Her wagon was large and luxuriously outfitted. A guard stood by movable steps that led up to the entrance in the rear. He gave Blade a sardonic salute but offered no insult. The guards, indeed all of those close to Sadda, had been quick to note Blade's new favor with her. Their manner changed. He knew they still despised him as a slave and a woman's toy, but now they did not gibe openly.
Sadda was waiting for him, naked on her bed. A taper struck highlights from her oiled body, the dark gold honey of her breasts and thighs gleaming softly. She held out her arms to him and Blade knelt to kiss her. At first she had not permitted him to kiss her, because he was a slave, but in a frenzy of passion one night she had kissed him and found it good and thereafter demanded it.
When she had had enough of kissing she toyed with him for a moment, running her fingers through his beard, now thick and luxuriant, and well trimmed by Baber. She tweaked his nose.
"I have missed you, Blade. Take off your clothes and make love to me. Hurry!"
Blade, having been deprived for six days and nights, was ready enough for sex, if not for love. The first bout was short and furious and Sadda moaned loudly in her final convulsion. She had never done that before. As they lay resting she began to stroke his face and hair.
"I find myself too much taken with you, Blade. I cannot understand it. But I like it. Perhaps, when we have slain the Khad, I will marry you and let you rule with me after all. Would you like that?" She was whispering, even though they were in private.
Blade thought that he would bloody well hate that, but he.smiled and said: "You honor me too much, my lady. I would not know how to rule such a people as the Mongs."
She frowned at him for a moment, then pouted. She had never pouted before, either, and he thought the coyness did not well suit her barbaric beauty.
"You are always evasive, Blade. I note it much. And I do not like it. And another thing - when we are alone you will call me Sadda. Not my lady, or Princess, or anything but Sadda. That is understood?"
"Yes, my - Sadda."
"Then kiss me again. I like kissing with you, though I never did before. This kind of kissing."
Blade shrugged inwardly and was glad that her appetites had changed. But she was like a chameleon, changing from minute to minute. So, he thought with resignation, if it was to be a love affair then it would just have to be, or he would be the late Blade. If he must feign love, then he must feign it and not be caught at the feigning. Even in H-Dimension one did not spurn a lady with impunity. He did not like to think of the consequences here in X-Dimension, with a woman like Sadda.
When once again she had enough of kissing she lay back and closed her eyes. "My brother confided in me today - the first time since Obi came to him in the dream that he calls a vision."
Blade stroked her hair and kissed her ear. He whispered, "And what had the Khad to say?"
Sadda scowled, looking more like her old self. "He is very pious these days. He goes to consult Obi each morning before we march. Obi bids him march eastward. Always eastward until the wall ends. Then he is to turn behind the wall and march to the west again, so coming in behind the Cath. Obi has promised him victory if he does this."
Very likely, Blade thought. He had seen the Mong cavalry at work. In open fighting the Caths were no match for them. Without their wall they would be quickly defeated. It might be Lali, after all, who ended in the cage.
But he shrugged and said, "This idol only tells your brother what he should know for himself, and commands him to do what he should have done long ago. The Khad, when he is not mad, is no fool. Why has he not done this before?"
She laughed and pulled him down on her again. "You are the one who does not know, Blade! The march will be terrible. Thousands will die before we reach the end of the wall. If we ever do. I have heard that there is no end, that the wall goes on forever!"
She was ready for love again and would not talk. She whispered as he left the wagon before the sun could shoot up, "Keep a close mouth and watch Rahstum. Our chance will come again. The madness will return, as it always does, and he will grow careless and fall to drinking too much bross and lusting after virgin children. Then leave it to me. I will arrange a celebration on some excuse and we will go through with the plan. Go, Blade."
Before many days Blade came to see that she was right about the trek. The days grew colder and the nights bitter. He was given a cape of thickly braided horsehair with a dogskin lining, and a pointed dogskin cap with thick earflaps. All the Mongs now dressed in this manner.
The wall was no longer in sight. The land began to slant upward, barren desert at first where the only moving thing, other than the trekkers, was black sand that blasted them constantly. The wind never stopped blowing. For three days a sandstorm buffeted them, three days of black hell when Blade, in spite of the cloth worn over his mouth and nose, spat out black sand constantly. Still the Mongs marched, on and on. Children began to die, and women, and even some of the older warriors. They were left for the carrion apes that dogged the caravan relentlessly. The apes were growing bolder and sometimes at night would rush the herds and tear at the horses' throats before they could be driven off.
By the time the sandstorm blew itself out, they were into a narrow pass that climbed abruptly toward distant mountains where snow glimmered. It grew increasingly colder. The Khad no longer rode Thunderer, but retreated to his wagon. Sadda sent for Blade nearly every night and they managed to keep each other warm, making love under heaps of horsehair blankets.
They got into a belt of trees, just beneath the snowline, and halted for a week while the Mongs cut precious wood and stacked it in wagons. They never used wood for fuel, it being so rare, but not a bit of pony dung was wasted. The dung gatherers, lowest in the order of Mong society, followed along after the herds and collected each precious dropping. It was flattened and dried on racks in the moving wagons, and used for fuel.
They left the forest behind and climbed above the snowline. The pass narrowed and grew precipitous, only wide enough for one wagon to pass at a time. Glaciers hung over them like mammoth glistening swords and beyond the trail there was only empty space layered with gray wet clouds. And always the wind blew, merciless and interminable. Cold became a way of life.
Each day they lost horses and men, and sometimes wagons, that slipped into the chasm bounding the trail. They went down in a welter of threshing bodies and hooves, screaming away into the silence beneath the clouds. The Mong officers barked harsh orders and the caravan closed up and kept on going.
The bodies of those who died from the cold were tossed into the chasm as well, the carrion apes having turned back at the snowline. When night came each wagon stopped where it was and the occupants fended as best they could. Dung fire smoked in the snow.
Blade, even with his awesome physique and endurance, suffered from the cold. He gulped down warm bross and gnawed on half-frozen horsemeat and was thankful that Sadda, far ahead in the column, could not call on his services at the moment. He had not seen his guards for two days, which was sensible of them. No need to worry about Blade. To the right was the chasm, apparently bottomless. To the left the monstrous glaciers climbed away into infinity. Now and again, during the day, Blade would glance at the vast sheets of snow and ice poised overhead and shiver. If they ever broke away and started sliding!
Baber's wagon, since the old man was now Blade's slave, was just behind his on the trail. On this night, when the breath froze instantly on his beard, Blade did not fear spies. He was in Baber's wagon, both of them huddled in straw and wearing their heavy capes, when a tapping came on the rear of the wagon.
They looked at each other. Baber put a finger to his mouth and whispered. "Not even she would seek you out on a night like this. Who can it be?"