A Life for Kregen

Chapter Sixteen

Before I could do that desired thing there was another task to my hand. I had not failed to ask about Dayra as well as Thelda on the way in; and had received no useful answers. At the time, with Lol along, Thelda had been our main concern, and rightly so, for Dayra was here not as a prisoner but as an embassy, bringing offers of alliance from that bastard Zankov.

It seemed to me perfectly proper to find another guard with a fancy uniform, a pakmort and the rank of Jiktar, take what I wanted from him, clean myself up, and then go looking for my wayward daughter. All this I did, and as a smartly turned out Jiktar, with the silver mortil head on its silken cord at my throat, went through from the slave quarters to the inner recesses of Trakon’s Pillars. This stronghold within its encircling bogs was an open place covering a fair amount of ground. Much of it was on stilts, some on mats, and the hard ground was reserved for the highest of the high. The Pillars from which the place took its name were volcanic extrusions, tall separately trunked obelisks of naked tufa, pitted and worn, rising like unformed Easter Island statues in a clump at the center. They provided a pivot around which the busy stronghold revolved.

In lifting terraces below, the palaces had been built, each one more grand than the last. White columns, pavements and walls blinded in the suns as I climbed leaving the dank mists below. I was not stopped, was not even questioned. A Jiktar is a reasonably exalted rank, and the insignia told observers that I was an ord-Jiktar, having risen eight steps in the grade. The pakmort carried more weight, even, than that, here where gold still bought swords.

Now, just because a Jiktar is a pretty high rank, the holder usually commanding a regiment, the disguise took me through the lower ways up to the palaces. But once there I would have to find a swod’s gear; for all Jiktars would be known and recognized. A party of men marched across and the dwa-Deldar in command saluted me. I returned the compliment. They were archers, and their bows were long and hefty, round staves of a certain length. They were Bowmen of Loh.

Finding one on his own was not easy; but eventually I was buckling up the leather gear of a Bowman of Loh and settling the bronze helmet on my head. I kept my own bow. Then I went boldly into the first palace, a sea-green confection profuse with satyrs and nymphs carved on the walls. The quondam owner of the archer’s gear had told me that the embassy from Zankov was housed in this place, the Palace of the Octopus. So, in I went. In for a zorca, in for a vove. Layco Jhansi had been the old emperor’s chief pallan and had run things in Vondium most tightly. He had subverted the allegiance of the Crimson Bowmen of Loh. So there were plenty of Lohvians with their red hair about, as well as dark-haired archers from Erthyrdrin. My brown hair, being Vallian, did not attract undue attention. Five-handed Eos-Bakchi, that mischievous Vallian spirit of luck and good fortune, favored me unduly. A Deldar spotted me and bellowed and soon I found myself marching in a three-deep column of Bowmen, en route to provide a guard. Well, the ploy got me in well enough. Five-handed Eos-Bakchi, however, did not see fit to arrange for me actually to attend in the reception for Zankov’s embassy. That would have been to ask too much. We were stationed at intervals along the corridors and the tessellated pavements, and I drew a billet at the head of some stairs that led down to what depths I did not know. I stood there, alert, looking the very personification of one of those guards I have detailed as being fancifully dressed, spear-bearing and ripe for knocking on the head. Now it is perfectly true that most people inhabiting palaces staffed with a plethora of guards barely notice their guards at all. Old rogues like myself who have served their time do notice; but we are in a pitiful minority. No one noticed me. I’m damn sure they’d have noticed had I not been on duty, like a pickled gherkin at my post.

And so my daughter Dayra walked along the corridor and past the stairs, deep in conversation with that foresworn scoundrel, Tyr Malervo Norgoth, him who had once come with an embassy from Jhansi to me and set his sorcerer, Rovard the Murvish, on me. I just stood there, lumpen, my face shadowed by the ornate helmet. Malervo Norgoth with his gross body and spindly legs looked much as I remembered him. He wore loose robes of a sickly green color, with much gold and silver embroidery. But Dayra — Dayra looked magnificent.

She wore a long dress of the imperial style, all in sheerest sensil, that finer silk of Kregen, of a pale oyster color that shimmered as she walked. Her carriage was that of an empress. There were feathers in the golden circlet around her brown Vallian hair. Her face glowed with conviction and passion as she talked. Her figure was a knock-out. Yes, I well realize the dignity and impudence of that; but it fitted. Fitted perfectly. For I had seen this glowing girl when she had been clad in black leathers, with her long legs flashing, driving wicked steel with her right hand, and her left taloned in those vicious raking claws. Her jewelry glistered and blinded. She wore far too much. I fancied the massed iridescence of gems was genuine. Just whose gems they were seemed to me — her father — as a matter of moment. But, not for the moment. Why she wore so much jewelry might have been puzzled out by an earthly psychologist, with a glib theory that it reflected rebellion against her mother’s elegant and refined taste, which leant more to small and costly items of quality, rather than a massed and vulgar display. I did not think so. This was Kregen. Dayra flaunted the gems so as further to convey the power she represented as embassy from Zankov.

Malervo Norgoth was saying as they walked along: “… doesn’t mean a single damn thing, my dear, and it would be best if you did not forget it.”

The reply Ros the Claw would make to that insulting comment intrigued me; but she simply said: “Yet Zankov’s new allies do mean a damn thing. They mean very much. No one is going to stand before them, you may believe me.”

“There are many dwaburs between the east and Vennar.”

“They can be crossed. Zankov would cross them in friendship.”

“A friendship which he values highly in terms of what he asks in the way of gold…”

They walked on, wrangling, and a few personal guards followed them, whereat I drew up even straighter and angled the helmet to shadow my face even more. Rovard the Murvish trailed along at the rear, emitting his unmistakable effluvium of dead rats and sewers, and shaking his morntarch with a reflective gesture. His furs and bangles and shaggy hair lent him a wild and grotesque appearance. The party moved on and I breathed out and glanced back along the line of guards. The Deldar was nowhere in sight. Not one of those ramrod guards would move if I walked off. That was a racing certainty. So, shouldering the spear I had taken from the archer, an ornate and highly-polished piece with tufts of white and ochre ribbons, I marched off after Malervo Norgoth, Dayra and the rest.

The search for the two madmen who had broken into Trakon’s Pillars from the bogs continued and so I assumed no one had yet discovered the absence of that single-place voller. That pleased me, for it meant no pursuit would take off after Lol and Thelda. So, feeling ready for what might come, I followed the embassy into a cross-corridor where tall windows threw diamonds of brilliance across the carpets and where Norgoth led Dayra into a room through an ochre and silver doorway. The thought occurred to me that both Zankov and Jhansi were avid for an alliance. Both felt their own weakness and needed additional strength. And both, it was clear, would seek to dominate their partnership. It seemed to me clear-cut that I should do all I could to upset that understanding between them and prevent the alliance. That fitted in with my plans for Dayra. I fancied it was high time that minx answered to her mother and father. That her answers might make the sweetest of sense I have already indicated, and I was fully prepared to take her side in all things, if it came to it, bar, perhaps, a coherent understanding of the man who had slain her grandfather. And, even there, reasons impelled him that were sound, even honorable, to him. I owed him that much. Zankov might not be the black-hearted scoundrel everyone said he was. The odds were against it; but the chance remained. And, as I walked up with a swagger toward the two Bowmen who guarded the ochre and silver door, I recognized in my thoughts the bias I owed to the condemnation of Zankov that stood in my brain like a lighthouse in stormy seas. I was prejudiced against him — for good reason — and must attempt in justice to take that into account in my dealings with him.

“Lahal, dom,” I sang out to the first guard, scraping up a frozen grimace that might pass muster for a smile, and nodding to his companion. “You’re in luck, by the Seven and Two.”

“Oh?” spoke up the first worthy, flicking a glance to his comrade. “And, dom, how are we so fortunate?”

“Why, to be sure. Here am I come to stand your watch while you have fun chasing after these madmen who have broken in. I wish you well of it, although I could do with loosing at fair game rather than the butts.”

The guard favored me with a hard look. But I had slipped the longsword on its strap down my back so that the checkered cloak covered it, and although the sword of the Bowmen of Loh was usually the Walfargian lynxter, many of them preferred other weapons picked up in their mercenary trade, so that my drexer passed muster. The second guard let a broad and happy smile part his whiskers.

“That is good news. Come, Nath, let us go and feather a few rasts and earn our hire.”

“Gladly, Naghan. I am with you.”

And, with that jaunty mercenary swing, they marched off with a perfunctory: “Rember!” and a laugh. I stood by the door and breathed out and considered.

To break in would be easy. To slay a few of the cramphs in there probably also not too difficult. But Ros the Claw would fight. She had fought before, although sparing me in the end. I did not wish once more to face my daughter with naked steel between us.

A subterfuge of the simple-minded kind was called for.

No food had passed my lips for far too long, a most unhealthy and anti-social attitude that, for Kregen, by Krun, and I had not slept much lately, either. But one must accept the needle. I pushed the door open and slanted my head so that the helmet brim shadowed my face. The small chamber beyond was an anteroom, with doors in three walls, fast closed, and a rumble of voices reached me from the door with a strigicaw head in half-relief above the architrave. I put my ear to the wood and listened. A rumble of voices in which no words were clear left me, as ever, it seemed of late, no alternative. My hand reached out for the latch fashioned after a pair of entwined totrixes and then I halted, dumbstruck at my own stupidity. My hand withdrew and I looked about swiftly. The next door along, the one with the chavonth head above it. Yes — another alternative had presented itself, and the simple-minded stratagem had become positively imbecile.

The door opened soundlessly. Two young fops, all lace and embroidery, playing Jikaida, looked up with guilt stamped all over their asinine faces. They went to sleep peacefully and I pressed my ear against a grille in the wall adjoining the strigicaw room. The voices spurted, not particularly clear; but I heard enough to make me feel that my daughter was a scheming minx and a half, a worthy daughter to her mother.

“…voves! Nothing will stand before them.”

“So you say, Lady Ros. But the distances and the gold speak against you.”

“The clans are with us in this. Their hatred of Vovedeer Prescot is as the prairie fire. It rages up fiercely and is all-consuming. Beware lest you and your master are broiled in the blaze.”

“Threats?”

Dayra laughed, that ringing, silvery, contemptuous laugh of Ros the Claw. “You have put these chambers at my disposal, good Norgoth. How sits a threat against you here?”

“I am glad you remember this.”

Then another voice broke in, a more distant rumble, and scraping sounds indicated the movement of chairs so I took it the conversation was ended. A few strides took me back to the door and I peered through the crack. Norgoth and Rovard and their retinue sailed out like galleons of Vallia, proud and puffed and supremely conscious of their superiority. I waited.

When they had gone I eased across to the door of the strigicaw and tried the totrix-latch. The door was locked. I rapped my knuckles on the wood. How formal one becomes in these moments! The door made clicking sounds of sliding metal and opened a fraction and a young, handsome, boy’s face showed, slightly puzzled, perhaps a trifle apprehensive. I pushed up and spoke in a swod’s metallic bark.

“Message to be delivered personal to the Lady Ros.”

“She does not wish to be disturbed. She will not see anyone save the lord-”

“I think,” I said, “she will see me.”

The boy jumped, and his face twitched, and he closed the door and went away, whereat I smiled. Presently he returned, the door was opened, and I went in. My right hand rested at my side. The hilt of the drexer angled across most conveniently. If Ros came at me with a rapier or her damned steel claw I’d have to skip and dance a measure, and no mistake…

The room led onto another chamber of some refinement and luxury, with rugs and hangings and golden lamps on chains. A zhantil-skin pelt was strewn artfully across a couch whose strigicaw-head legs rested on ochre and white rugs. Long curtains at the far end parted and Ros walked in. She was in the process of buckling up a war-harness over her black leathers, and her face was tight with annoyance.

“Who demands to see me so intemperately?” She struggled with a bronze buckle which refused to close.

“There can be no more messages to which I will listen unless they bring firm promises of gold.” She looked up, breathing hard, and saw the Bowman of Loh who stood ramrod straight but submissively before her, as she must have seen so many in her time.

“Voves,” I said. “So you bring voves into Vallia.”

She jumped as though I had struck her.

Her naked left hand struck up before her face. The fingers extended. She wore no rings. Her nails were trimmed and polished, unpainted, neat. That left hand clawed at the air in reflex so automatic it left her gasping.

“Yes, Ros,” I said.

To give her credit she did not gasp: “You!” like some ignoramus of a heroine from one of the operettas of the flea-pits of Vondium. I enjoy operetta. She lowered that lethal left hand, naked of its lethal weapon, and gazed on me and her look passed from astonishment through anger to a brooding puzzlement. Then:

“What am I to do with you?”

“Nothing. It is what I am to do with you. Boy!” I turned to the lad, who was not yet full grown, a dimpled handsome boy wearing a rose-colored tunic and with a pretty little dagger swinging from silver chains at his waist. His brown Vallian hair tumbled in locks about his ears. “Boy! Pull out that carpet -

that long wide one with the silken tassels and spread it out on the floor.”

She knew at once.

“You would not dare!”

“How much do you hate me, Ros?” I kept to this name of hers, instead of Dayra, out of an instinctive feeling for the moment, where Ros the Claw was at home and Dayra not.

“Hate you? More than you can imagine — more than the whole world can encompass!” She had not moved since that first instinctive gesture. Her face — beautiful, ah, yes, beautiful and passionate, willful, stubborn, marked with a pride I could sigh over, and marked, also, with a vicious sadness I found desolating — her face bore now the high flush of a controlled anger. “Are you not deserving of all the hate and all the contempt of the whole wide world?”

“Yes.”

Her hand went to her throat, above the rim of the black leathers. She was surprised. “But-”

“Turn around, Ros the Claw, and I will fasten up your wrists. Stand, boy!” For the lad made to draw his toy dagger.

The footfall at my back was soft. It was not soundless. I should not speak to you had that footstep been soundless. I ducked and turned and the drexer was out and the giant who slashed a giant sword at me staggered on with the violence of his blow. He was quick. Off balance, before I could get back and the drexer into him he swung around, the giant sword sweeping. I hurdled it and landed cat-footed and so faced him.

Well, he was big. He was broad and wide and bulky and he went up and up and up, his thatch of straw-yellow hair overtopping me by seven good inches. He wore a bronze-studded leather kax, and arm-bands of beaten gold, and a war-kilt of ochre and bronze, pteruges which swung to his knees. His sandals would have carried a landing party from ship to shore. And his sword — massive, thick through and wide, with a solid pommel shaped like a zhantil-head — that sword was like no other I had seen on Kregen. I rather fancied it would be slow, even for him, even with his enormous muscles. Dayra laughed her silver tinkle.

“You have not met Brun before. I think the meeting opportune.” She was enjoying this. “Do not slay him Hyr Brun. His mangy hide has a certain value in certain quarters. We will grow fat on his profit.”

Despite the gross proportions of that sword, Brun carried it one-handed and the hilt was close, not fashioned for two-handed work, not even for hand-and-a-half. I took three quick backward steps. Brun’s cheerful face, open, mellow, clean-shaven and with a few spots on one cheek, broke into a delighted smile. His reactions were those of a cat stalking a mouse. The drexer snapped away into the scabbard. I reached around.

“So, master, you give in?” Brun’s voice carried a clarity of sound amazing, until you realized the enormous cathedral-cavity of his lungs. “That is wise of you. The mistress is to be obeyed in all things.”

“I don’t know where you got him, Ros,” I said, as I put my hand on the hilt of the Krozair brand. “But I’d like to make friends with a thousand or so. What a bonny regiment they would make for Vallia!”

“For my Vallia!” she spat at me. “Never yours!”

“Well, my girl, you are going into that carpet, and this Hyr Brun is going to carry you out. You had best reconcile yourself to that.” I whipped the longsword out and it sparked a shard of light into that chamber as it swung out into line. “As for you, friend Brun. I shall not slay you, as you would not me. But carry your mistress in the carpet you will.”

He boomed a gigantic laugh and rushed.

The fight was not pretty — or extraordinarily pretty — depending on your personal viewpoint. He had a knack of swinging the huge sword around in his fist as though it was a length of rope so that it wove a circle of light. The trick was effective. Besides demonstrating his strength it confused his opponent. Inch had a similar trick with his long Saxon-pattern axe. Again I do not wish to dwell on the fight. It was interesting. Brun wore a leather strap around his head which confined his thatch of yellow hair. The Krozair brand met the gigantic sword and the metal rang and the jolt belted up my arms and across my shoulders. But the Krozair Disciplines held and the blows slanted and glanced, and, like a striking risslaca, the longsword licked out and sliced neatly through the leather fillet. Not a drop of blood was drawn, the skin was not marked. But the leather fell away and Brun’s yellow hair dropped down before his face.

Before he had time to brush it away I stepped in and clouted him over the head with the flat. He dropped. I do not think there can be many men born of women who will not drop when struck by a Krozair brand.

Before he hit the carpet I had leaped aside and swung the flat around horizontally and the boy was swept away, his toy dagger spinning up like a comet of diamonds in the lights. Ros leaped for me and she wore her talons.

I ducked, put my shoulder into her stomach, clapped my left arm about her back and hugged her. Horizontally she thrashed her legs wildly. I felt the kiss of the talons against the back of my thighs, and so banged her — gently, gently! — on her bottom with the hilt.

“Stay still, daughter, or I shall tan you, but good.”

“You-!”

“Yes.”

Presently we were sorted out. Ros, with wrists and ankles fastened with the silken cords from the curtains, lay rolled in the ochre and silver carpet with the silk tassels. Brun said to me: “You would not really slay the boy?” I stood with a dagger at the boy’s throat, the rest of my armory scabbarded. I said, “Do you wish to find out? Pick up your mistress and we will walk out of here, all friendly and nice. Boy, do you walk quietly and not wriggle.” I took the dagger from his throat and flapping a corner of the cloak over it, pressed it into the small of his back. “You walk before death.”

Well, it was detestable; but he believed me. And, believing, said, “You may kill me, master, if you desire. But I will not betray my mistress.”

“Well spoken lad. Your name?”

“I am called Vaxnik.”

I was astonished. Vax was the name used by Jaidur in the Eye of the World. And Jaidur was Dayra’s twin. I would ask the boy his history when we were safely away. Now, I said, “You have my word as a koter that no harm will befall your mistress. Despite her seeming hatred of me, I love her more deeply than you can understand. I would be cut down before harm should come to her. Now, lead on.”

Brun rumbled: “Do you speak sooth, master?”

“Aye, Hyr Brun, I do.”

“You are a Jikai, master, that is plain. And we do not do well in this evil place. But-”

“Carry your mistress out of here. All will be revealed.”

Cheap and easy words; but they were true, by Vox.

A serving man — for Brun was clearly no slave — carrying an expensive carpet, and an important boy to strut his office, and a dour professional mercenary to guard them, excited no attention in the busy warren. We saw parties of guards searching for those who had broken in. We walked solemnly on and were not challenged all the way down from the Pillars to the beginning of the mists rising and stinking from the niksuth.

Besides the carpet in which was rolled Ros the Claw, Brun carried a leather sack hastily stuffed with portable food, a few bottles of wine, and a curtain stuffed down on the top. He could, I thought, have carried a whole wagon-load of supplies without visible effort. So we walked on and passed parties of guards still searching and began to discern a pattern in the search for the intruders. I fancied we might run into serious trouble at the gates, and Vaxnik led on with an eager step. Now it appeared to me improbable that the outpost guards would have an expensive carpet delivered to their blockhouse. So we would have to re-arrange ourselves for the next step. I halted us in the shadows of a half-ruined building fronting the open space before the gate Vaxnik had chosen, and stared out as Bowmen and churgur guards moved about, parties coming and going, with Deldars yelling and a group of totrixmen spurring across in a swirl of dust and blown leaves. H’mm… There was a double enceinture here, where Vaxnik had led us, and I chalked a mark up to him, the cunning little devil.

Waiting until the open space was completely free of guards would take too long. Time pressed. Norgoth as Jhansi’s lieutenant would be raging with impatience that the intruders had not been found, and I suspected that some, at least, of those unfortunates who had been knocked on the head had recovered to add further to the alarm. So, once more, there was nothing for it. I settled the longsword more conveniently to hand. The shadows lay blue and bright. The suns shone. And then tendrils of oily mist wafted and the whole scene dulled to a dun mange, and a chill descended.

“March straight, Hyr Brun. And you, too, boy. I have a story for those guards yonder.”

A party of diffs wearing the gray slave breechclouts passed in a straggling line. They carried obese pots on their shoulders, no doubt water for the baths of those up in the palaces, if they’d run out of milk. I made a face, and we stepped out.

Two parties of guards approached. That to our right rear was composed mainly of Rapas, with a few apims and Brokelsh. They carried their spears all at the regulation slope and were mercenaries, skilled fighting men. The party advancing through the gate wore the ochre and white, and were armed with a medley of weapons which spoke again of mercenaries, although not the regimented and disciplined kind. I frowned.

Walking along a couple of paces in rear of Brun I readied myself. We attracted no attention from the guards with the spears. They were commanded by their Deldar and would do as he directed. We made a picture that held no menace for him.

A movement caught the corner of my eye and I looked forward again. The open end of the carpet was moving like the trunk of an elephant. How she had done it I do not know. Dayra’s head appeared, and an arm ripped free of the binding silks. Her face was flushed and her eyes looked murderous. She saw the guards. She yelled. She yelled good and loud.

“Guards! Guards! Here is the man you seek! Guards, ho!”

Her triumphant face bore on me, bright, vindictive, filled with passion. Vaxnik squeaked. Brun dropped the carpet.

I saw the guards running on. Their Deldar bellowed and they turned toward us. The other party of guards, attracted by the shouts, also turned toward us. We were trapped between them.

“You’re done for, now, you villainous rast!” shouted my daughter at her father. I ripped the longsword free. Two-handed I gripped the Krozair blade.

“Done for!” shrieked Dayra. “They will not kill you. But you may wish they had.”

“I do not hate you,” I said, stupidly, spreading my fists along the hilt of the longsword.

“Throw down your sword, cramph! Oh that I could get free and sink my talons in you!” And her left hand at last broke free from the swathing carpet and the suns shone through the drifting mist and glittered most vilely upon that curved and cruel claw.

I saw the spearmen charging toward me. I half-turned and saw the guards from the gate pressing swiftly on, their weapons drawn.

And I said, very gently: “I do not think your guards will take me, Dayra. But it was a nice try.”