The Sword Lord by Robert Leader Read Free Book Online

leg.”
    Ramesh looked sulky at being opposed, but Kananda was delighted with the decision.
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    The days that followed passed pleasantly in the shaded palm grove. Kananda’s leg healed quickly and cleanly, and it was not long before he could hobble with the help of a spear, but the wound was deep and needed time to heal fully. Except for a small party whom Kaseem had sent back to the plains with their news, the hunt had made camp. There was clean water in the stream, and plenty of fruit and game, pheasant’s eggs and bee’s honey, in the surrounding forest. Zela and her crew were well pleased to have made friendly contact, and they found more than willing collaborators in Kananda and the old priest as the two parties endeavoured to understand each other’s language. The encounter with the tiger, and the time-consuming delay provided by Kananda’s wound was a perfect opportunity.
    Kaseem was torn between continued mental discomfort and fascination. His logic slowly told him that these people were not gods, for they had to eat, sleep and function like mortal men and women, and yet he could not be sure that they were not from the gods. There had been no more voices from the sky, but the black temple of steel was a mighty edifice with three needle-pointed spires that were twice as high as any temple he had ever seen in stone, and he could not see how the hands of mortal men could have shaped it. The whole fabric of his philosophy and beliefs was under brutal attack and he performed his regular ablutions and sacrifices with the desperation of uncertainty.
    Even so, his thirst for knowledge held him fast, and he would not willingly have left the valley until all his questions were answered. Always a humble Brahmin, he did not see himself in any brave or noble light, but only as an old and unworthy priest who had been chosen by capricious fate to meet this new challenge to learning. He prayed endlessly as he struggled to understand the meaning of this new wealth of experience.
    Kananda was locked in a simpler, more fatal fascination. That of a young man’s awakened passion for a rare and lovely young woman, as ideal and mysterious as any vision from his wildest dreams. He hardly dared to admit his immediate infatuation for Zela, even to himself, for it would have taken the boldness of a god to declare his love for a goddess. Even so, he knew that he loved her, and constantly pricked or pierced his own flesh to determine that he was not dreaming.
    The bulk of the warriors and hunters, as their first fears diminished, were content to loaf and be idle. They stared often at the spaceship and its silver-suited crew, but eventually their attention turned more and more to gambling with the dice cubes that every soldier carried in his pack.
    Only Ramesh was dissatisfied with the unending delay. He fretted and pouted and nursed a grievance, for the tiger that Kananda and the woman had slain should have been his by right. The sabre teeth should even now be adorning his youthful chest, but he could not wear a trophy he had not killed. He felt cheated and more and more frustrated as it became painfully obvious that neither Kananda nor Kaseem were in any hurry to renew the hunt.
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    Kananda had many times visited the port of Baneswar, where the great river Mahanadi opened out into the heaving blue waves of the Indian Ocean. The main port and channel of trade for the empire of Karakhor, Baneswar was a proud bustle of inns and commerce. At its wharves lay ships that plied between the far coasts with silks and gold, timber and ivory, spices and salt, and a hundred other cargoes. On one visit, the young prince had seen a three-hulled trimaran lifted out of the water for scraping and repair, and he was reminded of that proud sailing vessel as he looked up at the sleek, rakish lines of the Tri-Thruster. The spaceship stood erect, but like the trimaran, its main hull was much taller than the wing