Paor stared, then shook his head. «I-the gods only know whether I am worthy of this.»
«I know that you are worthy,» said Blade. «So do many of the other warriors, and neither I nor they are gods.»
Paor laughed weakly. «No, I suppose not. But I-Blade, I need time to think upon this. Can you give me that?»
«Certainly,» said Blade. «But do not ask for too much time. The Torians will not give it to you.»
Chapter 21
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and the Torians did not come. Blade suspected that when they did come east again, they would come with fourteen or even forty thousand men, and they would be a great deal harder to defeat or discourage.
Meanwhile the Kargoi did what they could to prepare. The West Fort was repaired and a second fort was built and garrisoned. Five hundred mounted warriors camped on the edge of the forest, ready to move out to the aid of either fort. The rest of the warriors camped wherever they could get food and avoid the Hauri. They spent much of their time making fifteen-foot pikes and practicing using them, in lines, squares, and columns. Blade watched them with growing confidence. If the Torians were too slow in launching their next attack, they might face a pike wall that no cavalry charge could break. That might be enough to give the Kargoi the victory they needed. Hopefully they would not need to march two hundred miles to Tordas, storm its walls, and put Queen Kayarna to the sword in her own palace before the Torians would agree to let the Kargoi use the plains!
The truce with the Hauri held firm. The Kargoi still did not entirely trust the fishermen of the villages, while the Hauri did not wish to seem too friendly to the Kargoi, in case the Torians won the next battle.
Yet slowly the wariness and suspicion faded. The women of each people began to find the men of the other interesting, and the men did the same with the women. The Kargoi developed a taste for eating dried fish and wearing necklaces of polished shells. The Hauri found it agreeable to feast on roasted drend meat and wear garments of drend leather or armor of reptile hide.
The Hauri and the Kargoi were still not one people. That would take generations, if it ever happened at all. They were two peoples who had begun to trust each other. That meant a good deal. The Kargoi could face the Torians knowing that their rear was safe, and the Hauri could go about their lives as they had done for centuries.
After a month or two the Hauri began to invite Blade and other high-ranking warriors of the Kargoi to their villages. The visitors ate fish and oysters roasted on driftwood fires and strong-tasting stews of clams and seaweed. They slept in the grass-roofed huts with the chocolate-colored Hauri women. They even sailed in the Hauri's outrigger canoes, far out on what had been open sea even before the ice melted and the water rose.
Blade was happy to go on those fishing trips. He could do nothing against the Torians for the moment, while far out to sea he might again encounter the Menel.
There were whitecaps on the sea, and the sail of the big canoe was filled out round and firm.
«Like the breast of a fine woman,» said Fudan, as he put the helm over. The canoe heeled sharply; it would have capsized without the outrigger. The sail swung around with the mast and rigging creaking under the strain, and the canoe settled on its new course. Now they were heading straight toward a low rocky island that reared up out of the depths and sheltered a stretch of water three miles long. They could anchor in the lee of the island, safe from most storms but within easy diving range of a particularly rich pearl bed.
«Like Loya's breasts,» Blade thought, looking at the sail. He did not say this out loud, although he knew Fudan made no effort to act as his sister's guardian. He'd seen Loya often during the past few weeks. She never wore more than the trousers in which he'd first seen her, and sometimes less. Other women of the Hauri might cover themselves from throat to ankles, but not Loya, in the pride of her rank or perhaps in the even greater pride of her beauty.
The pearl bed they sought lay no more than sixty feet down, shallow water for the pearl oysters. Closer to the mainland, such a shallow bed would long since have been stripped of its choicest pearls. Here they were a good thirty miles farther out than the canoes of the Hauri usually came. Only a bold sailor such as Fudan would come this far.
A flash of light low on the horizon caught Blade's attention. It was far too bright to be sunlight reflected on the sea. It came and went irregularly. Blade realized that it was indeed reflected sunlight, but sunlight flashing from something made of polished metal, moving slowly just above the water. It appeared to be moving toward the lee side of the island, where Blade and Fudan were planning to anchor.
A moment came when the sunlight was not blazing from the moving object. Blade got a clear view of a streamlined metal cylinder with a high fin aft and a bubble canopy forward.
It was a flying machine of the Menel. He'd seen them before in the Dimension of the Ice Dragons. In fact he'd flown a force of raiders aboard one into the polar regions, to destroy the Ice Dragons and the Ice Master and liberate his slaves and prisoners. The one he'd flown against the Ice Dragons was several times larger than the one he saw now, but they were of the same basic design.
As Blade watched, he realized that the machine was not under full control. It was weaving erratically from side to side and bobbing up and down, sometimes barely skimming the crests of the waves, at other times soaring high into the air. Gradually it took a nose-down attitude. Blade held his breath, watching and waiting for the inevitable.
The machine swooped low, and this time its nose dug into the crest of a wave. Spray exploded around it as it cartwheeled for a hundred feet, the canopy shattering and the tail fin ripping loose. Blade thought he saw an elongated dark shape with four waving arms hurtling out of the spray. Then the machine struck again and arrowed straight down into the water. A spreading patch of foam marked the spot.
It was a moment before Blade realized that Fudan had watched the final gyrations and fall of the Menel flying machine. Blade stared at the man, trying to read the expression on the weather-beaten brown face.
«It will not come again, after this,» said Fudan quietly.
Blade was startled and his voice showed it. «You mean-this is nothing new to you? You've seen-that-before?»
«Oh yes. Our fishermen see it come up from the south, oh, once a month, for two years now. Always the same one, we think.»
«For two years, you say?» Blade went on. He was finding Fudan's calmness harder to deal with than panic or superstitious awe.
«Oh yes. It began after the great star fell from the sky onto the island to the south. So we think it comes from that island, where the Sky People must live.»
Blade realized that if the conversation went on this way much longer, he was going to either lose his temper or sound like an idiot. Neither would do any good. «You know that people from the sky have come to this world, and are living on an island to the south. Their machine has come once a month for the past two years. Didn't you do anything about this?»
Fudan looked innocent. «Why should we? They have done nothing to us by flying over our canoes and looking at them. The fish and the oysters and the seaweed are as abundant as ever, the sharks and eels no more dangerous, our women bear as many healthy children as before.» He frowned. «Of course, if the sea reptiles are becoming dangerous, as you say, perhaps it is these Sky People who are behind it. In that case perhaps we shall have to think about what we may do against them, if they go on doing evil with-«