Sadda made a sign and a minute later an enormous black entered the tent from a side entrance. He carried a wooden block, rather tall and narrow and with a peculiar notch scalloped into one side. He was followed by another black who carried what looked to Blade to be a long butcher knife.
Sadda gestured to the blacks. "Arrange it."
They set the block on end near Blade. He saw, with sickness growing in him, that the notch was so contrived that a man stepping into it would have his genitals just level with the top of the block.
Sadda watched him over the veil. "You will not kneel?"
"I will not."
She turned to one of the blacks. "Show him what he will be if he does not kneel."
The black unwound a cloth from around his waist and groin and in a moment stood naked before Blade. It was the first time he had seen an eunuch and he did not like the sight.
The Khad said: "Be only sure that he does not bleed to death. I warn you, sister!"
"He will not bleed to death." She pointed to a fire pan that a third slave had brought in and placed on a tripod. A cauterizing iron glowed white hot in the pan.
Sadda pointed to the eunuch who displayed himself, then at Blade. "You would be like that one?"
He was sweating heavily now. It ran into his eyes and he blinked against the salty sting. He was frightened, as. badly frightened as he had ever been in a lifetime of adventure and danger. He could face death well enough - but this!
And yet he must gamble. He had come too far to turn back. Turn coward now and he lost everything. He knew that. He felt it. He must gamble.
He stared back at Sadda. "I would not be like that one. I admit it. But I will not kneel."
Sadda snapped her fingers. Guards rushed forward and seized Blade and pushed him to the block. One of the blacks, his muddy eyes gleaming, tore away Blade's loin cloth and seized his genitals and stretched them on the block. Another black moved forward with the long knife and raised it, poised, over the block.
Blade stared straight ahead. At all costs he must not weaken. The next few seconds would decide whether he had won or lost his gamble.
The silence in the tent was like a living thing. The knife gleamed cruel and keen in the tawny light.
Sadda spoke so softly that it was almost a whisper. "You will not kneel to me?"
Somehow Blade managed to get the words out. Firm, controlled, without a quaver in his voice. "I will not."
The moment stretched into eternity. Sadda made a sign with her upraised hand.
Chapter Eight
They put Richard Blade into a prison wagon and placed him on public view. He did not mind. At least a dozen times a day he glanced down to reassure himself that he was still a whole man. He was, and that, for the moment, was enough for him. He had won his gamble and defeated Sadda. At the last second she had signaled the blacks away and ordered that Blade be taken from the tent. He had seen her since, but only at a distance. Sometimes she would ride to within fifty yards of his cage, never closer, and sit there on her small horse and watch him for a long time. Blade ignored her. In the end she would spur away, riding as wildly and as well as any Mong warrior.
His wagon was placed apart from the other slave wagons, on the windy black-dusted plain near the circle of rocks where he had first entered X-Dimension. The wooden slats of his prison were strong and well set, but even so he might have escaped but for the guards posted every night. In the daytime, when the sun blinked to life like a lightbulb, he had no chance. As soon as dark was near his cage was patrolled by six Mong warriors. There was nothing to do but bide his time and wonder.
He had expected that Sadda would make a household slave of him, for very personal reasons of her own, but in this she fooled him. Every day she came and watched, but only that.
The dwarf did not come near him.
But he was not neglected. Crowds of Mongs came every day to jeer and jabber at him and to poke sharp sticks into the cage. For a time he endured this patiently, merely grabbing the sticks and snapping them in two. One. day he lost his temper and snatched away a sharp stick, reversed it, and jammed it halfway through his tormentor's chest. The Mong ran screaming into the crowd, which only laughed at him. After that Blade was left pretty much alone. They still came to stare and gibe, but they kept a respectful distance.
He was fed twice a day on crude black bread, horse-meat, and a large bowl of the potent Mong drink called bross. This was made of mare's milk and blood, mixed half and half, with some fermented grain added. At first the bross sickened him, smelling as it did of faint decay, but in time he came to like it. And respect it. It was as potent as whiskey.
Every day the Mongs attacked the long yellow wall and every day they came back defeated. Now and again the huge cannon would boom and a jade ball would go whistling harmlessly overhead to smash itself on the rocks. At first he entertained hopes that the Caths would mount an attack, or a sortie at night, and fight through to rescue him. This he soon discarded as unrealistic. The Caths were hard pressed, even behind their wall, and he could not expect that Lali could influence her chiefs to waste men. To his own surprise he did not think much about Lali, except to wonder if she had taken a new man into her bed.
Rahstum, the Khad's captain, occasionally rode by the cage to speak with the guard officers, He would glance at Blade, the pale gray eyes narrowed in some private speculation, but he never spoke.
After a week of this Blade began to fret and plan escape, no matter how impossible or chancy it seemed. He was filthy and his beard a knotted tangle. He had been given a pair of ragged breeches, but otherwise had to endure sun and cold, wind and storm, and the eternally blowing black sand as best he could. Straw was tossed into the wagon, but by now it was filthy. He began, at night, to test the bars as best he could without the patrol becoming suspicious. This was not easy, for the guards continually circled the wagon, riding close every now and then to peer at him. But none would speak to him, not so much as a word, and Blade, though well aware of the irony, had to admit that he was lonely.
During the day, when they were not attacking the wall, the Mong cavalry drilled on the plain near Blade's cage. He knew something of horses, and horsemanship, and he had never seen skill like this before. They wheeled and formed and charged and reformed with clocklike precision. In open warfare he knew that nothing could stand against them. It was the great wall that baffled them, and against the wall the Khad sent them daily to die by the hundreds.
Did the Khad never think of flanking the wall? It must end somewhere. Either the Shaker of the World was singularly stupid or so obsessed with the great cannon that he could think of nothing else.
He watched the Mongs play a game in which they charged at a ring which was suspended from a post by a cord and set to swinging. The ring was no bigger than those brass ones that Blade, as a small child, had plucked from a carousel in Brighton to gain a free ride. The Mongs had to pick up the ring on their lance points at full gallop. Very few missed. Those who did were forced to ride between the lines of their companions and were well beaten.
On the ninth day Captain Rahstum rode up to Blade's cage and dismounted. Two Mongs were with him, one carrying a large square block of wood.
Rahstum surveyed the captive through the stout bars, hands on hips, as immaculately dressed as ever in leather armor that sparkled in the sun. Blade thought again that this man was not a true Mong. He was too tall, and his skin too fair beneath the heavy beard.
"So, Sir Blade, you survive well enough. Your cage agrees with you, I see. Though I will admit there is something of an odor about you!" And he wrinkled his nose.
Blade was silent, staring back at the Captain. Something had changed. He could smell it. But he was not to be provoked.