Read Ebook: Dark Destiny by Swain Dwight V

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 953 lines and 30267 words, and 20 pages

DARK DESTINY

The Blue Warrior had journeyed far across the void in his search for power; but he found death along with it--in the eyes of a goddess!

He said: "I want you to kill a woman."

Across the table, the blue warrior called Haral sat very still. He did not speak.

"It's true."

Somberly, the blue man stared off into the crowd and smoke and shadows. It dawned on him that already new faces had sifted in; new forms, all arrogance and swagger.

"Why--?" Sweat came to the ancient's face. Uneasily, he shifted. "She--she--Sark is a monster, and his men have seized her for tomorrow's games in the arena. She'll die in agony at their hands. I--I cannot bring myself to let her suffer--"

"So you'd hire me to kill her instead?" Haral laughed harshly. "I hear your words, old man--"

"My name is Namboina."

Haral said: "You lie in your teeth, Namboina! I've heard enough of your thrice-plagued Xaymar to know that she's called the passionate goddess--and her priestesses pattern themselves upon her! If there's a virgin still among them, it's news to the raider fleets that comb these warrens in search of women."

Haral shoved back his chair; surged to his feet. "I've had enough of your lies, old man!" he slashed. "Sing someone else your song of murder!"

Namboina's quavering voice rose, thin with fury: "A curse on you, alien! A curse on all your outland breed that have made a cesspool out of Ulna--"

But now a new voice cut him short, thundering through the shadows: "This is the one we want! The old one, the priest they call Namboina!"

Haral spun about.

A dozen fighting men from Sark's raider crews were coming towards him and Namboina. Spread in a menacing arc, weapons out and ready, they closed in like cold-eyed, deadly shadows.

Haral fell back a step, till he stood with his back against the wall. Big-eyed with fear, Namboina slumped in his seat, as if trying to hide behind the table.

Then a glowering Martian who seemed to be in charge of the raider gang snapped orders: "Yes. This is the one. Bring him along!"

A Thorian's tentacle lashed out to grip Namboina and drag him bodily from his chair.

Almost as if in intentional added insult, he turned away and sheathed his ray-gun.

A hot, tempestuous tide of anger swirled up within the warrior. But he did not move; he did not speak.

For an instant, in spite of himself, Haral's arm went rigid. Then, thin-lipped, he sucked in air, and fell in beside the quaking, shaking priest.

One of the raiders laughed contemptuously and shoved the pair of them ahead still faster.

They reached the narrow doorway that led out to the street. Then, while their prisoners paused, two of the raiders stepped outside.

A knot of tension drew tight in the pit of Haral's stomach. He let his shoulders slump, and slouched, half-turning.

Namboina stumbled on through the door.

With studied care, Haral, too, stumbled. He caught the handle of the open door as if to keep himself from falling.

Haral leaped through the doorway, out into the street, slamming the heavy portal shut behind him. He caught a glimpse of the two crewmen there--startled, whirling.

But Namboina was between Haral and the raiders. Savagely, the blue man threw himself against the priest and sent him crashing into the nearest crewman.

In the same instant, he heard Namboina cry out in panic.

The raider dropped dead in his tracks.

The charge caught the Martian in charge of the party square in the belly. The others, behind him, sprang back inside, out of the way.

The narrow street echoed with Haral's wild, reckless laughter. Lurching to his feet, he stood there swaying for a moment, looking this way and that for old Namboina.

Whirling. Haral raced full-tilt for the nearest alley.

Where would it end, this madness that ever drove him on? What prize lay in power, that he must waste his life away searching, groping, striving for it? Why could he not live and love and die like other men, unplagued by the fierce surge of insane ambition that still pursued him--even here, even now?

And the road ended here.

A new spasm of fury shook him, and he cursed Namboina aloud with the vilest epithets a dozen tongues could offer.

It was then he felt the weight in his side pocket.

Dully, he fumbled to find what it might be; then, puzzled, pulled it out into the open.

But it was only a bag ... a worn, somehow familiar bag.

Few knew his name, nor whence he came. He'd buried himself too deep for that. But then, they did not need to know, for those were unimportant things in this brutal, brawling world of Ulna, where death walked so close on every hand.

Yet none came forth to challenge Haral. For those who eyed and measured him gave special attention to the slender, deadly, light-lance that was his weapon. Then, wordless, almost too quickly, they turned away.

So now he rode the filth-choked streets of this slattern town that served as Ulna's spaceport. And as he rode, beneath the blazing yellow sky, he smiled his thin, bleak, mirthless smile, and wondered how the motley mob that thronged these warrens would look if they realized his real mission.

Sark, the renegade; Sark, the raider. Sark, who had looted Bandjaran. Sark, the butcher, with the blood of all Horla on his hands. Sark. A sinister figure, at best. At worst, a monster to strike terror across the void.

Ulna was his today, for no creature dared to stand against him. His ships had blazoned the purple night with streaks of scarlet flame as they ramped; and his crews too had turned the town scarlet with their violence, till even the other lawless ones gathered here were cowed to sullen silence.

This morning, the raiders had seized this ragged, unkempt tract that passed as a central park--that they might enjoy their own savage brand of sport, the rumor went.

'Sport?' Haral smiled his mirthless smile again. It was a good excuse, and Sark's own crews might even believe it. But for Sark himself, unless the day had come when tigers changed their stripes, grim business was mixed in with the pleasure. That was Sark's way; he made no move that did not offer possibilities of profit.

A shout went up, even as Haral reached the outskirts of the milling crowd that had gathered in the plaza--a shout and, through it, the scream of a soul gone mad with pain.

Sark's crews had set up an arena of sorts, with seats for their chiefs along one side. In front of the seats a crude ring was fenced in with posts and thin, resilient duraloid cable.

Within the ring, they had an Ulno--one of the grotesque, two-headed primitives that were this planetoid's dull-witted subject people.

And there, too, stood one of the scarlet coleoptera, the giant thinking beetles that were Ulna's plague.

Now, as Haral reached the front of the crowd, the coleopteron stalked forward, towards the Ulno. Hideous and deadly, it stood nearly three feet tall at the thorax. Its protuberant multi-faceted eyes glittered evilly. Mandibles clacking, the misshapen head moved from side to side in short, menacing arcs.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet