Lorelei of the Red Mist - 2

the outland rovers. And there was the man called Conan."
The harp crashed out like a sword-blade striking.
"Conan was a great fighter and a great lover. He was next under Faolan
of the Ships, and Beudag loved him, and they were plighted. Then Conan
was taken prisoner by the sea-folk during a skirmish, and Rann saw
him--and Conan saw Rann."
Hugh Starke had a fleeting memory of Rann's face smiling, and her low
voice saying, _It's a good body. I knew it, before_....
Beudag's eyes were two stones of blue vitriol under her narrow lids.
"Conan stayed a long time at Falga with Rann of the Red Sea. Then he
came back to Crom Dhu, and said that he had escaped, and had discovered
a way to take the longships into the harbor of Falga, at the back of
Rann's fleet, and from there it would be easy to take the city, and
Rann with it. And Conan and Beudag were married."
Starke's yellow hawk eyes slid over Beudag, sprawled like a young
lioness in power and beauty. A muscle began to twitch under his
cheekbone. Beudag flushed, a slow deep color. Her gaze did not waver.
"So the longships went out from Crom Dhu, across the Red Sea. And
Conan led them into a trap at Falga, and more than half of them were
sunk. Conan thought his ship was free, that he had Rann and all she'd
promised him, but Faolan saw what had happened and went after him. They
fought, and Conan laid his sword across Faolan's brow and blinded him;
but Conan lost the fight. Beudag brought them home.
"Conan was chained naked in the market place. The people were careful
not to kill him. From time to time other things were done to him. After
a while his mind broke, and Faolan had him chained here in the hall,
where he could hear him babble and play with his chain. It made the
darkness easier to bear.
"But since Falga, things have gone badly from Crom Dhu. Too many men
were lost, too many ships. Now Rann's people have us bottled up here.
They can't break in, we can't break out. And so we stay, until...." The
harp cried out a bitter question, and was still.
* * * * *
After a minute or two Starke said slowly, "Yeah, I get it. Stalemate
for both of you. And Rann figured if I could kill off the leaders,
your people might give up." He began to curse. "What a lousy, dirty,
sneaking trick! And who told her she could use me...." He paused.
After all, he'd be dead now. After all, a new body, and a cool million
credits. Ah, the hell with Rann. He hadn't asked her to do it. And
he was nobody's hired killer. Where did she get off, sneaking around
his mind, trying to make him do things he didn't even know about?
Especially to someone like Beudag.
Still, Rann herself was nobody's crud.
And just where was Hugh Starke supposed to cut in on this deal? Cut was
right. Probably with a longsword, right through the belly. Swell spot
he was in, and a good three strikes on him already.
He was beginning to wish he'd never seen the T-V Mines payroll ship,
because then he might never have seen the Mountains of White Cloud.
He said, because everybody seemed to be waiting for him to say
something, "Usually when there's a deadlock like this, somebody calls
in a third party. Isn't there somebody you can yell for?"
Faolan shook his rough red head. "The slave people might rise, but
they haven't arms and they're not used to fighting. They'd only get
massacred, and it wouldn't help us any."
"What about those other--uh--people that live in the sea? And just what
is that sea, anyhow? Some radiation from it wrecked my ship and got me
into this bloody mess."
Beudag said lazily, "I don't know what it is. The seas our forefathers
sailed on were water, but this is different. It will float a ship, if
you know how to build the hull--very thin, of a white metal we mine
from the foothills. But when you swim in it, it's like being in a cloud
of bubbles. It tingles, and the farther down you go in it the stranger
it gets, dark and full of fire. I stay down for hours sometimes,
hunting the beasts that live there."
Starke said, "For hours? You have diving suits, then."
"What are they?" Starke told her. She shook her head, laughing. "Why
weigh yourself down that way? There's no trouble to breathe in this
ocean."
"For cripesake," said Starke. "Well I'll be damned. Must be a heavy
gas, then, radioactive, surface tension under atmospheric pressure,
enough to float a light hull, and high oxygen content without any
dangerous mixture. Well, well. Okay, why doesn't somebody go down and
see if the sea-people will help? They don't like Rann's branch of the
family, you said."
"They don't like us, either," said Faolan. "We stay out of the southern
part of the sea. They wreck our ships, sometimes." His bitter mouth
twisted in a smile. "Did you want to go to them for help?"
Starke didn't quite like the way Faolan sounded. "It was just a
suggestion," he said.
Beudag rose, stretching, wincing as the stiffened wounds pulled her
flesh. "Come, on, Faolan. Let's sleep."
He rose and laid his hand on her shoulder. Romna's harpstrings breathed
a subtle little mockery of sound. The bard's eyes were veiled and
sleepy. Beudag did not look at Starke, called Conan.
Starke said, "What about me?"
"You stay chained," said Faolan. "There's plenty of time to think. As
long as we have food--and the sea feeds us."
He followed Beudag, through a curtained entrance to the left. Romna got
up, slowly, slinging the harp over one white shoulder. He stood looking
steadily into Starke's eyes in the dying light of the fires.
"I don't know," he murmured.
Starke waited, not speaking. His face was without expression.
"Conan we knew. Starke we don't know. Perhaps it would have been better
if Conan had come back." He ran his thumb absently over the hilt of the
knife in his girdle. "I don't know. Perhaps it would have been better
for all of us if I'd cut your throat before Beudag came in."
Starke's mouth twitched. It was not exactly a smile.
"You see," said the bard seriously, "to you, from Outside, none of this
is important, except as it touches you. But we live in this little
world. We die in it. To us, it's important."
The knife was in his hand now. It leaped up glittering into the dregs
of the firelight, and fell, and leaped again.
"You fight for yourself, Hugh Starke. Rann also fights through you. I
don't know."
Starke's gaze did not waver.
Romna shrugged and put away the knife. "It is written of the gods," he
said, sighing. "I hope they haven't done a bad job of the writing."
He went out. Starke began to shiver slightly. It was completely quiet
in the hall. He examined his collar, the rivets, every separate link of
the chain, the staple to which it was fixed. Then he sat down on the
fur rug provided for him in place of the straw. He put his face in his
hands and cursed, steadily, for several minutes, and then struck his
fists down hard on the floor. After that he lay down and was quiet. He
thought Rann would speak to him. She did not.
The silent black hours that walked across his heart were worse than any
he had spent in the Luna crypts.
* * * * *
She came soft-shod, bearing a candle. Beudag, the Dagger-in-the-Sheath.
Starke was not sleeping. He rose and stood waiting. She set the candle
on the table and came, not quite to him, and stopped. She wore a length
of thin white cloth twisted loosely at the waist and dropping to her
ankles. Her body rose out of it straight and lovely, touched mystically
with shadows in the little wavering light.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "What are you?"
"A man. Not Conan. Maybe not Hugh Starke any more. Just a man."
"I loved the man called Conan, until...." She caught her breath, and
moved closer. She put her hand on Starke's arm. The touch went through
him like white fire. The warm clean healthy fragrance of her tasted
sweet in his throat. Her eyes searched his.
"If Rann has such great powers, couldn't it be that Conan was forced to
do what he did? Couldn't it be that Rann took his mind and moulded it
her way, perhaps without his knowing it?"
"It could be."
"Conan was hot-tempered and quarrelsome, but he...."
Starke said slowly, "I don't think you could have loved him if he
hadn't been straight."
Her hand lay still on his forearm. She stood looking at him, and then
her hand began to tremble, and in a moment she was crying, making no
noise about it. Starke drew her gently to him. His eyes blazed yellowly
in the candlelight.
"Woman's tears," she said impatiently, after a bit. She tried to draw
away. "I've been fighting too long, and losing, and I'm tired."
He let her step back, not far. "Do all the women of Crom Dhu fight like
men?"
"If they want to. There have always been shield-maidens. And since
Falga, I would have had to fight anyway, to keep from thinking." She
touched the collar on Starke's neck. "And from seeing."
He thought of Conan in the market square, and Conan shaking his chain
and gibbering in Faolan's hall, and Beudag watching it. Starke's
fingers tightened. He slid his palms upward along the smooth muscles of
her arms, across the straight, broad planes of her shoulders, onto her
neck, the proud strength of it pulsing under his hands. Her hair fell
loose. He could feel the redness of it burning him.
She whispered, "You don't love me."
"No."
"You're an honest man, Hugh Starke."
"You want me to kiss you."
"Yes."
"You're an honest woman, Beudag."
Her lips were hungry, passionate, touched with the bitterness of tears.
After a while Starke blew out the candle....
"I could love you, Beudag."
"Not the way I mean."
"The way you mean. I've never said that to any woman before. But you're
not like any woman before. And--I'm a different man."
"Strange--so strange. Conan, and yet not Conan."
"I could love you, Beudag--if I lived."
Harpstrings gave a thrumming sigh in the darkness, the faintest whisper
of sound. Beudag started, sighed, and rose from the fur rug. In a
minute she had found flint and steel and got the candle lighted. Romna
the bard stood in the curtained doorway, watching them.
Presently he said, "You're going to let him go."
Beudag said, "Yes."
Romna nodded. He did not seem surprised. He walked across the dais,
laying his harp on the table, and went into another room. He came back
almost at once with a hacksaw.
"Bend your neck," he said to Starke.
The metal of the collar was soft. When it was cut through Starke got
his fingers under it and bent the ends outward, without trouble. His
old body could never have done that. His old body could never have done
a lot of things. He figured Rann hadn't cheated him. Not much.
He got up, looking at Beudag. Beudag's head was dropped forward, her
face veiled behind shining hair.
"There's only one possible way out of Crom Dhu," she said. There was no
emotion in her voice. "There's a passage leading down through the rock
to a secret harbor, just large enough to moor a skiff or two. Perhaps,
with the night and the fog, you can slip through Rann's blockade. Or
you can go aboard one of her ships, for Falga." She picked up the
candle. "I'll take you down."
"Wait," Starke said. "What about you?"
She glanced at him, surprised. "I'll stay, of course."
He looked into her eyes. "It's going to be hard to know each other that
way."
"You can't stay here, Hugh Starke. The people would tear you to pieces
the moment you went into the street. They may even storm the hall, to
take you. Look here." She set the candle down and led him to a narrow
window, drawing back the hide that covered it.
Starke saw narrow twisting streets dropping steeply toward the sullen
sea. The longships were broken and sunk in the harbor. Out beyond,
riding lights flickering in the red fog, were other ships. Rann's ships.
"Over there," said Beudag, "is the mainland. Crom Dhu is connected to
it by a tongue of rock. The sea-folk hold the land beyond it, but we
can hold the rock bridge as long as we live. We have enough water,
enough food from the sea. But there's no soil nor game on Crom Dhu.
We'll be naked after a while, without leather or flax, and we'll have
scurvy without grain and fruit. We're beaten, unless the gods send us
a miracle. And we're beaten because of what was done at Falga. You can
see how the people feel."
Starke looked at the dark streets and the silent houses leaning on each
other's shoulders, and the mocking lights out in the fog. "Yeah," he
said. "I can see."
"Besides, there's Faolan. I don't know whether he believes your story.
I don't know whether it would matter."
Starke nodded. "But you won't come with me?"
She turned away sharply and picked up the candle again. "Are you
coming, Romna?"
The bard nodded. He slung his harp over his shoulder. Beudag held back
the curtain of a small doorway far to the side. Starke went through it
and Romna followed, and Beudag went ahead with the candle. No one spoke.
* * * * *
They went along a narrow passage, past store rooms and armories. They
paused once while Starke chose a knife, and Romna whispered: "Wait!"
He listened intently. Starke and Beudag strained their ears along with
him. There was no sound in the sleeping dun. Romna shrugged. "I thought
I heard sandals scraping stone," he said. They went on.
The passage lay behind a wooden door. It led downward steeply through
the rock, a single narrow way without side galleries or branches. In
some places there were winding steps. It ended, finally, in a flat
ledge low to the surface of the cove, which was a small cavern closed
in with the black rock. Beudag set the candle down.
There were two little skiffs built of some light metal moored to rings
in the ledge. Two long sweeps leaned against the cave wall. They were
of a different metal, oddly vaned. Beudag laid one across the thwarts
of the nearest boat. Then she turned to Starke. Romna hung back in the
shadows by the tunnel mouth.
Beudag said quietly, "Goodbye, man without a name."
"It has to be goodbye."
"I'm leader now, in Faolan's place. Besides, these are my people."
Her fingers tightened on his wrists. "If you could...." Her eyes held
a brief blaze of hope. Then she dropped her head and said, "I keep
forgetting you're not one of us. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Beudag."
Starke put his arms around her. He found her mouth, almost cruelly. Her
arms were tight about him, her eyes half closed and dreaming. Starke's
hands slip upward, toward her throat, and locked on it.
She bent back, her body like a steel bow. Her eyes got fire in them,
looking into Starke's but only for a moment. His fingers pressed
expertly on the nerve centers. Beudag's head fell forward limply, and
then Romna was on Starke's back and his knife was pricking Starke's
throat.
Starke caught his wrist and turned the blade away. Blood ran onto his
chest, but the cut was not into the artery. He threw himself backward
onto the stone. Romna couldn't get clear in time. The breath went out
of him in a rushing gasp. He didn't let go of the knife. Starke rolled
over. The little man didn't have a chance with him. He was tough and
quick, but Starke's sheer size smothered him. Starke could remember
when Romna would not have seemed small to him. He hit the bard's jaw
with his fist. Romna's head cracked hard against the stone. He let go
of the knife. He seemed to be through fighting. Starke got up. He was
sweating, breathing heavily, not because of his exertion. His mouth was
glistening and eager, like a dog's. His muscles twitched, his belly was
hot and knotted with excitement. His yellow eyes had a strange look.
He went back to Beudag.
She lay on the black rock, on her back. Candlelight ran pale gold
across her brown skin, skirting the sharp strong hollows between her
breasts and under the arching rim of her rib-case. Starke knelt, across
her body, his weight pressed down against her harsh breathing. He
stared at her. Sweat stood out on his face. He took her throat between
his hands again.
He watched the blood grow dark in her checks. He watched the veins coil
on her forehead. He watched the redness blacken in her lips. She fought
a little, very vaguely, like someone moving in a dream. Starke breathed
hoarsely, animal-like, through an open mouth.
Then, gradually his body became rigid. His hands froze, not releasing
pressure, but not adding any. His yellow eyes widened. It was as though
he were trying to see Beudag's face and it was hidden in dense clouds.
Back of him, back in the tunnel, was the soft, faint whisper of sandals
on uneven rock. Sandals, walking slowly. Starke did not hear. Beudag's
face glimmered deep in a heavy mist below him, a blasphemy of a face,
distorted, blackened.
Starke's hands began to open.
They opened slowly. Muscles stood like coiled ropes in his arms and
shoulders, as though he moved them against heavy weights. His lips
peeled back from his teeth. He bent his neck, and sweat dropped from
his face and glittered on Beudag's breast.
Starke was now barely touching Beudag's neck. She began to breathe
again, painfully.
Starke began to laugh. It was not nice laughter. "Rann," he whispered.
"Rann, you she-devil." He half fell away from Beudag and stood up,
holding himself against the wall. He was shaking violently. "I wouldn't
use your hate for killing, so you tried to use my passion." He cursed
her in a flat sibilant whisper. He had never in his profane life really
cursed anyone before.
He heard an echo of laughter dancing in his brain.
Starke turned. Faolan of the Ships stood in the tunnel mouth. His head
was bent, listening, his blind dark eyes fixed on Starke as though he
saw him.
* * * * *
Faolan said softly "I hear you, Starke. I hear the other breathing, but
they don't speak."
"They're all right. I didn't mean to do...."
Faolan smiled. He stepped out on the narrow ledge. He knew where he was
going, and his smile was not pleasant.
"I heard your steps in the passage beyond my room. I knew Beudag was
leading you, and where, and why. I would have been here sooner, but
it's a slow way in the dark."
The candle lay in his path. He felt the heat of it close to his leg,
and stopped and felt for it, and ground it out. It was dark, then. Very
dark, except for a faint smudgy glow from the scrap of ocean that lay
along the cave floor.
"It doesn't matter," Faolan said, "as long as I came in time."
Starke shifted his weight warily. "Faolan...."
"I wanted you alone. On this night of all nights I wanted you alone.
Beudag fights in my place now, Conan. My manhood needs proving."
Starke strained his eyes in the gloom, measuring the ledge, measuring
the place where the skiff was moored. He didn't want to fight Faolan.
In Faolan's place he would have felt the same. Starke understood
perfectly. He didn't hate Faolan, he didn't want to kill him, and he
was afraid of Rann's power over him when his emotions got control.
You couldn't keep a determined man from killing you and still be
uninvolved emotionally. Starke would be damned if he'd kill anyone to
suit Rann.
He moved, silently, trying to slip past Faolan on the outside and get
into the skiff. Faolan gave no sign of hearing him. Starke did not
breathe. His sandals came down lighter than snowflakes. Faolan did not
swerve. He would pass Starke with a foot to spare. They came abreast.
Faolan's hand shot out and caught in Starke's long black hair. The
blind man laughed softly and closed in.
Starke swung one from the floor. Do it the quickest way and get clear.
But Faolan was fast. He came in so swiftly that Starke's fist jarred
harmlessly along his ribs. He was bigger than Starke, and heavier, and
the darkness didn't bother him.
Starke bared his teeth. Do it quick, brother, and clear out! Or that
green-eyed she-cat.... Faolan's brute bulk weighed him down. Faolan's
arm crushed his neck. Faolan's fist was knocking his guts loose. Starke
got moving.
He'd fought in a lot of places. He'd learned from stokers and tramps,
Martian Low-Canalers, red-eyed Nahali in the running gutters of Lhi.
He didn't use his knife. He used his knees and feet and elbows and his
hands, fist and flat. It was a good fight. Faolan was a good fighter,
but Starke knew more tricks.
One more, Starke thought. One more and he's out. He drew back for it,
and his heel struck Romna, lying on the rock. He staggered, and Faolan
caught him with a clean swinging blow. Starke fell backward against the
cave wall. His head cracked the rock. Light flooded crimson across his
brain and then paled and grew cooler, a wash of clear silver-green like
water. He sank under it....
He was tired, desperately tired. His head ached. He wanted to rest, but
he could feel that he was sitting up, doing something that had to be
done. He opened his eyes.
He sat in the stern of a skiff. The long sweep was laid into its
crutch, held like a tiller bar against his body. The blade of the sweep
trailed astern in the red sea, and where the metal touched there was a
spurt of silver fire and a swirling of brilliant motes. The skiff moved
rapidly through the sullen fog, through a mist of blood in the hot
Venusian night.
Beudag crouched in the bow, facing Starke. She was bound securely with
strips of the white cloth she had worn. Bruises showed dark on her
throat. She was watching Starke with the intent, unwinking, perfectly
expressionless gaze of a tigress.
Starke looked away, down at himself. There was blood on his kilt, a
brown smear of it across his chest. It was not his blood. He drew the
knife slowly out of its sheath. The blade was dull and crusted, still a
little wet.
Starke looked at Beudag. His lips were stiff, swollen. He moistened
them and said hoarsely, "What happened?"
She shook her head, slowly, not speaking. Her eyes did not waver.
A black, cold rage took hold of Starke and shook him. Rann! He rose and
went forward, letting the sweep go where it would. He began to untie
Beudag's wrists.
A shape swam toward them out of the red mist. A longship with two heavy
sweeps bursting fire astern and a slender figurehead shaped like a
woman. A woman with hair and eyes of aquamarine. It came alongside the
skiff.
A rope ladder snaked down. Men lined the low rail. Slender men with
skin that glistened white like powdered snow, and hair the color of
distant shallows.
One of them said, "Come aboard, Hugh Starke."
Starke went back to the sweep. It bit into the sea, sending the skiff
in a swift arc away from Rann's ship.
Grapnels flew, hooking the skiff at thwart and gunwale. Bows appeared
in the hands of the men, wicked curving things with barbed metal shafts
on the string. The man said again, politely, "Come aboard."
Hugh Starke finished untying Beudag. He didn't speak. There seemed to
be nothing to say. He stood back while she climbed the ladder and then
followed. The skiff was cast loose. The longship veered away, gathering
speed.
Starke said, "Where are we going?"
The man smiled. "To Falga."
Starke nodded. He went below with Beudag into a cabin with soft couches
covered with spider-silk and panels of dark wood beautifully painted,
dim fantastic scenes from the past of Rann's people. They sat opposite
each other. They still did not speak.
* * * * *
They raised Falga in the opal dawn--a citadel of basalt cliffs rising
sheer from the burning sea, with a long arm holding a harbor full of
ships. There were green fields inland, and beyond, cloaked in the
eternal mists of Venus, the Mountains of White Clouds lifted spaceward.
Starke wished that he had never seen the Mountains of White Cloud.
Then, looking at his hands, lean and strong on his long thighs, he
wasn't so sure. He thought of Rann waiting for him. Anger, excitement,
a confused violence of emotion set him pacing nervously.
Beudag sat quietly, withdrawn, waiting.
The longship threaded the crowded moorings and slid into place
alongside a stone quay. Men rushed to make fast. They were human
men, as Starke judged humans, like Beudag and himself. They had the
shimmering silver hair and fair skin of the plateau peoples, the
fine-cut faces and straight bodies. They wore leather collars with
metal tags and they went naked like beasts, and they were gaunt and
bowed with labor. Here and there a man with pale blue-green hair and
resplendent harness stood godlike above the swarming masses.
Starke and Beudag went ashore. They might have been prisoners or
honored guests, surrounded by their escort from the ship. Streets ran
back from the harbor, twisting and climbing crazily up the cliffs.
Houses climbed on each others backs. It had begun to rain, the heavy
steaming downpour of Venus, and the moist heat brought out the choking
stench of people, too many people.
They climbed, ankle deep in water sweeping down the streets that were
half stairway. Thin naked children peered out of the houses, out of
narrow alleys. Twice they passed through market squares where women
with the blank faces of defeat drew back from stalls of coarse food to
let the party through.
There was something wrong. After a while Starke realized it was the
silence. In all that horde of humanity no one laughed, or sang, or
shouted. Even the children never spoke above a whisper. Starke began to
feel a little sick. Their eyes had a look in them....
He glanced at Beudag, and away again.
The waterfront streets ended in a sheer basalt face honeycombed with
galleries. Starke's party entered them, still climbing. They passed
level after level of huge caverns, open to the sea. There was the
same crowding, the same stench, the same silence. Eyes glinted in the
half-light, bare feet moved furtively on stone. Somewhere a baby cried
thinly, and was hushed at once.
They came out on the cliff top, into the clean high air. There was a
city here. Broad streets, lined with trees, low rambling villas of the
black rock set in walled gardens, drowned in brilliant vines and giant
ferns and flowers. Naked men and women worked in the gardens, or hauled
carts of rubbish through the alleys, or hurried on errands, slipping
furtively across the main streets where they intersected the mews.
The party turned away from the sea, heading toward an ebon palace that
sat like a crown above the city. The steaming rain beat on Starke's
bare body, and up here you could get the smell of the rain, even
through the heavy perfume of the flowers. You could smell Venus in the
rain--musky and primitive and savagely alive, a fecund giantess with
passion flowers in her outstretched hands. Starke set his feet down
like a panther and his eyes burned a smoky amber.
They entered the palace of Rann....
She received them in the same apartment where Starke had come to after
the crash. Through a broad archway he could see the high bed where his
old body had lain before the life went out of it. The red sea steamed
under the rain outside, the rusty fog coiling languidly through the
open arches of the gallery. Rann watched them lazily from a raised
couch set massively into the wall. Her long sparkling legs sprawled
arrogantly across the black spider-silk draperies. This time her tabard
was a pale yellow. Her eyes were still the color of shoal-water, still
amused, still secret, still dangerous.
Starke said, "So you made me do it after all."
"And you're angry." She laughed, her teeth showing white and pointed as
bone needles. Her gaze held Starke's. There was nothing casual about
it. Starke's hawk eyes turned molten yellow, like hot gold, and did not
waver.