Kieron stirred, the pulsing ache in his side piercing the reddish veil of unconsciousness. Under him, he could feel wet stones that stank of death and filth. He moved painfully, and the throbbing agony grew worse, making him teeter precariously between consciousness and the dark.
He was stiff and cold. Hurt badly, too, he thought vaguely. His wounds had not been tended. Very carefully, he opened his eyes. They told him what he had already known. He was in a dark cell, filthy and damp. A sick chill shook him. Teeth chattering, huddled on the stone floor, Kieron sank again into unconsciousness.
When he awoke again, he was burning with fever and a cold bowl of solidified, greasy gruel lay beside him. His tongue felt thick and swollen, but the sharp agony of his wounded side had subsided to a dull hurt. With a great effort, he dragged himself into a corner of the dungeon and propped himself up facing the iron-bound door.
His searching hands found that he had been stripped of his harness and weapons. He was naked, smeared with filth and dried blood. As he moved he felt a renewed flow of warmth flooding down from his torn flank. The wound had reopened. Sweat was streaking the caked blood on his cheek. His mind wandered in a feverish delirium — a nightmare dream in which the tall, coldly arrogant figure of
Freka seemed to fill all space and all time. Kieran's over-bright eyes glittered with animal hate…
Somehow, he felt that the hated Kalgan was nearby. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the lids seemed weighted. His head sagged and the fever took him again into the ebony darkness of some fantastic intergalactic night where wierd shapes danced and whirled in hideous joyousness. .
The rattling of the door-lock woke him. It might have been minutes later or days. Kieron had no way of knowing. He felt light-headed and giddy. He watched the door open with fever-bright eyes. A jailer carrying a flambeau entered and the light blinded Kieron. He shielded his face with his hand. There was a voice speaking to him. A voice he knew. . and hated. With a shuddering effort, he took a grip on his staggering mind, his hate sustaining him now. Moving his hands away from his face, he looked up — into the icy eyes of Freka the Unknown.
"So you're awake at last," the Kalgan said.
Kieron made no reply. He could feel the fury burning deep inside him.
Freka held a jewelled dagger in his hands, toying with it idly. Kieron watched the shards of light leaping from the faceted gems in the liquid torchlight. The slender blade shimmered, blue and silvery in the Kalgan's hands.
"I have been told that the Lady Alys was with you — here on Kalgan. Is this true?"
Alys. . Kieron thought vaguely of her for a moment, but somehow the picture brought sadness. He put her out of his mind and squinted up at Freka's gemmed dagger, unable to take his eyes from the glittering weapon.
"Can you speak?" demanded Freka. "Was Toran's sister with you?"
Kieron watched the weapon, a feral brillance growing Hike a flame in his dark eyes.
Freka shrugged. "Very well, Kieron. It makes no difference. Does it interest you to know that the armies are gathering? Earth will be ours within four weeks." His voice was cold, unemotional. "You realize, of course, that you cannot be allowed to live."
Kieron said nothing. Very carefully he gathered his strength. The dagger…the dagger…!
"I will not risk war with Valkyr by killing you now. But you will be tried by a council of star-kings on Earth when we have done what we must do…"
Kieron stared hard at the slender weapon, his hate pounding in his fevered mind. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. Freka spun the blade idly, setting the jewels afire.
"We should have taken you the moment Landor was missed," mused the Kalgan. "But.. it really doesn't matter now…"
Kieron's taut muscles uncoiled in a snakelike, lashing movement. He hit Freka below the knees with all his fevered strength and the Kalgan went down without a sound, the slim dagger clattering on the slimy floor of the cell. The guard leaped forward. Kieron's searching hand closed about the hilt of the dagger. With a sound of pure animal rage in his throat he drove it into Freka's unprotected chest. Twice again his hand rose and fell, and then the guard caught him full in the face with a booted foot and the light of the torch faded again into inky blackness…
In the darkness, time lost its meaning. Kieron woke a dozen times, feeling the dull throbbing ache of his wounds and then fading again into unconsciousness. He ate — or was fed — enough to keep him alive, but he had no memory of it. He floated in a red-tinged sea of black, unreal, frightening. He screamed or sobbed as the phantasms of his sick dreams dictated, but through it all ran a single thread of elation. Freka, the hated one, was dead. No horror of nightmare or delirium could strip him of that one grip on life. Freka was dead. He remembered vaguely the feel of the dagger plunging again and again into his tormentor's breast. Sometimes he even forgot why he had hated Freka, but he clung to the knowledge that he had kiHled him the way a drowning man clings to the last suffocating breath.
Sounds filtered into Kieron's dungeon. Sounds that were familiar. The hissing roar of spaceships. Then later the awful susurration of mob sounds. Kieron lay sprawled on the stones of his cell-floor, not hearing, lost in the fantasmagoric stupor of delirium. His wounds still untended, onty the magnificent body of a warrior helped him cling to the thread of life.
Other sounds came. The crash of rams and the clatter of falling masonry. The shrieks of men and women dying. The ringing cacophony of weapons and the curses of fight-lug men. Hours passed and the din grew louder, closer, in the heart of the Citadel of Neg itself. The torches on the outer cellblocks guttered out and were left untended. The rounds of fighting rose to a wild pitch, interlaced with the Inhuman, animal sounds of a mob gone mad.
At last Kieron stirred, some of the familiar sounds of battle striking buried chords in his fevered mind. He listened to the advancing clash of weapons until it rang just beyond his dungeon door.
He dragged himself into his corner again and crouched there, the feral light in his eyes brilliant now. His hands Itched for killing. He flexed the fingers painfully and waited.
The silence was sudden and as complete as the hush of the tomb.
Kieron waited.
The door flung wide, and men bearing torches rushed into the cell. Kieron lunged savagely for the first one, hands seeking a throat.
"Kieron!" Nevitta threw himself backward violently. Kieron clung to him, his face a fevered mask of hate. "Kieron! It is I. . Nevitta!"
Kieron's hands fell away from the old warrior and he stood swaying, squinting against the light of the torches. "Nevitta Nevitta?"
A wild laugh came from the prisoner's cracked lips. He looked about him, into the strained faces of his own fighting men.
He took one step and pitched forward into the arms of Nevitta, who carried him like a child up into the light, tears streaking his grizzled cheeks…
For three weeks Alys and Nevitta nursed Kieron, sucking the poison of his untended wounds with their mouths and bathing him to break the fiery grip of the fever. At last they won. Kieron opened his eyes — and they were sane and clear.
"How long?" Kieron asked faintly.
"We were gone from Kalgan twenty days. . you have lain here twenty-one," Alys said thankfully.
"Why did you come back here?" Kieron demanded bitterly. "You have lost an Empire!"
"We came for you, Kieron," Nevitta said. "For our king."