Under the Green Star

Chapter 17 A KNIFE IN THE DARK

Sligon had, of course, been a witness to that dramatic scene of confrontation during dinner, and as I took my place on the benches at its termination, it did not escape me how much the twisted and spiteful little thief had enjoyed my discomfiture. He writhed about in his place at the far end of the hall, laughing silently, his mean little eyes filled with vengeful glee.

I, of course, ignored his very evident enjoyment of my predicament. It would do Niamh or myself no good at all to further antagonize one of the band who already had cause enough to dislike me. So I generally kept out of his way and I noticed that Sligon avoided my own company as much as was possible.

That night as we retired I questioned Niamh about the incident, but she displayed a curious reticence and was obviously reluctant for some reason to discuss the flare-up of Siona’s temper.

We were still forced to sleep in the same bed, maintaining our pretense of being runaway star-crossed lovers, and while this imposed a certain degree of intimacy upon us, I, at least, strove quite manfully to avoid violating her privacy by word or thought or deed. While I was by this time very deeply in love with the Princess of the Jewel City—a fact which I am quite certain she knew—it would not have been gentlemanly or very honorable of me to have taken advantage of the situation in which we found ourselves thrown together in such proximity. For her part, Niamh seemed rather reserved. She seldom spoke to me, save to reply to my own queries politely, and maintained a degree of reserve that grew frostier day by day.

This may have been nothing more than her way of discouraging in advance any attentions I might press upon her. That was my first thought, and I must confess that her behavior irritated me. After all, when a gentleman is very gallantly acting like a gentleman, he deserves at least some credit for his chivalry! But ere long it occurred to me that Niamh’s coolness toward me had some inexplicable connection or resonance with Siona’s own peculiar behavior—but, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what that connection could be.

Although reluctant to discuss the matter, Niamh did at length respond to my questioning, saying that it was because of Siona’s wishes that she had been relegated to the more disagreeable of the kitchen tasks, and also that it was on the express command of the Amazon girl that she was selected to serve her at table. Niamh did not, however, voice any opinion as to the reasons for Siona’s dislike of her, which it seemed amounted to something very close to genuine persecution.

“Why in the world has she taken such a dislike to you?” I puzzled aloud that night as we lay side by side, carefully apart in the darkness of our stuffy little sleeping cubicle. “I can’t understand why she should want to humiliate you before the eyes of everyone in so blatant a manner.”

“Perhaps for contrast,” Niamh murmured enigmatically.

“Contrast?” I repeated. There came to my mind a vision of the scene that had transpired that evening in the great, high-raftered hall. Siona, her boyish garments laid by, in a beautiful and rather revealing robe of semitranslucent gauzy stuff, gems flashing at wrist and throat, lobe and brow, silken hair worked up into an elaborate coiffure, her narrow waist cinched in by an ornate girdle of gem-studded plates of precious metal which lent emphasis to the rondure of her breasts and the swelling lines of her hips and thighs—and poor Niamh, with her smudged face and straggling, uncombed hair, grease-stained kirtle done up, serving the outlaw girl with rough, work-reddened hands.

“Contrast? I don’t understand what you mean,” I confessed in a baffled tone. Niamh gave me a long, cool, faintly amused glance.

“Don’t you? No, I can see that you do not,” she said. And with that she rolled over, her face turned from me, and fell asleep … leaving me staring at the ceiling, completely mystified, pondering the inexplicable perversities of the female mind.

Sligon, as I have mentioned, tended to avoid my company insofar as it was possible for him to do so; but this was not always possible, as his tasks occasionally conjoined with mine.

One of the first incidents on which they did so took place, as it happened, only a night later. Yurgon had guard captaincy that next evening, and the members of his squad were set in their posts. Sligon was a member of Yurgon’s company, and from the time when she had effected the rescue of Niamh and myself from the deadly embrace of the vampire blossom, Siona had placed me under the authority of Yurgon, an order which she had never bothered to rescind. Thus, in effect, I was of Yurgon’s company still, although not a formal member of the outlaw band.

There is no walking of the post when you stand guard in a tree two or three miles high in the air. Guards are mounted in far-spaced lookout stations and there they stay till sunup, or until such time as they are relieved. These lookout stations rather resemble the crow’s nests on a ship, being small, cramped platforms fastened to the ends of branches or the heights of the tree. A wicker railing runs around these platforms about waist-high, and the platforms themselves are securely bound to twig or branch with leathern thongs. They are also usually screened from view by the sort of camouflage I described earlier—twigs or branchlets unobtrusively bent awry so that the huge leaves conceal the platform from any casual notice.

The post Yurgon assigned to me on the night following my dramatic confrontation with the enraged Siona was a remote and lofty one, situated high up in the gigantic tree whereupon the outlaw camp was built. You could only get up to it by climbing a sort of rope ladder, and once in it, you were stuck there till either dawn or your relief came, as the rope ladder was untied and carried away. It was known as “red branch station” in the casual slang of the guards for the branchlet at whose end it was situated was covered with a variety of fungus or mold which was of a distinctive and unique coloration. When Yurgon read out my name and station I could not help but notice that Sligon pricked up his ears. An expression of cunning passed over his ugly, rat-like face, and a gleam of calculation flickered momentarily in his narrow eyes, until, as if by a conscious effort, he wiped his face smooth and innocent of expression.

At the time, this did not seem to be of any importance and I ignored it. Later, of course, I recalled it all too well.

The scuffle of something moving on rough bark awoke me instantly from the light doze into which I had fallen.

Nights on the world of giant trees were of an impenetrable degree of darkness. It was during the hours of night that the most dread and fearsome of the many predators of this planet were abroad, and that which hunted generally did so in complete silence so as not to alarm its prey. So it was that, save for the faint and unending whispering of breeze through the infinitude of leaves, the nights were not only utterly black, but of a ghostly silence as well.

Hence, the slightest sound of an unusual nature tended to arouse suspicion. This is why I snapped to full wakefulness from my dreaming doze when that faint scuffing sound reached my ears. I was crouched at the bottom of the high-railed little platform, my knees bent, for the floor space was miniscule; in an instant I was on my feet, leaning over the wickerwork railing, straining every sense to the fullest.

An almost undetectable tremor ran up the tapering branchlet at whose terminus I was stationed. The vibration was so slight that I might probably not have noticed it at all, had I not been roused to full alertness by the scuffling sound a moment before. I held my breath, heart thumping against my ribs, wondering what slithering monstrosity was inching its way up the branch to which I clung. We were under instructions not to rouse the alarm unless an enemy force was discovered or we ourselves were under the attack of some beast. My hand went out to the curved horn bound to the railing at my side. But still I hesitated—I waited, straining my ears for a repetition of the slight sound I had heard—not wishing to play the fool, afraid of the dark, who gives the alarm at the imagined approach of some nonexistent peril.

Again, that slight tremor up the branch. I had been conducted to my station by a rope ladder; this had been a length of thick rope with fat knots tied in it every three feet or so. It had been unfastened and carried off once I had attained the platform, for such was the custom. Therefore, whatever dread thing was slithering, up the branchlet was clinging to the rough bark itself. In the pitch-dark, my fancy painted a variety of monsters, my favorite among them being an enormous serpent. I could almost see the hideous, slithering shape coiled snakily about the narrow branch, its blunt, wedge-shaped head questing through the blackness for the scent of my flesh …

Was it pure imagination, or did I glimpse the faintest flicker of light below me?

Yes—there it was again! A curious double gleam, like two eyes burning through the dark!

If an enormous snake, or some other night-roaming monster, was approaching my station, there was little enough I could do about it. We guards were equipped with a long, broad-bladed hunting knife whose design was strikingly like that made famous by Colonel Jim Bowie of American frontiersman history; each of us carried one of these all-purpose weapons, which was called a “guard-knife.” We also wore, strapped across our shoulders, a spear or javelin about nine feet long; these, however, formed the extent of our weapons, it being the purpose of a guard to look and listen and, when necessary, give the alarm, but not to fight. It occurred to me that I might well be able to dislodge whatever creature clung to the rough bark if I reached down with my spear. The brute was directly below me now; I could hear its breathing.

Quick as thought I reached down, probing with my spear—

Two things happened almost simultaneously.

As I bent down to probe beneath me with the spear, something went hissing past my face. In the blackness I caught only the vaguest glimpse of it as it flew by; but the nights of this planet are not so dark but that a dim ghost of light cannot be mirrored in the blade of a knife!

At the same moment as the thrown knife went flashing past my head to vanish in the darkness, my spear came into contact with something that clung tenaciously to the bough directly beneath the platform whereon I stood. I jammed the shaft of the spear down between it and the branch and, using all the leverage I had, flung my arms out, effectively dislodging it.

An unearthly yowl sounded and some heavy object went crashing and bumping and blundering down through the foliage to a lower branch.

A moment or so later, Yurgon appeared.

“Red branch station—was it you who cried out?” he called.

“Some night creature approached my position,” I said, “but I beat it off.”

“Very good! But next time, if you are under attack, sound your horn,” he said.

“I doubt if the beast will return,” I said innocently.

With dawn we were relieved. Yurgon tossed the coiled rope ladder up to me; I caught it, secured it to the branchlet, and clambered down to join my company. At the tail of the line of guardsmen I glimpsed hunched, limping little Sligon. He had a bruised and battered look to him, and it seemed to me that he limped a bit more painfully than usual.

“Anything to report?” Yurgon inquired.

I shook my head. “Nothing, sir. Did anything else of note occur during the night?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. Sligon was careless enough to lose his guard-knife somehow, but nothing else … why are you laughing?”

I winked, but did not answer.