We galloped madly up to the running risslaca, who was a mere half-dozen strides from the crumpled form of the girl. The long bloodily gleaming blade high above my head blazed as the head of the crazed sectrix reached the tail of the lairgodont, reached past its flank, panted and gasped alongside the very fanged head of the monster itself.
Side by side we raced those last few strides, and then the longsword fell with all the weight I could put into it.
It struck shrewdly, just abaft the head on that sinuous neck.
The shrill the lairgodont let loose rattled the stones of the hills. I swung back with a wrench, prepared to strike again, and saw there would be no need. The monster swerved in its dead run, collapsing, toppling, its head flopping, and skidded in a long swathe of dust on its belly before it swiveled about, its legs spread, to come to a stop, tail limp, stone dead.
I hauled up the sectrix and jumped down, keeping the reins in my left hand. I rammed the bloodied longsword into the ground and knelt by the girl.
The risslaca had sprayed blood as it skidded past. She was drenched. Her green veil was torn away. So I looked down on her as she lay there.
I saw the full firm beauty of her form in the green riding gown, splashed with blood. I saw the beauty of her face, superb beauty, a perfection of features such as is seldom seen — but I must not maunder. She opened her eyes as I gazed. Her face in all its blood-splashed purity tried to smile. She licked her lips, those soft, sweet perfect lips.
"The monster-?"
"The lairgodont is dead, my Lady. There is nothing to fear."
"Then you-" And she raised herself, turning that imperious head to look. She saw the lairgodont. She saw me holding the reins of the sectrix, and she smiled.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is all right now. Hai, Jikai!"
"Perhaps, my Lady," I said. "It was a small Jikai." Her hair was a deep glossy black, curled in the fashion of the inner sea. A shadow crossed her face and her brown eyes widened on me. She reached a small firm white hand and gripped my arm.
"My lord Gafard! He is — he is-?"
"He is safe, my Lady." I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, a sensation I could not understand or explain. I thought she would respond to a small jest. "Judging by his shouts he is very sound of wind and limb — my Lady."
She stared at me, a long, level look. "Yes. Yes — I have seen you about the camp. I think I can trust you. You are this Gadak of whom my beloved speaks?"
"I am Gadak."
"And you are — as is he-"
I interrupted, always a rash thing for a mere soldier to do when speaking with a highborn lady. "Yes, my Lady. We are both. But it does not matter — you are safe."
She was a highborn lady. I felt that. I picked her up and felt her firm and warm in my arms and so carried her to the sectrix, who stayed calm now that it could smell dead lairgodont instead of ravening lairgodont. I did not wish to put the longsword all bloody back into the scabbard, even though this scabbard had not been made up for me by my beloved Delia. . I noticed the way she spoke so unaffectedly of Gafard. Perhaps, after all, there was a real affection, a deep love, between them?
How painful it must be for her, then! I knew nothing of her history, but if she was Grodnim by birth, then a love for a renegade would reduce her in the eyes of her family. If she was Zairian and had been captured, perhaps made slave, then how much more painful it must be to receive wealth and privilege and love from a man who had turned his back on Zair.
I looped the bloodied longsword through a rear strap and let it dangle. If it thwacked the beast a little it would help it along. It had done well. I would revise my opinion of sectrixes in its favor. Its name was Blue Cloud, and it was expensive, a gift from Gafard.
I took the girl in my arms again and mounted up, a trick I knew well from the days when I rode with my incomparable Delia. I held the girl close to my breast, supporting her, feeling her warm, firm body against mine, and she placed her slender arms about my neck. So we rode back to Gafard. We spoke but little, silly inconsequential stuff, for she was a great lady and the shock of her experience had not all worn off, although she affected to regard it as a mere incident. A fold of the veil tangled about her waist and the hunting gown were all of green, yet the lairgodont’s blood had splattered them with red. I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, for I judged she was still very young, and the perfection of her beauty would set any man mad and inflamed with passion. Yet I felt a strange otherly feeling for her in which my own profound and abiding love for Delia formed an inseparable part. As we rode back over the dust and left the dead monster behind, I thought about the many beautiful women I have known upon Kregen and of them all — even Mayfwy and certain others — none would have moved me had I never known Delia. But this girl might have. . Had I never met my Delia, then this girl, I thought, might have come in her time to take my Delia’s place. And this, I thought, as I reined up, was blasphemy. Gafard had limped out after us, raving. He had seen most of what had gone on. Like a warrior he had brought his sword with him. He was shaking. His face showed dirty gray beneath the bronze suntan.
"My heart! My heart!" He limped forward, desperate.
I set the girl upon the ground and she tottered.
"My beloved!" she cried.
Gafard dropped his longsword. The gleaming blade and the ornate hilt encrusted with jewels, all the symbolic power of the weapon, went into the dust. He took the girl in his arms. They held each other close. I walked away.
Yes, I thought, yes, there is genuine love here.
I, a grim old fighting-man, can understand love.
After a space, when I looked back, I saw that Gafard had adjusted what was left of the green veil, drawing it up to hide the glory of the girl’s face. He called her his pearl, his heart, the beloved of his days. He did not use her name.
That, too, I understood.
When, after a time, others of his retinue found us, he became all harsh authority, damning and blasting, calling down the wrath of Grotal the Reducer upon the beaters. He shouted passionately for his guards to take the head beaters and flog them and if they would not die to draw out their bowels until they did. Old-snake, torture, hideous death, would be their portion for allowing for a single instant any danger to his divine beloved. He desisted in his anger against them only when the girl pleaded for their lives.
"Jikaider them!" shouted Gafard, incensed, holding the girl as she held him. "Punish them so that all may know their crimes!"
Flogging them jikaider, with a right-handed and a left-handed man to wield the lash, was horrific punishment. But Gafard was at pain to point out why he was merciful. "You deserve to be shipped out to the Ice Floes of Sicce! But my Lady of the Stars has interceded for you, and I deny her nothing within my power! Thank her, you cramphs! Her orders are my commands! Go down on your bellies, you rasts, grovel to show your gratitude to the divine — to my beloved."
The beaters flopped down, howling, crying, wailing out their gratitude that they were to be flogged jikaider.
They were flogged most thoroughly, jikaider, and that night their howls sounded uncannily over the camp, stopping the cowardly and the guilty from much rest. That vicious crisscross flogging opens up a man’s back to the bone. Mere raw lumps of meat, the beaters, by morning. But they would have unguents applied and they’d be carried in litters and, after they’d recovered, would go back to the ranks. Tough, the swod of Kregen, the ordinary common warrior soldier. I wondered if they’d be paid the few obs they would have earned beating for the hunt. The beating had been of a very different kind, poor devils.
And yet, thinking that, next morning as we prepared to get under way again, I realized I’d have done exactly as Gafard had done — more, probably — if harm had come to this girl he called the Lady of the Stars.
In only a few more days we would reach the area in which our operations could start. Then it would be man’s work once more. The hebramen scouting ahead kept more particularly alert, for
these wild barbarians were notorious for their cunning and skill in ambush in this hard and sere region. Farther north the land of the tall forests led on and on until, at last, the land of everlasting whiteness was reached. I had no desire at all to journey there. What I did now was a part of the plan I had formed. Duhrra followed me still because I had promised him I knew what I was doing and he had had evidence of that in the past.
"We will for a time act the part of Grodnims, Duhrra of the Days. We do not fight Zairians-"
"No! Mother Zinzu the Blessed forfend!"
"Yet when we reach the Eye of the World again we will have proved ourselves of the Green. Then we may escape."
"Duh — let us crack a few skulls before that, Dak, my master."
"I am Gadak now."
"Aye! And they call me Guhrra, may Zair rot their-"
"Easy, easy. The camp has ears."
Duhrra had been about the camp, ears cocked, picking up all the scuttlebutt that forever circulates where fighting-men congregate. I wanted to know about this girl, this Lady of the Stars. There was precious little to know. The men speculated on the mysterious occupant of the palankeen and the great tent, of course, in the scabrous way of warriors. The story that had gained the most currency said that she was a Zairian, from Sanurkazz, and had been taken in a swifter by a squadron commanded by Gafard. He had found her in the aft state cabin and from that moment on no other man had seen her face.
"In a swifter?" I said. "Passing strange, for a woman to be in a swifter in action."
"It is known."
"Aye. It is known. And is that all?"
"None know her name, none know her face. Four men — trusted men — have been flayed alive by Gafard’s orders for trying."
The majority of the personal bodyguard maintained by Gafard about the tent were not apims. That would greatly reduce the dangers, of course, although no sane man trusted a woman to the protection of some races of diffs. Gafard chose wisely.
The moment came to which I had been looking forward with an interest that had led me to keep Blue Cloud always in perfect condition, a bag of provisions knotted to his harness, to sleep lightly and to have the edges and points of all my weapons honed razor-sharp.
The summons reached me carried by one of Gafard’s aides. I went with him to the campaign tent in which Gafard dictated his orders and kept his official being. Only when he had discharged his duties would he dress and anoint himself and go to the great tent where the Lady of the Stars awaited him. Among his retinue I had, as I have said, made no real enemies apart from his second in command. This was a certain man called Grogor. He was a renegade, also. The situation was obvious. Grogor feared lest I, the new friend of Gafard’s, might oust him from his position. I had been at pains to tell the fellow that I had no intentions of doing any such thing. He had not believed me. Now Grogor, a bulky, sweaty man, but a good fighter, motioned me into the campaign tent. Gafard sat at a folding table affixing his seal to orders and messages. He looked up and waved me to sit at the side and wait.
His stylor, a slave with privileges as a man who could read and write, was, as was common, a Relt. The Relt gathered up all the papers and their canvas envelopes in his thin arms and, bowing, backed out. The flap of the tent dropped. Gafard lifted his head and looked at me. I had not been called to ride with him since the episode of the lairgodont and the hunt.
"You have been wondering why I have been cold to you in the last few days, Gadak?" It needed no quick intelligence to understand why. I said, "Yes, gernu." He put his hands together and studied them, not looking at me as he spoke.
"I owe you my gratitude. I do not think I would care to live if my beloved no longer lived and walked at my side."
"I can understand that."
He looked up, his head lifting like the vicious head of a striking lairgodont itself.
"Ah! So you are like all the rest-"
There was no way out of this save by boldness.
"I saw the face of the Lady of the Stars. Yes, it is true. You have had men flayed for less. But when a lairgodont rips at one, and the green veil is already torn away, there is not much choice." He still stared at me. He measured his words. "Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman in all the world?"
I have been asked that question — and most often by silly women seeking to gain power over me -
many times, as you know.
Every time, every single time, the answer was automatic, instant, not needing thought. No woman in two worlds is as perfect as my Delia, my Delia of Delphond. Yet. .
I hesitated.
He thought I feared, perhaps, to speak the truth, hesitated for the reason directly opposite to the truth. Often, although my own feelings needed no thought to arrive at the truth, that none could compare with my Delia, I had temporized — most particularly on the roof of the Opal Palace in Zenicce. Now my hesitation held none of calculation.
I said, "The lady is more beautiful than all women — save, perhaps, for one." He seized on that.
"Perhaps?"
"Aye. But beauty is not all. I know nothing of the lady’s perfections — and I do know a lady whose perfections are unmatched, in her beauty, her spirit, her love of life, her courage, her wisdom, her comradeship, her love-"
He sat back. That small ironic half-smile flitted on his lips and vanished.
"I do not think you lie. You speak too warmly for lies."
Here there was no need for me to go on. He would decide what to do with me. If he decided against, then I would decide if he must be killed at once or if I dare leave him merely gagged and bound. Perhaps something of those wild leem thoughts showed in my face, although I own I would have been extremely wroth had I thought that possible: perhaps he realized more than I gave him credit for at the time.
"You know little of my history, Gadak."
"I know little, gernu. Men say you were a Jikaidast. If that is so it is no wonder you always win." His smile broadened, became genuine, warm. "Were I not so busy — with this and that — I would call for the board at once, the grand board. Yes, I was a Jikaidast, in Sanurkazz." These Jikaidasts are a strange lot, strange in the eyes of ordinary men who love the game of Jikaida and play when they can. A Jikaidast lives only for the game. As a professional he plays to earn a living, and these men are found all over Kregen earning their living from the highest to the lowest levels. The greatest of them even aspire to the title of San, which is given to great savants, wise men, and wizards. There is much to be said about Jikaida and Jikaidasts, as you will hear. The odds would be against the manner of the master’s winning, not if he would win. Handicaps would be set, a simple matter of removing a powerful piece, say a Paktun or a Chuktar, or of giving the privilege of extra moves. Gafard, the King’s Striker, said, "I was known as a Jikaidast who could win after having surrendered my Pallan from the call of ’Rank your Deldars’."
I resisted the temptation to fall into the deadly trap of talking Jikaida. That way lies the engulfment of many burs of a man’s life.
"You were a hyr-San, gernu. But of aught else, I know nothing." He showed his pleasure. This was the first time I saw him as a human being apart from those traumatic moments when he had clasped his lady to him after the hunt of the lairgodonts.
"There is little to tell, as a Zairian. My home was too small, the people too small, my opportunities too small. When I fought for Zair men smiled. I was taken by the Grodnims. I did as you have done. I think the decision hardened me, made of me different flesh. I am a man among men now, the keeper of the king’s confidence, his Striker."
"And Sea-Zhantil," I said.
I couldn’t resist that little dig. He nodded. "Aye. I value that. You know it. It was borne by a man who-" He glanced up sharply at me, and I saw he felt his own surprise.
"You were brought here to listen to me, Gadak. I tell you this because I have taken a liking to you. But treachery is rewarded by a knife in the back, just under the ribs."
"Aye. Perhaps that is all it deserves.
"
Again that probing look. If I was to take him seriously, for he was a mortal powerful man in his own surroundings, I would have said, then, that he was puzzled by my attitude, realizing he dealt with a man who might be of more use to him than he could have imagined.
"That is sooth." He picked up a dagger that threw scattered shards of light from the gems packing the hilt, and he twirled it as he spoke. If there was a meaning here, he was underlining it too obviously. "I am a king’s man. King Genod is a wonderful man, a genius at war, commanding, powerful — he has the yrium. I do not forget that. But-" Here he again broke off and flicked the dagger into the ground. The sharp blade struck and stuck, the hilt vibrating just enough to fill the tent with leaping colors. "But he demands women. He takes women and uses them and discards them. It is his only weakness; and, for a man such as he, it is not a weakness."
"I can see that. But the princess Susheeng?"
"She carried much weight when King Genod defeated the overlords of Magdag and took the throne. She supported him and in return is his official queen — although, well, it is all in the loving eye of Grodno. I tell you this, Gadak-" He interrupted himself yet again, rising and prowling about the tent, his fierce face thrust forward. "It is all probably common knowledge. Susheeng has her powers. She must tolerate Genod’s caprices. Do not whisper this in your cups, for you may wake up minus your head."
"I believe I understand, gernu. The veil, the concealment so that no man may see her face — yes, I understand."
"Be sure that if you do understand you tell no one."
I felt it was about time he eased up from this fraught excitement. And, anyway, confidences like this were damned dangerous secrets. So, to goad him, I bellowed.
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