low red ridges of the Dragals seemed tantalizingly far away. The sun was rising higher, and its blistering heat had already dispelled the coolness of dawn.
The crimson orb hung almost directly overhead, and they were still hours from the ridges, when Zoor’s pony tripped and went down. It rolled with a broken neck as the little man darted nimbly from the saddle.
Khal Kan reined up and came riding back. The dust-cloud of their pursuers was ominously big and close.
“Ride on!” Zoor cried, his wizened face unperturbed. “You can make the ridges without me.”
“We can’t make them,” Khal Kan denied coolly. “And it’s not our way to separate in face of danger.”
He dismounted. Golden Wings was looking westward with exultation in her black eyes. “Did I not tell you I’d see you caught!” she cried.
Khal Kan cut free her hands and feet. He reached up and set his lips against hers, bruisingly. Then he stepped back, releasing her.
“You can ride back and meet your father’s warriors with the glad news that we’re here for the taking, my sweet,” he told her.
“You’re letting her go?” yelled Brusul. “We could hold her hostage.”
“No,” declared Khal Kan. “I’ll not see her harmed in the fight.”
He laughed up at her, as she sat in the saddle looking down at him with wide, strangely bewildered eyes.
“Too bad I couldn’t get you to Jotan with me, my little desert-cat. “But you’ll have the pleasure of seeing us killed. Tell your father’s warriors to come with their swords out!”
* * * *
For a long moment, Golden Wings looked down at him. Then she set spur to the pony and galloped away to the oncoming dust-cloud.
Khal Kan and his two comrades drew their swords and waited. And soon they saw the force of a hundred drylanders riding up to them. Bladomir was in the lead, his beard bristling. And Golden Wings rode beside him.
“The little hell-cat wants to help kill us,” growled Brusul. “You should have slit her throat.”
Khal Kan shrugged. “I’d liefer slit my own. Too bad we have to end in a skirmish like this, old friends. I dragged you into it.”
“Oh, it’s all right, except that we won’t be with the armies of Jotan when they go out to meet Egir and the Bunts,” muttered Brusul.
The drylanders were not charging. No sword was unsheathed as they came forward, though old Bladomir was frowning blackly. The desert chieftain halted his horse ten paces away, and spoke to Khal Kan in a roaring voice.
“I ought to kill you all, Jotanians, for taking my daughter away with you. But we’re a free people. Since she says she goes with you of her own free will, I’ll not interfere.”
“Of her own free will?” gasped Brusul. “What in the sun’s name—”
* * * *
Golden Wings had dismounted and came toward Khal Kan. Her dark eyes met him levelly. She did not speak, nor did he, as she took his hand.
Bladomir laid a sword-blade across their clasped hands, and tossed a handful of the yellow desert sand upon it. Khal Kan felt his heart in his throat. It was the marriage rite of the drylanders.
Zoor and Brusul were staring unbelievingly, the drylanders sadly. But Golden Wings’ red lips were sweet fire under his mouth.
“You said that for each lash-stroke last night, I’d pay a hundred kisses,” she whispered. “That will take long—my lord.”
He looked earnestly into the brooding sweetness of her face. “No deceptions between us, my little sand-cat!” he said. “When I freed you and let you go to your father, I was gambling that you’d come back—like this.”
For a moment her eyes flared surprise and anger. And then she laughed. “No deceptions, my lord! Last night, in my father’s pavilion, I knew you were the mate I’d long awaited. But—I thought the lashing would teach you to value me the more!”
Bladomir had mounted his horse. The stoical old desert chieftain and his men called their farewells, and then rode back westward.
They had left horse and sword for Golden Wings. She rode knee to knee with Khal Kan as they spurred up the sloping sands toward the first red ridges of the Dragals.
Dusk came upon them hours later as they climbed the steep pass toward the highest ridge of the range. One of the pink moons was up and the other was rising. The desert was a vague unreality far behind and below.
“Look back and you can see the campfires of your people,” he told the girl.
Her dark head did not turn. “My people are ahead now, in Jotan.”
They topped the ridge. A yell of horror burst from Brusul.
“The Bunts are in Galoon! Hell take the green devils—they’ve marched leagues north in the last two days!”
Khal Kan’s fierce rage choked him as he too saw. Far, far to the east beneath the rosy moons, the lowland plain below the Dragals stretched out to the silvery immensity of the Zambrian Sea.
Down there to the right, on the coast, should have shone the bright lights of the city Galoon, southern most port of Jotanland.
But instead the city was scarred by hideous red fires, that smoldered through the night like baleful, unwinking eyes.
“Egir’s led the green men farther north than I dreamed!’” Khal Kan muttered. “Oh, damn that traitor! If I had my sword at his throat—”
“We’d best ride hard for Jotan before we’re cut off,” Zoor cried.
They rode north along the ridges, until the red fires of burning Galoon receded from sight. Then they moved down the western slopes of the mountains, and galloped on north along the easier coast road.
Galloping under the rosy moons, Khal Kan pointed far along the shore to a yellow beacon-fire atop the lighthouse tower outside Jotan.
The square black towers of Jotan loomed sheer on the edge of the silver sea, surrounded by the high black wall which had only two openings—a big water-gate on the sea side, and a smaller gate on the other. The rosy moonlight glinted off the arms of sentries posted thick on the wall, and a sharp challenge was flung down as Khal Kan rode up to the closed gate.
Joyful cries greeted the disclosure of his identity. The gates ground slowly open, and he and Golden Wings galloped in with Brusul and Zoor. Khal Kan led the way through the black-paved stone streets of Jotan to the low, brooding mass of the palace.
When, with Golden Wings’ hand in his, he hurried into the great domed, torchlit marble Hall of the Kings, he found his father awaiting him.
Kan Abul’s iron-hard face seemed even grimmer than usual.
“The Bunts—” Khal Kan began, but the king finished for
