Chapter 8

SWORD AGAINST DRAGON

The chase done, we dismounted on the branch of a nearby tree for a court picnic.

The giant trees of the World of the Green Star are unbelievable in height and girth. In comparison, men and women shrink to mote-size, like ants next to skyscrapers. The main branches of these forest colossuses are broader than twelve-lane highways and sturdy enough to support entire cities. The branches whereat we paused for our midday meal, however, were less huge-say, of the width of ordinary streets.

Our perch was not really precarious. The branches are gnarled and whorled and knotted, their sheaths of bark rough and coarse as broken rock face. One would have to be amazingly clumsy to slip or fall-and the Laonese are nimble as mountain goats, utterly unafraid of heights, with a superb sense of balance.

All about us hung leaves the size of tents, lucently golden like vast sheets of antique parchment; emerald shafts of sun, striking down through filtering layers of leafage, drowned us in a dreamy haze of green-gold twilight.

While grooms tethered our dhua to twigs, domestics unpacked delectable food and drink from saddlebags. The lunch was a picnic sort of thing, of zesty, spicy oddmentsnarrow crusty cakes savory of almond paste, tiny cubes like anchovy sandwiches, slices and crisps of pickled fruitall washed down with a foamy, effervescent drink that had the dry sparkle of champagne and the robust heartiness of dark beer.

We ate, clustered apart in couples and trios, scattered here and there about the branch. I had been favored with the honor of riding with the princess during the Dance of the Zaiph, now another was favored as her luncheon companion: a languid, lisping youth of ancient lineage and high rank named Awaiiomna, whom I particularly detested. The slender, elfin Laonese males are generally graceful and effeminate, but this particular princeling was foppish, limp-wristed and catty to a fault.

He and the princess retired to an upper curve of the bough, accompanied by Niamh’s maid; half-hidden from us by a screen of lucent gold leaves, I could not watch them with a jealous eye, as I longed to-I could only sit, seething, straining my ears to catch Awaiiomna’s sly whispers, and boiling with rude fury at Niamh’s frequent bursts of tinkling laughter.

My own luncheon companion was the High Bonze Eloigam, a dour priest whose conversation consisted of enigmatic homilies spiced with obscure texts from the Laonese scriptures. I understood hardly a word he said, and the grunts and nods and growls I gave in answer to his attempts at conversation must have been equally uninformative.

The High Bonze, it seemed, had been literally aching to get my ear, for he had a thousand and one queries of a philosophic or metaphysical nature to try on me. In retrospect, I can sympathize with the crusty old cleric, for, after all, as one who had certainly passed through the portals of life and death and rebirth, I must have been a tempting potential source of enlightenment on the nature of the gods, the astral terrain of the World Above, and all the more arcane secrets of super-nature.

“The World Above,” incidentally, is the name the Laonese give their conception of heaven. I suppose it is only natural for the theological speculations of a cloudwrapped planet to situate the country of the gods beyond the eternal cloudbanks; this, at any rate, was the Laonese theory. I have never bothered to look very deeply into the native religion, a subject of great complexity at best, with endless pantheons of divinities, their various aspects and avatars, their multiplex natures each enshrined in a separate configuration, wrapped in its own apocalypse. Between the ultimate godhead and ordinary man, as well, are rank upon rank of saints and sages, prophets and

miracle workers, angels and apsaras (a sort of Laonese version of valkyries), symbolic monsters, tutelary spirits, ancestral and clannish totem beasts, nature elementals, and guardian genies. The subject is worth a lifetime of study, for one so inclined.

At any rate, in my surly mood, I was struggling to make what answer I could to the probing questions of the High Bonze, coping as best I could with a spotty vocabulary unsuited to dealing with the higher matters of theologies, when a startling shriek of terror interrupted the meal and shattered the leafy tranquility of the idyllic scene.

It was Niamh’s voice!

Once again, the trained reflexes of my warrior’s body functioned automatically, bringing me to my feet in a lithe surge of rippling thews. Snatching my sword from its shoulder baldric, I nimbly sprang up the ascending coil of the branch, past lunching couples and trios frozen in sudden shock.

I shouldered through the screen of golden leaves to see a tableau of ultimate horror.

Niamh stood against a twig-stem the width of a sapling, luminous amber eyes dark and enormous against the pallor of her drawn visage. At her feet, cowering like a terror-stricken child, crouched the trembling highborn youth who had been her companion. He was gibbering in fright, mouth wet and working, hands futilely pawing at empty air as if to push from sight the monster that menaced them.

It was a ythid, the most fearsome carnivore of the World of the Green Star. Imagine a scarlet reptile twice the length of a full-grown tiger, with a sawtooth spine and lashing barbed tail, and you will have a picture of the thing.

With three pairs of sucker-disked claws, it clung to the up-curve of the dwindling bough. It glared down at the two helpless victims, mindless ferocity in its burning green eyes. The hooked snout snuffed the air, scarlet jaws parting to reveal a double row of fangs like curved daggers.

As I watched, the tree dragon glided toward its quarry, crouching on its six legs for the pounce.

No one else was near enough to help; my sword glittered naked in my band: it was up to me!

Silence stretched taut to the breaking point. Steely

sinews writhed and bunched in the sextuple shoulders, as the monstrous ythid gathered itself to leap upon the two.

The sword in my hand was a toy, a mere rapier with a slim blade of that strange, supple glass-clear metal the Laonese use instead of ferrous ore. Now I had cause to bitterly regret laying aside my mighty broadsword before departure, thinking it too heavy and cumbersome for the chase.

But-glittering toy or not-the sword was all I had. And it would have to do.

I hurled myself in the path of the ythid, splitting the silence with a deafening bellow!

My glass blade flashed and twinkled, slicing the air as I flicked the razory length across the hooked snout of the crouching reptile. Yellow gore spurted: the ythid recoiled with a squeal of surprise and anguish loud as a steam whistle.

I sprang to one side as it extended its long neck, snapping viciously at empty air where I had been a split second before. Whirling like a dancer, I slashed at the scarlet-mailed shoulder nearest me; again yellow blood squirted from the cut.

It gave voice to an ear-splitting screech and clawed at me, striking with blurring speed. I leaped back as hooked claws ripped open my leather tunic from throat to groin, merely grazing my flesh. Perspiration popped out on my brow; one good stroke of those keen sharp claws would disembowel me in an instant.

Fighting by pure instinct, I cut down at the extended paw, and caught it a shrewd blow at the wrist joint. Again, gore splashed from the wound-glistening, oily dragon blood, curiously yellow, like molten topaz.

Suddenly the thing reared up, using its terminal limbs to hold it secure to the curve of the bough. I swung at a scarlet forepaw-missed-drew back for another tryand felt an iron grip crush my midsectionl

One of the middle limbs had caught me in its grasp, hooked claws tightening like a vise.

The squalling brute jerked me off my feet and up into the air. The crushing pressure of those closing claws was driving the air from me; my face blackened; I gasped for breath.

The grinning saurian jaws swung down toward me, hideous fangs glistening wetly, eyes mad with pain and