Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Three

What brought Blade awake in the darkness this time was not just the chill of the oncoming night. It was the sound of a battle.

Blade leaped to his feet as he realized what he was hearing. He snatched the robe from the bushes and pulled it on, then dropped on hands and knees to listen. In the still desert night sound could carry a long way, and in this rugged terrain it was hard to tell directions precisely. He could make out the squeals and screams of frightened or dying animals, human shouts, and occasionally what sounded like gunshots.

He found his feet itching to break into a run toward the battle. But he could only tell that the battle was going on somewhere off to the north. It would make no sense to go clashing off totally unarmed in the hope of finding a battle that might be over before he got there.

Wherever the battle was and whoever was fighting, it was short and sharp. Within a few minutes the noise died away. Silence returned, broken only by the skittering sound of a lizard hopping past Blade.

Blade was about to start walking north when he heard the sound of fast-moving hooves approaching from the same direction. He dropped under cover again and stared out across the desert, waiting patiently.

Moments later seven of the desert riders dashed into sight around the side of a hill to the north. The animals they were riding looked exactly like camels, except for smoother coats and longer tails. All seven were moving so fast that the skirts of their robes fluttered out behind them like flags in a high wind. Several of the men carried short-barreled muskets with wide mouths, rather like blunderbusses. Others carried pistols or swords. All seven of them had bulging sacks slung across their saddles or hanging down on either side.

The seven pounded past Blade in an eerie silence, soundless except for the pounding hooves and heavy breathing of their mounts. The reek of hard-driven animals assured him that these were not ghosts, but he would have felt more comfortable hearing war cries or curses. None of the seven gave any sign of having seen Blade as they dashed past. He waited under cover until the last flicker of white and the last thudding of broad hooves on sand faded away to the south. Then he rose and began his delayed journey north.

Now that he knew enemies might be in the area, Blade moved more cautiously. He slipped from the cover of one hill to the cover of the next gulch, spending as little time as possible in the open. Every few minutes he stopped to listen. Silence had returned to the desert, as completely as if the battle and the seven riders had been a thousand miles away.

Blade kept the trail made by the riders in sight but stayed well to one side of it. So he saw and heard the fallen rider long before the other could have seen or heard him.

The man lay on his back on the sand, hands clasped over his groin, twisting slowly back and forth in obvious agony. Occasionally he let out a hissing moan. Scattered on the sand around him were a long-barreled pistol, a curved sword, and the loot from the torn sack lying beside his head. From where he watched, Blade could make out power flasks, smaller bags that might contain bullets, and several small vessels made of the black jade.

Certain that this man could do him no harm, Blade rose to his feet and strode down the slope.

«Jannah be praised,» murmured the man as he saw Blade. «Now I shall die a clean death, and swiftly. I am all crushed within, my friend, so do not think there is anything you can do for me. Take my knife, and put it to my throat. Then Jannah give you a safe journey home, for those of Kane are sure to be out. They-«A spasm of total agony twisted the man's face into a grotesque mask. His jaw clamped shut so hard Blade heard teeth grinding.

Obviously the man took him for another tribesman. Just as obviously, the man was right about being mortally hurt. From the waist down his robe was soaked with blood, and both legs were twisted and smashed gruesomely out of shape. Probably his mount had stumbled and fallen on him, then had risen and walked off, leaving him to die.

There were a hundred questions Blade would have asked a healthy man or even one less seriously hurt. This man was dying, and dying in agony. He deserved what he was begging for. Blade bent down and drew the man's dagger from the blood-soaked sash. The man's eyes flickered upward and met Blade's; the pain-twisted mouth formed a faint smile.

«Jannah bless you and give you many sons, my brother. And when Kano is ours, may many of their women-ah, for the love of Jannah, strike!» as new pain tore through him. Blade raised the knife and struck downward, through the robe and between the ribs, expertly seeking out the heart. The man's body stiffened again, then relaxed for the last time. Blade gently pressed both eyelids shut, crossed the man's hands on his chest, and stood up.

Now there were weapons that the dead rider would never need again. Blade picked up the sword and swung it experimentally. It was about three feet long, with a heavy curved blade and a silver-mounted hilt, clearly at its best when swung from the back of a camel or a horse. If Blade had seen it in Home Dimension, he would have called it a scimitar. He stuck the sword and dagger as securely as he could in his sash.

The pistol was a long-barreled wheel lock that would have been nothing unusual in the seventeenth century. As old-fashioned as it was, that long barrel would make it formidably accurate at close ranges. It seemed to be loaded and working. Blade added it to his sash. Then he pulled the hood of the dead man's robe over the bearded face, turned, and once more headed north.

He still kept the trail of the riders in sight, but was even more careful about keeping under cover. The next man he met might not be helpless or dying. Or there might be thirty men instead of one any or all of them ready to shoot or slash first and ask questions afterward. There was very little Blade did not know about staying alive while walking into the middle of a war. That was one of the reasons why he was still alive.

Blade walked north in the desert silence for at least an hour. Once he thought he saw the silhouettes of riders on top of the next hill. A closed look showed him only a cluster of unusually tall bushes, their outlines twisted by shadows. Another time he found three carved jade figures of full-bodied women that had slipped from some rider's sack of loot. Otherwise he might have once again been moving across a desert that had always been empty and always would be.

Blade was beginning to wonder when the sky would start showing signs of dawn, when he heard a long, high-pitched, bubbling cry from beyond the next ridge. It was answered by several more of the same. He stopped, then covered the last half mile in a slow, stalking crouch.

What he found was the scene of a massacre rather than a battle. The narrow valley below him offered good footing for heavily loaded pack camels. It also offered a perfect site for the ambush the white-robed riders had carried out with superb skill. At least twenty men in dark trousers and cloaks lay sprawled dead on the ground. There were enough detached arms, legs, and heads lying about to make it hard to count exactly. Thirty-odd pack camels lay among the men, throats laid open with scimitar slashes, their packs hastily stripped off and torn apart. A dozen or so more camels wandered aimlessly up and down the valley, calling to each other and occasionally nuzzling a body.

Blade scrambled down into the valley, sword in one hand and drawn and cocked pistol in the other. The closer he got, the worse things looked. Blade was hardened to grisly spectacles, but the sheer savagery of what had happened here impressed itself powerfully on him. He did not wince or become sick to his stomach. He did find himself looking over his shoulder more often than before.

The way the bodies lay told Blade a good deal about the attackers' plans. Their first target had been the leaders and the rear guard, all of whom had been picked off in the first moment and perhaps by the first volley. Leaderless, panic-stricken, uncertain which way to turn, the caravan had stopped in its tracks. Then the riders had swept in to finish the work at close range with steel and lead, slashing and shooting at men too paralyzed with surprise and fear to either fight or flee. With the men down, the slaughter and looting of the pack animals began. It went on until the riders had taken all they were looking for, or at least all they could carry off.

They must have been looking for guns and ammunition, among other things. Not one of the dead had a gun by him. Pistols and powder horns were scattered around several torn packs. All had been smashed or cracked, as though the riders had been determined to make useless what they couldn't carry away with them.

Three of the robed desert riders lay dead among their victims, and two more and their mounts lay sprawled on the opposite side of the valley. They too had been stripped of their guns. The fight hadn't been completely one-sided. But Jannah's worshippers had still brought off a notable victory tonight.

Blade walked slowly up and down the valley, not quite sure what to do next, trying to look at the bodies as little as possible. Some of the shooting had been pointblank work with the heavy blunderbusses. Too many of the bodies had heads blasted to pulped bone and flesh, or chests and stomachs blown up and trailing bloody rags of internal organs across the sand.

This valley would be a paradise for the vultures and the insects when the sun rose.

By that time Blade knew he was going to be elsewhere. He moved up to the head of the line of bodies and began searching saddlebags, packs, and the belt-pouches of the corpses. Somewhere in this shambles there ought to be a map or something that would show him the road to Kano, wherever and whatever that was.

From what the dead man had said, it sounded like a city whose people were at war with the riders. It might not be the best place in this Dimension, but it certainly would do as a starting point.

Blade laid down sword and pistol as he searched, to leave both hands free. He kept them within easy reach at every moment, however. Every minute or two he stopped searching entirely, stood up, scanned both sides and both ends of the valley, and listened for any sound that was not of the desert. If anyone else had been drawn here by the sound of the battle, he wanted to see and hear him coming.

The first three bodies revealed nothing. Blade was just starting on the fourth when he saw several of the camels at the east end of the valley start to move. They lumbered up the valley toward him, breaking into a gallop as they went by. He snatched up his sword and pistol and dropped on hands and knees behind a dead camel.

The sound of the fleeing animals died away. Then the sound of fast-moving mounted men floated up the valley. Moments later a solid mass of horsemen came pounding into the valley and started up it toward Blade.