Nalgre the Shebov worked on his armor on the other side of the blanket. He was the seventh son of his family and had taken up the mercenary life as a release from farm work. Now he carefully buckled up his armor, a kax tralkish — what on Earth is called a lorica segmentata — and whistled cheerfully as he worked.
Dolan the Sling methodically oiled his scaled kax, seeing that each bronze scale was firmly affixed to the leather. At his right side his sling lay ready to hand. With a leaden lozenge-shaped bullet Dolan fancied his luck against any archer. But then, as he said, he had not faced a Bowman of Loh.
“Although, Jak the Kaktu,” he said, “we routed a bunch of Undurkers three, four seasons ago when we were working for the King of Sanderdrin. Quite a dust up, that was.”
“We’re likely to square up to Bowmen of Loh if they don’t win over the emperor’s guard,” said Nalgre.
“And damned quick.”
“Undurkers,” I said, rubbing the oiled rag methodically. “I had a dust-up with them a while back. Some Bowmen of Loh did for them, skewered ’em right through well beyond their range.”
“Which side were you on?”
“Well, by Vox, I’m here, aren’t I?”
“So you were on the right side.”
They laughed. The paktuns of Kregen can see the humor in the situation, when from day to day they may be victors or slain. It gives them the old zest to life.
A whole day to get through. Forty-eight burs to the day. Fifty murs to the bur. And a Kregan bur is roughly equal to forty terrestrial minutes. A long time to keep out of mischief for a wild leem of a fellow. Not that, recently, I’d felt much like a leem. Like a calsany, perhaps. And everyone knows what calsanys do when they get excited. Nalgre and Dolan talked on about the female warriors — Battle Maidens they called them, Jikai Vuvushis — and we sent a camp slave for a couple of bottles of parclear to ease our throats. The suns rolled across the heavens and everything was going splendidly, for these two like myself were tazll mercenaries, unemployed, determining to enlist with the trylon’s regiments or none. I did not tell them Udo had returned overnight; the information had not yet percolated through. Even when the dust of a squabble rose beyond the next row of tents I felt no inclination to become involved.
But when Nalgre and Dolan stood up and peered across and said: “That looks interesting,” I realized I would have to go, for to do otherwise would be most odd in a paktun. So we yelled at the camp slave — he was shared by the two comrades and for a fee I could join in the syndicate — to guard our gear. We strapped on a sword or two and ambled across to see the fun. The dust billowed up from a cleared space and rose over the heads of the gathered swods. I call them swods, P.B.I., soldiers; in truth they were much more of a hastily gathered rabble, with a leavening of hardened professionals among them. No doubt, given time, Trylon Udo would smarten them up. By the time they’d marched all the long way to Vondium they’d either be an army or they’d be long since dispersed. We had little difficulty in shoving our way to the front of the ring. Bets were being wagered all around, and the excitement fizzed.
The sharp smell of the dust peppered nostrils and stung eyes. I was pleased Nalgre had thought to bring a bottle of parclear, that sherbet drink that so refreshes. The noise blattered skywards. The Suns of Scorpio shone down. On the morrow I would see my daughter Dayra. I knew the house. This time I would not wear a stupid dangling clanging object and the Krozair longsword would find business. Two girls fought in the dust.
I grimaced my distaste.
So that was why the swods were so wrought up.
Inquiries elicited the fact they were not fighting over a man but over the ownership of a fine string of amber beads. So they remained girls despite their martial kit, and the daggers, and their spitting snarling invective. The blonde girl was having the worst of it, the redhead being altogether quicker and deadlier. I wondered, with a shiver of disgust, if they would fight to the death, for, as we quickly learned, this was not a Jikordur but merely a common brawl.
A knot of Battle Maidens on the far side of the ring screamed advice and insults and encouragement. There were two sides here. The two girls fighting were not naked; but they might just as well have been. For an agonizing instant I wondered what Delia, if she were so unfortunate as to be here, would make of this spectacle. Then I brought myself up with a shock. Why should not girls fight and brawl in camp like men? Just because I viewed the scene with reservations meant nothing. If girls could tend wounded men and see the ghastly sights of the battlefield at, as it were, second hand, and if they could don boots and armor and wield weapons, as they did, who was I to say they could not act completely as warriors? Did I not demean them by suggesting otherwise?
Each person must act out his own nature, as the scorpion said to the frog, always — and this proviso is one I hew to for it is so often overlooked and disregarded, always provided that the free-doer does not harm his or her fellows in the liberated exercise of his or her own psyche. And by harm I do not mean the harm one of these girls was going to sustain in this free-for-all. Blonde hair, damped with sweat and slicked with dust, bent to the ground. The redheaded girl, who was screamed at as Firn in wild excitement, had the upper hand. She had fought cleanly. All saw that. And now she was on the point of victory.
Already coins were jingling, changing hands as the bets were paid out. With a wild scream a third girl bounded into the informal arena. Clad in green leathers, she wielded a rapier and main gauche. Her dark hair flowed loosely. Her face was brilliant with malice and vicious determination. She raced toward the two girls, the blonde submitting and Firn, the redhead, triumphant. With a shriek the girl in green leathers kicked the dagger from Firn’s hand. The rapier twitched down. Its point hovered at the redhead’s throat.
A hullabaloo broke out in red riot. Girls yelled, men cursed. Through it all no one took a single eye away from that central tableau as the dust fell.
“Firn! I challenge you! Prepare to die, here and now!”
“Karina the Quick!”
The noise lessened as we all struggled to hear.
Someone threw a rapier and dagger onto the settling dust.
A ferocious-looking apim at my side said: “Karina the Quick is notorious. Firn is as good as dead if she does not submit.”
“Firn! Firn!” came the screeches and yells.
“Karina! Karina the Quick!” flew from the other group of Battle Maidens. I felt the sorrow for redheaded Firn. To submit would bring life and to fight might bring death; but in these circumstances she had no choice.
Firn threw back her heavy head of red hair and picked up the weapons. She held them in a practiced grip. But at the first handstrokes those who knew about these things saw that Firn faced a swordmaster
— or, in this case, a swordmistress. Karina played with her, pinking that bright skin, bringing forth the ugly spottings of blood and all the time she taunted, foul-mouthing Firn, taunted her with torture and death.
This was a case for the Krozairs to decide. Could I, a man, step forward and stop the fight? No — this was not a case for the Krozairs, or for me. This was Savage Kregen, alive, vibrant, pulsing with blood -
and ending with a life and a death.
If I attempted to intervene I’d probably be torn limb from limb by everyone present who could get a hand on me.
Now Firn’s superb body was splashed with her own blood. Her scanty clothes hung in bloodied ribbons. Her hair swirled. The green leathers of Karina the Quick glimmered in the suns’ light, unspotted, unfouled.
Very soon if Firn did not yield she would be dead.
The Battle Maidens had now clearly separated into two groups. If there was a preponderance of green about one group and of red about the other, I put that down to coincidence and my own views on those two sky colors. Looking across the swirling dust that billowed up as the girls stamped and retreated and stamped and advanced, I saw, abruptly, clearly, as though focused in a telescope, the face of one of the Jikai
Vuvushis. The face swam clear through all the confusion and tumult. Open of countenance, glowing with the excitement of the moment, her brown Vallian eyes wide, Vad Kolo’s daughter, Leona nal Larravur, stood and stared hungrily upon the fight. She wore the green leathers, with a profusion of purple feathers. Now I understood why the topmost purple ronil gem had snapped away from her jeweled badge of the samphron bush. Rejecting the Sisterhood, she must have hurled the brooch from her in negation and disgust, and then, calculatingly, have picked it up to wear to the emperor’s reception for Queen Lushfymi. The missing gem not being found by her cowed slaves, perforce the missing socket had to be painted over. Yes, Leona nal Larravur was a real right scheming miss.
Dust puffed across as the struggling girls grappled and swung about. Firn was clearly weakening. Her blood glistered darkly upon her body, and dust patched her like camouflage. The group of Jikai Vuvushis who wore russet leathers began to shout. “Ros the Claw,” they called. “Ros the Claw.”
In all the confusion others took up the yell. Money which had changed hands twice now returned. The issue was, then, still in doubt. A girl in black leathers was thrust into the ring by the Battle Maidens, who chanted her name. Slowly, she walked to the center. Firn, panting, shrieked out: “She will slay you, Ros!”
The girl in the black leathers moved forward. The fighting girls staggered apart. Karina the Quick looked as lithe, as ferocious, as deadly as ever. She stood back, her blood-smeared rapier and dagger slanting up, smiling lopsidedly as Ros the Claw moved in. Firn collapsed, panting, disheveled, done for.
“Do you challenge me, Ros the Claw?”
“If you will it. Either way — you cease and desist from tormenting Firn.”
“Then you must make me.”
“It is the Jikordur, then.”
A gasp swept the assembly. The bets hovered, uncertain, for both girls possessed reputations. I knew the one in black leathers. I had seen her before, in those abominable caverns beneath Vondium where my Delia had been offered up on a basalt slab under the obscene idol of a giant toad to the fangs and claws of a real chyyan. I had seen her then, this Ros the Claw, as she released a mangled wight from a prison cell.
Two more girls in black leathers stepped forward. They looked grim. They were addressed as Zillah and Jodi, and they bore marks of authority. Ros flung out at them.
“This is overdue.”
“Maybe. But we cannot allow the Jikordur. The Trylon has forbidden duels to the death.”
“This began as a squabble over a bead necklace. What-”
“The Trylon Udo has commanded.”
“To the Ice Floes of Sicce with Udo! This bitch leem has tortured enough. She must be-”
“You may be called a tiger-girl, Ros. You may stand high. But in this you cannot go against the orders of the trylon.”
Now it was the turn of Karina the Quick to laugh.
The sightseers swayed this way and that to get a better view. All recognized this as a woman’s affair; but with rapiers and daggers in play, a universal sympathy was involved. I wondered what, if Dayra was here, she would do. She must have witnessed sights like this before. And that struck me as a most deucedly odd thought, I can tell you, I who had never to my knowledge seen my daughter. I wondered to which side she would hew. I did not think, with some assurance, that having a brother like Jaidur, Dayra could possibly have any truck with the green. That, here in Vallia, was a stupid concept, where green was merely another heraldic color, where blue, if any, was the color of contempt. And that was a pity.
The streaming opaline radiance of the suns brought out the colors of the soldiers and the irregulars, glittered from armor and weapons, struck glinting metallic highlights in the hanging dust.
“Desist, Ros the Claw, or we will take you into custody.”
This girl with her lithe feline form, the blood suffusing her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes that told of venom and intelligence, hauled Firn to her feet. The redhead swayed.
“Look! Very well. As Dee-Sheon is my witness, not the Jikordur — a common brawl, then, a gutter fight.”
At the words Dee-Sheon many of the women made tiny reflexive gestures with their fingers. Did they convey worship or did they ward off evil? Gods and goddesses and spirits throng the pantheons of Kregen. A New York City directory would contain not a half of them.
This was the moment I decided I could stand and watch no longer. I half turned to move away. The girls would not be constrained by the ritualistic trappings of the Jikordur and they would not fight to the death. This Ros had her way. But Karina laughed, derisively, showing her white teeth, her lips very red. Her body arched magnificently as she stretched, her rapier licking out in swift cunning passes. She vibrated confidence.
Slowly, Ros pulled from her waist pouch a thing of shining steel, an artifact shaped like an articulated metal glove, clawed with razor steel, sharp and cruel. She pulled it onto her left hand. The talons glinted. Metal splines extended up her wrist. She turned the tiger-talons this way and that. To call them tiger-talons is correct, for they shared much of the cruel curved beauty of a killer bird’s claws. The massed crowd fell silent.
The girls faced each other, Karina the Quick flicking her rapier and dagger about expertly; Ros the Claw poised with rapier ready and left hand glittering with clawed steel. So, I, Dray Prescot, sentimental onker, turned away and pushed through the crowd. I had no wish to witness what might follow. But, if I had to lay down any bets, my money would be on Ros, every last copper ob.
I had gone barely a dozen paces when a bubbling scream burst up into the bright air. I continued walking. I did not look back.
A vast sigh oozed from the crowd.
That was woman’s business. They were welcome to it.
Fourteen
“You May Choose the Manner of Your Death.”
“You are sure, Nalgre? Certain sure?” The seething anger and violence in me had to be held down. I could not show too much interest in the politics of Vallia here.
“Certain, Jak. I spoke to a flier pilot who returned with the trylon. The Lord Farris has been arrested and charged with treason. And others of like kidney, too.”
“It will make our task easier,” put in Dolan, idly swinging his sling around his legs. “Farris was loyal to the emperor.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
“And as Udo is back in camp we will go and enlist today.”
“Very well,” I said, to keep up my cover.
This news was bad. It indicated quite clearly that scheming people were burrowing from within. The Lord Farris was devoted to Delia and the emperor. How could he possibly be accused of so outrageous a crime? Accused, yes; that would be all too easy. But the accusation must be false. I was convinced of that.
Before we went to enlist the three of us ambled across to an ale tent, for the suns progressed across the sky, to spend some of Nalgre’s winnings. Dolan had bet on Karina the Quick. And, as Nalgre said, with a guffaw: “That cat-girl cut her up a real treat.”
I was not interested. The day passed too slowly for me. On the morrow Dayra would arrive and I knew I would have to be quick to fetch her out of it before Zankov moved. I’d summed up that villain, as I thought, and how I kept moving and speaking and acting normally I do not know. The problem of this acting as a paktun and hiring out to Trylon Udo also worried me. If I gave my sworn oath to serve, as any mercenary would do, I would not wish lightly to break my word. That the whole thing was a sham, a facade, would not count. My word would have been given, and here, in the camp of Hockwafernes, I was Jak the Kaktu, paktun.
Well, it is the same with problems as with plans. Men sow for Zair to sickle. Coming out of the ale tent after a goodly interval — a goodly interval — Nalgre wiped his lips and belched.
“By Beng Dikkane,” he said, comfortably. “I am in the mood now.”
A pang for old days and for Nath and Zolta swept me. We turned along the line of booths and tents where the trafficking went on all
the live-long day. A party of warrior women marched along, all in step, all spears ranked, their helmets gleaming.
Dolan nodded.
“I warrant they’d not be so regimented when the moons are in the sky, eh?”
“They wouldn’t give you a calsany’s offering,” quoth Nalgre, and he laughed. The Jikai Vuvushis marched with a swing. There were equal numbers of those in green leathers under their armor as those in russets. On duty animosities were forgotten. At the head marched Zillah and Jodi, and Ros the Claw was there, with Firn. They approached and we three together with other swods casually sauntering nearby moved out of the way.
Leona nal Larravur pointed at me.
“There he is!” she shouted. Her voice rose, cracking with strain and excitement. “There he is! The Prince Majister! Seize him!”
It was damned quick.
I was ringed by spear points. My comrades fell back, gaping. Many of the irregulars ran off in terror. Zillah, tall, buxom, high of color, fronted me. Her rapier glittered at my throat.
“You are the Prince Majister of Vallia?”
I stared about the hostile ring. Damned quick, by Krun!
To go drinking in camp we had merely donned rapier and dagger. My fighting equipment lay buckled up in its leather coverings along with the gear of the others, guarded by the camp slave. Even then I could have broken free, skewered a few of the guards, slashed a few more, and so broken to liberty. But I hesitated.
These were women. Mind you, they were women dressed up as warriors, carrying arms, armored. All the same, they remained girls. At that time I couldn’t bring myself to stick a length of sharp steel into any one of those delightful forms. It was a weakness.
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