Valkyrie From The Void
By BASIL WELLS
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 reachedthe rim of the river's low bluff. He was uncomfortable, for thevurth-padded garments that covered his naked body were growing dry,but tied to his huge hornless saddle were three fat Dryland birds. Hewould eat well tonight.
The rough fare of cereals and preserved fish had palled. Five yearsof roaming the blistering plains and mountains with sun-hardenedprospectors and hunters had given Hardan Synn a taste for Drylandflesh. So it was that he quitted the camp when the day's trek was doneand rode out in search of game.
The maar's long black ears cupped forward, searching the source of somediscordant sound. Hardan's keen green eyes snapped back to the realityof the camp sprawling half-in, half-out of the muddy bluish river.
Men were fighting, fists and clubs smashing into the down-furredflesh of their fellows. The sound of their enraged bellowing and theshrill screams of pain and agony grew louder even as he forced his maardown the steep path to the bluff's base.
"Nitka Porn again," Hardan Synn spat out savagely as the blue dustswirled about him. "Always he seeks to stir up trouble among thesarifs."
His sun-darkened face was a gaunt mask as he neared the river, but hisslitted green eyes were hot with growing rage. He could not leave theeighty great wagons with their cargos of two hundred Wetlanders andtheir meager supplies for so short a time as a turev of the waterdial without trouble arising.
Hardan sprang off his mount and elbowed his way into the thick of themelee, his broad hard shoulders tossing soggy-padded men aside. Hishard fists smashed one scowling-faced Wetlander's nose, and then he wasthrough into the rude square formed by the inner ring of six-wheeledwagons.
"Nitka Porn!" he shouted, his voice a knife-thrust of sound above thetumult.
The fighting men separated slowly, some weaving on their legsunsteadily, bleeding, and others kneeling and groaning. A half-dozen,most of them wearing the short green capes of the nobles' personalservants, sprawled limply in their own reddish-brown blood.
From one of these unmoving bodies a huge-bodied man, his brutal jawsmasked by a bush of fiery red whiskers and his broad nose segmented bya sword-cut's diagonal scar, rose. Half his protective shell of fadedblue cloth stuffed with vurth was ripped away from his shoulder andchest. Great muscles knotted there in his swiftly dehydrating pinkflesh. He snarled at Hardan.
"The Drylander arrives," he jeered, and laughed.
From the hard-packed blue clay of the camping place he picked anarm-long stake of wood. He waved it derisively at Hardan.
"Watch him shiver," he roared. "When he is well beaten I will drive himfrom the camp. Then I will lead."
Hardan's stomach knotted—and then dissolved into a glowing spot offire. His fingers bit into the leather handles of his twin shortswords. He had no eyes for the grinning minority clustered about NitkaPorn. Nor did he see the puzzled empty faces of the other trekker