We crashed among the warrens clustering by the amphitheater.
My last conscious impressions were of the ground swooping up; of the warm and vibrant form of Delia clasped in my arms, and of her strong slender arms clasped about me; and of a crazed, upside-down vision of coys and apprentices and kaidurs running in the moonlight that, with a supernatural suddenness, burst through those roiling diabolical black clouds. Lightning struck down, a ferocious earth-shaking noise burst up all about me — everything coming together like a volcano in my head. Even as I knew I was being knocked senseless, I would not let go my hold upon my Delia. And she would not let go her hold upon me.
Chapter Seventeen
The Arena
Queen Fahia sat in her curule chair, flanked by the sinister shadows of her pet neemus, and she taunted me. She enjoyed that. She had left to her only two neemus, and that pained her. But, she had me, she had Drak the Sword, hyr-kaidur, who had caused her that pain.
She would not be kind.
I had, of necessity, to crouch. They had loaded me with so many iron chains I could barely walk. But walking was not necessary, for they had stuffed me into a tiny square iron-barred cage where I had to crouch in a doubled-up position. The cage was carried by sixteen massively thewed Brokelsh. I twisted my head up to look at this Queen Fahia, for she interested me. They had not tortured me. I knew why that was.
“You have done much mischief, Drak the Sword. And I was foolish and weak enough to think you were my friend.”
Delia was not here. She was all I was concerned about. All this talk about friendship with this fat little woman who sat upon the throne of Hyrklana would have made Delia smile. I felt convinced, through my own agony and misery, that because I had not been harmed, Delia would not be either. I thought I knew the way Queen Fahia’s mind worked by then.
“My name is Dray Prescot. I warn you, Queen-”
“Silence, you rast! I am the queen! You are no more than a yetch of a kaidur who presumes.” She threw her head back and laughed, an unprepossessing sight, to be sure. “What! You call yourself Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy?”
“Aye. But you do not know what that is. I am Pur Dray. But, also-”
She flicked her fingers and the Pallan Mahmud passed her the scroll wherein was written my crimes. It was not paper, which would have interested me, thinking of far Aphrasoe, but a stiff parchment. She stabbed a jeweled finger down.
“You claim to be Pur Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Zorcander, Lord of Strombor, Prince Majister of Vallia, Kov of Zamra and Can-thirda, Strom of Valka!” She lifted her head and stared at me with a jovial evil over the parchment scroll. “And you seriously expect me to believe this roll of rubbish? This tirade of tomfoolery? You yetch! Think of my neemus! Think of my guardsmen!”
“I have little need to think of them, for they are mostly dead. If only they all were.”
She drew her breath. She stabbed the scroll again. “I know nothing of these impossible names — save Vallia and Valka. And Zamra. I once heard of a Kov of Zamra, for my stylors tell me his name appears in a secret document they brought from Hamal, where he visited. The Relts tell me his name is Ortyg Larghos.”
I laughed.
“Ortyg Larghos was slain by many arrows, slain in foul treachery to his emperor.”
“It is easy to claim a man is dead and take his name, when you are many dwaburs from his homeland.”
I could see Fahia was enjoying this. She was working up to a great scene when I would scream and beg for mercy, and she could turn the screw tighter and tighter, until in the end I would admit all my sins. She licked her full red lips. Even then, I truly think, I pitied her.
So far no mention of Delia had crossed my lips. What I was absolutely certain was to happen would not be swayed, now, by what I said, and I wished to start the thing as soon as possible and so spare my Delia any further protracted agony.
We must have been scooped out of the wreckage of the voller after those damned Star Lords had brought all my proud plans of escape to nothing. I had awoken to find myself as I now was, loaded with iron chains and doubled up in an iron cage. I had been given food and drink. But I was in a foul state, for all the buckets of water had been hurled over me before I had been carried into the queen’s presence. My clothes had been taken from me. I wondered where the Krozair longsword had gone, but forbore to ask. That would give one more item for them to crow about.
Presently the queen’s taunts became cruder and cruder and there is no point in repeating them. She worked herself up into a veritable passion, her blue eyes flashing at me and her features twisting. She dribbled and slashed at her slave fifis who trembled and tried to wipe the spittle away with sensil cloths. She saw the way I looked at her, and I believe then she understood that if I could get my hands around her fat neck I would have had no compunction about squeezing her evil life out, for all that I pitied her, and had recoiled from that deed before, for events had moved on apace since then, by Vox!
“By the putrescent left eyeball of Makki-Grodno!” I roared at her. “You silly fat old woman! Get on with it, for the sake of that yetch Havil the Green. Or” — and I stared her full in the face as she flinched back — “may that hyr-kleesh Lem the Silver Leem devour your mangy body entire!”
She fairly exploded then.
Courtiers ran with whips to hit me, guards milled, a number of Horters fainted, and noble ladies leaned on their noble spouses’ shoulders, shaking.
By the time the hullabaloo had subsided Queen Fahia had left her audience chamber, and her black neemus padded balefully after her, twisting their rounded heads, their wedge-ears low, their tails lolling. I laughed.
The preparations within the Jikhorkdun for this greatest of great Kaidurs were made with thoroughness. Barriers around the arena were heightened and strengthened, and solid marble walls were erected before the queen’s box, and many crossbowmen were stationed there. Her Chulik Chuktar still retained his place; but I knew it had been a near squeak for him when I had so impudently slipped and deflected his bolts and stuxes, and so barbarically hurled the bloody leem’s tail in her face. Thinking back, I would not have dubbed that a high Jikai. More likely a little Kaidur!
They brought my iron cage to a small newly created stone enclosure I did not recognize. All across one side of the stone-walled space stood a line of mercenaries, all with their crossbows lifted, loaded, and cocked, and aimed directly at me. There were fifty of them. At the Chulik Chuktar’s command — for he had taken personal control of this wild leem of a prisoner — fifty bolts would flash toward me, narrowing in a fan and piercing my heart. There would not be a lot left of that heart by the time fifty steel-headed quarrels had bedded there.
Slaves wearing the gray slave breechclout unlocked the cage and the chains. The reasoning was, I suppose, that the slaves were expendable. As it was, the four of them shook so much their fingers made a sad hash of the locks, until I said: “Hai, brothers! I am not a slave-master. One day the light will reach this evil place of Huringa. One day slaves will be free.”
They didn’t believe me, of course. And, to my shame, it was a bravo’s gesture, words out of an empty bladder of courage. They got the locks undone and then it was the old bloodstream twisting me about so that, for a time, I could not have faced a woflo, let alone a ponsho, and a quoffa might have had his way with me unmolested. When at last I could stand up, the guards with their crossbows aimed and their trigger-fingers white as death escorted me, all naked, through the far gateway. Oh, yes, believe me, I can see that scene now, etched in acid on my retinas. I stepped onto the silver sand of the arena. Everything was the same and everything was different. The terraces and boxes rose into the high blue sky. I was let out onto the sands of the arena exactly as the Suns of Scorpio reached the zenith. Shadows shrank small. Everyone would have a fine unobstructed view. The roar! The yells and shrieks in a bedlam of sound pulsed down from those thousands of throats. And I heard the tenor of much of that noise, the howls for “Drak t
he Sword! Hyr-kaidur!” Oh, yes, they loved to see the hot blood spurting, and if it gouted from a champion, from a favorite, there were always new accolades to be won by kaidurs forcing their way upward in the Jikhorkdun. The silver sand gleamed under the suns. The smell of caged beasts wafted in a streaming fetid breath down here, down on the blood-soaked sands of the arena, where the action was. There was, as usual, no wind. I looked up as a skein of mirvols with watchful patrolling aerial cavalry passed, and guessed they would find an excuse to wing around and so hover near, taking their fill of the sport below. They swung away, and a smaller, slimmer flying figure appeared, slipping in over the roof of the western stand and so disappearing in a twinkling. I had caught no sight of a flier upon the flying animal’s back. The beast roar smothered reason. Men and women — apim and halfling — screamed and screeched and banged the benches and swung their rattles and beat their gourd-drums. The winesellers passed along the benches, and could not sell their wares fast enough to slake the throats that all this yelling turned into volcanoes of thirst. Young slave girls, apims, Fristles, Lamnias, sylvies, in particular, moved among the seated thousands carrying fresh paline bushes for sale. Their masters employed girls from those races which traditionally produced the most beautiful girls. I have not mentioned the sylvies before out of decency. But they were there, and doing a roaring trade with their palines and squishes and gregarians and all the exotic fruits of Kregen.
The royal box had never been more ornately decorated. It blazed with color and fire. Queen Fahia sat there, enthroned, and I could guess she would be sitting with her hand propped on her chin, absorbing all this pageantry of the Jikhorkdun with those blue eyes wide, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, mesmerized. If I say that I was to witness a similar spectacle that would surpass this Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana, that is not to say that it was not a most impressive spectacle. Golden trumpets cut the air, shrieking their high notes above the din. A silence gradually fell, a silence of waiting, of lip-licking expectation.
I had been let out onto the sands, all naked as I was, from that special area near the queen’s box from which her own Queen’s Kaidurs — who owed no allegiance to any color — would march proudly forth to fight for her. They would halt and lift their arms in salute. There was nothing about the Queen’s Kaidurs or their prospects in the arena to prompt them to cry anything about imminent dying and present saluting.
I walked out a little upon the sand. I had not been able — all the time I moved from that stone gateway onto the sand, all the time the corner of my eye had picked up that mysterious flier slipping over the roof of the amphitheater, all the time my senses had been drowned by the noise and smells — all that time, I had been quite unable to take my eyes from the stake positioned in the center of the arena. I prayed she was unharmed.
Silver chains they had used to bind her. This was not because she was a princess, for Fahia did not believe that. The silver chains, I guessed, and felt the black rage in me, were a direct reference to the silver leem.
All naked she was suspended there.
Her glorious brown hair lay strewn about her shoulders and bosom. Her shape would set fire to any man. The silver chains draped her so that she could not move, and her arms were drawn up above her head and fastened with silver staples to the black balass of the stake. She was a princess, and she looked more proud, more beautiful, more regal, than anyone there -
anyone!
Soon, I knew, the horned bosks would be let out.
The thought of those long cruel bosk horns tearing into that slender form filled me with such horror, such rage, that I nearly allowed myself to go berserk and strive to climb that sheer unmarked marble wall to place my fists around the fat neck of that fat, evil woman.
I stood there, and I saluted her as her own Queen’s Kaidurs might salute had they wished to die instantly.
There is on Kregen a gesture of such obscene connotation that I have made it a practice never to use, for I am squeamish in such matters.
Now I drew myself up and saluted the queen with this sign.
The sigh that rippled around the amphitheater might have been the sigh of the mourners around an open grave or gathered by the pyre.
I was naked and unarmed. I faced, as I expected, either a single bosk and his long horns, or two or three together. The Chulik Chuktar came to the edge of the arena and tossed me a djangir. The short sword, squat and fat and two-edged, landed in the sand at my feet. Being frugal in the matter of weapons, as you know, I bent and retrieved it. It was sharp. They wanted their sport, then, before I died. And with my death, the death also of Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, fastened by silver chains to an ebony stake.
Once, she had said to me, “I wish to be known as Delia of Strombor.”
But I had always thought of her as Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. Now, perhaps in a few heartbeats, it would not matter.
Cunning are the ways of the managers of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, which is the capital city of Hyrklana, in Havilfar. But, of them all, none so cunning or malefic as their queen, Queen Fahia, she of the blue eyes and golden hair and heart as black as the fur of her own neemus!
This time they did not wait until my back was turned to release the beast into the arena, as they had done when I fought the leem with the silver collar. This time they wished me to see at once the horror I faced. One of the larger iron-barred gates swung up. Those bars were thick, and strong, and closely set. They had need to be.
I waited with the djangir in my fist, positioned halfway between the stake and the barred opening. I had not spoken to Delia. She had not spoken to me. We knew all there was to say to each other at a moment like this. I waited, then, poised and ready, for the first bosk to rush out, horns lowered. A boloth emerged onto the silver sands of the arena.
A boloth!
Huge, impossible, sixteen legs, eight tusks, a massive monster of destruction, standing there with his bunch of whiplash tails swatting flies, staring, with his rapacious mouth half open so that its red darkness glistened and its rows of jagged teeth glinted in the Suns of Scorpio. A boloth!
Impossible, inhuman, unstoppable.
And I — armed with a little shortsword!
There was only one thing to be done.
Without a shout, without a whoop, in a silent and feral rush I charged for the monster. I knew there was no hope; but then, my way is never to give up until they throw the grave-dirt upon me, and even then I’ll likely as not claw up, cursing them all to the Ice Floes of Sicce.
The belly of the boloth, bright yellow, stood as high as my head. His green sides towered above that, and his gray rhinoceros-hide back lofted above. He just stood there, for they are slow beasts, savage when roused — and I was going to rouse him now!
I skipped aside as I neared him, away from the gravel-dredger mouth. The eight tusks formed a barrier of bristling ivory. I thought of the shorgortz and I thought of the Ullgishoa, and then I thought only of this boloth.
My spring carried me past his lowered head, so that I could get a grip on his flap-ears, like those of an African elephant, if four times the size; but, unlike an elephant, there was no deadly weakness behind those ears where a thrust might do his business for him. And, remember, he had three hearts!
Up I clawed and lifted the djangir high and so plunged it down into his right eye. The mess that spurted had no power to sicken me. It proved that fifty percent of his vision had gone. He reacted with a frenzied bellowing scream, for the boloths have no trunk and therefore he could not trumpet out his pain. But he screamed and bellowed and that massive head shook and I went up in the air and head over heels and so came down flat on my back. Only that old training in the disciplines of unarmed combat enabled me to break the violence of that fall.
The boloth stared about, shaking his head, stamping his feet, lashing his tails about. He continued to bellow. For him, the world had gone dark on his right-hand side. But — disaster — the djangir ha
d remained firmly embedded in that vast ruined eye! I cursed by all the foulest Makki-Grodno oaths I knew; I had to get that djangir back, for, puny as it was, it had already served nobly and must do so again, before that left eye saw the slim form of Delia wrapped in her silver chains. The bellowing ceased and the boloth turned his head in a peculiar and meaningful way. I saw his nostrils quivering, for he had four of them, and their blackly red edges shivered as he sniffed. Abruptly the whole amphitheater fell silent. The boloth could hear me well enough as I slid on the sand; but he could smell!
And, in that silence, I heard the voice of Delia, lifted to me.
“Dray! They have smeared me with scented ointment!”
And I cursed most horribly that devil-queen of Huringa.
I might put out the other eye of the boloth with my bare hands, as I would — I would! — but still the beast would take the scent from my beloved and so charge full upon her. One gulp, one single snap of those gigantic jaws, and all I cared about or loved on two worlds would be gone forever. And so, as I stood there on the sand, knowing that this vast beast must soon sniff that treacherous scent smeared upon Delia’s naked body, I saw that I must express to her a final caress of love. I turned my back to the beast that threatened the lives of Delia and myself and ran away from it. I ran straight toward the balass stake. The uproar from the amphitheater changed into a shocked upheaval of disbelief. Delia hung in her chains, glorious, desirable, and altogether wonderful. Gently, I reached up and caressed her naked body. I stroked her shoulders and arms and waist and thighs, and every now and then I rubbed my hands over my own naked body. The touch of her stung me through with a whiplash electric bolt of exquisite agony.
“Oh, my Dray. .”
“Remember what I have told you, my Delia. Remember the twins, Drak and Lela. But, remember, always, that I love only you of all women in two worlds.”
Then I ran back toward the boloth.
Arena of Antares dp-7 Page 20
