Read Online Flame Winds by Norvell W. Page - Free Book Online

hopeless cry welled into Wan Tengri’s mouth. He strangled it there, flung his shoulders against the wall. There must be no sound, lest Tsien Hui be aroused and send new enchantments to ensnare him. The useless sword hung poised in his hand; the great bow across his back and its arrows pressed hard between his shoulders. Useless—all useless.
     
    The snake threw its coils at him, but he braced his shoulders grimly against the solidity of the wall, dug his heels into the earth. The striking of the serpent’s body bruised like the battering of a war club, but Tengri’s giant thews resisted fiercely. Behind the angry glitter of his eyes, his brain was racing, calculating. His brain was his magic. By Ahriman, he would see if Tsien Hui’s monsters could best the hurricane wrath of Prester John!
    Ah, the snake was poised to strike again! No poison fangs there, but teeth that looked like the back-curving head of a Persian lance. Once those teeth fastened on a man, the coils would swiftly crush out even Prester John’s flaming life. He braced himself, lifted his curving sword. It was a supreme slashing weapon, that scimitar. Every inch of its sloping edge was shaped to bite deep, but it had bounced—and it did have a point. It was the point Wan Tengri thrust forward, waiting while the snake swiftly tensed its steel muscles for the strike. The skin might be tough, but Wan Tengri thought the inside of that gaping, red throat might be pierced by true steel!
    Wan Tengri did not attempt to strike. He braced his shoulder, his arm locked rigidly with the sword a curving continuation of that axis—and waited. The snake’s head whipped forward with a speed not even the bow-sped arrows of Wan Tengri could equal. The sword point wavered—and the whole blade vanished! But it vanished down the throat of the giant enchanted serpent of Tsien Hui’s garden!
    Just in time, Wan Tengri whipped his hand away as the titan jaws snapped shut. He hurled himself aside, rolling, and saw the dripping, upthrust point of his sword jutting out from the serpent’s spine! That frantic, dying body threshed mightily. The tiger, struck by a sideswipe of that blind tail, was hurled the length of its chain and died, quivering, with the breaking of its neck. The wolf cowered back the full length of its leash.
    Wan Tengri, staggering to his feet, stood and stared with his chest heaving quickly. Slowly, his lips curved in a smile and his eyes lifted to the balcony. He would have to move swiftly before the lashing of the serpent’s death throes aroused Tsien Hui. His sword he could not reclaim until the last quiver had left those brass-muscled coils. No matter. With a quick gesture, he freed and strung his bow, swung it about his neck. A run, and a high leap, and he gripped the low branch of a tree. It creaked and swayed under his weight and, with its rebound, he soared out into space with upreaching hands. He just gripped the railing of the balcony and his body thudded against the wall with a force that made his teeth rattle.
    Wan Tengri was staggering when he leaped across the balcony and swept aside the gossamer curtains that screened a door. Like a woman’s clinging hands, the stuff twined about his arm—but its strength was the strength of a man. With a violent, suppressed oath, he ripped his muscles against it. The curtains tore loose from their fastenings and he carried them with him as he leaped across the great chamber toward a silk-draped bed. From about his neck came the great bow, and an arrow leaped from his quiver to notch on the gut. A bound and Wan Tengri stood on the foot of the bed. The gut cord touched his ear.
    “Move Tsien Hui!” he whispered. “Move, and I’ll pin thee forever to thy couch!”
    The slit eyes of the man from Chin gazed up into Wan Tengri’s distorted face. Yellow, long-nailed hands lay passive on the coverlets of silk and fur. “Art not satisfied, Barbarian?” he asked quietly. “I did not call back my