Blade studied the girl's face. It was so lovely, so tranquil, that for a moment a claw hooked at his heart and he thought she was dead. Then he saw the minuscule rise and fall of the snow covering her breast.

"She will not freeze?" asked Morpho.

"If we leave her too long like this, but we won't. And we must have heat in this wagon, Morpho. How can you do that?"

The dwarf snapped his fingers at the crone and gave a command. She brought forth a large bowl of wood into which an earthen sheath had been fitted. A crude brazier.

"When it is time," the dwarf explained, "I will have her start a fire of dung chips. There will be enough heat."

"She must be well wrapped," Blade warned. "As many robes as you can find."

"I will find enough." Morpho sat staring at the bed and his eyes were tender now. "She is all I have, Blade. All I care about in the world."

Blade watched him. "You have kept her well hidden."

"Yes. I have lived in fear that the Khad would come to know of her. I know his perversity too well. Her blindness, and her sweetness, would have great appeal to him. And I would be powerless."

"He will never learn from me," Blade promised.

"I believe that, Blade, I, who have never trusted anyone, trust you. I do not understand it myself. But now three people know - you and me and the old woman yonder. To the other dung gatherers I pretend that Nantee is my niece. I have kept her always with the dung gatherers, wearing rags and with her face dirty, and she gathers and cures dung with the others. My Nantee who is as beautiful as any princess! It was the only way."

Blade nearly asked the question then, nearly had the answer, but he let the moment slip away. Nantee moaned and he rose and went to her. She gazed up with sightless jade eyes and mumbled, "My father? I am cold - so cold."

Morpho came to comfort her and Blade pondered how soon to remove the ice and snow and warm her. Not for at least an hour.

While they waited the dwarf explained. "Once, many years ago, we Mongs caught a party of Caths raiding into our territory. Several of them had women with them. We killed the men and took the women captive. The Khad was drinking much bross at the time and he thought it a joke to give me, his fool, one of the women. I pretended to be grateful, though at the time I did not want her. I had often seen the way our women looked at me, a stunted man, and I did not like it. But I took her. And I came to love her, as she did me.

"We had a child, Nantee. My wife died of the coughing sickness and I, knowing how lovely Nantee would become, hid the baby with the dung gatherers."

"She was born blind?"

The dwarf nodded, "Yes. She has never seen, except with her fingers. But with them she sees well enough. I have never known her to be wrong. She knew you were good, Blade!"

Richard Blade was, after all, an Englishman. Now he was embarra.s.sed. He waved it away with a gesture and said bluntly, "I do what I can, Morpho. It is not much. And I am as concerned as any of you to keep my head on my shoulders. And, now that we are together, this is a good time to talk of..."

Morpho leaned toward him, a finger to his lips, and nodded at the crone. "Nothing of that, Blade." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I trust her, but if she were tortured she would tell anything she has heard. I would not blame her. So nothing of that. The time will come."

And yet Sadda has said that the dwarf was her man! That she could make Morpho do her bidding. How was that? Again Blade very nearly had it, and again he was distracted.

The girl called out loudly. "My father! I am freezing. My father - my father!"

Both men went to the bedside. Blade felt her brow. It was as cold as marble. He nodded at the dwarf. "Quickly now! Start your fire." He began to scoop the ice and snow away from the slender body.

By the time he and Morpho had removed all the ice, the crone had a dung fire glowing in the brazier. Stinking sworls of blue smoke filled the little wagon and Blade fell to coughing. Morpho, more accustomed to it, sat waving the smoke away from Nantee's face. Slowly the wagon grew warm as the crone fed the fire more and more pony chips.

Blade heaped robes on the girl until she was nothing but a mound of horsehair, with only her face showing. She was sleeping again.

Time pa.s.sed. Blade had not dreamed that a brazier could throw out such heat. He and the dwarf sat and waited, Morpho very quiet now, occasionally reaching to pat the pile of robes as if he were patting the child beneath them.

Blade saw it first. A trickle of sweat running down her forehead. He wiped it away and it came back immediately. He pushed a hand beneath the robes. She was soaked in sweat. He had broken the fever.

He stood up. "She sweats," he said. "That means the fever has gone. Now keep her warm and feed her well. A little hot bross would do no harm. But just a little. And I must be gone."

Morpho went with him to the door of the wagon. "I thank you, Blade. I am your man from this hour. Ask what you will. I have your promise, and I know you will keep it, but I ask that you do not tell even Baber of this. He is also good, in his way, which is not yours, but he is a man and will speak under torture."

"Not even Baber," Blade a.s.sured him. "Let me know how it is with Nantee, but do not approach me too boldly.

We have not been friends. It would look odd now if we talk too much together."

For a moment the old cunning sparked in the dwarf's eyes. "I know, Blade. I will be careful. As for other things - bide your time."

Chapter Thirteen.

Blade had little time to think of Nantee during the next week. The track narrowed and new storms broke on them. The cold increased. Mongs died of it, or of the coughing sickness, and the corpses were flung into the chasm. He went only once that week to Sadda and she was sullen and demanding in love, but would not speak of the plot against the Khad. When he had satisfied her, she clung to him with a hint of tenderness, then dismissed him.

Food and dung chips ran low. Horses had to be brought up and slaughtered in the snow, in a narrow s.p.a.ce between wagons. One poor beast, sensing the knife, went into a panic of rearing and kicking and took three Mongs with it into the chasm.

At last they reached the summit. Beyond this point the pa.s.s began to slant downward. Blade, leading his pony at the moment, looked out over the roof of this strange world. It was utterly dreary, a lifeless waste that stretched to every horizon, and it was utterly grand.

Blade stood at the center of a gigantic bowl of mountains. As far as he could see, in every direction, they thrust jagged peaks into the sky. Range after range after range of shale and snow and basalt and granite, glinting all dark and gray in the twilight air. No Jade Mountains here. He began to understand the harshness of the Mongs a little better. They were as their land was - cruel and hard.

The Mongs never halted. The van of the column crested the summit and began to spill down the far pa.s.s, slithering like a slow dark avalanche. Horses moved faster and men breathed easier of the thin dry air. Blade, who had been sickened and weakened by the alt.i.tude at first, now was as oblivious of it as any Mong.

He tugged his pony onto an outcropping and watched them pa.s.s. To his left there was no end to the dark straggle of horses and men, and the herds must still be brought over the summit. To his right the line was lengthening as the caravan picked up speed and moved toward a widening of the track.

Blade looked up to see Morpho pa.s.sing on a horse, jogging at a faster pace than the others and pa.s.sing when he could. The dwarf, who normally rode close to the Khad's party, must have been back to see Nantee.

Morpho gave no sign of recognition when he saw Blade. But his head moved in a nod, once, slightly up and down. Nantee lived.

Another three days and they were out of the pa.s.s and into desert again where the sands blew yellow instead of black. They halted on the desert to rest and reorganize, and for the herds to catch up with them. The black tents were hauled from the wagons and pitched, like sable mushrooms on the desert, and once more there was singing and laughter and quarreling around the fires.

Blade was called to service the lady Sadda regularly, in his role of first stud, and she was at times affectionate and nearly tender, and teased him about a secret concerning him which she would not tell.

"When it is time," she whispered. Then she bit his ear. "Come, Blade. Again - again!"

He carefully avoided the dwarf. Rahstum, he thought, carefully avoided him. The Khad remained aloof, sober and serious, with no hint of madness. He was still pursuing the vision of Obi, though he no longer spoke of it. None of the Mongs had ever been in this country before and while there was superst.i.tious murmuring, there was no fear of the unknown.

Blade and the legless cripple, Baber, had long talks from time to time. When they camped Baber left the wagon on his little cart and propelled himself about with his pointed sticks. He was now Blade's personal slave and attended to his needs with loving care. It gave him something to do, as Baber said, and it accustomed the Mongs to seeing them together.

And so Blade waited, watching for a sign from Rahstum, for a sign from the dwarf, for a sign from his lady Sadda. Everything was in midair, suspended in doubt and uncertainty. He was a man walking a tightrope over an abyss. A free man now, in all but name. But he still wore the golden collar. Each day it galled him more.

It took a week for the Mongs to recoup from that terrible journey over the mountains. An official tally was taken, in which Blade was called on to help, and they found they had lost over a thousand dead, men, women and children, and nearly four hundred horses.

Baber, with his cynical laugh, said the loss in population would more than be replaced during the halt. The married warriors were hard at it in the tents and the bachelors visited the camp followers in a steady stream.

"Making little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," said Baber, "who will have to spend their lives gathering dung. It was not our way among the Cauca. A man had to acknowledge his child."

That very night Sadda told Blade that she was carrying his child. She rubbed his nose with her own and for the first time he thought her near to tears. He had not thought her capable of tears..

"Not a word of this to anyone," she commanded him. "Until our plans are carried out and I give you leave."

Blade, who was stunned at the news, managed to gulp weakly and say, "This, then, is the secret of which you spoke?"

"Only part of it, Blade. Only half of it. The best part you will hear later."

He did not even tell Baber. He did not like to think about it, and tried not to, yet it began to haunt him. A child by Sadda! A tiny half Mong, half Englishman brought into this cruel barbaric world. He found himself wishing that Sadda was wrong.

As soon as they camped the Khad sent scouting parties out to the east, north and south. The parties sent to north and south came back in three days and reported to the Khad in private. The group that had gone east did not return for a week and then a long secret conference was held in the Khad's big tent. The next morning they struck camp and headed east.

Gradually they moved into steppe country, vast undulating savannas, spa.r.s.ely treed, where the gra.s.s grew tall and sweet and the Mong horses and ponies fell into an ecstasy of eating and rolling. They found wild hay, which was cut and baled by slaves. Tons of it was loaded into empty wagons and they were again on the trek. The steppe, as vast and empty as ever, began to slant downward, and one day when the wind blew from the east, Blade caught a scent that riffled his nerves with odd pleasure. Salt water! They were nearing the sea.

None of the Mongs had smelled salt water before and it amused him to watch them sniffing and frowning. Then the wind changed and the salt smell was gone.

One day a scouting party came in from the east with a prisoner. Blade, supervising a slave work group, stared as curiously as the others as they rode past. The prisoner rode a horse, his hands tied behind him and his feet held with rawhide under the animal's belly. He was a Cath, but not like the Caths Blade had known. His skin was light yellow, and he was beardless, but he was much st.u.r.dier with arms and legs well muscled and nearly as large as Blade's own. The prisoner, who held his head high and stared straight ahead, wore wooden armor with the moon symbol emblazoned) on the chest. On his left shoulder he wore an epaulet. He was a Cath officer of fairly high rank. That night, after they had made love, Sadda told him about the prisoner.

"He calls himself a Sea Cath. He speaks freely, without threat of torture, yet he tells nothing that we could not find out for ourselves. He is a subcaptain and thinks he is very grand." She frowned and added, "As do all the Caths!"

Blade, who was eaten with curiosity, managed to appear bored.

"Where was he taken?"

"There is a pa.s.s three days march to the east that leads into a valley. A small fort guards it. Our warriors took the fort and slew all the Caths except this one, who was in command."

Blade yawned. "What will happen to him? To this Sea Cath?"

Sadda shrugged her slim shoulders. "Who knows? Who cares? And do not yawn when you are with me, Blade! I do not like it. If I bore you I will find another way of amusing you, and myself."

In that tense moment she was the old Sadda, her eyes narrowed and dangerous, and Blade cursed himself for his laxness. The new Sadda, the princess of tenderness and love for him, and the mother of his child, was only a mask, a thin veneer that need only be scratched to reveal the reality beneath.

He sought to repair matters as best he could.

"I could never be bored with you, my lady."

She frowned. Another mistake.

Blade smiled and kissed her averted face. "Sadda. I am tired. Sleepy. I admit it. These nights with you are paradise, but they are also long. And I have my duties during the day."

He bent to put his ear against her belly, flat and taut as ever, and again smiled as he said, "I could not sleep anyway. I keep thinking of this miracle - of being a father to a new prince or princess."

For a moment he thought he had overdone it, troweling on such obvious flattery, for she still frowned and regarded him coldly. Then she smiled back, for she was a woman after all and Blade spoke what she wanted to hear. She moved into his arms and began loveplay. Blade, sweating a little, vowed never to grow careless again. She was a kitten that could turn into a tigress in a second.

The Sea Cath was eventually tortured, and he babbled like a child. When his tormentors deemed him bled of information he was put to death.

The steppe, funneling downward now, led them to the pa.s.s guarding the valley. They were greeted by a few Mongs who had been left to hold the captured fort. They reported no sign of hostile action in the valley. Blade, contriving to see and hear as much as possible, wondered at that. Were these Sea Caths as proud, as haughty, and as stupid, as the wall Caths back in Serendip? It appeared so, otherwise the fort would have been retaken and reinforcements brought up.

The smell of the sea grew stronger as the Mongs wound their way through the valley, ever downward into a belt of thick vegetation where trees cl.u.s.tered in dense copses and huge orchid-like plants bloomed and gay-plumaged birds sang and traced lines of color in the sky. The Mongs marveled at such country, and did not like it. It was too soft, too efflorescent, too tender, for these hardy sons of the black sands. Sweet bird song grated on their ears.

A last gradual rise and the sea lay before them, sapphire and unruffled, edged by golden crescents of beach where wavelets creamed in and out.

On this day Blade was riding with Sadda, not far behind the Khad and his guard of honor. From the top of the rise the party surveyed the downward slope and what lay beyond it.

The Khad Tambur held up a hand. The order was repeated and carried back and the marching column of Mongs came to a gradual halt. Twenty miles of horses, men, and wagons stretched far back into the pa.s.s.

Blade and Sadda moved their ponies up to the crest, off to one side of the Khad. No one paid them any attention. The Khad, slumped in his saddle, his malformed back bent half over in constant pain, stared at the scene with his good eye.

Blade, with two excellent eyes, was seeing it differently. This, he knew immediately, would not be easy. He understood why the Sea Caths had not reinforced the fort at the mouth of the pa.s.s. They thought themselves secure enough in their city.

Below them the land sloped away to level into a great green plain. Perfect terrain for the Mong hors.e.m.e.n - if the Sea Caths would come out and fight.

They would not be such fools. Blade was sure of it. The city below was perfectly situated for defense. It stood at the mouth of a harbor shaped like an hourgla.s.s. An enormous chain, glistening now in the sun, stretched across the narrow waist. The inner harbor was crowded with craft of every description from tiny fishing boats to tall clumsy-looking men of war. They floated placidly at anchor, with no sign of bustle or alarm. As well they might. The Sea Caths had nothing to fear from that direction.

High cliffs ran around the inner harbor, right up to the waterfront of the city. There was no approach that way. The cliffs were effective flank guards. The only feasible line of attack was the direct frontal, across the broad green plain which lay below them. It was inviting - until you got to within two hundred yards of the low city wall.

First there was a wide ditch that sloped gradually down until it met the perpendicular back wall. Blade guessed the wall at twenty feet. From the lip of the ditch to the wall, the slope was covered with sharp-pointed stakes set firmly into the earth and pointing at the lip. Men could move among those stakes. Not horses.

Beyond the ditch - Blade saw immediately and understood, and knew the Mongs would not comprehend - was the trap. The real defensive trickery. A wide moat. Dry now.

Blade traced the moat around the city and his lips twitched in a dry smile. Those were sluice gates where the moat ended in the harbor, and those long poles and levers would open them and let in the sea. A quick glance and rapid calculation convinced him. The sea wall fronting the city was keeping the harbor in its place. Open the sluice gates and gravity would do the rest.

For an hour the Khad and his Captains studied the town and the terrain. Blade saw Rahstum and the Khad in deep debate. Meantime he and Sadda had ridden even more to one side and were safely out of earshot.

Sadda, her knee touching his as the horses stood patiently, said, "We must make ready now, Blade. The time is coming again. I know my brother as few do, and I see signs of the madness returning. Not yet, but soon. And when he takes this city there will be a great feast and celebration. Greater, and wilder than would have been on his birth date. That will be our chance. Be ready."

He masked his eyes and nodded. "I will be ready. I have forgotten nothing and I know what I have to do."

Kill the dwarf after Morpho had killed the Khad! Blade knew it was not going to work out that way, but he still puzzled about how Sadda expected to force the dwarf into killing her brother?

She laid a hand on his, whispering. "I will tell you the other half of my secret now. You will see how clever I have been, and how perfectly everything fits."

A child bragging and wanting praise.

"Before this battle, Blade, I am going to ask the Khad for your freedom, that he let you break the golden collar. He will ask me why, in that sly way of his, and I will tell him truth - up to a point.

"I will say that I have love for you, which is true, and that I mean to marry you. He will shake with rage and scream at me, but in the end I think he will permit it. It has been done before, as I shall remind him. Not often, but royal women have married their slaves before."

Blade was watching her face. She was veiled, as always when they rode abroad, but he had come to read her beneath the veil. Her coronet of black hair glistened in the sun as she leaned to tap his knee with her whip. Her eyes were narrowed in speculation.

"There must be no mention of the child I carry. No one must know of that yet. But you see it, Blade? If my brother permits the marriage, and it is done according to Mong law, then our child is a legal prince or princess. Our marriage is legal. And when he is dead you will sit by me as legal Consort. We will have many children, Blade, and so found a new line of great warriors and conquerors the like of which has never been seen before."

Blade had not thought her so ambitious, and had deemed her much too selfish to be concerned with her posterity. It was another facet of this diamond-hard lady.

The Khad wasted no time in sending a courier to demand the immediate and abject surrender of the Sea Caths. Unconditional surrender! He promised them nothing but their lives, which would then belong to the Mongs.