Sword Empire (6 page)

The faint splash from behind them gave only the minimum warning. It might have been the playful leap of a fish or just the gurgle of the current, but Zela knew instinctively that it was something more. She had been forcing her knife blade through a thick branch and the green wood had locked vice-like on the blade, tearing it from her grasp as she whirled round. She saw a black swamp lizard, twice the size of a man, hauling itself out of the river.

The size of the creature was an initial shock, and then the long jaws opened to show a double row of fearsome teeth as it let out a roaring scream. Zela's hand flashed to the hand lazer holstered at her hip, but the leather flap was buttoned and the creature was upon her with an impossible charge of speed. An eight-foot tongue lashed out from between the shrieking jaws and curled around her waist like a living whip. She was jerked forward with terrible force, and although she dug her heels desperately into the mud, there was no grip and she slid helplessly forward. Tiny red pupils in the huge black eyes blazed down at her and the great gulf of the fanged mouth opened wide.

Zela screamed, and then a silver blade, swift as a streak of lightning, flashed past her eyes. She was suddenly released and fell backward onto the mud, half of the lizard's tongue still wrapped around her waist. The severed end, now spurting blood, lashed wildly from the creature's screaming mouth.

Kananda stood over her, sword drawn and poised for the second cut, but then a long Gheddan dagger flew over his shoulder and buried itself to the hilt in the glittering pupil of one of the large black eyes. In agony now, the great lizard thrashed on the river's edge, and Zela had time to draw her lazer.

“No, Commander,” Jayna snapped.

Zela turned and saw Jayna crouched on top of the skimmer from where she had deftly thrown her dagger.

“A lazer flash could be seen from the air for many miles,” Jayna explained.

Zela nodded, but kept the weapon ready in her hand.

As they watched, the lizard reeled back into the river, sliding away from the island with its head still raised and screaming above the surface. Drawn by the scent of blood and the dying creature's frantic struggles, something large and equally fearsome came up from underneath it. Huge jaws burst out of the water to clamp on its neck in a thrashing curtain of rich red blood and foaming spray. A surging V wake of ripples marked the approach of a third underwater predator that hit with another roaring and splashing into the rolling combat of the first two reptiles.

Kananda stood and stared. There were crocodiles on his native world, but nothing as gigantic and ferocious as the swamp leviathans that were now tearing the mortally wounded lizard to pieces. He gripped Zela's shoulder hard and backed further up the small beach.

“I think we should get back inside the skimmer,” Jayna advised. “It is our best protection.”

She led the way and Kananda and Zela quickly followed. Zela was still shaken, but she slowly revised her first estimation of their chances. Perhaps they just might make a good team after all.

 

 

 

Laurya lay wide awake in the soft, comfortable bed that she shared with Kyle in their home in the City of Singing Spires. They had just made love and she listened to his slow, regular breathing beside her. Kyle would sleep soundly now for several hours, and when she was sure she carefully closed her own eyes. She concentrated, letting her body follow its natural course to relax and follow Kyle into sleep, but at the same time keeping her mind awake. Her physical shape slipped away behind her, and she became spirit and mind, soaring free.

Antar was waiting for her, hovering high above the silent city. The shape he wore was that of a handsome young man in a short white robe with a crown of fresh green leaves.
We are all vain
, she thought.
We all choose to wear the most beautiful body we can remember from all of our past lives
, and she wondered in what athletic prowess had he once excelled in order to wear the winner's crown.

“You are fortunate,” his thought came back at her. “Your present physical body is lovely enough.”

She glanced down and laughed. Her astral body was naked and as softly flushed as the one she had left behind. She clothed it quickly with a short dress.

“Unfair,” Antar said, but he was unoffended. He reached out to take her hand. “It is good to see you again, Laurya. There are far too few of us capable of rising to the Astral plane.”

“It is good to see you, too, Antar.” They were old friends and she accepted the offered hand. She wanted to tell him about her Earth visit and her meeting with Kaseem, but there were more pressing matters and she knew that there would be a better time. “What news is there of Commander Zela and her mission?”

“They were landed on schedule and the Strato-bomber has returned. The rest we must find out.”

She allowed him to pull her higher and together they scanned the night skies above the city. Occasionally there were other astral travellers over Alpha, some of them advanced and friendly, most of them simply absorbed in their own wonderful wanderings. Tonight there was not even the glimmer of a silver thread in sight. Antar finally gripped her hand more firmly and they both fixed their thoughts on Ghedda.

Like silent white birds using directional techniques they could neither fully describe nor understand, their spirit selves flew north. Within seconds, they had left the City of Singing Spires far behind, its dome-like aurora glow fading into the horizon, and within minutes they were out over the Great Storm Ocean. They soared high into the thinning atmosphere, almost into space itself. The stars glittered with icy intensity and the two visible moons rolled large above them. The moon orbits were at their maximum pulling positions, and they could feel the magnetic and gravitational stresses tearing through their psychic forms. It was painful and bitterly cold, but on the ocean surface, two mighty hurricanes whirled and clashed in elemental frenzy. It was better to freeze in near space than to risk being shredded and torn from their lifeline cords by the monstrous winds.

For several minutes, they endured the discomfort, and then mercifully the sheer speed of their passage had carried them over the dividing ocean, and they dropped down into warmer air as the continent of Ghedda sprawled out below them. Massive cloudbanks obscured much of the alien world, but they were still able to discern most of its shape and features. The continent was roughly square shaped, but with its coastline rugged and frayed where the sea had taken great bites out of it. To the northeast, almost one-third of the land mass was covered by a great polar ice cap. Below the ice curved a barrier of mountain ranges, their frozen pinnacles thrusting up above the clouds. To the west, below the mountains, stretched a vast area of ice lakes and frozen marshes. The centre of the continent was occupied by a great swath of thick forests, and it was here, among the wild mountain foothills and the encroaching forest, that the minor and semi-independent Sword Lords of Ghedda held their strongholds.

The southern half of the continent was the domain of the Gheddan Sword Empire. The City of Swords was almost dead centre of the southern coastline at the mouth of the Great Steel River. The blaze of its lights was only one of a dozen such clusters of brilliance that marked the other major cities of the empire, most of them in the vast valley and fertile plains carved by the continent's major river and its tributaries. East of the central plain was the Stone Desert, and to the west the Great Gar Desert. Beyond the Great Gar was the vast black swampland split by its own tortuous river system.

Almost with one mind they swooped down toward the mouth of the Black Swamp River and began to follow it inland. They followed it for almost a hundred miles before they saw the skimmer nosing its way carefully upstream in the darkness. The craft showed no lights and they knew that Zela must be navigating with her viewscreen and keeping her air cushion high enough to let any debris on the current pass harmlessly under their hull.

“All seems well,” Antar sighed with relief. “This far up river they should be safe from Gheddan patrols. Tomorrow they can continue in daylight.”

Laurya chuckled. “You are a fraud. Your soul is not as hard as your physical face suggests.”

“Perhaps not.” Antar smiled at her, and then pulled on her hand again. They had seen what they had hoped to see, but there was no way they could communicate with Zela and her companions and no more they could do. However, he did not lead back the way they had arrived along the river, but turned to the east, leaving the black swamp behind and heading out over the barren sands of the desert.

Laurya was curious but made no comment. They knew the location of every bomber base and missile site in the Great Gar, and there seemed little that another astral flight could add. They paused for a while to watch the flaring lights and buzz of non-stop activity around the rocket pad where the Gheddans were aiming to put their next lazer battle station into orbit, and she both felt and shared the great sadness that filled Antar's soul.

“Can't we shoot these battle stations out of orbit before they launch their strike at us?” she asked, knowing that it was empty question.

“Ghedda would take it as an act of war,” Antar said wearily. “Which, of course, it would be. Their code would demand instant retaliation.”

He pulled her away and a few minutes later they were hovering over the City of Swords. Blades pierced up at them, crowning every gateway into the city, and starshine gleamed slickly, like wet black blood, on the monstrous blade that thrust up from the central barrack square. Laurya felt uncomfortable here. Even the air felt tainted by the godless militarism below, but Antar wanted to linger.

“Why do we wait?” she eventually asked.

“For a friend,” Antar said quietly, and she sensed in him a concern almost as deep as that he had radiated while watching the launch preparations for the battle station.

Laurya was perplexed. In all their astral journeys over Ghedda, they had never encountered another traveler. The very nature of their materialist psyche and their total rejection of any religious or spiritual beliefs had seemed to make all Gheddans totally blind to any metaphysical possibilities. No Alphan astral travelers ventured here and so the continent had always been an astral desert.

“We have no friends here,” she reminded him. “The Gheddans are soul-dead, or they might as well be.”

“We have one,” Antar contradicted her gently. “A Sword Lord name Karn, and one of the Council of Twelve. I met him here while you were away on Earth.”

“A Gheddan!” Laurya was startled. “Here on the astral?”

Antar nodded. “I gathered that his physical body was very sick. I think that perhaps he was dying. At the very least, his physical form was in great pain. I think he must have tried by a great effort of will to separate his body from his mind, to get away from the pain. Somehow he succeeded in breaking free and breaking into the astral. He was very confused and disoriented. Fortunately I was close by when he appeared.”

“What happened?”

“He saw my golden face, realized that I was spying on his empire, and tried to kill me.” Antar chuckled. “It was a clumsy attempt. He was falling over his own nightshirt and did not even know how to will a weapon into his hand.”

“What happened?” Laurya repeated in some exasperation.

“I saw an opportunity,” Antar continued more seriously. “I fled from him, and let him follow. He was slow and uncertain but I let him keep close behind me. I led him back across the Great Storm Ocean, back into the heartland of Alpha. He was weak. Even his astral strength was spent when we arrived. He realized then that I could have killed him if I had wanted. Instead, I showed him our missile sites along the Greenwall Mountain ranges.”

“You what?” Laurya almost shouted in disbelief.

“I showed him the caverns where our missiles are sited,” Antar repeated evenly. “And then I showed him how volcanic that area truly is. I took him almost into the flames of some of the active cones. I explained to him how the outer crust of our planet, with its continents and oceans, floats on this vast inner ball of molten lava. Then I led him back across the Great Storm Ocean and gave him a flying tour of the volcanoes that litter the Great Northern Ranges of his own continent. I showed him that both our continents have highly vulnerable volcanic fault lines. I succeeded in convincing him that our Alphan fears are neither weakness nor propaganda, but that they are terrible and real.”

“Karn,” Laurya suddenly understood. “The Sword Lord who now leads the minority group in the Council of Twelve.”

“The same, but Jayna brought us that information. I have not seen Karn since that first night, and since Jayna's forced exit from Ghedda I have had no up-date of news. This is the sixth time that I have returned to this spot and waited in the hope that he might free his spirit once more. But every wait has been in vain. I do not know at this moment whether the Sword Lord Karn is alive or dead.”

They waited for over an hour, hovering over the enemy city like anxious ghosts, but there was no flicker of silver movement anywhere on the visible astral plane. The one man who might possibly swing the fate of their planet, and of both of its civilizations, back from madness to sanity did not appear. The first grey fingers of dawn began to claw over the eastern horizon and they knew that they could not stay away from their own bodies for much longer.

“Karn may be too weak,” Altar said at last. “Or it may be that he does not even know how to reach the astral plane again. He was pain-crazed and his first breakthrough was blind chance. I think that even he did not know exactly how it happened.”

Laurya took his hand and gently pulled him away. Reluctantly he came, and they began the homeward journey to Alpha.

They both wanted to believe that Karn might still be alive, but it was a faint hope.