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men climbing the white stone that glimmered duskily pink and purple in the moons-light, for the twins
were now wheeling across the sky after the maiden with many smiles.
Hwang suddenly laughed softly and I was aware of the rapid putting away of the longbows in the hands
of his bodyguard.
The two parties met
 You are abroad late, Hwang.
 Yes, Majestrix. Hwang inclined. They inclined in Zenicce, and I had never liked the custom, so, as
before, I merely bowed. Queen Lilah of Hiclantung looked upon me, there in the fuzzy pink moonslight.
 It seems I have pierced two impiters with a single shaft. I came to haggle for corths from that fat
corthman Nath, and now I find the pleasure of meeting you, Dray Prescot. I had planned a more formal
meeting, for I fear I have not thanked you enough for saving the miserable skin of my foolish nephew.
Against that kind of polite nonsense, a plain sea officer and a fighting-man is usually out of his depth. I
merely bowed again and said:  The pleasure is mine, I assure you.
How long the inanities would have gone I do not know. This Queen Lilah stood very tall, her dark eyes
on a level with my own brown ones, and her red hair had been coiffed into a high pile resplendent with
gems and strings of pearls. Her dark blue gown, thickly embroidered and stiff with bullion and gold and
silver threads, gave no hint of her figure; but her face was very white, unlined, her eyes picked out with
kohl and her mouth painted into a cupid s bow of allure. She gazed at me most intently as we spoke, and
I gathered something of her power and her majesty, the immediate response she could always elicit, for
that pallid face tinged with the pink radiance from the moons of Kregen and those darkly glittering eyes
held a kind of hypnotic power, emphasized by the shadowing beneath her cheeks and the upslanted
eyebrows, the widow s peak of red hair over her forehead.
A man with her, elegant in dark green robes  dark green!  and with a powerful bearded face and
eloquent hands adorned with many rings on the carefully tended fingers, was speaking of the lack of news
of the scouts sent out to track the destination of the flying tribe who had so sorely bested the Hiclantung
army and carried off Delia.
 But in a day or two they will return, said this man, one Orpus, a councilor high in the Queen s
confidence.  Then we will know what to do.
 I doubt not but they were employed by those rasts of Chersonang. Soon, now, our plans will be ready
and then  The Queen did not finish her words, and the inanities might have turned into some
conversation more welcome to my ears, for Chersonang was a city-state of great power whose borders
marched with those of Hiclantung and with whom, as was to be expected, there was constant friction,
had it not been for the sudden and wholly unexpected slaughter caused by a shower of arrows that
whistled down about our ears.
At the same instant a body of men in dark garments rushed upon us. The next second I was fighting for
my life.
 Stand firm! roared a Hikdar and went down screeching with a cloth-yard shaft in his breast. An arrow
hissed by me and buried itself in the back of a bodyguard who had swung around to face the oncoming
assassins. Hwang was yelling and tugging at the Queen s sleeve. I saw her face, pale and
pinkly-illuminated in that streaming radiance, and she looked firm and powerful, and yet haggard and ill,
all at the same time. And, too, I saw the harsh lines curving about that painted mouth and understood
more of the burdens she carried and the absolute intolerance with which she carried out what she
conceived of as her duty.
Then, to what must have appeared as the seal of our doom to those attacking us, a cloud of
impiter-mounted men swooped from the sky and gusting in over the walled stairway fell upon us with all
the impetuosity of a chunkrah charge.
If we were to come out of this alive not a moment could be lost. Hwang had still not budged the Queen,
who stood, tall and straight in those heavy brocaded garments. Her bodyguard fell about her, and now it
was clearly apparent that these night raiders had planned this assault to carry off the Queen.
 The Queen! someone shouted.
 To the death! screeched the defiant answers from the bodyguard.
Hwang s little sword flickered in and out very expertly. My own great long sword, suddenly clumsy in
this civilized company, swept away three of the attackers, lopped heads and arms; but they pressed me
back and soon Hwang and I were left isolated with the Queen at our backs, pressed against the stairway
wall.
I felt cramped in, hemmed and penned. I had not used a rapier and main-gauche as a pair in a long time,
the Jiktar and the Hikdar, and all the advantages of a long sword were being lost to me.
 We must break through and reach the corthdrome, I shouted at Hwang. If only Seg were here! I felled
a man who lunged at me, skipping aside from his glittering point with accustomed unthinking skill.  You
must force the Queen 
 They will never take me alive.
Queen Lilah of Hiclantung held a dagger, jeweled and ornate, but needle-sharp for all that. I knew that
dagger would plunge into her breast when the end came. Somehow, in my agony for my Delia I found a
strange sense of outrage that another beautiful woman should die.
I leaped forward, whirling my sword in tremendous overhand circles, rather in the fashion of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]