Chapter VII

Bleakly, Haral looked down on the knot of coleoptera moving through the valley below.

There could be no mistake. This was the party. Even from here, sitting his _hwalon_ high amid the barren crags above them, he could glimpse the shimmering gold of the captive Kyla's hair.

He pondered. Nearly a dozen of the giant beetles were in the party, guarding the girl on all sides.

Further, considering their mastery of mind-to-mind communication, it seemed impossible that they had not heard by now of his escape and mission.

Almost affectionately, he touched his own worn helmet. With it to insulate his brain, at least he had little to fear from the weird mind control that was their deadliest weapon.

As for the odds, what real difference did it make whether they were a dozen to one against him, or a hundred? From any angle, his course was madness, and no calculation could make it otherwise. He'd thrown out logic when he struck Xaymar down and blasted the two beetles on guard over his _hwalon_. Now his fate lay with the gods of the void and his own right arm.

Laughing harshly, he wheeled the dragon. Then, light-lance raised and ready, he moved on down the rock-strewn defile for a closer survey of the situation.

When he came out of the gorge, he'd quartered the distance between him and his quarry. Thoughtful, narrow-eyed, he studied the group in more detail from the cover of a boulder.

But the coleoptera were obviously on guard. Two ranged ahead as scouts. Another pair closed up the rear, while one held to either side of the procession's line of march as outriders. The rest of the party stayed close-grouped about the girl.

Again the blue man checked the rugged terrain, searching for some accident of ground that would give him the chance he needed.

Ahead, the valley narrowed sharply, then divided. One of the two spurs, that on the left, was cramped and tortuous, a cleft-like gully. The other, smoother and wider, had walls so steep that it could not but force in the beetles covering the company's flanks.

Haral breathed a fraction faster. Spurring the _hwalon_ forward, following the high ground and taking advantage of every rise and rift and clump of cover, he headed full-tilt for the narrow left spur of the divided valley, racing to reach it ahead of the coleoptera.

* * * * *

His mount strained to the task. Clawing through broken stone, around boulders, up a dozen near-sheer rock faces, it matched the pace of the beetles as they hurried along the infinitely smoother road that was the valley. Then, slowly, it began to pull ahead. Rear guard, main group, scouts--one after another, they were lost to the blue man's view as the great dragon surged to the fore.

The last rise loomed. Haral pressed the _hwalon_ up it.

A moment later, they were plunging perilously down the steep wall of the left spur.

At the bottom, Haral wheeled the dragon to the right, back towards the spot where the two spurs came together. Riding swiftly to its mouth, he took up a position in a side crevice where boulders permitted him a view of the valley's main course, while at the same time screening him from the view of the coleoptera.

A rattle of stones, the rustle of wing-sheaths, warned him of the beetles' approach. Seconds later, the two advance scouts came into view.

Haral sat statue-still in the _hwalon's_ saddle. He shifted his grip closer to his lance's trigger.

The scouts came abreast his hiding-place, so close he could catch their smell and see their ray-tubes' glitter. He held his breath.

Then they passed on. Haral let out air.

Mandibles clacking like deadly castinets, the outriders moved up.

Again Haral froze.

But they, too, passed, unheeding.

Now louder sounds drifted to him. There was a whispering of hairy feet on sand; a slither of insectile bodies.

And, through it, a silvery voice rose, singing.

The main body of the coleoptera appeared. Kyla pocketed among them.

Her hair was mud-caked now, and streaked and straggling. Her garments, too, were torn, and bruises and cuts showed through the rents.

Yet still she sang her _Shamon_ song, head high and back unbending. And if she reeled and stumbled as she walked, it was weariness and not defeat that caused it.

It came to Haral in that moment that even madness had its glory ... that even death could be worthwhile.

He leaned forward, lance poised and focused on the coleoptera that shoved and buffeted her along.

But the time was not yet. Savagely, he fought down the rage that seethed within him, waiting while the beetles and their captive moved on past the spur that hid him and the _hwalon_.

Then, swiftly, before the rear guard could appear, he drove his great blue dragon forward--out of the crevice, out from behind the screening boulders, out of the spur canyon itself.

* * * * *

Like a thunderbolt, then, he charged, straight at the rear of the knot of huge scarlet beetles. His shout rose, a battle-cry of fury. The _hwalon's_ rush drummed a death-roll.

A glad cry burst from Kyla's lips. She tried to dart to Haral.

But fatigue slowed her. A coleopteron sprang upon her from behind, and she crashed to the ground. Great mandibles reached out to crush her.

Haral blazed with his light-lance. The beetle died.

The girl lurched to her knees. But she could not rise. Another coleopteron rushed in to seize her.

Haral's _hwalon_ lunged to her. Catching her up in one mighty claw, it dragged her close and stood above her, defying the beetles with all the menace of its fangs and talons and horrid, hook-beaked head.

Haral whipped round his light-lance just as the pursuing insect flicked on its Q-ray. The savage jolt of the beam striking home rocked him in the saddle. But the heavy copronium armor's breastplate held. He triggered the lance.

The beetle spun crazily, legs kicking, as the life seared out of it.

The _hwalon_ lifted Kyla. Swinging forward, heedless of the other Q-rays that now appeared close about him, the blue man caught her and dragged her up beside him.

Already, the _hwalon_ was backing and pivoting with the amazing agility of its kind.

Again and again, Haral triggered the light-lance, clearing a path for them. They raced back up the valley in the same direction from which they'd come.

The two coleoptera of the rear guard, close in now, made one futile effort to cut them down. But the furious rush of the blue man and his dragon was too much for them. They broke, scrambling desperately for safety.

Then Haral, girl and _hwalon_ were out of the narrow part of the valley. The broad expanse where travel was easier and faster lay before them.

But instead of taking it, the blue man turned the dragon back into the bleak, craggy hills. Grimly, he urged his mount on deeper and deeper into the wild mountains, all ups and downs and steep rock ledges. He still had not spoken to the slim young _Shamon_ priestess.

He wondered if it were because he was afraid to put into words the thoughts that gnawed within him.

But now she turned to him. "Where do we go, Haral?"

* * * * *

He shrugged and gave her a twisted smile. "Where is there to go, Priestess Kyla? To the city, the spaceport. It's our only hope."

"The spaceport--?"

"If we stay on Ulna, sooner or later Sark or Xaymar or the coleoptera will hunt us down. We've got to blast off, somehow, and that quickly."

She looked at him for a long moment, and it suddenly came to him that he had never realized before that her eyes were blue.

Blue, and calm, and very steady.

She said quietly, "I'll never leave Ulna, Haral."

There were the words he'd feared, already spoken. They tied a knot of tension in him.

"Not even after all this? Not even with your life at stake?"

"No, Haral. Not even if it means death in Sark's arena."

He smiled again, wryly, because he knew that if he didn't smile, the dark thoughts that came with his tension would boil over. "It's up to you. But I've no taste for Sark's tender mercies, and even less for Xaymar's."

She said, "I'm sorry," and would have turned away. But now he would not, could not, let her. He lashed out:

"What do you mean, you're sorry? Sorry for what? That not everyone's fool enough to want to die on your crazy rockpile planet?"

Her eyes flashed. "Are you so afraid of death, then, blue man?"

"You ask it?" His fury ate into his words like acid. "You _dare_ to ask it, after the blood I've shed just to save your lovely neck?"

The blue eyes lost their fire. "Haral, I'm sorry. Truly sorry--"

But the rage that was in him now would not let him take up the peace he knew she was trying to offer.

"What do I care for dying? I've gambled my life a thousand times, a thousand ways. But curse me for a _chitza_ if I want to die for nothing! What would it gain me or anyone else if I stayed here and drowned in my own blood in Sark's arena? If I perish, at least let it be somewhere along the road to empire, not here in the backwash of this pest-hole you call Ulna!"

The words quenched his fire, and as it died a strange confusion churned within him, a discomfiture that seemed to come only when he spoke with this slim girl, Kyla. Furiously, he riveted his gaze straight to the pathless wilderness ahead, trying to lose himself in scrutiny of the rocky course the _hwalon_ followed.

But Kyla asked, "Is that, then, your only dream, Haral? A dream of empire? Is that the height of your ambition?"

"What--?" He turned in the saddle to stare at her, as much for her tone as for her words. He thought he almost caught a note of sadness.

Or perhaps it was disillusion.

* * * * *

In spite of him, it brought back the old, hot-blooded, restless, reckless fever: the fever that had carried him through all these years of blood and battle.

He threw out his challenge fiercely:

"What better dream can a fighting man have than one of empire, priestess? What higher ambition?"

She bit her lip. Her eyes fell before his onslaught.

"They spell out power, my priestess!" he cried in bitter triumph. "Power, do you hear? Without it, a man's as nothing--sport for the rabble, fair game for every passing knave. With it--"

"With it, you can be a butcher and a tyrant!" the girl slashed in upon him. He could see the lines of strain and inner tumult etch deeper into her face. "You can carve your bloody way like Sark himself, till some worse monster topples you from your throne!"

Haral clenched his fist. He threw his words like thundering boulders.

"Strength rules the void, woman! Give me the strength to carve my way and I'll ask no more!"

The girl's face whitened. Her lips trembled. Passion echoed in her voice: "But ... is strength enough? Can you find the things you really seek in strength alone?"

"With power, I can do anything!"

"No! Power is not enough--"

"It is! It is!" He could not hold down his heat, his fervor.

But how could he tell her? How could he make her understand?

And why did he care?

He clutched the saddle and stared bleakly off across the crags. A flood of memories washed through him. And because their roots struck so very deep, he knew before he spoke that in spite of all his efforts, his words were going to come out as cold and hard as the stones of these barren mountains.

He said tightly: "I was born on Pallas. My ancestors came out to the asteroid belt from Earth as colonists, in the days when Earth still was mighty."

He could see the girl's eyes widen. "Then ... you are of Earth--?"

"Of Earth?" Haral laughed harshly. "Call it that if you will. But what place is there for any colonist, anywhere, when the mother planet falls? The first of my people came out three hundred years ago. But by the time Earth at last was vanquished, no one cared from whence they came, or what happened to them. They were left on their own, to stay and face their troubles. The weak died; the strong survived."

He broke off, and looked away. The memories were roaring now. Emotion choked him. But it was as if he were a witness, speaking out in behalf of all his hopeless, derelict kind. Coldly, brutally, he forced himself to speak on:

"I grew up watching the _Malyas_ come, and the _Chonyas_, and a hundred mongrel raiders. When I was twelve, Ibarak's killers cut my father down, so Ibarak could add my mother to his harem."

* * * * *

He heard Kyla's low gasp of horror, and the shock that was in the sound stabbed him with a feeling that held both pain and, somehow, a fierce, vindictive pleasure.

He said harshly: "It was his mistake. She slit his throat, and then her own."

"Oh, no--!"

"Yes!" He swung round, and looked squarely into the slim, lovely _Shamon's_ eyes. "I swore an oath that day, my priestess--because that day I saw that nothing mattered save the power to take and hold. Love, honor, duty--what did they count? What had they done for my father, my mother, a million others like them? So I swore I'd live to see the time when no living creature in all the universe would dare to strike a blow against me. I swore I'd have the might to smash them, one and all!"

There was silence, then, for a vibrant moment, broken only by the scraping of the _hwalon's_ claws as they moved over rock and slides of gravel.

At last Kyla said, "What can I say, Haral?" And now pain was in her voice, too.

Wordless, tight-drawn, Haral nodded and turned away.

But then the girl spoke again: "I have long been Xaymar's priestess, blue one, and a priestess learns many things. Namboina himself it was who taught me to read men's hearts from the words they speak and the things they do, no matter how confused and torn they themselves might be."

Haral shrugged, not turning. Dimly, the priestess' words drifted to him through the haze of his own dark thoughts and feelings:

"Your life has been bitter, warrior--as empty as the void itself. But the thing you've sought, the thing you seek, is not an empire, no matter what you think. Even if fate should give you the power of which you dream, its savor would turn to ashes in your mouth."

* * * * *

A welling anger touched the blue man, and he twisted in its clutches. He'd saved this slim _Shamon_ girl from the coleoptera; thrown away his own chance at destiny for her. Why could she not now let him be?

Yet still she spoke, almost as if she'd read his thoughts:

"You care nothing for destiny; not really. For if you did, you'd not be here with me now. What you truly seek is an excuse for living, a warmth to fill the void inside you. There lies the root of your recklessness, your mad ambition."

The anger grew in Haral, and sweat drenched him inside his armor. The very rocks through which they rode seemed out of shape, distorted.

"Do you think me a fool or a child, then, not even able to see my own self straight? Or perhaps you believe me mad. Is that it?" He spat. "Why did you bother to come with me? Why didn't you stay with your thrice-cursed beetles?"

But Kyla's voice stayed calm ... so calm it sent new fury through him.

She said: "I have no quarrel with you, warrior; and the thing you did for me is worth more credit than your words would ever give it. That is why I say that power will never fill the hunger in you. What you need is a cause to fight for and to live for, not greed and blood and booty."

"So you'd like to see me play the fool for Ulna! You want me, single-handed, to take on Sark and Xaymar and the coleoptera!"

As Haral lashed out, the _hwalon_ topped another ridge.

In the distance loomed the squat buildings of the shabby spaceport town that was their destination.

Haral forgot his fury. Frowning, he headed the dragon down a steep ravine.

A gnawing doubt was growing in him. This was all so smooth, so easy....

Grimly, he debated the chance of ambush before they reached the town.

Kyla said: "Truly, Ulna needs a champion--"

Haral bared his teeth and cursed aloud.

And as he cried out, the world exploded.

He didn't even see the blaster that knocked him down.