“What do you mean, ‘new’?”
The warrior shrugged, incuriously. “Came riding in an hour ago, when you were having meat. I was on guard and saw them. Old Houm was waiting for them, I think. At least, he seemed mighty relieved when they turned up, and glad to see them.”
“Do you know who they are?” Ryker asked.
“I don’t know the tall one,” admitted Raith. “But the little fellow with him is a Juhangir …”
An alert, wary flame leaped up in Ryker’s colorless eyes.
“Named Goro? The one who entertained back at Yhakhah?”
“That’s the one.”
Ryker said nothing, but now he was no longer curious.
Now he was afraid.
It took him quite a while to get to sleep that night, with so many small, annoying mysteries on his mind. Finally he did manage to drift off, although his sleep was shallow and troubled by shadowy and ominous dreams.
An hour or so before dawn he came fully awake, suddenly, tingling all over with apprehension. Something had disturbed his light slumbers. But, what?
He threw back the fold of his cloak of furs and raised himself on one arm, looking around. The energy gun was ready in his hand.
But he saw nothing, nothing at all. The bare, empty room of the ancient citadel, rubbish in the corners, the faded hues of curious antique murals—naught else was visible in the dim green glow of chemical flame. The metal pan stood on the floor by the door, shedding its emerald illumination evenly over the room. By this night light, which the Martians leave burning when they sleep, believing that green light repels the night-wandering apparitions and vampiric demons of the dark which throng their old mythology, he saw nothing suspicious.
It was merely a superstition, of course, but a night light sometimes comes in handy. As now, for instance, Ryker could see that no one was there.
From beyond the half-open door he heard the distant mutter of men in the suites below, being awakened to replace the guards. From the courtyard beyond his unshuttered window, he heard the beasts stirring in their sleep, and the restless clatter of their splay-footed feet against the worn old tiles.
The early morning was so still that he could hear even these faint, far, familiar sounds.
What, then, had startled him into awakening so suddenly?
Then he felt the night-chill against his heart. And knew that his garments were disarranged—and not by him.
His thermals were held together by pressure seams, which could not easily be opened. But something had opened them, laying naked the flesh above his heart.
A dim premonition stirred within him, then.
For around his neck in a leather bag he wore the black seal he had found in the ancient tomb.
Now, why on Earth—or on Mars—would anybody be interested in that?
9. “ZHAGGUA!”
Perhaps it had not been anyone after the black seal at all, he reasoned to himself. For, after all, it still lay snug and safe in the little leather bag he wore suspended about his neck on a thong. To make certain of this, he opened the bag, took out the carven piece of heavy black crystallike stone and examined it closely by the green glow. Then he put it away.
Perhaps his thief in the night had simply been that—a thief. Thieves seek valuables—currency, coins, gems. And Ryker’s pockets were bare of these things, God knew! He grinned sourly, shrugged, and lay back in the folds of his cloak, composing himself to snatch what little of the night was left before he must rise to the duties of the day.
But he had drunk deeply of the strong wine the night before, watching Valarda dance naked before the men, and the pressure of his kidneys goaded him reluctantly from the room to seek a privy.
There was a dry well in the courtyard where the slidars were tethered, he remembered. He headed downstairs for it. But at the head of the stairway he froze motionless, straining his ears, his gun out and ready.
There were men ascending the stairs, many men, moving with furtive stealth, keeping as quiet as was possible.
Ryker knew this by blind, unreasoning instinct. He had been pursued and hunted in his time, and men walk in a different way when they are trying to creep up on someone without being seen or heard, than when they are just trying not to awaken their sleeping comrades.
He melted into the shadows then, and when the band of men reached the head of the stair he was nowhere to be seen.
It was out in the open at last. The time of lies and cunning wiles and impostures was over with. Whatever (his thing really was, however ugly, it was about to reveal itself.
Dawn broke dim gold in the east, and the caravan was in an uproar. During the early morning a band of desert warriors had come riding into the dead city, bearing with them an Earthling captive. The presence of the captive, an old man with white hair, surprised no one. The surprise was that the warriors had ridden in without the alarm being sounded.
For Houm himself, and the two strangers who had shared his carpet with him at the drinking of wine last night, were dressed and awake and waiting at the gate to welcome the newcomers.
Word flew from mouth to mouth that the tall, hawk-faced stranger of the night before, who had watched Valarda dance with cold, searching, yet avid eyes, was Prince Zarouk himself, the desert marauder of the south of whom all had heard much, and little that was to their taste.
But further surprises were in store.
Down from the third story of the citadel came a band of Zarouk’s tall, long-legged warriors, grinning wolfishly.
With them they bore three captives—the dancing girl, the old man, and that imp of a boy!
The three were dragged forth into the gold light of dawn, and it could be seen that their arms and wrists were bound behind their backs by tight leathern thongs. Seeing them, the Prince strode forward, a cold smile on his thin, bearded lips. Houm stood smirking, fingering his ; little queue of a goatee. Silence fell—tense, tight, expectant.
The girl’s head was sunk upon her breast, the pale oval of her perfect face veiled beneath the black wings of her long hair.
Zarouk reached out and took her by the throat.
“Raise your head, slut!” he snarled. “Open your eyes, that all men may see you as you are, and may know the vile thing you be.”
Valarda lifted her face into the light and looked upon the caravan men and the desert raiders with great golden eyes.
A shudder as of loathing ran through the crowd. And men began to speak a word, first in a whisper, then in a mutter, then and at last in a growling chant.
“Zhaggua … Zhaggua … ZHAGGUA!”
There was fear in their voices, aye, and contempt, and also hatred. They did not so much utter the despised name as spit it in her face like phlegm.
But Valarda neither flinched nor let the slightest flicker of emotion shadow her expression of pride and disdain. No haughty French aristocrat ever faced the guillotine during the Terror with such proud disdain, nor with such courage.
Zarouk chuckled, enjoying the drama of the moment. He showed his white teeth in a leering smile, and his eyes gloated on the three captives. He flung up his head in a bold gesture.
“What shall we do with this zhaggua and her pack?”
He cried. “Dmu, what says The Book? What is the end decreed most fitting for such vermin, and most pleasing to the Timeless Ones?”
Forth from the throng of tall, robed desert warriors there came shuffling into view a small, old man with the shaven pate and silver ear-sigils of a native priest, his gaunt, bent, wasted form wrapped in dark, dusty robes, his hands lucked into his voluminous sleeves.