Empire Of Blood

Chapter 3

Suddenly there was no more heat around Blade, only cold. What roared past him as loudly as ever was not liquid but air. He was still moving, but more slowly. As he rolled over and over, something solid struck him, now in the chest, now in the knee, now in the head.

Blade threw out his arms and legs to stop himself. They slammed against something solid and cold and rough as sandpaper. He could feel patches of skin vanishing from his fingers and toes. Then he rolled over the edge of something, fell with a thud, and stopped dead. He took several deep breaths and opened his eyes.

He realized then that his eyes had actually been open for some time. It was just that this time he'd landed in Dimension X on a pitch-black night. As his senses cleared further, he realized that the roaring coldness around him was a strong wind. It had blown him across the face of the land like a dry leaf, into the shallow depression where he now lay. He shifted position, ready to sit up. As he did, he felt the pressure of the belt around his waist and the sheathed knife against his thigh.

Blade let out a yell of triumph. He'd done it again! Once more something from Home Dimension had made the trip into Dimension X with him. Knowledge was growing, bit by bit.-His delight at this discovery drove out the last of his headache and he sat up.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Blade's superb night vision began to pick out details. He was sitting in a shallow depression that ran up and down the side of a steep hill. The hillside was strewn with boulders and rose high above him, blocking off half the dark sky and making the world around Blade even darker.

Blade did not feel like standing, not yet and not in this wind. Instead he shifted position until he was on hands and knees, then crawled slowly up out of the depression.

That move saved his life. As he sat down again, there was a faint rattle, then a series of rumbling and crashing noises from the darkness above. A boulder twice the size of Blade himself came bouncing and rolling down the depression, straight across the spot where Blade had been lying. If he hadn't moved, it would have crushed him to a bloody pulp.

Blade decided that it was time to get to his feet and get out of here, in spite of wind, cold, and darkness, before the hill rolled any more half-ton rocks down at him.

Blade moved downhill as fast as the steep slope and, the uncertain footing would let him. As always when he started moving, he felt his full strength return swiftly. Below him a spreading dark mass curled around the base of the hill, like the sea around a rock on the shore.

Several times more as Blade descended the hill the wind sent boulders crashing down close enough for him to hear them. Soon he could make out the dark mass at the foot of the hill. It was a vast expanse of pine forest, hundred-foot trees bending, bowing, and tossing their long branches in the wind. The forest seemed to stretch away, endless and lightless.

Blade practically ran down the last hundred yards of bare slope and plunged into the shelter of the trees. Up there on the hillside he was exposed to the full force of the wind. He might not die of exposure in one night, but he would become damned uncomfortable! When daylight came he would also be as visible as a bug on a tabletop, never the best situation in a new and unknown dimension. He preferred the forest.

Inside the forest Blade moved slowly to avoid bumping into trees or tripping painfully over fallen branches. He had covered about a hundred yards when he decided to stop before he became disoriented and lost his way. The darkness under the trees was so deep and complete that it almost deserved a stronger name. It was not just an absence of light, it was an almost tangible presence that seemed to passionately hate even the idea of light.

At least the trees broke most of the wind. Only an occasional gust swept down from above, sending its chill breath across Blade's skin and kicking up the dead pine needles that lay inches deep underfoot. High above, the wind moaned and shrieked and roared continuously in the treetops, as if to remind Blade of its presence. Once or twice Blade heard the unmistakable long, tearing cracking and crash of a tree falling, giving up its struggle against the wind.

It was a forest in which a less disciplined man than Blade would have been expecting to meet vampires, ghouls, and witches. It was a forest in which even Blade was not sure he wasn't going to meet bears, wolves, and hermits or woodcutters who might swing axes and ask questions afterward. It would be a good forest to get out of-tomorrow morning, when there was enough light for him to see where he was going. It was not a forest where Blade cared to run the slightest risk of wandering around in circles. He would settle in for the night and move on in the morning.

Blade found a clump of bushes in the lee of a pair of particularly massive trees. Under the bushes the needles lay thicker than elsewhere. He crawled in and began scooping them over himself. They would not be much protection against the cold, but they would be better than nothing. He would not be spending a very comfortable night, and he doubted that he would be getting much sleep. But he would be alive and reasonably healthy, come morning.

He stopped when there were six inches of needles over him. He relaxed, and after that sleep came with surprising speed and ease.

Blade was struggling up from a dream that seemed to be nothing but golden warmth. He shivered as the dream gave way to the cold and darkness around him. Then he opened his eyes, shook his head, and was instantly awake and alert, listening to the sounds of the forest.

They were all there, the same sounds he'd been hearing when he dozed off. But there were new sounds as well. As they registered on Blade's awakened hearing, he sat up, plunged his hand under the pine needles, and drew the knife.

Far away, he heard the clang and thud of cymbals and drums, the occasional faint, thin wailing of a flute, and even more rarely the brassy voice of a trumpet.

The darkness was as solid and the wind as loud as before. Even Blade's trained ears found it hard at first to judge the direction of the music. Gradually he got the impression that it was coming from somewhere off to his left.

Blade's eyes searched the darkness. Was this lonely black forest beginning to make his imagination work too hard? Or did he really see a reddish glow flickering there off to the left, far away through the trees? After a moment, he was sure the glow was real.

It was hard to tell how far this forest stretched or how far beyond it lay the nearest human settlement. It certainly seemed endless and utterly lonely, no place for any sensible people to be lighting fires and playing music in the middle of the night.

So what was he seeing? Once more Blade could not forget that this forest was much too appropriate a setting for black masses, witches' sabbaths, and other strange ceremonies. And people involved in that sort of affair were apt to resent intruders and deal with them drastically.

True enough. Yet if he didn't seek out the musicians and their fire, it might be days before he got out of the forest, let alone found human beings. Blade slipped the knife back in the sheath but left it unstrapped for a quick draw. Then he set off again.

It took him longer than he'd expected to reach his goal. Several times the wind overhead drowned out the music. The fire seemed to flit ahead through the forest like a will-o'-the-wisp. He lost sight of it half a dozen times and once even managed to completely lose his sense of direction. He suspected that he was leaving a trail like a drunken snake's. He knew that if anyone was watching him blundering about, they were probably laughing themselves sick.

The only consolation was that the music and the roar of the wind in the trees completely covered any noise he might be making. Between the wind and the music, the people around the fire probably couldn't have heard him if he'd been approaching them in a tank!

Sheer determination carried Blade through. Eventually he reached a point where he could see the orange-red fire glow flickering clearly through the trees. He set the most direct course toward it he could manage, crouching low and moving by bounds from one tree to another. Whoever the people were, they had probably put out sentries.

The fire seemed close enough to touch when Blade came out on the edge of what was unmistakably a road. It ran in front of him, then curved around to the left toward the fire, which now showed through the trees on the other side. It was not a road that any people able to build anything better would have tolerated, even in this forest. It was barely one lane wide and totally unpaved. With his bare feet Blade could feel ruts and holes a foot deep and rocks the size of his head.

As he slipped across the road, the sound of the music grew louder than before. For the first time Blade heard human voices, cheering and shouting enthusiastically. The beat of the drums grew more rapid and the shouting grew more frenzied. Then suddenly all the instruments stopped as if the ground had opened up and swallowed the players. More cheering followed, along with applause; then that too died away and left the forest to the moan of the wind. Blade crept forward more cautiously than ever, until he could get a clear view of the camp. Beside the road was a clearing about a hundred feet square and on the far side, an enormous pile of roughly dressed tree trunks. In the lee of the pile half a dozen tents of various sizes were pitched in a rough semicircle. In the middle of the semicircle a campfire burned. Beside the tents a score of horses and pack mules were tethered to trees and bushes.

Blade's attention shifted to the people. There were at least a dozen men seated cross-legged around the fire on furs spread on the ground. All wore variations of the same outfit-a short tunic with baggy sleeves and broad trousers bloused into soft leather boots equipped with spurs. Two of the men wore tunics and trousers of material with a high sheen and had jeweled daggers stuck in broad leather belts. The others wore duller clothes, some of them showing patches and ragged edges. Every man had a weapon, either on him or within easy reach. Five held musical instruments-two drums, a flute, a pair of cymbals, and a spiraling horn with what looked like a pearl mouthpiece.

Beside the fire knelt a girl. She was totally naked except for a broad copper bangle around one wrist and another around one ankle. Blade could see her shivering in the wind in spite of her closeness to the fire. Her skin was olive-hued and beaded with sweat, her short hair was a gleaming copper-gold, tangled and damp. It was obvious she'd just been dancing to the music.

There would never be a better time to catch these people relaxed and off their guard, ready to talk first and shoot afterward. Blade rose to his feet and pushed the sheath around the belt, toward the small of his back. He could still draw fast enough in an emergency, but he would not be flaunting his one and only weapon.

Then he spread out both hands in front of him and walked forward, out of the trees and into the firelit clearing.