It occurred to Blade that they must be thinking very much alike. They were, after all, twins in everything but blood. Lord Leighton's words? Monozygotic twins?
The thing to do was to put himself in the other chap's place, probe the Russian's persona and act as if he were in the other's stead. If he wanted to kill Blade.
And stay out of trouble doing it.
He had not gotten very far along with it when he heard her step and saw the moon shadow fall athwart his rock. The Princess Canda.
I am very cold, Captain Blade."
She looked cold. Her delicious breasts were goose pimpled.
Blade said, "We are all cold, Princess. What of it? What would you have me do?"
"Do? Are you a fool then? Ixok."
She pointed to where Chephron was sleeping with the mad Zeena in his arms.
"Even a miserable wretch like that knows what to do. Knows how to shelter the one with no mind."
Blade stood up. "Is that what you want, Canda? Shelter?"
She moved toward him. "The wind is cold. I do want shelter - and perhaps other things as well. And you are a fool, and insulting as well. I have never had to ask before."
The humid musky smell of her came strong in his nostrils. Blade was ready for love, more than ready, and smiled at the thought that his worn breeches might not bear the strain.
Canda saw his smile. "You laugh at me, Captain?"
"At myself, Princess. You see?" He indicated his front, where a massive protuberance strained against the rotten leather. She stared. At that moment the leather parted with a ripping sound.
Canda stood staring at him for a moment She shivered. "I am not so cold as I was."
"Nor I, Princess."
They did not kiss. If she knew of tenderness she did not evoke it, or give it, or seem to want it. She refused to lie on the cold stony earth and so Bade turned her and pressed her back against the big rock. She gasped and grabbed at his ear with her teeth when he entered, but the entry was easy enough and Blade knew he was having no virgin this night.
Canda fell quickly into a panting rhythm of her own, not bothering to match her pace to Blade's thrusts. She wound her arms about his neck and little by little he bore more of her weight as gradually her long legs came up and entwined his waist and he was locked solidly and deeply into her flesh.
When he knew she desired, and could go, for a long time Blade began to pace himself. Holding back. Canda fell into frenzy several times, biting and clawing at him, raking his back and shoulders with her nails, before she went into her one great and grand and final surge. She let out a trembling cry to the cold moon. Blade, deadly workman, thrust her soft buttocks back against the rock and plunged impossibly deeper each time until he came to his ending as well. His groans and her sighs made a single sound.
When he stepped back away from the rock, she still locked around his big body, riding him face to face, she tossed her hair back and gave him that same strange smile.
"I cannot decide," she said.
Blade, going limp in her, that rigid flesh now become a worm and sliding out moistly, stared down at her in surprise. She had suddenly become heavy.
"Decide what?"
"Which of you is best. Which gives me the greatest pleasure. You or your twin."
So the Russian had been before him. With a pang that was more concern for his life than any jealousy, Blade disengaged and lifted her lightly to the ground. He made himself smile, forced an exudation of confidence that he did not in the slightest feel.
"Suppose you tell me of this, my Princess. I am most interested."
Her teeth flashed in the moonlight. "I thought you would be, Captain. And I am interested in you. Your man Pelops has told me much - but not all I would know. I have waited until the proper time to speak - when we are within five days' march of the oasis - and now it is time. What would you know of your brother, Captain?"
"Everything. More than I know now, which is very little."
"Strange. Those are his very words when he heard that there lived in Sarma a man that must be his brother. His twin. He seeks desperately for you, Captain."
No doubt, Blade thought. Desperately.
Something pinged in his mind. "How came my brother to know that I lived?"
"A rider came. A messenger from the Council of Five in Sarma. I forget his name, or never knew it, but he claimed to be sent by the priests to see if your twin lived."
Kreed's fine hand. Checking him out. Did Kreed still live? Had he made it to shore? Blade did not know, or care. If Pphira had any sense she would get rid of the old priest one way or the other.
Blade put his arm about her. "You and I," he said softly, "had better have a long talk. But first tell me truly - was not I, just now, better than my brother. Did I not pleasure you more?"
Canda frowned. "It is very difficult to tell about such things, Captain."
Blade supposed it was.
Chapter Eighteen
Matters did not fall out as Blade had foretold and feared. Fortune smiled, albeit falsely, and Blade did not cavil at what he took to be unexpected good luck. He counted his blessings and waited, and wondered, what the price would be.
The Princess Canda had been exactly right. In five days' trek the little party reached a large oasis where they were given food and clothing and drank their fill of a sparkling spring. In those last days the mountains did move closer; from a tent on the edge of the oasis Blade could see the pass through which a party of Moghs would come to greet them and escort them to El Kal.
Canda made herself available to Blade at night, but kept to herself and moved among the villagers during the day. These were a tall, loose jointed people with dark brown faces and dark eyes and inclined to gauntness. They were Moghs, Blade was informed, but of a lesser tribe and subservient to El Kal. The women went veiled and the men wore long loose robes of linen caught at the waist by sword belts, and wrapped their long hair in turbans. Blade, and indeed all the party, were treated with unfailing courtesy. Blade was stunned to learn that this was on the orders of the Vizier - Blade's double.
They recovered well from the trek and nearly ate the village bare. Pelops drank at the spring until he developed a paunch and was ill. Only Zeena languished.
Time and again Blade tried to speak with her. She would only stare at him with pain filled eyes, then suddenly cry out in terror for the slave Chephron. He alone could comfort her. She clung to him like a lost child and he would stroke her hair and croon her into silence.
On one such occasion the Princess Canda watched and, later, spoke to Blade.
"She will be mindless forever, that one. There is a place in El Kal for such as she - I will see that she is sent there and looked after."
Blade stroked his black beard, new combed and washed, and answered, "I would not like that. In a way she is my responsibility - under Sarmaian law I was married to her."
The Princess snapped her fingers. "Fie! You are not in Sarma now. Anyway they are only stupid barbarians. And would you have a woman like that - who was passed around among the pirates forty times a day?"
Blade, who now felt nothing but pity for Zeena, found himself angered at the callosity.
"I have been curious about that," he said curtly. "Zeena was used as a whore by the pirates. But what of you? You were as much prisoner as she. How were you left in peace and she debauched?"
Canda, now wearing a skirt and short bodice, glared at him over her veil. Blade glared back and waited. Canda was the first to look away.