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Blue. Red. The colors of opposing armies or only regimental or divisional
insignia? The rapist he had killed in the temple, and this man, had they been
enemies? Blade could not know and this was no time to worry about it. His own
helmet plume was red. He had the uneasy feeling that he would know soon enough
if there was a difference, and what it meant.
He tugged a shield off the arm of the corpse and adjusted it on his own left
arm. It was small and
circular, with a metal boss embellished with the curious design of a snake
with its tail in its own mouth.
Trying to swallow itself?
Beneath the snake, in script that was half cursive, half glyphic, were two
words
Ais Ister
.
Blade shook his head it was all Greek to him and began to make his way
cautiously down the lane. It narrowed again and twisted this way and that,
lined by rows of dark houses with narrow stone fronts and overhanging roofs of
shingle. Some of the roofs were beginning to smolder and catch fire from the
rain of fiery debris, but no one appeared to fight the flames. The houses
were deserted, their occupants slain or fleeing. Blade realized that, for
the moment at least, he was alone in a deserted section of the city. He was
suddenly thirsty and even felt a pang of hunger. He was beginning to adjust,
to adapt to this Dimension X. The Richard Blade of Home Dimension was fading
away, to be replaced by a supremely well-equipped survival mechanism.
He entered another small square. It was ringed by deserted homes and shops,
but in its center a fountain played and Blade made for it. His tongue was as
dry as old leather. For a moment he regarded the fountain from which fell cool
water in a delightful spray. It was in the form of a young woman holding a
tilted vase from which the water poured. Blade stared and paid silent homage
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to the unknown sculptor.
The girl was nubile and lovely and so cunningly delineated that he half
expected her to step off her pedestal and offer him a drink.
He raised his sword in a salute to her frozen beauty and plunged his face and
arms into a basin beneath the flowing vase. The water was icy and refreshing,
with a brackish taint that he did not find unpleasant. As he emerged, dripping
and snorting, he noted the legend at the foot of the statue:
Juna
.
Juna? That had been the name cried out by the raped woman just before she
killed herself. Blade, as he drank again and scrubbed himself free of blood
and grime and smoke, regarded the stone woman with a quizzical eye. Juna!
Obviously a goddess of some sort. Perhaps the patron goddess of this city, of
Thyrne. In which case, he thought with a grim smile, her work left much to be
desired. That poor raped woman had said it all Juna had turned her face away!
Then there was no more time for speculation. Blade heard them first. Under
him. Beneath the cobbles. A clang of arms and the sound of men marching. At
first he did not believe it, thought his senses were tricking him, then he
spotted a blank slab of stone in the cobbled area near the fountain. A sewer
opening, or at least a way in or out of some underground labyrinth of tunnels
and passages. For a moment Blade had the delusive thought friend or foe? Then
he laughed at himself even as he ran for cover. At this juncture, this early
in the game, they were all his enemies.
Beyond the fountain he found a dark aisle between two houses. He eased into
the gloom and crouched low, watching the slab of stone. Moonlight, stained
scarlet by onrushing fires, and increasingly laden with ash and smoke, was
sufficient for him to see plainly. The stone slab was flung aside and soldiers
began to climb out of the revealed dark opening. Their helmet crests were red.
Blade's teeth glinted in a sardonic grin. He was, in a matter of speaking,
among friends. He would not depend too much on it.
The first man out of the hole was obviously an officer. His helmet plumes had
not been shaven to a nubbed crest but stood tall, a red panache moving in the
night wind. He carried a sword and a shield embossed with a figure of the
goddess. Juna again. Blade nodded. He was beginning to sort them out now, a
bit. These must be soldiers of Thyrne. He gazed past them at their city,
three-quarters engulfed in flame. They would seem to have lost a battle, but
were still fighting.
Man after man climbed out of the trapdoor in the cobbles. Blade watched and
listened, trying to piece it together, to make what he could of it.
The officer strode nervously back and forth, shouting and prodding his men,
using the flat of his sword to form them into some kind of line. These were
weary men, begrimed and bloody from hard fighting, many of them heavily
bandaged. Some were swordsmen, some carried lances, and still others had bows
and slings. All wore short leather kilts and high-laced buskins. And
all grumbled and complained as they stumbled into a rough formation. Judging
from their looks, Blade could not much blame them. They must have fought well,
to be so beat up, and now they were to be sacrificed in a last desperate rear
guard action.
The officer raised his sword for quiet, then began to speak.
"Soldiers of Thyrne, I salute you. You have fought well against
surprise and treachery and overwhelming odds. You have earned rest."
A man spoke up in the front rank. "Aye, Captain Mijax. We have that. Then give
us our rest. Grant us more than that our lives. Let us leave this lost and
dead city and make our way through the marshes to the coast. There is a chance
that some of us will make it to Patmos. Then we can fight the Samostans again.
But let us not fight here. Thyrne is lost."
The soldier had spoken boldly. For a moment there was silence in the square
but for the wind sighing past the statue of Juna and dropping red and black
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ash in the fountain. The spying Blade felt his stomach tighten. He had a
premonition that he was about to see something nasty.
The officer pointed his sword at the speaker. "Lancemen drag that man here to
me."
There was some hesitation in the ranks. The captain called Mijax slashed his
sword through the air and began to bellow. "Immediately, you stupid dolts. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]