Valkyrie from the Void

Staggering under the blasting heat of a great ringed sun, she fought only to cross her savage slimy world. The lithe Priestess Ylda knew not that her goal lay, bright and shining, a thousand light-years away.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Hardan Synn reined in his graceful golden-furred maar as he reached the rim of the river's low bluff. He was uncomfortable, for the _vurth_-padded garments that covered his naked body were growing dry, but tied to his huge hornless saddle were three fat Dryland birds. He would eat well tonight.

The rough fare of cereals and preserved fish had palled. Five years of roaming the blistering plains and mountains with sun-hardened prospectors and hunters had given Hardan Synn a taste for Dryland flesh. So it was that he quitted the camp when the day's trek was done and rode out in search of game.

The maar's long black ears cupped forward, searching the source of some discordant sound. Hardan's keen green eyes snapped back to the reality of the camp sprawling half-in, half-out of the muddy bluish river.

Men were fighting, fists and clubs smashing into the down-furred flesh of their fellows. The sound of their enraged bellowing and the shrill screams of pain and agony grew louder even as he forced his maar down the steep path to the bluff's base.

"Nitka Porn again," Hardan Synn spat out savagely as the blue dust swirled about him. "Always he seeks to stir up trouble among the sarifs."

His sun-darkened face was a gaunt mask as he neared the river, but his slitted green eyes were hot with growing rage. He could not leave the eighty great wagons with their cargos of two hundred Wetlanders and their meager supplies for so short a time as a turev of the water dial without trouble arising.

Hardan sprang off his mount and elbowed his way into the thick of the melee, his broad hard shoulders tossing soggy-padded men aside. His hard fists smashed one scowling-faced Wetlander's nose, and then he was through into the rude square formed by the inner ring of six-wheeled wagons.

"Nitka Porn!" he shouted, his voice a knife-thrust of sound above the tumult.

The fighting men separated slowly, some weaving on their legs unsteadily, bleeding, and others kneeling and groaning. A half-dozen, most of them wearing the short green capes of the nobles' personal servants, sprawled limply in their own reddish-brown blood.

From one of these unmoving bodies a huge-bodied man, his brutal jaws masked by a bush of fiery red whiskers and his broad nose segmented by a sword-cut's diagonal scar, rose. Half his protective shell of faded blue cloth stuffed with vurth was ripped away from his shoulder and chest. Great muscles knotted there in his swiftly dehydrating pink flesh. He snarled at Hardan.

"The Drylander arrives," he jeered, and laughed.

From the hard-packed blue clay of the camping place he picked an arm-long stake of wood. He waved it derisively at Hardan.

"Watch him shiver," he roared. "When he is well beaten I will drive him from the camp. Then I will lead."

Hardan's stomach knotted--and then dissolved into a glowing spot of fire. His fingers bit into the leather handles of his twin short swords. He had no eyes for the grinning minority clustered about Nitka Porn. Nor did he see the puzzled empty faces of the other trekkers, the slow-minded plodding sarifs caught in this bloody trailside struggle.

"You stand alone against us all," snarled Nitka Porn, swaggering forward, his muddy green eyes slitted watchfully. "The Consars are dead, swimming in their fine wagon tanks for the last time. Their wagons and riding maars are ours now."

Hardan caught his breath on that. This was disaster!

"Fools," he said, his voice loud and sharp, "you know the price of any rebellion. The Consars will track you down. For many it will be the crushing death."

Even as he spoke his eyes never left those of the red-whiskered killer he fronted. In a moment the giant sarif would charge forward, his club swinging and the long curved sword of a dead lord in his other hand.

Hardan sprang to meet him, swords bared and gleaming. Perhaps with the death of Nitka Porn the revolt would collapse....

The stake caught him squarely on the shoulder. His left-hand sword dropped, tripping him. He caught himself, warded off a whistling slash of the huge curved blade of the sarif, and leaped backward. His left shoulder was numbed, his arm dangling limp as a blasted netho leaf in the noonday sun.

Hardan's sword darted in and out, flickering in the brazen sunlight. Blades clashed, slithered apart and the good steel rang clear as bells tinkling. Blood leaked through the pierced blue cloth of the sarif's vurth-padded garment in a half-dozen places.

His arm was tingling with reviving life. Through a red mist of hate Hardan fought with a cool machine-like series of lightning-swift lunges that ripped the sarif's skin into myriad reddish-brown furrows. Hatred was there, yes, but so controlled that it added strength to his sword arm and length to his blade.

The long curved sword flipped abruptly away into the faceless mass of the ringed trekkers. Nitka Porn pawed at his dripping knuckles, his mouth squared, his eyes bulging. He lunged backward, the men parting before his blind rush. And Hardan followed, his eyes hot.

"Kill him.... Mika, Garnd.... Don't let him.... No.... Mercy!" begged the great coward, his hands before his face.

Hardan poised his keen blade for the death thrust.

"No," he swore angrily, "by Ung Roth, I have not the heart for killing this foul bladt."

He rammed the sword into the clay. His fists swung hard, all the unleashed loathing and disgust of weeks past in their calculated blows, and Nitka Porn went down emptily, to quiver and lie still.

Hardan retrieved his swords, wiping the stains off on the unconscious hulk's ribboned cloth. He faced the sullen Wetlanders.

"I take over again," he announced. "Back to Aba we go. It's but two days' trek. There the guilty will be punished before I guide you to Lake Gron."