Sword Empire (18 page)

“The swords rise above every gate and entrance into the city,” Lars said, as he came to stand beside them. His brother was at the wheel and Lars was relaxed now that their voyage was almost over. “Twelve swords to ring the City of Swords, and in the Great Parade Ground of the empire, there stands another, half as high again. The empire was built by steel and is maintained by steel. We can now send ships to the stars, and we have terrible weapons of fire and power, but the blade is still the symbol of the empire.”

Jayna leaned her head backward to gaze up at the heavens. All the constellations were sharp and bright now and her voice became wistful and wondering. “I should like to travel to the stars,” she said softly. “But it is hard to believe that men can truly travel so far.”

“Believe it,” Lars said, and he stepped closer so that their shoulders touched with more intimacy. He leaned against her as he pointed upward. “See there? That point of light is the fourth planet, another world like our own, but they say it is a dead world, a barren place of sand and cliffs and desert. And up there! That is the third planet of our solar system. It is another world like ours, with mountains and oceans and cities. And people. Our expedition to the third planet brought back an alien woman, with strange brown skin.”

Kananda's body stiffened and he swung his head to stare directly at Lars. Zela's fingers dug into his arm as she tightened her grip, a fierce warning for him to be careful.

Fortunately Lars had his attention divided between the night sky and the pleasurable sensation of being close to Jayna. He now risked moving his arm casually around her shoulders. Jayna had instinctively sensed Kananda's inner reaction, so now she leaned closer to Lars to keep him distracted. “I am not sure that I believe in alien brown women,” she argued with him. “I think that is just a story.”

“It is true,” Lars protested. “The Sword Lord Raven led an expedition to the third planet, and he brought the alien brown woman back to Ghedda. Before I left to travel up-river, it was the talk of every drink-den in the city.”

“You will tell me next that she has three eyes or two heads.”

“No,” Lars denied sharply, but then he chuckled. “But they do say she has a voracious sexual appetite. Her sex slit is very large and she takes delight in strange alien techniques and wild animal desires. Why else would a Gheddan Sword Lord wish to bring one home?”

Kananda stiffened again, and this time Zela had to hang on to his sword arm with both hands. His mouth opened to speak and she caught his eye and shook her head. Kananda's whole body trembled. The coarse, lecherous insults were a hot fire in his soul, but there was more here at stake than his own outrage. He boiled inside and he swore a silent oath that before he left this planet he would kill this dog who had dared to defile his sister's name. However, for the moment he bottled his wrath and held his tongue.

“I think I would very much like to see an alien woman,” Jayna said casually. “Where in the City would I have to go to get a glimpse of her?”

Lars shrugged. “I think you are too late. The talk before I left was that the Sword Lord has left the City for his stronghold somewhere in the north, and he has taken the brown woman with him. The City is full of politics, deceit and betrayals, and the bar talk was that he probably will not return. Death waits for him in the north, and when he dies, the brown woman will be left without a protector. She will be fought over and probably killed also.”

For Kananda, the news was another shock, this time accompanied by the icy stab of a terrible fear. They were close to the towering central arch of the bridge, and he stared up at that monstrous sword blade thrusting up in the moon and starlight, and he felt his stomach contract with bitterness and grief. He had reached the Gheddan City of Swords, but it had all been for nothing. All the time and effort and all the dangers they had faced had only added up to a wasted journey. Maryam was no longer here.

CHAPTER NINE

“There is an alternative route,” Raven offered casually before they returned to sleep. “The Whitejaw Gorge will be quicker than the main trail and approaches the stronghold from behind. It will entail a steep descent to begin with, which the horses may find difficult, and at the end of it there is a sheer climb for all of us.”

The flames of their campfire cast a flickering light on the faces of his listeners, and beyond was the now silent darkness of the forest. After the violence of the night attack, there was a deep hush, as though every other living thing, even the birds and the insects, had simply fled.

“Can we still expect to be ambushed?” Taron asked.

Raven smiled. “I do not think so. The Whitejaw Gorge is a place to pass through quickly, not a place for lying comfortably in wait. There is plenty of water from the river that runs through the heart of the gorge, and so the habitat is much different from this pine needle forest. There is a much greater variety of leaf trees and undergrowth, and so the grazing and the fruits and berries are much more plentiful to support prey animals. Which in turn means that there are many more predators. The forest lions there are almost as large as our horses, while the Whitejaw apes which give the place its name are also exceptionally large, as well as being both cunning and ferocious.”

“Apes or endless ambushes.” Taron twisted his mouth into a wry grimace. “It seems we have a good choice.”

“Decide,” Garl told Raven bluntly, pausing only briefly in the act of cleaning his sword blade with a handful of dried grass. “It is your stronghold. Your mission. Your decision.”

Raven shrugged. “The apes will be more dangerous than the men who will haunt the main trail, but we will probably only have to drive them off once. The forest trail is the long way round, and I do not have time to waste for all of this. This is a deliberate diversion and my sword is more urgently needed in the City. The gorge is the direct route. We will take the gorge.”

It was settled, and despite her new-found status as a fourth sword, Maryam had not even been consulted. She had to console herself with the knowledge that Taron and Garl had not really voiced much of an opinion either. Raven was their commander and his word was law.

They threw more dead branches onto the fire and again rolled themselves into their furs and blankets. The three Gheddans seemed to sleep soundly for the rest of the night, although Maryam hardly slept at all. When the dawn light splintered grey cracks through the canopy of black pine branches, she was still wide awake, and every muscle ached with stiffness and the cold. She was glad to be soon on the move gain, back in the saddle and following the swaying black rump of Raven's horse.

For an hour, they cantered briskly northward along the wide forest trail, until they reached a bridge of rough-cut logs and sawn planks that spanned a fast-flowing river. Raven slowed them with the raised palm of his hand and they crossed at a slow walk. On the far side, the trail they had been following disappeared again into the brooding ranks of the forest, but now Raven turned off the trail to the right and led them alongside the river bank.

Progress was slow here, for there was no clear-cut trail and they had to pick their way more carefully. The river rushed and gurgled beside them, obviously deep and gathering a fearsome speed. Maryam felt fear thudding in her heartbeat as her mount slipped in a patch of mud and lurched them both dangerously close to the edge of the bank. For a second, it seemed that she must be pitched into the swift swirling waters, but then the animal righted itself, steadied, and plodded on. The sound of the river's flow became a roaring somewhere up ahead, and Maryam felt her heart continuing to beat at its accelerated rate.

The great pine forest abruptly came to a halt on their left. On their right the river leaped over a broad lip of limestone rock and plunged in an almost vertical drop to disappear below the tops of the deciduous trees filling the sudden huge ravine that had opened up before them. Spray drenched the trees below, veiling them in white cloud, pierced by the brilliant curve of an early morning rainbow.

“The Whitejaw Gorge,” Raven said, indicating the scene with a wave of his hand.

They reined in a moment to sit and watch the water pouring over the crest of the falls. Maryam thrilled with the beauty and wonder of it all, and even the Gheddans were impressed by its awesome power. They sat until the fine mist of rising spray registered on their faces with its damp chill, and then Raven turned his horse away from the majestic cascade with its arc of sparkling colours, and moved to seek a way down.

It took them a long, sweating, nerve-wracking hour, with the horses moving heads down and rumps up, heads tossing and snorting fearfully as they carefully picked their footing. Raven had to force his mount down the long, zig-zag path, alternatively cursing and coaxing as he fought the reins to prevent the animal from swinging its head round and turning back. In places, the way down was barely discernible, blocked by boulders broken from the main cliff face, or by great tangled tree roots. The remaining three mounts followed their leader with almost as much reluctance. Maryam rode directly behind Raven, leaning well back in her saddle, her feet braced hard against the stirrups, struggling desperately with the reins, and knowing that if either one of her stirrups broke she would slide helplessly down over the animal's neck.

At last they reached the bottom of the gorge and paused to rest the horses. The animals were all wild-eyed, still snorting and sweating, and most of all trembling from the tips of their quivering nostrils to their nervously twitching tails. It seemed a miracle that they had all descended safely, and Maryam knew exactly how the animals were feeling. She was shaking only a little less violently herself.

Raven led them back to the riverbank again and they followed its slow winding course for the rest of the day. The huge gorge was choked with undergrowth, great tangles of low, thick-leafed branches, brambles and ferns, with the trees growing taller and more dense as they backed up to the rock walls which occasionally loomed close, but were for most of the time almost a mile apart. There was more colour here, some of the branches bore great pink to scarlet trumpet flowers. There were giant white and gold buttercups in amongst the moss and grasses. They skirted deep green reedbeds with purple bullrushes as high as the shoulders of their horses. There was a profusion of birdlife and plentiful signs of small game in hoof and paw prints around the mud holes along the edge of the river. Several times they glimpsed small animals disappearing as they approached, but not once did they see any sign of a major predator.

As the day wore on, Maryam began to enjoy the ride. The gorge trapped the sun so she was no longer shivering and they had all taken off their outer furs. Their wild but peaceful surroundings were without doubt the most attractive part of this planet she had yet seen, and even though everything seemed larger and more barbaric than on Earth, at least much of the fauna and plant life seemed vaguely familiar, as though life might find its natural expressions in some similar form wherever it evolved.

By nightfall, she had been lulled into a sense of false security, although the three Gheddans were sufficiently cautious to clear their own campsite and avoid the obviously well-used watering holes along the riverbank. Again they built a large fire of dead branches and had the flames leaping high before the sun went down. They ate the same packed ration meal as before, drank water from the river, and then Raven set guard watches for the night. Now, Maryam was sure that none of the three Gheddans had slept before the attack of the previous night, and so the fact that they felt it was safe enough for three to sleep while only one watched was in its own small way a reassurance.

There was small talk before they settled down, and again Maryam was generally excluded. She had learned to curb her annoyance at such small slights and ignored them in turn as she sat staring into the fire. The warmth and the firelight were a small comfort to her, in that they reminded her of the sacrificial fires which had always burned in the temples and palaces of Karakhor. She tried to picture the wrinkled face of old Kaseem as he performed the holy rites, and the faces of her father and uncles and brothers as they performed their own acts of reverence. She in turn had always worshipped with her mother, her aunt and her sister. With dismay she realized that some of those memories were fading with time. With a small shock, she also realized that she had not made any act of acknowledgement to the gods for many days.

On the Gheddan space ship, while the Gheddans slept, she had stolen small moments of quiet when she could close her eyes and clasp her hands unseen while she offered her silent prayers to Agni, Indra, and Varuna. However, since she had arrived on the fifth planet, the swift whirl of events had given her no time to even think of such things. Now she felt ashamed that she had abandoned all the regular duties of prayer and ritual which had made up so much of her former life, and her soul was heavy with the sudden need to make amends.

She looked around the circle of firelight and saw that Raven and Garl were already asleep, snoring gently in the tight rolls of their furs. Taron had moved away to take the first watch and she saw him standing a dozen paces distant with his back to a large tree, a spot where he could watch both the campfire and the river where any animal might come down to drink. For the moment Taron was watching the river, his head was nodded forward, and he looked as though he might be dozing on his feet.

Carefully, Maryam moved onto her knees, facing the heart of the fire, with her hands held palm outward in supplication to the flames. She was not sure whether the gods existed here, for they were certainly unknown to the Gheddans, but somehow she knew that they would not forsake her. The fire was burning bright and Kaseem had taught her that Agni existed in all flames. If she could travel across the heavens between worlds, then surely so could the gods, and Agni would surely carry her prayers home to Indra and Varuna.