Warlord of Antares (7 page)

That movement broke the uncanny rigidity that held us all, and yet the Kanzai did not hurl his Star of Death, Seg did not loose his deadly Lohvian shaft.

The Kanzai Warrior Brother called across to us.

His voice was gruff, throaty, harsh, clanging with the resonances of a lifetime’s application to the demanding rigors of combat.

“Jikais! A stand-off.”

“Impudent devil!” exclaimed Seg, under his breath. “I can shaft him where he stands, one, two, three, and Havil take his damned swordbreaker.”

This Seg could do. No doubt of it. And, mark me, there was not an iota of boasting in his instinctive remark.

A tinkle of metal did not distract us. The Star of Death toppled onto its side. It had rolled along in a strange lopsided way, rhythmically bouncing in its progress. Something like a Japanese Shuriken, it was asymmetrical, its Kregan creators imparting a swooping deflection to its flight. Even so, the Krozair disciplines had enabled the Krozair longsword to deflect it from its intended target.

“Jikais!” called the Kanzai again.

“He,” observed Seg with some relish, “sounds suddenly apprehensive.”

“Didn’t expect his Star of Death to miss.”

“Quite.”

“Shaft him, Seg,” counseled Nath in his unruly bellow.

The Kanzai heard that.

The metal links stirred ripplingly across the cavern floor. The upflung throwing star glittered.

“Do you adhere to the decadent Rumay customs, doms?” he called across.

“No!” yelled Seg in a virulent voice.

I said nothing. Truth to tell, it might have been interesting to discover the adept’s reaction had we acknowledged the Rumay customs to him.

“That is as well.” He lowered the Star of Death.

“Look,” I said once more. “We can’t hang around here.” I shouted then, and I admit I put a little testiness into the bellow. “Kanzai! Stand aside and let us pass or you will suffer the consequences of your own foolishness.”

I started forward, the Krozair brand in my two fists, ready to swipe away a Star of Death or two or remove his head if he didn’t shift.

For a moment he hesitated. Clearly, he didn’t like what he saw of us. Just what he was doing down here in the Coup Blag was his affair and of no real interest to us.

The Star of Death vanished into its pouch. The links of chain coiled miraculously into loops and were stowed. As he stepped aside his right hand fastened on the hilt of his thraxter.

I stood next to him. I stared at him balefully.

“The ladies will now pass, Kanzai.
Dernun?
”
[1]

He nodded and that gruesome skull atop his helmet, flounced with feathers, bobbed. He used his left hand in a gesture to indicate we were to pass.

“Get the shemales moving, Nath!”

With a scurry and bustle, and with many a white-eyed sideways glance at the adept, the girls scuttled past. Some did not scuttle. Some walked arrogantly past, heads high, swinging in their gait and bold. These were women who had not first sought for clothes to cover their nakedness but had first snatched up weapons. The Kanzai eyed them as they strutted past as he would have scrutinized any potential foe.

When all had gone by I said: “I give you thanks, dom.” I went to move off and then halted and turned to say: “And you? Down here?”

“I have my mission.”

That’s all we would get out of him. As a Kanzai Warrior Brother, an adept, he was answerable only to his master.

It takes all sorts to make a world and Kregen is a world of many wonders, many marvelous oddities, by Zair!

Turning to march off after the others, I heard him draw a breath and in the same instant I’d ducked, swerved and sprung about to come up with the longsword pressing against his ribs. I halted the thrust.

He took a step back, a very smart step back, and his face expressed stupefaction.

“I was just—” he began. And then he swallowed and burst out: “By the Names! I do not know your Disciplines, dom; but you are sudden, most sudden.”

I glared at him, eyeball to eyeball.

Some cheap remark could have come so easily to my lips then.

I contented myself with a simple: “That is so, dom. Remberee.”

“Remberee, dom. I shall not forget you.”

Chapter seven

In the cavern of beauty

The shimmering manifestation of the Wizard of Loh Deb-Lu-Quienyin beckoned us on toward a gargoyle-crowned opening, black and ominous, jagged in the wall of the cavern.

We’d traversed a considerable quantity of corridor since our meeting with the Kanzai Warrior Brother. The women complained — very naturally — yet it was as obvious to them as to us that we had to keep moving and find a way to escape from the Coup Blag.

Old Deb-Lu’s turban was straight upon his head and he did not need to lift a hand to prevent the absurd headgear from toppling. His face looked grave.

Faintly, no louder than a distant whisper of wind, the sound of rushing water filtered through that gap of dark and evil aspect.

“The women need to rest up again, Jak,” called Nath. He marched at the back, shepherding the females along much as a ponsho-trag shepherds along his flock of woolly ponshos. He carried two of them, more or less comfortably, and it was clear to Seg and me that he was forming an attachment.

Just how wise or foolish that was down here in this magical maze remained to be seen.

“I don’t like the look of old Deb-Lu,” said Seg, in a quiet voice.

“There’s trouble up ahead, that’s for sure.”

“Better to have everyone rest up first, then.”

“Aye.” I called back to Nath. “We’ll take a breather, then, you Impenitent.”

“Quidang!”

The women flopped down and stretched out on the bare stone of the floor, grateful for the rest. Nath deposited his two with care and then stalked up to join Seg and me.

The girl with the pale shapely body and dark frizzy hair who’d hurled the knife at the Kanzai also walked up. She made a grimace of distaste that revealed the cruel sharpened teeth.

“Well, men, if we must go forward let us get on, for the sake of Mayruna the Perforater!”

“You would leave your friends here?” demanded Seg.

“Not my friends, man, of whom there are few left. These other frail fools, yes, of course.”

Rashly Nath the Impenitent burst out: “Your Perforater is not to my liking, woman!”

She gave him a look, an upward, slanting, calculating look that seemed to strip away skin and flesh.

“That is very true, man. Mayruna the Perforater is not to your liking in this world or the other.”

With what I hoped was a nicely judged amount of acerbity, I said: “We cannot push on yet, young lady. When the women are rested, we will see what that water ahead brings us. Is that clear?”

She opened her mouth and I haven’t the faintest idea what she might have said. I cut in sharply.

“So it would be less foolish of you to go and rest now, like the others.”

She had retrieved that flung knife so contemptuously disposed of by the Kanzai adept. Her brown fingers twitched once in the direction of the knife’s hilt, and then she puffed her cheeks, turned away with the frizzy hair glinting with the crystal overhead lights. Dust and dirt matted the hair. She said nothing and went back to drop down and find what comfort she could from the hard stone floor.

“Keep an eye on that one, Nath,” said Seg in his serious way.

“Aye, Horkandur, aye. I don’t fancy her knife tickling between my ribs.”

“She has friends here,” I pointed out.

“If, Bogandur,” said Nath, “they are all like her it will be exceedingly interesting.”

Seg pursed up his lips. I could sense something had been worrying away at my blade comrade, and now, without showing the slightest impoliteness to Nath by not taking up his comment and introducing a fresh, he said: “We have been spared the visitation of monsters and unwholesome beasties lately. Yet I fancy the Witch will not let us go without taking a last crack at us. Yes?”

“Indubitably,” said Nath, who was fond of the word.

“Aye,” I said. “And with all these women along—”

“My point, precisely.” Seg’s fey blue eyes showed a bright merriment. “Our ferocious lady friends of the Rumay persuasion may then earn their keep.”

Nath rumbled a huge guffaw from his stomach, highly impressed by the indubitableness of the proposition.

Not for the first time — and assuredly, by Vox, not for the last — I found myself rejoicing in the company and companionship of good comrades. Yes, yes, I love to go off adventuring alone, wearing the brave old scarlet and swinging a great Krozair longsword; but equally I joy in adventures shared with boon comrades.

And here I pulled myself up sharply and with a most unpleasant jolt of guilt.

What the hell was I doing contemplating going off adventuring when all of Paz demanded my utmost exertions? We had to escape from this damnable Coup Blag, Witch of Loh or no damn Witch of Loh, and then I had to see about organizing the countries to fight shoulder to shoulder. And by countries one always means the people of the nations. There would be no easy ride trying to convince some of the rulers in the lands of Paz to work together. The task which, in the early days, I had considered to be just another problem set to my hands, was altogether far greater and fraught with bristling difficulties I had not foreseen.

The simple answer and the one I had at first thought to be the one the Star Lords intended was just to go around to these various lands and gain control.

That meant conquest, naked war and conquest.

Or, it would mean that if there were no subtler way I could take over the running of a nation.

Now I saw that for one man to go around making himself king of this and prince of that was paranoia of a sublime madness. It was megalomania on a grand scale.

No. There had to be other ways, and just at the moment I had no idea what those ways might be.

Oh, yes, assuredly, I had a scheme dreamed up for Pandahem which I intended to put into operation the moment we were out of here and running free. But that was but a small chunk of the main problem.

“You look, Bogandur,” said Nath, “as though you have lost a zorca and found a calsany.”

“Rather, Nath,” I said with feeling, “found a woflo.”

“That you cannot ride.”

“Unless the one shrinks or the other grows.”

“Most profound,” put in Seg. “And I’m starving.”

Nath rumbled up a grunting cough.

“I wish you hadn’t said that, Seg. Now I am reminded that my guts are like the last flagon at dawn.”

“And,” shot back Seg, “I wish you hadn’t mentioned anything to do with flagons.”

The little sally-affray gave us some tithe of amusement. I stood up and stretched and looked around.

Seg stood up as well and said: “Yes. Time to go.”

Nath rolled off to get the ladies moving.

Again Deb-Lu appeared, shimmering and ghostlike.

The jagged opening into which he beckoned us did not look inviting. But trusting the Wizard of Loh absolutely as I did, I had no hesitation in heading directly into that Stygian blackness.

The sound of rushing water rustled and echoed about us, bouncing from the walls and drumming in our ears.

Feeling cautiously ahead, probing with the longsword, I made slow progress. Here, safety was far more important than speed.

Just rushing blindly ahead would get you killed stone bonkers dead, no doubt of that, by Krun!

The eeriness of this alien underground maze must not be allowed to affect our nerves. Yes, we were deep underground, walled by millions of tons of rock, creeping along in total darkness, prey to all the imagined fears the human mind can invent. Yet we had to hold onto our courage and press on and front the dangers and terrors as they leaped upon us.

The faintest iridescent shifting of mingled colors from a rockface far far ahead indicated the presence of distant light. With that faint and far off glow ahead the whole feeling to this cautious crawl through darkness altered. As we went on so the light strengthened. Our angle to the rockface shifted and gradually the predominant color emerged as an eye-searing viridian.

“Shades of Genodras,” I said to myself, and prowled on. The twin Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, might be shining away in the Kregan sky outside, or, for all I knew, it could be pitch dark and some of Kregen’s seven moons float refulgently among the stars. The diurnal rhythms of the world had, for the moment, been abandoned.

The noise now boomed and reverberated everywhere so that I was convinced a waterfall of some size lay in store for us.

Dampness in the air lay on the lips and tongue. The stone floor slicked with moisture. Along the walls as the green light intensified grew algaes and lichens, and the skipping figures of tiklos appeared and vanished among the crevices.

“I suppose,” said Seg in a resigned and injured tone of voice, “we won’t be able to drink the dratted water.”

“Dunno, Seg. Maybe now Csitra’s had her wings clipped natural things are back to being natural.”

“At least the she-witch did feed us from time to time.”

“Aye.”

Directly ahead the green light poured through a wide opening set at an angle so that the radiance bounced from the rock face opposite. The noise now reached a painful intensity. The women stumbled along with their hands clapped over their ears.

Deb-Lu’s figure showed to the side of the passage. A crevice in the rock, a mere jagged crack stretching from the floor up to a peak something like ten feet overhead, slashed a streak of blackness against the shining stone.

“Through there!” exclaimed Nath. “When there’s a large opening ahead?”

“The Wizard of Loh has not failed us yet.” I looked back over the mob. “Keep together.” With that I plunged into the crack of blackness.

Cobwebs slurred furrily across my face. Irritably I brushed them away and pressed on, sword extended. The floor was rough and littered with detritus fallen from the apex of the fault. The noise lessened at once.

The experience was spine-tingling and unpleasant. The crack broke to the left and then to the right, and more dinging cobwebs festooned around my head. A distant wash of green light glimmered in a vague triangular shape before me. I took a breath and smelled dampness and green growing creepers and the oily and unidentifiable smell of alien life. I forced myself on and stepped past the broken end of the fault onto brown and golden gravel.