Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger (27 page)

Sinbad, shaken by the blow and the fall, got his wits together and swung his precious pointed iron bar around at the tiger just as the great beast sprang. The butt of the harpoonlike bar was against a step, bracing it well as Sinbad threw himself back to hold it tight and steady. The flying body of the tawny saber-tooth impaled itself on the point of the iron spear with an agonizing roar. Its legs kicked and squirmed as the momentum carried him over the head of Sinbad, wrenching the iron bar from his grasp.

The butt of the spear gave him a painful blow on the thigh, but as Sinbad twisted around to see the tiger tumbling down he knew that the fatal blow had been struck. Arcing over his head, the tiger had missed Sinbad and crashed down the steps to the floor. It lay on its back, a sword in its side and the iron bar imbedded deeply in its chest. It clawed the air, screamed shrilly, and kicked out.

Sinbad got to his feet, ran down the steps, and yanked Hassan’s sword from the beast’s side. He plunged the sword again and again into the writhing body until the animal stopped moving.

Then he plunged the sword once more into the brain of the great saber-tooth and stood, bleeding and exhausted. He wiped sweat and blood from his face and looked around.

The rising waters had covered Rafi’s body, which was floating with only the hump of his back showing. Icicles were falling almost continuously, and the thunderous booms of the lightning storm persisted outside. Hassan stirred.

Sinbad staggered over to his friend, pulling the bloody and badly mauled sailor from the water. Hassan moaned, his head lolling loosely. “Hassan!” Sinbad shouted over the noise of the storm and the crackling of ice. “Hassan!”

“Wha—?”

“We must get away! Hassan!”

The wounded Hassan shook his head to clear it and some consciousness returned. “Sinbad . . .” he breathed. “What happened . . . ?”

“Get up!” the adventurer snapped, and turned to slosh through the water to the fallen Maroof. The muscular sailor was dead, disemboweled by the savage saber-tooth. Sinbad went back to Hassan to help him to his feet and get started toward the archway out.

They had moved only a few feet when they heard a great crackling, breaking, snapping noise and looked up to see tons of ice falling as one whole ice shroud, one whole inward slanting pyramid wall, come crashing down at them.

Sinbad and Hassan dove for the dubious shelter of the Egyptian-style columns along the lower part of the wall. The tons of crystal ice fell upon the corpse of the tiger and upon the body of Rafi. With the ice came some of the inner facing of stone from the pyramid wall. The avalanche barely missed Sinbad and his companion but the tidal wave of water knocked them off their feet.

They staggered up, dripping water and blood. The cracking noises continued and they looked fearfully up to see more fragments of ice and stones falling.

“It’s coming down!” Sinbad shouted, and led the sprint for the passage entrance. They sloshed through the water and Hassan staggered under a glancing blow by a fragment of ice, but Sinbad grabbed his arm and helped him along. Looking up, Sinbad saw that the Aurora Borealis light was growing fainter and fainter.

“Sinbad! Look!”

The sprawled, dead body of the saber-tooth was drenched with ice water, lying partially in the rising pool of bloodied water that covered the entire surface of the inner Shrine. The dead corpse had one leg thrust out, and at the end of that leg . . . a huge, transformed bird’s claw.

Another section of the ice shroud collapsed, covering the tiger’s corpse with glittering white. “Move . . . !” Sinbad snapped.

They splashed across the great hall and up the steps to the outside passage. Ice and stones fell just behind them as they plunged into the gloom and raced along the dusty hall. The wind was cold and snow was being driven in through the ragged opening. Wet and shivering, Hassan and Sinbad stumbled out of the passage into the Valley of the Shrine.

Everything was shrouded in freshly fallen snow.

The tropical trees were wilted and crisped by the chill, their leaves turning brown and curling in death. The grass was brittle, buried under the snow that would soon turn to eternal ice. The birds, butterflies, and flowers were gone.

The wind howled through the shrinking trees and Sinbad took Hassan’s arm. It was going to be a long and possibly deadly climb to the Gates.

M
elanthius huddled in the lee of the massive Gate as the storm swept around him. He was bundled into his furs and at his feet were the furs for Sinbad, Hassan, and Maroof. Kassim, who was beyond the open Gate with Farah and the others, had refused the furs until those who had come so far to save him were clothed and warm. He was sheltered from the worst of the wind by his sister and by the others, who braced themselves against the blizzard before him.

The entire Valley seemed to be in the grip of a spectacular storm. Snow clouds whirled under the lash of a tornado-force wind. Avalanches thundered down from the nearby mountain cliffs as the fresh snow built up and fell. Later, the old Greek knew, the Valley would be packed with snow, the mountains encased with eternal ice, and there would be few avalanches.

The old man sighed and mourned the green and peaceful valley, once a Paradise, and fast becoming an empty, glacial wilderness indistinguishable from miles and miles of ice and snow in every direction. And he mourned the knowledge lost, but not the deaths of Rafi or . . . he hoped . . . Zenobia.

It seemed to the old man he had been there a long time. He was fearful for Kassim’s health and for the delicate Farah, as well as for himself and the sailors. He was old, he thought, and had lived a long and interesting life. The sailors were tough and used to hardship, and besides, they were volunteers. But Farah and Kassim were pawns in Zenobia’s ambitious plan of domination and revenge. It was not their fault they were trapped here at the top of the world, in a frozen Hell of ice and wind that cut like a thousand knives. For their sake Melanthius hoped Sinbad and his men survived and were quickly arrived. He squinted into the swirling snowflakes, but saw nothing.

Sinbad took a step and fell into a knee-deep hole hidden by the snow. He pulled himself out and once again took Hassan’s arm. The tough sailor was all but out on his feet, the blood frozen on his ripped garments, his hair and beard frosted, his eyes slitted and unseeing. Sinbad was almost in as bad a condition. The deep wounds from the tiger’s claws had stopped bleeding, due to the intense cold, but their thin clothing, rent and hanging in tatters from their bodies, was little protection. The wet clothes had frozen into stiff panels, which broke with their movement. They were almost naked in the blizzard, chilled to the bone, and weak from loss of blood.

Hassan staggered and almost fell. Sinbad glanced back at the pyramid as he clutched at the stumbling sailor. He heard a crumbling roar, even above the howling wind of the storm, and saw the pyramid start to collapse upon itself. The bright metal cap went first, tipping, with puffs of frost, then the whole structure began to shake. The cap fell to the side and slithered down the buckling walls of the pyramid, tumbling and bending. A gaping hole opened suddenly in the snow-covered side of the great pile of blocks as the inner walls collapsed, bringing down the exterior walls.

Sinbad saw a splash of water that seemed to freeze as it flew into the air, falling as snow and sleet upon the collapsing pyramid. Slowly, very slowly, the great blocks fell in upon themselves throwing up dust, which was swept away by the howling wind. Then there was no more movement. The pyramid, the secret Shrine of the Four Elements of the ancient race of the Arimaspi, was gone. What remained was a pile of broken stones rapidly being covered by the falling snow.

The sea captain gritted his teeth against the biting cold. Getting warm, getting his friend to shelter—that was more important than anything. Pragmatically, Sinbad started putting one foot in front of the other, pulling at his staggering, stumbling companion, moving through the drifts toward the Gate wall high above.

Looking up, Sinbad was almost blinded by the snow, but he had a brief glimpse of the wall spanning the gorge. He lowered his head and kept on slugging through the deepening drifts.

They fell and Hassan moaned with pain, almost out of his mind with delirium. They lay in the drift for a long moment. Too long a moment. Hassan did not want to rise.

“Leave me . . .”

“No. Get up.” Sinbad tugged at him.

“No . . . pain . . . just leave me . . . go on . . . I’ll only . . . hold you . . . back . . .”

Sinbad lurched to his feet, the snow that had covered him in those brief moments falling away from his body. It was cold. Bitterly cold. Sinbad had never felt so cold. He wanted to fall down into the drift and rest . . . sleep . . .

Sleep forever . . .

He wrenched up his head and snarled at Hassan with his best battle-deck voice of command. “Hassan, you worthless dog! Get on your feet, you camel dungfly!” He kicked at the motionless man but the drifts softened the blow.
“Get up!”
he cried. He tugged at Hassan, who fought him. Off balance, Sinbad almost fell down. He knew if he went down then he was lost.

His face was inches from Hassan’s frosted countenance. The words came cruelly. “Hassan, you are the dregs! The vomit of the sea! A worthless woman fit only for the lowest crib! A baby feigning men’s work!”

“Why you . . . !”

The big sailor thrust out a fist, but Sinbad dodged and grabbed it. “On your feet, you bag of dog dung! Only women die in snowdrifts! Only weaklings give up! What’s a little tiger bite? Get up!”

“You . . . !” Hassan swung again but Sinbad staggered back, his voice mocking.

“Die here then and I’ll tell the men at the tavern you died begging for life . . .”

“Sinbad, I’ll kill you for this . . . !” Hassan got to his knees, his torso swaying.

“Lie down, dog, and die like you lived! Swiller of wine! Debaucher of women! Weakling! Beardless boy masquerading as a man!” Sinbad was hoarse from shouting over the wind, sick and weak, but he kept pounding at his friend’s ego.

“Don’t get up! Sleep, you lizard! Lie down here and I’ll tell Oki and Achmed and Tamilar you died whimpering and crying like a child!” The hurt in Hassan’s dazed eyes almost made Sinbad stop, but he saw the anger was giving strength to Hassan’s bloody limbs. He staggered back. “Goodbye, Hassan-the-Weak! Goodbye, dogmeat . . . I will tell the women how you died. Jamilia and Sumatra, remember them? They will know you died without a sword, died sobbing, died without trying to live . . . !”

“You lie!”
Hassan cried and lurched to his feet. He swayed, then plowed through the snow after the retreating Sinbad. “Stay and fight, you coward!” he screamed into the driving snow.

“Catch me, weakling . . . !”

Hassan cursed and staggered on. The snows closed in around them, howling like demons long denied a feast. The Valley of the Shrine was dead and the gods of ice were dancing.

Melanthius left the small fire they had built out of the wind and resolutely staggered into the blizzard to wade back through the drifts to the monstrous Gate. There was nothing below but swirling whiteness. Nothing could be seen.

“I’ll wait a few more minutes,” he muttered to himself. “Then we must go. Farah and Kassim must be saved . . .”

The winds howled and the cold was almost more then the old man could take. He found the bundles of furs and shook them free of snow and started to take them back. Kassim was blue, but still stubborn. Now he would don a dead man’s clothing and they would go.

A movement . . .

A spot of color covered at once by the flying snow . . .

The old Greek shielded his eyes against the wind and looked through ice-covered lashes, searching the white gorge below for the movement of color he had seen . . . or thought he had seen.

“Sinbad staggered out of the howling wind, the spot of color a rock as he looked up at the Gate. Melanthius started down, crying out to Farah and Dione for help. The wind whipped away his voice and he labored down alone.

Sinbad looked at him with wild, staring eyes, but made no protest when Melanthius forced his chill, blue limbs into the furs.

“Hassan . . .” Sinbad choked out. He gestured behind, but the old Greek saw no one.

“How far behind?”

A weak smile on Sinbad’s face cracked some of the frost. “Just . . . a . . . curse . . . behind . . .”

Melanthius looked again and saw a whitened figure lurching through the drifts below. He shoved Sinbad toward the Gate. “There’s a fire up there—go!” Then he went lower down and seized Hassan’s arm.

The sailor yanked back, his face wild and murderous. “I’ll kill you . . . !” Then he saw the fur-covered figure was Melanthius and he looked around wildly. “Where’s Sinbad?” he rasped.

The old scholar pointed up the gorge. He held out the furs and Hassan let himself be dressed. Then he lurched up the trail, falling twice, and staggered through the Gate. Melanthius was right behind and guided the wounded man into the rock niche, where a crude shelter had been made.

Sinbad looked up from the fire, his face cleared of ice and frost, the blood starting to run a bit again. He grinned at Hassan and held out a steaming bowl of soup. “Late for dinner again, eh?” he said.

Hassan recoiled as if struck, swaying dangerously. Then he stumbled forward to a seat by the fire, his frown giving way to a wicked grin. “Sinbad . . . Sinbad . . .” he muttered. “You are a devil. I . . . could have . . . killed you . . .”

Sinbad shook his head, grinning. “Perhaps . . . anger can be a great tool.”

“We’d given you up for dead,” Farah said to Hassan and Sinbad as Melanthius helped the stiff Kassim into dead Maroof’s thick furs.

Hassan flicked his eyes over to his captain. “Aye . . . everyone but Sinbad . . .”

Kassim shrugged into the furs, his face still blue from the cold. “And my friend, Trog?” he asked anxiously.

Sinbad shook his head. “He died well against a great and powerful enemy . . . as did Maroof.”

Hassan nodded, gulping down the steaming soup. “Not a bad way to die.” He exchanged grins with Sinbad.