The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales

by L. Sprague De Camp

  The camel's hindquarters rose with such suddenness that Vakar was pitched off its back on to his head in the roadway. He saw stars and wondered for an instant if his neck were broken. When he rolled over and got to his feet the camel was standing beside him, still chewing. Its legs were hobbled with a tackle of braided rawhide to keep it from running away.

  Now how should he mount the creature without a ladder? He tried speaking to it and tapping it here and there with the whip, hoping to persuade it to kneel again, but the camel stood masticating while the wrack of conquest and massacre swirled past it.

  At last Vakar untied the hobble, planted the Gwedulian spear in the ground, and hauled himself up hand over hand, kicking and straining. He took hold of the spear and whacked the camel with the whip, whereupon it grunted and started up with a jerk that nearly unseated him for the second time. He found that a camel did not trot: it paced, jerking its rider from side to side until Vakar thought he would fly to pieces. In his present bruised and battered state the motion was torture. He clung to the post in front of the saddle, and by sawing on the reins got his mount headed out of Tokalet.

  The sounds of massacre died away behind Vakar as the camel racked along the road that followed the shore of Lake Kokutos southward.

  -

  XVI. – THE WIZARD OF GBU

  Vakar Zhu rode along the margin of Lake Kokutos seldom seeing a living person. Sometimes he passed through a village, but it was either deserted or Gamphasant corpses lay about, showing that the Gwedulians had arrived before the inhabitants had time to flee. In the stifling heat the bodies became noisome in a few hours, so that Vakar learned to detour such settlements.

  The few live Gamphasants he saw fled screaming at the sight of his head-cloak. Bands of camel-riding Gwedulians paid him no heed save to call an occasional hail. When he came upon a group of them in a sacked village he stopped to watch them manage their camels. When he rode on he at least knew the tongue clicks used to make the animals kneel and rise.

  When the food in the Gwedulian's provision-bag ran low, Vakar killed an abandoned cow and, using the copper head of his lance and his stone ax, cut the more accessible portions of the meat into narrow strips across the grain. After hours of sweaty work he hung a hundred pounds of these strips on the camel's saddle to dry. Thereafter until the beef was jerked at the end of the following day he rode amidst an opaque cloud of buzzing flies and blessed the voluminous head-cloak for keeping most of them off his person. He would have preferred a nice compact pig, but the Gamphasants did not seem to keep them. In fact he had not seen a pig, barring the big wild tuskers of the inland savannas, since leaving Phaiaxia. When the beef was dried he scraped the flies' eggs off it with his nails and stowed it in his bags.

  Vakar had always been accustomed to travelling with a lavish equipage of spare clothes, toilet-articles, weapons, and trade-metal, and one or more menials to carry the stuff. Now that the Gamphasants had stripped him down to fundamentals he learned that one can live on a much simpler level, with practically no worldly goods save a supply of food or means for getting it. He never learned to like it, though. He missed Fual keenly.

  Because of the terror incited by his costume he had less trouble on this leg of his journey with men than with his mount. Though a tame and tireless beast, able to eat anything in the plant line, it was also stupid and unresponsive, quite apt unless watched to stop short in the middle of a morning's run, fold its long legs (pitching Vakar over its head) and settle down to a placid session of cud-chewing.

  By painful experiment Vakar mastered the art of camelitation. To make the camel go one waved the whip where the animal could see it; to stop it one pulled the reins and hit the beast over the head with the butt of the whip. Its racking pace was hard enough; its walk was worse, bouncing less but jerking the rider back and forth and from side to side in a labyrinthine pattern; while its gallop was impossible to endure for any time.

  Vakar missed Fual and somberly pondered on the bloodshed that had dogged his track. Surely the gods had it in for him. Nearly everybody who had been friendly to him—Queen Aramnê, Fual, and Abeggu of Tokalet—had come to a violent end. What curse lay upon him? He was not a bloodthirsty man, but one who only asked to be allowed to go about his business in peace ...

  As Vakar neared the southwest end of Lake Kokutos the farms thinned out and the signs of Gwedulian violence ended. Vakar took off the stifling face-veil and stopped the camel within earshot of a goatherd who did not seem to have heard of the invasion, for he did not run away. With their few words in common and much sign-language Vakar learned that beyond the end of the lake a track continued across the sandy wastes to the Oasis of Kiliessa, and beyond that one came to the Akheron River which flowed to the sea. The goatherd had never heard of Tartaros and its black craftsmen, but Vakar was sure that he could find that region once he reached the Western Ocean.

  -

  Two days later Vakar rode over a rise into sight of the Oasis of Kiliessa. A glance showed human beings moving among the palms. Tired of hearing no voices but the yap of jackals, the laugh of hyenas, and the gargling groans and grunts of his camel, he rode rapidly down the slope with a hail on his lips.

  As he neared the oasis there was a stir of activity and mounted figures came out towards him: three men on asses, beating their beasts along. As they came nearer the leading rider nocked an arrow and let fly just as he passed the camel. The shaft grazed Vakar's face, tearing a two-inch gash in his cheek at the edge of his beard.

  Vakar was so caught by surprise that he did not even try to dodge the arrow, but then he moved quickly. The second and third men each held a bundle of javelins in one hand and poised a single such dart in the other as they came closer. The second man's javelin struck the saddle-frame. Vakar, holding the saddle-post with one hand, leaned over and drove his lance into the third man just as the latter threw. The javelin went wild and the man's ass continued its rocking gallop, the man clawing at the spear so that the shaft was wrenched out of Vakar's hand.

  Vakar turned the camel around, slipped the ostrich-hide buckler over his forearm, and started back towards his assailants, pulling Gwedulian javelins out of their quiver. The first two attackers had turned also. As they came close again each loosed a missile as Vakar threw two in quick succession. Vakar caught the arrow with his shield; the other foe's javelin struck the camel. One of Vakar's javelins missed while the other struck the archer's donkey, which bucked with such violence that it pitched its rider off into the sand.

  The man whom Vakar had speared had now fallen off his ass. The remaining rider took to flight, galloping off into the desert. The archer got up and started to run. The Lorskan followed him, throwing flint-headed javelins until the man collapsed with five of the things sticking in his back. Then Vakar knelt his camel, walked over to the man, and brained him with the stone ax.

  Vakar took stock. The man he had speared lay dying with bloody froth running from his mouth. The wounded ass was disappearing over the sky-line, while the un-wounded one had fallen to nibbling on a desert shrub. Vakar examined the camel and found the stone-pointed javelin stuck into the shoulder-muscle. He pulled the dart out; the camel bled a little but chewed its cud without appearing to notice the wound.

  Vakar picked up his spear and cautiously approached the palm-trees. The other human occupants of the oasis comprised twelve naked Negroes: nine men and three women, fastened together by means of a set of wooden yokes strung together like a chain. One named Yoju spoke some Hesperian, the universal trading-language of the coasts of the Western Sea. Yoju explained:

  "We are from between the Rivers Akheron and Stoux, but inland from that land you call Tartaros. The chief of the Abiku (may his wives bear scorpions) enslaved us and sold us to these traders, who were taking us to Kernê. We hope your lordship will not slay us."

  Vakar asked: "Why did the traders attack me?"

  "Because they greatly fear Gwedulians, who slay all who come across their path. Thinking you a scout for a
party of raiders, they thought their only chance was to kill you before you could fetch your fellows."

  More useless bloodshed! Vakar leaned upon his spear in thought. He could use a couple of stout slaves and would have had no great compunction about so employing these people. But as a practical matter he could not use all of them, for being afoot they would slow him to a walk. They would be of little use chained, and if he unshackled them they would likely murder him in his sleep and flee. Even if Vakar had been willing to butcher all but one of the Negroes in cold blood (which he was not) that one might still stave in his skull with a stone some night.

  "What," he asked, "would you do if you had your choice?"

  "Return to our homes!"

  "Then hear me. I am no Gwedulian, but a traveler on his way to Tartaros. I am minded to free you. Have you enough food to take you back to settled country?"

  "Yes."

  "In addition I need a servant to accompany me to Tartaros. If you" (he indicated Yoju) "would like to ride home instead of walking, you may come with me, earning your food and fare. If I release you and carry you as far as Tartaros, will you swear by your gods to serve me faithfully until I find the man I am seeking there?"

  The man swore. Vakar freed the Negroes, stripped the corpses, and rounded up the unwounded ass. He found that he had acquired a good woolen tunic to cover his nakedness, several gold rings and a fistful of copper torcs, and a bronze sword: a two-foot chopper with a double-curved blade like a Thamuzeiran sapara.

  As his own wound had begun to sting abominably, he looked at his reflection in the water of the oasis. The luxuriance of his beard, now all matted on one side with dried blood, startled him. He thrust his face into the water to wash away some of the blood and dirt, and pinned the edges of the wound together with a small golden pin that he had found among the effects of the dead traders.

  One of the Negroes spoke to Yoju, who translated: "He says that as whites go you are a good man, and if you ever come to his village you need not fear being eaten."

  "That is kind of him," said Vakar dryly. "If you are ready we will set out."

  He mounted the camel and signalled it to rise. Yoju mounted the ass and together they started southward. The remaining Negroes waved, after them.

  -

  Twenty days later Vakar arrived at Tegrazen, at the mouth of the Akheron, and once again heard the boom of the surf. The town was formidably walled against a possible Gorgon raid. The language was similar to Gamphasantian and Belemian, but many of the people spoke Hesperian. The houses were mixed: some of the mudbrick Gamphasantian style, some stone Kernean-type dwellings, and some beehive thatched huts like those of the Negroes to the south. The population was equally mixed: tall brown Lixitans, bullet-headed yellow-skinned renegade Gorgons, bearded Kerneans, Tartarean blacks, and all intermediate shades.

  Vakar thrust through the teeming tangle, towing his camel. The town boasted an kin where Vakar took a place on a bench with his back to the wall. (He had made a habit of doing so ever since his experience in the house of the Ogugian witch Charsela.) The inn-keeper set down big blackjacks of tarred leather and filled them with barley-beer from a gourd bottle. Vakar was setting down his mug when he observed a curious expression in the eyes of Yoju.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  Yoju pointed. Vakar craned his neck and saw, on the end of the bench, a man dressed as a Kernean trader, a horny-skinned fellow with a full black beard speckled with gray—but the man was less than two feet tall. This midget was drinking barley-beer too, but out of a child's cup.

  When the innkeeper came to refill Vakar's blackjack, the latter jerked a thumb, saying: "What on earth is that?"

  "Him? That is Yamma of Kernê. When his accident happened he did not dare return home, but settled in Tegrazen as a dealer in metals. Would you like to know him? He is a friendly little fellow."

  "I should indeed," said Vakar.

  The innkeeper picked up the midget by the slack of his tunic and set him down upon the table in front of Vakar, saying: "Here is a traveller named Vakar Lorska, Yamma, who would like to know you. Tell him the story of your life: tell him what happened to you when you told that witch-doctor he was full of ordure."

  "I should think it was obvious," said Yamma.

  "What witch-doctor is this?" asked Vakar.

  "Fekata of Gbu, the greatest smith of Tartaros. If I had known who he was and had not been drunk I should have been more careful."

  "Tell me more of Fekata. He sounds like the man I seek."

  "It is said he can pull down a star from heaven with his tongs and hammer it into shape on his anvil. He is headman of Gbu, in the middle of the peninsula of Tartaros, halfway to the Abiku country. When you find him, spit in his soup for me, though he will probably turn you into a scorpion for your trouble."

  -

  Gbu was, like all Tartarean towns, a cluster of beehive huts, whence came the barking of dogs, the yelling of children, the tinkle of the bells hung round the necks of a Kernean trader's asses, and the buzz and clang and clatter made by the craftsmen of Tartaros as they plied their trades. Vakar threaded his way among the stalls of woodcarvers, bead-drillers, jewel-polishers, shield-makers, and goldsmiths until he found the premises of Fekata, Headman of Gbu, smith, and wizard.

  Fekata had his smithy in an open shed alongside the clump of huts that served him and his wives for a home. A fresh leopard-skin hung at the back, drying in the sun. A young Negro tended the furnace, while in the middle of the shed Fekata himself hammered a bronze ax-head into shape with a stone-headed sledge-hammer. He was a middle-aged Negro of about Vakar's height, but much broader, with a prominent potbelly and the most massive and muscular arms that Vakar had ever seen. One eye was blinded by a cataract, and a short grizzle of gray wool covered Fekata's head.

  As Vakar approached, the smith looked up and stopped hammering. The buzz of flies became audible in the quiet. Vakar identified himself and asked:

  "Are you he who made a ring from the metal of a fallen star?"

  "That is true, and if I ever catch the blackguard who swindled me out of my price on that job ..."

  "What happened?"

  "Oh, it was long ago, though I, Fekata of Gbu, do not forget such things. There was a beggarly trader from Tritonia, one Ximenon, who had been in the Abiku country when the thing fell with a great flash and roar and buried itself, and he had tracked it to the spot and dug it up. He promised me enough ivory and gold to break the back of that camel of yours if I would make him a ring of the metal of the star. I did, though it took a crocodile's lifetime to learn how to work the stuff. Then when he had the ring he started off on his ass as jaunty as you please. 'Ho,' said I, 'where is my price?' 'Come to Tritonia when I have made myself king and I will pay you,' said he, and away he galloped. I threw a curse after him that should have shriveled him to a centipede—not knowing then that the star-metal was a protection against all magical assaults. Later I heard he had become king of the Tritons by the help of this ring, but I did not see fit to travel half-way across the world on the slim chance that Ximenon would honor his promise. What do you know of this?"

  "King Ximenon is dead, if that pleases you," said Vakar. "As for the fallen star, is this it?" He produced the Tahakh.

  Fekata's eyes popped. "That is it! Where did you get it? Did you steal it from Ximenon?"

  "No, from another king: Awoqqas of Belem. How he got it I do not know, though I should guess Ximenon gave it to him in return for help in making himself king of the Tritons. Could you make more rings from it?"

  Fekata turned the lump over in his huge hands, his good eye gleaming. "For what price?"

  "I have several ounces of gold, and some copper ..."

  "Pff! I, Fekata of Gbu, have little need of gold and copper. I make enough from my regular work to keep myself and my six wives and twenty-three children in food and drink. But to work on a new metal... I will tell you. I will make one article for you—one only—from this piece, and in payment you shall gi
ve me the rest of the piece. How is that?"

  "What? Why you damned black swindler—" The smith shot out a hand and gripped Vakar's arm. The great fingers sank in and in, and Fekata pulled and twisted until Vakar thought his arm would come off. Though a wiry and well-muscled man he was like a child in the hands of this giant.

  "Now," said the smith in a deadly-soft voice, "what was that again?"

  "I said I thought your price was a little high," grunted Vakar, "but perhaps we can agree."

  The crushing grip relaxed. Vakar, massaging his arm and inwardly cursing the cross-grained temper that got him into these tiffs, said: "Will you agree before witnesses to make one article, anything I demand, in return for the rest of the star?"