It was likely the truth and Blade nodded. 'I am going to kill our dinner, Canda. Nothing more. I do not attack helpless women.'
Again her odd smile. 'I am not so sure, Captain Blade. I am not sure about anything with you. There - there are too many of you for my comfort!'
He ignored her and turned away. She had been hinting at something ever since they left the coast In her own time she would get to it.
Blade left them and, sword in hand, went in search of snakes. If it had nothing else, the Burning Land had snakes in plenty. They were non-poisonous, or so Canda said, and they came out at night. A hundred were to be found in any shallow ravine.
He killed a dozen snakes in as many minutes and took them back for Chephron and Pelops to skin and bone and prepare them for dinner. Cut into bite size and taken with what little water there was, they would furnish strength for another day of marching. Maybe you gagged a little, Blade admitted, but you got them down. Funny what a man could eat when he was starving.
He went back to the cairn. Pelops was there waiting for the first trickle of condensation to form. The little man had lost weight he could not afford, the fuzz on his face and long head was long and dirty, and he had lost his armor and sword in the sea. He looked, Blade thought, to be on his last legs. Yet there was a resilience about the man that continually amazed Blade. And his habits did not change. Even now, looking like a mistreated scarecrow and with only a scrap of leather twisted about his privates, Pelops had not lost his tendency to lecture.
'It is my thought,' said the little teacher now, 'that we should abandon Zeena. She delays us, sire, and she will get no better. And it sickens me to watch her, for I remember her from better days when she was a child and I taught her in the palace.'
Blade stared hard at him. He did not, could not, blame the man for what he was saying. Pelops was Sarmaian and could not help what he was.
'I remember Zeena,' said Blade, 'from the time of our first meeting. When I took her to save your life, Pelops. When I married her in your Sarmaian law. We will not abandon her. There are graves enough behind us.'
There had been nine in the party starting inland. Five were left. Blade, Pelops, Chephron and the two women. The dead men had all been slaves too weak and emaciated to stand the trek. Of the women taken from the pirate craft none had been saved but Zeena and the Princess Canda. Of Ixion Blade knew nothing at all; Pphira had become separated from the unireme long before she struck the reef and went down in a churning welter of fifty foot waves. Blade had barely made it ashore with the women, with the Princess Canda doing her share, and Pelops, strange irony, owed his life to the former mine slave, Chephron.
Pelops stared at a first small trickle of water tracing down the cairn. 'I wonder at times, sire, if you are not a man of magic. Such as lived in the old times in Sarma. To find water like this, out of nowhere!'
'A simple matter of physics.'
'I do not know the word, sire. But let me tell you - '
Blade laughed in spite of himself. 'You know enough words, little warrior. Too many. Spare me them. Speak only of what I wish to know - and that is about this Princess Canda. What of her, really? Is there a land of Mogh? And such people as the Moghs? Could there be such as El Kal, whom she calls her father, and who rules this land? What do you think of all these tales?'
While Pelops pondered, chin in hand, Blade watched Chephron caring tenderly for Zeena. Feeding her. The man's leg sores were healing somewhat. More proof, Blade thought, that the meta was really pitchblende. And that in Sarma there were mountain ranges of the stuff. Uranium.
Lord L and J would just have to take his word for it when Blade got back to H Dimension. He had lost the chunk of raw meta, along with the log he had started, when the Pphira went down.
Pelops said: 'I think she speaks the truth, sire Blade. I have, er, had some converse with her these days. As you may know?'
'I know,' Blade said dryly. 'She speaks more to you than to me. What of, little man?'
Pelops looked startled. 'Oh, sire, of nothing much. She is only a woman after all. She lacks company and when you stalk ahead, aloof and forbidding, and Chephron nurses Zeena along, the Princess falls back to talk to me. It is nothing.'
Slowly, calmly, Blade put his great hand about Pelop's throat and gave it a slight pressure. 'Do not lie to me, little one. Of what does the lady speak?'
Pelops began to tremble but his eyes met those of Blade. 'Yes, sire. I did lie. For a moment I was a fool. But I was, I am, frightened again. She, Canda, said that if I told you what passed between us she would have me tortured when we come to Mogh.'
Blade released him. 'She may yet. But you are not in Mogh - you are here with me. And I will not torture you. I will merely beat you. So talk, and tell me the truth.'
Pelops, rubbing his throat, explained that the lady spoke only of Blade. She asked questions. Always questions. No end of questions. She wished to know everything about Richard Blade. And about the Princess Zeena.
Blade heard him out. 'So you think she really is a Princess? There is a Mogh and her father is El Kal?' Blade pointed to the unreachable mountains over which floated a yellow paring of moon. 'And you think there is an oasis there - a place of water and grass and trees?'
'I think all those things, sire. For I have heard of the Moghs before. Not much, and perhaps only rumors and gossip, but I have heard. It is whispered that once, long ago, a Mogh ruler came to Sarma and lay with our Queen. With Pphira. He did not stay in Sarma. This was in the first days of Pphira's rule, just after she had poisoned her mother, and I happen to know another scholar, very ancient now, who - '
Pelops was off on a long rambling tale. Blade listened with slight amusement and half an ear. There was, he supposed, an inevitability about the matter. This El Kal, whom he might one day meet, must be the father of the late Equebus.
That little bit of information, Blade thought grimly, I will keep to myself.
