tensed bodies, their capes flying, and wondering.
Well, there are none so blind as will not see. But, by the Great and Glorious Djan-kadjiryon, how could I be expected to see then?
I shook up the reins and cantered after them, the sectrix’s six legs going in that damned ungainly lumber. The hunting horns had shrilled and died; the cries of the beaters dwindled and faded to silence. The sectrix lumbered along. I heard a scream. I rammed in my heels and we picked up speed and came galloping out onto a scene that in all its ugly drama made me furious and, had I known it then, would have made me go cold with horror.
Gafard had shot cleanly and had dismounted to dispatch his kill, a small tawny-colored plains ordel. The hunting lairgodont had caught him totally unprepared. The sectrix had wrenched free of its reins and bolted. The woman’s sectrix, equally terrified, bolted also and bore her off. After that first scream, which I suspected had been ripped from her when Gafard and she had first seen the lairgodont, she remained silent, wrestling to keep her beast under control.
Gafard stood there, his longsword out, his feet spread apart. Dust puffed as the lairgodont drew itself up ready to charge.
Not so much large in their strength, the lairgodonts, as vicious and quick and damnably difficult to kill. Scaled and clawed, sinuous as to neck and back, with those skull-crushing talons and those serrated, steely fangs in the gap-jawed mouth, the lairgodont presents a terrifying spectacle of feral horror. Scarlet gaped the fanged mouth of the lairgodont. Pricked ears lay back on its scaled head. Hissing, it advanced, one taloned claw after another. That long forked tail rippled high. When that tail straightened and became a rigid bar. .
I was minded to let Gafard, the renegade, go to his fate unmourned.
I knew I could not make the sectrix advance any farther. It pawed the ground, trembling, arching its neck and shrilling in fear. Hastily, I dismounted and hitched the reins to a projecting rock. If I was slain the sectrix would provide a fine second course.
Yes, Gafard, arch-traitor, a man who had betrayed the Red of Zair, yes, why not? Why not let him be pitched to the Ice Floes of Sicce under the fangs and talons of this vicious monster?
The bow in my hands spat four times as fast as I could draw string and let fly. The four arrows struck. Two bounced away, broken. The third penetrated one staring eye. The fourth took the lairgodont in the belly, for it leaped with the shock, not charging. I lugged out my longsword and ran in, yelling.
'Hai! Lairgodont! Your dinner is this way!'
It whipped about so that Gafard went into its blind side. Then its forked tail lashed sideways and knocked Gafard head over heels. There would be no support from him, then. . What an onker I was! Charging into this mess when I should have wheeled my mount away and let nature take its course.
'The ordel is not yours this day, my friend,' I said, and I leaped.
Chapter Seven
I leaped.
The longsword is a cruel weapon.
Even this longsword, this Ghittawrer blade Gafard had allowed me to keep without comment, could do its work with cunning and smashing power in the hands of a Krozair Brother. And, as I leaped, I even shouted: 'Hai! Hai!'
The sword licked across the beast’s near foreleg and almost severed it, crunching into bone. I leaped nimbly away. The tail hissed above my head. Again I leaped and as the vicious head struck at me so I came down and went on, rolling, to come up with the sword blurring for the other eye. The eye vanished in a gout of blood and slime. A blow like — well, a blow like a ripping slash from lairgodonts talon -
raked down my side. I thanked Opaz I wore mail this day, even for hunting. I was knocked over and flying, landing in a spout of dust. I heard Gafard’s yell, feeble and coming from a long way off.
Somehow I jerked the sword up and thrust and the lairgodont screeched and hissed and drew back. Blood flecked its snout above the fanged mouth. I got to my feet, drew in a breath, cocked the blade. Then, again, I leaped.
A clawed leg lashed blindly at the sound. The beast’s other leg, half severed, collapsed. It toppled forward. I was able to brace myself, feel the ground under my feet, my legs hard, and swing the blade with full force. Full force from all that length of steel. .
The lairgodont hissed once. Its head hung askew. Blood spouted from the hideous gash in its sinuous neck. It tried. Yes, it tried. Incredibly vicious and tough, the lairgodont. It tried to scrabble up to get at me and so, once again, I slashed. It fell. It rolled over and blood pooled away. Its body fell flaccidly. For the space of a few heartbeats I saw its belly heaving; then it slowed and stopped. Gafard was there. He looked ghastly.
'Hai, Jikai!' he said, and then: 'My heart! My love!' He glared distraught after the bolting sectrix bearing the girl away. He staggered and gripped his side. 'The pearl of my days! She is doomed!' I looked. I saw. This lairgodont had a mate. The mate, hissing and screeching, pursued the girl in swift, agile bounds.
There was time for no words, no comment, nothing besides leaping astride my sectrix, freeing the reins, a violent dig with the heels, and a jolting, bouncing, breakneck race to save the girl from certain death. As I went hurtling past, spouting dust, I heard Gafard yelling, but his words were lost. He called the woman of the palankeen, the woman of the tent, by the tenderest names. But not her name. The endearments might mean anything. But I knew he felt all he could ever feel for a woman and so, too, knew that if I failed I had best never return to the patronage of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the King’s Striker.
Head down I galloped, the neck of the sectrix outstretched. It would run for me, lairgodont or no damned lairgodont. I used the flat of my sword, all bloody as it was, on the back of the animal and it responded gallantly. We flew over the ground trailing a long plume of dust. Hard rattled the hooves of the sectrix, a drumming staccato that echoed the hoofbeats of the girl’s mount. The lairgodont kept up a hissing shrill that would have unnerved, as it was designed to do, the prey on which it lived. This Zair-forsaken risslaca was the emblem of the Ghittawrer Brotherhood founded by Genod. I cursed him, too, as I cursed everything else as I thundered along.
The thing would have to be done nip and tuck.
I gained on the risslaca as it gained on the girl. Again and again I hit the poor sectrix — and I felt sorry for the beast then — and we roared on. A sharp cry from the girl, the only one she had uttered since the first, heralded the plunging collapse of the sectrix. It went over in a sprawl of six legs and a wild confusion, dust spouting, the girl flying off to land with a crunch against rocks. I cursed for the last time, stood up in the stirrups, and swung the longsword high over my head.
We galloped madly up to the running risslaca, who was a mere half-dozen strides from the crumpled form of the girl. The long bloodily gleaming blade high above my head blazed as the head of the crazed sectrix reached the tail of the lairgodont, reached past its flank, panted and gasped alongside the very fanged head of the monster itself.
Side by side we raced those last few strides, and then the longsword fell with all the weight I could put into it.
It struck shrewdly, just abaft the head on that sinuous neck.
The shrill the lairgodont let loose rattled the stones of the hills. I swung back with a wrench, prepared to strike again, and saw there would be no need. The monster swerved in its dead run, collapsing, toppling, its head flopping, and skidded in a long swathe of dust on its belly before it swiveled about, its legs spread, to come to a stop, tail limp, stone dead.
I hauled up the sectrix and jumped down, keeping the reins in my left hand. I rammed the bloodied longsword into the ground and knelt by the girl.
The risslaca had sprayed blood as it skidded past. She was drenched. Her green veil was torn away. So I looked down on her as she lay there.
I saw the full firm beauty of her form in the green riding gown, splashed with blood. I saw the beauty of her face, superb beauty, a perfection of features such as is seldom seen — but I must not maunder. She opened her
