Clutching his spurting stump, the man screamed in shock and fell into a shallow irrigation ditch, slowly filling the dirt channel with his life' s blood.
" Run!" cried Lan. Many of the soldiers took it as a command- or a convenient reason for leaving the scene of such carnage. Only a few hesitated. One raised his own weapon.
Lan' s mind felt as if it had slipped onto greased glass. He struggled to bring up the proper spells. His concentration had lapsed upon seeing the captain die. There wasn' t any way he could re- form his protective spell in time to be effective. He brought up the blade of his sword in a reflex action.
The death beam squarely struck his shiny sword and reflected away harmlessly. The attacking grey- clad blinked, then aimed again. Lan reflected the beam directly back into the man' s body. He died, his belly a smoky ruin.
" He killed Molok with his own pistol," cried one of the two remaining soldiers.
" AAARRGHHH!" roared Krek, rising up on his eight long legs. His mandibles crashed together like scythes. The soldiers saw death advancing on them, turned, and ran.
" I say," said Krek, " I did not think I was that frightening. I am relieved, though, to have avoided an ugly confrontation. Ever since my days in the arena killing those poor boys and girls, it is difficult for me to get into the spirit."
" You were forced to kill then, Krek. Now you fight to protect yourself- and your friends. Thanks. You certainly saved me."
" That was an interesting trick with your sword. How did you know it would work?"
" Seemed likely," Lan said hurriedly. He didn' t want to let his friend know it was purely accidental that he' d even tried it. " Let' s get moving for Dicca. Unless I miss my guess, Inyx is waiting for us there."
" Probably nice and dry, well fed, and dangling in a wonderful web," said the spider, head bobbing in agreement.
CHAPTER SIX
Inyx stirred, moaned softly, and reached out. Her arms felt soft, pliant, flabby flesh when she should have found nothing but firmly toned muscle. Vivid blue eyes fluttering open, she stared at the man in bed next to her.
" Reinhardt?" she asked, her voice still husky and her eyes gummy with sleep.
" Yes, my love."
The softness under her fingers never changed, but the shape altered subtly. She blinked harder and stared. Reinhardt smiled at her, his perfect, even teeth shining whitely in the soft light filtering through the window. The four parallel scars on his cheek glowed.
Four?
Inyx sat up.
" There should be three scars," she said.
" What' s this, my dearest?"
The woman looked harder. There were three. She' d been mistaken.
Or had she?
" Where have you been for these years, Reinhardt? Why did you make me suffer? How did you:?"
" Shush, my darling," he said, pressing a finger to her lips. " This is not the time for talk. It' s a time for rediscovery, for love."
She felt his hands moving slowly over her naked body. Old responses rose within her, responses she cherished and had denied herself since he' d died- gone away. She sighed and sank back to the bed. But Inyx worried. Something wasn' t right. The scars. Three or four? The flesh under her fingers, the weight pressing her into the mattress, the feel of the way Reinhardt made love to her.
Then her passions consumed all doubt and she cried out in joy. She' d found her beloved Reinhardt and would never let him go. Never!
Inyx awoke in midafternoon. She rose from the bed and found her clothing. Silently, she put on tunic and trousers, noting that her weapons were gone. Living with them as her constant companions for all these years made her feel more naked without them than when she wore no clothes. She looked around the small room, looking for a spot where Reinhardt might have laid them.
The room was dingy in the extreme. White and blue striped roaches frolicked along the rotting floorboards, darting in and out and mocking her attempts to step on them. The light coming through the window revealed a coating of dust on the pane thick enough to give a brown tint to everything in the room; one small pane had been broken and not replaced. Curtains hanging in tatters added little class to the place. Inyx sat heavily on the bed, heard the springs protesting mightily. The bedclothes were grey- once they' d been white. The pillows were lumpy. The mattress ticking poked through in heavy knots. The headboard had been sloppily painted years ago and was now peeled and chipped.
" At least that matches the walls," she said glumly. But, in spite of the sordid surroundings, she had to feel a warm inner glow.
Reinhardt.
She' d thought him dead all those years, killed by the grey- clad soldiers as they attempted to take over her home world. The woman flopped back on the rickety bed and stretched like a cat in the warm summer sun. She felt good all over, for the first time in recent memory.
Reinhardt!
Footsteps sounded outside. From the tentative quality of the tread, she guessed someone tried to walk softly and keep the floorboards from creaking. They failed. In this boarding house, only faith kept the roof from falling down or the floors from collapsing.
" Reinhardt, is that you?" she called out.
" Yes, my dearest." Inyx felt a moment of giddy shifting, then the door opened. Her husband stood there, a tray of food in hand. " I brought you lunch. You' ve slept most of the day."
" I: I' m still a little sleepy," she confessed. " But it was so good being with you last night. It' s so good being with you now."
He batted away her teasing fingers.
" Not now. I have work to do. You eat."
" But Reinhardt, let me help. I can:"
" Eat." The word came out sharp, brittle, a definite command. Inyx had been walking the Cenotaph Road for three years and had learned to rebel against such orders. In spite of the fact that this was her beloved husband Reinhardt, she only pretended to eat the food. A little sleight of hand slipped most of it under the bed for the gourmet feasting of the roaches. It' d hardly be noticed with all the other debris there, she guessed.
" I' m finished," she said. Reinhardt stirred from across the room and looked at the plate. He nodded curtly, turned, and left.
" Wait!" she cried. By the time she reached the door, it had been locked from the outside. " Reinhardt, why are you doing this to me?" Inyx thought she heard a cruel laugh, but wasn' t certain. Did Reinhardt have three or four scars on his cheek?
She slept fitfully, awakening from a nightmare combining tigers, Reinhardt, and grey soldiers on one side against her, Lan and Krek on the other defending her. Inyx wiped away sweat and took a deep breath to regain her composure. It was an odd dream. Reinhardt should have been aiding her, not opposing her.
Voices drifted up through the flooring. She shook off a slight dizziness and got out of bed, pressing her ear to the wood planking. What Inyx heard turned her cold inside.
": best I' ve ever seen. Great legs, too," bragged a man. She recognized the voice only after difficult concentration. It sounded much like Reinhardt. " I' ll keep her up in the room till after the election. I can make at least a score a tumble with her and have the men lined up around the block waiting their turn. The women, too! She' s a fine one, she is."
" Really, Luister, I couldn' t care less about your crude sexual exploitations. You owe me eighty score interest on the loan. My superiors are very upset over the lack of payment." The voice turned icy with menace. " If you don' t pay a hundred score by the end of the week, we shall have to take over your Fine Rooms."