So, with the smell of spilled wine about me, men arguing in half-drunken ways, the girls dancing, and the air filled with shouts, there in the Scented Sylvie, I marked one of the Kovs talking to a Trylon. Both were of Hamal, hard men, filled with the vigor of full growth. Their faces severe even as they felt the wine working on their senses, they were men who knew their high positions and would not tolerate a single infringement upon their pride or their dignity. The pride of a noble is fanatical in most countries of Kregen. This I knew.
Outside in the moons-shot darkness they would have their preysany litters waiting with their link slaves and a retinue of guards, fierce predatory men — diffs, apims — who would delight in smashing a few heads to clear a path for their master.
The tavern was well patronized by diffs, I noticed and, even as Rees turned to me, I saw a fresh party of Kataki officers stride in, their tails bare, laughing, shouting, clearly already very merry from previous taverns. Other halflings sat at the sturm-wood tables, Chuliks, Rapas, Blegs — many and many a member of the diffs on Kregen, many of races I have not even mentioned yet, for the reason that they have not figured largely in my story up to this time. This was clear proof, if proof was needed, that Queen Thyllis had been pouring out her coffers to hire mercenaries. Bankers like Casmas the Deldy had lent her vast sums, to be rewarded by patents of nobility, favors or prerequisites within an administration which was corrupt despite all the rigid laws of Hamal. This reeking tavern, the Scented Sylvie, had evidently become a favorite haunt of the halflings in Ruathytu.
“Damned diffs,” the Kov was saying, his face a deep plum purple, as he lifted his glass.
Rees saw my look and turned to me, saying, “You don’t want to take too much notice of what old Nath the Crafty says, but, by Krun, you must watch your back if you cross him.”
“Nath ham Livahan,” said Chido, and bent his goggle-eyed face back to his glass. “Kov of Thoth Uppwe. We call him old Nath the Crafty—”
“And, by Krun,” chipped in Rees, “never a man better deserved it!”
“He don’t like diffs,” Chido said, laughed, and drank.
Well, there were many men on Kregen who disliked every other man not of their race. This was inevitable, I suppose, given xenophobia. A Chulik does not get on with a Fristle. A Rapa gets on with very few other races. Blegs will draw swords against Mystiges without excuse. And apims like Chido and myself — there probably being more apims than any other race on Kregen — often came in for hatreds from every quarter.
The presence of so many Katakis intrigued me, for previously, as far as I was aware, they had seldom ventured far from their homes in the Shrouded Sea and elsewhere. The only reason I could advance for their presence was the prospect of enormous hauls of slaves, for Katakis are slave-masters par excellence.
The noise racketed on and the girls danced; wine and beer were spilled, and men cursed by a medley of gods and spirits. More than once, listening, I heard the name of Lem spurt from the seething mass. Rees touched me on the forearm.
“Leave him be, Hamun. He is in a nasty mood.”
For quite humorous reasons, I could not explain to Rees that I wished to discuss the problems of the Nine Faceless Ones and the secrets of the vollers with this Nath the Crafty, this Kov of Thoth Uppwe, so I sat back in the chair. Nath the Crafty suddenly jerked up as his arm was jogged, and a stream of wine — the best the house afforded although not Jholaix — spattered the front of his gray shirt and the ling fur of his pelisse. Kov Nath leaped to his feet, his harsh features convulsed. He dragged out his thraxter.
The Bleg who had jostled him, about to apologize, snapped into the fiercely angry rage of that race and whipped his sword out in turn.
“Cramph!” bellowed Kov Nath. “Rast! You will pay for that!”
A Kataki about to sit at the next table, his tail curved over his shoulder, whipped a hand into his sash and flashed out a wickedly bladed dagger. The thing was strapped to his tail in a twinkling. Other diffs were brandishing weapons. The moment spurted a dark and horrible fire.
“To me, apims!” screeched Nath the Crafty. What craftiness there was now about his conduct I couldn’t see.
A Rapa hurled a knife. A Kataki whistled his bladed tail. “Kill the apim yetch!” yelled a Chulik, his tusks catching the oil lamps’ gleam and glistening.
In the next mur the tavern turned into a boil of action and fighting, a frenzied, murderous brawl.
We three, Rees, Chido, and myself, sat at our table shoved up against the wall.
I said, “If an apim tries to stick you, Rees, we will help you dispose of him.”
“And,” said Rees, “if a Numim does likewise, likewise.”
The tavern exploded with action. Men were reeling around, many more than half drunk, blinded by the glitter of sword and rapier. Daggers thunked home. The Katakis whistled their tails about and the wicked blades sliced and slashed. I sat still. I meant what I had said to Rees for one thing. For another, every man slain here meant a fighting man less for Hamal to fling against my country.
A Numim staggered from the press, a rapier still transfixing his body, and reeled to crash full-length on our table.
Rees pushed him off to die on the floor.
“Naghan Largismore,” he said. “He should have known better.”
Blood sprayed from an apim as he sprawled past, his neck efficiently slashed by a Kataki tail.
The Kov of Thoth Uppwe, this Nath ham Livahan men called Nath the Crafty, fought with a terrible cold fury which had swiftly succeeded his hectoring words and hot-tempered anger. But there were more diffs than apims. Another apim sprawled to the floor, grasping his neck and looking surprised as the blood spurted between his fingers. The Kataki who had flicked his tail with such virulent purpose swerved to get at another young apim whose thraxter glistened with fresh blood.
It was increasingly difficult for me to sit. I cannot analyze my feelings. I glanced at Rees. He looked disgusted with the whole proceedings. I wondered . . . suppose Rees had been with other Numims this night, instead of two apim friends? How often we behave so vastly differently with different company!
But I felt I could not sit much longer and watch young apims being slaughtered by Katakis and Chuliks.
A man stood in the doorway. I had not seen him enter. I looked at him from the tail of my eye — and I knew! I knew!
I knew what he would do and I knew the brand he wielded. Under an enveloping black cloak he wore hunting leathers, with the addition of a gray shirt. As he burst forward into the fray I saw his sword, that Savanti sword of superb balance and inconceivably cunning design, fashioned of steel far surpassing anything we have so far forged.
A man serving the Savanti! He had not been thrown out of Paradise, as I had. He had gone through all the tests and had been proved fit to be numbered among the elect. Now he worked with great purpose for the Savanti in their high designs for Kregen.
I admit I felt all the pangs I had thought dead and buried as I watched this man go about the business for which he had been selected, tested, and trained: to alter fate.
Once on a beach in Valka I had seen a young man try to do what the Savanti required, and fail. And so I had come into the possession of Alex Hunter’s Savanti sword. Do you wonder that I gazed at this man who had come from the Swinging City, and hungered for his blade?
Oh, yes, of course there were all the other reasons. But although I did not harbor a grudge against the Savanti for so contemptuously dismissing me from Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, I felt under no obligation to go out of my way for them; rather I would go on doing what I had always done, knowing that much of it paralleled what the Savanti were attempting to do on Kregen.
The fight did not last too long after that. This man was no novice, no amateur like Alex Hunter. He kept his eyes open and ducked the thrown knife, the wickedly flicking tail. He had been trained well. And he had a great deal of experience.
Soon the diffs were calling it a day and running. The t
avern’s occupants boiled out into the street, here in the Sacred Quarter where brawls were a way of life, running and shouting and hullabalooing. In any second the watch and the police would be here, and the laws of Hamal would swing into action. I stood up.
“Right gladly, Hamun,” said Rees.
Kov Nath stood, shaking a little, staring around at the carnage. The Trylon with him, holding a bloody arm, looked sick.
Rees and Chido made for the door. Going with them, for I had no wish to tangle with the law again, I watched the man sent by the Savanti. He walked quickly to the door, waited for Rees and Chido to pass out — had he raised his marvelous blade against Rees he would have been a dead man, for my rapier was loose in the scabbard — and swiftly followed. I went after them.
The street, indifferently lighted here, with the moons casting enough light to see sufficiently well not to trip over the first corpse on the doorstep, showed blank and empty. The link slaves had run. The guards had fought among themselves. I may be cynical, but I felt sorrow over that.
Fully prepared to make my own opening, Chido saved me the gambit.
“Warm work, dom,” he said in his shrill voice.
“Aye,” said this man, swirling his black cape about him, “for a tavern fight.”
“Do you hate us so much then?” Rees spoke heavily.
“It were better you did not ask that question, Numim.”
Walking up, I said, “Do you have a bed for the night, dom?”
“No. I am but newly arrived.”
I could believe that.
“I have rooms,” I said. “You would be welcome.”
Rees stared at me. I hated to hurt him, but I fancied he would remember our words in the voller. No explanation was possible.
The man from the Savanti hesitated only a moment, then said, “I am grateful, dom.”
“As for me, I am for home,” said Rees.
“And I,” piped up Chido. “I will walk with you.”
Rees did not say good night or Remberee. I was grateful for that. What I was about to do would betray Hamun ham Farthytu, and I had spent a lot of time and pain building up that young man.
When Rees and Chido had gone we walked the other way. We had gone perhaps six paces when I heard the shouts and I yelled, “Run!”
He ran without question. The Savanti train well.
We eluded the watch and the patrols and so walked to my old inn, the Kyr Nath and the Fifi. Absences in time of war are a common occurrence, and Nulty had seen to payment for the rooms. How was he faring in Paline Valley? We went up to my room and I closed the door. The man from the Savanti unclasped his cape and threw it swirling on the bed. I looked at him.
He smiled. He was apim, of course, with thick fair hair and a square-set face, exceedingly grim as to the set of the jaw. I liked the brightness of his eye and the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. Strongly built, as, of course, he must be, he looked like what he was, a powerful, professional fighting man.
I said, “Happy Swinging. And how are things in Aphrasöe?”
Before I had even finished, that superb, deadly Savanti blade had flashed from the scabbard and the point pricked my throat.
“Speak, rast! What do you know of Aphrasöe? Speak quickly and speak the truth — or you are a dead man!”
Chapter 13
Of a Savapim and the Savanti
Could I take this man? A fighting man trained by the Savanti, in as ferocious form as I had seen a man on a hair-trigger of violence? And, moreover, a man armed with that Savanti sword which is, I truly believe, the most perfect sword on the face of Kregen, not excepting the fantastic Krozair longsword? Could I take him?
“Hurry, rast! My patience wears thin! Speak up!”
I jerked my head back. I saw — a mere glance in passing — a drop of my blood on the gleaming blade he had so thoroughly cleaned on dead men’s clothes.
He took that as a signal of treachery and drove in instantly.
I had only a rapier and main-gauche. There was scarcely time to explain to him that I was not in the habit of speaking up with a sword at my throat — not, that is, unless absolutely no other course lay open. The other course here was starkly plain. I could get my fool self killed.
I skipped back and the main-gauche came out of its scabbard seemingly of its own volition; his blade screeched against it. The following rapier thrust — the rapier had leaped into my hand, out of the scabbard, and pointed at him as though alive — passed through thin air. He danced away.
“You fight well. But I think you are a dead man.”
Could I possibly face a man armed with a Savanti sword? I had never done so before except in practice in Aphrasöe, and that, clearly, was a different kettle of fish.
“Damn!” I burst out. “You’re a bunch of rogues in Aphrasöe these days! Can’t a fellow wish you Happy Swinging without a sword at his throat?”
“Tell me what you know of Aphrasöe and I will not slay you.”
“And if you don’t speak civilly I’ll have to teach you a lesson! Do you know Maspero?”
“Yes.” The brand gleamed in the lamplight as he let it drop a fraction.
“He was my tutor.”
“You are a Savapim?”
I had never heard the word before. It must mean a man who was an agent of the Savanti. Boldly, then, lying in my teeth, I said, “Of course, you damned great onker! What is your name?”
“Oh, no. You tell me your name, onker.”
Well, at least we were past the sword stage and to the probably more fruitful arguing stage. I did not laugh. I do not laugh easily outside the company of Delia, my children, and a few close friends, as you know.
Anyway, what confounded name should I give? The old and always amusing question popped up again. The Savanti could not have realized I was in the tavern when they had dispatched this man — one of their Savapims — to sort out the quarrel. Unlike the Star Lords, who dumped me down in the middle of a problem of life and death stark naked and weaponless, the Savanti at least equipped their agents with clothes and weapons. The Star Lords are altogether a starker group, starker, darker, and far more deadly.
This fellow could always make a few inquiries here and quickly discover I was the Amak of Paline Valley. Always assuming, of course, that I let him live that long.
So I said: “I am the Amak Hamun ham Farthytu.”
“An Amak! You must have gone through Aphrasöe before my time.”
“You get a thousand years,” I said meaningfully.
“Yes. I am Wolfgang . . .” Then he paused. After a moment he went on, “Wolfgang. That is enough. And where is your sword?”
“Wolfgang?” I said. “My sword is in another place.” And, by Zair, that was true!
“You would not understand Wolfgang. The name is strange to you, I have no doubt.”
If he was about to launch into a garbled explanation that he came from one of the lights in the sky and a place there called Germany, he would be badly trained. He did not.
“Very strange.” I prodded. “Where is your home, then, before you came to Aphrasöe down the River Aph?”
This seemed to reassure him. He did not enlighten me apart from a vague reference to a “distant place.”
“I am from Hamal,” I said. “And my labors are here. You?”
“I cannot understand why you were not used. I am tired lately, I have been very busy.” He grumbled on about the missions which had occupied him while he put the sword up and I found some wine — reasonable stuff Nulty had left, a middling Stuvan — and we drank. The tension lessened. He explained that he had been in so many fights lately that he’d upset his tutor, a man he called Harding, because of the great quantity of deaths he had caused. I wondered, as you may imagine.
“My training taught me that life is sacred.”
“Of course! That is just the point! It is a dispute that cannot be resolved. Kregen must be civilized, as the Savanti decree.” He waxed excited and perhaps the wine did the t
rick.
‘The doves watch well.” He sat on my bed cradling the wine glass. I kept it hospitably filled. He was talking about the white Savanti dove that had flown over me many times on Kregen to spy on me and report back to the Savanti. “There are so many diffs on this terrible world . . .”
I prodded, for I had not completed the course in Aphrasöe.
“The halflings live here as well as we apims.”
“But have they always? I am considered high in the Savapim. This mission was given to me as an emergency, at the last minute. I should be in Aphrasöe now, happily swinging. But as for the diffs, of course there are many of them, how could it be otherwise? This is not Earth—” He checked himself, put the glass down, and added, “My home.”
“Earth?” I said. “Is that in Havilfar?”
“You would not understand.”
“Maybe not. Tell me about the latest reports in Aphrasöe concerning the diff question. The problem is acute.”
We talked for a while about Aphrasöe, that marvelous city in the lake of the River Aph, and of the pool of baptism in the River Zelph where a dip will confer a thousand years of life, tremendous resistance to disease, and rapid recovery from wounds. I fully demonstrated that I knew what I was talking about, and his guard slipped; he drank a little more. Of course there were many different kinds of halflings, beast-men, men-beasts, on this world. It was an alien world. Would you expect to find men exactly the same as Madison Avenue advertising executives if you penetrated the jungles of Central America, the ice floes of the north? Some idiot might cavil at so many different kinds of men; the variety of nature is so enormous that it is this Earth with only one kind of dominant man that is strange and odd. Here on Kregen one kind of man had not obtained an ascendancy over all the others. And, too, this Wolfgang also believed that many of the species and races had come from other planets, as we had done ourselves, although I did not tell him that.
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