Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Outside the inn on perching towers the various flyers huddled up against the rain with flurried feathers, their backs turned to the wind, shaking membranous wings.

  “Look at them, master!” said Nulty, giving his mirvol a slap to send him scuttling up onto a vacant perch. “This is a miserable dump, and no place for an Amak."

  “Miserable or not, Nulty, it is a roof over our heads.” I sent my first-class mirvol up onto his perch on the tower. “Although I could wish for a covering for our mounts. A poor place, indeed, this"—and I turned to look at the sign swinging over the amphora placed at the door—"this Crippled Chavonth."

  When we approached the entrance I ducked my head, for the doorway was made deliberately low with a massive oak beam, and went inside followed by Nulty.

  The floor was sanded, the tables and settles of cheap purtle wood, the pine already splitting, the goblets of inferior pot-clay and crude as to shape. The wine was just drinkable; the ponsho chops, though, were tender enough, cooked by a smudge-cheeked girl in a flour-and-blood-stained apron. Nulty and I ate and drank in a companionable silence, while the other travelers in the room, apim, like ourselves, with only a few diffs to enliven the scene, talked in low voices. More than once I saw a pair of eyes lift to stare at the low ceiling.

  This inn was strictly a place to take a meal, to buy provisions, and to leave. The Crippled Chavonth. Kregans have a delight in names. The local ponsho farmers, we learned, caring for their flocks, produced an animal with surprisingly high-quality fleece, and the chavonth, that powerful six-legged hunting cat with fur of blue, gray, and black arranged in a hexagonal pattern, has a partiality to fat ponshos. The local infestation of these predators had come about through an airboat crash. The voller had been bringing in prize specimens of chavonths for the Arena in Ruathytu, and after their liberation they had bred and increased and had come finally to terrorize the countryside here in this dusty little town of Urigal in the half-forgotten Kovnate of Waarom.

  The ponsho farmers in this duchy of Waarom must have given uncomfortable little grimaces when they looked up at the sign of The Crippled Chavonth, no doubt wishing it to be so in fact.

  Peoples and animals are spread bewilderingly over the surface of Kregen, it often seems scattered at random, with only the haziest controlling influence of local evolution to be discerned. Much of this scattering of races and species, I believe, is due directly to the influence of the Star Lords; but quite a bit results from accidents like the one that brought hunting chavonths here to Waarom.

  The light coming through the low windows darkened and turned a deep umber. For a time, as the storm thrashed past overhead and the rain lashed down, the light vanished, and the pot-man brought out a few earthenware lamps. We finished our meal and then bought provisions to carry us through for the remainder of our journey. The storm grumbled and banged, but slowly the light came back and the lamps were extinguished. This was not one of the seasonal monsoon areas of Kregen; this rain was welcome in so dusty a Kovnate. The lingering after-rain smell carried overtones of quenched thirsty earth and green growths.

  The landlord was not immediately available for us to pay the reckoning. Heavy thumps sounded from the room overhead, and then doors banged, and footsteps clumped down an outside stairway, and loud voices lifted outside. There was a confusion of shouting, laughter, and that particular kind of freewheeling, innocuous oaths that some men adopt in the presence of ladies.

  “Fetch the mirvols, Nulty."

  “Yes, Notor."

  Nulty went outside—he did not have to duck his head—and I strolled after, expecting to find the landlord dealing with his important guests, who had been decently housed in the private upstairs room and served personally.

  The twin suns streamed down welcome rays, and the air sparkled with brilliance.

  The pot-man dodged after me. He did not dare to touch my elbow to halt me.

  “I will take the reckoning, Notor."

  This suited me, and I paid him, using a few sinvers from the vosk-skin bag at my waist, for I had not as yet adopted the Hamalese custom of wearing an arm-purse.

  “Thank you, Notor, may Havil the Green smile upon you, Notor, Remberee,” the pot-man rattled off in a monotone.

  I stepped outside the paved area before the door. Over at the perching tower flyers were being brought down and there was a flourishing of cleaning cloths as their feathers and hides and scales—for the different species—were dried after the rain and polished and made presentable for the great lady and her retinue who waited with growing impatience.

  I looked at the arrogant, brilliant group of people.

  They were apims.

  The men were hard featured, fair of hair, thick of jaw, clad in flying leathers adorned with much jewelry and gold lace. Their weapons were those of Havilfar. The girl who was the center of this brilliant group appeared to me, grown somewhat cynical in the ways of the mundane world, I fear, as completely out of place in that company. Her bright fair hair gleamed in the lights of Antares. Her small face, pert, with rosebud mouth, pale blue eyes, and a creamy-white complexion, seemed to me that of a child let loose in a world she did not comprehend. She was beautiful, in a china doll way, someone you might admire from a distance but scarcely wish to touch.

  She wore the pleated and flared skirt adopted by young girls of Hamal. It reached down halfway to her knees and glowed more with brilliants and stitchings of precious metals than with its original pale blue color. Her white shirt, also, overflowed with cascades of frills and lace. Over the shirt she wore a bolero of magenta. Flung back from her shoulders her short flying cape hung now demurely, folds of fluttrell-green. Astride her bird that cape would sweep back most proudly.

  Then all my attention was taken by the birds the handlers were bringing from the perching tower. Nulty was being forced to wait before he could fetch our mirvols. I saw these white-feathered birds and I marveled. I had not seen their like before in Hamal.

  All of pure white were these birds. Large, they were, powerful, streamlined in body, and with wide pinions that could sustain them and their riders in level flight for dwabur after dwabur over the world of Kregen. All of pure white save for their legs and beaks, which were scarlet, are the streamlined bodies and the quadruple-wings of these magnificent saddle-birds. These are the famed zhyans, and in money value alone one zhyan is worth ten good-quality fluttrells. So I looked with the keen interest of the flyer as the zhyans were brought down, dried and cleaned and polished, and I saw the huge birds were in a vicious temper.

  As well they might be, considering they are basically aquatic birds, with a great love for lakes. These zhyans had been called on to fly over dry dusty Waarom. The rain had given them a memory, a remembered longing for wide expanses of water. In bodily form the zhyan is not unlike a Terrestrial swan, although the feet bear taloned extensions, very fierce. And the beak, although of the wide and flattened variety of swimming birds, has a swanlike knob much enlarged into near raptor-like proportions, with a vicious, down-curved, meat-tearing hook. These very large saddle-birds of Kregen must, by the very laws of nature, have bodies of lesser proportionate bulk than their smaller Earthly counterparts. Their size lies in their length and in their wingspread.

  Nulty stood at the side, fuming, waiting to get at our mirvols, as the zhyans were brought down. One zhyan struck with a hiss at his handler. The man, a gul in a brown smock, staggered back, yelling, his arm slashed.

  One of the brilliant gallants, hitching his sword out of the way, strode across, bellowing. A kind of order was produced, and the swaggering group mounted up. I watched as they did so, noting the birds, looking at them rather than the aristocratic onkers mounting up.

  The zhyan is noted for its short temper. That is, perhaps, the greatest failing of the magnificent bird. Conscious of his own superiority, the zhyan does not like to be hustled. Maybe, had that girl out there been Delia, and I in command, I would not have allowed her to mount her saddle-bird. Oh, she would have flashed
those gorgeous brown eyes of hers at me, and called me a fussy old hairy graint; and, I like to think, she would have mastered the zhyan with all that consummate skill of hers.

  But this girl was no Delia.

  I, Dray Prescot, am an onker, a get-onker! What girl in two worlds can ever match Delia, save my Delia of Delphond!

  Almost in the saddle, the girl moved with a clumsy lurch that snapped the self-control of the zhyan. It lashed ferociously at the two handlers, first left, then right, cutting them with that deadly razored beak, stretching them senseless upon the muddy ground. It fluttered its two pairs of wings, a massive and—even in the abrupt horror of the moment—a beautiful movement. The girl pitched off. She screamed. She tumbled in the useless flailing straps of the clerketer, twisted and fell beneath the hooked beak of the zhyan.

  The bird's bright intelligent eyes told me that he would take his revenge for past insults now.

  Well, it was no business of mine.

  The men were yelling and one jumped forward, a flying-stick uplifted. Flying-sticks are the invention of any of a hundred foul devils of Kregen. I never used one. If a flying mount needed a lesson, as they sometimes did, in obedience, there were other and less unpleasant ways than to thrash the poor beast.

  This man was caught across the face by the slashing hooked beak. He had no time to scream. He spun about and bright blood spouted from his ruined face.

  Uproar burst about the perching tower. Men were yelling, women screaming, and the mud churned as the zhyan clamped his massive claws down. The girl dangling beneath him encumbered him. In the next second he would either rip her slender body to pieces with his claws, or tear her head from her shoulders with his beak. The pandemonium grew—and yet after the awful finish of the one who tried, no one else showed the determination to rush in to help.

  Still, it was no business of mine...

  I ran forward.

  “Help! Help me!” the girl screamed.

  She dangled there, half upside down, her brave clothes spattered with mud gobbets thrown up by the claws of the maddened bird. His beak flashed toward me, hissing.

  Dodging that lethal beak on its long serpentine neck was something like slipping an arrow or a spear. I checked in my rush, so that the beak struck where I would have been. I thumped my fist against the side of his head, feeling the solid thunking sledge of the blow. I grabbed the girl. She was incoherent with fear now, a gibbering shrieking bundle. My sailor's knife whipped from the sheath over my right hip and slashed through the tangling lines of the clerketer. I kicked the zhyan in the belly, and kicked again. If he took off now we were done for.

  He hissed. I crooked the girl in my left arm. If I had to kill this beautiful white bird, I would have to do so; I would prefer to let him live to recover from his fit of bad temper. There was no way past his beak. He curved his head down on that long neck, beneath his body, and darted at me again. The girl hampered me, but I flashed the knife at his beak, and chipped the side, and he hissed, and withdrew.

  With a savage lunge—and savagery was needed here to spring us clear—I went out from under the bird, rolling head over heels, clasping the girl, feeling her heart beat in panic against mine, her fair hair clouded about my face.

  Hands grabbed me and pulled the girl away.

  “We've got her, dom!"

  I let her go, heaving up on a knee, ready to flash the knife before me and so keep off that wickedly darting beak.

  There was no need.

  That gorgeous bird, that scarlet-billed, scarlet-clawed, pure white zhyan, lay jerking in the last throes of death.

  Crossbow bolts showed uglily in his feathers, studding his white breast obscenely, with red blood befouling all that beauty. He hissed, and shuddered, and died.

  I stood up.

  The girl had fainted. Her women were caring for her.

  The men with the crossbows were stowing their weapons away alongside their saddlebows. The fine-clothed gallants were shouting and gesticulating. The landlord was wringing his hands. The scene sickened me.

  Here came Nulty with the mirvols.

  “Mount up, Nulty. Let us drive into the clean air, away from this—this—"

  “Yes, master,” said Nulty.

  We took off astride our mirvols, and soared up into the clean air of Kregen.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  Concerning seven obs and a duel

  Ruathytu, the capital city of the Empire of Hamal, was a place where, if you were reasonably wealthy, you might enjoy a sumptuous time. Of course, if you happen to be wealthy in almost any place and at almost any time you may enjoy a sumptuous time, so you may think it unnecessary for me to call your attention to the matter. The truth was, in Ruathytu at that time, I came across an altogether too familiar and horrible phenomenon of our Earth that, until then, I had not encountered on Kregen.

  In Sanurkazz, in Magdag, in Vondium, in Zenicce, all wonderful cities of Kregen, there were lords with incredible wealth; their retainers and followers, who were sufficiently provided for; and fat shopkeepers, innkeepers, and the superior craftsmen; then there were slaves.

  In Ruathytu there were guls running the gamut from master artisans to laborers only a step removed from slavery. Beneath the skilled guls a great mass of poverty-stricken free men existed in Hamal. They were free, and they took a pitiful pride in that, but they were poor and in an ill season they would die of starvation or disease, and few of them could afford a doctor, even of the faith-healing sort.

  Slaves performed most of the truly unpleasant tasks, of course, as was common on Kregen; but many and many a free man or woman desperate for food would labor alongside the slaves.

  So it was that as Nulty and I stabled our mirvols in a public perching tower where they would be under cover, and took our first sight of the city, I was struck by the marked divergence of fortunes here, many races intermingled in every walk of life holding their own converse rank by rank, and each section sundered from the next by iron barriers of wealth.

  This may seem so common a fact of life on two worlds as not to merit comment; but my experiences of Kregen had shown me that a man might progress on that marvelous and yet terrifying world: progress materially and spiritually, gaining not only wealth but prestige and affection and a place in life that did not necessarily put down another fellow being. The slaves made this easier, of course, and I do not seek to deny that unpalatable fact. However, it does not deflect me from the perhaps impossible task of erasing slavery altogether within a foreseeable time. The clums of Hamal were not slaves; no man might enslave them without just cause or rivet an iron collar about their necks; the clums were free men and women. That they did not have the slaves’ advantages of a place to sleep and food from masters with their welfare at heart made no difference to them. Better a clum than a slave!

  Human beings of any race were constantly needed to feed the insatiable demands of the Arena. The clums would volunteer for the Jikhorkdun only in extremis. Willing hands were constantly needed to keep running the many ever-flowing, artful fountains; clums would do this work for a pittance. They would do whatever they had to, to survive; but, all the time, they were clums, free and not slave.

  One of the ever-present dreams of a clum was to gain wealth and skills enough to become a gul.

  Nulty, once a gul and now a faithful servitor to a noble, turned up his nose at the city.

  “The place stinks, master."

  I knew what he meant.

  “It smells pleasant enough, Nulty, with all the fountains and the armies of cleaners. There are flowers and fragrant bushes everywhere, and the white walls are scrubbed each day—"

  “That, Notor, was not what I meant."

  We found a comfortable inn catering to the more permanent kind of lodger. The inn was called The Thraxter and Voller, a clean house with a clientele composed mainly of high-ranking Horters, Tyrs, and Kyrs, people of the same rank as myself in my guise as Amak Hamun, an Elten or two, and a Strom who made no se
cret of his higher rank and so was condescending or contemptuous to the rest. I steered clear of him. A Strom is more like an Earthly count than an earl. I have always felt earls far superior to counts.

  For the first few days I felt my way around the city, learning. The city proper is situated in the fork between the two rivers, but the environs spread around for some distance, traversed by wide avenues along which the young bloods would race their saddle animals. Aqueducts bring in plentiful supplies of a crystal water from surrounding hills. The climate is equable. There is a considerable waterborne traffic down to the sea, and also inland along both rivers. I had taken a trip on one of the three-decked flat-bottomed boats on the Black River from Dovad to Hemlad. I had not cared to retrace my steps when with Ilter and Avec I had wandered Central Hamal in areas southerly of the Black River.[3]

  [3 See Fliers of Antares. Dray Prescot #8. [A.B.A.]]

  Once I had a firm impression of the city, once I felt I knew my way about, I would start inquiries concerning the vollers.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  No sense of impending doom darkened those early days in Ruathytu, and I admit, not without a proper sense of shame, that the sight of beggars, and of poor ragged starving people, came to seem to me merely an unsavory part of the city's life, quite distinct from me, completely unnatural on Kregen and yet something I was forced to accept here. The depth of my purse as Amak of Paline Valley would have clothed and fed a derisory percentage of those in need. I had given alms in such a fashion as to raise the supercilious eyebrows of the Strom lodging at The Thraxter and Voller. Then I reconsidered. I took a common course of action—or non-action. I did not give away my goods to the poor, I did not even tear my cloak in half. I had given a very great deal, and then I considered what I was doing. If I had nothing, how could I prosecute the designs that had brought me here? The greater plans I had were a part and parcel of a grand design that would free not only the slaves but also these clums.