The Sword Lord (19 page)

Opposite him sat Nazik, now attired in his red and grey priest's robe, with the long, brass-capped wooden staff of his office resting across his lap. The high priest's face was faintly reminiscent of the eagle visage he preferred on the astral plane: his nose was a long thin curve of bone with a minimum of flesh and his dark brown eyes had a fierce yellowish sheen at the edges of his pupils.

They were alone in the tent except for the corpse that lay huddled against one of the black leather walls, almost out of reach of the flickering firelight. The corpse had the red-dyed hair of the red monkey clan, and around its neck was a necklace of monkey skulls. Beside it lay a woven straw mask painted with the face of a blue baboon, together with its other badge of office, the witch doctor's staff with its embellishment of more bones, claws and small animal skulls.

Sardar finally spared the corpse a glance, and then hawked and spat into the fire. He looked up to Nazik. “What now? Will the Red Clan still follow us with both their old chief and their medicine man dead?”

Nazik shrugged. “Enough of them saw the Karakhoran prince kill their old chief. And now his brother rules and wants vengeance. Also, they have a powerful greed for the rape and loot we have promised when we take Karakhor. The Black Clan is our firm ally which means the Red Clan will not let them ride to grab all of that loot alone. Have no fears, my friend, the Red Clan is still ours. Malik was a crude but useful ally. We do not need him now.”

“Perhaps not.” Sardar was still troubled, “But what of our new enemies on the astral plane? This is something we did not expect.”

Nazik's eyes narrowed and he pursed the thick cruel lips below the hooked nose. It was a sign that his thoughts were not pleasant. “The old priest of Karakhor has much to learn,” he said slowly. “He was a blind bull wallowing in a mud hole. But the woman could be dangerous. That trick of flying naked—for a second even I was tempted by her honey pot! If I ever catch her, she will regret flaunting that little enticement in my face. Or perhaps she will enjoy it!” He laughed suddenly, but the sound was harsh and malicious.

Sardar scowled again. He was in no mood for even the blackest of humour. “If we meet again, I will tear her to shreds,” he promised. And he flexed his thick, hairy fingers as though they were still leopard's claws. “I will rip her open from the honey pot upwards. She will give birth to her own entrails. Then I will snip her silver cord.”

“An admirable ambition,” Nazik agreed. “But perhaps first we should do something about our late friend.” He nodded toward the corpse of the Red Clan witch doctor. “It might not be a good political move for him to be found dead in your tent.”

Sardar considered the implications and then stood and crossed to the drawn flaps that closed the tent. Loosening the lashing, he snarled at one of the two miserably drenched and rain-chilled guards who stood outside. “Fetch Tuluq,” he commanded. “I have a task for him.”

He returned to the fire and squatted again. For a few moments Sardar and Nazik discussed the prospects of the coming war with Karakhor. They had the monkey tribes of the forest and the Kingdom of Kanju already aligned to their banners. They had no evidence yet that Karakhor had gathered any allies, and so the question was simple. Should they wait to swell more kingdoms to the ranks of their own forces, or should they move quickly before their enemies also gained in strength? Sardar still burned with the insult of his rejection, but they both knew that the coming slaughter would be mainly about conquest and domination as such events always were.

While they talked, the tent flaps rustled and Tuluq pushed in. The oldest son of Sardar was taller than his father and had inherited the subhuman ugliness of his sire. Rain dripped from his bare muscled arms and from his tunic and leggings to form a puddle around his booted feet. He carried a sword at his hip and a pair of razor sharp knives crossed at his chest. He grinned with good news.

“A rider has arrived from one of our search parties,” he informed them. “They have caught up with the Prince of Karakhor. Half of the enemy is dead and our riders are in close pursuit of the rest. Soon we will have all their heads.”

Sardar sat up, almost cheerful. He beamed benevolently
at his son, and then at Nizak. “We have lost a key player but so have they. It seems the battle honours are even.”

His high priest also found a smile. “But we still have to dispose of this. He indicated the unfortunate Malik.

Sardar nodded and gave orders to Tuluq, one of the few men whom he knew he could reasonably trust, at least for the time being.

“Take this out quickly, while the storm still keeps the monkey clans hiding from the rain. It will look better if he is found in his own hut. There is no mark on him so let them think that he died of a heart attack or some over indulgence of his own vices.”

Tuluq stared curiously at the corpse for a moment. Then he stooped, heaved, and slung it over one shoulder. If he had any questions, he did not bother to ask them.

 

 

 

Kaseem returned to consciousness feeling as though both his body and mind had been thoroughly beaten, like a bundle of old clothes that a washer-woman had thrashed against the rocks at the riverside. He groaned as he opened his eyes and saw a blurred silver figure and then a pair of anxious deep green eyes. Laurya was sitting on her haunches with his shoulders cradled in her lap and his head leaning against the soft swell of her bosom.

He remembered and a smile creased his features. He reached for her hand and covered it with his own and saw the swift rush of sadness that swept over her shadowed face. He realized then that his hand was again the wrinkled, blue-veined hand of an old man. He turned his head and saw his reflection in the stream and it was the same, deep-lined, gap-toothed old man's face that he had worn for so many years.

“I am so sorry,” Laurya said softly. “In this rebirth we are not meant to be together. We were born on different planets. Our paths should not have crossed. Kyle is my lover in this life. He is a good man. We are happy together.”

Kaseem felt a deep sense of shock and loss. His eyes filled helplessly with tears.

“I saw you leave with the live bird,” she explained quietly. “I was curious and Gujar needed no urging to tell me exactly what you intended. He told me that in the trance state over the sacrificial fire you could experience dreams and visions. If you had flashes of what you called far-sight, then I knew they could only be glimpses of the astral. Somehow you were partially breaking through to the psychic plane but obviously you did not realize exactly what was happening. That can be dangerous, so I followed you.”

Kaseem nodded dumbly, knowing now that she was right. His present Earth life had led him into the priesthood in his search for spiritual understanding. And it was as though he had followed the right road to the right crossroads and then knocked on the wrong door. When he had attempted to see visions or signs in the sacred flames, he had in fact been touching on an unnecessarily complicated approach to astral travel. It was as though he had been struggling up a steep and tortuous path on a mountain when there was a direct and easy means of elevation that he had simply failed to see.

“You knew me,” he said. “Although I did not know you.”

“I saw into your eyes, but you would not search into mine. I thought that was for the best and allowed you to avoid me.” She paused and sighed. “Perhaps it would have been best if I had not followed you.”

“No,” he said sharply, for then he would never have known who he was, and who he had been. He gripped her hand tightly but that again only made him aware that she had the slim hand and the lithe, supple body of a woman who was forty, perhaps fifty years younger than him. His own desiccated skin bag of old bones could never be a partner to her youth and beauty in this present physical world.

She pushed herself upright and helped him to stand up beside her. He tottered unsteadily, like a drunken man or one still affected by a fever. She kissed his cheek briefly, her sweet, moist lips brushing the old parchment skin.

“We still have duties in this life,” she reminded him.

She began to run, back along the stream bank to where her spaceship and their companions were still invisible behind the trees. Kaseem remembered Kananda, and on unsteady legs and with a wildly beating heart, he stumbled after her.

Chapter Ten

They were four: Kananda, Zela, Kasim, and Hamir, the head huntsman, who by sturdy determination and an almost animal instinct for survival, had managed to outlive all of the trained warriors. They bled from a dozen minor wounds where they had been grazed by arrows or nicked by sword blades and yet miraculously, six hours after taking their stand on the hilltop, they were still alive. But Kasim had fired his last arrow and Zela had fired her last lazer bolt. They stood now in a defensive square, back to back, facing outward, awaiting the final Maghallan onslaught.

Their three companions lay dead at their feet but the Maghallans had paid dearly. More than a score of the enemy sprawled lifeless on the blood-splashed slopes of the hill and as many more nursed painful or crippling wounds. The carrion birds circled high over head, their ghastly presence a grim portent as they waited for it to be finished, for the victors to depart so that their own feast could begin.

The Maghallans had given up using their bows. They had killed three, but so many of their shafts had landed harmlessly among the rocks on the hilltop, only to be returned with swift and deadly accuracy by Kasim, that they had learned the folly of supplying him with arrows. Kasim's fame as an archer would become legend after this day, if any of them lived to tell of his skill and valour.

Their throats were dry with thirst. They had fought all through the blistering midday heat and their tongues were beginning to swell in their throats. There was no shade on the hilltop and the sun was still hot enough to suck the last of the moisture from their dehydrating bodies.

Come
, Kananda thought bleakly,
come while we still have enough strength to wield our swords and take more of you with us on our journey into death.
And he offered another brief prayer to
Indra
, no longer for life and salvation, but simply for more blood to spill down his own sword before he died.

Zela's head was swimming in a red haze brought on by fatigue and heat and she too prepared to die. She had succeeded in contacting her ship, but the communication had been brief and Cadel's voice had been faint and broken. She knew that her own signal must have been even more so and its location difficult to pin-point. Her crew would not find her in time. Her despair became diffused with anger. She still believed that there was a God Behind All Gods, but she could no longer ask Him to save her. She only demanded to know why he would permit her to die when she had so much to do and so much to live for. It was a question that the philosophers had never been able to answer.

Why? Why live? Why fight? Why die? Why anything? Was there a deeper meaning behind all things, as her father taught? Or could it be that the Gheddans were right and there was nothing beyond the here and now? A fearful doubt cavorted with the questions in her mind and she felt dizziness sweeping over her. Was dying a journey into knowledge and another plane of existence, or simply an end, an obliteration, a nothing? Soon she would know, or not know, as the case might be.

There was a silence, a stillness, a deceptive lull before the storm. Some thirty Maghallan warriors crouched on all sides of the steep pile of cracked boulders, most of them more than half way up to the summit. It was a difficult climb and on the summit the defenders had rolled the loose boulders into an encircling rampart. During the early stages of the battle, the Karakhorans had crouched behind their ramparts, making themselves almost invisible targets. But now they stood boldly, heads and shoulders in full view.

The Maghallan commander was a hard, sword-scarred man, his face hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed like a dark, living skull. He held his position because he was the most savage of his men. He was tempted to order another volley of spears and arrows to be hurled upward and yet he refrained. He had formed a grudging respect for the four who had held his force at bay for so long and he knew from the bejeweled helmet and insignia that their leader was a Karakhoran prince. He would permit them to die fighting and their prince would die on his own bright blade. He stood upright and voiced a command. And with screaming, blood-curdling battle cries his men followed scrambling at his heels as he charged for the hilltop.

“At last,” Kananda breathed, almost joyously. His eye was on the skull-faced man whom he had identified as the Maghallan chieftain, and his fighting soul soared in eagerness. He would have sprung forward to meet the man, but his military training forbade him to break the defensive square. Like a coiled cobra, he waited.

Two Maghallan warriors sprang together over the stone barrier on Kananda's right flank. Zela was there, blocking their attack in a succession of ringing sword clashes. One man was flung back, his cheek bones and jaw cleft by her cutting blade. The other sagged gasping to his knees as he was impaled below the breastbone. Two more rushed the left flank where Hamir defended. Kananda half turned to deal with one of them, making a slicing backhand stroke behind the Maghallan's guard that severed his sword arm above the elbow. He left the huntsman to deal with the other. Behind him, he heard Kasim defending his back with desperate swordplay. Then the Maghallan chieftain was leaping into the tight, rock-bound arena to face him.

In aiding Hamir, Kananda had lost the first initiative. The skull-faced man hacked wickedly for his throat and Kananda brought his own sword back only just in time to deflect the blow. The Maghallan roared his fury, a sound echoed from all sides by his attacking fellows, but Kananda and his three companions conserved their energy to fight all the better in tight-lipped silence. The skull-faced man was no master of his blade, but he fought with a homicidal mania that gave no quarter.