This time he came around more slowly. He was not weakened by loss of blood yet; that would take, in a leem, a little time. They are not easy to kill. When he charged me this time, I fancied, he would act differently, and not just because he had lost two legs.
He came in again. This time I leaped for him, got under him as he passed above me, and, ducking, I severed his rear hind leg. He went on, rolling, and this time he came back so fast, springing from his uninjured side, that a claw raked down my side and my blood dropped to mingle with his on that bloodstained silver sand.
But if he was taking the fight to me, I took it to him. He sat back, as a cat does, for an instant. Then he swiped at me with his second foreleg. I did not strike back but ran sideways, turned and feinted to hit him from that side. He pivoted and I went the other way — fast, fast! — and got six inches of steel between his ribs. That was not enough to reach his heart, of course, his main heart, and I had to skip back most circumspectly. I had missed my aim, but I did not curse. This was a game of life and death we played, this leem and I beneath the Suns of Scorpio in the arena of Huringa. He would not waste time spitting at me.
He did hunch his back, though, and I saw the way his stumps bled, and I knew the thing was really over; but before that he could squash my head with a single blow. I leaped again and swung and gashed a great slice across his shoulder. He tried to take me in his mouth and I drove the Krozair longsword at him, and again I missed and merely succeeded in slicing alongside his nose. The blade was sharp. Had it been blunt, as was the blade with which I fought the shorgortz, I believe I would not have been as quick as I was; I do not think the leem would have got me, for the blunted longsword is a great bone-smasher. The crowd had been silent. Now they began cheering again. I banished the noise; but I did notice the shouts and calls came when I attacked the leem. So, being a show-off in some things, I made a great point of attacking the leem, of charging him, and of smiting and hacking. He lost another leg — and now he did not want to know anything at all more about this man-monster with the brightly shining metal tongue who so tormented him.
He backed off, hissing.
I do not like leems, as I told you, for their ways and damage they have done me. But I could feel it in my heart to feel sorrow for this great beast. He was done for, and I think he knew it. Blood fouled his ocher fur. His eyes did not glare with so much bestial ferocity. He hissed and he slunk away, his ears low, his tail dragging.
I had an idea.
The leem was hobbling — for him — on four legs, but he could still run. I herded him. I wove a net of steel about him and drove him back and back, chivying him from the side, making him go where I wanted. His muzzle was a mask of blood. He slunk back, hissing, and tried to leap aside, and I thrust into that flank and so forced him back. When he was where I wanted him to be, and he attacked again, I leaped and sliced the great sword and so took off his fifth leg. Now he would limp in very truth. He spat now, and hissed, and then he began to shriek. I circled him. He tried still to get at me. When the moment came I sprang.
I landed with both feet on his shoulders — those beautifully articulated shoulders that swing two pairs of legs — and got my left arm around his head and under his throat, and so passed the sword downward and through his heart — both the main heart and then, unnecessarily, the subsidiary heart. I leaped clear, and I leaped clear backward, deliberately. In death he writhed and slashed and screamed and foamed and bled — but he died.
Anyone or any beast tends to die if a Krozair longsword passes through the heart. I cut off his tail. I held it at my right hand, by that tuft, and I sloped the bloody longsword over my shoulder.
The place I had herded the leem to was exact. I looked up, and there, sitting regally in her royal box, directly over my head, Queen Fahia looked down, her golden hair and white face unmistakable in that colorful brilliance surrounding her.
Absolute silence.
“Here, queen!” I roared. “A token from a Krozair!”
And I hurled the bloody leem tail full in her face.
Chapter Thirteen
Defiant, theatrical, ridiculous, that gesture.
As soon as I hurled the bloody leem tail I leaped nimbly away and to the side. Eight stuxes and half a dozen crossbow bolts pierced into the sand where I had been standing. If this was the way I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, was to die, then I would make of it a great Jikai, and die well, by Zair!
I started for the tall wall festooned with silks and carpets and flowers supporting the royal box. I held that marvelous Krozair longsword before me, double-handed, as I had been trained and as I knew how, and as I went forward so I flicked and batted away flying stuxes and crossbow quarrels. The whole crowd remained absolutely silent. That silence hung eerily over the enormous amphitheater. Every eye, I knew, was fixed in a hypnotic gaze upon that macabre scene, a half-naked man clad in a brave red breechclout, advancing with a monstrous brand in his fists, forging through a flying hail of death. I picked the way I would climb up where no man believed a kaidur could climb. I seized on the flying stuxes and bolts and swatted them away with the wrist flickings that are the joy of a Krozair. Queen Fahia looked down and saw my face.
She flinched back.
I think she recognized that I would reach her.
She stood up.
Tall and regal, her pile of golden hair ablaze with gems, she lifted her white arms upward, and spoke harsh words that instantly halted the flickering streams of bolts and stuxes. She lowered her arms and placed her hands on her breast, crossed, and she looked into my eyes and I stopped and waited for her to speak.
“You say your name is Dray Prescot. You cry upon unfamiliar spirits. What token is it that smears blood upon a queen’s face.” And, indeed, her pale face showed daubs of leem blood, spots splattered across her gown and hair. She stared at me with wide and brilliant eyes, willing me, I knew, to submit to her beauty and authority.
I threw my head back, challenging. “What queen is it that sends a man to his death in the paws of a leem?”
“You merited that death.”
“You merit a death no different.”
Some hot-tempered young mercenary of her guard could not contain himself longer at this and he let loose. I flicked the bolt away and stared evilly at this Queen Fahia. But she was a queen, long used to absolute authority.
“You are very clever with that monstrous steel brand. What if I order two of my guardsmen to loose together?”
“Order them.”
I think she had now reached a conclusion I had already come to — and the crowd, in the way of crowds who sense these things, already guessed. She did not wish to have me killed until she had satisfied her feminine curiosity and slaked her pique. But the challenge I had issued was direct. She nodded curtly to her guard Chuktar. He was a Chulik. I had seen very few Chuliks so far in Havilfar. I guessed he was a most expensive paktun, hired to train and command her private bodyguard. Two crossbowmen lifted their weapons and, at the Chuktar’s barked command, let fly. At the moment of this word
Every throat in that vast amphitheater roared out — a great volume of raucous noise — for they were laughing!
Only Queen Fahia and those about her did not share the jest.
Fahia spoke again, swiftly, to the Chulik Chuktar. He nodded and sent a file of his men running down the concealed stairs that would enable them to pass onto the sand of the arena through doors solidly bolted only on the inside. I braced myself.
“You will not be harmed, Dray Prescot. I wish to talk with you, before I decide what is to become of you.”
I knew that part of it. I considered what was best to do.
