The Sword Lord

by Robert Leader

  “Jahan, without Kaseem I have no priest who is wise enough to guess at the ways or intention of the gods, but you have always known what is best in matters of war. What say you? Should we look upon the blue-skinned ones as potential allies against Maghalla? Or should we stay neutral and pray that they will depart without involving us in some greater tragedy?”

  It was Jahan’s turn to frown. For once in his life he lacked the background information that his carefully created espionage network had always been able to provide. He had been pondering deeply as he listened to the debate between the princes, but now he was thrown back onto nothing more than his own instincts

  “Whether they are gods or not, I cannot say. I only know that I cannot wholly trust them until we know what they are and from where they have come and with what intentions. So my counsel is that we watch and wait until we do have some knowledge of these things. Only then can we decide whether we should court their favours.”

  “If they are not gods, then what are they?” Gandhar asked helplessly. “Surely they are not mortal men?”

  “Whether they are mortal or not, again I cannot say. But last night four of the blue-skinned ones took slave girls to their beds. The slaves reported back directly to me this morning. All the strangers used them exactly as ordinary men would use them, perhaps more crudely and more roughly but in the same way. The strangers all eat, drink and sleep, the same as ordinary men.”

  “But they have such fearful power.” The head of the House of Tilak shivered as he spoke.

  “But the power does not seem to come from the blue-skinned ones themselves,” Jahan said slowly. “At first the power came from their strange temple. Less than an hour ago, I closely questioned the guard captain I posted to accompany the strangers on their visit to the city. The one who cut the head from the statue of Shiva used some kind of weapon. The guard captain was very sure. The power did not come from the visitor’s eyes or from his fingertips. It came from this weapon which he wears at his waist.”

  There was silence while they considered these observations, then Sanjay made his own contribution.

  “They also wear swords which appear to be similar to our own. So perhaps there are times when their weapons have no power and they must use swords.”

  Jahan nodded. “It would be very useful to know how well they would fight if they possessed only swords. Are they really gods, or is it just the power weapons that make them appear to be gods?”

  ‘They came from the heavens,” Gandhar reminded them. “We saw them descend. Our talk could be blasphemy.”

  Kara-Rashna groaned and chewed on his knuckles again. “If only our old friend Kaseem was here! Why must my high priest be absent when we need him most?”

  “Perhaps we should send more runners to Kananda,” Devan suggested. “To urge the hunting party to return with all speed. The matter of Prince Ramesh killing a tiger seems of lesser importance now.”

  “Yes, yes.” The king’s agreement was immediate. It was the desire closest to his heart. “Send our fastest runners at once. Kananda and Kaseem must return without any further delay.”

  Jahan nodded his approval and reserved his doubts. Despite the deep respect he held for Kaseem, he did not expect that on this occasion the high priest would be of any more use than all the other priests. In times of crisis, he had noticed that the priests rarely did more than they did in peace times, which was to consult their holy books, make sacrifices and pray. The only difference being that they did it all more fervently. However, the delay suited him, for at least it would give him more time to observe their uninvited visitors and hopefully to gather more information.

  The meeting broke up with nothing positive decided or achieved and most of the participants left as uncertain and fearful as when they had arrived. Through it all, the two younger princes, the sons of Kara-Rashna, had listened silently. For once Nirad had realized that in this discussion he was greatly out of his depth and so he had curbed his normally imprudent tongue. His brother Rajar had been more intent on listening and learning.

  Jahan’s question—how would the strangers fight if they had only swords?—echoed through Rajar’s mind. The idea that perhaps the strangers could be separated from the source of their power was both a comfort and a goad to his calculated scheming.

  Chapter Nine

  For three days, Kaseem fretted and worried about the fate of his young princes. He knew that, despite his youth, Kananda had been well trained in the use of weapons and the command of men. The old warmaster Jahan had seen to that. But Kananda’s force was small and still vulnerable. Ramesh and his group were even more so. They were just children in Kaseem’s eyes. Like newborn deer, a ready prey for any predator, even the lowest jackal. His anxiety grew when they did not quickly return together and he was haunted by his fears of what might have befallen them.

  He took some comfort from the fact that Kananda had the support of Zela and her lightning-bolt weapon. However, Zela’s absence meant that the only woman left in the camp was Laurya, the cause of the other anguished turmoil of his thoughts and emotions. The voluptuous Alphan was totally unlike any of the dusky-skinned, dark-haired Hindu women of India and yet he could not rid himself of the disturbing certainty that he had seen her somewhere before. He dared not look into her eyes, although he felt a desperate desire to do so. It was as though they held all the secrets of her soul, secrets which he knew he must unlock, and yet he was terrified of what he might find.

  He avoided her as much as possible and yet he could not help but be constantly aware of her presence. Gujar and the young lords competed with each other to offer her small services, which she accepted with endless good grace and easy smiles. She and the Alphan, Kyle, were clearly lovers and so secure in their love that neither felt any real threat from her new admirers. Kaseem watched covertly from a distance and realized that he felt jealous.

  It was a ridiculous notion. He was an old man, old enough to be her grandfather, and he was the High Priest of Karakhor. He had forsaken the lures of the flesh many years before. His manhood was a wrinkled thing of no further interest to him and no possible attraction to any woman. And yet he was envious of Gujar and the young lords whenever they won the smallest of Laurya’s smiles. To see her hand-in-hand with Kyle was even worse, and when the two Alphans left the glade together, as they often did to be alone, he felt an almost violent urge to chase after them and knock the young man away with his staff.

  He did not understand these crazy frustrations and feelings and tried to ignore them. His refuge was prayer and ritual, sitting cross-legged for many hours and struggling to concentrate on his recitations of the Vedas.

  By the fourth day he knew that something more was necessary. He made his needs known to Gujar, who promptly sent one of his warriors off into the forest. The man returned two hours later with a live jungle cock he had captured in a snare. Kaseem took the bird gently, carrying it by its bound feet which had been lashed with a short cord, and set off along the bank of the stream, moving away from the camp and leaving the others to continue amusing themselves in their own various ways. He walked until he was well out of sight of that awesome temple of black steel. Although he was not sure whether it was the dark powers in that towering spear of the gods, or the thought of those gold-lashed, green eyes of the unsettling Alphan woman that disturbed him most.

  He found the perfect spot to suit his purpose: a slow bend where the stream ran shallow and there was a small beach of white sand. Birdsong warbled in the branches all around him, and a small group of white-tailed monkeys gibbered in protest at his intrusion before abandoning the fruit they were gathering and disappearing into the deep forest.

  Kaseem laid down his small shoulder bag and the bound cock and spent the next few minutes gathering dry sticks and grass. When he had collected enough materials, he built his sacrificial fire, adding to it a few pieces of sandalwood from his bag. With a knife and flint he struck a spark and crouched puffing over the twists of yellowed grass until h
e had bright flames shooting up through the pile of sticks.

  While the fire burned stronger, he took off his robe and, in only his loincloth, he waded knee-deep into the stream. There he bathed to purify himself, praying all the while and still praying as he returned to the fire. He knelt before the flames, positioning himself so that he could breathe in the rising smoke.

  The trussed bird watched him with one beady, remorseful eye, as though it knew what came next. The old priest did the job mercifully, a quick, practised cut with the knife across the bird’s throat as he lifted it high by the feet. The fowl barely had time to squawk and then its bright red blood was dripping steadily into the flames. After a few minutes, Kaseem laid the bird in the heart of the fire. There was the stink of burning feathers, which made him squint his eyes and flare his nostrils, but soon it was replaced by the sweeter smell of the roasting meat. From his bag, Kaseem added handfuls of powdered incense to sweeten the smoke even further and inhaled deeply as he prayed over the flames.

  His prayers were first to Agni, begging the fire god to carry his message to the realms of the great gods, Indra and Varuna. And then to the great gods themselves, pleading for news of his lost princes, begging for a vision of where they might be. He prayed with his eyes closed, ignoring the slowly growing pains in his cramped knees and his stiff-hunched shoulders. Occasionally he opened his eyes, staring briefly past his clasped hands for a sign in the heart of the flames, but time after time there was nothing.

  Time itself became like a dream as the coiling smoke stung his eyes and drugged his senses. He had the gift of far-sight. Visions had come to him before, but never completely at his command, and he was never sure of how he had achieved them. He only knew it could happen, and so he concentrated and prayed with a fervour he had never reached before.

  He felt his consciousness slipping away, as though he were falling into a vast black abyss in the very bowels of the deep earth. The darkness whirled around him, split by vivid images of Kananda and Ramesh and of the carved stone faces of the gods in the temple precincts he had left behind. Then the faces of his princes were both washed away with blood and his heart turned to ice as terror flowed through his reeling mind. The forms of Indra and Varuna became blue and alive, smiling wickedly and waving a multitude of arms. It was as though the sacrificial flames burned in his head and in his soul and the dead jungle fowl was alive again and pecking at his eyes.

  He tried to force his mind back, to visualize again the faces of Ramesh and Kananda. Their features blurred and wavered in his mind, fluid like images seen through rippled water. Both faces were fading and he tried to hold onto just one, the face of Ramesh. It was still too much and the familiar features were melting away—to be replaced by a pair of golden lashed, deep green eyes. He almost screamed his frustration. And suddenly a tumult of erotic images flooded his fainting brain. They were visions of himself and Laurya, impossibly and lasciviously entwined, lost in the heights of love and lust. In his present purified state, the very thoughts were sacrilege and the conflict of emotions made his head feel as though it might explode in lost agony. His body collapsed into a shapeless sprawl beside the stream, half in and half out of the unfelt water, and his mind soared free and upward.

  He hung suspended in a strange, weightless limbo of darkness, and slowly, infinitely slowly, his tortured nervous system stabilized and became calm. All the pains and stresses of his over taut body faded and vanished, almost as though he had become bodiless. He opened his eyes then and saw that he was indeed detached from the frail old body that he knew. He saw it crumpled far below him and for an instant believed that he was dead. Perhaps he had suffered a heart attack, or choked and suffocated in the sacrificial smoke, or perhaps his brain had truly burst.

  The forest and sky around him seemed normal, vividly green and blue, except that instead of gazing up into the branches from below, he was gazing down through the treetops from above. His body lying between the softly gurgling stream and the white-smoking fire seemed to be shrinking away as he rose higher and yet he did not feel the cold touch that he would have expected from death. He felt vibrant and free and more alive than he had felt for a very long time. This experience was both frightening and exhilarating and he knew that it was something much more than the brief visions he had glimpsed in his previous smoke-drugged trances.

  He looked down at himself and saw a young body that was his and yet was not his. It was the body he remembered from thirty years before, firm-muscled and supple, when he had been in his prime. He wore a brief leather vest, laced leather leggings, and the sword of a warrior. But he was not a warrior of Karakhor. The apparel was both strange and vaguely familiar.

  He allowed his gaze to range wider over the canopy of the forest. He was high enough now to see the great steel nose of the Alphan Tri-Thruster where it pierced the trees. He was on a level with its needle. He moved closer until he could look down and see his companions, the Alphans standing out clearly from the Hindus in their bright silver suits. He decided that this was not a vision but reality, even though the whole experience was totally unreal and bewildering. Somehow he also knew that he was not dead.

  He began to experiment, moving himself tentatively from one part of the sky to another. He was like a chick learning to fly, except that he had no wings and he was not conscious of any movement of his limbs. It was as though he just willed himself to move from one place to another and without any effort it simply happened.

  For several minutes, he was lost in the wonder of these new experiences and the mystery of what was happening to him. Then abruptly he remembered why he was here, the driving purpose that had pushed him to the limits in attaining the trance state that would lead him to his far-sight and his visions. Somehow he had succeeded more brilliantly and clearly than ever before and he must not now waste the opportunity. His task was to locate Kananda and Ramesh.

  Kananda had headed almost due south, following the cold trail of his younger brother, and Kaseem turned also in that direction. His new young body seemed to float with ease, gathering momentum as he willed it until he was travelling at two or three times the speed of the fastest chariot. He knew he could move faster, but if the terrain below him became too blurred then he might miss the vital signs for which he was searching. Like an eagle he swooped and circled, always moving swiftly southward.

  He left the stream, the jungle ridge and the next valley where they had flushed the sabretooth far behind. The high waves of treetops gave way to open plains of yellowed grassland and outcrops of piled bare rock. He saw deer of every variety, grazing or moving slowly in search of greener grass or water. A black panther crouched at a water hole, drinking deeply before lying down for the heat of the day. A small dust cloud near the far edge of the horizon marked the progress of a wandering herd of wild elephant. A single tiger slept in the deep shade of a massive boulder. The land was alive with animals which would have fled without him ever catching a glimpse of them if he had been on foot. Around him, hawks and vultures flew at ease, totally unaware of his passing presence. It was a wondrous revelation which, even in the urgency of his mission, touched his soul. He had never before realized how much diversity of animal and bird life his world contained.

  He changed direction frequently, veering left or right or doubling back on his track whenever a hint of movement caught his eye. Always the cause proved to be a natural inhabitant of this rich world of predator and prey. There was no sign of Kananda or Ramesh or of their passing. It was as though both groups had vanished or had never existed here.

  He realized that he had already travelled as far as a group on horseback would have reached in two days of hard riding, and he began to fear that he had missed them. If Ramesh had turned east or west on reaching the plains, then the sharp-eyed Hamir would have found the fresh track at ground level and Kananda would have followed. The fact that the trail had led south when Kananda left the camp by the stream meant nothing. The trail could have turned and led anywhere.

 
Kaseem paused and hovered, suddenly apprehensive. He did not know which way to turn or whether to go on. Even with this new found extension of his far-sight, he was searching blindly and he did not know how long the experience might last. At any moment the trance might end and he could find himself back in that weak old body, exhausted and drained and having learned nothing. He might not have any time to waste and yet it seemed that he was wasting his time and failing his princes.

  Slowly he searched the far horizons, letting his gaze linger on every puff of dust and movement. Nothing indicated anything more than a small animal. He had already checked three groups of elephant in the hope that they might be horsemen only to be frustrated and disappointed, but now there was not even a dust cloud of that size. South and west were empty of clues and he turned his gaze to the east. A storm was building up in that direction, purple-black thunderclouds formed and were rolling toward him. Beneath them, the plain ended and there was a treeline barrier of jungle.

  Ramesh would have stayed on the plains to hunt, Kaseem decided, so there was no point in searching any further east. He was about to switch his attention back to the south and west when a small fluttering of black specks registered on the edge of his vision. He had almost missed them against the roiling black masses of the advancing clouds. He turned hopefully, yet fearfully, toward them.

  Within a few seconds, he had definitely identified the black specks as circling vultures. The kill below them could have been a gazelle or a rabbit or anything brought down by one of the big cats or some other predator. But somehow he knew for certain that it was not, even before he was close enough to see that the half-picked bones were those of men. The bloodied skeletons that had been slashed free of their clinging meat and tissue by the cruel beaks of the carrion birds were only slight. They were not the heavier bodies of Kananda and his warriors. They were striplings, not much more than boys, and Kaseem knew that he had found what remained of the group led by Ramesh.