The Torian Pearls

Chapter 23

Kayarna Kameda, Queen of Tor, sat on a blanket spread on the landward face of a sand dune a day's ride north of Tordas. She was naked, her long legs stretched out in front of her and her arms crossed over her full breasts. The breasts and the flesh of her arms and legs were all tanned and admirably firm for a woman of forty-two, although the waist showed the thickening inevitable after bearing three children.

Without the three children, though, she would not have felt free to spend the remaining years of her life pleasing herself as she chose. Kayarna Deda had always been known as one who understood her duties and gave them the attention they deserved.

A man stood on the crest of the sand dune above her, looking out over the fog-shrouded sea. He also was naked, and Kayarna had to admit she preferred him that way. Duskas Mon had just enough brains to command a troop of the Royal Guards. His real talents lay in other directions, and Kayarna would keep him busy in those directions as long as he could do his duty. She would not give him anything else, no matter how often he lost his temper. She could always coax him back to her bed, and if some day she could not-well, there were other strong young guardsmen in plenty who could fill his place. She would not risk giving Duskas more than he deserved. Jealousy among the captains and nobles over the advancement of royal favorites had cost more than one ruler of Tor throne and life.

She heard splashes and the squealing voices of young women on the far side of the dune. Kayarna sighed. The four serving maids who'd accompanied her and Duskas out here were bathing in the sea. No doubt one of the little fools had stepped on a stingray and would have to be carried back to the palace. The next time she came out here ….

Then the squeals turned into unmistakable screams of terror. Kayarna snatched up her sword from the corner of the blanket, sprang to her feet, and rushed up to the crest of the sand dune without bothering to dress. As she reached the crest Duskas shouted, «Get down, Glorious One!» and shoved her so hard that she fell to her knees. She started to flare angrily at this disrespect, then got a good look at what was coming out of the sea and fell silent.

A ship's boat lay in the shallows, while fifteen men climbed out of it and waded toward the beach. Each one wore a long robelike garment of chain mail and a metal helmet with long sharp horns jutting out on either side. Each carried a sword or an axe at his belt, and three of them carried long metal tubes with some sort of sculptured decorations at the end they held. Farther offshore, half visible in the fog, Kayarna saw two large ships, with more boats coming ashore from them.

The four maids stood as if turned to stone while the steel-clad men tramped toward them. One of the girls shrieked and ran. Her panic made her clumsy. She went down, and shrieked again as two of the men fell on her before she could rise.

Whatever Duskas Mon might lack in brains, there was nothing wrong with his courage. The maid's shrieks drove him into action. Naked and unarmed as he was, he roared a war cry and charged down at the oncoming men. Perhaps he hoped to distract them long enough for Queen Kayarna and even the maids to escape.

Duskas covered only a few steps before one of the men pointed a tube at him and jerked on the «sculpture.» There was a terrible noise, a cloud of white smoke, and a hideous 'plat as something tore through Duskas's body and out his back. He fell on his face, kicked twice, and lay still. In his back Kayarna saw a gaping red hole large enough to hold a man's fist.

Kayarna knew suddenly that she could do nothing for herself or for Tor except run like the wind. Duskas was dead and the maids were doomed. The other three were now trying to run, but the men were hard on their heels. Four of the invaders started up the dune toward Kayarna. They came a few steps through the soft sand, then Kayarna was sprinting toward the trees where the horses were tethered.

She did not throw her sword away, for that would be neither honorable for the ruler of a warrior people nor sensible for a woman who might yet have to kill herself. She took nothing else-not a single stitch of clothing, not a single one of her jewels. She was as naked as the day of her birth as she dashed across the sand, expecting every moment to feel one of the smoke tubes hurling something into her back.

Instead the men coming after her tried to run her down on foot. Their armor and weapons dragged them back as Kayarna's fear drove her forward. She easily outdistanced them, leaped into the saddle of the first horse she reached, slashed the tether with her sword, and dug her bare heels into the horse's flanks. Sand flew up and branches lashed her across the face and shoulders hard enough to draw blood. She ignored the pain and everything else except driving the horse onward as fast as it would go.

Another of the tubes banged far behind her, as one of the men made a last desperate effort to bring her down. Whatever the tube threw came nowhere near her or her horse. Then she was far out of the invaders' reach, galloping along the shore, looking for a place to turn inland. Tordas had to be warned, and more than warned. It had to be prepared to fight these people who had come from the sea, in spite of their steel clothing and hats and their strange smoke tubes that reached out like the arrows from a bow but were something altogether new and terrible.

The Torians soon learned that the people from the sea called themselves the Vodi. They also found many other names to call them, all rude and some unprintable.

Ten thousand Vodi in two hundred ships came out of the sea and landed before Tordas. They fought on foot, so they could not run away from a Torian charge, but they didn't need to. They stood, threw balls of stone and lead from their smoke tubes, shrugged off arrows and lances with their steel coats, and slew Torians by the hundreds with their axes and swords. The Torians fought five battles in fifteen days, lost all of them, and lost ten men for every one of the Vodi they killed or hurt.

Within three weeks of the coming of the Vodi Tordas was surrounded. Food could no longer get in, and the poor who'd never eaten well anyway began to starve. Messengers could still get in and out, but they did no good. None of the captains of the garrisons of the other cities of Tor had any wish to hurl their horsemen against the smoke tubes and steel coats of the Vodi. Kayarna was also sure that some of those captains were holding back in hopes of making a separate peace with the Vodi after Tordas fell and the throne of Tor stood vacant.

Those captains would not have to wait long. The Vodi had other weapons besides starvation to use against Tordas. They had enormous smoke tubes, as long as a ship's boat and many times heavier, hurling stone balls as large as a horse's head and as heavy as a man. The stones crashed into the walls, rolled down the streets, fell through the roofs of palaces, hovels, temples, and shops with a gruesome impartiality. The walls of Tordas would certainly let the Torians beat off any assault as long as they stood. How long would those walls stand, under the battering of the smoke tubes?

Kayarna wondered. She did not show her doubts when she rode about the battered streets. She urged on the captains and the soldiers, consoled the bereaved, saw that widows were fed and orphans were housed in the palace itself. She spent eighteen hours a day awake and most of those hours in the saddle. This not only inspired the Torians, it gave Kayarna herself peaceful sleep at night, untroubled by nightmares of what would happen when the walls finally came down and the Vodi stormed the city.

If the gods had willed it that she should be the last ruler of Tor, then she would at least try to die in a manner worthy of those who'd gone before her.

It was several more weeks before Richard Blade learned precisely what was happening to Tordas and why the Torians would not be attacking the Kargoi any time soon. He had to get the story bit by bit from Torian prisoners.

Naturally these men were reluctant to admit how helpless their land was against the Kargoi. The Kargoi found convincing methods of persuading them to tell all they knew.

When Blade had a clear picture of what was happening to the west, he sat down with Fudan, Loya, and Paor to decide the best course of action.

«The Torians will not be able to hold out much longer. That seems certain. In England we have some experience with smoke tubes such as the Vodi are using. We call them guns. Against large guns no wall can stand, unless it is built specially to resist them.

«So the Vodi are on the road to victory, and in the end they will win without our help. We cannot earn their gratitude by helping them defeat Tor. We can only hurry the day when they will rule all the land to the west and feel ready to move against us.

«If we hold back from aiding either side, the Vodi will still win. It will take them a little longer, but sooner or later they will rule in Tor. Then they will also think of coming east-«

«Why should they do that?» said Paor. «If they have settled in a new homeland that is large enough for them, will they want more land?»

«They have not come across the sea because the waters have risen to swallow their own homeland,» said Blade. «They have come because they think the rising waters have made other peoples weak, and this is a good time to make those peoples into slaves.»

Fudan struggled for words to express his horror. «They-they are monsters!»

«I do not know about that,» said Blade. «I do know that such people will not stop with conquering Tor. Sooner or later they will march and sail against us. Also, a people like the Vodi, who love war, might some day be tempted to ally themselves with the Menel, to gain their help in conquering far and wide.»

That idea made the other three totally speechless for a moment. Then Loya burst out, «No! The gods forbid!»

Blade smiled. «The gods may forbid it, but I think we ourselves can do a better and more certain job.»

«How?» said Paor. Then he answered his own question. «We should go west and help the Torians drive the Vodi into the sea?»

«Yes. If we do that, the Vodi may not come again for many years. The Torians will be grateful, and it will be easy to get them to join with us against the Menel. With the Torians, the Hauri, and the Kargoi all united and given guns, the Menel will not have an easy time of it.»

«That is true enough,» said Fudan. «We will be a thousand to their one, and none of us will be cowards. But what of the-the guns of the Vodi? The Torians have suffered terribly from them. Do you think we can win against them, when the Torians have failed?»

«Yes,» said Blade. «The guns throw their stones by setting fire to a strong powder. The Vodi can only have brought a certain amount of the powder across the sea with them, and they have been burning it rapidly. If they have burned it all, or if we can destroy what is left, their guns will be useless. Then we can fight them in the old ways, which we know so well.»

Blade was making an educated guess when he said that, and he hoped he'd guessed right. If not, he could be leading the two peoples who trusted his wisdom to their deaths.

«If all this is true,» said Paor, «then Blade has spoken wisely. We shall go west to aid the Torians.»

«We shall,» said Fudan and Loya together. All four of them rose from the table, stepped into a circle, and joined their hands together.