Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  She tried to scream and then to bite, and I showed her the error of her ways.

  “Do you know the Hortera Rosala of Match Urt?"

  Her eyes, wide with shock, blinked. I tickled her and said, “Blink twice if you know—” She blinked twice. I said, “Very good. Blink twice if you will keep silent if I take my hand away.” Instantly, two more blinks. I took my hand away, ready to slap it back at once if she yelled.

  She took a breath—she was a slip of a thing with lustrous dark hair in the cheap oil dip's light—and said: “I am Paline and the lady Rosala is my mistress; have you come to rescue her?"

  Those romantic plays and books that are the rage of Kregen with their foolish notions of high passionate love, and excursions and alarms! They have much to answer for.

  “How do you know, Paline, that I have not come to ravish you?"

  She giggled. She was thoroughly at home and enjoying every minute of it.

  “You wear a mask, and you carry a sword, and you are a Notor, sure. These things are not necessary to ravish Paline."

  I did not chuckle. I said, “Where is the lady Rosala?"

  She rose at once, clad in a long white nightgown, and on bare feet she led me out of her room and into the one next door. Rosala lay sleeping in the wide double bed, beneath a canopy ostentatiously woven of gold thread, with blue flowers and yellow faerlings embroidered upon it. Paline shook her awake. She sat up, her fair hair gleaming in the light, and saw me, and put a hand to her mouth.

  “The great Jikai has come to rescue you, my lady! We must dress and fly! Hurry, my lady, hurry!"

  “We?” I said.

  Rosala looked at me.

  “Surely, you who drew me from the zhyan's claws would not leave my faithful Paline? You would not desert a defenseless girl?"

  Almost—almost but not quite—I laughed at this.

  “Get dressed, Rosala, and you too, Paline. I would prefer to leave without a fight."

  At this Paline pouted. She was a vivacious girl, very much a gypsy with her dark hair and brilliant eyes.

  They dressed and I growled at them to wear dark sensible clothing and, by Krun, to hurry. At which, in a silent twitter—a state very easily induced in the middle of the night when a masked madman storms into your bedchamber, I assure you—they hastily gathered up this and that, knickknacks, combs, brushes, mirrors, silver boxes, shawls, toiletries. Significantly, Rosala had pitifully few poor gems to carry away.

  “I will carry these things, Notor,” said Paline. “For, doubtless, you will be engaged in fighting."

  Callous? Brave? Or merely a silly head stuffed with romantic nonsense from millennia-old adventures on Kregen?

  We crept out on tiptoe. Paline, it was clear, didn't mind if we did make a noise. She thirsted for my rapier to tickle the guts of these cramphs of Casmas the Deldy's household.

  Casmas employed a sizable retinue of servitors and guards, besides his slaves. They were originally from a variety of social strata and of a jumble of diffs; under the lure of his gold they would serve as reasonably well as one might expect.

  “This way, Jikai,” said Rosala. She was, by her use of that great word, now convinced that I was all kinds of hero. I just wanted to get this thing done with and set about my real tasks in enemy Hamal. We went through a rear passage.

  I thought we would win free without trouble.

  Then, as we came out of the shadows of the last flight of stairs with the rear door bolted and barred before us, Paline let out a squeak and cowered next to her mistress. Both girls huddled, shaken, petrified with fear.

  Two guards stepped from a doorway at the side. They were fully armed and accoutered in the fashion of Hamalian swods. They saw the girls and me and they did not hesitate. The Rapa's big vulturine beak parted as he let out a hoarse shriek of rage, and the stux fairly flew toward me in the lamplight. The Brokelsh, his hairy body huge and ominous under the armor, drew his thraxter and charged up the stairs after the stux.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Rosala.

  Paline licked her lips, recovered. “Now, Jikai! Fight!"

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  I buy a slave

  Whatever Amak Hamun of Paline Valley would have done was neither here nor there. I knew what Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, would do. The stux was snatched from the air in my left hand, reversed, and in a twinkling sent flying back. It took the Brokelsh in the throat above the collarband of his lorica. He could not shriek, but his eyes glared madly, and he clawed at the javelin embedded in his throat; then he toppled and fell with a smash.

  I hurdled his prostrate body, whirling the rapier. As I passed Paline I slapped her bottom with my left hand, and yelled: “Unbolt the door, wench! And jump to it!"

  The Rapa faced me bravely enough. These bird-faced diffs are a fierce and predatory folk, serving as mercenaries all over the place, and adept with weapons. Not so cruelly fearsome as Chuliks, perhaps, and Chuliks are devils from hell, but tough adversaries. My rapier crossed with his thraxter, he threw up his shield, and then I had slipped in, and, knocking the shield aside, gripped him by the throat in my left fist and drove the rapier into his body, fatally low. He writhed, but I held his throat, glaring madly into his face, and so prevented an outcry as he died.

  Paline was standing watching, her face shining and rapt.

  “The door, girl! Or must I whip you!"

  She shrieked and fled for the door. Rosala was there to help. Between them they unbolted and lifted the bar, struggling, until I dropped the Rapa corpse and leaped to aid them. The door opened and pink moons-light flooded in.

  “Wait,” I grunted. I peered out. No sign of any guards—but the leaping black-and-white shape of a wersting.

  He yowled and leaped. Damned intemperate, these hunting dogs. But he did not know me, and so was legally entitled to rip out my throat. I had no business here. I let him have the rapier, but he died shrilling in the wild ululating cry of the wersting.

  “Hurry!” I yelled and we belted heads down for the glass-topped wall.

  A fold of Paline's dress smothered the sharp edges. I hefted the two girls up, fairly hurling them over to fall shaken and scratched into the bushes on the far side. As I went over I heard an uproar behind me and caught the fiery gleam of torches. More werstings were ululating. I picked myself up, tore down Paline's dress, all ripped. I thrust the rapier through the dress in two quick passes, cleaned it, and then snapped it back into the scabbard. As I say, I do not like to foul with blood a scabbard Delia has given me. I grabbed the two girls, one under each arm, holding them around their stomachs, their arms and legs dangling, and ran for the shadows of the trees.

  As my clansmen of Segesthes say: “In for a zorca, in for a vove.” Rosala knew who I was, despite the mask. She had no business wedding old Casmas, anyway. I collected up my clothes and we bundled off into the dark streets of the golden quarter, hurrying up the tree-lined avenues, going through the narrow lanes of the Horters’ quarter, passing right by The Thraxter and Voller, going on toward my inn in the sacred quarter. Our cloaks muffled us. We moved with purpose. Link slaves were about, but I did not hire one for the journey. Slaves may be made to talk.

  No sign of pursuit developed. I own I felt relief that I did not have to kill one of Rosala's family. As I have indicated, I had shifted billets from the first inn I had patronized here, finding one in a narrower alley, with a convenient tree growing up giving me a quick passage from the adjoining roof. This inn was called The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, a reference to a more disreputable incident in the career of the Kregan Hercules.

  I hefted the girls up by their rumps, slid them along the tree branch, ignoring their squeaks, maneuvered them down onto my balcony. The window opened as Paline landed, and Nulty took her into his embrace, very familiarly, I thought, and dragged her inside. I pushed Rosala through and slammed the window and the shutters—and we had done it!

  Rosala of Match Urt would demand explanations, and I was not prepared
to give them. I fobbed her off with as little information as I could; the problem remained. What was to be done with her and her maid?

  If I felt that chance owed me some recompense, I do not think that was an unreasonable attitude. Chance and my own stupid cleverness had brought me into my present position, and chance must have relented, at least in the matter of Rosala.

  With the girls safely hidden in the next room, and Emin and Salima sworn to secrecy, a secrecy I felt confident they would maintain, for as much as I would trust anyone in their position I trusted them, we were in fit state to receive Chido on his morning call. The duel and its aftermath had left him with a fragile head, but a dish of palines soon cured him. We settled that we would walk out, and he told me he was in need of a new slave, for he had freed his slave of the zorcas, and was thus perfectly handicapped, dear fellow, in the zorca races.

  I gave Chido this, that he had freed the slave on good terms, giving him enough so that he was able to live comfortably as a clum. What his descendants might do was another matter, a problem of the clums.

  The various slave markets throughout the city always repelled me. They held an undeniable fascination, of course, but you know my view on slavery. We strolled down there, and only because, having taken this fresh hitch upon fate, and having decided that the next person who tried to insult or put down Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley, would get a bloody nose and a challenge and six inches of honed steel, I was persuaded to venture into haunts where unpleasant characters made it a habit to go for their morning refreshment.

  Long terraces set with tables and chairs overlooked the central area, where buyers might stand to make their bids. Water was continuously sprinkled, but as seems always the way with a slave market, dust puffed beneath the feet of the eager buyers. On the stone platform at the far end, with steps leading on and off, and the barracoons in the rear, the miserable bundles of humanity were paraded up and made to strip, clanking in their chains. Bidding was brisk. There are various slave markets, of course, catering for different qualifications in slaves. The simple laboring slaves were something of a glut on the market, what with the prisoners the war was bringing in, despite the huge numbers sacrificed in the Arena. This market dealt usually in skilled slaves, of the kind Chido needed as a zorcaman, a task that is nowise as simple as it sounds.

  We sat down on the terrace, out of the blaze of the suns, and watched the proceedings. The auctioneers took turns. They seemed always to be big broad men, able to crack a whip with a cannon-shot report, able to size up the points of their merchandise in just the right, honeyed words to bring the bids rolling in. And, too, they were honest with it. One husky-looking Bleg, with his batlike face hideous in the suns-shine, was revealed as having a broken and badly set leg, and his value came down accordingly. I suppose slaving is like anything else; once you acquire a bad name no one will trust your goods.

  Tothord of the Ruby Hills was there, sipping a light forenoon yellow wine, and eating a luscious gregarian mousse between sips. “What diff do you fancy, then, Chido?"

  “Apim, if possible. But I do not mind too much. I don't think I could stand the smell of a Rapa, though, by Krun!"

  “They don't smell so bad once you get used to them,” I said.

  Chido grimaced. “If you ever can!"

  All the slaves being put up, either singly or in teams, were male. Some of them were very valuable, skilled men. All had been tamed—or almost all...

  In the dust of the bidding area, a kind of arena of acquisition, most of the bidders wore a fold of their scarf flung across their mouths and nostrils. Obeying Chido's injunction, I had come with an orange scarf carelessly thrown over my shoulders, ready for when he dragged me down into the dust. He watched the slaves as they were put up, his young eyes shrewd. He was no fool when it came to slaves.

  Why, except by the actions of chance, had I happened to pick up an orange scarf, when Nulty had handed me a green one?

  Suddenly Chido stiffened like a ponsho-trag on the scent of a stray. “That's my fellow!” he said decisively.

  The slave was a brown-haired, well-built intelligent-looking young apim. The auctioneer bellowed that he had been captured in a raid in Pandahem, that he had been a member of a Lomian zorca patrol. Chido rushed off down the wooden steps from the cool terrace into the dust of shouting men, waving his arms, already bawling out ten deldys as a starter. I followed reluctantly.

  “Twelve deldys!” bellowed a Lamnia close by. “Fifteen!” screeched Chido.

  At a guess a smart zorca handler would be worth twenty-five. Prices fluctuated wildly, of course.

  The price rose. I was attracted by the novel sight of an auctioneer abruptly catapulting from the curtains at the back of the podium concealing the gates to the cages. The auctioneer was a big fellow; his whip was wrapped around his neck and he fairly flew through the air. He landed with a crash, and his personal slaves picked him up and dusted him off and hustled him back. I heard yells behind the curtain.

  “Twenty!” bellowed the Lamnia. These golden-furred halflings are shrewd merchants, and I knew he'd work it so that his final bid was twenty-five or so, thus forcing Chido, if he wanted the slave, to pay over the odds. And so it fell out. Chido yelped: “Twenty-three!” The Lamnia, dusting his fur, said, “Twenty-five,” and Chido was left holding the sticky end.

  “By Krun!” he said. “I've set my heart on that fellow!” And, with a loud roar, he hollered, “Twenty-six!"

  The apim zorca handler was knocked down to Chido. He pushed his way through to pay at the raised desk where a Relt, one of those gentle cousins of the fierce Rapas, took the money. I was looking after Chido, and sighing, and thinking dark thoughts about slavery, when a massive booming voice burst through the tumult. I heard it distinctly.

  “Notor Prescot! Majister!"

  I felt as though a whip had scorched my spine.

  I looked toward the dais. Guards were holding down a giant of a man whose four arms flailed their chains about, whose fierce red haired head glared intolerantly on the rabble. He saw me, he saw the way my hand flashed instantly to my lips, and he nodded. His bellowings ceased. At once, he became docile.

  A Djang!

  And I—I, Dray Prescot, was the king of the Djangs!

  Without a second's hesitation, I saw it all clearly.

  A stout apim in a green cummerbund bid twelve deldys.

  I waited.

  The bidding crept up, but slowly. All realized this ferocious four-armed Djang had been knocking the auctioneer and slave-masters about, and had not been cowed by whip or chains. He would prove an unacceptable handful in any decent household. Djangs were very rare as slaves, rare as mercenaries. They kept to their own land of Djanduin, ever ready to ward off the attacks of the Gorgrens, who sought to subdue and enslave them. Well, we had seen off the Gorgrens, Kytun and Ortyg and my army of Djanduin, seen them off handsomely. I did not recognize the Djang up there, being sold off like a beast, but he knew me. I was his majister.

  I shouted: “Twenty deldys."

  One or two faces turned in my direction, but I sidled away, and waited for an opposing bid; none came. I heard a man snigger and say: “The fool who buys that four-armed monster is buying trouble, by Havil the Green!"

  I paid the Relt. The twenty deldys just about cleaned out what I had in my purse. The Djang, still loaded with chains, stepped down to me. I saw a scurry in the crowd as men pressed away. They anticipated trouble. The chains, according to the law of Hamal, would be returned by me to the slave market within a day. I said: “Follow me, slave."

  “Aye, master."

  Here came Chido, leading his apim zorca handler.

  “Now, by Krun, Hamun! What in Hamal have you been up to?"

  “A whim,” I said, and turning, caught the eye of the Djang and winked. He did not respond. People were looking at him. Like any Djang, in tactical matters he was quick-witted.

  “I'm taking this fellow back right away, Chido. I've a rod in pickle for h
im that'll teach him manners."

  “We—ell,” began Chido.

  But I strode off—I made it a good brisk pace to avoid further queries—and shouted back that I'd see Chido at the Dancing Rostrum later, and gave a jerk at the chains.

  “Come along, slave,” I bellowed, so that onlookers heard me clearly. “I'll teach you good manners, four arms or no four arms, by Havil the Green!” The onlookers, poor fools, sniggered. One shouted: “Whip him good, Horter!"

  We attracted some attention as we walked back to The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, but not overmuch. People on Kregen are well accustomed to outlandish morphology. Just that a Djang is something special, more trouble than they are worth, to quote most slave-masters and aragorn. Only the Djang girls—ah! They are a prize above rubies.

  As we turned into the alley leading to the inn, I said, “What is your name, brother?"

  “My king,” he said, and his face flushed with painful arrogance, “I am Kharon Wonlin Bandermair, Majister."

  I nodded. “I knew N. Wonlin Sundermair—a friend. He was assassinated—in my tent—and I was not there, I remember."

  “Yes, Majister. The Wonlin tan hold Nath Sundermair in high memory and esteem."

  “You were too young to fight?"

  “Yes, Majister.” We stopped just in the mouth of the alley. “So filled with a young man's fire, and the wars over, I thought to go as a mercenary ... alas, this is the result."

  “You are free now, Kharon. Listen carefully. I am known here as Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. There is an Hamalian, old Nulty, who is loyal and knows. No one else knows.” I gestured. “I am here in Ruathytu to discover—Why, what ails you, man?"

  K. Wonlin Bandermair was looking distressed, and making vague gestures with his hands, his face creased. “Majister!” he said. “I am a fighting-man. I know nothing of these high affairs of state, no, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux!"

  Well, warmed by his oath though I was, I recognized his words as truth. That is the matter with these four-armed Djangs, as you know. They are the bonniest fighters in all Havilfar, but, it saddens me to say, they are somewhat thick when it comes to affairs above a Jiktar's rank.