The Sword Lord

by Robert Leader

  “A rider has arrived from one of our search parties,” he informed them. “They have caught up with the Prince of Karakhor. Half of the enemy is dead and our riders are in close pursuit of the rest. Soon we will have all their heads.”

  Sardar sat up, almost cheerful. He beamed benevolently at his son, and then at Nizak. “We have lost a key player but so have they. It seems the battle honours are even.”

  His high priest also found a smile. “But we still have to dispose of this. He indicated the unfortunate Malik.

  Sardar nodded and gave orders to Tuluq, one of the few men whom he knew he could reasonably trust, at least for the time being.

  “Take this out quickly, while the storm still keeps the monkey clans hiding from the rain. It will look better if he is found in his own hut. There is no mark on him so let them think that he died of a heart attack or some over indulgence of his own vices.”

  Tuluq stared curiously at the corpse for a moment. Then he stooped, heaved, and slung it over one shoulder. If he had any questions, he did not bother to ask them.

  Kaseem returned to consciousness feeling as though both his body and mind had been thoroughly beaten, like a bundle of old clothes that a washer-woman had thrashed against the rocks at the riverside. He groaned as he opened his eyes and saw a blurred silver figure and then a pair of anxious deep green eyes. Laurya was sitting on her haunches with his shoulders cradled in her lap and his head leaning against the soft swell of her bosom.

  He remembered and a smile creased his features. He reached for her hand and covered it with his own and saw the swift rush of sadness that swept over her shadowed face. He realized then that his hand was again the wrinkled, blue-veined hand of an old man. He turned his head and saw his reflection in the stream and it was the same, deep-lined, gap-toothed old man’s face that he had worn for so many years.

  “I am so sorry,” Laurya said softly. “In this rebirth we are not meant to be together. We were born on different planets. Our paths should not have crossed. Kyle is my lover in this life. He is a good man. We are happy together.”

  Kaseem felt a deep sense of shock and loss. His eyes filled helplessly with tears.

  “I saw you leave with the live bird,” she explained quietly. “I was curious and Gujar needed no urging to tell me exactly what you intended. He told me that in the trance state over the sacrificial fire you could experience dreams and visions. If you had flashes of what you called far-sight, then I knew they could only be glimpses of the astral. Somehow you were partially breaking through to the psychic plane but obviously you did not realize exactly what was happening. That can be dangerous, so I followed you.”

  Kaseem nodded dumbly, knowing now that she was right. His present Earth life had led him into the priesthood in his search for spiritual understanding. And it was as though he had followed the right road to the right crossroads and then knocked on the wrong door. When he had attempted to see visions or signs in the sacred flames, he had in fact been touching on an unnecessarily complicated approach to astral travel. It was as though he had been struggling up a steep and tortuous path on a mountain when there was a direct and easy means of elevation that he had simply failed to see.

  “You knew me,” he said. “Although I did not know you.”

  “I saw into your eyes, but you would not search into mine. I thought that was for the best and allowed you to avoid me.” She paused and sighed. “Perhaps it would have been best if I had not followed you.”

  “No,” he said sharply, for then he would never have known who he was, and who he had been. He gripped her hand tightly but that again only made him aware that she had the slim hand and the lithe, supple body of a woman who was forty, perhaps fifty years younger than him. His own desiccated skin bag of old bones could never be a partner to her youth and beauty in this present physical world.

  She pushed herself upright and helped him to stand up beside her. He tottered unsteadily, like a drunken man or one still affected by a fever. She kissed his cheek briefly, her sweet, moist lips brushing the old parchment skin.

  “We still have duties in this life,” she reminded him.

  She began to run, back along the stream bank to where her spaceship and their companions were still invisible behind the trees. Kaseem remembered Kananda, and on unsteady legs and with a wildly beating heart, he stumbled after her.

  Chapter Ten

  They were four: Kananda, Zela, Kasim, and Hamir, the head huntsman, who by sturdy determination and an almost animal instinct for survival, had managed to outlive all of the trained warriors. They bled from a dozen minor wounds where they had been grazed by arrows or nicked by sword blades and yet miraculously, six hours after taking their stand on the hilltop, they were still alive. But Kasim had fired his last arrow and Zela had fired her last lazer bolt. They stood now in a defensive square, back to back, facing outward, awaiting the final Maghallan onslaught.

  Their three companions lay dead at their feet but the Maghallans had paid dearly. More than a score of the enemy sprawled lifeless on the blood-splashed slopes of the hill and as many more nursed painful or crippling wounds. The carrion birds circled high over head, their ghastly presence a grim portent as they waited for it to be finished, for the victors to depart so that their own feast could begin.

  The Maghallans had given up using their bows. They had killed three, but so many of their shafts had landed harmlessly among the rocks on the hilltop, only to be returned with swift and deadly accuracy by Kasim, that they had learned the folly of supplying him with arrows. Kasim’s fame as an archer would become legend after this day, if any of them lived to tell of his skill and valour.

  Their throats were dry with thirst. They had fought all through the blistering midday heat and their tongues were beginning to swell in their throats. There was no shade on the hilltop and the sun was still hot enough to suck the last of the moisture from their dehydrating bodies.

  Come, Kananda thought bleakly, come while we still have enough strength to wield our swords and take more of you with us on our journey into death. And he offered another brief prayer to Indra, no longer for life and salvation, but simply for more blood to spill down his own sword before he died.

  Zela’s head was swimming in a red haze brought on by fatigue and heat and she too prepared to die. She had succeeded in contacting her ship, but the communication had been brief and Cadel’s voice had been faint and broken. She knew that her own signal must have been even more so and its location difficult to pin-point. Her crew would not find her in time. Her despair became diffused with anger. She still believed that there was a God Behind All Gods, but she could no longer ask Him to save her. She only demanded to know why he would permit her to die when she had so much to do and so much to live for. It was a question that the philosophers had never been able to answer.

  Why? Why live? Why fight? Why die? Why anything? Was there a deeper meaning behind all things, as her father taught? Or could it be that the Gheddans were right and there was nothing beyond the here and now? A fearful doubt cavorted with the questions in her mind and she felt dizziness sweeping over her. Was dying a journey into knowledge and another plane of existence, or simply an end, an obliteration, a nothing? Soon she would know, or not know, as the case might be.

  There was a silence, a stillness, a deceptive lull before the storm. Some thirty Maghallan warriors crouched on all sides of the steep pile of cracked boulders, most of them more than half way up to the summit. It was a difficult climb and on the summit the defenders had rolled the loose boulders into an encircling rampart. During the early stages of the battle, the Karakhorans had crouched behind their ramparts, making themselves almost invisible targets. But now they stood boldly, heads and shoulders in full view.

  The Maghallan commander was a hard, sword-scarred man, his face hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed like a dark, living skull. He held his position because he was the most savage of his men. He was tempted to order another volley of spears and arrows to be hurled upward
and yet he refrained. He had formed a grudging respect for the four who had held his force at bay for so long and he knew from the bejeweled helmet and insignia that their leader was a Karakhoran prince. He would permit them to die fighting and their prince would die on his own bright blade. He stood upright and voiced a command. And with screaming, blood-curdling battle cries his men followed scrambling at his heels as he charged for the hilltop.

  “At last,” Kananda breathed, almost joyously. His eye was on the skull-faced man whom he had identified as the Maghallan chieftain, and his fighting soul soared in eagerness. He would have sprung forward to meet the man, but his military training forbade him to break the defensive square. Like a coiled cobra, he waited.

  Two Maghallan warriors sprang together over the stone barrier on Kananda’s right flank. Zela was there, blocking their attack in a succession of ringing sword clashes. One man was flung back, his cheek bones and jaw cleft by her cutting blade. The other sagged gasping to his knees as he was impaled below the breastbone. Two more rushed the left flank where Hamir defended. Kananda half turned to deal with one of them, making a slicing backhand stroke behind the Maghallan’s guard that severed his sword arm above the elbow. He left the huntsman to deal with the other. Behind him, he heard Kasim defending his back with desperate swordplay. Then the Maghallan chieftain was leaping into the tight, rock-bound arena to face him.

  In aiding Hamir, Kananda had lost the first initiative. The skull-faced man hacked wickedly for his throat and Kananda brought his own sword back only just in time to deflect the blow. The Maghallan roared his fury, a sound echoed from all sides by his attacking fellows, but Kananda and his three companions conserved their energy to fight all the better in tight-lipped silence. The skull-faced man was no master of his blade, but he fought with a homicidal mania that gave no quarter.

  Kananda held his ground, turned the Maghallan blade, and as their bodies met in solid, sweating impact, he smashed his elbow into the Maghallan’s nose, breaking the bone and causing a spout of blood to spill from the screaming face. The skull-faced man fell back, but in the split-second before Kananda would have killed him, another was in his place. And then another. As fast as they fell, there were others, until his blade arced in a bright rainbow of splattering gore.

  Hamir cried in pain and sagged to his knees, clutching at the Maghallan spear that had pierced his belly. Kananda wheeled to cut the spearman down, and the fighting square reformed as a triangle with the fallen man in the middle. Still the Maghallans came on. Kasim hewed mightily, left and right, severing limbs and laying open heads and breasts and faces. Zela spun lightly on her feet, her blade flying faster and with more deadly accuracy than any of them.

  Even so, the sheer weight of numbers would have borne them down. But then, from far away, the shrill sound of a battle horn echoed across the grassy plain. The first notes failed to penetrate through the battle clamour of screams and groans and sword blows, but then the Maghallans at the rear of the conflict began to take notice. A score of chariots were thundering toward the besieged rock pile from the east.

  The Maghallan attack faltered, and some of the warriors began to hurry back down the hill to take up defensive positions or to reach their tethered horses. The rest rallied again as the skull-faced chieftain screeched at them to finish this fight before they faced the next.

  The Maghallan commander had briefly withdrawn to nurse his shattered nose, but now he was back with a vengeance, his face a red mask of blood and his heart black with rage. Six of his warriors joined him, and Kananda and Zela faced them together while Kasim protected their backs. Again their swords whirled and sang in showers of bright red rain.

  The leading chariot flew the bright green pennant of the young lord Gujar and was the first to skid to a halt at the foot of the hill. The neighing horses reared and trampled two of the fleeing Maghallan warriors before they could get away, and then Gujar leapt down and was leading a dozen fresh fighting men on foot as they fell upon the disorganized Maghallans from behind. The remaining Karakhorans fired a deadly covering rain of arrows from their chariots over the heads of Gujar and his force as they advanced. With the rescue mission were two of the Alphans, distinctive in their bright silver spacesuits, striking death and terror into the enemy ranks with searing energy bolts from their hand lazers.

  Gujar stormed the hill at a run, cutting down all who tried to bar his way, and at his side, never a pace behind, with a sword in one hand and a lazer in the other, was Blair. The tall Alphan was as reckless with his life as the young lord and they reached the crest of the hill together. They arrived just in time to see Zela dispatch the second to last man of the enemy. Kananda thrust his sword through the frustrated heart of the skull-faced chieftain a moment later.

  “Kananda!” Gujar cried. “Praise Indra! You are alive!”

  “Gujar!” Kananda answered. “I have never been happier to see you.”

  They sheathed their swords, laughed aloud, and clasped arms violently in the eternal gesture of friendship. Kananda offered his free arm to Kasim, and Kasim and Gujar completed the arm-locked triangle. They had been boyhood friends and now they were comrades-in-arms and brothers in the hot blood of battle. The emotion and the love between them were electric.

  Slowly the elation and the blood-lust cooled. Kananda broke the circle and checked the body of Ramesh who still lay unconscious, protected and ignored and half buried under the corpses of their fallen comrades. He said grimly, “I am alive and so barely is Ramesh, but so many of our friends are dead.”

  He knelt by the fallen huntsman, lifting the man’s head and shoulders to find that he was still breathing, although unconscious and sorely wounded. He looked up again to Gujar. “This one has fought valiantly and loyally. We must find something to stop his bleeding.”

  There was a silver suit beside him. Kananda recognized Kyle. The Alphan laid down his hand lazer and took his medical kit from his belt pack. He was breathing heavily from his run up the hill and said briefly, “I can help him.”

  Kananda nodded and entrusted the care of the fallen man to the others. He rose and turned to look for Zela.

  He wanted to embrace her with a passion and emotion that soared far above his feelings for Kasim and Gujar and yet he held back. Zela stood with her feet apart, her reddened sword tip touching the ground, still panting from her recent exertions and smiling as she faced Blair.

  “Commander.” The tall Alphan was formal in deference to her rank, but his anxiety showed through. “Are you harmed?”

  “No.” Zela shook her head, her long golden hair dancing silkily on her shoulders. “I think I am in one piece.”

  Blair’s gaze roved over the cuts and stains on her suit, the bruise on her jaw and the graze on her temple that denied the reassurance of her smile.

  “But you are wounded—“

  “Only a few scratches and I am very tired. But there is nothing serious.” Her eyes softened and she reached forward and touched his arm. Relief and anguish filtered into her voice. “Oh, Blair—there was a moment when I felt that you would not find me. I should have known better.”

  “Your message was badly distorted,” Blair explained. “You were too far away, but somehow Laurya managed to pinpoint your position. I feared she was guessing but it seems she was not.”

  “Laurya seems to have gifts that none of us can understand,” Zela said thankfully.

  “We couldn’t use the ship.” Blair’s voice hinted at his frustration. “Cadel has been doing more maintenance work on the engines and parts of the engage thrusters were dismantled. We were fortunate that Gujar decided to bring up the Karakhoran chariots and the rest of their horses soon after you left. Laurya was able to establish the distance and direction of your signal and we calculated that the chariots would reach you more quickly than the time it would take us to get the ship ready for flight.”

  Blair’s voice continued calm and matter of fact, but Kananda detected the undersurface tension beneath the formal exterior.
The Alphan had fought with a rash ferocity that had been totally unsuspected in his previously imperturbable personality and suddenly, with a lover’s instinct, Kananda knew that Blair was also in love with Zela.

  Here was another unexpected and this time unwelcome surprise. Kananda realized that because Kyle and Laurya had been so open in their love for each other, he had mistakenly assumed that all Alphans made no secret of their feelings. Now, Kananda guessed that for reasons of his own, perhaps because a love affair at the command level might prove detrimental to their mission, Blair had chosen to keep his feelings secret. Or perhaps Blair had not even admitted his inner feelings to himself. Perhaps Zela knew. Perhaps she did not. Kananda was unsure. He only knew he was right about Blair.

  When the huntsman’s wound had been sealed and they had gathered up their scattered horses, they began the return journey. This time Ramesh and Hamir traveled more comfortably in two of the chariots. For Kananda it was a silent, thoughtful ride, and his thoughts were divided, jealous and disturbed. He knew that his immediate duty must be to return to Karakhor, to confirm Sardar’s alliance with the monkey tribes and to warn the city and his father.

  But he did not want to part from Zela, especially now that he knew he had a rival. His heart was torn between duty and love, and the pain was worse than dying.

  In the kaleidoscope of life’s rich patterns that pulsated continuously in the vibrant city of Karakhor, every single stage of its population’s life cycle could be witnessed on almost every day. Working and bargaining, playing and loving went on as busily as usual, despite the overlay of apprehension that followed the arrival of the Gheddan spaceship. At every sunset, the funeral pyres glowed on the burning ghats on the lower reaches of the Mahanadi River just below the city, and day and night squalling infants continued to make their traumatic entrance into the world. Weddings were equally a daily occurrence, and on festival and holy days there would be a spate of them. Today was one of the many feast days of Agni, god of the sacred sacrificial flames that acted as messengers between men and the gods, and so it was not difficult for Maryam to find a temple where a marriage ceremony was taking place.