by Джеффри Лорд
«Yes, I can see that it would.» Bryg-Noz might be confused briefly, but he never stayed that way for long. «As far as I know, Nris-Pol is sending out only warriors who are not of his faction.»
Blade nodded. «That is not good. It suggests to me that he wants to get the hard core of the opposition out of the Tower of the Serpent and involved in fighting a war. That would leave him free to make some dramatic move-against Mir-Kasa, for example.»
«Or breaking out the great wands,» said Bryg-Noz grimly.
«Exactly,» said Blade. «When is the war going to be fought?»
«The second day of the next ten-day.»
Blade grimaced. That was only seven days away. Seven days was hardly enough time for getting everything ready, even if they started now. And they couldn't start now. But equally well they couldn't just sit and wait.
Blade grimaced again and slapped Bryg-Noz on the shoulder. «My friend, you know what the plans for the war-the real war-are. So does the First Warrior here. You and he should get together at once, and start picking men for key positions. Plan on our striking the day of the war against the Tower of the Ox. With a hundred Serpent warriors out of the way, our job will be easier.»
«But-«began Bryg-Noz, and then he closed his mouth with a decisive snap of teeth. «Very well. But if the First Warrior is detected-«
«I know. It will mean his position. But he will not be detected. At least not by the only leader we have to fear, Ye-Jaza. I'll be keeping her too busy!»
«You'll be keeping her too busy,» Bryg-Noz echoed. He shook his head. «You seem to be very confident all of a sudden.»
«I am-somewhat,» said Blade. «But even if I weren't-do we want to run any avoidable risk of finding the balcony of the Tower of the Serpent lined with Nris-Pol's men, all carrying great wands?»
There was no answer to that question, so Blade and Bryg-Noz shook hands on their agreement and settled down to planning. Blade also sent off a message to Ye-Jaza, inviting her to dine privately in his chambers. It was a bold reversal of the female-dominated etiquette of the Tower of the Leopard. But Blade knew that if Ye-Jaza accepted, he was one more long step toward his goal.
She did. Blade forgot about planning for the war in a flurry of planning for the dinner. Food, drink, decorations, his own clothing (shorts and boots only)-he chose them all with an eye to creating the most relaxed and erotic atmosphere he could imagine.
He set the dinner for the very next evening. The fact that Ye-Jaza accepted on such short notice suggested that she was already half-willing to do his bidding. But only in minor matters, and the war was not a minor matter. Blade did not like having the whole future of a dimension depend on his skill as a host and a seducer, but there seemed to be no way out of the situation.
So he was relaxed and calm as he greeted Ye-Jaza and smiled down at her. She was easy to smile at tonight. Her gown was the same mass of threads with nothing underneath, but this time the colors were red and black. And the circlet in her high-piled hair was silver instead of gold. Her shoes were high-heeled, also black and red. She was not quite shaking in those shoes as she held out her hand to Blade, but he could see and feel the tension in her.
Her eyes never left his face as the servants brought in the food and the jug of wine. Her tongue kept creeping out between her small even white teeth and creeping back again. She gulped one, two, three glasses of the wine without doing more than pecking at her food. She was obviously doing it deliberately, and Blade knew that she knew what was in his mind. The only question was-what did she think of it?
She settled that matter almost in the next moment. Putting her glass down with a solid thump on the table, she fixed Blade with a stare and a grim little smile. «I know what you want, Blade-Liza. I do not know whether I want it. But I want to decide with a clear head. I will take no more wine. But you will come here, Blade-Liza, and you will try to take me.»
That was not the warmest invitation that Blade had ever received from a woman. But his heart leaped within him at her words. Here was his chance. Now to make the best of it.
They both rose in the same moment, and stepped away from the table. Blade raised his arms, and once more Ye-Jaza moved into them, step by step. But this time her own arms were raised as well. As his went around her, so did hers go around him. She clung to him with surprising strength, but Blade could feel her trembling. She was clinging to him for support rather than in passion.
He ran his hands up and down her back, and this time he did slip his fingers in through the threads. His fingers touched bare skin, smooth and warm and firm. He heard a little gasp. His hands moved down, until they were at the small of her back. They moved farther still, until he felt the swell of her buttocks. The gasp came again, louder. Her arms tightened still more, and Blade felt the small «give» as her breasts pressed against him. Unmistakably, he could feel the hardening buds of rising nipples through the threads.
He bent down and began kissing her, moving his lips slowly from place to place. Forehead-a chaste kiss such as a brother might have given-then both eyes, the tip of her rather prominent nose, both cheeks, ears, the sides of her neck-and finally full on the lips.
Those lips were dry and tight under his for a moment, a second moment, a third. Then they opened, slowly at first, then in a rush into great warm clinging wet blossoms that seemed to want to suck him in. Her tongue came out and caressed his. He saw her eyes roll up and close, and for a moment he thought she was going to faint. Her body stiffened and her breathing slowed almost to the vanishing point. For what seemed like an age she stood like that against him. Then her hands moved, and they did not push him away. Instead they closed on his hands and drew them around from her back to her stomach, Then her slim fingers released his to push the threads aside from her breasts and let his hands in.
They were the breasts of a girl rather than of a woman, in size but also in firmness. Blade's hands each cupped one very nicely, and he felt the surprisingly large nipples harden still further against his palms. Vaguely he wondered what color they would be.
Now her hands were moving again, across his shoulders and down his back, to tighten around him and pull him still more tightly against her. And in that moment Blade knew that he was through her last barrier. Ye-Jaza was listening now only to the call of her body, a body waiting and ready to be transformed in all ways into a woman's.
Blade heard the call of his own body too, and so he picked her up in his arms, his lips caressing her throat as he did so.
She was even lighter in his arms than he had expected. It was no effort at all to carry her to the bedchamber. He lowered her on to the bed, then turned aside to take off his shorts and boots.
He was half-afraid this necessary pause might give her a chance to change her mind, but she did not. When he turned back to her, naked, his arousal jutting out before him like a ship's bowsprit, she was lying where he had left her. Her eyes turned toward him, and widened as they took in his erection. But there was no fear or flinching in those eyes. Ye-Jaza seemed to have retreated into some private world of her own, beyond resisting him-but perhaps beyond feeling him or responding to him also. He would have to follow her into that private world, in order to get the results he wanted.
He lay down on the bed beside her. His hands could roam freely all over her body, and they did so. He spent a long time on her breasts, and before that time passed those breasts were rising and falling with the frantic speed of her breathing. Then his hands darted swiftly down over the flat stomach, to burrow between her thighs. Those thighs spread apart slowly but surely as his hands reached the crucial point, and a long slow shudder racked her body. Not a climax-not yet. Just the reaction to new and uncontrollable sensations, beyond what her mind had conceived or her body had felt until now.
The hair between Ye-Jaza's thighs was a small mat of silky strands, already beginning to go limp with the wetness of her arousal. But Blade did not take that first wetness as his cue to enter. Instead he let his fingers work up and
down her body again, both on the front and the back, gradually peeling away the threads of the gown until she was as naked as he was. Once her eyes flickered down at her bare body, widening in surprise. But she did not stiffen or stop or speak. Instead she shook her head and gave a little whimper that might have been delight, might have been protest. Her pubic hair was so black it was almost blue, Blade noted. And those now outrageously swollen nipples were solid cones of chocolate brown.
Eventually Blade noticed that her gasps and moans were coming almost continuously, and her eyes were riveted on his erection. It was as if she wanted to draw him inside her by the sheer power of her glance. He did not wait any longer. Swinging up on his arms, he positioned himself precisely, knowing that she neither could nor would give him much help. Then as her thighs spread apart again by another reflex, he slid down and into her.
There was a short tugging, then a sudden easing as he broke through. She gave a short, sharp cry, then her tight wetness closed around him, so suddenly that it was his turn to gasp. He knew he had to hold back particularly long with Ye-Jaza, for bringing her to climax would be harder than usual. But knowing this and doing it were two different things. Very different, when she was writhing under him, clutching him with her arms and the more intimate parts of her body.
It seemed forever before that body's reaction came. And when it came, it was with an almost terrifying violence. Ye-Jaza sobbed and howled and clawed at Blade's back until blood ran from the gouges her nails made, thrashing and heaving and jerking under him. With the final shudder of her tormented pelvic muscles her eyes rolled up in her head, and she fainted. It was as if thirty years of virginity had built up a monstrous accumulation of energy, all ready to be discharged in that one moment.
But if Ye-Jaza released all her energy then, she regained it soon enough. And she found more than Blade had imagined she-or any woman-could. It was three entire days before she left Blade's chambers. By that time both she and Blade were a little unsteady on their feet. It had not taken Ye-Jaza more than her first experience of love for her to become an addict. Specifically, an addict to Blade.
Now this was all well and good up to a point, for it gave Blade all the influence over her that he had ever dreamed of having. But she insisted that he promise to return to the Tower of the Leopard after the liberation of the Tower of the Serpent. She wanted him always around her, beside her-and in her.
Again, this was all very well and good, for the moment. But Blade strongly suspected that Mir-Kasa, if she survived the war, would make the same request. He could perhaps look forward to being caught in a tug-of-war between two strong-minded, able, and jealous women.
But that would be after the war. In the meantime that war had to be fought and won. And Blade had accomplished the crucial part of his mission, whatever difficulties he might have landed himself in during the process. Ye-Jaza remained as stubborn and proud toward everybody else as she had ever been. But she was putty in Blade's hands. And she gave her consent to the war against the Tower of the Serpent.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
It was just after dawn, the same time of day that Blade had arrived in Melnon. And the weather was almost the same also-a glowing blue sky overhead, promising a clear day-but the towers themselves were still veiled in mist. The towers-and the Waste Lands of the Tower of the Serpent, where five hundred picked fighting men crouched, waiting.
They had not been picked as carefully as Blade would have liked. But he could hardly argue that the refugees from the Tower of the Serpent should not be allowed to help liberate their home. And three hundred or more of the best fighting men of the Tower of the Leopard should balance any weaknesses among the exiles. There were also the two hundred «underground» fighters already inside the Tower of the Serpent. Blade and Bryg-Noz were hurling against Nris-Pol the strongest fighting force seen in Melnon in better than two hundred years. And it would get stronger still, the moment the pikes that each man was carrying got into the hands of the Low People. The attackers were carrying enough of those pikes to arm nearly every able-bodied Low Person in the Tower of the Serpent.
So they had strength and courage and determination. But skill, and the subtle battle sense that tells you when to strike and when to wait for a better time-did they have these also? Blade looked up at the sun. He would find out in a few minutes.
Blade looked at the Waste Land around him. No one looking casually down from the balcony at it would have dreamed that five hundred men lay hidden there, ready to strike. In fact, even someone looking for the men would have had trouble finding them. All their weapons and faces were smeared with brown-gray paste, and everyone wore faded green. The exiles from the Tower of the Serpent, of course, wore green by right. But it had been a struggle to get the Leopard warriors to wear something other than their own proud-and highly visible-yellow orange. Some of their commanders had even tried to invoke the War Wisdom in protest, until the Council of Leaders squelched them.
Blade could hardly think of a more pointless objection than the War Wisdom. After today's battle the War Wisdom and the Peace Wisdom alike would be shattered into small pieces, regardless of who won the battle. The old mold which had held Melnon in frozen suspension for centuries was about to come apart. Neither queens nor councils nor commanders would be able to put it back together again.
The mist was beginning to burn off under the heat of the fast-rising sun. Blade risked a look upward, to see if any signs of the war party's moving out showed on the balcony high above. He hoped they would hurry. He wanted the hundred warriors well on their way toward the Plain of War before people inside the tower launched their attack. The war party would certainly fight, otherwise. And to start off the day with a pitched battle against a hundred of Nris-Pol's opponents was not his choice.
The figures of men were beginning to appear along the railing of the balcony now. Not very many of them, though, at least not yet. The sacred routine set by the War Wisdom would prevail even today-at least for a few more minutes.
Blade was wearing the usual two swords in their scabbards and a stout club hanging on his belt. He also carried a great wand, wrapped in cloth and slung on his back. That was strictly for the worst sort of life-or-death emergency. Bryg-Noz and Blade alike felt that it would be far better to get through the entire day's fighting without revealing the great wands any more than necessary. Their existence would be enough of a shock to the people of the tower if it was announced peacefully, after the fighting was over. Unleashing them in the middle of the battle could also unleash utter chaos.
More figures were appearing on the balcony. Still no sign of any change from the usual routine, or of any awareness of danger. One man was visibly standing a little apart from his fellows. Then Blade saw the gleam of a lifter dropping down, to swing just in front of the man. The First on the Ground launched himself downward. In a few minutes he was indeed on the ground. Blade heard the familiar words of the formal declaration faintly across the hundred yards to the base of the tower.
Then men started swinging themselves out into space on lifters and plunging downward. Blade felt his own breath quicken, and felt a tension almost radiating from the forty-odd men scattered across the Waste Land around him. They were primarily a diversionary force, to fight only if there was no other way to keep the war party busy. Their main goal was the balcony, and a rendezvous with the main attack.
It would not be long now. More than half the war party was already on the ground, and Blade could count a dozen warriors descending on lifters at any one moment. Sixty, seventy, eighty-the number of men on the ground swelled continuously.
And then there was a sudden soundless flurry of motion among the figures remaining on the balcony, and the glint of dancing swords catching the sun. One of the figures was forced against the railing, and then over it. The dark shape plunged down through two hundred feet of air, his limbs flailing desperately. A small puff of dust rose where he struck the earth. A moment later another came sailing down after it, and a momen
t later two more. One of the last seemed to be wearing the work clothes of one of the Low People, but even Blade's eagle-sharp eyes could not be certain.
But he could be certain that something had gone badly wrong with the attack inside the tower. It was supposed to strike upward from the lowest Levels to the balcony, clear it, then lower the lifters for the men on the ground outside. That way the whole attack would not have to fight its way up the narrow stairs, where the defending warriors would have all the advantages. But the attack was not supposed to start until after the war party was well on its way to the Plain of War. Someone had blundered, and the alarm was up. Blade cursed under his breath.
A moment later someone else blundered. This time it was one of Blade's own men. Forgetting to wait for Blade's signal, he rose from his hiding place and hurled his smoke bomb. This time Blade swore out loud, in a bellowing roar that rolled away across the Waste Land. Plumes of green smoke suddenly spurted up on either side of him in response to the first bomb, as the scouts relayed the message. Blade's straining ears could pick out war cries on the other side of the tower as the main attacking party rose from its cover and moved into action.
He wasted no more breath swearing. The damage was done. Now all he could do was to try to salvage as much as possible-perhaps even a victory. Blade himself rose from cover, snatched a smoke bomb from the sack at his waist, and hurled it as far as he could toward the war party. Thick, oily green smoke gushed up, spreading fast across his field of vision, mixing with the mist to form an impenetrable curtain.
Seeing Blade in action, his other forty warriors joined in. The war party vanished behind a solid wall of rolling, greasy green smoke. The wall spread to either side, and forward and backward as well. Within moments of the first bomb, gentle swirling greenness was all around Blade. With luck, both his own men and the war party would be completely invisible from the balcony. The men up there would have no idea of what was happening on the ground.
