Gujar led the way deeper inside, and with nowhere to sit, they stopped against the wall to survey the scene.
“Each one smells worse than the last,” Kasim murmured ruefully. “Perhaps we are getting close.”
“I have yet to see a more likely den for murderers,” Gujar agreed. He caught the eye of the man behind the serving counter, and with some reluctance, the man left his post and came toward them. His eyes were wary, for these were not his usual sort of customers and already he sensed trouble.
“Two cups of wine,” Gujar ordered. The man stared at him, expecting more, and then grunted and went back to his counter to pour the drinks. There were two serving girls running between the counter and the tables, but the man chose to return with the wine himself.
“Would the young lords require anything else?” He had judged their rank and spoke deferentially, but his flat brown eyes were still cautious. As he spoke, he looked toward the nearest of the girls and raised an eyebrow.
The girl saw the look. She paused in her work and smiled invitingly. She had clean white teeth, and in an age-old gesture, she touched her finger to her tongue and then ran it slowly and wetly along her lower lip. With her free hand, she pulled tentatively at the top of her shirt, half exposing a plump, rounded breast.
Kasim shifted uncomfortably, half tempted and half embarrassed. Gujar remained single-minded and kept his level gaze fixed on the tavern-keeper. He opened the palm of his hand to reveal three small gold coins, and pushed one forward with his thumb to pay for the wine.
“We would buy information,” he said softly.
Refusal and greed fought together in the man’s eyes. “What sort of information?” he mumbled at last
“Three men.” Gujar watched his eyes. “One with a hunched back, another with a pox-marked face, the third almost as short as a dwarf. Did they ever drink in here?”
“No.” The answer was too quick and too sharp. “Never seen them,” he almost choked. He looked down at the three coins in Gujar’s palm, snatched the one offered in payment for the wine, and then hurried back to his counter.
“He lies,” Kasim said shortly.
Gujar nodded thoughtfully.
Kasim eased his cloak and dropped his hand to the hilt of his blade. “A sword point at his throat might prick the truth out of him,” he suggested.
“We are strangers here and he may have too many friends among this rabble.” Gujar thought for a moment. “Let us drink up and then have another cup of wine.”
Kasim tasted what was in his cup and grimaced. “Do we have to drink more wine?”
Gujar laughed and set the example. Reluctantly, Kasim drained his cup. This time Gujar deliberately caught the eye of the serving girl and showed her the two empty cups. “What is your name?” he asked as she took them from him.
“I am called Devi.” She flirted knowingly with her eyes and then took the cups to be refilled. When she returned she was clearly inclined to linger, even before Gujar showed her the gold coins in his hand.
“There is a room at the back,” she offered.
Gujar smiled and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and turning her slightly so that their backs were toward the room. He wanted no one to lip read.
“I want something special from you,” he whispered in her ear.
Devi laughed. “I can offer any speciality you can imagine.”
“Information,” Gujar kept his voice low. “Three men who once drank here, several weeks ago when the blue gods were in the city. A hunchback, a scarface, and a dwarf.”
Shock paled Devi’s face and stilled her laughter. She tried to pull away but Gujar’s grip was tight. “They cannot harm you now,” he insisted. “All three of them are dead.”
“They were assassins,” she whispered back. “It is dangerous to speak even of dead assassins.”
Kasim held up his hand, and she saw another gold coin in his fingers. She licked her suddenly dry lips and looked toward the serving counter. The tavern keeper was busy with the second serving girl. She looked back again into the set face of Gujar.
“No one will know. I will tell no other of what you tell me. It is easy gold.”
“They came here often,” she admitted fearfully. “Whenever they were in the city. This is where they drank and stayed.”
“Before they tried to kill the blue god, who did they speak with?”
“They spoke little. Most men avoided them.”
“The tavern keeper?”
“Daksha knows them. He rented them a room, served them wine, but that is all.”
“Perhaps we should speak again with Daksha.” Kasim said grimly.
“No, please.” Devi looked from one to another in panic. “After you have gone he will kill me.”
“Perhaps we will kill him before we leave,” Kasim offered.
“No.” The serving girl was terrified. She knew that she had said too much and was desperate now to protect herself. “The three men you speak of—they did meet once with a stranger. He was a Lord, a Great Prince, like yourselves. They talked, and the High One gave them a purse before he hurried away.”
“This High One,” Gujar pressed. “What did he look like?”
“He wore a dark cloak, like your own, and a black hood to cover his face. They stayed in the shadows. That is all I know.”
“How could you tell that he was high born?”
“By his manner, and theirs. They bowed to him and touched their fingers to their foreheads. And his dress. He wore a sword, like yours, under his cloak. And there were jewels on his fingers. I think he was a royal prince.”
“Why?” Gujar’s fingers tightened on her arm until tears flooded her eyes. “What made you think he might be from the royal household?”
“One of the jewels on his finger, it was shaped like the rising sun.” She whimpered the last words and then begged, “Please. Do not ask me any more. I do not know any more.”
Gujar relaxed his grip, and then gently stroked the tears from her cheek. “I am sorry, I did not mean to hurt you. I thank you for all you have told me. You had best go now before Daksha becomes suspicious.”
He slipped the gold coins into her hand and Kasim gave her the extra coin he had shown her. She hid them quickly in a pocket at her waist, and then made a brave attempt to smear the last of her tears away from her face.
“If you change your mind,” she said loudly. “There is still the back room.”
She turned away, and a few men at the nearer tables looked up and they laughed.
“Perhaps after a few more cups,” Gujar called after her.
They watched her go back to her work and reluctantly sipped more of the coarse red wine.
“Prince Sanjay or Prince Devan?” Kasim murmured at last. “Perhaps with the authority of Kara-Rashna himself. Is that possible?”
Gujar shook his head. “I cannot believe it. It would make sense for any one of them to arrange for the assassination of the blue one, but I cannot believe that any one of them would deliberately compromise my father. He was one of the king’s oldest friends.” A frown marred his handsome features and he finished slowly. “We have learned much tonight, Kasim, but somehow I have the feeling that we are still missing something.”
CHAPTER SIX
In the bleak dawn light, Raven and Maryam left their quarters and boarded the Space Corps sky-car that was to take them back to the Kaz-ar spacefield. Flakes of snow drifted across the parade ground, a phenomenon that Maryam had never witnessed before, and she grimaced and shivered as she pulled her coarse red wool cloak tighter around her shoulders. They were going north, where it would probably be even colder, and she was not sure whether she would have preferred to be left behind. She knew that Raven was only taking her with him because he was not sure that he could safely leave her. Either way she was becoming ever more disenchanted with this grim new world. She knew now that her bond with Raven was her only means of survival, and she was not sure how much she could rely on that.
Taron and Garl were both seated in the back of the sky-car. Both had volunteered to accompany their ship commander, to back his blade with their swords. Maryam was not sure whether they acted from friendship and loyalty, or whether this was more political expedience. It seemed that here only military politics were important, supported by the Gheddan law of the sword.
“Caid and Landis have both chosen to stay with their women,” Garl said with contempt.
“It is their choice.” Raven shrugged as he climbed into the co-pilot seat of the vehicle.
Maryam was left with no option but to get into the back of the vehicle, squeezing in beside Taron and Garl behind the pilot. The two Gheddans gave her cautious leers of welcome. She knew they lusted for her, but while she was Raven’s woman, she was inviolate. She wondered what would happen if Raven was killed in his next sword duel, and guessed that they would probably fight to decide which of them would own her. She shuddered and tried to keep both the thought and the reaction hidden.
The flight was a short one, and as soon as they had landed and disembarked, their pilot took off again and whirled the sky-car away. They had been emptied out beside a long, hard road runway where a two-winged flying vehicle waited for them. It was much smaller than the Solar Cruiser space ship with which Maryam was familiar. Raven looked round the otherwise empty runway and his face hardened. His immediate displeasure was obvious.
The Sword Lord Karn waited by the flying machine to greet them. He came forward stiffly, and the anger in his face was evident behind the fixed grey mask of pain. They all exchanged open palm salutes.
“I ordered a rotor-flyer to take you all of the way,” Karn said flatly. “But it seems that Doran chose yesterday to order a military exercise that would involve every rotor-flyer on the base. They are all unavailable.”
Taron eyed the fixed wing aircraft. “How close can we get?”
“My stronghold is deep in the mountains above the forest,” Raven answered. “The nearest landing field for anything other than a hovering rotor-flyer is at least three days away by horseback.”
“Two days,” Taron repeated gloomily. “And no doubt it is all excellent terrain for an ambush.”
“Thick forest trails, and then rugged foothills leading up into the mountains,” Raven agreed.
“Yours is a private matter, outside the empire.” Karn shrugged. “I cannot order an escort. I would accompany you myself, but with my guts burning I would now be more of a liability than an extra sword.”
Raven smiled and clapped the older man firmly on the shoulder. “Have the aircraft return for us in five days. We will be back here by the sixth dawn. Until then, watch your back with Doran.”
Karn shrugged. “Doran only needs to wait for me to die. He is only scheming out of habit, and possibly from concern that I may use you as my sword against him.”
The aircraft was fuelled and ready for its flight with its engines already fired and running. They filed aboard and took their seats. Raven saluted again through the glass window of the cockpit and Karn returned the salute as the aircraft began to move. The pilot at the controls was silent as he concentrated on his take-off procedures and within minutes they were gaining height and flying.
Karn watched until they were out of sight, before closing his eyes and seeming to collapse inside his uniform. He fought the pain for several minutes before he was able to brace himself again and walk slowly back to where his sky-car waited to return him to The City of Swords.
The flight took seven long hours. At first Maryam was fascinated, peering through the window at the passing landscape far below. The land was rugged, split with silvery streams and rivers and belts of woodland and forest between the rolling hills. There were towns or villages in every small valley, and the land around them was cultivated and clearly marked into fields. There were mechanical things instead of oxen ploughing the furrows, and on the interlinking hard roads, wheeled chariots sped to and fro without horses.
Everything was strange and wonderful to Maryam, and for a while she could even forget the taste of Sylve’s blood, and that awful look on her rival’s face as she had curled up and died. Maryam still wore the long Gheddan knife on her hip. Instinct told her that on this world she might soon need it again, but she hated its cold reminder of what she had done.
Raven conversed casually with the pilot, who had relaxed once his ship was safely in the air. Garl and Taron talked together, but their talk was mostly about whores and fighting and drinking. Through most of the long space flight from Earth, Maryam had stayed close to Raven as she struggled to learn his strange new language. By the time she had mastered the alien tongue, there was no time left to really get to know his crewmen, so now she tried to ignore them as totally as they seemed to ignore her.
The cultivated fields gradually became fewer and smaller, shrinking as the thin silver slivers of water dried up. The land below became increasingly barren as their flight skirted the edge of the Stone Desert. To the east, there was nothing but a vast plain of sand shades and boulders, and to the west, low red and black lava hills. Immediately below them was the shallow course of a river bed, dried out except for the occasional hint of green brush and scrub that suggested buried water. Twice they overflew the broken ruins of ancient cities, where smashed walls, tower stumps and what might have been the remains of harbours lay haunted and silent, shrouded in wind-blown dust. Here rested part of the history and the long dead ghosts of Ghedda, forsaken by the vanishing river or perished by the sword.
Her companions had tired of their boring conversations and had fallen silent, until Taron became aware of Maryam’s interest in the dried out valley below. A third ancient city appeared, collapsed into shattered remnants of past pride and vanity, perched on a high bluff where the river bed formed a curve. As the shadow of their aircraft passed over it, Taron surprised her by leaning closer and offering her an explanation.
“The lost city of Axell.” He pointed downward with brutal pride. “It fell in the Great War of Glory when the Great Gheddan Empire was formed around the City of Swords over a thousand years ago. The Sword Lord Strang, who founded the Sword Empire, surrounded it with five hundred thousand blades. Fifty thousand swordsmen died on each side, and Strang threw every corpse into the river. The bodies blocked the river, poisoned its waters and dispersed their flow. Strang destroyed the river itself, along with every man, woman and child, and every city along its banks. Now there is nothing left of those who opposed the birth of our Gheddan Empire.”
Maryam shuddered at his words, and the horror of the images they conjured in her fervent imagination. However, what really dismayed her was his matter of fact tone. Taron was trying to impress her, and in his own way, offer a crumb of comradeship.
After several hours, the desert was behind them and they were flying over grass and low green wooded hills. Maryam slept fitfully as the two Gheddans snored beside her. Finally she took interest again as they began to see traces of habitation once more: the nomad camps of herdsmen with small herds of wild-looking horses or cattle. Slowly the undulating ranges of the hills became higher and more dominant. Thickening forest began to fill the valleys as they flew ever northward. Soon there was only forest covering everything, a vast, crumpled blanket of dark green. On her home planet, the jungles beyond Karakhor were lush and wet, with seemingly a thousand shades of shimmering, blossom strewn greens. Here there was only the one, bleak, almost black shade of green, with no sign of life or flowers.
They flew over lakes of black water or black ice, Maryam could not be sure which. The world below her looked progressively more harsh and more cold. More and more frequently the small aircraft passed through thick, frightening layers of grey cloud. In those moments, the forest below was hidden and she felt that the pilot must be flying blind, although none of her companions seemed perturbed.
She did not want to face the world below, but the novelty of this eagle’s-eye view of the fifth planet had long since faded. She was cramped and uncomfortabl
e and began to long for the experience to end.
When the Great Northern ranges finally pushed their massive ice-cloaked peaks and spines above the far horizon, they were wreathed in dark swirls of cloud and storm. Maryam sensed their immensity even though they were still far away, and shivered at the sight of them. The ice giants loomed closer, but then the nose of the aircraft dipped and she realized that the pilot was at last bringing them back down to land.
The towering spikes of the tree tops reached up toward them, and just as Maryam was on the verge of closing her eyes and screaming, a gap appeared. The aircraft dropped down through the trees, hurtling between almost solid rows of the great black pine trunks, which were only a spear’s-length away from either wing-tip. Then Maryam did squeeze shut her eyes, but she bit down on the fear-filled scream and held it back. She was still a daughter of Kara-Rashna, a Princess of Karakhor, and her pride was stronger than her fear.
The aircraft touched down on the hard grass runway, bounced twice and then settled and slowed to a stop. The pilot switched off his engines and relaxed. The three Gheddan passengers began to unbuckle their safety straps. Maryam slowly opened her eyes.
There were men approaching, a small group of Gheddan soldiers in dark grey uniforms and black fur cloaks. Their leader wore two crossed swords of rank on his sleeve. Raven dropped lightly from the aircraft to meet them. Raven, Taron and Garl had all left their white and gold uniforms behind and for this mission were wearing rough leather tunics and leggings beneath their heavy grey furs, yet Raven’s manner and stance quickly marked him out from the other two. The Gheddan officer immediately offered the open palm salute.
“Commander Raven, I am Uris, Unit Commander of this arse-freezing, forgotten limit of an outpost. You are welcome to what we have.”
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