His eyes studied her. She was a lovely thing, slim and gently rounded.
Beside the flame-haired Flaith she was a cooling breeze, but he knew
many men who would have walked through the fires of Nanakar for an hour
in her arms.
"Not only for that," he told her. "You're a sight to send a man's blood
to pounding in his veins. You don't look like a slave girl. You're much
too beautiful."
Her laughter was soft, pleased. She came and sat beside him, so that
her hip and thigh were warm on his. She carried perfume in the yellow
hair that dripped on her shoulders. It was rare perfume, and the
McCanahan thought that if her mistress knew about it, that creamy back
would be striped with red whipwelts.
"There are men of the Senn who hate the sfarri," she whispered close
to his ear. "Rumors have come to them that you possess some strange
weapon, some magic means of killing the hated sfarri."
The McCanahan swallowed the cheap wine that had been chilled in a coil
of refrigerated stil. He nodded. "I know a way."
It was on his lips to say more when his sidewise glance surprised a
momentary gleam in the gentle brown eyes. He needed no psychiatrist to
read that triumph for him, even though it was quickly veiled behind her
curving lashes. _Now why should a slave girl of the palace know that
feeling because of what I said?_ he asked himself.
The McCanahan put his arm about the girl, drew her in against him. With
his lips buried in the yellow mass of her hair, he whispered, "It ought
to be worth a lot to the Senn to get that knowledge! With such a weapon
they need never fear the sfarri again. They could cast them out! Even
seek alliance with the Solar Combine!"
It was his last words that tensed the muscles across her soft back.
Instantly, the muscles were relaxed, and she melted closer against him,
her soft lips moving across his face to find his lips.
The McCanahan kissed her. Why not? But he was warned, and only a fool
disregards a warning. And Kael McCanahan, as he drank from the scented
lips of Slyss the slave girl, was even then congratulating himself that
no McCanahan was ever a cursed gossoon.
He let her go after a while. She was a pleasant little thing, but she
was no Flaith. He said, "Suppose I agree to trade my weapon for freedom
from the High Mor? How do I know the Senn can guarantee my liberty?"
"I have the keys," she whispered. "Tonight I will come for you, to lead
you through the dungeons, to the vaults below the dungeons, where the
sea seeps in through solid rocks. No sfarran ever walks down there. It
is a dead, damp place. But the Senn go there to hide from the sfarri.
It is the one safe place on all Senorech. Slyss will take you there."
He lingered over her lips, close by the unlocked cell door, to bind
their bargain. But when she was gone, he took to pacing his cell, his
brows drawn together. She wants more than the body of Kael McCanahan,
that one, he told himself. The weapon I possess, and me! Or am I
playing the buffoon in thinking she was fond of me? He went back over
their meetings and discovered to his chagrin that each of her moves
seemed calculated. Like a sfarran! Cold, careful! Even her kisses
lacked the fire such a woman should bring to them!
As the sun sank below the hills above Akkalan, the McCanahan rested.
He was fresh when Slyss came to him on her bare feet, her key grating
silently into the cell lock. "Slib, the jailer, lies drugged with
wine," she told him. "He won't stop us."
She went quickly along the cell corridor ahead of him. At an
intersection in the rock walls she slipped to the right, into dark
shadows. He heard the rough grate of metal, and a section of the floor
was rising and falling, as a balanced slab of rock fell back to expose
a number of handhewn stone ledges that served as steps.
Slyss went first. The McCanahan came after her, and at her whispered
bidding, tilted the stone slab back into place. An instant before
it fell, as his eyes were still above the floor level, he saw a man
standing in the cell corridor, grinning at him.
The McCanahan almost cried out to Slyss.
The man in the cell corridor was burly, with black hair matted over his
chest. He jangled a ring of keys at his side. It was Slib, the jailer,
and his little eyes were clear and evil.
No man who lay drugged with wine ever boasted eyes like that! The only
thing that troubled Kael was whether Slyss knew the jailer was awake
and watching. If she knew, then he was being led into a trap, like a
steer to the axing. If she did not know, then she was taking herself
unwittingly into that same trap.
The McCanahan kicked off his buskins and walked with bare feet after
the girl, along the cool damp floor of the sea vaults. In olden days,
the primal men of Senorech had made their coves in these vaults to
escape the ravening monsters of the dawn era. Here and there, in the
light of the torches along the wall, he could see piles of white,
bleached bones.
They walked for more minutes before he heard the faint rasp of metal
touching rock.
Slyss was whirling, crying out.
From the shadows, men came leaping. As he plunged sideways, Kael noted
that they were hardfaced Senn warriors. There was not a sfarran among
them.
The McCanahan used his fist like a club, bringing its balled weight
down in a full arm stroke, hitting the nearest man at the side of his
neck, and driving him sideways into his companions. Before the man's
falling club touched the floor, Kael held it, bringing it upward in a
ceilingwise blow into the middle of the next man's belly.
Kael McCanahan had fought in the port taverns of Marsopolis and
Dunverick. He had traded fists with Deneban dockwallopers and Karrvan
stevedores. He knew every trick in the creeds of a dozen fighting races.
He used them all in the sea vaults below Akkalan. He used the club like
a sword, driving it hard into a Senn's face. He hit backwards with it.
He used an overhand, downward stroke, that drove the inches-long spikes
that studded its knob, deep into a man's braincase.
It is no easy matter for ten men to cage one man. Not in dimly lighted
pits, with that one man an explosive cyclone of fists and bashing club.
Ten men keep getting in the way of each other. And Kael McCanahan was
there to make each mistake a costly one.
He cut his opponents down to five in those first few minutes. Then he
was at the wall, ripping loose the olisene-drenched torch, hurling it
in their faces, to splatter in thick little globs of burning chemicals.
With their screams of pain ringing in the sudden darkness, the
McCanahan slid forward into the blacker shadows. Out of sight he ran.
He found a tunnel that sliced at an angle into the main vault. He went
along it, his bare feet making no sound.
He discovered another converging corridor and raced along that. Inside
ten minutes, he lost himself in the labyrinthine vaults.
He came to a halt in the blackness, lungs gulping at cool air that was
faintly spiced with seasalt. He listened, but heard no sound. When his
heart ceased to thud so heavily against his ribs, he moved again. But
now he went more cautiously, with the club before him like an overlong
arm, probing the darkness.
He felt the cool updraft of air, just as his feet went out from under
him.