The Golden Steed

CHAPTER THREE

Blade awoke as the first pale light of dawn hit the hills and the valley. He was stiff with cold, cramped and aching from his curled position. There were bruises on his bruises where stones had dug into his already-battered skin, and every muscle and joint screamed in protest as he rose to his feet. But there had been no sign of any enemy during the night, and a thorough check of his surroundings showed no signs of any now. He had lasted through the night, and now that it was day he could mount and ride out of this desolate valley.

The horse was still tethered safely where he had left it. The body of its late master still lay at its feet. Rigor mortis had set in, and Blade had a struggle stripping trousers, boots, and belt from the rigid limbs and trunk.

When he had stripped the body of everything but the slashed and blood-caked tunic, he stopped to consider whether or not to bury it. Logic and training told him not to waste time. But they could not persuade him to simply leave the man lying stiff and naked to the sky and the carrion birds that he could see already hovering overhead. Finally he carried the body over to the edge of the riverbed, slid it down the slope, then piled rocks on top of it until it was well covered. Let the scavengers try prying the rocks off! He returned to the horse, swung himself up into the saddle, and urged it down the valley.

From the position of the sun, he knew the valley ran roughly east and west. He wanted to go east, toward the invisible but hopefully not-too-distant end of the valley. And then? The simplest solution would be to seek out the dead man's people, with the weapons and purse serving as his introduction.

Too simple a solution, unfortunately. The man's own people might be many hundreds of miles away. He and his horse both looked as if they had been on the road for a long time. And there were those unknown attackers. They had not appeared during the night, but that did not prove they were not lurking in the next grove of trees along the river bank.

So as Blade rode down the valley, he kept in the open, well away from the river bank and hopefully out of accurate bowshot from the trees. He rode slowly, with his eyes scanning the landscape. Once again there was no point in riding fast, dumb, and happy into an ambush.

It was about seven miles to the foot of the valley, downhill all the way. At a slow cautious walk, it took him nearly two hour's. Several times he spotted signs of the trail the golden horse and its rider must have made coming up, the valley the night before. But there was never any sign of any other men or horses, and no sign of any fight. Not even so much as an arrow stuck into a tree.

As Blade descended into the valley, the air grew unmistakably warmer. The trees were taller here, less gnarled by a constant struggle against drought and wind. The underbrush was also thicker. Blade did not particularly like this. The thicker the vegetation, the more opportunities, for men to lie in ambush. Several times he dismounted and scouted ahead on foot, sword drawn and ready. Once his scouting turned up a small spring flowing out from a crack in the rocks. He refilled his water bags there, and let the horse drink as much as it wanted.

The sun was rising higher, and so were the walls of the valley. They now rose almost vertically for a thousand feet, seamed and rugged blue-gray rock with a thin fringe of vegetation high above. The valley floor was in shadow so deep it was almost twilight. The course of the valley kept twisting and winding like a snake's trail.

Eventually the cliffs on either side began to shrink. Looking ahead, Blade could see level country not far ahead. The trees grew not merely in groves but in small forests. He thought he could even see the blue flash of a river running through the greenery.

Now a new danger was coming up. Perhaps the dead man's pursuers had not dared enter the valley. But that didn't prove they had gone off. As Blade reached the last point where the valley walls provided concealment, he dismounted, tethered the horse, and made a scouting trip on foot.

Compared with the grim valley he was leaving, this new land was teeming with life. Snakes wriggled and small animals scurried out from his path as he stalked through the bushes. Birds chattered and screamed in the treetops, and he mentally cursed them. They could easily give the alarm to anyone waiting for him. In places, thick creepers and vines had wound themselves around the trunks of several trees, knitting the whole grove into an impenetrable mass.

There was indeed a river flowing down through this new valley. Blade scouted nearly a mile to its bank, and looked down through the berry-hung bushes growing along the edge into the water. It was a sluggish stream, so shallow that it would hardly have floated more than a child's toy boat. But it was a guide he could follow. Small riverbeds led to larger ones, and larger ones to great ones. And in this type of country, there would be men along the rivers if they were anyplace.

Blade was beginning to wonder about that. For all that he had seen or heard to the contrary, the late rider of the golden horse might be the only man in this whole dimension. And he might have been fighting and fleeing from ghosts. That of course was impossible, but so far there hadn't been any reason to believe otherwise.

Then as he made his way back to the golden horse, he caught sight of a cluster of small birds perched on the lower branches of a bush. They were twittering and squabbling over something, and Blade saw that that something was a pile of horse droppings-a pile much too neat to be natural. Somebody had been very careful to clean it up and slip it under the bush, hopefully out of sight. Somebody who had passed this way not much earlier than last night. The droppings were drying, but still fresh.

There was no sign of a trail around the bush, but Blade didn't expect any. The ground here was hard enough to resist footprints in most places. And whoever had passed through here would have been careful to avoid any of the softer patches. He returned to his horse and rode out again.

The sun was now high and burning hotly down from a clear sky. Once again Blade kept out in the open as much as possible, eyes ceaselessly probing the landscape on all sides, ready to urge his horse to a gallop. He tried to keep the river in sight as much as possible, but before long the vegetation became so thick that the faint blue glimmer vanished. He reined in his horse, considering whether to risk getting closer to the trees in order to keep the river in sight. The birds seemed to have gone to sleep in the heat of the day, and there was silence all over the land. It was broken only by the gentle breathing of the golden horse.

Suddenly it was broken by a horse's neighing.

Blade froze in the saddle, and his right arm snaked down and jerked the sword free. His head swiveled from side to side, eyes raking the countryside more intently than before. His ears aided his eyes. If that neigh would only come again!

It came again, twice, three times. Other horses echoed the first one, forming a chorus. Blade heard human voices raised in unmistakable anger, cutting into the horses' noise. He could place the sounds now. They were coming from his left, toward the river.

Blade dug his heels into the golden horse's flanks. It leaped forward, working up from a walk to a trot to canter in seconds. As it hit a full gallop, Blade risked a look behind him. There was a continuous boil of motion inside the greenery, and sunlight flashing off metal. Then the bushes parted, and men on horseback started pouring out, some of them still only half in the saddle. For the moment, Blade didn't spend any more time looking at them. He bent low in the saddle and urged the golden horse along.

The wind whistled in his ears and the pounding of the horse's hooves on the hard earth jarred up through his body. He still kept to the open spaces. The horse could move faster there, and he saw no point in trying to lose the men pursuing him. This would be their country. They would know it better than he did. It would be a question of outrunning them. Fortunately the golden horse was fresh and looked strong. He hoped it would be stronger and faster than the horses behind it.

After a time he risked another look behind him. There were at least twenty horsemen in the group after him. They were all riding at a gallop, but the first half-dozen or so were slowly pulling out in front of their comrades. And they were closing the gap on Blade.

As they came closer, he saw that these horsemen were of a different people than the dead rider of the golden horse. They were clean-shaven and apparently bald under flat wool hats, square-bodied and short-limbed. They carried no bows at all, but swords and lances like Blade's. One man in the lead group was whirling a sling around his head. Blade ducked as it sent a stone whistling past him, much too close for comfort. Their clothes were clearly those of horsemen-baggy trousers, loose tunics, riding boots with spurs.

Blade urged his own horse on to a greater speed. The gap between him. and the leading pursuers widened, but they were still close. And then the first half-dozen horsemen began to drop back. Four more pulled out of the mass and began moving up into the lead. They were going to wolfpack him, Blade realized. They could keep rotating the lead, with only a few of their horses having to go flat out at any one time. But they could force the golden horse to keep moving at full speed without a break. No matter how great its endurance, Blade knew it couldn't stand that.

He had thrust his sword back into its scabbard when he broke into a gallop. Now he drew it again, keeping a grip on the reins with his left hand. His eyes scanned the country ahead, looking for a good spot to turn and fight. If he could wipe out one of the groups, it might make the others a little more cautious.

A hundred yards ahead a rocky outcropping jutted from the valley wall, reaching almost to the edge of the trees. Between the rock and the trees was a space barely fifty feet wide. That was as narrow a passage as he was likely to find.

As the golden horse thundered through the gap, Blade pulled its head around to the right. It swung in along the outcropping, invisible to the men thundering up behind it. Almost at the foot of the cliff, Blade pulled the horse back around to the left, in a complete half-circle. He raised his sword as the horse thundered back toward the gap, picking up speed on the slight downslope,

He came down like a whirlwind on the four leaders almost before they saw him, certainly before they could react. His sword slashed downward, shearing completely through one man's neck. The spouting blood drenched his horse, and it panicked, rearing up and blundering into the horse beside it. The second rider yelled in pain as his leg was caught between the two horses. Then he yelled again as Bade chopped him in half.

The golden horse reared. Blade had guessed right. It was a trained warhorse. Its iron-shod hooves crashed into the ribs of a third man's horse. The other horse stopped so suddenly, its rider kept right on going, over its head and on to the ground with a thud. The fourth man drew rein, turned, and headed back for the safety of his comrades. Blade dug his heels in and the golden horse was off again.

Two were dead, one down, and one scared off. But there were still fifteen-odd left, and they showed no sign of giving up the pursuit. More stones whistled past Blade's head. More of the enemy were now using slings. All of the stones seemed to be aimed at him. By crouching low and bobbing and weaving in the saddle, he escaped with only a graze or two. He wondered why they didn't aim at the golden horse, a target far larger and more vulnerable than he was. One stone breaking a leg, and they would have him cold. Perhaps there was some taboo against killing a horse?

The pursuit went on. Blade's brief counterattack had made his pursuers more cautious. The advance group was now hanging further back than before. But this cut both ways. They could not suddenly put on a spurt and overwhelm Blade. But he could not suddenly stop and turn on them. It was down to a straight endurance race, with all the odds in favor of the men behind him.

They covered several more miles before Blade felt the golden horse begin to falter. Its flanks were going in and out like a bellows, foam was thick on its muzzle, and its breath sounded in his ears above the pounding of its hooves. He turned and threw yet another look back at his pursuers. There were five in the lead group now, and their leader was pointing at the golden horse and gesticulating wildly to his followers. Blade would have given a good deal to know what the man was saying. Two more sling shots whizzed past him, one smacking his arm hard enough to leave a red welt.

Then suddenly all five men behind him were spurring their horses on even faster than before. The gap closed rapidly. As they saw it do so, the other horsemen began to cheer and spur their horses on also.

Blade's mouth set in a hard line, and he licked his dust-coated lips. They would be up with him within minutes and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The golden horse was almost spent. It was a miracle that it had not fallen in its tracks long before this. It was flesh and blood, not a machine.

And when the pursuers came up with him, there was nothing he could do to save himself, either. There were fifteen of them, and he could kill only so many before going down. It looked as if on this thirteenth trip his luck was finally going to run out. Well, he could at least turn and face them, take some of them with him, and not give them an easy shot at his exposed back.

He clenched his left fist and reined the horse in abruptly. It had strength left to rear and neigh in protest, hooves flailing the air, mouth open. The sudden halt brought the men behind Blade up with him before they could rein in their own horses. They shot past him at nearly full speed, too busy sawing frantically at the reins to have a chance to get their swords out. But Blade's sword was already out, and the sun flashed from the steel as it whistled out in a deadly arc.

If the man after him had qualms about killing his horse, Blade had no qualms about killing theirs. His first stroke smashed down across the muzzle of the leader's horse. The horse went down, sending its rider crashing onto the ground. Before he could rise, one of his followers, rode fulltilt over him. His screams of pain and terror were drowned out by the thunder of hooves. As the second man's horse reared, pawing the air with blood-spattered hooves, Blade swung his sword. It came down on the man's right arm, and the arm jumped into the air and fell to the ground, trailing blood. The man screamed and toppled off the other side of his panic-stricken horse.

Another man rode at Blade and this one had his sword out. Blade struck overhand, and his longer arm and greater strength did the job. The descending sword smashed through the other man's guard and split his face apart like a melon. Blade let the momentum of the heavy sword carry it down and around and back up again. It was up in time to guard against a sideways slash from a fourth man. Blade replied with a similar slash. The man jerked his body sideways and for a moment lost control of his horse. It crashed into Blade's, the shock nearly unseating both riders. But it was the enemy horseman whose sword went flying from his grip. And it was Blade who brought his sword down on the man's head, slicing through the hat as though it were paper, deep into the skull.

The remaining horsemen had now come up, and milled around Blade. The pile of dead or dying man and horses on the blood-spattered ground was enough to keep them from approaching too closely. And they were too closely packed for anyone to wind up a sling for a proper throw. Blade watched them and their wary, cautious expressions with rising hopes. For some reason these people did not dare to simply ride in slashing, to cut him and his horse into pieces by sheer weight of numbers.

But he was still surprised when one of them hailed him. The rolling, clicking gutturals the man was using were as comprehensible to Blade as English. That was no surprise. By now he was used to the computer altering his brain as it sent him into each new Dimension, so that he understood the new language at once. It was the fact of his being hailed at all that surprised him.

«Hail, rider of the Golden Steed,» the man said. «You are not Chief Nurash. We see this now. We have no quarrel with you. Give us the Golden Steed, and you shall be free to go.»

«Indeed, I am not Chief Nurash,» said Blade sharply. «But the Golden Steed is mine. It has already cost you eight men to get this close to me. It will cost you more before I die. And you will not get the Golden Steed even then.» He drew his knife and held it to the side of the horse's neck. «I will kill it before I let you have it.»

The horsemen glared at him, and there were muttered curses and remarks.

«Better it die than the Pendari get it.»

«But what about our treaty with…»

«Shut up, you fool! How do you know this man isn't Pendar himself?»

«He doesn't look like one and…»

«Doesn't look like one, you son of a she-pig? Why…» The man insulted raised his sword and turned his glare from Blade to his comrades.

«Stop squabbling like old women at a well,» snarled the man who had spoken first. Then he turned back to Blade. «We will give you one of our horses, and food and water and clothing, if you will give up the Golden Steed to us alive.»

«I have food and water and clothing enough,» said Blade. «When I have killed you all, I will have even more, and I can walk to wherever I want to go. I am not like you people, so short-legged and hunchbacked that I can go nowhere without a horse under me.» Half a dozen swords flew up at that taunt. The leader barked an order, but there was a tense moment before his men obeyed and the swords came down.

For a moment, Blade wondered if he was throwing away a chance for life. But he doubted it, doubted it very much. There was no good reason for these people to let him live after he had given them what they wanted-the Golden Steed. And once he dismounted, they could kill him easily, with no risk to themselves. More important, with no risk to the golden horse. He and the Golden Steed would go together, or not at all.

The leader's face was grim as he looked at Blade, and his hand was tight on his sword. Blade's own face was just as hard. He looked back, not only at the leader, but at the circle of horsemen around him. He was looking for a weak spot or a gap in that line. If he could charge them and break through… But the golden horse had no strength left for another run. His best bet was to to stay here and let them come at him. As long as they didn't dare injure the Golden Steed, he had an advantage.

The leader looked to the right and the left and saw the others in the circle meet his eyes. Eleven swords rose, while eleven mouths opened to shout war cries.

Then Blade heard the thunder of hooves in the distance, and a harsh, brazen horn call. A moment later he heard something else-the swelling whistle and whine of a flight of arrows. And then the arrows arrived.

Two took the leader in the chest, hitting him so hard that he sailed backward off his horse. He seemed to hang suspended in the air for a moment, the mouth that had been open to shout a war cry still open in a shout of surprise and pain. Then he crashed to the ground, kicked twice, and lay still.

Two of his men went down in the same flight of arrows, and a horse jumped and screamed. The circle around Blade held for only one more moment as though the surviving horsemen were too paralyzed to move. In that moment Blade urged the Golden Steed forward. He was heading toward the side of the circle away from the arrows. The oncoming men might be friendly, but that didn't mean he wanted to ride straight into their arms.

The weary golden horse didn't have time or space to build up much speed. It was barely moving at a walk when it reached the circle. For a moment Blade had a sick fear that he was going to be a sitting target.

But then fear hit the enemy horsemen, and they dug in their spurs and bolted. Blade's sword flashed right, then left, and two horsemen sagged out of their saddles. Blinded with fear, they never saw or knew what hit them. Another looked back at Blade and the archers, just in time to get an arrow from the second flight in his throat. He gurgled and clawed at the arrow for a moment, then his horse dashed headlong under a tree. A low-hanging branch swept him out of his saddle and spilled him to the ground. He lay there writhing and choking, until another arrow put an end to his struggles.

A moment later the approaching hoofbeats swelled to a thunder, and a dozen horsemen came pouring past Blade. He had a brief glimpse of small lean men on similarly small and lean horses. Each had a strung bow in his hands, and was controlling his horse even at a full gallop with his knees. They swept past in a cloud of dust. As they did so, Blade saw the bows bend and then snap straight a third time, and another flight of arrows winged off, black against the sunlit sky. Distant screams of men and horses told of more arrows finding their targets.

The horse archers did not slow or slacken their pace until they were almost out of sight. As they pounded away into the distance, Blade saw some of them sling their bows on their backs and break out lances. Each time they passed the body of an enemy lying on the ground, two or three would stop and jab the lances into him several times. Finally they all stopped, then turned and rode back toward Blade.

Blade had dismounted by this time. There was no point to imposing his two hundred pounds of muscle and bone on the exhausted horse any longer. If the horse archers proved hostile, he would have no more chance of escaping on horseback than on foot. Not with his mount exhausted. Not with the new enemies armed with bows that could pick him off like a duck on the wing fifty yards away. And they might not be hostile. «The enemy of my enemy is my friend» wasn't always something one could rely on. But it was at least a reasonable starting point.

The horsemen rode toward him in a wide half-circle. Their lances were still in their hands, but the points were aimed up at the sky. They slowed from a canter to a trot, from a trot to a walk, then stopped altogether about ten yards from Blade. They were all staring at him and at the Golden Steed with a look in their eyes Blade couldn't quite analyze or explain. It was not hostility, but it certainly wasn't friendliness either. Blade swallowed. Were they waiting for him to make the first move? He spread his hands, palms outwards in the universal peace sign.

As if that had been a signal, all fourteen men sprang down from their horses. Then as one man, they fell face down on the ground, hands strewn out toward Blade. A low murmuring rose into the air, a pair of chanted phrases.

«The Pendarnoth has come. The Golden Steed has come. The Pendarnoth has come. The Golden Steed has come. The Pendarnoth has come… «