A Sword for Kregen (18 page)

“No, no. The Game of Moons for me. Then the dice decide.”

For some perverse reason I defended the Game of Moons. “And skill, also, Pompino. You can’t deny that.”

He staggered three paces to larboard, smiled, and lurched four paces to starboard.

“Deny it? I love it!”

“Come on. They’ll have you inside with a sword in your fist before you can call on Horato the Potent.”

He nodded his head with great solemnity, his face glazed, his mouth slowly opening and then closing with a snap, only once more to drop open. I took his arm and steered him along the avenue away from Nath the Swordsman’s premises.

Nath’s place was not the only establishment we saw where the arts and skills and disciplines of fighting were taught. After my contretemps with Mefto I wondered — and not altogether in the abstract — whether or not I might benefit from a fresh course of instruction. One fact seemed clear to me from what I had pieced together of Mefto’s career. As a Kildoi he was by nature possessed of formidable advantages in the fighting business. He had left his native Balintol seasons ago and had ruffled and swaggered his way through the Dawn Lands as a mercenary, rapidly rising through paktun to be hyr-paktun and privileged to wear the golden pakzhan at his throat. Then, with all the raffish and bloody accompaniments to revolution, he had taken command of a band of near-masichieri and with their help overthrown the old prince of Shanodrin and taken over the country, the titles, the wealth and the power. His legal acceptance had soon followed. By all the laws of Kregen, he was now Prince of Shanodrin. The revolution by itself would not have been enough — in law — to give him the right. The bokkertu had to be made. Then Mefto the Kazzur became Prince Mefto and could take the name of A’Shanofero as his own.

From what little I knew of the man I wondered why he had chosen a principality and not a kingdom. But, probably, he had his avaricious gaze already fixed on his next victim.

Looked at completely dispassionately, Mefto the Kazzur had merely done what I, myself, had done.

All the same, the idea of Mefto lording it as Emperor of Vallia sent a little shudder up my backbone.

“You ill, Jak?”

“Not as much as you, you old soak, Pompino.”

“Don’t get away from the wife enough, that’s my trouble.”

“Then may Havil the Green smile on us, and the Everoinye set another task to our hands.”

“Amen to that, by the pot belly of Beng Dikkane!”

The twin Suns of Scorpio, the red and the green, are not called Zim and Genodras in Havilfar, but Far and Havil. Usually on Kregen, Jikaida boards are checkered in blue and yellow or white and black. There are places where the red and green are used; Jikaida City was not, as far as I knew, one of them.

As we neared the imposing pile of the Jikaidaderen the walls assumed something of their true stature, and we saw the palace was large, perfectly capable of accommodating many laid-out Kazz-Jikaida boards. The place was a maze of inner buildings, a vast complex not, I suppose, unlike the Jikhorkduns surrounding the amphitheatres and the arenas of Hamal and Hyrklana and other places. We strolled along, and Pompino was singing a charming if foolish ditty about a Pandaheem who kissed the baker’s wife and went floury white to see the sweep’s wife, whereat he became sooty black. The song is called “Black is White and White is Black” and I will not repeat it.

The city within Jikaida City in which we thus swaggered along was bedecked with yellow. The other city claimed the blue. They had names, long rigmaroles of high boasting; but folk usually called them just Yellow City or Blue City. I had to stop myself from joining in some of Pompino’s songs. And, I wondered how long it would be before the Watch employed by the Nine Guardians would heave up to arrest us.

Each city was run by its own Masked Nine, and they had no kings or queens here. They did have a nobility, and from this aristocracy were drawn the Guardians of the Masked Nine. The system employed was a democratic one that extended only to these nobles and their families; but within that limitation they voted for office and did not fight for it. Jikaida drew the fires of the blood, so it was said.

As a secret ballot was used, the successful candidates remained anonymous, masked, inducted into office by their peers. This system had, so far, proved effective in preventing unrest from developing into revolution. The army and the Watch obeyed the orders of the Masked Nine Guardians and enforced their edicts. We had heard of punishments for disobedience that would give nightmares to a seasoned paktun. All was balance, force countering force, and, over all, the games of Jikaida dominated the twin cities of Jikaida City.

The truth would not be served in saying the inhabitants of Blue City and Yellow City hated one another. They were rivals, at times deadly rivals; but all their hostility was played out on the Jikaida boards. Yellow against Blue. Blue against Yellow. Their loyalties to their color city and their partisanship were alike intense. They were dedicated. The forces aloof from this rivalry, the religious orders, the army — and very few others, by Krun! — were still infected by the Jikaida fever and wore black and white checkerboarded insignia. Havil the Green was a noted deity here, with his temples and priests; but there were others, plenty of them in apparently equal prominence. On the surface there appeared no sign of Lem the Silver Leem, for which I was thankful, although I kept my eyes open on that score.

Managing to drag Pompino off without further problems and keeping the Watch well in the offing, I found a suitable hostelry in the middle-sections of Yellow City called The Pallan’s Swod. Here, after due payment, I was able to deposit Pompino in a bed and close the door on his snores.

Useless to detail my doings after that; they boiled down to confirmation of the absence of flyers, the vowed testimony from seasoned leem-hunters that only death by suicide awaited across the lakes, and that Ineldar the Kaktu would be returning when a caravan had been assembled and when that would be, by Havil, he had no idea. In the meantime he was going to drink up and visit the public games and have himself a good time and that was what Pompino and I should do. He’d be pleased to hire us as caravan guards when the time was ripe.

Then he lowered his flagon and laid a long brown finger against his nose. The uproar in the tavern around us masked our words from all but ourselves. He winked.

“That run in you had with Mefto the Kazzur. You are lucky to be alive. He is a marvel with his swords.”

“Aye.”

“You bear him no rancor?”

“Not for beating me. But, as to himself, as a man—”

“Agreed. Listen. Go to see Konec na Brugheim. He puts up at the Blue Rokveil. Speak of the king korf. Do not mention my name.” He drew his finger down his nose and reached for his flagon. He looked at me, once, a shrewd hard glance, and then away. “I have spoken.”

“Thank you,” I said, not completely sure of what I should thank him for, but detecting his intention to help. He drank noisily and then bellowed for more wine, for the suns were declining. I joined him in a flagon of Yellow Unction, and then hied myself back to The Pallan’s Swod to find Pompino not holding his head and groaning, but cursingly trying to pull his boots back on and thirsting for more singing and amphorae of wine.

I draw the veil on that night’s doings. But Pompino rolled back to the tavern with his head flung back and his mouth wide open, yodeling to the Moons of Kregen.

In the morning I took myself off to find this Konec na Brugheim at the sign of the Blue Rokveil, and to discover what secrets would be unlocked at the mention of the king korf.

Chapter Fourteen

Of the Fate of Spies

As the Zairians of the Eye of the World say: “Only Zair knows the cleanliness of a human heart.” I had said I held no rancor against Mefto, and I believed that. But, humanly fallible as I am, perhaps a lingering resentment impelled me to watch my back with a sharper scrutiny even than usual as I walked gently along in the early morning opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. That vigilance which may have been caused by bitterness and suppressed longings for revenge served me well on that morning I walked in Jikaida City to talk about the king korf to a man I did not know.

They picked me up a couple of streets from the hostelry and they paced me, fifty paces or so to my rear. They kept to the shadowed side of the street. There were four of them and they wore swords and were dressed in inconspicuous gray and blue, as was I, save that their favors were of a hard bright yellow. There were two apims, a Rapa and a Brokelsh. I walked on, placidly, and pondered the indisputable fact that no man or woman born of Opaz knows all the secrets of Imrien.

The decision I reached seemed to me common sense. With a succession of alterations in course and speed, and with a swift vanishing into the mouth of a side alley where a stall loaded with appetizing roasted chingleberries smoked in the early light, I lost them. I kept up a good pace, but not too obtrusive a bustle in the morning activity, and so circled the Jikaidaderen and came into Blue City. Would those rasts with their yellow favors follow here?

Finding the Blue Rokveil was simplicity itself; the first person I asked looked as though I was a loon and jerked his thumb, marked with ink, for he was a stylor, to a broad avenue lined by impressive buildings. The place was there, clearly signposted, and looked to be an establishment more properly called a hotel than a hostelry. Only persons of standing and wealth would gain admittance as guests. I walked calmly to a side gate where Fristle slaves were trundling amphorae and shrilling orders at one another, and went in. The yard led by way of odoriferous stables to a long gray wall, mellow in the light, clothed with moon blooms, their outer petals extended and the inner tightly folded. From over the wall came a familiar sound — the ring and chingle of steel on steel and the quick panting for breath, the scrape and stamp of feet seeking secure purchases. A wicket gate showed me men at sword practice. I half-turned, prepared to move on.

Hung on a wooden post just within the gate, and already burnished to a shining brilliance, a silvered iron breastplate was being lovingly polished up by a little Och slave. He had three of his upper limbs busily polishing away and with the fourth he was surreptitiously stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth between those puffy jaws. And good luck to you, my old dom, I was saying to myself as, being an old fighting man, my eye was caught by the sudden and splendid attack one of the energetic and sweating combatants within the courtyard essayed against his opponent in this early morning practice session.

The opponent, a strongly built Fristle, gave ground. The assailant, an apim with strands of extraordinarily long yellow hair swirling, leaped in, roaring his pleasure, his good nature blazingly evident on his round, cheerful, pugnacious face. The men at practice in there all wore breechclouts and sandals. The apim whirled his sword in a silvered pattern of deceptive cunning and the Fristle, ducking and retreating, must have felt that steel net whistling about his whiskers perilously close.

“Ha, Fropo! I have you now!”

“Hold off! Hold off! I’ll slice your hair!”

“You dare!”

And with the speed of a striking chavonth the big apim, his yellow hair coruscating about his head in the light, leaped and struck — and the sword hovered an inch from the Fristle’s throat.

“D’you bare the throat?”

“Aye, may Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor pardon me, Dav. I bare the throat.”

With a great bellow of good-natured laughter the apim whipped his sword away and clapped a meaty hand around the Fristle’s golden-furred shoulders. “You let me best you, Fropo, by thinking of my hair. It never gets in my eyes — ever.”

Now they were at rest the two looked an oddly assorted couple, the Fristle and the apim. The apim, this Dav, was a splendidly built man, bulging with muscle; but I fancied his beginnings of an ale-gut might slow him down in a season or so if he did not temper his homage to Ben Dikkane.

So looking at these two as they snatched up towels to wipe the sweat away I saw reflections in the brilliant polish of the breastplate. The Och had dropped his piece of bread and bent to retrieve it. In the polished kax I saw four distorted figures. One was Rapa, one Brokelsh, and two were apims.

The Rapa lifted his hand and light splintered.

Even as I turned sharply away prepared to duck in the right direction, the big apim called Dav poised his sword and threw. It hissed through the air. It buried its point in the Rapa’s breast, smashing through his leather jerkin, crunching into his bones, spouting blood.

In the next instant I had drawn and was running upon the Brokelsh and his apim comrades. With a clang the blades crossed. I was aware of the Fristle, Fropo, and the apim, Dav, running up. Somewhere, someone had shouted: “’Ware your back, dom!”

The Rapa was done for, the dagger spilled into the dust. His viciously beaked face lay against the earth. But as my sword felt the savage blows of these would-be stikitches, I felt a new and wholly unexpected sensation — an unwelcome and treacherously deadly emotion.

I recalled that last fight with Mefto, and the way he had bested me. My blade faltered. The apims had sized me up and were pressing hard and somehow and, I think of its own volition, my thraxter leaped to parry their blows. But I saw again those five lethal blades of Mefto flashing before my eyes.

My throat was dry. I leaped and slashed the blade about and caught the Brokelsh in the side. The Brokelsh are a squat-bodied race of diffs, and he staggered and recovered and came for me again. Then Fropo’s sword switched in and took the Brokelsh in play, Dav took one of the apims, and I was left to face the last. Whatever my emotions had been, however the feelings had scorched through my brain, I felt the old secrets flowing along my arm and through my wrist and into my hand. I turned the sword over and beat and twitched and so lunged, and stepped back.

Fropo and Dav were standing looking at me. The Brokelsh and the other apim were coughing their guts out.

“You were a mite slow, dom,” said Dav, in his affable way. “You need to sharpen up.”