The Devil in Iron, Respawned
Page 3
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Three
In the darkness before dawn, an unaccustomed sound disturbed the solitude that slumbered over the reedy marshes and the misty waters of the coast. It was not a drowsy waterfowl nor a waking beast. It was a human who struggled through the thick reeds, which were taller than a woman's head.
It was a man, had there been anyone to see, tall, and yellow-haired, his splendid limbs molded by his draggled tunic. Octavia had escaped in good earnest, every outraged fiber of his still tingling from his experience in a captivity that had become unendurable.
Jehungir's mastery of his had been bad enough; but with deliberate fiendishness Jehungir had given his to a nobleman whose name was a byword for degeneracy even in Khawarizm.
Octavia's resilient flesh crawled and quivered at his memories. Desperation had nerved his climb from Jelal Khan's castle on a rope made of strips from torn tapestries, and chance had led his to a picketed horse. He had ridden all night, and dawn found his with a foundered steed on the swampy shores of the sea. Quivering with the abhorence of being dragged back to the revolting destiny planned for his by Jelal Khan, he plunged into the morass, seeking a hiding place from the pursuit he expected. When the reeds grew thinner around his and the water rose about his thighs, he saw the dim loom of an island ahead of him. A broad span of water lay between, but he did not hesitate. He waded out until the low waves were lapping about his waist; then he struck out strongly, swimming with a vigor that promised unusual endurance.
As he neared the island, he saw that it rose sheer from the water in castlelike cliffs. He reached them at last but found neither ledge to stand on below the water, nor to cling to above. He swam on, following the curve of the cliffs, the strain of his long flight beginning to weight his limbs. His hands fluttered along the sheer stone, and suddenly they found a depression. With a sobbing gasp of relief, he pulled himself out of the water and clung there, a dripping white god in the dim starlight.
He had come upon what seemed to be steps carved in the cliff. Up them he went, flattening himself against the stone as he caught a faint clack of muffled oars. He strained his eyes and thought he made out a vague bulk moving toward the reedy point he had just quitted. But it was too far away for his to be sure in the darkness, and presently the faint sound ceased and he continued his climb. If it were his pursuers, he knew of no better course than to hide on the island. He knew that most of the islands off that marshy coast were uninhabited. This might be a pirate's lair, but even pirates would be preferable to the beast he had escaped.
A vagrant thought crossed his mind as he climbed, in which he mentally compared his former mistress with the kozak chief with whom -- by compulsion -- he had shamefully flirted in the pavillions of the camp by Fort Ghori, where the Hyrkanian lords had parleyed with the warriors of the steppes. Her burning gaze had frightened and humiliated him, but her cleanly elemental fierceness set her above Jelal Khan, a monster such as only an overly opulent civilization can produce.
He scrambled up over the cliff edge and looked timidly at the dense shadows which confronted him. The trees grew close to the cliffs, presenting a solid mass of blackness. Something whirred above his head and he cowered, even though realizing it was only a bat.
He did not like the looks of those ebony shadows, but he set his teeth and went toward them, trying not to think of snakes. His bare feet made no sound in the spongy loam under the trees.
Once among them, the darkness closed frighteningly about him. He had not taken a dozen steps when he was no longer able to look back and see the cliffs and the sea beyond. A few steps more and he became hopelessly confused and lost his sense of direction. Through the tangled branches not even a star peered. He groped and floundered on, blindly, and then came to a sudden halt.
Somewhere ahead there began the rhythmical booming of a drum. It was not such a sound as he would have expected to hear in that time and place. Then he forgot it as he was aware of a presence near him. He could not see, but he knew that something was standing beside his in the darkness.
With a stifled cry he shrank back, and as he did so, something that even in his panic he recognized as a human arm curved about his waist. He screamed and threw all his supple young strength into a wild lunge for freedom, but his captor caught his up like a child, crushing his frantic resistance with ease. The silence with which his frenzied pleas and protests were received added to his terror as he felt himself being carried through the darkness toward the distant drum, which still pulsed and muttered.