«Is there room to fight in the Ulungas' circle?»

Nayung nodded.

«All right, then. I'll only plan on getting through the Ulungas' guards. Then I'll do my fighting in the Ulungas' circle. You get in close enough to the Ulungas' guards so that you can be sure the king will hear you when you shout. But don't get too close. The Ulungas' guards will probably know what the Ulungas have said to you. One more thing-will the Royal Guards join in the fight?»

«Not unless you look dangerous to the king.»

«You should be able to convince King Afuno that I'm not a danger to him, only to the enemies of the Zungans. If not-well, we must leave the Sky Father with something to do, and not plan everything ourselves.»

«Blade, I think sometimes that you are mad, to talk as you do of the Sky Father and the Ulungas. Or else you are a spirit of the Sky Father given the form of a man and sent down to help the Zungans. I wish I knew which.»

Blade slapped Nayung on the shoulder. «Neither, my friend. Only a warrior who has traveled farther and seen more than most Zungans. But this is no time for talking. Let's go.»

Blade's feet kept itching to break into a run as they headed down the lane toward the assembly field. But he knew nothing would be more certain to attract attention. Besides, the crowd of people heading for the field would have made running almost impossible in any case. Warriors, women and children, even household slaves-everybody was on the move.

Many hundreds of people had already crowded toward the circle by the time Blade and Nayung reached it. But the two men were able to slip to within a few yards of the Ulungas' guards. There were about a hundred of these, stationed in pairs at six-foot intervals around the outside of their circle. Of each pair, one stood facing outward toward the crowd, one inward toward the Ulungas' circle.

The sun was now well up in the sky and beating savagely down on the open field. Blade was glad he was wearing his turban, in spite of the curious and sometimes hostile looks it drew. But the turban could not keep out the smell that was rising from hundreds of unwashed bodies as the sun worked on them. For the moment Blade's empty stomach was holding its peace, but he wondered if that would last as the crowd grew.

As more and more people came, a tremendous din of voices added itself to the smells. Women's and children's voices almost entirely, though. The warriors stood in the blazing sun like so many mahogany statues, the only words coming from their sections of the crowd were the barks of orders.

Suddenly, the iron gongs sounded again. This time in a definite four-beat pattern. As the heavy metallic sounds rolled out across the field, the warriors took up the rhythm, stamping their feet, shaking their spears in the air, and shouting, «Hi! Ho! Ya! Ha!» in time to the gongs. The noise swelled to a deafening roar that tore at Blade's ears and made him seriously consider putting his hands over them. Beside him, Nayung was chanting and stamping with the best of them, and Blade finally decided he should join in.

He had just done so when a new noise cut through the uproar-the deep bray of a horn. In a second the gongs stopped and the chanting died away. In the next second someone in the section of warriors to Blade's right shouted an order. Every one of the hundreds of warriors in the section did a perfect simultaneous about-face. Then another order sounded, and they stepped forward, again moving as one man. In perfect order and formation the whole section marched out of the crowd into the open field, dressing its lines and keeping step as it did so with no apparent effort.

Now a solid wall of warriors three ranks deep came marching across the field toward the crowd, led by half a dozen men blowing the long horns Blade had heard. Behind the warriors appeared six large, carved wooden chairs, each apparently floating along in midair several feet above the ground. As the whole group approached, Blade saw that each chair was mounted on a platform borne by four of the Zungan cattle. In five of the chairs sat young women-one in fact was only a girl-but in the lead chair sat a man. Blade hardly needed Nayung's whispers to know this was King Afuno. Nor did he wait to go down on his knees when everyone around him started doing so, Fortunately there seemed to be no taboo about looking at the king. Blade examined the man carefully as his chair passed down the corridor left by the withdrawal of the section of warriors.

He might have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, but obviously he was still in magnificent physical condition. He was nearly as tall as Blade's six-feet plus, and every bit as muscular. He wore a loincloth of solid blue, worked with bright red figures, and held a spear in each hand. One spear had a red shaft, one a black, and both had gilded heads. That was all Blade could see before the king passed into the royal circle and for the moment out of Blade's field of vision.

Behind the king came the five chairs with the princesses. As the first one moved past, Nayung nudged Blade and whispered, «Aumara.» But Blade would have known the princess without Nayung's prompting. She sat straight and proud in the chair, head slightly raised by the massive golden collar around her neck. That collar and a red loincloth were her only garments. Even seen in profile, the straight-back, the high, full breasts, and the flawlessly curved legs were unmistakable-and exciting. As the other four princesses were carried past, Blade could not deny that Aumara was first in beauty as well as in place.

The last of the princesses vanished into the circle. Three barked orders sounded in the silence. There was a stamping of feet and a clattering of spears as the Royal Guards took up their positions around the royal family, then silence again. The king had arrived.

Again Nayung nudged Blade, and whispered in his ear.

«Are you ready, Blade?»

«Ready? Now? Why?»

«You said we wanted to get much attention. We will get the most attention now, before the king speaks. And we should move before the warriors come back into that space,» he said, pointing off to the right.

Blade nodded. The Zungan was right on all points. Was there any reason besides his own nerves to delay? He could think of none. He took one, two, three slow steps to the right, until there was only one row of people separating him from the open space. Several of the people turned to look at him and Nayung, with open hostility on their faces. Then in a single motion he pushed through the row and dashed down the open lane toward the Ulungas' guards.

CHAPTER NINE

Blade was gambling that surprise and speed would bring him in among the guards before they could react. So he made no sound, and rushed straight down the open lane as fast as his feet could carry him across the hard ground. His spear rode on one shoulder, out of the way for now but firmly gripped in his right hand and ready to be swung down and into action in a second.

The Ulungas' guards did not wait long to react to this huge pale-skinned warrior rushing at them. But even that little delay was too long. Their spears were only just coming up into fighting position when Blade reached them.

His own spear whistled down off his shoulder and then whirled up again, gripped in both hands. It came up under the shaft of the first guard's spear with a sharp bang. The other's spear flew straight up into the air. Blade slammed the spear butt down onto the man's shoulder before he could do anything else to respond.

Blade was trying to pull his blows and avoid killing any of his opponents, which put him at a disadvantage. A pulled punch or blow had to go in more slowly, possibly too slowly, but he had to take the risk. A wholesale slaughter of the Ulungas' guards would make it impossible for King Afuno to give him a hearing. The defeat of a dozen or more without killing, on the other hand…