Blade kept a watchful eye on Totha. She was still fighting magnificently. As soon as she realized the trap, she had pushed her driver from the chariot and taken the reins herself. She cut a scarlet swathe through the ceboids coming up in the flanks, then whirled and whipped her horses back into the midst of the fray. Blade, watching, knew that Totha meant to die here, near where her father had died. His smile was grim. It was fitting enough.
The Tharnian women, mindful of what had been done to their sisters, were taking revenge. As the Pethcines died, or fell badly wounded, they began to cut up the remains. One towering war maiden ran past Blade, smiling and screaming at him, and holding up a pair of bloody genitals.
Blade turned to Xeno. The battle was won, all but the mopping up, and he had not much stomach for this. He tried to see beyond the melee, over the plain to the Pethcine tents, but swirling dust obscured his vision.
Blade nodded toward a chariot and team that stood nearby, the horses unharmed and calmly grazing on some errant mani that had somehow seeded here. The chariot was intact, the driver slumped in it with a spear through him.
"Fetch me that," said Blade. It was time to go after Zulekia and Honcho now. More than time. It might even be too late.
Xeno, wondering, tumbled the dead driver out of the chariot and brought it to Blade. Blade leaped into the chariot, sheathing his sword. He picked up the reins.
"I have something to do," he told Xeno. "You will 'tell Isma that I will return as soon as possible. I..." Xeno, who had been watching the diminishing battle, and the growing carnage as the women sated their bloodlust, let out a shout of warning.
"Careful, my Lord Blade! The barbarian Princess!
Totha, by some miracle - and tenacity of desire for revenge - had broken through and was whipping her horses straight at Blade. Her helmet was gone and she was bleeding from a score of wounds. Her hair streamed about her bloody face, and her screaming mouth was just another gaping wound. She came at Blade full tilt, a last spear poised in her hand. She rode down two women who leaped to check the horses, and a third was decapitated as she slipped and fell before the scythes. Blade had only time to wheel his chariot broadside before Totha was upon him.
Totha hurled the spear at him. "Die, Blade! Die with me! Die with Totha, daughter of Org!"
Blade ducked away. He had no shield. The spear point caught him in the side and ripped a long seam in the flesh, a bloody but minor wound. He tried to draw his sword. Totha's horses crashed into Blade's chariot, rearing and pawing at it, and it was smashed sideways. Xeno leaped at Totha, only to be beaten back by her flashing sword. She brought her chariot close alongside Blade's, controlling her team with one hand, and slashed at Blade. He was partially stunned trying to keep his footing, and had not yet had a chance to draw his sword. Totha screamed in triumph and was on the point of leaping into his chariot to finish him when she choked, stood stiffly upright, her eyes glaring, and then clutched at the basketwork of the chariot.
Blood cascaded from her open mouth, a spear point protruded from her left breast.
Totha, still standing, holding to the chariot side, stared at Blade. She tried to speak but choked on blood and fell over the side, between the chariots.
Isma walked to the body and tugged out her spear. She looked up at Blade. "It is over," she said. "The Pethcines are all but destroyed. Forever. We can hunt the others down as we choose. And I, Blade, have saved your life. I, Isma, High Priestess of Tharn."
Blade nodded gravely. "That is true. My thanks, Isma." He was tense now, alert. She had never been so dangerous.
Isma smiled at him and made a sign. A cup bearer came forward, a neuter whom Blade did not remember seeing before. The neuter handed Isma a tall chalice of teksin. Blade caught the odor of soka.
Isma handed the cup to Blade. "A victory cup, my Lord Blade. I will drink after you."
Blade was thirsty, so much so that his tongue was cleaving to the roof of his mouth. He smiled at Isma. She thought him a child, a low-level neuter, a witless ceboid? To fall prey to such a trick?
He was preparing to fumble and drop the cup when Xeno sprang forward with a cry. "No, my Lord! No! Do not drink! I saw the cup prepared. It is poi..."
Isma drove her sword into Xeno's heart. Blade grieved inwardly. Poor Xeno. Had he only kept his mouth shut...
Isma left her bloody sword in Xeno and stared defiantly at Blade. He stared back. Behind her the Second Neuter moved uneasily and would not meet Blade's eye. The women, battle weary and stained with bloody sweat, crowding around with their grisly trophies, muttered and exchanged puzzled glances. They had no clear idea of what was going on.
Blade tilted the cup and poured the contents slowly to the ground between himself and Isma. The soka puddled there, mixing with the blood of Totha who lay close by.
Blade pointed to the puddle. "That will always be between us, Isma. Remember it!"
He flung the cup at her and seized the reins of the chariot horses, shouting to them. As he wheeled the chariot around the women leaped to escape the scythes. Isma and the Second Neuter stepped back to safety and watched him go, whipping the horses furiously across the plain.
Blade lashed the horses on. They had rested and were fresh enough. He made his way through a nightmare plain, littered with dead and still dying, toward the Pethcine tents. There were a few looters, dazed and maddened, and the walking wounded, but no one paid him any attention or tried to harm him. One Pethcine warrior, badly hurt, had dragged a Tharnian corpse back toward the tents and was methodically cutting it into small pieces. He stared without interest as Blade thundered past.
Zulekia and Honcho were gone. Blade was not surprised. He had been too long coming, and the neuter would have known the battle lost when he saw Org's head. He would not have tarried for the grim finale with Totha's chariots.
The stakes to which Zulekia had been bound were still in place. Blade contemplated them briefly, then whipped his horses around and headed north. There was only one place Honcho could go.
Chapter Sixteen
The old King of Neuters, Sutha, knelt beside the sarcophagus of Astar I. He had been kneeling for a long time and his bony knees were sore. His hands trembled as he put them on the edge of the sarcophagus and pulled himself up. It would not be long now before they came. Sutha had employed a staff of young neuters to keep him abreast of the news from the battlefield, and the last messenger had departed only a few minikronos before. No - it could not be long.
Sutha stood looking down at the dual face of Astar and Isma. Astar I had been the first. The Astar recently murdered by Isma would be the last Sutha was sure of it. Blade's coming had changed everything in Tharn. Had changed Tharn itself. For the better, Sutha prayed, when it was all over. It was not over yet.
As he gazed down at the dead and long mummified flesh he wondered why he bothered to pray at all. He did not really believe. Nor did any true homid, the intelligent Tharnians, the People. Belief had been lost for multikronos now, lost in the engulfing mists of cruel superstition and heartless technique.
On impulse Sutha reached and touched the cheek of Astar I. He had never dared before. He snatched his hand away. Cold. So cold!
He sighed and went back to the teksin ledge, glancing down into the Power Pool, at the glimmering box in the quiet depths. Blade was right, of course. Sutha understood, though Blade had never put it into so many words. The Power had been good at first. Now it was bad. The Power had taken over. It dominated them all, even to the last ignorant ceboid. With what Blade proposed to replace the Power Sutha did not know, nor care much. That was Blade's problem.
There was a stack of slates on the ledge beside Sutha. He had filled this time of waiting by writing a long missive that Blade might someday find. Or might not find. That did not matter much either. What did matter was that Sutha, through stylus and onto slate, had managed to transcribe thoughts, at last, that he had never dared admit before.