A Sword for Kregen

Chapter Fourteen

As the Zairians of the Eye of the World say: “Only Zair knows the cleanliness of a human heart.” I had said I held no rancor against Mefto, and I believed that. But, humanly fallible as I am, perhaps a lingering resentment impelled me to watch my back with a sharper scrutiny even than usual as I walked gently along in the early morning opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. That vigilance which may have been caused by bitterness and suppressed longings for revenge served me well on that morning I walked in Jikaida City to talk about the king korf to a man I did not know.

They picked me up a couple of streets from the hostelry and they paced me, fifty paces or so to my rear. They kept to the shadowed side of the street. There were four of them and they wore swords and were dressed in inconspicuous gray and blue, as was I, save that their favors were of a hard bright yellow. There were two apims, a Rapa and a Brokelsh. I walked on, placidly, and pondered the indisputable fact that no man or woman born of Opaz knows all the secrets of Imrien.

The decision I reached seemed to me common sense. With a succession of alterations in course and speed, and with a swift vanishing into the mouth of a side alley where a stall loaded with appetizing roasted chingleberries smoked in the early light, I lost them. I kept up a good pace, but not too obtrusive a bustle in the morning activity, and so circled the Jikaidaderen and came into Blue City. Would those rasts with their yellow favors follow here?

Finding the Blue Rokveil was simplicity itself; the first person I asked looked as though I was a loon and jerked his thumb, marked with ink, for he was a stylor, to a broad avenue lined by impressive buildings. The place was there, clearly signposted, and looked to be an establishment more properly called a hotel than a hostelry. Only persons of standing and wealth would gain admittance as guests. I walked calmly to a side gate where Fristle slaves were trundling amphorae and shrilling orders at one another, and went in. The yard led by way of odoriferous stables to a long gray wall, mellow in the light, clothed with moon blooms, their outer petals extended and the inner tightly folded. From over the wall came a familiar sound

— the ring and chingle of steel on steel and the quick panting for breath, the scrape and stamp of feet seeking secure purchases. A wicket gate showed me men at sword practice. I half-turned, prepared to move on.

Hung on a wooden post just within the gate, and already burnished to a shining brilliance, a silvered iron breastplate was being lovingly polished up by a little Och slave. He had three of his upper limbs busily polishing away and with the fourth he was surreptitiously stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth between those puffy jaws. And good luck to you, my old dom, I was saying to myself as, being an old fighting man, my eye was caught by the sudden and splendid attack one of the energetic and sweating combatants within the courtyard essayed against his opponent in this early morning practice session. The opponent, a strongly built Fristle, gave ground. The assailant, an apim with strands of extraordinarily long yellow hair swirling, leaped in, roaring his pleasure, his good nature blazingly evident on his round, cheerful, pugnacious face. The men at practice in there all wore breechclouts and sandals. The apim whirled his sword in a silvered pattern of deceptive cunning and the Fristle, ducking and retreating, must have felt that steel net whistling about his whiskers perilously close.

“Ha, Fropo! I have you now!”

“Hold off! Hold off! I’ll slice your hair!”

“You dare!”

And with the speed of a striking chavonth the big apim, his yellow hair coruscating about his head in the light, leaped and struck — and the sword hovered an inch from the Fristle’s throat.

“D’you bare the throat?”

“Aye, may Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor pardon me, Dav. I bare the throat.”

With a great bellow of good-natured laughter the apim whipped his sword away and clapped a meaty hand around the Fristle’s golden-furred shoulders. “You let me best you, Fropo, by thinking of my hair. It never gets in my eyes — ever.”

Now they were at rest the two looked an oddly assorted couple, the Fristle and the apim. The apim, this Dav, was a splendidly built man, bulging with muscle; but I fancied his beginnings of an ale-gut might slow him down in a season or so if he did not temper his homage to Ben Dikkane. So looking at these two as they snatched up towels to wipe the sweat away I saw reflections in the brilliant polish of the breastplate. The Och had dropped his piece of bread and bent to retrieve it. In the polished kax I saw four distorted figures. One was Rapa, one Brokelsh, and two were apims. The Rapa lifted his hand and light splintered.

Even as I turned sharply away prepared to duck in the right direction, the big apim called Dav poised his sword and threw. It hissed through the air. It buried its point in the Rapa’s breast, smashing through his leather jerkin, crunching into his bones, spouting blood.

In the next instant I had drawn and was running upon the Brokelsh and his apim comrades. With a clang the blades crossed. I was aware of the Fristle, Fropo, and the apim, Dav, running up. Somewhere, someone had shouted: “’Ware your back, dom!”

The Rapa was done for, the dagger spilled into the dust. His viciously beaked face lay against the earth. But as my sword felt the savage blows of these would-be stikitches, I felt a new and wholly unexpected sensation — an unwelcome and treacherously deadly emotion.

I recalled that last fight with Mefto, and the way he had bested me. My blade faltered. The apims had sized me up and were pressing hard and somehow and, I think of its own volition, my thraxter leaped to parry their blows. But I saw again those five lethal blades of Mefto flashing before my eyes. My throat was dry. I leaped and slashed the blade about and caught the Brokelsh in the side. The Brokelsh are a squat-bodied race of diffs, and he staggered and recovered and came for me again. Then Fropo’s sword switched in and took the Brokelsh in play, Dav took one of the apims, and I was left to face the last. Whatever my emotions had been, however the feelings had scorched through my brain, I felt the old secrets flowing along my arm and through my wrist and into my hand. I turned the sword over and beat and twitched and so lunged, and stepped back.

Fropo and Dav were standing looking at me. The Brokelsh and the other apim were coughing their guts out.

“You were a mite slow, dom,” said Dav, in his affable way. “You need to sharpen up.”

“Yes,” I said. I took a breath. “My thanks-”

“Against them? The apim I took I know. Naghan the Sly, he was called. Look.” Dav bent and ripped away the big blue favor. Under it the hard yellow showed. “They tried to cowp you from the back, the yetches. Well, they’ll never report back to Mefto the Kazzur, may he rot in Cottmer’s Caverns.”

I said, “My thanks again. But I do not think they could have known you — who know them — would be here. They would not have been so bold.”

“Right, dom. They would not. And,” Here his big smile burst out. He wore a little tufty beard bisecting his chin, and he was burly, no doubt of that, genial. “And no Lahal between us. I am Dav Olmes. Lahal. This is Fropo the Curved.”

“I am Jak. Lahal, Dav Olmes. Lahal, Fropo the Curved.”

“And now I need three stoups of best ale, one after t’other,” quoth Dav. “Instanter, by the Blade of Kurin.”

So I knew he was a swordsman, and we went into the courtyard and found the ale and washed the dust away down our throats. And, for me, Dray Prescot known as Jak, the dust went down bitter with unease.

No need to ask where the sword with which Dav had made such pretty play had come from. The little Och was wailing away and scrabbling around picking up the scattered items of the harness that Dav had ripped to pieces from its hangings on the post. The beautifully polished kax had fallen with a crash. The gilt helmet with the brave blue feathers still rolled about, like a balancing act. Now Dav threw the sword at the Och, who caught it with the unthinking skill of the man who spends his life with weapons, free or slave.

“Thank you, notor, thank you,” chattered the Och.

“That,” said Fropo, “was the kov’s own blade.”

“Aye. And very fine, too. Now where is this ale?”

“The Och called you notor,” I said. Notor is the usual Hamalian way of saying lord. We say jen in Vallia. Before Dav had recovered from his gutsy laugh at my words, Fropo, with sudden seriousness, said:

“Aye. This is Dav Olmes, the Vad of Bilsley.”

A vad is a high rank of nobility indeed, and they had mentioned a kov. I said, “And the kov?”

Fropo sucked through his teeth. “Konec Yadivro, the Kov of Brugheim.”

Ineldar the Kaktu could have told me I was going to see a kov, by Krun!

Dav had found the ale and after he had demolished the first stoup in two swallows, he said: “The kov and I do not parade our ranks here in Jikaida City. We have work to do that-” Here he took the opportunity of destroying the second stoup. Then: “By this little fracas I take it you have run afoul of Prince Mefto the Kazzur the yetch?”

“Aye.” I told them I had fought Mefto, and lost, and had been saved by the drikingers. They expressed the opinion that I must be somewhat of a bladesman after all, not to have been slain in the first pass or two. And, I knew, I had stood like a loon, shaking, when I had crossed swords with these stikitches. Kov Konec and his comrades had reached Jikaida City a few days earlier in a caravan whose master was Inarartu the Dokor, the twin brother of Ineldar the Kaktu, and this explained Ineldar’s knowledge, I thought.

The kov turned out to be a strong, frank-faced man with charming manners. I formed the opinion that he placed great reliance on the opinions and advice from Dav. Their estates, those of Brugheim and Bilsley, lay in Mandua, a country immediately to the west of Mefto’s Shanodrin. At once I realized the rivalry existing, and determined that it had nothing to do with me. Mefto could go hang; Vallia counted for me, and nowhere else. I was wrong there, of course.

However, I did take the opportunity in conversation of remarking that I knew a Bowman of Loh who swore that shafts fletched with the blue feathers of the king korf were superior to any other. I thought it tactful not to mention that Seg had also revised his opinion and had been heard to admit that the rose-red feathers of the zim-korf of Valka were as good. He wouldn’t admit, as many a bowman felt, that they were superior.

“You know about the king korf, then, Jak?”

“A little. Not enough, kov.”

“You call me Konec, Jak, here in Jikaida City.”

“Konec.”

“You have no love for Mefto?”

“He bested me. It was a fair fight-”

“A man with four arms and a tail?”

It rankled; but I had to say it, if only to show myself that I was not blinded by self-esteem. “It was not that, Konec. He is just simply superb. I think, perhaps, with other weapons he might… But it would be a brave man who would go up against him, man to man.”

“Aye,” said Fropo, and he riffled his whiskers.

“His ambitions are overweening. He must be stopped before he brings ruin to all the Dawn Lands. It is here in Jikaida City that we stand the best chance, paradoxical though that may appear.”

Dav chipped in to say, “If you are with us, Jak-”

I said, “There is the story in the old legends, true or false who can say after thousands of seasons? The legend of Lian Brewis and his enchanted brush. He was the artist for the gods, he could draw and paint so beautifully that his creations came alive, and peopled the world, and what the gods spoke of, Lian Brewis created out of paint.”

“The story is known over Kregen and is very beautiful,”said Dav. “So-?”

“So when the evil gods grew jealous in their wrath they took up Lian Brewis. He was cut off in full flower, a plump, jolly, wonderful person. And the gods for whom he had created so much beauty arose likewise in their just wrath and placed Lian Brewis as that constellation of stars that adorns the Heavens of Kregen. He can never be forgotten.” I looked at them, at their serious faces, and understood the intensity of their determination to halt Prince Mefto in his career of conquest. “Be sure the gods do not-”

“They will not,” said Konec, and he spoke with power. “You may rest assured on that.”

There was always the chance that the Rapa, the Brokelsh and the two apims had been sacrificed by their master just so that he might infiltrate a spy into the enemy camp. The trick is known. So I was not accepted whole-heartedly all at once, and of course my hesitation in dealing with my opponent added to the suspicion. But Dav was genuine and genial and my mention of the king korf, which was by way of being a secret signal, allayed much of the natural suspicion. They did not think that Mefto had penetrated that far into their schemes.

As for myself, I pondered just why I was here; how could these folk help me back to Vallia?

In the succeeding days I came to know them better and Pompino made the pappattu as my partner. We shifted quarters and Konec placed a room in the hotel of the Blue Rokveil at our disposal alongside the others. We spent the time practicing at swordplay, and, by Zair, I felt I mightily needed that sharpening up. The remembrance of Mefto’s five blades seemed to have mesmerized me. This party from Mandua were here ostensibly to play Jikaida, and Konec was a player of repute. Their intrigues against Mefto were kept very quiet; but if assassination formed part of them, it stood little chance. Mefto was surrounded continually by his brilliant retinue of followers. He lay abed, recovering from his arrow wound. So Dav insisted we go with him to watch a well-touted game of Kazz-Jikaida. It was to be between rival factions of the twin cities, and was the usual Kazz game and not the Death game, that is, the pieces did not face certain death if they lost.

We went along to take our seats in the public galleries of one of the game courts of the Jikaidaderen and I watched the Kazz game — and I was not enthralled. There was a powerful fascination in Kazz-Jikaida, an appeal to deeply hidden emotions and a dark pull on the blood; but I kept seeing the magical blades and the scornful and triumphant face of Prince Mefto the Kazzur before my eyes.