Fliers of Antares [Dray Prescot #8]

by Alan Burt Akers

“I do not think Djanduin would care for that."

  “No—we would have to kill him then, ourselves. And the country—” Kytun flicked blood-drops from his sword. “By Djan! This is a sorry business. The challenge should never have been allowed!"

  “But it has been, good Kytun, and I accept. Is all prepared?"

  “Aye, Dray. It will be as the old laws prescribe. Man against man, and no other man will raise his hand to help either, no matter what the outcome."

  So I walked forward between the arcades with the sculptured and painted friezes—fine work but nothing to compare with what I had seen elsewhere on Kregen. Fresh torches were brought and they cast their flickering erratic light down into the sacred court of the warrior gods. Kov Nath sat on the faerling throne. He looked as I had last seen him, save that his once-smooth helmet of copper hair had now grown long and was disarranged. Many dead Djangs lay about the court. I marked them. The night was very dark, and the stars sparkled down with unwonted brilliance.

  “Bring torches!” bellowed Kytun.

  I went with my people in a kind of procession into the sacred court; the thought occurred to me then: almost as though we marched ceremoniously into the Jikhorkdun where we would perform our bloody rituals.

  Still more torches were brought. Their golden light streaked upon the chemzite carvings of the walls, upon the mosaics of the floor, now dabbled in blood, upon the gold and silver and ivory of the faerling throne, and upon the huge and solidly gem-plated hood which rose, high and domed and arching, above. Like a hollow benediction of gold and jewels the sacred hood of the faerling throne rose over the throne itself, both protecting and threatening. As Kov Nath stood up to reveal himself, clad only in a scarlet breechclout, I loosened my longsword and drew it forth.

  Kov Nath stepped down the six golden steps and trod upon the mosaic floor. His four hands were empty.

  Thinking it a useful ploy to be seen not to have the advantage of armor I started to strip it off, and Wil of the Bellows was there, unstrapping and carefully removing all the dinted pieces from my body. He took my sword. I held out my hand for the weapon.

  An old Dwadjang came forward with a wide and shallow balass box. Wil clung on to my sword, his eyes wide and fear filled upon me. The old Djang opened the box. Inside were ranked eight djangirs. The short broad blades of the double-edged swords glittered in the torchlight.

  “This is by the customs of the ancients of Djanduin!” he cried out in a reedy voice. “The challenge has been made and accepted. It is man against man and the prize is the crown and the faerling throne!"

  In the rustling silence the spit and crackle of the torches sounded loud and ominous. I stood, all manner of thoughts rushing and colliding in my head.

  “Come, cramph, the rast men call Notor Prescot! Select your weapons!"

  Slowly I drew out two djangirs.

  Kov Nath Jagdur laughed with immense scorn. He plunged his four hands in and withdrew four djangirs.

  This was the way of it, then! This was the ancient custom! In Djanduin the Djangs fight duels and ritual battles with their national weapon, the djangir.

  We faced each other. Two men, alike in so many ways, for had Kov Nath not possessed an extra pair of arms he would have been apim. And—because of a little fad, a weakness, of mine which made me don my old scarlet breechclout on the morning of battle—we both stood naked but for a scarlet loincloth.

  He fell into a fighting crouch and then surged up, laughing, gleeful, swinging his arms.

  I stand as though mesmerized at those four whirling djangirs.

  So he faced me, at the end, Nath Jagdur, Kov of Hyr Khor, who was once of the Djin tan. The torchlight threw two stars of mocking gold into his eyes, and his four arms wove a flickering silver net before my eyes. He leaped for me, and in his four hands the whirling blades swung into a lethal wheel of deadly steel!

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The fight in the sacred court of the warrior gods

  The marvelous world of Kregen is blessed with two suns and seven moons. Usually at night a combination of moons sends down their streaming pinkish rays, sometimes golden, sometimes jade, as seasons change and the mists rise. Sometimes there falls a night in which no moons are visible. There are two suns and seven moons, and each has many names, and the tenth is called Notor Zan, the Tenth Lord, the Lord of Blackness.

  The Djangs are ferocious warriors.

  Had I my trusted longsword—or a thraxter and shield—or a rapier and main-gauche—for it might perhaps have been too much to ask that I gripped the superb Savanti sword I had left with Delia—I would have gone up against Kov Nath with greater confidence.

  As it was, we fought with his national weapon, and he had four arms and he was possessed of great skill. He leaped for me and his arms wove a deadly net of steel. I backed away nimbly, leaping dead bodies, for the court had not been cleared of the corpses. He roared and charged.

  “Stand and fight, you nulsh! By Zodjuin of the Storm-clouds! Act like a man, even if you are only apim!"

  There had to be a way of taking him. He would not be decoyed so easily as to stumble over a dead man. Djangs are warriors born. I circled, for we were pent between the mystic friezes of the sacred court of the warrior gods, and men clustered in the arcades, watching us by the light of torches.

  On those walls frowned down the carved representations of warrior gods, the pantheon of Djanduin. High over the rest rose a giant stele with symbols incised upon it describing the creation of Djanduin out of the primitive miasmas of the Ocean of Doubt. Djan had called forth the land and the land had risen and, lo! that land was Djanduin, blessed among the lands of the world.

  Kov Nath flickered his three djangirs most expertly while he kept his left lower blade down and limp, as though out of the play. I might not have four arms, but I recognized the symptom of the ploy he was trying there. As I circled he rushed me in an attempt to finish the thing quickly. I took two djangirs upon my own and skipped aside as the third sliced down past my thigh and only just managed to interpose a hurriedly snatched blade between that last, treacherous, left low blade and my belly. He roared, and stood back, the sweat starting out all over his body.

  “Hai! For a cripple you fight passing well!"

  I did not reply. Along the walls the sacred carvings seemed to flicker in the torchlight and to march, writhing across the stone. They appeared to me to be marching around, up there, along the friezes, and to be looking down on us as we fought for the faerling throne.

  Asshurphaz, Djondalar, Rig, Zodjuin, perhaps the most favored by warriors of the warrior gods, Djan-kadjiryon. All of them were armed, armored, crested, their diamond and ruby eyes gleaming down in the torchlight, and they writhed and rippled there upon the solid stone walls. Nundji was there, escorted by wild leems, railing against the warriors who had jailed him in a leem-hell. Over on the far side the draperies of Mother Diocaster seemed to surge as the torchlight shimmered across the pale alabaster surfaces. The shadows moved.

  Kov Nath leaped again and his blades wove a deceptive circle of sparks. I ducked and slid sideways and tried to stick him in the belly. Two djangirs came down with a firm finality and halted my blade, and only a savage kick and lunge saved a third from going through my shoulder.

  Those watchful Djangs kept a strict silence at first. But as we leaped and lunged across the mosaics of the floor, hurdling dead bodies, slipping and recovering in the pools of spilled blood, so the fire got to those wild warriors and they began to yell. There were fierce shouts of encouragement for Kov Nath from those of his men who had remained here, until the challenge and acceptance had been confirmed. My men yelled, too. The torches waved in the wide space, curling the streaming golden hair against the darkness of Notor Zan. I knew I was likely to go down into Notor Zan's paunch, and wake up in the Ice Floes of Sicce, if I did not speedily devise a system for sticking a man with four arms who knew how to handle four deadly djangirs with consummate skill.

  “You
are no Djang, rast; but stand and fight like a man, by Zodjuin of the Glittering Stux!"

  As Kov Nath spoke, I leaped with a great fury and so took him high on the upper left shoulder. The morphology of the Djangs is remarkable, for their doubled shoulder blades constructed rather like sliding doors give equal power—well, almost equal power—to their upper and lower arms, and their muscles rope like steel across their backs. I sliced some flesh and the blood spouted. A hoarse shout rose from the assembled warriors and then, out of nowhere, I felt a keen blade slice down my side. I swiveled and lurched away and I felt the blood running down my side; but I did not put a hand to it. There was no time.

  Kov Nath bored in, his four blades wheeling with as much ferocity as when we had begun.

  “You are a dead nulsh now, Notor Prescot!"

  I had discarded the idea of throwing a djangir. I could have done so—as could he—but I think we both realized we had the skill to slip a blade. But the hurling of a djangir was something he could afford better than could I, for he had four.

  “Prepare to meet your pagan gods!” he bellowed again, and charged, and the four blades sang and whistled about me. I thought of nothing much thereafter, except a memory of three things—of Zair, of dealing with the savage beasts of Kregen, and of Delia.

  I concentrated on cutting him up piece by piece. I would not be clever, or go for the big one. As I had the shorgortz and the Ullgishoa and the boloth, three out of many memorable combats, I would deal with this wild leemshead piecemeal.

  He was very quick and very clever and he bored in without allowing me a moment's respite, now that he thought he had me and I was done for. I let him come in and so twisted and leaped far to the side, away from the point of his attack. As I leaped both my djangirs came down onto his upper right arm. I hacked with tremendous force, and, together, the blades struck, cutting and shattering the arm so that the white bone showed bloodily through the skin.

  Immediate yells broke out from all around the sacred court. Kov Nath staggered back, looking stupidly at the ruin of his arm. His fingers could no longer hold the djangir and they opened, and the blade—it had some of my blood upon it—slid jangling to the floor.

  I did not give him time to recover from the shock.

  I came in low, almost bent double, surged up, and hacked across his lower left forearm, taking off the wrist, the hand, and the djangir in a splashing gout of blood.

  The Djangs have an astounding agility and an almost superhuman strength. Shock and amazement shattered Kov Nath, but he came back at me with fearful courage and ferocity. I had to hack and slash and slice and fend him off, but, all blood-smeared with his two ruined arms flailing, like some ghastly monster from the deepest hells of Kregen, he pursued me. I backed up and turned and waited. Then, as he lunged with a fearful scream to sink the djangirs in my throat, and I fronted him and smashed them aside, I saw the first faint crack in his psychology, the first chink in his armor of courage.

  But he would not give in as easily as that. The stump of his left lower arm battered my body, bruising me around the ribs. I swung away, and as he bellowed and charged to follow I let him have a Krozair of Zy foot-kick. I missed the target, but he screamed and backed away, and I slashed—rather foolishly—at his throat, for I wanted to finish this ghastly business quickly now. His return sliced down my arm, drawing blood and making me grip the djangir tightly, for I thought I'd lost control of my arm then.

  He saw that, and the chink in his armor closed. He stood for a moment glaring, his chest heaving, blood and sweat rivering down his magnificent body.

  “By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds! You will die now, apim!"

  I felt that I might usefully add an observation to the so far one-sided conversation.

  I said, “By Vox, you nurdling onker! You have but two hands now! You are less than an apim now! And, by Zim-Zair, you will be less than a dead apim before a mur or two!"

  He flinched back.

  Oh, yes, he was magnificent, even pathetically smothered with blood, with his two useless arms dangling. But the two he had left still clutched sharp steel, and he made a final enormous effort to bear me down with him. He jumped and roared and the two djangirs lanced for me, one to the eyes, the other to the belly.

  I parried them both.

  He knew then, did Kov Nath Jagdur, that this was his end.

  For, marvelous fighter that he was, he recognized that I had not instantly followed the parries with attack. I had held back, poised to destroy him at my pleasure. He saw all that.

  He was too fine a fighter not to recognize the truth. He had tried all his tricks, and they had failed him. He knew that I had not riposted through fear of closing with him; he understood I had him at my mercy now, for I had read all his cunning and skill and bested them.

  It was in my mind not to kill this man, for I valued him as a fighter and as a man, even if he was a wild leemshead who had brought near-destruction to the country I loved.

  “Kov Nath!” I called to him. “I am minded to spare you your life, if you will—"

  “No bargain, rast! The Kov of Hyr Khor does not bargain with rasts of apims!"

  “It is your own blood."

  I spoke as mildly as I could, but he flinched back, seeing that old devil look upon my face. Brutality and war wreak a fearful havoc upon a man.

  “Aye, my own blood! And I would shed it all again to rid my country of Obdjang and apim!"

  “In that you are an onker, Kov Nath."

  “I am the King of Djanduin, cramph!"

  “You were, for a short space only. But you brought the country to ruin. I would rather not have your blood on my hands—or any more than there already is.” At this I heard the roar of coarse and appreciative laughter from those watching. The Kregan often has a bloody line in jests.

  He was bleeding profusely now, and he dropped one of the djangirs to grip the shattered arm. He felt it with great and ghastly disbelief. He glared at me, his coppery hair wild about his face, the silver fillet long since lost.

  “What bargain do you offer me—the Kov of Hyr Khor?"

  There appeared no strangeness in that the two of us, who were in the midst of so violent a combat, could talk thus.

  “If I am to be King of Djanduin, as men say I am, for the good of the country, I would not relish a wild leemshead within the realm."

  “That would not be wise, I promise you."

  “So you would find a new home, somewhere in Havilfar."

  “That I could never do, Notor Prescot."

  I did not fail to perceive his change of tone.

  I decided to press a trifle. “You are a dead man if we fight again. I can slap you, my two arms against your two. But I see in you some good you cannot see in yourself. Kregen would do ill to lose too many men like you, leemshead though you are."

  A growl ran around the packed men watching. I wondered what their reactions truly were, and then forced them out of my mind. Slaying for the sake of slaying is a pastime for the perverted, for the insane, for the kleeshes of two worlds.

  He rallied. His blood dropped ever more rapidly upon the mosaics, making their colors blot with a more dreadful stain.

  “And if I leave Djanduin, what is to become of my people of Hyr Khor?"

  “They will be treated with honor. Hyr Khor is a part of Djanduin. If I am to be king I will not permit one part of Djanduin to set itself above another part."

  There might be explanations due to Kytun; he would get them.

  Kov Nath sagged back. How near death he was without treatment we did not know, but he would not leave here until he had given his word.

  He knew that. That subtle chink in his psychological armor, opened when he recognized he had met a man who could best him—and that man an apim!—widened more as he saw a way out. He forced himself to stand upright, panting now, the blood running, the sweat sparkling redly upon him. He threw the last djangir upon the floor.

  “I accept! If I am to leave Djanduin, then it is to you, D
ray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, that I pass on the Kovnate of Hyr Khor! To you I bestow Hyr Khor!"

  This was perfectly legal, although I fancied the little crippled girl with the Bolinas would have to be seriously consulted. But, too, I saw his cunning ruse. He would hand me his Kovnate of Hyr Khor and with it, he surmised, the enmity of his people, who would seek to revenge him upon me.

  I was prepared to accept anything to get this great gory, sweaty man out of here as safely as might be.

  “I accept, Nath Jagdur. I take upon myself the title of Kov of Hyr Khor and release you from that burden. Now, I will see to your wounds, and bind you up, and care for you—"

  My men were lax.

  I do not blame them, for the drama had been compelling, there in the torchlight of the sacred court of the warrior gods, as the warrior gods themselves seemed to parade around the friezes above us. Out of the torchlights flew a stux. I had sensed its flight instantly, like any Krozair brother, and could do nothing.

  Straight for the heart of Nath Jagdur, who had been Kov of Hyr Khor and King of Djanduin, flew the stux. The spear penetrated and such was its force it staggered him back and threw him to the ground.

  He had time to look up at me, his handsome face drawn with the bitter knowledge of failure. The blood gushed from his mouth and he died.

  I heard a chunking meaty thwunk from the side, and knew the man who had thrown the stux was dead, also.

  Kytun said, “It was that Nundji-lover Cleitar! He could not believe his master had done what he had done. Truly, loyalty and revenge are entwined plants."

  After that Coper's people could organize everything. I have learned to live with and to defeat fatigue for long periods, and, truly, I believe, my immersion in the sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe confers on me the ability to stay awake and alert long after other people have fallen in stupor. But the tiredness would not be denied now. My wounds were bound up, the court was cleared, the mosaics scrubbed and washed. All through that night of Notor Zan we worked on, and men stumbled away, to collapse with exhaustion, as we started to put Djanduin back on its feet. It had taken me seven years since I had come here. Well, there were three more to go in this enforced prison of time before I would be free.