Gods of Green Mountain (28 page)
"How can we consider your demand until you name it?" Dray-Gon answered in his own loud voice, and then whispered to Raykin, "When I give the word, be prepared to jump onto the driver's seat of the princess's wagon--and drive like the demons of hell are pursuing you..."
"But how can we ride over the barrier of rocks ahead?" whispered back Raykin. Dray-Gon smiled. "I have taken care of that; even as we talk, Arth-Rin and Ral-Bar are readying the disintegrating guns that will burn those boulders into dust."
From the shadowed hills, again boomed Sintar's voice: "Turn over to us the Princess Sharita, and we will allow you to travel on your way unharmed."
All of the young men sucked in their breaths in surprise and shock. Dray-Gon laughed. "Sintar--what kind of men do you think we are? Each one of us would die before we would turn our princess over to the likes of you. But how can we turn over tribute that we don't have? The princess is not with us, but back at the palace, safely guarded."
"You lie, son of Ron Ka!" roared Sintar's voice, from a particular spot that Dray-Gon had located, and watched with narrowed eyes. "We know for a fact that the princess rides within one of those blue wagons! So turn her over to us, and then proceed on your way."
"I have heard of you, Sintar," called back Dray-Gon. "You killed a man when you caught him assaulting your young daughter. So you must have some sympathy for a young girl like our princess. And you are not an uneducated man, so you cannot believe the king would be so foolhardy as to risk the life and safety of his only remaining child by allowing her to travel with us. Late last night, the king sent a patrol of palace guards here, and they took the princess with them, back to the palace, so she could be slipped inside and hidden away, and the people will only believe she is with us."
Silence came back from the hills as this untruth was digested, and apparently discussed. Then, from the hills, Sintar's strong voice boomed again: "You are a clever man, Dray-Gon--and I don't believe you! We have our own knowledge. The princess is inside one of those wagons! King Ras-Far would not deceive his people! If he says the princess will go to the Green Mountain, then she will go!"
"Ha!" scoffed Dray-Gon with disdain. "He may be a king, but he is still a man, and a father who cares more for the safety of his daughter than he does for keeping his word."
Arth-Rin slipped close to Dray-Gon and whispered in his ear that all was ready.
Inside her wagon, the princess awakened to loud voices, and the nervous braying of the horshets, and the panicky rilling of puhlets. When she looked outside a wagon window, all the young men were rushing about in apparent confusion. Hurriedly Sharita drew on a long robe over her short sleeping gown and she left the wagon and ran over to where she saw Dray-Gon clustered with several of his officers. "What is wrong?" she asked breathlessly of Dray-Gon before she recalled she had vowed to herself that she wouldn't speak, or even so much as look at him today.
He turned to give her a short look of exasperation before he softly swore. "Damn! You certainly timed your appearance beautifully, princess! Just when I had them halfway convinced you weren't here, you come running out of your wagon! Why couldn't you have overslept?"
Sharita couldn't understand the way he blazed at her, or why the other men looked so upset. She took a quick look around, trying to see for herself what was causing so much agitation, while the wind snapped her long hair about her face, and whipped her robe form-fittingly against her body.
Out of the hills roared the voice of Sintar: "Aha! Dray-Gon, you are the deceitful one! Who is that tempting little beauty that runs out in her nightclothes but the princess? What other wench has hair the color of hers? Send her out to us, and we will let the rest of you go unharmed, but if you make an attempt to fire your weapons, we will crush all of you, including the princess, under an avalanche of rocks!"
"Get back in your wagon!" Dray-Gon hissed at Sharita, but she shook her head, defying him, and stood looking toward the boulder that shielded Sintar from view.
"All right, Sintar," the captain of the expedition called, "this is the princess. Before I turn her over to you...tell me first what you will do with her." He said then in a low voice, hardly moving his lips, "All of you men prepare to mount, and those assigned to drive the wagons, slip as furtively close to them as you can without drawing attention to yourselves. Sharita, let the wind open your robe so the outlaws will be diverted by staring at you while we attempt to break free of this mess."
Sintar's voice sounded again" "Captain, unjust laws made a criminal of me, drove me out onto the wildlands because I killed in defense of my daughter. I sired my allotted three children, and had to leave them and my wife behind, but there are many here who have not fathered one child, and the laws of our lands decree we must live as exiles, without names, without shelter, without wives, or the ability to produce children--for that natural right was taken from us before we were released. So we try to defeat the laws and steal what women we can from the small unguarded cities, and we bring these women back to our caves and force them to submit to us and try to make them love us. But women are a strange breed. They have only scorn and contempt for men who can only plant dead seed in their bodies--and soon they hate us and seek to escape. Those women who try to run are usually caught, and we punish them in the most brutal ways you can conceive--for men without loving women soon turn into animals. That is what we are now: beasts. And when we have that fair and beautiful princess, the daughter of the ruler who has established these inhuman laws, then we will make her pay for every lonely, frustrated, miserable moment we have lived as animals! And when we have used her, and dehumanized her, and made her crawl and beg and plead, we will notify the king we have his daughter. If he wants her back, he will have to change the laws that banish a man to live as we do, as shadows without substance, as beasts without heart or soul or compassion."
Sharita turned to Dray-Gon and clung to him, trembling from head to toe, as he covered her ears with his hands so she couldn't hear more of the obscenities the other outlaws shouted, speaking of the ways in which they would degrade her.
"Sintar!" shouted Dray-Gon in red-hot temper. "Each one of us will die before we turn the princess over to the likes of you, as I said before--and she will die too, before I will see her so defiled--so what you are asking is death for you and your companions!"
"Will you kill us, Captain?" shouted back Sintar. "If you do, then you too will be an outlaw, and you too will be banished and made sterile! So, do your damnedest to save your princess, and use your ingenious weapons against our rocks, our bows and arrows--but you too, all of you, will be considered murderers, no matter how justified--and you will be sent out to live as we do, and if there is one of us left alive after this battle today, we will tear you limb from limb on the day of your exilement!"
No sooner had the last word left his lips when an arrow whizzed by Sharita's cheek, so close she felt the breeze. Dray-Gon threw her to the ground and fell on top of her, as Sintar shouted out: "That arrow wasn't meant for you, princess, for we will take you alive to use for our pleasure--we will kill your captain first!"
A rain of arrows shot out from the surrounding hills, and struck on the ground, or battered harmlessly against the sides of the armorlike wagons. "You see, little one, why you should have stayed safely in your wagon?" whispered Dray-Gon. Then he hastily kissed her pale lips, even as one of his hands lifted and signaled to Arth-Rin. "While the men mount the horshets, you crawl under your wagon, and enter it through the trapdoor underneath--and you stay inside there until I say you can come out again!"
Without any objection, she did this, feeling ridiculous on her hands and knees, but in this way, she wasn't giving anyone a chance to aim an arrow her way. Once inside her wagon, with the secret trapdoor latched, she opened a window just a fraction to hear what was going on. She heard Dray-Gon order the men to ride like the wind, the drivers of the wagons to use the whips. "And we will go in double file," he yelled, "and try to keep our animals herded in between, and shoot at the targets I have named, for it will work if we gain enough speed." He then ran to a wagon across the way from Sharita's, and swiftly climbed to the top where he could lie flat, partially protected behind a raised shield. "Ride on!" he ordered in sharp command.
The wagons began to roll, with the riders keeping the extra horshets and puhlets corralled between the double file of wagons, as they urged them on to a faster clip.
Ahead of the caravan was the huge barrier of stones piled by the outlaws in the night, and they were all racing pell-mell directly at it, even as the outlaws began to roll the boulders down! Several struck Sharita's wagon, and bounced off, like rubber balls striking something unyielding...yet, if one of the huge boulders struck the running horshets, it would be another story. As Sharita watched, staring in fascination out of a wagon window, she saw Dray-Gon aim a long barrel-like thing at the stone barrier--the extinguisher! He splayed the burning light on the rock barricade . . and where it had been, there was now only powdery dust blowing in the wind, allowing the lead horshets to plunge on ahead, unheeded. The men driving the wagons and those on horshetback cheered.
"Great shot, Captain!" Raykin congratulated from his seat on Sharita's wagon.
Then, from a higher hill just ahead, a mammoth boulder came tumbling, gathering force as it rolled, heading straight for the wagon in which Sharita rode. She saw Dray-Gon again take careful aim and fire. A sizzling flash of light, and the boulder was gone...but in its previous course, the boulder had dislodged smaller rocks and they came tumbling down, keeping all of the men riding atop the wagons busy firing and turning them into powdery dust. The outlaws hiding in the hills abandoned the avalanche attack as useless, and began to aim their arrows at the racing horshets pulling the wagons.
It was then that Dray-Don called out, "Now is the time to use our alternate strategy!" Even as he spoke, he was picking up another type of weapon, and lying prone to take careful aim, not at an outlaw as Sharita expected, but at huge boulders high above their positioning on a shelf terrace. This weapon didn't disintegrate the boulder into dust--instead the beam of fiery red light split it apart so that it careened down, taking other boulders with it, showering down on the hidden outlaws, and driving them out into the open where the men on horshetback could now use their paralyzing guns--which hardly seemed necessary now. The roar of the falling rocks almost drowned out the screams of the outlaws as they ran before the onslaught of rocks not meant to be used against them. A ragged man came running like crazy down from the hills, flailing his arms and legs so fast they seemed a rotating blur in his effort to escape a mammoth boulder that was sure to catch him. At the last possible moment, he took a quick glance behind, then dove sideways, rolling over and over and falling into a ravine--perhaps hurt, but alive.
And now, that very same boulder was coming directly at the dual file of wagons! To use a disintegrating weapon now would kill the driver of the first wagon, and his horshets...Sharita drew in her breath sharply, almost paralyzed with fear when she saw whose wagon it was sure to strike--hers!
Dray-Gon saw too the target the tumbling boulder was headed for, and leaping down from the wagon he rode, he sped across the open space toward the wagon of the princess, ploughing his way heedlessly through the spare horshets and the racing puhlets. It seemed that it took forever for him to reach her wagon; years it took to jump up on the seat beside Raykin, and use an extra whip to slap down on the backs of the horshets already galloping and blowing steam. "Faster! Faster!" he urged, bringing the whip down hard again, so the terrified horshets, seldom used brutally, leaped ahead with such vigor Sharita was thrown off her feet and fell to the floor. She fell in such a way that her leg twisted beneath her, and she screamed out with the pain, then lay there panting as the wagon bounced over rocks and ruts, almost jolting the insides from her, with each jar adding to the pain of her ankle. The pretty dishes in her cupboards crashed together and broke; her toilet articles pitched onto the floor and rolled erratically about, breaking as they collided with this or that. A rolling bottle of shampoo met with a flying jar of cold cream, and the collision sprayed a sticky goo all over the princess sprawled miserably on the floor. A battered doll that she had kept with her always since the age of two fell to the floor and shattered, and the loss of that beloved old doll brought more tears to her eyes than the pain of her ankle. She felt sick and ready to throw up by the time the wagon slowed to a normal pace, and Dray-Gon was coming in through the side door, laughing to see her sprawled so undignified on the floor.
"Oh--what a sight you are, princess!" he mocked, standing with his strong legs spread apart, and his hands on his hips, apparently enjoying the humiliation she was suffering. Every inch of her disheveled appearance was thoroughly gone over by his eyes several times.
In the rubble of her beautiful possessions, she glared at him, too angry to speak and make the effort to stand at the same time. Being the barbarian he was, he made no courtly effort to help her, just stood and watched as she struggled to stand, and then cried out, before she fell again. Despite her will, she began to cry, like a child, certainly not the way a princess should behave in the presence of someone so detested. Then, even worse, she was really wailing...
Dray-Gon went and knelt at her side, sober-faced now that he knew she was hurt. Tenderly he slipped an arm under her shoulders and another under her knees, picking her up and carrying her to the bed, where he laid her down gently, and skillfully felt her bones to see which one was broken.
"It is my ankle, damn you!" she flared when his examination became too complete.
"Nasty temper you have, princess," he replied calmly, and then jeeringly: "Why didn't you speak up sooner?" Insinuating in such an insulting way, Sharita reached her hand out for something hard to hurl at him. He laughed as he seized her wrist and used enough pressure to force her fingers to release the object. "Behave yourself, princess," he said in the tight-lipped, soothing, indulgent way one speaks to an unruly, spoiled child that really needs a slap that is being held back with great restraint. "If you are a good little girl, I will go for the one doctor we have--and for your sake, I hope he is a good one."