"I will borrow this," said the king, slipping it back upon his finger. "Strip him for sacrifice."
"Ho!" said Vakar. "Are you mad? What are you doing?"
Ximenon replied: "We are about to sacrifice you to Drax."
"But why, in the name of Lyr's barnacles?"
"For two reasons: First, old Drax has not had much attention from us lately. Curiously, since I came into possession of the ring, not one god has visited me in slumber. Secondly, I have sworn by the horns of Aumon to give you the ring. But I have not sworn to respect your life and liberty afterwards, and I cannot let so valuable a talisman leave the kingdom."
"Well, take the damned thing!" cried Vakar, sweating, as the guards peeled off the gaudy Tritonian raiment that had been lent him for the occasion.
"No, for your giving it to me under duress would not be a true legal gift. On the other hand when you die, having no legal heirs in Tritonia, your property falls to the throne. Therefore the only way I can legally fulfill my oath and retain the ring at the same time is to kill you."
"Queen Aramnê!" shouted Vakar. "Can you do nothing about this?"
The queen smiled frostily. "It is your misfortune, but I fully agree with my consort. We planned this stroke just now on the king's barge, while you were gauping at the flute-girls. And why should you complain? Better men than you have died upon our altars to insure our land's fertility."
"Strumpet!" screamed Vakar, straining in the grip of the guards. "Was my nocturnal performance then insufficient, that you turn me over to this treacherous hyena?"
He went on to shout intimate details of an imaginary liaison with the queen on Kherronex. At least, he thought, he might stir up jealous dissention between his two murderers, and escape in the turmoil or at any rate spoil their pleasure.
The king put on a sardonic smile, saying: "If you had been wise you would have kept your mouth shut and gained a quick death. Now, for slandering the queen, you must receive additional punishment. Flog him."
"How many strokes, my lord?" said a voice behind Vakar.
"Until I tell you to stop."
The first stars were coming out as Vakar's wrists were bound and hoisted above his head, so that he half-dangled with only his toes on the deck. He had sometimes wondered what he would do if flogged, and had firmly resolved not to give his tormentors the satisfaction of seeing him weep or hearing him scream.
But when the whip whistled behind him and struck across his bare back, sending a white-hot sheet of pain shooting through his torso, he found it much harder to bear than he had ever imagined. The first blow he took in silence, and the second, but the third brought a grunt out of him, and the fourth a yell. By the tenth he was screaming like all the others, and felt warm blood trickling down his back.
Swish—crack! Swish—crack! He jerked and screeched with each blow, though hating himself for doing so. The pain filled his whole universe. He would do anything— anything—
Then a vestige of his natural craft asserted itself. With a terrible effort he stopped screaming and relaxed, letting his legs bend, his head loll, and his eyes close.
After a few more lashes came a pause. A voice said: "The wretch has swooned. What now, sir?"
"Wake him up," said the king.
The rope that held Vakar's wrists was let run so that he fell at full length on the blood-spattered deck. He continued to play dead, even when a heavy boot slammed into his ribs and when a gout of cold water splashed over his head.
The queen said: "Let us waste no more time on him; I am hungry. Sacrifice him now."
"Very well," came the voice of the king. "Drag him over to the altar. You shall do the honors, Spaxas."
Vakar felt his wrists being untied. He was dragged across the deck to the small altar on which the lamb had been sacrificed for the wedding. Watching through slitted lids, Vakar saw the minister draw the broad knife and try the edge with his thumb, while the king stood nearby, leaning back against the rail.
Vakar relaxed as completely as possible, so that the Tritons had more trouble dragging him than they otherwise would have. When they got him to the altar they asked another of their number to help them hoist him across it, for by Tritonian standards Vakar was a big man.
Then came the moment when the grips on his arms were relaxed while the Tritons braced their feet and shifted their hands to lift him. In that second, Vakar came to life with the suddenness of a levinbolt.
With a mighty twist and jerk he broke the loose grips upon his arms, got his feet under him, and dealt the nearest Triton a punch in the belly that doubled the man up in a spasm of gasps and coughs. There was a shout from those watching:
"Watch out!"
"Seize him!"
"He is—"
Hands reached out from all sides, but before they could fasten on to his naked hide, slippery with sweat and blood, Vakar burst through them. He brushed past Sphaxas, standing open-mouthed with the sacrificial knife in his hand, and as he passed dealt the minister a buffet below the ear that stretched his length upon the deck.
Now one man stood between Vakar and the rail: King Xirnenon, three paces away. Vakar strained forward, leaning as if he were starting a hundred-yard sprint, and smote the back with the balls of his feet while the hands of the closing Tritons snatched at his bloody back. At the first break Xirnenon had reached for the silver-shafted palstave thrust through his girdle, and as Vakar bounded forward the bronze hatchet-head whipped up and back for a skull-shattering blow.
Vakar left the deck in a diving leap and, as the palstave started down, struck the upper part of the king's body head-first with outstretched arms. The stubble on the king's chin rasped his ear as he caught the king around the neck, and his momentum bore the king back against the crotch-high rail. Down and back went the king's torso and up flew his feet. In deadly embrace the two men tumbled over the rail into the dark water below.
The Lorskan let go as soon as they struck the water. With his eyes open under water he saw the cloud of bubbles that represented King Ximenon, the weedy bottom of the queen's ship beyond, and the king's tomahawk gyrating down into the blackness beneath. As his head broke the water he was aware of a strangled shout from the floundering king through the bedlam that had broken out upon the deck a few feet over his head.
Vakar took a deep breath, dove, and seized a sandalled foot that lashed out from the swirl of robes. He pulled it downward. The king came with it, eyes popping and mouth emitting bubbles. Vakar remembered that Tritons could not swim. Even if Ximenon were an exception, the fact that he was fully clothed and weighted with gold and jewels, while Vakar was nude, gave the latter an advantage. As the king started to rise towards the surface, arms and legs jerking wildly, Vakar pulled him under again.
Then Vakar felt a movement of the water behind him: the fluid pushed sharply at him as if displaced by the passage of a large body. A glance over his shoulder saw an immense crocodile, a forty-footer, bearing down upon them from the murk.
Vakar let go the king to use his arms for swimming just as the crocodile arrived with a tigerish rush. The great jaws gaped and clomped on the still struggling king. A hide of horny leather brushed past Vakar, tumbling him over in the water and lacerating him with its projections. He had a brief impression of the great serrated tail undulating lazily as it propelled the monster past him.
Vakar came to the surface again. As he shook the water out of his eyes and ears he perceived that he was now somewhat further from the galley, on which people rushed about madly, some yelling for bows, some for spears, and some for oars.
A bowshot away lay the king's galley. Vakar struck out for it, simultaneously trying to think up some specious story.
He swam as he had never swum before, ears straining to hear the first splash of the oars of the queen's galley behind him. He was over halfway to the king's ship when he heard it. At the same time an arrow plunked into the water nearby.
He plowed on. Another arrow came closer. The king's ship was near now; a row of e
xpectant faces Lined the rail. Someone called:
"What in Drax's name goes on over there?"
"A rope!" yelled Vakar.
The oars of the king's ship moved too, gently so as not to run Vakar down. A rope slapped across his tortured back. He grabbed it but was too exhausted to climb. At last they dropped a bight for him to wriggle into and hauled him up. He gasped:
"They slew the king! It was all a plot to get him into their hands. They cut the throats of the king and Sphaxas and all the other Tritons, and would have cut mine had I not dived over the side."
Exclamations of horror and amazement burst from the Tritons crowing round. An officer of the galley said:
"How do we know you are not lying?"
"Look at my back! Does that look like a fake?"
The captain of the galley roared: "I knew there was some such trick in the offing! Bend the oars; we will sink them before they slip away in the darkness! Stroke! Stroke!"
The galley moved with increasing speed in a path that curved towards the other ship. As the king's barge bore down, the oars of the queen's ship, which had been idle for some minutes, began to move again. But the king's ship was going too fast for the other to dodge. As the former neared its target, a chorus of screams burst from the queen's barge. In the dusk Vakar could see the Amazons running about, waving arms, and shrieking at the approaching ship. Crash!
The ram of the king's ship crunched through the side of the other as if it had been papyrus. With a terrible clatter and roar of breaking timbers and a thin screaming of women, the queen's barge broke up into a floating tangle of boards, ropes, oars, gilded ornaments, bright hangings, and thrashing human limbs. The king's ship plowed through the mass and out the other side, ropes trailing from her ram.
As the king's galley turned and headed back towards Menê, Vakar caught sight of a couple of moving objects on the dark surface of Lake Tritonis: crocodiles swimming towards the wreck. He felt a little badly about having caused the deaths of all those Amazons of lesser degree, who might not have had anything to do with the attempt to murder him. Vakar disliked killing women on grounds of waste not, want not. But then, he consoled himself, they were probably all as perfidious as their queen. And what else could he have done?
Though his experience had been exhausting, Vakar Zhu turned his mind immediately to his next step. The Tritonian Ring was gone for good in the belly of a crocodile, but the thing from which it had been cut, the "fallen star" (whatever that was) lay to the south in the realm of Belem. And if one ring had been made from it, another could be.
He must persuade the Tritons to give him back his property and be on his way—quickly, before somebody suggested that the death of King Ximenon had been his fault and they dealt with him accordingly.
-
Drax said: "The wretch has departed from amongst the Tritonians and is now riding south, with his manservant, towards Belem. While I cannot foresee events to happen in the neighborhood of Niowat, for reasons you know, I fear that his journey concerns the Tahakh."
The gods all shuddered. Entigta gurgled: "Somebody must warn King Awoqqas and set him against this man, or it will be too late." The squid-god spoke to Immut, the god of death of Belem. "Cousin, will you see to the matter?"
Drax glared round the circle and hissed: "I think there has been too much warning—to the wrong party." He looked hard at the Pusadian gods. "Are you sure none of you has been dropping a quiet word here and there to forewarn this Vakar of the doom intended for him?"
Lyr and Okma and the rest looked innocent, and Vakar Lorska cantered across the parklands south of Lake Tritonis.
-
They crossed wide grassy plains seeing immense herds of gazelles, antelopes, buffalo, ostriches, zebras, elephants, and other game. They skirted Lake Tashorin where crocodiles lay in wait in the shallows and herds of hippopotami bellowed and splashed, and finally rode up the dark defiles that led into the rocky range of Belem.
For several days after the Tritons had released him, Vakar had been in his gloomiest mood, seldom speaking save to snarl at Fual, and brooding on his own insufficiencies. Besides the tenderness of his healing back there was the feeling of defilement and degradation at having been flogged like a mere slave.
Then as the scenery became more somber Vakar cheered up. He said: "We were lucky to get away from that treacherous crew so easily. You know, Fual, it occurs to me that it must hurt you to be flogged just as much as it does me!"
"And why shouldn't it, my lord?"
"No reason; I've simply never considered the matter. You must hate me for the times I've beaten you. Do you? Be honest."
"No-no, sir. Save when you lose your lordly temper you're not a hard master to serve. Most slaves get far more beatings than I."
"Well, I apologize for any beatings I've given you in excess of your deserts." Then Vakar amused himself by singing an old Lorskan lay, The Death of Zormi:
"Heaped up in hills lay Bruthonian bodies
When a hailstorm of hits felled the far-famed one ...
There goes another!"
He pointed to where a goatherd bounded barefoot from rock to rock, his vermilion-dyed goatskin cloak flapping, until he disappeared. "Why should they all run from us as from a pair of fiends? We're not such fearsome fellows."
"I can't imagine," said Fual, "but I wish you'd never brought me to these dreadful lands of violence and sorcery. Ah, could I but see the gray towers of Kerys and the silver beaches of Aremoria once again before I die!"
The valet wept great tears. Vakar, with a snort of impatience said:
"Do you think I revel in sleeping on the ground and dodging death from wild beasts and wilder men? I'd rather settle down in some civilized city to the study of literature and philosophy, but I don't complain at every step. Having put our hands to the plow we must finish the furrow." He paused. "However, in view of Belem's unsavory reputation, you'd better get out my shield."
With the bronze buckler slung against his back Vakar felt better, though the sparse inhabitants of this barren land continued to flee from the sight of him.
"Why no houses?" he said. "I never heard the Belemians lived in the open like wild beasts."
Fual shrugged, but when Vakar began another song the Aremorian pointed and said: "Isn't that a house, sir?"
Vakar guided his horse in the direction indicated. The structure was a round hut of stones, roughly clunked with mud, which blended into the stony landscape. It had once possessed a roof of wood and thatch, but this had been burned off.
Vakar dismounted and kicked a skull that lay near the threshold of the hut, saying: "That was a child. There must have been war hereabouts. Since we can't get to Niowat tonight, this place will do."
As Fual set up the cooking-pot he said: "We haven't seen any of Awoqqas's headless servants, my lord. Let's hope we never do." He struck sparks from his flint and pyrites to start the fire. "Material dangers we've surmounted, but this is the home of the blackest magic in the world."
All was peaceful as they ate their frugal meal, watching the long shadows climb up those cliff-faces that were still illuminated. A hyena gave its gruesome laugh somewhere in the hills. Vakar said:
"Look at the horses."
The four animals were tugging at their tethers, rolling their eyes, and swinging their ears this way and that. Both men peered about and up and down, and Vakar's uneasy gaze caught a movement among the rocks. There was a shrill yell and—
"Great gods!" yelped Fual. "Look at them!"
Scores of men popped into view and rushed down the steep slopes, bounding from rock to rock and screeching. Some wore goat-skins, some were naked, and all were hairy and filthy. They carried clubs, stones, and boomerangs, and as they came closer the stones and throw-sticks began to whizz through the air.
"To horse!" cried Vakar, vaulting on to his own animal.
A stone clanged against the shield at Vakar's back as Fual scrambled on to his own mount with his usual awkwardness. A thump behind Vakar
and a neigh told him that another missile had struck one of the horses. With a quick glance to see that his cavalcade was in order, Vakar set off at a canter along the winding track to the south, hoping that his beast would not stumble in the twilight.
"Now," said Fual mournfully, "we have lost not only that good meal I was preparing for you, my lord, but also our only cooking-pot."
Vakar shrugged. "You can steal another."
"Why did they attack us?"
"I don't know; maybe they're cannibals. They kept yelling a word like 'Ullimen, ullimen' which as I remember means 'lords' or 'gentlemen.' But if they considered us aristocrats, why should they mob us? This part of the world must be stark mad."
Vakar led the way southward until darkness forced them to halt again. They snatched a cold meal and an uneasy sleep, watching alternately as usual, and took off before dawn.
The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales Page 14
