Lord Tyger (34 page)

Ras caught Gammum in the back with the spear. Gammum slid down a few steps and did not move thereafter. As Ras pulled the spear out, he heard a scream from below. The white-haired woman was looking up at him, her mouth open. Then she turned and ran down the street toward the lake shore. Some of the infants toddled after her. Some continued to play.

She was too far away for him to hope to catch her. Within a few minutes she would have rowed across the quarter mile of lake to the island and given the alarm. There was nothing else he could do except run back up the steps and to Eeva's cage. He slashed the rope on the door of her cage with a copper knife taken from Tukkisht.

"What do we do now?" she said. Her skin was pale beneath her tan, but her gray eyes were bright.

"I want my knife," he said. "And since Gilluk burned down the fine cage and house I built for him, his cage--and his building--will burn."

"We haven't got time!" she said. "If we left right now, we could get ahead of them and escape through the swamp!"

He shook his head, whirled, and ran to the nearest doorway.

The stairway was quartz-shot granite blocks, the edges of the risers worn down by generations of feet. It twisted up to a hallway between the rooms on the outside wall and those on the rooms overlooking the courtyard. The light in the hall was dim. Sunlight came through the open windows of the inner and outer rooms, but it was choked by the grass-and-bamboo curtains covering the entrances to the rooms. Unlit torches were stuck at 45-degree angles into holes bored into the granite walls. Ras removed several and told Eeva to get some for herself. Pushing aside a curtain, he entered a large room. There were several beds of carved mahogany frameworks, grass mattresses, and pelt coverings. Stone shelves rose against one wall from floor to beamed ceiling. These held at least three hundred skulls, Gilluk's ancestors, direct and collateral, and a number of broader, rounder, more prognathous skulls, Wantso victims of Sharrikt raids. There were also gorilla and leopard skulls.

Beside the great window was a tall-backed chair with arms and seat covered with crocodile-hide. A wooden rack held spears and war clubs and Ras's belt, sheath, and knife.

The only other furniture was a small copper brazier in the center of the room. It contained some hot coals of a heavy wood.

Ras strapped on the knife belt and applied the torches to the coals in the brazier. Eeva lit torches from his torches. She
said, "Why do you insist on wasting time?"

"Because Gilluk must realize that I am no ordinary prisoner. Because Gilluk must pay."

He told her what she should do. They tore down the curtains, set them in a pile by a huge, upright beam, and piled the wooden beds on top of the curtains. Ras set the curtains to blazing and then raked the skulls off the shelves with his spear. He threw the skulls on the fire and watched the flames curl around them.

After that, he and Eeva raced around the building, downstairs, and around the second and first floors, where they started other fires. Before he returned to the courtyard, he looked out a window toward the island. White-clad figures were streaming out of the temple toward the dugouts and bamboo boats on the island beach.

While Eeva stacked a few curtains and mats against the sides of the cages, Ras hammered with a large, three-legged copper brazier at the bars of his cage. The bamboo poles gave way, and he soon had an opening for the great exercise wheel.

"What are you doing now?" Eeva said. Her hair and face were black with smoke, and her gray eyes, wide with excitement, the whites reddened with strain and smoke, stared at him.

She recoiled at his savage expression and said, "Never mind! I give up! You're mad!"

He ignored her to run though the door of his cage, past the crackling flames, and into the annex that held the wheel. He lifted it off its support, although it had taken four men to carry it between them, lowered it, and rammed it through the open space he had made by knocking the poles out.

Smoke was beginning to fill the courtyard. It curled around them and made them cough. Ras rolled the wheel out through the great doorway, turned it a little, and halted it a few feet from the crest of the hill.

By then, three dugouts and one war canoe, Gilluk's, were drawn up on the mainland shore, with others coming in. The giant white figure of the king, the sun-glinting sword raised above his head, was running through the street. Behind him was his bodyguard, their spears flashing. Freemen armed with spears followed the king's relatives.

Ras turned the wheel once more and rolled it to a position near the northeast corner of the building. When smoke enveloped them, he and Eeva lay close to the ground and looked over the edge of the hill.

"I'd ask you what you're going to do," Eeva said, "but I'm afraid to."

"I moved the wheel over here so it wouldn't carry us into the houses," Ras said. "It'll get a straight roll down to the lake. And bring us near the dugouts."

Her nails sank into his biceps, and she said, "You mean...?"

He grinned and said, "We'll get a good head start on them that way. They'll all be almost up the hill before we start down. We can get across the lake and up into the hills, and from there we'll get back to the swamp. We could take the boat up to the mouth of the river, but they could go faster on land and be at the river before we got there if they knew we were going that way. But in the hills, they won't find us. I'll make sure of that."

She almost wailed. "But we could have gone out the back way and been in the hills on that side, too, long ago."

"No. That way, there are three miles of flat land before we could get to the hills. I could outrun them, but you..."

He paused, then said, "Besides, I want to do it this way."

"All right."

She withdrew her nails from his arm, and she laughed.

"
Jumala!
If my colleagues could see me now! They'd never believe it! Nobody will ever believe it!"

Through the smoke, Ras saw Gilluk striding up the steps, his guard and male relatives below him a few steps, and the freemen spreading out on both sides of the stone steps to form two lines across the face of the hill. Ten ran around the hill on one side and seven on the other, apparently to come up on opposite sides of the hill. And also to look out across the country on that side for him if he were escaping that way.

At the foot of the hill, just leaving the town to start up the steps, was a mob of slaves and artisans, some freeman farmers, and the Sharrikt women. The chair of Gilluk's mother was supported at an angle on the shoulders of slaves. She was holding her parasol herself as she bent her head back to look up.

"For God's sake, how long do we have to wait?" Eeva said.

Ras grinned again and stood up.

"Now."

The smoke was so thick that there were times when she could not see him although she was only several feet away. Coughing, she got down on her belly and crawled forward until her hand touched a wooden spoke. He was already inside and coughing violently.

"Hurry up!"

She slid through the opening between two spokes on the
side of the cage. She gasped, "I can hardly see you!"

He was suspended in the cage, his hands around a spoke on either side and his feet braced against the spokes. Between coughs, he said, "It isn't going to work this way."

He lowered himself until his back was against the curved walk, after which he braced himself again.

"It'll be a hard ride," he said. "Whatever happens, don't let go."

Seeing that she was set, he eased himself up the walk so that his weight would roll the wheel forward. It moved a little, then stopped. Again, he climbed, his feet on spokes higher up. The wheel rotated slowly because Eeva's weight was holding it back.

Ras gave a shout that ended in a cough. He bent forward, his hands gripping spokes, his insteps hooked around spokes, and then he threw himself backward. The wheel rolled again, slowed, seemed to stop, and suddenly went over the edge.

Eeva shrieked. Ras continued to cough, even as he went down and then up and over in a forward motion. He gripped harder as his body sagged down and pressed against the walk. Shouts and screams came up the hill. Ras turned his head just in time to see Gilluk, about forty yards to one side, standing on a step, staring at him, the sword slowly sinking. Then Gilluk was upside down, the sun was below Ras, rightside up, upside down, and out of sight. A shrill squawk was slashed by the spinning spokes; a white-clad figure with a black face, white-rimmed eyes, and white teeth and black gullet flashed by. The wheel bumped as it hit a small mound, shot into the air a little way, and banged down, almost tearing Ras from his position on the upper part of the wheel.

The wheel tottered. Eeva screamed. The wheel regained balance and shot down the hill on a slightly different path, which was taking them toward town. Or so it seemed to Ras, who could get no accurate picture of their line of flight.

Abruptly, the stone walls and thatch roof of a house appeared hanging downward, sky below it, a frightened face in the window, spun over, was gone, another house, a cry from a doorway soaring out and away, the squawk of a chicken, a thump, a feather floating, a lurch, a splash of water, then the wheel so suddenly slowed it tore him free of his grasp, the lake covering him, uncovering him, and he was lying on the walk up to his neck in water and looking at Eeva, whose wet hairs hung like weeds over her face.

To get out, they had to hold their breaths while squeezing through the spokes under water. They waded to the shore, where the track of the wheel was the path of a monstrous snake. A small dugout with two paddles was on the muddy beach about thirty yards from them. Faces were at the windows of some houses on the edge of the town, and fingers jabbed at them.

Gilluk and the others were halfway down the hill, the king taking two stone steps at a time and holding his sword above his head with one hand. The others were strung out but converging; the common point would be Ras and Eeva.

"Get in the boat!" he said, and he ran toward the nearest hut while she croaked an unintelligible question behind him. As he neared the hut, he heard screams and then saw a woman and two children run from it. He entered the house and found two short spears, a hunting bow, and a quiver of arrows. Before he left, he kicked over a copper tripod containing a fire and threw
some sleeping mats on it. He lit a torch and touched off the thatch roof. The houses were so close together that if one caught fire, many or all might, even if the breeze was from the west and this house was on the southeast corner of town.

Eeva was waiting for him in the dugout. She was on her knees, paddle poised, and looking over her shoulder. Her shirt and bra, already rotten and torn, had been ripped off during the descent or perhaps when she had squeezed out between the spokes. The skin on her breasts and stomach was red-raw from scraping against the spokes.

Ras hesitated, then said, "You go ahead; get a good start! I'll be along in another boat!"

He threw a spear into her boat and shoved it out into the lake. He threw the other spear into another dugout and put the strap of the quiver over his shoulder. Holding the bow in one hand, he began to shove the rest of the boats out onto the lake. They went easily enough, but he had to put down the bow and bend with all his strength and dig into the mud, to launch the two heavy war canoes. Fortunately for him, the Sharrikt had been in such a hurry they had not drawn the war canoes very far up onto the beach.

When all the boats were adrift, he ran back to the dugout. On the way, he glanced up the main street. Gilluk was halfway down it with about twenty close behind him and the others strung out. Ras shot at him, but the king saw him while he was fitting the arrow to the string, and he ran into the nearest hut. The arrow stuck quivering in a bamboo pole near the doorway. The other warriors scattered to duck behind the stone houses or to throw themselves onto the ground.

Ras took to the dugout and paddled furiously. Thirty yards out, he looked behind him. Gilluk was dancing on the shore and howling at his men, who were wading or swimming after the boats. The southeast-corner house was burning now, casting flames at its neighbor. A line of slaves and freemen were passing pots of water up from the lake to the fire fighters.

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