The Sword Lord (2 page)

Her father would give her hand to the hand of Sardar of Maghalla and speak the holy words of bride-giving. Kaseem would offer sacred prayers and blessings. The fires would flare and Sardar would lead her three times around the sacred flames and the ritual would be complete. Sardar the Merciless would be her New Lord and Master.

Maryam held her head high, gripped hard on the cold hand of Kara-Rashna, and took the first step down the long hall to the open courtyard.
I am a princess of Karakhor
, her strong will insisted.
I will do my duty
.

Her procession swelled behind her and a trumpet fanfare filled the great dome ceiling and the arches above as the heralds stationed on either side of the doorway saw her approach. The sound was joyful, exhilarating, and fought bravely against the subdued silence of her family and courtiers behind her. The trumpeteers lining the walls above the courtyard took up the soaring fanfare, drums rolled, the conch shells blared, and Maryam stepped out into the sunlight.

She blinked, almost blinded by the glare. Her ears were momentarily deafened by the great roar of approval that rose from the massed throats of Maghalla. All her senses reeled: the smells of roasting meats, fresh flowers and fruits, incense and a thousand perfumes, all assailed her nostrils, and the sweet sting of the sacred smoke from burning sandalwood was a cloying taste in her throat. She swayed for a moment, recovered her balance, and opened her eyes.

A sea of faces stared up at her, cheering, shouting, pounding each other's backs or pounding fists into palms. The men of Maghalla were clearly not disappointed with their new princess. Their women laughed and clapped more politely, and some of them had the grace to look jealous. They were rough faces, many of them brutish, but Maryam looked for only one.

Sardar of Maghalla was unmistakable. He stood a pace forward of all the rest with a small knot of resplendent chieftains and lords behind him. He wore a tunic, a turban and pantaloons of blue and gold, and his jewels were blue sapphires and yellow amber. A huge curved sword and an equally wicked-looking curved dagger with ceremonial jewel-encrusted hilts were thrust through the red sash at his waist. His hands were planted on his hips with the stubby fingers spread wide to display a score of glittering rings. A mailed warrior who could have dwarfed an ox held the Black Leopard banner so that it floated boldly above his master's head.

Sardar was broad and squat, with shoulders even wider than his banner bearer, and his arms were long and powerful. There were tufts of thick black hair at his wrists and at the neck of his tunic, suggesting a hairy body that would be more like that of an animal than a man. He was not old, no more than forty years, but that was no consolation as Maryam stared at his face.

Sardar wore a fearsome grin on features that would have been ugly even before they had been brutally scarred. It was a face more ape-like than human, black and wrinkled with bloated lips and wide-flared nostrils. The deep set eyes were coal black in red-veined whites, and reminded Maryam of a wild pig she had seen once in a cage on the market. The scar tissue that gave the final touch of horror began just below the left eye, slashed through the corner of the mouth, and finished in an unnaturally deep cleft at the chin. It was a face that she could not have imagined in her worst nightmare.

The shock as the blood drained swiftly from her own face only caused more laughter from the crowd below. Sardar saw her repugnance and only grinned wider. She saw that his teeth were rotten and knew that his breath must stink. The brave words—
I am a princess of Karakhor. I will do my duty
—no longer echoed in her mind.

Stunned, she allowed herself to be led down the broad swathe of marble steps into the courtyard, until her father stopped her face-to-face with the horror that was to be her husband. Behind her, Kaseem was reciting a blessing and the other priests were chanting mantras, and in a half swoon the awful, sub-human face of Sardar seemed to dissolve, only to harden again as she forced herself to hold tight to her senses. The pig eyes burned hotly into her own and she saw that there could never be love there, only a fierce, unbridled lust.

Her father had lifted her limp hand forward to place it in the rough, hairy palm of Sardar. Kaseem and the other priests fell silent, and even the crowd was hushed. The fanfare gave one last trumpet flourish and fell away into silence.

“Sardar, Lord of all Maghalla,” Kara-Rashna began his address in flat and hollow tones. “This is my first daughter, Maryam, beloved of all Karakhor. Take her hand and walk the sacred circuits thrice round the sacred flame. Let her be, from this day forth, your own true and faithful wife.”

The speech should have been longer, with more flowering phrases invoking the gods and extolling the virtues of both bride and groom, but Kara-Rashna had to pause as if to steel his own heart before he continued. Sardar was oblivious to such subtleties and to the responses he was expected to make. He tightened his grasp on Maryam's hand, clearly eager to lead her around the flames with no further delay.

Maryam stared into his eyes, and suddenly the iron will that had determined that she must do her duty turned a swift, soul-searching circle in her mind. She was a princess of Karakhor and she would not accept this cruel trick of fate. As firmly as she had determined to endure and obey only a few moments before, she now decided with death-defying finality that she would not. Like a flash of fire the word burned behind her eyes and was ripped from her constricted throat.

“No!” She shouted and tore her hand from the bestial grasp that held it.

She flung herself backward, but the crush of those behind her blocked her immediate escape.

“No,” she shouted again, defiant and trembling. “I will not marry him.”

There was a stunned gasp from the mass of on-lookers. Time froze. Kara-Rashna turned to stare at his daughter with a look of confusion. The face of Sardar grew black and even uglier with rage.

“What is this?” he snarled. “You are mine, woman. In Maghalla you will learn how to behave.” He stepped forward, snatched her hand again and dragged her toward him. Maryam struggled but this time his iron grip was prepared and she could not break it.

“Leave her,” a cold voice demanded. And suddenly her full brother Kananda was at her side. His left hand clamped upon her upper wrist, side by side with Sardar's. For a moment she thought that her bones would be crushed between them, and she heard the scrape of steel upon scabbard as Kananda's right hand half drew the sword at his waist.

“Gently, Lord Prince,” Jahan hissed in Kananda's ear. The old warmaster's left hand was heavy upon Kananda's elbow, preventing him from drawing his sword and pushing it back a few inches into the scabbard. But Jahan's own right hand was resting on the hilt of his own sword.

Sardar stepped back, his face flushed now with rage. His own hand dropped to his sword-hilt and on both sides a score of blades cleared the first few inches of their scabbards. Maghalla and Karakhor backed apart.

“What insult is this?” Sardar roared, turning his anger against the flustered king.

Kara-Rashna was hesitant a moment longer, and then he sighed, it seemed, with relief. He stared from the grotesque face of the man who would have been his son-in-law to the white-lipped mask of his daughter, and then to his oldest and dearest friend.

“It seems our daughter shames us,” he said quietly. The reproach in his voice was for himself alone, and he too dropped his hand lightly on his own sword.

Jahan nodded, and in his eyes there was a smile. He glanced upward and both Kara-Rashna and Sardar followed his meaningful gaze. The trumpeters lining the courtyard walls had vanished, and from behind them ranks of archers had stepped forward. At Jahan's almost imperceptible nod, each man nocked an arrow to his bow. As always, the warmaster general had been ready for anything.

“A trap,” one of Sardar's chieftains snarled, his anger laced with fear.

“No trap,” Kara-Rashna reassured them all. “Just a misunderstanding.”

“I think,” Jahan said politely to Sardar, “That our daughter is unwell. You can see for yourself how pale she is, how near to fainting. We regret that, for today, the wedding must be postponed.”

“If there is no marriage, there is no peace,” Sardar bellowed. “This insult can only be wiped out with blood.”

He glared hatefully at his intended bride, and Kananda carefully handed his sister back to her attendants and their mother. The ranks of his brothers and uncles re-formed behind him. Maryam stared at their defensive backs and listened to Sardar's vile threats and cursing.

With tears in her eyes and her heart beating wildly, Maryam knew that she had won. Her father had relented and Karakhor would not force her into this marriage. She found her feet and fled back into the palace with her mother and her attendants running behind her.

She had failed in her duty and had been reprieved, but at what terrible cost for the future she could not even begin to know.

Chapter Two

Kananda, First Prince of Golden Karakhor, halted his war elephant on the crest of the jungle ridge. He was less than an hour's march from where the Tri-Thruster command vessel lay hidden in a wooded valley, although as yet he was unaware of the spaceship's presence. The intrusion from another world was three days old, but still unknown to its local inhabitants.

For a moment the first-born heir to city, kingdom and empire paused, soothing the slow-moving elephant with a soft word of command. The great beast stood patient and solid, its wrinkled eyelids drooping. A fearsome iron spike, its needle point tipped with red, protruded from the massive leather head harness and below that the long and powerful ivory curves of the sharpened tusks were painted with white and gore-crimson stripes. Terrifying in charge and battle, the elephant was temporarily content to half slumber. In the heat, even the effort of reaching its trunk for the nearest branch of tender green leaves was too much.

To the south, the jungles thickened, a rising plateau of gloomy forests and wild, tangled gorges where strange beasts and strange men dwelt in half-darkness and primitive savagery. Further south rose a vastness of foreboding mountains, and beyond, the great, wild Godavari River, of which Kananda had heard but never seen. The tribes of these regions were subhuman, more like monkeys than men, shambling brutes too poor and ignorant to be worth taming, but dangerous enough to be kept at bay. An occasional show of strength was needed here on the southern edge of the lands of Karakhor.

The real danger was to the west, far beyond the visible horizon, where the rising power of Maghalla was growing in arrogance and strength. The Maghallan tribes had begun their invasion from the northwest two generations before, forcing a route between the Great Thar Desert and the trackless foothills of the mighty Himalaya ice-peaks that formed the northern edge of the known world. They had subdued the passive plains people who lived between the Chambal and Narmada rivers and their settlements had grown into the crude but war-like kingdom which now had the boldness to challenge Karakhor.

Kananda's lips tightened as his gaze focused on the far hills that formed the border lands. In the cruel reign of Sardar the Merciless, the very name of Maghalla could conjure fear and trembling in the breasts of women and babes, and even for a royal prince, fearless in his manhood, youth and pride, it caused a grim bracing of both his physical and spiritual self.

Then pride became the dominant emotion, a warm glow that filled his breast and expanded his being, and Kananda smiled as he thought fondly of his sister, Maryam. He recalled those fateful, blood-pounding moments almost a year past when the first royal princess had bravely spurned the arrangements for her marriage to Sardar and Maghalla, which their father's soft-stomached advisers had briefly entertained. Such an alliance, it was now realized, could only have polluted the royal bloodline of the house of Karakhor and could only have been envisaged by the weak council of men who had never seen the half-human ugliness of Sardar.

Mighty had been the wrath of Sardar, and now Maghalla and Karakhor prepared for war. Sardar saw himself as the recipient of the gravest insult that could only be wiped away in blood.

From behind the young prince, disrupting his thoughts, came the sounds of the advancing hunt. Wild birds fled shrieking in flashes of incandescent colour and startled white-faced monkeys scattered through the sun-lanced treetops, hurrying away from the shouted voices of huntsmen, trackers and warriors. Spotted deer leaped more gracefully into the distant gloom and the crash and tear of breaking trees heralded the trampling feet of the war elephants.

Kananda turned as the foliage parted noisily behind him, and a second war spike protruded through the tangle of green. Then the elephant carrying his brother, Ramesh, forced its way up the hill to stand beside him. Both princes wore high leather helmets, embroidered with golden thread and encrusted with jewels around the diamond sunburst insignia of their rank. They wore heavy necklaces of gold and precious stones, armbands and bracelets of gold. Bright sashes of royal scarlet supported their simple white loincloths, and on each prince, the hilt of a jeweled dagger. Their calf-high boots were of soft deerskin, fringed with red and silver tassles, and soled with hard leather. Their weapons, bows and arrows, swords and javelins, were hung on the harness of the elephants, close at hand where they were mounted on the broad necks of the huge tuskers.

Ramesh was younger, his handsome bronzed features a more boyish and care-free mirror of Kananda. Not yet as hard-muscled in physique, as confident in manner or as skilled in warfare as his elder, he still carried himself with all the promise and pride of a Karakhoran prince. His eyes sparkled and he was anxious to move on, his heart too joyful to be afraid.

“Well, Kananda,” he demanded. “Where is the tiger you promised me? Our hunt is three days old and again the sun is near to noon. And as yet I have not seen so much as a whisker of a striped cat.”