The Jade Warrior

Chapter Three

As Blade drew near the wall he began to encounter the corpses of men and horses. Here they were piled thick atop each other, there scattered thinly, and one thing he noted above all. There were no wounded. They were all dead. If the defenders had left wounded behind them when they withdrew behind their wall the attackers had killed them before being scattered by the giant cannon. Already a sickly stench was beginning to rise from the hundreds of corpses, a nostril-wrinkling miasma rising like mist.

Yet life other than himself moved among the dead. He heard them at first, a stealthy retreat before him, and the gobbling sound of feeding. Jackals? Hyenas?

The moon shone out of cloud rack and he saw they were neither. Eyes flashed red at him and white fangs snarled and there was a scampering. Apes! Small flesh-eating apes.

He was looking for clothes, and armor and a weapon, and he may as well have the best. He began to examine the dead in the intervals of bright moonlight, keeping low and skulking like one of the strange apes. He saw at once that the enemies were of two contrasting physical types. Two of them, a little apart from the others, made a perfect paradigm. They lay close in death, each with a sword in the other's heart, each grinning at the moon they could not see. Blade bent to inspect them closely.

One, of the party that had sallied from the wall, was tail and well formed and even in death had a certain dignity. His skin, as best Blade could see in the uncertain light, was a light yellow. Lemon colored. His armor glinted in the moonlight, and Blade thought it bronze until he touched it. Wood! Very hard and finely carved wood.

He scraped it with a nail. It was paint that made it appear bronze.

The companion in death was a swarthy man with thick dark hair, very coarse in texture. He was short and bowlegged and powerfully muscled. He wore leather chest armor and on his head was a pointed leather cap. His breeches were of skin, and he wore knee-high boots fashioned from the same animal hide. Blade stared down at him for a moment. The legs told the story. Bowed and powerful. Horseman.

One of the carrion apes, bolder than the others, glowered at Blade and began to feed on a body not ten feet away. An arrow lay nearby. Blade picked it up and flung it at the beast, which retreated with a snarl and a flash of defiant fangs. As Blade stared after it, a glint of gold caught his eye. Something about the corpse the ape had been about to devour. Blade went to see.

This man, one of the wall defenders, was wearing gold-painted armor. On his chest plate was painted a golden orb of some sort, possibly a moon, and on his shoulders he wore what Blade recognized as epaulets. But it was the thick golden chain around the dead man's throat that convinced Blade. He tugged at it, found a catch, and loosened it. It was of woven gold, many plaited, and of exquisite workmanship. This had been a man of consequence.

Why not? Blade smiled grimly as he began to strip the body. As long as he was going to be a ghoul he might as well travel first-class. The dead man had obviously been one of rank and prestige - and that same rank just might help Blade get behind the wall.

The man was wearing a short silken tunic beneath his armor. Blade covered his own nakedness and began to don the armor. Here he ran into trouble. The dead man was as tall as Blade, but with none of his brawn. Blade could not get the corselet to fasten around his massive chest. To hell with it then. He found a helmet nearby, also with the golden orb painted on it, and placed it on his head. It fitted well enough and reminded him of ancient Greek helmets. There were nasal and ear plates and a high arching panache of the same silken stuff as the underrobe. Blade nodded. His face was well enough concealed. As an afterthought he scooped blood from a gaping wound in the dead man's chest and smeared it on the visible part of his face.

He was searching for a weapon to match the splendor of the armor when he saw the lights bobbing toward him. Blade sank to the ground with a muttered curse at his own carelessness. He had been so intent on his new guise that he had been caught off guard. And yet - they had come very silently!

He turned on his face and reduced his breathing to the barest minimum. Play dead and they would soon pass him by.

It was with an eerie feeling that he heard the voices. They were the first distinct and individual voices he had heard since coming into this new land. Other than the hubbub of battle he had heard only his own voice.

A voice of command said: "Look farther over there. To the right of the pile of Mongs. And do not look for a face, fools, but rather for his armor. You all know what manner of armor the Emperor wore!"

The voice was light, high pitched, with a silky cultured quality and an odd singsong effect, like spoken music.

Blade was not interested in tonal effects. He had just gotten himself into a jam. Or had he? It might be an easy way of getting beyond the wall, though what happened then might not be so pleasant.

Another man said, "I do not think we will find the Emperor tonight, sir. We are not even sure where he fell. And if the Mongs see the lights they will come to investigate and I, for one, have had enough of fighting Mongs for one day."

The command voice: "Do as you are bid or your head will join those of the captured Mongs tomorrow. I promise you this."

Another voice: "Why is the Empress Mei so insistent that we find her husband?"

"To do his body honor, of course. What else?" A man laughed. Blade winced.

Another man said, "And who is afraid of the Mongs? They will not fight at night. We all know this. They are afraid of the corpse spirits, the barbarians."

Command voice: "All of this chatter convinces me that you do not value your heads at all. So be it. We shall return behind the wall and I will have the Empress sign the order for your executions."

Muttering. Grumbling. Blade held his breath. Someone kicked him in the chest. Blade closed his eyes and played dead as he never had before.

No use. Light fluttered over him, a man bent to look at him, then called out softly. "Here he is. Over here. I have found the Emperor Mei."

If they take off the helmet, Blade thought, and examine me carefully, I've had it. He had no weapon and there must be at least six of them. Maybe he would have time to start talking - maybe—

Command voice was just over him now. "Yes. That is the Emperor. See the chain of office. Put him on the litter and let us go. Hurry. I do not fear Mongs but those corpse-eating apes make me nervous."

Richard Blade could be, when the occasion called for it, a superb actor. It had stood him in good stead many times and it did now. He now gave a terrific performance as the corpse of one Emperor Mei, deceased, whose widow, the Empress Mei, wanted him back to honor him. And this occasioned laughter? His brain, even as they carried his big body off the field of battle on a litter, began to click over like one of Lord L's lesser computers. He was getting into something. But what?

It was a long ride. One of the litter bearers grumbled: "I do not remember the Emperor as being so heavy. Or do the dead weigh more than the living?"

"You are a fool," said the command voice. "Desist. The sooner this task is over the sooner we can all get to our beds."

"And our women." Laughter.

Blade dared not risk even a peep. He attuned all his senses, and was aware of being taken through a postern gate in the great wall. Then through a long, echoing tunnel where torches flared and smelled of a pungent incense that Blade could not identify.

Out of the tunnel and into open air again. Into semidarkness. Only four litter bearers and the command voice behind at some distance. Blade risked a look.

He was being carried across a vast formal garden. There were flowering shrubs and trees shaped into the forms of men and beasts and a long, shimmering black pool that cast back the reflection of the torches. They were skirting the pool, on a paved path. Blade glanced down and would have sworn the path was made of jade blocks.

Behind them the command voice said: "Hurry, you idiots. I want my dinner and bed, and the Empress wants her dead husband."

One of the bearers laughed. "Why?" More laughter.

Blade began to wonder again about this Empress Mei to whom he was soon to be introduced - as a corpse.

Command voice said: "That is none of your affair. And long noses have been cut off. Heed."

Blade restrained a grimace. They seemed to do an awful lot of cutting off of one thing or another.

A man said: "I have never seen the Empress, sir. Do you think?"

"No! The Jade Empress is not for your eyes, you fool. She will not enter the Temple of the Dead until we leave. Now will you get on!"

They marched between a long line of flaring torches and Blade closed his eyes again. Not before he had seen a tier of gracefully ascending steps that led to a tomblike structure. Both stairs and tomb cast back glittering emerald sparks as the torchlight laved them. Everything behind this wall seemed to be made of jade.

The Jade Empress! Blade was in peril and knew it. He could very well be dead within a minute, yet he confessed to a growing desire to see what this lady was like.

He was carried into the large room and placed on a jade altar at one end. The only light came from a single torch in a sconce high up on the wall. They left him there and tramped out.

Silence. The torch guttered in a draft that wafted across the long room, bringing with it the same cloying fragrance Blade had noted before. The torch leaped and sputtered and cast its long flame sideways, tossing shadows over the altar. A door had been opened.

Blade lay on his back, his head turned just enough to allow him to survey the long room. There was nothing behind him but the blank cold wall. She must come from the opposite direction.

Movement in the clotted shadows. A small section of the wall moved and swung, noiseless, a marvel of counterbalancing, then swung back. Silence. He was no longer alone in the Temple of Death.

Through slitted eyes Blade watched the shadows. She was there, watching him, amorphous and wraithlike, yet very much a presence. He waited, trying to control his breathing. The effort was painful and his heart was thudding like a drum in his big chest. Why? This was merely a woman come to see a corpse. Why did he feel this tremendous bursting sense of excitement? It made no sense, yet there it was. He had experienced it often before, just prior to combat - or entering a woman.

Feet moved and rustled on stone and she stepped into the light and slowly approached the altar. In one hand she carried a long curved dagger. Blade tensed. What did widows do to their husband's corpse in this strange place?

She stopped six feet from him. She gazed at the bier, her face impassive, breathing lightly, her breasts moving only slightly beneath the single garment of silken stuff that clung to her like a second skin. If there was imperfection in that body, he could not see it. In that instant he named her, in his own mind and in the context of his own dimension. Venus. Jade Venus.

She raised the dagger and pointed it at the man she thought was dead. "So, Mei Saka, it has come to this at last. They bring you to me, in this Temple of Death, and I must honor you and pretend that you were honorable. Such lies! And whom do we deceive? The common folk of no account. All others, our own kind, knew you for what you were."

Blade watched her face intently. A face men dream of when they would conjure the impossible woman.

A master craftsman had drawn that oval in one sure stroke. Blade was a connoisseur of women and he knew perfect art when he saw it. Symmetry. Every feature in absolute balance. The brow high and imperious, the nose fragile and patrician, the mouth finely chiseled and yet sensuous. Wet now, moist and scarlet as a little tongue flicked out like a pink snake. He felt his loins stir and respond. God! What a woman. And what a corpse he was!

She took a gliding step nearer to him and brandished the dagger again.

"I have come to kill you again, Mei Saka. For my own honor, not for yours. The wise say that this cannot be done, that a man can only be killed once, but I do not care for this. I must kill you again, Mei Saka, so that I can rest. When I have had revenge I can find content in the arms of new lovers and forget you lived."

Another step toward him. She was breathing harder now and Blade could smell the fragrance of her. The body sheath she wore was so nearly transparent that he saw her breasts tautly outlined, sharp and hard, the nipples erected by her excitement and hate.

"I hope you can hear me, Mei Saka, wherever your dark soul dwells. I would have you know this - I had you killed! I knew of your plot to betray Cath and I sent one to kill you from behind. I then had that one killed so he could never betray me."

She held the dagger aloft. "It is clean now, you see, but it has been bloody. Not an hour ago I slew the second man and had his body destroyed."

Blade watched the dagger. Beautiful she was, and as dangerous as a cornered tigress. He must move soon to take control of the situation. Correctly handled it could be much to his advantage. She was high born and of station and authority - such a hostage could gain him breathing space. Time. But careful. Very careful. No mistakes.

Another long step toward him. The dagger flamed in the torchlight. For the first time he saw her eyes. Really saw them. And in them saw both heaven and hell.

Long almonds of green, narrowed but with no slantiness, wherein chrysolite seas moved and washed. Depthless pools of jasper where hate sparked and spun. Wide set, fringed by dark lashes, timeless and deathless and with promise of the Secret, they were of a purity beyond knowing. Blade, bold and bloody adventurer that he was, shivered. His body moved slightly in an involuntary movement he could not control.

She smiled. Her teeth flashed white in the dim light. "So, Mei Saka, you do hear me? Your muscles relax in death, or so the wise would say, but I know better. You hear me! Then feel this, Mei Saka! You have been killed once, to save Cath. I, the Empress Mei, kill you again. For revenge!"

She was so fast that Blade nearly took the dagger in his heart after all. She came in a rush as fast as a heartbeat. Blade moved sideways and caught at her descending wrist and pulled her close to him and their faces were an inch apart.

"Don't scream," Blade said softly. "Make no sound. I will not harm you."

Those incredible eyes stared into his. Her mouth opened slowly, a pink cavern of shock and fear. She made no sound. She fell against him, lax and supple, and he felt the glow of her body on his own.

They stared, one at the other. A caught second of time that had no ending. Eternity in a single breath.

Blade moved a big hand toward her mouth and whispered, "No sound. Let me speak."

Those wondrous eyes closed and she fell slowly into his arms.