A Sword for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  “By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh!” growled a Brokelsh near us. “Why don’t they get on with it.”

  “There is all the time in the world to die, as Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls knows full well,” a Rapa told him.

  The Brokelsh spat, which heartened me.

  A Pachak hefted his shield in his two left hands. “I have given the lady Yasuri my nikobi,” he said in that serious way of Pachaks. “And by Papachak the All-Powerful! I shall honor my pledge. But I think this is like to be the last fight for us.”

  The Chulik slid his sword neatly under his left arm and then polished up his tusks with a spittled thumb. “By Likshu the Treacherous!” he said. “I shall take many of them down to the Ice Floes of Sicce with me.”

  “Numi the Hyrjiv fights with us,” said one of the Fristles. “But I wish I had my scimitar instead of this thraxter.”

  So, as we waited to march out with our backs as straight as we could contrive and take our places on the board, we called upon our gods and our guardian spirits. This is human nature. And how the exotic variety of Kregen can respond! Truly is it said, on Kregen are joys for all men’s hearts.

  As we marched out we presented a spectacle at which, I suppose, many a person of limited intellect would scoff, dubbing us a collection of menagerie-men. Yet we were all men, all human beings, and we marched out to fight for our lives.

  Even the Chulik shared some reflection of those feelings.

  And, there was among our number a single Kataki.

  “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!” The Kataki swished his bladeless tail about like a leem in a temper. “Would that Takroti would slit all their gizzards!”

  “Careful with your tail,” snapped one of the Fristles. “By Odifor, you nearly tripped me.”

  The guards stepped in with upraised bludgeons to separate out the violently bawling combatants in the ensuing melee. Truly, we presented a horrifying and a pathetic spectacle as we marched out.

  As we stepped onto the board we saw that the Princess’s square was already occupied. The woman standing waiting wore a long white gown of sensil, lavishly embroidered with blue and yellow and black and white checkers. An enormous crowning plume of blue feathers rose above her head, surrounded by tufts of blue. She glittered with gems. As I passed her, and the carrying chair for her Jikaidasta, I saw her face. Most of the lines were gone, her flesh filled out, and I guessed many of those lines had been caused by apprehension for the journey across the Desolate Waste. Her hair was a dark brown, curled, and I caught its perfume. Her shape in the white sensil was a world away from the shape in the shiny black bombazine and lace.

  She saw me and a muscle twitched in her cheek. But she made no movement and ignored me. That suited me. I was not here to fight for the lady Yasuri, but to fight against her opponent.

  The eight slave girls who carried the Jikaidasta’s chair were Gonells. The male Gons habitually shave off their white hair, believing it shames them. But some peoples of the Gon race take a proper pride in the silver hair of their females, and these eight Gonells were splendid girls, well-formed, clad in wispy blue, and their silver hair shone lustrously, sweeping in deep waves to their waists.

  The occupant of the carrying chair was invisible to me and the gherimcal rested on its four legs, carved like prychans. We marched past and so fanned out to take up our positions.

  As the trumpets blew and the Suns of Scorpio shone down on us, we Ranked our Deldars.

  The game opened with Mefto taking the first move and soon his pieces were extending down the board toward us, like rivers of lava from a volcano. Our own lines extended toward Yellow. Truly, Mefto’s pieces looked splendid in their yellow breechclouts and with tufty masses of yellow feathers. Their shields formed a field of daffodils. He had picked his best men, no doubt of that; they were brawny, tough, adept. Like us, they were a mixture of diff and apim, and they were confident of victory.

  The beautiful girls in their wisps of clothing ran about the board carrying the orders to the pieces. Men moved in obedience and soon the opening clashes began. Swords flashed and blood flowed.

  We played Death Jikaida.

  It chanced that I was formed into a diagonal line with a swod each side, and there I remained. Mefto had not put in an appearance on the board. I could just see him in the Yellow throne, giving his orders and the stylor below repeating them to the girls who ran so fleetly, their limbs rosy and glowing, or brown or black and splendid in the light. The lines formed and pieces fought and were taken or took, to be tossed back into the velvet-lined balass box or to be replaced from the substitutes’ bench. The opening proved to be the Princess’s Kapt’s Gambit Accepted, and my diagonal remained fast, the action taking place on the right wing.

  The young swod by me licked his lips. He was apim, a lithely built lad, without the bulky toughness of the fighting man who has campaigned for seasons on end. Despite the regulations, we talked, as the pieces did. What could the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians do about that now? Have us all shafted?

  There were things he could order and which the black-clad men would carry out; but this infringement of the rules was minor.

  “I only borrowed the chicken,” said this lad, by name Tobi the Knees. “Mother was starving and Father — well, I do not know what happened to him. I would have given the next chicken back, as I always do.”

  So he had been taken up by the Watch and condemned, and sent to the academy to be trained for Kazz-Jikaida. He came from the teeming sections of the city in which many poor folk eked out a precarious living. There were too many of these poor quarters. The contrast between their squalor, and the lavishness of Yellow or Blue City, condemned the Nine Guardians — at least, in my eyes. As for the Foreign Quarters, where visitors who were impartial as to color stayed, they were as palatial in their hotels as the palaces of the City nobility. Tobi the Knees was not alone in his misery.

  “I was going to be a wheelwright — always get work as a wheelwright. And I can shape the wood perfectly. But, mother was ill and I lost my job, and—”

  “You borrowed a chicken.”

  “They got the feathers back!”

  “I see.”

  “And they showed me this sword and this shield and I can make a pass or two. But I still don’t understand it all.”

  “Keep the shield up and keep sticking the sword out, Tobi. You’ll make a bladesman yet.”

  “But I—” He swallowed. He was keeping up a brave front and smiling and swishing his thraxter about; but he was scared, frightened clear through to his ib.

  A flash of legs and a wisp of purple drapery and a girl’s clear voice saying: “Swod to vault to Prychan D Four.”

  Prychan Drin was the third drin toward Yellow on the left of the board. Dermiflon was the home drin on that side, and then Strigicaw Drin. These drins do not appear in Poron Jikaida. Tobi the Knees looked. He gripped his sword. Then, without a word to me or the girl he walked up along the diagonal line. Prychan D Four was unoccupied. Tobi came down off the end of the zeunt and stood on the square and looked around. He was right out in the front of the Blues.

  I just hoped Yasuri and her lady Jikaidasta knew what they were doing.

  D Four is a blue square.

  Over on the right of the board Mefto made a bold advance, vaulting a Hikdar down through Neemu Drin to the end of Wersting Drin, and as Yasuri brought a Hikdar across to Boloth Drin to cover, so Mefto advanced a Chuktar. I began to think the crucial action would take place over there, on the front between Wersting and Boloth Drins. I hoped so. I didn’t give a damn who won this silly game; I owed Konec and his comrades from Mandua and I owed Vallia to make sure of Mefto when he appeared on the board.

  The charming little girls with their blue or yellow feathers who carry the orders are equipped with long light wands of red-painted wood wrapped in blue or yellow streamers. With these they tap the pieces on the shoulders if, as so often happens, the men are staring in sick fascination at the
fighting. So I felt the tap, and turned, and the girl said: “Deldar to Prychan E Three.”

  I vaulted. This placed me diagonally ahead of Tobi. He greeted me as though we’d met on an Ice Floe in You Know Where.

  The next instant Yellow’s orders were carried out. A fellow wearing the Yellow favors and feathers stalked across the squares from Krulch Drin toward me. Mefto had decided to put an end to this advance.

  I recognized the Yellow piece at once. He was acting the part of a Chuktar; but I had last seen him eating palines in Friendly Fodo’s Weapons Shop. He halted for a moment on E Two, for as a Chuktar he had come straight on, and then, instantly, flung himself on me.

  As his sword beat down on my upraised shield I fancied I’d stir him up a little.

  “Why, Llahal, Trinko. Fancy meeting you here.”

  His muscular body shielded with that shiny carapace across his back bore on, and his Moltingur face, all eating proboscis and feelers and terrifying faceted eyes, showed shock. I thumped forward with the shield, let the thraxter snout to the side and below. The resistance was soggy, and then the blade slid in. I stepped back.

  He toppled over and his tunnel mouth emitted a long hissing wheeze.

  The slaves in their red tunics ran out with a stretcher and carted him away. Other slaves raked the blood and sprinkled fresh blue sand. There was no lifting uproar from the refined onlookers lounging in their chairs along the terrace. Yasuri made her move.

  The red wand touched me again and the blue streamers tickled my face.

  “Deldar to take Hikdar on Prychan C Three.”

  This fellow, a Rapa, had watched the previous contest with his blue-feathered beak stuck high in the air. The yellow feathers in his reed-laurium outweighed his racial feathers. I stalked across and we set to.

  He was good — all Mefto’s men were good — and the shields gonged like pale echoes of the Bells of Beng Kishi before I slid him and so stretched him out on the blue sand.

  The red-clad slaves bore him off. Still there was no sound from the terrace and I did not expect any. They were connoisseurs up there, lolling in their fancy chairs and sipping their wines.

  Yasuri, as was her privilege because I was the attacking piece, recalled me then. I trailed off to the substitutes bench with a word for Tobi as I went.

  “That’s how it’s done, Tobi. Keep your chin tucked in and your shield up. Jikai!”

  “It is to you the Jikai, Jak.”

  What could I say? I gave him a hard nod of encouragement and walked slowly back across the blue and yellows.

  Up to this point the game had been reasonably equal, for Yasuri’s scratch team had fought like wild leems when it came to push of pike. But the tension would increase with each succeeding move, as the pieces drew closer together and the skillful maneuvering gave way to the blood bath.

  The palanquin of the lady Jikaidasta rested quietly near Yasuri, who, as the Aeilssa, had not so far been forced to move. As I walked back Yasuri looked at me. “Well done, Jak. I give you the Jikai.” Only lower and upper case initial letters can attempt to indicate the quality of meaning in the same word here.

  “Watch his center, lady. I recall Scatulo favored a thrust—”

  A voice spoke from the palanquin. The golden cords of the carrying-chair’s curtains loosened. The voice said: “Go to the substitutes’ bench, tikshim, and do not presume.” And the curtains at the side parted and a woman’s face looked out.

  Red hair, she had, a glowing rippling auburn mass piled atop a small face, a pale face with the sheen of ivory of Chem. Her eyes were blue, and direct and challenging. Small her mouth, and scarlet, and pursed above a firm rounded chin. Beautiful? Yes, beautiful, like a stalking chavonth, lissom and slender and feline. Even then I did not liken her to a leem.

  I halted stock-still at once. I was very near her chair. The silver-haired Gonells waited, stupidly transfixed by the blood and violence — and, at that, not stupidly. It was we who partook of the blood and violence who were the truly stupid. So I stood, not going to the bench as she had so impolitely ordered me, using that word tikshim that so infuriates those to whom it is addressed, being considerably worse than the condescending “my man” of Earth.

  “I was talking to the lady Yasuri.” I spoke softly.

  The Jikaidasta’s face resembled a mask at first sight; the sheen of ivory of Chem, the delineation of line of lip and jaw and nose, the flesh firm and compact as though carved from that smoothest and mellowest of ivories. But, as I stood there, a trifle lumpen and boorish, a faint mottling of color appeared on her cheekbones. She had a most perfect bone structure, fine-drawn, distinct, and in no single place could be seen any sagging of flesh. The effort with which she controlled herself was quite admirable, quite; here was a lady used to having her own way, and highly conscious of her own worth.

  “Do not allow the blood to rule your head just because you have won two encounters. This is a game to win.”

  “You think you will win it — against Mefto?”

  “If the creatures we have to fight for us do as well as you then perhaps. Nothing else will do.”

  I felt the pang in me. What I had done — would that be any use against Mefto the Kazzur?

  And then, well, I was a trifle wrought up. So I said, “You are the Jikaidasta they call Ling-li-Lwingling. You are from Loh.”

  Three men in black appeared on the board heading in our direction. I will not describe the instruments they bore.

  Yasuri said: “Be off with you, Jak.”

  “Aye, my lady.” And then, before I went, I said: “We shall win today, by fair means or foul.”

  Ling-li-Lwingling, of Loh, let the side curtains fall back into place and I trotted off to the substitutes bench. I think, if the three men in black had followed me and attempted to use their instruments I would have dealt with them, not recking the consequences; but they looked malevolently, and then turned away.

  The man chosen to replace the piece I had acted on the blue square was a Khibil. Yasuri was bringing her left flank into play with a nicely calculated precision of timing that, had this been other than Death Jikaida, would have placed Mefto’s pieces in a cramped and unfavorable position. I fancied the lady Jikaidasta’s hand was in this strategy. But this was Death Jikaida. Mefto sent a hulking swaggerer of a fellow, acting as a swod, to deal with the Khibil Deldar. The Khibil was carted away, dripping blood on the sand. The victor bore ghastly wounds and Mefto would quite clearly replace him. Yasuri responded by switching her attack, hoping to get our Chulik into action, and then — and at last, at long last — a response was elicited from those languid watchers on the terrace.

  With the accompaniment of a long sigh susurrating around him, Prince Mefto the Kazzur strode onto the board.

  Useless for me to race toward him. I had almost the length of the board to go, and long before I reached the rast I’d be shafted by those vigilant Bowmen of Loh. No, I had to be on a square and near the cramph before I could break all the rules and leap for his throat. He stood on his square and looked about. He preened himself. Well, he was a master bladesman and I would not deny him that. While I would admit I did not know his full character and guessed there was good in him, somewhere, he did seem to me to vaunt his prowess, to take a dark pride from his own gift that, somehow, repulsed me. This is subjective. May Zair forgive me if I swagger in the same way. I do not think I do.

  And, this was strange. The great swordsmen I have known usually revere their gift, assessing it humbly as a gift of the gods, however much sweat they distribute in training and understanding the Disciplines. Perhaps I was still sore and vengeful, still filled with resentment. I sat down, and watched as Mefto went to work.

  Tobi the Knees stood next in line. Mefto declared his move and pounced. He did not slay Tobi in a simple quick passage as he could have done. He toyed with him, and feigned alarm that he was under pressure, and poor Tobi thus drawn on pressed hard, and was cut, and then cut again, and so, all bewildered and uncomprehen
ding, was sliced into pieces.

  I suppose the old intemperate Dray Prescot would have leaped up and gone hurling forward. He’d have swatted the flying arrows away in the old fashion as the Krozairs of Zy do. But I do not think that maniac of a fighting man would have lived to reach Mefto the Kazzur, let alone have had time to cross swords with him.

  The Dray Prescot that was me sat lumpen on the bench. But a change did come over me. As the remains of Tobi were carried away and the blue and yellow sand was sprinkled I felt I would not wait too long. And the game went badly for us. Our Kataki came up against Mefto, and his tail sliced this way and that, emptily, and Mefto laughed and his own tailhand gripped the Kataki’s bladeless tail as he sank his thraxter into his belly.

  But our Chulik fought well, and dispatched his men, and Yasuri recalled him. We were being pressed back now, and over the lines of blue and yellow men the yellow of Mefto’s pieces vaulted long into our home drins. That unique vaulting move in Jikaidish is zeunt, and the Yellows were zeunting in on us with a vengeance.

  The carrying chair pressed close to Yasuri, and the two ladies argued long and fiercely over their next move, and the water dripped in the clepsydra and time fleeted away. The Blues out there began to cast anxious eyes toward the water-clock. The water dripped. The ladies conferred. Some of the pieces began to beat their swords against their shields. The hollow drumroll made no difference to the ladies. Still they talked. And the water dripped.

  We all saw the long lenken arm of the gong lift ready to descend with a resonant boom against the brazen gong. Then a purple wisp of gossamer and a flash of spritely legs and a girl was off to order the move. It was made before the gong struck. But even as the Chuktar ordered to move complied, the gong crashed out — too late.

  “Well,” said Bevon next to me. “I do not wish to be on the board if the ladies do that again.”

  “Nor me, by Odifor!” quoth the Fristle next to us on the bench. Sweat stank on the air, and both ladies used perfume bottles. Move followed move, and it was clear that Mefto had sized up the play and was ruthlessly pushing everything forward, not caring for finesse, just using the superior skills of his fighting men. Our ranks thinned. It was soon perfectly clear that we were going to lose, for a set-up was approaching in which the Yellow Pallan could sweep down in a long zeunt and coming off the vault turn sharply and so pin the Princess. Yasuri saw it and was helpless. Her every move was beaten by superior swordplay.