“But in a day or two they will return,” said this man, one Orpus, a councilor high in the Queen's confidence. “Then we will know what to do."
“I doubt not but they were employed by those rasts of Chersonang. Soon, now, our plans will be ready and then—” The Queen did not finish her words, and the inanities might have turned into some conversation more welcome to my ears, for Chersonang was a city-state of great power whose borders marched with those of Hiclantung and with whom, as was to be expected, there was constant friction, had it not been for the sudden and wholly unexpected slaughter caused by a shower of arrows that whistled down about our ears.
At the same instant a body of men in dark garments rushed upon us. The next second I was fighting for my life.
“Stand firm!” roared a Hikdar and went down screeching with a cloth-yard shaft in his breast. An arrow hissed by me and buried itself in the back of a bodyguard who had swung around to face the oncoming assassins. Hwang was yelling and tugging at the Queen's sleeve. I saw her face, pale and pinkly-illuminated in that streaming radiance, and she looked firm and powerful, and yet haggard and ill, all at the same time. And, too, I saw the harsh lines curving about that painted mouth and understood more of the burdens she carried and the absolute intolerance with which she carried out what she conceived of as her duty.
Then, to what must have appeared as the seal of our doom to those attacking us, a cloud of impiter-mounted men swooped from the sky and gusting in over the walled stairway fell upon us with all the impetuosity of a chunkrah charge.
If we were to come out of this alive not a moment could be lost. Hwang had still not budged the Queen, who stood, tall and straight in those heavy brocaded garments. Her bodyguard fell about her, and now it was clearly apparent that these night raiders had planned this assault to carry off the Queen.
“The Queen!” someone shouted.
“To the death!” screeched the defiant answers from the bodyguard.
Hwang's little sword flickered in and out very expertly. My own great long sword, suddenly clumsy in this civilized company, swept away three of the attackers, lopped heads and arms; but they pressed me back and soon Hwang and I were left isolated with the Queen at our backs, pressed against the stairway wall.
I felt cramped in, hemmed and penned. I had not used a rapier and main-gauche as a pair in a long time, the Jiktar and the Hikdar, and all the advantages of a long sword were being lost to me.
“We must break through and reach the corthdrome,” I shouted at Hwang. If only Seg were here! I felled a man who lunged at me, skipping aside from his glittering point with accustomed unthinking skill. “You must force the Queen—"
'They will never take me alive."
Queen Lilah of Hiclantung held a dagger, jeweled and ornate, but needle-sharp for all that. I knew that dagger would plunge into her breast when the end came. Somehow, in my agony for my Delia I found a strange sense of outrage that another beautiful woman should die.
I leaped forward, whirling my sword in tremendous overhand circles, rather in the fashion of the Clansmen of Viktrik with the Danish ax, and cleared a space in which the ghastly slashed trunks and sliced heads of my opponents sank down bloodily. Moving now very rapidly, even for me, I scooped up Queen Lilah, hoisted her under my left arm, and with a great yell to Hwang to follow, bounded up the stairway.
Two, three, four of the dark-clad assassins I slew as I raced up the steps. I forced my breathing to fall into that old familiar regular rhythm. The only thing that would stop me now would be an arrow through the spine. Even then, such was my wrath, that I believe I would have reached the lofty doors of the corthdrome with a quiver-full of arrows feathering in my back.
Just as we reached those arched doorways a figure scuttled out and the doors began to close. In seconds they would slam in our faces. From below us on the wide stairway the beast yells lifted and the rapid patter of feet and the clink of steel eloquently told of what fate lay in store for us there.
I let rip with a furious, atavistic, enraged yell and bounded up the last flight, shoved my shoulder against those closing valves, and thrust vigorously.
A frightened squeak answered from within, and then we were through and Nath the Corthman and three or four of his stable slaves were pushing frantically at the doors again. Hwang pitched in to help them.
“Put me down, you great oaf!"
I had forgotten the Queen, bundled up under my arm. As I set her on her feet, she called out in her most imperial way: “The bar, you fools! Put the bar across! By Hlo-Hli—hurry!"
Nath the Corthman was dancing around and wringing his hands and sobbing. “My beautiful corths! These barbarian beasts will take them all, or slay them, my flying wonders of the sky!"
“Cease your babbling, cramph, or I will nick your ears!"
Nath bobbed and bowed before the Queen as we struggled to close the doors, our feet slipping on the tessellated paving, our muscles bulging, our breaths clogging in our throats.
Flint-headed spears thrust through the slit opening between the two valves. Arrows flew through. We could hear the yelling outside, the whip-like crack of orders, and hear the bestial grunting of the assassins as they sought to thrust the doors wide and rush in upon us.
Behind us the corths, whose unease manifested itself in a great whistling chirruping, had now begun to emit their strange feathery-dusty odor. I glanced up. Long before we could unchain a corth and open the ceiling valves, which drew back in segments, the assassins would have completed their work.
As we surged against the doors Queen Lilah stood back from us, tall and regal, her embroidered robes falling in sheer lines to her feet, her face as waxy white as a votive candle, the dagger in her hand catching the light from torches in their wall brackets and splintering strange and disturbing colors over the scene.
“The defense wires had been removed from this stairway,” she said. Her voice cracked as flat and hard as a falchion blade. “There were men waiting in hiding. Oh, Orpus, unhappy man! If you have survived it were better had you not!"
If the high councilor had been a party to the plot then he wouldn't hang around Hiclantung; if he had not been then he would be lying on the stairway weltering in his own blood.
The doors groaned as weights thrust unequally against them. Their bronze hinges squealed. Slowly, the stable slaves and Hwang and I were being thrust back. It was a mere matter of moments before the murderers broke in.
All my natural instincts urged me to fling wide the doors and with my sword in my fist to hurl myself upon these beast-men.
Such a course—which is deplorable in itself—often seems to me the most natural one in two worlds in circumstances like those when I fought the assassins in the corthdrome of Hiclantung. I can wait for an attacker to expose himself and then counter-strike. I can charge headlong and carry the fight to him. But now—such a course would mean the inevitable deaths of Hwang and Queen Lilah. I glanced back at the torchlit interior of the corthdrome.
Beyond the ranked perches where the corths whistled and shrilled and ruffled their feathers beneath the arched roof a narrow stair ran winding around the interior wall. At its summit a narrow door of lenk wood gave ingress to the windlass room, where were situated the necessary drums and levers and apparatus for opening the roof. I shouted at Hwang.
“Hwang! Do not argue! Take the Queen up there—at once!"
Before Hwang could reply she had stamped her foot and rejected the suggestion in an icy manner of high hauteur.
“If you do not go, Lilah,” I said, “I shall put you under my arm again, and this time I shall beat you."
“You would not dare!” Her eyes flamed at me. “I am the Queen!"
“Aye—and you'll be a dead Queen, by Zim-Zair, if you don't do as I say! Now—go!"
She looked at my face in the vivid light of the torches and I must have been wearing that old ugly look of demoniac power that transfigures my features into a devil's mask, for she shuddered and turned away.
With what I took to be either a curse or a sob she lifted the heavy brocaded hem of her robe and I saw her slippered feet twinkling as she ran across the floor between the perches and started on the lung-bursting climb.
“After her, Hwang!"
“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 poo
r 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 crumpled 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?"
Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3] Page 13