Avenger of Antares [Dray Prescot #10]

by Alan Burt Akers

  All Nulty said was: “When do we return to Paline Valley, Amak? For I am grown weary of this great city."

  “What? And where will you find a Fristle fifi there?"

  “I can live without them. No wife, no children for me, Amak. I served Amak Naghan, and his son, faithfully. Now you are returned safely, may Havil the Green be praised—"

  “Yes, well, as to that, there is nothing in Paline Valley to which to return, is there?"

  “We can rebuild! We can find people willing to go to start a new life. I have made friends. There are many guls, aye, and clums, also, who would leap with joy at the chance to start a fresh life."

  That must be true. There were many slaves in Hamal's Ruathytu, Zair knew. And one miserable step above them, different only in that they called themselves free men, were the oozing masses of clums. Above them, better off, as craftsmen, with rights under the laws, were the guls. All these working-class people groaned under oppressions and taxes and iniquities. If a gul by his daily work as, for instance, a cobbler, employing a clum or two and a few slaves, made a couple of sinvers a day, the strict government of Hamal would relieve him of one of them by way of taxes. Yet I, an Amak, a low rank of noble, paid only ten percent in income tax.

  On upward through the ranks of nobility, the nobles paid less and less. An Elten paid nine and a Rango paid eight percent. A Strom paid five percent. A Trylon paid four percent. A Vad paid two percent. A Kov just did not pay at all. Truly, the rewards of nobility were very great in Hamal!

  Despite that I lived on a world four hundred light-years from the planet of my birth, and was wont to swagger about clad in a scarlet breechclout, a sword in my fist—all these bright cities with their fountains and their aqueducts, their armies and their air fleets, had to be paid for. Nowhere in the whole universe, I judge, is a man free of income tax.

  “There is a gul with a shop just off the Kyro of the Horters,” went on Nulty.[5] “An honest fellow, I think, by name of Lon the Honey. His brother keeps hives outside the city walls and Lon sells the honey. He would be useful in Paline Valley. And there is a blacksmith who was condemned to be flogged unjustly, master, unjustly. And two sisters, seamstresses, who can weave the most wonderful cloth and are tired of making dresses for Horteras. And—"

  [5 Kyro: square or piazza.]

  “Cease, Nulty!"

  I could see what he had been doing. He had been sure I was dead this time. He was a shrewd fellow, as I have said, and loyal. Now he must have conceived his loyalty as extending to Paline Valley itself in the absence of the Amak. That fine estate far over against the Mountains of the West had been raided and destroyed by the wild men from beyond those mountains in the eternal frontier fighting that went on, on those borders of Hamal. With a new people, free men and women who owed no slave-status to anyone, he could start anew. Suddenly I knew this was the right thing to do. I had promised to make the name of Hamun ham Farthytu renowned in Ruathytu, and I had not done so. I had acted the part of the foppish buffoon, too feeble to grasp a sword in earnest, even though I had wounded, as though by accident, a Strom in a duel. Duels were regulated by the laws, a part and parcel of the raffish, exciting, foppish, decadent life of the sacred quarter.

  “Nulty,” I said. He looked up quickly at my tone. “You have done right. You will collect all the people you know. I am sure you have picked well. You will no longer be my body-servant, you will be Crebent of Paline Valley.” A Crebent stands rather in the light of a bailiff or castellan, a trusted man who commands and operates estates, castles, industries, for his master. He looked at me, and I did not know, at first, if joy or sorrow was the predominant emotion he felt.

  Then: “I thank you, master. I shall be a loyal Crebent. I joy in that and in your trust in me.” He scowled. “But, by Havil the Green, I wish you were returning yourself!"

  “That cannot be. You know, Nulty. But I fancy we have nowhere near enough money to finance a return."

  “No, Amak."

  “In that case, Nulty, I really think that Hamun ham Farthytu will have to forget what he told you at the shrine of Beng Salter."

  A fierce and unholy satisfaction lit Nulty's hairy face then. He brushed his mop of hair back and glared with joy upon me. “And we will inscribe the name of ham Farthytu on a fine marble monument in the Palace of Names!"

  “We will, Nulty."

  This we did, in all pomp and ceremony, after the events I am about to relate. In addition to Nulty's clear excitement at recruiting people to go to Paline Valley, a long distance, and there put the estates back into order, I sensed that these people who would go with him, guls and clums, were also quite anxious—to pitch it no higher—to leave Ruathytu at this moment. The army would be out recruiting in full force, soon. There were many of the poorer folk who would be willingly admitted to the army, where previously that career would have been closed to them. Mind you, I was realistic enough to realize that no gul, let alone a clum, stood any chance of making promotion past the rank of so-Deldar, and that only after he was extraordinarily lucky and had survived battles enough to have made a more fortunately placed man an ord-Hikdar at the least.

  “How much money do we have left, Nulty?"

  He made a face and went and fetched the lenken chest with the brass hinges and locks. He took out four golden deldys, five silver sinvers, and a leather bag of obs.

  “Is that all?"

  “You took everything with you, Amak, when you went away."

  “So I did. And I sold the voller, too."

  Nulty was not to know that all that money had been used to bribe my way to the secrets of the vollers. I cleared my throat and lifted the cup and the tea was cold. I could use that fact to clear the moment, and I bellowed: “Nulty! Tea, Nulty, tea!"

  “Yes, master!"

  So that was what he thought of my gambling habits.

  I quite agreed with him.

  The plan, then, when it was formed, came out of necessity and vicissitude. It was not foolproof, but it was serviceable.

  Unlike some men who would have jumped up right away and gone roaring off to find their friends of the sacred quarter and start the ball rolling, I sat and drank the tea Nulty brought. No tea, and especially Kregan tea, can be taken lightly or without due thought.

  The fates of nations hung on my actions here in Hamal—this is true—and yet I spent time working a petty little gamble in order to send a pack of folk a bare step above slaves to a distant estate to renovate it. Truly, I wondered if I was quite sane, and fretted over just how I could explain my foolish actions to Delia.

  Would she say that a true Vallian would consign all these cramphs of Hamalians to the Ice Floes of Sicce? Somehow, I thought my Delia would not say that, would understand what I was doing and applaud.

  Thus with Delia uppermost in my mind—the most usual and loving place in my thoughts, in any case—I said to Nulty: “Listen and mark me well. You take these new people. They are free, you tell me. Well, there will be no slaves in Paline Valley. No slaves, ever again. You understand?"

  “I hear you, master.” He rubbed his ear. “I cannot say I understand. Some work is hard for a man, and it is fitting that a slave should do this work."

  “However fitting it is, there will be no slaves in Paline Valley."

  “As you say, Amak.” Then he fixed his shrewd eyes on me. “And if we are raided again and we take some prisoners. Must we then not put them to slavery, but kill them all?"

  Of course, that was an old ethical poser.

  “If they cannot be exchanged they will be ransomed. If not, you must talk to them and set them free and promise them if they come again they will surely be slain."

  “It seems to me you store up trouble against the future."

  “By Krun! I know whereof I speak!"

  “Yes, master."

  I wasn't going to apologize to him, for you know my views on that. Instead, I said: “Make sure you enlist a good force of flyers, mirvol men in preference to fluttrell riders. The old Am
ak had a fine mirvol aerial cavalry."

  “Aye, master."

  “I am going out now. Rustle out some fine fancy clothes, lots of lace and gewgaws. The Hamun ham Farthytu those ninnies of the sacred quarter know will walk among them again, in all his foppish finery, for the last time."

  I dressed in drippings of lace and bows, silken ribbons, fancy blue trousers, frilled white shirt, and a glaring green jacket with a scarlet cape thrown over all. I looked terrible. I wore one of these hard black Spanish hats, with a narrow black leather under the back of my head. My boots had been spat into a polished luster by Nulty. I waved a kerchief in my right hand and held a beribboned balass cane in my left. As I say, I looked a foppish fool.

  But I buckled on one of those fine rapiers Delia had given me, and its matching left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar.

  So I sallied forth to meet again Rees the lion-man, and dear chinless Chido, and all the others of my acquaintance among that raffish set of the sacred quarter.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wersting versus manhound

  The sacred quarter of Ruathytu is a twisting maze of alleys penned between the walls of the villas secluded in their grounds or balanced upon crags and heights within the city. There are boulevards intersecting with colonnades and lines of shops. There is a huge open square, a piazza with colonnades on three or four levels, drenched with flowers and greenery, laced with the tinkle of waterfalls, the great Kyro of the Vadvars. At the eastern end of the quarter on its V-shaped spit of land rises the three-domed Great Temple of Havil the Green. Under one of those domes is situated the Palace of Names. The name of ham Farthytu would be engraved in marble there before I left Ruathytu. The sacred quarter contains salles d'armes, the dueling halls, theaters, drinking dens, fighting arenas for the smaller but no less bloody encounters, tavern after tavern, and dopa dens. In short, the sacred quarter is a brawling, colorful, and vibrant section of a city, and just such a quarter is to be found in any great city of Kregen. Here in Hamalese Ruathytu, though, all the energy does not add up to a great shout of good living, of a zest for life. The Hamalians are a glum folk, as I have said, and they need perhaps a little too much of the stimulation of the Jikhorkdun, the great amphitheater, to bring a glow to their sallow faces.

  I feel I do them an injustice, but give me the folk of Sanurkazz, or Vondium, or some of Zenicce, any time!

  Looking back, I find it incredible in these accounts that I have not described in any detail the great city of Vondium, capital of Vallia, or, come to that, my own capital city of Valkanium in Valka.

  By Zair! How we could sing in The Fleeced Ponsho in Sanurkazz, or in my high hall of Esser Rarioch in Valkanium!

  As I walked through the labyrinthine ways of the sacred quarter, heading for roistering haunts, I felt the familiar pang that I had not seen for long and long my two rogues of oar-comrades, Nath and Zolta. They were far away in the Eye of the World. They must believe me dead. How I beseeched Zair, the puissant red-sun deity, that they should both still live and I would see them once again, and soon!

  If you can picture me then as the very excrescence of a dandy, beribboned and frilled, mincing along with my bedecked cane, a pomander in my kerchief to my nose, then how would my two rascally oar-comrades, Zolta and Nath, see me? They would howl and the tears would come to their eyes and they would fall about holding their guts. “What, Pur Dray!” they'd yodel. “Is this the rig for hauling at the sweeps of a Zair-forgotten Magdaggian swifter, with those cramphs of Magdag overlords a-whipping your back?” And they'd be off after a drink and a wench, roaring their mirth. I felt hot as the memories gushed up. How we had fought and roved and drunk there as we reived across the inner sea! Truly, I missed much. I was still a Krozair of Zy, and this meant very much to me, as you know. I would trade the Kovs and the Stroms, aye, and the Prince Majisters, too, to be still a Krozair of Zy—and this my Delia knew, also.

  The first person I met of my acquaintances as I paused outside the tavern with the two Fristle fifis as signboard, The Two Fifis, was Nath Tolfeyr. He saw me and there was a visible struggle in his face to retain that indolent, elegant posture of indifference that is the mark of the dandy of the sacred quarter.

  “Why, Amak Hamun! By Havil! You are a stranger."

  “No longer a stranger, Nath. What fun is there to be had these days in the quarter?"

  He looked offensively resigned to an ill fate. His long arms and legs moved with elegance as he paced by my side. He wore the rapier and dagger, as did most of the young bloods affecting the new ways, but he was skilled in their use.

  “This devilish war, Hamun. It drains the fun out of life."

  I forbore to inquire why he was not with the army or the air service. I had no wish to pick a fight with him, for all that I knew he was secretly addicted to the ways of Lem the Silver Leem.

  “Have you news of Rees, or Chido, or Casmas the Deldy?"

  “You have not heard? No, if you have been away, then you would not have. Rees's regiment was in a battle. I think we won, although to think otherwise is not healthy, I assure you."

  “Tell me, Nath, and quickly!"

  He looked surprised at my tone.

  “Rees has been sorely wounded."

  For all that Rees the lion-man was supposed to be an enemy, I felt a pang of sorrow.

  “Is this wound serious?"

  “Enough for him to be invalided at home. He will recover, so the doctors say. But he is pretty useless at present"

  “I am most sorry to hear. And Chido?"

  Nath Tolfeyr laughed. “Chido went off his zorca and fell head over heels into a swill bin. He broke a rib in the vosk swill, which is typical of Chido, as you must admit."

  The thought of chinless, goggle-eyed, good-natured Chido falling headfirst into a bucket of swill could not fail to amuse me. Chido ham Thafey, who held the courtesy rank of Amak, and who would become a Vad when his father died, was one of those addle-pated, good-natured, nincompoopish young men of the world who somehow, despite their incongruities, never fail to raise an affectionate chuckle.

  “Typical of Chido, I admit. Is Rees at home on his estates of the Golden Wind, or—"

  “He is here, in his villa, with Chido. They both lie there roaring at each other all day, cursing for their ills."

  Well, it made an amusing picture, although I knew that Rees should never have led his regiment of zorcamen off to war, for he had not been fully recovered at the time. I bid a polite farewell to Nath Tolfeyr as we turned into the Boulevard of the Goldsmiths.

  “I am for the baths of the nine, and the Dancing Rostrum, Hamun. Will you not join me?"

  “I thank you for your invitation, Nath. I am for Rees and Chido."

  “Fare you well with Havil, then."

  He made that a mocking parting. Had he said, “Lem go with you,” he would have been more sincere, but the cult of Lem flourished in secret here in Ruathytu, as did the religion of Opaz. The way was not far to Rees's villa, and as I went I reflected that the state religion of Havil obsessed many people here, and yet the slighter religions of Werl-am-Nardith and Blessed Xerenike the Open-Handed were tolerated and had their own small temples in various quarters of the city. What the religions of the guls and the clums were, I did not then know with any coherent understanding, although they used the names of Kuerden the Merciless and Kaerlan the Merciful. And as for the slaves, they might practice what devil rites they chose, brought from their own country, provided they paid lip service to Havil the Green.

  Rees's small villa was as I last remembered it. I was announced and went in, and stopped short in the doorway, wanting to burst out laughing.

  My two friends, Rees and Chido, occupied beds set side by side. The beds were equipped with wheels that they might be taken to the balcony for fresh air. Between the two beds a table had been erected and a Jikaida board occupied the table, with a sprawl of playing pieces. Rees was in the act of hurling a blue piece—it was a King's Paktun—at Chi
do, who was drawing the sheets up over his bright chinless face, and crying out: “Mercy, Rees, mercy! I'll not take your Pallan, then, but it isn't fair, Rees, it deuced isn't fair!"

  And, being Chido, he made of his R's all W's, so that he called Rees “Wees."

  “Of course it ain't fair, you great fambly! But you took my Pallan because I was looking at the nurse as she bent over, and you'll ruin the game! And I'm not in the mood to start another. So finish this one."

  “But I did finish it with your captured Pallan!"

  “You roaring great onker!” bellowed Rees, and he hurled the King's Paktun, and Chido let out a yell and vanished completely beneath the bedclothes.

  I said, “Is this how the returning heroes fight their battles all over again?"

  “Hamun!” they both yelped, and Chido popped up for air.

  Neither could get out of bed, and so I went across and we shook hands in the Hamalese way, and fell at once into animated conversation. We talked about the war and their experiences, whereat we laughed again at Chido's misfortune with the swill bucket. I did not speak of the time I had employed swill buckets and vosks to good purpose in the Black Marble Quarries of Zenicce. So we prattled on and wine was brought and we talked and talked. None of it matters much, now; it was all trite inconsequential stuff. But, by Krun, it was good to see these two again!

  Their hurts were mending. Chido was strapped up, and Rees, for all his bellowing and roaring in true lion-man fashion, would have been in great pain but for the forest of acupuncture needles stuck in him. Moxybustion was being used and fragrant herbs burned at the ends of the acupuncture needles.