In the Green Star's Glow. Lin CarterЧитать онлайн книгу.
or as burly as were most of the Blue Barbarians, he was a full-grown man in his prime and possessed of a man’s strength.
But the supple girl twisted lithely in his crushing grip, as agile as a writhing serpent. The girl fought furiously against the blue man as he struggled to thrust her over the side. Delgan soon discovered he had taken on a young wildcat.
She raked the sharp nails of one hand down the side of his face, slashing his cheek from eye-corner to chin. Blood spurted from his torn flesh; with a curse, he jerked his head back, fearing that with the next swipe of her vicious nails she might blind him.
Then a small but firm knee thudded into the pit of his stomach with staggering force. With a whoosh the air was driven out of his lungs as Niamh drove one sharp elbow into his ribs. Bent double, clutching at his belly, face streaming with blood, Delgan stumbled in retreat until he was backed against the control panel itself. Blinking open his eyes, which had been squeezed shut with pain, he saw the sunlight of the Green Star flash dazzlingly from the small, glittering blade of the girl’s knife.
The gleam of the naked metal was no less deadly than the wrathful fires that burned fiercely in the girl’s narrowed eyes.
Pampered child of the jewelbox cities though she was, Niamh of Phaolon fought like a tigress when she had to.
Facing her glittering blade, Delgan’s bravery ebbed. Cunning and unscrupulous, it was ever his way to win with words or guile rather than to resort to physical action, which, in his warped view, was the way of the brute. The wily and devious Delgan had long ago discovered that he would trick and entangle those he sought to use in a web of words. So he tried it now, rather than trust his precious hide to the stinging kiss of that small, chaste blade.
“Would you slay me, then, witch-girl?” he panted. “I am no enemy of yours! Think: have ever we met, child? If not, then how could we be foes?”
“It was no friend who tried to thrust me over the side, stranger!” spat Niamh, the keen knife unswerving in her grip.
Delgan forced a bewildered laugh.
“But you have taken everything wrong, child! I sprang aboard this flying craft to aid you in piloting it to the palace roof, for I alone know the trick of the controls. And I leaped forward to steady you, for fear that the impact of my leap might toss you from your feet and over the side. Then, and, I’m afraid, without even giving me a moment to speak and to identify myself, you brought that wicked small knife into action. Even then, although attacked without warning, I was not provoked, but kindly thought to remove the weapon from you, lest in your hysteria you do yourself an injury. . . .”
The blue man’s words were smoothly plausible, and the bewildered, almost hurt tones with which he uttered them came very dose to disarming Niamh’s suspicions. But the girl was no fool and remembered her own precise reactions, despite the sly-tongued villain’s attempt to befuddle her.
“If you are my friend, first toss that curious crystal weapon over the side,” she said keenly. Then, with a small, ironic smile, she added: “For, if we are friends, we need no weapons, now, do we?”
He nodded in a friendly fashion. “Certainly I will do so, to reassure you, mistress. But the crystal rod is no weapon; it is an instrument of the Ancients which sheds light in darkness. At any rate, I will surely do as you wish . . . but first, I think it not too much for me to ask of you a similar token in gesture of our friendship. Throw away that knife of yours, and I will do as you bid.”
Niamh looked at him strangely.
“Do you not know that every woman of my race bears ever on her person the sacred knife that is called the ‘Defender of Chastity’?” she murmured, puzzledly. “Or are you some savage outlander, unfamiliar with the code of civilization?”
Delgan, who was indeed just such a savage, albeit one who had rigorously schooled himself in the ways of the more civilized races of his world, bit his lip in silent fury at the slip. But not so much as a muscle twitched in his face to reveal his inward feelings.
“Of course, of course! I had forgotten!” he said, with an apologetic laugh. “Well, then, my girl, sheathe that holy knife of yours, or put it away . . . a naked blade is not drawn between comrades, you know!”
So cleverly devised was the verbal trap he had woven about her, that Niamh—although her every impulse screamed to retain the blade for instant use, if threatened—could not conjure up a good reason for not putting away the little knife. Keeping a wary eye on the smiling, seemingly friendly man, she reinserted the blade in its secret sheath, which was sewn in the lining of the garment wound about her breasts. When she had done so, she half expected the strange blue-skinned man to hurl himself upon her. But he did not.
“There we are, then; a truce between us?” he suggested genially.
“Perhaps,” she said tentatively. “But you have not yet tossed overside the crystal rod you wear.”
“This?” he said, smiling, drawing the death-flash from his girdle. “But it is too rare and precious to throw away, this artifact of the Ancients.” Then the deadly crystal rod was pointed unswervingly at her heart.
“Do not move or reach for that wicked little knife of yours,” he said softly. “But do exactly as I say. The deathly fires of lightning sleep in this rod, easy to awake, and it would be a pity to snuff out so young a life, to sear and shrivel so delectable a soft young body.”
Niamh crimsoned and bit her lip at the mockery in his eyes, but she offered no resistance.
Then he reached for her.
3.
Over the Side
Delgan suddenly snatched back his hand with a shrill, unbelieving cry. For, out of nowhere, a green-feathered arrow had transfixed his hand. Paling to a muddy, unhealthy hue, his thin-lipped mouth pinched with pain, Delgan stared down at his right hand. The arrow had pierced completely through the bones of his wrist. Its gory-bladed point protruded from the other side of his arm. Red blood trickled down his hand to drip upon the cabin floor from numb fingertips.
In the next instant a deep, quiet voice spoke from somewhere behind Niamh:
“Do not give credence to his lying words, lady, for he is a faithless traitor, and the direst foe of your friends Janchan and Zarqa and Elam.”
Niamh turned about to see the speaker of these words, and saw a tall, bronzed bowman in the forest-green and silver of Tharkoon. His powerful scarlet bow was at the ready, an arrow nocked in place to be loosed upon the instant, should the blue man try to fire the zoukar he still gripped in his uninjured hand.
While Delgan had sought to trap her in his wily web of words, the bronzed bowman had drawn himself up with a surge of his mighty arms until he straddled the tail-assembly of the sky craft. Then he had inched his way along the smooth, sleek fusilage of the streamlined flying vessel, until he crouched just behind the spacious cockpit. From that vantage point he had observed all which had transpired between the lissome girl and the smooth-tongued ex-Warlord of the Barbarian horde. His intervention had been a timely one. So intent had Delgan been upon the slim girl he sought to ensnare with his lies and half-truths and clever distortions of fact, his keen and watchful eyes fixed upon her elfin face, that he had not so much as glimpsed the burly bowman crouched atop the cowling. Had he so much as lifted his fixed gaze from Niamh’s face for an instant, the encounter might have had a very different outcome.
Now holding his bow nocked and ready in one hand, the archer from Tharkoon swung his booted legs over the cowling and dropped like a great cat into the cockpit to stand protectively beside the bewildered Princess of Phaolon.
“He lies, lady, I swear it!” panted Delgan, his eyes wild, his calm controlled demeanor shaken for once. His mouth worked loosely and spittle foamed at the corners of his lips, to dribble down his chin. “He is a renegade—an outlaw!—who seeks to seize you and deliver you into the hands of your enemies. I, I alone, am your friend!”
His words were