“Take his weapons, nulshes!” Callimark had made up his mind. The Rhaclaw guards snicked out Froshak’s knife. He made a single gesture; then he remained still.
Callimark pulled his thraxter around. “Guard him. I shall consult the vad in this.” So saying, Callimark marched off. He took with him, I noticed with amusement tinged with concern, an audo of his guards, the section — not a rank — of eight men marching along closed up around him. With his going a visible relaxation took the guards left. As for the slaves, they chittered and chattered about their business, and the dust plumed and the suns shone and, for all I could see, no one here cared aught of a mass escape of slaves from the Recalcitrants House.
A bronze bell rang above the outer door.
The noise among the trees and pathways fluctuated as the guards searched and this outer courtyard must have been checked over at the very beginning. Certainly, as I observed, no one, slave or guard, gave sign of excitement or concern over that escape. The escape that concerned them had taken place here earlier. The bronze bell rang again and with its second summons the majordomo and his retinue who had admitted us appeared, hurrying toward the gate. He had to pass by the cage which lay on its side, its iron-barred door flapped open. At first this had seemed to me to be a wersting cage, but it was not, as I looked closer. Something had been brought into the courtyard in that cage and the cage door had been opened and the something — or somethings — had escaped.
So that was why Callimark questioned Froshak the Shine.
The outer gate was thrown open and a file of slaves entered. They carried sacks and pots and their backs were whipped every now and again to urge them on. They scurried beneath the trees away toward the vad’s storerooms. Despite the noise the business of the villa had to go on.
One of the Rhaclaw guards gave Froshak a prod. Just why he did this I do not know; all men in these positions of petty power are not insensate beasts — of course not. But some are.
Froshak reacted. He twisted away, violently, avoiding that prodding sword.
The other Rhaclaw guard joined in, bellowing his anger.
The swords beat down. Froshak defended himself, pushing up his arms, taking the blows as best he could. He saw the open gate. If he broke free now — he and I were both aware that any resistance the Fristle might make would be punished, he could be killed, and no one would bother overmuch. The vad’s writ ran here. The Rhaclaws used the flats of their swords. Froshak would have to take his punishment, take his beating, or make a break for it.
The slaves took no notice. The other guards guffawed.
Froshak tried to grab a sword arm, and missed, and the thraxter came back and belted him alongside the ear. He tumbled over. I saw his right hand. It snaked down to his belt and an expression of anger was followed swiftly by a look of bafflement so furious I felt for the Fristle. His knife was not sheathed at his belt. He crouched, glowering. The Rhaclaws taunted him, obscenely, savage in their enjoyment of his frustrated savagery.
I drew my own sailor knife.
“Froshak!” I called in a voice directed to the Fristle. He looked up. I threw.
The knife glittered once as it flicked across the intervening space. Handle first it flew. Froshak put his hand up and — thwunk! — the knife slammed into his fist as though grown there.
One Rhaclaw yelled in abrupt alarm, and then Froshak slid the knife in, and out, slashed at the other Rhaclaw, and was on his feet and running. He was quick, by Krun! The Rhaclaws staggered away, dropping their swords, the blood bright upon their legs. There was little point in hanging around any more. Froshak ran out through the opened gateway, and I dodged back the other way around the well, keeping below the coping, faded back into the bushes.
Very little time had passed since I’d hurtled off the roof of the landing platform.
Finding the statue of Mahgoh of the Two was not difficult. The lady was a somewhat prominent landmark. Beyond there a curving arcade led on and I padded along. Froshak the Shine was a tough and resourceful customer and I had no doubt that he would win free. What he would do thereafter I could not guess. He’d recognize the knife, for sure. He’d know who had thrown it to him.
The shrubbery at the side of the path flanking the arcade rustled. Bright green leaves moved aside and a couple of men staggered out, locked together. One was a slave, a Gon with a bristle of white hair over his scalp, the other a Rapa guard. The Rapa could not cry out because the slave’s fists gripped a length of the chain about the feathered neck. The Gon struggled silently with his work. They pitched onto the pathway, flailing about, and the Rapa’s struggles weakened.
I stopped in the shadow of a column.
The Gon stood up. He touched blood on his left arm, and along his ribs. He was panting raggedly.
I said, “I’ll give you a hand to stow him in the bushes, dom.”
The Gon spun about, his hands flicking the lethal chain up.
“You’d best hurry — there will be other guards.” And I jumped across, grabbed the Rapa and started to heave him into the bushes. The Gon drew a breath.
“By Havil! You are a—”
I was ripping the Rapa’s sword belt free. His thraxter was a plain and simple weapon, much like the one I had been forced to abandon when dressing up as the cadade.
“No time for jabbering! Listen!”
The sound of heavy footfalls reached us around the curve of the arcade. The Gon looked wild. He would not touch his bristle of hair, as another man might have done, rubbing his hand across his hair in perplexity.
“I’m off—”
“May Havil the Green go with you, Gon.”
“You will need the protection of Havil more than me if you stay here.” The Gon shoved into the bushes, panting, holding> his left arm where the blood ran. “Run, apim, run!”
He vanished between the leaves. I straightened my clothes and walked on a few yards past the place where blood drops might prove tricky to explain. Mingled with the oncoming tramp of studded sandals, the ominous clash of weapons indicated guardsmen. I finished buckling the Rapa’s sword belt about me, flicked my fingers and walked on.
Vad Noran in the lead, Unmok bobbing along at his side, the party rounded the bend and bore down. He had a score of guards. Noran looked murderous. At his other side, Callimark, looking agitated, was fluttering his hands and trying to explain.
I stood to one side, looking at them, and — I own! — I drew my stomach in and pulled myself up and got ready to lie like a trooper for our lives.
Chapter twenty
Combat, Blood and Death
The lies tripped off my tongue smoothly enough once I’d figured out what the hell was going on.
In addition, I was now pretty sharp set. The thought of a slap-up meal inside me to fortify the inner man against the hazards ahead tantalized with its unrealizability at the moment.
“...malignancy, and he’ll be flogged jikaider if I have any say in the matter,” Callimark was saying. He looked like a man bluffing away, blustering to conceal his own lapse in duty.
“When the truth is established, Callimark, we’ll flog to your heart’s content.” Noran’s face bore a most unpleasant expression.
“The schrepims have not been found—”
“Your pardon, notor,” said Unmok, his middle left twitching. “But there could be no reason for Froshak to let loose the schrepims! Believe me, notor, we are too conscious of your kind patronage—”
“As to that, Unmok, we shall see. I paid good red gold for those four schrepims and I intend to have my money’s worth!”
Now it was plain. The overturned cage with its iron-barred door flapped open had contained four schrepims, and these diffs, rather like overgrown lizards with cunning and intelligence, had escaped. I, too, doubted that Froshak would have done that; there was no reason for it. Well — no reason beyond the ordinary person’s aversion to schrepims. It was reputed that these scaled men had the powers of the Dark, that they could scry almost as well as a Wizard
of Loh — that, I did not believe — and that their cold reptilian natures set them always in opposition to the ways of the gods of Kregen.
I stepped forward.
Unmok twitched. Callimark cast a worried look at me and then started to argue his case again with the vad. Noran did not stop. He went to bustle past without even looking at me.
I said, “Your pardon, notor.” I went on very quickly. “I believe there has been an escape of slaves, and they overturned the cage and the schrepims escaped in the confusion.”
Now Noran half stopped and regarded me as he continued on along the curving arcade.
“And you?”
“I do not know for sure, notor.”
“If you are right this Froshak may keep his head — and Unmok here and you may escape a flogging.”
That was as cold as the Ice Floes of Sicce.
Noran stopped. He eyed me up and down.
“The schrepims cost me money. They are renowned kaidurs — hyr kaidurs. They must be coddled. If they are damaged before I see them fight... By Glem! Am I or am I not the vad!”
Everyone around him hastily assured Noran that, indeed, he was the vad.
Up to now on Kregen I had not much faith in receiving any help from the Star Lords or the Savanti. Oh, yes, there had been times during which I thought that, well, perhaps either the Everoinye or the Savanti might have arranged things to favor me. But these occasions were few and far between. As far as I knew, and as far as I was concerned, I was battling along alone.
Now, a large missal tree overhung the arcade a few paces along and its leaves brushed the tiled roof. The arcade curved around Vad Noran’s private arena. A movement among the branches of the tree drew my attention, and then the quick looks of the others.
Up there, quickly glimpsed and vanishing, the green-scaled visage of a schrepim glared down on us.
As I say, it was probably mere chance. But, perhaps, just perhaps, the Star Lords did have a hand in it...
“They have run into the arena!” shouted Callimark.
Noran swung to bellow at his guards.
“Go and round them up — and treat them gently until I get there.” He guffawed then, suddenly back in good humor.
“After that you may fight in my arena as though in the Jikhorkdun!”
There were a score of guards. They ran off obediently enough, but it was very clear they did not much fancy the task ahead of them. I felt a stab of pity. Schrepims are the very devil as antagonists. They are quick and sudden, skilled with weapons, able to take a great deal of punishment before they are killed. Their vigorous energy is cold and reptilian, and exceedingly vicious.
The memory of that time over in Higher Ripolavi where we’d been forced to fight a roaming band of schrepims came back to me. There are schrepims and schrepims, and that lot had been of the Soparan race. These four who would give the twenty guards a nasty time, as I judged, I gathered were of the Saradush race. Over in Ripolavi we’d lost Nath the Langon and Nalgre the Forge before we’d even got properly to handstrokes. We’d lost half a dozen more good men before we’d seen the scaled fighters off, and there had been only thirty of them in the band.
Noran was rubbing his hands together. Callimark was looking relieved.
“We will go up into my arena and witness the fight.” said Noran. “It is what I paid for, and I will not be balked of my pleasure.” He set off at a brisk trot around the arcade toward the flights of steps leading up to the stand seating. We followed.
Managing to fall in beside Unmok as we trailed along after the vad, I said, “Froshak got away.”
“Thank his Fristle gods for that! We’re like to have our heads off if—”
“No, Unmok! It will turn out all right. Remember the werstings.”
“I do. Money will not stitch my head back on my shoulders.”
Noran’s private arena had been built as a miniature copy of the arena in the Jikhorkdun. Strewn with silver sand, ringed by comfortable seatings, shaded by a velarium which could be pulled across on its yards if the suns burned too hotly, it waited in the true style of an arena — an area dedicated to combat, blood and death.
He even had the four quarters arranged with their various colors, each with a prianum to receive the trophies of victory and the four staffs with the colored symbols. At the moment the ruby drang lifted highest. Noran was of the reds. The sapphire graint, the diamond zhantil and the emerald neemu were all at the bottoms of their poles. I wondered if he altered this when he invited guests of different color persuasions.
His own box, although lavishly appointed, flanked by columns garlanded and wreathed and with sumptuous hangings of cloth of gold and ruby velvet, did not dare match the opulence of the royal box in the great arena of Huringa. Queen Fahia was conscious of her regal dignity and touchy on matters of etiquette. But the display of wealth was dazzling.
Noran took his seat. It was a throne in everything but name. We settled alongside on the lesser seats. Each one was softly upholstered, with padded arms and back, and with a small table alongside with wine racks beneath. As I sat down and looked out across the suns shimmer along those silver sands I caught my breath.
Here I was, looking out over the arena in Hyrklana instead of being down there, with a sword in my fist, facing death for the entertainment of gilded trash in the stands and the howling crowds!
Sitting in those plush surroundings with the waiting oval of silver sand spread out below me, I wondered what was going to happen next. My thoughts veered off to a vision of this kind of obscenity finding a place in Vallia. The bloody tradition of the arena flourished in many countries of Havilfar. Even the games of Jikaida City were in truth an offshoot of the Jikhorkdun. No, in Vallia we drew spiritual sustenance and refreshment from other sports. There were precious few Vallians I knew who would wish it otherwise.
Three of the escaped schrepims moved into view below. They stepped cautiously backwards, feeling back with each foot in turn, moving with the reptilian grace of their kind. Following them in a curved line, the guards advanced cautiously. There was a sense of hunting animals closing in for the kill in the way that semicircle of guards shuffled steadily forward. But it was clear to us all that they were in no hurry to get to grips with the scaled men.
Noran picked a candied fruit from a box on his table. He bubbled now with good humor.
“This is more like the way life was meant to be led.” He popped the fruit into his mouth. His cheek distended, glistening. “I paid my money, now I want my entertainment.”
“The guards are not happy,” commented Callimark. He, too, sat forward in his chair to watch, and a lick of spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth.
“Get on with it!” Noran abruptly shrieked down. He waved a fist at the guards. “A dozen gold pieces for the first to attack!”
My small knowledge of the fighting habits of the scaled men told me the guard who accepted the offer would not live to collect his dozen gold pieces.
I studied the schrepims.
Their greenish-grayish scales were dull. Different races have different shapes and colors of scale, of course, and the edges glister with different contrasting colors. These three had orange edges to their scales under their fighting harness. The straps were all of scales. Their armor was scale. But their swords were solid thraxters, efficient weapons in the hands of experts, although in nowise the finest swords of Kregen, as you know. The tails of the schrepims were thick at the root, and heavy, flat, flailing instruments. They were nothing like the supple whip-tails of Katakis, for instance, or the superb handed tails of Pachaks or Kildois.
“What are you waiting for?” bellowed Noran again.
The guards shuffled forward, swords pointed, shields up, the visors of their helmets pulled down.
“They’re all jikarnas,”[4] said Callimark. He beat a fist on the marble coping before him. He looked contemptuous.
No one sought to contradict him. Also, no one suggested he might like to hop down there and s
et to himself.
The aura of the scaled men exuded a menace that comes as much from their reputation as from their mere presence. Ordinary mortals steer clear of them, and they have their own ways on Kregen.
“Jikarna!” Noran shouted the word down. It made no difference. Slowly and steadily the guards advanced and as steadily the three schrepims retreated. It was quite clear the guards had decided that no single one would rush forward — the notor’s dozen golden deldys or not — but they would attack together, in a bunch, and overpower all three in a final massive onslaught.
That made the sweetest of sweet sense to me, by Krun.
The three scaled heads, so much like those of lizards, turned this way and that, in purposeful summing up of the situation. When the action began the speed of the schrepims would be blinding. And, I own it with some diffidence, I began to calculate just how many guards might be left at the end, or even if any would be left alive, and whether or not the scaled men might win free.
“Fifty deldys,” roared Noran.
One of the guards, a Khibil, reacted. Khibils with their overbearing ways and haughty fox-like faces always consider themselves to be a superior race of beings. Well, I own to a fondness for Khibils that, although of a different nature from my affection for Pachaks, shares much of that fellow feeling. This Khibil hoisted his shield, whirled his sword — and charged.
He shrieked as he went in, boring dead for the center scaled man. “Fifty golden deldys!” he screamed, and with all the cunning of the fighting man sought to overpower the center antagonist before the two flankers could strike at him. Taking his onslaught as the signal, with equal cunning the other guards rushed forward.
The Khibil had time for one stroke. It was a bold, slashing blow that would have taken the head off the schrepim had it landed. But the schrepim was not there as the blow whistled past. A superb sliding glance of the scaled man’s body, a glint of greenish gray, and the wicked sword smote once, and was still.
Beasts of Antares Page 21
