The Forests Of Gleor

Chapter 8

«Blade, Blade-wake up»

Neena's voice cut into Blade's sleep. He struggled awake, rolled over, and sat up.

«What-?» he grunted, as he drove the fog of sleep out of his mind. Neena only pointed at the grating and the tunnel beyond it. Suddenly Blade was not only awake but alert, and he saw what Neena meant.

Far down inside the tunnel was a flickering orange glow. Wherever it was and whatever it was, it was bright enough so that the bars of the grating threw shadows on the floor of the prison chamber. That glow must be illuminating the entire inside of the tunnel. Blade got down on hands and knees, and scrambled quickly and quietly toward the grating.

A few quick jerks, and the way was open. Blade crawled through, Neena following him. In the tunnel they rose to a crouch and headed downward as fast as they could. The orange glow grew stronger as they moved.

They came to the gap. The glow showed it clearly, and the tunnel beyond. The actual source of the light lay well beyond the gap, about where Blade had seen gray daylight trickling through. Now an enormous fire was burning above, flooding the tunnel with its glow. Blade could hear the distant roar and crackle of the flames and feel puffs and waves of warm air on his skin.

Blade turned his attention to the gap that yawned at his feet, and plunged away into the depths. The blackness in the shaft below swallowed even the fire's glow after a few yards.

The width, on the other hand-Blade looked, and cursed. The far side of the gap was just under twenty-five feet away.

Damn, damn, damn-damn ten times over! A yard less, and Blade would have gladly attempted the leap. The earth on both edges was firm, and there was plenty of room overhead.

As it was, the gap was just a little too wide for him to have more than a slim chance of making it safely. A chance much too slim to be worth risking, when the price of failure was a three-hundred foot plunge to certain death in the musty darkness far below.

As he'd suspected, the tunnel wasn't going to be a very good escape route. As a hiding place for moments of privacy, it was fine. As a route to a quick and merciful death it was even better. But for the moment Blade's mind was more on escaping. He suspected Neena's was the same.

He noticed that she was staring out across the gap, apparently measuring it with her eyes. Then she turned to him.

«Blade. Can you leap that?»

Blade slowly shook his head. «Not with much hope of landing safely.»

She nodded. «Neither could I. But if you-well, threw me just as I leaped-«Again she measured the distance with her eyes. «I am light, and you look very strong. I think it could be done.»

Blade frowned. «But then?»

«If we had a rope and a stake, I could push the stake into the dirt and tie the rope to it. Then I could throw the other end of the rope back to you, and you could swing across and climb out on the other side.»

That seemed perfectly logical and sensible to Blade. Except-

«One of the bars from the grating will do for the stake. As for the rope-«She smiled and shook her head. «There I admit we have a problem.» She pulled out a few strands of her dark hair and looked at them, then dropped them into the shaft and watched them as they floated down out of sight. «No, that will not do. Not even if I made myself as bald as a koba nut could I make a proper rope of my hair.»

There was undoubtedly plenty of stout rope in Trawn. But all of it was outside their prison chamber. Damn again!

Neena looked at Blade, saw the sober expression on his bearded face, and misunderstood what was on his mind. «Blade-do not think that I would ask you to help me escape if there was no way out for you. I am of the royal house of Draad, and unlike those of Trawn we have some knowledge of honor. We shall escape together, you and I, or not escape at all.» She rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, lingering, warm kiss, that promised an even warmer passion at another time and place. Blade put his arms around the princess and they stood there, locked together, for some time.

As they crawled back up the tunnel, Blade was certain that Neena had made a promise she would keep. Still, if only one of them could have a chance to escape, he would make sure that it was she. King Furzun and Lord Desgo and all the stolofs in Trawn put together could do nothing worse to him than kill him. They could do a good deal more to Neena. She deserved every chance to escape that luck or skill could manage.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem that there would be very many of those chances for either of them.

Another week went by. Blade began to wonder if Lord Desgo had thought up a new form of torture-leaving them alone until they either got ulcers from worrying about what might happen; or died of boredom because nothing did.

Neena laughed at the idea. «Things will happen, sooner or later. King Furzun is a mighty eater and drinker. He can eat and drink in a single day much more than even his body will hold. Then he must lie in bed for a week or more, bathed each day in perfume, drinking nothing but water, and taking not even one woman. Doubtless we came to Trawnom-Driba just after Furzun took to his bed. So nothing will be done about us until Furzun has seen us, and he will not see us until he is on his feet again.»

The next morning breakfast was delivered at the usual time, in the usual buckets, and consisting of the usual stew. But five of the guards in blue leather stood behind the two slaves who lowered the buckets. All the guards' leather gleamed with fresh wax, and the metal of their helmets and swords was freshly burnished.

Blade jerked a thumb at the guards. «All prettied up for a visit by somebody important, it seems. King Furzun?» Neena's mouth was full of stew, but she nodded.

They had just finished breakfast, when a terrific uproar of very badly blown trumpets sounded outside. Each of the trumpeters seemed to be playing in a different key. Several of them ran out of breath halfway through the fanfare. It was a dreadful noise. Neena winced and clapped her hands over her ears.

Eventually the uproar died away in a last pathetic Hurry of gasps and feeble tootings. A bellowing voice roared out, «Furzun the Third, Supreme. Warlord of All Trawn, Master of the Forests, Terror of Gleor-«The bombastic list of titles went on for quite a while. The herald's voice was no more musical than the trumpets, and it sounded as if he had a bad cold in addition.

In time, the herald ran out of titles for King Furzun or out of breath. Then the guards drew aside to the right and the left. Lord Desgo appeared in the doorway, and beside him one of the ugliest men Blade had ever seen.

King Furzun must have weighed close to four hundred pounds, most of it fat. He was nearly six feet tall-also six feet wide and six feet thick. He wore a dark yellow robe trimmed with brown fur and large enough to make a good-sized tent. The robe showed several patches and at least a dozen different kinds of food and wine stains. Furzun's long gray hair was stiff with grease and stood straight up. His long gray beard was even stiffer, and stood straight out from his chin like the bowsprit of a sailing ship. A sickeningly sweet odor of perfume rose from him in waves almost strong enough to beat down the smells of the prison chamber.

Beside him a naked slave girl knelt on the floor. She carried a basket in her mouth, like a dog carrying a bone. Occasionally Furzun would reach down into the basket, pick up a sweetmeat, and pop it into his froglike mouth.

Lord Desgo bowed to the king and pointed at Neena.

«Behold, Your Majesty. I spoke the truth when I said I had made Neena of Draad prisoner and gift to you. Indeed it is she who stands before us.»

Furzun's eyes shifted in their deep pouches of fat and focused on Neena. «It is indeed Neena of Draad, and I spoke ill when I said you lied.» Furzun's voice was the only normal, healthy thing about him. It was a plain, unaffected baritone, with a slight wheeziness about it.

«How came you to take her?» Furzun went on. «She is much given to hunting. This we know. But King Embor has his wits about him, and keeps a strong guard around her.»

«It was not about her when we met,» said Desgo. «Only her woman Kubona, whom I gave to my warriors for their pleasure.» Blade saw Neena's mouth tighten into a hard line at that grim memory. «The man was a stranger to her, though he did fight for her. Yet he was no problem, for my stolof and I found it easy to overcome him.»

«That part of your tale is most probably a lie,» said Furzun. «He does not look like a man who would be easy for you to beat, with or without a stolof. However, we do have him a prisoner, and doubtless some use may be found for him. As for Neena, she was a fool to wander in the Forests of Gleor without a guard stronger than men's desires for her.» Neena glared at the word «fool,» and Blade laid a hand gently on her shoulder to calm her.

«Indeed, Your Majesty, she was a fool.» Another glare from Neena. «Now she shall pay a woman's price for being foolish. She has been kept as she came to us, that you might treat her as one would write upon fresh-cleaned parchment. She has not even received any training. Furzun nodded and pulled at the flesh of his jowls as he looked at Neena. Blade saw that she was beginning to breathe heavily in growing rage under Furzun's stare. Again he laid a hand on her shoulder. This time she twisted sharply, throwing his hand off.

«See how she moves,» exclaimed Lord Desgo. «There is nothing she is not fit for. I can see that she would be most marvelous in the Seven Blowing Reeds position, also the Flight of the Kingfisher, possibly the-«Lord Desgo went on and on, running through what sounded like Trawn's equivalent of the Kama Sutra. Furzun looked at Neena and listened silently as Desgo rambled on.

Blade kept looking from the men in the doorway to Neena and back again. Neena's nostrils were wide, and her neat firm breasts were rising and falling as her breathing quickened. That red-pepper temper of hers was slowly building up to an explosion.

Finally Lord Desgo noticed how excited Neena was. He broke off his listing of sexual gymnastics to point dramatically at Neena. Blade's ruby ring flashed on his hand as he shouted, «Look, Your Majesty. See how perfect she will be for your desires, how ready to meet them. My simple listing of what may be done to her has aroused her. She pants like a bitch in heat. She-«

Neena's temper exploded in an ear-splitting wordless screech that made Blade jump. Before he could move to stop her, she darted across the prison. Her hands locked around Lord Desgo's ankles. «You filthy pimp!» she shrieked. Before anyone could move she drove both her feet hard against the wall and heaved. She put every muscle in her body into that heave. Lord Desgo was jerked off his feet and over the edge of the doorway. He let out a yell of rage as he fell and a yell of pain as he landed. Then Neena was swarming all over him, kicking him, punching him, slapping his face, spitting on him. She was in a terrifying rage. Blade was sure that if Lord Desgo had been wearing a sword, Neena would have snatched it from his belt and cut his throat with it.

If the situation hadn't been so dangerous, Blade would have roared with laughter at Lord Desgo's humiliation. He knew that the sensible thing to do would be to step forward and pull Neena off Lord Desgo, before her rage provoked King Furzun into ordering both of the prisoners killed. What he felt like doing was stepping forward and helping Neena finish off the warrior noble. He felt his hands itching to close around Desgo's thick neck and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. A roaring sounded in Blade's ears. He looked up, to see King Furzun leaning against one side of the doorway, laughing until his stomach shook like jelly and tears streamed down his face and dripped from his beard. As his eyes met Blade's he lurched upright and shouted to someone standing outside. The guards on either side hastily backed out of Blade's sight.

A moment later a stolof-whistle sounded, and a moment after that came the chittering, clattering, and hissing of one of the monsters. Blade darted toward Neena, ready to pull her out of the way. If he could then grab Lord Desgo and use him as a shield.

Before Blade took three steps not one but two stolofs loomed up in the doorway. Both stood more than six feet high, and both were a deep, rich gold all over, instead of green. King Furzun stepped clear as the two stolofs shoved their heads forward and fired their sticky ribbons at Blade.

As before, they were excellent shots. One ribbon caught Blade by the left leg, the other caught him by the right arm. The stolofs reared back, and Blade was unceremoniously heaved forward onto his nose in the filthy mud. Cursing, he clawed and heaved at the ribbons as the two monsters reared back again. Blade was dragged forward toward the wall.

The stolofs heaved again, pulling Blade hard up against the wall, then once more. With the last heave, Blade rose completely clear of the ground and hung grotesquely against the wall. Neena leaped back from the sprawled Lord Desgo. Her face was twisted now with fear for Blade as well as hatred of the warrior noble.

The stolofs heaved one more time, and Blade rose until he hung just below the edge of the doorway. A vast hairy face peered over the edge at him. It was King Furzun.

«Look upon this man, princess,» he snapped. «Look upon him well, where he is, and how he is at the mercy of the royal stolofs and the royal guards. For this attack of yours upon our servant Lord Desgo, he will hang head down for a day before the people of this city. The next time you lose your temper, the royal executioners will have a chance to practice upon him. Consider whether you wish this, or whether you wish to control your temper.»

Neena said nothing, but her eyes were murderous. Blade found himself looking up at Furzun's grotesque face with more interest than before. Furzun had hit on by far the best way to keep Neena in line without threatening or hurting her directly. Lurking inside the mass of fat was a fairly shrewd mind.

The ribbons tightened again, jerking Blade up over the edge of the doorway, to sprawl on his back at King Furzun's feet. King Furzun smiled triumphantly. Then a club smashed down on Blade's head, and he didn't see or hear or feel anything for quite a while.