Lin Carter - Down to a Sunless Sea (14 page)

He measured Tuan's warriors with thoughtful eyes. They were a lean and hungry band of ruffians, men without a clan, hardened by the lifelong struggle to survive in the hostile wilderness of desert Mars, and probably accustomed to every crime he could think of, and a few more that he couldn't.

They were hard riders, excellent trackers, and, as he knew from the brief battle at the mouth of the cave, dangerous and veteran warriors. They were also heavily armed. About half of the fourteen were armed with laser rifles, the others with power guns, and all of them had knives—the long-bladed, heavy, deadly Martian knives they called
s'zouks.
As efficient and dangerous a weapon, in skilled and practiced hands, as had been the bowie knives on the American frontier.

And he had no doubt that all of these desert wolves were well practiced in using them. ...

Even if he had been able to get his hands loose, they were too wary to be taken by surprise, and there were too many of them for him to hope to fight, with even the slightest chances of success.

He also noticed—with bitter amusement—that their bristling store of weaponry had newly been augmented by the twin laser rifles which Doc Harbin and his native scout had held when Brant and the women first encountered them, as well as Brant's own pair of power pistols, and even the long knife Agila had carried in his boot.

What was needed here—he thought wryly—was some sort of a diversion to distract the outlaws just long enough for the five prisoners to struggle to their feet (for the outlaws had not bound their captives' ankles, for some reason, perhaps being short of ropes). Then, with any luck, they could all hightail it into the depths of the fungus-forest, and, with a little more luck, find places to hide in whatever sort of terrain might lie on the far side of the grove.

Once safe, at least relatively, they could in time chew through each other's bonds and be off. Although off to
where,
Brant had no idea.
A diversion. . . .

Brant uttered a mirthless chuckle. Well, the sudden appearance of a hungry dinosaur about the height of a two-story building would be adequate! A charging herd of woolly mammoths would come in handy. Brant would even have settled for a hunting-pack of sabertooth tigers, if any were available.

He rather doubted that they were, though. He had yet to see any wildlife bigger than a couple of outsized dragonflies, and these seemed harmless enough.

He leaned back as comfortably as he could, and closed his eyes, resting himself and conserving his strength for whatever opportunity, to make a break for it might, but probably would not, occur.

When he opened his eyes again it was because the sea breeze had wafted to his nostrils the scent of burning fungus-stalks. Tuan and his band had started a bonfire, touching off the dry, fibrous stuff even as Brant had earlier, with a touch of needle-beam. The stuff burned like tinder.

Brant narrowed his eyes. The desert warriors were rigging a makeshift spit over the fire, using their metal spears. As they did so, they grinned and chuckled among themselves, for all the world like a passel of Apaches about to scalp a few White Eyes. They glanced occasionally at their captives, and the expression in their eyes was cruel and gloating.

Brant shot a glance at Agila. The lean rogue was wide-eyed and panting in fear, and Brant didn't blame him.

The outlaws obviously intended to roast the poor bastard over a slow fire, Brant grimly guessed. And his stomach-muscles knotted in sympathy.

For he and Will Harbin would probably be second course, once Agila had died screaming, burned to a crisp, as the saying goes. The women would be sold into slavery in the slave markets of the nearest city of the People, once the chieftain had led his band back up the stony stair to the surface.

Time was running out, although it would take Agila hours to die, if Tuan and his warriors did the job properly, and in those interminable, grisly hours before it was his and Doc's turn for the torture, anything at all might happen.

Brant rather wished he had been a religious man, for if so, he could have prayed right then and there, without cowardly hypocrisy. Because if anybody ever needed a miracle to happen, it was him and his companions. . . .

Jesting obscenely among themselves, the outlaws strolled over to where Agila crouched in terror, and lifted him to his feet, and began to truss him to one of the spear-shafts. These lances were of metal, of course, not wood, for wood is virtually unknown on the Desert World. The heat of the metal shaft along his back, shoulders and buttocks would add a certain extra something to Agila's agony, once they began to turn him slowly over on the makeshift spit over the roaring fire.

Brant looked at his companions. Suoli lay huddled facedown in the moss, blubbering hysterically, her entire body shaking convulsively as she sobbed and shuddered.

Will Harbin's face was grave but composed, and the older man's eyes were closed and his lips moved slightly in prayer, perhaps.

Then he looked at Zuarra, seated beside him on the moss with her ankles crossed tailor-fashion. She held herself proudly, her spine as straight as an arrow. Her eyes were stony, her lips tight, her expression aloof.

God, she was a brave woman, Brant thought. He had never known a braver!

She turned to meet his gaze, her eyes calm and level and unfaltering. Their eyes locked.

And in that moment he realized that he loved her, and she read it in his face and smiled.

20

The Flying Boy

The outlaws lifted the spear to which Agila was securely bound onto the supports they had rigged over the bonfire for their makeshift spit. As the heat smote him—face, breast, belly and thighs—he squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his lips together tightly, screwing up his face, and letting no sound escape him.

Tuan watched appraisingly, a slight smile playing about his lips.

"O, brave and braver still is the skulking thief in the night!" he exclaimed tauntingly. "But the courageous silence of the dog Agila will not last very long . . . soon will he writhe and wriggle on the spit. And then a whimper or a gasp will come . . . and then, mayhap, some weeping or crying out. It will perhaps be half a
kua,
mayhap a trifle less, before the screaming will commence. And it will be happy music to the ears of Tuan!"

Half a
kua
was a measurement of Martian time the equivalent to about ten minutes, Brant knew. He rather agreed with Tuan's estimate of how long Agila could hold his tongue.

And then it happened. 

Tuan glanced up suddenly, in the direction of the hills, and his eyes widened in amazement and disbelief. He uttered a harsh croak, an involuntary cry.

Behind Brant, Will Harbin cried out, "Good God!" in a shaky voice.

And Brant himself looked up.

There came hurtling through the air toward their camp, heading inland from the sea, a Flying Boy.

He was lithe and naked, pale golden, hairless. And he bore in one fist a long, glittering lance.

At first glimpse, it seemed to them all that he was winged. But then, as he flashed down upon them, scattering the outlaws into howling flight, they saw that he was mounted between the flickering, thrumming wings of a gigantic dragonfly.

It was obviously akin to the flying things they had seen in the fungus-forest, one of which Brant had slain with the knife, and Doc had cooked and sampled its meat.

But that one was only as long as Brant's arm.
This
fantastic creature was the length of a six-man canoe, and its glittering wings of sheeted opal must have a forty-foot spread.

As his amazing steed flashed by overhead, the golden youth leaned from the saddle—for now Brant had a closer look, he observed that he was strapped into a high saddle woven, it seemed, of wicker. With the flat head of his lance, he caught Agila in the ribs, with a blow just strong enough to push the whole spit-contraption over into the moss beyond the fire.

Agila flopped, wriggled, gasping, rubbing his blistered parts against the cool, damp moss.

Brant got clumsily to his feet, and stood staring skywards. The aerial knight soared by overhead, banked in a sharp turn, and came about for another pass at them. He bent over to peer at them, and Brant noticed only that his eyes were glinting amber, and that he was quite young, long-legged, smoothly built, and so strikingly handsome as almost to be worthy of being called beautiful, although in a boyish way.

Brant nudged Zuarra with his foot.

"Up
girl! Run for it. Doc! Suoli—stop your blubbering! On your feet, all of you—make for the grove!"

Zuarra and Will Harbin, at least, instantly understood Brant's notion. While the outlaw band scattered in witless terror, like jackrabbits startled by a hunting hawk, they could lose themselves in the forest.

With Zuarra loping along at his side, Brant broke into a clumsy staggering run for the edge of the clearing. Then, several things happened so quickly, that ever after it was tough for him to sort them out in sequence.

Suddenly, to his dazed eyes, the sky was filled with naked golden children mounted on enormous dragonflies. There must have been a couple of dozen of them, perhaps twice that number. Uttering shrill, exuberant cries and brandishing their glittering lances, they wheeled in tight formation over the clearing.

Then Will Harbin cried out for help. A coil of braided rope settled about his shoulders, bringing him to a halt; another caught him about the hips. Yelling and kicking, he was dragged off his feet and into the air.

As Brant paused uncertainly on the edge of the clearing, looking back, one of the aerial riders spotted him, gave voice to a shrill halloo, and headed for him quicker than the eye could follow. Brant did not even have time to blink before he, too, was lassoed and hauled into the air.

Zuarra screamed once as her kicking heels left the moss and she was born aloft.

Then, the speed of their flight making their eyes blur with tears, they were carried off on swift, thrumming wings toward the luminous sea.

Brant looked back, squinting his watering eyes against the wind. Zuarra, Harbin, Suoli, Tuan, and all of the outlaws had been captured by the flying boys. All kicked and squirmed and seemed unharmed. He discovered later that one of the flying youths, the first to have discovered them, had returned to rescue Agila from his bondage.

Looking up, he realized that each of the dragonfly-riders was sharing their weight. That is; he had been lassoed almost simultaneously by two of the nude children. It would seem, then, that the dragonflies, no matter how enormous, had to share the weight of captives between them.

The aerial creatures had two sets of wings at either side, sprouting from the same boulderlike bunch of muscles. For all their strength, however, they had to share the extra burden of a captive.

They were gorgeous, the super-dragonflies. Even in this precarious position, he could appreciate their rich coloring. Their long, stiff, tube-shaped bodies varied from the hue of burnished bronze to metallic green like verdigris, and sparkled in the light of the radiant sea beneath them. The droning of their wings in flight was sonorous, and their eye-bunches glistened like clustered wet black gems.

He noticed that the strange glassy lances borne by the pilots were employed in lieu of bit or bridle, for the giant dragonflies wore no reins. Instead, they were guided by these long, flat-bladed spears. It seemed the flying creatures had sensitive nodules on the top of their heads: a tap or a rap on certain of these communicated the commands of their riders. Up, down, right, left, went the message of the tappings.

He had, of course, thought of them as weapons. It seemed, however, that they were not.

As for the riders themselves, all of those who were within , the range of his vision were uniformly young. This would seem to make good sense: for all their size, the super-dragonflies had little in the way of lifting-power. The riders most suited to the craft were young boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen, as he later learned.

They flew out over the phosphorescent ocean, the captors and their captives, and descended before very long to an astonishing vessel. It was like unto no ship that Brant had ever seen or heard of. Its shape was that of a crescent, with a high forecastle and an equally tall aft-structure. And it seemed to possess neither sails nor oarbanks.

Even stranger, it was not made out of wood, but woven out of something like bundles of reeds or wicker.

The flyers hovered above the deck midships and—dropped their captive quarry!

They landed upon a springy deck woven, it seemed, of rattan, which gave beneath their weight. All of them were bound and helpless, the party led by Brant with bound wrists, the outlaws tangled in those braided lassoes.

The rattan decks gave beneath their weight. In no time, other excited mariners, young and naked and golden, took (hem into custody. Whereupon, the mounted dragonflies settled into the mastlike superstructure above the ship.

Brant had noticed these branching masts devoid of sails or cordage, with naught but rope-ladders, but had been too busy to think much about them, so swiftly did the movement of events go forward. Now he saw that the many-branched masts were the roosting-places of the super-dragonflies.