"There is no danger. The carrion apes will leave nothing. And I will think of a story to explain why there is no body in the Temple. That will be easy. The difficult thing will be to explain your living body, and why you look as you do. Any fool, with one look, can see that you are not of Cath. But do not worry. I said I would think of a lie and I will."
Blade somehow thought she would.
A few minutes later he was in the midst of luxury that staggered him. And Blade had known luxury in his day as well as privation.
They bathed in a great pool of warm scented water. There was no soap, as Blade knew soap, but rather a fragrant soft powder which they rubbed on their bodies. And each other. Lali scrubbed him intimately and asked that he do the same for her. They talked.
They were waited on by a score of pretty bare-breasted girls, wearing only what he thought of as a bikini bottom. Lali paid absolutely no attention to the girls except to give orders.
Blade, when he was in H-Dimension - J and Lord L had come to call it that, Home Dimension - lived in a world of intrigue where no servant could ever be trusted. When he confessed his uneasiness she merely laughed and said: "They will not speak of you. They dare not. All I have to do is snap my fingers and they lose their heads."
He believed her.
After they had eaten she took him to a great chamber with a thick circular pad of silken material on the floor. It was her bed. In Cath, she explained, everyone slept on the floor. She thought it strange that he should think it strange.
They made love again. Then talked. Then made love again. Then talked. By the time the sun shot up with the same blinding suddenness with which it had disappeared - it was going to take Blade a while to get used to that - she had, as she had promised, concocted a marvelous lie. She was very quick, very clever. And at the moment very much subdued and in love with him.
The servants brought shades to black out the room and as he fell asleep Blade thought that he had done very well indeed so far. He thought of an old American joke. He was living the life of Reilly.
He just hoped that Reilly didn't come home!
Chapter Five
Thuck - Thuck - Thuck - the executioner's sword flamed in sunlight and descended. The heads fell into a ditch and were immediately covered over with loose black earth. The next Mong, who had been waiting patiently, squatting with his hands bound behind him, spat in contempt and moved, into place at the edge of the ditch. Thuck - the head rolled down to join the others, the mouth still contorted in a grimace of defiance.
These Mongs died well, Blade thought as he watched from a high tower on the great wall. He waited for Lali to join him. They then would mount horses and ride along the top of the wall to inspect the Cath forces and survey the Mong camp out on the plain where the black sand never stopped swirling. Blade had now been three weeks in Cath. Already he was restless, and dared not show it.
Queko, Chief Captain of the Caths under the Empress Mei, stood beside Blade on the tower. As tall as Blade, but very slim, he had the lemon-colored skin and the handsome straight features that distinguished the Caths. A fine soft fuzz covered his upper lip and chin. Caths had very little facial hair.
Blade, on the other hand, had by this time a luxuriant black beard which he kept trimmed short.
Blade had voiced his thought aloud. Queko, who so far had shown neither hostility nor friendliness to Blade, said: "They are savages. Barbarians. They have no imagination and therefore they have no fear. Why shouldn't they die well? They have been taught that they will prevail in the end, so one Mong more or less does not matter. They may be right. There are millions of Mongs. The more we kill the more they come."
Queko spoke in the high-pitched musical tones of the Caths. His eyes glittered sideways at Blade.'"Perhaps, Sir Blade, you have by now found a solution to this problem. I hope so, because the Mongs are bleeding us like leeches."
Blade concealed a smile. J and Lord L would be a little surprised to know that he had promoted himself to a Sir. But it had been necessary. Back in H-Dimension it meant little, here in Cath it was most important.
He said nothing more. Queko excused himself on plea of military affairs and left him. Blade watched the long lines of captive Mongs, squatting patiently on the plain behind the city, move toward the executioner. Something of a paradox here. The Mongs took no captives. The Caths took them, treated them well, then cut off their heads.
Blade turned away. He was beginning to feel uneasy. He was also aware that he was not doing his job very well. He was in X-Dimension to explore, investigate, probe. Yet he had been three weeks in the same place.
The fact was that he was as much a captive as any of the Mongs.
He descended the tower and stood on the broad roadway atop the wall. Here came his captor now. Lali. She who bound him with chains of silk and flesh.
She came riding toward him, sitting well in the high wooden saddle. She wore a little peaked cap atop high piled hair, a small corselet of painted wood, and flowing breeches stuffed into tiny boots. Underneath she would be wearing the diaphanous body sheath with which he was now so familiar.
Lali pulled her horse up and saluted him with her whip. "Good morning, Sir Blade."
"Good morning, Lali." They exchanged a secret smile. The Sir was Blade's sole contribution to the tremendous lie they were living.
A horse was brought for Blade and he swung easily into the saddle. "Come, Lali, let's ride down to the cannon."
They rode together down the wall, past groups of Cath soldiery and officers preparing for the day's fighting. Hearts were touched with fingertips as Lali rode by, and the brawny, bearded Blade was the object of curious stares. It was the same day after day. They did not understand Blade, nor did they question. Lali was an absolute ruler - compared to her Catherine the Great had been a democrat - and if their Empress wanted Blade, who was to question it?
Lali touched his knee with her whip. "You left me early this morning, Sir Blade. I awoke to an empty bed. I do not like that." The deep green eyes were narrowed on him.
Blade did not apologize. He knew better, and in any case apology was foreign to his nature.
"I had business," he said brusquely. "I made an early tour of inspection. I am trying to think of a plan to rid us of these Mongs, Lali. I cannot do it in bed."
Lali expected love-making every morning before rising. She explained it in direct speech. "Mei Saka, may he rot in the bellies of the carrion apes, had not touched me for two years before you came, Blade. I am a woman of great passion and demand."
They came now to the great cannon and dismounted. "I will forgive you this time," she said. "Not again."
The silken leash.
Blade inspected the huge gun with his usual awe and amusement. Lali could never understand why he was so fascinated by it. It had always been there, ever since she was a child, and the explosions frightened her almost as much as they did the Mongs.
She watched, a trifle impatiently, as Blade walked around the cannon. He had been very nearly right in his first estimates. The muzzle was five feet across, not six, but the gun was sixty feet long. The wheels of its eight-wheeled carriage were twelve feet high. It took ten barrels of crude powder to charge it and five hundred men to move it up and down the ramp. What puzzled Blade was why the damned thing had never blown up. The barrel was of wood, thick and ornately carven, and reinforced with wide steel rings. Steel was hard to come by in this province of Cath. It all had to come from the south, from the Imperial City of Pukka.
Blade shrugged, as he always did, and went back to Lali. Those old gunsmiths must have known something about wood, something that had been lost with the years.
Together they watched the Mongs moving about out on the plain. The sturdy little horses, long haired and with bushy manes and tails, wheeled and swooped amid the blowing clouds of Hack sand. Soon the attacks would begin. Day after day.
Year after year, as Lali explained later that night.
"Khad Tambur, the Lord of the Mongs, wants the big gun. If we let him have it he will make peace and go away."
They had been in Lali's bed. Blade, yawning, said: "Then why not give him the gun? What use is it? You never kill any Mongs with it - you just scare them and then they come right back."