“What’s the matter, princess?” asked Dray-Gon, “you’re not eating well. Are you already discovering that you would rather be home, in your exclusive apartment?”
“It’s a delicious meal,” she answered, smiling at a fellow named Arth-Rin, who had prepared it. “I don’t have much appetite because I foolishly ate a few sweets not long ago.” The young chef of the meal beamed happily, although he himself was having difficulty chewing the stringy meat. He reasoned that royal teeth must be better and sharper than his own. “How do you like the pudding?” Dray-Gon asked again of Sharita, who was forcing herself to swallow the lumpy, burned mess. If he weren’t watching her so closely, she would quickly dump the contents of the bowl into the crevice directly in back of where she was sitting, but Dray-Gon didn’t allow her that opportunity. She smiled at her tormentor charmingly. “Did you prepare this?—it tastes like something you would make,” she asked of him.
“You mean you don’t like it?” he asked innocently.
Sharita glanced at Arth-Rin, who anxiously awaited her opinion. “No, I like it very much.” Quickly she ate all that remained of the pudding, swallowing before she could taste it.
“Since you like it so much, I’ll make it again the next time we’re honored with your company,” Dray-Gon said. “In fact, I won’t forget the lumps either…”
She gave him a hard glare and then rose to her feet, saying she was tired, and would see them early in the morning.
Dray-Gon called after, “We’re leaving at the crack of dawn, princess—the first dawn—so don’t sleep late.”
For an answer, she slammed the door of her wagon. Inside her elaborately outfitted wagon, she quickly bathed and washed her hair, and fell wearily asleep. It seemed she had hardly closed her eyes when someone was rapping on her door, calling out, “Time to get up, princess.”
Hurriedly Sharita dressed and ate a small meal of prepared food, and then joined the men who were saddling the horshets. Dray-Gon was buckling on the saddle of her own special white horshet. “You don’t have to do that,” she said to him sharply. “I can do it for myself.”
Quicker than she could object, he had the saddle off the animal’s back and thrown on the ground. “If that’s the way you want it, as captain of this expedition—appointed by your father—from now on, it’s against the rules for any man here to assist you in anything.”
“My father didn’t tell me he appointed you captain!” Sharita flared, her face flushed and angry.
“Whether he informed you or not, he did name me captain, and you, dear princess, are as much subject to my rule as any other here.” And with this Dray-Gon extended his hand, showing her a crested ring, similar to the larger one the king wore. Sharita paled, then turned to pick up the saddle. It was heavier than she had supposed. Though she had seen it done many times, the effort of lifting the saddle and slinging it over the horshet’s high back threw her to the ground. Quickly she got up and tried again. This time she managed to keep her balance, but she used too much effort, and the saddle ended up on the other side of the horshet, once more on the ground. Behind her, several of the young men were laughing. She pivoted around sharply to see who it was. She couldn’t tell, for all faces sobered immediately.
“If you ask prettily, I may saddle your animal for you,” Dray-Gon said with hardly any sarcasm.
She refused to reply, but stalked around to the other side of the restless horshet, and again picked up the saddle. This time it seemed even heavier, and she had managed to get it quite dirty, and now the seat of her pristine white uniform would be soiled. She tossed the saddle recklessly on the horshet’s back, and somehow, for some reason, this time it stayed. Sighing, she reached under the horshet and found the right strap. Her horshet, Singer, began to prance about, unhappy with her clumsy handling, and her small hands, inexperienced at the task, couldn’t buckle the cinch. “It seems we will be here all day if I don’t help,” said Dray-Gon, pushing her roughly aside. “The clumsy way you put on this saddle will have you dumped off in a ditch later on—and I swore to your father I would bring you back unharmed, or else I would let you end up in a ditch, broken legs and all.”
“Why would my father ask for such a vow from you—when there are ten men here from Upper Dorraine, more dependable than any barbarian?”
“Bad judgment on his part, I suppose,” replied Dray-Gon. “Then too, he may have thought a barbarian like me has more experience at this sort of adventure than any of your upperland dandies.”
Just to the back of her, Sharita heard several men draw in their breaths, as if ready to take offense. She turned to see several of the young men she had known since childhood, squaring off, as if to fight with several of Dray-Gon’s friends. “La-Don,” called Sharita, “come assist me up on my horshet…we have to be on our way.”
The handsome young man came willingly, smiling in triumph as he gallantly assisted the princess up, and at the same time, throwing Dray-Gon a look of disdain. The princess sighed in relief once they were under way, the first crisis averted.
The day was long and tiresome, and grew hotter as they approached Bay Sol. The large, clumsy wagons slowed their progress considerably, so that by nightfall they had only reached the rim of the bay, and there they settled down for the night. Sharita ate her second evening meal with a different group of four men, these from the upper borderlands, and since she had assisted with the meal preparation, this time it turned out slightly better. Two of her fingers were burned, and she had broken three long nails. That night after she was in bed, she studied a cookbook…the first she had ever read, or else she was going to end up skinny as a stick, for her own cooking wasn’t much better than what the men managed to throw together.
Her light attracted someone, for he knocked on her window. “Time to turn out your light, princess, or you won’t be able to get up.”
“Go to bed, Dray-Gon,” she snapped back. “Don’t keep your eyes on me every second of the day, and the night too!”
She heard his soft chuckle. “I give you ten seconds, princess, or else I will come in and turn off the light for you.”
“That is one thing you cannot do, Captain! I have the door locked!”
“Sharita,” he called softly, very close to her window, “I have the master key that unlocks all the wagon doors…”
The count was nine when she snapped off the light, and then she heard his footsteps walk away. Why, her father must have been mad to have named him captain! He was a tyrant! A bully! He gave her absolutely no freedom! No privacy! He treated her like a spoiled, pampered, idiot child!
Such were Sharita’s thoughts as she fell asleep.
Captain Dray-Gon was up early, rousing the other men, and barking commands right and left, for they were still within the unpoliced territory controlled by the many bands of outlaws, and he would have them out of here as soon as possible. “Hitch the horshets to the wagons,” he ordered as one born to be in authority, “round up the puhlets and eat your breakfast.” When all this was done, he called out, “Let’s roll!”
It was then his first lieutenant Raykin, spoke: “Shouldn’t the princess be awakened, Captain?”
“She seemed overly tired last night,” answered Dray-Gon, peering this way and that to see that everything was done correctly, “and there is no reason why she has to ride with us, and leave the comfort of her wagon.”
Again Raykin expressed his opinion: “But she isn’t going to like being treated with patronizing condescension.”
Sharply Dray-Gon cut his eyes to this handsome young man from Bar-Troth, an upperland province. This was the very elegant young dandy he had seen dance most often with the princess at the court ball. With intuitive recognition he guessed that Raykin was his most formidable opponent in the competition to win the love of the princess. The thought scowled his dark brows in a close knit. “Do you know the princess so well and so intimately that you can determine what she will consider patronizing and condescending?”
Raykin grinn
ed in a challenging, snide way. “Her parents and my parents have always been the closest of friends—so Sharita and I have known each other since childhood.”
As the two young men stood there, sizing each other up, each determined to win the same woman’s favor, suddenly from the surrounding hills, came a large booming voice: “Hail there, fool sons of bakarets! I am Sintar, chief of the outlaws. You trespass upon my territory—and I demand tribute if you are to continue on with your absurd journey to speak with gods that don’t exist!”
Dray-Gon spun about, keenly alert as he faced the voice that called, though the speaker was hidden behind large boulders, and he could see no one. “Hail to you, Sintar, chief of the outlaws,” he called back in response. “I am Dray-Gon, captain of this fool expedition to speak with the Gods, whether or not they exist. Step out and show yourself like a man when you make demands of tribute!”
From the hills came a roll of booming laughter. “Step out and show myself, did you say? Do you consider me as large a fool as yourself, Captain Dray-Gon? I have no wish to be paralyzed for several hours—so hidden here behind the rocks you have no target for your weapons to aim at. But believe this, sons of noblemen, you are completely surrounded by my men, and you cannot escape, even with your paralyzing weapons, for just beyond the curve of the hill ahead, we have built a strong barrier of boulders through which your wagons cannot pass without my consent. Turn over to me the tribute I demand, and we will allow you to pass.”
“Name the tribute!” Dray-Gon called, putting one hand behind his back and signaling to Arth-Rin and Ral-Bar, friends of his youth. The two young men from the lowerlands understood his gestures, and quietly, unobtrusively, stepped backward, slipping out of sight behind the horshets all readied for mounting.
“We demand but one thing,” called the outlaw chieftain Sintar, “and we will permit you to pass on. Otherwise, we will rain down on your wagons and animals an avalanche of rocks, and we can slay your horshets one by one with our arrows. So don’t think you can outwit us with your guns and your superior weapons. Primitive weapons can kill too!”
“How can we consider your demand until you name it?” Dray-Gon answered in his own loud voice, and then whispered to Raykin, “When I give the word, be prepared to jump onto the driver’s seat of the princess’s wagon—and drive like the demons of hell are pursuing you…”
“But how can we ride over the barrier of rocks ahead?” whispered back Raykin. Dray-Gon smiled. “I have taken care of that; even as we talk, Arth-Rin and Ral-Bar are readying the disintegrating guns that will burn those boulders into dust.”
From the shadowed hills, again boomed Sintar’s voice: “Turn over to us the Princess Sharita, and we will allow you to travel on your way unharmed.”
All of the young men sucked in their breaths in surprise and shock. Dray-Gon laughed. “Sintar—what kind of men do you think we are? Each one of us would die before we would turn our princess over to the likes of you. But how can we turn over tribute that we don’t have? The princess is not with us, but back at the palace, safely guarded.”
“You lie, son of Ron Ka!” roared Sintar’s voice, from a particular spot that Dray-Gon had located, and watched with narrowed eyes. “We know for a fact that the princess rides within one of those blue wagons! So turn her over to us, and then proceed on your way.”
“I have heard of you, Sintar,” called back Dray-Gon. “You killed a man when you caught him assaulting your young daughter. So you must have some sympathy for a young girl like our princess. And you are not an uneducated man, so you cannot believe the king would be so foolhardy as to risk the life and safety of his only remaining child by allowing her to travel with us. Late last night, the king sent a patrol of palace guards here, and they took the princess with them, back to the palace, so she could be slipped inside and hidden away, and the people will only believe she is with us.”
Silence came back from the hills as this untruth was digested, and apparently discussed. Then, from the hills, Sintar’s strong voice boomed again: “You are a clever man, Dray-Gon—and I don’t believe you! We have our own knowledge. The princess is inside one of those wagons! King Ras-Far would not deceive his people! If he says the princess will go to the Green Mountain, then she will go!”
“Ha!” scoffed Dray-Gon with disdain. “He may be a king, but he is still a man, and a father who cares more for the safety of his daughter than he does for keeping his word.”
Arth-Rin slipped close to Dray-Gon and whispered in his ear that all was ready.
Inside her wagon, the princess awakened to loud voices, and the nervous braying of the horshets, and the panicky rilling of puhlets. When she looked outside a wagon window, all the young men were rushing about in apparent confusion. Hurriedly Sharita drew on a long robe over her short sleeping gown and she left the wagon and ran over to where she saw Dray-Gon clustered with several of his officers. “What is wrong?” she asked breathlessly of Dray-Gon before she recalled she had vowed to herself that she wouldn’t speak, or even so much as look at him today.
He turned to give her a short look of exasperation before he softly swore. “Damn! You certainly timed your appearance beautifully, princess! Just when I had them halfway convinced you weren’t here, you come running out of your wagon! Why couldn’t you have overslept?”
Sharita couldn’t understand the way he blazed at her, or why the other men looked so upset. She took a quick look around, trying to see for herself what was causing so much agitation, while the wind snapped her long hair about her face, and whipped her robe form-fittingly against her body.
Out of the hills roared the voice of Sintar: “Aha! Dray-Gon, you are the deceitful one! Who is that tempting little beauty that runs out in her nightclothes but the princess? What other wench has hair the color of hers? Send her out to us, and we will let the rest of you go unharmed, but if you make an attempt to fire your weapons, we will crush all of you, including the princess, under an avalanche of rocks!”
“Get back in your wagon!” Dray-Gon hissed at Sharita, but she shook her head, defying him, and stood looking toward the boulder that shielded Sintar from view.
“All right, Sintar,” the captain of the expedition called, “this is the princess. Before I turn her over to you…tell me first what you will do with her.” He said then in a low voice, hardly moving his lips, “All of you men prepare to mount, and those assigned to drive the wagons, slip as furtively close to them as you can without drawing attention to yourselves. Sharita, let the wind open your robe so the outlaws will be diverted by staring at you while we attempt to break free of this mess.”
Sintar’s voice sounded again” “Captain, unjust laws made a criminal of me, drove me out onto the wildlands because I killed in defense of my daughter. I sired my allotted three children, and had to leave them and my wife behind, but there are many here who have not fathered one child, and the laws of our lands decree we must live as exiles, without names, without shelter, without wives, or the ability to produce children—for that natural right was taken from us before we were released. So we try to defeat the laws and steal what women we can from the small unguarded cities, and we bring these women back to our caves and force them to submit to us and try to make them love us. But women are a strange breed. They have only scorn and contempt for men who can only plant dead seed in their bodies—and soon they hate us and seek to escape. Those women who try to run are usually caught, and we punish them in the most brutal ways you can conceive—for men without loving women soon turn into animals. That is what we are now: beasts. And when we have that fair and beautiful princess, the daughter of the ruler who has established these inhuman laws, then we will make her pay for every lonely, frustrated, miserable moment we have lived as animals! And when we have used her, and dehumanized her, and made her crawl and beg and plead, we will notify the king we have his daughter. If he wants her back, he will have to change the laws that banish a man to live as we do, as shadows without substance, as beasts without heart o
r soul or compassion.”
Sharita turned to Dray-Gon and clung to him, trembling from head to toe, as he covered her ears with his hands so she couldn’t hear more of the obscenities the other outlaws shouted, speaking of the ways in which they would degrade her.
“Sintar!” shouted Dray-Gon in red-hot temper. “Each one of us will die before we turn the princess over to the likes of you, as I said before—and she will die too, before I will see her so defiled—so what you are asking is death for you and your companions!”
“Will you kill us, Captain?” shouted back Sintar. “If you do, then you too will be an outlaw, and you too will be banished and made sterile! So, do your damnedest to save your princess, and use your ingenious weapons against our rocks, our bows and arrows—but you too, all of you, will be considered murderers, no matter how justified—and you will be sent out to live as we do, and if there is one of us left alive after this battle today, we will tear you limb from limb on the day of your exilement!”
No sooner had the last word left his lips when an arrow whizzed by Sharita’s cheek, so close she felt the breeze. Dray-Gon threw her to the ground and fell on top of her, as Sintar shouted out: “That arrow wasn’t meant for you, princess, for we will take you alive to use for our pleasure—we will kill your captain first!”
A rain of arrows shot out from the surrounding hills, and struck on the ground, or battered harmlessly against the sides of the armorlike wagons. “You see, little one, why you should have stayed safely in your wagon?” whispered Dray-Gon. Then he hastily kissed her pale lips, even as one of his hands lifted and signaled to Arth-Rin. “While the men mount the horshets, you crawl under your wagon, and enter it through the trapdoor underneath—and you stay inside there until I say you can come out again!”
Without any objection, she did this, feeling ridiculous on her hands and knees, but in this way, she wasn’t giving anyone a chance to aim an arrow her way. Once inside her wagon, with the secret trapdoor latched, she opened a window just a fraction to hear what was going on. She heard Dray-Gon order the men to ride like the wind, the drivers of the wagons to use the whips. “And we will go in double file,” he yelled, “and try to keep our animals herded in between, and shoot at the targets I have named, for it will work if we gain enough speed.” He then ran to a wagon across the way from Sharita’s, and swiftly climbed to the top where he could lie flat, partially protected behind a raised shield. “Ride on!” he ordered in sharp command.
Gods of Green Mountain Page 20
