“Smash him over the head!” screeched the guard commander.
They danced in, one went down with his face ripped off, then they had entangled the chains, were bringing up spears to strike at me.
“Come on, rasts, and by the Black Chunkrah, come to your deaths!”
As I shouted the words, that bestial roaring stopped in the dungeon. Only then was the realization borne in on me that it was I, Dray Prescot, who had been roaring and thundering in so savage a fashion. The shock sobered me.
In that instant the dungeon door was blocked off by the entry of a bulky half-man and the guards finally lost their patience with me and one thrust hard and in deadly earnest. His spear point darted for my breast.
I smashed it away and took him by the throat with my left hand, held him squirming and kicking in the air as I snap-reversed the spear and de-gutted the next guard. Then I hurled the one I held into their midst and swung the spear down again in low port.
“What are you waiting for, offal and dung feeders?”
They hesitated. They were splashed with the blood of their comrades. They could see the dead bodies sprawled on the dungeon floor, dreadfully mutilated. And all this from a man chained up by his legs!
The newcomer shouted, harshly, loudly, angrily, beside himself with fury.
“Dunderheaded dolts! By Hlo-Hli the Debased! I’ll flog every man of you! Take him! Take him now! ”
Goaded by twin fears, the Harfnars flung themselves upon me in a body. They entangled my left arm in flung ropes and dragged me down cruelly. I gasped and forced myself upright. A spear blade slogged down on my temple and I only half broke its force. But I slashed through the ropes — the flint-headed spear was sharper than any cheap steel — and reared back, blood obscuring my vision, my legs clamped as though trapped by a chank of the inner sea.
The man giving the orders moved closer. He peered at me in the light streaming down the dungeon steps. He put both hands on his hips and jutted his head forward, so that his indigo-stained beard shot forward like the ram of a swifter.
“You must be the one they call Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor.”
“And if I am, much good it will do you!” I shouted and hurled the spear full into his stomach. He gobbled and fell back, his hands clawing himself, seeking to stem the dark rush of blood welling past the neat flint-knapped semicircles of the blade.
His opened mouth sought to shriek, but only blood poured forth.
He fell.
And then I, Dray Prescot, laughed.
It did not last long after that.
The other captives were taken out one by one and when it was my turn I was tightly wrapped around in chains and ropes and carried up the dungeon steps. I saw clearly on the square boxlike faces of my captors a gloating kind of good humor. They knew what lay in store for me and they joyed in their dark fashion for the horrors I must endure. Indigo-haired Ullars met the cortege — an apt word, I remember thinking, wryly — at the entrance of arched brick where the brilliant hues of the suns of Scorpio flooded down in topaz and opal and incandescent light.
We entered an open area rather in the fashion of a theater or arena. The anti-flier defense had been rolled away, and hung in nets at the sides, rather after the style of a Roman velarium not paid for by the gladiatorial promoter presently putting his show on and awaiting the next one, who had. The amphitheater-like atmosphere continued in the storied series of seating terraces, all jam-packed with spectators. Dark blood lay seeping into the sand. Ullars moved about officiously. I looked for Umgar Stro. He must, I considered, be the chief man among the lolling group of dignitaries and nobles gawking down from an awning-draped box over the arena steps.
In the air and cutting through the familiar reeks of spilled blood and dust and sand and sweat a new and strangely disturbing odor laid a nasty taste in my mouth.
At the far end of the stretch of sand a monstrous erection of red brick reared. It was barred down the front. Beyond I caught the vaguest of glimpses of writhing motion, a flicker of evil eyes, the sway of tentacles.
And then — and then!
A wooden stake reared from the sand, surmounted by a triangle of logs, all bound together with thongs. Naked she was.
All naked and white in the suns-light.
Thick and heavy ropes bound her to the triangle of logs, their rough bark harsh upon her soft skin. All white, her body glowed in the suns-light, bound by the constricting ropes that crossed over her spread-eagled legs, cutting into her thighs, her stomach, her arms, her throat. Openly displayed, she hung there naked before the taunting gaze of the Ullars and the Harfnars, hung there by express order of Umgar Stro, baffled of a willing conquest, victim of his lusts for sadistic pleasure as much as the sweeter pleasure of voluptuous surrender. White and virginal and hanging, Delia, my Delia of Delphond, hung there awaiting the doom that writhed beyond the iron bars. And I stood stupidly before her, bound head and foot, helpless.
Chapter Eighteen
On my own two feet, then
Some little Ullar with his silly blue-dyed hair was prancing and yammering on the sand before me, but I could not pay much attention to him, even when he jabbed a spear into my stomach, because I was looking and looking at Delia. She hung there in her bonds, roped to that blasphemous triangle of rough-bark wood. Her head was raised in defiance, her chin high, and her glorious brown hair shone radiantly with those outrageous auburn tints beneath the suns of Scorpio. She saw me.
She did not scream out.
We looked at each other, Delia and I, we looked, and between us passed the knowledge that if we were to die now, at least, we died together.
The Ullar was shouting and his flint-headed spear was becoming decidedly uncomfortable. I managed to fall sideways against my chains and the Ullar on my right side, and as his arms automatically constricted about me to support me I lifted myself against him. Like a jackknife I doubled up in the chains and my feet shot out and crashed into the Ullar’s face. He yowled and went over and I heard the answering roar from the massed spectators.
Yes, we were a spectacle, staked out for the enjoyment of the half-men peoples of Chersonang. Well-divided they were, I noticed; Ullars to my right and Harfnars to my left. The ornately canopied box of Umgar Stro frowned over the assemblage. The Ullar picked himself up, clasping his nose from which the blood poured. He would have done for me with his spear then, but a shout arrested him and he swung away under orders from Umgar Stro.
All around the walls of the stadium perched giant impiters. Their coal-black plumage cut stark arabesques against the bright sky. The heat stifled down, intense and sweaty. I went on working with the chains, testing, seeking, straining.
Was that a link, thinner than the rest? Malleable? Subject to a straining twist? Surreptitiously I pulled and levered, feeling the thinner link distorting its shape.
We prisoners to be offered up as sacrifices had been fed some nauseating swill so as to keep our strength up to prevent us from fainting and so cheating the populace of their spectacle. If ever I had needed strength in my life, I needed it then.
Now the noise from the rows of seats began to settle into a rhythm and recognizable words beat out in a roar of sound.
“The Ullgishoa! The Ullgishoa!”
As if in response to some blasphemous call the thing in the iron-barred cage stirred and rippled its tentacles.
Whatever the thing was, the Ullars had evidently brought it with them from far Ullardrin. As I watched and worked on the chain everyone’s attention centered on the cage and the thing within.
“The Ullgishoa!”
Half-men with their indigo hair streaming ran joyfully across the blood-soaked sand. Approaching the cage, they moved with a sureness of purpose that contrasted oddly with their sudden and completely unfeigned caution. Quickly the iron bars were flung back. Like a scatter of leaves before a gust of wind the Ullars scampered back to the side walls. The cage gaped open.