The Sword Lord (24 page)

Raven felt the sharp pain and the warm blood seeping down his chest. Then the hunchback yanked on the rope, trying to bring him staggering forward onto the other man's sword.

The rope was strangling him. Raven knew that if he tried to pull back, it would choke him to death. The blood was already pounding in his temples as he gasped for air. It was as though a red cloud had enveloped his brain. He knew his life expectancy could now be counted in seconds.

He refused to fight the rope and instead allowed himself to be catapulted forward. Again the swords rang and crashed as he engaged the man with the ravaged face. The hunchback had danced back out of the way to get another heaving pull on the rope. Raven couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. He fought with Gheddan instinct and the stubborn Gheddan refusal to face oblivion.

His sword arm hewed with a ritual will of its own. Block, parry, feint, thrust—but his opponent had learned, the thrust was parried in turn and the dagger in the assassin's left hand was striking for Raven's heart. Raven hooked the blade away with his left arm, the point slicing through his tunic sleeve and the skin over his bicep. For a second, they were chest to chest, arms apart, and Raven used the last of his failing strength to headbutt the ravaged face before him.

The swordsman fell away, blood streaming from his shattered nose. Raven's head was yanked sideways in the same moment. The hunchback had taken up the tension on the rope and was hauling him hand over hand up the alleyway. Raven swung his sword in a gleaming arc. The blade seemed to move in extreme slow motion. Raven was blacking out and he no longer knew what he was doing. In a red dream, the sword blade faltered at the top of its curve, and then fell limply. The cutting edge struck the taut rope, severed it, and the hunchback went flying backwards.

With his left hand, Raven clawed at the strangling coils round his neck, his desperate fingers gouging deep into his own flesh as he pulled the rope loose. He gulped air, gagged and gulped again. His chest heaved. The red mist partially cleared in his brain, his reeling senses fighting to focus.

The hunchback was on his feet, screaming obscenities. He was surprisingly nimble for such a grotesque shape and he had produced another short sword from his own ragged robes. He charged full tilt at Raven.

The Sword Lord met the headlong attacks and again, the long blade keeping the shorter one at bay. Raven gulped down more air. The adrenaline flowed. He felt strength returning to his body and arm. Slowly and terribly, his lips peeled back to bare his teeth and at last he smiled.

The hunchback had no more tricks. Death stared him in the face. Again he screamed in frustrated rage. Then the long blade swept the short one aside and flung it against the alley wall. The hunchback froze, perhaps he prayed. His eyes tilted up in final horror to watch the long blade fall, and then it smashed through flesh and bone as it split open his skull.

Raven turned. The man with the diseased face still slumped with his back to the wall, still dazed and only half conscious. Raven deftly ran his sword through his body.

There was silence. Raven withdrew his sword and stood back, panting. His senses were still alert but the night held no more threat. The very air seemed hushed and fearfully listening. Cautiously, Raven moved to pick up his severed weapon belt, hanging it lightly over his sound shoulder. The hand lazer bumped solidly against his chest, but he let it hang in the holster. There was no longer any need for it.

With grudging respect, he examined the three dead assassins. They had been good, as excelled in their trade as any he might have met in the back alleyways of Ghedda. They had clever techniques and they had worked well as a team. Such men, he knew, did not select victims at random and never worked unpaid.

He did not expect to find any clue as to who might have paid them, but as he turned them over he found, to his mild surprise, that each man wore a leather armband with three short ribbons of fine green silk. He had seen that identifying mark before, on the warriors of the House of Gandhar.

Chapter Twelve

Thorn had thrown his tunic aside and was removing his weapon belt. Namita had recoiled on her pillows, clutching her sheets around her and was still screaming hysterically. Thorn's grin slowly dissolved into a scowl. He had not wanted quite so much fuss. He could deal with any interruption—if anyone dared to interfere—but it would be an embarrassment to be interrupted. He told her curtly to be quiet and moved around the bed to smack her hard across the mouth with the back of his hand.

Namita was a royal princess. Apart from the gentle chastisement of her mother and her aunts, no one had ever dared to strike her before. The violence and effrontery of Thorn's blow shocked her into a frozen silence. Suddenly she dared not even whimper.

Thorn grinned again and took off his weapon belt. He hung it carefully at the head of the bed where his sword and lazer would be within instant reach. Before he could remove the golden chain mail of his codpiece, Raven's voice came sharply and clearly from his belt communicator in the pouch behind the lazer holster.

“Thorn. I am on the far side of the main square of this miserable city—about one hundred paces along the central avenue. Join me here. There has been treachery and we have work to do. Acknowledge.”

Thorn stopped in mid-movement. His face darkened with anger and frustration. He mouthed a vile string of obscenities that would have flushed Namita crimson if she could have understood them.

“Thorn!” There was a cutting edge to Raven's voice, a dark impatience. “Respond.”

May the fangs of a Silurian lizard chew on your balls
, Thorn thought bitterly, but this was one interruption he could neither defy nor ignore. With the thought still in mind, he reached for the communicator and flipped the speak-switch.

“Thorn, commander. I acknowledge.”

There could be no delay. Even if Raven had not been a Sword Lord of superior skill, he was still the Mission Commander and representative of the empire and that one-hundred-foot high steel blade in the City Of Swords to which Thorn had sworn his own sword and his allegiance.

Still cursing, Thorn buckled his weapon belt back into place, snatched up his tunic and body armour and hurried out of the room.

 

 

 

Namita was still sobbing wretchedly when the door crashed open again a few minutes later. Jahan burst in with a dozen warriors at his heels, still in his nightshirt and without his turban, but with his ruby-hilted sword grasped firmly in his right hand. The face of the old warmaster was thunderous and he came ready to fight and die, but he could only stand baffled when he saw that she was alone.

“Where is he?” he cried angrily and blended in with his rage was the awful fear that he was too late.

Namita could not answer. She only wept more loudly.

“Where is the defiler?” Jahan roared. “By
Indra
and all the gods, for this I will kill him.”

He turned on his heel, ready to storm out in search of Thorn. Namita realized what was happening and a new panic filled her fearful breast. She struggled up on her pillows and desperately called him back.

“No, Uncle! Do not follow him. He will kill you with his white fire.”

“Then I will die.” Jahan's fury was unstoppable. “But I will not stand by when you have been dishonoured.”

He pushed through his warriors, scattering them from his path, but then found the doorway blocked by the king's two senior wives who had donned their night robes to hurry to the scene of commotion. Padmini, the mother of Kananda and Maryam, laid a restraining hand upon his arm. Kamali, the mother of Namita, Rajar and Nirad, hastened to the side of her daughter. Both queens were pale and trembling.

“Wait, Jahan,” Padmini begged him. “At least let us find out what has happened.”

Jahan hesitated, torn between the different pulls of duty. A command from the queen carried only slightly less weight than the command of Kara-Rashna himself. He found himself ushered tactfully but firmly out of the doorway and into the outer chamber where his warriors still crowded.

“Truest and most loyal friend of ourselves and our husband, please wait,” Padmini pleaded with him again, and then she too disappeared quickly into the bedchamber, closing the door behind her.

Jahan could only stand fuming, frustrated by the delay. The minutes passed. The princes Devan and Sanjay arrived together with drawn swords and more warriors from their respective palace guards. Then the king appeared, distraught and confused, half supported by his guard, but bravely clutching his sword. Jahan reported what he knew, which was no more than he had been told by the young warrior whom Thorn had chased away from Namita's door.

They debated the outrage with hot tempers rising, and were upon the point of marching in a mass upon the chambers occupied by the Gheddans, when the door to the inner bedchamber opened and the First Queen emerged. All voices and movement stopped as they faced her anxiously.

“Princess Namita has not been dishonoured.” Padmini gave them that vital reassurance first in an effort to calm them and restore some sensible order. “The one called Thorn was here, but a voice spoke to him in his own language from the little box they carry on their belts, and he hurried away.” She chose not to tell them that their princess had been struck across the face or that Thorn had started to remove his clothing. These things were best left unsaid if she was to prevent them from destroying themselves. “Princess Namita is distressed,” she admitted. And then repeated with emphasis, “But she has not been dishonoured!”

“Even so,” Jahan growled, “for any man to enter her bedchamber is punishable only by death.”

The royal princes nodded grim agreement. Even if their niece had not been bodily violated, the honour of them all was still besmirched and would remain so until Thorn had paid the price.

“How can you kill a god?” Padmini cried in anguish, addressing the question directly to her husband. “You all know their power. How can you stand against the white fire of the gods?”

“If we do not stand, then how can we prevent this god from returning to complete what he so clearly intended?” Kara-Rashna asked helplessly. “How can we protect our daughters?”

“Kamali and I have discussed this.” Padmini risked her husband's disapproval. “With your permission, sire, Kamali will take Namita secretly to one of the noble houses. There she will be safe and can be kept hidden until these strangers depart.”

“What if the gods have the vision or other means to find her?” Devan asked slowly.

“Or if the strangers do not depart?” Sanjay added with equal doubt.

“We can only pray that they will not find her and that they will depart.” The queen clasped her hands together and bowed her head as she spoke.

“Pray!” Jahan drew himself up to an unsurpassable height of apoplexy, forgetting that he was garbed only in his nightshirt. His knuckles were white around the raised hilt of his sword. “Pray, and hide our women while we are afraid to act. It is better to die first.”

The princes nodded their grim confirmation and looked to their older brother. The will of Kara-Rashna would decide.

The ailing king drew himself up and raised his own sword. He opened his mouth to speak, but then a vast, hollow, booming sound rolled throughout the palace. It came again and again and all ears recognized it.

The sound was the beating of the great gong in the king's audience hall, which was only used to summon the city's rulers to a meeting of great emergency.

 

 

 

Raven had returned to the palace with one of the dead assassins draped across his unwounded shoulder. Behind him marched Thorn, stolidly carrying the corpses of the other two. Raven had already made up his mind how he would act and he carried his burden straight to the king's audience hall. Torches burned in brackets attached to the high central pillars but the hall was empty and unguarded.

Raven went inside and deposited the dead man at the foot of the splendid, elephant-tusked throne. The head lolled back over the edge of the raised dais and the wide-open, rolled back eyes stared at him blankly from the ravaged face. Thorn allowed the bodies of the hunchback and the third man to slide down from his aching shoulders so that they all sprawled in a piled heap. Blood stained the white uniforms and gold body armour of the two Gheddans. More blood began to seep from the freshly killed bundle of limbs to run between the brilliant green and blue mosaic tiles that covered the entire floor of the great hall.

Behind the throne, suspended between two only slightly smaller tusks gilded with red and gold, hung the great gong. Raven had seen it used and had noticed its purpose. Now he walked up to it and took down the large, leather-padded drumstick that hung beside it. With both hands wielding the hammer, he struck the centre of the gong with all his strength. Its deep, resonant boom filled the vaulted hallway, echoed through the palace corridors and carried out into the still night air to awaken and alarm the whole city of Karakhor.

The magnificent dome above the dais that supported both the throne and the gong acted as a huge amplifier for the dreadful sound. There was no corner of the city, alleyway, cellar or dungeon, that its repeated reverberations did not reach. Like a knell of doom, it shattered the rest of princes and peasants, warriors and priests, merchants and artisans. Raven continued to pound at the gong until his arms ached, and by then the summons had brought its first responders.

The young princes Nirad and Rajar had heard the earlier disturbance in the women's quarters but had delayed to dress themselves properly before seeking to investigate. They had been on their way when the first gong beat sounded, and after staring at each other in frightened stupefaction for a few minutes, they had reluctantly turned their faltering steps toward the audience hall. They entered warily, almost on tiptoes, but Raven's hearing was sharp. He turned and faced them.