A Fortune for Kregen (8 page)

A yelling mob rushed through the narrow alleyway, sweeping away stalls and awnings in their panic. I could see the soldiers riding them down, laying about them with the flats of their swords. Two men almost knocked me flying. I ducked into a doorway with the stink of days-old vegetables wafting out. The rout rushed past. Then — well, I suppose I should not have done what I did — but, being me, I did.

A woman carrying a baby fell onto the slimy cobbles.

The pursuing totrixes hammered their six hooves into the ground, prancing on, and the woman would be run down.

Darting out, with only the most cursory of looks, I scooped her up, baby and all, and started back for my doorway.

A totrix, rearing up, shouldered me away. I spun about, staggering, clutching the woman. A Watchman hit me over the head with his bludgeon. He was shouting, excited, frantic.

“Here’s one of the rasts—” And he hit me again.

That was it, for a space.

The blackness remained, the blackness of Notor Zan, and I did not open my eyes. The place where they had thrown me stank. A dismal moaning and groaning filled the air. And, in my aching head the famous old Bells of Beng Kishi clashed and clanged. I winced. Cautiously, I opened one eye.

The place was arched with ribbed brick, slimy and malodorous, and a few smoky torches sputtered along the walls. The place was a dungeon, a chundrog, and the prison would extend about us with iron bars and stone walls and many guards.

Water dripped from that arched ceiling and splashed upon us, green and slimy, stinking. Rivulets of the water trickled down to open drains along the center. The people were crammed in. They were poor.

They were tattered and half of them were starving. They moaned in long dismal monotones. And the air stifled with fear.

Gradually I pulled myself together and sorted out what had happened.

Criminals had been sought, and the Watch had scooped up a ripe bunch, and anyone who got in the way was taken up also. It is a dreadfully familiar story. The Nine Masked Guardians who ran LionardDen were fanatical about the order of the city. Many visitors stayed here, and the reputation of the city rested on reports of conditions. Who would journey to a city of thieves, or a city of revolution —

even to play Death Jikaida?

There was no sign in this tangled company of the woman and her baby and I just hoped they were all right. The people looked like a field of old rags ready for the incinerators. I have said that the Star Lords never lifted a finger to help me, and although this is not strictly accurate, for they once enabled me to overhear a conversation to my advantage in the island of Faol of North Havilfar, it was precisely in the kind of situation in which I found myself now that no help could be expected from the Everoinye. I expected none.

A group of ruffians near me, all gleaming eye and broken teeth and rags, were discussing future possibilities.

“It is Death Jikaida, you may be sure.”

“No — they want fighting men for that.”

“We can fight — aye, and will fight, if they put spears into our hands.”

“Kazz-Jikaida,” said another, shaking. “Blood Jikaida. My brother was cut down in that, two seasons ago.”

A man with lop ears and a broken nose, very villainous, stilled them all as he spoke. “It will not be that.”

He spoke heavily, with a wheeze. “It is Execution Jikaida—”

“No! No!” The shouts of horror were as much protestations as outbursts of terror. “Why, Nath, why?”

“They had a blood-letting yesterday, did they not? And the great ones demand another game — I know, may they all rot in the Ice Floes of Sicce forever and ever.”

The uproar told me that these ill-used people put store by the words of this Nath. It seemed he possessed enough of the yrium, that mysterious force that demands from other men respect and obedience, to command them.

Lop-eared Nath, he was called, and he looked a right villain.

We were fed a thin gruel and most of it was dilse, that profuse plant that pretends to nourish, and fills a man’s belly for a time and then leaves him more hungry than before. We drank abominable water. This chundrog was Spartan, a dungeon from which it would be well-nigh impossible to escape except in death. I began to think along those lines. A feigned death...

Engaging in conversation with the nearest group, I soon discovered that plan was a bubble-dream.

“Anyone who pretends death is stuck through with a spear, to make sure.” Lop-eared Nath appeared to relish his words. “Listen, dom, we only get out of here one way. We go to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida.”

“But there is a chance in that. All the pieces will not be taken, not all killed.”

“Aye. A chance.”

A man with a snaggle of black teeth and one eye chuckled. He was half off his head already.

“It depends who we get to act as player.”

“May Havil shine his mercy upon us,” said a woman, and she made the secret sign of Havil the Green.

We spent three days and nights in the hell-hole. At one point a man in resplendent clothes and a blue and yellow checkered mask over his face appeared. Lanterns illuminated his figure as he stood upon a dais beside the lenken door. The people babbled to a stupefied silence.

“You are all given a trial, and the evidence is against you and you are all condemned.” This man, the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians, spoke in a booming, confident voice. He lifted a ring-clustered hand. “The trial was fair and just, according to the laws of the republic. You are all appointed to act as pieces in Execution Jikaida—”

He got no further. The yells and shrieks, the imploring screams, all smashed and racketed to that slimed brick roof. He turned away, disgusted with the animal-like behavior of the mob beneath him, and walked out with a measured, pompous, confident tread. We were left to face our fate.

What the devil had happened to Pompino and Drogo? Had they taken the voller? What ailed Yasuri?

These questions flew up in my head, and I saw them as the petty concerns they were.

On the morrow I faced Execution Jikaida, and, by Krun, that was a concern that shook a fellow right down to his boots.

Execution Jikaida may be conducted in a number of different ways, and I guessed we’d get the stickiest.

Guards shepherded us along the next afternoon — we could judge the time because the afternoon was the time for this particularly nasty form of the game — and we shuffled out, loaded with chains manacled and fettered to our hands and legs. Screams and sobs echoed about that dolorous procession.

At a wooden door we were each given a large drink of raw dopa.

I drank the dopa.

Some of the people calmed down, others slobbered, some fell faulting. The guards dealt with them all faithfully.

At last we were marched down a long stone corridor. At the far end double doors arched, and these, we guessed, led out onto the board. A Jiktar, smart in his soldier’s uniform, stood by the door, backed by a squad of men. His face, although grim, betrayed a feeling that in my heightened state I hardly recognized as pity.

“Take heart!” he bellowed. “Not all of you will die. It depends on the game. Some will live. Pray to your gods that you will be among the fortunate.”

Lop-eared Nath shouted up, truculent, fierce. “And who is to act as our player?”

“You?”

Nath shrank back. “Not me!”

I said, “Jiktar, how can the player be harmed?”

He looked hard at me.

“You are a foreigner? Yes, I see. Then you were foolish to commit a crime in our city. The object of the game is to take the Princess, is this not so? To place her in hyrkaida? Well, then, her Pallan is the player in Execution Jikaida.”

I saw it all.

The Pallan is the most powerful piece on the board, and, also, as a consequence, the piece the opposing player most wishes to dispose of.

The smells of this dismal place rose about me. The water dripped. And the people with their bellies afire with dopa moaned softly, given over to their own destruction.

“Thank you, Jiktar,” I said, and shuffled off back into the amorphous mass of people.

“Wait!”

The word hit me like a leaden bullet slung by a slinger. “Yes.”

“You, dom, will be the player.”

The eyes of the people about me showed white. Some started to caterwaul their fears, others cried out, some shrieked.

“But—”

“
Shastum
!” The Jiktar roared out, instantly halting the growing noise. “Silence. Move out!”

I did not move.

Into that cowed silence I said, “And who acts as player when I am slain?”

“The next in line. There is no interruption in play. Move out!
Grak
!”

It all made sense. Any fumble-wit might make the moves. The poorer the player — the more the deaths.

The double doors were thrown open. Mingled streaming light poured in, the glorious radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, illuminating a stairway of brilliance out to horror.

We played black.

Each one of us wore a grimy black breechclout and a tattered favor marking the rank of the piece we represented — and that was all.

Almost all the black breechclouts carried rusted stains — dark and dreadful mementoes of past games.

The brilliance of the day outside smote in with pain. We walked out, for we hardly marched, and so were shepherded willy-nilly to our places on the yellow and blue sanded squares. The terraces were packed. The spectators craned forward. The rituals with their incantations and sacrifices and prayers were all passed. We marched out to a hush, a long hollow waiting silence.

Up there against the brightness of the day the ranks of Bowmen of Loh brooded down, tall and spare; but they were there on this day to perform a slightly different function from their usual task of shafting any wight foolish enough to run. Now they were insurance, in case the men in black were too slow.

One young lad — his face was so contorted with fear it took a moment to realize he was apim — when he was positioned by the marshals upon his square in the front rank, simply ran. He did not know where he was running. Head down, screaming, he fled from horror — and ran into the arms of the men in black, into the arms of horror upon horror.

What the men in black and their instruments did to the young man rooted every other piece wearing the black to the square on which he stood. Rooted him there as though he had grown into the solid ground beneath.

The trumpets blew. The banners waved. The crowd craned forward as the white pieces emerged.

So we understood what kind of Execution Jikaida we played. I stood on my square, feeling — well, feeling that I had had some ups and downs in my life upon Kregen, sudden and dizzy swoops from greatness to disaster. And I had clawed my way back, only once more to be thrust down. The situation was no novelty in that respect; but this was like to be the last time I was so cast down. This time was the casting down and out.

The white pieces were not men condemned to execution. They were soldiers, in garish fancy-dress uniforms, with white favors everywhere. They carried weapons. They were off duty, performing a part of their agreement entered into when they signed on, and earning themselves a tidy bonus apiece.

When they took a piece from the black side they would kill him, chop him — or her — down without thought. When a black piece took one of them, he would simply walk quietly off the board, most probably to sit on the substitutes bench to watch the remainder of the game.

As the Pallan I stood next to the Princess.

She stood there, drooping, pale, and I saw she was the woman I had so uselessly attempted to rescue from the trampling hooves of the totrixes. She wore a black breechclout and, because she was the Princess, a forlorn black crown of drooping feathers.

I looked again. In her arms she cradled the baby.

The bastards had even wrapped a scrap of black cloth about the baby’s skeletal ribs. I felt sick.

If I lost the game, then hyrkaida would not be a mere civilized checkmate — it would be the swift and lethal swordblow finishing this woman — and her child.

“What is your name, doma?”

She jerked as though I had assaulted her. Her eyes shifted sideways. She colored. She shook her head.

“They don’t mind if we talk a little, quietly.”

“Yes... I am Liana whom men once called the Sprite.”

“Lahal, Liana the Sprite. I am Jak.”

“Lahal, Jak — will it be very — very terrible?”

“For some of the swods and Deldars, and some of the superior pieces, yes, it will be terrible. But you will be safe—”

“Unless you lose!”

“Yes.”

Up there lolling on the terraces, ensconced on their comfortable seats, the audience stared down avidly.

It seemed to me outrageous that anyone could take pleasure from all this. Although I detested Kazz-Jikaida, where the pieces fought for the squares on which they stood, at least then there was some chance. But here, just to stand and wait to be butchered! And it was useless running. The men in black and their ghastly instruments hovered.

The throng murmured with excitement. They were sick, all of them, sick to their twisted minds.

And perhaps the sickest of all was the white player.

He — or she — would have paid an enormous sum for the privilege of playing Execution Jikaida. I looked at the white throne, at the far end, and the tiny glittering figure there.

An immediate advantage was conferred by that position, the usual one that overlooked the board. From my level place it was going to be difficult to see all the board and appreciate what pieces stood on what squares.

But, then, that was all a part of the fun of the game to these sickening blood-batteners watching.

These wealthy people whose obsession with Jikaida led them to make the difficult journey here and play in Blood and Death Jikaida employed a Jikaidast to advise them in their games. A Jikaidast, a professional who played the game for a living as well as for the absorbed joy of it, would sit at their side and the moves would be seriously discussed. The massive clepsydra would drip its water, drop by drop, as the move was pondered, and a brazen gong would signal that time had run out. What normally happened then would happen here as a matter of course — just another poor devil would be chopped.