Chapter Eight
THE CRYSTAL PIT
The ship reached land the next day - whether the mainland of the Western continent or an island I did not then know.
We leaped from the ship into the shallows, plunging thankfully up to the firm shore, while Rokin directed his men to beach the hull.
When this was done and we sat in the shadow of the hull, recovering from what we had endured in the past two days, Rokin turned to me with a faint trace of his old grin.
"So now we are all far from home - and far from our glory," he said.
"Thanks to you," said Hool Haji, echoing my own sentiments.
"Well," said Rokin, fingering his golden beard, now clogged with salt, "I suppose it is."
"Have you no idea where we are?" I asked him.
"None."
"Then we had best strike off along the coast in the hope of finding a friendly settlement," I suggested.
"I suppose so." He nodded. "But someone must stay to guard the treasures still in the ship."
"You mean the machines?" Hool Haji said.
"The machines," Rokin agreed.
"We could guard them," I said, "with the aid of some of your men."
Rokin laughed aloud. "Barbarian I may be, my friend, but fool I am not. No, you come with us. I'll leave some of my men to guard the ship."
And so we set off along the shore. It was a wide, smooth beach, with an occasional rock standing out from the sand and. far away, its foliage waving gently in the mild, warm breeze, was semi-tropical forest.
It seemed a peaceful enough place.
But I was wrong.
By mid-afternoon the shore had narrowed and we were walking much closer to the forest than before. The sky was overcast and the air had become colder. Hool Haji and myself had no cloaks and we shivered slightly in the still, chill air.
When they came, they came suddenly.
They came in a howling pack, bursting from the trees and running down the beach towards us. Grotesque parodies of human beings, waving clubs and crudely-hammered swords, covered in hair and completely naked.
I could not at first believe my eyes as I drew my own sword without thinking and prepared to face them.
Though they walked upright, they had the half-human faces of dogs - bloodhounds were the nearest species I could think of.
What was more, the noises they made were indistinguishable from the baying of hounds.
So bizarre was their appearance, so sudden their assault, that I was almost off my guard when the first club-brandishing dog-man came in to the attack.
I blocked the blow with my blade And sheered off the creature's fingers, finishing him cleanly with a thrust at his heart.
Another took his place, and more besides. I saw that we were completely surrounded by the pack. Apart from Hool Haji, Rokin and myself, there were only two other barbarians in our party and there were probably some fifty of the dog-men.
I swung my sword in an arc and it bit deep into the necks of two of the dog-men, causing them to fall.
The hounds' faces were slobbering and the large eyes held a maniacal hatred which I had only previously seen in the eyes of mad dogs. I had the impression that if they bit me I would be infected with rabies.
Three more fell before my blade as all the old teaching of M. Clarchet, my French fencing master since childhood, came back to me.
Once again I became cool.
Once again I became nothing more than a fighting machine, concentrating entirely on defending myself against this mad attack.
We held them off far longer than I had expected we could, until the press became so intense I could no longer move my sword.
The fighting then became a thing of fists and feet, and I went down with at least a dozen of the dog-men on top of me.
I felt my arms grasped, and still I tried to fight them off. But at length they had bound me.
Once again I had become a prisoner.
Would I survive to save Cend-Amrid?
I had now begun to doubt it. Ill-luck was riding me, I was sure, and I felt that I would meet my death on that mysterious Western continent.
The dog-men carried us into the forest, conversing in a sharp, barking form of the common Martian tongue. I found it hard to understand them.
Once I glimpsed Hool Haji being carried along by several of the dog-men, and I also saw a flash of Rokin's golden armour, so I assumed he lived, too. But I never saw the remaining barbarians again, so I concluded they had been slain.
Eventually the forest opened out on to a clearing and there was a village. The houses were only roughly-made shelters, but they had been built on, or among, the shells of far older stone buildings that did not seem to have any associations with either the Sheev or the Yaksha. The buildings must once have been massive and durable, but they had been erected by a more primitive race than the ancient race which had destroyed itself in the Mightiest War.
As we were carted into one of the shelters and dumped on the evil-smelling floor - half of stone, half of hardened mud -I wondered about the race that had abandoned the settlement before the dog-people had discovered it.
Before I could say anything to Hool Haji or Rokin about this, a dog-man, larger than the rest, entered the shelter and looked down at us out of his large, canine eyes.
"Who are you?" he said in his strange accent.
'Travellers," I replied. "We offer you no harm. Why did you attack us?"
"For the First Masters," he replied.
"Who are the First Masters?" asked Hool Haji from where he lay beside me.
"The First Masters are they who feed from the Crystal Pit."
"We do not know them," I said. "Why did they tell you to attack us?"
"They did not tell us."
"Do they give you your orders?" Rokin said. "If so, tell them they have made a prisoner of Rokin the Gold and his men will punish them if Rokin dies."
Something like a smile touched the heavy mouth of the dog-man.
"The First Masters punish - they are not punished."
"Can we speak to them?" I asked.
“They do not speak."
"Can we see them?" Hool Haji asked.
"You will see them - and they will see you."
"Well, at least we might be able to reason with these First Masters," I said to Hool Haji. I returned my attention to the dog-man who seemed to be the leader of the pack.
"Are these First Masters Like you?" I asked. "Or are they like us?"
The pack-leader shrugged. "Like neither," he said. "Like that one more." And he pointed to Hool Haji.
"They are folk of my race?" Hool Haji said, brightening a little. "Then surely they can see that we wish than no harm."
"Only like you," said the dog-man. "Not the same as you. You will see them in the Crystal Pit."
"What is this Crystal Pit?" Rokin growled. "Why can't we see them now?"
Again the dog-man seemed to smile. "They do not come yet," he replied.
"When will they come?"
“Tomorrow - when the sun is highest."
With that the dog-man left the shelter.
Somehow we managed to get some sleep, hoping that the mysterious First Masters would be more forthcoming and more open to reason than the dog-men, who were apparently their servants in some capacity we could not understand.
Just before noon on the next day several dog-men entered the shelter and picked us up, hauling us from the place and out into the daylight.
The pack-leader was waiting, standing on a piece of fallen masonry, a sword in one hand and a stick in the other. At the tip of the stick gleamed a ruby-like gem of incredible size. I did not understand its significance, save that perhaps it was some sign of the dog-man's leadership over the rest.
We were borne out of the clearing and into the forest again, but it was not long before the forest gave way to another and much larger clearing, with the farther trees a great distance away. Here lush grass waved, rising waist high and brushing my face
as they carried me.
The grass soon became sparser, revealing an area of hardened mud in the centre of which was a great expanse of some gleaming substance which made my eyes ache.
It scintillated, flashing in the sun like a vast diamond.
It was only as we came closer that I realized that this must be the Crystal Pit.
It was a pit. Its sides were formed of pure, faceted crystal that caught the light from so many angles that it was almost impossible to guess what it was at first.
But where were these First Masters who looked like Hool Haji? I saw no one but my companions and the dog-men who had brought us here.
We were carried to the edge of the blinding pit and our bonds were cut. We looked about wondering what was to happen and none of us was prepared for the sudden shoves we received. Luckily the pit's sides were not particularly steep. We slid down to the bottom, barely able to check our descent, and landed in a heap at the bottom of the Crystal Pit.
As we picked ourselves up we saw the dog-men retreating from the edge of the pit.
We were unable to guess why we were there, but we were all of us uneasy, suspecting that we were not merely to be imprisoned in the Crystal Pit indefinitely.
After about an hour, during which we were forced to keep our eyes closed most of the time, we gave up trying to scramble up the sides of the pit and began to try to work out some other means of escaping.
There seemed none.
Then we heard a sound from above and saw a face peering down at us.
At first we thought this must be one of the First Masters, but the face did not fit their description.
Then we saw that it was the face of a girl.
But perhaps girl is the wrong word, for the face, though intelligent and pleasant to look at, was the mutated face of a cat. Only the eyes and the pointed ears were evidence of the girl's non-simian ancestry, but it was as much a surprise to see this cat-girl as it had been to see the dog-men earlier.
"Are you enemies of the Hounds of Hahg?" came the whispered enquiry from the cat-girl.
"It seems that they think of us as such," I replied. "Are you, too, their enemy?"
"All my people - and they are few these days - hate the dog-folk of Hahg," she replied vehemently. "Many have been brought here to meet the First Masters."
"Are they your masters, too?" Hool Haji asked.
"They were - but we rejected them."
"Have you come to save us, girl?" came Rokin's voice, practical and impatient.
"I have come to try, but there is little time. Here." She reached over the edge of the pit and slid some objects down the sides. I saw at once that they were three swords, unlike those we had seen used by the dog-folk, but still strange. They 318 were shorter than the swords I was used to, but of excellent workmanship. Picking one up and handing the others to my companions, I inspected it.
It was light and beautifully tempered. A little too light for my taste, but far better than nothing. I felt a little better.
I looked up and saw that the cat-girl's face had suddenly become anxious.
“Too late to help you from the pit," she said. "The First Masters come. I wish you well."
And then she was gone.
We waited tensely, swords in hand, wondering from where the First Masters would appear.
Chapter Nine
THE FIRST MASTERS
They came from above, their vast wings flapping noisily in the still air.
They were somewhat smaller than Hool Haji, but very like him in basic appearance, though their skins were of a much paler blue, a strange, unhealthy blue that contrasted oddly with their red, gaping mouths and their long, white tusks. Their wings spread partially from their shoulders, partially from around their hips.
They seemed more like beasts than men.
Perhaps, as the beasts had become men in the shape of the dog-folk and the cat-girl who had given us our swords, these men had become beasts. There was a strange, insensate glow in their eyes that did not seem to reflect the madness of men but the madness of the beast.
They hovered above us, their huge wings beating the air, causing a stiff wind to ruffle our hair.
'The Jihadoo!" Hool Haji gasped unbelievingly.
"What are they?" I asked, my gaze fixed on the weird creatures above.
"They are legends in Mendishar - an ancient race, similar to my own folk, who were shunned from our lands because of their dark, magical experiments."
"Magic? I thought no one in Mendishar believed in such stuff!" I said.
"Of course not. I told you, the Jihadoo were simply a legend. But now I am no longer certain of anything,"
"Whatever you call them, they mean us ill," Rokin the Gold growled, blinking his eyes against the glare of the Crystal Pit.
One by one the First Masters - or the Jihadoo, as Hool Haji called them - began to cluster downwards into the pit.
Horrified, I prepared to defend myself.
The first one came sweeping down uttering a shrill scream, red mouth gaping, fangs bared, claw-fingered hands extended to clutch me.
I slashed at the hand and drew blood. At least the Jihadoo were mortal, I remembered thinking as it swerved in the air and attacked me from another direction. Now others had joined the first and my comrades were as beset as myself.
I stabbed with the slim sword at the face of my first attacker and had the satisfaction of taking him in the eye and killing him.
The First Masters were plainly unprepared for armed resistance and this was why we survived the first encounters with comparative ease.
Another came at me, exposing his chest for a perfect stab into his chest.
The fairly narrow base of the pit helped us, since not too many of the Jihadoo could get at us at one time, but now we were forced to clamber on to the corpses of those we had already slain. In some ways this gave us a firmer footing as we fought.
All was a confusion of beating wings and fanged faces, glaring eyes and clutching claw-hands. I lopped another's head off, recoiling as sticky, evil-smelling blood spurted at my face.
Then, suddenly, as I engaged yet another of the monsters, I felt my shoulders seized in a painful grip.
I tried to turn, to slash at my attacker, but even as I did so I was hauled into the air and lost my balance for a moment.
I was being borne upwards into the air by one of the flying man-beasts.
High above the forest now, I still tried to destroy my captor, even if it meant my own destruction, so abhorrent did it seem to me.
I saw that Hool Haji and Rokin were in a similar plight to 321 my own, but the few First Masters who followed us made me realize with a grim satisfaction just how many of their fellows we had killed.
Twisting in the painful grasp of the claws half-embedded in my shoulders, I tried to stab backwards at the arms or the torso.
To my right I saw Rokin attempt the same thing and, because of his golden armour, manage to twist one shoulder out of the Jihadoo's clutches.
Hanging by the arm which the Jihadoo still clasped, he began to slash at the centre's chest.
The creature did not retaliate, as I had expected. It simply released its grip on Rokin's other arm.
In horror I saw the barbarian yell and began to hurtle towards the rocky ground that had given way to the forest.
I saw his golden armour twisting in the sunlight, falling rapidly earthwards.
Then I saw it strike the ground.
I saw the armour split open on impact and a red corpse roll for a moment before becoming still.
I was sickened by the sight.
I knew that Rokin had been a barbarian and an enemy, but he had been a warm-blooded and, in his own way, generous man - a human being in the full sense.
And, with Rokin gone, we might never discover the rest of the machines he had stolen from the Yaksha - assuming, of course, the unlikely event of our surviving our present predicament.
I swung myself back now, curling my legs around one of the
trailing legs of the Jihadoo. He did not seem to have anticipated this. Neither had I. It had been sudden inspiration, and now I at least had some chance of clinging on if he decided to release his grip.
Next, I managed to shift my position so that I was able to stab at his side with my sword. I began jabbing.
The wounds I was able to inflict were not serious, but they were sufficient to set him screaming and hissing.
I felt his grip begin to weaken and readied myself for what must happen next.
I stabbed several more times.
He screamed even more loudly. One claw released my shoulder and I ducked as he began to flail at me with it. I slashed at the clawed hand - and severed it.
This was too much for him. He dropped his remaining grip and I fell forward.
Only my legs, twisted around one of his, prevented me from joining Rokin.
I hurled my body through the air and managed to get another grip on his leg, this time with one of my arms.
He shook the leg, losing his equilibrium in the air and slowly beginning to descend, in spite of himself, as his wing beat to keep him up.
Bit by bit, and to my intense satisfaction, we began to go lower and lower as he struggled now to free himself. But I still clung to him, stabbing with the light sword.
He was bleeding profusely and getting weaker all the time.
Then, suddenly, with one final convulsion, he managed to loosen my grip.
With a feeling that all had been for nothing, I lost my hold and began to fall.
I did not fall for long, luckily, for once again the rocky ground had been replaced by forest and I fell into the branches of a tree. The supple bows held me like a soft hammock and after a moment I was able to climb out and begin to clamber to the ground.
I was worried about Hool Haji.
How had he fared?
I prayed that he had, like me, been able to save himself from the clutches of his captor.
The forest was quiet for a moment, then I heard a tremendous crash to my right.