by Джеффри Лорд
Finally, there were the Houses of the Iron Flower, the barracks of the fighting Hashomi. Blade was allowed to enter one of these and look around-with an escort of twelve grim-faced Hashomi, led by the Master himself.
The daily life of a sworn Hashom was thoroughly Spartan. Each had a room to himself, but it was no more than a stone cell ten feet on a side, with whitewashed walls, a tiled floor, and a ceiling of rough-hewn beams black with age. The only furnishings allowed were a thin sleeping pallet with two blankets, a water jug, and a plain chest of polished wood to hold clothes and weapons. A Hashom could use his cell for sleeping or meditating. Everything else-eating, bathing, answering the calls of nature, and above all training and exercising-was done communally.
They took Blade to one of the communal dining halls and let him sample the food being prepared for the evening meal. The food was. . well, it existed, and presumably there was enough of it to keep the Hashomi from dying of starvation. It had no other virtues that Blade could discover. A Home Dimension mess sergeant who served up food like this would be court-martialed-if he wasn’t lynched on the spot by the men who had to eat what he prepared.
The Hashomi trained, exercised, and meditated at least fourteen hours a day, every day of the year except on certain religious festivals. They drank nothing stronger than water, and they were allowed sexual intercourse no more than once a month-if they had conducted themselves well during that month.
«What is bad conduct, according the the laws and customs of the Hashomi?» asked Blade.
There were a thousand different things for which a Hashom might be punished-talking during the hours of meditation, taking more than his share of the food, crying out or giving other signs of pain during weapons training. A long and dreary list that in Blade’s mind added up to a thoroughly grim way of life. The Hashomi were dedicated, but Blade wondered how many of them, after years of such dedication, were entirely sane.
After ten years without any serious misconduct a Hashom might become a Treas-one of the leaders who wore the blue tunics and were entrusted with the drug-laden staves. For a Treas some of the rigorous discipline was slightly relaxed. He could drink weak beer four times a year, have a woman as often as once a week (if he hadn’t given up sex entirely, as the average Treas did), and spend one day a month outside the Houses of the Iron Flower, with no one to give him orders or judge his conduct.
Blade suspected that last privilege was the one most valued. He knew that if he’d spent ten years under the iron discipline of the Hashomi, he would have gladly given his right arm to have one day a month entirely to himself.
A Hashom normally entered the Houses of the Iron Flower at the age of fourteen. He seldom left alive before he was sixty, and then only if he’d rendered exceptional service to the order or become disabled in honorable battle.
This did not mean that the ranks of the Hashomi were top-heavy with worn-out graybeards. Far from it. Blade knew certain Oriental martial-arts teachers who, in their sixties, had been able to mop up the floor with opponents young enough to be their grandsons. Old age was always as much in the mind as in the body.
Those Hashomi who had reached the rank of Treas were often admitted to the Ephraimini, and spent their last years cultivating and processing the handr and performing the burial rites over their former comrades. There was a good deal of burying, for as the Master said, «Like fish drawn from the stream onto the bank, the Hashom who leaves the Houses of the Iron Flower often leaves the only place where he can exist.»
Blade could hardly think of a sadder end to forty-odd years of dedicated self-denying service and constant danger. He couldn’t help feeling that those Hashomi who died in training accidents or in battle were lucky. He was also sure of one thing: he would choose almost any form of death rather than life as one of the sworn, drugged, and disciplined Hashomi.
Blade understood much more about the Hashomi after his visit to the Houses of the Iron Flower, but there were still several mysteries. What did the Hashomi do with their hard-earned, lethal skills, for their friends and against their enemies? Who were their friends (if they had any), and who were their enemies? Blade was certain that Dahaura was considered an enemy, but why and what were the Hashomi fighting against?
Finally, where were many of the Hashomi? The Houses of the Iron Flower were square, squat buildings of stone blocks, with iron doors cast in the shape of a handr flower-thus their name. There were only enough of them to hold the five thousand Hashomi of which the Master spoke so often. Yet nearly half the Houses seemed to be empty. Doubtless some of the Hashomi were guarding the valley, like the men Blade had fought. Still, more than a thousand of them must be completely gone from the valley. Where had they gone; and why? Dahaura? Perhaps, but that was only a guess.
Blade was certain of one thing. The Hashomi were approaching a great moment, perhaps a crisis, in their history. The Master dropped too many hints of that for Blade to have any doubts on the matter. The Master was willing for Blade to know how valuable his assistance could be to the Hashomi, even if not precisely why.
Blade didn’t blame the Master. In the man’s position he would have done the same thing. It did mean one more mystery about the Hashomi that he would have to explore on his own, with the danger of discovery nipping at his heels.
It was not just curiosity that now drove Blade. Now he considered himself an enemy of the Hashomi. To be sure, he would not seek to destroy them entirely, even if by some chance he acquired the power to do so. That was not his affair. He would do almost anything to keep them from extending their power and their grim way of life beyond their home valley.
Unfortunately he had no idea of how to do this. He couldn’t safely do much until he was out of the valley, yet he had to stay there until he’d learned a good deal more. It was a familiar dilemma, one that every secret agent faced a dozen times in his career. To learn what you needed to know, you had to expose yourself to so much danger that you might not live to pass on or use what you’d learned!
Blade was undressing for bed one night a few weeks after the testing when he heard a faint tapping on his door. The door could not be locked, so he shifted position until he had the bed between him and the door. He pulled out the knife he kept under his pillow, crouched beside the bed, and called softly.
«Come in.»
The heavy wooden door slid back on its greased rails, and a robed figure was silhouetted against the dim light in the hallway outside. Blade saw that it was small, slim, with a long, bound tail of hair trailing halfway down its back. One of the women of the hospital staff, apparently. Was she old or young, and, in any case, why was she paying him a visit in his room at this hour? There was nothing written down to prohibit it, but there was nothing written down to prohibit a great many of the things for which he’d seen men and women severely punished. The woman was risking dismissal for certain, perhaps a flogging and branding.
The woman stood motionless in the doorway. Blade realized that she was waiting for him to let her come in. He was putting her in danger every minute he made her stand in the open doorway, visible to anyone who might pass along the hallway.
«Come on in, I said,» repeated Blade, gesturing urgently. The woman nodded, heaved the door shut, and approached Blade. He picked up the oil lamp on the floor beside the bed and held it out in front of him as the woman approached the bed.
Blade now recognized her. She was one of the younger women whose eyes had followed his comings and goings with interest. In fact, she was the only one he knew by name. Her name was Mirna, and she seemed to be a leader among the younger women. It was hard to judge her age, but she was certainly no fresh-faced girl.
«Welcome, Mirna,» said Blade. «I have only water to offer you, but-«
She laughed softly, and her face twisted into a wry smile. «You need not tell me how little there can be of hospitality, here in this valley. But you can make me welcome, with only water or indeed with no drink at all. I am not thirsty.»
She sat down
on the bed, pulled her bound hair around over her shoulder, and began undoing the bindings. Slowly she worked at her hair, until it flowed down freely. Like most of the women of the valley, Mirna was dark-haired, but her hair was so black that it held distinct tints of blue. She shook her head, and the hair tossed in a cloud that framed her narrow olive-skinned face with the prominent arched nose. Blade found that he wanted to stroke that hair, feeling its silkiness on his skin, and then move on to stroke Mirna’s face. He also suspected that Mirna would not object. Blade was an experienced man who seldom failed to detect a willing woman, and a lusty man who seldom turned one down unless there was a very good reason to do so.
There might be a reason now. Was Mirna coming to him out of desire for him, or on the Master’s orders, to surround Blade with scandal? That could give the Master a perfect excuse for breaking his agreement with Blade and having him drugged or slain.
On the other hand, the scandal the Master could spread would be nothing compared to the scandal Mirna could cause, if she felt herself rejected and humiliated for no good reason. Blade had no desire whatever to find himself considered an enemy by any of the women of the valley.
Mirna now ran her fingers through her hair, tugging and combing, wincing as the knots and snags came out. Her eyes seldom left Blade’s face, except to run up and down his body. He was barefoot and wore only a pair of the baggy Hashom trousers, leaving his massive torso with its display of muscles and scars entirely bare.
At last Mirna seemed to finish with both her hair and her examination of Blade. She wore a plain gray robe, belted in at the waist with a knitted sash of black wool. The garment barely hinted at any female curves underneath. Women’s garments in this valley seemed to be about as stylish as flour sacks.
Mirna’s hands closed over the knot in the sash, and Blade felt a sudden tightening in his loins and a dryness in his throat as her fingers went to work on the knot. He’d been living without women far longer than he ever did by choice.
He still did not let desire rise to swallow his judgment. He continued to stand by the bed, the knife in his hand, as Mirna finished unknotting the sash. He watched as she rose to her feet, the robe drifting open to give tantalizing hints of beauty underneath. Now she shrugged the robe from her shoulders. It whispered to the floor and she faced him across the bed, gloriously naked.
There was a faint hint of perfume in the air of the room now that it could play freely over all of Mirna’s body. Blade saw that the nipples of her delicately rounded breasts were darkened with some cosmetic. The dark triangle of hair between her thighs had also been rubbed with something that gave it a silvery sheen in the dimly lit room.
Slowly she raised her arms above her head, which gave her breasts new and fascinating movements, then slowly turned her back to Blade. He found his eyes drawn to the line of her spine where it emerged from under her hair, downward to the cleft between her firm buttocks.
Blade’s eyes were not the only part of his body moving now. He pushed his trousers and loinguard under them down his legs, and stepped around the bed as naked as Mirna. She stepped away from the bed without turning around. He came up to her from behind, burying his face in her hair, smelling its perfume, while his hands went around her and cupped her breasts. The solid warmth of her buttocks nestled against his groin, and it was like a caress. Suddenly warmth was flaring up in Blade, and his hands tightened on Mirna’s breasts as her nipples thrust out hard against his palms.
They stood there for a long moment, in a flare of desire so intense that neither wanted to move apart for fear of losing it. Somehow their minds told their bodies that they had to move, if they wanted to reach the goal they both now desperately sought. Mirna turned toward Blade, standing on tip-toe to raise her lips to his as his arms locked around her and lifted her.
There was a moment when it seemed that Mirna would insist on Blade taking her then and there, as they stood by the bed. But her desire lifted her high, and Blade’s arms lifted her higher. He picked her up and held her in his arms as easily as a child while his lips caressed her breasts. Then he turned and lowered her gently to the bed. The leather straps that supported the thin mattress groaned under Blade’s weight as he lay down beside her. He ignored the sounds. Like all the buildings of the Hashomi, the hospital had thick walls. He could play trumpets, set off firecrackers, or make love to Mirna as passionately as they both wished without anyone in the next room being much the wiser.
Mirna clutched at him furiously, arms and legs thrashing. Then she maneuvered him over on his back, straddled his thighs, and dropped upon his massively swollen and upthrust manhood. She bent forward, and her hands clutched Blade’s dark hair as her inward warmth and wetness gripped his swollen flesh. Her hands gripped so hard that pain stabbed Blade for a moment. Then the pain was gone, and only pleasure remained, swelling slowly and then not so slowly as Mirna began to move upon him.
She moved in more different ways than Blade would have thought possible for any one woman. Sometimes she bent far backward until her hair brushed his ankles, sometimes she stopped moving altogether and sat bolt upright, motionless except for the rise and fall of her breasts. Did she do that to prolong her own desire or Blade’s? It was impossible to tell, and in the end it was a question with no meaning.
Suddenly she bent far backward, and Blade could both see and feel the twisting and tightening of her pelvic muscles. Then she bent as far forward, with a small scream that turned into a long tearing gasp, and her teeth clamped down on her lower lip until Blade could see drops of blood.
Then he could see nothing, for the room became even darker and seemed to vanish in a swirling blue haze. He was conscious only of a blaze of sheer ecstasy in the middle of that blueness, as he found his own release. He thrust his own hips upward, until Mirna was tossed about on top of him like a chip of wood on top of a wave. His own breath came out in a long groan that turned into a hiss as his lungs emptied. Then his hands groped for Mirna, ran up and down the smooth, sweat-slick back, and drew her against him as both of them relaxed.
The relaxation lasted only moments. Somehow Mirna found enough strength to lift herself off Blade. She half-rolled, half-fell off the bed and for a moment held onto the edge to keep from slumping to the floor. Then she rose on shaky legs, and stood looking down at Blade.
She sighed. «Blade, if we had time, and this place was safer-«She seemed to run out of breath.
«Yes,» he prompted her. «If the time and place were better-«
She took a deep breath, and ran her hands through hair that spread damp and tangled all over her shoulders. «No. The time and place have been good enough, for now. You have been given another test, Blade-and you have passed it as you did the test against the fighting Hashomi.»
«Who has been giving me this test besides yourself?» said Blade.
«The women of the Valley of the Hashomi,» she replied. «The women who cannot live as they wish because of the ways of the Hashomi.»
Blade started to laugh at the idea of the women of the valley testing his virility, then sobered. Behind Mirna’s cryptic words was a very real meaning-and perhaps a very real opportunity.
«The ways of the Hashomi?» he repeated slowly. «You think particularly of their ways with women?»
«Yes. Or of their not-ways,» she said, her face twisting bitterly. «They are taught, and exercised, and drugged until they are less than men, as far as the women are concerned.»
«How many women?» said Blade. The opportunity was taking firmer shape in his mind.
«More women than there are men who can help them live as women ought to,» said Mirna. The way she hammered out the words told Blade clearly that he wasn’t going to learn any more-at least not yet.
Mirna bent with swift grace to retrieve her robe and tie it about herself. Then she bent again, and her lips ran warmly and lightly down Blade’s stomach into his groin. He could feel desire stirring again, but before it had time to do more than that, Mirna’s lips were no longer th
ere. Blade sighed. As she said, the time and place were not the best, but still-She laid a hand lightly on his cheek. «Blade, I must go. The women of the valley will hear of this-«
«Not the men?»
Her voice hardened. «They keep their secrets from us. We keep ours from them.» Again Blade understood that she would tell him no more tonight. «The women will hear, and then in time I shall come to you again.»
«Not alone?» Blade hinted.
She hesitated for a moment, then-
«No. Not alone»
A moment later she was gone, and the door slid into place. Blade lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He suspected he’d found not only willing women, but perhaps willing allies as well. With the eyes and ears of even a few of the valley’s women at his command, his ability to penetrate the secrets of the Hashomi could be multiplied many times over.
Could be. How long would it be before he knew for certain?
As long as the women want it to be, said a firm voice in his mind.
After a moment, Blade was forced to agree with that voice. Trying to hurry one woman was seldom wise. Trying to hurry several dozen was almost always stupid.
Blade turned on his side, pulled the blankets over himself, and drifted off to the easiest sleep he’d had in this Dimension.
Chapter 8
The women of the valley were eager to get Blade’s services, but didn’t forget caution or common sense. It was several days before Blade heard from Mirna again, and more than a week before she led him to his first rendezvous.
Even then Blade was not quite as well-off as he’d hoped to be. It was entertaining to dream of satisfying hundreds of sex-starved women while learning all the secrets of the Hashomi from what the women babbled or moaned. Things didn’t work out that way.
