A Victory for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  The bout was over very quickly, The marquee held a complete silence for six heartbeats, and then the benches erupted.

  Muvko was shaking his head.

  “You are a marked man now, Jak.”

  “Just let us get this over with honor and then we can go and ask Jimstye Gaptooth the questions.”

  “May Morro the Muscle have you in his keeping.”

  Four more bouts took place with fresh Khamorros or the ones who had been defeated returning. That made no matter. Between us, Muvko, Nolro, Kimche, and I threw them all over the bronze chain. Yes, yes, it was petty, all sweaty men heaving and grunting; but, too, there was a panache about it.

  They were shouting now, from the benches, shouting that great word that is the unarmed combatman’s equivalent to the Jikai of the swordsman.

  “Hikai!” they shrilled. “Hai, Hikai!”

  It was quite a night.

  And that night was less than a third over.

  “What!” I shouted at Kimche as Abanch took his inordinate length into the ring to shout our triumph.

  “Not over!”

  “We were the first contest of the night. There are two more to come.” He saw my face. “We are not involved—”

  “Thank Pandrite for that!” Then I glowered at the backs of the Khamorros as they trailed away up the aisle between the seats. “All the same, I was just getting the blood flowing nicely and freely... Perhaps it is a pity, after all.”

  “But the third contest will be fought by Jimstye Gaptooth’s people — some he has in reserve, these who will have recovered.”

  I glowered. I felt the old blood climbing up inside my head and I ground down on that scarlet rage.

  “I can’t wait all damned night to see this cramph!”

  “There he is, just come in, and passing strange it is, too, that he was not here to see his men in action.”

  Kimche nodded his bald yellow Chulik head. I looked where he indicated.

  Jimstye Gaptooth — well, yes, his two front teeth were missing. He lowered himself to a padded seat at the front reserved for principals. He wore sumptuous clothes of blue and ivory, with much gold lace. He was bulky and fatter than he ought to be, with a full-fleshed face that concentrated into a single crimson scowl. At his side sat a man who took my closer attention.

  I knew this man — I had never seen him in my life before, but I knew him. He wore gray leathers all over his body, except his head, and his face was very pale, with dark hair cropped short. His mouth, a mere thin gash, his sharp nose — and his eyes! Dark, piercing, intent, concentrating on all he saw with the power of an incisive instinct — revealed him to me. Revealed him as clearly as the rapier and main gauche he wore in the bravo-fighter’s unmistakable fashion.

  A bravo-fighter from the enclave city of Zenicce.

  By his colors of gray and blue, worn discreetly, I knew him to belong to the noble House of Klaiton. I had no quarrel with that House. My own House, the House of Strombor, had more than once assisted in an insurance loss for young Nalgre Stahleker, Prince of the House of Klaiton, and his seductive wife, Nashta. So what was a bravo-fighter of Zenicce doing sitting next to a professional wrestling owner in South Pandahem?

  Kimche told me, and my face darkened.

  “And the story is true, Jak. This swordsman, Miklasu, eloped with the Princess Nashta. He was the house champion. The prince did not seek him, so we are told, because he said if his wife wished to go she would go, and if she did not she would return.”

  “And?”

  “She chose to return. And her ship sank off the coast of Segesthes in a great storm, sent, it was said, by one of the Sea Lords, Notor Shorthush of the Waves. So Miklasu hires his sword and, it was said, he told his cronies he was well quit of the woman.”

  I had known Princess Nashta. Her seductiveness had destroyed her, that and the weakness of her will.

  And I felt for Prince Nalgre, even though I could not guess at the real reasons why his wife should leave him. Perhaps Quergey the Murgey would know, for all reports spoke well of Nalgre. Delia had said he was a fine young man. Of such puzzles is the world constructed.

  “So we must wait until the end of the contests,” said Kimche.

  “No,” I said. “I do not think so.”

  Whatever Jak the Sturr might do in these circumstances was one thing; but I knew what Jak the Drang would do — aye, and Dray Prescot!

  The changing rooms yielded my clothes. The other wrestlers were clearing their things out. We went outside, under the stars and the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. I had brought the kalider taken from Trylon Nath Orscop. With this naked in my hand I prowled around the outside of the marquee. The others, led by Kimche, followed.

  “What, Jak—?”

  “I can’t lollygag about all night,” I said.

  The first guy rope parted under the keen steel.

  I went around the marquee methodically, slicing the guy ropes asunder. The marquee began to sag. By the time I had reached three-quarters of the way the roof billowed in. The roars of excitement within changed to yells of alarm. The marquee billowed like a collapsing dermiflon, speared on the field of battle. It rippled and sagged and flapped, and the rest of the ropes parted.

  The whole lot collapsed.

  ‘There,” I said, standing up with the dagger in my fist. “Now perhaps that rast will come out!”

  Chapter fourteen

  The Khamorro Way

  Like fish struggling upstream, the audience battled their way out beneath the collapsing folds of cloth.

  The uproar was just as prodigious as a sensible man would expect. By the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles we stared on that heaving scene. I stuffed the kalider away and moved across the boardwalk where mud lay in thick cakes from heedless boots.

  “Watch for the rast! Spread around the marquee.”

  “This is not in the plan, Jak!” Kimche looked wild, gesticulating, his bald yellow head glistening in streaks of mingled color in the moons’ light.

  “But it will get him out, Kimche. We need to ask him, do we not?”

  “Aye. Aye, Jak, that we do.”

  No one could believe the marquee had fallen of itself and the first conjectures, expressed with many oaths, took the view that some god or spirit inimical to Beng Drudoj Flying Alsh had wrecked the bouts out of spite. Some very watchable fights started between the pirates and the steelworkers, and drew admiring crowds. No doubt Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall took pleasure from this substitute entertainment.

  The light of torches splashed the scene with vivid color. The smell and mood of the crowds thickened.

  The wrestlers from the Golden Prychan spread out and pretty soon Sly Nath the Trivet came arunning, pointing. His eye was beginning to look magnificent. We followed him and saw a group of men staggering out from the folds of fallen cloth. They staggered up amid much blasphemy. The guards had come running up; but the marquee was fallen and they couldn’t put it up again. The wrestling was abandoned for the night. The cut guy ropes were found, and the blasphemies mounted against the night sky.

  Sly Nath, eye and all, was chuckling away to himself.

  Well, yes, it was funny, too, if you thought about it...

  We followed Jimstye Gaptooth and the bravo-fighter Miklasu, as they went off with their people. I would not have been surprised if they stayed at an inn called The Black Neemu; but its name was The Wristy Grip, which showed how proud they were of their wrestlers.

  “I,” said Fat Lorgan, “do not have my club with the nail in its head with me.”

  “I think, Jak,” said Kimche, after due consideration, “that I would like to have a sword. A Khamorro can break the bones of a swordsman, that is well known; but if the swordsman is very good, an unarmed man has no chance. It is a matter of relative skills.”

  I well knew that Kimche would have the skills of the sword, being a Chulik.

  “I only want to talk to this Gaptooth, not fight his army of kh
amsters.”

  “But the two will of necessity go together.”

  “May Drig take the fellow!” I am used to going ahunting alone. I said, briskly, “Do you return to the Golden Prychan and fetch what weapons you have, and mine, also. I shall sniff around a little. Something May Turn Up.” Shades of Quienyin!

  The fairground formed a pulsing bubble of light and noise in the moonlit night. The Wristy Grip reached up three imposing stories, and many windows were illuminated, and the sounds of revelry within indicated a good night was being enjoyed.

  If you consider me a bash-on sort of fellow, well, you may be right in that I like to get on with it. But I fancied that it would be less than clever to go in the front door acting as an ordinary customer. I eyed the upper windows. It was a climb under the moons of Kregen for me...

  Kimche and the others trailed off, and I sensed they were not too sure about leaving me. But I told them to get back with the naked steel and to think about the Khamorros. As they went off into the shadows I went around to the back of the inn.

  Climbing into other people’s houses, and inns, and palaces, is a tricky business; but one which has its own lessons. I clawed up a vine by the rear wall, and chinned myself to a ledge, and so opened a window, whose wood, while warped, did not squeak, and so dropped silently into a darkened room.

  The sounds of breathing came from a bed, half-seen.

  I tiptoed to the door and let myself out into a corridor.

  I knew exactly what I wanted.

  If Turko was being held prisoner, which seemed the only explanation for his absence, it appeared highly unlikely he would be held here in the inn. But — he might be. So I eased to the head of the stairs and had not to wait too long before a potman came puffing up. He was looking for fresh candles, as he was relieved to tell me. He was a Fristle. His green and yellow striped apron was bunched around his neck when he spoke to me, and my fist was tight around the cloth.

  “And where is the Khamorro they hold prisoner here?”

  His cat’s eyes goggled. “No, notor, no — I know nothing of any prisoner!”

  Eventually, I believed him. I pondered.

  Brown shadows lay thick in the corridor. Dust hung in the air and tickled the nostril. The sounds of revelry from below wafted up faintly, as from a distant shore. The corridor was very quiet. I knew that I could not trust this Fristle potman an inch.

  Wrapping his unconscious body in his striped apron, I stowed him away in a broom cupboard. Then I started down the stairs.

  The doors of the rooms of the next floor down were all closed, and from the sounds within I judged it prudent to let them remain shut. At the far end of the corridor a double door promised to reveal something more interesting. I put my ear to it. The rumbling sounds of conversation could not be interpreted into words. Again, I pondered.

  It seemed most likely to me that Gaptooth and his cronies would have a private suite here, and these rooms were likely to lie beyond this double door. So, very well, then. In we go...

  The double doors were locked. So I kicked them in. Beyond them lay a small anteroom and the doors at the far end opened almost instantly at the racket I had made and men crowded in. Some were Khamorros and some bore naked steel.

  “I have come to see Jimstye Gaptooth,” I said. “Is this the way to greet an old friend?”

  That held them for the space of three heartbeats.

  As soon as I spoke I realized I had been too clever for my own good. As an old friend, my story would be stupid. My story, to hold water, would demand a rueful admission of misplaced loyalty.

  Why, with a glib story all ready, had I blurted out this nonsense about being an old friend?

  They ushered me into the chambers beyond the anteroom. The place was furnished with a kind of tongue-licking lavishness I found not to my taste. Gaptooth bustled forward, very much the center of attention. At his shoulder hovered the bravo-fighter.

  So, one story having been shot and the other about to be shot to pieces, I decided I would have to bait this Jimstye.

  “Old friend? I don’t know you. Who the devil are you?”

  “I am Nalgre ti Hamonlad,” I said, inventing on the spot with a nudge-nudge to the swordsman, Miklasu, in the use of the name Nalgre.

  “But I know him, the nulsh!” spoke up a Khamorro I had thrown over the bronze chains at least three times.

  “And I! Let me at him in fair fight—” Others crowded forward.

  “If you choose not to recognize me, Jimstye,” I said brightly, over the hubbub, “then that is your affair. I did not know you were in Mahendrasmot, otherwise I would have signed up with you instead of that mangy lot at the Golden Prychan.”

  So, I had blended both stories. Let him chew on the implications of his refusal to acknowledge an old friend.

  He looked annoyed.

  “I’ve never met you — but if you are the man who—”

  “He is! He is, the rast!”

  The fellow who spoke thus, a husky khamster, stood near enough to enable me to take his arm in a grip to pull and then push him. He staggered; but being a Khamorro, he recovered with cat-like speed and bored in, his hands razoring for me.

  I sidestepped, swung back, chopped him, and then, as he went on past flailing, kicked him up the backside.

  “Can’t you control these idiots?” I demanded hotly. “By Havil! You always said you hated the guts of all Khamorros.”

  The gazes of these feared men of martial art fame fixed on Gaptooth. He looked keenly at me and lifted a hand.

  “You are clever, you rast. I admire Khamorros and always have. Take him out and slice his throat—”

  For a space no one made a move.

  “So you don’t want me to fight for you in the contests?”

  He sneered. “You would?”

  “Why am I here, Jimstye — even if you deny friendship?”

  “Shastum! Silence!” he called over the hubbub. “Let me think.”

  The upshot of his thoughts was that avarice won over common sense. He knew damn well he didn’t know me. But if I was the man who had bested his fighters, and I was willing to work for him — he saw much money flowing in. And perhaps that is common sense, after all, making the most of what occurs.

  “I did not see you fight. Can you—”

  “Let me!” And: “I’ll twist his neck!”

  They just did not believe, these Khamorros, and that was understandable. They were accustomed to seeing men shrink away from them unless they carried steel and knew well how to use it. The truth is, of course, that the very highest khamsters do not travel overfar from Herrelldrin, which is down in the southwest of Havilfar. These men were not out of the top drawer; but they were good. All Khamorros are good at their trade.

  After half a dozen lay about the chamber I said to Jimstye, “That is enough.” I had my eye on the farther door which must lead to the inner private chambers and if Turko was here, that was where he would be.

  “You are satisfied — old friend?”

  “I am satisfied. We will discuss terms later.”

  He gestured to the wrestlers. “Best clear out now and take advantage of the night off. When I find who cut down the marquee I shall pull his thumbs out, for a start. Go on!”

  It was clear to them as to me that he wanted to discuss terms with his new acquisition in private. That suited me. When they had gone, he said, “Wine, Nalgre ti Hamonlad?” Miklasu moistened his lips and went across to a side table. His rapier and main gauche were plain, hard-used weapons, the Jiktar and the Hikdar, the weapons of a killer.

  I said, “I believe, Jimstye Gaptooth, that you know- the whereabouts of a friend of mine. I am minded to see him, and at once. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me where he is?”

  He looked surprised. Miklasu turned sharply from the table, a glass of wine in each hand, the red steady as a level.

  “A friend? I know we have never met before, and I see you used that to gain entrance.” He frowned.

&n
bsp; “Although you pressed overhard by trying to stir up trouble between me and my Khamorros. What friend?”

  “Turko.”

  Miklasu dropped both wine glasses. His rapier and his main gauche flamed in his fists, drawn instantly, a superb bravo-fighter’s fighting draw.

  Gaptooth laughed. “So it was all a fake, a trick! You are from the Golden Prychan, after all, and you are another seeking this Turko!” He turned to Miklasu. “Kill him.”

  The bravo-fighter moved forward, and his sword and dagger were held just so.

  “I am not one to be taken by a khamster,” he said. “You have no weapons. So, it follows you will surely die.”

  “As to that, we shall see. Klaiton, is it?”

  He stared. “What—?”

  “Get on with it, Miklasu, get on with it!”

  “Before he starts,” I said, “tell me — if I am to die it will prove of illusory comfort. Where is Turko?”

  Again he laughed. “Oh, you will die. There is no swordsman in all Pandahem like unto Miklasu. And, Turko—” He jerked his thumb toward that inner door. I sighed.

  Now I remembered my encounter with Mefto the Kazzur, when that superb Kildoi swordsman had bested me in fair fight. I thought it highly likely that I could beat this Miklasu; but, as always, there was the chance that he would have the beating of me. And Turko was my first concern.

  I ran for the door, kicked it down, and burst through.

  The three of them were in there, hung up like chickens on hooks. They were all mother naked. The room gave ingress to other bedrooms. The sound at my back heralded the vicious onslaught of Miklasu. I turned to face him.

  I shouted, “I — Nalgre ti Hamonlad — caution you, Miklasu. I do not wish to slay you—” And then he ran in on me with his rapier doing all the flash and the dagger ready to rip into my guts. A pretty bravo-fighter’s trick, that. I swayed, took his wrist, but he hacked back and so I ducked away. He was good.

  Turko said, “I might have known...”