The Ruins Of Kaldac rb-34

by Джеффри Лорд

  Blade, you are getting much too soft in the heart or the head or both for this kind of work.

  Lord Leighton would tell him that. Even J might do the same. But neither of them would ever have to meet Kareena's haunted eyes.

  Chapter 19

  Blade kept the Hovercraft on the river until dawn, following the route he'd planned after looking at the Doimari maps of the Land. The shortest route home to Kaldak lay through rough country. The Hovercraft might not be able to get through at all, and it would certainly be slowed down so much that the Doimari pursuers might catch up.

  So Blade was taking the long way home, down the Loga River which flowed past Doimar to Lake Mison, across the lake, and then over the plains to the south of the lake into Kaldakan territory. As the crow flies, it was three times as long as the other route, but the Hovercraft wasn't a crow. On the water or on the plains Blade could use its speed freely.

  There were still dangers, of course. If the Hovercraft broke down or ran out of power, Blade and Kareena would be a long way from home. Before they could walk back to Kaldak, the war might be over and Kaldak no more than a mass of smoking ruins.

  A second danger on this route was the Tribes. Doimar had no settlements more than fifty miles downriver, and no city at all claimed the shores of Lake Mison. The Tribes roamed there freely, fishing, hunting, and fighting with each other. They sometimes respected the power of the cities' armies enough to leave their citizens alone, and sometimes killed them on sight. Blade hoped they could avoid the Tribes entirely. He and Kareena would be around Lake Mison for only a day or two, so their chances would be good.

  Blade sent the Hovercraft racing down the Loga with an easy mind. Beside him Kareena gradually fell asleep in her couch, while the sky to the east turned gray with the coming dawn.

  By the time it was full daylight, they'd reached the mouth of the Loga. Lake Mison stretched out before them, so wide at this point it was impossible to see the far bank. The rising wind was also kicking up whitecapped waves four or five feet high.

  Reluctantly Blade decided against taking the Hovercraft out to one of the small islands in the middle of the lake. They'd be safer from the Tribes there, but they'd also have to battle the waves. Even if they didn't run into trouble on the way, they might find themselves stranded on the island until the wind died.

  He turned the Hovercraft onto the hard beach running south from the mouth of the river and increased speed again. Kareena woke up, asked what he was doing, listened to his explanation, and fell asleep again. Blade was happy to leave her alone. Sleep would be better for her than anything he could do now.

  Blade headed south along the lakeshore until he was sure they were far beyond any territory the Doimari ever visited. Then he ran the Hovercraft up onto the grassy hillside above the beach, cut the power, and woke Kareena. She shook herself, climbed out, and stood in the long grass. The wind from the lake sent her hair streaming out behind her. Blade alternated between watching her and heating some emergency rations on the hotplate under the control panel. Otherwise he was prepared to wait, then listen to whatever she would say to him whenever she wanted to say it. Only after that would it make any sense for him to speak.

  The hours of Kareena's silence still tested Blade more than some of the battles he'd fought. She moved around as stiff-limbed as a wooden puppet, her mouth tightly shut but her eyes wide and staring. It looked as though she wouldn't believe she was safely out of Doimar until she'd taken in every detail of the landscape. She drank some water but refused to eat or show an unnecessary inch of skin. She kept her boots on and made a hood for her face out of a spare piece of cloth. She even insisted on walking a hundred yards away from the Hovercraft to empty her bladder. Blade didn't care for her taking that risk, and said so.

  «The Tribesmen are thinly scattered, but we don't know where they might pop up. So why take chances?»

  Kareena said nothing in reply-at least nothing in words. Instead her mask broke again and a wild animal looked out at Blade. By sheer reflex he took two steps backward and dropped into karate stance. Before he could recover, Kareena was walking off into the grass. He didn't waste his breath chasing her or even shouting. She wouldn't hear words, and if he chased her she might break completely and plunge away into the wilderness. She was like a brutally-treated horse. She'd have to set her own pace.

  By the time Kareena wandered off for the third time it was midafternoon. The wind was still rising, the waves were breaking hard on the beach, and the sky was turning gray. Blade hoped Kareena would come back soon and not let herself be caught outside the shelter of the Hovercraft by the storm.

  By the time she'd been gone half an hour, Blade was pacing up and down outside the Hovercraft like a caged lion. He had to wonder if she might have finally run off. If so, the coming storm would make it almost impossible for him to pick up her trail.

  Blade paced for a few minutes longer, then decided to throw caution to the rising winds. He hadn't brought Kareena this far simply to let her die in the wilderness. He went back inside the Hovercraft, and when he came out he was carrying a laser rifle and his jacket pockets were full of hand grenades.

  Although Kareena hadn't left much of a trail he could follow, Blade knew which way she'd gone. He tramped up the hill, rifle in hand and eyes searching the landscape ahead. By the time the Hovercraft was out of sight behind him, the day had faded to a weird half-twilight and the wind was turning cold.

  A mile inland he came over the crest of a low ridge and found himself looking down into a narrow valley where a few stunted trees grew among the rocks. Kareena was tied to one of those trees, her face pale and blood running down her chin. Seven men in ragged outfits of leather and fur were standing around her or sitting by a small fire. All of them had swords or spears, and one of them had a battered laser rifle as well.

  Blade felt like raising his own rifle and blasting away but knew the men down there could easily kill Kareena before they went down themselves. He'd try diplomacy first, rather than brute force. The fact that Kareena was still clothed and apparently not badly hurt suggested that those Tribesmen might listen to argument.

  Blade slung his rifle aside, but unbuttoned the flaps over the pockets where he carried the grenades. They would be his ace in the hole, if he could use them without hurting Kareena. Then he stood up, his empty hands held in clear sight. The Tribesmen shouted and pointed, then the largest of them stepped away from the fire, repeating Blade's gesture. So far so good. Blade started down into the valley.

  The exchange of peace gestures was the last bit of clear communication for several minutes. It wasn't that Blade didn't understand the language of the Tribesmen. It was a recognizable dialect of the universal language of the Land. The problem was that they hardly used the language to communicate, preferring an elaborate code of grunts, gestures, and headshakes which they seemed to expect Blade to, understand. Perhaps the Doimari or other city traders did, but as far as he was concerned the Tribesmen might have been speaking some South American Indian language he'd never even heard of, let alone learned! The computer's work on his brain was no help at all.

  After a while the leader seemed to understand that what they had here was a failure to communicate. He waved his followers back and stepped close to Blade. Blade felt like gagging at the chief's smell.

  «Your woman?» he said, pointing at Kareena.

  «My woman.»

  «You are in land of Hoirccchhh.» Or at least the name of the tribe sounded like that to Blade.

  «I have heard of the Hoirccchhh,» said Blade, hoping he'd pronounced it right. «They are a strong and brave people.»

  The chief smiled. «Yes. Strong and brave. We take a price to come on our land. You pay with this woman for us, for tonight.»

  Blade saw Kareena stiffen and had to fight not to do so himself. The chief was asking for the right to gang-rape Kareena as the price of peace between him and Blade. Blade wondered if he hadn't wasted everybody's time trying to be diplomatic.
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br />   «My woman is not strong,» he said in a level voice.

  «Then why you keep her?» said the chief. «You are strong warrior, need strong woman to give you sons.»

  «She is strong enough for me,» said Blade. He noticed that the seven men were now forming a circle around him. The man with the laser rifle was in plain sight, though. Also, the men were now all out of easy reach of Kareena.

  «She strong enough for you, strong enough for us,» said the chief bluntly. «You pay for coming on our land with her, or some other way.»

  Blade was tempted to play for time by seeming to agree, then Kareena raised her head. The trapped look in her eyes drove the temptation out of Blade. He wasn't going to add anything to Kareena's burden, even if it meant greater danger for him.

  Unfortunately the chief seemed to take Blade's look as a sign of agreement. One of his men stepped toward Kareena, gripped her jacket with both hands, and tore it down to her waist. She hissed like a snake and closed her eyes. Then the man reached inside her shirt and started to fondle her breast, and she screamed.

  Blade had never heard a scream like that from a living throat. He hoped he would never hear one like it again. His hand dropped toward the grenade pocket. Even without pulling the pin, he could throw one like a stone and take out the rifleman.

  Then Kareena screamed again, and Blade stopped thinking of grenades or any other modern weapons. He wanted blood, preferably shed with his own hands. His control snapped completely but his skills didn't desert him. In the next minute the Tribesmen paid a grisly price for all that Blade and Kareena had endured in Doimar.

  Blade leaped completely over the campfire to close with the rifleman. He tore the weapon out of the man's hands and drove the butt into his face so hard it not only crushed his nose but also blinded him. The rifle broke in two under the impact but Blade hung on to the barrel and used it as a short spear. A swordsman screamed as the jagged end of the barrel destroyed his manhood, then fell over backward into the fire and screamed again. A man coming at Blade with a spear tripped over the fallen man and went down almost at Blade's feet. Blade jumped on his back and stamped down with both feet, cracking the spine like a twig. Then he drew his own sword and engaged two men at once.

  That took him only a little longer. He slashed through a spear and one of the arms holding it. Then he closed with the man, grabbed him, and spun him around so that he took in his own stomach a sword thrust his comrade had meant for Blade.

  Finally Blade dropped the dying man and broke the swordsman's neck with a karate blow. Five down, two to go.

  The other two weren't standing to fight. They were running toward the crest of the hill, to get away or perhaps bring reinforcements. Blade snatched a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and threw. The grenade exploded just as it hit one man in the back of the neck, and his head and shoulders vanished in a bloody spray. Fragments and concussion knocked the last man off his feet. He was still struggling to rise when Blade caught up with him and pounded his head against the rocks until he lay still.

  When Blade came back down the hill, he found that Kareena had fainted. He cut her loose with his sword, and was lifting her in his arms when a bolt of lightning hit the crest of the hill. The light half-dazzled him, the thunder left his ears ringing, and sulphur stank in his nostrils. Then the rain poured down, washing away the sulphur smell but soaking them both to the skin in moments.

  The journey back to the Hovercraft was a nightmare in the storm. Fear that other Tribesmen might have found it didn't ease Blade's mind. But it was intact and unharmed when they reached it, although the rising wind was shaking it. He didn't dare try moving to another place in this storm-they'd be blown out onto the lake the moment they lifted clear of the ground.

  Instead he turned the cabin heat up as high as it would go, then stripped off Kareena's clothes and wrapped her in everything dry he could find. She woke up while he was heating some soup.

  «Blade, are we-where are we?»

  «In the Oltec machine, on the shore of Lake Mison, a long way from Doimar. Right where we were a few hours ago.»

  «Then-it was a dream, those Tribesmen and-your fight?»

  «It wasn't a dream, Kareena. They'd captured you. I fought them and killed them.»

  «Yes. I remember now. But-Blade, you didn't need to fight. They weren't going to kill you. They were only-only…» She shuddered.

  Blade desperately wanted to hold her but restrained himself. «Yes. I would not allow that. I wouldn't have allowed anything that happened in Doimar, if there'd been any other way to learn the city's secrets. I had no choice. Believe me, I had none.»

  «Blade-you really-didn't-betray Kaldak?» Her words were getting slurred.

  «No. They haven't learned anything about us, and we've learned everything about them. Not only that, but everything about where Kaldak's Oltec can be found. Kareena, you went through hell, but now we can fight Doimar and win!»

  «Fight,» she said. «Fight-like you fought for-me.» Her hand crept out from under the blankets and reached for Blade's. Before their fingers touched her eyes drifted shut, and she was asleep. She was also smiling.

  Blade sat there, looking at the smile. He supposed he ought to feel dirty, even animallike. He'd certainly slaughtered those seven Tribesmen more like an animal than like a man. Yet he could hardly feel that gang of would-be rapists was much of a loss to any Dimension, and Kareena's smile was worth a lot.

  Chapter 20

  Kareena was still smiling when she woke up after the storm. In the evening twilight Blade moved the Hovercraft a few miles down the shore, out of reach of anyone searching for the missing Tribesmen. Then he and Kareena both got their first really good night's sleep since leaving Kaldak on the way to Gilmarg.

  The next morning they left the shore of Lake Mison and headed out across the plains. Blade took his time, now that they were beyond the reach of both the Doimari and the Tribes. They were more than halfway home, but it would still be a long walk for Blade and probably an impossible one for Kareena.

  After some arguing, Kareena took off her trousers and let Blade examine her injured leg. As he'd suspected, the fracture was setting slightly crooked. In Home Dimension it would have been a simple matter to rebreak the leg and set it properly. In this Dimension there'd be no point in putting Kareena through another painful ordeal with not much chance of success. So she would always have a slight limp as a souvenir of her captivity in Doimar.

  She shrugged when Blade gave her the bad news. «I'm still too happy just to be alive to worry about being crippled. Perhaps in time we'll find Oltec which can finish healing the leg. Meanwhile, we've already found Oltec which will let me fight the Doimari sitting down.»

  It took them several days to cross the plains and reach the hills which marked the boundary of the lands claimed by Kaldak. Blade stopped once to shoot and butcher a wild munfan, to give them a change from the wholesome but dull emergency rations in the Hovercraft. That night they had a feast of munfan steaks broiled over a brushwood fire. Kareena sat across the fire from Blade, eating with the first real appetite he'd seen her show, happily smearing her face and her bare arms with grease. She looked like the warrior-queen she'd been when Blade first saw her.

  By the time they reached the hills, Kareena was willing to be naked in front of Blade and have him naked in front of her. She still didn't care to have him touch her, but she was willing to touch him. Her fingers hadn't lost their skill in massaging kinks out of muscles, and after hours hunched over the controls Blade welcomed those massages.

  They met a Kaldakan patrol the morning after they crossed the hills and nearly fought a battle with it. The Hovercraft had Doimar's insignia on the hull, which confused the Kaldakans. The Kaldakans were entirely armed and equipped with Oltec, which confused Blade. Fortunately someone in the patrol knew Blade, and several knew Kareena, so the confusion was settled before any shots were fired.

  Blade climbed down from the Hovercraft, and the Kaldakans gathered ar
ound him while he told his story briefly. At the same time he was studying them. Now close up, he could easily tell they were not Doimari. Their Oltec was all new and shiny, and they didn't wear it as though they were used to it. Two of them were wearing hand grenades hung by the rings. Blade quickly corrected that.

  «The Lords of the Law must watch over fools, or both of you would be dead by now,» he said sharply. He showed them the correct way of handling grenades, then asked, «Why are you all armed with Oltec? Has there been a new find? Or did Peython give everything there was to the guards on the border?»

  «Oh, Peython gave first choice to us of the border, sure enough,» said the leader. «But no one in Kaldak is short of Oltec now. When Bairam and Saorm came back from Gilmarg, they turned out every man and woman as you urged. We tore the city apart almost stone by stone. There is Oltec now for many more things than killing Doimari, although we will have to do that-«

  Laughter interrupted the man and made Blade turn around. Kareena was standing in the Hovercraft's hatch, laughing wildly. For a moment Blade was frightened, thinking she'd gone into hysterics. Then he realized that she was just amused. He had a nasty feeling he knew what was making her laugh.

  «All right, Kareena,» he said when she'd quieted down. «What's the joke?»

  «I'm sorry, Blade. But when he was telling you they'd found all the Oltec themselves, you looked like this.» She opened her mouth in an idiotic gape with her tongue sticking out and rolled her eyes up in her head.

  «Did I really-?» Blade began to ask the men around him, then shook his head. «No, don't tell me.»

  It was embarrassing to work hard at the risk of your life for weeks on end, then come home and find somebody else had done most of the same job while you were away. But it was also good news. The Kaldakans' work would save months in arming and equipping their army with Oltec, and might very well save their city.