by Jeffrey Lord
From behind Blade came affirming nods and hisses. The Five were in agreement.
Blade had been thinking fast. Now he made his first tentative positive move. He had been helpless. Now, though still in a chancy position, he was not quite helpless. Not if he played his cards right.
His eyes held Pphira’s. He did not entreat. He spoke boldly and with resolution. He was prepared, remembering what J had told him about Code Gemini.
“I must go and seek for my brother, Gemma, your Majesty. We have been very close all our lives. I cannot forsake him now. If there is a bare chance that he lives I must find him. I ask your gracious permission - “
The Five were clacking like a crowd of old hens.
The Queen smiled at Blade. “Perhaps. I do not think it likely, but perhaps. If you live. If you please me enough to persuade me to indulge you. But first there is the law - he who would succeed another man in my affections must first kill that man.”
Blade, still on his knees, gave her back look for look. He could feel the priestly eyes gnawing at his back.
Queen Pphira had a sudden thought. She frowned and leaned forward and Blade saw the glitter of something deadly in her eyes. She spoke softly through compressed lips.
“You do find me desirable, man?” Mockery now. And menace. “You arc conscious of the honor that may come to you?”
He knew how near he skirted the chasm. Blade smiled, using all his great charm, his teeth gleaming white in the curling back beard.
“I know, my Queen. I am not fit, yet I desire you beyond all things. Even, perhaps, my brother’s life. And that is an evil thing to say. But I am a man - how can I slay a blind man? That is also an evil thing. I cannot do it.”
She leaned to tap him on the shoulder with her wand. “It may be that you cannot, Blade. Tarsu has slain the last three men who sought to take his place. He may kill you as well.”
Pphira leaned back. She tapped her teeth with the wand. She smiled at him again. “I think that I would regret that.”
Puzzled, Blade said, “But how can I fight a blind man in fairness?”
“You will see.”
She looked over Blade at Kreed. “Let it be arranged. At once. I would know who shares my bed tonight Tarsu - or Blade?”
Chapter Twelve
They did not let Blade see his opponent. Blade, under heavy guard, was taken to catacombs beneath a huge square stadium built of the ubiquitous white stone. He was lodged in a narrow cell, unchained. The surrounding stench was overpowering, a mingle of urine and excrement and unwashed flesh. A burble of cries, screams, weeping and laughing and cursing, washed through the subterranean chambers like a miasmic surf. He was alert for a sight of Pelops but saw none. This turned Blade gloomy, for he thought that the little man’s chances were not even as good as his own.
He was well fed and before the cell could befoul his new clothes, or his temper more than it was already, they came to see him. Equebus and Kreed. The Captain and the High Priest. Their heads close together and whispering like the conspirators that Blade now judged them to be. Why they conspired, this unlikely pair, he could not guess. He did not care. He had to kill a man and keep himself alive. In total darkness.
Equebus explained with pleasure, staring down his hooked nose at Blade. Kreed, behind the Captain, nodded from time to time and dry-washed his hands.
“Since you are obviously a man and a warrior,” said Equebus with a sneer, “and no slave, you will not want to take unfair advantage of a blind man. You will fight this Tarsu in a dark room. You will be as blind as he, then, and it will be a fair fight.”
Blade scratched his beard - it itched a little - and glowered at the Captain. “Weapons?”
Equebus leered down at Blade’s big hands. He pointed. “Those alone for you. Tarsu will have a sword - he is much the smaller man. You object to this?”
, “He cannot object,” Kreed cackled. “The Queen has ordered it. She is smitten with Blade, I think, but she will not weaken in this. He must earn the right to replace Tarsu.”
Equebus regarded the big prisoner. The Captain tugged at his beard, now combed and pomaded into a point. There was, Blade sensed, something ambivalent about Equebus today. He was both pleased and displeased. At times he smiled like a wolf, at other times his hatchet face darkened as he looked at Blade.
He said: “You have done better than I expected, Blade. Oh, you have lost Zeena, who is sent to punishment, but it may be that you have gained the mother instead.”
Blade taunted him a bit. “You have also lost Zeena, Captain. If she is in a prison galley, she is as far from you as she is from me. At least I have known her. You never will!”
The goad did not work. Equebus glanced at Kreed. Both laughed. Equebus said, “You are right, Blade. Much good it will do you. There is much in Sarma that you do not understand - and never will. Now enough of talk. You go to fight. Allow me to wish you the worst of fortune.”
The Captain bowed to Blade with a mocking leer, then snapped an order to the guards. Blade was dragged from the cell and escorted to the center of the vast stadium. Rows of empty whitestone seats towered on every hand. It would, he calculated rapidly, seat a hundred thousand or more.
The floor of the vast square arena was strewn thickly with sand. In the very center was a heavy trap door with an iron ring set into it. Blade watched as slaves, under direction of the guards, tugged the trap door away to disclose a black hole with steps leading down. Equebus, sword in hand now, gestured with it at the stair. “Down you go, Blade. Just as you are. Tarsu is waiting.”
Blade hesitated. “My eyes will take time to adjust to the darkness. Tarsu, being blind, has no such problem. You spoke of fairness - “
The Captain made an impatient gesture. “That has been thought of. The Queen is very concerned that it be a fair fight - ” his lip curled in a secret smile, “and fair it shall be. Chephron here will see to it. Goodbye, Blade.”
Equebus smiled pure venom. Kreed, lingering in the background, chuckled and wrung his hands in glee. Blade spat into the sand at the Captain’s feet.
The slave named Chephron was a hideous hunchback clad only in a long leather kirtle. He wore an iron collar and his pocked face was badly malformed. He was bald and his legs were twisted and spindly and covered with open sores. Blade looked at him with distaste. The man had executioner, torturer, written all over him. Most obscene of all was the voice, a high shrill bleat.
He touched Blade’s arm. The filthy crooked fingers were cold as death on the big man’s smooth warm flesh.
“Come, master,” said Chephron. “I will see to everything. I will instruct you, master, never fear. But come. Hurry. Tarsu already awaits you.”
Blade followed the grotesque form down the stair. Down and down as the murk grew deeper. Somewhere below them a torch gleamed yellow. Still they kept going down.
The guttering torch revealed a small narrow room. Three walls of stone, the fourth of wood. Chephron, smirking and bowing, muttering all the time, rapped on the wooden wall. “Tarsu? You are ready?”
A voice came back deep and gruff. “I am ready.”
“Your hand is on the wall so you will know when it is lifted?”
“It is. Have done with chatter and begin. My sword is thirsty.”
The executioner turned to Blade, grimacing horribly. He pointed to the wooden wall, then to the single torch in the ring bolt. “You understand, my master? Simple - quite sun-pie. I will take the only torch with me. When I am out and the trap door is closed you will be in darkness.” His bleating laugh was shrill and high. “As dark as Tor’s bowels! Not a single ray comes down.”
Blade nodded at the wooden wall. “That rises, then?”
“Ah, yes, master. It rises. On the far side there is another room such as this. You will be alone with Tarsu, master. In the dark. As Tarsu has always been in the dark. Heh-heh - I do not envy you, master, and I do not think I will see you again.”
There came an impatient rapping from the far
side of the wooden wall.
Chephron extended fingers to Blade in a twiddling motion. “It is the custom, master, to give something.”
Blade’s skin was crawling. This creature was like a slimy thing that had lived in darkness forever.
“I have nothing,” Blade said harshly. “But this!” He moved the executioner toward the stairs with a sound kick. “Get out!”
Chephron rubbed his behind and drooled. Slaver ran from the corners of his toothless mouth. “I thank you, master. It will be a great pleasure to drag your body away.”
“Out!”
Chephron scuttled up the steep stairs with the torch. He vanished around a bend and Blade was in near total darkness. He waited and listened. He ran to the end of the room and threw himself flat, belly down, on the floor. He rested his fingertips lightly against the wooden wall. From far overhead came a sullen clang of stone on stone as the heavy trap door was dropped into place.
Blade was in darkness. The wall began to rise.
Chapter Thirteen
The wooden wall slid away from Blade’s touch, upward into darkness. There was a faint click. Then silence absolute. Pit dark. Stygian. Blade held his breath.
Silence. Blade caught an odor, a whiff of human sweat. Near. Very near. Too near!
SWISH - the sword cut the air just over Blade’s head. Tarsu had been at the same end of the room, touching the wall, directly opposite Blade.
Blade rolled frantically to his left. Sparks flew as the sword beat on the stone floor. Could the man smell him, Blade?
He got on his hands and knees and scuttled, for all the world like one of the giant crabs, to the rear wall of the room. There he went to his belly again. He took a deep breath and held it until his ears popped. He made a mental picture of the room. The stairs were behind him and about ten feet distant. They were narrow and there was no room to swing a sword. If he could entice Tarsu to fight him on the stairs -
Later he would try that. For now, if he could only come to grips with his enemy before the sword could inflict a mortal wound - if he could get the sword, or make Tarsu lose it.
Something rattled on the stone floor just in front of Blade. He lay unmoving. breathing softly through his mouth. An old trick. Tarsu had tossed a pebble, a fragment of the wall. Blade smiled grimly. His opponent would have to do better than that.
There was the smell again. This time of sweat mingled with something else. Grease? Oil of some sort -
Blade moved just in time. The sword glanced off the wall just over him and sparks showed like tiny golden stars in a miniature eternity, a macrocosm of space. Tarsu grunted, a foiled animal sound, and Blade launched himself in air, feet first, at an unseen point three feet behind the sparks.
His bare feet rammed into solid flesh. The man went down, the sword chiming “wildly on stone, with Blade half on him, half off. Now!
Both men were mute. Blade tried to use his weight and his great strength. Tarsu, the smaller man but wiry and with lightning reflexes, writhed and fought back with a fury Blade had not expected. The man’s body was heavily greased and Blade could not hold him. It took both his hands just to keep the eager sword away from his throat and when he tried to pin Tarsu with his weight the man kept slipping from under.
Tarsu tried to get his teeth into Blade’s throat. Blade butted him cruelly in the face and heard the nose crack. Tarsu got his hand into Blade’s beard and began pulling it out by the roots. He slammed a knee into Blade’s crotch and the big man went sick. He held on to the sword arm, trying to break the wrist, unable to get the right leverage. They rolled over and over across the cold stone floor, nailing and biting and scratching. Blade’s face contorted as he put his last strength into breaking the wrist, the arm, anything.
Tarsu saved his arm by letting go of the sword. It fell with a clang, slid and stopped. Blade let go of Tarsu and dove in the direction of the sound. But Tarsu clung to him like a leech, biting and clawing at his flesh, and it was Tarsu who found the sword again. He kicked it far across the room. Blade cursed and seized Tarsu by the beard and smashed a terrible right hand. The blow only partially found its mark. Tarsu went falling backward, away from Blade. Blade groped. Nothing. He fought to control his breathing, to cut off the gasps that could betray him. There was no sound from Tarsu.
A slithering sound. A scraping and brushing sound. Tarsu was feeling about for the sword. Blade, on his hands and knees once again, began to crawl in the direction of the sounds. He would have to play bulldog now - get a grip on the man’s throat and hang on, no matter what. Hang on until Tarsu was dead.
“Hah!”
A grunt of triumph from the darkness. A slither of metal on stone. Tarsu had found the sword. Blade stopped and began to inch backward.
He had his breathing under control. Very slowly, inch by patient inch, he began to work his way toward the stone stairs in a corner of the room. He reached the wall, brushed it with his hands, began to feel for loose mortar. If he could tug one of the crude undressed stones free -
Blade was nearly to the stair before he found it. A stone twice the size of his fist and loosely set. Within a few seconds he had tugged it free. A weapon of sorts. But how to use It?
Tarsu heard the trickle of mortar or a tiny scrape of stone on stone, something. And spoke for the first time since he had found the sword. His voice came from the far end of the room.
“So, Blade, you take to the stair! Others have done that before you. They thought I could not use my sword in close quarters. They were wrong. You are wrong, Blade.”
Tarsu was moving in, his feet light on the stone, stalking, knowing where Blade must be. Blade retreated up the first step and raised the stone high. Yet he dared not hurl it. He could hear Tarsu stalking, coming at him out of the gloom, but he had no target. If he hurled the stone at random into the darkness he was certain to miss. The chances were a 100 to 1 that he would. Keep the stone.
He could hear Tarsu grunting now. “Unh-unh-uhn-unh - “
A rhythmic sound that puzzled Blade for a moment. Then he understood. Tarsu had gone to the point. No more wild cutting and slashing about. He was thrusting furiously ahead of him as he moved slowly and cautiously. Blade could picture it in his mind’s eye.
Tarsu was working rapidly, crouching, exploring with a foot ahead of him, and all the time thrusting into the gloom with the sword. High - low - to one side and then to the other. Thrust - draw back - thrust again. The sword point would bite deep when it struck. Blade’s guts chilled for a moment; he did not like the thought of two feet of cold iron through him.
Tarsu stopped grunting. Still Blade could hear the very faint sibilance of the sword as it thrust and poked and darted for his life. He retreated up another step.
Blade put the rock between his knees and clenched it there and spread his arms. He could not quite extend them. Good. His legs were longer than his arms. An old mountain climbing technique might save him now.
A man can climb a narrow mountain chimney, a vertical rift in the rock, by putting his feet against one wall, his back against the other, and worming his way up. It can also be done by spreading the legs wide and, with each hand and foot, pushing upward. It requires timing, great skill and experience, and tremendous strength. Blade had all these. He also had the stone to carry.
He could smell Tarsu again. There was no sound. Not even the whisper of steel. Tarsu was waiting, collecting himself, preparing for the kill. He was sure now that he had Blade trapped in the narrow confines of the stair. And so he had.
Blade, conscious of time running out, held the heavy rock in both hands. He put his back solidly against one rough wall and his bare feet against the other. With his toes he got a purchase in the old eroded stone and began to exert pressure with his legs. He slid his back upward, feeling the stone tear at the skin. He wriggled. He gained a foot, then another foot, and brought his legs up even with his torso. His knees were slightly bent and he was hanging in mid-air over the stairs. Yet not high enough, for that feral swo
rd would come licking any second now, like a flashing serpent’s tongue lacking venom but thirsty for blood.
Blade eased up another foot. His big thigh muscles corded and rolled and a cramp began to gnaw at him. Blade ignored it. He turned slightly to his left, to clear his own body, and raised the stone high over his head. Everything now depended on his timing. He hung there, naked but for the leathern kilt, very much aware that his genitals were cruelly exposed to the sword. He scowled in the dark. Grim irony if he should lose his manhood, kill Tarsu, and then go castrated to Pphira.
Queen Pphira even now was waiting in her chamber for the door to open and a man to enter. She had a sense of the dramatic, did the Queen, and she had given orders that she was not to be notified beforehand of the outcome. When her chamber door opened she would know the winner. In that moment Blade knew that he would make her pay for this cruel charade.
No more time. It had leaked away like water on sand. The smell of Tarsu was strong, the oiled body pungent and close below Blade. The sword darted and darted in the narrow space. Tarsu grunted. He was confident now. He thought he was forcing Blade up to the top of the stair. There he would finish him.
Rotten mortar crumbled under his foot. Blade slipped an inch down. The mortar struck the probing Tarsu in the face. He gave an outraged grunt of surprise and twisted the sword upward, in a direction from which he had never expected danger. The steel bit deep into Blade’s left leg.
The top of Tarsu’s head touched Blade’s buttocks. Blade slammed the stone down with all his might, missing the man’s head and breaking his shoulder and collar bone. Tarsu groaned. The sword jangled on the stairs. Blade dropped.
His legs were slippery with his own blood as he twined them around the man’s neck in a dreadful scissor hold. Together they tumbled down the stair to sprawl into the room. Tarsu, weak with pain and fear, still fought like a desperate animal. He managed to get his teeth into Blade’s inner thigh and bite deep and Blade screamed with the pain. He held Tarsu’s head firm in the scissors of his legs and exerted terrible pressure. Tarsu began to kick and flail about wildly as he strangled.