Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Besides being a world of great beauty, Kregen is also a world of great and sudden violence, and there was no anticlimax to this night's work. Or, rather, the true anticlimax of my failed mission was masked by a flurry of action as four Rapa guards, carrying flaring torches, burst into the shed as I bent over an opened silver box.

  The sight of them in the torchlight with their ferocious beaked faces, the war-feathers flaunting from their helmets, and the swords and shields, snapped some link in my brain. I flung myself upon them, ripping the rapier free, my left hand still cumbered by the small cube of the fireglass box.

  They shrieked in their high obscene Rapa way as our blades crossed glittering in the torchlight. My cloak flared out, swirling, as I spun away, slicing a Rapa beak down, avoiding the vicious thraxter slash, stuffing the box back into my breechclout.

  “Apim rast! Die!” They were shrilling at me, incensed by the death of the first of them, absolutely confident they would overpower me. They were making an infernal racket, and as the blades crossed and rang and screeched, the noise grew and I knew guards would come running to reinforce these three. I dropped the next, my main-gauche slapped into my hand, and deflected the next one's thrust. My blade gonged against a shield and I had to skip and duck away. A sword-and-shield-man against a rapier-and-main-gauche-man provide endless room for argument; but it always all boils down in the end to who is the better practitioner with the weapons he uses.

  Luckily for me I was able to prove superior. The torchlight splintered from the blades as they chopped and crossed. The two remaining Rapas’ blades were shining and silver; my blade gleamed starkly dark with blood.

  “Yetch!” one Rapa shrieked at me, foam flecking from that beaked face. “When we take you it will be the Heavenly Mines for you!"

  “Aye!” panted the other, as he thrust up his shield and so managed to deflect my blade. “The Heavenly Mines, cramph, where you will slave until you die!"

  These guards would know the Heavenly Mines by hearsay only, by their fearful reputation. There was no information to be gleaned from them. I had slaved in the Heavenly Mines already, and nothing would drag me back there, so I thought, as I twisted a slash and feinted left, then dropped and was able to thrust the rapier through the guts of number three.

  Number four shrieked again, in fear this time, and turned to rush from the shed to the safety of his friends. I could hear them coming running, now, shouting the alarm.

  He had seen my face. It was bearded, true, and many Rapas cannot tell one apim from another; although with experience I was growing more and more capable of differentiating between Rapa faces. He was a guard and would also be experienced. He would be questioned.

  As the fool turned to cast back a frightened glance, the terchick stood out quiveringly from his eye.

  He collapsed against the door as those outside sought to thrust it open, and the slight delay gave me time to leap for the far end, bash a plank out, force more away from the beams, and so dart out into the darkness. Still the Twins were not up, but over the eastern horizon, She of the Veils rose, ominously lifting pale level streaks of gold and pink.

  Time was running out.

  The way back to the inn—an inn I had already made up my mind to leave for a more convenient billet—lay across either one of two bridges across the Black River to the sacred quarter. I chose to return over the built-up and arcaded bridge the Ruathytuans called the Bridge of Sicce, for its massive pillars and piers supported a pressing multitude of houses and shops, with promenades running as many as three or four stories above the main street level. From this high perch many and many a poor devil cast himself or herself into the dark waters in suicide to be swept away to the Ice Floes of Sicce. These galleries and arcades and narrow roofs gave me a fine time as I fled back. My cloak flared in the wind of my passage. She of the Veils rose clear of the jumbled horizon and shone benignly down as I scampered across the rooftops and jumped down from the ledges, level to level, passing across the river and so plunging back into the sacred quarter. Here I could leap from balcony to balcony, hang from ledges, crawl along a razor-backed gable, cling to a chimney, and hurl myself across the gulf of an alley far below. I do not think any eyes spied me as I cavorted across the tiles of sleeping Ruathytu.

  What kind of devilish figure, half beast, half gargoyle, I created, hurdling the rooftops, I did not know. I slid down the roof of my inn, plunged to the balcony of my room, and crept stealthily in by the window. I employed a couple of harmless Hamalian servants, and they were not disturbed in the next room. As I turned for a last look at this alien sky I saw She of the Veils floating clear. And against that luminous golden-pink orb floated a long bank of jagged black cloud like a reflection of the city below.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Of Chido, Casmas the Deldy, and Radak the Syatra

  The only result of the night's work that affected me could as well be summed up in the words of young Chido ham Thafey. “He must have been a man,” said Chido. “For the fellow left a knife behind him. He isn't the devil the guards would have us believe, by Krun, he isn't!"

  Chido, a young man who held a courtesy rank of Amak, for when his father died Chido would become a Vad, screwed up his chinless, watery-eyed, aimless face in a contortion expressing extreme amazement. We were in the throes of fencing practice and Rees was attacking Nath Tolfeyr with huge enjoyment. The high-windowed hall rang with cheerful shouts. Chido—well, Chido was Chido, a young man with much wealth, little sense, great charm, friend of Bladesmen, and with a burning desire to become a renowned duelist.

  The only result of the night, I say. Well, four dead men, be they Rapas or not, are not so lightly glossed over by me. I have found a greater respect for human life than a casual observer of my carryings-on on Kregen might imagine, and although the Savanti must share a great deal in those initial impulses, the shedding of blood except in the direst of emergencies remains abhorrent to me. I think my Delia understands. And, Kregen is a world where violence can get out of hand unless a man seeks and holds on to a doctrine, whether from some easy and externally imposed religion, or from a much more difficult inner compulsion, which will make him understand that a human life is a human life no matter in what form the spirit is encased. The unpleasant religion of Len the Silver Leem thrived on violence and lust and cheap promises of fulfillment.

  “Come on, Hamun, there's a good fellow,” sang out Chido. “Take up your wapier and let's have a set-to."

  “No, no, Chido. I feel too fragile just now."

  Chido always spoke like that, changing his R's to W's and affecting a high-pitched tone of voice, goggling eyes and all. I suppose no one can live in a country and fail to find someone for whom they can feel a spark of affection. Hamal was the bitter enemy of Vallia, and of my friends of Pandahem, and so that made Trylon Rees and Chido my enemies, too. But I did not hate them. They were jolly company. They amused me.

  Excusing myself, I left the salle and strolled out into the city. My life had followed a strange path since I had come here, almost as though a curtain had gone up on a new act. No very great deal of time had elapsed since I had last been hurled back to Earth by the Star Lords, for I had been moving very fast; but there was no sign of anyone I had encountered in my previous sojourn in Hamal. The depredations of the wild folk from over the Mountains of the West continued. The estates of poor Amak Naghan had not burned alone in that endless and bitter struggle on the far frontiers. And the burnings had been savagely echoed here, nearer the capital, in the recent revolt. I had seen a city burn, I had fought in the ruins of a local estate. Now this local violence was over, the Queen in full power, the laws of Hamal firmly on her side. There might be bandit raids of flutsmen from time to time, but the flutsmen were a thorn in the flesh of all the countries of Havilfar...

  So now I strolled and watched the throngs of people, all busy about the essential everyday tasks that keep a great city alive. In the sacred quarter within the old walls and the curved he
lmet-shape of the fork of the rivers, the streets run higgledy-piggledy, often narrow and cramped, shadowed, lined with shops and stores and arcades, with the townhouses of the great ones secluded beyond iron-spiked walls. To the west beyond the old walls lies the new town, where the boulevards run arrow-straight, where the Jikhorkdun stands proudly, where the new temples rise, where the Horters and the lesser gentry sometimes mingle in the passing phases of social movements. The Walls of Kazlili encircle the city in a wide encincture, the new Walls, pierced by stupendous gates, enclosing all the hustle and bustle of a mighty city, proud and arrogant in its power."

  The little wheeled vehicles trundled on their tracks behind their amiths, up and down the broader avenues. I thought of my adventures with Avec and Ilter, and of the time when in just such an amith-drawn carriage I had plunged my face into a basket of ripe shonages. Well, still on the trail of the voller secrets, I was now embroiled with an entirely new set of people.

  By day I lounged with this raffish set, gambled, drank, swore, raced. By night I followed up the hints and revelations I had uncovered in my talks. Two other voller manufactories had been entered, with the same barren results ... dirt and air. Now I was going to find out what I could of the manufactories where the amphorae came from, which were used to convey this mysterious dirt, this infuriating air. I knew the dirt was very similar to that earth and mineral we quarried in the Heavenly Mines in conditions of utmost horror. There were additions to the earth before it reached the silver boxes. So there must be other mines, somewhere in Hamal, making their contributions to the mix in the silver boxes. In the manufactory called Zhyan's Pinions—called that because an aerial view of the four blocks of brick-built buildings with their white stucco walls and roofs suggested the appearance of a zhyan in flight—the guls filled amphorae with this mysterious dirt. I had found that out from old Casmas, who had no ham in his name, was not of the aristocracy, and yet was tolerated—no, welcomed!—by these young bloods because his cognomen was Casmas the Deldy.

  And Deldys he had too, in plenty. He was near enough to a banker for that to fit him as a description; but usuring ways were more to his predilection, more to his way of life, and those rich fat golden deldys he lent came back to him well multiplied—or the young bloods rued the day and ran the gauntlet of their fathers’ displeasure. Casmas the Deldy had ears and eyes everywhere. His corpulence fitted him. He wore a great black cummerbund swathed around his belly—and, I had more than half an idea, some kind of ribbed corset beneath to hold him in—and rich gem-encrusted robes, and he kept his smooth satiny skin oiled and sleek. Oh, yes, Casmas fitted his part in the hectic life of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu.

  I had pumped him and gained information, but he had stonewalled on my request to be taken on a visit around the buildings of Zhyan's Pinions. I was not to get in as easily as that.

  “No, no, my dear Amak.” He was punctilious, was Casmas the Deldy, in his lubricious way. As I say, he fitted his part. “I am merely a poor money-lender scraping a living from young bloods. What those guls do down in Zhyan's Pinions is a mystery to me. All I know or want to know is that I am paid my due for my lovely golden deldys."

  He shut up then. But I guessed the government of Queen Thyllis, desperate after the devastation and the expenses of the successful revolt, was borrowing money everywhere, as hard as it could. Damned war! Always upsets the economy and makes it hard for a poor man to make a living. Just a simple straightforward fight between equals, one to one, as Trylon Rees had said, that should be the way of it. That would sort out the warmongers. But then, Hamal had the duel, developed to an art form and an entertainment.

  So I spent my days, wandering, scraping up information, at the salle, circumspectly at the baths of nine, seeking to worm my way into establishments where it was clear Queen Thyllis and her Pallans wanted no one's nose poking around. And, still, for all my working, for all my nighttime flittings over the rooftops, my cloak flaring under the moons, for all my smashing of amphorae, I came not a jot nearer. And, too, I guessed much more of this would arouse suspicions to the point where the Pallans must guess someone was after the voller secrets. They were sensitive about their vollers. They had already set heavier guard details. I had one or two merry fights to break clear, and left three more terchicks as evidence that the mischief was done by a man and not a demon with eight arms.

  I had to cover my tracks somehow.

  All the time these nocturnal expeditions were going on I ruffled my life away as one of the young bloods of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. I had now practically perfected that blank look of docile imbecility—and damned difficult it was, too, with a figurehead like mine.

  The precautions I took in the baths of nine so as to disguise my muscular development and the breadth of those shoulders of mine that, as a boy, had wrought such havoc with my clothes, to the despair of my mother, the sheer animal strength of the body God and adversity have blessed me with—all these precautions make me look back now with amusement. At the time it was deadly serious. The baths of nine—and they are worth a book in themselves—had to be most carefully indulged in, and I pleaded all manner of ingenious excuses. Only with Trylon Rees could I feel reasonably comfortable, and that because the lion-man thought he knew me best of all of them, and understood the burning desire in me to be a Bladesman, a desire frustrated by nature.

  Once, I recall, Rees received a challenge from a man—an apim—from some outlandish tribe of Hamal renowned for its wrestlers. With his great booming laugh the lion-man accepted the wager, and we all gathered around the mat, with the rules and the laws all carefully detailed, to watch and hoot and roar encouragement, and to lay wagers that made old Casmas the Deldy rub his sly hands together.

  The lion-man was a truly remarkable specimen of humanity. His massive golden mane, the golden flecks in his eyes, that tawny skin with the muscles sliding and roping, that bunched bursting power of him—only when I took a more careful look at his challenger did I give this man, one Radak, any chance at all. Then I looked more closely.

  Radak the Syatra came from a tribe living far away over by the Mountains of the West, remote and half cut off, under constant threat of raids, although not, I fancied, as forgotten as Paline Valley. His physique had clearly been developed from barbarian ancestors only a generation or so removed. Like a solid block of metal with the muscles deeply etched, as though by acid, with a round head jutting from between massive shoulders, he stood with his fists on his hips, a primitive killing-machine, entirely savage, appearing invulnerable.

  “Come on, Radak the Syatra! Let us see if you are made of steel or of flesh and blood!"

  “With the blessing of Havil the Green. On your own head be it, Notor!"

  Radak's body moved with that blur of speed that betokens an athlete in perfect training or a barbarian in his natural state. I knew savages. Simple-minded a barbarian may be, but he is quick-witted and cunning because he wishes to keep his skin on his back and his head on his shoulders—and not decorating the trophy posts of his enemies. I looked at the superb chiseled body of Radak with all that dynamic, unstoppable killing power and I knew that I, Dray Prescot, walked about in a body like that, for all that I took great pains with paints and disguises to conceal the facts.

  The fight took some time. Accompanied by the whistles and catcalls of the onlookers the two men wrestled. I knew with a little uncomfortable shiver that I'd best call into play those marvelous disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, if I was ever pitted against either of them, summon up the almost mystical tricks and systems that had given me the advantage in unarmed combat even over the fearsome Khamorros. These two wrestled country style. They grunted and grappled and heaved and fell with enormous splatting squashes and displays of colossal brute power. They streamed sweat. They roared and sledged each other, and twisted, and locked, and still each man remained on his feet. A few khamster grips and locks and they'd fall flat and down and out. I looked on, wanting Trylon Rees to win, of course, but feeling for Rad
ak, named for the voracious man-eating plant of Loh.

  Such a display of sheer primal energy! Crashings and bashings, simple barbarian strength pitted against only a fractionally more skilled civilized strength. In the end Rees managed to land so many elbow blows that Radak staggered back, his face a mask of blood, and Rees was on him, bearing him down, smothering him. For a few murs they twitched like a single dying beast, convulsively, each spasm following at greater and greater length, and then Rees patted Radak on the head and stood up, smiling and stretching, and it was all over.

  Casmas the Deldy came off reasonably well, although he forked out my golden winnings when I held out my hand.

  “You would bet on the Trylon Rees if he was sent against a chavonth,” Casmas grumbled. Rees was listening.

  “Aye,” I said in my best toadying manner. “Aye! For the Trylon Rees is a man among men!"

  Rees came over, hot and sweaty, and clapped me on the shoulder, roaring his good humor. I take no pride in all this: it was necessary, it was a distasteful task laid on me.

  The betting had not been entirely in Rees's favor. Radak, this massive chunk of barbarism, had been imported into the raffish and decadent world of Ruathytu's sacred quarter by a Vad who fancied he had a grudge against the Trylon of the Golden Wind. When the doctors had patched up Radak the Syatra he was led out. His Vad, an aristocratic shark called Garnath, had swung off with so black a look I knew the business had been nowhere near finished on the wrestling mat. Radak's eyes held all the ferocity of the true savage, smoldering with the inner fires of pure rage, well exemplified in many of the cycles of ballads surrounding the mythical figure of King Kranak whose story has been sung these many thousand years around the hearth-fires of Kregen. The lilt in the songs of Kregen is ideally suited to bring out the true barbarian savage, limning him in fine detail, with his heavy-jawed, low-browed face and mighty-thewed body. That treacherous lilt can abruptly break its rhythm to pitch the imagination over into dark abysses of the mind...