But first — there was Holly.
I handed the sword to Susheeng. She hesitated. A party of guards moved past a cross corridor. I motioned to them. “A shout, Princess, and how do you explain this?”
She flung herself around, taking the sword, and almost, I believe, the impulse to cut us down mastered her. Then she led us on. The swing of her hips as she walked ahead of us made a fascinating sight
“Wait here,” she said outside her brother’s palatial apartments within the megalith. “I will bring the girl.”
When she had gone, Pugnarses said: “Can we trust her?”
Genal said: “We have to. She, and Stylor, are our only hope.”
“And when we get back to the warrens,” I said, “what is to become of her then?”
Genal looked at me, and away. He felt his disgrace keenly. Pugnarses, uncharacteristically, said: “At another time, Stylor, I would have counseled: ‘Kill her!’ But I do not think you will do that.” He eyed me.
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“But she loves you.”
“She believes so. She will get over it.”
“And — Holly?”
“Holly,” I said, “is a sweet child. But my love lies far away from here, in another land, and I remain here only because it is a stricture laid on me. As soon as I have finished my work, then — then, believe me, I shall leave Magdag and all its evil ways far behind me!”
I spoke with a passion that forced them to believe. Holly, following Susheeng meekly, came out then, and she saw me and the color flooded her cheeks.
I merely said: “Hurry, Princess.”
There was no time, as I saw it, for a traumatic and emotional outbreak. I wanted to get back to the warrens. We all knew what would happen as soon as Genodras reappeared in the sky above Kregen and the overlords of Magdag were freed from their superstitious imprisonment in the megalithic complexes.
Susheeng, it was clear, still believed she could persuade me to accede to her plan. To her it would appear the only sensible plan, indeed, the only and inevitable one.
Why would a man, a Kov of Delphond, choose to return to a stinking rasts’ nest of workers and slaves?
We hurried through the corridors. Truth to tell, I was beginning to think we would break clear away without trouble.
“This way,” panted Susheeng. “Up this narrow staircase lies a bridge and then a descent to the outside. I dare not venture out while Genodras is gone from the sky. We can wait.”
I did not say anything to that. I would not wait.
At the top of that steep flight of stairs, walled with enameled tiles depicting fantastic birds, animals, and beasts, two mailed guards were descending. Torchlight struck back from their mail. Between them they marched a captive, a fresh sacrifice for the ritual games. He was haggard, bearded, filthy. But I recognized him. I moved aside to let them pass.
But Rophren, that certain Rophren who had been first lieutenant aboard Pur Zenkiren’s Lilac Bird and had failed in the rashoon, recognized me too.
A shout lifted from the foot of the stairs. More torches spattered lurid orange light upon the brilliant tiles.
“Hai! Princess! Princess Susheeng — that man is Stylor! They are escaped slaves! They are dangerous!”
I took the first guard’s sword away and chopped him over the back of the neck. He pitched forward and tumbled all the way to the bottom. Pugnarses and Genal dealt with the second guard, who joined the first in a tumbled heap at the feet of his comrades. They started up.
“Run!” screamed Susheeng.
We now had three long swords.
Rophren reached out a hand.
His haggard face looked uplifted, lightened. He squared his shoulders with a gesture at once instinctive and defiant.
“Lahal, Pur Dray,” he said. His voice sounded thick, drugged. “Give me a sword. I would be pleased to exchange hand blows with these Zair-benighted rasts of Magdag. You go on and take the women with you.”
He knew I could not do that. But he meant it. I looked at him.
“Lahal, Rophren,” I said.
“I am of the Red Brethren of Lizz,” he said proudly, with a lift of his head. “I wished to be a Krozair of Zy, but the rashoon stopped all my hopes there. Give me the sword. I will die here, and none will pass until I am dead.”
“I believe you, Rophren. I will stay with you.”
I reached for the long sword Susheeng held. She was looking at me with a wild light in her eyes and she shrank back. “What-?”
Rophren took the sword. He hefted it. The mailed overlords of Magdag were hurrying up the stairs toward us. “It is good to feel a sword in my fist again,” he said. “I have been captive too long.” He laughed then, and swung the blade. “Stay, as you will, Pur Dray, my Lord of Strombor, you who are a Krozair of Zy. It will be a great fight. Stay and you, a Krozair, may see how a Red Brother of Lizz can die!”
Susheeng was staring at me with all of horror and hell in her eyes. “A Krozair,” she whispered. “You — the Lord of Strombor!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Truth to tell, all during this imprisonment in the colossal structures of Magdag where I was a sacrificial victim in the ritual games to insure the return of Genodras, I had been half hoping against all reason that the workers and slaves of the warrens would continue our plans, would mount the attack despite the catastrophic loss of their leaders. If ever there was a need for them to put in an appearance, it was now. Even while the Princess Susheeng shrank back from me, her face a white mask of fury and despair, a seething agony of acrimony I could well understand impelling her to turn from me at last and finally, the mailed men ran up the flight of stairs.
“A Krozair!” she said. Her fists struck again and again at my chest. “A pest-ridden rast of a Sanurkazz pirate! The vilest Sanurkazzian Krozair of them all, Pur Dray Prezcot, the Lord of Strombor!” She was laughing and shrieking now, mad and wild with the frenzy that tore her. Holly came up and took her shoulders and wrenched her away. Holly’s face was as blanched and set as those of Pugnarses and Genal. To them it was inconceivable that an escaped galley slave hiding in the warrens might be a Krozair. Krozairs, they knew, fought to the death.
“They come,” grunted Rophren. He had wanted to be a Krozair of Zy, and his crisis of nerves during the rashoon had blasted his hopes. But the Red Brethren of Lizz were a renowned order. He had redeemed himself; he would die well. I do not subscribe to the view that a single act of courage can wash out all a man’s crimes, as is so often said; but Rophren, for me, had committed no crime save that of being unfit to be a sailor.
We stood, Rophren, Pugnarses, and I, with our long swords eager to smite down on the coifs of the advancing overlords. We fought. There were only ten of them and in accounting for five of them I felt I had betrayed my comrades, for Pugnarses was wrestling his sword out of the cranium of one while Genal struggled hand-to-hand with another who sought to cut down Pugnarses from the side — and Rophren was down, on his knees, bending over with his life’s blood bubbling through his fingers. But there were ten dead overlords littering the stair.
We stepped back from the carnage. Pugnarses, with a curse, kicked the bodies down the steps. I knelt by Rophren. He tried to smile. “Say Lahal and Remberee for me to Pur Zenkiren,” he whispered, and so died.
Pugnarses and Genal were collecting the swords.
“Why burden yourself with them?” I asked. Susheeng was vomiting all over those brilliant tiles. I knew it was not because she had seen men die.
“We can give them to the slaves!” snapped Pugnarses. “They will fight-”
“As you have just done, Pugnarses? With your blade wedged in your opponent’s head? The skill, Pugnarses, the skill.”
He swore vilely, bitterly, but he kept the swords.