Star Gate, page 13
again, Kincar did not try to count. But he was seated when he felt a vibration in the stone heralding the coming of his jailors. He was up and facing the door when that portal crashed back against the wall, and light flared at him from above, blinding him once more.
"Up on your feet, are you, dragtail?" demanded a voice with that sort of hearty humor that is more sinister than a curse. "Have him forth, you stumble feet, and let his betters see if he's ripe for the skinning—I"
Figures plunged out of the source of the light, hands fastened on him, shoulder and elbow, and he was propelled up the stairs and out into a stone-walled corridor. More stairs, then the light of a fair day, as they issued into a courtyard.
The men who hustled him along were guardsmen of the common sort, with flat, brutal faces, the spark of intelligence low behind their uncaring eyes. Their officer was a huge man. Kincar almost believed him of off-world breed until he saw the Gorthian features and the devil mark between his eyes. He grinned, showing tooth gaps, leaning over Kincar until his foul breath was thick in the younger man's nostrils. One big hand dug deep in Kincar's hair, pulling his head back at a painful angle.
"The mark right enough," remarked the giant. "But you'll find that will not save you here, youngling."
"Do we pin him, Sood?" inquired one of the guards.
The giant loosed his grasp on Kincar and slapped his open palm across the questioner's face, rocking him so that he stumbled against the prisoner.
"Tighten your lip, dirt! He's pinned when Sood says pin and not before. But he'll cry for pinning before we get the irons to him, so he willl Nay, larng scrapings, he goes to the hall; you get him therel You know who is not ever pleased to be kept waitingl"
The man who had been slapped spat red. But he made no protest at his rough disciplining, not even the inarticulate one of a glare at Sood's back as the giant marched ahead. Kincar was pushed on across the courtyard and under a second archway into the living quarters that were officers' territory.
They shuffled under an arch of rough stone into another world. Here was no stone, no native cloth arras as were stretched across -the walls of Styr's Hold to keep out cold-season drafts. On either hand the walls were smooth with the sheen of a sword blade. They might have been coated with metal. And over their pale gray surfaces there was a constant dance and play of rainbow color, which appeared, until one focused steadily upon it, to form pictures in an endless and ever changing series of ghostly scenes.
It was totally unlike anything Kincar had ever seen or heard described, and he guessed it was born of the off-world magic of the Star Lords. But he kept his surprise under control. He must appear to be familiar with such if he would carry out his pose as the ex-retainer of another lord in search of a new master.
A curtain of shimmering stuff fronted them. Without any touch from his guards, it parted, drew back against each wall to allow them through. Now they had come into a wide room. Sun flooded it from the roof, filtering through an intricate patterned crystal, which threw more rainbows on the floor. Evenly spaced about were a number of doors, each veiled with the strange curtains, while in the center was a square pit, some benches beside it. On those nearest Kincar, two Gorthians sat stiffly. There was no ease in their manner. They might have been fieldman bidden to eat at a hold lord's table because of some whim of that lord, wary at what would chance should that whim change. They did not turn their heads to look as Sood and the others tramped in but kept their attention upon the man at the other end of the pit, as a novice swordsman watched a master-of-blades during a lesson.
Here Sood, too, was dwarfed for all his giant's brawn, made to dwindle in an odd fashion. He was no longer a roistering bully to be feared, but a servant attendant on a lord of power. He advanced no further than within a foot or two of the occupied benches and stood waiting to be noticed.
The lord of this fortress, he who held in a child's discomfort fighting men and who dwarfed Sood, lounged at ease on a couch removed from the Gorthians by the width of the pit. He was lying full length on the padded surface, his head supported by his crossed arms as he watched something below. And there was no mistaking his birthright. This man was of the Star breed.
Hitherto Kincar had seen the off-worlders only in their silver battle dress, simple clothing designed for hard usage. This man wore a robe of some light fabric under which every movement of his muscles was plainly visible. He was as massive as Lord Dillan, but the clean, fine lines of Dillan's body were here blurred as if someone had tried to copy him from the same mold but with no master touch. There was a curve to a jaw line that should be square and sharp, a rounded softness of lip arid chin. His hair was the most alien—a dull dark red, thick and straight.
Kincar had time for that appraisal because the Dark Lord was intent upon the pit. Then there came a thin squeaking from that opening, and he laughed, levering up his head to see the better.
"Well done!" He might have been cheering on some warrior duelist. "I win again, Calpar!"
There was a duet of agreement from the two Gorthians. But they were still watching their lord rather than the pit. Now he looked up—to sight Sood's party.
"Ah, Sood—" His voice was rich, almost caressing, only Kincar felt a sensation of cold as if he had walked bare-bodied into an ice storm. Here was something he had never met before. He had known awe with Lord Dillan, and to a greater degree with the Lady Asgar. With Lord Bardon he had felt the admiration of a warrior in the train of a rioted chief. But none had given him that daunting of spirit, that feeling of being less than a larng in their sight. From this man he did not even strike the interest he would give to Vorken— he was less than a well-trained beast.
But that realization was consumed by a growing heat within him, a heat that flamed outward, as the heat of the
Tie had eaten inward when it had been so cruelly activated by the Star Lords' magic. Perhaps the men of this Gorth had been beaten long ago into accepting that valuation of themselves—but he had not. Kincar fronted the Dark Lord straightly, striving to keep under control both his aversion and his defiance.
"What have we here, Sood—" The purr lapped across the pit.
"The one who was taken at the hideout of fJiose, Lord."
"The one who aided in their escape, aye. Brings,forward
this hero—" I
Kincar was shoved ahead, to the very lip cw the pit. But those who pushed him remained a little to theVear, sheltering behind him from their ruler's attention.
"And who may you be?" The Lord addressed Kincar
directly. f*V
"I am from the mountains, Lord—Kincar^or Styr who
was lately Hand to Lord Seemon—" He had chosen the lord
who had ruled the captured guard, and heo4d it would
prove a good choice. ' N
"And why, my good Hand, did you leave the service
of Lord Seemon?" _ ,
"There was a sword quarrel set upon me/ ft£rd. I killed
my man, but he had brothers who took blade cVath to meet
me one by one—" . >
Lord Rud laughed. "You are an unluckj^Uar/, are you not, Kincar of Styr? First you kill a man with Brothers to be active in his favor and then you make a long journey only to meddle in what concerns you not, so y»u come to an ill fate in U-Sippar. Tell me, Kincar of Styr, Whwdid you befriend those dirt-eaters you met upon the shore?'
"Lord, I knew nothing of them, save that they said they were flying also from a blood feud—"
"They said? Ah, but I think that one of them was incapable of saying much, or had he miraculously grown once more a certain important piece of his body which had been stricken from him?"
"The young man said it, Lord," Kincar corrected himself.
He knew very well that Lord Rud was playing a game with him, that sooner or later the alien would give an order to finish him.
"So they were flying from blood vengeance were they? Apt enough. But they will discover that one does not fly from some kinds of vengeance. They are within my hand, even as these—"
He made a gesture at the pit, and for the first time Kincar looked down into it. What he saw was a Gorthian scene in miniature—a thread of stream, trees no higher than his tallest finger, clearings he could cover with his palm. Yet water ran, trees and grass grew, and other things moved. A suard the size of a flying beetle grazed on open land. And on a trampled bit of ground lay—
Kincar swallowed. Great was the Star magic—but thisl He could not believe what his eyes reported. The inner men of the mountains were manikins, but what were these tiny things? Manlike in form, manlike in their deaths, but surely they were not, had never been living thingsl Then he knew that his astonishment had betrayed him, for Lord Rud was watching him closely.
"One could almost believe," his silky words came deliberately, "that you had never seen the 'little ones' before, Kincar of Styr. Yet it is in my own knowledge that Lord Seemon has a fine company of such and that pit wars are the leading amusement in his hold. How odd that one of his men should be so ignorant of them! Perhaps we should ask you again, and with greater persuasion, just who you are and what you do in U-Sippar, Kincar of Styr. Not only do you keep very ill company for a loyal Hand, but also your past seems hazy, and that will not do at all. Not at all—"
"Lord, not all the men who serve one of your greatness are admitted to the inner chambers." Kincar seized upon the only argument that might save him. "I was no chieftain, nor a captain, but a young warrior. What amused my betters was none of my affair."
"Your wits are quick enough, that is certain." Lord Rud
yawned. "Quick-witted natives are good sport. Sood, we have a puzzle here—"
The giant quivered in his eagerness, as a mord quivers before being signaled to the hunt. "Aye, Lord, shall we have him forth to the pins?"
"Sood, Sood!" The other laughed. "Always impatient. Break a man and then expect answers from the bloody bits. No, Sood, here are quick wits and perhaps something else." Lord Rud paused. His eyes—hard, dark, and yet with a fire in their depths—raked over Kincar. "I wonder, now, I wonder. Could Seemon have made a mistake in the dark?" He chuckled softly, as if nourishing some amusing idea. "Not the pins, Sood—at least not yet. It is a wearying business, this living ever penned within walls. I need amusement. Remove this Kincar but keep him in good condition, excellent condition, Sood.' I want him whole of body and-mind when I summon him again. Meanwhile, Kincar of Styr, you had best examine your conscience, reckon up the number of times you have twisted the truth to your own profit, for we shall have another time for questions and then I shall have straight answers! Oh, aye, I shall have them; Kincar of Styr, for am I not a god?"
He had a breathing space, if a limited one. Kincar clung to that. Every hour so won was a small victory for him. He presented a problem to Lord Rud, and as long as he continued to interest the bored ruler, so long might he hope for a slender measure of safety.
But Kincar breathed easier when he was out of the rainbow-walled inner chambers into the open day. Sood did not return him to the foul underground cell where he had been pent on his arrival. Rather he was marched up a flight of stairs into a tower room, which, bare as it was, had a crude bed, a table, and a bench, and might have been the quarters of a very junior officer. They loosened his wrist bonds and slapped coarse provisions on the table befoie they left him. Rubbing his wrists and wincing at the pain of returning circulation in his blue, swollen hands, Kincar crossed to the window to look out upon U-Sippar.
ORDEAL BY MORD
Though he was viewing it from an unusual angle, looking down upon those roofs and towers instead of up, still U-Sippar presented the unreal aspect of some city visited in dreams, where the most commonplace is linked with the bizarre. Here were ancient stone buildings, the work of the native Gorthians who had reached for the stars with their towers and sharply slanted roof-trees before the stars came to them with such devastating results. And from that honest stone sprang other structures, excrescences frankly alien to this earth. There were not many of these, only enough to distort the general outline of U-Sippar into something faintly corrupt and debased.
The fortress was part of it, a monstrous hybrid crouched upon an artificial rise, so that its shadow moved menacingly across the packed houses below with the climbing and setting of the sun. Half of it was of the stone, the rest of it new. And that portion flashed metallic, cold, smooth, like a sword pointed to sky.
Kincar could count four—no—five similar structures in U-Sippar. They could not all be dwelling places of Lord Rud. But surely each housed some measure of Star magic. The one farthest from him was planted so that sea waves washed about its foot. Though there were ships in the harbor, anchored there for the cold season when no trained mariner attempted passage into the freakish winds, none were tied up near the tower, and what purpose it might serve was beyond Kincar's powers of speculation.
Having seen U-Sippar, or as much of that city as could be viewed through a window slit, he set about the morg
urgent business of seeking a way out, not only of that room, but of the fortress itself. Unless he could shrink to less than Vorken's size—and possess her wings into the bargain—he could not attempt that window. And a single testing told him that the door' was secured from thé outside. An examination of the bed made it plain that bare hands could not rip loose any part of it for an improvised weapon, and the same was true of table and bench. He had been stripped by his captors of his outer ring-sewn jerkin and his belt, so even the empty sheaths of his weapons were gone. And since he was no hero of the song-smith's creation, he could not blast his way out with a well-tried spell.
But at least he could eat. And coming back to the table Kincar did just that. The fare was coarse, rations such as were given to the rank and file of guardsmen. But it was not prison fare, and he finished it to the last crumb of soggy milt-bread, the last swallow of sour frangal juice. Then he threw himself on the bed and tried to prove his right to Lord Rud's charge of quick wits.
Lord Rud! Was this the man his father had been in that alternate Gorth? Strange— His hands folded over the comforting bulge of the Tie. Had a change in history also wrought a change in a man's nature, the way Lord Dillan insisted that it would? This Lord Rud could not be the man he had heard extolled in the hold. This ruler was corruption, evil power, fear and death; the odor of his character was an evil smell throughout his stronghold.
Kincar wondered what would happen if the truth were made plain to this Dark One. And in the same instant he knew that no act, no betrayal, would be more fatal. No matter what chanced with Kincar of Styr—as long as he could, he must lock lips and mind alike against telling what he knew.
Had Murren and the boy escaped? Cim was better than any of the larngs he had seen in the troop that had captured him. And Murren's desperate dash might just have broken through the circle with enough force to give them the necessary start, since Cim had had a period of rest and was fairly fresh, and the troop mounts were weary at the end of a long day. That escape had been wholly Murren's improvisation—the boy would not have deserted another to the Hands of Lord Rud, though, because he bore the mark he did, the fugitives might have believed Kincar was in no great danger. What was the crime held against those two? From the bits he could piece together, it was enough to stir up all U-Sippar. He wished that they could have been picked up earlier by men from the hold.
So, in place of planning, his thoughts drifted from place to place, until, at last, the needs of his body could no longer be denied and he slept, while outside the sky over U-Sippar darkened into night and it seemed that Kincar of Styr was forgotten by his guards.
He was aroused by a cry so familiar that he lay blinking at the roof overhead, hazy as to where he was, certain for the space of an instant or two that he lay on his pallet within Styr's walls. That shriek, ear-torturing, came from the hatchery on the watchtower, where Vorken was doubtless exerting her authority over some rebel. Vorken was ruler of the Styr hatchery; let any other moid challenge her at its peril.
Vorkenl Kincar sat up as he remembered. Vorken was gone and Styr, too, was farther away than if the whole of Gorth's sea lay between him and its towersl There was a square patch of sun on the floor of his prison. It must be hours late into the morning. And he had been visited during sleep, for a jug and a plate, both filled, stood on the table. Apparently, if Lord Rud had not yet made up his mind concerning Kincar's disposal, his men were still under orders to treat their captive well.
Kincar ate as a duty. There was no reason to believe that such coddling of a prisoner would continue, and he'd best take rations while they were still coming. It was again fare of the most common sort, but it was filling and designed to satisfy men who were ready for a spear-festing.
While he munched away, he twice more heard the challenge call of a mord. But his window gave him no sight of any. The hatchery might be at the crown of the same tower in which he was locked, but mords always sought the heights when they took wing. That cry set him to a restless pacing, and, as time passed with a bar of sun creeping from crack to crack across the rough slabs of the floor, his impatience grew.
There was no doubt at all the Lord Rud planned some unpleasantness for- him. And, knowing so little of U-Sippar, of this fortress, there was very little he could do on his own behalf. He would be as a child in Sood's paws, and the giant would be very pleased for a chance to subdue him physically. As to matching wits—who could match wits with the Star men?
The shaft of sun crawled on, disappeared. Kincar was by. the window again, studying his knife-edge view of the city, when the outer bar of the door was drawn. He faced Sood and the two who had brought him there the previous day.
"Have him out!" Sood bade his underlings with the loftiness of a Star Lord, or his own interpretation of such. And he stood aside sucking his teeth while the other two roughly rebound Kincar's wrists and gave him a shove doorwards as a reminder to move.
When he would have passed Sood, the giant put out a hand and held him. Fingers bit into flesh and muscle as Sood pawed at him, as a man might examine a lamg for sale. And from that grip there was no wrenching away.
