The Sword of Rhiannon

IV. Perilous Secret

The door against which Carse’s back was braced suddenly gave way, opening inward. He reeled backward into the black interior.

As he staggered for balance the door suddenly slammed shut again. He heard a bar fall and then a low, throaty chuckle from beside him.

“That will hold them for a while. But we’d better get out of here quickly, Khond. Those Sark soldiers will cut the door open.”

Carse swung around, his sword raised, but was blind in the darkness of the room. He could smell rope and tar and dust but could see nothing.

A frantic hammering began outside the door. Then Carse’s eyes, becoming accustomed to the obscurity, made out a ponderous corpulent figure close beside him.

The man was big, fleshy and soft looking, a Martian who wore a kilt that looked ridiculously scanty on his fat figure. His face was moonlike, creased and crinkled in a reassuring grin as his small eyes looked unfearingly at Carse’s raised sword.

“I’m no Jekkaran or Sark either,” he said reassuringly.

“I’m Boghaz Hoi of Valkis and I’ve my own reasons for helping any man of Khond. But we’ll have to go quickly.”

“Go where?”

Carse had to drag the words out, he was still breathing so painfully.

“To a place of safety.” The other paused as new louder hammering began upon the door. “That’s the Sarks. I’m leaving. Come or stay as you like, Khond.”

He turned toward the back of the dark room, moving with astonishing lightness and ease for one so corpulent. He did not look back to see if Carse was following.

But there was really no choice for Carse. Half-dazed as he still was he was of no mind to face the eruption of those mailed soldiers and the Jekkaran rabble. He followed Boghaz Hoi.

The Valkisian chuckled as he squeezed his bulk through a small open window at the rear of the room.

“I know every rathole in this harbor quarter. That’s why, when I saw you backed against old Taras Thur’s door, I simply went around through and let you in. Snatched you from under their noses.”

“But why?” Carse asked again.

“I told you—I have a sympathy for Khonds. They’re men enough to snap their fingers at Sark and the damned Serpent. I help one when I can.”

It didn’t make sense to Carse. But how could it? How could he know anything of the hates and passions of this Mars of the remote past?

He was trapped in this strange Mars of long ago and he had to grope his way in it like an ignorant child. It was certain that the mob out there had tried to kill him.

They had taken him for a Khond. Not the Jekkaran rabble alone but those strange slaves—the semi-humans with the broken wings, the furred sleek chained creatures who had cheered him from the galleys.

Carse shivered. Until now, he had been too dazed to think of the strangeness of those not-quite-human slaves.

And who were the Khonds?

“This way,” Boghaz Hoi interrupted his thoughts.

They had threaded a shadowy little labyrinth of stinking alleys and the fat Valkisian was squeezing through a narrow door into the dark interior of a little hut.

Carse followed him inside. He heard the whistle of the blow in the dark and tried to dodge but there was no time.

The concussion exploded a bomb of stars inside his head and he felt the rough floor grinding his face.

He awoke with flickering light in his eyes. There was a small bronze lamp burning on a stool close to him. He was lying on the dirt floor of the hut. When he tried to move he found that his wrists and ankles were bound to pegs driven into the packed earth.

Sickening pain racked his head and he sank back. There was a rustle of movement and Boghaz Hoi crouched down beside him. The Valkisian’s moonface was expressive of sympathy as he held a clay cup of water to Carse’s lips.

“I struck too hard I’m afraid. But then, in the dark with an armed man, one has to be careful. Do you feel like talking now?”

Carse looked up at him and old habit made him control the rage that shook him. “About what?” he asked.

Boghaz said, “I am a frank and truthful man. When I saved you from the mob out there my only idea was to rob you.”

Carse saw that his jeweled belt and collar had been transferred to Boghaz, who wore them both around his neck. The Valkisian now raised a plump hand and fingered them lovingly.

“Then,” he continued, “I got a closer look—at that.” He nodded toward the jeweled sword that leaned against the stool, shimmering in the lamplight. “Now, many men would examine it and see only a handsome sword. But I, Boghaz, am a man of education. I recognized the symbols on that blade.”

He leaned forward. “Where did you get it?”

A warning instinct made Carse lie readily, “I bought it from a trader.”

Boghaz shook his head. “No you didn’t. There are spots of corrosion on the blade, scales of dust in the carvings. The hilt has not been polished. No trader would sell it in that condition.

“No, my friend, that sword has lain a long time in the dark, in the tomb of him who owned it—the tomb of Rhiannon.”

Carse lay without moving, looking at Boghaz. He did not like what he saw.

The Valkisian had a kind and merry face. He would be excellent company over a bottle of wine. He would love a man like a brother and regret exceedingly the necessity of cutting out his heart.

Carse schooled his expression into sullen blankness. “It may be Rhiannon’s sword for all I know. Nevertheless, I bought it from a trader.”

The mouth of Boghaz, which was small and pink, puckered and he shook his head. He reached out and patted Carse’s cheek.

“Please don’t lie to me, friend. It upsets me to be lied to.”

“I’m not lying,” Carse said. “Listen—you have the sword. You have my ornaments. You have all you can get out of me. Just be satisfied.”

Boghaz sighed. He looked down appealingly at Carse. “Have you no gratitude? Didn’t I save your life?”

Carse said sardonically, “It was a noble gesture.”

“It was. It was indeed. If I’m caught for it my life won’t be worth that.” He snapped his fingers. “I cheated the mob of a moment’s pleasure and it wouldn’t do a bit of good to tell them that you really aren’t a Khond at all.”

He let that fall very casually but he watched Carse shrewdly from under his fat eyelids.

Carse looked back at him, hard-eyed, and his face showed nothing.

“What gave you that idea?”

Boghaz laughed. “No Khond would be ass enough to show his face in Jekkara to begin with. And especially if he’d found the lost secret all Mars has hunted for an age—the secret of the Tomb of Rhiannon.”

Carse’s face moved no muscle but he was thinking swiftly. So the Tomb was a lost mystery in this time as in his own future time?

He shrugged. “I know nothing of Rhiannon or his Tomb.”

Boghaz squatted down on the floor beside Carse and smiled down at him like one humoring a child who wishes to play.

“My friend, you are not being honest with me. There’s no man on Mars who doesn’t know that the Quiru long, long ago left our world because of what Rhiannon, the Cursed One among them, had done. And all men know they built a secret tomb before they left, in which they locked Rhiannon and his powers.

“Is it wonderful that men should covet the powers of the gods? Is it strange that ever since men have hunted that lost Tomb? And now that you have found it, do I, Boghaz, blame you for wanting to keep the secret to yourself?”

He patted Carse’s shoulder and beamed.

“It is but natural on your part. But the secret of the Tomb is too big for you to handle. You need my brains to help you. Together, with that secret, we can take what we want of Mars.”

Carse said without emotion, “You’re crazy. I have no secret. I bought the sword from a trader.”

Boghaz stared at him for a long moment. He stared very sadly. Then he sighed heavily.

“Think, my friend. Wouldn’t it be better to tell me than to make me force it out of you?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Carse said harshly.

He did not wish to be tortured. But that odd warning instinct had returned more strongly. Something deep within him warned him not to tell the secret of the Tomb!

And anyway, even if he told, the fat Valkisian was likely to kill him then to prevent him from telling anyone else the secret.

Boghaz sorrowfully shrugged fat shoulders. “You force me to extreme measures. And I hate that. I’m too chicken-hearted for this work. But if it’s necessary—”

He was reaching into his belt-pouch for something when suddenly both men heard a sound of voices in the alleyway outside and the tramp of heavily shod feet.

Outside, a voice cried, “There! That is the sty of the Boghaz hog!”

A fist began to hammer on the door with such force that the small room rang like the inside of a drum.

“Open up, there, fat scum of Valkis!”

Heavy shoulders began to heave against the door.

“Gods of Mars!” groaned Boghaz. “That Sark press-gang has tracked us down!”

He grabbed up the sword of Rhiannon and was in the act of hiding it in his bed when the warped planks of the door gave under the tremendous beating, and a spate of armed men burst into the room.