Queen of the Martian Catacombs Engraved Page 6

a table, where her back was to the wall and she could see both the door and the whole room.

  Kale had returned to his own heap of furs by the door, but his basilisk eyes were alert.

  Stark made a pretence of drinking, but her mind was very busy, very cold.

  Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast. She would fight, and Kale would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes would rise and fight also.

  But she would have needed no warning about that – and Delgauna herself had said there would be trouble.

  No. There was something more.

  She let her gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were other rooms off it, the openings hung with ragged curtains. Through the rents, Stark could see others of Kale's customers sprawled under Shanga-lamps, and some of these had gone so far back from humanity that they were hideous to behold. But still there was no sign of danger to herself.

  There was only one odd thing. The room nearest to where Freka sat was empty, and its curtains were only partly drawn.

  Stark began to brood on the emptiness of that room.

  She beckoned Kale to her. 'I will try the lamp,' she said. 'But I wish privacy. Have it brought to that room, there.'

  Kale said, 'That room is taken.'

  'But I see no one!'

  'It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your lamp brought here.'

  'No,' said Stark. 'The hell with it. I'm going.'

  She flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, she placed her eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.

  Luhara of Venus came out of the empty room. Her face was worried, and Stark smiled. She went back and stood flat against the wall beside the door.

  In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing her gun as she did so.

  Stark jumped her.

  Luhara let out one angry cry. Her gun went off a vicious streak of flame across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones of her wrist together so that she dropped it clashing on the stones. She whirled around, raking Stark's face with her nails as she clawed for the Earthwoman's eyes, and Stark hit her. Luhara fell, rolling over, and before she could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and thrown it away into the ruins across the street.

  Luhara came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with her, back through Kale's door, and they rolled together among the foul furs and cushions. Luhara was built of spring steel, with no softness in her anywhere, and her long fingers were locked around Stark's throat.

  Kale screamed with fury. He caught a whip from among his cushions – a traditional weapon along the Low Canals – and began to lash the two women impartially, his hair flying in tangledlocks across his face. The bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled.

  The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of her back beneath it. She snarled and staggered to her feet, with Luhara still clinging to the death grip on her throat. She pushed Luhara's face way from her with both hands and threw herself forward, over a table, so that Luhara was crushed beneath her.

  The Venusian's breath left her with a whistling grunt. Her lingers relaxed. Stark struck her hands away. She rose and bent over Luhara and picked her up, gripping her cruelly so that she turned white with the pain, and raised her high and flung her bodily into the growling, beast-faced women who were shambling toward her.

  Kale leaped at Stark, cursing, striking her with the coiling lash. She turned. The thin veneer of civilisation was gone from Stark now, erased in a second by the first hint of battle. Her eyes blazed with a cold light. She took the whip out of Kale's hand and laid her palm across his evil face, and he fell and lay still.

  She faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden women who walled her off from what she had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to her vision, partly blood, partly sheer rage. She could see Freka standing erect in the corner, her head weaving from side to side brutishly.

  Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of women who were no longer quite women.

  Hands struck and clawed her. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls and bestial laughter in her ears. The blood-lust had spread to these creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore her down with the weight of their writhing bodies.

  They bit her and savaged her in a blind way, and she fought her way up again, shaking them off with her great shoulders, trampling them under her boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood rose on the choking air.

  Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled and flung herself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and she sagged into Stark's arms.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, Stark saw Luhara. She had risen and crept around the edge of the fight. She was behind Stark now, and there was a knife in her hand.

  Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhara rushed in, she crouched and went backward, her head and shoulders taking the Venusian low in the belly. She felt the hot kiss of the blade in her flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhara could strike again, Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhara's skull rang on the flagging. The Earthwoman's fist rose and fell twice. After that, Luhara did not move.

  Stark got to her feet. She stood with her knees bent and her shoulders flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of her throat was one of pure savagery.

  She moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like a dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave back from her. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and there was something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend them apart that penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds.

  Kale sat up on the floor, and snarled, 'Get out.'

  Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then she lifted Freka to her feet and laid her over her shoulder like a sack of meal and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and way was made for her.

  She carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at her and drew back, out of her path. She came to Delgauna's palace. The guards closed in behind her, but they did not ask that she stop.

  Delgauna was in the council room, and Berild was still with her. It seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private talk. Delgauna rose to her feet as Stark came in, so sharply that her goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at her feet.

  Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor.

  'I have brought Freka,' she said. 'Luhara is still at Kale's.'

  She looked into Delgauna's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of him, dream. It was hard not to kill.

  Suddenly the man laughed, very clear and ringing, and his laughter was all for Delgauna.

  'Well done, wild woman,' he said to Stark. 'Kynyn is lucky to have such a captain. One word for the future, though – watch out for Freka. She won't forgive you this.'

  Stark said thickly, looking at Delgauna, 'This hasn't been a nightfor forgiveness.' Then she added, 'I can handle Freka.'

  Berild said, 'I like you, wild woman.' His eyes dwelt on Stark's face, curious, compelling. 'Ride beside me when we go. I would know more about you.'

  And he smiled.

  A dark flush crept over Delgauna's face. In a voice tight with I fury she said, 'Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!'

  She would have said more in her anger, but Berild said sharply,

  'We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight.'

  Stark went. And as she went, her brow was furrowed deep by a strange doubt.

  6

  At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynyn's caravan formed again and went out of Va
lkis with thundering drums and skirling pipes. Delgauna was there to see them go, and the cheering of the people rang after them on the desert wind.

  Stark rode alone. She was in a brooding mood and wanted no company, least of all that of the Sir Berild. He was beautiful, he was dangerous, and he belonged to Kynyn, or to Delgauna, or perhaps to both of them. In Stark's experience, men like that were sudden death, and she wanted no part of him. At any rate, not yet.

  Luhara rode ahead with Kynyn. She had come dragging into the square at the mounting, her face battered and swollen, an ugly look in her eyes. Kynyn gave one quick look from her to Stark, who had her own scars, and said harshly,

  'Delgauna tells me there's a blood feud between you two. I want no more of it, understand? After you're paid off you can kill each other and welcome, but not until then. Is that clear?'

  Stark nodded, keeping her mouth shut. Luhara muttered assent, and they had not looked at each other since.

  Freka rode in her customary place by Kynyn, which put her near to Luhara. It seemed to Stark that their beasts swung close together more often than was necessary from the roughness of the track.

  The big barbarian captain sat rigidly erect in her saddle, but Stark had seen her face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute look still clouding her eyes. There was a purple mark on her temple, but Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth – Freka would not forgive her either the indignity or the hangover of her unfinished wallow under the lamps of Shanga.

  The dead sea bottom