A Life for Kregen [Dray Prescot #19]

by Alan Burt Akers

  It sped true.

  Lol spurred on swiftly, as we had agreed, and I ran in after him, hurdling the fallen men, for the Fristles may have cat-faces, but they are men and can prove it. Inside the gateway the wooden walls stretched, and ahead showed shadows under brickwork, arches and galleries. That looked promising and so I ran—fast, you may be sure—expecting an arrow to float silently down any mur and knock my brains out. I reached the brick, gray with age and round-edged, and ducked into the shadows. A totrix snuffled and Lol said, “All clear."

  “Well done. Now let us get on."

  From previous experience of the uniquely Kregen architecture of palace and castle I expected us to be able to move about with comparative freedom provided no alarm was raised. The alarm was going to be raised in no uncertain fashion the moment the first of the Fristle guards was discovered. So we must tailor our cloth to suit the narrowness of our movements.

  This rat's warren of Trakon's Pillars turned out to be something of a surprise, in the end, for we ventured through courts of moldering brick and past colonnades of gilded wood where every motif shrieked of one thing and one thing only.

  Jikaida.

  Our bedraggled appearance which had served to give us time to fell the Chuliks had vanished with the donning of their guard uniforms provided by Jhansi. We moved smartly, with that unmistakable swagger of the mercenary drawing swift, half-averted glances from serving wenches, free and slave alike. For a space we could proceed unmolested. The totrix was like to be a hindrance but we were loath to part with the steed against his immediate and urgent need in the near future. Past tumbled ruins, past brand-new buildings, freshly lime-washed, we went, seeking always to come to the center. There, we both felt, lay the answers to our dual questions.

  We skirted several courts laid out as Jikaida boards of various sizes. Not one was in use this early in the morning. An ob-Deldar moved bulkily out of an arched doorway and bellowed at us, and we ignored him and marched on as though about the kov's business. Later on we were accosted again, this time by a thin-nosed and supercilious Hikdar. His misfortune was that he snapped at us in an alleyway between ochreberry bushes, and so had no protection from inquisitive eyes as we clapped him down in his cape and sat on him. He struggled like a landed fish.

  “Dom,” I said, very friendly. “Tell us where the captives are stowed away and you may live."

  He started to bluster and then to yell as soon as Lol took his clamping hand away. Lol tapped him alongside the skull, gently, put his fist back over the fellow's mouth, and, leaning down with a fierceness that perfectly complemented my apparent gentleness, said, “If you do not instantly tell us what we wish to know, and do so quietly, you will miss—” Well, what he would miss would make him miss a lot of life hereafter. The Hikdar was happy, most happy, to tell Lol what he wanted to know.

  Leaving the Hikdar stuffed under the ochreberry bushes we led the totrix through ways advised us until we passed a neat little pavilion reflected in a goldfish pool. Past a tall yew hedge a gravel path led to a small wicket set in a creeper-bowered brick wall. Here the sentry eyed us as Lol, most officiously, said: “We have news for the kov, dom. You had best not keep him waiting."

  The guard—one of that nameless band of heroes whose sole function, as I have pointed out before, seems to be to stand all puffed in gold and silver finery, with a spear, and to be knocked on the head—was inclined to argue. He was also incautious enough to open the wicket to make his point with great vehemence. Lol hit him, whereupon he ceased to be an obstacle and we were able to pass inside.

  “Now where?"

  “We must ask again, and keep asking, until we get the answer we seek."

  “You have, majister, I think,” said Lol, “done this before."

  “On and off,” I said. “On and off."

  But, the truth is, and will remain, that no two occasions are ever the same. And, every time, the old gut-tightening sensations afflict you and you have to keep a damned sharp lookout behind you. Damned sharp.

  The bustle of the place was refreshing after the dolorous dragging down effect of the bogs. Slaves and servants and guards moved about and we were able to make our way forward. A swod with purple and green sleeves told us that, he thought, the prisoners were confined in dungeons where the rasts nested and the schrafters sharpened their teeth on the bones of corpses.

  “The lady prisoner, cramph!"

  The swod rolled his eyes down, trying to focus the dagger pressing into his throat. “In the Lattice House,” he squeaked.

  So we went to the Lattice House.

  This turned out to be a brick-built structure whose bricks were still sharp-cornered, and whose roof was tile rather than wood or thatch. We stopped by the corner of a gravel path, where brilliantly plumaged arboras strutted, and took in the prospects of breaking in. Lol was shaking.

  “Easy, Lol. We are almost there."

  “Aye. I haven't even thought of getting out."

  “One thing at a time."

  A dozen guards sweating with effort ran past, and their Deldar bellowed at them to spread out and search the Ladies Quarter. I frowned. “The hunt is up."

  “Just let us break in. Then—"

  We glared from the shadows of the foliage, and I saw that Lol's shaking had stopped. I rather fancied he would make a good companion, even a member of the KRVI, if we got out of this in one piece apiece, so to say. For the life of me I couldn't take it seriously, and this, I vaguely realized, was because Lol was the kind of fellow to make you do things you wouldn't dream of doing in more staid moments. He was a lot like Seg, and Inch, in that...

  “Bluff,” I said. “It will work if you believe it will."

  With that and giving Lol no time to argue I straightened up, gave the stolen uniform a flick, and marched very arrogantly toward the entrance door. This was of lenken wood with bronze bolt heads, and each side stood an apim swod, brilliant in the ochre and white livery of Layco Jhansi.

  “Llahal, doms,” I called out. “There are two madmen at large and the kov has sent us to protect the prisoners. Let us in and be quick about it."

  The two rankers frowned at us, and their swords twitched up. You couldn't blame them. Now I have been accused, here and there, of saying that a certain man was a fool to draw a sword against me, and this has been alleged against me as proof positive of my overweening self-pride and pompousness. This is not so, as you who have heard my story will know. The truth is rather that I sorrow at his foolishness and take no pride from it whatsoever—how can one man take pride in the exposure of another? These two swods would have fallen into the category of fools, but that Lol stepped in first, feverish with frustrated impatience, and belted them, one, two, and knocked them flying.

  “Very pretty,” I said. “Now we must drag them in and find someone else to ask where away is your lady wife."

  “We will,” he growled. As we dragged the guards in through the doorway I reflected that Lol was picking up my ways with a pleasing aptitude.

  The lenken door closed with only the wheezingest of groans and as the wood latched shut a posse of Rapa guards ran past, swords and spears at the ready. I cursed them and turned to follow Lol into the interior of the Lattice House.

  The place was lushly furnished, carpeted, lit by skylights well out of reach of even my Earthly muscles. We found a Fristle fifi who was eager to tell us where the captives were. Captives. I frowned.

  We padded along on the carpets, past statuary of an erotic and convoluted kind, up stairways where candelabra branched, unlighted now, and tall mirrors reflected us as two stikitches, murderous with intent, stalking their prey. I fancied the mirrors did not entirely lie...

  This Lattice House contained a distinctive smell compounded of sweat and scent, of heavily perfumed flowers and that sharp aroma that Jilian would call armpit-smell. There were mirrors and statues, paintings and tapestries everywhere. I wondered if Seg had ever been here, and, if he had, why the place still stood.

  The Fri
stle fifi hurried ahead. Her fur was of that sweet honeydew melon color so highly-prized by connoisseurs, most of whom deserve chains themselves. She led us along a purple velvet draped corridor toward a balass door. No guards stood there. Lol pushed on ahead, eagerly, and thrust the door open. The Fristle let out a little squeal of surprise, and half-turned to me. Lol yelped. He vanished. His yelp broke up in a startled bellow, and echoes caught it, twisting and magnifying it into a booming hollowness. I caught the Fristle by her upper arm and held her gently and so looked down into the pit.

  The shaft was black and unpolished by a single shard of light save what few rays fell from the lamp over the door. No sound reached me from that ebon pit.

  I said, “How far did he fall?"

  The Fristle was sobbing and squirming, terrified. At last she got out, “There is straw below. He is not killed."

  “You should, fifi, be very thankful for that.” I saw that the pit extended from jamb to jamb. “How do we reach the bottom of the pit?"

  “You cannot. It is guarded by werstings. The handlers will come later and—"

  “Show me the way."

  “I cannot! I cannot!"

  The scene was not pretty. I said, “I think you can—I think you will, Fristle."

  She wailed and sobbed but began to lead me back and along a side corridor covered in pink brocades. I carried the drexer naked in my right fist, and my left hand clamped the fifi's arm. She wore a copper bracelet there, and that should have warned me, onker that I am.

  The likelihood was that she was more terrified that I did not rave and shout, and my calmness in a situation she must know was one of frightful horror for me, unnerved her. She led me along the corridors and I sheathed the blade only three times so as to avoid suspicion as we passed people. The girl Fristle made no attempt at raising the alarm at these times and, to my sorrow, I realized she imagined she would be the first to die.

  At the next corner of the corridor, where an ivory statue of a talu swirled multiple arms in exotic frozen dance, she hung back. The tears glistered pearl-like on her face.

  “Go on, girl."

  “There are guards—"

  I pushed her back, still holding her, and stuck my head around the corner. Four apim guards lounged outside a door. Clad like the others in ochre and silver, bearing swords and spears, they yet, for all their lounging, looked alert and a cut above the usual run. One revealed the glitter of a silver pakmort at his throat.

  “The lady captive,” I said to the Fristle fifi. “She is in there?"

  “Yes. She and the child."

  I pondered.

  No harm seemed to have come so far to Thelda Polisto and her child. The priority appeared to me to get Lol safely out of that black pit, then rescue his Thelda, and so make our break out. I did not wish to be lumbered with a woman and a baby going down against Werstings. So I hitched my left fist around the girl's arm, very friendly, and said to her a few home truths, whereat she trembled anew, and so started off with a confident swing, my story all ready for the guards.

  Well, men grow corn for Zair to sickle.

  Somewhere a harp was being played, long muted ripples of sound pouring through the close confines of the corridor where the lavender drapes and the pictures set an incongruous note against the harsh armor and weapons and the passions. For I was wrought up, and the Fristle was half-dead with fear, and the guards to relieve the tedium were mindful for a little fun.

  We walked along as sedately as a pair of candidates for the Dunmow Flitch. But these idle-bored-half-witted guards! The antics of people attempting to relieve the tedium by teasing and taking pleasure from baiting others have always repelled me, and, by Krun, always will. These four started the usual nonsense and I walked on with a stony face which, in their ignorance, they failed to observe. The Fristle gasped. When the buffoonery became too coarse, for they halted us with a lazily dropped spear to bar the passage, and the Fristle, shivering with a paroxysm of terror, fell half-swooning, and the guards moved in with more intent purpose, there was nothing else left for that onker of onkers, Dray Prescot, to do but prevent them.

  They went to sleep peacefully enough, all four of them.

  “The devil take it!” I was wroth. Now, as there had been nothing for it when the guards started to have their idiot nasty fun, so now there was nothing for it but to go in and bring Thelda Polisto and her son out. The guards’ slumbering bodies would soon be noticed. If we dragged them in and locked the door their absence would soon be noticed. And if we simply left them they would recover and they would soon give notice.

  So, in we went.

  The revolting behavior of the guards outside should have given me some warning. Of the four, one had been a paktun. Their Hikdar inside the prison chambers was also a paktun, an apim and a damned handsome fellow in his own eyes with his curly brown hair and striking eyes and smooth easy swagger. The woman he held in his arms in an alcove struggled silently with him. He had begun his little antics early. I wondered if Layco Jhansi was aware, and realized instantly that he could not be. Or, he might—and not give a damn. Provided Lol's wife was still alive to act as a bargaining counter, Jhansi wouldn't care what tortures she went through. The two were in partial shadow. I let go of the Fristle, who swooned clean away, and crossed the rugs in half a dozen strides, knocking an ornamental table with spindly legs over on the way. The baby lay in a crib to the side and Thelda's dress was disarranged and I guessed she had been putting the infant to sleep after his morning feed. I felt inclined to put this rast of a Hikdar to sleep, also.

  I hit him with a certain force under the ear.

  He collapsed, face first, soundlessly, onto the carpets at the woman's feet. Her face blazed up. She swayed. Her hand went to her breast.

  “Dray! Oh, Dray—it is you!"

  I stared, appalled.

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  I Postpone a Problem

  Sometimes a man will leap out of bed after a vile dream with a cry of horror on his lips, and his hand will reach out for the sword scabbarded conveniently on the bedpost.

  Well, I could not stop the anguished cry from bursting past my lips. And I already held a sword in my fist.

  But I knew I could not awake from this nightmare.

  Seg!

  “Dray, oh, Dray!” Thelda lurched toward me, her arms out and I could only take her into my arm, and hold her and feel how she trembled, like a hunted beast in a snare. She was trapped, horribly trapped, and she did not know it.

  “Thelda,” I said, stupidly. Then, “We'll get you out of this. Now, love, brace up."

  Her face lifted and she looked at me. Tears spangled her cheeks. She was just as I remembered her, just as beautiful, just as plump and happy, just as self-oriented with all her outward devotion to her friends, like puppy-love. Yes, this was Thelda, whom I have mocked and laughed at, who was a good comrade to Delia and me, and who was Seg's wife and the mother of his children.

  I moved a little back in a gentle attempt to free myself from her embrace and swung about a little; but she clung to me, her naked arms about my neck, her tear-stained face reaching up to mine. I did not kiss her. I do not think I ever had. Standing thus so closely-entwined I could feel the warmth of her, the perfume, and I saw the door open with a smash and a man burst in. I started to hurl Thelda away and then there was no need.

  Lol Polisto stood there, disheveled, the sword in his fist caked with blood to the hilt and blood splashed most horridly over that smart Chulik uniform. He saw us.

  The instinctive and fierce flash of jealousy that burst up like flame into his face was instantly quelled as I spoke.

  “Thank Opaz you got out of that pit, Lol. Here is Thelda and safe. The baby too. Now, for the sweet sake of all we hold dear, let us get out of here."

  “Yes, yes,” cried Thelda. There was no pretense in the way she freed herself from me and flung herself at Lol all blood-caked as he was. I stood there and the brains in my old vosk-skull felt as th
ough they were frizzling. Didn't Thelda know Seg was still alive? And, if knowing, did she care? Then I remembered what Lol had said, off-handedly, that the Kov of Falinur was dead. Thelda must believe that, too. She must...

  “Now, my heart,” said Lol, holding Thelda close, stroking her back, her hair, soothing her in an old familiar way that spoke eloquently of their intimate relationship. “The emperor and I will get you out of here, and our son, and then—"

  Thelda drew back a little, her face flushed; but she still clasped Lol with a fierce and supplicating grasp. “Is the emperor here with an army, then? After all I have done for him and his family that is the least he could do for us."

  And, I swear it, I laughed.

  Wasn't that Thelda—to the life?

  The puzzlement in Lol's tough face added to my amusement.

  “Here is the emperor, Thelda, my heart, so do be—polite."

  “I do not see him, Lol. What—?"

  “Come on, you two,” I broke in. “If you must gabble, gabble as we run."

  Leaving the unconscious and unharmed Fristle where she lay a-swoon, and the Hikdar, of whose conduct I felt it best not to apprise Lol, draped across the carpets, we went out. Thelda carried the baby on her breast. Lol's protective instincts were now so fully aroused I had not the slightest query to make how he had got out of the pit. As we went quickly along the corridor he told me that he had chopped a couple of werstings, those ferocious hunting dogs of Kregen, and a couple of slave handlers, too, the cramphs. At this I lost my smile. He had arrived here from the other direction, the way the Fristle was leading me, and seeing the guards guessed at once he had arrived at where he needed to be. He had also, he said, breathed a quick prayer to Opaz before flinging the door open and bursting in.

  At the first stairway we went up, for Thelda told us there was a small and private flier park on the roof of the Lattice House. This was the means by which she had been brought here. The next flight of stairs was guarded by two Fristles, lounging and yawning, and they yawned in a more ghastly way after Lol was through with them. The stairs were no longer carpeted with lushly decorative patterns, merely a plain ochre weave. Our footsteps remained soundless. Near the top an alcove held a silver lamp shaped in the form of an airboat, its tall single flame unwavering. The quietness struck oddly after the racket below. Thelda paused, and gasped, and half-laughing said: “Give me leave to rest awhile, my love."