Delia of Vallia

by Alan Burt Akers

  Magero dropped soundlessly, sliding away from her.

  Naghondo leaped in.

  “That’ll teach the bastard! And I’ll carry on where he left off! C’mere, girl! You’re mine now!”

  Chapter seventeen

  A Zorca for Two

  To speak thus to Delia when she was unarmed was one thing. Even had she been wielding her earthenware pot, perhaps. But to speak thus to Delia with a rapier and left hand dagger in her fists was to commit a grievous error.

  The point on which she chose to check this Naghondo and show him his error amused her. It created a pleasant frisson.

  “You claimed I cheated in the Shishivakka race, you great blowhard oaf! Draw your rapier and we’ll see if I cheated.”

  “Do what?” He looked completely flabbergasted. The billy lowered. He looked stupidly at the rapier and dagger whose points hovered before him. Then he let rip a great bellow.

  The roar was compounded of amusement, not even of contempt.

  “C’mere, girl! I’ll show you what fun is!”

  Had she been of the truly murderous kind she sometimes thought she was, Naghondo would have been dead by now. When she thrust, he had time to skip back to the doorway. He looked puzzled. Then his face cleared. “You wish me to show you? Right!”

  He whipped out rapier and main gauche and bore in.

  “I’ll show you a few things, my girl, and then I’ll show you a few more. Hai!”

  She realized he intended not to spit her but to hit her with the flat, punish her for her effrontery. That was his misfortune. She did not stop to curse herself for not having the courage to stick him through on the instant. She set herself, met his first attack with ease, set up her own attack, and missed the final thrust as he stumbled away and only took a sliver from his ribs.

  “You bitch!”

  Now he came in with more deadly intent.

  Circling him, feeling the strength of his wrists, the speed of his reflexes, sounding him out, she was aware of faces looking in at the door. Well, this was a free show. Come one, come all. She’d have to remember to put out a hat or a bowl to collect the copper obs after the show.

  Then she banished thought and allowed the transparency of the sworder to enter her soul.

  Naghondo was a fair hand with the rapier, but he was not in her class, nowhere near. She circled his bald attacks, checked his twinned onslaughts, the left-band dagger held and deflected out of the true line. She stuck him through the arm and he yelped. Then she stuck him through the other arm, and he yelped again. He staggered over Magero’s prostrate mountain of a body and twisted and fell. She stepped in, smoothly, rapier ready to dart down and finish him.

  Hands grabbed her shoulders and waist. She was dragged back. A rapier pointed at her midriff, and Chica said: “Enough, girl. You think you are a sworder — well, desist, or you will meet someone who knows the Jiktar and the Hikdar.”

  “Treat her gently,” said Kovneva Nyleen, over Chica’s shoulder. “She is worth gold. Bring her to me when I summon. The rest of you carrion crows — back to work! Grak!”

  The rush and scurry to obey cleared the area outside the door of the flour storage. Nadia with her bodyguard crowded up, carrying their weapons. Nadia’s full-fleshed face looked savage.

  “Let me at her! I’ll show her what rapier work is!”

  “Yes, yes, Nadia, you are very good,” said Nyleen. “But the girl is deranged. She is a harpist. Not a Jikai Vuvushi.”

  “All the same, my lady,” said Chica, taking the rapier and dagger from Delia. “She seems to know one end of a sword from the other.”

  Nyleen looked scornful. “Naghondo cannot make a fist of rapierwork. He should stay with his clanxer. That is more his mark. And I shall want to see my brother over this.”

  “Quidang!”

  Nadia looked disappointed she was not to have a bout, and Chica led Delia off. Nyleen did not even bother to speak to her slave harpist.

  As for that same slave harpist, she was so savagely condemning herself as would have made all the saints in The Golden Grottoed Halls blush. Why had she been so stupid? Why hadn’t she just got on with escaping? Why hadn’t she killed these men instead of trying to be so clever? The excuse that Nyleen had returned and so scotched any escape plans was merely an excuse. Damn the woman! Why had she skulked in the flour storage? It was all so — so infuriating!

  Also, it was deadly...

  Nyleen was saying in her hectoring voice: “What’s that there, Magero? Give him a kick and rouse him. Is he dead? That would not worry me. He is getting too big for his boots. My brother will have to watch him...”

  The sound as of some leviathan of the deep breaking the surface and uttering a distress signal would be Magero the Obstreperous regaining consciousness.

  Naghondo the Squint, carried off, complained loudly and bitterly that the fool girl had only stuck him because he’d fallen over that oaf Magero. Since when did a slave shishi know anything about swording?

  The reason for the puzzlement and clash of sympathies in these women was perfectly plain. They were women. A man, a common brutish man, had attempted another woman, who had defended herself — and with naked steel. But the woman was a slave, a nothing, one of the grey ones. Where should sympathy lie?

  The last Delia heard before she was assisted up the stairs was a fruity bellow from Magero, frothing.

  “The girl was my steed, Naghondo the Squint! Not yours! And she has a fire you don’t understand.” The spluttering voice pounded out words that must have caused Magero’s aching head to throb even worse. “If you touch her I’ll have your tripes!”

  Stupid to warm to man-mountain Magero the Obstreperous... Still, the idea of having Naghondo’s tripes spilled out wasn’t altogether a bad idea, at that...

  When they’d dumped her back in her room, Nadia looked back, scowling, and said, “One of my girls will stand outside your door until my lady sends for you. Keep you out of mischief. Mind you behave yourself, slave.”

  She stretched out on the bed, feeling her bruises, and contemplated with thoughts that were exceedingly hot the fiasco of the evening. What a leem’s nest she’d made of it all!

  Not being in the habit of feeling sorry for herself, she didn’t lament over that end of the mess. And to start longing for what might have been was worse. She’d just have to start over.

  But it was cruel, damned cruel, by the disgusting diseased left eyeball of Makki-Grodno!

  So that little memory of him made her feel even more determined and, truth to tell, even a little better.

  Then Sissy waltzed in, prattling on, all agog, and with a few words upended all Delia’s plans. Delia experienced a piercing shock. She trembled and went pale. Sissy, chattering on, did not notice.

  “Yes, Alyss, I know you have had an exciting time. But my lady is fond of you, as she is of me, of course. And dear Nath will do all he can.” Sissy’s rounded shoulders drew back as she thought of Nath the Muncible. Then: “And with the poor kov so near to death in the Lud Tower, who knows what is to become of us?”

  “Kov?” Delia’s words croaked.

  Sissy, busily unpacking, rattled on. “Poor Kov Vomanus. He is like to die, and the needlewoman can do nothing. It is very sad.”

  Delia stood up. She swallowed down and some of the bile went away. Vomanus was a reckless scamp; but he was her half-brother.

  “In the Lud Tower?”

  “So dear Nath said. Alyss! You cannot go out. There is a Jikai Vuvushi, and she was very strict with me when I came in. Alyss!”

  Delia opened the door.

  The Battle Maiden was hefty, big-breasted, thick of thigh, with a high color. Delia put an arm around her neck, above the gilt-rimmed corselet, and twisted. She did not kill the girl. She dragged the unconscious body into the room and, unheeding Sissy’s squeals of terror, stripped the armor. She put it on. It fitted here and there, for, and she would not say it herself, there were few, very few, women in all of Kregen with so perfect a figure
as Delia of Delphond. She strapped on the weaponry.

  Sissy, hand to mouth, face green as Genodras, watched. The girl’s eyes rounded into enormous terror.

  Delia tied up the Battle Maiden herself.

  “Now, Sissy, you know nothing of all this. You will not tell anyone, not Nath, not anyone. If you do, I shall come back and cut off your head.”

  Sissy started to cry.

  Delia resisted the impulse to put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and chide her for a silly goose. She looked very fierce, said, “Remember, Sissy, your head!” and marched out.

  The helmet was of that curved pattern that both allowed freedom of movement of the neck and shielded the cheeks. Delia’s face was, therefore, partly shadowed. She tilted the helmet forward. She marched with a swing, just like any of your battle-hardened Jikai Vuvushis. She stared with utter contempt and loathing upon Limi who was creeping along carrying a linen-covered bowl. Limi shrank away. Delia strode on.

  Sissy ran out after her, distraught, and then raced off in the other direction. If the girl had any sense she’d have stuffed the Battle Maiden under the bed first. And, if Sissy babbled out her news — why, then, that would mean that Delia would have to start fighting in real earnest. Somehow her blood was up. Somehow she was invigorated. And, she told herself sternly, that could not be just because she was concerned about someone other than herself, could it? That was to admit to a silly kind of perverse self-love.

  Making her way to the Lud Tower at this time of evening when some of the torches were lit and others were not was not overly difficult. No wonder she’d not discovered what existed inside the fourth tower. The ward rang hollow under her Battle Maiden’s sandals with the iron studs. Her equipment clanked. That wouldn’t do for any regiment Delia commanded. A guard stood at the lower doorway. The torch was lit and helped by contributing its quota of shadows to conceal her face.

  “What do you want, dom?” inquired the guard in an unfriendly voice.

  “Why, dom — nothing that concerns you—” The blow was swift, unexpected, and hard. The girl collapsed. Delia dragged her into the shadows inside the doorway and then started up the stairs. The place stank of damp and dust and disuse. Nyleen hadn’t as yet gotten around to redecorating in here, then.

  The kovneva was very sure of the kov. There remained only two more guards and a couple of werstings on the second landing.

  The guards, being human, could be knocked out without trouble. The werstings presented a more formidable obstacle...

  The black and white striped hunting dogs snarled at her, exposing yellow fangs. Their tongues lolled. They were chained through slots in the wall so that she could not pass without putting herself within their range. Their fangs had not been blunted. She took out the Jikai Vuvushi’s terchick, hefted the little throwing knife, hurled. Even as the first wersting yowled at the steel sliver in his neck, trying to bite and scrape it off, so the long slender steel of the rapier slid into his mate. Feeling disgusted, Delia stepped back.

  With the blood-stained brand in her fist she ascended the last flight of stairs and pushed open the door at the top.

  In the dimness she could see little apart from a vague rectangle of radiance from a door in the room’s far wall. Something moved, and a trembling voice said: “Majestrix!”

  “Quiet,” said Delia.

  A chain clanked. The voice said: “I would give you the full incline, majestrix, but these cramphs have chained me up.”

  He spoke in a low voice, heeding her injunction to be quiet. Evidently, he knew her. She said: “Kov Vomanus?”

  “In the inner room, majestrix. I fear he is near death.”

  She went in, kicked over a stool, peered about. Her eyes could make out objects better now. The man was, indeed, chained. His straw pallet was filthy. A few scraps of bread in a wooden platter looked stale. His hair stood up in spikes.

  The far door beckoned her. But she paused to say: “You are?”

  “Larghos Ventil, majestrix. I serve the kov—”

  “Yes. I will see what I can do for you.”

  She went through into the far room. She put a hand to her nose instantly, gagging.

  The light from the arrow-slit fell across the haggard face. Vomanus did, dreadfully, look close to death. She held herself within herself. Sickness... Suffering... Disease! How she loathed all this ghastly business!

  “Delia?” The fluttery voice barely stirred the stifling air. “Delia?”

  “Yes, Vom. It’s me. I’m taking you out of all this.”

  “Yes, but — Nyleen—?”

  “Do not fret.”

  Vomanus looked as though he might be in the process of being starved to death. That would be like the dark revengeful soul of Nyleen. He tried to rise, and she shushed him, and turned back to the outer room.

  “Larghos — the keys?”

  “The guard, majestrix — with the werstings.”

  “Yes. And do not call me majestrix, as you love your life. If you must, call me Sishu.”

  “Yes, my lady, yes, Sishu.”

  She went out and down the stairs, the rapier held just so and ready to rip into the throat of anyone attacking her up the stone stairs. The guards still slumbered. The werstings looked pathetic, slumped in their own blood. She tapped the two guards again, just to make sure, wondering when the guard Deldar would come by to change the sentries, snatched the keys off the uglier girl’s keyring and darted back up.

  She had been gone a bare score of heartbeats, but already Vomanus was querulously demanding where Delia was.

  “Hush, Vom. I’m here.” She threw the keys at Larghos Ventil and went through to bend over her half-brother.

  “Nyleen,” he said. “She tricked me. I thought she was—”

  “Yes. Where are your clothes?” Then, berating herself, she looked. The clothes, splendid wedding gowns, lay bundled in a chest. She dragged them out and then Larghos was with her and they began to dress Vomanus. He was wasted to skin and bone.

  “Nyleen is a wicked woman,” he babbled. “She is mad, quite makib. She plans to be empress of Vallia.”

  “Yes, yes, Vomanus, my dear. Put your arm through here. Larghos! Do up those laces! Hurry!”

  “Yes, Sishu.”

  “She plans to kill you, Delia. Kill you!”

  “I know.”

  “She sent the wedding invitations, all smiling, and she waited to kill you and you didn’t come. I was glad.”

  “How did she manage to bring you to this?”

  He shivered.

  “Fiacola the Gaze... Sorcery!” He glared up, and reached out a withered arm to grasp at her dangling pteruges. “Witchery!”

  “If you don’t let go I can’t dress — there, that’s better. Larghos, a blanket! And how was she to be empress?”

  “Why, she plans to marry the emperor. Then, she will kill him, too. She and her brother—”

  “Kill the emperor!”

  And then Delia saw the comic side of that. “Marry the emperor!”

  “When you are dead.”

  “Well,” said Delia, Empress of Vallia, lifting the shriveled form of her half-brother off the bed. “Well, we will see about that!”

  “Oh, she will marry him. Her witch is strong. I — I—”

  “Yes. Now keep quiet. If there is any fighting to do I shall have to drop you.”

  “Sishu? Should not I carry the kov?”

  She laughed. A small gurgle in the dimness. “So that I can do the fighting myself? Unimpeded? Why, Larghos Ventil, I was hoping you would help with the fighting.”

  “Yes, majes — yes, Sishu.”

  Down the stairs they went. “Give those two another tap, Larghos. Do not kill them.”

  He picked up the girls’ abandoned weaponry, and tapped them, and then crept on. The guard at the bottom still slumbered, for Delia had dealt with her more severely, but Larghos tapped her, just to make sure. A big fuzzy pink moon floated above, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, and this did not plea
se Delia. The overpowering scent of moon blooms reached her, strong on the night air. Sounds of the usual fortress business floated up; there were no shouts of alarm.

  She started off for the tricky business of penetrating back to the yard and Larghos said: “The stables are this way.”

  She stopped. Of course there would be other stables. She said nothing, but followed Larghos as he led off in the opposite direction, skirting the tower, heading for the far corner where the stone walls ended jaggedly and the new wooden ramparts joined. In the angle stood a small door. At the side leaned sheds. A zorca stamped his hooves and blew.

  There was one zorca.

  Delia let fall an unladylike remark.

  A girl slave passed carrying a bucket. The moon shone. The moon blooms drowned the night in perfume. And there was one zorca.

  The girl slave vanished around the corner. Delia lifted Vomanus into the zorca’s saddle which Larghos, with practiced skill, had already cinched up. The saddle animal was a splendid example, belonging to the guard on perimeter patrol, and, like all zorcas, was so close-coupled as to make riding two up difficult. With a little give and take and a squash it could be done. She had felt the strength flowing in her arms and back and thighs when she’d lifted her half-brother. He would have to go, of course. But she could scarcely ride off and leave Larghos Ventil. She could do so, of course, and he would understand and accept the proprieties of her decision. For she was the empress. And that was the kind of thing empresses did.

  Delia was not and never could be your ordinary mundane kind of empress. If she wanted to do something and it didn’t hurt anybody else, she’d damn well do it. If it didn’t discommode them too much, she’d do it... But in this...?

  Torchlights blazed up from the darkness. Through the gateway separating this ward from the next, lurid light flickered. Orange highlights bounced on the stonework of the tower. Shouts raised, heavy angry bellowings. The heavy beat of war-sandals cracked out, iron studs ringing against flagstones.

  “Up with you, Larghos. Hold the kov firmly.”

  “But, majestrix! Sishu!”