'Unless,' Pelops hedged, 'it be Mokanna. The High Captain of Battlemen. I have never seen him, or seen him fight, but I have heard that he is a monster among men.'
Blade shrugged his big shoulders. 'That may be. Let us go, then, and meet this Mokanna and find out. You, Zeena, will do as we have agreed.'
Zeena, as a Princess of Sarma, had the right to sponsor a battleman. She would pay for his keep and his education and he would fight for her in the lists. This, Pelops explained, was often done. And it was not unusual for a woman to marry a successful battleman.
'It is the best way,' Blade said. 'Go to Sarmacid, Zeena, and tell your story. As a Princess of the Blood you will not be questioned too much - '
'My mother the Queen will question,' said Zeena with a tight laugh. 'She questions everything, my mother. She is a witch and jealous of all her daughters.'
By this time Blade was aware that no love was lost in the Palace. Zeena, as she prattled between love bouts, told him some weird tales of intrigue and double-dealing and murder.
'No mind,' said Blade. 'Go tell your story. Pelops and I surrendered to you. You took mercy on us and did not turn us over to the slave patrol. Instead we are to train at Barracid and I am to represent you at the next great battle show. Do it, Zeena. It is a story that will be believed.'
'But I will miss you too much, Blade. I will not have you to bed me.'
'If you do not,' said Blade grimly, 'I will eventually be hunted down, as will Pelops, and then I will be made a slave in fact, perhaps even executed for aiding Pelops. Is that what you wish?'
Zeena had gone to Sarmacid. A royal escort was provided by the High Captain of Battlemen, Mokanna, with much fawning and servility. At first it amused Blade, then gave him serious thought, to see the power of a woman so absolute. Sarma was a matriarchy with a vengeance. Blade cautioned .himself not to forget it. Life in any Dimension X was tricky enough - in a land ruled by women it might prove to be fatally so.
They were quartered in rude stone huts on a vast brown plain not far beyond the black lake called Patmos Tarn. Beyond the pale khaki mountains lay the city of Sarmacid. On the plain outside the encampment, near a row of T gallows, stood a small stone image of Bek-Tor. The God of Sarma.
On this day Blade was running. Each battleman did five miles a day for conditioning. They were not watched, or even guarded very closely, for all logic was against any attempt to escape. Legally the battlemen were either slaves - though not often treated as such - or men who had volunteered to escape slavery and perhaps make their fortunes. In certain cases a man might be given such a choice. Much depended on the judge - always a woman, because women held all power in Sarma.
Blade, clad only in a loin strap and carrying a sweat rag, stopped to gaze at the statue of Bek-Tor. The thing fascinated him and made him uneasy at the same time. Yet his survival depended on understanding, and unless he understood Bek-Tor and the dark religion He-She represented he could not understand the Sarmaians.
He-She. Bek-Tor was a hermaphrodite god.
Blade wiped sweat from his face and stared at the god with the revulsion he always felt. Not a usual thing with him. He understood well enough that all men, in all times and all cultures - and it would seem all dimensions - created their gods as they must. An inexorable law - that man must create a god of some kind.
Blade wiped sweat from his eyes and grimaced. With a grin, on impulse, he cocked a snook at the stone image. The face gave him a stony leer in return.
The face might have been that of a lovely woman or a beautiful man. The hair was cut short and thickly curled. The breasts were full and pointed with long nipples, the waist slim and incurving.
At the waist the figure changed into that of a man - and a woman. The legs were sturdy and powerfully muscled. Both sexes were represented in the genitals - there was a mons veneris, a stone vulva, and below this dangled a penis and testicles.
This was Bek-Tor. Bek the woman - good. Tor the man - evil. Tor was never mentioned when it could be avoided. Sarmaians did not like to speak of evil. When they made the sign of the T it was to invoke Bek, but more to propitiate Tor. They warred, these gods sharing the same body, and sometimes Bek won, sometimes Tor. Bek looked upward, to good. Tor looked down, to the earth where evil reigned.
Blade had heard of the bestial sacrifices made to Bek-Tor. Girl babies cast into flames. Male children were not considered important enough to sacrifice.
He spat in disgust and was about to turn away when someone called his name. Mokanna stepped from behind the statue of Bek-Tor His grin was evil, his stumpy teeth stained black from chewing a tree gum the Sarmaians called chicso. He carried a whip and around his paunchy waist was belted a short sword.
Mokanna pointed with his whip to the stone image. 'You have committed sacrilege, Blade. I saw it.' He pointed to the gallows. 'For that I can have you hanged and whipped.'
It was a cruel punishment which Blade had witnessed once. For sacrilege, for disobeying an order, for failing to do your best in practice, for any number of things a man could be hanged. A slender but strong cord was looped around the penis and testicles and spliced into a longer and thicker rope. The man's hands and feet were bound and he was hauled up. The duration of punishment varied with the offense. Few men survived the ordeal and those who did, as the grim joke had it, would never marry and make children.
Blade stared back at the man. Ever since his arrival at Baracid he had been expecting trouble with Mokanna and here it was. Mokanna resented Blade's physique and skill with arms. While Blade lived he was a challenge, as yet unspoken, to Mokanna's authority. Blade knew well enough that were he not a protege of Zeena, sponsored by her, both he and Pelops would be dead by now.
He forced himself to speak calmly. 'No sacrilege, Mokanna. I only spat. I have been running and my mouth is dry. What can you make of that?'
Mokanna showed his black teeth. He was shorter than Blade by a foot, but by Sarmaian standards he was an enormous man. His bowed legs were like tree trunks and over a round belly his chest and shoulders were massive and knotted with muscle.
'I make of it what I wish,' said Mokanna. He snapped the whip idly in Blade's direction. 'If I wish to make sacrilege of it I will do so. If I wish to string you to a gallows I will also do that. I do not like you, Blade. You are a stranger, such as we have never seen in Sarma, and I do not trust you. In short. Blade, I wish you evil. I invoke Tor to do
