Джеффри Ллойд - Liberator Of Jedd

The sloe eyes narrowed at him for a moment and she laughed again. With one supple movement she twitched off the tiny bra and flung it aside. She gazed down at her breasts, then up at Blade.

«See, then. Are these the breasts of a little girl, a child?»

To Blade, of Home Division, they were indeed the breasts of a child, of a tender and unsullied girl verging on womanhood, and therein lay his greater agony. Her breasts were small and plump and perfect rounds of flesh unspoiled by fondling. Coppery mounds as soft as the flesh of inner thigh. Moving now to her breathing, trembling with hie of their own, tipped with pink buttons of erectile tissue now responding to her inner excitement.

Mitgu put her little hands under her breasts and cupped them and lifted as if to offer them to Blade. She caught her breath and with a half sigh, half gasp, repeated, «Are these the breasts of a child?»

Blade stood tall, his shadow etched by the tapers and falling across that golden little body. As he could cover her, then and there, if he wished it.

Mitgu trailed her fingertips across her nipples, then extended her arms to Blade. «Would you kiss me, Sire? And so find out how much child I am?»

He had taken a step toward her when the door was flung open and the lady-in-waiting entered. Mitgu squealed and disappeared behind the divan. Blade, feeling like a man who has seen the axe begin to fall and then been reprieved, yet turned on the woman with a scowl. An order was an order!

«I was not to be disturbed—»

The woman bowed low and her voice quavered as she nervously fingered her chain of office. «I know, Sire, but there is one who insists. He would not be turned away. He is a cornet, sent by Gath himself, and he has news of the greatest import. He threatened to kick in the door and enter unless I—»

«Enough,» Blade said gruffly. He brushed past her without a backward glance. But he thought he heard a subdued giggle from behind the divan and his face grew hot. That had been a near thing. But one thing he knew — in future, if he had a future in Jedd, he would treat Mitgu as a woman. She was right. She was no child.

The young Jedd waiting for him in an anteroom was one of Gath's sublieutenants. Blade recognized him vaguely and spotted the polished iron cornet around the man's throat. The little iron half-moon was engraved with a large G. This was one of Gath's men, right enough.

As Blade strode toward him, the young officer saluted with his short sword, then touched the blade to his chest armor over his heart. «I am Sesi, Sire Blade, sent to you by the Captain Gath on an affair of the utmost importance. The Captain is busy elsewhere and could not attend you in person.»

Blade crossed his arms on his chest and nodded. Smiled encouragement. «Then out with it, Sesi. What is this great news?»

The cornet, a stripling with a few chin whiskers and very light gray eyes, met Blade's glance for a moment and then looked away. He stared hard at the floor in concentration. Here, Blade thought, was no great intellect. This Sesi would never be a captain.

«I am to give you this message word for word,» the young officer said. «It comes from the Captain Gath as given to him by another. But first I am to tell you that the message was delivered by a fat man.»

Mok. Mok the drunkard! Blade stepped close to the cornet and scowled at him. «The message, then? Get on with it, man.»

Sesi would not be hurried. Evading Blade's eye, staring at the floor and the walls, he labored through it.

«Gath bade me speak thus — a fat man came to the house of Nizra, the Wise One, looking for Sire Blade. I, Gath, halted him and took his message instead. The fat man said: 'The girl Ooma, of whom Blade knows, is in danger and has great need of him. Ooma begs that Blade come at once to her.' «

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 running sore. Blade kicked the door open and entered. Mok lay on the floor near the table where he had passed out that night. He was on his back, his face saffron and twisted with pain, his mountainous stomach thrust up. He was laughing, the gaping mouth disclosing the ruins of blackened teeth. Laughing and laughing.

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.