Gods of Green Mountain (32 page)

The dual suns beat down as relentlessly here as on the barren desert plains, though the wind was much less, perhaps broken by the strange, twisted things that rose up from the ground everywhere. It was terrain such as one sees in a nightmare, an unworldly devil's place. Sharita shuddered as she wondered where they would camp tonight, without heat, without any of the comforts left behind in the wagons. From time to time, as the file of riders curved a huge crater, she saw Dray-Gon turn in his saddle and glance back at her. She didn't wave, only pretended not to notice. He had placed himself deliberately in the lead, behind the puhlets, so if the crust broke, he would be the one to die. "Heroic to the end," she thought bitterly.

Their progress was torturously slow. So slow, Sharita thought she might bake sitting in the saddle and adhere, so she would have to be pried loose. "Is there an end anywhere in sight?" called out one of the men to their captain. "Can't see any yet," he called back, causing Sharita's shoulders to sag even more.

The narrow rock rims between the craters that the puhlets chose were so slim, there wasn't room to descend from the horshets and take a rest break. So they ate and drank as they traveled, reaching cautiously into the pouches slung just behind the saddles. "Everyone sit tall, and don't list to the right or left!" called back Dray-Gon just as Sharita swayed, almost falling asleep. "Do what you can to assist the horshet in keeping their balance. It's tricky riding here. One mis-step, and that's it."

As the first sun sank to near its place of sleeping, Sharita felt her slight fever rising. From time to time she lifted a hand to her forehead as a throbbing headache began. "I'm going to be sick," she thought, "really sick. Maybe Dray-Gon was right. I should have stayed with the wagons."

Directly ahead of her rode Doctor Benlon, and he too glanced back at her often. "Are you feeling all right, princess?" he asked, concern on his kindly face.

"Yes, I feel fine."

From his expression, he didn't believe her, but he didn't comment. This time Dray-Gon called back that he was searching for a place to spend the night. Looking about, Sharita couldn't see even a single space wide enough to even descend from a horshet. She had lain down almost, with her arms wrapped around the neck of the beast, clinging on desperately, as she felt delirium from the fever take her into unreality. From far away she heard Dray-Gon's voice call out there wasn't any recourse but to descend into one of the craters and sleep down there.

Sharita hung on, desperately clinging to the horshet, allowing it to follow as it would the lead of the others. She heard Benlon say he would give her medicine as soon as they could dismount, but her tongue was too dry to reply. "It won't be long now, princess," he encouraged. "We are almost at the bottom."

She knew Mark-Kan was behind her, and he too said encouraging things that she didn't understand. She forced herself to sit up, and hold her eyes open. The sky was ablaze with the setting of the second sun, streaking the sky with banners of gold, crimson, scarlet, and deep purple. The shimmering ebony crystals of some of the larger rocks caught and held the colors of the retreating sun. For a short while, there existed in this bleak, black eerie world a weird sort of haunting beauty. I am going to recall all this one day, and put it in a picture, so Father can see, Sharita told herself, for all ladies of her social stature took painting lessons as a matter of course, along with music and dancing lessons. Lessons, all my life has been a series of lessons on how to live, and I've never really lived until now were Sharita's thoughts as she determinedly forced herself to stay awake and fight the fever that had her clothes sopping wet, and her thoughts whirling around like horshets chasing each other.

The bone-weary men, with muscles cramped and aching from the daylong ride in the saddle, cheered as they reached the bottom of the cavern bowl. "It wasn't so bad," said Arth-Rin, looking back at the trail they had followed, spiraling down layers that seemed the stairway of a giant. Before the last of the riders reached the crater bottom, Dray-Gon had the first men setting up camp. "Pitch the tent for the princess first," he ordered.

The planners of the expedition had tried to think of every contingency, so they had sufficient tents of shimmering pufar fabric to house them all. Other men began to feed and water the puhlets and horshets as they were unloaded, and fires were started from material they had brought with them.

Sharita, on her horshet, was one of the last to limp into camp. She slumped there, her arms dangling loosely, too fevered and weak to dismount. Dray-Gon reached her before Benlon.

"Have you enjoyed your day, princess?" he asked, reaching up to assist her down. She gave him one long dazed, unfocused look, then fell into his arms in a dead faint. "Give her to me," cried Benlon, "I have just the medicine to have her feeling fine by tomorrow morning."

"Then get it out, while I carry her into her tent," snapped Dray-Gon. "Why the devil didn't you give her some of that medicine before this?"

"She didn't need it before this!" answered Benlon in a testy way, as he followed Dray-Gon into the special tent set up for the princess. He put down his bag and opened it up, glancing at Dray-Gon, who had laid the princess on a cot. "Now get out, Captain, so I can tend to her."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm a doctor, remember? I know what to do. I'll take her temperature, her pulse, take off those wet clothes, and put on dry ones, after she's dosed with this." He held up a bottle of dark red liquid. "She really needs to be bathed off with cold water, but I suspect she won't like knowing I did it."

"Do what you have to," Dray-Gon said stiffly, his eyes on Sharita, who tossed restlessly on the cot, "and she won't have to know, but damn you, don't you take advantage of her while she's unconscious!"

"What the devil do you think I am?" flared Benlon, his face very red. "Do you think I don't care about her just as much as you do? All day she's clung to that horshet, and never complained once!"

"Hah! Just wait until she's feeling better! She'll have plenty to say!" With that, Dray-Gon threw Sharita a last parting look before he left the tent.

Someone tried to force her to eat and drink, but she wouldn't. Someone patted her head and said she would be better in the morning.

In the night she grew cold, and made sick little whimpering sounds, as the frigid winds above the crater blew, and an even more intense cold settled down in the depths of the pit. Shivering and half-crying, Sharita curled up into a tight ball, disoriented and miserable. There came a rustling noise at the flap of her tent, and the soft rilling of the puhlets, and Dray-Gon's voice speaking softly as he picked her up and wrapped her in a blanket before he laid her on the floor. "The puhlets kept your ancestor Far-Awn from freezing, Sharita, they'll do the same for you...and for the rest of us." She felt his kiss upon her forehead, then on her lips. "Good night, darling," he whispered, and was then gone.

Comfortably she fell asleep within the circle of puhlets, their long hair and body heat warming better than the machines of the wagons.

Not long after that, she was again half-wakened, as arms picked her up and carried her outside. "Dray-Gon?" she asked in a small hoarse voice. "Yes," he whispered back, "I'm taking you to a better place."

His voice sounded funny, and she wanted to ask where a better place was, but she couldn't think clearly. She passed out. From time to time she wakened, and sensed she was riding on a horshet, with someone behind holding her on. She tried to orient that with her memories of descending into a crater, and she was sick. "I want to go back and sleep with the puhlets," she said in a mumbling way, "I feel cold."

"Tsk, tsk," he said, "that's too bad, princess, but from now on, you don't get what you want."

This time she recognized his voice. It wasn't Dray-Gon! She opened her mouth to scream, but a hard, gloved hand clamped down over her mouth, shutting off her cries. "Don't struggle, princess! We're riding on a rim, and any resistance on your part will have us both falling over, and remember how that horshet screamed. I'm taking you back to the wagons." He laughed in an exhilarated way. "This black land was an unexpected miracle! Every day I've waited for my chance to do this, but I couldn't get to you as long as you were locked in that wagon! Princess, you are going to make me the richest man in all of Upper and Lower El Dorraine!"

The Rage of Mark-Kan

B
efore the first sun cracked the sky with color, Dray-Gon was up and dressed, and breaking camp. Tossing orders right and left. "Prepare a hearty breakfast," he said to Arth-Rin, who was chief cook today, "for I want the princess to eat well before we set off again." He thought he would let her sleep until the last possible moment, and ordered the men to work as quietly as possible, leaving her tent until last.

It was then he saw Doctor Benlon hurrying to him, almost at a run. "Captain," he called out as he came, "I checked the tent of the princess, and she isn't there!"

"What do you mean, she isn't there?" Dray-Gon quickly scanned his eyes about. It wasn't necessary for her to sneak off for privacy to do some intimate thing, her tent was fully equipped to take care of her needs.

"She's gone, Dray-Gon," said Benlon as he neared. "Even the blanket I covered her with."

"By the Gods! Do you suppose she wandered off, delirious?"

Benlon shook his head. "No, she wouldn't be delirious now. The last time I checked on her, she was sleeping on the floor with four puhlets, and seemed quite normal. No fever, not too cold."

During this, Raykin had been checking over the horshets. "Dray-Gon, six of our horshets are missing, and I had to round these up. It seems someone deliberately unhitched them, and forced them to scatter!"

"Who isn't here?" barked Dray-Gon, turning about in a circle to discover for himself who was missing. As familiar as he was with the men he had been traveling with for so many days, it took only a few seconds to know. Mark-Kan! He swore to himself. "Arth-Rin, Raykin, saddle three horshets, we're going after them!" He turned to Benlon. "Set the tents up again, and wait for us here. No doubt Mark-Kan has headed back toward the wagons, since he took enough horshets to pull one." Dray-Gon stuffed into his belt one of the laser beam weapons, and told Arth-Rin and Raykin to do the same.

"Why did he take the princess?" asked Benlon, bewildered-appearing.

"What do you think? If he turns her over to the outlaws, she'll be worth a king's ransom. And do you know what else, since Mark-Kan is one of our men, the Uppers will think we were all in the plot! And the war the king tried to prevent by distracting us with this fool trip will begin!"

"Then we will all go, to save the princess, to stop the war!" cried out Benlon, and behind him all the men shouted they were willing, eager...say the word.

To Dray-Gon's reasoning, three men would travel faster than nineteen, and someone had to stay and care for the extra horshets and round them up, and see they didn't wander away. "Don't worry...we have the weapons, Mark-Kan doesn't have any!"

He didn't speak of the ring of wagon keys that were missing.

In another few minutes, the three men left, carrying with them a light supply of food and wine.

Alone in her wagon, bound hand and foot, but not gagged, Sharita tossed and squirmed, trying to wiggle out of the ropes that held her.

After the long, tiresome journey back to the wagons, Mark-Kan had thrown her heedlessly on her own bed, and then left to eat and quench his thirst with the large supply of food and wine left in another wagon. In an hour or so, he lurched back, staggering to her bedside and staring down at her, reeking of wine, his pupils wide and unfocused as he sat on the bed and reached for her.

Quickly squirming out of his reach, Sharita thrust her bound legs forward, aiming at his most vulnerable area, but he dodged her kick just in time, and slapped her so viciously her vision blurred! "Now hear this, princess," he began in a slurred voice, "right now you are no king's brat! You are just another woman. During all of this trip, you have never looked at me one time, like I wasn't good enough. Well, I am every bit as good as Dray-Gon any day! My father is a bakaret just like his, and if you had treated me nicer, maybe you wouldn't be in the position you are in now. When I've finished with you, I am driving this wagon back to the borderlands, and turning you over to the outlaws. And then I am staying just long enough to collect my share of the ransom." His drunken laughter sounded dry and throaty, terrifying, as once more he reached for her. This time she didn't move, only waited. "This is nice," he purred, "but don't you have anything to say?" Asking as he leaned above to stroke her hair, a wild tumbled mess, before his hand moved lower, to her throat. "I think you are an animal, a beast! I hope Dray-Gon slits your throat!" she said coldly arrogant, disregarding his insulting caresses.

He sneered: "Do you think he loves you, princess? Dray-Gon has a servant girl he gives his love to; you he uses to get to the throne. He and his father plotted all this very carefully: make a lot of trouble, make the king think a civil war was inevitable, and he would marry you off to Dray-Gon so the lowerlands would be appeased with one of their own as your husband. Your mother wasn't a true native of Bari-Bar, all her ancestors were Uppers! Anybody can grow rich farming in Bari-Bar--or they could, until they all died...so mysteriously."