“I will pause a while before going into the fields, Drak, and drink a cup of water with you."
“That will give me great pleasure, Theirson."
So we sat in the early sunshine and drank our water and talked of the lack of rain and the crops and the old days in Valka. Truth to tell, I recall, I wanted to learn as much as I could of this island of Valka. This village had been raided often, and the pitiful attempt to hide it away from the main road and canal had been completely unsuccessful. That the roads here were reasonably good was a result of the old Strom's grandfather, who liked to race zorca chariots, a sport he could not practice on the canals.
Presently Thisi came back. “Tlemi had tears in his eyes,” she said. “The old fool. Over a mere sword!” She looked a great deal calmer.
Thisi leaned over and whispered to her husband.
He started, and looked down the road, and then at me, and back at Thisi. He swallowed. “Here, Drak. Cover yourself with this old cloth—"
But I understood, and I cursed myself for a credulous simpleton.
They cared for me, these old folk, and they did not wish me killed. I had done nothing for them. I had brought merely sickness, and another mouth to feed. More altruistic love for a fellow man is difficult to find.
I stood up.
“I will go to Tlemi's hut and get my sword, now—"
“It is too late, Drak. Look!"
I looked.
Riding in their pride and their power, the aragorn astride their zorcas moved up the street. The old folk stumbled to their knees as the mercenaries passed. Absolute power they held, absolute control, a will never challenged.
And I, Dray Prescot, stood like a loon in the dust before them, empty-handed.
* * *
CHAPTER FOUR
A surprise for the aragorn
Theirson's hand gripped my ankle and jerked, and stunned by the folly of my own actions, I lost my balance and tumbled into the dust at his side. He whispered fiercely, in an agony of terror.
“Put your forehead into the dirt, Drak! For the sake of the glorious Opaz himself! Else you are a doomed man—and we with you."
Those last words, alone, could make me bend my stubbornly and stupidly proud neck. I bowed. I cringed. I, Dray Prescot, double-inclined to these cramphs of aragorn.
The zorca hooves twinkled past. Following them the calsanys lumbered along, tails flicking. Tethered to the last two calsanys by lengths of rope were two people, a man and a woman. I could see only their naked legs. They stumbled as they were jerked along. The woman fell. Now I could see her. She was young, with long brown hair and a thin but vigorous figure, clad only in a wraparound of the orange Valkan cloth. She was dragged by her bound wrists. An aragorn reined back and beat her with his crop until she rose up silently, and stumbled on, dragged by the calsany.
Theirson's hand gripped my arm.
Then the party had passed and the aragorn were yelling for the headman and Theirson was rising and shuffling forward, head bent.
“Bibi!” said Thisi. I looked at her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. “Bibi—my granddaughter."
Many secret societies exist on Kregen, as anywhere else, I suppose. Societies exist devoted to this end and that. On Valka, with the absolute dominance of the slavers and the mercenaries, and the disappearance of so many of the younger people into the central massif, a clandestine organization must grow up to resist. Given the normal strengths and fears of human beings—and of the halflings, too—this is natural and inevitable. Bibi, Thisi's granddaughter, must have come down with a message from the center. They—she and her companion—had been caught. Now the aragorn wanted to find out why she was visiting here.
I stood up warily, and looked up the street.
Theirson was talking to the aragorn. They looked to be the same six, evidently backtracking because of their captives. Other village people crouched abjectly by their huts. The six slaves stood by the calsanys, and the three dancing girls put their heads out of their preysany-palanquin covers and chattered like parakeets. The palanquins were gorgeously decorated with filigree work, and the poles by which they were slung were lavishly bound with silver wire. The preysanys—a kind of superior calsany—were likewise highly decorated and feathered.
I stood there and I looked down on Thisi.
My voice carried all that harsh, intolerant authority, and I know my face must have glared with that hateful devil's look.
“Run, Thisi, and bring my sword. Tell Tlemi I have need of it."
“But, Drak—"
“Run."
She ran.
In the days immediately after I had been captured and taken as a slave into the marble quarries of Zenicce, coming at a stroke from Zorcander of my clansmen to slave, I fought blindly and obstinately against restraint until beaten into submission. That happened only when I was unconscious. I still react in the same way now, on occasion; but I have tried to school myself. As I stood there looking upon these indifferently cruel and despotic aragorn I kept telling myself to wait. I had to wait for Thisi and my sword. I did stand, and how I did it is a mystery, for I longed above all else to hurl myself forward and fling myself upon these sadistic overlords and tear them from their jeweled saddles.
I was spared the wait.
One aragorn glanced at me. He frowned. He lifted his crop and beckoned.
“Stupid cramph! If you cannot incline before your master I will teach you! You will scream for mercy—but we aragorn no longer know what mercy means."
At this his companions guffawed.
The orange cloth hurriedly thrown around me still hung from my shoulders, and it was evident that the mercenary had not yet appreciated I was not an oldster like the rest. I shuffled forward. I kept my head lowered.
When I reached the zorca I looked up.
I had put that simpleton's look on my face. Zair forgive me, but I take a pride in that look, for it makes me look an idiot of idiots, and gives me great and unholy—and very petty, I confess—feelings of gaiety and secret knowledge that I play a prank, that I disguise Dray Prescot.
“You stupid, Doty-rotten cramph! I'll teach you—"
I looked up at him. His arm was raised to bring the crop down across my face, possibly to blind me, certainly to mark me. His companions laughed.
“Kleesh,” I said.
I prided myself, then, that I spoke so rationally. A kleesh is violently unpleasant, stinking, repulsive; and yet applied to me the name serves only to make me yawn. Applied to most men, I have noticed with sure unconcern, it is a guaranteed explosive firecracker.
His face contorted, he roared and brought the crop down in a violent slashing blow.
I moved in, took his foot from the stirrup, jerked it up, hauled it out—I didn't care if his leg parted from his hipbone—and tossed him swinging over my shoulder into the dust. I took a pace toward him and brought my foot down on his face. Then, without thinking about it, I ducked.
The flung javelin scraped over my back. It struck the ground with such force that it snapped. I disregarded it. I leaped sideways, turned, surveyed the five remaining mercenaries. One was already in action, gouging in his spurs cruelly, hurtling down on me, his drawn rapier pointed and low, aiming to spit me. I slid off the orange cloth, whirled it once and enveloped that rapier in the folds, and dived to the side.
The others were reacting now. Bibi and her companion, a personable young fellow with a thin face but merry eyes, huddled together, bound and helpless. I shot a look down the road. No sign of Thisi. The aragorn had seen I was unarmed, and they were taking no chances of my reaching their fellow lying in the road with a red pudding for a face. Mercenaries are ever conscious of the value of seizing a weapon from an adversary. They were roaring and yelling all the time, of course, threats and curses and detailings of what they would do to me and the rest of the village. I needed nothing extra to spur me on; had I done so the threats against my friends here would have been a spur and a brand.
Two came a
t me, with a third cursing and trying to rein his zorca around with them. I had to dodge and duck and weave. They were even taunting me now, cries such as some warriors use, mercenary tricks that, even if they did not realize it, meant they had admitted they were not faced by a helpless old man of the village.
The utter surprise they had, the sheer impossibility of an old man suddenly dragging one of their number from the saddle and breaking his neck, had now passed. But that uncanny business of a helpless victim abruptly turning on them, savagely, had for a mur unnerved them. Now they were upon me again, ready to drive and hunt me, to have sport, to flick and lash with their rapiers, not to kill but to torture.
Forced thus to skip this way and that I worked my way to the side. They reined their beasts around, the spindly legs of the zorcas perfect for this kind of wheeling curveting work. They performed caracoles very well, these aragorn. But I wormed free, turned, leaped, and, as I had done on that beach so long ago in Segesthes, I was upon the haunches of the nearest zorca and with an arm around the neck of its rider was dragging him back. I had to be quick. If I knew these people they'd care nothing for their comrade and would hurl a javelin to kill me, risking his life.
I snapped his backbone and then made a grab for his rapier. But he had twisted in his agony and I missed. I had to let myself go and slide off the zorca. The javelin hissed into the dead man's back.
On the ground I danced, as it seemed, between javelins.
Again I risked a glance down the street—and here came Thisi, hurrying and stumbling. She carried my sword.
The calsanys were uneasy and were milling, the two bound prisoners were being dragged across, and I saw they would stagger between me and Thisi. A zorca rider saw Thisi. He shrilled his anger and drew a javelin from the sheath strapped to his saddle. I saw Bibi open her mouth, but her scream was drowned by the roars from the aragorn. Her companion staggered across and fell against the javelin-man's zorca. The javelin missed. The calsanys barged against Bibi's friend and he fell. The zorcaman reined away, raving, drawing his rapier. Bibi pulled her man into the calsanys. I could leave them, but not for long. The stink of blood and dust stung my nostrils, rank and raw, but they have been familiar smells to me all my life.
I ran toward Thisi.
“Here, Drak! May Opaz have you in his keeping."
I forced myself to speak. “Thank you, Thisi."
I took the brand. The hilt had never felt so good in my fist before.
I turned.
There were four of them left, and they were completely incapable for a single moment of understanding defeat. They had cowed these people, enslaved all their young men; their slightest word was law, their littlest whim a command. Here was a man, all but naked, impudently attempting to challenge them. That two of their comrades were dead would mean only an excuse for an orgy of revenge. They had no conception that they would not slay me.
They wore armor and the man on the zorca whose back I had broken had not died of the javelin, for it had failed to penetrate his backplate. I balanced easily, the sword held low, and I laughed at these professional killers.
A shrill screaming that had been fracturing the air all the time gurgled away as I laughed. The three dancing girls, who had so short a time ago been laughing from their preysany-palanquins, had been shrieking and screaming; but when I laughed they stopped, and they remained silent thereafter.
Then, I confess it not without a knowledge of how foolish and inflated it makes me appear, I shook the Savanti sword at them, and I shouted: “Bite on a sword for a change, you cowardly kleeshes who murder old men."
Their rage was a wonderful and edifying sight.
They dug in their spurs and they charged.
I am a clansman, of the Clan of Felschraung, and I have faced the earthshaking charge of a whole hostile clan astride their voves. The zorca is not an animal a clansman uses in the massive barrier-smashing charge.
“Fools!” I said, and set to work.
I here proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that the Savanti sword was, and again, at least in my hand, a better weapon than the rapier. I had no main-gauche. The first man simply tried to spit me through as though I were a target at practice. I flicked his blade aside and as he passed I struck his thigh. The stirrup alone kept his leg from falling off.
The second man, seeing this, attempted to rear his mount back and slash me down the face. The zorca is a nimble animal—perhaps there is no more nimble animal on all Kregen, certainly there is none on this Earth—but I was quicker and slid the blow, reaching up and forward, and so passed my blade through his guts just beneath the corselet rim. I withdrew and flung myself sideways. The next man's blow would have clanged off my helmet comb had I been wearing one.
Mind you, unless you are a superb horseman or zorca-man it is deucedly difficult to fix a man who insists on dodging all around you and intends to unseat you or smash you or in some other unpleasant way do for you first. The third aragorn came out of his stirrups all flailing with my left hand gripping his left boot. He tried to cut down on me, but my blade deflected his blow, and as he struck the ground I sliced the sword down. The way I was feeling must surely be indicated by the fact that his head jumped clean off his shoulders and rolled under the middle preysany-palanquin, whereat its occupant swooned and fell out, a heap of jumbled silks, gold, and bells in the dust.
The fourth aragorn had no intention of quitting, I'll give him that; he was angry, so enraged that he roared in, screaming abuse, swirling his rapier, madly intent on finishing me off. I didn't want to kill this one. Him, I would like to question; but the fool ran himself onto my blade. It went through his throat. By Zair, but he was a fool!
Mind you, I must take a share of the blame. But, there they were, six dead aragorn littering the dusty street of the village.
Then it began to rain.
If the villagers wanted to take that as an omen, they might. Certainly, the raindrops felt cool and sweet. I walked over to the palanquins. The two petal faces regarded me in horror. They were not particularly pretty girls, but curved and complaisant, as I judged, able to wiggle their hips and rotate their bellies and jangle their bells. I spoke quite pleasantly.
“How do you wish to die? Would you like to be hanged, burned, beheaded? Perhaps you prefer drowning? I am in no hurry. Just make up your minds and then let me know.” They cowered back, shattered, shrunken, unable to implore, seeing in my face only darkness and evil. I swung back. “Oh—there might be a way—but no. I am sure you will wish to die."
Then I strode off and left them. Bibi and her man were freed. His name was Tom—yes, the same as our Earthly Tom, although not deriving from Thomas—and although thin he was well-muscled and active and a very merry man altogether. He eyed my sword.
“Lahal, Koter Drak,” he said, for Thisi had whispered the name by which they knew me. He shook his head. “I would not have believed it possible had I not seen it with my own eyes."
“Lahal, Koter Tom of Vulheim,” I said, for that was where he came from, a port town up the coast that was now a mere pile of rubble and burned beams, razed, destroyed, and abandoned.
He looked about, lifted his arms, and let them drop.
Certainly, the situation called for considerable thought.
The dancing girl woke up from her swoon and when she was given the news by her two companions promptly swooned again. The six slaves stood docilely by the calsanys, soothing them. They would be a problem. There were four men and two women, hardy, short-statured folk with thick oily black hair and flattish noses, bought in a market far from Valka, I judged. That made me realize they were probably in a special relationship with the aragorn; slaves, yes, but privileged slaves, doing domestic work and quite unlike the whipped and beaten slaves for which Valka was scoured.
“We had best tie ‘em up, Tom,” I said. We had quickly dropped formalities. But the use of Koter is obligatory in Vallia unless you know a man well. We felt, Tom and I that we did know each other tolerably w
ell. Time telescopes when you fight together—and his action in spoiling the aim of the javelin man, when he must have thought he would be instantly cut down, was as brave a stroke as any in any being's book.
“Will you really kill the girls?” Theirson wrinkled his nose up. He eyed me with a look that struck me as altogether too knowing.
They had heard him, for we were using Kregish.
“Certainly,” I said. “The aragorn are evil, and these perfumed dancing girls are likewise evil.” I heard them squeak, and sniffle, and realized they were crying now. That was one crisis over. “Of course,” I said loudly, taking Theirson by the arm and walking him away. “If they understand just how evil the aragorn are, and are prepared to mend their ways, then perhaps—"
By that time I had lowered my voice and walked sufficiently far off for them not to overhear us.
“I doubt that I could kill them, Theirson. I am a man of peace. I seldom kill in cold blood."
“Seldom?"
“For my sins."
“You are a strange man, Drak. Harsh and hard and merciless. Yet there is mercy in you. I will see what we can do with those girls."
Tom had joined us. He had possessed himself of the leathers of an aragorn, a rapier, and a main-gauche.
“They'll have to be watched. But they will give us valuable information.” I told Tom about the released prisoners on the beach.
“Panvals?” he said. “They can be useful to us, too."
The street was cleared, and the bodies stripped and buried. The slaves were placed in a hut, and an old man with a rapier stood guard over them. The largesse on the calsanys was distributed and the calsanys and preysanys themselves herded in with the village animals. We made the place spick and span again. And then we discussed what best to do.
I made my position clear. I would find a boat and go to Vallia. I saw Tom looking at Theirson. Tom would marry Bibi as soon as that could be contrived, and between them they could look forward to no life at all. Unless...
No one did any work in the fields that day. That night we ate well and drank wine for the first time in many a long day.
Prince of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #5] Page 4
