The Torian Pearls

Chapter 5

As they saw Blade waiting for them, the riders slowed to a walk. They spread out into a crescent with the points toward Blade and came on as if they had all the time in the world. Three of them weren't even looking at Blade.

Blade looked at all of them as they approached. All four wore kiltlike garments slit up the side, shapeless calf-length boots, and not a stitch above the waist except two or three necklaces apiece. Their heads were shaved except for a scalp lock running from front to back, and bone earrings dangled from their rather large ears. Their eyes were wide, dark, and totally expressionless; their skins were a dirt-smeared reddish-brown.

They rode without stirrups, sitting on leather pads tied across the backs of their mounts with rope. Each man had a shortsword slung at his belt and a longsword, a bow, and a quiver of arrows tied on one side of his mount. On the other side hung leather pouches and water bottles.

The animals' horns curved forward, and each horn divided into two sharp points at the ends. All four points were painted red and one of the animals had a diamond-shaped patch shaved on its forehead. Otherwise they looked very oxlike-broad, thick bodies covered with grayish hair and supported by four heavy splayed-out limbs. They looked built for strength and endurance, not speed.

The four men reined their mounts to a stop when the nearest one was about ten yards from Blade. None of them dismounted. One of them picked up his bow, nocked an arrow to it, and held it with the arrow's point toward Blade. Two others shifted in their saddles so that between them they could look all around the horizon.

It was a display of military skill that impressed Blade. These people didn't look hostile, but they were obviously as suspicious of him as he would have been in their place. So they would be efficiently on their guard until they could be sure that he was harmless and alone.

The fourth man rode the ox with the diamond blazed on its forehead. He raised one hand in a gesture of greeting. Blade noticed he kept the other hand very close to the hilt of his shortsword.

«Ho, wanderer. Why do you wander here, alone on the trail of the Kargoi?» As always, the alterations in Blade's brain during his passage into this Dimension made the words reach him as plainly as English.

«The Kargoi have left their trail on the land where I choose to walk,» replied Blade. His English thoughts left his lips as the clicking, hissing speech of the Kargoi. He'd chosen those words to give the impression of a man who wished the Kargoi no harm but did not fear them and would not. With warriors like these there was always a delicate balance. Be too proud, and provoke them to a pointless fight. Be too polite, and be considered a weakling or a coward who can be killed without a second thought.

The leader's face showed no reaction to Blade's words. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the faint sigh of the wind and the fainter dripping of the last of the rain.

Then he shifted his hand, until it actually rested on the hilt of his shortsword. It was a gesture meant to be noticed. Blade smiled politely to show he had noticed, met the leader's eyes and held them. Except for the smile and the fixed eyes, Blade's face was as expressionless as the warrior's.

Without saying a word, Blade wanted to send a vital message:

«You may be able to kill me, and you may not be. It does not matter to me whether you can or not, or whether you even try. It does matter to you, for you will certainly die whether I do or not.»

It was a message Blade wanted to send and keep sending until it was firmly impressed on the leader's mind.

Few men will provoke a battle after they've been firmly assured they are certain to die in it.

The silence went on. Blade did not take his eyes off the leader, but he shifted his footing slightly. Now he could either stand to face an attack or run to deliver one. It would depend on whether the archer loosed his arrow, or the leader insisted on using his sword.

The silence went on for a little longer. Then the quiet, grim promise in Blade's leveled eyes and poised body sank into the leader's mind. Slowly he moved his hand away from his sword hilt, and rested it in his lap. Blade noticed that the movement was slightly jerky. He took his eyes off the leader, but didn't relax.

He'd met and held the man in a silent clash of wills. The man might take this gracefully, as from one warrior to another. Or he might feel a wound to his pride that could drive him to violence more surely than any wound in his body. It was impossible to guess, for the man's face remained expressionless. It seemed a face that would remain expressionless even if the man were being slowly tortured to death.

Then the leader's other hand flickered in a brief signal. The archer thrust the arrow back in its quiver and laid his bow across his lap. Blade took a deep breath, let it out, and relaxed his own stance, one arm dangling freely and the other hand braced against one hip. He smiled again, and this time the leader smiled back.

«It takes courage to speak harshly to warriors of the Kargoi,» the man said. «It takes even more courage to speak harshly to them without saying a word.»

Blade suddenly felt almost friendly toward the leader. The man had pride, but it was the pride of a warrior who knew he was so good that he didn't have to prove it by meaningless bloody little fights. It was also the pride of a warrior whose followers knew that he was good. He could refuse a fight in full sight and hearing of the other three men without losing their respect.

He looked like a good man to have on one's side in a new Dimension. Other warriors of the Kargoi would listen to him and his judgments. They might not obey him or follow him in battle, but they would hardly slip a knife into a stranger under his protection. Without shedding a drop of anyone's blood, Blade had won his first victory in this Dimension. To win the same victory in other Dimensions he'd had to kill as many as a dozen men.

The leader crossed his arms on his chest. «Who are you, and what do you seek in this land where the Kargoi have left their trail?»

«My name is Blade. I seek the Kargoi.»

«I am Paor. You seek us alone and naked?»

«I have not heard that one needs to come to the Kargoi with an army, if one does not wish them harm. Their warriors can tell an enemy when they see one and do all that is needed. But those who are not enemies ….» Blade shrugged.

Paor smiled. He obviously recognized the flattery, but still enjoyed hearing it. Few men can resist being praised for their honorable behavior.

«Indeed, you know the ways of the Kargoi,» said Paor blandly. «I think the time has come for you to know them better. You shall come to the camp of the Red People and speak before their baudzi.» He turned to one of the other men. «Agik, join Bayus on his mount. Blade, mount upon Agik's drend and we shall take you with us.»

In a minute the two warriors were doubled up on one drend. In another minute Blade was mounted on the back of the vacant one. Paor took the reins of Blade's mount and tied them with a length of rope to his own straps. Then he remounted and dug his heels into the flanks of his drend. The beast grunted irritably, then lurched into motion. The other warriors fell in behind Blade, and the little party trotted off across the plain, through the twilight.

Minute by minute, the drends slowly increased their pace from a leisurely walk to the rolling trot Blade had seen first. Soon they were moving fast enough so that a man would have had to run in order to stay ahead of them. More important, it seemed as though the drends would be able to keep going long after most men had run themselves breathless and collapsed, to be trampled underfoot.

Blade now understood why the mounted warriors of the Kargoi carried bows and swords, but no lances. The drends were too slow and solid. Even the best warrior mounted on one could hardly press home a charge against an opponent who was free to move.

On the other hand, this same slowness and solidity made the drends excellent platforms for archery and swordsmanship. Did the Kargoi rain arrows on their opponents from a distance, then close in and go to work with their swords? Blade was intrigued by the idea. He'd never fought a cavalry battle in slow motion before!

The light was almost gone now, but the sky was clearing. The drends trotted forward, staying in the trampled-down trail but instinctively avoiding the ruts left by the wagon wheels. Off to the left Blade saw the loom of the forest that lay between the plain and the sea. The trail seemed to be running almost parallel to the edge of the forest. No doubt the rich animal life of the forest offered the Kargoi excellent hunting.

By Blade's rough reckoning, it was two hours after dark when they turned off the trail and stopped. Blade saw they were surrounded by grass heavily grazed in spots but not trampled into the ground. The drends promptly lowered their heads to the standing grass and began munching busily. The warriors dismounted, took nuts and strips of salt meat from their pouches, and began to eat. They seemed to have forgotten Blade's existence.

Eventually Paor finished his meal, drank some water from his bottle, and came over to Blade. In the darkness his face was unreadable, but his tone was sympathetic.

«It is unbreakable law that a stranger can neither eat nor drink with warriors of the Kargoi until at least five of the baudzi, the War Guides, have called him worthy. I call you worthy and will go on calling you worthy, but I am alone. Four more baudzi must be found before I can give you food or drink without being cast down among the tent carriers and the dung gatherers.»

Blade nodded silently. He could not help wondering where else he could eat and drink among the Kargoi, if not with the warriors. If the Kargoi were migrating, they and their chiefs might be scattered far and wide across a plain extending for many days' march. Blade didn't particularly want to fast until five chiefs could be tracked down and assembled in one place to judge his worthiness.

Something of this must have shown in his face. Paor smiled. «It will not be so hard to find four baudzi or perhaps even more. All six clans of the Red People are together. We will be up with them once more before it grows light.»

«I understand,» said Blade. «Do not worry. You ask of me no more than a warrior should be prepared to face, if he is worthy of the name.» He did not say that in a boastful tone, but as quietly and politely as if he was discussing the weather. Blade's eyes met Paor's and held them for a moment. Paor smiled and turned away. In a few minutes they were on the move again.

They rode on through the empty, silent darkness for the rest of the night. One more time they swung off the trail to let the drends graze. The warriors dismounted, but neither ate nor drank.

An hour after that the sky began to turn gray. Blade watched the eastern horizon, to see if sunrise in this Dimension would match the sunset. He saw that the forest no longer marched parallel with them to the east. There were scattered groves and isolated trees, but much of the land was open. Once he saw what could only be the ruins of a small castle, with a stone keep rising blackened and grim against the lightening sky. Half a dozen cattle were grazing in the shelter of a half-tumbled wall. Once they must have been part of the castle's herds. Now they were wild things that galloped clumsily off in all directions as Blade and the Kargoi rode past.

The light to the east grew and began to flare. Once more Blade saw the sky lit up with a dozen different colors and a dozen different shades of each color, a display so overpoweringly beautiful that it was almost terrifying to watch as it grew steadily. It grew until it was possible to imagine that the colors would spread all across the sky, then pour down on the world and swallow it entirely.

Blade watched the faces of the Kargoi as the sunrise grew. He would have liked to ask them about the colors, but this might not be wise. So far they seemed to think that he was merely a wanderer from some other part of this Dimension. If he said anything to hint that he was not familiar with the Dimension's spectacular sunrises and sunsets, at least the sharp-witted Paor might wonder.

The baudz watched the sunrise in silence, until its raw beauty began to fade as daylight came to the land. Then he turned to Blade.

«What do your people say of the colors at the rising and the setting of the sun?»

«The sky is the face of the Worldmaster,» he said with glib assurance. «The Worldmaster feels a mighty anger toward us below, his servants. From that anger the colors come, that pass across his face at the dawn and the sunset.»

Paor laughed grimly. «There were those among us who said the same thing, when the sky changed after the shaking of the land and the burning of the mountains. But then the waters began to rise. Slowly they ate up our homeland so that we had to seek a new one. Then we no longer worried about what anger the gods might be showing in the sky. It was enough that their anger was on the earth-or rather, in the waters that were swallowing it.» He paused, then fixed Blade with a not quite friendly stare. «Is your land yet uneaten by the waters?»

«Part of it,» said Blade. «Some remains. But what remains is only enough for those people who live there now. Our hearts are not hard, but our swords would be swift against anyone else who came seeking a home among us.» He laughed, to take the harshness out of his words. «There is also this. I sailed to this land in a ship that traveled for thirty days and nights before it was wrecked. Can the Kargoi ride their drends and haul their wagons across such a width of sea?»

Paor relaxed visibly. «No, I think your land is safe from the Kargoi, if not from the gods. It is in our power to take our beasts and our wagons and ourselves across small rivers and perhaps large ones. So much water as you have crossed would stand in our path forever.» He frowned. «Or at least until we learned the art of building ships. That is an art we may well wish to learn, when we have found our new home. If the gods take from the land and give to the sea, those who can sail the farthest may live the longest.»

«Perhaps,» said Blade politely. «But the wrath of the gods is abroad on the sea. Remember that although my ship came thirty days from my homeland, it was wrecked in the end. A storm overthrew it, a storm that made me think the bowels of the earth were being torn up. Then the creatures of the sea fell on my comrades, so many of them did not even live to drown.»

Blade could now be reasonably sure what had happened in this Dimension. His guess about volcanic dust in the air causing the sunset colors had been right. There'd been a period of seismic activity, with volcanoes erupting all over the world and spewing dust into the air. That dust not only colored the sunsets and sunrises, it made the world warmer. Somewhere massive icecaps had begun to melt and gone on melting, pouring water into the seas until they started to rise and swallow the land. One by one, the people whose lands were vanishing beneath the water had to flee, fighting their way along as they searched for new lands. A grim picture.

Blade let no hint of his thoughts appear as he went on. «I shall gladly teach you as much as I can. I have little chance of returning to my homeland. By the time the Kargoi have learned to build great ships, I will be dead or far too old for the voyage. Perhaps by that time the anger of the gods will also be no more, so that when the Kargoi and my people meet, they will do so in peace.»

«We can indeed hope for an end to the anger of the gods,» said Paor with a sigh. «I wish we could do more than hope.»

They rode on in silence for another hour. Then the horizon ahead began to show squat black shapes. In a few more minutes they were in sight of the camp of the Red People of the Kargoi.