Instead, she was Desgo's ally. Or rather, she thought herself his ally. With her guiding him, Desgo would tonight destroy Draad's secret weapons, slay Prince Blade, and begin his vengeance against Princess Neena. Then in a few days he would order the waiting army of Trawn forward. It would pour into Draad, killing every warrior who stood against it, but as few others as possible.
Lord Desgo had no tenderness for the women and children of Draad. He had only a coldly calculating desire to make them grateful to him and to Queen Sanaya for sparing them. He would be ruling them with her beside him, and soon. After such a victory as he would win, King Furzun could hardly make anyone else viceroy over the newly conquered lands.
And after that? The visions of what might be were even more enticing. With Queen Sanaya to advise him, he could certainly devise ways of winning and keeping the loyalty of the people of Draad. The emerald mines would give him wealth, wealth to reward any warrior of Draad or Trawn who would follow his standard, wealth also to reward those nobles and merchants of Trawnom-Driba who had already promised to be his allies.
Over the years, he would forge his warriors and allies into an army, an army standing ready like a weapon for his hand to wield. In the end, he would wield it against King Furzun. Furzun would die in his own prison chambers, and King Desgo would rule Trawn and Draad and all the lands and forests of Gleor!
With the favor of the gods, he would do it. He would have prayed for that favor, except that this was no time for prayer and Desgo was not a praying man in any case. Loud prayers would earn less favor from the gods than shrewd blows with a sword.
He took Sanaya from the hands of the two guards and lifted her onto the neck of the meytan. Then he scrambled back up into the saddle behind her. The other warriors of the raiding party did the same. All of them carried swords, bows, and throwing spears; five of them led stolofs. One of the stolofs chittered briefly, and was promptly silenced by a spear butt rapped across its head. Desgo raised his hand, then pointed forward into the darkness and dug in his spurs.
The gods would be with them tonight. Desgo was certain of that. The warriors and the stolofs and the riding meytans were all picked and trained, the best available. The workshop was guarded weakly, if at all. The mountain clans might patrol the forests all around, to be sure. They could not see in the dark like a meytan, nor stand against stolofs.
Guided by Queen Sanaya and mounted as they were, the raiders would be on their enemy before any alarm could be given. Then it would be fire, death, bonds of captivity for Neena, and flight into the darkness faster than any of Draad could follow!
Princess Neena had no more than an hour of freedom left. Prince Blade had no more than an hour of life.
Chapter 26
Blade awoke in the darkness with Neena's warm body curled against him. That wasn't what had awakened him, though. Something else had penetrated into his sleep and brought him out of it. He sat up in bed and listened. The darkness around him seemed utterly silent. He'd heard something-he was sure of it. He had the instincts of a hunting animal for the dangerous or the unusual, instincts that seldom let him down.
Then a sound came out of the darkness, faint and far away, muffled by distance and by the forest. It was also a sound that shouldn't have been heard anywhere for many miles around. It was unmistakably the chittering of a stolof.
Blade rolled out of bed and began pulling on his clothes and weapons. The noises he made awakened Neena. She sat up in bed, pulling the blankets around her against the chill of the night air on her bare skin, and stared sleepily at Blade. She did not have his knack of being fully alert the moment she awoke. He was about to shake her when the chittering came out of the night again. It was just as unmistakable this time, and it was closer.
Neena leaped out of bed as if she'd received an electric shock and began dressing. Blade finished belting on his sword and hurried into the room where the three assistants slept. He woke them quickly and silently.
«Raiders from Trawn approach. Arm yourselves, but stay here and guard our comrade.» He pointed to the door of the room where Kulo tossed in his pain-ridden sleep. «Don't move out unless I call, or you have to. Whatever you do, don't let yourselves be captured alive.»
The three young men stared at him, then scrambled out of their beds. They might not understand exactly what he'd said, but they understood his tone of voice. Certainly they understood what being captured by raiders from Trawn might mean.
Blade was sure they would do their best. He turned and dashed back to the bedroom, where Neena was now fully armed and dressed except for her tunic. Blade passed on without stopping, heading for the main door. He wanted to get out into the courtyard, where he would have fighting room and a clear view of what was going on. He also wanted to call out and start the alarm on its way to the main camp of the stolof killers two miles away.
As Blade put his hand on the bar of the door, a wild scream came out of the darkness. «Raiders, raiders! They come with sto-«The words ended in another sort of scream, one with agony as well as terror in it. A moment of silence, then a chorus of chittering that sounded like a whole herd of stolofs, an unmistakably human war cry, stolof-whistles, and the pad-pad-pad of dozens of soft hooves on the earth.
Neena stared at Blade. «They must have come in on meytans, to come in so fast like this. The gods only know what they may be bringing with them!»
«The gods won't get the word to us in time,» snapped Blade. He kicked the door open so hard that it nearly flew off its hinges. Then he snatched up a loaded sprayer with one hand and a sack of throwing pots with the other. Behind him Neena grabbed up her two spears and her threebo, tucked them under one arm, then picked up a sprayer with her free hand. Both of them dashed through the open door and out into the courtyard.
As they reached the open, another sentry died outside the walls with a horrible gurgling scream. Again the chorus of chitterings sounded, as well as heavy grunting that must have been the meytans. Something heavy crashed against the outside of the main gate. Blade saw the logs shiver and pieces of bark fall to the ground.
He also heard other shouts-«Raiders, raiders, raiders of Trawn. Come, come, come!» The clansmen and warriors on alert were doing their job, shouting the warning from one to another down the hill to the camp. When word reached the camp, King Embor would be on his way with enough trained stolof killers to swamp the raiders. How long would that take?
Again the gate shivered. This time one of the crosspieces split apart with a sharp crack. The gate was designed to keep out thieves and the wild animals of the mountain forests, not half-ton stolofs, charging meytans, or battering rams wielded by warriors of Trawn.
Crash! A third blow, and this time one of the logs of the gate twisted out of position and sagged inward. Through the gap Blade could see a confused, churning mass of nightmare shapes-stolofs, the great floppy-eared heads of the meytans, the helmets of warriors. The foul smell of stolofs reached Blade on the night breeze, so strong that he gasped and coughed to clear it out of his throat and nostrils.
He heard the chug of an arrow sinking into flesh, and one of the warrior's heads twisted and jerked and sagged out of sight. A moment later a stolof chittered hysterically, closer to the forest. Another hideous scream came, along with the crunching of mandibles as they closed on a human body.
Blade swore. Mountain clansmen were dying out there, perhaps needlessly, and if so it was his fault. He had deliberately not armed the clansmen on guard with sprayers, so they would not be tempted to attack raiders instead of just giving warning. He should have remembered how the mountain men hated those of Trawn, and how none of them would hold back from a battle, regardless of what weapons they held. He had made a mistake.