Flame Winds Page 7

  It was a long course they traced through the stench of the dungeons. It seemed longer to Wan Tengri. He walked with a feral lightness of stride, and there was an eager forward thrust to his shoulders. Bourtai’s words had faded almost from his mind. He knew only that battle lay ahead and that, if he survived long enough, he would have his chance at these cowled and scowling priests who had inflicted torture on Kassar.

  Presently, the stones of the wall ahead squealed on a pivot, and the hot brilliance of sunlight slashed into Wan Tengri’s eyes. It brought pain like the touch of white-hot iron, but it was welcome. His body seemed to suck up the warmth of the sun; the hot odor of spilled blood on sunbaked sand was clean after the fetor of the cell. Just beyond the creaking stone portal, Wan Tengri paused while his narrowed eyes adjusted themselves to the glare, while the heat baked the damp ache from his bones. Dimly now, he could make out the multicolored crowds that rose, tier on tier, from the circus arena. There were seven gateways besides the one from which he had come, and their barriers were tinted with the heraldry of the Seven Wizards. Guards and priests in partisan colors were ranked before them.

  A roar from many throats assaulted his ears, and Wan Tengri’s fiercely bearded lips moved in a slight smile. “Ave et vale,” he muttered. Yes, he had heard that cry before in the arena at Alexandria! His eyes were questing more rapidly, seeking some trace of Kassar. When they found him, a savage shout rang like brass in his throat. In the midst of the arena, rose an altar block, and it was across this Kassar lay, but his arms hung downward in the laxness of death, and his twisted face, inverted over the altar’s edge, told terribly how he had died.

  Fiercely, great arms reaching out hungrily, Wan Tengri whirled toward the priests—and they were gone. The great stone door had swung shut. It was not until that moment that he realized the chains were no longer about his wrists and ankles. They lay in a glittering, brassy heap upon the ground at his feet. He snatched them up, a metal flail in his fist, swung around to face the arena. He had no thought of death, or of anything save Kassar—and that, in his third battle, he would face the priests of the Seven Wizards who had decreed this thing!

  Slowly, on tense legs, Wan Tengri stalked forward across the black, burning sand. His red head blazed in the sunlight, and there was a stiff, challenging roll to his shoulders. In his right hand, he swung the brazen chains. The burning of the sand was good to his naked soles. His nostrils flared to suck in the hot battle smells he knew so well. He had no doubts. He would live to avenge the honor of Kassar!

  Still no enemy rushed to face him. The battle of the beasts, that was first. Well, he was ready. Below the altar where Kassar’s corpse lay, Wan Tengri paused to stare up at the dead face of his friend. He could see how horribly he had died, his belly ripped open while he lived and his entrails spilled out for an augury. What bloody prophecy had they read in the vitals of this man who was his brother? Wan Tengri’s bearded lips parted in a savage smile. They should have read their own doom! If his valor had needed a spur, he had it now.

  Wan Tengri whirled to face the white blur of faces that lifted tier on tier from the high barrier of the arena, and his voice boomed out, sullen as the sea in storm.

  “Hear, you men and women of Turgohl,” he cried. “For each drop of blood spilled from this, my brother’s veins, five lives shall answer! And if still his blood cries for vengeance, five hundred lives shall not make up the sum. Prester John has spoken!”

  A breathless silence hung over the banked crowds. They might have been dead men watching. Then a trumpet blasted and a murmur as of rising wind swept them and, behind him, Wan Tengri heard the snarl of a starving beast. He sprang a full three yards forward, whirled to land lightly, facing the sound. In the base of the altar, a door had swung open and, in that square of darkness, there crouched his gaudily striped opponent for the battle of the beasts, a tiger.

  For an instant, the beast hunkered close to the sand, blinking its great gleaming eyes against the brilliant light. Then it sighted the man, and its saber-fanged jaws parted in a roar that dwarfed the multiple voice of the mob. Wan Tengri, poised lightly on the sand, stood motionless to wait the charge. The brazen chain that was his only weapon swung lightly against the taut muscles of his thigh. Before this, he had faced the charge of the tiger of the plains, when the month-long Mongol hunts reached the gurtai and the circle of the drive was closed for the slaughter. But always then he had carried a lance in his hand and his keen sword hung ready at his side. Yet there was keenness rather than fear in his alert gray eyes, and the smile still curved his solid lips.

  Three slow, crouching steps, the tiger had taken forward, belly close to the ground. Now the haunches were setting their muscles for the charge. The great silken tail was stiff as brass, save that its black tip twitched just a little. And still Wan Tengri did not move. He could feel the breathless waiting of the crowd. The little breeze that had brushed the arena was quiet in sympathy—and Wan Tengri waited.

  The mask of the tiger contracted. Its roar burst out, deep and hoarse, a terrifying weapon in itself. Wan Tengri’s throat opened in an answering shout of defiance and, as the tiger released the taut springs of its thighs, launching into the air, Wan Tengri charged! His forward leap disconcerted the beast in the moment of its attack. Prey did not behave thus. Prey fled from beneath outreaching talons. The powerful forelegs of the tiger were spread wide, the six-inch claws reaching for a grip that would rend a man’s head from his body, yet its charge was half broken. It twisted in mid-leap as Wan Tengri feinted toward his right. It was no more than a sway of his swiftly lunging body, yet it served its purpose, and when he flung himself violently to the left, crouching low beneath the outward sweep of those deadly talons, the tiger could not reach him. How closely Wan Tengri had calculated even he did not guess until he felt the brush of the beast’s silky foreleg across his chest as he pivoted. Wan Tengri’s right arm was winging through the air. The brass chain caught the glint of the sun in a golden streak of fire and then the manacles struck home in the tiger’s face!

  For a breath of time, Wan Tengri was motionless, then he allowed the impetus of his giant’s blow to carry him forward, across the tiger’s flank. The beast roared out a gust of pain and fury and, in the instant it landed, whirled and pounced on the spot where a moment before the man had stood—and Wan Tengri was not there. Once more, just beyond the reach of the beast’s claws, he swung his brassy flail. He had a breathless glimpse of the snarling mask as he struck the second time, then he was running across the arena with great leaping strides. He heard the howl of the tiger and the vicious snapping of its teeth; caught the violence of its bounding feet as it struck the earth.

  There was no time to look behind him. Five long strides Wan Tengri took, then pivoted on a single thrust of his stiffened left leg and doubled aside from his trail. The tiger blundered on, roaring, tearing up the black sand in clouds, a tawny fury, a maddened, slaughterous beast—but almost helpless. For Wan Tengri’s flail had struck true and both those amber eyes were blinded. Its own blood ran down into its nostrils to cloud the natively weak sense of smell as still it sought its prey. The tiger’s roars shook the air, but the sound was beaten down, submerged in the frantic applause that burst from ten thousand human throats. It struck the tiger with terror. Blindly, it cringed to the sands, snarling in its throat but cowed by this greater ferocity of the human beast.

  Wan Tengri checked for a moment, poised on his toes, then flung himself forward in a furious sprint. There was grimness on his face. That beast might be cowed, but there was still death for a dozen men in those saber claws and awful teeth. Yet the tiger must be finished. Without doubt, there would be more beasts loosed upon him. This terror could not be free to rend when he needed all his wits and strength for another battle. Straight toward the tiger he ran, and still the brazen links swung from his fist. He leaped high into the air—and landed astride the tiger’s back!

  Behind the powerful forelegs, his knees clamped home, locked benea
th the beast’s belly. In the same instant, he had snapped the brazen chain beneath the furry throat. His fists locked on the links and, with all the power of his mighty shoulders, he strained upward on the chain, twisting it, knotting it behind the wicked head. In the first instant of his leap, the tiger sprang high into the air, all four claws striking out at once. It fell on its side, rolled frantically—and made no sound.

  Wan Tengri’s breath was driven out of him by the savage violence of that leap, but his legs clung with bitter strength to the hold that made the difference between life and death. Both hands were locked in the chain and, while man and beast rolled and tumbled on the ground, he twisted and twisted again the garrote knot he had tied, strangling the tiger. Sunlight and blackness wheeled in his brain. Muscles like brass quivered and jerked beneath his legs, and he was pounded on earth again, and yet again, until there was no vision in his eyes, no breath in his body—but the tiger made no sound.

  He could feel the frantic pumping of those mighty lungs. The hammer of the tiger’s laboring heart thudded against his left thigh. That pounding became swift as the drum of horses’ racing hoofs. It became a war club that almost battered Wan Tengri’s desperate grip loose. Then, it began to slow, and the struggles of the tiger slowed, too. A final, frantic spring that tossed Wan Tengri a dozen feet, and the tiger leaped convulsively and was still.

  Wan Tengri staggered to his feet. The arena was wheeling about him and his breath surged in his chest. Roar upon roar of applause beat upon his eardrums. He sought for and found the motionless body of the tiger and moved toward it on feet that seemed strangely numb beneath him, but already his keen brain was working. In his struggles with the tiger, he had approached within a half dozen paces of the scarlet gate. While he had fought, the scarlet-clad guards and the priests had ducked behind the brass grating that closed the exit, but now they were filing back. Beyond them, Bourtai had said, a horse would be waiting. But Wan Tengri’s resolution was already formed. Escape waited there, just beyond these cowardly fools in red. Presently, he might claim it, but first he had a score to pay. His eyes swung toward the altar where dead Kassar lay. The door in its base was open, and this time it was two black-maned lions that paused, bewildered on the threshold! Bitter laughter stirred in Wan Tengri’s dry throat. No wonder that, in seventeen years, no man had survived the three battles!

  With the swiftness of an arrow flicking through a beam of light, he had made his plan. He stooped over the carcass of the tiger, and the bronzed flesh of his shoulders corded and rippled as his mighty muscles came into play. An instant he tensed there, then the tiger was lifted high over his head. In the same instant, he took a quick running step and heaved it—straight into the faces of the red guards!

  The same leaping stride that had hurled the beast sent Wan Tengri racing toward them. There were muffled shouts and a hurried attempt to dodge. One man futilely snatched out his sword. Then the great tawny hulk of the tiger struck among them. Two men went down screaming. The man who had drawn his sword tried to leap under the carcass, tripped and sprawled full length on the sands. Even as he hit, Wan Tengri was on him. His knees gouged into the taut, arched back. His two hands locked beneath the chin. An explosive release of the power in his body, and the guard’s thin scream quavered out, strangled and cut short when his neck snapped.

  With scarcely a pause, Wan Tengri snatched the man’s heavy, curved sword from the sand and was lunging across the arena. Behind him, he heard the fierce shouts of the scattered guard and a sharp command as the captain closed their ranks. Wan Tengri laughed as he ran.

  “You will get your chance presently, you who call yourselves men! After the Battle of the Beasts—”

  The lions had sighted him and were crouching out from the darkness of the doorway. Their sides were gaunt with starvation, and there was white slaver on their fangs. They swung their heads heavily from side to side and a coughing roar began in the chest of the larger beast. Wan Tengri did not check his race across the arena. He answered that bestial challenge with a shout that rang against the crowded ranks of the amphitheater.

  For an instant, the two beasts crouched, undecided in the face of this man who charged with a scream as savage as their own. The smaller lion cringed back against the altar base, but, after that momentary hesitation, the second, larger beast roared again—and charged to the attack. Straight at each other, across an ever-narrowing stretch of the black sand, man and beast raced. In silence now, a silence that gripped the waiting crowd, that stopped breath in their throats for a timeless pause. Then, with a final, vaunting roar, the lion launched itself into the air. Its claws caught gleams of light, reaching for the taut, rendable skin of the man.

  Using the speed of his charge, Wan Tengri swerved aside as he had leaped from the tiger’s path, and this time, when his arm swung, it carried keen, murderous steel. It was not so fine as his own lost scimitar, but with the skill of a warrior’s arm, he drew it home as the curving edge bit into flesh and bone. The lion dropped limply to earth, and did not stir. Its almost-severed head sagged, curiously limp. Its severed spinal cord brought death without a quiver!

  With that stroke, Wan Tengri spun on his heel. He made a complete turn and, as the maneuver finished, he was charging down upon the second lion! For a moment only, the beast stood against the screaming challenge that Wan Tengri sounded, then it turned tail and slunk back into the darkness from which it had come. Laughter mingled with the shout of approbation that roared from the mob and, from the top-most rank, a blast of trumpets sent their brazen notes across the tempest of sound. The door in the base of the altar swung shut and Wan Tengri stood, an erect statue of bronze, gleaming and metallic with sweat, against the white alabaster. Greedily, he sucked air into the barrel of his chest. His arms swung ready at his sides and, once, he lifted the sword point to weigh its balance in his hand. There was a frown furrowing his forehead. It would serve.

  His brain was empty of sensation. There was no weariness in him. He was warming to the slaughter. A second blast of the trumpets beat upon his ears, and his fiery head pivoted, his red beard thrust out fiercely. That Battle of the Beasts was ended; the Battle of the Men about to begin. A contemptuous smile curved the straight, stiff line of his mouth. Marching toward him were seven fools in motley, seven guards who wore each the brilliant livery of his master. But the one who wore scarlet was more eager. There was a thrust to his shoulders, and a stiff determination to the way he carried his head. Wan Tengri nodded. He dragged the flat of the blade along his thigh, cleansing it of beast blood. There would be blood enough presently, and it was slippery stuff when it trickled down to wet a man’s palm on the hilt.

  On came the seven, sun glinting on cuirass and helmet, on the embossed shields they slung on their arms. Wan Tengri’s eyes were narrow with calculation. One advantage he had, and one only. A naked man could move more swiftly than a soldier cumbered with armor. He would deal with them—if there were no enchantments. He stood, solidly braced on his feet, to await their coming. As if he intended to stand as firm as that alabaster altar. He could see the grim set of those clean-shaven faces. Phagh! They looked like priests. Wan Tengri spat contemptuously on the sand. As if he had given a command, the seven swords flashed out of their scabbards and the men formed a semicircle to hem him against the altar base. Slowly then, cautiously then, they paced forward, shields ready on their left arms, sword points reaching—

  Wan Tengri spat again. “Red,” he said deliberately, “must be the color of cowards here!”

  With a furious shout, the scarlet guard hurled himself forward. His curved sword glittered aloft in a high arc. Wan Tengri moved like the lithe leap of a tiger. He made no effort to ward the blow. As he darted forward, he thrust out his sword like a spear, point toward that eager, shouting throat. Then a cry rose futilely to the lips of Prester John. Enchantment, by all the curses of Ahriman! His sword, the valiant sword that had sliced off a lion’s head at a blow—had changed to a serpent in his fist!

  V
I

  PRESTER JOHN could feel the cold, writhing muscles of the serpent as it twisted and coiled in an effort to sink fangs into his hand. There was a triumphant shout in the throat of the red guard, and his glittering blade started its downward swing at the fiery unprotected head. The other six men were pivoting, forming two ranks of three each to crush him between the vicious tongues of their swords, beneath the weight of the shields. Death was very close; death by enchantment.

  Prester John had fought coolly and with calculation up to this moment, but now he felt surging through his veins the joyous battle rage that had earned him his terrible name. He shouted, a hoarse and inarticulate challenge. His right arm circled over his head and struck like the lightnings of that same hurricane whose name he bore. Straightened by the fury of that swing, the snake’s head snapped against the face of the red guard! There was a thin, rising shriek. The man’s sword faltered in its lethal sweep and, bounding on unshod feet, Prester John ducked under it and was behind his enemy.

  He did not check there to finish the man from behind, but with two great leaps was beyond the swift closing of those twin ranks of death. The black guard tried to block his escape with a long leap and a flickering thrust of his sword point, but his armor weighed him down. His feet lifted heavily from the ground, and Prester John flashed past, checked and flung the serpent with its shattered head squarely at the scowling darkness of the black guard’s face. The man’s shield came up to ward it, and Prester John heard a clash as of metal striking tempered metal.

  There was no time to think of the meaning of that sound, but the memory lingered in Prester John’s mind as he hurled his bronze-gleaming body into action. While the black guard was blinded by the swift lifting of that shield, Wan Tengri leaped in past the groping of the outthrust sword point, and his two hands locked on the man’s wrist. He used the impetus of his violent charge and the towering strength of his brass-thewed body—and he used the wrestling skill he had learned among the Mongols. He wrenched the black guard’s sword arm over his shoulder and with a smooth forward sweep of his trunk, lifted the man clear of the ground and hurled him squarely on the sword and shield of the next guard!