Somehow I jerked the sword up and thrust and the lairgodont screeched and hissed and drew back. Blood flecked its snout above the fanged mouth. I got to my feet, drew in a breath, cocked the blade. Then, again, I leaped.
A clawed leg lashed blindly at the sound. The beast’s other leg, half severed, collapsed. It toppled forward. I was able to brace myself, feel the ground under my feet, my legs hard, and swing the blade with full force. Full force from all that length of steel. .
The lairgodont hissed once. Its head hung askew. Blood spouted from the hideous gash in its sinuous neck. It tried. Yes, it tried. Incredibly vicious and tough, the lairgodont. It tried to scrabble up to get at me and so, once again, I slashed. It fell. It rolled over and blood pooled away. Its body fell flaccidly. For the space of a few heartbeats I saw its belly heaving; then it slowed and stopped. Gafard was there. He looked ghastly.
"Hai, Jikai!" he said, and then: "My heart! My love!" He glared distraught after the bolting sectrix bearing the girl away. He staggered and gripped his side. "The pearl of my days! She is doomed!" I looked. I saw. This lairgodont had a mate. The mate, hissing and screeching, pursued the girl in swift, agile bounds.
There was time for no words, no comment, nothing besides leaping astride my sectrix, freeing the reins, a violent dig with the heels, and a jolting, bouncing, breakneck race to save the girl from certain death. As I went hurtling past, spouting dust, I heard Gafard yelling, but his words were lost. He called the woman of the palankeen, the woman of the tent, by the tenderest names. But not her name. The endearments might mean anything. But I knew he felt all he could ever feel for a woman and so, too, knew that if I failed I had best never return to the patronage of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the King’s Striker.
Head down I galloped, the neck of the sectrix outstretched. It would run for me, lairgodont or no damned lairgodont. I used the flat of my sword, all bloody as it was, on the back of the animal and it responded gallantly. We flew over the ground trailing a long plume of dust. Hard rattled the hooves of the sectrix, a drumming staccato that echoed the hoofbeats of the girl’s mount. The lairgodont kept up a hissing shrill that would have unnerved, as it was designed to do, the prey on which it lived. This Zair-forsaken risslaca was the emblem of the Ghittawrer Brotherhood founded by Genod. I cursed him, too, as I cursed everything else as I thundered along.
The thing would have to be done nip and tuck.
I gained on the risslaca as it gained on the girl. Again and again I hit the poor sectrix — and I felt sorry for the beast then — and we roared on. A sharp cry from the girl, the only one she had uttered since the first, heralded the plunging collapse of the sectrix. It went over in a sprawl of six legs and a wild confusion, dust spouting, the girl flying off to land with a crunch against rocks. I cursed for the last time, stood up in the stirrups, and swung the longsword high over my head.
We galloped madly up to the running risslaca, who was a mere half-dozen strides from the crumpled form of the girl. The long bloodily gleaming blade high above my head blazed as the head of the crazed sectrix reached the tail of the lairgodont, reached past its flank, panted and gasped alongside the very fanged head of the monster itself.
Side by side we raced those last few strides, and then the longsword fell with all the weight I could put into it.
It struck shrewdly, just abaft the head on that sinuous neck.
The shrill the lairgodont let loose rattled the stones of the hills. I swung back with a wrench, prepared to strike again, and saw there would be no need. The monster swerved in its dead run, collapsing, toppling, its head flopping, and skidded in a long swathe of dust on its belly before it swiveled about, its legs spread, to come to a stop, tail limp, stone dead.
I hauled up the sectrix and jumped down, keeping the reins in my left hand. I rammed the bloodied longsword into the ground and knelt by the girl.
The risslaca had sprayed blood as it skidded past. She was drenched. Her green veil was torn away. So I looked down on her as she lay there.
I saw the full firm beauty of her form in the green riding gown, splashed with blood. I saw the beauty of her face, superb beauty, a perfection of features such as is seldom seen — but I must not maunder. She opened her eyes as I gazed. Her face in all its blood-splashed purity tried to smile. She licked her lips, those soft, sweet perfect lips.
"The monster-?"
"The lairgodont is dead, my Lady. There is nothing to fear."
"Then you-" And she raised herself, turning that imperious head to look. She saw the lairgodont. She saw me holding the reins of the sectrix, and she smiled.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is all right now. Hai, Jikai!"
"Perhaps, my Lady," I said. "It was a small Jikai." Her hair was a deep glossy black, curled in the fashion of the inner sea. A shadow crossed her face and her brown eyes widened on me. She reached a small firm white hand and gripped my arm.
"My lord Gafard! He is — he is-?"
"He is safe, my Lady." I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, a sensation I could not understand or explain. I thought she would respond to a small jest. "Judging by his shouts he is very sound of wind and limb — my Lady."
She stared at me, a long, level look. "Yes. Yes — I have seen you about the camp. I think I can trust you. You are this Gadak of whom my beloved speaks?"
"I am Gadak."
"And you are — as is he-"
I interrupted, always a rash thing for a mere soldier to do when speaking with a highborn lady. "Yes, my Lady. We are both. But it does not matter — you are safe."
She was a highborn lady. I felt that. I picked her up and felt her firm and warm in my arms and so carried her to the sectrix, who stayed calm now that it could smell dead lairgodont instead of ravening lairgodont. I did not wish to put the longsword all bloody back into the scabbard, even though this scabbard had not been made up for me by my beloved Delia. . I noticed the way she spoke so unaffectedly of Gafard. Perhaps, after all, there was a real affection, a deep love, between them?
How painful it must be for her, then! I knew nothing of her history, but if she was Grodnim by birth, then a love for a renegade would reduce her in the eyes of her family. If she was Zairian and had been captured, perhaps made slave, then how much more painful it must be to receive wealth and privilege and love from a man who had turned his back on Zair.
I looped the bloodied longsword through a rear strap and let it dangle. If it thwacked the beast a little it would help it along. It had done well. I would revise my opinion of sectrixes in its favor. Its name was Blue Cloud, and it was expensive, a gift from Gafard.
I took the girl in my arms again and mounted up, a trick I knew well from the days when I rode with my incomparable Delia. I held the girl close to my breast, supporting her, feeling her warm, firm body against mine, and she placed her slender arms about my neck. So we rode back to Gafard. We spoke but little, silly inconsequential stuff, for she was a great lady and the shock of her experience had not all worn off, although she affected to regard it as a mere incident. A fold of the veil tangled about her waist and the hunting gown were all of green, yet the lairgodont’s blood had splattered them with red. I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, for I judged she was still very young, and the perfection of her beauty would set any man mad and inflamed with passion. Yet I felt a strange otherly feeling for her in which my own profound and abiding love for Delia formed an inseparable part. As we rode back over the dust and left the dead monster behind, I thought about the many beautiful women I have known upon Kregen and of them all — even Mayfwy and certain others — none would have moved me had I never known Delia. But this girl might have. . Had I never met my Delia, then this girl, I thought, might have come in her time to take my Delia’s place. And this, I thought, as I reined up, was blasphemy. Gafard had limped out after us, raving. He had seen most of what had gone on. Like a warrior he had brought his sword with him. He was shaking. His face showed dirty gray beneath the bronze suntan.