The Temples Of Ayocan rb-14 Page 2

  He moved along briskly, trying not to exert himself enough to work up a sweat. There was no point in wasting any moisture if he could avoid it. Distances were deceptive on this high plain, as he already knew. That glimmer of water might have come from twenty miles away.

  He loped onward, his shadow black against the lighter blue-gray of the earth at his feet. Sun and wind had powdered a thin layer of that earth, and as he moved along he left footprints and kicked up dust. Under that thin layer the earth was nearly as solid as the rocks that lay in large patches everywhere.

  It was a drab land. The only color nearer than the mountains was occasional patches of white gravel and even rarer patches of scrubby black-green bushes and vines. These were mostly huddled in the lee of the larger rocks. Not surprising, in this land where a wind from those mountains could sweep fifty miles unchecked, stripping the land bare, grinding down even boulders with clouds of wind-driven dust. This was a land that had been here long before men-if indeed there were any in this dimension. And it would be here long after they had gone, if they ever came, and it would show no signs of either their coming or their going.

  The blue on the horizon spread wider and wider as Blade moved south, and the sun began to creep down from overhead, toward the mountains. By the time it was halfway down in the sky, Blade knew that the blueness must indeed be water. By the time the sun hovered just above the highest peaks, Blade was within a mile of the shore of the lake. And by the time darkness was falling, he was standing by the water's edge.

  Seen close up, the water was an incredibly rich blue. It was impossible for Blade to judge how far it stretched-neither to the south nor to the east could he see any shore. At this altitude it had to be a lake, but a lake the size of an inland sea. And it was fresh water. One taste reassured Blade on that point. Whatever he might die from in this new dimension, it would not be thirst.

  For many hundreds of yards back from the water's edge, the shore of the lake was heavily overgrown with low-slung black-green bushes. These bore large yellow flowers that looked somewhat like sunflowers except that the mass of seeds in the middle of the blossom was bright red instead of brownish. Blade wondered if the red seeds were as edible as sunflower seeds. If they were, he was in no danger of starving either.

  But he was in danger of getting very cold very quickly. The thin air of the high plain was rapidly losing its heat now that the sun was gone. A chill breeze crept down from the distant mountains, blowing across his bare skin and bit by bit robbing his body of its heat. He bent down and took hold of one of the bushes, trying to break it off or pull it up out of the ground. A layer of leafy branches under him and another over him might not make the most comfortable bed for a good night's sleep, but they would at least be something between his bare skin and the cold.

  The bushes were tough and their bark scraped at his fingers, which were red and sore by the time he had broken off half a dozen branches. The broken ends dripped a sticky lemon-yellow sap. Blade bent down and sniffed at it. A strong vegetable smell, but underneath it something else, tantalizingly faint, so faint he couldn't define or describe it. But definitely appealing. He sniffed at the sap more vigorously, then suddenly pulled himself to a stop and threw the branch down on the ground.

  That faint, underlying element in the smell of the sap was something-Blade didn't know what-insidiously attractive. He had been within seconds of smearing the sap over his nostrils, to absorb more and still more of the odor. And then what? What would a massive dose of whatever lurked in the sap have done to him? He didn't know and he didn't want to find out, at least not here and now. All he needed now was an overdose of narcotics while he was fighting to survive and keep warm on the lonely shores of this lake. He continued breaking off branches, but he was very careful now to keep them away from his face. He even tried to keep the sap from getting on his skin. He had no way of knowing whether or not it could be absorbed into his body through the skin.

  By the time Blade had piled on the ground what he hoped would be enough branches, it was almost completely dark. Only the faintest orange glimmer beyond the mountains gave him any sense of direction. The lake stretched out endlessly away into the darkness, featureless and now black instead of blue. The wind had died, and even the faint splashing of little waves on the gravel of the beach had died away with it. For the moment, this was a dimension of total loneliness, almost total darkness, and silence except for the sound of his own breathing and footsteps.

  Blade was getting ready to burrow down into his bed of branches when he suddenly realized that there was no longer total darkness out on the lake. Lights had suddenly appeared, faint, distant, and wavering, but unmistakable. Blade counted nine of them, stretched out in a long line across the lake. They shone a pale yellow-orange, and slowly but steadily they were coming closer. Their approach was too steady, too purposeful, for anything natural.

  The line spread out wider and wider, until it seemed to stretch halfway across the lake horizon. Blade realized that if the line kept on all the way to the shore, he would end up almost in the middle of it. Slowly and cautiously, he rose to a crouching position, and moved away from his piled branches. He would have liked to scatter them so that they gave no sign of his presence, but there was no time for that. The lights were coming on faster now. Blade could hear a distant but fast-swelling chant as they did so.

  He slipped up the slope from the beach, taking care to avoid softer patches of ground where he might leave footprints. Fifty yards up the slope, he came to a particularly thick patch of the bushes, some of them eight feet high. The close-grown rough branches were hard to push apart and painful to slip through. But when he had done so, he could crouch almost invisible to anyone on the beach.

  The chant coming out of the darkness was definitely getting louder now. With relief Blade recognized human voices-at least forty or fifty of them, all chanting together to a beat set by two deep-toned drums. He had encountered a fair number of nonhuman or semihuman beings in his Dimension X travels, but he always preferred to at least start by dealing with human beings. Not that human beings were necessarily that much more predictable than nonhumans, or less likely to shoot first and ask questions afterward. It was more a question of what contributed most to his own peace of mind.

  The lights kept growing brighter, the chant kept growing louder. Now Blade could make out words, and understand them. Once again Lord Leighton's computer had done its incomprehensible work on his brain, altering it so that he understood and responded in the language of the new dimension, however strange it might be.

  The chant was a repetition of a single set of sentences, in a complex and varying pattern. Blade could pick out at least three different parts, and every fourth repetition they seemed to shift key entirely.

  Over and over again the words came:

  «Hail, flower of life! Hail, flower of death! We come to you in the service of Ayocan. We come to you in the judgment of Ayocan.»

  Ayocan? thought Blade. King, priest, saint, devil, god, spirit? And the flower of life/death? Blade had a sudden chilling thought. Could the «flower» be the one growing on the bushes where he was lurking, the bushes with the narcotic sap? There didn't seem to be anything else living here that might match the description. And what were the people approaching across the lake planning to do with the bushes?

  He had no time to answer these questions, or ask himself any more. Suddenly even more yellow-orange light was shining from the lake. Narrowing his eyes against the new glare, Blade saw that behind each of the nine original lights a second one was now burning, brighter than the first. Then the original lights all went out, suddenly, simultaneously, with almost military precision. Now Blade could see what was approaching him across the lake-and who.

  Chapter 3

  Nine long outrigger canoes were approaching Blade across the lake, each sixty-odd feet long and filled with men. He counted more than thirty men in each canoe. All were thin-faced and brown-skinned, but otherwise they seemed divided into
two groups.

  One group was obviously warriors. They carried long swords that gleamed in the torchlight with the sheen of polished bronze, and daggers and short-handled axes that seemed to be made of polished green stone. They wore dark blue armor from neck to wrists and ankles, consisting of dyed leather patches sewn on a cloth backing, and on their heads they wore vividly dyed orange, red, yellow, and green helmets plumed with white feathers. About twenty of the men in each boat were warriors. Two stood at the bow, tending the torch that poured out yellow-orange light, one stood at the stern, tending the steering oar, and the others paddled.

  The other men in each canoe were-what? They wore only simple flowing yellow-orange robes, with a bit of blue embroidery at the neck, and no weapons that Blade could see. Their heads were not only shaved bald but apparently oiled, from the way they glistened in the light. Their faces were also oiled, and cheeks, forehead, and neck were marked with cryptic signs in white. Each of them, Blade noticed, carried a large blue cloth bag also marked with white signs and slung from a blue leather belt at his waist. It was these men who were keeping up the chant about the flower of life and death.

  That was all Blade was able to make out before the warriors suddenly drew in their paddles. The canoes floated in to shore and grounded on the gravel beach with gentle scraping sounds. The warriors in the bows of each one leaped down into the water, carrying a large stone with a rope tied around it, and dropped this improvised anchor on the beach. In each canoe a yellow-robe rose to his feet and went forward to the torch in the bow, pouring some liquid over it from a small bronze ewer he took from the bottom of the boat. Each torch blazed up still more brightly, spreading yellow-orange light still farther up the slope from the beach.

  In Blade's mind the need to be cautious fought a brief battle with the need to make contact with the human population of this dimension. Normally he would not have hesitated to step out from his hiding place and greet the men in the canoes. But the shaven-headed men looked too much like priests-priests of Ayocan, perhaps? And where there were priests, there was often some religious rite that it was ill-advised for a stranger to interrupt. The best plan for the moment was to stay under cover, watch, and wait. The torches were so bright now that making a run for it undetected would probably be impossible. Particularly with two hundred or more warriors ready to pursue him. Blade lowered himself into a more comfortable position and settled down to follow his own advice.

  As soon as the canoes were safely beached and anchored, the warriors put away their paddles and began climbing out. They splashed onto the beach and formed a double line extending inland from the bow of each canoe. Then it was the priests' turn. Without breaking their chant, they filed out of the canoes and onto the shore, unfastening their bags as they went and holding them up high over their heads. When all had reached dry ground, the leader of each file barked a single word.

  «Nolk!»

  And all the priests went down on their knees, placing their bags reverently on the ground in front of them, each at the base of one of the bushes. Except for the breathing of many men, silence fell over the shore.

  Definitely a religious rite, thought Blade. He was sorry he had not made a run for it when he first saw the yellow, orange lights. Now it was even more dangerous than before to try to escape. Since the priests did not seem to be coming far up the slope, the remains of his bough-bed might pass unnoticed, he hoped.

  Now each priest picked up his bag, opened it, and pulled out a large curved knife, like a pruning knife, and a small brass bottle. With a quick slash of the knife each priest cut through the bush in front of him. Then he picked it up, and dipped the broken end into the bottle. Finally, he laid the bush gently and carefully aside. Blade noticed that the cutoff end now gleamed black.

  The priests then rose to their feet, the chant sounded again, and each took two steps forward. Then they knelt again and repeated the ritual. Slash-dip-lay aside. And again, and again. Blade realized with a chilling shock that they were moving rapidly up the slope toward him, toward where he had mutilated more than a dozen of the bushes.

  The intervals between the cutting of bushes were growing longer now, and the priests were also fanning out as they climbed. They formed a solid line nearly a quarter of a mile from end to end, with Blade still near the center. Behind them as they advanced came the warriors, picking up the bushes as gently as they would have picked up newborn babies and carrying them back to the canoes. Unless both priests and warriors were blind, they must see those broken branches soon.

  Blade did not have much longer to wait. Suddenly two priests broke off their chant. Their voices rose in howls of outrage that brought all the chanting to a sudden halt. Priests and warriors alike scurried toward the noisy two, gathered around them, and raised their own voices in lamentations. Blade saw that the two priests in the middle were each holding up a broken-off branch with one hand, and gesturing violently with the other. In the babble of voices rising into the night Blade could not make out a single coherent word. But he could certainly recognize tones of anger, outrage, and grim determination.

  Obviously he had committed some sort of sacrilege by taking the branches. And there went practically any hope of quickly getting on good terms with these people. It was tempting to throw caution to the winds and try making a run for it. But Blade's trained judgment of the situation told him he would not get far. The warriors would be up with him before he got clear of the bushes. And he had no desire to run like a rabbit and end up being hunted down like one.

  Besides, his best remaining chance was to stay and try to make the best fight possible. Barbarian warriors could understand and appreciate courage in battle better than anything else. He might be able to get the warriors to take him prisoner by a show of courage and skill. There were the priests, of course, but priests were always unpredictable. Certainly he had nothing to lose.

  With only small cracklings of branches, Blade crawled out of his hiding place. The warriors striding up the slope did not see him as he crouched in the shadows of the clump of bushes. Then he stood up, and they did see him. The two who saw him first raised shouts of triumph and rage, making the rest of the searchers spin around and stare at Blade. The gathering around the two priests broke up in a gabble of voices. Blade saw drawn swords gleaming in the torchlight, and the heads of axes glistening. He made no move to run or hide, but stood calmly in the open, hands at his sides.

  The first two warriors moved toward him, taking care to avoid damaging the bushes. Blade shifted a few steps to the left and dropped into an unarmed-combat fighting stance, balanced on the balls of his feet, fists raised. Both warriors were coming at him with their swords in the right hand and their axes in the left. Blade kept a particularly close watch on the axes. If they were throwing axes, he might need more luck than he liked to imagine to make a good showing in this fight. He wanted the warriors at close quarters, where his unarmed-combat skills would give him an advantage.

  The warriors spread apart as they approached, until they were coming in almost on either side of Blade. He drifted back a few steps, so he could keep both in sight. They spread still farther apart, again trying to get around his flanks. But now they were so far apart that they could not support each other. Blade saw that, and also saw that the next step the right-hand one took would bring him into the open, with nothing between him and Blade.

  The warrior took that step. Blade sprang forward, fists lunging. He came down within striking distance of the warrior. His right fist flashed past the man's rising sword and smashed into his jaw. The warrior's head. snapped back, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed backward, spitting blood and teeth. As he went down Blade broke his sword-arm with a left-handed karate chop and snatched the sword out of the air. He had just time to raise it before the second warrior charged in, sword guarding and axe raised to strike overhand. By sheer speed and strength Blade smashed the man's guard down and split his skull open like a melon. The axe dropped from his wavering hand, and th
at too Blade plucked out of the air.

  Blade turned toward the other warriors and brandished both sword and axe high in the air. They caught the torchlight and threw off sparks of yellow-orange. He shouted at the warriors, «Come on, little men! If you are men, that is. Two hundred of you, only one of me. Isn't that even odds, at least? Or does it take three hundred of you to meet one real warrior?»

  His insults got the reaction he was hoping for. Angry growls and muttered curses rose from among the warriors. Blade shifted again, still farther up the slope, and watched two more warriors move toward him.

  This time Blade attacked first. He could move faster through the bushes, for he did not have to worry about damaging them. Vaulting high over one of the lower bushes, he landed squarely between the two warriors. Before they recovered from the surprise, he had whirled to the left, slashing low with his sword. The warrior brought his sword down to guard while raising his axe to strike. This opened his left side and armpit to Blade, who struck hard with his own axe. He felt bone crunch under the axe, and the warrior choked, coughed blood, and fell gasping and writhing to the ground. Blade leaped high, smashing both feet down on his back as he lay, and the warrior abruptly stopped writhing.

  Now Blade leaped from his victim's body to face the man's partner. This warrior was either more skilled or more cautious. He stood on the defensive, guarding with both axe and sword, his black eyes never leaving Blade's face. Blade feinted several times with both sword and axe, but the warrior's responses were fast and sure, and left no openings. Blade realized this was a more dangerous opponent than the first three. But he couldn't afford to let the fight go on much longer. Every extra minute would give the other warriors more confidence, and perhaps a chance for a sneak blow from the rear.