She was standing, swaying with Nath's hand on her shoulder. She realized she would probably fall if he had not supported her. That made her think. She had thought very little since she'd first said “No!” to Cranchar the Cranchu.
“The girl won fair and square,” said Nath. “Magero has won the gold, lord. Your sister the kovneva—"
The rapier in Cranchar's fist glittered in the torchlights. He moved uncertainly, scowling.
“I know, Muncible—and you run in peril—"
Nath let go of Delia's shoulder.
Instantly, she fell down.
Truth to tell, that collapse was not entirely fake. She felt as though she could not have stood up a moment more. She fell and sprawled on the floor, covering herself, and so lay motionless.
Let the bastards sort this one out!
A considerable commotion persisted, with catcalls and yells boiling up as men argued intemperately among themselves. Delia lay still. Some said she had won fairly, others that she had cheated by standing up.
The man who had come in second struck his girl.
“You stupid shif! Why did not you run?"
The girl held her knees and crooned in pain.
“I could not, master—"
“My gold!” Magero would not be put off.
“Cheat!” shrieked the man he had beaten.
“Say that again—"
“Cheat!"
Magero roared into action. He and the man who had come in second, Naghondo the Squint, tore into each other.
In a wild and unscientific flurry of heavy-handed blows they started to bash each other about the head. Magero landed a pile-driver and Naghondo staggered back, only to yell and spit out a tooth and come windmilling in again. They wrapped their arms about each other, massive hairy bodies fast locked, and fell down, struggling and writhing and trying to throttle each other. Delia lay still.
Nath hoisted her up.
Over the din he shouted: “The slave has fainted. You!” to a scared slave girl, whose pitcher of wine slopped in her terror. “And you!” to another, who dropped her platter of palines. “Take this stupid slave girl to her quarters! Grak!"
Helped by Nath, the two girls somehow heaved Delia up and started to carry her off. The fight between Magero and Naghondo rip-roared on. Men ran out from the tables to form a ring and cheer. The girls, trailing blood from their knees, staggered away. The bag of gold lay on the table by Cranchar, the left-hand dagger sticking up at the side. Cranchar stared hotly at Nath and the two slave girls, at Delia's form as she was carted off, a limp and lovely burden.
“I haven't forgotten!” he said. He slapped the rapier down. “She will recover from her faint. Then we will see."
Nath, bent over, hurried on. The two slave girls, whimpering, grasped various portions of Delia's anatomy and helped.
Swinging back to the fight, Cranchar, his blood up, bellowed his bull roar over the noise. He was caught up at once in the new combat.
“Fight for your gold, Magero! If you win, you win the gold. If you lose, then your mount cheated!” He looked enormous, bloated, scarlet-faced, once more in command. “Let the gods decide!"
* * *
Chapter sixteen
Magero's Gold Piece for his Little Paline
Most of the next day Cranchar spent with his women closeted in the chambers of the tower reserved for his use. His men rampaged within this tower, and the noise broke over the walls and roofs of the fortress like surf driven before a gale. Slaves cleared up the refectory and put the place to rights before the kovneva returned.
Of the other three towers built of stone, one contained Nyleen's quarters and the small rooms of her handmaids and slaves. The next contained her fighting women bodyguards. The last tower's contents were unknown to Delia.
She felt humiliated, dirtied, her pride grossly affronted.
She tried to tell herself these were irrational reactions. They left her alone that next day to recover. This was, she surmised vaguely, because Cranchar was either roistering on or sleeping it off, and there was no one left prepared to take action. As for her own feelings, these were murky and passionate.
Some of the girls, apart from the pain in their knees, had accepted the Shishivakka race as a mere part of entertainment, what men expected, and therefore tolerated because there was nothing else they could do. Certainly, and to Delia incongruously, Magero sent up to her by a little slave girl a single gold piece.
“Magero the Obstreperous bids me give you this, Alyss,” said this girl, wiping her nose. She was scrawny, unkempt and as appealing as a cold haddock. The gold piece shone on her dirty palm.
“Put it on the table, Limi,” said Delia. “And go."
“Do you not send thanks?"
“Get out!"
The door cracked shut. Poor Limi ... And, this gold piece in thanks from Magero meant he had won the fight with Naghondo the Squint. He was big enough, the hairy monster.
So then, of course, to add to her woes she had to feel guilty about shouting at poor Limi, who was just a skinny little slave girl. As soon as she was up and about she'd make it up to her; probably an extra helping of whatever was the tastiest dish of the day would soothe Limi's hurt feelings. Delia was only too well aware that slaves had feelings.
Jumbled up with her own feelings about the race were the problems surrounding this Nath the Muncible. Certainly, when she brought her armies down on this place, this sink of iniquity, why should he not die along with the rest?
He had gone out of his way to afford her what protection he could. He had run perilously close to disaster. If this puffed-up bladder, this Cranchar, had been half the lord he fancied himself, then Nath would be walking around headless. Had Cranchar been of that breed of lord of Kregen who did not lightly tolerate interference with their desires, Nath would be done for.
Only the thought of Nyleen, the kovneva, kept her brother in check. Nath had played on that. Delia found, and with alarmed surprise, that she was actively looking forward to the return to Nyleen.
Almost unimaginable!
During the late afternoon she found strength enough to rise. She bathed and washed her hair and brushed it out. The thought of that flagstone with its loot hidden beneath tempted her. Well, and why not? Surely there would be fresh unpleasantness when Nyleen got back. Cranchar would fabricate some story to have the impertinent slave girl up to her neck in trouble. Gold was gold, and pride was pride. The two Gillois hungered for the one and allowed the other, perhaps, to overpower their actions. Once Nyleen was persuaded, Cranchar would have a free hand. Delia did not relish that prospect. Tonight, then, and may the luck of Eos-Bakchi the Five-handed be with her!
She prepared herself, physically and mentally, for the tasks ahead. Stealing a kerchief of food was not over difficult, the most dangerous part being to dodge the swipes of Nan the Bosom's third largest ladle.
Silly Nath was all agog about the race; but Delia shooed him away—very gently—and skulked back to the room she shared with Sissy. The odd thing was, without the girl there the room appeared bare and lonely. She locked the door with Sissy's bed jammed against it, put a pot to hand in case anyone tried to break in, and then composed herself on her own ramshackle bed.
Obnoxious.
Yes, that was the word she would use about this place. The slaves were cowed in their fashion, and full of energy when a master or mistress appeared. They carried on their own way of life, as it were below stairs, and contained their own febrile strengths. But this place was obnoxious. She did not know its name, although she'd heard Nyleen and her cronies speak of Veliganda as though they might be referring to this fortress. Anyway, whatever its damned name, it was obnoxious.
She lay on the bed, then she got up and prowled about the room. She picked up the earthenware pot, and hefted it, and swung it through the air a few times.
Here she was, cowering in her room until dark, frightened of every footstep in the corridor outside, wondering if some drunken lout would break
in. It just wasn't fair. Girls could learn tricks, stratagems, cunning twists and grips to deal with men, but a man's brute strength remained a man's brute strength. By Vox! If any drunken bastard broke in here he'd have a smashed head and caved in ribs and go reeling out clutching himself and with a face as green as Green Genodras!
It was all very well taking a lofty world view when you sat on your throne in your palace wearing a crown and with regiments and fleets and aerial forces at your beck and call. But when you sat in a little room with only an earthenware pot to defend yourself with—world views reduced in importance and took a back seat.
Cunning, intelligence, skill and courage. They were just about the only weapons she had. She might have taken a pride in her use of the old standby of women through the ages down in the refectory. Women who were blinded by anger, like Nyleen, would condemn and have only contempt for that particular stratagem. But the faint had been splendid. She'd fainted clean away, swooning beautifully, and that had got her out of it.
Footsteps passed in the corridor, and she tensed up, and then only half-relaxed as the heavy tread passed on.
If she could have taken on in a fight all Cranchar's men, and bested them, she would have. But that behavior did not belong in the logical world, that was of the stuff of the shadow plays and mimes hawked along the souks of the great cities of Kregen. Actors might fight whole armies and win, tiny girls might put to rout regiments; she was a mortal girl.
The slot of light falling from the window in mingled streaming jade and ruby slanted further along the floor, began to creep up the wall. The Suns of Kregen were declining. When the shadows fell, she would move. And woe betide anyone who got in her way!
With these brave thoughts to make an attempt to sustain her, she waited.
Once, and once only, she allowed herself to think of her husband. If he was beside her now, had he been there, last night, in the refectory—well, and perhaps the shadow plays would have been proven true.
Even though he had changed greatly, she knew with utter conviction that before anyone bestrode her in the Shishivakka race, her husband would be dead. And, equally, the refectory would have been awash in the blood of Cranchar's men. As for the Cranchu himself, a Krozair longsword would make his head leap from his shoulders ... Idle dreams, girl! she told herself. It's all up to you, and you alone...
The gold coin sent up to her by Magero lay on the table. It gleamed erratically as the slanting light of the suns glanced across the surface. It showed a worn portrait of Delia's grandfather on the obverse, and a trophy of arms on the reverse with the exhortation to Support Vallia.
She did not touch the coin. The exhortation to support Vallia reminded her that these people here causing all this woe were Vallians. She had demonstrated her reactions to Magero the Obnoxious and his gift by shouting at a poor little slave girl. Limi had jumped with fright. That reaction, it seemed to her, was perfectly natural. But, wait a moment ... Magero had bothered. He had shouted at Cranchar. There seemed the distinct possibility that he held some petty rank, that he was not as cowed as the other henchmen. This gave her to ponder.
When he'd changed his grip on her, she had promised to chop him. But he might merely have been making sure of his hold, not wishing to fall off. That reading of what had happened was admissible, grotesque though it might seem. The way nature had constructed men and women with only two arms meant that certain holds could not but fail to fall in certain places, willy-nilly.
She glared at the kerchief of food. That would be required after the escape. But she was hungry. Slaves were entitled to eat, for they had to maintain their strength in order to serve their masters and mistresses.
Going down the backstairs to the kitchens this time called forth a greater degree of resolution. She felt as a small animal must feel, penned at the end of its burrow, knowing the savage predators approached nearer and nearer with every passing heartbeat.
A new chief cook was on duty. The old one, Naghan the Meats, had been ill and unable to work, and Nan the Bosom had stepped in. Now she showed her feelings about being relegated back to her soups by thwacking about with her various-sized ladles, each increase in size a measure of her mounting displeasure. The new man, a slave with uppity airs, was Ornol the Rasher, for his specialty was vosk rashers served in a hundred and one different ways. He looked at Delia as she came in, and Silly Nath darted across with an urgent query about the well.
“You should be out there, Silly Nath, not lollygagging about here!"
“Yes, master. But the handle is split..."
Ornol the Rasher threw his hands up in despair. He looked porcine, flabby, with a sheen to his skin. His grey slave tunic bore a yellow and ochre favor. “All right. I will look."
Nan the Bosom, when they had gone, said: “He'll never last.” Delia ducked the swing of the third largest ladle.
She found a hunk of bread and a bowl of soup, and Nan looked the other way. As any slave would say, a slave has to eat.
Had she cared to consider the matter, it was a measure of her own personality that these kitchen slaves had not turned hostile and jealous when she'd been promoted out of the kitchens, rising in the slave hierarchy, to be harpist.
The soup was good, a thick ordel, and she wiped the bowl with the crust of bread and wolfed the lot down. She decided not to return to her room but to wait out the last of the Suns here and then steal out into the yard.
Then she made a mistake.
Thinking to take herself out of harm's way, she went off to one of the small storerooms. This one held flour sacks. She spread a few empty sacks and lay down, continuing to build her strength for the night's operations. There Magero found her.
He was not drunk. He had been drinking, and he carried a flagon of good red, and he was flushed and jovial and sweaty, but he was not drunk. He smiled. His teeth were gapped. He wore a lounging robe of a lurid pink and blue, and he carried a basket of food of better fare than slaves were provided. Quiveringly alert, Delia was aware of his bulk, and of his belt of plain leather—with cheap bronze fittings—and of the rapier and main gauche. The belt also swung lockets for a clanxer, the straight cut and thrust common sword of Vallia.
He called her his Little Paline. This was a compliment.
“You ran well, girl. I won the gold. That buffoon Cranchar could not deny me, not after I knocked Naghondo's squint straight for him. Ha!"
She said nothing. She drew herself into herself, warily.
“I like you, my Little Paline. For a slave you are beyond beauty—I have never seen anyone to match you.” He put the red wine down and spilled some food in placing the basket. “I feel we are soul mates. We have much in common. We serve a master who does not appreciate us."
Delia wet her lips. “The kovneva—"
“She will whistle, and Cranchar will come groveling like a beaten cur. I have seen it.” He smiled gappily. “But I have not come here to talk about onkers like that. You had the gold piece? Or did that slave shif steal it away?"
“No, no,” said Delia. She did not want to bring more trouble on Limi's head. “I had the gold piece."
“You see! You see how generous I am. And I can be much more generous. Much more, if you are nice to me."
Delia decided on a course of action that would have aroused contempt in women like Nyleen Gillois.
“You are so big and strong, and you fight well. Yet you speak ill of the lord. Perhaps it is not safe to know you."
“Safe? Of course it's not safe! Cranchar fears me, for I can see through him. Come here, girl, and take off your tunic."
“Should I not dance for you, first?"
“You have no veils, and I am sharp set."
He reached for her, and she slithered away on her bottom. Standing up, and making herself smile, she undulated around him, keeping out of the reach of his hairy arms. This was ludicrous; she had to have him dead to rights before she hit him, he was such a great lummox.
“You entrance me enough! You need not dance for
me!"
“Oh, Magero, you great zhantil of a man! Do I not dance well?"
She was gyrating and swaying, and weaving her arms about and smiling, her head on one side. Magero gaped. Sweat stood on his brow.
“By vox! You overpower me, my Little Paline!"
She reached up to the latch on her tunic, and undid it, and flapped the grey cloth down and then up. The tunic was one of Sissy's, and was a tightish fit. She danced lightly around, avoiding him, and he lumbered after her, sweating with passion. Now if she'd chosen the firewood shed, there'd be a handy length of lumber to hit him over the head with...
“Come here, sweet! I am ready for you!"
Despite the desperate appearance of this situation, Delia felt close to hilarious laughter. It was comic, this tantalizing of this great man mountain. She'd have to take him with bare hands, get him in a grip, and hope to finish him quickly. But he was so big, and—unfairly, unfairly!—so mannish brutish strong.
Her plan was this—she undulated around flapping the grey cloth down and up tantalizingly so that his eyes boggled out on stalks—she'd come in close, let him slobber all over her, and she'd have the rapier and main gauche out quicker than he could think. Then the weapon used would be up to her...
She circled to face the door and advanced. He broke into a great slobbering smile and opened his arms wide to enfold her. She moved in quickly, and felt his paunch slog into her stomach with a grunt. Her hands dropped to the hilts of the weapons. He was kissing her neck—and over his shoulder she saw the door open and Naghondo the Squint appear. The man's face bore an expression of vicious hatred. He lifted the bludgeon and brought it down with savage and unerring accuracy on Magero's head.
Magero dropped soundlessly, sliding away from her.
Naghondo leaped in.
“That'll teach the bastard! And I'll carry on where he left off! C'mere, girl! You're mine now!"
* * *
Chapter seventeen
A Zorca for Two
Delia of Vallia [Dray Prescot #28] Page 16
