E.C. Tubb - The Winds of Gath

"Crowder? Perhaps." The prince was amused. His full lips parted to show gleaming white teeth as he smiled. He considered himself to be an attractive man. Physically he was. "You are a brave man," he mused. "Are you willing to risk your life for a friend?"

"If necessary. He could have saved mine."

"And you are grateful." The prince was pleased with the answer. "Tell me," he said gently. "What will you give me if I do as you ask?"

"Ten times the cost of the drugs, My Lord," said Dumarest promptly.

The prince shook his head.

"The High passage I won by defeating your fighter."

"So much?"

"If necessary, My Lord. A man is in pain."

"And you want the cure for his agony." The prince gestured to Crowder. "Find my physician. Have him give you what is needed. Go!" he waited until the man had left. "Come closer," he ordered Dumarest. "Closer. That is better." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You see? I trust you. I have placed myself within your power."

"Have you, My Lord?"

The prince caught the irony. "You are wise. Only a fool would wholly trust another. You are no fool and neither am I. There is a thing you could do for me. If you agree I will give you the drugs and the cost of a High passage." He paused. "The drugs now, the passage later. You could use it for your friend."

Dumarest nodded, waiting.

"I have seen you close to the Lady Seena," continued the prince. "She is an attractive woman. I would like to know her better. You understand?"

"Yes, My Lord."

"Good. What I ask is simple. It could be that I shall need a friend who is close to the lady in question. You could be that friend. If so you must obey my orders without question or hesitation. You agree?"

"Certainly, My Lord." Dumarest hesitated. "The High passage?"

"Comes when your work is done." The prince lifted his hand for silence as Crowder returned. The courtier carried a small package.

"The drugs, My Lord."

"Give them to Dumarest and escort him from the area."

The prince was thoughtful as the men left the room. He felt a vague sense of unease—Dumarest had been too willing to agree—then he shrugged off the feeling. How could he compare the values of a common traveler with those of a cultured man? Dumarest had nothing; to him the Lady Seena was a woman as distant as the stars while the price of a High passage was something which he could appreciate. No, he had reacted according to his type and would prove to be a useful tool when the time came to act.

The prince smiled as he thought about it. Crowder had done better than he knew.

Outside the tent Dumarest wiped the sweat from his palms and tucked the package under his arm. He felt dirty, soiled, yet there had been nothing else he could have done. Megan needed the drugs and, if he had to lie to get them, so what?

He frowned as he walked to where the monks waited in the shelter of their tiny church. It was hard to see: thick clouds had rolled from the east and covered the sky, blotting out the stars. They made the air even more oppressive, a lid clamped down on the oven below, stifling with their presence.

Dumarest didn't look at the sky. He was thinking about the Lady Seena and the Prince of Emmened. What did they have in common? What plan had the prince in mind and what would be his part in it?

Something hit wetly on the back of his hand. Another drop followed it, and another until, in seconds, the air was heavy with falling rain. At the same time a vivid flash of lightning ripped across the sky.

The storm had begun.

IT CAME WITH a continuous rolling of thunder which tore at the ears and numbed the senses. The lightning was a web of electric fire across the sky, stabbing at the ground, searing wetly into the sea. The rain was a deluge, pounding the ground into mud, turning the air almost solid with its moisture.

The fires died. Stretched plastic echoed the drumbeat of the rain. Tourists cursed and huddled beneath the shelter of their rafts. Travelers fought to join them or scurried frantically to what shelter they could find. It was little. The wise stripped their shirts off and covered their heads with them so that they could breathe at least. The stupid drowned in the relentless downpour.

And still the air remained motionless. The winds had yet to come.

"I don't like it," said Megan. He sat, hunched in a corner of the church, his face pale from recent strain, "I've never known it this bad before."

"But it rains?"

"Sure." Megan moved so as to give Dumarest a little more room. The church was crowded with desperate travelers sheltering from the storm. They stood packed in an almost solid mass. The air was heavy with their heat and smell after their long confinement. "It rains and sometimes there's thunder, but not to this extent." He listened to the drumming of the rain. "This is something special."

He was shouting but Dumarest could hardly hear what he said. The thunder and rain seemed to fill the universe. Suddenly he could no longer stand the cramped confinement, the heat and the smell.

"I'm going outside." He tried to rise to his feet and Megan caught his arm.

"Wait it out, Earl. You're safe in here."

Safety was relative. In the church Dumarest was safe from the immediate danger of the rain but the rain would not last forever. Then would come fresh danger, perhaps from the Prince of Emmened, or Crowder, or the person who had tried to kill him on the journey. The violence of the storm triggered a violence within so that he burned with the need for action.

He jerked his arm free and tried to thrust his way toward the opening of the church. He failed; the press of men was too great. He dropped to his knees and probed the lower part of the wall. The plastic was thin, merging with the sea of mud outside. He dug and lifted and gasped as spattered rain lashed his face.

"Earl!"

"Wait here!"

Dumarest lifted the side wall, ignoring Megan's protest, flattening so that he could thrust head and shoulders outside. The rain slammed at his skull and forced it into the mud. He reached out and clawed at the ground, dragging the rest of his body from the tent. The side wall fell behind him and suddenly he was alone.

Alone in a peculiar world lit by the stroboscopic effect of vivid flashes of lightning, deafening with the roll of thunder, the drumming of rain.

He turned and felt water drive into his nostrils, his mouth, slam with bruising force against his closed eyelids, run wetly into his ears. He tried to breathe and choked as water reached his lungs. Coughing he turned to face the mud, stooping low as he ran forward in a long, loping crouch.

He paused to get his bearings, conscious of the proximity of the sea and the cliffs falling to the waves. In such a storm it would be easy to go over the edge. A lightning flash showed him his position. Ahead and to one side loomed the tents of the Matriarch, black in the fierce glare. He could see no guards but had expected none. They would be inside. Another flash and he could see the complex of the Prince of Emmened, equally black, equally lifeless. The rafts of the tourists rested, well away from the sea, a cluster of crowded travelers devoid of shelter, some alive, some dead, all inconspicuous in the mud.

He ran forward as darkness closed around.

It was hard work, harder still as he had to steal every breath, shielding his face and waiting as his gasping lungs reoxygenated his blood, retching as water reached where only air should go; waiting too as the vivid glare of lightning etched the plain with stark clarity, running only when it was safe to move unobserved.

The rain eased a little. The rolling thunder moved seaward; the lightning was no longer directly overhead.

Dumarest tripped and fell, slamming heavily into the mud, feeling the soft dirt splash into his eyes and mouth. He rolled, face upward, so that the punishing rain could wash him clean, rolling again in order to breathe. He looked at what had tripped him.