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the order. Its main effect was to make them more sensitive to the other eight
drugs.
Three of these were more important than the others. There was the huma, the
poison the Master had injected into the two men defeated by Blade. A full dose
of it could kill a strong man in a few seconds.
Even a grain or two finding its way through a cut or scratch could kill a man
within a few agonizing hours.
There was the ken, the drug the leader had injected into the two disobedient
Hashomi after the fight by the bridge. It made a man passive, almost without a
will of his own, incapable of acting without orders and equally incapable of
disobeying any order given him. While a man had the ken in him, he was little
more than a puppet.
The final member of the deadly trio was the nad. This was not made from the
handr flower, but compounded according to a highly secret formula from certain
mineral salts and vegetable juices. Its effects reminded Blade of what he'd
seen among victims of massive doses of LSD. The nad reacted in any
warm-blooded creature to produce madness paranoia, uncontrollable rage,
catatonic withdrawal, furious convulsions that ended in death from the
rupturing of muscles and internal organs.
Any warm-blooded creature-animals as well as men. Seared into Blade's memory
was a demonstration, of the nad he watched one day. He stood beside the Master
on the edge of a steep-walled pit dug in the earth almost at the foot of the
White Mountain. Together they watched three armed Hashomi lead a man and a
woman into the pit. Their hands were bound behind their backs, and both were
naked. The man was gray-haired and pot-bellied, while the woman was hardly
more than a girl.
They were led to the center of the pit, then chained by the ankle to a thick
wooden stake sunk in the earth. The Hashomi scuttled toward the entrance to
the pit and slammed the gate behind them. As they did, another gate on the
opposite side of the pit opened. The two chained victims turned fear-widened
eyes toward the second gate.
"They are a farmer and his daughter caught stealing ripe handr from the fields
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of the Hashomi," the
Master said. "This is contrary to our ways, which were given to the First
Master by Junah himself."
In other words, stealing handr was blasphemy. Junah was the god of the
religion that seemed to dominate this Dimension. It ruled in Dahaura as well
as in the valley, although Blade had heard that in
Dahaura it was divided into several sects.
Blade nodded politely. "I understand. Certainly the handr must be protected."
The Master smiled. "Indeed it must be, and today you shall see how we protect
it." His last words were nearly drowned out by a high-pitched neigh that
turned into a shrill scream and ended in a long rasping intake of breath.
Blade recognized a horse, in terrible pain, fear, or anger.
Hooves thudded, and the horse burst out into the pit. It was a small gray
stallion, thick-necked, short-legged, obviously a breed formed for strength
and endurance rather than speed or show. It plunged out into the pit,
alternately rearing and kicking out, long teeth snapping at the air. Its eyes
were wide and bloodshot and rolled furiously.
"The nad is working in it," said the Master. "Soon it will be blind as well as
mad. But before its eyes grow dark, it will see the man and the woman."
As the horse dashed around and around the pit, one of its lashing hooves
struck the girl on the hip. The girl bit back a scream and clutched at the
post to hold herself up. Blood now trickled down her bare thigh, and her
father let out a sharp cry that mingled horror, fear, and rage.
The horse heard him and turned. Its drug-hazed eyes focused on him, and it
reared up, its iron-shod hooves striking out. Its aim was good enough. One
hoof flailed the air by the man's ear, the other crashed into his forehead.
Skin parted, bone cracked and shattered, blood oozed. The man jerked
convulsively, then collapsed to the ground without a cry. He was not
dead-Blade could see him twitching feebly. But the damage would have defeated
Home Dimension's best brain surgeon.
Then the horse turned on the girl, using both hooves and teeth. The girl was
not as lucky as her father, for it took her a long time to die. At first she
tried to be silent, then she screamed, and finally she was silent again
because her torn lungs could no longer take in enough air for a scream.
Blade also had to exercise a good deal of self-control before the girl died.
He wasn't going to cry out and he wasn't going to be sick. He'd seen far too
many ugly sights. He did have to grip the railing in front of him, to keep his
hands from closing on the lean throat of the Master of the Hashomi and
squeezing until life was gone. He was quite certain that he could do that
before the other Hashomi could kill him.
At last the only movement around the girl was the flies settling on her
wounds. The Master signaled to one of the Hashomi and the man stepped forward,
holding a bow with an arrow already nocked to it.
The arrow whistled down into the pit, driving through the horse's skull. It
reared with a gasp and dropped beside its two victims. The bodies were still
lying there as the Master led Blade away.
"Thus the nad is an instrument of the justice of the Hashomi," said the
Master. Blade nodded. He did not trust himself to speak, not when it took a
real effort to keep his hands at his sides.
Finally he was able to ask, "You say that any warm-blooded animal will do this
under the influence of the nad?"
"Yes. We have tried it with horses, dogs, oxen, goats, and sheep-even the
hunting falcons that the nobles of Dahaura love so greatly. All will run mad,
smashing and killing as best they can, until they fall dead or are slain."
"I see," said Blade. Perhaps he saw even more clearly than the Master
intended. What would happen to a city-say, Dahaura-if a few dozen animals
maddened with the nad were let loose in its streets? Or a few hundred, or a
few thousand? With the nad, not only men but animals could be turned into
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mindless, maddened weapons of the Hashomi.
Then a question occurred to him. Perhaps the Master would answer it, having
already shown him so much. "What about animals whose blood runs cold-snakes
and fish, for example?"
The Master's smile was unpleasantly smug. "We have little use for fish. But as
for snakes-well, we do something with the fathers of snakes."
The next day the Master led Blade to another pit, at the mouth of a large cave
on the other side of the valley. This pit was more than a hundred yards across
and twenty yards deep. Iron spikes six feet long and six inches thick were
planted firmly in the rock all around the edge. They sloped inward, to impale
anything trying to climb out of the pit.
This time four of the Hashomi with Blade and the Master carried crossbows, and
two carried large brass trumpets that coiled around the men's shoulders. The
trumpeters walked to the edge of the pit and started blowing. They blew until
echoes were bouncing around the pit and from the pit to the slopes above. They
blew until half the mountainside above the pit could have crumbled and crashed
down in a landslide without being heard. The trumpeters began to gasp and
their faces turned the color of ripe tomatoes, but they went on blowing.
Finally the blare of the trumpets died, because the trumpeters had no more
breath to blow. They reeled back from the edge of the pit, and only sheer will
power and the Master's watchful eyes kept them from collapsing. As the echoes
died away, the crossbowmen stepped forward, raising their weapons.
Then the earth seemed to respond to the call of the trumpets. Out of the dark
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