A Fortune for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  Now, in other times I would have gone raging up to the roof, a scarlet breechclout wrapped about me and a sword flaming in my fist, and down to the Ice Floes of Sicce for any damned Hamalese who got in the way. But, now, I was taking my time, making excuses, seizing every opportunity to prevaricate.

  Many times on Kregen I have noticed that when I shilly-shally for no apparent reason, when things do not work out with the old peremptory promptness, there is usually an underlying cause. Often to have rushed on headlong would have been to rush headlong into disaster. And, Zair knows, that has happened, often and often...

  But the voller beckoned, and I hesitated and did not know why.

  The Star Lords had discharged us from our immediate duty, the Gdoinye had so informed Pompino.

  Then why hesitate?

  But it was pleasant to sit in the window seat of a comfortable inn in the grateful afternoon radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, with a cool flagon of best ale on the clean-scrubbed table... And, believe me, doing just that is just as important a part of life on Kregen as dashing about with flashing swords.

  My thoughts had taken me away a trifle from the conversation. I heard Pompino talking and the words:

  “...a capital voller...” leaped out at me.

  I listened. This Drogo was clearly seeking Mefto — and it was no great guess that he was seeking with no good will. He could be a bounty hunter. He could be a wronged husband. He could be a stikitche.

  But Pompino must have told him that Prince Mefto had returned to Shanodrin, the land the Kazzur had won for himself in blood and death. Now Drogo wished to get out of Jikaida City as fast as he could —

  and a caravan, besides being slow, was also not on the schedule for departure for some time.

  “An airboat? Aye,” said Drogo, and drank.

  “It is a great chance—” Pompino was not such a fool, after all.

  To have this Kildoi with us when we essayed the airboat would make success much more certain.

  I pushed aside the startled inner reflection that this was not how I would have thought and acted only a few years ago. There were wheels within wheels here, and I was canny enough by now to let the wheels run themselves for a space.

  Drogo said, “If you will have me, I will join you—”

  “Agreed!” said Pompino, and he sat back and quaffed his ale.

  I sat back, also, but I did not drink.

  Drogo did not look at me. He made rings with his flagon on the scrubbed wood.

  “And you, Jak?”

  “Why, Horter Drogo, is it that you Kildoi always seem to have only one name?”

  His smile was again like those damned ice floes of the far north.

  “But we do not. We do not parade our names, that is all.”

  “Point taken — and, as for your joining us, why, yes, and right heartily.” I put warmth into my voice.

  Foolish, I felt, to antagonize him for no reason.

  “Then no harm is done.”

  What he meant by that I was not sure. I did know that the old intemperate Dray Prescot might well have challenged him to speak plain, blast his eyes.

  He went on, “We are of Balintol, as you know, and we keep ourselves to ourselves. There are not many of us. All the first families know one another. The use of family names is felt to be — to be—”

  “Drink up, Horter Drogo,” I said, “and let me get you the other half.”

  That, at the time, seemed as good a way as any of ending that conversation.

  Once again I promised myself I’d have a good long talk with Korero when I got back to Vallia. My comrade who carried his enormous shields at my back was a man of a mysterious people, that was for sure.

  It was, naturally, left to Pompino, when I returned with the drinks, to say, “And you are chasing this rast Mefto to—”

  “One of us will kill the other.” Drogo took his flagon into his lower left hand. The other three hands visible clenched into fists. “I shall not face him with swords. So he may die. I devoutly hope so.”

  Like Korero, this Drogo did not habitually swear by gods and demons as do most folk of Kregen.

  “You are no swordsman yourself?”

  He glanced across at me, and his fists unclenched, and he took a pull of ale.

  “Oh, yes, I own to some skill. But my masters suggested I would be better served by taking up some other weapon—”

  “And?” interrupted Pompino.

  Drogo made himself laugh. His teeth were white and even, and his tongue was very red.

  “I manage with an axe, polearms, the bow, a knife—”

  I said, “All at once, no doubt.” As I spoke I heard the sour note of envy in my voice.

  “When necessary.”

  By Vox! But I had walked into that one with my chin!

  “You have met Katakis?”

  Offhandedly, he answered obliquely. “The little streams run into the great river.”

  I nodded. “And Djangs?”

  He frowned. “No — I do not know of them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I just wondered.”

  I stood up.

  “If we intend to take this confounded voller, then let us be about our business.”

  Chapter Six

  Concerning a Shortcut

  Most men are not mere walking bundles of reflexes. Most men have deeper layers of thought and emotions below the superficialities of life. Among the many people a man bumps into on his way through life there must be some, a few, for whom he feels enough interest to be fascinated by those deeper levels.

  And this really has little to do with friendship, which is by way of being an altogether different idea.

  As we walked along in the radiance from the twin suns of Antares, I pondered the enigma of this Drogo the Kildoi.

  Pompino was prattling on about Jikaida and his own honest conviction that he did not have a head for the game, and Drogo was nodding civilly and saying that, yes, he quite enjoyed the Game of Moons, if he was in the mood, and that he found Vajikry surprisingly challenging for what appeared so simple a game although the version they played in Balintol, his homeland, was markedly different from that played here in the continent of Havilfar. I wondered how he had got here and his adventures on the way. Korero never spoke of himself. Balintol is a shrouded land and a fit birthplace for the men it breeds.

  Onron, the lady Yasuri’s coachman, caught up with us as we passed through the colonnades surrounding the Kyro of the Gambits. His bright yellow favor glistened. We were about to cross into the Foreign Quarter, where the Blue and the Yellow held no favor one above the other.

  “I’ve been looking for you all over, you pair of hulus,” he puffed out. He was riding a freymul, the poor man’s zorca, with a chocolate-colored back and streaks of yellow beneath, and Onron had ridden the animal hard. Clots of foam fluffed back from his patient mouth. Sweat stained all down his neck, matting the fine brown hairs.

  “Hai, Beaky!” greeted Pompino, jovially.

  “May your whiskers shrivel, you—” Onron threw the reins over the freymul’s head and stood to face us.

  “My lady demands your presence — at once. The word she used was Bratch.”

  “Why should we jump for her any more?”

  The Kildoi, Drogo, had disappeared into the shadows. Onron scratched his beak. He was not used to this kind of address respecting his lady.

  “You had better go at once,” he warned.

  Pompino glanced at me, and his bright eye told me that the Star Lords had relieved him of a burden. The case appeared to me, suddenly, and I confess somewhat startlingly, as being different. A tug at his sleeve pulled him a little apart.

  “The Everoinye have discharged you of the obligation to Yasuri, Pompino. The Gdoinye spoke to you.

  But not to me...”

  His foxy face took on a shrewd, calculating expression, and yet, I was grateful to see, a sympathetic look also.

  “You could be right. The Gdoinye did not speak to you.”
>
  “Hurry, you famblys!” called Onron.

  “Yet, the voller—”

  “Drogo will turn up when Onron is gone. I shall go to the lady Yasuri and see what she requires. If you and Drogo can manage the flier, you will command the air. You can pick me up later at the inn.”

  “Yes.” He stroked his whiskers. “Yes, Jak. You have my word as a kregoinye. I will return for you.”

  “Good — then we must both hurry.”

  He turned away at once and started off along the colonnade, his lithe form flickering in light and shade past the columns. He heard Onron’s indignant yells right enough; he just ignored them. I turned to the Rapa.

  “I will come, Onron — so stop your caterwauling.”

  He stuck his beak into the air, offended, and climbed back on the freymul. There was no question of my riding, so, perforce, I walked smartly off for the Star of Laybrites.

  The thought crossed my mind that more stikitches, assassins, had come in with the caravan that had brought Drogo, and Yasuri’s life was again in peril. But that did not make sense. For one thing, this King Ortyg would not know his men had failed. And, for another, had there been assassins there would have been no time for Yasuri to dispatch Onron in this fashion.

  One objection to the first point could be that the new King Ortyg of Yasuri’s country employed a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out for him what was happening here. That was possible. I quickened my steps, although recognizing the validity of the second point.

  The Rapa coachman took off on the freymul, yelling back that he would tell the lady that I was obeying her and convey to her the news of Pompino’s ingratitude and treachery. Onron shot off along the avenue among the crowds, and I took a shortcut.

  There are shortcuts in life and there are shortcuts. This one took me through a poor quarter where they spent their time in tiny workshops making tawdry souvenirs of Jikaida for the visitors to pay through the nose for in the souks. And, this shortcut was a shortcut to disaster. The Watch was out, backed up by soldiers in their armor and hard black and white checkered cloaks, helmets shining.

  A yelling mob rushed through the narrow alleyway, sweeping away stalls and awnings in their panic. I could see the soldiers riding them down, laying about them with the flats of their swords. Two men almost knocked me flying. I ducked into a doorway with the stink of days-old vegetables wafting out. The rout rushed past. Then — well, I suppose I should not have done what I did — but, being me, I did.

  A woman carrying a baby fell onto the slimy cobbles.

  The pursuing totrixes hammered their six hooves into the ground, prancing on, and the woman would be run down.

  Darting out, with only the most cursory of looks, I scooped her up, baby and all, and started back for my doorway.

  A totrix, rearing up, shouldered me away. I spun about, staggering, clutching the woman. A Watchman hit me over the head with his bludgeon. He was shouting, excited, frantic.

  “Here’s one of the rasts—” And he hit me again.

  That was it, for a space.

  The blackness remained, the blackness of Notor Zan, and I did not open my eyes. The place where they had thrown me stank. A dismal moaning and groaning filled the air. And, in my aching head the famous old Bells of Beng Kishi clashed and clanged. I winced. Cautiously, I opened one eye.

  The place was arched with ribbed brick, slimy and malodorous, and a few smoky torches sputtered along the walls. The place was a dungeon, a chundrog, and the prison would extend about us with iron bars and stone walls and many guards.

  Water dripped from that arched ceiling and splashed upon us, green and slimy, stinking. Rivulets of the water trickled down to open drains along the center. The people were crammed in. They were poor.

  They were tattered and half of them were starving. They moaned in long dismal monotones. And the air stifled with fear.

  Gradually I pulled myself together and sorted out what had happened.

  Criminals had been sought, and the Watch had scooped up a ripe bunch, and anyone who got in the way was taken up also. It is a dreadfully familiar story. The Nine Masked Guardians who ran LionardDen were fanatical about the order of the city. Many visitors stayed here, and the reputation of the city rested on reports of conditions. Who would journey to a city of thieves, or a city of revolution —

  even to play Death Jikaida?

  There was no sign in this tangled company of the woman and her baby and I just hoped they were all right. The people looked like a field of old rags ready for the incinerators. I have said that the Star Lords never lifted a finger to help me, and although this is not strictly accurate, for they once enabled me to overhear a conversation to my advantage in the island of Faol of North Havilfar, it was precisely in the kind of situation in which I found myself now that no help could be expected from the Everoinye. I expected none.

  A group of ruffians near me, all gleaming eye and broken teeth and rags, were discussing future possibilities.

  “It is Death Jikaida, you may be sure.”

  “No — they want fighting men for that.”

  “We can fight — aye, and will fight, if they put spears into our hands.”

  “Kazz-Jikaida,” said another, shaking. “Blood Jikaida. My brother was cut down in that, two seasons ago.”

  A man with lop ears and a broken nose, very villainous, stilled them all as he spoke. “It will not be that.”

  He spoke heavily, with a wheeze. “It is Execution Jikaida—”

  “No! No!” The shouts of horror were as much protestations as outbursts of terror. “Why, Nath, why?”

  “They had a blood-letting yesterday, did they not? And the great ones demand another game — I know, may they all rot in the Ice Floes of Sicce forever and ever.”

  The uproar told me that these ill-used people put store by the words of this Nath. It seemed he possessed enough of the yrium, that mysterious force that demands from other men respect and obedience, to command them.

  Lop-eared Nath, he was called, and he looked a right villain.

  We were fed a thin gruel and most of it was dilse, that profuse plant that pretends to nourish, and fills a man’s belly for a time and then leaves him more hungry than before. We drank abominable water. This chundrog was Spartan, a dungeon from which it would be well-nigh impossible to escape except in death. I began to think along those lines. A feigned death...

  Engaging in conversation with the nearest group, I soon discovered that plan was a bubble-dream.

  “Anyone who pretends death is stuck through with a spear, to make sure.” Lop-eared Nath appeared to relish his words. “Listen, dom, we only get out of here one way. We go to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida.”

  “But there is a chance in that. All the pieces will not be taken, not all killed.”

  “Aye. A chance.”

  A man with a snaggle of black teeth and one eye chuckled. He was half off his head already.

  “It depends who we get to act as player.”

  “May Havil shine his mercy upon us,” said a woman, and she made the secret sign of Havil the Green.

  We spent three days and nights in the hell-hole. At one point a man in resplendent clothes and a blue and yellow checkered mask over his face appeared. Lanterns illuminated his figure as he stood upon a dais beside the lenken door. The people babbled to a stupefied silence.

  “You are all given a trial, and the evidence is against you and you are all condemned.” This man, the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians, spoke in a booming, confident voice. He lifted a ring-clustered hand. “The trial was fair and just, according to the laws of the republic. You are all appointed to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida—”

  He got no further. The yells and shrieks, the imploring screams, all smashed and racketed to that slimed brick roof. He turned away, disgusted with the animal-like behavior of the mob beneath him, and walked out with a measured, pompous, confident tread. We were left to face our fate.

  What the
devil had happened to Pompino and Drogo? Had they taken the voller? What ailed Yasuri?

  These questions flew up in my head, and I saw them as the petty concerns they were.

  On the morrow I faced Execution Jikaida, and, by Krun, that was a concern that shook a fellow right down to his boots.

  Execution Jikaida may be conducted in a number of different ways, and I guessed we’d get the stickiest.

  Guards shepherded us along the next afternoon — we could judge the time because the afternoon was the time for this particularly nasty form of the game — and we shuffled out, loaded with chains manacled and fettered to our hands and legs. Screams and sobs echoed about that dolorous procession.

  At a wooden door we were each given a large drink of raw dopa.

  I drank the dopa.

  Some of the people calmed down, others slobbered, some fell faulting. The guards dealt with them all faithfully.

  At last we were marched down a long stone corridor. At the far end double doors arched, and these, we guessed, led out onto the board. A Jiktar, smart in his soldier’s uniform, stood by the door, backed by a squad of men. His face, although grim, betrayed a feeling that in my heightened state I hardly recognized as pity.

  “Take heart!” he bellowed. “Not all of you will die. It depends on the game. Some will live. Pray to your gods that you will be among the fortunate.”

  Lop-eared Nath shouted up, truculent, fierce. “And who is to act as our player?”

  “You?”

  Nath shrank back. “Not me!”

  I said, “Jiktar, how can the player be harmed?”

  He looked hard at me.

  “You are a foreigner? Yes, I see. Then you were foolish to commit a crime in our city. The object of the game is to take the Princess, is this not so? To place her in hyrkaida? Well, then, her Pallan is the player in Execution Jikaida.”

  I saw it all.

  The Pallan is the most powerful piece on the board, and, also, as a consequence, the piece the opposing player most wishes to dispose of.

  The smells of this dismal place rose about me. The water dripped. And the people with their bellies afire with dopa moaned softly, given over to their own destruction.