He didn't quite turn fast enough. The last man's club slammed down on his left shoulder hard enough to break his left hand's grip on the ax. It swung down and twisted out of his arms, to clatter on the wooden stairs.
The man promptly made the mistake of thinking Blade had become easy meat. He swung the club in a spectacular but badly aimed blow that left him wide open. Blade's right fist drove into the man's stomach, then his left foot struck squarely in the groin. The man quivered all over like a bowl of jelly and dropped in his tracks, then rolled down the stairs to join his friends.
Blade reached over to prod his left shoulder and winced at the pain. He was going to be one-armed and one-handed for the rest of this fight. He hoped nobody would notice it.
Once more, it seemed that Blade's deadly fighting had stunned the mob. Watching six men going down this fast was something they had never seen before, or perhaps even imagined. Blade suspected that it would take a while before somebody screwed up the courage to risk being part of the next act.
But somebody would, that he was sure. And all it would need was one lucky blow. Then he would be down and the way opened into Council House.
He listened for sounds from inside the House. The angry voices had died away. Apparently whoever was inside had given up objecting to the Conciliators. But it was hard to imagine anybody in there who would be willing and able to protect the Conciliators from three thousand furious people. If those people got past him-
Then he heard the sound of the door behind him opening, with only the faintest whisper as it swung on well-oiled hinges. A ripple of surprised movement ran through the crowd, and Blade heard gasps of surprise and amazement. He risked turning his head enough to look behind him.
A man as undersized as Gershon was oversized stood there. Only five feet tall at most, he still radiated an almost majestic dignity and authority. His childlike limbs were draped in shimmering green and gold, and on his large bald head he wore a broad-brimmed gold hat with a green band.
«This is an abomination,» he said, in a severe voice that somehow carried over the entire crowd. Silence fell in the square. «I do not know what these people in the Council House have done. For now I do not care. If they have committed any crimes, they will be punished.»
His voice rose. «But you will not attack the Council House itself and slay them in its chambers and halls as though they were Fishmen. You will not.
«But you would have, without this man.» He pointed at Blade. «This man I am told is new in the Sea Cities of Talgar, an escaped slave from Nurn. But he is also a mighty warrior, trusted as such by one of our most honored Brothers, Captain Foyn. And he has proved his war skills and his trust again today. Though new in Talgar, he yet seems to understand what is fitting under its laws better than you, citizens of the Sea Cities.
«But for this Blade you would have violated the House of the Council of Autocrats. But for this Blade you would have slain men and women in its halls and drenched its floors with blood. You would have sown internal violence through the Sea Cities, at a moment when all our strength must be united to hurl against the Fishmen. You would have committed an abomination and been damned forever for it in the eyes of the Holy Silver Goddess, Mother-Patron of the Sea Cities of Talgar. On your knees, people of the Sea Cities! Do honor to the Council of Autocrats, and also do honor to this man Blade who has saved you from the price of your own anger and folly!»
There was a long, tense moment of silence. Blade was not sure if the Autocrat's words hadn't been too harsh, his manner too overbearing. He might have calmed the mob. Or he might have stung them into still greater fury. In that case, Blade knew that he and the Autocrat had very little time left, and the Conciliators inside the Council House not much more.
Then the mob's mood changed, as suddenly as an earthquake. Some sailors down in front began shouting, «Long Live the Council! Long live Krodrus!» The little Autocrat smiled and bowed as he heard those cheers. His smile widened further as he heard other people begin to shout, «Long live Blade! Long live a hero of Talgar! He saved our honor! He saved our peace! Long live Blade!»
Blade looked down the stairs and saw that one of the loudest shouters of «Long live Blade!» was Gershon, now back on his feet. Blade laughed, releasing some of his own tension. Gershon was one of those powerful men who needs a still more powerful master. He will follow no man weaker than himself. But if he finds one stronger, then he will follow that man to the death.
Now the mob was beginning to break up. The people at the rear were drifting away into the streets around the square. But others were flowing up the stairs, waving and shouting. Blade saw the faces of some of the Counciliators peering nervously out of the Council House windows-
Then the crowd was at the top of the stairs. They lifted Blade off his feet and set him down on Gershon's shoulders. Balanced precariously on the huge sailor, Blade was carried around the square amid continuous deafening cheering from people who had only minutes before wanted his blood.
He felt relieved as he rode. But he couldn't help wondering whether being a hero of Talgar was really such a good thing to be.
Chapter SEVEN
Blade shortly found out that it wasn't.
Being a hero meant a number of things. It meant that he was promptly relieved of his post as armsmaster to Captain Foyn. He was given the best and most intensive training in Talgaran fighting methods, especially of underwater fighting.
It meant that he was assigned to the Conciliar Guard, the force of picked and trusted soldiers who guarded the Council of Autocrats at home and represented it in war. Its nominal chief was the Autocrat for War, a sour-faced man named Stipors, who was a fanatical advocate of war to the death against the Fishmen. Blade didn't much care for being under the eyes of such a man.
Meanwhile, plans for the great attack were going forward at full speed. Talgar was going to hurl against the Fishmen a good ten thousand men, half of them equipped with breathing gear, riding in nearly two hundred ships and boats. They would in fact be hurling against the Fishmen nearly every ship and man not needed for the defense of Talgar. If the whole force was lost-
But no one considered that possibility, at least no one who dared to open his mouth on the subject. The ships were re-rigged and repainted and stocked with arms and weapons. The crews and the raiding parties were picked, then drilled and trained within an inch of their lives. Weapons were piled up in the arsenals-tridents, bows, spears, swords, incendiary bombs, waterborne poisons, water-ignited chemicals. And chest after chest of breathing gear.
The breathing gear fascinated Blade more than anything else. It was not the comparatively clumsy gear of Home Dimension. Rather, it was a simple mask, with a pad impregnated with some chemical, that fitted over a wearer's mouth and nose. Breathing through that pad, a man could breathe in «the Life Principle» (oxygen, no doubt) from the water as easily as he could breathe it in from the air.
Even to the tough-minded Talgarans, this seemed almost like magic. Blade constantly heard whispers that the learned men of the Empire of Nurn had access to black and otherwise-forgotten arts that no honest man would use.
Blade didn't doubt that. It sounded as though the Empire had kept some remnants of the superior science of a vanished civilization in this dimension. Part of that science was obviously the secret of easily extracting oxygen from seawater. Home Dimension scientists knew this was theoretically possible, but Blade had heard of nothing practical done along those lines. Certainly nothing as breathtakingly efficient as the breathing masks from Nurn. One pad would keep a man deep in the sea breathing easily for as much as twelve hours. When the first pad ran out, one simply surfaced or found an anchored bubble and changed pads. The pads were expensive, but the attacking force would have at least fifty of them stocked for each of its five thousand underwater fighting men.