Warlord of Antares [Dray Prescot #37] Page 6

  “The women need to rest up again, Jak,” called Nath. He marched at the back, shepherding the females along much as a ponsho-trag shepherds along his flock of woolly ponshos. He carried two of them, more or less comfortably, and it was clear to Seg and me that he was forming an attachment.

  Just how wise or foolish that was down here in this magical maze remained to be seen.

  “I don't like the look of old Deb-Lu,” said Seg, in a quiet voice.

  “There's trouble up ahead, that's for sure."

  “Better to have everyone rest up first, then."

  “Aye.” I called back to Nath. “We'll take a breather, then, you Impenitent."

  “Quidang!"

  The women flopped down and stretched out on the bare stone of the floor, grateful for the rest. Nath deposited his two with care and then stalked up to join Seg and me.

  The girl with the pale shapely body and dark frizzy hair who'd hurled the knife at the Kanzai also walked up. She made a grimace of distaste that revealed the cruel sharpened teeth.

  “Well, men, if we must go forward let us get on, for the sake of Mayruna the Perforater!"

  “You would leave your friends here?” demanded Seg.

  “Not my friends, man, of whom there are few left. These other frail fools, yes, of course."

  Rashly Nath the Impenitent burst out: “Your Perforater is not to my liking, woman!"

  She gave him a look, an upward, slanting, calculating look that seemed to strip away skin and flesh.

  “That is very true, man. Mayruna the Perforater is not to your liking in this world or the other."

  With what I hoped was a nicely judged amount of acerbity, I said: “We cannot push on yet, young lady. When the women are rested, we will see what that water ahead brings us. Is that clear?"

  She opened her mouth and I haven't the faintest idea what she might have said. I cut in sharply.

  “So it would be less foolish of you to go and rest now, like the others."

  She had retrieved that flung knife so contemptuously disposed of by the Kanzai adept. Her brown fingers twitched once in the direction of the knife's hilt, and then she puffed her cheeks, turned away with the frizzy hair glinting with the crystal overhead lights. Dust and dirt matted the hair. She said nothing and went back to drop down and find what comfort she could from the hard stone floor.

  “Keep an eye on that one, Nath,” said Seg in his serious way.

  “Aye, Horkandur, aye. I don't fancy her knife tickling between my ribs."

  “She has friends here,” I pointed out.

  “If, Bogandur,” said Nath, “they are all like her it will be exceedingly interesting."

  Seg pursed up his lips. I could sense something had been worrying away at my blade comrade, and now, without showing the slightest impoliteness to Nath by not taking up his comment and introducing a fresh, he said: “We have been spared the visitation of monsters and unwholesome beasties lately. Yet I fancy the Witch will not let us go without taking a last crack at us. Yes?"

  “Indubitably,” said Nath, who was fond of the word.

  “Aye,” I said. “And with all these women along—"

  “My point, precisely.” Seg's fey blue eyes showed a bright merriment. “Our ferocious lady friends of the Rumay persuasion may then earn their keep."

  Nath rumbled a huge guffaw from his stomach, highly impressed by the indubitableness of the proposition.

  Not for the first time—and assuredly, by Vox, not for the last—I found myself rejoicing in the company and companionship of good comrades. Yes, yes, I love to go off adventuring alone, wearing the brave old scarlet and swinging a great Krozair longsword; but equally I joy in adventures shared with boon comrades.

  And here I pulled myself up sharply and with a most unpleasant jolt of guilt.

  What the hell was I doing contemplating going off adventuring when all of Paz demanded my utmost exertions? We had to escape from this damnable Coup Blag, Witch of Loh or no damn Witch of Loh, and then I had to see about organizing the countries to fight shoulder to shoulder. And by countries one always means the people of the nations. There would be no easy ride trying to convince some of the rulers in the lands of Paz to work together. The task which, in the early days, I had considered to be just another problem set to my hands, was altogether far greater and fraught with bristling difficulties I had not foreseen.

  The simple answer and the one I had at first thought to be the one the Star Lords intended was just to go around to these various lands and gain control.

  That meant conquest, naked war and conquest.

  Or, it would mean that if there were no subtler way I could take over the running of a nation.

  Now I saw that for one man to go around making himself king of this and prince of that was paranoia of a sublime madness. It was megalomania on a grand scale.

  No. There had to be other ways, and just at the moment I had no idea what those ways might be.

  Oh, yes, assuredly, I had a scheme dreamed up for Pandahem which I intended to put into operation the moment we were out of here and running free. But that was but a small chunk of the main problem.

  “You look, Bogandur,” said Nath, “as though you have lost a zorca and found a calsany."

  “Rather, Nath,” I said with feeling, “found a woflo."

  “That you cannot ride."

  “Unless the one shrinks or the other grows."

  “Most profound,” put in Seg. “And I'm starving."

  Nath rumbled up a grunting cough.

  “I wish you hadn't said that, Seg. Now I am reminded that my guts are like the last flagon at dawn."

  “And,” shot back Seg, “I wish you hadn't mentioned anything to do with flagons."

  The little sally-affray gave us some tithe of amusement. I stood up and stretched and looked around.

  Seg stood up as well and said: “Yes. Time to go."

  Nath rolled off to get the ladies moving.

  Again Deb-Lu appeared, shimmering and ghostlike.

  The jagged opening into which he beckoned us did not look inviting. But trusting the Wizard of Loh absolutely as I did, I had no hesitation in heading directly into that Stygian blackness.

  The sound of rushing water rustled and echoed about us, bouncing from the walls and drumming in our ears.

  Feeling cautiously ahead, probing with the longsword, I made slow progress. Here, safety was far more important than speed.

  Just rushing blindly ahead would get you killed stone bonkers dead, no doubt of that, by Krun!

  The eeriness of this alien underground maze must not be allowed to affect our nerves. Yes, we were deep underground, walled by millions of tons of rock, creeping along in total darkness, prey to all the imagined fears the human mind can invent. Yet we had to hold onto our courage and press on and front the dangers and terrors as they leaped upon us.

  The faintest iridescent shifting of mingled colors from a rockface far far ahead indicated the presence of distant light. With that faint and far off glow ahead the whole feeling to this cautious crawl through darkness altered. As we went on so the light strengthened. Our angle to the rockface shifted and gradually the predominant color emerged as an eye-searing viridian.

  “Shades of Genodras,” I said to myself, and prowled on. The twin Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, might be shining away in the Kregan sky outside, or, for all I knew, it could be pitch dark and some of Kregen's seven moons float refulgently among the stars. The diurnal rhythms of the world had, for the moment, been abandoned.

  The noise now boomed and reverberated everywhere so that I was convinced a waterfall of some size lay in store for us.

  Dampness in the air lay on the lips and tongue. The stone floor slicked with moisture. Along the walls as the green light intensified grew algaes and lichens, and the skipping figures of tiklos appeared and vanished among the crevices.

  “I suppose,” said Seg in a resigned and injured tone of voice, “we won't be able to drink the dratted water.
"

  “Dunno, Seg. Maybe now Csitra's had her wings clipped natural things are back to being natural."

  “At least the she-witch did feed us from time to time."

  “Aye."

  Directly ahead the green light poured through a wide opening set at an angle so that the radiance bounced from the rock face opposite. The noise now reached a painful intensity. The women stumbled along with their hands clapped over their ears.

  Deb-Lu's figure showed to the side of the passage. A crevice in the rock, a mere jagged crack stretching from the floor up to a peak something like ten feet overhead, slashed a streak of blackness against the shining stone.

  “Through there!” exclaimed Nath. “When there's a large opening ahead?"

  “The Wizard of Loh has not failed us yet.” I looked back over the mob. “Keep together.” With that I plunged into the crack of blackness.

  Cobwebs slurred furrily across my face. Irritably I brushed them away and pressed on, sword extended. The floor was rough and littered with detritus fallen from the apex of the fault. The noise lessened at once.

  The experience was spine-tingling and unpleasant. The crack broke to the left and then to the right, and more dinging cobwebs festooned around my head. A distant wash of green light glimmered in a vague triangular shape before me. I took a breath and smelled dampness and green growing creepers and the oily and unidentifiable smell of alien life. I forced myself on and stepped past the broken end of the fault onto brown and golden gravel.

  “All clear!” I bellowed back and then moved on a few paces to inspect this new and enormously vast cavern.

  Light diffused green and gentle from the unseen roof—only a radiance seeped down from overhead. Winged creatures flew and darted, streaks of blue and white, among the stalagmite-like spires clustered around the left-hand wall. The golden brown gravel gradually merged with golden sand leading to the edge of a river. The roaring of the waterfall reached through a drift of spray spilling from the tunnel mouth where the river entered the cavern. The green growing smells, wet vegetation, trailing waterweeds, and the unmistakable smell of lavender coulory blended to form a not unpleasant cocktail of scents.

  “Well,” said Seg stepping out, “what have we here? Fish for supper?"

  Then his fey blue eyes, surveying the scene, softened. He looked around and said: “Y'know, my old dom, this is a remarkably pretty place to find so deep underground."

  “There are even trees growing with their roots in the water. And those birds—if they are birds—look quite unthreatening and cheerful."

  The women trailed out of the crack in the cavern wall and incontinently flopped down on the gravel.

  Nath deposited his pretty burdens and came over to join Seg and me.

  “A forest under the ground!” he exclaimed.

  “Could be an enchanted forest, my old Impenitent."

  “Very probably, Horkandur. If so, we can surely avoid it by going around it."

  “In,” said Seg waspishly, “dubitably."

  “Let the women rest for a time,” I said. “We'd better search for the way out."

  Nath heaved up a grunting sigh. “I don't much care, Bogandur, to leave the women unguarded down here."

  “You are right, of course, Nath. And you will do the honors?"

  “I will."

  “If anything occurs,” said Seg in his light and casual way. “You start yelling and then defend them all and hack and slay until we get back, right?"

  I looked at Nath and saw him give a sudden start, as though thoroughly surprised and taken unawares. I'd no idea what could have caused that.

  “I will,” he said again, and this time in a much harsher and much shorter snap.

  The pale shapely girl with the frizzy hair walked across. With her were her companions, and their hair, too, spiked out, and I guessed that in times of stress it, too, could resemble the snake tresses of a Medusa.

  “We will search one way, man, if you search the other."

  Most of them were half-clad. All had knives, spears or swords, and they looked a nasty bunch to argue with. Their Fuzzy-Wuzzy appearance reminded me I had no Martini-Henrys or Gardner guns to deal with them.

  “Very well.” Then I added: “I do not wish to continue to call you woman, woman. Would you favor me with your name?"

  Now names are matters of great and imperative importance upon that miraculous and marvelous world of Kregen. Many peoples employ only use names, for their own name if known to an enemy confers power to the foe. She gave me a look, a hard appraising look. Dust glinted in her hair.

  “You may call me Shalane, man."

  “Very well, Shalane."

  The group of Rumay fanatics went off to the right and as we trailed off in the other direction, Nath said: “They are not Battle Maidens; but many Jikai Vuvushis I have known who glory only in the uniform and the pomp and the show of being a War Woman would run screaming at the sight of them, aye, by Vox, many of them."

  “Oh, aye,” said Seg. “A most scrapworthy bunch."

  So we set off to explore this new world we had discovered deep underground and to encounter what new perils it might hold.

  * * *

  Chapter eight

  "Save your breath for breathing!"

  With our usual wary step, Seg and I walked along following the course of the river downstream. Nath remained with the women and the Rumay fanatics went upriver. We would then circle the cavern seeking egress.

  “Y'know, Seg, there has to be a reason for a place like this."

  “You mean a place of beauty among all the horrors of the Coup Blag?"

  “Right. This is not quite the sort of cavern we're accustomed to finding deep in the heart of a mountain."

  “We're well down underground here, all right. But I rather fancy this cavern is still in the mountain above the outside ground level."

  “And that causes an idea to form, perhaps?"

  “Aye, by Vox, an idea of some fraughtness."

  “I agree."

  “Well, my old dom, if it is the way, it is the way. By the Veiled Froyvil! We've come through thinner scrapes before this!"

  So, not much caring for the idea in our heads, we went on along the river bank. Vegetation with the abundant water and never-ending light grew profusely and we saw many varieties of plants that I'd never seen before.

  The blue and white flying creatures were joined by others of multicolored feathers, and they swooped and cavorted above our heads.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Seg, and darted forward. “Palines!"

  I lost no time in joining him and picking the bright yellow berries and stuffing them into my mouth. Palines—ah, they are a boon Kregen confers almost anywhere you travel and they'll keep you healthy and clear hangovers and generally make life worth living.

  The scents of this delightful place sharpened about us. We breathed in refreshingly. The nonsensical notion flitted across my mind that one could live here in perfect tranquility for the rest of one's natural span.

  The river ran smoothly and shining under the radiance. Fish leaped. We saw no sign of aquatic predators.

  The colors and sounds and perfumes of this place delighted us. The trilling of the birds complemented the scents of the flowers in a sensory palette soothing and yet exhilarating. Here, the weary could rest.

  We saw the place where the river entered the cliff face from some way off. Trees clothed the lower portions; the rocks frowned gaunt and bare above. We walked on, alert for danger even as our senses were soothed by the beauty and serenity of the cavern. Soon we stood before the river's exit.

  “Ugly,” commented Seg. “Dratted ugly, by Sasco!"

  The river plunged into its carven hole, fashioned into the likeness of a snarling mouth. The sculpted face surrounding that unwholesome oriflee bore the likeness of a devil, a Kregen devil, which puts those of Earth to shame.

  The rock here glistened dully with a green patina. The river rustled between the banks and plunged over smoothly a
nd evenly with little spume or fuss. The blackness of the hole into which the river entered was of a blackness highly disturbing to those of nervous dispositions. I owned to myself that I tried to lighten the effect by a lightness in thinking of that damned hole; if you didn't feel amused by it you'd run screaming. Some of those poor women with us were most definitely of a nervous disposition, unfortunately.

  “Come on, Seg, let's find the way out of this place."

  “I'm with you. Unfocuses your eyes, does that blasted hole swallowing the river."

  We gave the demonic face lowering down above us a last look, then we set off along the base of the cavern wall.

  I suppose, to be honest, we both knew what it would come to, that there would be no escape from the deed. Still, we searched diligently all the way around for the way out, until we reached the gap in the rock through which the river entered the cavern. Then we went downstream to the camp.

  Shalane spat and said: “There is no way out but the way we entered."

  “D'you want to retrace your steps in there?"

  A great hullabaloo started at this, and Seg and I went off to eat some of the fish Nath had caught and cooked. Some of the women had brightened appreciably in these pleasant surroundings, and were busy about our camp. I do not much care for fish; I recall that meal with pleasure.

  In the end, of course, there was nothing else for it.

  I felt no surprise when, staring up at the demonic face swallowing the river, some of the women turned around. They went back to the camp, calling that they would stay here.

  “We can't leave them!” Nath looked outraged.

  “We cannot in all conscience force them to go against their wishes, can we? They will be safe here—"

  “But—forever?"

  Seg said: “We'll talk to ‘em again. It won't be all that bad, by the Veiled Froyvil!"

  Eventually six of the women remained adamant that they would stay. They could do without men gladly.

  “So be it."

  “Havila have you in her keeping,” said one of the women who was not staying, bold of face and grasping a spear.

  From the slain malkos the Rumay women had taken axes as well as swords and spears, and we set to work to chop enough branches and trees to make sufficient rafts. They were bound together with lianas, and everyone pitched in to help.