The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales

by L. Sprague De Camp

  The men looked at him and at each other, and began to sidle towards him. Soon they were all around him, grinning. One of them professed much interest in his clothing, pinching it and saying:

  "A gentleman, eh?"

  Another gave Vakar a sharp push, which made him stagger against another, who pushed him back. Prince Vakar had never been hazed in his life, so this treatment bewildered and infuriated him. At the next push he shouted: "I'll show you swine!" and hit the pusher in the face.

  He never had a chance to see how effective his blow had been, because they all jumped on him at once. They caught his arms, and blows rained upon him ...

  -

  Vakar came to an indefinite time later, lying in a corner of the stockade. He tried to move and groaned. His body seemed to be one vast bruise. He inched up into a sitting position and found that he was nursing a swollen nose, a split lip, a pair of black eyes, and a few loose teeth. They must have stamped on him.

  He peered through swollen lids at the others, who huddled on the far side of the enclosure around some game of chance. For the time being they ignored him. He chewed his bruised hps with hatred. If he had thought that he could get away with it he would have planned to wait until they were all asleep and then to murder the whole lot with his poisoned dagger. As it was he could only huddle miserably and wait for his hurts to heal. He thought of using the dagger on himself; what had he to look forward to save a life of deepening misery and degradation?

  The sun was low when the gate of the stockade opened and a man stepped in with two buckets, one full of water and the other of a repellant-looking barley-porridge. The men crowded around the buckets, scooping up water and mush with their hands. A couple of fights broke out. Vakar, though hungry, felt that he had no stomach for such rugged competition in his present state. The turmoil around the buckets subsided as the men stilled their most acute pangs of hunger.

  "Here, stranger," said a voice, and Vakar looked up from his broodings to see the Black standing over him with an outstretched fist.

  Vakar held out his cupped hands and received a gob of mush. The Negro said:

  "You did not look as though you could get any for yourself. Next time the boys want a little fun with you, do not be a fool."

  Vakar said: "Thank you," and fell to eating.

  The following morning the same man came in, this time with an apronful of pieces of stale bread. Vakar hobbled over and snatched up a piece that rolled to his feet out of the scrimmage. He turned back towards his solitary place to eat it when a long arm came over his shoulder and tore the bread from his grasp.

  He whirled. The tall blond Atlantean who had taken his bread was already turning away and beginning to eat it, confident in his superior size. He was the biggest man in the enclosure, and Vakar had inferred that he was the unofficial leader.

  Vakar saw red. His hand darted inside his shirt and came out with the dagger. A second later he had buried the blade in the Atlantean's broad back. The Atlantean gave a strangled noise, jerked away, and collapsed.

  The rest of the men chattered excitedly in a dozen languages. They looked at Vakar, standing over the dead man with the dripping dagger, with more respect than they had shown before. One said:

  "Quick, hide that thing! They will be here any minute!"

  It sounded like good advice. Vakar wiped the dagger on the Atlantean's leather kilt, took off the harness under his shirt, sheathed the blade, dug a hole in the dirt with his fingers, buried the weapon, and stamped the earth into place over it.

  He had hardly done so when a pair of Tritons entered. When they saw the corpse one of them shouted: "What happened? Who did this? You there, speak!" The man addressed said: "I do not know. I was relieving myself with my back to the rest, and heard a scuffle, and when I looked around he was dead."

  The Triton asked the same questions of the others, but got similar answers: "I was throwing knucklebones and was not watching ...."

  "I was taking a snooze ..."

  "Line up," said the Triton and passed down the line searching the men's scanty clothing. He finally said: "We could torture you, but you would tell so many lies it would not be worth while. Off you go to drill. Lively, now. Ho, you!"

  Vakar saw that the Triton was addressing him. "You looked battered. Have they roughed you up?" Vakar, who had been limping towards the gate, said: "I fell."

  "Well, you need not drill today."

  "I am Prince Vakar of Lorsk, and I wish to speak to your king."

  "Shut up before I change my mind about the drill," said the Triton, following the recruits out.

  Vakar found an uncontaminated spot and sat down wearily. After a while a couple of slaves come in and dragged out the Atlantean. The day wore on until Vakar became so restless with boredom that he wished that he had gone to drill despite his hurts.

  In the afternoon the men came in again to loaf, gamble, or chatter until the evening meal. Vakar wondered how some of them seemed able to do nothing ^definitely without going mad.

  The next day he felt better and went to drill. He found that the men were being taught the rudiments of marching and handling a spear. As an experienced rider and swordsman he was told off to supervise some of the others. He asked the drillmaster to be allowed to see the king, and was told:

  "One more of those silly requests, young man, and you shall be beaten. Now shut up and get back to work."

  After about the tenth day Vakar lost track of the time he spent in the stockade. He learned that life among these unwilling soldiers was on a lower level than he had ever known to exist; no self-respecting savage would live like that. Dirt was ubiquitous and perversations were rampant. The only kindly gesture he ever saw was from the Black on the first day. When he had murdered the Atlantean the men had protected him not because they liked him, but because they hated him less than they did the Tritons. For their own protection they recognized one iron law: death to tattie-tales. It was lucky for Vakar that he had not complained about his hazing.

  For the rest he found little among them but stupidity and mutual hatred. They seemed for a while to have been willing to take him as their leader, since he had killed the old, but when he did nothing to confirm his tide they turned to a swarthy, thick-thewed Atarantian who had gouged out a man's eye in one of the daily fights.

  So long as Vakar wore his dagger nobody molested him. When he had somewhat recovered from the despair induced by his beating, he engaged some of his fellow-inmates in conversation, picking up what information he could about the peoples and customs of the surrounding regions and a few words of their languages. In line with the scheme that he was concocting he asked what the Tritons deemed their most sacred oath.

  "They swear by the horns of Aurnon," a small Pharusian told him. "That is some sheep-headed fertility-god of theirs. While they break all other oaths, that one holds them. Though why any right-minded people should choose such a stupid and timid beast ..."

  Before a month had elapsed, a day came when the Tritons announced that as the men were now well enough trained, they would be moved elsewhere. But instead of sending Vakar off with the rest, one of them told him:

  "You shall see the king after all. Step lively, and bear yourself respectfully in his presence."

  "What am I supposed to do? Kiss his butt, or bang my head on the floor?"

  "No insolence! You shall kneel until he tells you to rise, that is ah."

  Vakar was conducted back to the waterfront of the city of Menê and aboard a large red galley. On the poop, in a chair of pretence, sat the man whom he had come to see:

  King Ximenon, big, stout, clean-shaven, in bright shimmering robes, with a golden wreath on his curly graying hair. Beside him stood a man in gilded snakeskin armor, and a pet cheetah lay purring at the king's feet. On the middle finger of his left hand, Vakar saw, he wore a broad plain ring of dull-gray metal.

  The Ring of the Tritons.

  "Well?" said the king.

  Vakar gathered his forces. "Have they told you who
I am, King?"

  "Something about your being a prince in some far-western land, but that means nothing to us. We cannot prove you are not lying. Get to your business, or by the fangs of Drax it will go hard with you."

  Vakar suppressed an urge to make pointed remarks about his unroyal reception in Tritonia. Back in Lorsk his sharp tongue was always getting him into trouble, but now that it was a matter of life and death he found that he could control it. He said:

  "All I wish to suggest is that I may be able to end your war with the Amazons."

  The king's porcine eyes glittered with interest. "So? Some new weapon or stratagem? I listen."

  "Not exactly, sir, but I think I could negotiate a treaty of peace with them."

  The king leaned forward with an impatient motion. "Peace? On what terms? Have you reason to think these doxies are ready to surrender?"

  "Not at all."

  "Then are you proposing that we give up? I will have you flayed—"

  "No, sir. I had in mind a half-and-half arrangement, whereby each should respect the rights of the other. It might not give you all you would like, but at least thereafter you could strive with them as men and women should strive, on a well-padded bed ..."

  Vakar gave King Ximenon another quarter-hour of argument, with an eloquence that he had not known he possessed. He depicted the beauties of cohabitation until the king, squirming with concupiscence, said:

  "A splendid idea! We should have tried it sooner, but after the bloodshed and bitterness between us no one on either side would make the first move. As an outsider you are in a position of advantage. Queen Aramnê is a fine-looking woman; could you arrange for me to wed her as part of the peace-settlement?"

  "I can try."

  "If you can do that along with the rest you can practically name your own reward."

  "I have already chosen it, my lord."

  "Huh? What then?"

  "The Tritonian Ring."

  "What? Are you mad?" shouted the king, looking at the dull circlet on his finger. "I will have you—"

  At that instance the man who stood beside the king's chair leaned over and spoke in the king's ear. They muttered back and forth, and the king said to Vakar:

  "Your price is impossible. We will instead give you all the gold you can carry."

  "No, sir."

  The king roared and threatened and haggled, and still Vakar held out. Finally Xirnenon said:

  "If you had not caught us at a time when prolonged continence has driven us nearly mad ... But so be it. If you can put this treaty through you shall have the ring."

  "Do you swear by the horns of Aumon?"

  The king looked startled. "You have been inquiring into our customs, I see. Very well. I swear by the holy horns of Aumon that if you negotiate this treaty with the Amazons successfully, without impairing our masculine rights to equal treatment, and get me Queen Aramnê to wife, I will give you the Ring of the Tritons. You are a witness, Sphaxas," he said to the man beside him, and again to Vakar: "Does that satisfy you? Good. How soon can you set forth for Kherronex?"

  -

  XII. – THE HORNS OF AUMON

  Queen Aramnê was indeed an impressive-looking woman, as tall as Vakar, with a broad-shouldered mannish figure clad in a loose short tunic that left one small breast bare. She sat in a chair of pretence on her galley-barge, the torchlight gleaming on and pearls in her diadem, and rested her chin on one capable fist. Vakar guessed her age as the middle thirties. She said:

  "Your words are persuasive, Prince Vakar. In fact, a party among us has been urging that we take the initiative in such negotiations. However, before I make my decision, we will undertake a divination to aid us. Zoutha, proceed!"

  There was a burst of activity among the attendant Amazons. Some set up a small stand with a copper bowl on it while others dragged in a naked man whom they forced to his knees in front of the bowl. There was nothing to indicate what sort of man he was and Vakar thought it injudicious to ask.

  An elderly woman who seemed to be high priestess or head sibyl prayed, and then the man's head was forced down while Zoutha, the old woman, cut his throat so that his blood poured into the bowl. When the man's throat stopped gushing the Amazons threw the limp body over the side, where the crocodiles soon carried it off.

  Zoutha stared into the bowl a long time. She dipped a finger into the blood and tasted it, and said:

  "Queen, a thing will almost come to pass."

  "Is that all?" said Aramnê.

  "That is all."

  The queen said to Vakar: "I have almost decided to acceed to your proposal—with a few minor reservations. However, words are not enough."

  "Yes?" Vakar wondered what was in store for him this time.

  "Before I commit my people to this course, I should like a sample of the benefits offered by King Ximenon."

  Vakar's heavy eyebrows rose. "You mean, madam ..."

  "Exactly. You shall attend me tonight." A faint smile touched the queen's frosty face. "I too have lost time to make up for."

  At least, thought Vakar, this new test promised to be one that he was competent to surmount, even though he had never contemplated it as a method of earning a living.

  -

  The sun was well up the next morning when Vakar confronted a wan and peaked reflection of himself in Queen Aramnê's silver mirror as he fumbled for his razor. Behind him the queen stretched like a lazy lioness where she lay and said:

  "Vakar, if some unforeseen accident should remove King Ximenon, would you be interested in—ah—"

  "You honor me beyond my wildest dreams, but I fear that duty calls me back to my homeland," he replied, conscious that accidents that happened to his predecessors might some day happen to him also. "By the way, do you Amazons eat breakfast? I could devour one of those beasts you call a hippopotamus whole, I think."

  Aramnê sighed. "Men! Before they have their pleasure they will promise anything, but immediately afterwards they rush off, full of plans and bustle, with less thought for their late partner than for their favorite hound or hawk."

  -

  For the next few days Vakar shuttled back and forth between Menê and Kherronex while King Ximenon and Queen Aramnê bargained over the final terms of the treaty: what rights each sex should have in the reunited Tritonian state, the marriage contract between the king and the queen, and other details.

  At last all was settled. The royal galleys of the two sovereigns should meet in the lake midway between the islands. To show mutual trust, Queen Aramnê should come aboard the king's galley for the signing of the contract; then the king should board hers for the wedding ceremony and the feast to follow.

  The ships met. A dinghy brought the queen across the short stretch of the glassy lake between them. The red ball of the sun was just touching the smooth blue horizon when Aramnê, followed by a small guard of Amazons, clambered up the side of the king's galley.

  Sphaxas, Ximenon's minister, spread a big sheet of brown papyrus on a table on the deck and read the terms. The king and queen swore by Aumon and Drax and all the other gods of Tritonia to abide by the terms of the treaty and called down an endless concatenation of dooms and disasters upon their own heads should they fail. Finally (as neither could write) they impressed their seals upon the papyrus and exchanged a kiss as a pledge of amity. Then they turned, the tall woman and the grossly massive man, towards the companionway, laughing at some private joke. Sphaxas followed. Before they put foot over the side the queen turned her head back and said:

  "You shall come too, Prince Vakar. What would the celebration be without the man who did the most to bring it about?"

  Vakar followed, grinning. Impatient as he was to get his ring and begone, he saw no harm in one good binge. The gods knew that he had suffered enough in that stinking pen, living on stale bread and barley-porridge.

  On the queen's ship a priest of Aumon performed the marriage ceremony. The king cut the throat of a white lamb and let the blood trickle on the altar. He d
ipped a finger in the blood and marked a symbol on the queen's forehead, and she did likewise to him. All sang a paean to the gods of Tritonia, after which there was much familiar back-slapping and lewd jests. Vakar, feeling thoroughly pleased with himself, said:

  "And now, King, how about my ring?"

  King Ximenon grinned broadly and pulled the ring off his finger. "Here," he said dropping it into Vakar's palm.

  "And now," continued the king, "there is one other small matter we must attend to before proceeding with the feast. Seize him!"

  Before Vakar knew what was happening, muscular hands gripped his arms. His mouth fell open in bewilderment as the king stepped forward and wrenched the ring out of his hand.