Neither Loya nor Blade could have stayed apart a second longer. It would have made no difference to him if she'd weighed four hundred pounds-he still could have lifted her like a feather pillow, with the strength given by the overpowering desire in him.
He had no need to move, only to support Loya while she rose and fell and twisted as though all her limbs were suddenly made of elastic. She followed no pattern or rhythm, followed nothing except her own desire. Yet somehow what her desire demanded was exactly what would also perfectly satisfy Blade. It seemed to him that in the joining of their bodies they had also joined their minds, so they had only one consciousness between them.
Suddenly Loya seemed to spring upward, her arms locking hard around Blade's neck and her legs around his waist. All the breath went out of him under the pressure of those muscular limbs. A moment later all the breath went out of Loya as well, in a series of convulsive gasps. Her body arched forward and back, her head twisted from side to side and battered itself against Blade's shoulder. Then before she could be still it was Blade's back that arched like a tightly-drawn bow, and his arms and legs that gripped Loya as though his life would cease the moment he let her go. He did not gasp, for there was no breath left in his body. He stood until his body had found all its release and the room began to swim around him from the lack of oxygen. Slowly he sank to the floor, without releasing Loya, and her head sank forward onto his chest with a last moment of grace. Then they had no strength left to keep them from sprawling on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and damp hair.
The strength to look at each other swiftly returned. The strength to sit up, laugh, talk, eat dried fish and seaweed from Loya's pack came a little later. It was hours before they found the strength or the desire to join again. The first loving had drained both of them so that for a time they were unable to even conceive of desire, let alone feel it.
That was something rare for Blade, and it meant that Loya was something equally rare among women. That was no surprise. He'd suspected it since they first met. Now that he could be certain, he could also hope that uniting the Hauri and the Kargoi might not be so difficult-if he had the time.
Chapter 23
Kayarna Kameda, Queen of Tor, sat on a blanket spread on the landward face of a sand dune a day's ride north of Tordas. She was naked, her long legs stretched out in front of her and her arms crossed over her full breasts. The breasts and the flesh of her arms and legs were all tanned and admirably firm for a woman of forty-two, although the waist showed the thickening inevitable after bearing three children.
Without the three children, though, she would not have felt free to spend the remaining years of her life pleasing herself as she chose. Kayarna Deda had always been known as one who understood her duties and gave them the attention they deserved.
A man stood on the crest of the sand dune above her, looking out over the fog-shrouded sea. He also was naked, and Kayarna had to admit she preferred him that way. Duskas Mon had just enough brains to command a troop of the Royal Guards. His real talents lay in other directions, and Kayarna would keep him busy in those directions as long as he could do his duty. She would not give him anything else, no matter how often he lost his temper. She could always coax him back to her bed, and if some day she could not-well, there were other strong young guardsmen in plenty who could fill his place. She would not risk giving Duskas more than he deserved. Jealousy among the captains and nobles over the advancement of royal favorites had cost more than one ruler of Tor throne and life.
She heard splashes and the squealing voices of young women on the far side of the dune. Kayarna sighed. The four serving maids who'd accompanied her and Duskas out here were bathing in the sea. No doubt one of the little fools had stepped on a stingray and would have to be carried back to the palace. The next time she came out here ….
Then the squeals turned into unmistakable screams of terror. Kayarna snatched up her sword from the corner of the blanket, sprang to her feet, and rushed up to the crest of the sand dune without bothering to dress. As she reached the crest Duskas shouted, «Get down, Glorious One!» and shoved her so hard that she fell to her knees. She started to flare angrily at this disrespect, then got a good look at what was coming out of the sea and fell silent.
A ship's boat lay in the shallows, while fifteen men climbed out of it and waded toward the beach. Each one wore a long robelike garment of chain mail and a metal helmet with long sharp horns jutting out on either side. Each carried a sword or an axe at his belt, and three of them carried long metal tubes with some sort of sculptured decorations at the end they held. Farther offshore, half visible in the fog, Kayarna saw two large ships, with more boats coming ashore from them.
The four maids stood as if turned to stone while the steel-clad men tramped toward them. One of the girls shrieked and ran. Her panic made her clumsy. She went down, and shrieked again as two of the men fell on her before she could rise.
Whatever Duskas Mon might lack in brains, there was nothing wrong with his courage. The maid's shrieks drove him into action. Naked and unarmed as he was, he roared a war cry and charged down at the oncoming men. Perhaps he hoped to distract them long enough for Queen Kayarna and even the maids to escape.
Duskas covered only a few steps before one of the men pointed a tube at him and jerked on the «sculpture.» There was a terrible noise, a cloud of white smoke, and a hideous 'plat as something tore through Duskas's body and out his back. He fell on his face, kicked twice, and lay still. In his back Kayarna saw a gaping red hole large enough to hold a man's fist.
Kayarna knew suddenly that she could do nothing for herself or for Tor except run like the wind. Duskas was dead and the maids were doomed. The other three were now trying to run, but the men were hard on their heels. Four of the invaders started up the dune toward Kayarna. They came a few steps through the soft sand, then Kayarna was sprinting toward the trees where the horses were tethered.
She did not throw her sword away, for that would be neither honorable for the ruler of a warrior people nor sensible for a woman who might yet have to kill herself. She took nothing else-not a single stitch of clothing, not a single one of her jewels. She was as naked as the day of her birth as she dashed across the sand, expecting every moment to feel one of the smoke tubes hurling something into her back.
Instead the men coming after her tried to run her down on foot. Their armor and weapons dragged them back as Kayarna's fear drove her forward. She easily outdistanced them, leaped into the saddle of the first horse she reached, slashed the tether with her sword, and dug her bare heels into the horse's flanks. Sand flew up and branches lashed her across the face and shoulders hard enough to draw blood. She ignored the pain and everything else except driving the horse onward as fast as it would go.
Another of the tubes banged far behind her, as one of the men made a last desperate effort to bring her down. Whatever the tube threw came nowhere near her or her horse. Then she was far out of the invaders' reach, galloping along the shore, looking for a place to turn inland. Tordas had to be warned, and more than warned. It had to be prepared to fight these people who had come from the sea, in spite of their steel clothing and hats and their strange smoke tubes that reached out like the arrows from a bow but were something altogether new and terrible.