Planet of Dread by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: 9780575107823
Publisher: DAW Books
Published: 2011-09-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The music held a throbbing beat reminiscent of Heddish drums, the pounding accompanied by the thin wail of pipes, the sonorous thrum of strings. Drifting from the high walls of Zhelar the sound held a careless gaiety.

Enough, Kennedy hoped, to distract the attention of the guards, the beat of drums sufficient to dull their ears.

Crouched beneath some undergrowth he looked up toward a rounded turret of the city wall rising close to the flank of the mountain. Zhelar occupied the narrow neck of a defile, hewn stone blocking the entrance to the city and valley beyond, the mountains completing the barrier. Too high to scale, too smooth to descend, they were a formidable protection.

If the city was to be taken it had to be done by going over the wall.

An easy thing to decide, not so easy to accomplish.

Kennedy watched the figures of patrolling guards, remembering the details he had learned, the facts culled from the maps and his own observations. The parapet was high, the guards overconfident, seeming to be more interested in the city than what could be happening outside.

Torches flared in the cold night wind, some set along the curtain walls, others on the turrets that reared from the smooth stone at regular intervals. Their light was bad, illuminating the immediate area only, leaving the ground in darkness.

There was no moat, only a dried ditch that had once held water and now, if filled, would be frozen. There was no guardhouse at the end of the drawbridge which crossed it and was now raised. And the commander, whoever he was, had been too big a fool to have cleared away the underbrush.

Facts for which Kennedy was grateful.

He shivered a little, blowing on his hands to keep them warm. Stripped to shirt and pants he was numbed by the cold, but he’d had to shed the brigandine, cloak, helmet, and sword. A thin coil of rope hung over his shoulder, a thinner length weighted with a stone was looped over the hilt of his dagger. Other knives, thin-bladed, were stuck all around his belt.

At his side Ewing said abruptly, “I’m coming with you. I used to climb a lot when I was a boy.”

“You’ll stay with the men,” said Kennedy. “Keep them alert. Once I reach the top there’ll be no time to waste.”

Like a shadow he slipped to the base of the wall, fingers reaching, digging into the cracks between great blocks of stone, lifting his weight as he searched for footholds. The wall was old, the mortar fallen from the joints in places, the gaps providing a rough ladder which an agile man could climb.

It ended as he had known it would, the blocks more finely cut, the cracks bare crevices too thin for a finger to hold. Kennedy slipped a knife from his belt and probed with the thin blade, thrusting it deep as the point found a crack. Gripping the hilt with his right hand he pulled himself upward, boots scrabbling for purchase, left hand rising as his feet found the holds his hands had left.

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