Liberator Of Jedd

Ooma! Blade's heart pained and remorse struck at him. He had been so busy, so caught up in a frenzy of events, that he had spared the girl little thought.

He seized the young officer by the shoulder. «You saw this fat man?»

Sesi shook his head. «I did not, Sire. I was given the message by Captain Gath. He saw the fat man.»

But Blade had turned away. «No matter. You will come with me. I have a bodyguard of six below stairs. You will take command of them and follow me without question.»

He went vaulting down the stairs, three at a time Ooma in trouble, in danger. Again he cursed himself for his thoughtlessness. He owed the girl much, had a tenderness for her and yet had been so neglectful.

Blade set a blistering pace out of the city. Through the gates to the south where no guards challenged them and no death carts rumbled. His orders were being obeyed.

The young sublieutenant and the six soldiers panted along behind the big man as he increased his pace. There was no semblance of a formation and they were all trotting to keep up with Blade's long strides. He had noted it before — most Jedd men were short of leg.

They skirted the charnel pit and the rocks behind which Blade had lain in wait for the corpseburner and his cart. He spared them hardly a glance as he started up the hill to the house of Mok and the aunts. The soldiers and Sesi came after him as best they could, sweating and cursing and stained with dust and smoke from the smoldering pit.

Blade could see the house now. There was no sign of life. The humble little cottage brooded, desolate and alone, on its hilltop. The path here wound through a copse of melon trees and Blade halted just at the edge of the grove. His followers slumped to the ground, panting.

Blade studied the cottage. The door stood half open and his heart contracted painfully as he saw the mark — a splash of yellow paint. The plague mark. Ooma?

The young cornet and the six men saw the mark also. There was a frightened burble and Sesi came to stand beside him. «There is plague in that house, Sire. The men will not go nearer.»

Blade shot him a sideways glance. «I have not asked them. And you?»

Sesi would not meet his eye, but mumbled, «Nor I, Sire. My duties do not require that—»

He was cut short by a peal of maniacal laughter from the cottage. The young officer shuddered and stepped back a pace or two. Blade stared up at the cottage. That had been a man's laughter. Laughter?

Peal after peal now, of a man mad with fear and pain, the eerie laughter of a man who sees Death looming out of the black mists. Mok. It could only be Mok.

Blade snapped an order over his shoulder as he sprang up the path. «Remain here, Sesi. Form up your men and keep discipline. Wait for me.» He broke into a run.

The yellow plague mark was like a ru

Blade, ignoring Mok, vaulted up the stairs, calling out as he went. «Ooma? Ooma — Ooma?»

Echoes mocked him. No voice answered. He peered into the room where he had left her sleeping. Empty. He ran down the corridor and glanced into the only other room. Both the aunts lay in their beds. One look at their yellowed faces was enough. Dead of plague. But where was Ooma? She had sent a message and surely she would wait here for him.

He ran down the stairs and approached Mok. The man still lived, though for the moment he had stopped that terrible laughing. Blade knelt beside him. «Mok! Mok — do you know me? It is Blade.»

The little eyes, lost in folds of jaundiced fat, slowly opened and Blade could discern a last intelligence in them. The mouth opened and words tried to slip past the swollen black tongue and were blocked. Blade bent closer, trying to understand, to make sense of the jumble and slur, of the agonized attempt to speak. Nothing.

He glanced at the table. There was a clay vessel of the powerful fermented melon juice. Blade seized it and dashed half the contents into Mok's face, then he pried open the mouth and poured the rest down the fat throat. It was a faint hope, but the stuff might jolt Mok into a few last moments of lucidity.

The fat man choked and retched and spat. Blade knelt and put his ear close to the frothing mouth. «Mok — Mok! It is Blade. Ooma sent for me. Where is she, Mok? Where is Ooma?»

The fiery liquor did its work. Mok's eyes cleared for a moment and he looked up at Blade with comprehension. His first words nearly tore Blade's heart from his chest.

«Api,» burbled Mok. «Api came. They — they took Ooma and used her, all the Api soldiers, and then bound her and threw her alive into the charnel pit. She would— would not tell them of you, Blade. They would have spared her, the Api, but she would not tell them of you. A-alive — in the pit—»

Mok closed his eyes and let out a deep groan. Blade struck him hard across the face while his guts twisted with horror and remorse. Api? They were immune to plague. And who controlled the Api? Who but Nizra. The Wise One. Blade struck Mok again and damned himself bitterly for being the fool of all time.

Mok was speaking again. «Trap, Blade. T-trap. Ooma did not send for you. She was content to wait until you came. B-but Api came first. Took her. G-gave us all plague with knife. You see—»

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It was his last moment of lucidity before death. He raised a fat arm and Blade saw the cruel knife gash. They had inoculated Mok and the aunts with plague. Simple enough. Let a dagger fester in a corpse for a time, then plunge it into living flesh and plague would follow almost instantly. But this time it had not struck fast enough. Mok had lived long enough to talk.

There came a scream from the copse where he had left his bodyguard. Then a clash of arms and more screams and cries and the curses of men locked in battle. It was a trap. The Api had been waiting.

Mok's arm dropped to the floor. The fingers curled, stiffened, then relaxed. Mok was dead.

Blade drew his sword and ran to the door and peered out. Three of his men were already down and the remaining three were retreating up the path toward the cottage and giving a good account of themselves. They were being hard pressed by half a dozen Api warriors, as hairy and long-snouted as Blade remembered them.

Blade stepped outside the door and raised his sword and bellowed, «To me, guardsmen. To me! Break off and form around me here.»

His stentorian roar for a moment broke off the hot little battle. The Api paused in their attack and stared at Blade, their pale eyes feral beneath the horned helmets, the pointed baboon muzzles dripping with sweat and slobber. The goons rested for a moment, leaning on their long wooden swords edged with flint; and Blade's remaining three men broke off and ran to join him.

One of the soldiers was bleeding badly from a shoulder wound. Blade ripped away part of his tunic and bound it up as the man gasped out his story.

«They were concealed in the melon trees, Sire. We were betrayed by Sesi, who led us here. And now we die, for there are many of them all around the house.»

It was true. Blade could hear the high-pitched, effeminate calls of still more Api as they emerged from the trees at the foot of the hill behind the cottage and began to ascend. But he patted the wounded man on his unhurt shoulder and smiled at them all. «We are not dead yet, guardsmen. Only obey me — obey me absolutely and keep your courage and we may come out alive yet. They are only Api after all and we will out-think them.»

Yet as he gazed down the hill to where the Api leaders and the traitor Sesi were conferring, Blade did not feel so confident. It was going to be a near thing. Yet such was his rage and despair at the moment that he welcomed it. Let them come on. They would find a Blade as cruel and brutish as themselves. His eyes narrowed as he sought out the young sublieutenant Sesi. How skillfully, how carefully, the cornet had carried out his master's orders. Blade cursed himself again and again. He had made what might be a fatal mistake — he had underestimated the Wise One. What was worse, Blade had ignored the clear indications that this might happen. Nizra had told him of signals from the Api, and Nizra had carefully avoided mentioning the girl Ooma. Blade, busy and full of his own conceit, had let it pass u