Princess of Amathar (23 page)

"The Zoasians have an extra eyelid which they can close to protect from the elements, and still be able to see,” she explained. "My aunt has made an extensive study of their culture and their physiology, though I dare say, I will be able to write quite a book on the subject myself, if I ever get back to Amathar."

"Yes, I know your aunt."

"She and I were always very close, at least after my mother died. In fact, I am closer to Mindana Remontar than her own daughter is. People always said that we were so much alike. Vena Remontar is much more like her father."

"I hope I get to see Vena Remontar again." I said.

"Why?" Her query caught me off guard. Why did I want to see Vena Remontar again? Because she was a good friend, of course.

"I have to tell her of the death of her betrothed." I said aloud.

"Betrothed? Was it Tular Maximinos"

"Yes," I affirmed. "He was killed in the assault, but brought down a Zoasian battleship almost single-handedly."

"Curious," said the Princess, thoughtfully. "Tular Maximinos had been my cousin's companion for a while before I left, but I never thought they were particularly right for one another." The great Zoasian land rover chose that moment to lurch into motion. The path the driver decided to take was very bumpy. And unlike the Amatharians, who seemed to employ interior decorators in even their most utilitarian war machines, the Zoasians made no effort to make anyone on board comfortable by padding a seat or the floor. The snake-man who was guarding us did not look as though he were particularly relaxed in his seat, and I, sitting on several exposed bolts in a armor plated floor, was certainly not. All in all, it reminded me of a trip I once took in an overcrowded helicopter for the United States Army.

It was a funny thought, but in almost everything except physiology, the Zoasians seemed more like the humans of my home planet than did the Amatharians. They lived in cities the size of New York or Mexico City, and the trash lying in the streets of Zonamis certainly did remind me of home. They seemed to have a military organization similar to armies on earth, and they expanded their territory just as every leader from Sargon of Akkad to Joseph Stalin had done on Earth. True, their science lab was more horrible than anything I would have expected from the U.S. Army, but I could imagine something similar in Nazi Germany.

"I wonder where they have stowed our swords." said Noriandara Remontar.

"I was just wondering the same thing,” I replied. I was too. It was the first thing that any Remiant would wonder. It was something that pushed to the front of one's brain and refused to get out of the way.

"Thankfully the Zoasians usually keep them close to the knight, and seem afraid to damage them." Thinking back to the death of Tular Maximinos and the destruction the soul within his sword inflicted upon the surrounding enemies, I could well imagine what they might be afraid of. Perhaps one of the Zoasian scientist had damaged one in the lab and caused just such a conflagration. Then again, the Zoasians had quite a bit of battlefield experience against Amatharian knights from which to draw. I felt very tired, so placing my shoulder beneath my head; I lay back down and went to sleep. I have had better rests in my time. The bouncing of the vehicle and the hardness of its floor were certainly not conducive to a comfortable rest. Yet the back and forth rocking of the truck and the hum of the loud, by Amatharian standards, engine did somewhat make up for it. While I passed in and out of sleep, I did not return to a full waking state until the land rover slowed to a stop, and I quite frankly have no way to tell how long that might have been.

Once a complete halt had been achieved, the entire rear wall of the great machine opened and formed itself into a ramp. The Zoasian guard, or it might have been a replacement for the first, as I have great difficulty telling them apart, stepped over to me and picking me up, slung me over his shoulder like a sack of whatever the snake men eat instead of potatoes. One of his fellows did the same thing with the Princess. They then unceremoniously deposited us on the ground beside one of the great wheels. Several Zoasians were preparing a camp: laying out sleeping mats, and setting up various pieces of equipment, the uses of which I could only guess at. I estimated that there were twenty to twenty five Zoasians total inside and outside their craft. While I might have been tempted to take them all on with my long sword, I didn't see much hope of engaging them with no weapon at all, and with my hands and feet bound.

One of the snake men tossed two foil pouches onto the ground beside us. I watched several of the reptiles open similar pouches and begin to eat the unidentifiable substances within. It seemed to be some type of freeze-dried food.

"Looks like the MREs we had in the army," I mused.

"What are they?" asked Noriandara Remontar, and don't think this didn't take some explaining, since in Amatharian, the words meals, ready, and eat do not start with letters even similar to M, R, or E. It took cooperation between both of us to open the foil pouches, because of our hands being bound, but at last we freed the block of Styrofoam-like food inside. I took a careful bite from mine and nearly gagged. While it was a dry wafer-like thing just out of the bag, when it combined with saliva or presumably any other liquid, it turned to a slimy ooze with the smell and taste of three week old catfish-and I mean three weeks without refrigerated storage, and dead.

"Try and eat it,” suggested the Princess. "We both need our strength, and we are unlikely to get any better from our captors."

"Yes, of course," I replied, as I forced the vile mess into my throat against its will. We ate and then sat in silence for a long time. Most of the Zoasians lay down on the sleeping mats and seemed to go to sleep. It was difficult to tell their actual state, since they neither snored nor breathed heavily, but they did close their eyes and refrain from movement. I could hear a couple of the snake men moving around inside the truck, but the only one outside who seemed to be awake was the one apparently assigned to guard us, and he never turned away and hardly ever blinked. I remain impressed by the Zoasians' ability to remain completely still, watching something. I tried repeatedly to out stare our guard, but could not do it. He blinked perhaps once every ten minutes, and that was a slow leisurely blink, all the while, the rest of his body remaining completely motionless. I had just resigned myself to being continually watched, when without any apparent motivation, our guard got up and walked into the vehicle.

I was not about to waste any opportunity to escape, and as soon as he was inside, I reached down and began unwinding the wire which bound my feet. I urged Noriandara Remontar to do the same, and she went to work on her own bonds. I had just finished freeing my stiff lower extremities, when I noticed two Zoasian feet standing beside me. The guard had returned. I expected to be hit on the head, something to which I was not looking forward to with any pleasant anticipation. But it did not happen. The Zoasian placed the long box he had brought from the truck, on the ground beside me. Then he reached down, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me to my feet. Then unwrapping the mess of wire, he freed my hands. He then opened the box revealing its contents--our swords, my pistol, and my belt. He pointed to the open box.

I first freed the Princess from her restraints, and then the two of us gathered together our weapons. When I looked at the snake man again, he pointed off to the distance. I realized he was telling us to go. It occurred to me then that this was the same Zoasian that I had freed from the Uursh Poch. He could have been picked up by that transport just before it captured us. I looked into his face to see if I could identify him as the same one, but I could find nothing in his black face and large yellow eyes to help me identify him. We didn't stay around worrying about it, but grabbed our gear, and left the Zoasian encampment at a trot.

Chapter Twenty Three: City in the Sky

Noriandara Remontar and I put as much distance as possible between us and the Zoasians. We didn't stop until we were completely exhausted. Even then, we rested for as short a time as possible, and were on our way again. We journeyed continuously for what seemed to me to be about ten days, though beneath the eternal noon-day sun of Ecos, there is really no way to tell: at least we stopped to sleep about ten times. We had just crossed over a low rise of hills, when I spotted a cave on the face of a small cliff.

"That looks like a good spot to lie low for a while," I said. "I don't think I can continue this pace."

"I can't either," the Princess replied. "It's hunger that is taking toll upon us most." We climbed up to the cave and found it to be nothing more than a scooped out chamber about six feet high, six feet wide, and perhaps nine feet deep into the hill. It was a place of shelter from unpleasant elements and any pursuers however, so we entered, lay down, and rested soundly. I woke up first and looked at Noriandara Remontar. She was incredibly beautiful. Even after all of her ordeals, after wandering in the desert, after battles, captures, and flight, she still looked like the woman I had dreamed of for so long. Something about the Amatharians' hair seemed to keep it looking shiny and clean, when mine felt matted and dirty and in serious need of a shampoo. The deep blue of the Princess’s Amatharian skin precluded any dark circles under her eyes. As I was looking at her, she opened those beautiful round eyes and sat up.

"Why did you follow me all the way to Zonamis?" she asked.

This wasn’t really a conversation that I wanted to have now, if at all. What feelings did I have for this woman? Was I madly in love with her? I had followed her across the face of an alien world and had passed though numerous trials and tempted many perils to bring her within my grasp. Yet now as I looked at her, I didn’t feel.... I didn’t know what I did or didn’t feel. I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t feel. She was so very attractive, and yet I was not feeling that deep-down sense of need that I had always believed would be there for the woman I loved.

"From the time I first saw you," I answered slowly, "I couldn't stop thinking about you. I just had to see that you got back to Amathar safely."

"Were you in love with me?"

"For a moment I thought that I was," I confessed.

"Now?"

"I'm not so sure now."

"I do not know you," she said, looking intently into my face. "This has not been the best circumstances under which to meet someone. Perhaps when we reach home, we can become friends. Just remember. My first duty is to my family and to the Sun Clan."

"As is mine."

We decided to split up and search for food and water and to meet back at the cave. I started down the hill and around to the right, while the Princess went left. I felt somewhat uneasy about letting her off by herself, especially after I had spent such a portion of time as I had, finding her in the first place, but she was a grown woman and a knight of the Sun Clan. She was probably more capable of taking care of herself than I was.

I had my light pistol and had high hopes of finding some type of animal to shoot. I felt if I were able to shoot a creature in the head, then perhaps the remainder of the carcass would not be too damaged to harvest. The light weapons of the Amatharians were not designed for hunting, but for war. It was not quite as bad as duck hunting with a bazooka, but it was certainly close. Unfortunately for me, there seemed to be no animals larger than a good sized beetle around. A beetle about three inches long sat in the shade of a rock, and for a moment I thought about catching him for dinner, but I decided that I was not quite that hungry, yet.

As I was searching around for prey, I spotted in the distance, a gathering of rather large bushes. Observing that the only large plants in this Ecosian desert seemed to grow along the stream beds, I made for the brush in hopes of finding a source of water. As luck would have it, in the center of the bushes was a small fountain bubbling up from between the rocks and forming a small pool covered with moss and insect larvae. I brushed the extraneous matter out of the way and filled my canteen. Then I took a long drink. The water was bitter tasting, but otherwise fine.

What I had taken for bushes around this little oasis, were in fact five thick, but stunted trees. Growing upon them were fruits about the size of a pear, though dark brown in color. I picked one and tasted it. Not only did it taste very bad, it actually burned my mouth. Undaunted by this apparent failure, I cut the fruit in half with my short sword and found in the center, a marble sized seed. Extracting this seed and rinsing it off, I bit into it and found it to be, while very hard, actually quite tasty. I harvested several dozen seeds from the trees, rinsed them off, and headed back to the cave.

I arrived back at the cave to find it still empty. I decided to take advantage of the time and clean out the interior of some of the dirt and plant debris that had been deposited by the wind. I scooped it out with my hands and threw it down the side of the hill. In a short while, I had cleared the entire chamber. The cave was solid rock on roof, walls, and floor, and seemed very safe and secure. Once my cleaning had been completed, I lay down and thought about my situation. While it was true that we were lost in the desert, I thought that things could certainly be much worse. I was alone in the wilderness with a beautiful companion, my arm was no longer throbbing though it was by no means as good as new, and we were at least temporarily safe from attackers.

I was just beginning to worry that perhaps my first instincts about letting Noriandara Remontar leave by herself were correct, when she climbed back up to the mouth of the cave. She had managed to capture a small animal, which looked to me to be a cross between an iguana and a horseshoe crab. I didn't make an in-depth examination of it, because the Princess had it skinned and spitted almost before I knew it. I did take a picture of it though.

Once I had created a small cook-fire just outside the cave entrance, Noriandara Remontar started the meat cooking. We shared the water and the nuts which I had procured and recounted the details of our excursions.