Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [69]
"Go ahead—see for yourself. You'll find Lod in his private interrogation room, at the end of a tunnel from the cellar under the kitchens. He had fifty or more thugs hanging around the place, so be careful. Don't worry about his dragon, though; Dinny here killed it."
"You take me for an idiot? You're perched on the Lod's dragon at this moment, in living testimony to your false alliance!"
"OK. I can't wait around. I've got to get to the capital before it's too late. Too bad you can't see your way clear to join me." O'Leary kicked his heels against the saurian's skull: it obediently started forward. Alain spurred aside, watched as O'Leary rode past.
"First I ride to rescue her Highness," he shouted. "Then I settle accounts with you, Sir Lafayette!"
"I'll be waiting for you. Ta-ta!" O'Leary waved and then settled down for the long ride ahead.
The sun was high when he crossed the cactus-grown borderland and rode down the last slope into the green countryside of Artesia. News of his approach had spread ahead of him: his fifteen-foot-tall mount must have been visible for the last quarter hour as it tramped across the sandy waste. The road was deserted now; shops stood empty; the windows of the houses along the way were tight-shuttered. O'Leary's cuts and bruises were aching abominably and his reflections were gloomy.
By agreeing with his theory that Lod was the abductor, Nicodaeus had neatly set one nuisance against another, with a chance that O'Leary and the giant might manage to destroy each other. The magician had been a plausible scoundrel; poor King Goruble had given the schemer quarters right in the palace, where he could carry out his plot with the greatest convenience. The plan had been well worked out, O'Leary conceded; and only luck had given him this chance to thwart the would-be usurper—if he wasn't already too late.
He entered the suburbs—the collection of squatters' huts and merchants' stalls clustered outside the city wall proper. All was silent, the narrow alleys empty. A damned shame he couldn't find someone to spread the word that he was on their side, that he needed their help now in his attack on Nicodaeus. No telling what the magician might have rigged in the way of defenses. There might be a battery of artillery waiting just inside the palace walls. Well, if so, that was just a risk he'd have to run.
The city gates just ahead were closed tight. From his perch, O'Leary could see over the wall into empty streets beyond. Well, if they wouldn't let him in, he'd have to make his own way. He urged Dinny ahead; the saurian balked, sidled, then turned, lashed out with its tail. A twenty-foot section of the ancient wall went over with a crash and rumble of falling masonry. The dinosaur picked its way delicately through the rubble into the street of shuttered shops. Far away, O'Leary heard the sound of a church bell tolling out a warning. Except for that, and the scrape and clack of the iguanodon's horny bird-feet on the cobbles, the city was silent as death.
The palace gates were shut, O'Leary saw, as he rode up the avenue leading through the park toward the high iron grilles. Two frightened sentries stood their ground inside the wall, nervously fingering blunderbusses. One raised his weapon as O'Leary halted fifty yards from the gates.
"Don't shoot," he called, "I'm—"
There was a loud boom! and a jet of black smoke spurted from the flared muzzle of the gun. O'Leary heard a shape whack! against the dinosaur's hide. The latter turned his head casually and cropped a bale of leaves from an arching branch.
"Listen to me!" Lafayette tried again. "I've just escaped from Lod's fortress, and—"
The second guard fired; O'Leary heard the ball shriek past his head.
"Hey!" he yelled. "That could be dangerous! Why don't you listen to what I've got to say before you make a serious error?"
Both men threw their guns aside and bolted.
"Oh, well, I guess it's what you'd expect," O'Leary muttered. "All right, boy, here we go again." He urged the dinosaur forward; it stalked up