Zela pulled at his shoulder and she urged him to hurry. Kananda swallowed his frustration and turned to follow her and Kasim through the jungle. The fierce glow of flames was quickly left behind them.
They were blind here, but they ran as fast as possible knowing that there might be other jungle paths where the wild men would be able to get ahead of them. The unseen foliage that had softly caressed them as they slowly moved in now whipped and slashed at their bodies and faces as they raced back. When any one man stumbled, the others automatically blundered into him or over him in an undignified heap. Where their courage had held fast in the face of battle, it now waned as they felt themselves lost in this hellish, tangled blackness. The retreat had become a rout, but mercifully they were not pursued.
They finally emerged from the forest bruised, battered and bleeding, but with an infinite sense of relief at finding that they were once again beneath the familiar patterns of moon and stars. Kananda saw with relief that the huntsman was waiting for them with the two soldiers who had stayed with the horses, and the body of Ramesh was already secured on Kananda’s mount.
“He is alive,” Hamir said hoarsely, but there was hope and elation in his voice.
Kananda stared at the huntsman, hardly daring to believe what he had heard. Ramesh hung like a corpse, face down in front of the saddle, and slowly Kananda lifted the slack head and looked into his brother’s ghost-white face. As he leaned closer, he felt the faint movement of breath on his cheek. He had been so certain that his brother was dead that he could barely believe it. He turned to stare joyously at Zela.
“He breathes. He lives! We must tend his wounds.”
“There is no time,” Zela answered firmly. “We must get further away.”
Kananda stared at her, and then realized bitterly that she was right. The pursuit would be hot behind them and if they stayed, they might all be lost.
They had left four of their number behind, so the party now numbered thirteen, together with Ramesh who had to be carried. Kananda ordered the horses to be ridden double, and the four men who still had to run to be rotated as soon as the runners flagged, and in this manner they continued their escape at a good speed.
It was mid-day before Kananda dared to allow a stop. He knew that even though the monkey tribes might be demoralized by the death of one of their chieftains, Sardar would almost certainly pursue them as soon as it was light. They were still only just within the frontiers of their own empire, but the horses had to be rested and the men needed to eat and drink to rally their strength. Also he could no longer delay his own desperate need to examine his brother. After the hard riding of the past few hours, he was again unsure whether Ramesh was alive or dead.
They laid the young prince tenderly on the ground, and with Hamir and Zela beside him, Kananda carefully checked his wounds. Hamir had made a hurried attempt at dressing the two deep gashes in the naked chest and Kananda peeled away the rough bandages and the handfuls of leaves that the huntsman had used to plug the open wounds. They were spear or sword thrusts, ugly but mercifully shallow. One thrust had skidded off the ribcage, tearing the flesh in a long, ragged slice. The other had pierced between two ribs, but the thrust had lacked power and had been stopped by the ribcage itself before penetrating any vital organs.
“I think he suffers mainly from shock and loss of blood,” Zela offered. “Fortunately you cut him down before he could fully bleed to death.” She took the medical kit from the broad belt at her waist and quickly began to clean and dress the wounds. Ramesh remained unconscious, but at this stage there was no more they could do.
While they shared the meagre rations from their saddle packs, Zela again sat to eat beside Kananda. When they had refreshed themselves, they were silent for a while, and then Kananda struggled to find the words to thank her.
“We are friends,” Zela said. But her smile was troubled and she continued, “I am glad your brother lives, but we lost four men in exchange. Was it worth it?”
“Ramesh is a royal prince of Karakhor,” Kananda said slowly. “We showed that an attack on the royal household will not go unpunished, and that retribution from Karakhor can reach even into their forests. We killed one of their chieftains and burned the leopard banner of Sardar. All of this may force the monkey tribes to think again, and they may yet turn back from their alliance with Maghalla. If we have achieved this, then we have done what my duty demanded.”
He paused to glance at the still figure of his younger brother. “In all of this, Ramesh was more than a man. He was more than my brother, even though I would war against all of Maghalla to avenge him. He was a symbol. He carried the name of Karakhor and flew her golden banner. And it is always in the nature of men to die for their names and their banners. Even if Ramesh dies, even if he had been dead as I first feared, all of what we have done would still be worth the sacrifice and the effort.”
Zela nodded her understanding. They watched a hawk hovering in the blue sky to their left, and when it swooped out of sight, Kananda spoke again. “You are skilled with the sword, Zela, more so than any man I have ever seen. And yet I thought your people only wore swords for ceremony?”
“I did add that some of us do practise the art,” she reminded him. “And with good reason.” Her face hardened with another grim memory, and then she explained: “Once, I too had a brother, whom I loved as dearly as you love Ramesh. Lorin was my elder brother, a splendid young man, and when I was a little girl I worshipped him almost as though he were a god. I also had two younger brothers. We all used to play together. One day, when I was only ten years old, we were playing in a boat on the lake near our home. Suddenly a terrible storm blew up…”
The memory was ever painful in her mind, a mental pain her thoughts would return to like a tongue to a nagging tooth. The fateful day had started with hot blue skies, the warbles of birdsong, and the light slapping of the wavelets on the small gold sand beach below their father’s house. Laton, their father, was absent as usual, having left early in his sky-car for the City of Singing Spires where he taught philosophy and unified learning in the Academy of Knowledge. Zara, their mother, had died in child-birth when Larn, the youngest of Zela’s brothers had been born. Larn was five now, Logan was seven, and Lorin was thirteen. Only Zela and Lorin could remember their mother, and for Zela it was a memory of feeling loved and cared for and secure rather than any visual image. She knew that Laton loved them and cared for them just as much, but he had to spend much of his time at the academy, and some of the security, and something that was unique and beautiful, had gone forever. Or perhaps not forever. Sometimes Zela had wanted to die, just to know whether she and her mother would be together again, as Laton had promised.
Rena, the nurse-housekeeper who had looked after them since their mother’s death, was always busy, and as Larn and Logan became more agile and adventurous, and Lorin more capable and responsible, they were all left much to their own devices outside the hours of schooling. So they had played hunt and chase on the beach, climbed as high as they dared on the rocks, bathed at the edge of the lake, and finally, tiring of all the land-bound games, they had launched their small boat with its bright disc of orange sail.
They had been told never to sail more than fifty paces from the shoreline and they had no intention of disobeying the rule. Lorin had cast out a large, roped stone that served as an anchor and they had commenced fishing. The sail disc had been tipped to its horizontal position above their heads so that it now provided them with shade instead of catching the wind, and they became absorbed in their sport. The lake was filled with a rich variety of fish. The most plentiful and the most delicious to eat were the red-finned silverbacks and today they were close inshore in shoals and they were hungry. The slippery pile of fish grew quickly in the bottom of the boat, wriggling and sliding over their bare feet and filling them with excitement and enthusiasm. With their attention concentrated on their hand-held lines, they failed to notice that the sail had tilted slightly and was catching some o
f the strengthening breeze from the shore. The crude anchor was dragging on the lake bottom and inexorably they were being carried out to deeper water. The silver, solar-panelled dome of their father’s house was growing darker as the storm clouds gathered, becoming smaller in its nest of blossoming fruit trees.
It was then that Lorin’s line had hooked a blackfin. The blackfins were a much larger fish, less pleasant to eat, but vigorous fighters. The blackfin was a true sporting fish and Lorin fought and played it while the others cheered and all but fell overboard in their misguided efforts to help. The small boat began to rock dangerously, partly from their reckless movements and partly from the increasing size of the waves.
Several things happened almost simultaneously. The water became deeper than the length of their anchor rope, and suddenly the stern of the boat was dipping because the stone was pulling them down instead of dragging on the bottom. The boat began to move even faster and further from the shore and the squall hit them in a violent lashing of wind and rain. The sail tilted almost to the vertical to catch the full force of the wind. Lorin’s line broke, the blackfin escaped, and all four of them became abruptly aware of their position of danger.
In moments they were drenched and terrified. Lorin struggled manfully with the sail, fighting the wind in his efforts to get the sail-frame back and secured in the horizontal position. Zela hauled in the now useless anchor, while Larn and Logan huddled together in the bottom of the boat. By the time Lorin had the sail made fast, they had been blown another hundred paces from the shore and the waves had slopped into and half-filled the tiny boat.
Lorin took up the oars and tried to row them back to the shore, while Zela found a drinking cup and desperately tried to bale out the water that was sloshing around their ankles. The squall had become a gale, the waves towered fearsomely all around them and lightning split the black sky with a deafening crack of thunder. Larn began to cry, but his whimpering was quickly lost in the nightmare of falling water.
Lorin’s efforts with the oars were futile and Zela’s frantic baling even more so. The boat was water-logged and sinking. Suddenly it tipped with the thrust of a wave and they were all tossed helplessly into the lake. Zela saw Larn and Logan still clinging together, their faces agonized and screaming then the waves sucked them down. She was sure she was going to drown with them, but then Lorin’s arm was around her waist and he was pulling her with him as he swam bravely for the shore. Only Lorin could swim and he could only try to save one of them. And, Zela realized in anguish, he had chosen to try and save her.
It seemed to Zela like forever that they were in the water, and a thousand times it seemed that she must have choked and drowned in the roaring black tumult of the waves. Each time, her head somehow emerged again and, despite her bursting heart and lungs, she managed to gulp down enough air to keep her alive. Lorin was tiring, his struggles becoming weaker, but still he would not let her go. Zela tried to beg him to save himself but her mouth filled with water and she could only splutter and gasp. In that moment she would have preferred to go with her mother and her brothers, but Lorin’s hold on her was unbreakable.
She closed her eyes and stopped fighting. She stopped fighting to live and she stopped fighting to break Lorin’s hold. It was all irrelevant because they were both going to drown anyway. And then she was aware of another voice screaming above the storm. It was Rena, screaming encouragement to Lorin. She had seen the boat sink and waded out from the shore into chest-deep water to try and reach them. Her voice spurred Lorin to one last, final effort as a wave pushed him forward, and then the old woman’s hands were clutching at them. She caught Lorin’s arm and dragged them both close to her breast.
Somehow the old nurse had pulled them both into the shore, and there Zela lay, sobbing and choking in her arms. The old woman wept. Lorin lay sprawled on the sand, gasping for breath, his strength gone, his body exhausted. Then in anguish he pushed himself up and stared out onto the rain-lashed wildness of the lake. Their brothers and the boat had vanished. Lorin called their names in heart-broken despair and staggered back toward the lake. He would have thrown himself into its water and gone back for them if Rena had not left Zela on the sand and run to stop him at the water’s edge. They struggled before Lorin collapsed again and Rena had to drag him clear of the lake for the second time. Zela could only watch and weep, and weep and weep…
There were tears on her cheek now as she relived those awful moments. Her words died away and she became silent. Kananda put his arm around her shoulders but said nothing. He sensed that there was more.
“Lorin saved me,” she continued at last. “But our brothers perished. After that there was only Lorin, and because I owed him my life, I worshipped him all the more. We were closer than any other brother and sister could be.”
Kananda nodded in understanding, thinking of his own affection for Maryam.
“When he was old enough, Lorin joined the Alphan Space Corps,” Zela said quietly. “He became a first class pilot and a natural leader in everything. He was their star and champion in every kind of sport and skill. He rose faster through the officer ranks than any man before him. He was a member of the expedition that established the first base on our largest moon. And later he commanded the first manned expedition to the fourth planet. It was a dead planet, a red and hostile world of no practical value, but it was a vital stepping stone to this planet which you call Earth.”
She stopped again. Telling how her younger brothers had died had been hard, the memory almost too painful to bear. But this was harder still, the memory pure anguish and undying rage, and when she next continued her voice was bleak and bitter, with the cutting edge of steel.
“Our first expedition to the fourth planet clashed there with a Gheddan expedition. Both sides had raced for the prestige of putting the first man on the red planet, and the race was a tie. Lorin was killed there, in a sword duel with the Sword Lord who commanded the Gheddan spaceship. Sword-play was the one skill which Lorin had not thought it important to master. He accepted a challenge because he was the kind of man who could do nothing else, but his death was ritualized murder.”
She turned grim eyes upon Kananda. “From that day forward I vowed that I would take Lorin’s place in the Space Corps. And from that day forward I have trained and practised with the sword. One day I shall meet with my brother’s murderer and it will be my greatest pleasure to slay him with his own chosen weapon of honour and by his own chosen code. It is both my prayer and my destiny—something I sense with every fibre of my being—that one day I shall face and kill the Gheddan Sword Lord named Raven.”
Chapter Seven
The lush green lawns between the palace and the limpid waters of the Mahanadi were filled with feasting tables, with altar and cooking fires, and a vast, colourful throng of nobles, warriors, priests and ladies. The women wore their most gorgeous saris in swirls of patterned silks, while their men were almost as resplendent in bright tunics, trousers and turbans. All of them dripped gold and jewelry in intricate chains and necklaces and pendants, all dazzling with precious stones. The royal princes sat like brilliant peacocks at the central table where Kara-Rashna’s gold-and-ivory throne had been carried out of the audience hall and placed at the head of the table by a dozen slaves. The princes sat on the monarch’s left, while Raven and four of his crew lounged nonchalantly on his right.
The sweet scents of roasting meat, burning sandalwood and incense drifted in the air. A priest recited the Vedas in a low, monotonous voice beside one of the altar fires, although no one seemed to listen. Other priests in their white robes dispensed flower garlands and soft prayers. The fierce heat of the afternoon had passed, but the evening was still warm. Sitars and flutes played trembling background music and there were subdued murmurs of conversation. There were pigs, deer, pheasant and an ox roasted whole, a variety of spiced eggs, grilled fish, platters of hot rice and bread, bowls of honey and small mountains of vegetable and fruit.
However, it was not th
e rich abundance of food and wine which slowed the hub-bub of talk that was normal on such occasions. The banquet and festivities had been ordered by Kara-Rashna to provide fit and royal welcome for the strangers from the stars. Every noble house of Karakhor was represented here—none had dared to ignore the invitation—but the visitors were greeted with as much apprehension as honour. The sardonic amusement with which they viewed the proceedings had not earned them any affection, and the general atmosphere of nervousness was growing.
Only Maryam seemed blind to it. She sat between her father and Raven, glowing with more radiance and beauty than any other woman present and smilingly indicating to the Sword Lord the select morsels and delicacies she thought he would enjoy the most. The queen Padmini, Kara-Rashna’s first wife and Maryam’s mother, sat at the monarch’s other side, and twice she risked raising her eyes to signal her cautious disapproval to her daughter, but Maryam pretended not to notice. Kara-Rashna looked most uncomfortable and toyed fretfully with his food. His brothers felt that, although they could not communicate with their guests, it would still be impolite to exclude them by talking between themselves, and so they remained mainly silent and ill at ease. Only the Gheddans talked carelessly and ate with hearty appetites.
There was almost a sense of relief when enough food and wine had been consumed for it to be deemed proper for the entertainment to begin. A small orchestra formed and began to play and a group of slave dancing girls began to perform. They danced slowly at first, their supple movements graceful and teasing. Then gradually they moved faster, bare thighs flashing beneath their swirling skirts, hips undulating, and their almost bare breasts vibrating erotically with their exertions. Now even the Gheddans were silent, watching for the first time with interest and without a sneer.
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