Flight to Opar

  According to Phebha, the wall here was very thin. It was in fact a stone plate, a shell. It would operate like a drawbridge, its upper part describing an arc inward toward the floor. Originally it was operable only from the interior of the apartment. Madymeth had not wanted anyone coming in from the shaft, of course. It was accessible from the roof, however, which was why there were always twelve guards at the top of the shaft.

  Madymeth had not reckoned, of course, with the silent and enduring cunning of the high priestesses, who knew there might be a showdown some day between Resu and Kho. The priestesses had cut and drilled and scraped passageways through the solid granite, taking perhaps fifty years or more, and at last attained their objective.

  The final stage had involved drilling a hole in the stone near the plate, giving access to the equipment which lowered the wall section. Now Hadon removed from his belt the long instrument of iron curiously fashioned centuries before. It had been waiting for its single occasion of service all this time. It would not be used again.

  He inserted the swelling end of the iron device into the hole and then pushed in two-thirds of the stem. The capped end slid smoothly over the nine-sided end of a crank. Then, making sure that it was on securely, he twisted the T-shaped handle. Nine times he turned it completely, grimacing at the squeals issuing from the hole.

  Something bellowed from above. He was so startled that he almost lost his hold on the rung. He jerked his head back, looking upward. The faint light from the clouds was gone now, replaced by bright torchlight. And then a section of the light fell off and was hurtling down toward them.

  Fortunately the flaming torch only came close. If it had been on target, he would have had to let loose and drop, which he certainly could not do, or else let it strike him.

  Klyhy cried out in horrified protest. Wemqardo swore and said, "I knew it! I knew it!" The others voiced their terror in their own fashions, but Hadon could not distinguish what was said. Nor was he concerned about that. How had they been found? Surely those on guard had not seen the torchlights? The shaft was too far up, and there would be too much glare from the great fires and reflections from the clouds.

  Perhaps somebody long ago had detected the additions of the Queen's men to the wall-opening mechanism and, instead of removing them, had attached an alarm to them. Thus, when Hadon had turned the crank, he had triggered a notice to the King's men that someone was out in the shaft.

  Whatever had caused the alerting of the sentinels, it was too late to get into the apartment. In fact, there would be no getting into it in any event. The wall section was not responding, was not beginning to move down inward as it was supposed to do.

  In fact, and here he began to feel more than just a little alarm, the top of the wall was coming outward!

  Hadon just had time to note that his idea was correct: the mechanism had been found long ago. The wall was fixed now so that it would open out to the shaft. And anyone clinging to the ladder would be hanging upside down from it unless he could get to the rungs immediately below.

  Hadon yelled at Klyhy to get down, but she was already on her way, dropping after the others, who fortunately had not frozen with fear. His hands were on the rung just below the bottom of the wall section when it fell outward, its upper part banging to a stop against the far side of the shaft.

  At least the section would act as a shield, Hadon thought frenziedly. It would prevent the guards at the top of the shaft and in the apartment from dropping things on them. The damn fools in the apartment wouldn't be able to pursue them. Didn't they realize their own trap would stop them from getting out into the shaft?

  Yes, they had considered that. They weren't such damn fools. The wall section continued to lower itself with a screech, flattening straight toward Hadon along the length of the ladder.

  27.

  Since the wall would not miss him, it forced him to take the only action possible. He released his grip on the rung and jumped back, falling down the shaft, holding himself upright as long as he could.

  Above him, men shrieked as the wall section struck them.

  Everything outside him was a blur and he was frozen internally, not even wondering what had happened to Klyhy, nor why she was silent.

  Then he was past the area of light of the torch on the lowest rung. He was in darkness and falling, falling, though still upright. Perhaps the water at the bottom of the shaft would be deep enough so that he might survive the impact if he entered it feet first.

  Then he was out of the shaft—a very brief sensation of suddenly expanding space around him, a coolness—and he hit the river.

  The force of the blow was enough to stun him a little, though he had entered it cleanly, presenting a minimum of surface. He went down, down, slowing. His toes were suddenly in cold ooze. His knees had bent and for a few seconds he was crouching on the bottom like the godling of the river, that often described but seldom seen monster. He too squats at the bottom and looks upward, waiting for victims, usually a young girl, squats huge and misshapen, breathing water slowly, waiting, waiting, patient as only immortals can be patient.

  With such thoughts, Hadon rose to the surface. The current had carried him away from the shaft, or at least he supposed it had. He could see nothing and he could feel only the cold water and a far more numbing terror. He was not thinking of the godling of the river now, but of the little blind fish with the big heads and teeth. He expected to feel something rip out a piece of flesh at any moment, then a hundred jaws fastening onto him, then—his outflung hand struck something—flesh—and he almost cried out.

  Though he had pushed himself away from it, he swam back and ran his hands over it. It was the corpse of a man. The head was split open. A coil of rope was still over its shoulders. One of his men.

  There was little sound except for the lap of water against the walls and some gurglings here and there. Hadon swam toward his right and within a minute felt cold stone. He dog-paddled then, feeling the stone now and then, hoping that he would bump into one of the projections leading to a passage. So far, there was nothing except rather smooth stone. He did not really have any strong expectation of finding a projection: the number of passages must be very limited in number and restricted to a certain area. For all he knew, he was past that area. After a while he would be past the city above, borne only Kho and the deities and demons of the dark underground knew where. He would become too tired to swim and would sink. Or the ceiling would get lower and lower until it dived beneath the surface, taking him with it Or the blind little fish…

  The scream was so unexpected, so close, so shrill with utter terror, that it almost stopped his heart.

  He knew, however, that it had to be Klyhy.

  "Help! Help! Oh, Kho, help me! They're eating me alive!"

  Hadon treaded water, turning, straining his ears to determine her direction.

  He shouted, "Klyhy! It's Hadon! Where are you!"

  The screams and his shout bounced off the walls of the tunnel and reverberated. He could not tell where she was, though he thought she was to his left.

  "Oh, Kho!" Klyhy screamed. "Help me! I'm being torn apart!"

  Hadon swam toward the voice. She stopped screaming for a moment. He heard a thrashing and swam toward that sure now that he knew approximately where she was. And then something touched his right leg. A second later a number of somethings were biting into his calf, fastening down on his toes, on his Achilles tendon. At first there was no pain, only numbness. Then fire struck in a dozen places.

  His left hand struck soft flesh. Klyhy screamed in his ear. His right hand struck the wall, slid along it, stopped against a shelf of stone perhaps five inches thick. His fingers locked around it; the fingers of his other hand seized Klyhy's shoulder. In her agony she tore away from his grip, but his fingers clenched around her long hair.

  Yelling at her to quit fighting him, he pulled her close to him. She struck at his face; fingernails tore at his eyes and nose. And now his left leg was being attacked. Pa
in shot through it. And then more pain, this time in his buttocks, then a tearing and plucking at his loincloth.

  It was this last attack that gave him superhuman strength. He pulled himself up on the apron with one hand, afraid to let go of Klyhy with the other. While the upper part of his body was on the apron, his legs and groin area still undergoing attack, he pulled Klyhy on to the little tongue of stone. He struck her in the shoulder with his fist, felt to her face and struck her jaw. She collapsed, screaming no more.

  He pulled himself completely up on the stone, gibbering in a frenzy of loathing and fear, and hacked the fish off his legs with the edges of his palms. The teeth came loose reluctantly, taking more flesh with them. He bent down then and dragged Klyhy further along the apron and repeated the dislodging process. Some of the writhing greasy things were knocked off easily; others clung, forcing him to grab them by their heads and rip them off, causing Klyhy to scream. And though he could not see the blood, he could feel it.

  He turned then and groped around the apron, hoping to find a boat on. it. There was none, so he felt around the wall, traced the thin line of partition with a finger and pushed on one side of the section. It swung slowly, groaning, requiring a great effort from him. Apparently this section had not been used for a long, long time.

  The air inside was musty and heavy and surprisingly dry, but cooler and wetter air from the river quickly replaced it. He felt along the wall to his left, raising and lowering his hand. When he found a large recess, he stopped. His fingers detected several torches—rather dry—some flints, irons and a box. The latter contained some tinder, also surprisingly dry. Within a few minutes he had the torch lit; he had never been so glad to see light in his life.

  His legs and buttocks were bleeding, though fortunately the wounds were not deep. They were painful enough, however.

  He went out to the apron and stood aghast for a moment. Klyhy's body was a bloody ruin. Chunks of flesh had been torn out everywhere, and it was a wonder that she could live after having lost so much blood.

  He lifted her and carried her into the tunnel. When he put her down, he saw that she had lost several toes and a nipple, and the bones of a little finger were bare.

  She moaned and looked at him with glazed eyes. "I hurt, Hadon!"

  "I know, Klyhy," he said. "But you are not dead yet. You will live."

  He removed her loincloth and his, wrung them out and tied them around her worst wounds. But the blood continued to run.

  "Oh, great Kho, I hurt!" she said, moaning. Then, looking down at herself, she asked, "Why should I live? Like this? Who would ever want to lie with me again?"

  "There's more to living than lying with lovers," he said. "Besides, the wounds will heal."

  "You're a liar," she said in an even weaker voice. "Hadon…"

  He bent down so he could place an ear close to her lips.

  "Take care of Kohr. Tell him…"

  "Yes?"

  "I hurt, only…"

  "What is it?" he said.

  "I don't feel pain now. It's getting dark…"

  She mumbled something, and with a sigh she had gone.

  Hadon muttered the ritual words and made the necessary signs; he promised Kho and Sisisken to sacrifice a fine bull and a fine cock to them for the sake of Klyhy. He also promised her ghost that she would be honored as a heroine of Opar. He would erect a pointed monolith over her body after it had been suitably buried, and he would see to it that one of the gold tablets in the Temple of Kho bore her name and her deeds. Her tablet would be next to his.

  At that moment he became aware of a very faint light coming from down the river. He rose painfully, noting almost unconsciously that his wounds had mostly stopped bleeding now; only a few still trickled. He stuck the torch in the recess, so its light would not shine directly out through the mouth of the tunnel. Then he pushed the wall section until only an inch-wide gap remained between the wall and the side of the section. Putting his eye to this, he looked up the river. A longboat had just come into view.

  It held about thirty men. Four torches, two at the prow, two at the stern, lit up the bronze helmets and cuirasses of the paddlers and the two officers. There were no spears in sight, but these, he supposed, were placed on the deck.

  He shut the section and removed the torch. He took Klyhy's dagger and stuck it through his belt. He was entirely on his own now, intent only on escape. His mission had failed, and the King's men were out looking for him. Not exactly for him, since they would not know the identity of the invaders—nor would they know if any had survived the fall—but search parties were out, looking. The men in the longboat would see the blood on the apron and would stop to investigate. They would push on the wall section and in a short time would be on his trail.

  For all he knew, other men would be coming along the tunnels ahead of him. They would have the advantage, since presumably some of them would know these passages or at least have diagrams of them. He didn't have the slightest idea where any of them led.

  Hadon walked for several hundred feet until he came to what seemed to be the end of the passage. After passing the torch slowly along the wall to check for warning signs, he pushed the section open. It gave to a round room which was the bottom of a vertical shaft. A series of bronze rungs set into the stone enabled him to climb for about fifty feet upward. The shaft ended in the center of a horizontal tunnel. Hadon hesitated, not knowing which direction to take. Suddenly he heard a noise behind him. He looked down the shaft and saw men below. Ten were coming up the rungs, while others were crowding into the round room. Those on the rungs were making slow progress, since the lead man was holding a torch in one hand. He was forced to hook his right wrist over a rung instead of seizing it firmly.

  Hadon thought it best to slow them down as much as possible. He went down the tunnel to his right—the clean or good-luck side—until he came to a bend. He placed the torch on its side and returned, guided by the light of the torches in the shaft. He lay down by the lip of the shaft and waited. Presently the light grew very bright and he could smell a strong resinous odor. The face of the lead man appeared.

  Hadon ripped the torch from the man's hand. He flung it behind him and seized the man's throat. His dagger's point went through the man's eye, into his brain. The man ceased his cries.

  Hadon dropped the dagger and grabbed the man's neck with his other hand. He pulled the body over the lip and into the tunnel. Below, men shouted. They did not know what was happening, but the cries of the lead man had alarmed them. Hadon removed the sword-belt of the corpse and strapped it around his waist. Then he took the helmet and the cuirass off, and leaned over the lip with the helmet in one hand and the heavy cuirass in the other. The man now on top looked up and cried out. His face was only five feet below Hadon, who hurled the bronze cuirass into it. The man gave a choked cry and fell back, missing those on the rungs. But his body struck the crowd at the bottom, hurling most of them to the floor.

  Hadon threw the helmet into the face of the next man, also causing him to fall and injure or kill more.

  Hadon lifted the corpse above his head with both hands, the effort causing some of his wounds to start bleeding again. He hurled the body down. It struck the first man and dislodged him, both falling on the man just below; the three fell, two screaming. Four more men were knocked down, all crashing into the heap of dead and disabled on the bottom.

  That still left two men on the rungs. Besides, despite the groaning tangle on the bottom, more soldiers were coming out from the tunnel into the shaft. Hadon counted eight. So he had immobilized all but ten of the thirty. Not bad for one man, he thought.

  The survivors were either fools or very brave or both. They were coming up the rungs after him, ignoring the calls for help from the bloody mess on the bottom.

  Hadon decided the climbers were stupid. They were in a helpless position if he stayed where he was, and he would be crazy to leave now. Once they were on the level, he would be outnumbered.

  Hadon
waited by the lip. After a while he heard the heavy breathing of the first man. He sat up then and when the bronze helmet slowly appeared—the man was cautious—he brought the sword's edge down on top of the helmet. Not, however, hard enough to split it or knock the soldier unconscious. The man cried out but clung to the rungs. Hadon stood up and leaned down, unloosening the chin- strap and removing the man's helmet. The soldier stared at him with crossed eyes. Hadon grabbed the long hair and yanked the fellow on up. As he came over the edge, Hadon brought his knee up under the man's chin. The fellow sprawled out senseless.

  Leaning over the edge, Hadon hurled the helmet into the upturned face of the next man, who was climbing up swiftly and desperately. The force of the blow broke the man's nose, but he did not let go of the rungs.

  Hadon removed the sword and dagger from the man on the floor beside him. He rolled the groaning man over the edge. There were two cries, one from the falling man, who had just regained sufficient consciousness to realize what was happening; the other was from the man beneath the body. His grip broken, he fell with the other on top of him, and three others were scraped off.

  Which left three.

  These men became very wise very suddenly and retreated. Hadon did not want anybody able to follow him, however. He hurled a sword down and it went point first, striking the lead man on top of his helmet. He fell with a scream into the man below him, and both smashed into the heap at the bottom of the shaft. The sole survivor went down swiftly, too swiftly in his panic. He lost his hold and fell twenty-five feet on his side. Hadon thought he had been killed but, no, he was up on his feet and climbing over the tangled bodies.

  Hadon threw a dagger at him. It missed, sinking instead into the neck of a man lying facedown on top of several bodies. The soldier got through the doorway and, though Hadon waited for five minutes, he did not show his face again.

  Hadon speculated about going back down the ladder and killing the man. But that would accomplish nothing. The man was trapped there, since he could not handle the heavy longboat by himself. He would not dare to come back up the shaft again for a long, long time. He would want to make sure that Hadon had left the area.