Guardians Of The Coral Throne

Chapter 8

Blade awoke bit by bit. His head hurt as though an anvil had fallen on it, and most of the rest of his body hurt almost as much. He quickly discovered that both his wrists and his ankles were tied. For the moment he was alive and reasonably healthy. Somebody had put enough value on him to take him prisoner rather than kill him outright.

It looked as though he was going to wind up among the Karani, whether he wanted to or not and whether Tera came with him or not. His jaw tightened as he thought of Tera tumbling painfully to the ground as the first man in gilded armor rode off in a panic. That man had given him a score to settle. Settle it he would if he had the slightest chance, even if he could only avenge Tera instead of rescue her.

Blade writhed and twisted himself into a sitting position. He was sitting on the edge of the forest from which the Riders had come. A long row of Scadori prisoners stretched away on either side of him. Most of them were still unconscious or too frightened to move. Blade saw no one he recognized, and no sign of Tera.

Farther out on the mountainside Blade saw a ragged square of bodies. Black-winged scavenger birds were already circling above as the Karani stripped the bodies. The rear guard's battle had ended as it had to. Toward the pass Blade saw no sign of anything or anyone moving.

Several Riders were ambling back and forth in front of the Scadori prisoners, lances resting casually on their shoulders, drinking from wine jugs as they walked. As Blade watched, they suddenly stiffened, hooked their jugs onto their belts, and swung their lances upright.

The man who had captured Tera and the gold-armored giant were approaching each other along the line of prisoners, from opposite directions. Each moved in the middle of a circle of armed Riders, tanned, scarred, cold-eyed men who looked formidably tough.

The first man still wore his gold armor and would have looked fairly impressive in any other company. He was as tanned and tough-looking as his men, and moved like a hunting animal. But he could not quite match the impression made by the giant.

The man was not quite seven feet tall-only about six and a half, Blade realized, but broad in proportion. He now wore a blue tunic and embroidered black trousers, the tunic opening at the chest to reveal a good deal of fat and even more muscle. The man was entirely bald, but the lack of lines on his heavy-jawed face suggested someone no more than forty. The club no longer swung in his hand, but was slung across his back.

«Ho, Pardes,» the smaller man shouted. «What have you to say to me?»

The larger man smiled, but it was a smile that reminded Blade of a shark opening its mouth to bite. The man had a full set of white teeth, and showed them all.

«Iscaros, I have a great many things to say to you, and I hope that His Sacred Majesty will have a great many more. Your orders were to lead your Riders to the pass and hold it with dismounted archery. You were not to put on a pretty show against a handful of those vermin. We could have trapped them all, but because of you we had barely a quarter of them, and that includes what we killed in the night's battle. Iscaros, you are a fool, and if she herself-«The man broke off, as though he had caught himself going on too far and too frankly. From his highpitched voice, Blade suspected the man was a eunuch.

The man called Iscaros laughed, but it was a laugh no more friendly than Pardes' smile. «She herself will do nothing, you prickless wonder. For I can do something, and go on doing it, that you never have. Besides, why should I lead my men to where they will do all the fighting and dying and then let yours come in and snatch up all the prisoners? Consider the woman I got by riding on in.

«Oh, I will consider her,» replied the big eunuch. «I will consider how you dropped her and no doubt dropped something in your trousers when that woman's master rode at you. I will consider how little use you will get of her, after the one you pant and whimper around hears of her. Oh yes, I will consider much.»

Iscaros' superficial calm cracked. «You fat no-prick, when the time comes-«

«If it comes,» said Pardes in a voice suddenly ice-cold. «And it is true that I have been a eunuch for many years. But I cannot say I have done badly. Having no balls, there is no place my brains can flow down into, the way yours have done.»

For a moment it looked as though Iscaros was not only going to explode into rage but into violence. Bows swung off shoulders and swords rasped out of scabbards as both sets of bodyguards got ready for a fight. Pardes unslung his club and rested it lightly on one shoulder, ready to swing.

Then Iscaros appeared to lose his nerve. His shoulders slumped, and a barked order sent his men's weapons out of sight. «Pardes, you wield a mighty tongue, and so shall it be always. Let us put off this squabbling like children to another time, and divide up the prisoners. I claim the woman.»

So Tera was alive! Blade's cracked lips curved in a smile. He was sure she would do badly in Iscaros' hands. But while she lived, she might be rescued, not just avenged.

Pardes nodded. «On your head be it, as it shall be when Princess Amadora hears of your new captive. I shall claim the man whose woman she was. From the way he rode out and struck down Riders, I would call him neither Scador nor Nessir nor Karan. He seems something new that I want to know more about.»

Iscaros looked dubious. His mouth opened and shut several times before he finally nodded. «Very well. Have him and get what you can out of him, for as long as you can.» Another harsh laugh. «Do not let yourself hope that will be long.»

Pardes didn't seem to consider that a reply was even necessary. Instead he jerked a thumb in Blade's direction and four of his bodyguards started toward the Englishman. They reached him, cut the rope on his ankles with their swords, and dragged him to his feet. By then Pardes had joined them.

Seen close up he again looked seven feet tall. In fact he looked big enough to almost make Blade feel small and weak. But the man was certainly no mere mass of bone and muscle. He seemed to be a key player in some deadly game of intrigue going on in Karan.

«Well, warrior of whatever people you call yours,» said Pardes. «Welcome to Karan.» Again the teeth-baring smile.

Blade could not keep his face quite straight at the phrases. Pardes had no eyebrows to raise, but he would have raised them if he'd had them. His lips pursed, and he raised one slab-like hand to pull at his jowls. «Well, well. So it seems that you understand the speech of Karan. That does make you something new-unless you are perhaps an escaped slave. But that does not matter. What does matter is that you are now mine. By the laws of Karan I am free to wield you as I do this.» He swung the club off his shoulder and swished it through the air, letting it pass within inches of Blade's face.

«You do not flinch? Good. This will be interesting, when the time comes for you to appear in the Arena.» He turned to the guards. «Take him to my compound and see that he is fed.» He strode away, swinging the club like a willow twig.

Blade realized that he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a long whooosh as the four guards started pushing and hauling him away. Not only was the land filled with deadly games, it now seemed that one of the chief players had chosen him for a piece in the games. Would he be just a pawn, or could he hope to rise higher? If he lived long enough, Blade knew he could and would rise. But living long enough in Dimension X was sometimes a problem.

The next morning the Karani army marched down from the mountains with its string of enslaved Scadori prisoners and its own dead and wounded. The bodies of the Scadori dead were left lying where they fell, prey to the sun and the wind and the scavenger birds. No doubt both Pardes and Iscaros thought that the rotting bodies and later the bleached skeletons would serve as a deadly warning to the Scadori the next time they came storming over the pass. Blade was not so sure of that.

At least Degar and Chudo were probably alive. The main body of the Scadori, servants, women, and all, had reached the shelter of the rough ground where the Riders of Death could not charge or even get within archery range. If Iscaros had obeyed his orders, he might have reached the pass before the Scadori archers could settle into position. But he had sought out glory for himself and his men instead. So more than two thousand warriors of Scador marched away safely through the pass before the infantry of Karan could come up to the attack.

Blade learned other things about the battle from overheard conversations among the soldiers. The Karani had been warned of the Scadori attack by several of the mountain tribes, bribed or threatened out of their traditional alliance with the Scadori. Blade suspected the tribes had signed their own death warrants by that change.

As for the sudden night attack of the Karani infantry, that was Pardes' idea. He had contrived to mount them on commandeered farm horses from many miles around, and sent them pounding through the darkness until they could dismount in the forest and move to the attack on foot. That explained why there had not been a Karani in sight in the afternoon, and a thousand or more attacking the camp in the night.

There were seventy-odd Scadori prisoners in the line that marched off, roped together at neck and ankle, Blade marching with the others. Pardes might have his eye on Blade, but the eunuch obviously had too much sense to single him out for any further special treatment. Blade tramped along with the others, naked, barefoot, unwashed, his cuts and bruises untended, his throat baked dry. In spite of the meal served him in Pardes' compound, his stomach was beginning to growl like a cageful of starved lions.

But he started out strong, tough, unwounded, and not despairing of his future in Karan. Most of the other prisoners were in much worse shape, and their defeat and capture had knocked out of them most of the will to live. As their captors drove them along like cattle, the Scadori began to sag and stumble. Each time one went down, the Karani infantry guarding them would close in, cut the man out of the file, and lay his belly open with a sword. It was always a slash across the belly, so that the man lay on the ground shrieking in agony until his strength failed. Sometimes that took a long time, so that the prisoners marched miles farther on before the dying man's cries faded away behind them.

After this happened a dozen times, something new was feeding Blade's determination to live. It was a desire to live long enough to kill a few more Karani. When and where didn't matter. He would quite gladly pick them up by their collars and bash their heads together, or strangle them very slowly with his bare hands, if he couldn't find a weapon. But he was quite certain that at least one Karani was going to pay for every Scadori prisoner left writhing and shrieking on the ground.

After a few days there were no more executions. Everyone still on his feet was determined to stay there until he dropped dead. Some of them did just exactly that. Thirty miles a day on a few swallows of water and half a loaf of coarse bread was too much for even the hardened Scadori.

It was not beyond Blade's strength. There were times when he wasn't sure about that, but somehow he was always able to go on putting one foot in front of another. Sometimes exhaustion, sun, dust, and the sweat pouring into his eyes blinded him so that he stumbled and staggered along. Before too many more days his back was burned raw by the sun and his feet left traces of blood as he walked. But he kept on going.

One night a Karani soldier slipped in through the guards and offered him a full skin of water and large slabs of bread and meat. Blade recognized the man as one of Pardes' personal bodyguard, poured the water on the ground, and threw the bread and meat in the man's face. He would make this march on his own, with the strength that he had in him, without accepting favors from any damned Karani. He would do that or die.

As the prisoners started off the next morning, Pardes himself rode in close to the line, staring hard at Blade. Behind rode his usual companion, a hard-faced officer whose right cheek was a mass of scars above his brown beard.

Blade returned the stare, although it cost him more strength than he could really spare to keep his head up until the eunuch rode off. By now it was all he could do to keep his body upright and moving forward.

That was more than a good many of the other prisoners could do. By the time they reached a large river, only about thirty were still on their feet. None died after that, however. They were allowed to drink all the water they wanted, bathe, cut each other's hair and beards, pick out each other's lice, and generally make themselves look and feel human again. Although the food did not improve, Blade felt his strength returning rapidly. He had lost nearly thirty pounds, but what was left was all muscle and bone and sinew. The soles of his feet were as tough as shoe leather, and he was alert and aware again. The Karani guards were careful to stay at a safe distance from him, and both Pardes and his henchman were unmistakably impressed.

After a few days spent recovering, the surviving prisoners were loaded aboard a large flat-bottomed river galley and began a journey downriver. The days passed, the river widened slowly, and its banks became less covered with forests and more studded with farms, plantations, and towns. The towns grew larger and closer together, and the traffic of barges, galleys, and fishing boats on the river grew thicker. Twice they passed ferries crossing and recrossing the river, propelled by paddle wheels driven by horses on a treadmill. Blade noted all this with interest. Karan had a civilization, no doubt about it. But the smell of decadence and weakness rose from that civilization, even from the small sample Blade had seen so far.

Then at last they came to salt marshes and a tidal estuary so wide that Blade could barely see from one shore to another. Two seagoing galleys came out to join the river ship, and the three rowed on together through the night.

At dawn the next morning Blade at last saw the towers of Karanopolis rising out of the mists ahead. He saw the miles of walls with their hundred-foot towers crowned with banners, he saw the harbor crammed with galleys and sailing ships and fishing craft. He saw the three- and four-storied buildings that jostled each other for space on the five hills inside the walls. He saw the gilded and blued domes of the temples, the square towers of the palaces, and everything else that made Karanopolis the wonder of its world.

The sight of the mighty city did not discourage him. But it gave him a far more vivid notion of how large the prizes might be in the game Pardes and Iscaros were playing. Power over this city and the empire it ruled would be an immense, glittering prize. Men who sought that prize would gladly risk their lives and fortunes. They would even more gladly expend any number of minor pieces-such as unknown Scadori prisoners.