Presently Blade was half between sleep and waking. Baber's voice was a lulling drone in the torch haunted gloom, with the words slurring now and making no distinct sense. Blade posed himself a question.
Would he be glad or unhappy if Lord L were to snatch him back to H-Dimension now. At this moment? Before he had seen this adventure through. He could not really answer himself. At best he was ambivalent. He knew his peril. Death and torture were as real in this dimension as in his own natural one. Yet to seek out, to know, to persevere and above all to conquer, was in his nature as cruelty was in the Mongs. The adventure, the search and solving, beckoned like a lantern on a mountain. Besides, he was an Englishman to whom a task had been entrusted. That it was a shocking and weird and unbelievable task, so fantastic that only five men in the world knew about it, made little difference. It must be done.
Strangely, for Blade was not an intellectual, he found himself thinking of hope. In his mind he capitalized it. HOPE. He had seen the superficial and cynical splendor of the Caths; he understood the mindless cruelty of the Mongs. There was no hope in either.
Yet how often had he thought the same back in H-Dimension, when you only had to read a paper to feel disgust! Blade began to see here what he had not seen there. There was hope! Things did change. Six steps forward and five back left a net total of one step gained.
With a strange sense of personal enrichment, and oddly comforted, Richard Blade fell asleep.
Chapter Nine
A week passed. Blade, the great collar dragging at his neck, worked like the slave he was. He worked in the women's quarters, emptying night soil and scrubbing the pots afterward, and was taunted by dark eyes flashing over veils. Not once did he see Sadda or the dwarf, though once he thought he heard Morpho's voice coming from her quarters.
Rumor had it that the Khad was approaching a new season of madness. Every day the Mongs attacked the wall, sometimes luring the defenders to sally out, sometimes not, but always losing men and retiring in defeat.
When there was no work in the women's quarters Blade was put into the field to labor. He dug latrines and carried great timbers and repaired the high sided wagons, discovering that the Mongs had no clue to using grease on the wheels. No one had thought of it yet. He helped corral and tend the enormous herds of shaggy little horses on which the Mongs depended.
In all this he was guarded like the image of the God, Obi, which sat in a wagon apart. A huge black-painted wagon that only the Khad could enter. Not even Sadda was permitted to gaze on Obi.
In a perverse way Blade enjoyed the work away from the women's quarters. He was free of Aplonius' whip and did not have to struggle to keep from killing the man. For Aplonius whipped him well, many times a day, and always in front of the women.
At night, when he was taken back to the stockade, he and Baber talked. Or rather Baber talked and Blade listened and questioned. And grew wiser and wiser.
As the second week began, and as Blade sat in the dirt eating leavings which Aplonius had thrown him, Sadda left her great tent and approached them. Aplonius, as pomaded and perfumed as ever, brave in his gaily colored clothes, immediately began to fawn. Blade was sickened and, in that moment, could almost feel pity for the man.
Aplonius saw Blade glance at the woman as she drew near and slashed him across the face. "Eyes down, swine!"
Blade cast his eyes down, but contrived to watch just the same.
Sadda was bare breasted and veiled, as always. Aplonius bowed low and saluted with the whip. "Good day, my lady Sadda. How lovely you are. You enhance the day. You perfume the air. What can I, who wear your golden collar with gratitude, do for my lady Sadda?"
"You can have him bathed, Aplonius. He stinks! He smells like a corpse left too long uneaten by the carrion apes. Have him well scrubbed - and give him suitable clothes. My women will give them to you."
She turned and walked away without another word.
When Aplonius turned back to Blade his eyes were swimming with terror and he was wet with sweat. Blade stared at the man and said, "Your time ends, Aplonius. Mine soon begins."
Aplonius lashed him in a frenzy, lashed him until he could no longer raise his whip arm. Blade endured it stoically, knowing with a fierce certitude that this was an ending and a beginning.
He was put into a great tub of near boiling water and scrubbed by the same women who had been taunting him. Their attitude had changed, and there was much laughter, many sly glances and crude jokes. They, as well as Blade, knew what was coming. They were marvelously impressed by his muscles and, though none dared touch him, he knew the wish was there.
Blade was perfumed and his hair and beard trimmed. He was dressed in a leather jacket and loose leather breeches that ended at the knee, and given a pair of horsehide boots that came to mid-calf.
During all this he adroitly managed to steal a short-bladed knife.
That night, when he was taken back to the stockade, the cumbersome wooden collar was removed at the gate.
As the guard pried the lock away with his sword point he winked at Blade. "Orders from the lady herself. You climb in the world, Blade. I do not care for that, for you will not last forever, but I am glad to see that Aplonius is cast out. I only hope I have a chance at him."
Blade, who always planned ahead, stooped to pick up the wooden collar. "I would keep this if I can."
The guard shrugged. "Keep your collar? You have grown so fond of it, then? Keep it. Wear it in your sleep if you will. You are a strange one, Blade."
The guards had apparently received new orders, for that night they did nothing to prevent Blade and Baber from talking in Baber's sty.
Baber, when he saw the new finery and smelled Blade, laughed and nodded his bald head. "I told you. It comes. But why do you carry your collar about? I would have thought..."
Blade passed him the stolen knife beneath the straw. Baber, keeping the knife hidden, felt it and glanced at Blade in awe and admiration. "You are a fool, my friend. You risked everything when you stole this. And to what purpose? What am I, without legs, supposed to do with a knife?"
Blade pushed the wooden collar toward him. "You use it, Baber, to carve wheels from this wood - four small wheels. I will somehow find more wood for a platform and axles. We will make you a little cart which you can use for legs."
Baber nodded. "That is good. I would not have thought of it. But even when I have a cart for legs, then what?"
Blade regarded him steadily. "Did we not speak, once, of things that might come to pass? Changes. Perhaps they come sooner than you think. You must be ready."
The older man's glance sharpened. "You have heard something?"
"I have heard nothing. But now I am to have a little freedom and I will know what to do with it."
Baber frowned. "Not too soon, Blade. Not too soon! The golden collar does not mean that you are free. It makes you even more a slave! Sadda is like wind, and as unpredictable. She may use you one night and have you killed."
Blade, who knew his own sexual prowess, smiled and said, "I think not. I shall teach her what a real man is like. So will I gain time. You could help me, Baber, if you would tell me what you know of Morpho the dwarf. Do not lie to me or turn close mouthed. We are not friends? I know that there is something about Morpho that you do not tell me."
Baber's face closed like a blank door and he would not look Blade in the eye.
Blade waited a moment, then said: "We walk a dangerous path, you and I. And the Captain Rahstum. And, I think, the dwarf also. I must know everything I can, Baber. Is the dwarf friend or foe?"
The old man scratched his scalp and frowned. At last he said, "I cannot tell you that in truth. But this I can tell - the dwarf is his own man. As is Rahstum, and you and me. I say only this, and then no more, that if Morpho comes with a message for you, trust him! I may be wrong, and that mistake mean our deaths, but sometimes a chance must be taken. Trust the dwarf if he comes to you. But do not go to him. Never!"