Guardians Of The Coral Throne

Chapter 4

Blade discovered within a few hours that even a position of leadership among the Scadori was no bed of roses. Or if there were roses, they had very long thorns.

There was the ceremonial cup of beer that Chudo offered Blade. At least it tasted more like beer than anything else, although Blade was happy that he didn't know what really went into making it. He wouldn't have used the stuff to scrub any self-respecting floor. But he not only drank it, he was able to keep it down.

There was putting on the late and unlamented Urgo's armor and clothing. It was fortunate that Urgo had been an exceptionally large and beefy man. Blade was six feet one, weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and in a good many Dimensions had trouble finding clothing that didn't burst at the seams when he tried to put it on. But the armor was rusty and badly cared for, and as for the clothes, it had obviously been a long time since they were washed. They held enough dirt to stand up by themselves and almost enough assorted crawling things to walk away by themselves. They also stank beyond belief. In fact, the stink of the clothing surrounded Blade so thoroughly that he stopped noticing the smell of his new comrades. None of them seemed to have washed for a long time, either.

The porridge and the bits of roast meat they offered him for his meal weren't so bad. At least he could honestly say that he had eaten worse, although not much and not very often.

Blade decided he was going to find out as soon as possible who and what were the Karani-and where. Obviously they were one of the other peoples in this Dimension, but what else? If they were another tribe of barbarians like the Scadori, this was going to be a dull and dreary trip to Dimension X and a total waste of time as far as finding out anything or bringing anything back. But if the Karani were civilized, he was going to head for their territory as soon as he had a chance and move as fast as he could cover ground. If the Karani were close enough to fight with the Scadori, they were close enough for him to reach them sooner or later.

By the time he went to bed, Blade was even more determined to leave the Scadori if he got half a chance. Chudo offered him the crowning honor of the day-a chance to have the band's woman with him all night. Seen close-up, the slave was unmistakably female, although filthy, stringy-haired, and showing the signs of years of hunger and a good many beatings. Her dirt-encrusted back and buttocks were practically criss-crossed with scars, some only just healed.

«Who was she?» Blade asked. He tried to keep his voice casual, to match the contempt Chudo showed for the woman.

«Oh, nothing special. Just a Karani woman we took on a raid among their farms. To have a Karani woman for a band is rare now. The last Emperor kept a good watch on his people, may the Watchers shrivel him! But the new one is only a boy, they say. Perhaps we shall see things change for the better.»

Blade shook his head. «I cannot take a woman now. It is my people's way that after we have killed we must lie apart from women for a full day and night. I would be cursed if I took the woman now.»

Chudo nodded. «Your ways are strange, but if they produce such warriors as you are, they cannot be bad ways. But you will be apart from women for some time, I think. We have-«he broke off to count on his fingers «-seven days of walking before we come to our homes.»

«I am a warrior,» replied Blade. «I am used to going without many things for long times, even women.»

One of the other warriors laughed harshly at that. «Has a eunuch come among us, perhaps?» Blade turned to glare at the man, raising both fists, and Chudo drew his sword. The man swallowed and turned away.

«So be it,» said Chudo. «Then I shall take the woman first tonight, as is my right as leader next to you.»

«Go ahead,» said Blade.

Chudo did go ahead, vigorously. Blade heard his grunts and groans and the woman's whimpers and occasional screams of pain for quite a while. Eventually Chudo wore himself out and Blade was able to go to sleep. As he fell asleep he knew that he had learned a few useful things. The Karani were at least civilized enough to have a ruler who called himself an Emperor. But they were also such deadly enemies of the Scadori that if a Karani woman fell into Scadori hands she was treated worse than an animal. That meant a hatred between the two peoples that went very deep. That in turn meant that Blade would have to be very careful in asking about the Karani, and even more careful when the time came to escape to them.

Over the next few days Blade easily learned much of what he needed to know about the peoples of this Dimension. He simply kept his mouth shut and his ears open as the band of Scadori warriors tramped steadily across the rugged southern uplands of their home territory. Whatever one might say about their manners and habits, the warriors of Scador could certainly cover ground. They marched thirty miles a day and more. Fortunately Blade had held his own with the warriors of Zunga, who could cross fifty miles of their native plains in a single day.

The Scadori were a loose alliance of more or less independent tribes and clans scattered over an area at least as large as England. It was poor, barren, rugged land for the most part, like the land they were marching over or only a little better. Sometimes there was enough food and kind weather, often there were famine and storms. Since there had been people in Scador, those people had looked enviously at the lowlands to the southwest.

But in those lowlands lived the Karani. Not necessarily the High Karani, who lived in the golden city of Karanopolis beside the Great Water, so far away that a man could walk for a month before its shining towers came in sight. But people of the same blood, undeniably. If the Scadori raided down into the lowlands, the High Karani sooner or later marched out against them.

Then there was war, and a terrible one, for neither side showed any mercy at all. Almost invariably the Karani won, sooner or later. They had not only a sturdy infantry, but horsemen who could fight equally well on horseback or on foot, with bow, sword, or lance. The Scadori called the Emperor's elite fighting men the Riders of Death.

The Karani were civilized and formidable as well. But they were not invincible. They could make mistakes, they could be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. As the raids and wars went on over the centuries, the Scadori gained skill in fast marching, laying ambushes, deadly close-in fighting. They captured Karani weapons and copied them, passing them on with the new war skills from father to son. Some day the Scadori would be able to march out as a people, many thousands of them. They would march against the Karani, and then even the Riders of Death would give way before them.

«In the meantime,» said Chudo, «the wars and raids must go on, whether we lose or win. If we do not go out and fight, our warriors will lose their courage and our sons will have no examples to follow.»

As Chudo promised, they marched for six days. From the position of the sun Blade could tell that they were heading roughly northwest. The land also slowly but surely rose under them. Each night the stars shone more clearly from the sky, and a colder wind blew across the sleeping warriors and made the horses whinny plaintively. The Scadori seemed completely indifferent to the cold.

On the morning of the seventh day they climbed through a final pass and came out on a high plateau. A few miles farther on was a small lake, and everyone stripped and plunged into the icy water. Blade managed to keep his teeth from chattering loudly enough to be heard, and enjoyed feeling at least some of the dirt wash away from his skin. After refilling their water bags, they ate a quick meal of cold dried meat and the march began again. The sun passed overhead and began to slide down toward a distant flat horizon. As the western sky began to turn red, Blade saw a conical shape rising from the plain against the redness. Its top and sides were studded with humps and blocks.

«Ukush,» said Chudo briefly.

«Your home?»

«Yes.» He turned to the warriors behind them. «Take the heavy things from the horses. The Blade and I will enter Ukush riding. Let whoever has a pipe play a death-tune for Urgo, for we must give his spirit what it deserves.» He winked at Blade as he said this.

Blade slowly and carefully mounted the horse Chudo offered him. The horse was not skittish or hostile, fortunately. It had been starved into apathy and was so gaunt that Blade was more worried about its collapsing under his weight. It had obviously been a fine gray once, small but extremely sturdy and with a high proud head, probably a mount of one of the Riders of Death. Now Blade was glad he did not have to ride it more than a few miles or faster than the gentlest of trots.

Chudo also mounted up and two of the warriors pulled out short pipes and began playing a tune that was either improvised or something they knew very badly and played even worse. Blade gently urged his horse into motion and the little procession of returning warriors tramped out across the plain toward Ukush.

They began to see herds of gaunt piebald cattle. The herders and guards waved to them as they passed. Beyond the cattle were fields, the rocky soil dark and bare now, surrounded by walls of loose stones piled just high enough to discourage the half-starved cattle. Under the darkening sky, with the bloody glow in the west, it was a grim, dreary sight.

As they moved closer to Ukush, Blade saw thin trails of smoke smudging the sky above the town as small fires tried to make headway against the chill winds. Dung fires, no doubt, or perhaps peat if the Scadori were lucky. Blade hadn't seen a tree since they reached the plateau, and damned few in the hills below the pass!

Around the base of Ukush's hill rose another wall, this one of earth mounded ten feet high and covered on the outer face with stones. They passed through a gap in the wall flanked with massive boulders perched on top of the wall to either side.

«When another tribe fights us we bring the cattle and the people inside the walls. Then strong men push the big rocks down into the open space. No one can get in easily as long as our warriors stand on the walls with weapons in their hands.»

«Are such wars common?»

«You would like to fight, Blade?»

«I am a warrior. It is my way of life to have enemies and fight them.»

«Good. But we in Scador do not fight much among ourselves now. I think you will be among us many years before you help defend the walls of Ukush against other Scadori.»

«But it will not be long before I fight the Karani, I hope?» Blade did his best to seem eager almost to the point of being bloodthirsty.

«You want to fight beside us, do you?»

«You have taken me in among you when you might have thought I killed Urgo by trickery and sent my spirit to join his.»

«It is so. Then you will share in the next battle with the Karani, and all the battles with them after that until there are no more to fight.»

«Or until I die,» put in Blade. «No warrior can be certain that will not happen.»

«No,» said Chudo. He grinned. «But I do not think it will happen to you. I think you will fight the Karani and kill so many that in three years you will have five Karani women all to yourself. And you will also have Tera.»

«Who is Tera?»

«She is Urgo's woman. She is seventeen, and so beautiful that I think the light of the Watcher of the Day Sky must be in her. But she bore Urgo no children, and has a stronger spirit than is right in a woman. So he had to beat her often, and it twisted her spirit. Beware of her, for all her beauty. She might try to stick your own sword in your guts some night if you are not careful.»

«Thank you for the warning,» said Blade. He was about to add, «I will start off by not beating her for a while, to see if that untwists her spirit.» Then he realized that Chudo would hardly understand the idea. He might not think Blade a coward, too weak to treat a woman as she deserved. But he might think that the new warrior who had come among the Scadori was a madman, and say so. That could cause talk, which Blade did not need. Anything that could make him a suspicious character would make it harder for him to slip quietly off toward the lowlands and the Karani.

The lower slopes of the hill inside the wall were empty, the earth trampled bare and hard in many places. Above it was a ring of shops. Smoke and clanging sounds rose from what was obviously a forge. Farther around the circle was a butcher's shop, with a horrible pile of bones and entrails beside it. Blade was glad that the weather was cold and the wind blowing from him toward the pile. He hoped he could get out of Ukush before hot weather came, and with it a host of frightful smells.

Part of the ring of shops was given over to stables. Like all the other buildings they were built of stones and turf, thickwalled, low, with roofs of hides sewn together and stretched over frames of bone. As Blade dismounted, a warrior nearly as large as Urgo stepped out from between two stables. He wore only leather breeches and a knife at his waist, and the hair of his beard and his massive chest was gray.

«Where is Urgo?»

Chudo pointed at Blade. «We found this warrior named Blade from a distant land traveling in the hills to the south. Urgo said too much, as usual. He thought the warrior Blade would be easy and pleasant to kill because he was naked and unarmed. But Blade fought Urgo naked with only his hands, and killed him. Now he leads our band. His customs are strange, but he is a mighty warrior, so they must not be bad customs.»

The gray-haired warrior's broad face split apart in an even broader smile. He stepped forward and threw both arms around Blade, pulling him against his barrel chest until Blade felt that his own ribs would crack. «That great maker of loud noises is dead! Praise to the Watchers! Now perhaps my daughter will no longer be called barren, to the shame of my family. It cannot be that she was barren. It must have been that Urgo could not do what a man does, and threw the shame down on her like a rock from a high place. But now he is dead, dead, dead!»

Blade didn't follow this, but the man's bear hug had squeezed all the breath out of him. The man noticed Blade's confusion.

«Ah, Blade, I see you do not know. Tera, the woman who was Urgo's and will now be yours, is my daughter. My name is Degar.»

They clasped right hands and placed their left hands on the hilts of each other's weapons. In Scador that was the gesture of greeting between men who were not only friendly toward each other, but did not expect to ever become enemies.

Degar said, «It is good that Urgo is slain, for now my daughter will go to a man who will see that she bears a child and takes away the shame from my house.»

Chudo said farewell to Blade and promised to come to his house tomorrow to tell him more of what he must know to be a warrior of Scador. Then he turned back to the rest of the band, while Degar led Blade through the alley between the stables and up into the streets of Ukush. The streets were hardly wider than the alley and nearly as dark and smelly. Only occasional dim flickers of light crept around the hides drawn across the low doors of the huts and houses, to fall on the worn and age-blackened stones underfoot. Blade heard drunken singing, children crying, the sound of someone being violently sick. Above everything rose the continuous faint moan of the chill wind. Blade realized that in winter Ukush must be a grim stony hell of shrieking wind and snow flying like shotgun pellets.

Degar stopped before a house with red checker patterns painted on stones on either side of the doorway and a white diamond painted on the bleached and cracking hide of the door itself. «This is the house of Urgo.» He drew his knife and rapped smartly on one of the stones by the doorway with the hilt. «Ho, in the house of Urgo! I bring the new master, the warrior Blade, who has slain Urgo and will claim his rights on this house and all in it.»

A flurry of low muttering voices, a flurry of scuttling feet, and the hide door was pulled aside. An old woman peered out, one eye in her thin brown face filmed over with white, the other dark and piercing. «Enter, Degar, and enter, Blade, that we may do you honor in this that is now your house. What is your wish?» She seemed quite unsurprised at the turn of events. No doubt she had been passed from one master to another half a dozen times in her life.

Blade drew himself up to his full height to make a proper entrance, then noticed that the doorway was barely five feet high. So he bowed head and shoulders with as much dignity as he could manage, and led Degar into the house.

Inside, the ceiling was no higher than the doorway. The bones and bits of wood that held the hide taut, the hide itself, the stone walls-all were black with years or even centuries of soot. The air was chill, heavy with the smells of smoke and grease and filth, as though it had crept into the house many years ago and been there unchanged ever since. But at least it was warmer here, thanks to a small fire burning in a circle of stones in the center of the main room. The smoke of the fire was supposed to rise up through a small hole in the roof. Some of it actually did. The rest of it filled the house, eddying to and fro.

For the first time in many hours Blade could no longer hear the endless whine of the wind. That alone was enough to make him feel that the house was almost luxurious.

The old woman led Blade to a seat by the fire. The seat was a large flat rock with layers of hides piled over it. Blade sat down, while Degar crossed the room to an even lower door set in the far wall.

«Tera! Come forth to meet your new master! Come forth to see he whose will shall be over yours from this night on!» There was a stirring in the darkness beyond the door, a small squeal of pain or surprise, and Degar reappeared, dragging a young woman.

Very young, in fact. But then Blade remembered that seventeen was very young only by Home Dimension standards. Here in Scador she had doubtless been considered a grown woman at fourteen. She would be old at forty, if she was still alive.

But now she was seventeen, and as Blade looked at her his eyes widened. Tera was beautiful. More beautiful than he had expected, almost more beautiful than he could believe in someone from this barbaric people living in their harsh, chill land. She was barely five feet tall and exquisitely formed. Huge dark eyes stared out at him from a face that missed being perfect only through the square lines of its jaw, and a great mass of dark brown hair poured down her back and over her-shoulders. It was matted and filthy, and right now her father had a firm grip on it. But Blade could not help imagining how that hair might look, clean and flowing. Or how the rest of Tera might look, stripped of the shapeless garment of hides that concealed her from neck to ankles and left bare only face, feet, and slim arms.

Degar released his daughter and made a sharp gesture with one hand. She nodded submissively, reached down to the hem of the garment, and pulled it over her head. Her nude body kept the promise of the rest of her, with small perfect breasts, slim waist, beautifully molded legs. Blade felt desire rising in him more quickly than it had for any woman in years.

«Is she not pleasing, Blade?»

«She is very pleasing, Degar.» The sincere enthusiasm in his voice made the warrior smile.

«She is small, and she has Nessiri blood in her through her mother. But is she not, in spite of that, formed to bear the sons of warriors?» The Nessiri were a people living to the south of Scador and east of Karan, a people of hunters and fishermen who fought both Scadori and Karani.

«She is.» As Blade spoke, Tera did a quick twirl on her small feet, showing herself off with a smile of pride on her face. She obviously knew just how desirable a man should find her.

«Can you believe that it is her fault that shame has come on my house because she has borne no sons? Can you believe that it was not the fault of Urgo, unable to do what a man should do?»

«Urgo indeed must have been as weak in his manhood as in his head,» said Blade. He looked Tera up and down, letting his face show all the appreciation and desire he felt. Her smile broadened. «A warrior of my people must fast and keep vigil after battle, before he can take a woman. This I have not done on the journey here. When I have done that, Tera will find that my manhood is as strong as my arms.» He flexed his arm and shoulder muscles. It would have been even more dramatic if he had been able to show a full erection, but he hadn't quite reached that point yeti

Tera's smile faded, and Degar frowned. «You speak the truth in this? It is the way of your warriors?»

Blade hardened his own voice and expression. «It is so. I am not as Urgo. There will be unhappiness between us, Degar, if you again doubt what I say.»

Blade did not want to start his life in Ukush by a quarrel with Degar. But among these people he doubted if he could let anyone call him a liar without losing reputation. He hoped his choice of words had struck the right balance.

Apparently it had. Degar shrugged his massive shoulders, then turned to his daughter. «There will be a time yet, girl, or this Blade shall tell me why.» His face softened for a moment as he gazed at his daughter. Then he turned and strode out without another word.

Tera stood, still naked and looking down at the floor. «Shall I cover myself, Blade?» she said softly.

Blade laughed. «You shall not, Tera. Why should you cover yourself just before I take you?»

Tera's mouth dropped open and she clapped both hands to her breasts with a little gasp. When she could speak, she could only stammer, «But-but the laws-your people-«

«There are things no laws of any people can make a man do when he has his manhood,» said Blade with a grin. «One of them is not to reach out for a woman such as you are, and do with her all that he can for as long as he can.» Tera giggled in delight and anticipation. Blade turned to the old woman.

«You shall keep silent on all that passes tonight. Or you will not have a tooth in your head tomorrow morning. Do you understand?»

«Yes, master.» The woman bowed so deeply that her forehead nearly touched the floor.

«Good.» Blade stepped forward and scooped Tera up in his arms. She was as light as he had expected. He carried her through the inner door into a tiny sleeping room, then laid her down on the furs that gave the floor a little softness. She lay back, hair making a fan around her head, legs spread nearly as wide, wearing nothing but a smile that seemed to light up the whole gloomy chamber. Blade felt desire rising in him again as he began stripping off his clothes. Tera's eyes widened at the sight of his erect maleness. But the smile never left her face, and her hips began to move slowly, with an almost liquid motion.

Then Blade lay down and surged into her. She was snug, but warm and wet and totally receptive and welcoming. He began thrusting, and she began moving faster. Slim arms came up to wrap around his neck; the superbly molded legs rose to clamp around his hips with more strength than he thought they had in them. Her teeth tightened painfully on his left ear. But he barely felt the pain in the rising joy and delight he felt as he moved inside Tera and she moved around him. He felt nothing except this woman and what was happening between them.

Her breathing came faster, and he felt the hard little points of rigid nipples against his chest. He pressed down on her harder, not worrying that she might be fragile, not thinking of anything except doing all that this woman would let him do. Could he last that long? He sensed that this woman might be more than his match. There were years and years of pent-up desire in Tera, and she would be spending it all on him, here and now.

Yet in the end it was Tera who first cried out, shrilly and wildly, who first twisted and writhed still more wildly under Blade's thrusts, who locked her legs still more tightly about him and tossed her head about until her hair flowed over Blade's head. Then she was sobbing and whimpering as her spasm passed. A second came, and with that Blade reached his own climax and writhed and heaved as he groaned and poured himself into her.

Eventually they found the strength to untangle themselves. Blade became aware that it was chilly in the little chamber, and pulled some of the piled furs over them. The furs stank and probably swarmed with vermin, but he hardly cared about that now. Certainly he did not care about that one-tenth as much as he cared about Tera. She was indeed a woman and an unusual one, with more to know in her and find out about her than many Home Dimension women twice her age. Blade did not know if he loved her or indeed would ever love her. But he knew even now that he cared very much what happened to her.