Ephrais had already guided his mount to one side of the narrow trail and brought it to a halt, but he had seen something of the brief exchange between Khai and the princess. Now he watched the column pass him silently by until he was alone, then he too chuckled. Back along the trail at the deserted campsite, the bonfire’s flames reared high, an open invitation to any of Pharaoh’s soldiers who might be watching from afar. Ephrais stared for a moment longer at that fiery pillar and rubbed his chin.
“That’s not the only fire I’ve seen set today,” he told his mount. “It’s going to be interesting when we get back home—if we’re that lucky—to see how this lot works out. Our little Sh’tarra fancies the Khemite, of that you may be sure—and he fancies her, if I’m any judge. And as for Manek Thotak—”
Ephrais grinned again, turned his mount after the column and urged it into a trot. “Manek, my lad,” he said, “it looks like you have a serious rival!”
Fifteen minutes later, the column began to climb through long grass and shrubs toward the humped horizon of a low ridge. Following the flashes of white paint on the hindquarters of the double-ranked animals ahead, Ashtarta craned her neck to see where the forward part of the column was already cresting the ridge.
“See,” she told Khai. “If there are watchers, it will seem that the silhouette is of just two horses and their riders standing on the ridge. No one would suspect that we are over a hundred strong. And note how the ponies bear spots of white paint, so that we may all follow on like a snake in the dark.”
“I see,” said Khai, but his mind was not altogether on her words. So close to her, with her scent in his nostrils and her backside pressed against him—and the not unpleasant motion of the pony between his legs—he had discovered that his angry feelings toward the princess were melting away.
Suddenly he no longer minded the ache in his ribs where she had jabbed him, or the numbness of his tongue where he had bitten it. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he was distracted by vivid pictures of Ashtarta as he had first seen her. Her little breasts, flat belly and firm legs. And the way she had fought the Theraens. . . . With Ashtarta it would not be the same as with Mhyna. It would be more like fighting a Nile croc! Ah, but wouldn’t that be a fight to win?
But now, aware of how he was beginning to react to Ashtarta’s nearness and his own imagination, he relaxed his hold on the girl a little and gently drew back from her an inch or two.
“Hold tight to me,” Ashtarta immediately hissed, “and sit close! If we have to make a sudden run for it, I’ll lose you.”
Obediently, but gritting his teeth and hoping she wouldn’t notice, he inched closer. Impatiently, she tut-tutted and pushed her rump back against him. He groaned inwardly as he felt her body immediately stiffen. Beneath his hands the muscles of her stomach tightened, and he gritted his teeth as he waited for her outburst.
That outburst never came, for they had reached the crest of the ridge and the sight that opened to them as they stared across the nighted land ahead was one which shook both of them with an almost physical force.
Whatever it was that Ashtarta might have said or done, now she simply gasped: “Look!”
But Khai was already looking.
IV
MELEMBRIN RUNS
THE GAUNTLET
Away to the west, at a distance of some two or three miles as Khai judged it, a second line of low hills formed an undulating horizon lit by the residual glow of a sunken sun. Directly in the path of Melembrin’s column, the hills were breached by a deep gash which formed a pass to the west, and this was obviously the war-chief’s escape route. To north and south, however, the hills leveled out until they merged with the shadows and darkness of the lower ground—except that it was not dark now but burning with the light from thousands of torches!
Vast bodies of men were on the march, closing in a massive pincer movement, and already the points of that pincer had passed behind the dark masses of the hills and were doubtless converging upon a meeting place on the western flank—which could only be the far end of the pass. Khai saw all of this in an instant, and as Ashtarta dug her heels in and urged her mount to greater speed, so his eyes went again to the masses of moving lights where they wound like rivers to north and south.
Why, he could almost hear—no, he could hear, even at this distance—a faint blare of brazen trumpets and an even fainter chanting from thousands of throats! The marching-chant of Pharaoh’s army, the war-chant of a disciplined military machine. Quicker by far than Khai, Melembrin and his warriors had recognized their peril, and as the column sharpened its pace so the chief fell back and hastened his men on, until eventually he spied Ashtarta and brought his massive mount to a gallop alongside hers. Seated bareback astride his great horse—with his naked arms rippling with muscle, his leather-clad back straight and strong, and wearing his horned war-helmet like a metal skull—the Kushite now looked more like some great savage than a wise and respected king, and the flame-eyed beast between his legs must surely be a demon from the depths of blackest nightmare. Khai’s flesh crept and he shrank from the vision; but Ashtarta, reaching out even on the gallop to grip Melembrin’s jacket, merely cried:
“Father, did you see them? How many, do you think?”
“Too many, lass,” he barked. “A mighty pride of lions if ever I saw one—and now we must outrun them. If they reach the far end of the pass before we’re through it—” and he left the sentence unfinished.
“Father, I—” she began, but he quickly cut her off.
“Listen, Sh’tarra. Whatever else happens, you must get back to Kush. No heroics, girl—though I know you’d fight like a man if you had to—but you must make it home for two good reasons. One: someone has to warn Kush, and you’ve got the fleetest little animal under you that I ever saw. And two: you’ll be Candace one day, and Kush will need you. Are you listening, Sh’tarra?”
For answer, she nodded, leaning forward as her mount barely cleared a small shrub in its way. “I’ll make it home, father—we all will.”
“We’ll see about that,” he shouted. “We’ll see. But you’re certainly not going to get very far with the Khemite lad hanging on your neck. Give him here—” and he reached out a massive hand and took hold of Khai’s arm near the shoulder. Khai let go of the girl and lifted up his legs, sliding clear of Ashtarta’s mount and cocking a leg over the broad back of the king’s animal. Then he wrapped his arms round Melembrin’s waist and hung on for dear life.
“Cling like a leech, lad,” the king grunted, “and old Thunder won’t even notice he has an extra passenger. And don’t worry if your teeth get rattled a bit. Believe me it’s better than walking! Come on, Thunder—let’s go, boy!” And away they went like the wind, flying up a rise to where the steep sides of the pass loomed like some great dark throat ahead.
Within those walls, which soon towered high on both sides, the pace of the column decreased and the riders began to bunch up. Up front, torches were hastily lit and the pace picked up again. Above, beyond jagged rims of rock that obscured the moon, the sky was a wide river of stars. Khai clung grimly to Melembrin’s back and felt, to his amazement, a wild and savage joy rising inside him as the pounding of hooves became a rhythmic beat like the drums of war. In another moment Khai became one with the mighty rider whose back he hugged, one with the powerful beast beneath him, one with the night and the drumming of hooves.
Strange visions filled his head, of other places and times, of a lance under his arm, a high shield held against his breast and an armored opponent thundering toward him on a field of battle. He felt the curve of a leather saddle beneath him and the weight of the great lance as he tilted it to point at his opponent’s shield. Then—
“There’s the end of the pass up ahead, lad!” came Melembrin’s cry, jolting him dizzily back to earth. “I see none of your countrymen there—but hang on anyway!” And lifting up his voice, the king bellowed: “Arrowhead, men, and the princess in the center. If it gets hot form two ranks, with s
ufficient room for her to make a run down the middle. Here we go—!”
With the echoes of that mighty cry still reverberating from flanking walls of rock, the column burst out of the pass to flow down onto an undulating plain of scrub and grass. Without pause, they took up an arrowhead formation, with the king in the lead and Ashtarta locked centrally behind three thundering walls of men and beasts.
Now, as those strange visions faded from Khai’s mind—leaving him to wonder what mad recesses of his brain had spawned the idea of a seat for a horse’s back and long spears on which riders might impale their enemies—he glanced off to the arrowhead’s pounding, night-dark left flank and beyond it to the massed might of the Pharaoh’s soldiery. It seemed that the land to north and south was awash with streams of fire—blazing with the light from thousands of torches—while up ahead, mere hundreds of yards away, the nets of flame were quickly closing.
The rapid emergence of Melembrin and his raiders from the gorge had momentarily surprised the Khemites, but they very quickly recovered. Now, along with the blare of brazen instruments, Khai could also hear the squealing and trumpeting of elephants. For the first time, the Pharaoh was using elephants as weapons of war.
The flaring torches that lit the darkness ahead were thinning out, stringing themselves into individual units that moved rapidly to close the gap and cut off the fleeing Kushites. Huge, lumbering shapes there were, too, and the sounds of shouted commands could be heard above the quickening beat of drums.
“Throw down your torches and run blind!” Melembrin roared. “And get your shields up—now!”
His warning came none too soon. No sooner were shields lifted than there came the concerted whistling of flight-arrows and their rattle and thud as they fell upon leather-covered bucklers. The gap ahead had closed now, but as yet only foot soldiers and archers blocked the way.
“Ride ’em down!” Melembrin roared as he sent his horse, Thunder, crashing into a pair of Khemites who loomed up like shadows and sprang at him from the darkness. In another moment Thunder shied sideways and Khai and Melembrin were hurled from his back. Khai leaped to his feet amidst clouds of dust and flying shapes in time to see the war-chief’s great knobbed club rise and fall once, twice, to an accompaniment of gurgling death-screams; then Thunder was pawing the ground and Melembrin leaping to his back, reaching down a hand to pull Khai up behind him.
The column had passed on and the dark ground all around was strewn with trampled Khemish corpses; but the war cries of warriors closing from the flanks were loud and the whistle of their arrows shrill and deadly. Digging in his heels, Melembrin sent Thunder galloping after his men, a dozen of whom waited to give him cover. Behind them as they fled, a squad of archers nocked long flight-arrows and aimed them into the night. A single sharp word of command was sufficient to fill the air with speeding shafts.
Pounding westward and slowly gaining on the rest of his men, suddenly Melembrin and his escort found themselves riding through a hail of arrows. Khai felt a heavy blow to his back and a sharp burning agony, and simultaneously saw a shaft appear over his right shoulder where it seemed to grow from the king’s back. A number of horses and men went crashing down uttering their last cries, but Thunder merely reared up and snorted his alarm before continuing his run for the west.
Knowing he was hurt and feeling blood sticking his shirt to his back, Khai clung tenaciously to the wounded king and gritted his teeth. The other riders, wondering at Melembrin’s slackened pace and closing with him, saw the shaft in his back and steadied him where he sat his great horse. Then they were over a low rise and the clatter and clash of Pharaoh’s army was fading behind them. They had run the gantlet and there was no longer any way that the Khemites could catch them.
For ten more long miles Melembrin hung on, until he felt Khai’s hands loosening where they gripped him and realized that the boy had had enough. Then, gentling his great horse to a halt, he allowed his men to lift the boy from him and slid himself down onto firm ground. As soon as he stood alone, however, he staggered and would have fallen. His men lit torches and lowered him to the ground.
“Get the arrow out of me,” he snarled. “Quickly, for we can’t stay here, and—” He paused as he saw Khai slumped on the ground close by, a second arrow sticking straight up from his back. Then the king’s mouth fell open. “So that’s why the lad was weakening! But for him, I’d have two shafts in my back. . . . Mattas!” he shouted. “Where are you? Where is the damn butcher? I must be mad to trust a doctor who’d rather be out breaking bones than stay at home and mend them! Khai—are you all right, boy?”
Slumped forward, with his wet face hanging down and his palms pushing against the earth, Khai managed to nod his head. By now, the rest of Melembrin’s column had fallen back and dismounted, gathering in a circle about their wounded king. Pushing through their ranks came Ashtarta and the warrior-physician Mattas. Ashtarta flew to her father and kneeled beside him. He pushed her gently away.
“No, no, Sh’tarra. Better you cut the lad’s shirt away while Mattas deals with me.” He glared round about him at the encircling men. “Come on all of you—move! I want a litter made. And make sure Thunder is not used for its dragging. The litter’s for me . . . aye, and for the youth there. Mattas, when you’ve done with me and the Khemite lad, then look to my horse. He, too, has an arrow in his shoulder. I tried to draw the thing but only succeeded in . . . aahhh!” And with that soft sigh of anguish, the King’s voice fell silent as Mattas slit his leather jacket open and without ceremony drew the dart from his shoulder.
Khai saw all of this through a haze of wavering red shot with the yellow flames of sputtering torches; but then, as Mattas turned to him with a grim smile, he too fainted . . . .
V
THE KEEP AT HORTAPH
When Khai regained consciousness, it was to the sound of muffled sobbing. Opening one eye, he looked down the length of his raised pallet to where Ashtarta clung tightly to one of his projecting feet and sobbed into the fur which covered the rest of him. His body felt so stiff and bruised that for a moment or two he dared not move. The ache in his back was a slow-burning fire that threatened to blaze up if he so much as twitched, but he knew that eventually he must take that chance.
Still using one eye only, he experimentally turned his head to left and right and took in his surroundings. He lay on his pallet in a tiny, low-ceilinged cave which admitted light through a jagged hole in its roof. More light flooded from around a bend in the wall. Apart from a stone pitcher of water and a small pile of clothes, the cave was otherwise quite empty. Done with his inspection, Khai again turned his eye upon Ashtarta.
“Why don’t you wake up? You . . . you Khemite!” the girl snuffled into the fur. “If only to let me thank you for my father’s life. For his and for my own. And how might I ever pay my debt to you if you insist upon dying?”
“Oh?” said Khai. “Then you admit there’s a debt, do you?” His mouth was clammy and vile, so that he grimaced as he spoke.
Ashtarta started violently and let go his foot. Slowly she looked up, her mouth open, eyes wide and streaked with tears. An astonished smile quickly spread over her face, then gave way to a blush as she saw how keenly Khai’s eye regarded her. She did not quite manage to disguise either her delight or her blushes as she answered:
“A debt, yes—but not the one you mean. I meant a debt of of . . . of blood! My father’s blood and mine. You saved our lives, Khai, and that is the debt I meant.”
“In that case,” he answered, opening his other eye, “you can forget it. Both of you. All I expect is a place to live and some food to eat, I’ve told you that already. And as for saving your father’s life: it wasn’t of my own free will. Do you suppose I would have sat still on that horse if I had known an arrow was speeding for my back?”
“Nevertheless,” she told him, “your back took the arrow which would have killed him.”
Khai frowned. “It didn’t kill me,” he said.
“It ver
y nearly did,” Ashtarta answered. “It smashed the arrows in your quiver and they deflected it. It went in close to your spine, but not very deep. Since then you’ve been in a fever. Sometimes violent and babbling crazy things, other times so quiet we thought you must be dead.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, anyway, I feel a lot better now. My back doesn’t hurt too much and I’m hungry. Is that a good sign?”
“I’m sure it is! You’d like some meat, eh? Better than the slop I’ve been feeding you, when you’d take it. You got more down your front than you got in your mouth!” And she burst out laughing. Khai laughed, too, until his back began to hurt again.
“Where are we?” he eventually asked. “And why is it so quiet? You Kushites are supposed to be a noisy lot, and yet here—”
“Here it is quiet because we wish it to be so,” she said. “We mourn those men of Kush who will never return, those brave men who guarded my father’s northern flank and are lost.”
“What of the others,” Khai asked, “who guarded his southern flank?”
Her face brightened. “They are safe. Every one spared. We met up with them beneath the walls, and now it is the lull before the storm.”
“Beneath which walls?” he asked. “And what storm do you speak of?”
“Now we are on the heights over Hortaph,” she answered. “The Khemites followed us. We left a trail a blind man could follow. They are massed below, on the approaches to the keep. They’ll attack soon—today, maybe.”
“What?” cried Khai, struggling to sit up. “Hortaph? Isn’t that in Kush? How long have I been here? I have to see what’s happening. I—”