by Jack Vance
Aillas once more started up the trail: back, forth, back, forth, and with a last surge, came up and out upon the plateau. To the south stood the Cloud-cutters; to the east rose the final ridge of the Teach tac Teach, now burning in the sunset light; to the north the plateau became lost in fog and low clouds.
A hundred feet away a tall man in a black cape brooded over the landscape. He stood as if in deep thought, hands resting on the pommel of his sword, with the tip of the scabbard resting on the ground before him. His horse stood tied to a nearby shrub. He glanced aside at Aillas and Tatzel, then seemed to ignore them, which suited Aillas well enough.
Aillas set off along the trail, passing the man by as if he were not there.
The man turned slowly to face them, so that the sunset light modeled his features in dark gold and black. He spoke a single word: "Hold!"
Aillas politely reined up his horse, and the man came slowly forward. Black hair hung close beside a low forehead with saturnine eyebrows and luminous hazel eyes below. Harsh cheek-bones, a mouth wide and shapely, if somewhat heavy, above a short heavy chin, along with a flickering muscle of the left cheek, gave an impression of passionate strength dominated, if only barely, by a sardonic intelligence. He spoke again, in a voice at once harsh and melodious: "Where do you go?"
"We travel along the Windy Way and down into South Ulfland," said Aillas. "Who, sir, are you?"
"My name is Torqual." His eyes became fixed upon Tatzel. He murmured: "And who is this lady?"
"She is in my service, at the moment."
"Lady, are you not Ska?"
"I am Ska."
Torqual moved somewhat closer. He was a strong man, thought Aillas: broad of shoulder, deep of chest, narrow in the flanks. Here was a man, he thought, whom Tatzel would think neither furtive nor timid, nor even prudent.
Torqual spoke in lilting melodious tones: "Young man, I claim your life. You trespass upon a territory which I consider my own. Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset." He drew sword from his scabbard with a whine of steel on steel.
Aillas said courteously: "Sir, I prefer not to die, and certainly not upon my knees. I will ask your permission to cross this land which you claim, with my goods and my company put to no peril."
"The permission is denied, though indeed you speak with a good and easy voice. Still, it is all one."
Aillas dismounted and drew his own sword, which was slim and light, and which suited the style of sword-play he had learned in Troicinet. His knife? Where was his knife, upon which he relied? He had cut cheese for their noonday meal, and had packed the knife away with the cheese.
Aillas said: "Sir, before we continue with this matter, may I offer you a bite of cheese?"
"I care for no cheese, though it is an amusing concept."
"In that case, allow me a moment while I cut a morsel or two for myself, as I hunger."
"I have no time to spare while you eat cheese; prepare instead for death." With this, Torqual advanced a step and slashed out with his sword. Aillas jumped aside and the stroke went for naught. Torqual swung again but the stroke slid off Aillas' blade.
Aillas feinted a lunge, but Torqual's heavy blade darted up and Aillas would have been spitted had he attempted more, and he understood that Torqual was a swordsman of skill as well as strength.
Torqual again attacked, driving Aillas back, and Aillas fended off a series of blows any of which might have cut him in two, apparently each time by a hair's-breadth. On the last stroke Aillas counterthrust savagely, touching Torqual's shoulder, and Torqual was forced to jerk back with an effort in order to recover. Aillas now took note that Torqual carried a knife at his belt.
Torqual's mouth drooped in concentration; he had not expected quite so much exercise. Again he struck, and Aillas lunged hard, throwing up his left arm in an awkward manner which exposed his left side. Torqual attempted a tricky backhanded blow, which Aillas effortlessly slid aside, and lunging again threw up his left arm in the the same awkward fashion.
Torqual lunged; Aillas countered and thrust home, drawing blood from the side of Torqual's chest, missing his heart only by inches. Torqual's mouth drooped and his eyes widened; otherwise he ignored the wound. Aillas noticed now that his hand had gone to his knife.
Torqual again made play and again Aillas fended away his blows, and Torqual seemed to allow an opening for a lunge. Aillas stepped foward, thrust his left arm high, exposing his left side; instantly Torqual struck out with the knife, except that Aillas stabbed out his sword and plunged the blade through the inner side of Torqual's elbow, so that the point emerged beyond and the knife dropped from the suddenly nerveless hand.
Aillas pounced upon the knife and caught it up almost before it struck the ground. He grinned at Torqual, and now began to press the fight: thrusting, lunging, the tip of his sword moving beyond Torqual's ability to fend it off. "Kneel, Torqual," said Aillas, "so that I may kill you with less effort." Aillas swung the tip of his sword in a circle, dodged, feinted, thrust, and Torqual was forced back, step by step.
Torqual drew a deep breath, and venting a great yell, charged with sword swinging like a scythe. Aillas retreated and momentarily Torqual's chest was exposed. Aillas threw the knife with all his force; it sank to the hilt into Torqual's chest. He staggered backward, dumbfounded. Aillas lunged and thrust his sword through Torqual's neck. Torqual cried out in woe and tottered backward over the edge of the plateau. He fell and rolled: down, down, and down, and at last, coming to rest, was merely a black anonymous bundle.
Aillas looked around. Where was Tatzel? She was already two hundred yards away, riding at best speed to the north, though somewhat slowed by the pack animal which Aillas had tied to her horse, as well as Aillas' horse which he had tied to the pack horse. Tatzel therefore rode at an awkward canter which still would have been sufficient to leave Aillas behind, had it not been for Torqual's horse.
Tatzel looked back over her shoulder; Aillas saw the desperate flash of her face, and might have been angry except for the exultation of his victory over Torqual.
He untied Torqual's horse, mounted and gave chase. And again he became angry that Tatzel had chosen to flee north, ever farther into the wilderness which extended all the way to the Godelian border.
At the thought a new concept entered Aillas' mind, which he considered a moment, then rejected. It was too flamboyant, too brash, and probably impractical... . The thought recurred. Was it truly impractical? Probably, and reckless as well. On the other hand, when all was said and done, it might be the boldest and bravest stroke of all.
Tatzel rode on with grim determination, hoping that Aillas' horse would fall and break a leg. She had a long lead; miles went by before Aillas caught her. Without comment he took up the reins of her horse, and slowed it to a walk.
Tatzel sat glowering, but had nothing to say. By the light of the afterglow Aillas made camp in a little spinney of mountain larch, and on this evening for their supper they dined upon Torqual's preserved goose.
Chapter 12
WINDS BLEW ACROSS THE HIGH MOORS, moaning and sighing through the larch trees. Covered by the tarpaulin, with Tatzel taut and sullen beside him, Aillas watched clouds flying across the moon.
There was much to consider. Even now in South Ulfland his absence may not yet have been noticed, each of his staff believing him to be elsewhere. Still, when all was weighed in the balance—here Aillas smiled a rueful smile to the moon—he would have done the same deeds, and endured the same hardships all over again, if only to gain those fresh perceptions which had banished some of the clutter from his mind. Further and beyond all else, a wonderful new scheme had burst into his mind. Tatzel would discover a new bewilderment, and the thought prompted Aillas to chuckle aloud.
Tatzel, also lying awake and staring up at the moon, found Aillas' amusement totally at discord with her own mood. She asked resentfully: "Why are you laughing?" Then, as Aillas made
no immediate reply, she said: "When men are bereft of their senses, they laugh up at the moon."
Aillas chuckled once more. "Your ingratitude has curdled my brain. I laugh so that I may not cry."
Tatzel made a scornful sound. "Your vanity is inflated because Torqual stumbled and fell."
"Poor Torqual! I neglected to warn him that fighting with strangers might be dangerous, and he suffered a fearful injury! Kindly Torqual, modest and good! His demise* brings sorrow to us all!"
*Torqual survived both his wounds and his fall. He managed to crawl to the trail, where he was rescued by a pair of his henchmen. They took him to Castle Ang where in due course he recovered his strength.
Tatzel said no more, and so the night passed.
In the morning, as they ate their breakfast crouched over a small reeking red fire, Aillas looked across the moors and discovered, not half a mile distant, a caravan of Ska horsemen leading a dozen wagons piled high with bales and, behind, a column of two or three dozen men linked neck to neck with ropes.
Aillas instantly extinguished the fire lest a wisp of smoke draw attention from the riders. He told Tatzel: "Yonder is the Windy Way; it leads to Poelitetz. I have come this way before."
Tatzel watched wistfully as the caravan passed by, and Aillas could not suppress a pang of pity and even a trace of guilt. Was it just to visit vengeance for all the wrongs done to him upon the head of one young girl?
He gave an angry answer to himself: Why not? She was Ska; she shared and endorsed the Ska philosophy; she had shown never an iota of pity or concern for the slaves at Castle Sank: why should she be exempt from retribution?
Because the Ska style of life was not of her contriving, came the answer. She had assimilated Ska precepts with her mother's milk; they had been given to her as axioms of existence; she was Ska willy-nilly, through no choice of her own!
But the same could be said of any Ska, man or woman, old or young, and she showed no sign whatever of altering her point of view. She simply refused to accept Aillas' assertion that she was now herself a slave. In short, she was as guilty as any other Ska, and tender emotions in this case were irrelevant.
Still, there was no denying that Aillas had singled out Tatzel for special attention, although he had envisioned none of their present hardships. He had wanted only to—what? To force her to recognize him as a person of worth. To make real the daydreams he had fabricated at Castle Sank. To indulge himself in the pleasure of her companionship. To enter intimately into her life and thoughts, to gain her good opinion, to excite her amorous yearnings... . Again Aillas felt sardonic amusement. Those goals, formed with such innocent fervor, now all seemed absurd. At any time he could put Tatzel to those erotic uses which she apparently at least half-expected, and which, so Aillas' instinct told him, she might not have found entirely unwelcome. Often, when he felt her warm presence beside him, the urge to abandon all restraint was almost overpowering. But whenever lust started to cook inside his brain, a whole cluster of ideas intervened to quench the fire. First, what he had seen upon entering the hut had sickened him and the image hung in his mind. Second, Tatzel had possessed herself of his knife, and he could only believe that she had meant to kill him, a thought which dampened his ardor. Third, Tatzel, a Ska, thought him a hybrid of the ancient beetle-browed cannibals and true man, and a creature lower in the evolutionary scale than herself: in short, an Otherling. Fourth, since he could not woo Tatzel in the ordinary fashion, pride dissuaded him from taking her by force, for the sheer relief of his glands, with no thought for all the other considerations. If Tatzel were amorously inclined, let her make the first move: naturally, a far-fetched possibility. Although—perhaps he only imagined this—sometimes he felt as if Tatzel were taunting him, daring him to take her, and possibly she burned with some of the same urges which beset him.
An irksome problem. Perhaps some day, or some evening, when conditions were right, he would learn the truth of how she felt, and perhaps the daydreams would be realized in full and breathtaking totality. Meanwhile, the caravan had passed.
"Come!" he said gruffly. "It is time we were riding."
Aillas had long since recovered his knife from the cheese. He made up the pack, which he loaded upon the horse he had previously ridden, while he mounted Torqual's strong black stallion, and the previous packhorse carried nothing. Aillas helped Tatzel into the saddle and they were once more underway, but now they rode into the north.
As Aillas had expected, Tatzel was sorely bewildered by the choice of direction, and finally blurted out a question: "Why do we ride to the north? South Ulfland is behind us!"
"True: a long hard journey, with Ska and other bandits as thick as flies along the way."
"Still: why ride north?"
"Ahead is the road from the Foreshore to Poelitetz. Beyond is wilderness, all the way to Godelia. The land is empty; there are neither bandits nor Ska to plunder us. At Dun Cruighre we will find a Troice ship and return to South Ulfland in comfort."
Tatzel looked at him as if she doubted his sanity, then gave her apathetic shrug.
An hour later they came upon the road leading from the Foreshore to the great mountain redoubt Poelitetz. Discovering no traffic to right or to left, Aillas put the horses to their best speed, and crossed the road unchallenged.
All day they rode across trackless moor. Far to the east stood the guardian ridge which here separated Dahaut from North Ulfland. To west and north the moor melted into haze. On this high tableland only furze and sedge and coarse grasses prospered, with an occasional cluster of windbeaten yews or a spinney of ragged larches. Sometimes a hawk flew overhead, on the lookout for quail or young rabbits, and crows flapped across the desolate distance.
As the afternoon passed, a float of heavy black clouds appeared in the west: first a line of scud which quickly advanced to loom across the sky; a storm was surely in the offing, with a dreary night ahead. Aillas accelerated the pace of his company and gave keen attention to the landscape, in the hope of discovering some semblance of shelter.
The outriders of the storm passed across the sun, creating a scene of melancholy magnificence. Beams of golden light played across the moor, and shone full upon a low cottage with walls of white-washed stone and a roof slabbed over with thick turf from which grew tufts of grass and clover. Smoke issued from the chimney, and in the yard adjacent to the byre Aillas noted a dozen sheep and as many fowl.
With hopes high he approached the cottage, and dismounted near the door. At the same time he signaled to Tatzel: "Down from your horse! I am not in the mood for another crazy chase across the moors."
"Help me then; my leg pulses with pain."
Aillas lifted Tatzel to the ground, then, together, the two approached the cottage.
Before they could knock, the door swung wide to reveal a short sturdy man of middle years, round and red of face with orange-red hair cut to overhang his ears like the eaves of a house.
"Our good wishes to you, sir," said Aillas. "Our business here is ordinary: we seek food and shelter during this stormy night for which we will pay in suitable degree."
"I can provide shelter," said the crofter. "As for payment, ‘suitable' for me might be ‘unsuitable' for you. Sometimes these misunderstandings put folk at the outs."
Aillas searched the contents of his wallet. "Here is a silver half-florin. If this will suffice, we have eliminated the problem."
"Well spoken!" declared the crofter. "The times of the world would flow in halcyon joy, if everyone were so open-hearted and forthright as you! Give me the coin."
Aillas tendered the half-florin piece. "Whom do I address?"
"You may know me as Cwyd. And you, sir, and your mistress?"
"I am Aillas, and this is Tatzel."
"She seems somewhat morose and out of sorts. Do you beat her often?"
"I must admit that I do not." _
"There is the answer! Beat her well; beat her often! It will bring the roses to her cheeks! There is nothing better to in
duce good cheer in a woman than a fine constitutional beating, since they are exceptionally jolly during the intervals in an effort to postpone the next of the series."
A woman came to join them. "Cwyd speaks the truth! When he raises his fist to me I laugh and I smile, with all the good humour in the world, for my head is full of merry thoughts. Cwyd's beating has well served its purpose! Nevertheless Cwyd himself becomes gloomy, through bafflement. How did the roaches find their way into his pudding? Where except in Cwyd's small-clothes are household nettles known to grow? Sometimes as Cwyd dozes in the sunlight, a sheep wanders by and urinates in his face. Ghosts have even been known to skulk up behind Cwyd in the dark and beat him mercilessly with mallets and cudgels."
Cwyd nodded. "Admittedly, when Threlka is beaten for her faults, there is often a peculiar aftermath! Nonetheless, the basic concept is sound. Your mistress has the look of costive asthenia, as if she were an arsenic-eater."
"I think not," said Aillas.
"In that case, a thrashing or two might well release the bile into her blood, and soon she would be skipping and singing and larking about with the rest of us. Threlka, what is your opinion?" Aside, he told Aillas: "Threlka is a witch of the seventh degree, and is wise beyond most others."
"In the first place, the girl has a broken leg," said Threlka. "Tonight I will mend the break, and then she will know less dole. But singing and larking? I think not. She is fey."
"Sound opinions," said-Cwyd. "Now then, Aillas, let us deal with your horses, while the storm still gathers strength. Tonight it will be a mighty display, and conceivably a single silver coin is poor recompense for the misery I am sparing you."
"This sort of afterthought often spoils a promising friendship," said Aillas.
"No matter how reasonable its basis?" asked Cwyd anxiously.
"Trust, once established, must never become the plaything of avarice! This was my father's wise dictum."