Drask’s half-smile deepened. The fleet had struck without a moment’s warning from the black abyss of the Rift. Within hours Argion planet had fallen, her obsolete defense-network drifts of incandescent metal-vapor rising from craters of fused stone and liquid steel. And now the princess sat, huddled beside him as one in a dream, eyes blank, limbs flaccid. He would not keep her long, he thought… .
And yet she was a lovely creature. Her young breasts were like warm white fruit, soft beneath his hard hands. He stroked her slender body—as suddenly the stillness was rent by a great shout.
The thard struck like a thunderbolt. And the blood-blurred vision of the blond swordsman played him wrong. His magnificent young body dangled now from the scissor-beak, its nakedness clothed in dripping scarlet. As the crowd thundered with earth-shaking approval, the jungle-dragon ripped the body into shreds and lifted its own deafening roar in challenge to the many-throated thunder.
Huddled by Drask, the girl shrank back, her cold flesh crawling with revulsion, as if the ring-laden hands that touched her body were dripping with the gore of her slaughtered countrymen.
As the Rover guards baited the thards attention away to the other side of the arena, removed the mangled corpse and brought out the next “rebel” for his punishment, the Warlord let his attention return to the girl. Eyes dilated and nostrils pinched and white, she stared at the scarlet thing that only moments before had been a vigorous young male.
“A friend?” Drask asked, cynically. His lips twitched. “Perhaps—a lover? Ah, I sympathize—he had a fine body, for a youth.”
Her blue eyes blazed, the stunned languor of shock vanished now.
“You filth,” she said.
Drask smiled thinly.
In the dazzling sunlight below, the Rover chieftain, Tonguth, consulted a parchment scroll. Sweating in his leather tunic and orange cloak beneath the dazzling light of the two suns, the rough-bearded barbarian downed another tankard of chilled ale and blinked at his list. The Warlord had reclared him Master of the Victory Games as special recognition for his bravery during the Siege of Argion, but Tonguth would rather have lolled in the cool shade of patterned awning on the stone benches. His sweat-soaked leather and iron garments chaffed him raw. Grumbling a curse, he rinsed his thirsty throat with another tankard of sour ale, and blinked as the next victim stumbled out of the cages and into the open arena. Glancing at the slim, tattered figure below, he bellowed the man’s name.
“Perion of North Hollis, piper to the court of the late Darion, Lord Argion, rebel and traitor. Turning from his tunes to red murder, the Piper slew six Star Rovers with a stolen sword during the capture of the palace. How say you, brothers?”
As one man, the Rovers massed along the climbing rows of stone benches raised sword, axe, mace, laser gun or Haemholtz coagulator, and thundered one word: “DEATH”!
The tiny figure below seemed to cringe beneath the weight of that many-tongued cry. But then it straightened, preened, and with a gallant, rascally impudence, swaggered boldly out into the full view of the thard. The monster snorted blood from its throat, and tensed.
Drask smiled thinly, rather admiring the little troubadour’s impudent—and imprudent—courage. Courage in any form was, in fact, his only god—and it seemed almost a pity it must be crushed out in a red smear. However, one cannot hold a conquered planet unless the example made of the heroes who have defended it is so terrible as to daunt potential liberators. And the Rovers were true barbarians: they wanted to see blood, and pain, and panic. Still, Drask watched the small figure with more than common attention.
Reaching the very center of the arena, the small minstrel paused, struck a pose, flourished his ragged many-colored cloak—and bowed to the throng. He doffed his little plumed cap to Lord Drask. In so doing, its broken cock-feather dabbled in a pool of the last victim’s blood, a touch of poetic irony that pleased Drask’s sense of artistry and drama. The throng, pleased by this gesture and the fellow’s daredevil impudence, applauded noisily.
But the thard was still mad with bloodlust, and impatient for the kill. A long ripple of tension ran along the rows of men and woman, a visible thing, as stalks of neocorn register the pass of the wind’s viewless hand. The dragon froze immobile, save for the twitch of its tail. The spectators drew in their breath.
Tonguth, as Master of the Games, tossed a slim rapier into the arena.
“Here, tunester,” he bawled hoarsely. “Make music with this!”
The blade fell in a glittering arc of sun-struck steel to the hot red sand, to thud a few yards from the bedraggled figure in motley. And then the Star Rovers saw something unprecedented in all their crimson annals of loot, conquest and rapine. The ragged minstrel struck a pose—spurned the weapon with his foot—and turned his back on it, and on the thard.
And he turned a cartwheel.
In the astounded silence, belly scraping the coarse red sand, the thard inched forward, its burning flame-colored eyes fastened on the slim capering figure of its next victim. Even Drask held his breath, eyes riveted on the lonely little figure dancing on the edge of death.
Perion turned a somersault.
The thard paused, hesitant, wavering. Man-things either ran screaming before him, or stood with naked steel awaiting his charge. They never ignored him …
Drawing a dirty kerchief from his pocket-pouch, Perion waved it at the stands to catch the spectators’ attention—then slipped it over his eyes, fastening it with nimble fingers behind his head. Then, blindfolded, he began fumbling over the steaming scarlet sand towards the frozen thard, feeling his way along with first one foot extended and then the other, tapping his way, hands extended like a blind beggar.
Like a thunderbolt, the thard struck—
And missed! Perion evaded the beast’s lunge with the nimble grace of a dancer. Raising a blinding storm of sand, the thard halted, turned—struck—
And missed again. Again the slim, ragged figure dodged, blindly.
On the parapet of the arena, burly Tonguth stared, jaws agape, as the minstrel played with the furious monster, evading its ferocious charges as easily as a clown, on Year’s End Day, dodges the paper dragons in the festive, torch-lit streets.
“Pick it up, fool,” Tonguth muttered, gritting his teeth. “Pick up your sword—fight!” Such courage was crazed— foolhardy—suicidal—yet even rough Tonguth felt a glow of admiration for the sort of man who could clown and play while teetering on the brink of sudden death.
Now, as if tiring of his game, the piper plucked the kerchief from his eyes and stood, boldly daring the panting, enraged thard to strike again. But it refused to move, standing still although trembling with frustrated rage, foam slavering down its gasping jaws.
Then he turned his back on it.
And sat down, tailor fashion.
Drask—even Drask, terrible Warlord of the Star Rovers—gaped and swore with amazement, struck with the sheer daredeviltry of the little man.
The thard moved, then. Again it hurled its sinuous blue-mailed body at the taunting figure—but, as if warned by some sixth sense, Perion flipped head-over-heels in an acrobat’s leap … and landed astride the thard’s shoulders.
For one long, breathless moment, the beast hovered, dazed, as if unable to believe that such audacity could exist in so small and puny a creature as this spindly-legged manling. In the next moment it exploded in a frenzy of pure rage. Leaping, whirling, lashing the sand with its barb-spined tail, the thard cavorted madly around and around the arena, raising dense, choking clouds of sand in a mad attempt to dislodge the thing that clung with uncanny ease to its back.