King Of Zunga

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There were neither sights nor sounds of pursuit all night, and still none when dawn broke over the camp. The Zungans were ready to stop worrying about pursuit. They were cheerfully confident that they would outmarch or outrun as well as outfight any soldiers coming after them. Once more Blade did not try to argue with them, he merely gave his orders. In spite of their high spirits the Zungans obeyed him as well as ever.

Blade leaned against a tree and conjured up his mental map of the area. The best course for them seemed to be heading east. There lay the roads south from Kanda to its satellite towns. Along these roads passed slave raiders heading south, slave coffles heading north, and merchant caravans headed in both directions. The Kandans would not be expecting Zungan raiders to strike there. With surprise on their side, the Zungans might cause uproar, confusion, and destruction out of all proportion to their numbers.

Blade switched off his mental map and faced the warriors. «We go east,» he said. They spread out into their scouting line and followed him toward the faint glow behind the overcast that told of the rising sun.

With the sun almost invisible, it was hard to tell time. Blade guessed it was about noon when the most advanced scout suddenly halted and pointed at the ground in a clearing just ahead. Blade joined the man and frowned as he looked down. The ground was too hard to show goad footprints, but there was no mistaking the swath of crushed and flattened grass. It had not begun to lose color, either. The soldiers had passed this way only hours before.

Suddenly the gray day seemed gloomier than before, and the thin forest somehow denser and more menacing. Blade shook his head. They would have to go back. It would be stupid to plunge on toward the eastern roads if the Kandans were patrolling this far west. The roads still lay a day's march ahead, and now they would have the enemy at their backs for every foot of that march.

Blade gathered the Zungans around him and explained the situation. His own partner protested the loudest.

«But Blade, there is no honor for us in running away from soldiers who passed by hours ago.»

«Where they passed once, they will pass again. And when they pass again, they will be behind you.»

«They will never pick up our trail.»

«Perhaps not. But they might. And then they would call up other soldiers and surround us. We cannot fight hundreds of enemy soldiers, not with only ten men. The east roads will have to wait until the next time we come back. Then we will come with a hundred warriors, and the Kandans will remember our visit for a long time.»

The Zungans still seemed unhappy. So Blade decided that now was perhaps a good time for a lecture he had been planning to give them later. «Remember, each of you will soon be needed to train many more warriors in the new ways of fighting. And soon after that you will be leading them into battle. Consider them as your children and think about your duty to them. Who will teach them or lead them in killing the raiders if you throw away your lives now? It is sometimes a warrior's honor to go away and live, instead of fighting and dying.» If any were still unconvinced, they said nothing as he led them back toward the west.

Blade was no happier than the Zungans about abandoning the raid on the eastern roads. A victory there would have made him a man of mark, and proved the new fighting techniques beyond any doubt. It would have driven home a sharp thrust at the Ulungas and the On'ror. Now all of this would have to wait until the next raid north. And when that would be, not even the Sky Father knew. Blade did not like finding Kandan patrols this far west. It suggested special patrols, laid on to find or catch-what? Him and his men? He liked that idea even less.

They retraced their steps for more than an hour, with no more signs that they did not have the whole countryside to themselves. He drove the Zungans along at a mile-eating pace-not that any Zungan warrior ever needed to be driven to cover ground fast. By mid-afternoon the overcast was beginning to break up and the sun began to blaze down on the marching men. The improved weather lifted Blade's spirits. He began to relax and enjoy the steady rhythm of his feet on the hard ground.

Then a flash of light from the north struck his eyes. He stopped, turned, stared in that direction. Another flash came, then a series of them. With a chorus of squawks and a flurry of wings, a flock of large pink birds shot up into the air, also from the north.

Blade snapped to full alertness. The signs pointed unmistakably to a force of soldiers off to the north. His jaw set. There was only one way to find out. He motioned the Zungans to gather around him. Pointing to the north, he said, «I think there are more soldiers there. I am going to go and find out if there are too many to attack or not.» He pointed to his partner. «You come with me, but keep well behind me. If there are only a few soldiers, we will call the others forward and fight them. If there are many, we will run back and warn the others, and we will all run.» The Zungans' faces fell. Blade glared at them. «Remember what I said about warriors who must sometimes choose to go away and live for another day?»

«Yes,» several muttered. «But to run away from an enemy in plain sight?»

«If it is the only way to stay alive, you will do it. Or do you want the Ulungas to rule in Zunga forever?» He thought of adding his suspicions of the On'ror. But this was not the time or place for that. The warriors reluctantly fell into silence and drew back under cover. Blade nodded to his partner and led the way.

Blade guessed that the line of trees where he had seen the flashes was about a hundred yards north. The ground between was open and flat, with no cover large enough to hide a rabbit. Blade felt painfully exposed as he stepped out from behind the trees, even though he knew that neither the Kandans nor the Rulami used the bow.

Step by step he moved forward, with his partner keeping parallel to him about twenty feet behind. Every second he expected the bushes to crackle and crash and spew out armed men. Now he had covered half the distance. There was definitely something behind the trees; he could see more metallic glintings. He could hear nothing, nor see any movement. This suggested that the men ahead must be trained soldiers, the men of Rulam. He was close to simply turning about and retreating. The men of Rulam would not be as easy a proposition as the Kandans had been.

Then something finally moved in the woods. Not a mass of armed men pouring out into the open, but a long heavy rope with a weighted loop at the end. It soared high into the air, uncoiling as it flew, high over Blade's head, straight down onto the Zungan behind him and around the man's neck. As the noose descended, the rope went tight, and the Zungan was yanked off his feet.

Blade drew his sword and leaped at the rope. The sword flashed up, came down, rebounded from tough fibers without cutting through. He raised the sword again. As he did so, a second loop arched out of the bushes and thudded into place around his own neck. And then the bushes did spew out armed men, dozens of them, the sunlight gleaming on their polished armor. Their shields bore red circles — the badge of Rulam.

In their haste to spring the trap, the Rulami forgot to jerk Blade's rope tight. Dropping sword and spear to leave both hands free, he clawed it from around his neck, then snatched up his weapons before the soldiers could reach him. Sunlight flashed off spearhead and sword blade as he flourished them overhead, roaring out, «Warriors! Remember your honor! Flee and fight again! I will delay those-!» He did not know if the Zungans heard him or not, but he knew that if they got a good headstart, they would be safe. No armored soldier in any army in any dimension could run down a Zungan warrior moving at full speed. Then he was suddenly too busy with his own fight to pay any more attention to his scattering followers.

As the Rulami formed a circle around him, Blade discarded his sword. Then he yelled, «Come on, you cowards. There's only one of me, there's forty of you. Or is one man of the English equal to forty of Rulam? I've heard a lot of bad things about your city, but nothing that bad. You wear iron on your heads to keep your brains from falling out. Do you wear it on your stomachs to keep your guts from falling out? Maybe you need some iron inside your guts, not outside? Well, I'll give it to you!» And without pausing for breath, he charged.

The two men in front of him jerked up their shields to meet a straight thrust. Blade's spear whirled up and over. The weighted butt crashed down on one polished helmet, then snapped sideways into an exposed cheek. The two men flew in opposite directions, but instantly the gap in the Rulami line was closed by two more.

These did not wait for Blade to come at them. He had to back away into the center of the circle as their swords flickered and jabbed at him, waiting for an opening. It came. His spearhead darted in under one shield, laying open a thigh. He heaved upward on the shaft, sending the man sprawling backward, then swung the spear sharply to the right. It rode up across the second man's shield, caught his helmet, flipped it high into the air. The spear whirled end for end in another lightning stroke, and this time the butt end came down on an unhelmeted head.

Blade did not wait for the man with the smashed skull to hit the ground. He shifted rapidly left, then right as two men charged him from opposite sides. The spear shot out level as he spun about. Like a runaway revolving door the shaft caught both men and knocked them sprawling. One's helmet came off as he fell. Blade stamped down on the exposed neck and felt bone give way. At the same moment he drove his spear down into the other man's face, smashing it between the teeth into the brain.

He realized a moment later that he should not have taken the time to do that. An entire section of the circle charged in against him at once, half a dozen men at least. He should not waste time killing men who were down. His reason told him that, but his blood fury told him something else. Now that he had these slavers within killing range, he wanted to kill as many of them as possible before they killed him.

He retreated hastily before the advancing section. As he did so, he realized that there were just enough of them to get in each other's way. Blade knew he was a master of exploiting the advantage one man always has over a group in such a situation.

They were trying to back him against another section of the circle. No chance, friends, he said to himself. He stepped forward, the spearhead went down into the ground, and like a pole vaulter he soared clear over the heads of the advancing soldiers. A sword flashed up, waving helplessly at him as he sailed past. Then he was behind the line, spinning around, spear up and thrusting.

He drove the spearhead into two men below the cuirasses before they could even begin to turn. He opened the side of a third man's face with the spear's edge. A quick sideways flick of his powerful wrists, and the heavy wood shaft caught a fourth man on the neck. The two survivors of the advancing section suddenly decided to stop advancing. That didn't save them. Blade feinted at one man's head, then jabbed the butt into his comrade's knee. As the second man reeled and opened the first one's flank, Blade moved in before he could get his shield around. The spear jabbed up into the man's armpit so hard it nearly jammed there.

But in the moment before he could get back into the open, three more men rushed at Blade. One of them stumbled over a fallen body and staggered forward. He cannoned into Blade, throwing him off balance. Fighting to keep his feet, Blade let go of the spear with one hand and rammed his fist into the side of the man's neck. The man jerked and started to slide to the ground. Before Blade could get both hands back on the spear, a second man chopped down wildly with his sword. The sword struck the head of Blade's spear with a tremendous clang, and the jar broke Blade's grip on the shaft. The spear slammed down hard on the ground. Blade lunged for it, and suddenly found two sword points waving within inches of his throat. He froze, looking up at the soldiers. Under the helmets, their eyes were wide and staring, and the knuckles of their sword hands stood out white. These men would kill him if he moved an inch.

Then behind the soldiers he saw another figure loom up. He could not see it clearly, but it seemed to be dressed in flowing silvery robes, with something off-white dangling on its chest. He could not make out the face. But the voice was that of a man in authority.

«Do not kill him,» said the voice.

Blade tensed. If these soldiers had to try to take him alive… He took a deep breath, ready to plunge forward the minute one of the swords shifted as much as an inch.

But the sound came from behind him, feet approaching at a run. The two swords held steady, keeping him facing rigidly forward. He froze as the footsteps came to a stop behind him. Then something heavy slammed down on top of his head, on the side, on the back. He hardly felt the third blow as he sagged forward, his face coming down on the hard ground by the foot of one of the soldiers. The last thing he saw was the figure in silver stepping between the two soldiers and stopping above him. The man's sandals shone with the unmistakable blood-hued glint of rubies. Then Blade stopped seeing or feeling anything.