We had made our little camp and Delia helped willingly about the chores. I had fashioned a stout sharpened stave from a sturm tree, and would twirl this about, remembering. Once I had to fight an outraged she-ling. It had crept from a bush and sought to snatch Delia away. The ling lives between the bushes and rocks of the small-prairie, where there are trees and streams, and is as large as a dog of the collie variety; but it has six legs, a long silky coat, and claws it can extend to four inches in length and open a rip in chunkrah-hide. From the pelt, I fashioned Delia a magnificent furred cape. It suited her well. She looked gorgeous and feminine in the furs.
Our first intimation that the caravan was near was not the tinkle of caravan bells, or the thud of calsany pads, or the shouts of the drivers; but the shrill yammer of men in combat and the gong-like notes of steel on steel.
I leaped for the fringe of bushes above our camp, the sharpened stake gripped in my fist. This period with Delia had become very precious to me. Had I deluded myself, or had there been a softening in her attitude to me? Always, she was correct, polite, meek and obliging about the camp in the small matters of domestic chores. When we avoided the agreed taboo subjects we could talk, lazily, for hours on topics ranging from that vexed question as to who was the first creature on Kregen, to the best way of dressing the silky white ling furs, and all manner of delicious speculations in between. Yes, very precious to me was that time beneath the moons of Kregen around our campfire at night. These thoughts rushed through my head as I saw a small caravan under attack by clansmen. Why should I embroil myself?
Far better to wait until it was over and the clansmen had taken their booty and such prisoners as would bring a ransom and had ridden off, singing the wild boisterous clan songs. Any interference on my part might well result in an ax-blade through my thick skull, and would certainly destroy this too short sweet period of growing friendship between Delia and myself.
“Look, Dray Prescot,” said Delia from where she lay at my side, peering down through the bushes. “Powder blue! Eward-a caravan of the Noble House of Eward.”
“I can see,” I grunted.
The clansmen were from a clan I did not recognize. When I rode the Great Plains as a clansman, had we met, there would have been bloodshed between us, perhaps; if we lived, the giving and taking of obi. They meant no more to me than the men of Eward. But Delia compressed her lips, and looked at me, and her eyes sparkled dangerously-at least, that is how they appeared to me, for whom, in two worlds, there was no other woman fit to hold the hem of her dress.
“Very well,” I said. Lately I had been speaking a very great deal. Naturally taciturn except when a subject excites me, with Delia lately I had, as a newer time would have it, been shooting my mouth off. Having decided, I wasted no time. I stood up, hefted my hunk of timber, and charged down into the fracas.
Men in powder blue were riding their half-voves in furious combat with zorca-mounted clansmen. That gave the men from the city some chance. Rapiers sliced past clumsy guards and pierced brawny chests; axes whirled high and descended to split skulls and spill brains. It was a small raiding party of clansmen-the zorcas told me that-and they must have stumbled on the caravan unexpectedly. I was down and among them before anyone realized a new force had been added to the conflict. I did not utter a sound.
In an instant I had dismounted two clansmen, seized an ax, swung violently against a group of three who sought to rip the hangings from a sumptuouslyappointed palanquin. I had discarded the notion of making a noise as though I were the forerunner of an army. I was not dressed as a clansman, nor as a city man-I was dressed as a hunter of Aphrasoe-and both sides would immediately have seen through the ruse and all surprise would have been lost.
The ax parted a neck from its trunk, sliced back to sever a cheek and knock the man from the saddle. The third man reined up his zorca, its hooves flashing, ready to swipe down on me, fully extended. I convulsed back and his blow swept through empty air. The hangings parted and a head crowned in a wide flat cap poked unsteadily out. Beyond the man about to attack me again I saw a man in powder blue sink his rapier into the throat of a clansman, the blade caught, and he jerked for a moment unavailingly. To his side a clansman lifted a bow string drawn to his ear. The next instant would see that iron bird buried in the man of Eward’s back.
I hurled the ax high and hard, in the old clansman’s cunning, and the daggered six inches of bladed steel sank into the zorca rider’s breast. He looked down stupidly and then fell off. Then the man facing me was spurring forward and bringing his ax down. I went in under the sweep of the blow, avoided the zorca’s mouth-with a vove I would have been already a dead man-and sprang upward and took him about the waist. We both toppled to the ground. When I arose and looked alertly about my dagger was brightly-stained.
“Well done, Jikai!” I heard a croaking voice call.
The zorca riders had had enough. What should have been a nice leisurely killing and plundering had turned into a bloodbath. With wild and baffled shrieks they rode off. We avoided their last Parthian discharges as the bolts thunked into the ground. If they stood off, we had bows enough to give them a spirited return to their shooting.
Often these days I am forced to smile when reading the ill-informed and ignorant usage of words when Earthmen speak of barbaric weapons. How often one reads that arrows are “fired” in combat. I have used flint and steel to fire a musket, and a percussion cap to fire a pistol, and have fired a high-velocity rifle many and many a time-I have even used a lighted match wound around a linstock to fire a thirty-two pounder in the pitching gundeck of a three-decker-but in all this smoke and flame I have never “fired” an arrow. One does not “fire” bow and arrows. Except, perhaps, if you allow that term to those occasions when we clansmen set blazing rags to our shafts and used them to set fire to the wagons and the roofs of our foemen, as we did that wild day in the Pass of Trampled Leaves.
The half-vove rider had freed his rapier. He looked at me with curiosity all over his bronzed, keen face, with the black eyes and the cropped hair beneath the steel cap, and he sized me up as I sized him up. Lithe and strong, he rode well, and I had seen his swordplay-with the last exception of those neck-bones, and they can be lubbers at letting a blade free-and he handled himself superbly well.
He rode over.
He passed me with an intent, anxious look on his face, bent to the palanquin.
“Great-Aunt Shusha! Are you all right?”
The old head in its wide flat hat poked out again. This time more of the old woman appeared, I saw she carried a dinky little dagger in her gloved right hand. Her face was old-old-and lined and pouched with the record of her years; but her eyes were lively enough, bright and malicious on her nephew.
“Don’t prattle so, young Varden! Of course I’m all right! You don’t think I’d let myself be fretted by a miserable bunch of scallywags like these pesky clansmen, do you?”
She was thrashing about now in attempting to alight, and men ran to let down the steps of the palanquin from its height, slung between two calsanys. She stepped down, small, incredibly vital, dressed in a powder blue gown that had scarlet stitching threaded all over it like sunshine on water.
“Great-Aunt Shusha!” The young man, whom I knew now to be the Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward, protested in mock horror and despair. “You mustn’t keep tiring yourself.”
“Tush and bottlecock! And you haven’t even said Lahal to this young man-” She peered up at me with her faded eyes. “Look at him, walking about half-naked, and killing men as easily as I push a needle through a tapestry.” She hobbled over to me. “Lahal, young man, and thank you for what you have done. And, it minds me-”
She broke off, and Varden leaped from his high saddle and caught her to support her. “The color-the color! It reminds me so vividly…”
“Lahal, my lady,” I said. I made my voice as gentle as I could; but it still came out in the old forbidding growl.
Varden, holding his gr
eat aunt, stared at me. His eyes were frank on mine. “Lahal, Jikai,” he said. “I own to a fault, it was remiss of me, not to thank you seemly. But my great-aunt-she is aged-”
She tapped his bronzed hand with her gloved finger. “That is enough of that, you young razzle-dazzle, insulting me. I’m no older than I should be.”
I knew that on Kregen men and women could look forward, if they were not killed or fell sick, to a life considerably longer than that on Earth, and this old lady, I judged, must be nearer two hundred than one hundred years old.
All this time I had not smiled. “Lahal, Prince Varden Wanek of Eward. I am Dray Prescot.”
“Lahal, Dray Prescot.”
“You did not see Dray Prescot save your hide, did you, nephew?” She explained how I had thrown my ax to save Varden as the man about to kill me charged. “It was true Jikai,” she finished, a trifle breathlessly.
“I had my Hikdar, my lady,” I said, holding up the dagger. She chuckled and coughed. “As I had my little Deldar.”
I looked, and, it was true, the dagger was a terchick. A shout of surprise brought our attention back to the scene around us. Delia of the Blue Mountains walked down the little slope toward us. Clad in the scarlet breechclout and with the white furs swinging, swinging in time to the sway of her lithe body, her long lissom legs very splendid in the suns’ light, she brought a gasp of awe and wonder to the lips of the men. I caught my breath. She was magnificent.
After the introductions were made it only remained for us to ride back to the city with the Eward caravan. It had been to fetch Great-Aunt Shusha from her annual pilgrimage to the hot springs of Benga Deste. Benga, I should hasten to say, is the Kregish word most corresponding to “saint” in English. Beng is the male form and Benga the female, the suffix letter “a” playing a similar part in Kregish as it does in Italian.
I cannot explain why; but when I asked my habitual question of fresh acquaintances on this occasion I felt a taut sense of expectancy. A vague look came over Great-Aunt Shusha’s wrinkled face.
“Aphrasoe? The City of the Savanti? It seems I have heard of such a place, once; but it is long ago, so long ago and my poor head cannot remember.”
Chapter Seventeen
A bravo-fighter of Zenicce
Now life took a completely fresh turn for me, Dray Prescot. If I had missed companionship before, finding that rare commodity at last on Kregen among the tents and wagons of the clansmen with Hap Loder and his like-for Maspero and those, as I thought godlike beings, of Aphrasoe created always in me a breath of awe-I found it once again with Prince Varden and his drinking companions in the House of Eward of the city of Zenicce. And, too, most strangely, I found a compelling sense of friendship, warm and human and very luxurious to me, in the wise companionship of old Great-Aunt Shusha. I owned she might one day recall what she knew of Aphrasoe; but I did not need that hope to make me respect and admire her, and I admit my fondness for her grew almost foolish, if affection can ever be called foolish. Airboats are rare and precious objects in Segesthes and Wanek sent a party to repair and bring back the one Delia and I had escaped in, regarding it as another trophy wrested from the hated Esztercari. Delia said that she was familiar with airboats, and added that they were not manufactured in her land. That ruled out Havilfar, where I understood the mining was done on which the airboats depended for their lifting force.
I had entered with some spirit into the plans of the House of Eward to take down more than one peg the House of Esztercari. Dressed in the powder blue of Eward I would ruffle it with the other young blades as we strolled through the arcades, patronize the drinking taverns, watch the varied amusements in the Barbary Coast area of Zenicce. I went to the impressive Grand Assembly buildings, and watched as the never-ending debates took place, with men and women walking in and out to leave or resume the seats allotted to their Houses. We even got into one or two bravo-fights, all flurrying cloaks and the clink and rattle of rapier and dagger, and shouting and laughing, and hurried retreat as the crimson-and-emerald of the city wardens was espied hurrying to break up the fracas.
Once across the canal and within the cincturing walls of our enclave, of course, we were absolutely safe. To break into a House enclave would take an army and although many sporadic raids took place-often, I learned with an amusement so grimly ironic Prince Varden was surprised, to steal a girl-no House felt strong enough alone to challenge another directly. The Esztercari’s had by chicanery, murder, corruption and then naked force, ousted the previous House from the enclave and further estates in which they had now settled some hundred and fifty years ago. Some of Great-Aunt Shusha’s venomous hatred for the emerald green was explained when I learned she had been a Strombor, a girl of the previous House and recently married into the Eward’s, when her family, her friends, her retainers were killed and scattered. Some had been sold as slaves, some had gone to the clans, some had vanished in their ships over the curve of the world and never returned.
By the twin forces of law and custom all the rights, ranks and privileges of the House of Strombor had passed to the House of Esztercari.
Each House enclave was a city in itself: tasselated pavement, marble, granite and brick walls, domed roofs, colonnades, towers and spires, all the whole gorgeous jumble of splendid architecture enclosed and supported a living entity within the greater entity of the city. The Eward beer was extremely good; Zenicce was famous for its beers, although its lagers, as all are, were weak and dispirited. We young blades would go ruffling a long way to sup a new brew of beer, commenting wisely and with many hiccups on its quality and strength. Zenicce claret, too, is very fine. I looked very kindly upon being a citizen of Zenicce, and of having the undisputed run of the enclave-city of the Ewards with its own canals, avenues and plazas.
There were temples throughout the city, of course, mostly erected to Zim and Genodras; but each House also maintained its own temples and churches to its own personal House deity. In all this frenzied pleasure-seeking I indulged in at that time I could see, even then, that it was merely a hollow scrabbling at an anodyne. The problem of Delia remained forever with me, and nothing would remove it. I hugged my ache to myself, hating it and yet incapable of cauterizing it. Delia must be returned to her own land; yet to find that land was the difficulty.
We pored over the maps and charts in the library, and I saw with a nostalgic pang how similar and yet how different were the charts of these people. There were portolanos in the great library of the Esztercari’s; we could not study those. The globes were so like those of Medieval Europe, the confident coastlines of countries near at hand, the gradual loss of definition as distance threw a pall of ingorance across knowledge until, on the opposite sides of the globes, only the most general outlines of those of the seven continents and nine islands thought to lie there were represented. Aphrasoe was never shown; neither was Delphond.
Looking at the maps, Delia shook her head.
“My country is not shaped like any of these.”
I had shared the gems three ways, and Gloag had smiled his wolfish smile, and taken them; but he remained with me as a raffish drinking companion. Delia had pushed the gems back to me across the shining sturm-wood table, her face disdainful, her mouth prim.
“I would not take anything from that woman.”
I kept in a chest those gems, promising myself they were in trust for Delia of the Blue Mountains.
Wanek and his son, Varden, insisted that we regard the captured airboat as our own. Delia took me flying and showed me how to operate the controls, which I found magical and wonderful, and of which I will speak at another time.
During this period I talked long into the night with Great-Aunt Shusha, for she needed little sleep, and I have grown accustomed to doing without all my life. She had witnessed that terrible attack on her House, and had seen the young girls carried off and the men killed. She did not, I noticed, maintain a great retinue of slaves, and, indeed, the Ewards were as humane as they could be, given the c
ircumstances and the nature of the thing, in all their dealings with their slaves.
At last we had fomented our plan and it was time for me to play my part. I had more or less given my word to Varden that I would assist him. The Esztercaris, we had discovered, planned a great rising against the Ewards, and the Reinmans and the Wickens, Houses in alignment with the Ewards. The stroke was audacious; but it could be accomplished, and we must get in our blow first, or we would be lost. Almost inevitably, whichever way the contest went, the city would be up. The stakes at risk were enormous. From the zorcas and the equipment we had taken on the day I’d helped beat off the clansmen’s attack on the caravan I had selected a fine beast and set of equipment. I donned my scarlet breechclout and then over it pulled on a clansman’s russet leathers with the fringings. I would say a brief farewell to Delia and then be on my way. It was on this day, strangely enough, that I learned just which girl it was that Prince Varden mooned after, and had told me of during our tavern-times and ruffling strolls through the city. Varden, it seems-and I felt a jolt of incongruous guilt strike through me-had lost his heart to the Princess Natema. He had seen her many times, always with a powerful bodyguard, and his hopeless passion festered in his breast.
“She is promised to another, to that oaf Pracek of Ponthieu. And, anyway, how could our two Houses consent to such an alliance?” I felt very sorry for the prince; for I would have you know he was a true and gallant friend.
“Strange things have happened, Varden,” I told him.
“Aye, Dray Prescot. But none as strange as the chance I shall ever hold Natema in my arms!”
I said: “Does she know?”
He nodded. “I have had word taken to her. She scorns me. She sent back insulting- It is enough that she refuses.”
“That is her father’s doing. It may not be hers.”
Transit to Scorpio dp-1 Page 16
