Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Eighteen

The first thing the new High Chief of the Ganthi nearly did was fall flat on his face in front of more than a thousand of his new subjects. Blade was hot, horribly thirsty, and dizzy from pain and loss of blood.

Catherine chose that moment to faint in his arms, from sheer relief. He lowered her gently to the ground. Then for a while he was much too busy seeing that she was properly treated to worry about his own wounds.

He was also much too busy listening to what she babbled as she tossed and turned on her sleeping mat in the grip of fever and nightmares. He listened very carefully, and he did not like what he heard.

She babbled in Russian, to start with. Blade knew the language well enough to understand most of what she said. She was disoriented, and she thought she was in a hospital deep inside Russia, being cared for after returning from a mission in the West! Then she cried out and clutched at her head and stomach, moaning something about Lord Leighton, J, and a terrible gray monster of a computer.

She moaned and murmured and babbled a good deal more, and by the time she fell into a quiet, healthy sleep Blade knew most of what he had to know about Katerina, who she was, and how she had been sent into Dimension X.

Katerina was a Russian undercover agent. She had successfully penetrated the Project by getting her job as a computer technician. That in itself was going to mean a monumental uproar in Project Security. Probably the uproar was already underway, if Lord Leighton and J were moving as fast as they usually did when the Dimension X secret seemed to be in danger.

Somehow she had been detected and caught. Blade could easily see the logic of what had happened next. The best way of keeping the secret of the Project was for Katerina to quietly disappear. The best way to do that was to send her off to Dimension X. Whatever happened to her, she would never come back to Home Dimension with what she'd learned.

So far so good. But none of this explained how in the name of Whoever ruled Dimension X Katerina had managed to arrive here, alive, sane, and entirely functional! How had it happened? How had half a dozen picked Englishmen died or gone mad on trips to Dimension X, while Katerina hadn't? How had years of searching for someone else who could survive the trip been totally unsuccessful, if Katerina had done it so easily? What had gone wrong?

Blade realized that this trip into Dimension X was sprouting unanswerable questions like an untended garden sprouting weeds. Certainly they were unanswerable by anyone except Lord Leighton and his team of scientists, far away in Home Dimension. There wasn't too much Blade could do beyond observing what happened and staying alive to return to Home Dimension and report on it. It was maddening to have to play such a passive role, but unfortunately he didn't have much choice.

One thing he could do on the spot was do his best to get from Katerina the story of who she was, what she had done, and how she had managed to survive her trip. That raised a knotty question. Should he frankly tell her that he knew who she was, and that she shouldn't waste time with cover stories? Would he learn more, or less, if he did that? Would he be in more or less danger?

He turned the question over and over in his mind for several hours, and decided in favor of telling the truth, as far as he would tell Katerina anything. If she was as good an agent as she probably was, he had to assume that she knew who he was, and that she would be on the alert in any case. She would not really expect him to believe her cover story, which would certainly be lame and full of holes. There was no really convincing way for her to explain how she had gotten here! She would also be less likely to try extracting information from him, if he let her know that he was aware and alert. She would know then that probing him would be a waste of time.

Of course, there was the danger of setting up a total stand-off, in which neither could hope to learn very much about the other. As long as they were both in this situation, however, there wouldn't be too much danger to the Dimension X secret. Blade knew he had to start by protecting that as best he could and letting anything else come second.

There were other methods for extracting information from Katerina without giving any himself. Blade had used those methods before, even on women. He never enjoyed using them on anyone, but he never hesitated when the need arose.

But here in Dimension X, it was hardly safe to proceed to drastic methods. He and Katerina were alone here among the Ganthi, and for the moment they would do better as temporary allies, guarding each other's backs. Threatening Katerina would certainly make her an open enemy, determined to destroy him at any reasonable risk to herself. She would be a formidable enemy, Blade knew. The Russians chose their top agents well and trained them better.

Even if Katerina did not kill him, an open fight between them would leave the Ganthi confused and wondering what was going on. The Ganthi might well decide to end their new High Chief's life. Blade could not afford to risk his own life that way in order to extract Katerina's secrets. Anything he might learn would be wasted if it died with him.

There were also two more considerations. First, Katerina might very well not make it back to Home Dimension, even with his help. She'd made the trip one way, but that didn't guarantee she could make it both ways. If she didn't return to Home Dimension alive and sane, it didn't matter how much she learned.

Second, she was somebody from Home Dimension, even if she was from the opposition. Without some good reason, Blade could not bring himself to simply kill, torture, or even deceive somebody able to survive the trip, somebody who was, by virtue of that quality alone, set apart from the rest of the human race, who was in a way his equal and his comrade. It would be like wantonly destroying a great work of art, to «terminate» or even endanger Katerina unless he had to.

It took Blade several hours of complicated analysis to reach his conclusions, and he was more relieved after reaching them than he had been after some major battles he'd fought. He sincerely hoped that Russian agents weren't going to start popping out of the woodwork on every trip into Dimension X!

It was early evening before Katerina fell soundly asleep and Blade felt he could leave her to have his own wounds cared for. He was careful to wash all of the wounds thoroughly in hot, herb-scented water, and he insisted that the bandages be thoroughly boiled as well. Then he ate a light dinner and returned to the hut where Katerina lay asleep. He sat by her bed as evening turned to night, as drinking and feasting in celebration of the new High Chief began outside in the streets of Thessu.

He was sitting there when she awoke.

Katerina awoke to find that darkness had come down on the town. She felt weak and tired, but clearheaded again. Then she saw the massive form of Richard Blade looming over her in the dim room. She gave a small gasp of surprise, before she realized that he was sitting calmly on the floor by her low bed, looking down at her. His cheek, leg, and ear were freshly bandaged.

He reached over and took her by one hand as he saw she was awake. «Welcome back, Catherine. You had me worried there for a while.»

She laughed. «I had you worried? What do you think I was doing when you were out there fighting with Geddo? Doing trigonometric equations in my head?»

He laughed also. «No, I don't imagine you were. But it's still good to have you with us again.»

«Us?»

«With me and the Ganthi. I am High Chief now, by defeating Geddo in fair combat. At least he had a fair chance.»

Katerina nodded. «Is Stul dead?»

«Yes. They laid his head before me, just before you fainted. We don't need to worry about him any more. In fact I'm not sure that we need to worry about anything, at least not for tonight.»

Katerina heard a particular note in Blade's voice as he said those last words. They made her more aware than before that she was naked under a quilt of woven rushes, and that he was naked except for a loincloth and his bandages. His huge body was perfectly conditioned, and it radiated a quality of power and competence she'd never encountered before. She could not keep her eyes from roaming over that body from head to foot. Nor could she limit her appraisal to the professional sizing-up of a possible enemy. A faint bell-like note of erotic interest was ringing deep in the back of her mind as she looked. There was the sheer physical appeal of Blade, there was the overpowering sense of relief at being for the moment out of danger, and there were other things she couldn't put a name to. She could not help imagining those enormous, powerful arms around her and that wide chest pressed against-

Without a word, Blade bent over, pulled the quilt back, and lay down beside her on the bed. For a moment he lay still, moving nothing but one finger that traced a gentle line along her cheekbone, down her throat, and over the firm curve of her left breast. She shivered and felt the nipple spring erect as the finger passed over it. He saw it and bent over it, his lips warm on her skin. Katerina felt another sort of warmth inside her, a tingling warmth, as though little jolts of electricity were flowing through her.

She hadn't expected this to happen, not with Blade, not after the rape by the Hunters in the forest. She wasn't terribly surprised either, and as the warmth spread slowly through her body, she knew she wouldn't stop. She couldn't even if she wanted to, and she didn't want to. All she wanted now was for Blade to sense what she was feeling and what she wanted, to take her in his arms, to do everything that she knew he could and would do.

For a moment longer Blade's lips and fingers continued their gentle movements up and down her body. Katerina felt the tingle become a continuous pulsing warmth, gasped, whimpered as desire rose in her, bit her lip to keep from crying out at the delicious agony. She tried to hold herself still, but she found her body arching upward toward Blade, her arms reaching out for him, her lips moving as passion drew wordless sounds out of her.

Blade kissed her full on the lips, and she let her mouth fall open and her tongue creep out to play with his as it seemed to search the inside of her mouth. Then he gave a faint groan of pain as he lifted himself above her on his massive arms. She had a moment of fear as she remembered how it had been the last time a man entered her, a fear that Blade seemed to sense. Effortlessly he held himself above her with one arm, while he stroked her cheek with the other hand. Then with a sudden graceful movement, he bent down and gently bit the lobe of one ear. In a moment the fear vanished. Katerina laughed out loud. She was still laughing as she felt Blade sinking down onto her and into her, and he was still stroking her cheek and murmuring gentle noises.

Blade was huge. In the first moment his massiveness was both exhilarating and frightening. Then the fear vanished and the exhilaration rose as she felt that wonderful massiveness beginning to move within her.

Blade rose and fell in a superbly controlled rhythm, sometimes withdrawing almost completely, tantalizing and tormenting her. In those moments she arched herself upward and clawed at his back and shoulders, desperate to bring him back down and into herself again. As other times he plunged deep into her until she wondered that she could hold him. Then she would lock her arms and legs about him, trying to hold him there.

All the while the warmth within her was growing. The little pulses and shocks came more and more often. She gasped, she moaned deep in her throat, she cried out little words in Russian and English, she made more wordless sounds, she felt tears starting from her eyes. She knew that her control was slipping, knew that in another moment she would be a writhing, howling animal.

Her control vanished. She did not know where she was, who she was, what she was doing, what was happening to her. She knew vaguely that the solid body above her and against her was twisting and writhing as wildly as hers was, that the massive solidness within her was jerking and spurting warmly into her. It was a very long time before she knew anything else.

By the time she did, Blade had rolled off her and was lying on the mat beside her, cradling her in his arms. Even then she had only vague impressions of his warmth, the darkness around them, the noises of the feasting and celebrating that floated in through the door of the hut.

She did know that before too long desire rose in both of them again. This time she spared him effort and strain on his wounds. This time she caressed every part of his body with her hands and her lips, straddled him, took him into herself, once again reduced both of them to animals. When she finally lay down on the mat, it was just in time for both of them to fade away into a dreamless sleep.

They slept so deeply, in fact, that they slept right through another earthquake that came in the night.