Avenger of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  The dueling hall reeled about me. I could be back aboard a frigate beating about off Brest, forever servicing the ships of the line on eternal blockade. I did not feel as though I rode a swinger, hurtling between the colossal growths of Aphrasöe the Swinging City, for there no one would weave a net of blinding steel before my eyes and seek to bury that glittering blade in my guts.

  Sheer instinctive bladesmanship kept out Garnath’s steel.

  He pressed his attack, for he knew well that the drug his serving slave had slipped into that glass cup of wine would soon drop me, and the crowd would not fail to notice a swordsman who fell without a wound, and ask questions. He had to be quick and finish me. I struggled against the nausea, and the dizziness, and my wrist firmed a little, enough to beat away a savage attack and to make the beginnings of a counter.

  Garnath looked surprised.

  We surged together for a moment, body to body, our four blades locked and thrusting skyward. I glared madly into his eyes.

  “You kleesh, Garnath! I shall not slay you now. I will let you live and tremble at my vengeance to come!”

  “Boastful yetch! Be very sure I shall spit you — now!”

  His rapier snickered free and darted for my ribs as he fell back to make a space and so with straightened arm attempted to thrust me through. My dagger came down with agonizing slowness, but the steel deflected Garnath’s blade. A moment later, a moment nearer, and he would have scored my side and so, whoever slew who, he would have drawn first blood and my wager would be lost.

  This could not be allowed to go on.

  If I say I summoned up all the vicious and dark energies in me, I do an injustice to the mystic disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy that came to my aid and saved me. I did summon up all my will, all that vision of the opponent as transparent, as though the force of will alone guided my arm and eye, gave me an uncanny foreknowledge of where he would strike. These disciplines came from long hours of contemplation and of weapons practice on the Isle of Zy where often and often during my long stay among the Zairians of the Eye of the World I had gone, season by season, to reinforce and continue afresh all that I had learned during my year of total concentration there. Being a Krozair of Zy is a continuous process, never stilled until at last one sets off for that long last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

  Now this Vad Garnath became transparent and far off to me; by calling on the will and making of the will a single central instrument, I was able for a short time to hold on, and grasp my blade, and so make a finish.

  In a quick and savage flurry Garnath, laughing with his expected triumph, swaggered in, flicking and flashing and feinting. I met him stoutly, dazzled him with my rapier and slashed my long, narrow left-hand dagger across his right thigh. I stepped back.

  “First blood!” I thought I shouted; but I knew I croaked.

  Garnath stood for a moment looking for all of Kregen like an onkerish calsany, glaring at the line of blood welling from his slashed trouser leg.

  “Fall down, you rast,” I said.

  He tried to come at me again, and tottered, and his leg would not support him, and he fell.

  I stood above him. He forced himself up on hands and knees, his head twisted up, glaring at me with a sick and awful knowledge.

  “You are an abomination under the suns, Garnath. The Trylon Rees’s honor is intact, while your honor is shredded and worthless. You are shamed, Garnath! Now — down on your nose or I spit you through!”

  Down he plumped on his nose.

  I was not minded to reveal my disguise, to shout with great fierceness a battle cry that would betray me. I had worked hard and long at being the Amak Hamun; I would not throw that work away, for there yet remained much to be done for Vallia. But I did stagger forward, and I know the dueling hall rang and reverberated with the yells of the crowd, though I heard none of it. I bent and wiped the main-gauche carefully upon Garnath’s frilled shirt, jerking him up the better to get at it. He lay, trembling. I was trembling, too.

  It is not my way to thrust a blade foul with blood into a scabbard given to me by Delia of Delphond.

  The noise in my head was not the noise of the crowd. The mat swayed and swooped. I stepped back and someone gripped my elbow. In a narrowing circle of bright vision with a ring of black and purple shadows dropping down I saw Garnath’s seconds caring for him. I tried to shake my head. I felt, I saw, I experienced . . . then the darkness of Notor Zan claimed me entirely.

  I awoke in Rees’s room high in his small villa, between Rees and Chido, the three of us lying there like three wounded soldiers in a hospital ward. There was much to learn.

  “Thank Havil you are awake, Hamun!” Rees looked remarkably cheerful. His golden mane glowed. Chido chuckled and, between mouthfuls of palines, the pair of them told me what had transpired.

  Nulty had come to them in terrible straits. Garnath’s men had visited my inn, The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, and sought to take me away. His loyalty to me, as a person, was never more fittingly displayed. Rees had immediately dispatched a strong party of his own retainers and a brisk little brawl had blown up there in the narrow streets of the sacred quarter. Rees’s folk had dealt with Garnath’s. Rees shook his great head.

  “The rast sent that marvelous wrestler of his, Radak the Syatra. When Radak discovered he was to fight my people he refused. I suppose Garnath thought him thirsting for revenge because I had bested him in a fair fight. I have sent Radak away to the Plains of the Golden Wind, and now we face litigation over ownership and purchase and enticing a retainer. But these are small affairs beside your news, Hamun!”

  “Absolutely!” cried Chido. “How did you do it? Where did you learn your rapier-work, Hamun? We heard such stories.”

  Being Chido, he said “wapier,” of course, and I made shift to tell them I had met a wandering sword-master on his way to Zenicce, meeting by chance, and he had showed me a few tricks.

  They both kept badgering me.

  But there was nothing more I could tell them. I did promise to show them some of these astonishing tricks, and, indeed, this could be done. There are mechanical contrivances in swordplay that stand one in good stead; but for the inner drawing out of the will, the intuitive response to an attack even in its earliest stages of development, this is not mechanical. This is the art and soul and fiery spirit of swordplay.

  When I asked after Casmas the Deldy, Rees pointed to a stout iron-bound lenken box on the floor.

  “Stuffed with gold, Hamun!” he said. “We have not counted it, but that old rogue Casmas swears it is all there — less his commission, of course.”

  “And the thousand from Jefan ti Nulvosmot for ripping off Leotes’ trousers?”

  “It is all there — less, of course, Casmas’ collection fee.”

  “Of course.”

  They laughed, joying in my good fortune.

  All my belongings had been brought and Nulty had overseen everything and was now ensconced as a privileged retainer in the household of the Numim, Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind. Being gentlemen the Trylon and the Amak had not poked around in my lenken chests. I felt relief at that, for some of the stuff in there was so obviously Vallian that all my carefully worked out explanations against such a discovery might not have sufficed. If I felt regret at deceiving these two, I had to subsume that regret into the much more profound regret that the stupidities of fate and the insane ambitions of their rulers set us apart, enemies by nation, friends by personal inclination.

  Once I had recovered consciousness and could eat and drink hugely, the effects of the drug soon wore off. Rees nodded when I told him.

  “A foul and cowardly potion,” he said. “And I heard what it was you said to this Garnath of the dunghill. I thank you for that, Hamun.”

  “And this drug?”

  “Memphees. Distilled from the bark of the poison tree memph, with subtle additions from the cactus trechinolc. It seeps through the body and gradually takes away one’s strength and senses. Enough
will kill.”

  I grimaced. “We have not heard the last of this cramph.”

  “There is nothing we can do about this drugging of you, Hamun. Proof is lacking, for the rast will have slain that poor slave girl and written her down in his records, all fair, as Casmas knows, as the victim of an accident. Casmas may know, but it is a risk he takes. When one insures slaves it is good to make very certain the premiums bring payment.”

  “Yes,” said Chido. “And that horror Garnath will have his records written up for the annual government inspection. The law is touchy regarding slaves in the old country.”

  Why did it always distress me so much when these two spoke so affectionately of their country, the mortal enemy of my own?

  “As to that,” said Rees, “what with all the new slaves in the country from the wars, Casmas is seriously thinking of closing down the slave-insurance side of his business. The profits are small enough, and people do not bother when it is almost as cheap and much less bother to buy fresh.”

  So they talked, these two, of men who might well be from Pandahem, and very soon perhaps from Vallia, if this Queen Thyllis had her way.

  Even in law-ridden Hamal we were thrown back on our own resources in the struggle against Vad Garnath. He was rich, as all knew, and he had the proud “ham” in his name which proclaimed him as a scion of one of the oldest families of Hamal. He was Garnath ham Hestan, Vad of Middle Nalem, a Vadvarate west of the Black Hills in which originates the Black River. That he chose to spend his time in the capital instead of on his estates meant merely he was a pleasure-loving man, able to afford this raffish high-life living. That he had failed to raise a regiment for service was looked at a little askance, and would be looked at with greater and greater disfavor as the war dragged on. He would have to do something about that, soon. Rees chuckled — rather nastily — and said the rast had been talking of raising a squadron of small fliers, or of equipping a flight of skyships.

  I fretted. They would not let me quit my bed for a full day, and I had to lay and ponder what was going on in the wide world. All this talk of regiments and skyships embittered me. My people of Valka and Vallia must have vollers, and soon! The ones we had bought from Hamal before the troubles would soon be mere junk, judging by the Hamalese practice of selling us Krasny work, inferior models. When I had last spent a short spell in my kingdom of Djanduin, far to the south and west of Havilfar, after my trip to Earth to search out the history of Alex Hunter, I had given certain instructions to my Djangs. A party had left by a circuitous and safe route taking six matched pairs of the Djanduin flyers with those wide yellow wings and vicious black beaks, the flutduin, by airboat as a present to Delia in Valka. She would know what to do with them, and with the ferocious Djang riders I had also sent. There would not be time to breed a race of saddle-birds in Valka before the storm burst from Hamal, but I had a thousand years of life ahead, and there lay many, many plans in my head for that future.

  Even so, by careful husbandry, both in Djanduin and elsewhere in Havilfar where I had friends, I fancied I could scrape together a promising beginning of an aerial cavalry for Valka. What Delia’s father, the dread emperor of Vallia, might say I did not much care. He would know — or ought to know — that I had at heart the welfare of all Vallia and not just my island Stromnate of Valka.

  “You’re dreaming, Hamun!” bellowed Rees. At the happy tone in his voice I looked up, prepared to contest most hotly this calumny, and saw a party of Numims in the doorway, all rushing forward in a billowing cloud of bright colors and fluttering ribbons and flowing golden manes, their bold lion faces alight, shouting their greetings to Rees.

  “Rashi!” he said ecstatically, after the first, proper Lahals, and he embraced his wife in an enormous hug that made Doctor Larghos the Needle tut-tut and hop about from foot to foot. Then it was his eldest son, potential heir and Trylon-to-be, young Rees. Then Rees’s twin sister, Saffi. And then, last of all, as was proper, the youngster, Roban. Well, they kicked up a right shindig, roaring and booming in their lion way, golden fur glowing, eyes bright, laughing with their father.

  I saw Larghos looking worried.

  “Avast, Rees, you great nurdling lion-man!” I bellowed it out so that they turned from his bed to regard this boorish and insulting apim. “Rees, will you deny me the pleasure of saying Lahal?”

  “You are the nurdling apim, Hamun, but gladly will I introduce you to my wonderful family.”

  Larghos tugged out a kerchief and mopped his brow. Chido was introduced and then Larghos shooed them all away. “Your father needs rest! You are liable to break all his ribs and open all his wounds.”

  “Silence, you drooling numbskull!” bellowed Rees. But I saw. His face was unhealthily yellow, lacking that glorious golden tint of the Numim. He was a sick man, and all this hullabalooing and hugging was draining him. Later, his family saw him in less boisterous fashion. His wife was charming, a regal lady, in the nicest sense of that word. His two sons were tough little beggars, and Rees, at seventeen, was filling out and looked set to become just such another bullroarer as his father. I took to young Roban, sensing he might feel left out. He had not yet grown his mane, of course, but he had clear bright eyes and I liked the way he spoke up. We played a game of poron-Jikaida while Rees talked to Rees — young Rees was trying to outgrow the diminutive Reesnik now, as is the way of youngsters — and I found Roban sharp at the game, and I made him fight hard. We never did finish, for Saffi put her glorious golden head around the door and complained with typical sisterly logic that: “You men hog everything!”

  The lads were banished and Saffi sat on her father’s bed. Chido and I turned toward each other and carried on the Jikaida abandoned by Roban. This Saffi was really a remarkable girl. Numims have much the same bodily configurations of Fristles, of course, both being cat-people. But whereas a Fristle fifi is giggly and soft-furred, seductive and sensual, and entirely desirable, a Numim young lady is quite different. Apparently possessing all these qualities, the Numim is more like a sleek and regal lioness, rather than a pampered Siamese cat. Saffi was not sensual, but she was sensuous. Her body charmed me, clad in the fashion of Hamal with that short, pleated and flared skirt cut away from the thighs. Her deep blue bodice was of a simple material and cut, but its shape made me think, and this I confess, of my Delia. I sighed.

  Why on this world of Kregen was I wasting my time among a parcel of rascals, avowed enemies, when I might be home in Esser Rarioch, with Delia and my twins, Drak and Lela?

  Numim girls do not have whiskers, either, and their faces are soft and smooth within the frame of that glorious golden hair.

  Chido perked up no end when his father, the Vad, arrived bringing his sister, Chelestima, a fascinating girl with dark hair and bright cheeks, a few years younger than Chido and, clearly, devoted to him. Their mother had died and the old Vad depended on Chelestima. She was dressed in such a way that I felt for her, clad in clothes that while being expensive and beautifully sewn, were dowdy and unfashionable. The first thing the Vad said after the greetings was: “And how much did you win on the Amak of Paline Valley, Chido?”

  Chido spluttered out weakly that he had not wagered.

  “Then you’re still the onker I thought!” The old boy held himself erect, whip-smart, his black clothes, silver ornaments, and thraxter the marks of a grand Horter of Hamal. “This Amak was your friend, I am told, and there was much money to be won. You lost an opportunity there, my boy. Money doesn’t drop from fluttrell wings.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Well, I will say no more about this tough old character, Chido’s father, the Vad of Eurys, save to say he impressed me as a man Vallia could well do without as an enemy. (Eurys is situated in a bold curve of the coast of southeast Hamal opposite Niklana, the small island to the immediate north of Hyrklana.) I will have more to say about the Vad of Eurys later.

  You may imagine the whole household was in the utmost turmoil with all the visitors. I bellowed until a slave girl
brought my clothes and I could dress. I took up a thraxter and belted it to my waist, flung my brilliant green jacket about my shoulders, and so escaped.

  The business with Nulty was conducted with all speed and due process of law. I kept of the hoard I had won sufficient for what lay ahead; Ornol was a gul and the sight of gold often frightened these poor people.

  “How will you get to Paline Valley, Amak?”

  “If I come, I shall come, Nulty. That is my problem.”

  The lawyers of Hamal are a rich and bloated species of humanity, for they are always engaged in business. Nulty was duly confirmed as my Crebent for Paline Valley. I would be sorry to see him go, for many reasons, and he sensed this. But life is made up of greetings and partings, of Lahals and Remberees . . . I was officially abjured of any guilt in the death of Leotes, according to the rules under which we had fought, and the name of ham Farthytu was duly inscribed in the Palace of Names.

  I had taken a thraxter, the straight cut-and-thrust sword that is the typical Hamalese weapon, for a purpose. I was not molested. The rogues of the sacred quarter were most wary of me now, and I was stood drinks, and clapped on the back, and generally made to think of myself as the very devil of a fellow. This could not make me change my ways, but for someone else — dare I suggest Chido? — this fame would bring problems. I did not intend to stay here long, anyway.

  Taking an amith-trolley out to the Horters’ quarter and over the Bridge of Nalgre the Penitent, I made my way up to the Shining Quarter. I had to give my thanks to Casmas for his handling of the affair, for all he had taken his percentage. Truth to tell, I do not much care for these money merchants. They grub. But, then, that is their nature, and we all grub after our fashion. He received me most warmly, and although I spent only a bur at his villa I learned he was even more certain of receiving his patent of nobility. His marriage of the Ranga, the jolly fat widow, did not mean he would automatically be made a Rango, of course. He was confident he would become more than an Amaknik; if he was really fortunate, an Elten, at least.