Chapter eleven Vajikry

The thongs binding my wrists were not lesten hide and when the time came for me to burst them, I fancied they’d snap without too much effort. As I stood before Trylon Nath Orscop I had to check myself and realize that time had not arrived yet.

His private room was furnished with an austerity surprising in a man wielding his kind of power. He sat behind a plain desk of balass, black and shining, the walls were covered by plain silk drapes, the floor by plain carpets of some indescribable weave that scratched the feet, and his men wore plain dark harnesses of black and bronze. But they had been smart enough in knocking me over, netting me with iron links in the old way of man management on Kregen. Now I was brought before the trylon to discover what he wanted.

A trylon is four rungs down the ladder of nobility, usually. This Nath Orscop, the Trylon of Absordur, ruled a small trylonate; but it was buried in the woodlands, rich in timber and minerals, and he kept himself to himself. He had a single ruling passion, and I was to discover what that was rather sharply.

“You claim your name is Jak the Sturr?”

“Yes, notor.”

I spoke with just enough neutrality in my voice to pass muster. I was prepared to humor this trylon, for the fellow intrigued me. He wore clothes of severe cut, a rusty black, with a flat, black velvet cap. His face was long and narrow, gaunt, very pale, and his gray eyes seemed filmed. Deeply indented lines grooved beside his nose and mouth. A tall oblong of pallid violence, that face, framed in the rusty black.

“You play Vajikry, of course.”

“Moderately, notor. Now, if it is Jikaida—”

The guard at my side, a hulking Gon, hit me alongside the head with his bludgeon.

“My lord!” bellowed the Gon. “I heard nothing!”

‘That is good,” said Trylon Nath, as I put a hand to my head where the famous Bells of Beng Kishi were starting their second round of campanological mayhem. “That name, that game, is never mentioned here. Only—” And here he leered at me. “Only we flog jikaider — that is the only use for the name here in Absordur.”

“As the notor pleases,” I said, eyeing the Gon’s bludgeon.

Many a fellow winces when Jikaida is mentioned; this cramph seemed possessed of more than a fair share of hatred for the game. But, for Vajikry, his passion was all-encompassing.

“All who enter my trylonate uninvited are given the opportunity to play Vajikry. The game is supreme here. If you win you go free and with a handful of golden deldys to go with you. If you lose...”

He didn’t have to tell me, did he?

I said, “Do many men win, notor?”

He sniggered and wiped his pallid lips with a kerchief.

“Do not let that disturb you, Jak the Sturr. You will need all your concentration for the game.”

I’d been playing games a lot, just lately, what with Kazz-Jikaida and Monsters and Moders — and now, Vajikry. I’m no real hand at it, and admit that. Maybe I was in a tighter spot than I had realized. Trylon Nath stood up from behind that black balass desk. At his waist he wore a bronze-link belt, and a thick, curved dagger sheath swung from lockets. The blade of that kind of dagger, well-known in Havilfar, is often as wide as a knuckle at the hilt, and a Kregan knuckle is 4.2 inches. The blade curves very sharply to a fine point, is sharpened on both edges, and can go in your guts and burst your heart. The Havilfarese call that manner of dagger a kalider. The hilt was thick and heavy and without gems.

“Now, Jak the Sturr, you will be given refreshment. We meet here as the suns go down. You will play Vajikry with me. Whatever your gods may be you would do well to pray to them for guidance.”

“Yes, notor,” I said, bowing. “Thank you, notor.”

He smiled.

They stuffed me into a small stone-walled chamber with a window large enough for a woflo to squirm through and gave me to eat. Rough viands: coarse bread, fatty vosk rashers, stewed cabbage, momolams too long in the tooth for tastiness, and, at the end, a clay dish with eleven palines. I know, I counted. The water from an earthenware cup tasted of weeds and mud.

In the next cell a man was singing a nice cheerful song. His voice rose dolorously. He sang “The March of the Skeletons.” This starts off by recounting how a brilliant and charming girl returned from a boat holiday, and goes on, as is the way of that inscrutable Kregan humor, to detail her story of how the skeletons all marched from the graveyard in search of their missing flesh and blood. As I say, a nice, rousing, cheerful song for the surroundings.

The spires and battlemented towers we had glimpsed as we set the vollers down crowned the very place in which I was confined. This was the palace and chief city of Trylon Nath’s Absordur. I had seen little of it, being brought here festooned with iron nets. Pretty soon when the shafts of emerald and ruby from that mocking window shifted to the far wall the guards took me out and spruced me up a trifle under three buckets of water, and then we all marched off to Trylon Nath’s private room. If I felt just as those skeletons felt, marching off all clicking and bony in search of their missing flesh, I am sure you will grasp my feelings. Vajikry! That infuriating game!

I remember once, in the Fleeced Ponsho in Sanurkazz, Nath and Zolta starting on a game in all friendship with a couple of swiftermen, and how, long before the end, the bottles were flying, the fists were flying, the ale was flying, we were flying and the mobiles — well, jolly fat mobiles with their rusty swords, no, they weren’t flying after us. But it was a right old punch-up — and all over a simple board game. Trouble is, Vajikry is not as simple as it looks.

Trylon Nath Orscop sat at his black balass desk and I saw his long pallid face and the way he gloated on the Vajikry board set out on the polished desk surface. The board was hexagonal, although you can have round or square boards, and a serpent or ladder-like series of hexes or squares coil inward from one edge to the center. Often there are two parallel coils, curled one within the other, and this confounded mournful-faced old buzzard would have the dual-coil variety, naturally. The Vajikry board looks not unlike a coil of rope. If you set squares so that two squares abut onto one, giving two ways to go, you have what is in effect the same as hexagons. I am not a hexagon man, preferring eight ways to go rather than six; but the linear distance argument holds some weight. I looked at the board, and at the guards standing beside me with their bludgeons ready and their swords scabbarded. Four samphron-oil lamps shed a mellow light, a silver dish contained a piled-up display of fruits, wine stood in flasks — it looked a cosy scene, and this old vulture brooded over it like a dopa-doomed Rapa.

“Come in and sit down, Jak the Sturr. I trust you are ready for the game?”

“Notor,” I said, and sat in the sturmwood chair across from Trylon Nath. The pieces were set out, and, surmising that I had better show some interest in the confounded game, I studied them. It is not necessary to understand very much about Vajikry to follow what happened. By Vox, no! But, all the same, the game is a tartar. You have a number of pieces of different ranks, and the irritating thing is that while the chief piece, called a Rok, of which you have two, can take the other pieces of superior rank, he cannot take the lowest ranked superior piece, called a strom. In between, the kov can take vads and trylons; vads can take trylons and Stroms; and trylons can take Stroms. This is the old scissors, stone, paper idea, or pikes, swordsmen, cavalry on a sterner field. For — a strom may capture a Rok.

The Roks cannot take the opposing Roks; but of the inferior pieces, some are called flutsmen, and when a Rok chooses to land on a square — or hex — containing a friendly flutsman he can fly right off the board and reappear during a later turn at a prescribed distance. I suppose there is a resemblance to the zeunt of Jikaida in this move. The other inferior pieces cannot be taken by their opposite numbers. Some inferior pieces are zoids, traps, and a secret mark is made on a flap of the board denominating which particular pieces are traps. When a superior piece lands on the square of a zoid, the secret mark is turned up and, lo! the superior piece is taken instead.

That, at the least, has always appealed to me.

If a superior piece is taken, not a Rok, of course, you can promote an inferior piece, not a flutsman, to his place.

So I studied the board and saw that Trylon Nath was a Vajikry fiend, all right, for he had laid out the maximum number of pieces allowed to each rank. The numbers, in varying, control the duration of the game, as well as changing its character.

We were in for a long session, until one of us had taken both the opposing Roks and then safely seated at least one of his own Roks at the spider’s web center of the board. And no flutsman may enter the final circle at the center.

“I shall, of course, allow you to go first.”

“Thank you, notor.”

“Play well, Jak the Sturr. I do not trouble myself over winning or losing.” In that, the old buzzard lied most damnably, that was very clear. “But, for you, a lost game is a lost life.”

“So I gathered — notor.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let us get down to it, as King Naghan said to the fifi.”

“Yes, notor.”

So, not without some hesitation, I moved my first piece. This was a nicely carved representation of a swordsman, an inferior piece, called a hiviku. Now Hiviku the Artful is, I suppose, the Havilfarese equivalent to Vikatu the Dodger, the archetypal old sweat, the old soldier who knows all the tricks and can swing the lead furiously. And this I was now about to do. I took my time. I played cautiously, well guessing that Trylon Nath would suss me out in no time and then bore in with all his force. And his long mournful face would look more mournful still. For he might be an old reprobate; but he dearly loved his Vajikry, and longed to meet an opponent who would give him a prolonged and engrossing tussle. I knew I was in no frame of mind to concentrate. My Val! Didn’t Turko, all Vallia, await me?

Well, that’s as may be.

We played. I fell smack into one of his traps, and with a mournful look he turned up the secret mark and his zoid whisked one of my vads away.

I had a nice opening showing, and took a chance, and one of my flutsmen removed a Rok from the board, ready to come in hell for leather when he least expected it. He reached for the wine. He poured himself, so I judged his temper concerning slaves.

“You will join me, Jak the Sturr?”

The wine was a green pimpim, thick and cloying, out of Loh.

“Thank you, notor. A little pale yellow, if I may...?”

He waved a negligent hand to the array of bottles and amphorae stacked on the side table and the floor on tripods.

I stood up. The guards were all looking at the board, and I judged Trylon Nath was forced to play them when he had no unsuspecting and uninvited guests. The thongs binding my wrists impeded me only a little. The chains and nets had been removed. I moved to the side table and took up a goblet. I half-turned, looking at the room, placing the positions of the guards.

Very well...

Turning my back on the Trylon so that I could break the thongs, I suddenly turned back. The old devil was in the act of lifting up the flap of the board to look at my secret mark denominating one of my hivikus as a zoid.

The yetch!

Swiftly I twisted back to the table and broke the thongs. My wrists tingled as they came free. Holding a glass, low, I swung back to face into the room. The guards were smirking away, one to the other, letting their lord see how much they admired his astuteness.

There were four strides to the desk — three if I jumped a trifle. Three strides took me there, that wicked curved dagger came free of Trylon Nath’s scabbard, and the broad, sharp blade pressed against his neck.

“Just all hold still,” I said, cheerfully.

Trylon Nath was a rigid lump. He knew a single twitch from that deadly curved blade could slit his throat from ear to ear.

“Yes, trylon,” I told him. “And will slit your damned throat. Now you will play my game, and not your cheating brand of damned Vajikry.”

“You are a dead man, Jak the Sturr.”

“And, my friend, so are you, if that be the case. Now, up with you. I am tired of games.”

The guards sweated. They looked at me and I looked at them. They knew the score.

“We are going to take a little walk.” I didn’t care if I sounded like a cheap melodrama down on Wharf Street in Vondium. “You have a voller? Good. I shall regard that as fair quittance for unwanted hospitality.” Then I wounded him sorely. “And for a damned cheating rogue who wins foul at Vajikry.”

“Never!” he said, and he tried to twist that gaunt head to glare at me. The blade bit and he choked. “I had you — you know nothing of the arts of Vajikry—”

“I know enough to know when to take a dagger to your scrawny throat. Move!” And I amplified that with: “Bratch!”

He jumped.

We went out of the room and if the guards thought to stop me they saw my face and made no move. Which was the wiser course for them. We went up the stairs, and retainers and servitors shrank away as the trylon called, hoarsely: “Let us pass. This mad leem means me ill.”

“Right, trylon,” I said. “Absolutely right!”

“You will spare me my life? I can give you wealth—”

“A voller is all I need. And, Trylon Nath Orscop, I may return your voller to you, one day, and play another game of Vajikry with you. It is, I own, infuriating and fascinating.”

A thought struck me. They had in the nature of these things stripped my splendid mesh steel from me and taken my weapons away. I am so used to padding about in the old scarlet breechclout I’d clean forgot I owned a pretty little arsenal, and fine armor.

“Oh, trylon. Bid your people bring my belongings. All of them.” And the bright curved kalider twitched against his skin.

“You heard!” shrieked Nath Orscop. “Run, you nulshes! Fetch this — this man’s armor and weapons!”

So, as we emerged onto a flat roof between two spires and I fastened my gaze on a chunky little voller, retainers ran up bearing the mesh steel and the armory. “Into the voller with them!” I snapped it out, and they obeyed. I wondered why no one had challenged that dagger at the throat of the lord. Surely, some one of all these folk would wish to see the trylon dead?

But I climbed into the voller gripping Orscop by the neck.

He slumped down and his gaunt face turned up, pleadingly.

“You said...”

I looked over the side. The landing chains were cast off. I moved the control levers and the voller lifted a couple of feet into the air. I nodded, satisfied.

“Over you go, Orscop. And thank whatever gods you pray to that I spare you your miserable hide.”

He clawed up, gibbering, and as he went over the side I assisted him with an ungentle foot. Then, roaring with laughter, I sent the voller skimming into the night sky, racing away under the Moons of Kregen.

Chapter twelve

Of an Invitation at the Golden Prychan

Why is the air of one continent or island so different from that of any other? Each country’s air holds its own essences and aromas. Does the air over Valka smell sweeter than the air over any other part of Vallia? I believe so — but to ask me to explain it — ah, there you should better question the Todalpheme, the wise mathematicians and meteorologists of Kregen.

I know that as I breathed in the air of the island of Pandahem, I tasted the difference, and vivid memories of Pando and Tilda rose up to torment me. Yes, at that time on Kregen I still owed dues to many people. I gave thanks that Deb-Lu-Quienyin had eased my mind on the score of Que-si-Rening. But, when I went to Hyrklana this time, I vowed, as well as seeking out Balass the Hawk, Oby, and Tilly, I would make more strenuous efforts to discover what had befallen the Princess Lilah. All the agents I had sent off to make inquiries had reported a total absence of news. All that was known then, all I had heard here and there, were merely rumors. Rumors of the “tragedy” that had overtaken Princess Lilah of Hyrklana.

So I marched down from the jungly foothills where I had hidden Trylon Nath Orscop’s voller. And, of course, he had not lost on the deal. The airboat I had left in the clearing, the one of the three we had liberated in Khorunlad was fair recompense.

The island of Pandahem, between Vallia to the north and Havilfar to the south, is divided into two halves by a massive east-west chain of mountains, variously named along their rambling length. Kingdoms divide up the northern portion of the island, lands some of which I knew well. The southern half’s kingdoms were virtually unknown to me, and were mostly smothered in thick, lush, hot, and mostly inhospitable jungles.

Walking along the overgrown path toward the town of Mahendrasmot I fell into conversation with a lanky Relt. He was clad decently in loincloth and sandals, with his rolled coat over one shoulder. Looking like skinnier replicas of their distant cousins the fierce and voracious Rapas, the Relts do have beaked faces, but these are of altogether a gentler aspect. He carried a hollow bamboo filled with pens, and a scrip with paper and three bottles of ink, bamboo bottles, swung at his girdle. He was a stylor, and so we fell into easy conversation, as I had been a stylor at one time, working for the Overlords of Magdag. He, this Relt called Ravenshal, knew nothing of the inner sea of Kregen, of course.

“The fair, Jak?” he said, striding along easily, with the deep green of the foliage each side of the path framing his eager birdlike face. “It is a dire place, dreadful, sometimes. There are a large number of seafaring folk who go there, and, well, you know how rough they are.”

“Yes, Ravenshal. They lead a rough life.”

“People come from a long distance to the fairground. The sailors from the swordships are almost as bad as the renders they chase.”

“Do pirates frequent these coasts?”

“Naturally. Commerce is brisk.”

“Of course. And do you know the Golden Prychan?”

He gave his beak a brisk rub with his fist. Then: “I would not wish to know the place. It is infamous.”

Well, I commented to myself, that sounds a capital place to hoick Turko out of. In Trylon Nath’s airboat I had stumbled on a bundle of clothes, and so had selected a plain brown tunic and a short blue cloak. I had without any regrets laid aside the splendid mesh steel. That was like to get me into trouble where I was going, among wrestlers. But I carried my weapons. They, of course, would attract no undue attention.

Ravenshal told me he had been up to take a deposition from a tree-tapper who lived up in the hills. His wife had run off and he wanted the lord of Mahendrasmot to send men to find her and had offered a reward of a hundred silver dhems.

“He must care for her—” I said.

“Perhaps.” Ravenshal, belittling his nervous ways, had seen most of it. “But it is lonely up in the hills.”

“That’s why she ran off, then. Some young spark from the city, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“If Notor Pergon lays hands on him, he will wish he had not seduced another man’s wife away.”

“Strict, is he, this Notor Pergon? And with this notorious fairground in his city?”

Ravenshal fisted his beak again. “Yes, strict. He is a strom, and proud of that. The fairground brings in money. But Notor Pergon will take the hundred silver dhems for his trouble, and take his pleasure out on the hide of the young man.”

“If he catches him.”

“He will, he will, if such a man exists. He runs his city as the suns cross the sky, does the notor.”

So as we walked down the overgrown track to the city we talked and I learned a little something of the place my Turko passed his life away in a fairground booth.

The mild Relt stylor was anxious to get back to his wife and children, saying he lived in a pretty little house near the men’s quarters of the steel works. “There is a modicum of regular work to be had there, Jak.” And then, with that gracious little lift to his beak that Relts have, he said, “I do not know why you go to Mahendrasmot, but you would do me honor if you supped with me and my family this night.”

Well, now...

I said with a gravity that was not assumed, “It is you who do me the honor, Stylor Ravenshal. I shall be delighted.”

So that was how I, a desperado of desperadoes — as you know only too well — entered this strict city with its gutter side discreetly hidden in the fairground, in the meek company of a Relt stylor. His house was delightful, small and cheerful, his wife was charming, and the kids splendiferous, a squeaking bunch of charming mischief. We ate well, wine was brought, the lamps were lit, and when I broached the subject of going to see about finding an inn for the night, nothing would halt them in their protestations that I must use their guest room and welcome, seeing it was now little used after Rashenka’s sister had moved so far away, fully fifty dwaburs along the coast, with that husband of hers. Rashenka brought the lamp to the guest room, neat and tidy, and fussed only a little, and Ravenshal came along to bid me a good night’s sleep with Pandrite, and gently drew his wife away, and they went off full of smiles.

I slept with my usual caution, weapons at hand.

In the morning they greeted me with smiles, and a cup of superb Kregan tea, and small octagonal biscuits they call sweet Ordums. I stretched. After the toilet we sat down to a fine breakfast of crisp vosk rashers, and loloo’s eggs, and more tea, and red honey and palines. You see — there are good simple folk on Kregen, just as there are on this Earth. The mention of payment would have been insulting.

I went out and found a tiny Banje shop in the nearest souk where they sold baubles for children, and candies and knick-knacks of that kind, and went back to Ravenshal’s little house, and insisted they take the trifles I had brought. The children squealed, tiny bundles, all beak and feathers, and fell on the candies.

“And again my thanks. Remberee!”

“Remberee, Jak — and you have brought us luck. I have a commission today that will bring in at least five dhems. Five whole dhems! You have brought us good luck, praise to Pandrite.”

Shaking my head and wondering about the way of the world, I took my hulking old self off to the Golden Prychan.

Had I saved Ravenshal from footpads on the road he and his wife could not have been more attentive. And they were diffs and I was apim. Truly, I thought, as I passed along the crowded streets where people shouted and jostled and the mytzer carts clattered by without thought for the unwary pedestrian, truly, that was the spirit and attitude sorely needed in all Paz to confront the menace of the Shanks. The fact that the stylor had been able to walk down that lonely, jungly road and not be attacked by footpads also gave a good idea that this Strom Pergon, strict as he was reputed, kept an iron control on his stromnate. That could work for me, in some areas; but it was far more likely to make any mayhem more difficult. Just what had Turko got himself into here?

The notorious fairground of Mahendrasmot was not what I expected. For a start, it was fenced in by a tall lapped-wood barrier, and uniformed guards patrolled outside and stood sentry at the gates. This early in the morning the place held a lackluster look. Marquees and tents flapped a trifle in the early morning breeze; but the pennons hung limply. The ground was still soft and puddled with the marks of last night’s feet. When the daily rain came drenching down only the boardwalks gave pedestrians a reasonably mud-free walk. I went in. That was not difficult. The corollary came to my mind, to be pushed away. The Golden Prychan looked a formidable inn. It stood four square just inside the eastern gate. Many riding animals of the lesser kind stood hitched to rails; but there were three totrixes and just the one zorca.

The walls were built of baked brick. The roof was tile. The chimneys were twisted brick. And the windows were glazed. All these signs of affluence were emphasized by the sign swinging at its grandest on a tall pole. The prychan, which is the tawny-golden furred version of the black neemu, showed up there in bold style, painted by an artist of imagination. The neemu again brought my thoughts back to Hyrklana, for fat Queen Fahia loved to have her pet neemus, fierce, independent four-legged hunting cats, lolling on the steps of her throne.

Standing with my head cocked back studying the sign, I became aware of a shadow at my side and then a voice, saying: “You stare overlong at the prychan, dom. Do you wish to have your ribs crushed? Or would you prefer a broken arm — only the one, since you have only two?” I looked down. He was big. He was burly. He smiled with his lower jaw swinging like a jib boom in a gale. He wore a pair of tights colored bright purple, and a wersting breechclout. Otherwise he was naked — naked and hairless. He was a Chulik. I drew in my breath.

“Llahal, dom. I was admiring the sign. You are a wrestler?”

“Come now, dom. Do not refuse my offer. I am sharp set, for I bested Tranko last night, and I owed him that.”

This Chulik’s tusks had been sawn off close to his gums. That is a cruel and horrendous thing to do. Much as I deplore the activities of Chuliks, I had grown to a better understanding of them and their ways. Trained to be mercenaries from birth, they are superb paktuns, demanding high rates of pay. With their merciless black eyes and pigtails, their oiled yellow skins, their fierce three-inch tusks thrusting up from the corners of their mouths, they earn their hire. But — this one, tuskless — a wrestler in a fairground?

Oh, my Turko!

As I did not reply immediately, the Chulik said in a less friendly voice, “You are impolite. I am Kimche the Lock. I shall have to teach you manners.”

“Look, Kimche the Lock, I do not wish to fight you—”

“I did not say fight. I said wrestle.”

“Why should I? By the Blessed Pandrite! Why?”

“Why?” Now that really puzzled him. He shook that bald yellow head. “Why? You mock me. Me! Is this not the Golden Prychan?”

“So I believe.”

“Well, then! Onker!”

So, of course, very late in the day, I fell in.

“Oh — the Golden Prychan — you are all wrestlers here—”

“Take up your guard. It is the third syple of the Hikaidish. Protect yourself!”

“I,” I said, “carry weapons.”

Now he was truly puzzled, puzzled and angry. His chest swelled. The yellow skin, oiled and glistening, stretched like a drum.

“You talk of weapons, here? You are decadent or mad.”

If I’d had a hat I’d have taken it off and jumped on it.

By Zair!

“I am not a wrestler. I came here seeking someone—”

“If you are frightened witless to try a fall with Kimche the Lock, why, dom, you should have said so. There is no shame in fearing to grip wrists with me.” His face broke into an oily smile. He clapped me on the back. “Now I understand!”

“If that is how you will have it.”

“Of course!” His bad temper evaporated. “There is no shame in it, dom. By Likshu the Treacherous! I understand!” And then he stuck his thumbs into his mouth and began to massage those pathetic stumps. I looked about. Nothing much was happening, save a couple of gyps starting an interesting friendship. Kimche took his thumbs out of his mouth, spat, and said with a wistful air, “All the same. I could have gone a fall or three with you. I am fair set for it.”

“Perhaps you know the man I seek?”

“There is such a man?” He looked puzzled again and I guessed he was considering the reason he had found for himself for my lack of response to his genial challenge.

“There is. His name is Turko—”

He looked about at once, and put a finger to his lips.

“Ssh, dom! Have you no wits! Caution!”

He drew me out of the streaming mingled radiance of the Suns of Scorpio into the shadows under the eaves. He looked about again, with much eye rolling. For a Chulik he was evidencing much non-Chulik behavior. But, then, his tusks had been sawed off, and that must profoundly change the mental attitudes of any self-respecting Chulik.

For a start, how could one call him a Yellow-Tusker now?

The dependent fronds of a brilliantly green tree, a fugitive from the jungle — or the advance guard of the jungle returning — concealed us from prying eyes out along the boardwalk. Kimche stared at me, and his tongue crept out to lick his lips.

“I did not take you for Hamalese. If you are, I shall surely fight and slay you — you do understand that?”

“I do.”

One factor I had not overlooked was the simple problem of the island of Pandahem now being in the vulture-like grip of Phu-Si-Yantong. With the duped help of the iron legions of Hamal he, under his cloaking alias of the Hyr Notor, had conquered the various and separate kingdoms of the island. Queen Lush of Lome had been his tool, coming from Pandahem, and was now with us of Vallia. Other rulers had been subjugated or slain. Yantong ran the island working through human tools. If there was a resistance to Hamal, then Turko would be up to his Khamorro neck in it, that was for sure.

“I am aware of the problems you Pandaheem face—”

“Tell me your name, rank, and station, dom.”

He had no fear of me or my weapons. In a twinkling he would have my back across his knee, and, snap!

— one more Hamalese cramph gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

“I am Jak the Sturr. And I fight against Hamal.”

He stared at me with those feral black Chulik eyes.

He nodded. “Very well. And Turko is in trouble. Do not think you can deceive him, for he is a man among men.”

“When can I see him? Where is he?”

“Early this morning, before dawn, he went to Black Algon’s marquee to reason with him once again. I do not think he was successful.” Kimche screwed up his mouth. “I think Turko must take my advice and break the yetch’s back.”

I sighed.

Problems, problems...

“Tell me, Kimche the Lock.”

The story was simple and straightforward and not at all pretty. One of the wrestlers’ comrades, a young Khibil called Andrinos, was deeply in love with a Khibil maiden who was slave to Black Algon. She worked in a fire-eating and magic act. Black Algon, gloating in his own power, would not release her or sell her. Andrinos was in despair. His comrades had vowed to help him; but short of violence, gold being of no assistance, they had so far failed to secure the maiden Saenci’s release.

“Trust Turko to become embroiled in an affair like this. Can nothing be done to convince Black Algon to part with the girl?”

“One thing only, by Likshu the Treacherous. Break the nulsh’s back!”

Now, I had hitherto on Kregen detested Chuliks as fierce and inhuman diffs. They had caused me much pain. But, then, so had other diffs, and apims, too, by Krun! Lately, certain experiences had modified my views on the Yellow-Tuskers, and, too, I did not forget that Chulik with whom I had spoken before the Battle of the Dragon’s Bones. So I could talk quite reasonably to Kimche the Lock, and treat him as a man first, discounting all my old hostile feelings toward Chuliks. Truly, life brings changes to the most flinty of characters!

“The marquee of Black Algon? And you say this fellow supports the Hamalese?”

“Aye. If you go there, take care. He has many friends among the wrestlers in the booth of Jimstye Gaptooth. He is the mortal foe of us at the Golden Prychan, who are comrades all.”

One of the cardinal principles of staying alive on Kregen is to remember names. Names confer power, not power for misuse, but self-power, the knowledge to orient a life-style amid dangers. If you forget or confuse names, you can end up skewered on the end of a rapier or have your head off in the slice of a cleaver — so be warned!

I nodded. “I shall tread carefully. Tell me, Kimche, does this Jimstye Gaptooth have any Khamorros in his booth?”

“Yes.”

The monosyllable shook me. The savagery with which Kimche spoke told me much. I did not press. What there was to learn I would find out. That was as certain as Zim and Genodras rose and set, by Zair!

Chapter thirteen

Of a Few Falls with Beng Drudoj

Black Algon’s marquee was tightly shut and his slaves told me he had gone into the city about important business. There was no sign of Turko. When I mentioned Saenci, the Khibil slave girl, the slaves ran off. Annoyed, I walked around the fairground, spying it out, seeing the bright booths and sideshows and all the gaudy come-ons and money-taking-offs revealed in the pitiless light of the suns. The air dried up the mud. Shortly after the hour of mid the rains would fall down in solid masses of water, and the mud would ooze again into its sticky consistency. I took myself back to the Golden Prychan.

“It is time for ale, Jak the Sturr,” Kimche greeted me. He took me through the wide, sawdust-sanded floor into a back snug. The bamboo-paneled room contained about a dozen wrestlers. They looked a ripe assortment of battered humanity. The ale was brought in by Fristle fifis, and we sat to drink. I was reminded of Dav Olmes and his penchant for stopping at the least provocation for a stoup of ale. These men were drinkers.

Food, very naturally, was brought in and no one seemed to be concerned if I would pay the reckoning. There were Khamorros among these wrestlers. Kimche wiped suds, and leaned forward, and said, “You know the story of Lallia the Slave Girl, Jak?”

“I know the story of Lallia the Slave Girl.”

“Well, it is not quite like that, Kimche,” put in broken-nosed Naghan the Grip.

“I know, I know. But Andrinos and Saenci worry our Turko. That is what concerns us. He is our best Khamorro and Jimstye Gaptooth has three high kham Khamorros — and what may a mortal man do against them?”

The other wrestlers, florid and bulky and coiling with muscles, grumbled and grunted, and drank. Truthfully, there are few mortal men who may go up in handgrips against a Khamorro and stand a chance in a Herrelldrin hell of winning.

I asked the obvious questions, and learned that the wagers dictated the relative powers of the contests. In catch as catch can the ordinary wrestler, with Turko available, handled his opposite number and called in Turko in the inevitable crisis. As Jimstye Gaptooth could put more Khamorros onto the canvas than the consortium operating from the Golden Prychan, Turko was called on frequently. The smell of sweat in the bamboo-walled snug was barely noticeable, for these wrestlers were particular about themselves. But the smells of oils and liniments rose pungently. Some of the men wore bandages, tightly strapped and pasted, and two carried broken arms in slings of clean yellow cloth.

“And,” said Nolro, a young Khamorro whose headband indicated he had barely begun his climb through the khams, “where is Turko, anyway?”

“And Andrinos?”

“By Morro the Muscle!” declared Nolro. “We fight tonight and if Turko is not here—”

Kimche reached for the ale. “He will be ready to step onto the canvas, Nolro. You, of all men, should know that.”

“I do. But — I worry...”

When they questioned how I had come to know Turko I simply said we had met in the past and as I was passing through I thought to look him up. I made no big thing of it, and went on to question them as to the advisability of all this ale-drinking if they fought this night. They guffawed.

“This ale gives us our strength, dom!”

Well, it might, too, given that it was brewed from top-quality Kregan barley and hops and was filled with good things. I drank and wiped my lips, and we talked of this and that. And still, Turko did not appear. He was never once referred to as Turko the Shield. A couple of times they called him Turko the Rym, and I will not advise you of what that means. So the time passed and then the note of exasperation in their voices sharpened. They were a consortium of wrestlers, and if one let the others down, his shares were forfeit. Also, his honor was smirched, that was plain. I sighed. I had no desire to step into a ring and take Turko’s place. But, if I had to, I had to...

The secret disciplines under which the Khamorros train in Herrelldrin, the syples, their allegiances and their kham status, are all shown on their reed-syple, the headband with its symbols. I could read a paltry handful of those, from previous experience, and recognized none of the reed-syples of the Khamorros here.

Turko, of his own desire, wore a plain scarlet reed-syple. By this he proclaimed his allegiance, his disdain of other syple disciplines, and to hell with anyone who questioned his kham status. A bit of a rogue Khamorro, our Turko the Shield. And he had a fine mocking way with him, too!

I looked at Muvko the Breaker, who appeared to be the likeliest of the khamsters present.

“Muvko,” I said, with a smile. “I mistook good Kimche’s offer of a fall or three. After we have finished our bout, would you do me the honor of gripping wrists?”

He laughed good naturedly. I guessed these Khamorros were not high khamsters, lacking the refinement of skill to take them into the master class, and were happy to find employment in a fairground booth. For all that, no ordinary unskilled mortal in the arcane lore of wrestling stood a chance against them in fair combat.

“If Kimche leaves you with any bones joined together.”

“By Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall!” quoth Kimche. He was mightily pleased and showing it for a Chulik. But, remember, he was minus his tusks. “You are my man, Jak, after all!”

“Then let us begin,” I said, and stood up.

Their practice ring was functional. An alcove with a neat little bronze statue of Beng Drudoj, the patron saint of wrestlers, faced a broad table with medical impedimenta at hand. Most of the medical assistance, as far as I could see, consisted of bottles of liniment and unguents, bandages and slings, and copious buckets into which a man might spit his teeth. And over this table on which a defeated combatant would be laid out frowned the intolerant bronze features of Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall. These spartan surroundings were enough to perk a flutter through the heart!

Because I have had the good fortune to go through the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, which teach a man wrestling and unarmed combat tricks — all the martial arts — that leave the best syples of the Khamorros far in the shadows, I had been able, without actually fighting Turko, to convince him that I had the besting of him and many a high khamster.

So, Kimche and I stripped off and began and it was not made too swift and there was a deal of grunting and straining before he gave me best. I stood back.

“You fight well, Kimche. But—”

“By Likshu the Treacherous!” he panted, standing up and shaking himself like a dog run from the sea.

“You must be a Khamorro!”

“No, Kimche. I am not a Khamorro.”

“Then,” said Muvko the Breaker, stepping forward, “let us see what you can avail against a true khamster.”

Muvko was, as I had suspected, competent within the syples. Again I made nothing great of it, and the contest prolonged itself long past the moment when Turko, for one, would have had Muvko flat on his back. But it is foolish to puff up one’s abilities if there are skullduggeries to follow.

“Now may Morro the Muscle be my witness!” declared Muvko, sitting up and staring at me. “If you are no Khamorro — what manner of man are you?”

Useless to answer, “A Krozair of Zy.” So I smiled, and said, “I had luck and the knack of it, Muvko. Now, who is for ale?”

My intentions were plain to them. And, having seen me in action, they were fully in agreement.

“And when Turko returns, we will have a few words to say!”

“Aye!”

The daily downpour had come and gone outside, no doubt adding a fair quantity of fresh growth in that voracious jungle, and we started to prepare seriously for the evening’s contest. Hoping that I had not created too great an impression, I joined in. After all, ordinary wrestlers stand no real chances against Khamorros. The wagers and rules reflected this, as they would have to do. So —

how could I be explained? As a freak, that seemed the only answer, and thus I was accepted. They made plain I was standing in for Turko, and could have no share of the consortium’s profits on my own account. This seemed reasonable.

A smart trot across to the marquee of Black Algon revealed the place open and girding its magical loins for the night’s doings. Black Algon, himself, was still not there. Neither were Saenci and Turko. And Andrinos was still missing.

Back at the Golden Prychan, Kimche expressed himself of the opinion that mischief was afoot but that, by Beng Drudoj Triceps and Biceps, he had no inkling what it might be.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If he’s got Turko and the others chained up in some infernal chundrog, I’ll—”

“So would we all, Jak, if we knew if and where!”

“There is one way to find out, a very old and still reasonably efficacious way.”

“If you can find any rast to question.”

‘True, may the black lotus-flowers of Hodan-Set breathe on the cramph!”

“Jimstye Gaptooth may know,” said Nolro. “He must put in an appearance tonight when his men fight us.”

“By Morro the Muscle! Could we do it?” demanded Muvko.

A hubbub ensued. Of one thing I was sure, in all the bicep-rolling, muscle-flexing, stomach-tautening going on around me, these fellows would be ugly customers to cross on a wet and windy night, by Krun!

Kimche, the Chulik, a man who had been trained from birth to bear weapons and who now, tuskless, worked as a wrestler in a fairground booth, struck a note of warning.

“Remember, doms! Jimstye Gaptooth employs swordsmen. Who among you can handle a blade?”

The reaction to this unwelcome reminder brought scowls and fists gripping wrists and twisting so the muscles jumped, and a coarse variety of oaths heating the atmosphere. But the fact remained and real; just as these wrestlers were masters of their craft, so swordsmen hired by Jimstye Gaptooth would be masters of theirs. Only Kimche could face them with steel in his fist, and only the Khamorros could hope to live against pointed and edged weapons with empty hands.

“I have a large club,” shouted Fat Lorgan, and his belly shook. “With a nail in the head!”

“And I a dagger,” said Sly Nath the Trivet, looking fierce.

They looked at my little arsenal stacked to hand.

“When is this expedition to be, doms?” I said.

“After the bouts, when the credulous public are all drunk and chasing women and Jimstye Gaptooth is counting his money.”

“A remarkably fitting time,” I observed.

Each office of the consortium was held by a wrestler, and they were punctilious in the discharge of their duties. They employed a tall and supercilious Ng’grogan to present a front to the public, and to call their titles and stations before the contests. He was not, this Abanch from Ng’groga, anything at all like Inch, Kov of the Black Mountains. In a spirit of devilment I offered Abanch a juicy portion of squish pie as we took our meal, the fifth or sixth of the day.

“Thank you, master Jak,” he said, and took it and wolfed it down. I waited. Abanch looked around. “Is there more? For I am inordinately fond of squish pie.”

Kimche handed across the rest.

I said, “I knew a man who stood on his head—”

“Ah!” said Abanch, and spluttered rich juice down his chin and crumbs onto the table. “He is your high and mighty, hoity-toity Ng’grogan, too good for the likes of me.”

I did not hit him. He was like Inch in only one thing; he was tall. But, in the public address he made as the crowds flocked into the enormous marquee where the contest would take place, Abanch earned his hire money. The public paid. They were mostly men, with a sprinkling of women, seafaring folk, and I did not doubt there were a number of renders among them, pirates who had crept in a longboat into some jungly creek and stolen ashore for a night’s jaunt among the flesh-pots. As for the swordshipmen, they preened in fancy uniforms and flashed their smiles and their swords and gold lace.

Many steelworkers and city folk, of course, patronized the fairground. The place was brilliantly illuminated by mineral-oil lamps, with bits of colored glass to lend a fairyland lighting. The noise was prodigious and quite drowned out the eternal sound of the sea. Refreshments were served continually, and many a honey cake was flung in the wrath of an argument along the benches. As for drink, that flowed in a broad river of ale and wine and fermented in the brains and bloodstreams of the spectators. The whole scene in the marquee was rough and rowdy and heated. Everyone hungered to see the fights. As for betting, that was a nicely calculated art and anyone whose skill was lacking would go home with his pocket linings hanging out — if he was not hit on the head in the firm belief that he walked thus to conceal the waist belt stuffed with gold and silver.

Before Abanch had finished two men were carried out, unconscious or dead, it did not seem to matter. The crowds yelled.

The contest began.

Well, by the offensive stink of Makki Grodno’s disgusting diseased liver and lights, it went ill for the consortium from the Golden Prychan.

In the singles only two of our fellows scored outright wins.

When the tag matches began we were on to a hiding to nothing.

Four of us stood on small raised platforms outside the ring, which was fenced with a single bronze chain at waist height. The canvas covered sturmwood planking, and the whole was raised a little. Four of us stood on these platforms, and four of Jimstye Gaptooth’s men stood on platforms adjacent. One from each side leaped into the ring and started to twist each other’s arms and legs off. Kimche was controlling this bout. He faced me across the canvas where squirming bodies writhed. The crowd wanted blood.

Our man, it was Sly Nath the Trivet, hoicked himself on top of his opponent and started banging his head on the canvas covered sturmwood. This was highly pleasing.

The leader of the opposition bellowed, and a hulking Gon, his head a sheen of buttered baldness, leaped into the ring and caught Sly Nath around the throat and choked him back.

“Fat Lorgan!”

Fat Lorgan leaped and used his belly to knock the Gon down. He sat on his head. The first two crawled away on hands and knees. The crowd bellowed. Presently two more were at it, and then I was called in and got my man down, and was only just in time to avoid a diabolical kick in the ear. Kimche loomed up and threw that one away, and we looked about, and, lo! we of the Golden Prychan remained in the ring. Of Gaptooth’s men, none remained. Two were spitting blood on the platform around the outside of the bronze chain; one was lying head down, out to the wide; and the last was being sick all over a plump gentleman in the front row of benches.

Mind you, Sly Nath had an eye that would, come the morning, be a single gigantic purple lump. And Fat Lorgan was staring at a finger that bent backward and dangled when he pushed it. The yelling lessened by a fraction, and Kimche said, “Next foursome.”

Slowly, we of the Golden Prychan overhauled the lead Jimstye Gaptooth’s wrestlers had opened. A singles win counted as one, and one was scored for every man remaining in the ring after the opposition had been thrown out.

Then Muvko said to me as we sat on the participants’ benches, “Now they start in earnest. Their Khamorros come on.”

So I looked at the four men on their platforms, as Kimche, Muvko, and Nolro walked across to our platforms. I joined them, studying the Khamorros belonging to Gaptooth. They were all, instantly seen, of high khams. They were all deadly.

So Kimche began, for Muvko was leader of this bout. The Chulik did not last more than a few murs against the khamster and Nolro went in. Then another one from the other side was followed by me. As I jumped the bronze chain a single scarlet thought flamed across my vosk skull of a head. What was I doing here? What on Kregen was the Emperor of Vallia doing playing tag with a bunch of bone-breaking Khamorros? In a sleazy fairground booth by the light of cheap mineral-oil lamps and surrounded by a blood-hungry mob? It was crazy.

And then, of course, all that went from my mind and I leaped on the fellow who was about to snap Kimche’s arm, hauled him off, twisted him in the grips, and hurled him over the bronze chain. After that it was a splendid blur.

I saw no reason to injure these Khamorros. They were only employees. So I caught them by an ear, or a wrist, or by some more interesting part of their anatomy, and threw them away. The bout was over very quickly, The marquee held a complete silence for six heartbeats, and then the benches erupted.

Muvko was shaking his head.

“You are a marked man now, Jak.”

“Just let us get this over with honor and then we can go and ask Jimstye Gaptooth the questions.”

“May Morro the Muscle have you in his keeping.”

Four more bouts took place with fresh Khamorros or the ones who had been defeated returning. That made no matter. Between us, Muvko, Nolro, Kimche, and I threw them all over the bronze chain. Yes, yes, it was petty, all sweaty men heaving and grunting; but, too, there was a panache about it. They were shouting now, from the benches, shouting that great word that is the unarmed combatman’s equivalent to the Jikai of the swordsman.

“Hikai!” they shrilled. “Hai, Hikai!”

It was quite a night.

And that night was less than a third over.

“What!” I shouted at Kimche as Abanch took his inordinate length into the ring to shout our triumph.

“Not over!”

“We were the first contest of the night. There are two more to come.” He saw my face. “We are not involved—”

“Thank Pandrite for that!” Then I glowered at the backs of the Khamorros as they trailed away up the aisle between the seats. “All the same, I was just getting the blood flowing nicely and freely... Perhaps it is a pity, after all.”

“But the third contest will be fought by Jimstye Gaptooth’s people — some he has in reserve, these who will have recovered.”

I glowered. I felt the old blood climbing up inside my head and I ground down on that scarlet rage.

“I can’t wait all damned night to see this cramph!”

“There he is, just come in, and passing strange it is, too, that he was not here to see his men in action.”

Kimche nodded his bald yellow Chulik head. I looked where he indicated. Jimstye Gaptooth — well, yes, his two front teeth were missing. He lowered himself to a padded seat at the front reserved for principals. He wore sumptuous clothes of blue and ivory, with much gold lace. He was bulky and fatter than he ought to be, with a full-fleshed face that concentrated into a single crimson scowl. At his side sat a man who took my closer attention.

I knew this man — I had never seen him in my life before, but I knew him. He wore gray leathers all over his body, except his head, and his face was very pale, with dark hair cropped short. His mouth, a mere thin gash, his sharp nose — and his eyes! Dark, piercing, intent, concentrating on all he saw with the power of an incisive instinct — revealed him to me. Revealed him as clearly as the rapier and main gauche he wore in the bravo-fighter’s unmistakable fashion.

A bravo-fighter from the enclave city of Zenicce.

By his colors of gray and blue, worn discreetly, I knew him to belong to the noble House of Klaiton. I had no quarrel with that House. My own House, the House of Strombor, had more than once assisted in an insurance loss for young Nalgre Stahleker, Prince of the House of Klaiton, and his seductive wife, Nashta. So what was a bravo-fighter of Zenicce doing sitting next to a professional wrestling owner in South Pandahem?

Kimche told me, and my face darkened.

“And the story is true, Jak. This swordsman, Miklasu, eloped with the Princess Nashta. He was the house champion. The prince did not seek him, so we are told, because he said if his wife wished to go she would go, and if she did not she would return.”

“And?”

“She chose to return. And her ship sank off the coast of Segesthes in a great storm, sent, it was said, by one of the Sea Lords, Notor Shorthush of the Waves. So Miklasu hires his sword and, it was said, he told his cronies he was well quit of the woman.”

I had known Princess Nashta. Her seductiveness had destroyed her, that and the weakness of her will. And I felt for Prince Nalgre, even though I could not guess at the real reasons why his wife should leave him. Perhaps Quergey the Murgey would know, for all reports spoke well of Nalgre. Delia had said he was a fine young man. Of such puzzles is the world constructed.

“So we must wait until the end of the contests,” said Kimche.

“No,” I said. “I do not think so.”

Whatever Jak the Sturr might do in these circumstances was one thing; but I knew what Jak the Drang would do — aye, and Dray Prescot!

The changing rooms yielded my clothes. The other wrestlers were clearing their things out. We went outside, under the stars and the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. I had brought the kalider taken from Trylon Nath Orscop. With this naked in my hand I prowled around the outside of the marquee. The others, led by Kimche, followed.

“What, Jak—?”

“I can’t lollygag about all night,” I said.

The first guy rope parted under the keen steel.

I went around the marquee methodically, slicing the guy ropes asunder. The marquee began to sag. By the time I had reached three-quarters of the way the roof billowed in. The roars of excitement within changed to yells of alarm. The marquee billowed like a collapsing dermiflon, speared on the field of battle. It rippled and sagged and flapped, and the rest of the ropes parted. The whole lot collapsed.

‘There,” I said, standing up with the dagger in my fist. “Now perhaps that rast will come out!”

Chapter fourteen

The Khamorro Way

Like fish struggling upstream, the audience battled their way out beneath the collapsing folds of cloth. The uproar was just as prodigious as a sensible man would expect. By the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles we stared on that heaving scene. I stuffed the kalider away and moved across the boardwalk where mud lay in thick cakes from heedless boots.

“Watch for the rast! Spread around the marquee.”

“This is not in the plan, Jak!” Kimche looked wild, gesticulating, his bald yellow head glistening in streaks of mingled color in the moons’ light.

“But it will get him out, Kimche. We need to ask him, do we not?”

“Aye. Aye, Jak, that we do.”

No one could believe the marquee had fallen of itself and the first conjectures, expressed with many oaths, took the view that some god or spirit inimical to Beng Drudoj Flying Alsh had wrecked the bouts out of spite. Some very watchable fights started between the pirates and the steelworkers, and drew admiring crowds. No doubt Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall took pleasure from this substitute entertainment. The light of torches splashed the scene with vivid color. The smell and mood of the crowds thickened. The wrestlers from the Golden Prychan spread out and pretty soon Sly Nath the Trivet came arunning, pointing. His eye was beginning to look magnificent. We followed him and saw a group of men staggering out from the folds of fallen cloth. They staggered up amid much blasphemy. The guards had come running up; but the marquee was fallen and they couldn’t put it up again. The wrestling was abandoned for the night. The cut guy ropes were found, and the blasphemies mounted against the night sky. Sly Nath, eye and all, was chuckling away to himself.

Well, yes, it was funny, too, if you thought about it...

We followed Jimstye Gaptooth and the bravo-fighter Miklasu, as they went off with their people. I would not have been surprised if they stayed at an inn called The Black Neemu; but its name was The Wristy Grip, which showed how proud they were of their wrestlers.

“I,” said Fat Lorgan, “do not have my club with the nail in its head with me.”

“I think, Jak,” said Kimche, after due consideration, “that I would like to have a sword. A Khamorro can break the bones of a swordsman, that is well known; but if the swordsman is very good, an unarmed man has no chance. It is a matter of relative skills.”

I well knew that Kimche would have the skills of the sword, being a Chulik.

“I only want to talk to this Gaptooth, not fight his army of khamsters.”

“But the two will of necessity go together.”

“May Drig take the fellow!” I am used to going ahunting alone. I said, briskly, “Do you return to the Golden Prychan and fetch what weapons you have, and mine, also. I shall sniff around a little. Something May Turn Up.” Shades of Quienyin!

The fairground formed a pulsing bubble of light and noise in the moonlit night. The Wristy Grip reached up three imposing stories, and many windows were illuminated, and the sounds of revelry within indicated a good night was being enjoyed.

If you consider me a bash-on sort of fellow, well, you may be right in that I like to get on with it. But I fancied that it would be less than clever to go in the front door acting as an ordinary customer. I eyed the upper windows. It was a climb under the moons of Kregen for me...

Kimche and the others trailed off, and I sensed they were not too sure about leaving me. But I told them to get back with the naked steel and to think about the Khamorros. As they went off into the shadows I went around to the back of the inn.

Climbing into other people’s houses, and inns, and palaces, is a tricky business; but one which has its own lessons. I clawed up a vine by the rear wall, and chinned myself to a ledge, and so opened a window, whose wood, while warped, did not squeak, and so dropped silently into a darkened room. The sounds of breathing came from a bed, half-seen.

I tiptoed to the door and let myself out into a corridor.

I knew exactly what I wanted.

If Turko was being held prisoner, which seemed the only explanation for his absence, it appeared highly unlikely he would be held here in the inn. But — he might be. So I eased to the head of the stairs and had not to wait too long before a potman came puffing up. He was looking for fresh candles, as he was relieved to tell me. He was a Fristle. His green and yellow striped apron was bunched around his neck when he spoke to me, and my fist was tight around the cloth.

“And where is the Khamorro they hold prisoner here?”

His cat’s eyes goggled. “No, notor, no — I know nothing of any prisoner!”

Eventually, I believed him. I pondered.

Brown shadows lay thick in the corridor. Dust hung in the air and tickled the nostril. The sounds of revelry from below wafted up faintly, as from a distant shore. The corridor was very quiet. I knew that I could not trust this Fristle potman an inch.

Wrapping his unconscious body in his striped apron, I stowed him away in a broom cupboard. Then I started down the stairs.

The doors of the rooms of the next floor down were all closed, and from the sounds within I judged it prudent to let them remain shut. At the far end of the corridor a double door promised to reveal something more interesting. I put my ear to it. The rumbling sounds of conversation could not be interpreted into words. Again, I pondered.

It seemed most likely to me that Gaptooth and his cronies would have a private suite here, and these rooms were likely to lie beyond this double door. So, very well, then. In we go... The double doors were locked. So I kicked them in. Beyond them lay a small anteroom and the doors at the far end opened almost instantly at the racket I had made and men crowded in. Some were Khamorros and some bore naked steel.

“I have come to see Jimstye Gaptooth,” I said. “Is this the way to greet an old friend?”

That held them for the space of three heartbeats.

As soon as I spoke I realized I had been too clever for my own good. As an old friend, my story would be stupid. My story, to hold water, would demand a rueful admission of misplaced loyalty. Why, with a glib story all ready, had I blurted out this nonsense about being an old friend?

They ushered me into the chambers beyond the anteroom. The place was furnished with a kind of tongue-licking lavishness I found not to my taste. Gaptooth bustled forward, very much the center of attention. At his shoulder hovered the bravo-fighter.

So, one story having been shot and the other about to be shot to pieces, I decided I would have to bait this Jimstye.

“Old friend? I don’t know you. Who the devil are you?”

“I am Nalgre ti Hamonlad,” I said, inventing on the spot with a nudge-nudge to the swordsman, Miklasu, in the use of the name Nalgre.

“But I know him, the nulsh!” spoke up a Khamorro I had thrown over the bronze chains at least three times.

“And I! Let me at him in fair fight—” Others crowded forward.

“If you choose not to recognize me, Jimstye,” I said brightly, over the hubbub, “then that is your affair. I did not know you were in Mahendrasmot, otherwise I would have signed up with you instead of that mangy lot at the Golden Prychan.”

So, I had blended both stories. Let him chew on the implications of his refusal to acknowledge an old friend.

He looked annoyed.

“I’ve never met you — but if you are the man who—”

“He is! He is, the rast!”

The fellow who spoke thus, a husky khamster, stood near enough to enable me to take his arm in a grip to pull and then push him. He staggered; but being a Khamorro, he recovered with cat-like speed and bored in, his hands razoring for me.

I sidestepped, swung back, chopped him, and then, as he went on past flailing, kicked him up the backside.

“Can’t you control these idiots?” I demanded hotly. “By Havil! You always said you hated the guts of all Khamorros.”

The gazes of these feared men of martial art fame fixed on Gaptooth. He looked keenly at me and lifted a hand.

“You are clever, you rast. I admire Khamorros and always have. Take him out and slice his throat—”

For a space no one made a move.

“So you don’t want me to fight for you in the contests?”

He sneered. “You would?”

“Why am I here, Jimstye — even if you deny friendship?”

“Shastum! Silence!” he called over the hubbub. “Let me think.”

The upshot of his thoughts was that avarice won over common sense. He knew damn well he didn’t know me. But if I was the man who had bested his fighters, and I was willing to work for him — he saw much money flowing in. And perhaps that is common sense, after all, making the most of what occurs.

“I did not see you fight. Can you—”

“Let me!” And: “I’ll twist his neck!”

They just did not believe, these Khamorros, and that was understandable. They were accustomed to seeing men shrink away from them unless they carried steel and knew well how to use it. The truth is, of course, that the very highest khamsters do not travel overfar from Herrelldrin, which is down in the southwest of Havilfar. These men were not out of the top drawer; but they were good. All Khamorros are good at their trade.

After half a dozen lay about the chamber I said to Jimstye, “That is enough.” I had my eye on the farther door which must lead to the inner private chambers and if Turko was here, that was where he would be.

“You are satisfied — old friend?”

“I am satisfied. We will discuss terms later.”

He gestured to the wrestlers. “Best clear out now and take advantage of the night off. When I find who cut down the marquee I shall pull his thumbs out, for a start. Go on!”

It was clear to them as to me that he wanted to discuss terms with his new acquisition in private. That suited me. When they had gone, he said, “Wine, Nalgre ti Hamonlad?” Miklasu moistened his lips and went across to a side table. His rapier and main gauche were plain, hard-used weapons, the Jiktar and the Hikdar, the weapons of a killer.

I said, “I believe, Jimstye Gaptooth, that you know-the whereabouts of a friend of mine. I am minded to see him, and at once. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me where he is?”

He looked surprised. Miklasu turned sharply from the table, a glass of wine in each hand, the red steady as a level.

“A friend? I know we have never met before, and I see you used that to gain entrance.” He frowned.

“Although you pressed overhard by trying to stir up trouble between me and my Khamorros. What friend?”

“Turko.”

Miklasu dropped both wine glasses. His rapier and his main gauche flamed in his fists, drawn instantly, a superb bravo-fighter’s fighting draw.

Gaptooth laughed. “So it was all a fake, a trick! You are from the Golden Prychan, after all, and you are another seeking this Turko!” He turned to Miklasu. “Kill him.”

The bravo-fighter moved forward, and his sword and dagger were held just so.

“I am not one to be taken by a khamster,” he said. “You have no weapons. So, it follows you will surely die.”

“As to that, we shall see. Klaiton, is it?”

He stared. “What—?”

“Get on with it, Miklasu, get on with it!”

“Before he starts,” I said, “tell me — if I am to die it will prove of illusory comfort. Where is Turko?”

Again he laughed. “Oh, you will die. There is no swordsman in all Pandahem like unto Miklasu. And, Turko—” He jerked his thumb toward that inner door. I sighed.

Now I remembered my encounter with Mefto the Kazzur, when that superb Kildoi swordsman had bested me in fair fight. I thought it highly likely that I could beat this Miklasu; but, as always, there was the chance that he would have the beating of me. And Turko was my first concern. I ran for the door, kicked it down, and burst through.

The three of them were in there, hung up like chickens on hooks. They were all mother naked. The room gave ingress to other bedrooms. The sound at my back heralded the vicious onslaught of Miklasu. I turned to face him.

I shouted, “I — Nalgre ti Hamonlad — caution you, Miklasu. I do not wish to slay you—” And then he ran in on me with his rapier doing all the flash and the dagger ready to rip into my guts. A pretty bravo-fighter’s trick, that. I swayed, took his wrist, but he hacked back and so I ducked away. He was good.

Turko said, “I might have known...”

The two Khibils, Andrinos and Saenci, hung in their bonds, gawping. I noticed that the Khibil maiden had not been crying. Andrinos’s foxy face showed determination as well as a goggling surprise at my eruption.

Miklasu foined around; but he was too canny to let me get close to him. Gaptooth appeared, shrieking for the bravo-fighter to get on with it.

Working my way around out of the reach of that sharp rapier, I came along the wall where the three captives hung. There was not much time left, for the row would surely bring the wrestlers arunning. I whipped out the kalider, slashed Turko’s bonds. He fell to his knees and, for two heartbeats, his head hung down. Then he was up, flexing his superb muscles. He did not say anything. I threw him the dagger and turned to make a feint at Miklasu and so draw him away. Turko could have handled the rapierman, I knew, but his muscles would be stiff and the blood must be giving him one hell of a time right now. He made no sound, but slashed the other two free.

When he had done that, he moved with his ferocious speed toward Jimstye Gaptooth... Long before that man could escape, Turko had his neck in one fist. He looked across at me.

“Do you remember Mungul Sidrath?”

“Aye.”

“So do I.”

He put Jimstye Gaptooth to sleep. Miklasu shouted, and leaped, and the rapier and dagger swirled in a twin cyclone of glittering steel and the Khibil maiden let out a tiny scream and Miklasu was suddenly upside down, his head crashing into the floor, and the rapier and main gauche were in my fists.

“And about time too,” said Turko. “Nalgre, was it?”

I bent to the bravo-fighter. He was not dead, and his eyes opened and fluttered. “Nalgre Stahleker,” I said. “I know him. I knew his wife, too, Princess Nashta.”

Miklasu’s eyes rolled up.

Disgust shook me. I stopped what I was going to say, some stupid boasting about the Lord of Strombor. I turned to Turko.

“Let us get out of this pestiferous place.”

“With all my heart, Nalgre. My limbs appear to have returned to me.”

“But,” said Andrinos. “How?”

I ripped the cloak away from Miklasu and handed it to Saenci. She was a beautifully formed girl. Turko ripped off Gaptooth’s shirt-tunic and Andrinos donned that.

“We go out the way I came in,” I said.

Then Turko smiled. “Hark,” he said.

The uproar outside took on a new and suddenly splendid difference. We went into the main chamber and saw a very large and knobby club with a six-inch nail embedded in the head going up and down like the head of a sissingbird snapping insects. A thraxter was slicing away with all the Chulik skills. Other weapons were being used, and the Khamorros were throwing people about like ninepins. Against the high khamsters our people would have had a more tricky time; but Turko waded in with all the venom engendered by being hung up like a chicken on a meat hook, and I took my part, and in short order we broke back through the door and ran down the stairs in a shouting, laughing mob. No one offered to stop us as we ran out of The Wristy Grip into the pink radiance of the Maiden with the Many Smiles and the rosy golden light of She of the Veils.

Chapter fifteen

The Confidence of the Kov of Falinur

The experiences through which I had gone since escaping from the Humped Land formed a distinct pattern in my head. Finding Turko was not quite the last knot of that pattern. He was, of course, unwilling to leave the Golden Prychan and his wrestling comrades until the business of Andrinos and Saenci had been settled. But, for all that — and I warmed to the idea — he was ragingly eager to return to Vallia. Born in Herrelldrin though he had been, trained as a Khamorro, rising to a high kham, he now made his home in Valka and regarded himself as a Vallian. Well, did not I, also?

The last knot in this chain would be, of course, Hyrklana.

And that must wait until we had returned to Vallia.

“He has had a fright, that Jimstye Gaptooth,” quoth Kimche. “But if you leave us, Turko, we face a hard time of it in the contests.”

This was a matter I must not interfere in and must leave to Turko.

“When I joined the consortium of the Golden Prychan,” said Turko, and he spoke slowly and with gravity, “I was beholden to you. But I did warn you, fair and square—”

“Yes. You said you would have to leave us one day—”

“And that day is now. Black Algon must be made to see reason.”

“I have gold,” I said.

They all stared at me.

“But I will not interfere.”

Andrinos, one arm about Saenci as we talked in the bamboo-lined snug, said, “If we win free, I will go with Turko.” He did not know where Turko was bound. Saenci would go with him. “And for the gold —

that I will earn and repay and thank you with all my heart.”

I nodded.

With a lift of her Khibil head, Saenci said, “Tell Black Algon I will never return to him. If he refuses the gold, tell him I shall surely kill myself. Then he will have neither gold nor me.” She made herself smile.

“And he is very avaricious.”

So that was the way of it. Turko said to me, “Andrinos is a lucky fellow.”

And I said, “Yes.”

Now Turko the Shield is an extraordinarily handsome man. With the superb athletic build of a Khamorro and that brilliant profile, he must have wreaked havoc in many a female heart. When he married and settled down, then, I judged, a shadow would come over the bright days of many and many a beauteous maid.

And, as you shall hear, I had the confounded problem of Korero the Shield to attempt to solve... Perhaps it was just blind luck; perhaps it was fate; perhaps it was some beneficent god or spirit of Kregen taking a hand, but what fell out heartened every one of us. On the very day Turko, Andrinos, and Saenci prepared to walk with me up that lonely, jungly path, the Khibil’s gold having been paid over and her manumission processed very smoothly, three fearsome Khamorros arrived at the fairground and were immediately taken into the consortium of the Golden Prychan. Kimche rubbed a thick hand over his glistening yellow pate.

“Now may Likshu the Treacherous smile, doms! Our comrade Turko leaves us and we replace him with three of his compatriots!”

So, laughing, filled with good cheer, we set off for the flier hidden away in the jungle. Fliers are rare craft in Pandahem. Andrinos and Saenci walked on ahead of us, close together, so I was able to have a private word with Turko as we followed. When I expressed myself as being surprised that so many Khamorros came to Mahendrasmot, he smiled that ironical, infuriating damned smile of his.

“Mahendrasmot is well known. The fairground attracts people from far away. And, Dray, as you saw, the Khamorros were not high khams.”

“And you?”

He repeated what I had heard from our comrades of their shattering surprise when they had been sorcerously hurled back to their homelands. Turko had begun to work his way back to Vallia and had bogged down here, out of cash, and taking the fairground job to earn his passage money on. At this time there was no real volume of trade between Pandahem under Yantong and our sections of Vallia, apart from smuggling. He would have landed in an inhospitable section of Vallia, and he told me how concerned he had become at the rumors and stories out of Vallia.

He was avid for news. I told him of the changed circumstances in the island empire, how the old emperor was dead, and of how I had been fetched to be the new. I said we must all act as our consciences dictated, and there were new men in the world, and Vallia was most miserably divided up and many of her people cruelly mistreated by Yantong and his minions, by riffraff, flutsmen, aragorn, and by the Hamalese.

“There are stern battles ahead, Turko—”

“And I shall be there, with my shield.”

“It is in my mind to make you—” And then I stopped myself. I had been going to say I would create Turko a kov, that exalted rank similar to that of duke, as a preparation for broaching the subject of Korero. I saw that as contemptible.

I said, “I have fought in a few battles since we parted, Turko. I have a fine Kildoi to guard my back with his shields. You will meet Korero the Shield.”

His eyebrows lifted and he half-turned. Then, in stony silence, he walked on up the jungly path. Andrinos and Saenci were laughing. The suns burned down.

I ploughed on, my throat on fire. “Since you will have no truck with steel and edged weapons, in which you have my admiration, I think it right—”

Then he said, “So you are casting me off?”

“My Val!” I said. “Sink me! Of course not! You are a fambly to think it, let alone say it!”

“So what is in your mind for me, then, Dray? Or should I call you emperor, majister—?”

“Do you wish to try a few falls, dom? Listen, and shut that black-fanged winespout!”

Then he laughed. “You are the same, at any rate, thanks be to Morro the Muscle!”

“Seg and Inch are both kovs of Vallia. I see no reason why you should not be a kov also. I shall arrange this. And, as a kov—”

“You can get rid of me and my shield at your back in the day of battle?”

“Not so. Oh, no! When we fight the Hamalese, as we must, and the clansmen, and the riffraff tearing the heart out of our country, I shall count on you, Kov Turko, to be in the thick of it, as usual.”

He kicked a jungly frond that tendriled across the path.

“And, being a kov, and high and mighty some of them are, as we both know—” He stopped speaking then and scowled.

We walked for a space in silence.

Khamorros have reflexes as quick as thought. Turko’s hand whipped out and his fist cupped a sparkling fat, blue insect. It was harmless. It buzzed in the prison of Turko’s fingers for a space; then he opened his hand and the fly buzzed free.

“Yes,” he said. “Seg is a kov and Seg is damned unhappy with his kovnate. Oh, Thelda loves it—” He saw my face. “What? Is Thelda dead? What has chanced with Seg?”

Very firmly, I lied to him. “Thelda is reported dead, seeing no one has seen her in Vondium since we were all parted. Seg is getting over it.” As I spoke I realized these were not lies, for Seg’s wife, Thelda, although not dead but very happily married to Lol Polisto in all ignorance that her real husband was not dead, was generally regarded as being dead. Seg thought so. I cleared my throat. “Seg is unhappy, yes... But that does not mean you will be.”

“It does not. If I am to be a kov I would like to take over Seg’s kovnate of Falinur. They are a bunch of rogues who deserve to be brought into a better understanding of life.”

I was astounded. Then it was my turn to laugh. “I have spoken to Seg about his kovnate. He remains a kov. But, Turko, you have the lands and the titles and are the Kov of Falinur.”

“Right,” he said, and I did not miss the ring in his voice. “I thank you for this, majister. There will be changes. And the first will be to alter that damned miserable ocher and umber checkerboard schturval.[4]

Those colors for your kovnate clothes and symbols are depressing. I shall border each square with a nice thick line of cheerful red.”

“Quidang!” I said, and thus mocked him in turn.

He was filled with a bubbling confidence, which both amazed and heartened me. I had been totally unsure how he would take to the idea that he was no longer to stand at my back in battle with his shield. I had wondered how he would receive the comical notion that he should be a kov, with titles and estates and cities owing allegiance to him. He seemed to be thriving on the latter idea, and I, shrewdly I suppose, surmised he had not given up on the former and would seek to stand with me in battle as always. Korero would have to be handled, too...

So, as we found the hidden voller and all climbed aboard, I felt that the future for the midlands of Vallia looked brighter than it had for seasons.

We took off and soared away, heading for the islands of Vallia and what was left of my empire. And, at the thought, I suddenly felt a coldness, and stupidly longed to be down the Moder with all the Monsters and menace... By the Black Chunkrah! A few footling fun and games around passages and secret doors and ghoulish weirdies seemed then to be children’s pastimes beside the job facing me in Vallia and all of Paz. Again and again I had tried to throw off the yoke, and always some stupidity in my own nature forced me to resume the burden. The single decisive fact impelling me to go on was simply this: that I had been called on, chosen, fetched by the people of Vallia to lead them in their way of life and their struggle for freedom.

My comrades were individual people, with strong characters and minds of their own. If, sometimes, it sounds as though I ordered them about willy-nilly, this is not so. Each one was a personality, a real living, breathing person, and if I fail to bring them vividly alive to you in these tapes, then the lack is mine, the loss yours, for, by Zair, they are a bonny bunch!

Now Turko said to me, “I see you fly due west. So you do not intend to chance the mountains?”

I shook my head.

“This voller may not let us down as those cranky rubbish heaps from Hamal so often do. But the mountains offer a risk we do not have to accept.” I looked at him. “Anyway, I’ve a mind to fly over Rahartdrin.”

I had told him how we had lost contact with so many of the outlying provinces and islands. Rahartdrin, the large island off the southwest of Vallia, was the kovnate of the Lady Katrin Rashumin. As a friend of Delia’s, her welfare concerned me. No news had come out of that part of the empire, and all our spies had either reported failure or had not returned.

Turning north off the west coast of Pandahem, we soared on over the southern reaches of the Hobolings and struck out across the Sea of Opaz. The whole distance was above seven hundred dwaburs and we estimated should take us the best part of three days, as the flier was not of the fast variety. We took turns to conn the helm and stand by the levers, Saenci catered splendidly, and we bustled through the skies of Kregen in fine style.

The strategic concept of having to stop for fuel, and have coaling stations conveniently scattered across the world, was one with which I was at that time unfamiliar. Vittles and water were the limiting factors in a journey time. The silver boxes, the vaol and paol, with their mix of minerals and gas, upheld us and drove us on, so there was no need to make any halts.

Out over the Sea of Opaz, the islands of the Hobolings dropped astern; looking for the dawn and then a few burs of sunshine before we reached Rahartdrin, I stood at the controls and felt the lightness of spirits on me. I felt more free then I had for ages, and this despite the ponderous weight of the problems facing me at home. Going back to Delia; that was the answer. So I stood there and snuffed the night air and Deb-Lu-Quienyin appeared at my side.

His ghostly form glimmered spectrally against the side of the voller. I could see the canvas stitching through him.

He gestured. Commandingly, he pointed two points off the starboard bow. Darkness shrouded the sea, with the massed glitter of the stars above and the Twins fast sinking in the west. Then he stabbed his fingers into the air, five fingers, and his mouth framed the word “Bur.” The Kregan bur is forty terrestrial minutes long and there are forty-eight of them to a Kregan day.

I moved the controls and the voller swung onto the heading Quienyin indicated. The Wizard of Loh smiled, and pushed his turban straight, and disappeared.

Well, I said to myself, lucky Andrinos and Saenci had not witnessed that supernatural manifestation. I felt the chill. Yet how splendidly different this apparition from those with which that egomaniacal cramph Phu-Si-Yantong favored us!

Turko came on deck at the change of course. He yawned.

“In about five burs’ time, Turko, we shall see something interesting. The suns should just about be up by then.”

He looked at me. “What—?”

A brief, a very brief, explanation had to suffice.

“And this Wizard of Loh. You will no doubt kick Khe-Hi-Bjanching out as you—”

“Now, Turko!”

But he was smiling, and as we sailed on he launched into a summary of his plans for his new kovnate. I listened. I fancied the recalcitrant folk of Falinur were in for a shock. Turko had seen how Seg’s methods had failed to impress. As I listened I realized that Seg had attempted to do things in the way he knew I would approve, without force. Turko was prepared to bear down that much harder — well, by Vox! So was Seg; but he had genuinely attempted to apply the new principles we all wanted to bring to the hard and harsh world of Kregen. There was a lesson here. But, I knew, I would not give up my plans, even if, from time to time, they were temporarily set back.

As for Quienyin, this visit proved to me he had been accepted in Vallia, and for that I joyed. I broke the bad news about Falinur with a little lift of that mockery subsisting between us. “Oh, and Turko. The ex-pallan, Layco Jhansi, has taken over in Falinur. We will have to send him packing first.”

Turko glowered. I had told him of the treachery of Layco Jhansi, the old emperor’s chief pallan. “I find it odd, to say the least, Dray. Vallia, the island empire, divided up into a parcel of warring factions. Odd, damned odd.”

“Odd but true. We hold Vondium and much of the south and midlands. But we must patrol these artificial frontiers, and hold strong reserves in loci where they can march instantly to any threatened point. And the flutsmen drop down anywhere, for they are returning to Vallia in increasing numbers. The world regards Vallia as doomed and as merely a fat prize to be sucked dry. Oh, and we have good friends in Hawkwa country, up in the Northeast.”

“And Inch and Princess — I mean Empress — Delia? The Blue Mountain Boys, Korf Aighos, they would not take kindly to these rasts stealing from them. That is certain. And the Black Mountain Men. Inch’s kovnate must have fought.”

“They both did and have kept themselves relatively clear of the vermin infesting our land; but it is mighty hard.”

He had received the news that our island of Valka had been cleaned up with joy. “I expect fresh regiments from Valka to join in the struggle,” I told him. “The job is immense.”

“Right. So between Inch and me, we can squeeze this traitorous Layco Jhansi until he squeaks.”

“You have yet to win Falinur back.”

“I’ll do that.”

He did not say that the gift of the kovnate was a poor gift, seeing it was occupied by usurpers. I felt fresh resolve in him, and knew the wise thing had been done here.

Seg Segutorio had been happy to dump Falinur. Next time around, he would run a kovnate that would be a marvel.

The voller’s speed was about five db.[5]She was not fast, but she was a useful, chunky craft with a deal of urge in her. Neither Turko nor I could place her country of manufacture. The wise men at home would have to examine her silver boxes to learn what secrets she contained. Certainly, she was unlike the fliers with which we were familiar.

The alteration of course to starboard would bring us east of Rahartdrin. A number of small islands dot the sea off the south coast of Vallia here. Some are densely populated by reason of their fertile soil, others are barren and empty. Many are ringed by fanged rocks. As the sky lightened and the first rays of palest rose and leaf green flushed the sky we saw that a gale had broomed the sea beneath us during the night. We had been speeding faster than we thought. Down there the sea heaved in long, running swells, the breeze brushed the tops into shot-silk, it was a day for expanding the chest and avoiding a lee shore. Turko pointed. I nodded.

A ship down there, dismasted, wallowing, had not avoided a lee shore. The islands ahead reached out cruel reefs of rock and the sea spouted in climbing combs of foam. The ship was doomed, for she could never claw off the rocks and round the headland into a muddy bay opening up on the far side.

“This is what Quienyin meant,” I said. “But he had more in his mind than merely to summon us to witness a shipwreck.”

“She’s an argenter out of one of the free cities along the Lohvian coast,” said Turko. His expression remained noncommittal. What we did would be down to me, and Turko would loyally support me, for that was the way he had chosen.

“We could—” I said, and stopped and looked again, figuring angles and calculating with a seaman’s quickness. “It could be done.”

Turko mistook my meaning. “You’ll never get them all aboard, Dray!”

The deck of the argenter was packed with men. Like any ship given the appellation of argenter, she was broad in the beam, capacious, a tubby, comfortable, not particularly weatherly vessel, and fleets of argenters formed the backbone of the merchant navies of the maritime nations — except Vallia. I noticed an odd thing about those men seething on the deck below. They had all stripped off so as to be able to swim after the impending shipwreck had pitched them into the sea; but every man carried weapons strapped to his naked body. Yes, I know I say a Kregan will not willingly walk his world without weapons; but when you must swim for your life in murderous breakers, that, surely, is one occasion when you must cast away your sword, your spear, your bow? These men were naked and armed. Turko was quite right. Taking a quick block count I reckoned there must be a hundred fifty to two hundred men jammed on the deck, all braced for the impending impact. We’d never get them all in this flier.

“Rustle out what rope we have aft, Turko. Get Andrinos. We’ll tow that argenter around the point!”

Instantly, without fussing, Turko went aft to the rope locker. We might not have enough. We could drop a line to them down there; they’d not shoot a line up to us. A pretty little calculation entered my mind as we maneuvered into position. Could even Seg Segutorio, in my view the greatest bowman of Kregen, shoot a shaft trailing a line from that ship up to us? Turko let out a yell and he waved, so I knew we had rope enough.

The trickiest part of the operation would be keeping a steady strain on the hawser. The argenter was going up and down sluggishly and rolling with that dead effect that told me she was filling. It would be touch and go. Three results were in the offing: she could strike the rocks and fly to flinders, she could be towed around the point — or she could sink before either of those events took place. The line dangled down and was seized in a forest of upraised arms and made fast to the inboard stump of the bowsprit. Gingerly, I opened up the forward control lever and the voller moved ahead. Aft, Turko kept a watchful eye on the line.

“And get your head out of the way. If she snaps—”

“Aye, Dray. I know.”

And, with his superb Khamorro reflexes, he would be moving and avoiding the deadly whiptail of broken line faster than the eye could follow.

The argenter proved a stubborn beast. Most Kregan vollers are soundless in flight; had engines been involved they would have been screaming in protest. But we moved. We moved!

Slowly, painfully, we hauled the argenter crabbing through the waves, seeing the white water bursting clean over her. Not a man was washed off. Her blunt bows rose and fell and churned the white froth in a welter of foam. Slowly she came around and we crawled for the point. The hawser sang. This unknown voller might not be fast; but she could pull!

Gradually we saw the vital stretch of sea opening up as we hauled the ship away from the rocks. It was a maelstrom down there. The men clustered, looking up at us, and we prayed with them that all the gods of Kregen would smile on this enterprise.

As we passed clear of the spit of land dividing the cruel rock reef from the muddy bay, a small group of totrixmen galloped along the spiny ridge below. The six legs of their mounts spraddled out and their leathers glistened in the flung spray. They carried lances, and their helmets gleamed in the early light. They rode inland and were lost to view.

“Company,” I shouted at Turko. “We’ll have a reception committee.”

“Friends?”

And then, of course, I realized that this part of Vallia was firmly in the hands of a vicious foeman, that Kataki Strom, Rosil Yasi, the Strom of Morcray, who was a tool of Phu-si-Yantong’s and who would joy to see me dead. I may add that those sentiments were reciprocated in part.

“More likely to be enemies, Turko.”

He did not reply; but I saw the muscles along his arms bunch and roll. Andrinos, with his keen foxy face concerned, said, “Then this ship full of armed men could be enemies going to join their friends?”

I shook my head. “It is a possibility, and a risk we must take.” I did not say that I considered Quienyin would have acted differently had this been a shipfull of enemies. Andrinos and Saenci shared the respect and caution accorded Wizards of Loh. Feeling my reply to be somewhat abrupt, and, into the bargain, hardly reassuring, I added, “I am convinced they are not friendly toward the enemies of Vallia. On the contrary, if I am right they have sailed here to fight for us.”

“We pray Pandrite and Horata the Bounteous you are right, pantor,”[6]said Saenci. We were almost clear of the point. Beyond the crags the water ceased its frantic turmoil and smoothed into placidity. Once there the argenter could drift gently toward that muddy shore and ground without a fuss. After that, in due course of the seasons, she could molder to ruination. At that point the hawser snapped.

Turko moved. One instant he was checking the tension and calling to me, the next he was flat on the deck, yelling a warning.

The end of the line snapped over our heads and came down like a sjambok, thwack, across the cabin roof.

With a frantic snatch at the control levers, I halted the mad onward leap of the voller. She swung about and soared back over the argenter. The men down there stared up. The seas took the ship into their grip and remorselessly pushed her down onto the rocky crags.

“There’s only one thing for it, now!” I yelled at Turko. The voller swerved and descended. We felt the force of the breeze. With finicky movements I brought her low over the sea, to leeward of the argenter. As we passed that high, ornate poop the name leaped up, gilded and carved, Mancha of Tlinganden . Tlinganden was one of the Free Cities left after the collapse of the old Empire of Loh, situated on the east coast opposite the country of Yumapan in Pandahem. This ship had successfully fought her way through the renders infesting the Hobolings. Now she was going to come to grief with all her people, if we could not save her.

Gently I eased the voller in until we nudged the surging bulk of the argenter. It was touchy business. I had to maintain the same rhythm as the sea, lifting and lowering the flier, and at the same time maintain a steady pressure against the bulky hull.

“By Morro the Muscle!” exclaimed Turko, joining me forward and craning out over the coaming.

“You’re going to push her free!”

“It’s the only way left. Just hope we don’t stove her in.”

The voller rose and fell and rolled and the argenter was like a sodden souse refusing to move along.

“Or she doesn’t drag us down.”

Water sluiced inboard, drenching us.

The pressure kept up. The black crags ringed with creamy foam seemed to be racing up toward us as we went careering down, forced by wind and sea. But the silver boxes of the voller exerted their power as I forced the levers over. Slowly, we saw the angles widen, slowly we saw the bows creep past the last disturbed confusion of water, slowly the argenter, Mancha of Tlinganden , rolled and sagged and pitched clear of the last fangy outcrop.

“We’ve done it!’” shouted Andrinos. His hands were clasped together. Saenci clung to his arm. “Never have I seen such flying!”

Spray burst over us. The argenter rolled uglily. Men clung to her, like bees on a honeypot. And we weren’t done with her yet. She had to be turned, now, turned poop on to the run of the sea, so that she would ground less forcefully.

And then disaster struck. One moment I was beginning to think that we had successfully done it, the next a brute of a sea surged in, crisscrossing the current, the towering sterncastle punched at us, the poop swung shrewdly, and the voller was caught and flung and toppled end over end into the sea.

Chapter sixteen Homecoming

The water felt like a brick wall.

Spread-eagled, cartwheeling, I crashed into that brick wall and burst through it with all the breath knocked out of me. Water buried me.

To struggle back to the surface and to gulp air... To struggle, never to give in, to go on fighting and clawing even as they shovel the grave sods over your face. That is the way of Dray Prescot, and often and often I wonder just how far it has got him. As the sea smashed into me and water clogged my nostrils I gave a few erratic strokes with my legs, turning and twisting upright, forcing myself to rise. Up. Up I went and my head broke the silver sky and the Suns of Scorpio blazed in my face. Light blinded me. Shimmer of wavetops, spray cutting across, all a liquid movement of colors and radiance. I spat. I shook my head. I forced my eyes to remain open. I felt, I admit, like a side of beef must feel after it has been corned and stuffed into a tin.

The situation was quite other than I had expected, for the voller floated. Amazingly, the flier sat on the water, upright, rising and falling with the motion of the sea. Just beyond her the argenter Mancha of Tlinganden rolled and wavered in my vision, surging on like a runaway temple to Kranlil the Reaper, shedding bits and pieces, falling apart, scattering timber as she lurched and shuddered to her doom. A few strokes took me to the voller. I handed myself up and felt the sluggishness. The canvas had been ripped and most of her starboard side stove in. She would sink in a few murs. There was no sign of my companions.

Standing on the splintered deck of the voller, I looked about. The advantage of vision afforded by that little extra height proved sufficient. Two heads showed in the sea, among white splashes, and then a third. Saenci’s reddish foxy hair drifted on the water and I dived in first for her. She was swimming well; but going the wrong way.

Spitting, I gasped out, “Steady, Saenci. It’s all right now. Just relax and let me—”

“Where is Andrinos?”

“He’s all right. We must reach the argenter.”

I held her in the prescribed fashion for lifesaving and swam across to the drifting ship. Turko and Andrinos swam across. We trod water and looked up and they threw ropes down for us and helped us inboard. Like half-drowned gyps we crawled aboard.

Being your ruffianly kind of mercenary, I knew I had not much time left before the voller sank to act as any proper hyrpaktun would act now. I dived back and swam to the flier. I left the hubbub and howls of protest. Clambering onto the warped deck and working very rapidly, very rapidly indeed, by Krun! I snatched up my weapons and that superb harness of mesh links. Swimming back with the bundle was not too difficult although not a sport I’d take up for pleasure, and once again they hauled me inboard. This time I was content to lie on the deck and let my battered old carcass recover.

“You’re a right maniac, dom!” quoth a cheerful voice. I looked up. He stood, his thick legs spread apart, his hands on his hips, stark naked but for the weapons belted to him. His face was plug-ugly, scarred, with prominent eyebrows and a mass of thick brown hair, plastered into shiny flatness by spray.

“Aye,” I said. And then, “Llahal.”

“Llahal, dom. I am Clardo the Clis. I thank you for saving us—” A gleam of gold at his belt caught my eye. He had taken his pakzhan, the little golden zhantil head that is the mark of the hyrpaktun, from around his neck and twisted the silken cords tightly around his belt. About to reply that, Llahal, I was Jak, a sudden shadow fell over me as I sat up and a fierce, excited, bubbling voice burst about us and brought instant silence from everyone.

“Lahal!” said this voice. “Lahal and Lahal, Strom Drak! It’s me, Torn Tomor. And you are now Emperor of Vallia. Lahal, majister, Lahal!”

I stood up and looked at him.

Yes, he had the virile toughness of his father and the slim agility of his mother, and if he had a tithe of their strengths he would be a most puissant young man. I smiled.

“Lahal, Torn Tomor. And your father and mother are well and thrive, thanks be to Opaz. And, as for you, your faith was too fragile, for the murderer confessed.” He started at this, a young, eager, alive man with all his life to lead. “Yes, Torn, you ran off to be a paktun when we all knew you would not strike down a man from the shadows, with steel between his shoulder blades.”

“But,” he stammered, “majister — everyone said — it looked black—”

“It is black no more. Do I need to ask why you return to Vallia?”

“By Vox, no!” spoke up Clardo the Clis. “But—” And here his scarred face swung toward Torn Tomor. “—is this really the emperor, Torn? How can he be, seeing the emperor sits in Vondium and waits for us to fight and win his battles for him?”

The argenter gave a lurching heave that made us all brace ourselves to the sway of her. The muddy shore was not far off and soon the ship would splinter to flinders. Turko stood at my side. Andrinos was holding Saenci. I looked at the crowding men, hardened men, professional fighting men, tough and ruthless in combat, easy and reckless in camp. Yes, they were mercenaries, going to Vallia to find employment. A few quick words established what I had instantly guessed, and what had made Deb-Lu-Quienyin direct me here. Every man was a Vallian. Each man had gone off from his own country as a lad, seeing that Vallia had no army but employed paktuns to fight for gold. And, now the mother country was in dire danger, beset by enemies, her sons were returning home. But they were not the country bumpkins, the smart townies, who had left. Now they were paktuns and hyrpaktuns. Now they were professionals. I sighed. What I could do with a hundred thousand like this!

The voller had taken with her the secrets of her silver boxes, and I had to quell the spurt of anger. All that had chanced to me since leaving Vallia for the Dawn Lands formed a part of a pattern, that was clear. Prince Tyfar and Quienyin; well, Quienyin was actively assisting me now and Tyfar was going to have a much more prominent part to play in my plans than he dreamed of. By Zair! He had a much bigger part to play than I dreamed of! How fate does throw the knucklebones, and sits back, giggling. And that Vajikry fanatic, Trylon Nath Orscop, had afforded me a voller able to pull. No Vajikry, no voller. No voller, no ship of fighting men for Vallia.

Turko said, “We’re going to hit any mur — and that company you spoke of. They’re waiting.”

Along the edge of the surf the lines of totrixmen cantered. They looked hard and sharp. They were waiting for us. As we staggered up out of the clutch of the sea they would ride forward and spear us. The Vallians in the ship were shouting and waving. They thought these riders were waiting to succor them. And that was the sensible thought to any Vallian who had left the country before the Time of Troubles. I shouted, hard and high, in an ugly voice.

“Those jutmen are our mortal foes! They will spear us as we wade ashore through the mud. Each man must be ready to resist them. They are a parcel of the cramphs who are eating up your homeland.”

Well, that changed the demeanor of the returning mercenaries wonderfully. A staff-slinger stepped forward. “Lahal, majister. I am Larghos the Sko-handed.” He spread his left hand. “My men will loose, seeing all the bowstrings will be wet.”

Larghos had a long, narrow chin, and a slinger’s shoulders. A squatter, fiery-faced man stepped forward, spluttering.

“Lahal, majister! I am Drill the Eye.” He waved an oilskin pouch. “Give me a few murs to string our bows and we will see!”

I did not laugh. But the vivid image of Barkindrar the Bullet and Nath the Shaft flashed up before me. By Krun! But they do love a fine professional argument, these slingers and these bowmen of Kregen!

I eyed the surf. It was not too dangerous; but it would knock a fellow over unless he was well-braced and not too far out.

“Stand back, you missile men, and give the swordsmen a chance. Loose over them.” Again I eyed the narrowing distance between us and the shore. “If she grounds close enough, best you remain aboard for as long as you can and shoot from here.”

“Aye, majister!” they shouted. “Until she falls to pieces!”

That was the moment the keel of the argenter touched bottom. We held our breaths. Some of that luxurious stern ornamentation, all gingerbread work, fell off with a roar and a splash. She lifted up with the surge of the waves and shuddered on. Thrice more she touched and thrice more she lifted and rolled nearer the shore.

The breeze blew our hair forward and chilled our skins. The smell of brine and mud grew more pungent. Turko had found a shield — I saw him talking to a swarthy fellow who nodded and handed his shield over without a fuss. I marked him. The shield was the rectangular cylindrical shield of Havilfar. Efficient. When a vessel marked for destruction touches the shore always, I think, a man must mourn for another hostage lost to the implacable elements. Mancha of Tlinganden struck at last, and her keel scraped through slimy mud, and the black stuff swirled up in the water alongside. She shuddered on for a few more paces, and then stuck, slewing slightly, canting over, coming to her final rest with a kind of peace we had bought for her. She did not fly into flinders, as I had feared. But her doom was certain. We plunged down into the sea and struck out for the shore.

Andrinos swam with me and Turko was there also, the shield almost like a surfboard. The surf crashed about us and men yelled and were knocked flying, and surfaced, spluttering and going doggedly on. With an increase of pace I managed to get ahead. I did not wear the mesh-link iron harness. I held the thraxter, and the sword glimmered wet with running water. Jumping the retreating waves, I crashed on up that muddy beach, feeling the gluey muck clinging and trying to haul me back. Like a mud-devil I reached forward with the water around my waist, and the muck did not wash off. The riders on the beach turned their mounts to face us.

They rode down, the six legs of the totrixes splaying out, their heads high against the commotion of wind and water. The spear points twitched down. They cantered on, full of confidence that they would spear us poor half-drowned rats before we could stagger clear of the waterline. Two of them came for me. I braced myself with the tug of the sea about me. The first abruptly switched from his saddle as though jerked by puppet cords. A long arrow sprouted from his neck. The second had no time to puzzle over his comrade’s fate. I leaped for him, brushed the spear aside, sank the thraxter in.

After that as the paktuns roared up out of the sea, naked, shining with mud and water, half-crazed, yelling, we tore into the totrixmen. Leaden bullets flew. Shafts pierced. Swords glinted and ran red. We had the beating of them in the first half-dozen murs. We fought as men fight coming up out of their graves. Only a dozen or so survived to gallop off wildly.

Panting, the Vallians gathered, and stared balefully after the fleeing riders.

“Hai, Jikai! Emperor!” someone shouted.

I quieted the hubbub.

“I think we are on the island of Wenhartdrin. It is a rich land, and the best wines of Vallia, some say, come from here.But the whole land here is in the grip of our enemies. We are Vallians!”

“Aye!”

“Let us then see what honest Vallians may do, by Vox, and in the radiance of the Invisible Twins made manifest through the light of Opaz, let us go forward!”

And, by Vox, forward we went!