Blade studied his chief aide. "You are mindful of my orders about Nizra?"
Gath said, "I am, Sire. He is not to be harmed, unless on your explicit orders, and he is never to go unwatched. My spies are busy, Sire, and they are good men. Nizra may do what he will and go where he chooses, but he will always be watched. My men report to me on the hour."
Blade nodded in approval. "Good. But remember that he is not called the Wise One for nothing, and I daresay his spies are as good as yours. Probably he has more of them. When did you see him last?"
Gath grinned. "I left him in his house, Sire, after I had disbanded his guard of honor and taken their weapons. To tell truth he did not look too unhappy, and there was a great coming and going of men. Spies, no doubt. Would you have me stop this traffic? It would be easy enough to do."
After a moment of hesitation, Blade said, "No. I want to give him rein, see what he will do. So long as I know what he is doing I can see no great harm. So carry on as before, Gath. Do not impede him in any manner unless he threatens me or the Child Princess. This is understood?"
"It is, Sire."
"And now," said Blade, "I must go and meet your little Princess." He twitched his swordbelt around and straightened his helmet. He had changed his robe for a soldier"s tunic over which he wore a highly burnished breastplate. Short trousers of fine cloth and high-laced sandals completed his dress.
Gath was staring. Blade laughed and said, "I am a little nervous, to tell you true. How does one handle a ten-year-old? But I will cope. How do I look, Gath?"
Gath saluted with his sword. "Just as I would have you look, Sire. Like my leader." He saluted again and stepped back. "I wish 30U fortune with the Child Princess, Sire, but only remember this, words sometimes lie, and among us Jedds a ten-year-old is not exactly a child. Not yet a woman, perhaps, but not a child."
Blade thought of Ooma and wondered. He had put her age at fourteen or less, and still marveled at her experience and skill in lovemaking. Was Ooma even fourteen? His doubts came back.
But a child, a girl, of ten? Surely she could present no problems. All he had to do was humor her and win her confidence, show her that he was honest and meant her only good. Yet he was faintly uneasy as he went into the house and mounted a stair to an upper chamber where he was awaited.
He approached an ornate door. A middle-aged woman, dressed all in black and wearing an iron chain much similar to that of Nizra, bowed to him and opened the door.
"The Princess Mitgu awaits you, Sire."
Blade halted and looked at the woman. "I would be alone with her. This is understood?"
"It is understood, Sire. You will not be interrupted."
Blade stepped into the chamber. It was s.p.a.cious and very dark except for two tapers gleaming at either end of a large cushioned seat. Rugs and pillows were scattered all about and there was a taint of incense in the room. Blade halted and gazed around. Where was this Child Princess, then?
A close-cropped head of golden hair appeared from behind the divan-like seat. The tapers sparked and reflected themselves in that smooth poll and a pair of wide-set and narrowed eyes studied Blade. For a moment he was shaken, thinking himself the b.u.t.t of some outrageous joke. This was a boy!
The voice, high and dear and lilting, was that of a girl. "I wanted to see you first," it said. "That is why I hid and spied when you entered. All of Jedd whispers of you, Sire."
Blade, one hand on his swordhilt, bowed low and was silent. He did not really believe his eyes, Blade who had been in so many dimensions and had seen sights that few men in his own world could believe.
She had come around the divan now and was confronting him and matching him in silence while each studied the other. Her poise and bearing left no doubt that she was a Princess born. Her flesh, and she displayed a great deal of it, glowed with a coppery-yellow translucence that seemed to give color to the tapers. Blade had the fleeting impression that he could see her fine bone structure trimmed beneath the satiny flesh. This illusion soon pa.s.sed and his throat dried and his hands were moist in the palms and he, of all men, felt and admitted a fine trembling in his knees. This was youthful beauty incarnate. He had never seen its like before and knew that he would never see it again. And also knew, that if he married this child, he would be powerless to restrain himself from consummating the marriage. Already his groin tingled and for just a moment Blade felt shame.
"Yes," said the Princess Mitgu. "I will call you Sire. I was not sure I would, but now I see that I must. You look like a Sire. And I think I will marry you. I was not sure of that either, but now I will. You are the handsomest man I have ever seen and not at all like the Jedds. That is a pity in a way, because all the captains will be jealous and make much trouble for you. But that cannot be helped, I think."
Blade felt like a fool and supposed that he looked a bit like one. Had his mouth been hanging open?
He bowed again and said, "I have much to learn, Princess. I did not know that you had been courted by any of the captains." It was true. Nizra had said nothing of this, nor had Gath mentioned it. He wondered if it meant new complications, new jealousies? His plate was full enough as it was.
Mitgu c.o.c.ked a tiny finger at him. "Come further into the light, Sire. Sit with me and we will talk and make ourselves known to each other. A girl should know something of the man she is to marry. And I would have you tell me of great-grandmother. How did she die?"
"She died well," he told her. "Well and in peace. And it was her wish that we marry, Princess, not mine. I promised her, else I would not be here now."
Her face, with its small, perfect features, reminded him of a copper rose. The corners of her red mouth turned down. "I loved her, even though she was often stern with me. I would have been at her bedside, but it is against Jedd law for the young to watch the old die. A stupid law, I think, as so many things in Jedd and Jeddia are stupid. But now that you are here, and to be my husband, all that will change. Come, I said. Sit with me."
Sweat trickled down the back of Blade"s stalwart neck. She came to him and took his big hand in her tiny one and led him to the divan. She wore very little, just a vestige of white bra over her small, virginal b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the miniest mini-skirt Blade had ever seen. The skirt barely sufficed to cover her and Blade would not let himself look at the slim golden legs beneath the skirt. They were long, perfection in form, and in exactly the right proportion to the compact little torso above them. He could almost have spanned her waist with one hand. But it was the odor of her that most intrigued Blade. And made him extremely nervous.
If it was perfume he had never known any like it. Indeed he did not think it was perfume, it was the clean and uncloyed scent of a well-scrubbed child, a girlchild just hovering on the brink of womanhood. Her tender flesh glowed at him, emanating a warmth and a fragrance and, yes, a golden color that made his face redden and his own flesh sticky with sweat. Richard Blade was finding out things about himself, things that he did not really want to know. Was he really this much a lecher? For honesty bade him admit that he was s.e.xually excited, but this fragile and lovely child had aroused him almost beyond bearing. Yet bear it he must. At least until after the marriage. Beyond that he did not dare to think.
Mitgu pulled him down beside her on the divan. She took one of his hands in both of hers and laid it on her bare leg. Electricity seared through the big man and he made a final effort. He sat bolt upright, took his hand back and put on a most solemn visage.
"We will speak of marriage later, Princess. Plenty of time for that. I came to inform you about my plans and to know if they meet with your approval."
A formality, but one he deemed necessary. This girl was now the nominal ruler of the Jedds and, though he meant to go through with his plans in any case, it would be easier with her cooperation. He told her of his plan to burn the city and trek to the north.
She was watching him closely. Her eyes, sloe dark and in startling contrast to the golden head with its boyishly cut hair, were tip-tilted at the outer corners and when she smiled with her mouth her eyes smiled too. They smiled now at his attempt to be formal. She squeezed his arm and laughed at him, gold and silver notes that tinkled through the great gloomy chamber.
"You are afraid of me," she crowed. She clapped her hands in glee. "You are like all the captains, except that you do not go down on bended knee. But you are like them all the same, you think I am a little girl who must be given sweets and humored." She moved away from Blade and twisted lithely on the divan to face him. Blade was permitted to gaze for an instant between those girlish golden thighs, to explore a silken, coppery cavern where lurked a fuzzy golden shadow. Mitgu wore nothing at all beneath the brief skirt. His heart thudding, his breathing strained, Blade tore his glance away from that virginal target. He felt dizzy and his head spun. Sweat drenched him. He did not understand this, never had he suffered such an onslaught of unbridled animal l.u.s.t. And for a child of ten! He stood up, conscious only that he must get out of this place before he lost control.
Mitgu clapped her hands again, unmindful of his torment, and laughed at the big man towering over her.
Suddenly she sobered, frowned and extended her hand to him again. "I am sorry, Sire. And I did not speak true, you are not at all like the others. But I would have you know that I am not a child, not a little girl. I am a woman."
Blade, having got well away from the divan and the temptations there, paced a few steps back and forth and then faced her again.
"Are you, then? A woman?" Blade had won his battle now and felt calmer. His look, still in self-defense, had a hint of coldness and mockery in it.
"If this is so," he continued, "and you are indeed a woman and no child, then you will understand that I am a man and you will know what is in my mind."
The sloe eyes narrowed at him for a moment and she laughed again. With one supple movement she twitched off the tiny bra and flung it aside. She gazed down at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then up at Blade.
"See, then. Are these the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a little girl, a child?"
To Blade, of Home Division, they were indeed the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a child, of a tender and unsullied girl verging on womanhood, and therein lay his greater agony. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small and plump and perfect rounds of flesh unspoiled by fondling. Coppery mounds as soft as the flesh of inner thigh. Moving now to her breathing, trembling with hie of their own, tipped with pink b.u.t.tons of erectile tissue now responding to her inner excitement.
Mitgu put her little hands under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and cupped them and lifted as if to offer them to Blade. She caught her breath and with a half sigh, half gasp, repeated, "Are these the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a child?"
Blade stood tall, his shadow etched by the tapers and falling across that golden little body. As he could cover her, then and there, if he wished it.
Mitgu trailed her fingertips across her nipples, then extended her arms to Blade. "Would you kiss me, Sire? And so find out how much child I am?"
He had taken a step toward her when the door was flung open and the lady-in-waiting entered. Mitgu squealed and disappeared behind the divan. Blade, feeling like a man who has seen the axe begin to fall and then been reprieved, yet turned on the woman with a scowl. An order was an order!
"I was not to be disturbed, "
The woman bowed low and her voice quavered as she nervously fingered her chain of office. "I know, Sire, but there is one who insists. He would not be turned away. He is a cornet, sent by Gath himself, and he has news of the greatest import. He threatened to kick in the door and enter unless I, "
"Enough," Blade said gruffly. He brushed past her without a backward glance. But he thought he heard a subdued giggle from behind the divan and his face grew hot. That had been a near thing. But one thing he knew, in future, if he had a future in Jedd, he would treat Mitgu as a woman. She was right. She was no child.
The young Jedd waiting for him in an anteroom was one of Gath"s sublieutenants. Blade recognized him vaguely and spotted the polished iron cornet around the man"s throat. The little iron half-moon was engraved with a large G. This was one of Gath"s men, right enough.
As Blade strode toward him, the young officer saluted with his short sword, then touched the blade to his chest armor over his heart. "I am Sesi, Sire Blade, sent to you by the Captain Gath on an affair of the utmost importance. The Captain is busy elsewhere and could not attend you in person."
Blade crossed his arms on his chest and nodded. Smiled encouragement. "Then out with it, Sesi. What is this great news?"
The cornet, a stripling with a few chin whiskers and very light gray eyes, met Blade"s glance for a moment and then looked away. He stared hard at the floor in concentration. Here, Blade thought, was no great intellect. This Sesi would never be a captain.
"I am to give you this message word for word," the young officer said. "It comes from the Captain Gath as given to him by another. But first I am to tell you that the message was delivered by a fat man."
Mok. Mok the drunkard! Blade stepped close to the cornet and scowled at him. "The message, then? Get on with it, man."
Sesi would not be hurried. Evading Blade"s eye, staring at the floor and the walls, he labored through it.
"Gath bade me speak thus, a fat man came to the house of Nizra, the Wise One, looking for Sire Blade. I, Gath, halted him and took his message instead. The fat man said: "The girl Ooma, of whom Blade knows, is in danger and has great need of him. Ooma begs that Blade come at once to her." "
Ooma! Blade"s heart pained and remorse struck at him. He had been so busy, so caught up in a frenzy of events, that he had spared the girl little thought.
He seized the young officer by the shoulder. "You saw this fat man?"
Sesi shook his head. "I did not, Sire. I was given the message by Captain Gath. He saw the fat man."
But Blade had turned away. "No matter. You will come with me. I have a bodyguard of six below stairs. You will take command of them and follow me without question."
He went vaulting down the stairs, three at a time Ooma in trouble, in danger. Again he cursed himself for his thoughtlessness. He owed the girl much, had a tenderness for her and yet had been so neglectful.
Blade set a blistering pace out of the city. Through the gates to the south where no guards challenged them and no death carts rumbled. His orders were being obeyed.
The young sublieutenant and the six soldiers panted along behind the big man as he increased his pace. There was no semblance of a formation and they were all trotting to keep up with Blade"s long strides. He had noted it before, most Jedd men were short of leg.
They skirted the charnel pit and the rocks behind which Blade had lain in wait for the corpseburner and his cart. He spared them hardly a glance as he started up the hill to the house of Mok and the aunts. The soldiers and Sesi came after him as best they could, sweating and cursing and stained with dust and smoke from the smoldering pit.
Blade could see the house now. There was no sign of life. The humble little cottage brooded, desolate and alone, on its hilltop. The path here wound through a copse of melon trees and Blade halted just at the edge of the grove. His followers slumped to the ground, panting.
Blade studied the cottage. The door stood half open and his heart contracted painfully as he saw the mark, a splash of yellow paint. The plague mark. Ooma?
The young cornet and the six men saw the mark also. There was a frightened burble and Sesi came to stand beside him. "There is plague in that house, Sire. The men will not go nearer."
Blade shot him a sideways glance. "I have not asked them. And you?"
Sesi would not meet his eye, but mumbled, "Nor I, Sire. My duties do not require that, "
He was cut short by a peal of maniacal laughter from the cottage. The young officer shuddered and stepped back a pace or two. Blade stared up at the cottage. That had been a man"s laughter. Laughter?
Peal after peal now, of a man mad with fear and pain, the eerie laughter of a man who sees Death looming out of the black mists. Mok. It could only be Mok.
Blade snapped an order over his shoulder as he sprang up the path. "Remain here, Sesi. Form up your men and keep discipline. Wait for me." He broke into a run.
The yellow plague mark was like a running sore. Blade kicked the door open and entered. Mok lay on the floor near the table where he had pa.s.sed out that night. He was on his back, his face saffron and twisted with pain, his mountainous stomach thrust up. He was laughing, the gaping mouth disclosing the ruins of blackened teeth. Laughing and laughing.
Blade, ignoring Mok, vaulted up the stairs, calling out as he went. "Ooma? Ooma, Ooma?"
Echoes mocked him. No voice answered. He peered into the room where he had left her sleeping. Empty. He ran down the corridor and glanced into the only other room. Both the aunts lay in their beds. One look at their yellowed faces was enough. Dead of plague. But where was Ooma? She had sent a message and surely she would wait here for him.
He ran down the stairs and approached Mok. The man still lived, though for the moment he had stopped that terrible laughing. Blade knelt beside him. "Mok! Mok, do you know me? It is Blade."
The little eyes, lost in folds of jaundiced fat, slowly opened and Blade could discern a last intelligence in them. The mouth opened and words tried to slip past the swollen black tongue and were blocked. Blade bent closer, trying to understand, to make sense of the jumble and slur, of the agonized attempt to speak. Nothing.
He glanced at the table. There was a clay vessel of the powerful fermented melon juice. Blade seized it and dashed half the contents into Mok"s face, then he pried open the mouth and poured the rest down the fat throat. It was a faint hope, but the stuff might jolt Mok into a few last moments of lucidity.
The fat man choked and retched and spat. Blade knelt and put his ear close to the frothing mouth. "Mok, Mok! It is Blade. Ooma sent for me. Where is she, Mok? Where is Ooma?"
The fiery liquor did its work. Mok"s eyes cleared for a moment and he looked up at Blade with comprehension. His first words nearly tore Blade"s heart from his chest.
"Api," burbled Mok. "Api came. They, they took Ooma and used her, all the Api soldiers, and then bound her and threw her alive into the charnel pit. She would, would not tell them of you, Blade. They would have spared her, the Api, but she would not tell them of you. A-alive, in the pit, "
Mok closed his eyes and let out a deep groan. Blade struck him hard across the face while his guts twisted with horror and remorse. Api? They were immune to plague. And who controlled the Api? Who but Nizra. The Wise One. Blade struck Mok again and d.a.m.ned himself bitterly for being the fool of all time.
Mok was speaking again. "Trap, Blade. T-trap. Ooma did not send for you. She was content to wait until you came. B-but Api came first. Took her. G-gave us all plague with knife. You see, "
j It was his last moment of lucidity before death. He raised a fat arm and Blade saw the cruel knife gash. They had inoculated Mok and the aunts with plague. Simple enough. Let a dagger fester in a corpse for a time, then plunge it into living flesh and plague would follow almost instantly. But this time it had not struck fast enough. Mok had lived long enough to talk.
There came a scream from the copse where he had left his bodyguard. Then a clash of arms and more screams and cries and the curses of men locked in battle. It was a trap. The Api had been waiting.
Mok"s arm dropped to the floor. The fingers curled, stiffened, then relaxed. Mok was dead.
Blade drew his sword and ran to the door and peered out. Three of his men were already down and the remaining three were retreating up the path toward the cottage and giving a good account of themselves. They were being hard pressed by half a dozen Api warriors, as hairy and long-snouted as Blade remembered them.
Blade stepped outside the door and raised his sword and bellowed, "To me, guardsmen. To me! Break off and form around me here."
His stentorian roar for a moment broke off the hot little battle. The Api paused in their attack and stared at Blade, their pale eyes feral beneath the horned helmets, the pointed baboon muzzles dripping with sweat and s...o...b..r. The goons rested for a moment, leaning on their long wooden swords edged with flint; and Blade"s remaining three men broke off and ran to join him.
One of the soldiers was bleeding badly from a shoulder wound. Blade ripped away part of his tunic and bound it up as the man gasped out his story.
"They were concealed in the melon trees, Sire. We were betrayed by Sesi, who led us here. And now we die, for there are many of them all around the house."
It was true. Blade could hear the high-pitched, effeminate calls of still more Api as they emerged from the trees at the foot of the hill behind the cottage and began to ascend. But he patted the wounded man on his unhurt shoulder and smiled at them all. "We are not dead yet, guardsmen. Only obey me, obey me absolutely and keep your courage and we may come out alive yet. They are only Api after all and we will out-think them."
Yet as he gazed down the hill to where the Api leaders and the traitor Sesi were conferring, Blade did not feel so confident. It was going to be a near thing. Yet such was his rage and despair at the moment that he welcomed it. Let them come on. They would find a Blade as cruel and brutish as themselves. His eyes narrowed as he sought out the young sublieutenant Sesi. How skillfully, how carefully, the cornet had carried out his master"s orders. Blade cursed himself again and again. He had made what might be a fatal mistake, he had underestimated the Wise One. What was worse, Blade had ignored the clear indications that this might happen. Nizra had told him of signals from the Api, and Nizra had carefully avoided mentioning the girl Ooma. Blade, busy and full of his own conceit, had let it pa.s.s unnoticed. How Nizra must have chuckled, how that ghastly head must have lolled. For by torturing Ooma he could learn the truth about Blade, at least to a point, and thus seek to discredit him as the avatar. Fool, Blade called himself. Fool, fool, fool!
At the foot of the hill the conference broke up. Sesi turned away and sat down beneath a melon tree. Blade smiled grimly. The cornet had done his part and would not fight.
The Api leader, a goon not so large as the slain Porrex, but who looked to be shrewder, began to squeal out his orders. Blade followed suit.
"Into the house," he ordered. "There are four windows and the door to guard. I will take this door and the near window, each of you will take one of the remaining windows. They are large and clumsy, these Api, and not made for climbing through narrow windows. Now, keep your spirits up and fight for your lives."
One of the men gazed at the yellow mark on the door and cringed away, crying out, "But there is plague in this house, Sire. We will, "
J.
Blade gave him a brutal shove in through the door. "There is a greater plague out here, fool. In! Must I think for all of you?"
The Api were slow in approaching and Blade understood why. He reckoned some two score of the goons, against four. Impossible odds. Once inside the cottage he cast about for some manner of evening them a bit. He stared at the corpse of Mok and had an idea. There was still time, for the overconfident goons were shouting and jesting among themselves as they moved in to slay the four men.