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comfort and shelter of the tower itself.
That was as far as Blade got with his observations before the tall man was
back again, looming over him more closely and grimly than before. He drew a
long, sharp knife from his belt. Blade tensed. He was ready to make a fight,
but how much of a fight could he manage with both wrists and ankles bound?
Instead of driving the knife in, the man bent down, keeping well clear of
Blade's reach as he did so, and slashed the thongs around Blade's ankles. A
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quick barked order and two men came over from the guard tent. They hauled
Blade to his feet and held him upright while he stamped his swollen, numbed
feet and felt the fiery prickles of returning feeling in them. Then one of the
guards lifted his spear and prodded
Blade gently in the small of the back with the point, gesturing toward the
tower with the other hand.
Blade nodded and stumbled forward.
Inside the darkness was almost tangible and certainly pungent. There was
only an occasional wavering spot of smoky yellow light, where torches burned
in metal holders driven into the wall or standing on the floor. Under Blade's
feet the floor seemed to be free of the ancient accumulation of dust he had
noticed in nearly every other building in Pura.
They came to a staircase and started up it, the tall man leading and the two
guards following behind
Blade with their spears still pointed at his back. Up they went through the
darkness for three flights, passing doorways hung with patchwork curtains
roughly splashed with incomprehensible badges of white paint. Finally they
came to the fourth door, which was covered by a curtain of solid blue, with a
single gigantic eye painted on it in white. Two guards stood in front of it.
"I bring the prisoner Blade before Krog," said the tall man. The guards
nodded; one of them reached up and lifted the curtain aside. Blade's guards
prodded him onward again as the tall man led the way through the arched
doorway into the room beyond.
Blade had half-expected something the size of the interior of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, a ceiling soaring out of sight into the gloom above and a floor the
size of a football field. Instead the chamber was almost cozy, barely forty
feet on a side, and lit almost as well as a Dreamer's vault. It was a moment
before
Blade recognized the color of the light and where it was coming from. Then he
stared in frank amazement at the marconite capsule in the base of the heavy
iron lamp that hung on a chain from the ceiling. He stared at the capsule and
the bulbs wired to it, his mind working furiously to find some
plausible explanation for this Waker gang using marconite. Then a sharp cough
came from the end of the room.
Blade immediately forgot about the marconite and turned his entire attention
to the two people sitting on a bench there. Both were contemplating him as
though he were a specimen under a microscope.
The girl woman drew his eye first. Which was she? It was hard to tell her age.
From the slim, hard lines of her body and the proud jut of her small, firm
breasts, he would have guessed her to be nineteen, perhaps twenty at most. She
wore only a kilt and a dazzling array of knives that sparkled and glinted at
her waist, wrists, and ankles. What seemed like fair skin was darkened by
grease and dirt, as were the foamy curls of blonde hair covering her neat
little head. Blade could see from even across the room an intentness and a
calculating quality in the wide blue eyes and a streak of savage cruelty that
struck Blade with almost physical force and made him instantly alert. Here was
a possible enemy, and a deadly dangerous one. Woman, definitely, not a girl.
To call her a girl would be to risk making himself just a little bit less
alert. He could not afford that with this woman.
A beautiful woman, also. And obviously interested in him, the way her eyes
were roaming over his body. Nine times out of ten he had found a way to put
that interest to some sort of use, but he had a
feeling that this might be the tenth time. He jerked his attention away from
the woman and turned to the man.
Here was a very different type. The young woman was obviously a barbarian;
this man was just as obviously civilized or at least trying hard to look that
way. The woman's father, Blade realized, noting the unmistakable facial
resemblance. Like his daughter he was slender the slenderness of a man who
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carries nothing but muscle and sinew on his bones and blond. His hair was
close-cropped and clean enough for Blade to make out the numerous strands of
gray in it.
He wore a blue kilt and a dark red tunic. Both his garments and as much of his
skin as Blade could see appeared to be a good deal cleaner than the average
among the Wakers. He was clean-shaven which also set him apart from the
generally hairy Wakers. He appeared to be unarmed, but why not, considering
the arsenal his daughter was carrying? He was, however, wearing the first
piece of jewelry that Blade had seen among the Wakers a silvery medallion with
a blue jewel in the center, carved in the form of an eye. It hung around his
neck on a gold chain.
The old man raised his hand and beckoned the four men facing him forward to
within ten feet of his throne. Then he waved the tall man aside so that he and
Blade could see each other still more clearly.
Blade was already moving warily toward a favorable impression of this man. A
closer look at him reinforced this impression. The man's face was scraped and
red, suggesting that the fight to keep himself clean-shaven had been won at
the cost of considerable pain. The man seemed to have created for himself a
small center of civilization among a mass of barbarians. Had he had much
success in passing his notions on to his people? Blade didn't think so except
in training the fighting men. But in Dimension X, as in
Home Dimension, new and better ways of fighting and killing were willingly
learned by almost anybody.
The man crossed his arms on his chest and spoke. "You are Blade, the man from
another world who has been helping the Dreamers and training them to fight."
It was a statement, not a question, delivered in a quiet, calm voice with no
hint of challenge in it. "I am Krog, the leader of the People of the Blue Eye.
I
have been looking for you for a long time, ever since one of my war patrols
met you on the East Bridge. I
have heard that you had just arrived in our world that night, only hours
before. Is that so?"
Blade nodded.
"Then you learn very quickly and keep your head as well as being a strong and
wise fighting man.
The People of the Blue Eye need one like you. And my daughter Halda " with a
look in which Blade thought he saw a flash of weary distaste " finds you [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]