Read Mutiny in Space Online

Authors: Avram Davidson

Mutiny in Space (8 page)

“It seems like a crack-brained scheme to me,” Rond said, getting out his warmcloak. “And I tell you what — we’ve got to pay more attention to the terrain. Keep an eye out for shale, for sandstone or limestone. No reason why petroleum deposits shouldn’t have formed on this planet.”

“But, sir — ”

“No reason at all. Good night.”

O-Narra said, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” To his surprised “why?” she made one of those indeterminate little noises peculiar to women, caressed his face with her fingers. “Nelsa was looking at you,” she murmured, at last. Jory laughed, spread the cloak around them.

But the last voice he heard that night was Nelsa’s, after all.

Clear and unmistakable it came through the darkness. “Dam?” she was asking someone. “Dam — or
Dame?
Who knows …”

Who, indeed, Jory thought, sleepily.

• • •

At first he thought it was a drop of rain on his face, and moved to pull the cloak closer. His eyes opening, he realized that it was only dew. The time must be earliest morning, the light was muted and dim and the air misty gray. The trees shimmered and looked ghostly. A smell of woodfires and food reminded him of last night’s cold supper and of stumbling around in the darkness. Nelsa’s directive had been a sensible one, but it would be little if any more comfort to be overtaken in the daytime. While he mused, he became suddently aware of voices, a hum of voices, far too many voices for the twenty or so of his and Moha’s party and the fifty-odd of Nelsa’s.

O-Narra was still asleep, her hair looking ash-blond in the half-light. Gently, he drew apart, tucked the cloak in around her, and stood up. At once, the voices rose to a shout; abruptly died away.

They were surrounded.

There must have been close to two hundred of them, and almost all were men. The noise awakened one of the crew — Levvis, it proved — and when his long figure popped to its feet, there was another shout. It was not long before everyone was awake. The small men came, fearfully, at first, cheerfully, before long, flocking around the big ones. Awe was on their faces as they touched their taller brothers. At first too shy to speak, they found their tongues soon enough.

“Men!”

“Great Men!”

“The old daddy’s tale was a true one — see — giants!”

Then they were falling back, stumbling over one another in alarm. Sejarra came striding through the throng, almost running, one hand laid threateningly on her sword-hilt, the other hand knocking the frightened men aside. Her face, ugly even in repose, was now quite hideous in rage. She shook her fist.

“What have you brought among us, Narra!” she shouted. “Anarchy? Rebellion? Treason?”

Accusations poured from her. She almost frothed at the mouth. Every man-servitor for miles around must have left his mistress — and even some of the women. More shame to them. What would be the result if men left their labor, fled from their kitchens, abandoned their flocks, deserted their wives? If servitors of either sex felt free to ignore their tasks …? Their positions in society?

“Heaven and Earth tremble!” she continued, with a shriek.

A voice cut short her hysterical rage as if with an ax. “Great Lady,” it said — and the words were an insult in that tone of scorn and contempt — “Great Lady, if there were no crying children here and if we desired to make them cry, your hysterical babble would serve a useful purpose. You sound like a bailiff with a bellyache berating an awk-boy.”

Someone laughed, and at the sound, Sejarra’s face, which had been for a moment almost bewildered, changed. Her sallow color became gray, almost that of a corpse. Then it grew mottled and patchy. Her breath hissed in her mouth. She seemed to crouch, She said one word.

“Draw.”

Nelsa, one hand on her hip, tilted her head. “What?” she continued, still in the same insulting tone. “Is a Great Lady condescending to match her sword against the plebian blade of an outlaw? Why … Sejarra … what would they say at Court, if they knew — ”

But Sejarra was not to be baited any longer. The word broke like a howl —
”Draw!”
— and while it still came, baying, from her mouth, she had drawn herself and was attacking.

Nelsa, freeing her own weapon from its sheath, and engaging in some nimble and defensive footwork, said, looking only at her antagonist, “I ask you to witness, Narra, that it was no challenge of mine which broke this truce …
Ah!
Not this time, Sejarra!”

As attack succeeded attack, Sejarra was beside herself. Jory shivered, his mouth twisting awry, as he heard the horrid war-cries once again, as they burst and bellowed from Sejarra’s mouth. Nelsa, after her first comment, saved her breath.

She had need of it. Sejarra was lighter and moved more quickly; she was the angrier and moved furiously. Sejarra’s weapon was longer and enabled her to strike out with hope of striking home at distances which gave Nelsa no such advantage.

Circling, leaping, withdrawing, the two figures as they flew about in the dust were surrounded almost at once by spectators — all of whom, however, took care to remain at a safe distance. Moha’s voice, filled with outrage trembling against respect, sounded at Jory’s ear. “Who drew first? Sir — ?”

“The challenge was Lady-Sejarra’s,” he said, shortly.

“Oh! Against an outlaw to whom I had granted truce!” Her conditioned contempt toward outlawry was overcome by the almost instinctive horror of any breach in the code of war — outlawry by its very nature standing apart from the necessity of obedience. Had it been Nelsa who had challenged or first drawn, Moha would not have felt a tithe of the indignation which now showed so plainly on her face.

A howl of triumph from Sejarra was followed by a groan from the watching crowd, but not till the circle of combat had turned his way again was Jory able to see the cause. A trickle of blood from Nelsa’s forehead coursed down onto her face, narrowly — fortunately — missing the eye. Attracted like a fly to the blood, Sejarra struck out again and again toward the cut, never achieving her earlier success, but continuing — almost as though hypnotized — to try.

In so doing, and doing so once too often, she left herself open. Even as her sword clove the air, her antagonist went on one knee, struck with a double chopping movement whose noise, though dull, was clearly heard. It did not seem to pierce the armor of Sejarra’s leg, but she stumbled. Nelsa swung her body around and chopped again.

Again, they were on their feet, again Nelsa with her back and Sejarra with her face toward Jory. Again Sejarra stumbled, and this time Jory saw why. The tape which bound the greaves upon one of her legs had been cut, and the pieces hung loose, bumping back and forth with each movement. They were obviously not going to remain as they were much longer, and Sejarra, evidently realizing this, endeavored to move the leg as little as possible; tried to tempt Nelsa into coming closer.

But Nelsa would not be tempted.

“Fool, fool!” O-Narra said, almost breathlessly. “Why doesn’t she ask a quittance until the armor is repaired? The Code would justify it.”

But Sejarra was obviously far from thinking of the niceties of the Code. In another moment her actions ceased to be motivated by conscious thought at all, became purely visceral. She wavered, waved her arms woodenly, staggered, then leaned over and was violently sick.

The fight ended then and there.

Nelsa simply walked away. Sejarra made no attempt to follow, and, indeed, did not seem to notice. Moha came up and put out her arm, but it was pushed away. With a shrug, Moha, after a second, went away. Everybody went away. Jory, looking over his shoulder, saw the woman, her head still down, standing quite alone.

No one could say, afterward, when she had left.

At first, wrenching his mind with difficulty away from the duel whose sounds still echoed in his ears, Jory was intending only to rejoin Rond and the men, who had looked on from a slight rise of ground off to one side a bit. But Jory’s progress was impeded — gently, respectfully, even involuntarily — by the crowds of newcomers, the existence of whom (although they had been the cause of the fight) he had for the moment forgotten.

Their small hands plucked at his clothes … or, perhaps they only caressed … and their voices, scarcely above a whisper, murmured,
Giant … Great Man … Great Man … Giant … Giant …

O-Narra saw his mild difficulty and, smiling slightly, came toward him, speaking.

“Here are the Giants,” she said. “You see them — the Great Men. They cannot talk now with every one of you. Be sure they wish you well. And now — ”

She was about to ask them to return, but Jory, to whom an idea had suddenly, almost violently, occurred, stepped up beside her. “And now,” he said, “give no cause for offense, but wait quietly till we have washed and eaten and begun our journey to the saintly King. And then, still quietly, come with us on our pilgrimage.” There was an instant’s stunned silence. Then another shout went up. Then, bowing, faces glowing, the small men retreated. What, exactly, they had had in mind, Jory did not know, but that more than a quick peek and then a return to the old order was involved was obvious. The men had brought food, bedding, wood and small stoves, walking-staves, new clothes, children, pet animals…. In another moment the sound of their prayers and the smell of their incense filled the air.

In less than half an hour the procession moved off.

It never ceased growing. At least two and fragments of several other outlaw bands joined it — wandering and nonwandering clerics of both sexes, widowers and orphans, peasants, woodcutters, workers…. There was one bad moment. Jory, coughing a bit from the dust which the (by now) more than one thousand feet had raised on the road, looked up to see the hideous scarlet and black battle-mask of a warrior next to him. But in a moment the mask was thrown back, and the face beneath it showed only awe and curiosity.

“Ho! Giant!” the woman cried. “Have you heard anything of slavers raiding near the coast?” He shook his head. “I am Fief-Darna — the smallest fief in the Land,” she said, with a laugh. “Word reached me that the Dame has raised the septs to punish those rogues. I am on my way to bring Sword-Darna to her … Holy King! what an army you have with you! Your dust alone would smother the slavers!” And, with another laugh, and a friendly wave of her arm, she was gone. He wiped his face on his sleeve.

Once, too, Nelsa spoke to him. After a few words about the fight, she said, suddenly, “I have had husbands in my time,” she said, “both as an honest woman and as an outlaw. Husbands and pretty boys … Some were nothing, some — I thought — were real men. But now I see I never knew what real men were. There are fewer and fewer men-children being born, did you know that? Many poor women never marry. But the Great Ladies, the rich, those in high places, they have all the men they want; the Dame herself has always a hundred — one goes, another comes. Between them they have given her six children, four of them girls…. Why should she have so many, and others none? Many women ask these questions. Narra — she was once a Sword, wasn’t she? And now she’s your woman?”

He met her frank question with a level look. Narra … At first she was merely a woman to him. She was already more than that, how much more he was not sure. He
was
sure that some kind of an offer was being made him now. The odd thought occurred — what would Sejarra think of an innovation such as polygamy in place of polyandry?

“Well, well,” said Nelsa. “We shall soon be at the Holy Court, where — as you said — ‘questions will be answered’.”

• • •

It was late in the day. From time to time Jory scanned the landscape with his farseer, partly to carry out Rond’s orders, partly to make sure the pursuit hadn’t reached them yet.
“Slavers”
— did the Dame believe that? The dust made it hard to see anything; he took advantage of a rest stop to climb a low hill for better view. He did not tarry long.

O-Narra looked up in surprise as he took her arm. “Who rides in a white palanquin?” he asked urgently.

“Only the Dame,” she said. “Why?” Then she went pale. Her hand, gesturing at the farseer, trembled slightly. “Did you see that … with this?”

He nodded. The throng buzzed happily along like a swarm of insects, Rond and his men in the midst of them. How fast could they go, if they had to? And what sort of show of resistance could they put up?

“Yes,” he said. “On the road below … And what seems like every sept in the Land behind her.”

Narra didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “This is Sejarra’s work….”

• • •

The wall marking the boundary of the Holy Court lay downhill, an ancient and ornate gate coming in and out of their view as they all but tumbled down the spiral roadway. They were approaching it from above; the Dame and her forces, from below. Whether her intention was purely a tactical one — to cut them off — or whether she had a purpose of her own inside the Temple precincts, Jory did not know. He knew only that they had to get there first. Others must have sighted the white palanquin, rushing up the road on the shoulders of its fifty white-clad bearers, surrounded by the Corps of Guards, with Sept Sartissa right behind them; and behind them — O-Narra began to name them, Septs Boulbissa, Marnissa, Tarntissa, Ro’issa, Movissa, and Harn; the two Moieties of Larn; then Verdanth, Saramanth, Toranth … The names vanished into an obscurity of exotic syllables…. But others must have sighted them, too.

A ripple went through the throng, then something like a shudder. It stopped, moved back, moved forward, began to eddy. Jory moved rapidly. “Ho!” he shouted. “Ho, and ho!” Every eye turned to him. “The Dame comes to meet us! We must not tarry! Ho! Ho!” And he ran forward.

It was contagious. Men and women, young and old, they ran after him, O-Narra by his side. Over his shoulder he shouted, “
Persephone!
To me!” One by one, they caught up to him — tall Levvis, Little Joe riding on his shoulders, young Storm, old Lockharn, Mars, Duston, Rond.

“What do you intend by this, Mr. First?” Rond demanded, panting.

But Rond got no answer, was carried along more by momentum than zeal. The Dame had remembered — or had known — only part of the old maxim which said that a good leader should always be at the head of the troops but a good leader should always be behind the troops as well. It was, after all, a rather difficult maxim to carry out, and pre-eminence was not a habit easily relinquished. Nor was respect and discipline — her troops remained behind her. The palanquin, white upon white, moved swiftly; the scarlet and black masses behind it kept right up with it; but Jory and his undisciplined horde moved even faster.

Other books

A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
On the Edge of Humanity by S. B. Alexander
Pages of Passion by Girard, Dara
(Mis)fortune by Melissa Haag
Duel Nature by John Conroe
Honeymoon in High Heels by Gemma Halliday
Sin noticias de Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza
MagicalKiss by Virginia Cavanaugh


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024