Warlord of Antares (8 page)

“All clear!” I bellowed back and then moved on a few paces to inspect this new and enormously vast cavern.

Light diffused green and gentle from the unseen roof — only a radiance seeped down from overhead. Winged creatures flew and darted, streaks of blue and white, among the stalagmite-like spires clustered around the left-hand wall. The golden brown gravel gradually merged with golden sand leading to the edge of a river. The roaring of the waterfall reached through a drift of spray spilling from the tunnel mouth where the river entered the cavern. The green growing smells, wet vegetation, trailing waterweeds, and the unmistakable smell of lavender coulory blended to form a not unpleasant cocktail of scents.

“Well,” said Seg stepping out, “what have we here? Fish for supper?”

Then his fey blue eyes, surveying the scene, softened. He looked around and said: “Y’know, my old dom, this is a remarkably pretty place to find so deep underground.”

“There are even trees growing with their roots in the water. And those birds — if they are birds — look quite unthreatening and cheerful.”

The women trailed out of the crack in the cavern wall and incontinently flopped down on the gravel.

Nath deposited his pretty burdens and came over to join Seg and me.

“A forest under the ground!” he exclaimed.

“Could be an enchanted forest, my old Impenitent.”

“Very probably, Horkandur. If so, we can surely avoid it by going around it.”

“In,” said Seg waspishly, “dubitably.”

“Let the women rest for a time,” I said. “We’d better search for the way out.”

Nath heaved up a grunting sigh. “I don’t much care, Bogandur, to leave the women unguarded down here.”

“You are right, of course, Nath. And you will do the honors?”

“I will.”

“If anything occurs,” said Seg in his light and casual way. “You start yelling and then defend them all and hack and slay until we get back, right?”

I looked at Nath and saw him give a sudden start, as though thoroughly surprised and taken unawares. I’d no idea what could have caused that.

“I will,” he said again, and this time in a much harsher and much shorter snap.

The pale shapely girl with the frizzy hair walked across. With her were her companions, and their hair, too, spiked out, and I guessed that in times of stress it, too, could resemble the snake tresses of a Medusa.

“We will search one way, man, if you search the other.”

Most of them were half-clad. All had knives, spears or swords, and they looked a nasty bunch to argue with. Their Fuzzy-Wuzzy appearance reminded me I had no Martini-Henrys or Gardner guns to deal with them.

“Very well.” Then I added: “I do not wish to continue to call you woman, woman. Would you favor me with your name?”

Now names are matters of great and imperative importance upon that miraculous and marvelous world of Kregen. Many peoples employ only use names, for their own name if known to an enemy confers power to the foe. She gave me a look, a hard appraising look. Dust glinted in her hair.

“You may call me Shalane, man.”

“Very well, Shalane.”

The group of Rumay fanatics went off to the right and as we trailed off in the other direction, Nath said: “They are not Battle Maidens; but many Jikai Vuvushis I have known who glory only in the uniform and the pomp and the show of being a War Woman would run screaming at the sight of them, aye, by Vox, many of them.”

“Oh, aye,” said Seg. “A most scrapworthy bunch.”

So we set off to explore this new world we had discovered deep underground and to encounter what new perils it might hold.

Chapter eight

“Save your breath for breathing!”

With our usual wary step, Seg and I walked along following the course of the river downstream. Nath remained with the women and the Rumay fanatics went upriver. We would then circle the cavern seeking egress.

“Y’know, Seg, there has to be a reason for a place like this.”

“You mean a place of beauty among all the horrors of the Coup Blag?”

“Right. This is not quite the sort of cavern we’re accustomed to finding deep in the heart of a mountain.”

“We’re well down underground here, all right. But I rather fancy this cavern is still in the mountain above the outside ground level.”

“And that causes an idea to form, perhaps?”

“Aye, by Vox, an idea of some fraughtness.”

“I agree.”

“Well, my old dom, if it is the way, it is the way. By the Veiled Froyvil! We’ve come through thinner scrapes before this!”

So, not much caring for the idea in our heads, we went on along the river bank. Vegetation with the abundant water and never-ending light grew profusely and we saw many varieties of plants that I’d never seen before.

The blue and white flying creatures were joined by others of multicolored feathers, and they swooped and cavorted above our heads.

“Ah!” exclaimed Seg, and darted forward. “
Palines!
”

I lost no time in joining him and picking the bright yellow berries and stuffing them into my mouth. Palines — ah, they are a boon Kregen confers almost anywhere you travel and they’ll keep you healthy and clear hangovers and generally make life worth living.

The scents of this delightful place sharpened about us. We breathed in refreshingly. The nonsensical notion flitted across my mind that one could live here in perfect tranquility for the rest of one’s natural span.

The river ran smoothly and shining under the radiance. Fish leaped. We saw no sign of aquatic predators.

The colors and sounds and perfumes of this place delighted us. The trilling of the birds complemented the scents of the flowers in a sensory palette soothing and yet exhilarating. Here, the weary could rest.

We saw the place where the river entered the cliff face from some way off. Trees clothed the lower portions; the rocks frowned gaunt and bare above. We walked on, alert for danger even as our senses were soothed by the beauty and serenity of the cavern. Soon we stood before the river’s exit.

“Ugly,” commented Seg. “Dratted ugly, by Sasco!”

The river plunged into its carven hole, fashioned into the likeness of a snarling mouth. The sculpted face surrounding that unwholesome oriflee bore the likeness of a devil, a Kregen devil, which puts those of Earth to shame.

The rock here glistened dully with a green patina. The river rustled between the banks and plunged over smoothly and evenly with little spume or fuss. The blackness of the hole into which the river entered was of a blackness highly disturbing to those of nervous dispositions. I owned to myself that I tried to lighten the effect by a lightness in thinking of that damned hole; if you didn’t feel amused by it you’d run screaming. Some of those poor women with us were most definitely of a nervous disposition, unfortunately.

“Come on, Seg, let’s find the way out of this place.”

“I’m with you. Unfocuses your eyes, does that blasted hole swallowing the river.”

We gave the demonic face lowering down above us a last look, then we set off along the base of the cavern wall.

I suppose, to be honest, we both knew what it would come to, that there would be no escape from the deed. Still, we searched diligently all the way around for the way out, until we reached the gap in the rock through which the river entered the cavern. Then we went downstream to the camp.

Shalane spat and said: “There is no way out but the way we entered.”

“D’you want to retrace your steps in there?”

A great hullabaloo started at this, and Seg and I went off to eat some of the fish Nath had caught and cooked. Some of the women had brightened appreciably in these pleasant surroundings, and were busy about our camp. I do not much care for fish; I recall that meal with pleasure.

In the end, of course, there was nothing else for it.

I felt no surprise when, staring up at the demonic face swallowing the river, some of the women turned around. They went back to the camp, calling that they would stay here.

“We can’t leave them!” Nath looked outraged.

“We cannot in all conscience force them to go against their wishes, can we? They will be safe here—”

“But — forever?”

Seg said: “We’ll talk to ’em again. It won’t be all that bad, by the Veiled Froyvil!”

Eventually six of the women remained adamant that they would stay. They could do without men gladly.

“So be it.”

“Havila have you in her keeping,” said one of the women who was not staying, bold of face and grasping a spear.

From the slain malkos the Rumay women had taken axes as well as swords and spears, and we set to work to chop enough branches and trees to make sufficient rafts. They were bound together with lianas, and everyone pitched in to help.

While everyone was busy I glanced up to see the ghostly form of Deb-Lu standing beside me. He nodded and tried to make his serious look revert to his usual kindly expression. This time he whispered: “It is the only way.”

“Yes, for we will not go back.”

“May the Lords of the Seven Arcades go with you, Dray.” He rustled up the hint of a smile. “And Vox and Djan and Zair, of course, also.”

He vanished.

Seg came across and said: “He has no more news?”

“Only that this
is
the way out.”

“That’s all right then!”

And Seg swung off to shout at a girl fumble-fingering a botch of a knot.

“You’ll ride on that raft, shishi, and if it falls to bits, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

“Men!” she flared up at him, swirling red-brown hair about her naked shoulders. “You should be tying this.”

“I’ll show you — then you finish the rest.”

This was quite unlike the Seg Segutorio I knew who was always punctiliously polite and gallant to women. He did not much care for the bunch we’d saved from the malkos, that was clear. Apart from the Rumay fanatics, whose beliefs and actions were self-explanatory, others of these women held secrets that made me wonder just how much trouble we were storing up for ourselves. It could be the women had been imprisoned after a process of justice, even in the Coup Blag. I doubted it; but it was possible.

Nath the Impenitent’s whole attitude was quite different. He had already sorted out the women in his own mind. He had the leems and the ponshos marked.

The two girls he had been caring for were, I had to admit, in a different class from the others. Nath had chosen well, and yet these two, pretty though they were, shared all the toughness and spirit of the Rumay fanatics.

No one questioned Nath’s right to share a raft with these two girls: Seg and I sorted out who would sail with whom, and suggested to Nath he take more of the ladies with him.

“The three of us will have to take different rafts, that is obvious. I don’t like it; it is a duty laid on us.”

“It is, my old dom, a duty only if we choose to accept it.”

“By Chozputz, Seg! You are right, and yet I’d far rather we did not have to accept the mission, take on this heavy burden.”

Nath rumbled out: “The Rumay women can handle themselves, doms. It is the others we must care for.”

In the end we had it sorted out and the little armada of rafts lay on the bank of the river, waiting.

We ate of the cooked fish and of handfuls of palines. Among the trailing vines and plentiful leaves of the trees against the cliff, small agile figures clambered to gibber at us. The women left here would not need to exist on an exclusively fish diet.

I didn’t fully trust to the lianas to lash the rafts and so had insisted on using other materials as well: split bark twisted and plaited, proved excellent. The rafts were serviceable. I hadn’t served as a Powder Monkey and as a First Lieutenant in Nelson’s Navy for nothing. Well, by Krun, I
had
got nothing for it, that was true, and I suspected my lack of success on Earth had a great deal to do with what others considered my considerable success on Kregen.

We ripped up blankets of moss and heaping mounds of leaves to form pliable cushions and we lashed everyone down with many strands of our plaited ropes. When all was ready Seg, Nath and I launched the other rafts, then Seg and I lashed Nath down and launched him, and I lashed Seg down and launched him amid an icy silence of reprobation that he was not the last.

As the current swirled him off he yelled back: “One of these days you’ll take a risk too many, you stiff-necked hulu! I can be spared from Kregen; you—”

“Close the black-fanged winespout, my old dom!” I hollered back. “Save your breath for breathing!”

In the next instant Seg aboard his raft whirled into the black demon-guarded opening.

Lashing myself down as securely as I could, I felt my priorities of safety had been correct. Going first was not the peril that going unsecured would be.

Using forearms only, I thrust the long branch at the bank and eased the raft the last few inches off the mud. The current caught us at once, and we spun about, caught and sucked along with instant force. The smell of the mud, of the algae, of the water, struck up with physical force as we hurtled along.

The girls aboard my raft squealed; but they were very good and tried to keep silent. I think three of them fainted as we burst from the soft green radiance into the unholy darkness of the tunnel.

Phocis, a dark-haired girl with a full fresh face who clutched a spear at her side, stared up at me in the stern. At the moment, the raft had swirled around and I was going first. The branch with which I had equipped myself as a pole and rudder was completely useless for the moment.

Then Phocis and all the others vanished in the gloom.

As I saw it the main problem would come if the roof descended low enough for us to strike our heads. A makeshift arrangement of branches lashed upright and with cross-members would never protect us from the jags at this speed; it might give us a little warning.

Well, I will not dwell on that horrendous ride along an underground river in almost total darkness. Phosphorescence glimmered along the walls from time to time, enough to show us the long sliding gleam of the water. I managed to twirl the craft so that I was at the stern and able to steer. The girls lay low at my feet. Phocis still clung onto her spear. We hurtled along, a chip in a millrace, and all our fates were in the hands of whoever controlled them; certainly they were not in ours.