The Delian Cycle

Chapter five

Chapter five

Delia of the Blue MountainsA thousand years!

I stammered in confusion. We were back in Maspero’s house. I could not believe it. I only knew I felt as fit and healthy as I ever had. But a thousand years of life!

“We are not immortals, Dray; but we have work to do and that work will not allow us to die off after three score years and ten.”

The wonder of that stayed with me for a long time; and then I pushed it away. Life was still lived from one day to the next.

Maspero apologized for the Savant’s atavistic attitudes when we went hunting the graint. From time to time huge wild animals would wander through the few passes into the inner world of the crater and because they would damage the crops and kill the people, they must be caught and returned. But the Savanti had once been warlike and fierce like any Kregan of the outer world. They joyed in the dangers of physical combat; but they would not allow of any danger to their quarry. The dangers where they existed were to the Savanti.

So, like a Kregan war party we went forth onto the plains upriver to hunt the graint. I should mention that Kregen, the planet, Kregish, the language, and Kregan, for the inhabitants of Kregen, is pronounced as though there were an acute accent on the letter “e” in the French fashion. I wore hunting leathers. Soft leather cinctured my waist and was drawn up between my legs. On my left arm a stout leather arm guard might prevent slavering jaws from ripping that arm off. My hair was bound back by a leather fillet. There were no feathers in that band, although Maspero, had he wished, could have filled his fillet with feathers — what the Indians called calling coup — and he joyed and delighted in the hunt, and at the same time woefully deplored his savage and primitive behavior.

I carried the sword Maspero had given me. This sword was not designed to kill. The Savanti delighted in meeting the monsters with various weapons; but their chief joy lay in the Savanti sword, a beautifully balanced arm, straight, not a shortsword, not a broadsword and not a rapier; but a subtle combination that I, for one, would not have believed possible had I not seen and wielded one. I felt it to be an extension of my arm. Of course I did not then know how many men I had killed with cutlass, tomahawk or boarding pike. Pistols at sea almost always became wetted or damp and refused to fire; it was not until two years after my translation to Kregen that, on Earth, the Scottish Reverend Alexander Forsyth perfected his percussion caps. I knew how to use a sword and I had used them in action among the smoke of broadsides in the wild plunge to an enemy’s deck. I was not one of those fancy university fencers with a foil like a maid’s feather duster; but that old Spaniard, Don Hurtado de Oquendo, had taught me well how to use a rapier, and he had been broad-minded enough to allow me the French as well as the Spanish grip and system. I took no pride in the number of men I had spitted as I took no pride in the numbers whose skulls I had cleft through with a cruder Navy cutlass.

We hunted the graint. The beasts somewhat resembled an Earthly bear with eight legs and jaws that extended for over eighteen inches like a crocodile’s. Our only chance against them was speed. We would take turns to dart in and parry those wide-sweeping vicious paws armed with razor-sharp claws. We would parry and duck and then cut or thrust and the Savanti sword would inflict a psychic wound that was directly proportional to the power of our blow. When a graint was subdued the poor beast would be carefully tended and taken back over the hills. To accomplish this the Savanti used what was to me then another miracle.

They possessed a small fleet of flying petal-shaped craft powered in a way that I was not to understand for some time. The graint was strapped down and with a plentiful supply of food and water would be flown back over the passes and deposited in a favored place. If he was stubborn enough to retrace his steps then the Savanti could logically accept his decision and once more we would don our hunting leathers and sally forth.

On one such bright day of summer we sallied out ready for a day’s sport that would not injure our quarry and would not harm ourselves if we were quick and lithe enough. I had seen a man brought back with a badly slashed side from which the bright blood poured; he was up and about the next day none the worse. But one could be killed at this game, and this the Savanti accepted as a spice to life. They recognized their own weakness in this desire; but they accepted it as a phenomenon of their human character.

We had subdued two graint and I had wandered a little off on my own seeking the spoor of a third. My friends were resting and eating at our little camp. A shadow passed over my head and, looking up, I saw one of the petal-shaped flying boats skimming close. I ducked and it continued on and hit the ground, bounced, lurched, and skidded askew. Thinking that the Savanti taking a monster back would need help, I ran across.

At that moment the graint I hunted bounded from a low hillock and charged the airboat.

Aboard the airboat were three dead men clad in strange coarse garments of some yellow stuff, hooded, and girdled with a scarlet rope with tassels. Their feet were sandaled. There was also a girl, who cried out in terror.

She was blindfolded.

Her hands were bound behind her and she struggled in a silvery tissue gown. Her hair was of the auburn-tinged brown I have always found attractive. I had no time to look further at her for the graint was clearly intent on eating her for his dinner. I shouted, high and hard, and leaped forward.

Somehow, by continuous struggling, the girl had managed to slide the blindfold down from her eyes. As I charged I cast her a single swift glance. Her large brown eyes were terrified; but as soon as she saw me an entirely different expression filled them. She stopped her screaming at once. She shouted something in a fierce excited tone, a word that sounded like: “Jikai!”

I did not understand; but her meaning was plain.

The graint was a large fellow, a good eight feet tall as he reared back on his hind two pairs of legs and pawed at me with the upper two pairs. His long crocodilian snout gaped and the teeth looked extraordinarily hard and sharp.

I might be playing a game; but he was not, and he was hungry, and the soft flesh of the girl represented a nice juicy dinner to him.

I darted in and instantly leaped back so that his responding blow sliced the air where my head had been. I thrust quickly; but he turned and I had to dive forward and roll over as his other paws clapped together in an attempt to imprison my body. I scrambled up and faced him again. He grunted and snuffled, put all his paws to the ground, and charged at me. I skipped aside at the last moment and slashed down as he passed. The blow would, had the Savanti sword not been charged with its miraculous powers, have lopped off his forequarter. As it was the stun lost him the use of that paw. It was erroneous to call his parts quarters, they were eighths; but my father’s horse-training died hard. A damned sight harder than this pesky graint. I jumped in again, ducked the gaping fangs, and thrust. This time his other foreleg went out of action. He roared. He swiped at me and I met the blow with a parry; the edge did not cut into him but again that stunning power drained the strength from that limb.

But I had been slow. His fourth upper limb raked down my side and I felt the blood spurting down my flesh. I also felt the pain; but that had to be pushed aside.

“Jikai!” shouted the girl again.

A blow had to be landed on his head. I had scorned to use the superior leaping ability the slightly lessened gravity of Kregen afforded my Earthly muscles as unsporting. These beasts were only doing what was in their nature. But now this girl’s life was at stake. I had no choice. As the graint charged in again I leaped up, a good ten feet, and slashed him across the eyes and snout. He went down as though a thirty-two pounder had caught him between wind and water. He rolled over and stuck his eight clawed paws in the air. I felt rather sorry for him.

“Jikai!” the girl said again, and now I realized that the three times she had used the word had been with a different inflection. It was a Kregish word, I was sure, yet, for some reason, it had not been dissolved into my neural net along with all the other words of Kregish I had acquired.

Now Maspero and our friends ran up. They looked concerned.

“You are unharmed, Dray?”

“Of course. But let us see to the girl — she is bound—”

As we untied her Maspero grumbled away to himself sotto voce. The others of the Savanti looked with as much ill will as that people ever could look at the bodies of the three men clad in the yellow gowns.

“They will try,” Maspero said, helping the girl up. “They believe it, and it is true; but they will take such risks.”

I stared at the girl. She was a cripple. Her left leg was twisted and bent, and she walked with an effort, gasping at each painful hobble. I stepped forward and took her up in my arms, cradling her against my naked chest.

“I will carry you,” I said.

“I cannot thank you, warrior, for I hate anyone who despises me for my crippling. But I can thank you for my life — Hai, Jikai!”

Maspero looked remarkably distressed.

She was remarkably beautiful. Her body was warm and firm in my arms. Her long silky brown hair with that enraging tint of auburn hung down like a smoky waterfall. I could plunge over that waterfall with great joy. Her brown eyes regarded me with gravity. Her lips were soft, yet firm and beautifully molded, and of such a scarlet as must have existed only in the Garden of Eden.

Of her nose I can only say that its pertness demanded from me the utmost exertion not to lean down and kiss it.

I could not dare to dream of kissing those red lips; for I knew that were I to do so I would drown and sink and succumb and I would not answer for what would happen then.

An airboat flew out from the city. It was a pure white, which surprised me, for all the airboats used to carry the animals back through the passes were brown or red or black. Savanti came from the flier and gently took the girl from me.

“Happy Swinging,” I said, unthinking.

She looked at me, obviously not understanding.

“Remberee, Jikai,” she said.

Remberee, I knew instantly, was Kregish for au revoir or so long, or I’ll be seeing you. But Jikai?

I forced my smile and found to my amazement that to smile on her was easy — too easy.

“Am I not to know your name? I am Dray Prescot.”

The white clad Savanti were carrying her to the airboat.

Her grave brown eyes regarded me. She hesitated.

“I am Delia — Delia of Delphond — Delia of the Blue Mountains.”

I made a leg, as though I were in my admiral’s drawing room in Plymouth among his great ladies.

“I shall see you again, Delia of the Blue Mountains.”

The airboat was lifting.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Dray Prescot. I think you will.”

The airboat soared away to the City of the Savanti.