Chapter Two
Richard Blade lay for a time, face down, on rocks that were still hot. Hot from a sun that had passed its zenith so long ago that now dark shadows lapped his naked body. He lay unmoving, without a tremor, scarcely breathing. He was in X-Dimension once more and there would be danger. Wherever he was, whatever it was, there was danger. He must begin the slow and difficult process of orientation. He was allowed no mistakes.
Without moving his head he examined the terrain immediately before him, and to both sides. Blade had tremendous peripheral vision - one of the many reasons he had survived so long in the murderous game of espionage - and he saw that he was in a cup-shaped depression. Lying on sun-heated rock and surrounded by a ring of tall jagged boulders.
The rock beneath him was lightly dusted with sand. He gathered some in his fingers and brought it close to his eyes. Black. Fine and black.
Wind gusted through the rocky bowl, sandblasting his eyes and face and enormous rugged body. Borne on the wind was sound - a rising and ferocious din of battle. It could be nothing else. Blade had known battle and he recognized the cries and curses of men trying to kill each other. And yet another sound! He put his ear to the rock and listened intently. Horses. Many hundreds, or thousands, of horses careening across the earth not far away.
Now trumpets, brazen and haunting on the wind that scoured him. Trumpets and a new high screaming of frenzied men. Men in pain. Men dying. Men defeated. Men victorious.
WHOOMPPl A new sound. A gun. By the sound of it a giant cannon of some sort. It had a deep, hollow, bell-like sound that Blade had never heard before.
For the moment he judged himself safe. It was time to see as well as hear. He crawled on hands and knees to the barricade of tall rearing boulders, going against the wind that still howled in his little shelter. He found a crevice in the rocks and peered cautiously out.
Blade had marvelous sense of direction, and he placed himself immediately in relation to the battle raging beneath him on a broad and far-flung plain. He was a mile to the rear of the fighting and he reckoned his elevation at about two hundred feet. For a man with Blade's eyesight every detail was plain. He began to study the frenetic bloody scene that unrolled beneath him like some vast panoramic painting.
A mile beyond his vantage point a great wall undulated along the horizon like a yellow snake. Blade drew in his breath and shrugged his big shoulders in admiration. He was impressed. That wall must be fifty feet high, broad enough for four horsemen to ride abreast, and it had no end. It stretched away to either side as far as Blade's keen eyes could see. It simply vanished into distance.
Before a sector of the wall nearest Blade the fighting raged most fiercely. Hordes of horsemen raced back and forth before the wall, firing arrows from peculiarly short bows, all the time screaming in a high savagery that set Blade's teeth on edge. Bad tactics, though. What could horsemen hope to achieve against the wall?
'Like trying to kill an elephant with an air gun,' he muttered to himself. What could they hope to gain.
A moment later he saw. The attackers were trying to taunt the defenders into a sortie. Blade smiled. Surely they would not be fools enough to—
They were. He watched, incredulous, as a huge gate in the wall swung open. Horsemen and men on foot rushed out. The attackers screamed in triumph and charged in. The two forces met with a clangorous shock that made Blade wince, even at his distance.
The melee was brief and bloody. Men and horses went down in scarlet heaps. Spears and arrows arced and glinted in the fading light - there was a nacreous tint to the air now - and there was no quarter given. Men killed and were killed in the act of killing.
A gutted horse, riderless, broke away and galloped within bowshot of the hidden Blade. It was a small sturdy beast with a wild mane and very long hair. Just beyond Blade's vantage the horse stopped, and began to graze on sparse grass growing from the black earth.
Farther down the wall a new horde of attackers were trying to raise scaling ladders. They were on foot, hundreds of them, rushing in with long narrow ladders and covered by the fire of bowmen. The defenders on the wall greeted them with spears and arrows and heavy stones. Great cauldrons of boiling oil were poured down on the few ladders that went up. The attack broke and retreated. The party that had sortied out was now also retreating. It was continually attacked by the charging horsemen. The defenders fought their way back into the gate, covered by murderous spear and arrow fire, and boiling oil, and at last the ponderous gate swung shut.
Blade saw the gun. His eyes widened. It was enormous. He had never seen anything like this gun. He guessed the muzzle to be six feet across. It must be fifty feet long. Hundreds of men were tugging it up a ramp behind the wall.
Blade watched with something akin to awe. It was one hell of an impressive gun, yes, but how did they expect to hit anything with it? It was tilted at an impossible angle and it was not even aimed at the attackers' camp, a vast cluster of black tents off to Blade's right.
A moment later he understood. They were firing the huge gun for effect.
Whoommph - Boinggg—
The muzzle flash was tremendous. Great clouds of black smoke billowed up and cloaked the wall and the defenders. Blade, a little amused now, saw the projectile leave the huge maw of the cannon and begin to sail. Toward him.
The trajectory was so high, and the muzzle velocity so slow, that he had ample time to observe the effect of the gun on the attackers. They broke and ran, on horse and foot, screaming defiance and shaking their weapons at the wall and the gun, but running nevertheless. Blade grinned. The gun worked in a fashion. He watched the projectile coming his way. It reached apogee and began the swift fall to nadir. It was going to strike very near him. Blade moved a bit uneasily. The thing was damned big. It looked like a good-sized meteorite coming to slash at the earth's hide. In the last minisecond Blade noticed something very strange about it. It was transparent. It was green and he could see through it.
The great ball smashed into a boulder fifty yards from Blade with tremendous sound. He flattened himself and cringed in the shelter of lesser rooks. No one had ever called him a coward - or a fool.
The thing exploded in a shower of cruel green shards that sang about Blade's head. One great jagged fragment
