by Джеффри Лорд
The hobbled prisoners slowed the march. It took three days and part of a fourth to cover the remaining miles to Trawnom-Driba. By noon on the fourth day, they were marching up to the city's walls.
Trawnom-Driba sprawled along the bank of a medium-sized river in a rough oval a good four miles long and half that wide. It must have held well over a hundred thousand people.
How «great» the place was, Blade was less sure. Only a handful of the largest buildings were stone or brick. The rest were wood-some of them heavily ornamented, but others only rough planks or rougher logs. Even the wall surrounding the city was made of logs peeled and driven into the earth.
Around the wall ran a narrow, water-filled ditch. It was narrow enough so that a strong man could have jumped across-if the smell rising from the scummy brown water below didn't strike him dead in midair. The wall itself sagged in many places, and was overgrown almost everywhere with tangles of creepers and flowering vines. The wall and ditch together looked just about able to keep wild animals out and keep house-pets in, and that was all. Blade was certain that a hundred well-armed and well-led men could get over or through the wall any time they wanted to.
Dozens of his fellow warriors and hundreds of ordinary citizens came out to welcome Lord Desgo and his prisoners. When they learned who the woman was, they cheered raucously and waved everything from swords and spears to sandals and headcloths.
Blade could understand why. Trawn and Draad had fought each other, up and down and back and forth across the forests of Gleor, for the better part of five centuries. Now Desgo was home, bringing with him the daughter of Draad's own king. It wasn't at all surprising that Lord Desgo suddenly found himself the man of the hour.
The crowd drew aside to give Desgo's party a clear path across one of the wooden drawbridges that crossed the ditch to gates in the walls. Several boys and youths scrambled up the vines growing on the logs. They started plucking flowers and throwing them down onto the planks of the bridge, to make a scented path for Lord Desgo's entry into the city.
One of the boys reached out too far toward a particularly gorgeous blossom and lost his balance. For a moment he hung on with one hand, then the vine he was holding snapped. He plunged twenty feet straight down with a wild scream, bounced off the narrow muddy bank under the wall, and dropped into the ditch. A wave of stench even more ghastly than before welled up from the ditch.
Blade heard the boy gasping and choking as he thrashed about wildly in the filthy water. Quite a number of people turned to watch. None of them made any move to help the boy. Blade felt a chill sensation inside as he looked at the people's faces. He remembered the faces of the men as they raped and tortured Kubona. The people watching the drowning boy wore the same expressions of unholy joy in someone else's agony.
«Ho, people!» shouted Desgo. «We can spare little time for this now. I must pass within and put my prizes in safety.» He looked around. «Has the boy a family or a master?»
Several shouts came in reply.
«Nobody, I think.»
«He's an orphan.»
«Nobody's ever claimed him that I know.»
«So be it,» said Desgo. «I invoke Noble's Right against the Lone.» He took a spear from one of his warriors and raised it, sighting on the boy. As the boy turned on his back, Desgo hurled the spear. It drove squarely into the boy's stomach. He gave a horrible bubbling scream, then thrashed wildly for a few more seconds and sank out of sight as the water around him slowly turned red. Another few seconds, and the spreading patch of red water was all that was left of him. Even then the people went on watching, their expressions unchanged, until the red faded away. Then slowly they made way for Lord Desgo as he led his prisoners into the city.
Inside the walls Blade had even more doubts about whether Trawnom-Driba could really be called «great.» The streets were mostly rutted paths, except where standing water had turned them into stinking mud. Wretched huts, shops of all sorts, larger houses with their own walls, and what looked like temples of palaces were all jammed together without logic or pattern. Pigs wandered about, rooting in the middens and garbage heaps. Occasionally they roamed over to snatch vegetables or fruit from the food shops. Blade found it rather hard to tell where the food shops left off and the garbage heaps began. He didn't blame the pigs for having the same trouble.
The more he saw of the people and what they did, the less Blade liked them. There was a small boy, about seven years old, who came out of a door holding some small animal by the tail. The animal looked like a cross between an otter and a kitten. It was writhing and twisting and squeaking frantically. Beside the shop was a small fire of twigs, burning in a brick hearth. The boy swung the animal three times around his head, then let it fly. It was a good throw-the animal landed squarely in the fire. Its squeaking turned to shrill screams that slowly faded away as Blade moved on down the street.
Blade had never before in his life felt like kicking a small boy the length of a street, like a soccer ball. But he knew that if he had been free and unguarded, he would have been extremely tempted to do just that. As it was, he couldn't even clench his fists or clamp his teeth tight shut. He kept his face expressionless and his breathing regular, walked on quietly, and wondered what he would see next.
The street ended in a rough muddy square that seemed to be some sort of public assembly place. On a wooden platform in the middle of the square two men were being publicly flogged. Blade was not surprised to see that a large and cheerful crowd had gathered around to watch the sight. On the fringes of the crowd several men had set up small stands or carts, selling cakes and fruit.
The crowd broke up as people streamed over to watch Desgo pass. Blade got a clearer view of the flogging. The executioner was a barrel-chested six-footer in a loincloth. His whip had five long plaited strands, and as he swung it Blade could see the glint of metal at the end of each strand.
One of the men was dead or dying. His back was one raw gaping mass of pulped and hacked flesh. Insects swarmed over it and in several places the white of the man's spine showed through.
The other victim was hardly more than a boy. His back was less grisly to look at, and he still had the strength to scream as the whip struck him. Blade wondered what the boy had done to deserve being flogged to death. If he'd spent his childhood throwing live animals into fires, there might be a sort of rough justice in what was happening to him. Blade doubted if he was being punished for anything like that, however. Sadistic cruelty seemed to be as popular in Trawnom-Driba as beer was in London, and just as easy to come by.
The street now wound snake-like through a tangle of close-set huts. Blade couldn't help wondering how many serious fires Trawnom-Driba had each year. In a city mostly wood, a single badly tended cooking fire could burn down half of it.
They came out of the huddled buildings into another square. On the far side was the largest building Blade had seen in the city. It had its own brick wall twenty feet high, with armed warriors walking back and forth on top of it. Beyond the wall Blade could see highpeaked roofs painted in a dozen garish colors, with beam ends carved into dozens of hideously distorted human and animal masks. Even in their art the people of Trawn seemed to cultivate pain and torment.
Desgo stopped and addressed Blade and Neena.
«I bring you to your new home, slaves. Before you lies the palace of King Furzun. What welcome you will find in that home depends much on you. King Furzun has no time to waste with unruly slaves. If you displease him, he will punish you and return you to me.
«On the other hand, if you please him in all the ways King Furzun enjoys being pleased, you will live as well as a slave may until he tires of you: Then I shall take you from him and you may continue to live with me for as long as it is given for slaves to live.» Blade suspected that was not very long. Life in Lord Desgo's power would hardly be worth living, in any case. But for the time being Blade knew he would continue to be as well behaved a slave as possible. Live slaves had more opportunities to escape
than dead ones.
He wasn't sure Neena would see things the same way. She'd continued to be apathetic and numb all the way to the city, not even speaking when Desgo slapped her, drinking her water and eating her food in silence. She'd watched the ghastly scenes at the walls and in the streets with a face that might have been a bronze mask. Now she looked at the palace with the same bleak, resigned expression. Was anything going to register, or had her mind broken under the shock of captivity?
The massive gates of the palace squealed and rumbled open. A score of guards in blue leather tunics and codpieces scurried out, with drawn swords. Desgo spoke briefly to their leader, then stepped back and let them surround his prisoners. Blade and Neena found themselves being herded in through the gates. In the darkness beneath the gate towers, Blade heard more squealing and rumbling as the gates shut behind him.
Inside the walls, the palace seemed to be a labyrinth of twisting alleys and low doors that seemed to neither come from anywhere nor lead to anywhere. The only difference between the palace and the poorer neighborhoods of the city seemed to be that the palace didn't smell as bad.
Eventually the guards led Blade and Neena up to a door of solid square beams set in a featureless brick wall. To Blade's surprise it opened at a shove from the guard captain. Total blackness yawned beyond the doorway, blackness and an almost solid stench of too many things too long dead.
Before Blade could move, four of the guards grabbed him by the arms. The leader drew his sword and in two quick slashes cut through the bonds around Blade's wrists and the hobbles on his ankles. Then all four of the men holding him gave a mighty heave. Blade felt his feet leave the ground, then he was flying forward and plunging down into the darkness beyond the doorway.
Chapter 6
Blade somehow expected the darkness to be completely bottomless. Instead he struck solid ground no more than ten feet below. He wasn't braced for the shock of landing, and sprawled face down.
The ground under him was more of Trawn's universal mud, several inches deep, slimy, cold, and foul smelling.
Blade rose on his hands and knees and spat the mud out of his mouth, then stood up. Ten or twelve feet above his head, he saw a rectangle of light-the doorway through which he'd been thrown. As he watched, several figures struggled into the light. Three were guards, the fourth was Princess Neena.
The guards did not heave Neena out into the gloom like a sack of grain. Instead they took her by the hands and lowered her over the doorsill until her feet were only a few feet above the mud. Then they let go. Neena landed with a squelching noise, staggered, and would have fallen if she hadn't reeled against the wall. She seemed unhurt.
Neena pushed herself slowly away from the wall and straightened up. As she did so, the door above slammed shut with a thunk that echoed hollowly in the thick air of the chamber. For a moment there was total darkness around the two prisoners again, as lightless and seemingly endless as the remotest parts of outer space. Blade heard Neena give a faint whimper of fear or pain.
The blackness lasted no more than a minute. Slowly a faint light crept into the prison, driving back the darkness. It was a pale light without color or warmth, like a winter dawn. It seemed to be coming from above. Blade looked upward, and saw a faint glow creeping through a circle of holes in the ceiling at least twenty feet above his head.
Blade looked at Neena. The princess was standing a few feet from the wall, erect and motionless, her face blank and her hands at her sides. She seemed as numb as ever, making no effort to meet Blade's eyes. He sighed with frustration, then began examining their prison.
It was a simple square chamber, about forty feet on a side and dug about twelve feet into the earth. The floor and the walls up to ground level were bare earth. Above ground level were ten-foot brick walls, with a heavily timbered ceiling on top of that. The holes from which the light was coming were set in the bottom of a large wooden drum in the exact center of the ceiling. Blade suspected that there was more than light behind those holes. The light had come on so fast that someone was almost certainly up there, with ears to hear and eyes to watch what went on below.
Blade lowered his eyes, scanning the walls of the prison again. This time he saw something that made him start-a wooden grating low down in the opposite wall. Behind it was blackness.
Slowly, trying to give the impression that he was wandering aimlessly, Blade drifted over toward the grating. When he'd reached it, he sneaked a quick look at the ceiling. He might-just might-be outside the angle of vision of any of the holes. Or he might still be visible, but not clearly enough for the observer above to realize what he was doing. It might be a foolish risk to try anything with the grating this soon. It would be an even more foolish risk to sit around doing nothing to find out what might lie in the darkness behind it.
Blade bent down and looked carefully at the grating. It must have originally been designed to open-on one side were rusted hinges. It had been sealed shut around the edges and the lock removed. Several of the bars also looked as if they had been broken out and replaced over the years.
Blade sat down in front of the grating so that his body hid what he was doing from anyone looking down from above. Slowly he pulled on each bar, testing it. He didn't try to break the bars themselves. They were made of a dark wood as heavy and nearly as tough as wrought iron. Instead he tried to loosen them from their sockets.
Bit by bit he began to feel a little play in one of the bars. He concentrated on that one, pushing and pulling with all his strength. Sweat began to stream off him, plowing lighter paths in the dark mud that covered much of his skin.
Suddenly one end of the bar popped out of its socket, with a shower of dust. Blade now had more leverage. He forced himself to work slowly and quietly, until suddenly the other end of the bar was also free. Then he heaved, and the rotted cords that bound the bar in the middle also gave.
The missing bar left a gap barely wide enough for Blade's head, let alone his massive shoulders. But it gave him more room to work on the others. Three more bars went quickly, and there was an opening wide enough for Blade to squeeze through. He looked back across the prison chamber. Neena was now sitting down where she'd been standing. Her face was as expressionless as ever. Blade sighed and carefully pushed himself through the hole in the grating. He was bruised and sore by the time he found himself in the dark tunnel on the other side.
As his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, Blade saw that the tunnel was not absolutely black. Far away-so far away that it was impossible to even guess the distance-he sat two faint patches of grayish light, one above the other. Blade smiled. Perhaps there was some other explanation. But from here it looked very much as if somewhere far down the tunnel was an opening to the light and air above.
Blade crawled forward into the darkness. He held onto one of the loosened wooden bars as he moved, using it to probe the way ahead. After only a few yards he felt the floor of the tunnel sloping downward. He moved on more slowly, occasionally pausing to feel above and to either side of him. The tunnel's cross section was roughly square, about four feet on a side. The walls were plain earth, but solidly packed and surprisingly dry. This tunnel had been dug a long while back. Blade wondered how many prisoners had found their way out through it.
Gradually the mouth of the tunnel faded to a pale, dim square incredibly far behind him. The gray light ahead seemed only a little closer. All around him were darkness and the smells of earth and air that never saw the sun.
His hand came down suddenly on something hard. He drew back, then felt cautiously. It was a human rib cage. A little exploration by touch turned up skull and leg bones. He didn't feel like looking for anything more. The bones were totally fleshless, and as dry as anything could be down here. Like the tunnel, the bones had been here for a long time.
Blade crawled past the bones and on into the darkness. It was now impossible to tell what lay around him except by feel. Blade moved on still more slowly, feeling his way before each movement.
Blade got down on his stomach, wormed his way forward until he lay on the very edge of the gap, then reached out as far as he could. He swept the bar up, down, and sideways, without meeting anything but air.
Damn! The gap might be fifty feet wide. It might also end five inches beyond the end of his probing bar. There was no way to tell, and there wouldn't be any unless he could bring some light down here. But how to do that?
Perhaps he could climb down one side of the gap, across the bottom, and scramble up the other side? It would not be impossible to kick hand- and footholds in the earth, although it would take a while.
Moving as quickly as he dared, Blade scrambled back to the skeleton. He picked up one of the bones, then crawled back to the gap. He had to find out how deep it was before he risked starting a climb down into it. He held the bone out at arm's length, then let it fall.
He heard a faint whisper of air as the bone dropped down into the blackness. It fell for a long time, gradually fading away. A still longer time after that came a faint, incredibly distant thump as the bone landed. It must have fallen close to three hundred feet.
Blade swore to himself. Climbing down one side of the gap and up the other had been a good idea, in theory. It was not going to be a good one in practice, not if losing his grip meant a three-hundred-foot fall. He understood now why the tunnel was still there and so easily accessible from the prison chamber. All it was good for was a quick way of committing suicide. Blade wondered how many prisoners had done just that, and how many sets of smashed bones lay far below in the darkness.
Slowly he turned around and started crawling back toward the chamber. So one way out was blocked. Well, there would be others to be found, or if necessary made.
