I, Dray Prescot, of Kregen and of Earth, am so often a spineless ninny when it comes to seeing friends of mine being knocked about. I knew, even as I stalked forward with the ugly black iron of the sledgehammer cocked ready for action, that I should not be doing this. I should be hammering this sledge at the iron-bound doors, smashing them in, racing into the secret halls to discover the mysteries of the vollers.
Instead I was sacrificing all that to go to the aid of an Hamalian, an enemy, just because I didn’t like the idea of his being flogged.
But then — how on this terrible world of Kregen could I call Nulty an enemy?
The Deldar was joyously putting his back into the flogging. There was a Hikdar in command of the punishment detail; he was a lowly holder of his rank, a so-Hikdar.[5]There were ten swods, lined up on parade, their shields to the side and their thraxters in their hands, point up, ten glimmering pink-gold blades in the moonlight. A pace to the front on their left flank stood their Matoc. A pace to the rear of the so-Hikdar stood a drummer. As is the case in so many armies, the army of Hamal employed young lads as drummers. This one stood there, beating a brave rat-a-tat on his drum, brilliant in all the gaudy trappings of a drummer-boy, but his face a trifle green.
If he didn’t run for it he’d be sorry.
The whip-deldar had just finished with number three. Numbers one and two were hanging senseless; number three was making a disgusting blubbering moan of agony. Nulty was number four. I broke a cardinal rule.
To give Nulty hope, as I raced forward, I yelled.
“Hai!” I shouted. “Hai! Kleeshes! Fight a man who is not lashed to a post!”
Nulty’s head jerked around as though he already tasted ol’ snake.
The Hikdar jumped. He stared as I burst from the shadows into the torchglow. The sledgehammer whirled about my head in that cunning two-handed grip that is normally given to an ax of the Saxon pattern, descendant of the great Danish ax. The clansmen of Viktrik use a single-bitted ax in that fashion. .
The line of swods broke as the Hikdar yelled. They rushed me.
The facts of the matter are that I should have stood no chance.
But I was thoroughly annoyed with everything, and mostly with myself, and so I swirled the hammer and crushed the ribs of the first and ducked the thraxter of number two and kicked him in the belly in passing and split open the skull of number three and on the continuous circle splattered blood and intestines out through the crevices of number four’s lorica. It was swing and jump and swirl and bash and crash. I let the head of the sledge go on swinging, merely guiding it onto the next target, and straightening it and giving it fresh impetus after each collision. This was the way our ancestors fought at Hastings, before the shield wall broke. This was the way an unedged weapon might smite through the bronze hoops of a lorica, crushing and smashing the ribs and inner organs beneath.
Nulty was shrieking; thankfully he was not using my name.
Through a trail of mangled wrecks I forged across to the whipping-frames. The whip-deldar tried to lash me and I caught the thong around the hammer. The Deldar yelled, then, thinking he had me and need only jerk the hammer from my grasp. Instead I hauled him in as a fisherman hoicks in a tarpon. As he spun toward me I shifted grips, took his throat in my hand, and squeezed. As I squeezed I whirled about and the flung stux bit into his back, stripped as he was for the flogging. He grunted, and bright blood gushed from his mouth. I did not simply fling him from me. Dead, he was still a weapon. I hurled him at the Matoc who had flung the stux, and before the non-com could recover I had brained him. The Hikdar, mouth open and frozen, stared at me. He was stricken with the horror of what had happened. The drummer-boy had stopped his retaplan. He hovered, first on one leg, then on the other, uncertain. I glared at him. Blood dripped over the disguise on my cheeks; I had to be quick if he was to live.
“Run, boy! Run for your life!”
With a squeak he abandoned his drum and fled.
My shout brought the Hikdar to life. His thraxter glimmered in the moonlight as he leaped for me, thinking me distracted, seeking to bury the sharp point in my guts. I backhanded him and brained him. I looked up at Nulty.
His frame was far less well filled than when I had seen him last, at the time of the abortive duel with Strom Lart ham Thordan. I dropped the blood-, brain-, hair-, and intestine-smeared sledgehammer and reached for the knife that, as a gul, I was allowed to carry.
The knife slashed through his thongs and I caught him as he dropped. A hoarse voice wheezed from whipping-frame number five.
“Nath, old friend! You would not — not leave me!”
By this I knew Nulty had told them his name was Nath.
Nulty swallowed and managed to stand up. His nose was still as bulbous as ever, and this cheered me.
“It is for the Notor to say, Emin.”
Could I leave the other two slaves, and free just my friend? I damn well could, of course, but I did not. The knife slashed Emin free. He was an apim, bulky and strong, not a Hamalian, I judged, by the language he used about them. Number six was in worse case, and had to be helped down. She was a Fristle. (A Fristle is a furred diff after the fashion of a cat. The females are considered among the most beautiful of Kregen.) Like all Fristle women younger than middle age she was lissome and furrily attractive; she had been sent here to be punished from the retinue of some Hamalian officer’s wife. She sobbed her gratitude, tears streaking the soft down of her cheeks, her eyes glistening.
“No time, no time,” I said, deliberately harsh. “We have to run for it now. Can you run, Fristle?”
“I can run faster than a furless apim, apim!”
“Good! Then let us run.”
We ran.
Nulty and Emin had taken up thraxters for themselves from the dead guards, and — as was proper -
the officer’s sword for me. They had also ripped off four of the soldiers’ short green capes for us. We ran beneath the moons of Kregen, out through the shrubs, beyond the trees, leaving the barracks. We heard the beginnings of the alarm and saw flaring torches as we left Zhyan’s Pinions. . We ran due south.
I guessed the guards would assume we had taken to the guls’ quarters, to the eastward or northward, for due south over the Bridge of Swords lay the sacred quarter. No fugitive gul or slave would find much of a haven there. So we were able to slink through the shadows, following my well traveled routes, closing up into a compact body when we traversed an open space, pressing ever on to the inn. Getting them inside presented the problem only of sliding them down the roof and onto the balcony. Everything was as it had been when I’d left here to assume the identity of Chaadur, the gul. Now we all crowded into my room and I whispered to them with great fierceness to be quiet in their joy. I said: “I will help you on your way to escape, or-”
Nulty coughed, and scraped his foot, and when I glared at him, he said: “Truly, Notor, I thought you were dead. You vanished from the duel — aye! That was a bad time. But these two — they are my friends. We were caught in a little enterprise, and would have been flogged but for you, Notor.”
“So?”
But I had guessed what the old reprobate would say.
“Emin and I, and the Fristle Salima, wish to stay and serve you, Notor.”
All I could say was, “I have been away on business. I will say I have brought you back with me from Paline Valley. Nulty will advise you of Paline Valley-”
“Nulty, lord?” said the girl Salima, her cat eyes as wide as they would go. Nulty’s face was a picture. Then he mumbled something and rumbled, and I understood. He had been ashamed of what I had done, and, as I learned, that foul cramph the landlord of The Thraxter and Voller had sold him into slavery. Then Nulty, as a slave, could not bear to bring further dishonor to the name of Paline Valley. So he had called himself Nath. There are many Naths on Kregen, a result of the ancient tale of rollicking adventure called The Quest of Kyr Nath. I think Kyr Nath may be likened to our Earthly Hercules.
A freshly inked mark had to be scored in the little black book.
The two Hamalian servants I’d hired had been discharged before I had gone off adventuring as the gul Chaadur, although I had retained the rental of my rooms. Now the three fugitives could sleep next door. In the morning Nulty, temporarily rigged in some of my old clothes that would fit him somehow, went out for clothes for them all. I squared the accounts away with the landlord, and expressed surprise he had not heard me come in last night, hinting at a drunken sleep on his part, and so, in fine, the affair was smoothed over.
Chido ham Thafey, Amak by courtesy, came to see me, full of all the latest engrossing news of the sacred quarter. It was all mediocre stuff, a mere series of trifles, and his evident engagement with this pettiness made me see that I had been falling into the very pit I swore could never entrap me. He commented on my new retainers, and I passed them off with the remark that Paline Valley was a surprising place. The slave brandings of Nulty, Emin, and Salima, all in correct numbers by Hamalese Law, I had removed with a concoction the formula of which had been shown me in Zenicce. That great enclave city was not overly liked upon the high seas of Kregen, and this was a reason for that dislike. For themselves, the folk of Zenicce think it great sport to take slaves, and wash out their brands, and so rebrand them as their own for all the world to see.
Chido’s main item of news concerned a new sword-master from Zenicce. Because the Horters and nobles of Hamal had been brought up to the thraxter as their national sword, this new craze for rapier-and-dagger fighting meant they imported men to teach them. This new sword-master from Zenicce, so Chido said, was the best anyone had ever seen — and he had been brought in by none other than Vad Garnath.
I admit I felt interest at this news. This was not petty. “So you see, Hamun!” cried Chido. “This wast Garnath will challenge Trylon Rees again, will call on Leotes ti Ponthieu as his second, and then, and then-”
“Aye, Chido, and then!” I glowered at Chido, but he was busy looking about my room for a glass and wine. “Is this Leotes ti Ponthieu then so great a swordsman?”
The wine bottle clinked against the glass as Chido poured. It was early for him. “I have never seen a better. He is quick, strong, vicious.” As always, Chido made Ws of his R’s, so that he said, for example,
“Twylon Wees,” and “stwong,” but I do not care to imitate him so faithfully. He looked deucedly upset now, though, and no mistake.
Now I perceived a little irony here, a tiny thing that would have swayed the idlers of the sacred quarter when this sword-master from the enclave city of Zenicce came among them. My enclave of Strombor, of which I am Lord, is honored to wear the brave old scarlet. The colors of Ponthieu are purple and ocher. And the colors of this Queen Thyllis of Hamal were purple and gold. So this Leotes had landed with a head start.
By the Black Chunkrah, I said to myself, but it was a dolefully long time since I had been to Zenicce and Strombor!
And I had, here in enemy Ruathytu, to be very careful what oaths I let fall. There could be no carefree bellowing of “By Vox!” or “By Pandrite!” or any other of my old favorites. “By Zair!” would go unrecognized, of course. “By Opaz!” would be dangerous, for all that I knew there was a strong following in the city for Opaz, the spirit of the Invisible Twins, as there was for Lem the Silver Leem, in direct opposition.
And the various diseased portions of the anatomy of Makki-Grodno had received no attention from me lately at all, at all. .
So I said, as gently as I could: “Oh, Chido, you are a great fambly! Rees will eat this Leotes and spit the pips out.”
Chido shook his head, clutching his glass. “You have not seen the Zeniccean fight, Hamun!”
The rapier-and-dagger-men of Zenicce are most skilled, as I knew, for I had once swaggered as a bravo-fighter of Zenicce. The fumbling attempts of the aristocracy of Hamal to take up rapier-work, to become, in their terms, Blades-men, would make a sword-master of Strombor or Eward — or Ponthieu!
— smile the wide wicked grin of a shark. Vallians are most nimble with the rapier, and I have met fine swordsmen from Pandahem. Despite my brave words and despite my confidence in Rees, I felt strongly that if this Leotes ti Ponthieu was a sword-master of a high quality in Zenicce, he would do Rees’s business for him.
There are twenty-four Houses in Zenicce, noble and lay. Chance had directed that Vad Garnath in his pursuit of revenge should choose a bravo-fighter from the noble House of Ponthieu, a House which at that time was a deadly foe to my own House of Strombor. I would have no compunction with this Leotes.
The preparations for the inevitable duel went ahead, Just as they had before, with one exception. Nath Tolfeyr cried off from being Rees’s second. Chido would have jumped in, but Rees sternly bade him away. The lion-man looked in truth as noble as a lion does in the imagination, as he glanced around the upper room of the tavern where we had gathered on the night before the encounter. It was scarcely an affair of honor any longer, but it was holding up my own work.
I said: “I shall stand as your second, Rees.”
“Very well, Hamun. As I shall most certainly thrust this dog of a Zeniccean through the guts after a few passes, it will serve.” But he did not thank me, and I knew that he was more worried than he cared to admit. His confidence remained high.
Chido swore most vilely, but Rees had a duty for him that had nothing to do with duels. Chido was packed off to the wide Plains of the Golden Wind to pick up the rudiments of military lore necessary for his appointment as a staffer.
I had my own private thoughts about the regiment Rees was putting together, but I did not speak my thoughts to the lion-man.
Casmas the Deldy announced, with an oily smile, that even though he was contracted to be married -
and to a charmer! a marvel! a passion-lily of scarlet fervor! a most luscious armful! and rich into the bargain! — he would be taking bets. This time the betting so heavily favored the Zeniccean bravo-fighter that it seemed no one gave Rees a chance. I laid a bet and Casmas smiled and fingered his chin, chuckling, already counting the money as his. So, rather dolefully on the part of Rees’s friends, we trooped down to the hall ready for the duel.
The first man I saw inside was Lart ham Thordan, Strom of Hyr Rothy. He started when he saw me, then sneered, and passed a comment to a crony that some Amaks ran away from duels and hid behind the rapiers of lion-men friends. I ignored him. I had to.
Everyone crowded around. I carried out my duties as second, and, as everyone expected, Vad Garnath successfully satisfied the judges that he could not fight and his second must do so in his place. Leotes ti Ponthieu stepped forward.
Well, we know his type. He was a bravo-fighter. He lived by his rapier. One day — and he knew it -
he would die by a rapier or dagger. Rees faced him, and the bout began. I saw, at once, that Rees was quite out of his class. Even so, Rees balked him of a death, for Leotes’ blade took a chunk of flesh away from Rees’s side, and the blood being drawn, the bout might be called off. I leaped forward, shouting that honor had been satisfied. Rees looked abruptly shriveled. He was carried off and I swung about to follow him through the turmoil of shouting men and women, yelling to his attendants to carry him gently. The confusion was remarkable, for Rees had many friends as well as enemies. And the ladies of Ruathytu would not miss such a spectacle. I pushed after Rees, but the crowd pressed in, and the noise and bustle racketed from the high ceiling.
“Rees!”
“Keep back, keep back!”
I saw the lion-man lift himself from the stretcher. He looked terrible. A doctor was working busily away, but a dreadful red stained his bandages with terrible rapidity.
“Honor — Hamun,” said Rees, and I could just hear him through the din. “You. . keep off it. . old fellow. .”
Then the crowd closed in and he was whisked from my sight.
Strom Lart stood before me. I was aware of Casmas the Deldy, and Nath Tolfeyr, and Tothord of the Ruby Hills, in the press.
“So your champion has fallen, Amak Hamun!” Strom Lart was enjoying this. He was dressed in the off-duty rig of a soldier, a totrix cavalryman, and that big bloated face was flushed scarlet with greed for the enjoyment of pain and humiliation. “We have a debt unpaid, you and I, clum-lover!”
I went to push past. “Out of the way, you fat fool,” I said. “I must see how Rees is.”
He did not roar or bellow, although the scarlet of his cheeks deepened even more grotesquely. He lifted his glove. I knew what he was going to do and could do nothing myself. Before them all, Strom Lart of Hyr Rothy slapped me across the face with his gauntlet.
“And this time, Amak, do not run away!”