A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  “Each of the five has a talent …” Now the razor seemed to be tugging more, and it wasn’t for lack of sharpening. Kalkor was starting to sweat too. He was still striving to seem relaxed and limp in his chair, and yet he was growing tauter and tauter. A fine sheen of damp showed on his forehead and chest. Was this ordeal going on longer than he had anticipated? Likely he had expected Rap to nick him on the first or second stroke … all right so far; half done now. Probably Kalkor had planned to end the game when he got to ten nicks. A seer with no hands would be easier to keep prisoner. But if he wanted to mutilate Rap like that, he would do so anyway, regardless of how many times Rap cut him.

  Talk was easier while stropping than while shaving. “Darad doesn’t need to call for help very often, so he’s aged. He stays too long. Thinal, on the other hand, is still just a kid.” Rap gripped Kalkor’s ear and pulled a little harder than necessary.

  Not a game—it was a trap. Nicks were not what the jotunn expected, but an attack. Rap moving to cut his throat. Strop some more. “Jalon’s the minstrel, the artist …” He was talking without thinking, but he didn’t mind revealing the gang’s great secret. He owed nothing to any of them. The only thing he left out was the word of power. Kalkor already had a word of his own, and might be tempted to become an adept. He might very well extract Rap’s word, also, and three words made a mage. Kalkor as a mage was a brain-curdling thought.

  His talent was fighting, so Andor had said. Could a mere occult genius fend off a razor attack even if it was launched from such close quarters? Perhaps. Probably. So Kalkor was not nearly as vulnerable as he looked. If Rap tried to avenge Durthing, then Kalkor could still block him.

  And the man was really sweating now. It made the shaving harder, but Rap could afford to take his time. He was beginning to think he could win this game, unless Kalkor deliberately cheated by moving, and so far he had played fair. So Rap was stropping after almost every stroke, dragging it out.

  “Sagorn is the wise man—”

  “Never mind him. Tell me again what you saw in the casement.”

  “Which time? You, or the dragon, or the goblin?”

  “All of them. Start with Inosolan’s prophecy.”

  “You, wearing a fur and nothing else.” Rap was enjoying pushing the thane’s head into odd angles. “An old man giving you an ax …”

  But any ordeal must end eventually. Rap had no sooner closed the razor and replaced it in the bag with the strop than his knees folded of their own accord. He slumped down, with one leg twisted under him; he doubled over and shivered convulsively, as if he had a fever. He retched, but his stomach was empty and nothing happened. It was over. Over! He shivered and shivered.

  After a moment, a dirty toe poked under his chin and nudged his head up. There was a very strange glint in those deadly blue eyes.

  “Tell me again of the place where we were supposed to fight this interesting duel, you and me?”

  Rap licked his lips and managed to steady his quivering jaw enough to use it for speaking. “I told you, sir—it wasn’t clear at all. Short grass; scythed or grazed. Mist and rain. A ring of people all around. That was all. Nothing in the distance, no landmarks.”

  “The Place of Ravens on Nintor,” Kalkor said, staring intently, “ has a circle of great stones around it. The spectators must stay back from those. Stay outside. There are no predators or scavengers on Nintor, except the ravens, and the bones of the losers are left where they fall. Did you see any bones, or the monoliths?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Mmm.” Kalkor rubbed his fresh-shaven chin and seemed to ponder. “Reckonings are almost always done at the Place of Ravens, but they need not be. They can be held anywhere, if certain conditions are met.”

  Rap almost gagged again. He could think of nothing to say, so he didn’t try. Sagorn had interpreted the vision as showing Rap being Inos’s champion; but he might equally well be Kalkor’s plaything. The shaving episode had just demonstrated that the jotunn’s sense of humor was as warped as his morals, and if he found the idea of a ritual battle with Rap an amusing prospect, then he could stage it at the next landfall, wherever that might be.

  “And when you tried for a vision from the casement?”

  “I never did, sir. I approached it twice, and each time it … well, it sort of blazed. Very bright. All shining. Eerie!”

  Kalkor nodded. Then, slowly, his smile widened—and yet his eyes seemed to narrow. He stepped off his chair and moved out from under the helmsman’s deck. “Up!”

  Rap rose also and cautiously straightened. He was shorter and slighter than the jotunn. He felt very frail beside that potent killing machine.

  Kalkor looked him up and down twice, perhaps making the same comparison and feeling reassured by it. Then he folded his arms and shook his head mockingly. “Just be glad I’m a gambler, sailor.”

  “Sir?”

  Rap staggered on a roll, and the thane’s hand flashed out to grip his shoulder and steady him. His fingers dug in like skewers.

  “There is something very odd about you, halfman. Very odd! My instincts for self-preservation tell me I should gift you a full suit of armor and send you out to push. I just tested you, you realize?”

  Here came the job offer. “Sir?”

  “You passed, but not in the way I expected. I would have taken odds of a thousand to one that what I demanded was humanly impossible for a mundane in your condition. But you weren’t using occult power, were you?”

  “No, sir. Just farsight. I can’t see well at the moment.”

  “Farsight … and something else, but not magic!” Kalkor chuckled, and it was a sound to freeze bones. “I had decided to kill you if you did pass.” He sighed. “But, as I said, I’m a gambler. Just a sentimental softie, I am. I will accept that you are not an adept in spite of the test.”

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Rap said, “ Thank you, sir.”

  “Indeed. You may be a mage or even a sorcerer, of course, but then I am helpless—and you certainly don’t look like either at the moment. Faun, I am going to be very surprised if we do not fulfill that absurd prophecy one day, you and I. That intrigues me! I have raised twelve heads in the Place of Ravens. I should like very much to raise yours, also.”

  “I will bet on you, sir, not me.”

  Sudden anger blazed in the inhumanly blue eyes. “Do not joke about sacred matters! I am no imp to wager squalid, worthless things like money! A Reckoning is a solemn ritual, an offering of courage and a sacrifice of life. Few things less than life itself are worth gambling.” For a moment Rap thought Kalkor was going to flash into jotunn madness, but then the eerie smile returned. “Two strong men battling to the death, entering the circle knowing that one of them will never leave? There is the ultimate gamble, the finest game of all. I hope that one day I do leave my bones for the ravens of Nintor—it is the noblest death for a thane. And I ask only one favor from the Gods, Master Rap.”

  Rap saw that he was supposed to question. “What’s that, sir?”

  “That my slayer be worthy, a man of courage. Tell Darad I want him.”

  4

  It was a real pleasure to pass the message to Darad and see apprehension spread over the nightmare face. There were not many pleasures on Blood Wave. Gathmor was conscious, but too weak even to sit up. Rap found water for both of them and eventually begged some food, also. Then he set to work on the problems of cleaning up his fellow prisoner and finding fresh clothes for him. The jotnar did not interfere, but they were surly and uncooperative.

  And yet even a captive could have moments less miserable than others. Boat and contents steamed in the hot tropic sun. The sea shone like silver, flashing bands of glory across the minatory obscenity of the orca crudely painted on the sail. White birds followed, rocking on the arcs of their wings. Given blue sky and a fine breeze, a half jotunn could not be totally unhappy on a sprightly vessel like Blood Wave on a fine day.

  Rap had noted Darad cowering at the thane’s feet
and then forgotten him. The next development was Kalkor himself striding past, stopping to drag one of the sacks of loot out from under a bench near the bow. Rap knew what was coming before it emerged, and he swung his farsight aft again. Cowering under the poop deck was the flaxen-haired minstrel, Jalon, straggling to adjust Darad’s oversize breeches to his slender form. Small and unassertive, Jalon was a most unlikely jotunn, as he himself had pointed out to Rap once when they shared a picnic lunch in the hills, long ago. His skin was pallid, sickly-looking compared to all the bronzed sailors, and certainly there was no more terrified minstrel on the Summer Seas.

  What the crew thought of the magical transformation was impossible to tell. Blue-eyed glances flashed under golden brows, questioning and commenting in surly silence. Kalkor had not deigned to explain, and not a man aboard would dare show fear.

  The thane headed aft again, carrying a bejeweled ivory harp. In a few minutes Jalon had done the best he could to tune the battered, impractical instrument and was sitting on the helmsman’s deck, with his legs dangling.

  And then—pure miracle! Somehow he wrung a flawless, angelic thread of music from the harp and on it wove tapestries of the finest singing in all Pandemia. A couple of sea chanties, then a ballad, and more and more, and either every one was perfectly fitted to the timing set by the ship’s motion, or else Blood Wave herself now danced to the minstrel’s beat.

  Glory! It soared, it floated in the warm sky like a flight of rainbows. It lifted the heart or wrung it as he chose. Murderous brutes those jotnar certainly were, but at times Rap could see tears in their eyes, while he himself was tormented by thoughts of Inos and could not help but weep. Then Jalon would switch to some rousing warrior song. Rap’s heart would pound, his spirit surge, and he was ready to storm Zark single-handed. At those times the jotnar were roaring, waving battle-axes and eager to waste the entire Impire.

  “God of Madness!” Gathmor whispered during a brief pause. “Who is he and where did he come from and how does he do that?” But then the mystery came again, and everyone hushed to listen. Kalkor kept Jalon at it for hours, while Blood Wave rushed over the ever-rolling waves in search of land.

  As each song ended, harsh jotunn voices called out the names of others, and there were very few that Jalon did not know or could not sing; his repertoire was enormous. But even he had his limits, and eventually his voice began to falter. To say that Kalkor took pity on him would have been an absurdity, but at last he acknowledged human frailty and sent the minstrel off with Vurjuk to eat and drink and rest. The other jotnar began to talk fiercely among themselves, discussing what they had just heard.

  Gathmor was asleep. Rap was hungry, but the sailors were eating and he felt it wiser to wait awhile than dare to interrupt. Instead he gave some more thought to his own troubles and prospects.

  To start with, where exactly was the ship? The storm could have moved it an immense distance; he had no experience to guess how far. Direction he always knew fairly well, a talent that seemed to be part of his farsight, and in any case he could always read the helmsman’s binnacle. After his first two or three days aboard, though, his attention had been distracted by weakness and pain and he had stopped caring. The wind had first carried Blood Wave southward, then northeast, but she had not piled up against the coasts of either Kith or Sysanasso. One or other likely by ahead, then, for the helmsman was holding the most northerly course he could manage in a southwesterly, and although she, too, bore only a single square sail, this was a much more weatherly vessel than the top-heavy Stormdancer.

  And if Blood Wave had not gone westward, then Gathmor was in terrible danger, because he was no longer needed as a pilot for the Nogids. Kalkor could find another of those anytime.

  All Pandemia lay somewhere to the north. If Blood Wave passed west of Sysanasso, she would enter the Dragon Sea, rife with commerce and good pickings for a merciless raider. Alternatively, east of the big island lay Ilrane and elves or Kerith and merfolk, areas Rap had never studied. Farther east still was Zark, although one storm could not possibly move a ship that far.

  Which brought his thoughts back again to Inos.

  How ironic that a callous killer and rapist like Kalkor should have seen what Rap himself had never before realized. He was in love with his queen! How blind could a man be?

  Or how crazy? A stableboy falling in love with a princess—the very idea had been stupid beyond dreams, too stupid even to contemplate. It still was.

  And so what? She still deserved his loyalty as a subject. That loyalty should be even stronger if he loved her.

  She did not return his love. How could she? A very lowly factor’s clerk … not even that now, only a vagabond with a knack for horses and a smattering of sailoring skills. On that mad night when her father died, Inos had been courteous and kindly to her childhood friend, as she would always be. She had thanked him for his help. She had not flinched before his occult abilities, because she was a sophisticated, educated lady, not one of the ignorant, superstitious rustics of Krasnegar. Like him.

  And if by some miracle he could ever find her, she would certainly by then be married into some noble family. The wardens might just possibly have installed her on the throne of her fathers, with a compromise consort acceptable to both thanes and imperor … not, thank the Gods, Little Chicken!

  Never Rap.

  The man in her tent had been a swordsman, almost certainty an aristocrat. Big, handsome fellow.

  So Rap must continue his search if it took a lifetime. She would welcome him into her household, perhaps make him master-of-horse, as they had joked together when they were children. She need never suspect how he felt about her. He would serve her loyally as subject and worship as lover from afar.

  And if all he was feeling was an overaged juvenile infatuation, then he would grow out of it in time.

  Could a juvenile infatuation hurt this much?

  Now he knew why the fairy child had not told him her word of power—her name, or possibly the name of her guardian elemental, if that is what the words were. She had told Little Chicken because he had truly known his life’s great desire, and because he had wanted it enough to die for it. Rap had not said that he loved Inos, only that he wanted to find her and be her loyal subject. Not the whole truth! Had he known the truth, and said it, then he would be an adept now, with two words. And the fairy would have died in his arms, not the goblin’s.

  What if Kalkor got to Inos first?

  Or changed his mind and slew Rap out of hand? He obviously took the prophecy seriously.

  Or decided to torture his word out of him to become an adept?

  Better not to think about that.

  No, somehow Rap must escape from the thane’s clutches. He’d escaped from the goblins, hadn’t he? And from the imps, and from a warlock.

  How obvious now was the advice that King Holindarn had given him, and even Andor—that occult powers must be kept secret at all costs. Too late! A jotunn raider would never willingly release a seer. Before landfall, Rap would find himself chained or deliberately crippled so he could neither run nor swim.

  “Rap?”

  The whisper startled him out of his brooding, and he jerked around to stare at a brilliantly flushed face. For a moment the redness suggested an extreme, comical embarrassment; then he saw that it was only a very bad case of tropic sunburn. Jalon had now found a shirt to give him some protection, but he must be suffering. Under his pain, he was pathetically bewildered and frightened. He still clutched the frivolously ornate harp in one hand and was holding up his oversized breeches with the other.

  Once Jalon had confessed to having elvish blood in him. Seeing him now alongside so many pure jotnar. Rap thought he could detect a goldish tinge to his skin, and a slant to his eyes. And of course he lacked the height and muscle. It would be unkind to comment on that, though.

  “Take a chair,” Rap said sadly. “Wine? Sweetmeats?”

  “Don’t!” the minstrel said, crouching down. “Don’t moc
k, Rap! Gods, man, but you’ve grown!”

  “I have?”

  “It was only two days ago we met, you know. For me, that is.”

  “You share memories, don’t you?” Rap thought of Thinal and Sagorn and Darad, and all that had happened in the year since that picnic … more than a year.

  “Yes. But mine are the clearest to me. The others never see things properly!” That was the artist speaking, the painter. He took a harder look at Rap’s face and grimaced. “It wasn’t me set Darad on you, Rap!”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Really!” Jalon’s dreamy blue eyes filled with tears. “I warned you about him, remember! Then I got lost in the forest, and I was tempted to call him, because he knows that country, but I knew he’d head straight back to get you, so I called Andor instead. He recognized the danger. Rap, too. Andor’s not all that bad! He managed to find his way south …”

  “Did he meet any goblins?” Rap asked, suddenly curious.

  The minstrel nodded. “A few, in ones and twos, and of course he could charm that many. They’re fairly harmless in the summer, anyway.”

  “Not now, they’re not! Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Well, they were! But I did try to keep Darad off you. And I haven’t been back since.”

  “Not at all?” Rap thought he saw a shiftiness.

  “Well … once. Just for a few minutes. I wrote a letter that Andor needed, a letter of introduction. And he’d trapped me, because he called me in a room where lots of people had seen him going in. They would’ve seen me if I tried to leave.”

  Rap chuckled. The gang of five exploited one another without scruple. He wondered how many little tricks they had like that.

  Jalon glanced around nervously, then looked doubtfully at Gathmor, who was glaring at him. “Rap, I need some help!”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “No, immediate help! I have to compose an epic, a jotunn war song.”

  “Good luck.”

  A flicker of anger appeared in Jalon’s washed blue eyes, or perhaps it was only fear. “Kalkor told me to. You know the sort of thing he wants?”