclout and a simple silvery-tissue blouse that was as near as made no difference to being transparent. Her dark brown hair had been meticulously coiffed by one of the house slaves we had been obligated to accept — we had no powers to free them, as Seg and I would have instantly done -
and the lush coils sparkled with gems and pearls. Her fingernails and toe-nails had been lacquered a pleasant scarlet. Her face received such care and attention as it had surely never known since leaving Vallia. She did look alluring and lovely and voluptuous, no question of it, now that her fat had been worked off and the natural firm and Junoesque lines of her figure could be seen. She stood with her legs braced, her hands on her hips, and she regarded me as a risslaca regards a rabbit.
“You, Dray Prescot, recovering from a terrible wound, go slallyfanting about the city at the dead of night
— getting into fights — rescuing the Queen — oh, Dray — look out for her! She is a deep and devious one. I know, for Seg has told me of the notorious Queens of Loh-”
“I know,” I said. “I have heard. They call her the Queen of Pain. But only when she cannot overhear them.”
“They were terrible — the Queens of Loh! The things they did turned my stomach over when Seg merely hinted at them. And this one is right in the line. I wouldn’t like to inquire into just how many husbands — husbands! That’s a laugh! — how many poor silly believing men she’s toyed with and discarded and had tortured to death. .”
“Thelda! It’s you who are slallyfanting, not me.”
“But surely you can see why I am so worried about you, Dray!”
“No. And, anyway, since the Walfarg empire crum
pled Loh has left only some of its culture behind here
— why, the women don’t wear veils, as they do in their mysterious walled gardens of Loh.”
“You have been to Loh, Dray?”
“No. But I have heard of it-”
She was standing straight and firm, but now she seemed to melt and flow, the tenseness leaving her thighs and calves, her shoulders, and she bent and flowed and moved against me so that she pressed into my chest. I was wearing a plain white loincloth, having come straight from the bath, with my hair still wet, and I could feel the warmth of her through the silver tissue. Quite evidently she expected me to put my arms about her as she put hers about me, tilting her head to gaze up at me, her lips half parted, moist and clinging in that way that can madden almost any man of sensibility. I kept my arms away from her.
“Oh, you fond, silly, silly man! Don’t you know why I worry so over you, so that my heart seems to burst right out of my bosom?” She unclasped one hand, and grasped my fingers. “Feel my heart, Dray, and you will know how passionately it beats-”
I had had enough of this. I simply didn’t let my arm bend in, and I said, gently: “I think Seg is up and about. His wound mends well-”
She flounced away, her lips plainly wanting to rick into a snarl and yet forced by a will I was coming to recognize to curve into a fetching pout.
“It is no good thinking of Delia, Dray-”
“What?”
She wouldn’t be checked now.
“Why — didn’t you see? I thought you knew-”
I was at her side and I gripped her by the shoulders, crumpling the silver tissue, dragging her half upward so that she staggered up onto her toes. I glared down on her upturned face where now that silly pouting look vanished to be replaced by a sudden startlement.
“Knew what, Thelda?”
She gasped as my fingers dug into her shoulders.
“Dray — you’re hurting-”
I let her down, but I still held her hard.
“Tell me!”
“Delia — the Princess Majestrix — the impiter dropped her, Dray — I thought you knew! It dropped her into a pond — you know, one of the little tarns that you find all over the uplands — and I screamed
— why did you think I was screaming, Dray, for myself?” She wriggled and licked her lips. “I knew Delia was dead, and I was screaming in fear for you, Dray!”
I let her drop so that she went down in a flurry of silver tissue with the brave scarlet breechclout sprawling in an ungainly back-slide, and turned away, and Seg said: “I did not see Delia fall from the impiter! By the veiled Froyvil — she cannot be dead! It would not be allowed!”
He came into the room with most of his old reckless air still about him; his limp had almost gone. He was better, he was the old Seg again, with the reckless laugh and the damn-you-to-hell manner.
“No,” I said, my voice a croak. “No — it would be unthinkable — it could not be allowed. My Delia, she is not dead-” I swung to Thelda, who raised herself on her arms, the silver tissue bulging and crumpling with the force of her breathing. “What tarn was it, Thelda? I will go to this pond and see for myself!”
Nothing would stop me.
When Hwang pointed out the dangers, that travel between cities anywhere in this land was beset with peril, that the winged host might still be in the vicinity, that wild beasts would rend me, I brushed all that tomfoolery aside. I donned my scarlet breechclout, buckled on my long sword, and I found a blanket roll, and some odd items of food. I took my new longbow in my hand, slung the quiver over my shoulders, mounted a borrowed nactrix, and I was off.
As I had expected Seg soon spurred up to ride at my side.
By the time we had ridden back over that ground and found the site of the battle — massacre, really -
where the bones lay white and bleaching under the suns of Scorpio, Hwang and a regiment of his own cavalry were hard on our heels. I had heard from the Queen’s nephew something of the reasons for that disastrous battle in the valley; that the men cherished their traditions and fought in disciplined bodies held together by rules sacrosanct with age. That the treacherous councilor Forpacheng — and not Orpus whom the Queen had suspected and who had miraculously escaped the ambush on the stairway — had led the troops into the valley, and had then let them be cut to pieces. That the discipline had broken under Forpacheng’s malicious and contradictory orders. Now, Hwang had said, a new army was being forged from the remnants and new recruits, and they would not repeat the mistakes of the past. The pool lay black and ominous beneath the suns.
I dived. I dived and swam beneath the water until my lungs burned and all the suns of the universe flamed before my eyes; I did not find my Delia.
Memories of that time blur. I remember men talking to me and urging me not to continue; and of myself taking deep agonizing breaths and cleaving the dark water of the tarn and swimming, swimming, swimming, and always that nightmarish expectancy that my groping hands would close on the obscenely bloated, water-logged, half eaten body of my Delia of Delphond.
Exhaustion had no place in my scheme of things. I would search every single square inch of the bottom of the pool, and every cubic inch of its water; and if I did not find my Delia, then I would begin all over again. I did not want to find her there, God knows; but I did not want to leave the task unfinished and be haunted for the rest of my days.
Perhaps, in the end, I was only saved from insanity by the arrival of Orpus and more soldiers. They seemed to my dulled senses smart enough, Zair knows. With them rode a man whose hair was dyed a deep indigo.
I reared up and from somewhere my long sword was in my fist and I started for this man with the indigo hair and I heard Seg shout and his hand gripped my arm.
“No, no, Dray! He is of Hiclantung — his hair is dyed because he has been scouting-”
“A spy,” I said stupidly.
“Yes, yes — and listen! He believes he has found where Delia is held captive!”
When I had somewhat recovered my senses and the news had been expounded, my next step was obvious.
The name I now focused on with an intensity of purpose at once hateful and vengeful and obsessional was — Umgar Stro.
The spy, one Naghan, a common name on Kregen, had been clever; clearly he was a courageous and resourceful man. Charged with the task of discovering who had instigated the nighttime attack upon the Queen he had begun by making inquiries in Chersonang, the rival city-state of Hiclantung, only to discover that the whole political situation had changed. A new force had entered this area of the Hostile Territories. From far to the northwest a fresh barbarian horde had swung southward as they had done when the empire of Walfarg in Loh had fallen. From the windy heights past The Stratemsk they had flown astride their impiters and corths and zizils, intent on carving a new land for themselves. They had taken over a country inhabited by Rapas, killing the vulturine people by the thousand, installing themselves as overlords. And here their leader, this Umgar Stro, had suborned and paid the traitor Forpacheng. But now — Umgar Stro had announced his intentions of dominating the entire section of nations centering on his new capital of Plicla, that had once been Rapa, and then of taking over the whole of the Hostile Territories, and the eastern seaboard with its scattering of settlements of nations of the outer ocean, and, so he had said, boldly, he would also march across The Stratemsk and attack whatever lay beyond. Of course, the inner sea, the Eye of the World, was unknown to these people except in the vaguest of myth and legend.
“And Delia is held in a tower in Plicla. May the veiled Froyvil guard her and keep her from harm!”
“You are sure?” I asked Naghan as Seg’s anxious words died.
“I cannot be certain that the girl captured is the princess you seek,” said Naghan, omitting all forms of ceremonial or obsequious address. “I never saw her.” He was short and strong, with a faded look around his eyes. He had built his face up into a blunt profile with oiled clays, but no one would
think him one of Umgar Stro’s half-men in any kind of decent light. He had taken his life in his hands to bring me this information, and I was grateful to him. “I can give you all the information of the tower you require; externally, that is. Once inside-” He spread his hands.
Umgar Stro.
The whole area between The Stratemsk and the eastern seaboard had been turned into a place containing a very large number of petty kingdoms. The so-called Hostile Territories were places where a series of nations each followed its own destiny. There were tracts where the original inhabitants remained, there were barbarian nomads, there were cities of half-men and beast-men, there were nations of half-civilized barbarians, there were the cities which had managed to retain much of their Lohvian heritage. The whole was a great quilt of conflicting cultures.
Umgar Stro.
With the legacies left by Walfarg — the long well-constructed and surfaced roads, a common currency, the use of arms, a common law that the barbarians naturally disrupted, a religion based on worship of the female principle in life and the interesting ramifications following on that — all these elements of existence held in common had in an ironic way helped rather than hindered the dissolution and conquest of the land by factions. A raiding army could move rapidly down the roads, but they would be exposed to attack at known places by the flying hosts.
Umgar Stro.
“Once I am inside Umgar Stro’s tower,” I told Naghan, the spy, “I shall be satisfied.”
He looked at my face, and turned away, and fidgeted with his sword.
“What is the name of this barbarian nation that flies its impiters against Hiclantung?”
“They come from Ullardrin, somewhere north of The Stratemsk and they are called the Ullars.”
“We’ll need to fly, Dray,” said Seg.
“Yes,” I said. “I hear the men of Hiclantung do not really relish flying — the corths are few and far between in the city.” This was true. Corth-flying was in the nature of a sport for the nobles and the high councilors; the ordinary people and the soldiers hated all flying beasts, and one could well understand why. Their ancestors had waged ceaseless war against the aerial barbarians, and it still went on today. They had developed effective tricks and weapons they could deploy against impiters and corths and only through Forpacheng’s treachery were they deprived of them on the day of the army massacre. We hurried back to the city.
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