The Sword Lord (3 page)

Kananda laughed and briefly touched the necklace of tiger teeth that lay upon his own bare breast. It was the only difference of apparel between them. “Fear not, little brother. Twice the trackers say that we have only just missed a cat that has escaped from our path. The third one cannot be so blessed by the gods. Soon we will find a beast worthy of your spear. Perhaps
Indra
is even now driving toward us the mightiest tiger of them all, especially for you.”

Ramesh drew his hunting spear from the thong that held it against his elephant's neck. “Mighty
Indra
,” he shouted to the sky. “God of thunder and of storm—God of the lightning's flash and all the forces of thunder—send me a mighty beast that I might slay it and prove my valour.”

“And boast of it to the fair maidens of the city forever and a day,” Kananda finished impiously for him. “May they swoon at your glory, and heap garlands and kisses at your feet—and perhaps other select parts of your noble person.”

The two princes laughed uproariously until a third elephant toiled up to rest on Kananda's left flank. This beast wore no war spike and carried both a driver and a passenger on a swaying seat high on its back. The driver was naked but for a brief and simple loincloth, but the passenger sweated in swathing white robes, despite the shade of the white umbrella above his balding head. The wrinkled lines of his ancient and normally gentle face were now registering deep shock and anger.

“Noble princes, you forget yourselves,” the old Brahmin spoke fiercely. “Your mockery ill befits you, and the gods are not partial to such scorn. Rest assured that your impiety will not go unanswered.”

Ramesh flushed with embarrassment, while Kananda bowed his head in momentary shame. “Tonight we shall make due obeisance to Mighty
Indra
,” the elder said carefully. “We will light the sacred flame and make due sacrifice.”

“It may not be enough,” answered Kaseem, his tone reminding them that he was both the high priest and holiest of the holy men of Karakhor. And he voiced another grumble, “You are also both reckless with your lives and earthly duty. We hunt here in the southlands not only for a tiger to raise the fame of Prince Ramesh. Our main purpose is to show our strength to the savages and impress upon them the folly an alliance with Magahalla. Such a duty will not be served if you get yourselves slain by riding too far ahead. You must rein back and stay with our warriors and the hunt.”

Kananda sighed. His impulse was to forge ahead, but Kaseem held their father's mandate when Kara-Rashna was not there to supervise his own sons. They were irritated by the old man's caution, but respected his years and his wisdom.

“Your chastisement is deserved,” Kananda said. He briefly bowed his head again but not before Kasseem had seen that the twinkle of merriment was not quite dimmed in his eyes.

Kaseem frowned, preparing himself to deliver a sermon, but the princes were saved by a wild cry from the right flank of the hunt. It was a cry taken up and repeated by a great swell of excitement, echoing in the hot, languid air from a hundred throats.

“Tiger! Tiger!
Tiger
!”

“Tiger!” Kananda added joyously to the sudden uproar, and upon his face there flashed a brilliant smile. “The gods are not angry, Kaseem. They forgive us. Come, Ramesh!”

Prodding their huge mounts with javelin and spear butts, the two princes plunged together down the ridge, steering to the right where the first cry had sounded. The blare of a hunting horn now marked the centre of the chase and the whole line of mounted nobles and running warriors was swinging in that direction. Behind them Kaseem clasped his hands and offered a brief prayer to heaven, while his driver, knowing well his master's temperament, goaded the third elephant more cautiously in pursuit of the hunt.

On this chase only the princes and the priest rode elephants. The sons of the other noble houses of Karakhor rode horses, having left their chariots behind on the plains. Now the riders were moving out to the flanks of the long line of running warriors and huntsmen. Their task was to forge ahead and contain the great cat in the running V of the hunt, and finally when it had tired, to turn it back to the centre of the line where the fates ordained it must die upon the ready spear of the Prince Ramesh.

The hunt had turned and reformed on the run with a fluid efficiency that gladdened Kananda's heart. It swept down from the ridge and swept westward along a shallow valley. Three horns now answered each other with exhilarating blasts that echoed between the low hills on either side. The short, deep blasts from the head huntsman marked the path of the fleeing tiger. A succession of longer, higher notes marked the position of the young lord Gujar, forging ahead on the right flank. From the left a more vibrant fanfare attested that there Jayhad, son of the old warmaster Jahan, was boldly leading the field.

Side by side, Kananda and Ramesh urged their thundering tuskers onward. Twice they almost trampled the racing foot warriors in their path, and only the quick wits and agility of the men in danger enabled them to save themselves. Both elephants were trumpeting fearsomely in their excitement and had become all but uncontrollable. Kananda saw the green helmet of Hamir, the head huntsman, bobbing through the shoulder high grass and foliage and turned his mount to follow on the man's heels. In another moment he would have run the man down and he hammered the butt of his javelin desperately between the elephant's eyes in the signal to slow it down. The tusker blundered almost to a halt, all but pitching the young prince forward over its head. Behind him Ramesh's laughter rang wild and free.

There was still no glimpse of the striped beast, but the keen eye of the huntsman marked the trail. Hamir moved at a fast crouch, tracking on the run with a skill that was unmatched throughout the empire. In one hand he held the hunting horn that was constantly at his lips, in the other a short-handled but long bladed spear. He swerved suddenly, taking a new course that led up the slope of the hill to the left.

Kananda yelled at the hunt and his elephant to bring them all on the turn. There was a general confused floundering and crashing of bodies through the undergrowth. A peacock fled screaming through the grass and the elephants trumpeted again in their toiling frenzy. From the right the pursuing shouts became edged with anger and frustration as hunters and warriors realized that their quarry had broken away from them. From the left the yelling voices became diffused into gasps and panting as the men on that side turned to ascend the slope. From the top of the ridge there came a blood-chilling death scream which Kananda could not identify as coming from a man or an animal.

Kananda froze. The blood that had pulsed hot in his veins seemed to pause in mid flow. His mind was suddenly crystal-clear, sharpening to a new alertness, and his soul quailed. Instinctively he knew the gods no longer smiled. The elephant carried him on and a moment later they crashed through a flimsy screen of small trees and onto a bare patch of the ridge top. Kananda saw a crushed circle of yellowed grass that was bloodied with gore. A black stallion was flung to one side of the circle with its throat and flank ripped wide as though
Indra
Himself had slashed it open with a mighty sword-cut. The crumpled body of the young lord Jayhad lay just as raw and red and obscene on the far side of the circle. Of the tiger there was no sign.

The awful cry had been that of man and horse blended together. Kananda knew that now and he tasted his own fear mixed in with the rich, sweet smell of the fresh gore. His heart lurched, but then anger steeled his heart and mind. He and Jayhad had been boyhood friends. They had played together, and raced each other on foot, in chariots, and as swimmers across the broad Mahanadi. They had thrown dice together, got drunk together, and competed for the smiles of the same young girls. Jayhad had been almost as much a brother to him as Ramesh, and suddenly this was no longer Ramesh's tiger. Jayhad's blood cried out for vengeance and with a fierce cry of grief and fury Kananda answered the call.

Hamir reached the hilltop at the same time as Ramesh and three of the horseman who had accompanied Jayhad. The old huntsman's experienced eye swept the scene and his weathered face paled as if confirming a dark suspicion that had been forming in his mind. His trackers had flushed the big cat by chance without first finding and examining its spoor, but now he was certain that this was no ordinary beast. He shouted a warning to Kananda, but in the turmoil of angry and fear-filled voices he was drowned out. The First Prince of Karakhor was voicing his own cry in the same moment and was already urging his tusker down into the next valley.

The hunt and the horns were behind him now and Kananda trusted blindly to fate and the gods and the charging elephant beneath him. If it was
Indra's
will, he might yet catch up with the escaping tiger.

 

 

 

The five-strong crew of the Tri-Thruster had learned to relax. Their mission was to make friendly contact with the largest and most civilized population of the planet, and so the great pear-shaped subcontinent of the southern hemisphere had been the obvious choice. There had been signs of habitation around the Fertile Crescent beside the island-dotted inland sea to the west, and again to the north where long rivers wound across the vast land mass that lay behind the planet's highest mountains. But here, on the wide, lush plains below that towering white barrier, bisected by a dozen major rivers in a warm tropical climate, lay the widest areas of cultivation and the only signs of large cities and towns that they had been able to observe in seven orbits.

However, caution had decreed that they should make their first landing somewhere remote from the nearest settlement so that they would have time to rest and acclimatize themselves to the planet's slight atmospheric and gravitational differences before they attempted to make contact. The cramped, eighty-seven day journey through the solar system had left them all tense and strained. Space travel, between the traumas of launch and landing, was an infinitely tedious process that led to irritation and short tempers among the best of crews. And on this trip they could not afford to have their peace mission turn into confrontation through some simple lack of diplomatic tact.

Zela, Commander First Class of the Alphan Space Corps, commander of the ship and leader of the Alphan expedition to the third planet, lay at ease in the cool shade of a bamboo grove. Her eyes were closed and her thoughts drifted peacefully as she listened to the soft gurgling of the nearby stream. Her one-piece silver zip-suit was open for comfort and beneath it she wore only a brief pair of pants. Her arms were stretched back, her hands clasped behind her head, and even in that semi-flattened position it was clear that her breasts, like those of all Alphan women, were firm, round and voluptuous. Her flawless skin was a light golden colour, a few shades paler than her long, golden hair.

In one ever-responsible corner of her mind, she marked the positions of her companions. Blair, her energetic First Officer was upstream, almost certainly absorbed in the scientific analysis of more of the planet's flora and fauna. Cadel, the Engineering Officer, was back on the ship, forever checking and testing, writing up his log books or reading his manuals. Only Kyle and Laurya had any sense. Her Weapons and Communications officers were together on the far side of the stream, out of sight and out of hearing, at the very least holding hands, and more likely stealing another opportunity to make love.

Zela smiled wistfully at the mental image and felt a brief touch of jealousy. Her loins felt sensuous and she wished that she were some exotic wild woman, and native of this beautiful blue-green planet. Perhaps then Blair would find a scientific interest in her. Blair was not unhandsome to look at, and at least he had a first class body. Or perhaps if she were robotic, with an internal system of electrodes and microchips, then Cadel would find her an object worthy of his love and fascination. She chuckled aloud at her thoughts. She should not be thinking these things, she told herself. A commander should remain a little bit aloof. Love encounters at her level were not good for discipline.

The tiny wings of a dragonfly beat a gentle murmur close to her ear. There was a drone from other insects feasting on the nectar of a profusion of scarlet and yellow flowers but they did not bother her. A single ray of direct sunlight found its way through the green blades of bamboo and warmed the bare nipple of her left breast. Zela closed her eyes and drifted toward sleep. She heard the splash of fisher birds darting in and out of the stream, a dove cooed, a lark warbled, and somewhere faraway there sounded a faint, shrill scream.

Zela was abruptly awake and alert. She sat up, her head cocked and listening. They had chosen this valley because, although there was a clear glade where the ship could land beside the stream, it was otherwise thickly wooded with tall trees and screening jungle to keep them hidden. However, from the pre-landing survey, she knew that the land rose in a long hill to the south, and it was from the direction of the ridge top that the sound had come. Now she faintly heard other sounds that were not in tune with her sylvan surroundings, far-off human voices and the harsh notes of some kind of musical instrument.

Zela reached for her belt pack and deftly fastened it around her waist. In its neat pockets the belt held emergency food, medical and tool kits, her communicator and a lazer hand weapon. She used the communicator to call the others back to the ship, and without haste began to move in that direction herself.

Something was definitely disturbing the forest to her left. Birds and monkeys were now shrieking in flight through the treetops. Zela hesitated and drew the lazer weapon with her right hand. For a moment she was uncertain whether to hurry ahead or to wait for Blair. Then the panicked scream of the trumpeting elephant assailed her ears. The tusked beast was descending the steep ridge too fast, its huge bulk slipping and sliding as it flattened every obstacle in its path. Its scream and the thunderous crashing of its approach focused Zela's attention too far back along the line of the pursuit and she was facing the wrong direction as the tiger leaped out into the glade fifty yards ahead of her. As it landed, it opened its throat to let out a great roar of rage.