Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Now why? If the mob had stormed in and out, they would not likely have taken the trouble to close doors behind them.

  The door was not quite closed, but ajar, and a thread of light showed under it. Hand on hilt, Fallon put a foot against the door and pushed. The door swung open.

  The room was lit by a candle in the hands of a Krishnan woman, who stood with her back to the door. Facing Fallon on the other side of the conference-table stood an Earthman. As the door opened the woman spun around. The man whipped out a sword.

  The wheep caused Fallon to snatch out his own blade as a matter of reflex, though when he got it out he stood holding it, his mouth gaping with astonishment. The woman was Gazi er-Doukh and the man was Welcome Wagner, in Krishnan costume.

  “Hello, Gazi,” said Fallon. “Is this another jagain? You’re changing them fast nowadays.”

  “Nay, Antane—methinks he does indeed have the true religion, that for which I’ve long sought.”

  As Gazi spoke, Fallon took in the fact that the huge table had been assaulted with axe and chisel until it was a mere ruin of its splendid self. The drawers had all been hacked or forced open and the papers that had lain in them were scattered about the floor. In front of Wagner on the scarred surface lay two small rectangular slips of paper. Though Fallon could not read them from where he stood, he was sure from their size and shape that they were the fragments that he sought.

  He said to Wagner, “Where’d you get those?”

  “One from the guy that had it, and the other outa this drawer,” said Wagner. “Sure took me long enough to find it, too.”

  “Well, they’re mine. I’ll take them, if you don’t mind.”

  Wagner picked up the two slips with his left hand and pocketed them. “That’s where you’re wrong, mister. These don’t belong to nobody—so if there’s any money in it, it’ll go to the True Church where it belongs, to help spread the light. I suppose you got the other piece.”

  “Hand those over,” said Fallon, moving nearer.

  “You hand yours over,” said Wagner, stepping out from behind the table. “I don’t aim to hurt you none, Jack, but Ecumenical Monotheism needs that dough a lot worser’n you do.”

  Fallon took another step. “You killed Qais, didn’t you?”

  “It was him or me. Now do like I say. Remember, I used to be pretty hot with these stickers before I seen the truth.”

  “How did you find out about him?”

  “I went to Kastambang’s trial and heard the testimony. Gazi knowed about the check being tore in three parts, so I put two and two together.”

  “Cease this mammering!” said Gazi, setting down her candle on the table. “You can divide the gold, or fight your battle elsewhere. But with the city on the edge of falling we’ve no time for private wannion.”

  “Always my practical little sweetheart,” said Fallon, and then to Wagner again: “A fine holy man you are! You intend to murder two men and run off with the loot and the lady, all in the name of your god…”

  “You don’t understand these things,” said Wagner mildly. “I ain’t doing nothing immoral like you did. Gazi and me are gonna have strictly spiritual relations. She’ll be my sister…”

  At that instant Wagner leaped catlike, his rapier shooting out ahead of him. Fallon parried just in time to save his life; Wagner stopped his riposte-double with ease. The blades flickered and gleamed in the dimness, swish-zing-clank!

  The space was too confined for fancy footwork, and Fallon found himself hampered by the lamp in his left hand. His exertions scattered drops of oil about. Wagner’s arm was strong, and his swordplay fast and adroit.

  Fallon had just made up his mind to throw the lamp into Wagner’s taut, fanatic face when Gazi, crying: “Desist, lackwits!” caught his tunic from behind with both hands and pulled. Fallon’s foot slipped on some pieces of paper. Wagner lunged.

  Fallon saw the missionary’s point coming toward his midriff. His parry was still forming when the point disappeared from his view, and an icy pain shot through his body.

  Wagner withdrew his blade and stepped back, still on guard. Fallon heard, above the roaring in his ears, the clang as his own sword fell to the stone floor from his limp hand. His knees buckled under him and he slid to the floor in a heap.

  Dimly he was aware of his lamp’s striking the floor and going out; of an exclamation from Gazi, though what it meant he could not tell; of Wagner’s fumbling through his scrip for the fragment of the draft; and lastly of the retreating footsteps of Wagner and Gazi. Then everything was dark and quiet.

  Fallon was never sure whether he had lost consciousness or not, and if so for how long. But an indefinite time later, finding himself asprawl on the floor in the dark with his tunic soaked with blood and his wound hurting like fury, it seemed to him that this would be a rotten place to die.

  He began crawling toward the door. Even in his present condition, he did not mistake the direction. He dragged himself a few meters before exhaustion stopped him.

  A while later he crawled a few meters more. He made a fumbling effort to feel his own pulse, but failed to find it.

  Another rest, another crawl. And another, and another. He was getting weaker and weaker, so that each crawl was shorter.

  Hours later, it seemed, he found the foot of the stair down which he had come. Now, could he even consider crawling up all those steps, when it was all he could do to pull himself along horizontally?

  Well, he would not live any longer for not trying.

  Chapter XX

  Anthony Fallon came to in a clean bed in a strange room. As his vision cleared he recognized Dr. Nung.

  “Better now?” asked Nung, who then did to him all the things that physicians do to patients to determine their state of health. Fallon learned that he was in the consul’s house. Some time later, the doctor went out and came back with two Earthmen, Percy Mjipa and a leathery-looking white man.

  Mjipa said, “Fallon, this is Adam Daly, one of my missing Earthmen. I got them all back.”

  After acknowledging the introduction in his ghost of a voice, Fallon asked, “What happened? How did I get here?”

  “The Kamuran saw you lying in the gutter in the course of his triumphal procession up to the royal palace and told his flunkeys to toss you out with the other offal. Lucky for you, I happened along. As it was, you were within “minutes of going out for good by the time I got you here. Nung just pulled you through.”

  “The Qaathians took Zanid?”

  “Surrender on conditions. I arranged the conditions, mainly by convincing Ghuur that the Zaniduma would fight to the death otherwise, and by threatening to stand in front of the Geklan Gate myself while he tried to knock it down with a battering-ram. These natives respect firmness when they see it, you know, and Ghuur’s not such a fool as to court trouble with Novorecife. I’m not supposed to interfere, but I didn’t care to see Ghuur’s barbarians ruin a perfectly good city.”

  “What were the conditions?”

  “Oh, Balhib to retain local autonomy under Chindor as Pandr —a treacherous swine, but there didn’t seem any alternative. And no more than two thousand Qaathians to be let into the city at once, to discourage robbery and abuse of the Zaniduma.”

  “Could you hold Ghuur to that, once he got the gates open?”

  “He lived up to it. His record of keeping his word is better than that of most of these native headmen. And besides, I think he was a little afraid of me. You see he’d never seen an Earthman with my skin-color, and the superstitious beggar probably thought I was some sort of demon.”

  “I see,” murmured Fallon. He understood one thing now: that quaint as some of Mjipa’s affectations of superiority to the “natives” might be, they had the partial justification that Percy Mjipa was, as an individual, a superior sort of Earthman.

  “How about the missing Earthmen?”

  “Oh, that. Ghuur’s men had carried them off—another coup arranged by your late friend Qais. The Kamuran has a hi
deout in Madhiq where he makes arms.”

  “But they’ve been pseudo-hypnotized…”

  “Yes, and un-pseudo-hypnotized as well. Seems there’s a Krishnan psychologist who studied at Vienna many years ago, before the technological blockade was tightened up, and he had worked out a method of undoing the Saint-Remy treatment. He worked his stunt on these three, and—you tell it, Mr. Daly.”

  Adam Daly cleared his throat. “When we’d had the treatment the Kamuran came to us and told us to invent something to beat Balhibuma, or else. There was no use pretending we couldn’t, or didn’t know how, and so forth. He even had another Earthman— some fellow we never heard of—hauled in and his head chopped off in front of us just to show us he wasn’t fooling.

  “We thought of guns, of course, but none of us could mix gunpowder. But we did know enough practical engineering to make a passable reciprocating steam-engine, especially as the Kamuran had a surprisingly fine machine-shop set up for us. So we built a tank, armored with qong-wood planks and armed with a fixed catapult. The first couple didn’t work, but the third was good enough to serve as a pilot model for mass production.

  “The Kamuran ordered twenty-five of the things and pushed the project with all his power; but what with shortages of metals and things, only seventeen of them were actually started— and what with breakdowns and bugs only three arrived at the battle. And from what I hear of the musketry of the Balhibo army, I take it that Balhib had been doing something similar.”

  “Yes,” said Fallon, “but that was an all-Krishnan project. “Good-bye technological blockade. And I see the day when the sword will be as useless here as on Earth, and all the time I spent learning to fence will be wasted. By the way, Percy, what happened to the Safq?”

  Mjipa replied, “Under the treaty, Ghuur has control of all armament facilities, so when the priests of Yesht closed their doors on his men he had ‘em pile the Balhibo army’s remaining store of powder against the doors and blew ‘em in.”

  “Did the Qaathians find a couple of Krishnan philosophers named Sainian and Zarrash in the crypt?”

  “I believe they did.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose Ghuur has them in confinement while he decides what to do with them.”

  “Well, try to get ‘em free, will you? I promised I’d try to help ‘em.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Mjipa.

  “And where’s that ass Fredro?”

  “He’s happy, photographing and making rubbings in the Safq. I persuaded Chindor to give him the run of the place after Iiyara the Brazer—for reasons you can guess—prevailed upon the Protector to suppress the cult of Yesht. Fredro’s babbling with excitement—says he’s already proved that Myande the Execrable was not only a historical character but built the Safq as a monument to his father—who wasn’t Kharaj but some other chap. Kharaj, it seems, was centuries earlier, and the myths mixed them all up. And Myande was called the Execrable not because of anything he did to his old man, but because he beggared his kingdom and ran all his subjects ragged building the thing… But if you’re interested he’ll be glad to tell you himself.”

  Fallon sighed. “Percy, you seem able to fix up everything for everybody, except getting me back my kingdom.” He turned to Daly. “You know, those tanks of yours wouldn’t have been worth a brass arzu against anybody who knew about them ahead of time. They could easily have been ditched, or overturned, or set afire.”

  “I know, but the Balhibuma didn’t,” said Daly.

  Fallon turned back to Mjipa. “How about Gazi and Wagner and those people? And my friend Kordaq?”

  Mjipa frowned in thought. “As far as I know, Captain Kordaq never came back from Chos—so he’s either dead, or a slave in Qaath. Gazi’s living with Fredro.”

  Fallon grinned wryly. “Why, the old…”

  “I know. He took an apartment—said he’d probably be here for a year or more, so… Dismal Dan Wagner, you’ll be pleased to hear, tried to lower himself down the city wall by a rope one night and was shot by a Qaathian archer.”

  “Fatally?”

  “Yes. It seems he’d been trying to reach Majbur to cash a draft from the late Qais on Kastambang’s bank, not knowing that the Balhibo government sent orders by the last train from Zanid to the Majbur bank to sequester Kastambang’s account, he being a convicted traitor.”

  “Unh,” said Fallon.

  Dr. Nung appeared, saying: “You must go now, gentlemen. The patient has to rest.”

  “Very well,” said Mjipa, rising. “Oh, one more thing. As soon as you’re well enough to travel, we shall have to smuggle you out of the city. The Zaniduma know you spied for Ghuur. They can’t arrest and try you openly, but a lot of them have sworn to assassinate you at the first opportunity.”

  “Thanks,” said Fallon without enthusiasm.

  A Krishnan year later, a disreputable-looking Earthman slouched along the streets of Mishe, the capital of Mikardand. His eyes were bloodshot, his face bore a stubble of beard, and his gait was unsteady.

  He had peddled a small item of gossip to Mishe’s newspaper, the oldest of Krishna. He had drunk half the proceeds and was on his way with the remainder to the dismal room that he shared with a Mikardando woman. As he staggered along, Anthony Fallon muttered. The passing Knight of Qarar who turned to stare did not understand the words, not knowing English.

  “ ’F I can only work one deal—one good old coup—I’ll get an army, and I’ll take that ruddy army to Zamba, and I’ll be king again… Yesh, king!”