Sword Destiny (20 page)

The young priest nodded. His face was as white as his robe, his whole body trembled and he too wept freely. He could not speak but turned and hurried from the tower to carry his fateful message. The
Juahar
fires had been kept burning bright in the temple courtyards, while the waiting women and priests had kept up a continuous murmur of prayer. Now there was no longer any cause to postpone the rites of
Sati
.

Kaseem could hardly bear to look, but with a huge sigh he raised his head to gaze back upon the plain. The hordes of Maghalla were poised now for their long-denied kill. With Jahan dead and their numbers more than halved, Devan could no longer rally any last show of defiance. There was no resistance left. The Karakhoran front was crumbling as the bone-weary survivors lowered their swords, stepped back, and waited to be slain.

And then the last Alphan Tri-thruster appeared in the eastern sky.

 

 

 

Long after the brilliant white light had faded from the solar system, Zela sat stiff and numb with shock. Her viewscreen returned almost to normal, except for the dispersing embers of red-hot core material cooling slowly into millions of fragment asteroids. The distant stars and galaxies began to faintly glitter again, star dust slowly brightening in the black void. She saw none of it for her eyes were screwed tightly shut. Even after all the warnings, she still could not believe that her homeworld was gone. It was an impossible event that should not have happened. Her mind had been drained of all thought, hope and reason. Her heart was hollow, her soul in dreadful limbo. She was an empty husk, robbed of everything.

Kyle had turned away to go and tend as well as he could to Laurya.

Kananda remained with his hand on Zela's shoulder. After a while, that too seemed an empty thing to do but he did not know how to comfort her.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of grief and silence, Zela opened her eyes. She stared then at her viewscreen where Dooma no longer existed and heaved a long, shuddering sigh. She looked up at Kananda but still could not speak.

“What happens now?” he asked quietly.

Zela scanned the heavens around them for any signs of Raven's ship. There was nothing. They were alone in space and she looked next to her fuel and power readings. They were almost zero. The solar panels that should have automatically started to recharge her lazer banks and most other systems were obviously damaged and no longer functioning.

“It seems we have only two choices,” she said at last. “We can just drift here until we die in space or we can try to land on Earth.”

“I think I would prefer to land,” he admitted simply.

Zela forced a thin, white smile. “Then I will try to take you home, to your city of Karakhor.”

They strapped Laurya into her bunk, using pillows and blankets to insulate her as much as possible from the stress and pull of entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Kyle and Kananda then took up their flight seats and Zela piloted them down. She made one orbit of the planet before the distinctive sub-continent of India took shape through the swirls of broken cloud. Kyle plotted in the recorded co-ordinates for the location of Karakhor and Zela banked the Tri-thruster and began their descent. With a pilot's natural skill and instinct, she was conserving their last dregs of power as much as possible.

As they approached, Kyle was able to bring a close-up image of the plain and the city on to their viewscreens. The full horror of the battle and the destruction of the city were revealed to them and now it was Kananda's turn to suck in his breath and realize that the world he had known was destroyed. He stared at the awful scenes of total carnage and mass slaughter and now he could fully understand Zela's grief and anguish at the death of Dooma. If anything, this was worse, for the fifth planet had died in one clean burst of brilliant white light, while Karakhor was being systematically butchered before his eyes.

“Can we help them?” he asked, and then in desperation, “we must help them.”

For a moment it seemed that Zela had not heard him. She too was staring at her viewscreen. The gory scenes of battle had registered, together with the fact that the defenders were on the very edge of defeat, dying helplessly with their backs to the river. However, her gaze was glued to the city itself, to where the black needle of the Gheddan Solar Cruiser thrust up from the city square and the circle of surrounding stone temples. The last Gheddan ship had landed and instinctively she knew that this had to be Raven's ship. He was the leader of the enemy expedition, their most experienced space pilot and commander. Simple logic said that the one ship most likely to survive would be Raven's.

Raven, the Gheddan Sword Lord she had sought for so long. The man she had sworn to kill, the murderer of her brother, Lorin. He was down there somewhere and he was alive. Because she so desperately wanted to kill him, she could convince herself that he was alive. Suddenly what was left of her life had meaning again. She could still avenge Lorin. The opportunity might still come to challenge Raven, to see him die as Lorin had died, by the sword.

Slowly she became aware of Kananda's question and the urgent pleading in his eyes. She blinked to clear her mind and forced her concentration back to the immediate task at hand. She checked her instrument readings and made swift mental calculations. “We could make one pass over the battlefield and fire one burst from the ship's lazers. But then we would have no power left to bring the ship's nose up again and land in the conventional way. We would have to make a crash landing.”

“Please,” Kananda begged her. “Let us leave the rest to the gods.”

Zela smiled wryly. “Then pray that your gods will be more merciful than mine.”

She brought the ship in low over the up-turned faces of the struggling mass of men, aiming for the line of contact where the two opposing forces struck together. The line parted as they approached, with both sides trying to break away and run back. Screaming men trampled each other in their haste, fear and panic spreading through them in a bursting flood. The warriors of Karakhor backed up frantically on to the log rafts floating along the Mahanadi. Those of Maghalla tried to flee back across the plain toward the forest.

The Tri-thruster thundered down in a swooping arc, powered by the backward lancing, red-flame spears of her engines and the main battle lazer banks in her bows fired the last terrible burst of white-hot fire. Zela had targeted the hordes of Maghalla and the white beam sliced and burned its way through the fear-maddened ranks. Thousands of men, scores of chariots, and the last handful of Maghallan war elephants were all incinerated in an instant in that almighty blast of scorching death.

A second pass would have annihilated Sardar's forces but the ship's energy sources were swiftly depleted. The white lazer beam flickered and vanished and the engine thrust fires died. The ship's belly sagged and touched earth and one of her three dead external engine fins was torn away in a nightmare shrieking of tortured steel. Then the ship crashed down fully and was tearing and skidding her way across the plain, ploughing up the red soil and great piles of the dead and dying.

Zela had aimed her crash landing just forward of the Karakhoran lines, and again it was the fading might of Maghalla that was crushed and scattered under the ship's descent. The Tri-Thruster practically fell from the sky, obliterating all in its path. It careered across the full length of the plain and finally came to a stop where it smashed into the edge of the jungle. The first trees splintered and snapped, allowing the ship to continue its slithering progress. As more and stronger trunks took the impact, and foliage and liana vines wrapped around her like a net of stretching elastic, the ship halted. She lay steaming and groaning as her tortured plates buckled under her settling weight.

A haunted hush hung over the battlefield, broken only by low groans and whimpers. In the paths of the white lazer beam and the crashed spaceship, there was now only death and smoking piles of charred and broken men, horses and chariots.

Proud Kamar had died, roasted alive in his battle car, but Sardar, Nazik and Tuluq had been far enough back to survive. They all stared, stunned, at the totally transformed battlefield. Their forces had been more than halved at a single stroke.

Slowly the men who lived began to move, struggling to stand, looking around them in disbelief, searching the skies for more dangers and looking for their comrades and their weapons. Then the desertions began. The blue sea serpent banner of Bahdra fled the field as the reluctant Prince Vijay led the remains of his father's token force away. The survivors of the Monkey Clans broke and ran to hide in the comforting vastness of the forest that was their natural home. Many others also turned their backs on the city that had so nearly been won, their heads bowed and humbled, their feet and sword points dragging in the dust.

Sardar saw what was left of his forces draining away and cursed them for cowards. He stood tall in his chariot and his roaring voice strove to rally them for one last effort. “The gods have fallen from the sky,” he insisted. “Victory is ours. Not even the gods can stop us now.” The trickles of departing men became streams and he howled his frustration. “Karakhor is defeated. The city is ours. All the gold of Karakhor, all the riches, all the women. The war is over. Let us take what we have won.”

The streams paused. Some of the surviving captains and chieftains began to curse and tongue-lash their men back into line. The battle was over. The gods had crashed to earth. Karakhor was still a ripe, sweet fruit that only waited to be picked. The numerical odds were even now, but Karakhor was still the weaker, almost leaderless and sapped by wounds and starvation. If Maghalla could overcome her terror, her forces were still the stronger. After all the weeks of fighting, they could not simply turn tail now and walk away.

“Let us finish it,” Sardar roared. He held his sword aloft, ready to signal another charge, and now they were wavering, almost persuaded to be led back into the fray.

Suddenly there was sound and movement from the crashed spaceship. With a resounding clang, a hatchway was pushed open from the inside and allowed to fall back against the hull. The echoes rang in the still air and all faces turned back to watch. There was a collective intake of fearful breath, and then a human figure slowly emerged to stand tall on the ship's hull. In his right hand, he carried a naked sword that gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight.

“I am Kananda—” His voice carried loud and clear. “First Prince of Karakhor.” He allowed a moment for the words to sink home as he searched the remaining ranks of the enemy for the black leopard banner. Then he issued his challenge. “Sardar of Maghalla, there has been enough bloodshed here on both sides. Now let us decide the fate of this war, you and I, in single combat. Karakhor, send me a chariot.”

There was a mighty cheer from the riverbank, and immediately two chariots were speeding across the plain. They were driven by Kasim and Gujar and they made a gleeful race of it, finally reining in with their horses almost neck and neck together. Kananda jumped down from the hull of the Tri-thruster and the two young lords from their chariots. The three friends embraced together, and then Kananda took the reins from Kasim and leaped up into his vacated chariot. With a whip of the reins, he sent the horse team thundering back into the centre of the battlefield.

“Sardar,” he shouted again as he hauled the chariot to a halt. “Sardar of Maghalla—come forth and die!”

Sardar recognized the name. It was the young Karakhoran prince who had, all those months ago, denied him his bride and turned what should have been his triumphant wedding day into a humiliation. It was the same upstart young prince who had dared to attack him in the forest. There were old scores to be settled here and he could not ignore the challenge. Instead he saw it as a heaven-sent gift, a chance to show his forces that he could still lead them to victory. All he had to do was to cut down this haughty young prince.

Bellowing his mighty war cry, he swung his sword high and charged his chariot forward.

Chapter Ten

Kaseem stared open-mouthed as the Alphan ship came down. The walls on which he stood trembled with the frightful impact as the long black spacecraft hit the yielding earth. For a moment he feared that the whole weakened structure of the shaking gate tower would collapse beneath him. The thunderous roar and screech of sound, mixed with the howls and screams of the dying and the terrified, all hammered at his ears and deafened him. The rising clouds of brick dust choked his throat and nostrils and stung at his eyes, half blinding him as the scenes of devastation unfolded.

He clung with one hand to his staff and with the other to the ramparts, his legs tottering beneath him. It seemed that if the tower did not give way then his knees would surely fail him, but somehow both held and he remained standing. The dust slowly settled and he blinked away the grit and tears so that he could see. Half of Sardar's army had been sliced away and the Alphan Tri-thruster was now a pile of black steel wreckage that had half-buried itself in the edge of the forest.

On the plain below him, most men were still stunned and shocked. The wake of that nightmare of tearing sound was just as suddenly replaced by a ripple of dull groans and whimpers. The old priest stared with almost as much incomprehension as the rest of them, but then, like light explosions in his brain, two things became clear. One was that he must stop the
Juahar
.

The other, of which he was equally and instinctively certain, was that his beloved Laurya was trapped inside the hot wreckage of the crashed spaceship.

For a few more seconds, he clung weakly to the wall and then he rallied his wits and turned away. There were other watchers along the ramparts, some women, a few small boys and a few grandfathers too crippled by old age to even lift a sword. The old ones would be too slow and he stumbled toward the nearest boy, a lad of about eight who was standing on tip-toes to see through an arrow slit in the ramparts. Kaseem prodded the boy sharply in the ribs with his stick, a painfully crude but effective way of gaining his attention.