Despite the cold, dry air of the evening, sweat broke out upon Ryker’s brow and the skin crawled horribly on the nape of his neck.
He began to wish, and that most fervently, that he had never let that idle curiosity, that vagrant impulse, lead him out of the tavern to follow the girl with the golden eyes and the boy whose breast bore the Mark of Mystery into the furtive, meandering, shadow-steeped back alleys of old Yeolarn.
But he had, and there was no turning back now. He sensed the mood of the mob behind him. They were after the girl and her companions, not after him. But they would not permit him to escape, either. Whatever lay ahead—towards whatever trap or cul-de-sac they were herding the three fugitives—no witness would be permitted to get away unmolested.
Especially, no F’yagha witness.
Ryker growled a bitter curse deep in his throat, and his fingers curled about his gun butt. His hard face grew bleak. His lips thinned, and his cold, pale eyes went hunting restlessly from side to side, for a doorway, an open arcade, a flight of worn steps. But no avenue of escape was left open, he knew within his heart. Silent men stood deep in the shadows, blocking every way out of the maze.
They came at last into an open square which was walled on three sides by sheer stone surfaces, unbroken by gate or archway.
At the entrance to this cul-de-sac, Ryker halted and stood aside against the nearer wall in the black shadow of an overhanging second-story balcony, hoping not to be seen.
The girl, the old man, and the boy, stopped, too, realizing they were trapped and could go no further.
The silent mob halted at the entrance to the little courtyard, and stood motionless, blacker shadows amid the darkness of the alley. Ryker drew his gun and hid it in a fold of his cloak and stood there sweating, wishing himself a thousand miles away. He smelled an execution in the air, and the stench of it was fearsome and ugly.
And then the shadows, which stood ranked motionless, began to … whisper. Ryker cocked his ears to catch the unfamiliar word. It was rarely heard, even in the vilest dens of Mars, but it was not unknown to him.
“Zhaggua!” the shadows were whispering.
The word was blunt and unlovely, and they spat it like a curse.
“Zhaggua! Zhaggua!—Zhaggua!”
The girl stood, naked under her fringed long-shawl, facing the faceless shadow-throng proudly, masked face lifted fearlessly, and took the ugly word full in the face like a glob of spittle. She took it unflinchingly, Ryker noticed. And even here, with death inches away and only moments in the future, he felt the pure, sweet, singing spirit of her, and he marveled at it. The manhood within him responded to the unconscious grace of her slim, poised body, her thrusting breasts outlined under the thin silken stuff of the shawl, and the pride and scorn eloquent in the fearless lift of that masked face.
“Zhaggua!”
The shadows were inching closer now, the glitter of catlike eyes intent on their prey. And the whispering rose to a chant as the ugly strange name, the ugly word, was spat forth. The smell of the mob was rank and vile in Ryker’s nostrils, and the name of that smell was hate. But the reek of fear was in that sharp stench, too. And that was strange.
For why should the mob, many men strong, fear a slim girl, an old man, and a child?
But yet another question seethed through the turmoil of Ryker’s thoughts. And it was the strangest mystery of all.
For the vile, guttural word—Zhaggua—had a meaning. A meaning lost in the dim vistas of the past, shrouded behind old mysteries and forgotten legends, veiled in the obscurity of remote and unremembered aeons.
It was a dirty word, that ugly grunt of sound. It was a curse, an obscenity, like “nigger” or “wop” or “Commie.”
It was a word which had once been applied to a people lost in time’s far, forgotten dawn.
It was a name that had not been used against a living man in millions of years.
It meant … Devil!
“Zhaggua—Zhaggua—Zhaggua!” the mob chanted, and now Ryker saw they held stones and bricks cupped in eager, trembling hands. Stones, heavy stones, to beat down that slim, proud, fearless, warm gold body. To beat and break and pulp that sleek, perfumed flesh.
But why?
Devil—Devil—Devil! The mob growled as it surged forward, stones lifted, to kill.
3. Red Thirst
Ryker cursed, shrugged his cloak back over his shoulders, and stepped forward. Knowing himself for a fool, he lifted his heavy guns. There was nothing else that he could do, after all. He had been many things in his time, and had done those things that tarnish the soul and harden the heart. He had lied, cheated, thieved, and he had killed for hire. But one thing he had never done, and could never do, and live at peace with himself thereafter.
He had never stood idly by and watched a woman be torn apart by a mob.
The shrill yammer of his power guns shrieked as they cut through the growling of the mob.
The thick shadows were split asunder, quite suddenly, by a cold, unearthly light. It was blue-white, that glare of fierce electric fire. And men fell before the blaze of those twin guns as wheat stalks fall before the keen-bladed scythe.
The mob was as brave as mobs usually are. That is to say, each man lost his own fear in the lust for violence which gripped them all, even as each felt his individuality submerged in the oneness that was the mob.
Therefore, each man was only as brave as those around him.
The mob was one animal by now, one huge animal with many parts and one desire in its hot heart—the red thirst for blood. But before the yammering shriek of those guns the mob dissolved into its component units. Those units were only men—alone, individual now, isolated from the mob mentality, and terribly vulnerable to the cold fire that spat from the grim muzzles of Ryker’s guns. The men had only bricks and stones and broken bottles in their hands, for power guns were forbidden to the People and were hard to come by in the Old City.
And bricks and stones and bottles weighed little in the balance against the sizzling death vomited forth by the twin guns held rock-steady in Ryker’s hard, scarred fists.
A dozen men, maybe more, lay dead on the dusty cobblestones that paved the plaza. And the evil smell of burnt flesh was thick in the nostrils of those who lived.
The red thirst faded in their hearts, and in its place came fear. They licked their lips. They hesitated. They gave little, quick sideways glances at each other. And they hesitated. Had the mob been goaded on by a leader, it might still have been rallied. But there was no leader to stand forth and confront the bright death held now in check by a finger’s pressure.
The mob began to crumble, peeling away in scuttling, shadowy figures. First, the rear ranks melted away as if by sorcery. Then from the sides, and men turned away and slunk off into the black ways of the little, crooked alley.
Finally there were none in all the little plaza, save for Ryker, the girl, her two companions, and the dead.
Ryker drew a long, ragged breath, and put his guns back in their worn leather holsters, and his heart began to beat again.
He turned to face the girl, who still stood proudly before her companions, and who had not moved or spoken.
He cleared his throat and spoke. Some whim made him speak not in the harsh sibilants of the gutter lingo he would have used, but in that old and finer variant of the Tongue spoken only by the warrior princelings of the High Blood.