The Steel of Raithskar (8 page)

“Markasset!”

I turned toward the high-pitched, slightly breathless voice. A woman was hurrying toward me.

Though there were not consistent or obvious style differences between what I had seen men and women wearing as I walked through the marketplace, the sexual dimorphism in this race was more pronounced, and I had been having no trouble differentiating the sexes. Nor did I now. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a woman. Or that she knew me.

I tried to keep my expression pleasant but noncommittal. I had a faint memory of having met her before, but no name would come to mind. She rushed up to me, smiling eagerly, golden, fur-like hair, no longer than mine, coated with mist and winking in the sun. Her canine teeth were as well-developed as mine. Somehow, they looked even better on her.

“What are you doing back in town?” she asked a little breathlessly. I could hear concern in her voice. “You told me you’d taken a job with Gharlas the merchant!”

I opened my mouth to say something—damned if I knew what. Luckily I didn’t get a chance.

“Darling,” she rushed on, “once you were gone, you should have
stayed
gone! Worfit is furious because you left town still owing him money, and he probably already knows you’re back. Why didn’t you leave Keeshah outside the city, so fewer people would recognize you?”

“Well, I—”

“Did you hear that the Ra’ira has been
stolen?
And Zaddorn has been asking me questions about you.” She stopped for breath, looked around almost furtively, stepped closer and lowered her voice. Like most of the women I had seen, she was small and delicately boned; I had to bend my head to her to catch her words.

“I told him that what’s between you and me is none of his business, but he says that the Chief of Peace and Security has the right to ask anyone questions in a case like this. What with Worfit and Zaddorn both looking for you—darling, coming home right now was
terrible
timing!”

I was trying to put together what I had learned from her with what I had overheard from the police squad on the road the night before. I didn’t much like what I came up with.

“Do you mean,” I asked, “that somebody thinks
I
stole the—uh—Ra’ira?”

“Oh, you know Zaddorn—he’s always been jealous of you. He thinks if he could discredit you, I would turn to him. It hasn’t even been officially announced that the Ra’ira is gone, but there are rumors everywhere. I don’t know if he really thinks you did it, or is just trying to make
me
think you did. I don’t. I know you’d never do such a thing, especially when it was in your father’s care.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I couldn’t help wondering about the “especially” qualification. What sort of man
was
Markasset?

“You’d better get home fast,” she was saying. She was looking around again as though she expected to be caught at any moment. “Before Zaddorn hears you’re back. Your father can give you protection.”

“Keeshah needs food,” I told her. As Keeshah had been telling
me
during the entire conversation. “I’ll get a side of glith for him, then I’ll go straight home.” The look she gave me was unreadable. “I promise,” I added.

“You can’t take Keeshah in a meat shop! And you can’t leave him out here!”

“I know,” I covered rapidly. “I was going to ask you to go in and get it for me, if you would.”

I had another reason for asking; I hadn’t the least idea of how much glith meat was worth, nor how much the coins in my purse were worth. I handed her the pouch. She looked impatient, but she glanced over at Keeshah and finally agreed.

“Oh, all right. If it will get you off the streets sooner. You want a whole side? Wait here and I’ll have the meatmonger bring it. I’ll be right back.” She went into the meat shop.

I stood quietly, scratching Keeshah’s ear and trying to digest this new, gratuitous information. There was plenty of it, and I
didn’t
like it.

ONE:
Markasset apparently was engaged to marry this talkative wench—but we (Markasset and Ricardo) couldn’t remember her name.

TWO:
A certain Zaddorn, who seemed to be the equivalent of the Chief of Police, was also (?) in love with her and was jealous of Markasset. And maybe not above using his position to ace out a rival.

THREE:
Worfit—now
that
name rang a loud bell. A moneylender of the shadier kind, unhandsome, powerful, dangerous. Little Caesar with fat teeth. Markasset owed him a rather large sum of money—I didn’t know exactly how much, but I had an impression that it was a gambling debt, and not his first.

FOUR:
If Zaddorn had been telling the girl the truth, Markasset might really be suspected as a jewel thief.

None of this spoke well for Markasset. I had the feeling that he—
I
—had not been the most reputable of young men-about-town.

Keeshah rubbed his cheek against my chest, reminding me that I had stopped rubbing behind his ear.

I had to laugh at this huge, dangerous cat that wanted to be petted like a kitten.

*
I guess if
you
liked Markasset, Keeshah,
* I told him, *
he can’t be as bad as all that.
*

I was distracted suddenly from my own problems. Two monsters were walking down the street.

Part of my mind told me that they were only a couple of working vineh. Nothing remarkable. Nothing to worry about. But I couldn’t help feeling like the lead idiot in a Friday night Creature Feature—who hadn’t had a chance yet to read the script.

At first, I thought they were blond gorillas. They were taller and wider than I, but on closer inspection I could see that their legs were longer and their arms shorter than those of
Gorilla gorilla
, and they held themselves more naturally erect.

Their faces were definitely apelike. The head sloped back steeply from the supraorbital ridge, leaving little room for prefrontal lobes. The lower jaw was massive and muscular, and the great canines made my own look ridiculously small. Their faces and bodies were covered with short, curly fleece, as though they had grown pubic hair all over. It was a light tan in color, not much darker than Keeshah’s fur. But where Keeshah carried his pale bulk with grace, these lumbering brutes were even uglier for their pallor.

To add to their grotesqueness, they were wearing gray-brown shorts and were wielding push-brooms. And as I watched, a third one followed them from the crowd; he was pushing a wheelbarrow-like cart.

No one else was in the least disturbed by their presence or their appearance. Shoppers stepped out of their way automatically as they passed. Apparently they were a normal sight on the streets of Raithskar, a simple street-cleaning detail, sweeping up sand and leaves, and leftovers from passing vleks.

Then one of the broom-pushers caught the cart-pusher in the side with the end of the broom handle. It was purely accidental, a miscalculated backstroke. But Cart-pusher roared, spun the cart out of his way and cuffed Broom-pusher on the side of the head from behind. Broom-pusher swung around, his broom cutting a wide arc and knocking the wind out of Cart-pusher.

The Gandalaran pedestrians were paying attention now, scattering away from the fight. The two vineh were literally at each other’s throats, grappling and snarling and trying with single-minded determination to kill each other. The second broom-pusher turned and looked, crouched and eager to join the brawl. I had the feeling that the only thing that stopped him was having to decide which side to join.

A man in a yellow tunic, whom I had seen near the vineh but hadn’t really noticed, pushed against the outward tide of people and ran toward the fray, shouting with authority. “Break it up!” he ordered the struggling vineh, who paid him no attention. The third ugly took a step toward the other two, but stopped in confusion when the man yelled, “Gooloo, you stay out of this!”

He was carrying a thick baton nearly as long as his arm. He thrust it between the two fighters, but they ignored it.

“Stop it, you fleabitten filth-heads! Stop, I say!” They pulled out of their clinch for a second, and, with a quick flick of his wrist, the man gave each one of the pair a painful smack on the nose.

Both vineh roared their indignation, forgot their quarrel, and turned on the man, who backpedaled quickly. “Back! Back! Stay back!” he ordered. But the note of authority in his voice had been replaced by one of terror. He was the one who was backing, trying to hold the brutes off by jabbing with his baton like an inept fencer.

His heel caught in an irregularity in the hard clay surface of the street and he went down, flat on his back. The two vineh who had been fighting were close now, and the third was converging on them. This decision, obviously, was easier to make. It was going to be a slaughter.

I had to do something. Without my even thinking about it, my bronze sword was suddenly in my hand, and I was sprinting toward the fallen man, who was still poking upward with his baton to ward off the beasts. One of them grabbed, jerked, and took it away from him. I tried to put on more speed.

But before I could reach them, the attack stopped as quickly as it had begun.

The vineh who had grabbed the baton dropped it, looked stupidly around, and went back to pick up his broom. The other went back to the cart. He was limping slightly, and both of them were bleeding slowly from gashes and bites. I marveled at the toughness of their hides. They picked up their equipment and continued along the street as though nothing at all had happened. The third, who had been halfway to the scene of the fight, recovered his own broom and joined them.

The man picked himself up and grabbed his baton. He ran a few steps after the vineh, but stopped when he saw me. I could see him relaxing, the anger and terror going out of him.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad you were here. But I don’t think they’ll make any more trouble.”

Someone in the crowd called out: “You ought to have better control over your vineh than that, Foreman; someone might have been hurt!”

The foreman smiled and nodded, but I, standing next to him, heard him mutter, “Fleabite you, townsman.”

“You hurt?” I asked, sheathing my sword.

“No. I’ll be all right.” He smiled at me. “Thanks again.” He moved off, following his charges, who were once again calmly sweeping the street.

I turned to go back to the shop, and found Keeshah beside me. Together we walked to where the girl was waiting anxiously. Beside her stood the meatmonger, holding a wrapped bundle half the size of a goat.

“Markasset, what is the
matter
with you? Are you crazy?” She glanced at the meatmonger and refrained from reminding me that news of the fight—and my almost-participation—was sure to reach Zaddorn. “Why didn’t you stay out of it?”

I was shocked. “And let a man get killed?”

“Don’t be silly. Whoever heard of a vineh killing anyone? He would have been all right. He
was
all right, wasn’t he? You didn’t do any good by going out there, brandishing your sword, and making a spectacle of yourself.”

“I don’t know,” the meatmonger spoke up for me. “I never saw
two
of ’em gang up on a man before. It could have been nasty.”

She gave him a look that might have quick-frozen the meat he held, so hurriedly did he hand it to me. “Here’s your side of glith, townsman—er—Rider.” Then he disappeared back into the shop.

I laid the bundle across Keeshah’s shoulders.

*
Eat?
*

*
When we get home.
*

The girl handed back my pouch, but came close to whisper to me. “Markasset, why are you carrying around so much money? Do you realize that you have
five
twenty-dozak pieces in here?” I did now. “Why, you might be robbed!”

“With Keeshah around? A thief wouldn’t get very far,” I said. There was a short silence which was, for me at least, very awkward. Did she expect an explanation for the money? If so, I couldn’t help her. “Well,” I said at last, “if I hurry, I can get home before Zaddorn gets the word I’m back.” I hesitated, then asked, “Are you coming?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I can’t come with you now, darling. Mother gave me definite instructions. ‘Get your shopping done and come right back,’ she said. ‘I need that cloth right away.’ ” The girl sighed.

She looked up at me, and for a moment there was a look on her face that spoke more than all her words. Beneath the chattering, the nagging, the impatience, she was really frightened for me. She cared.

“I’ll come by your house later, darling. And if I see Zaddorn I’ll try to send him in the wrong direction. Just hurry now and—take care of yourself.” And she was gone.

I remembered her name now. Illia.

Keeshah knew the way home, and I followed him through streets which narrowed and twisted as we approached the residential district. The homes reminded me of the Spanish Colonial style—mostly stone and sun-baked clay, plastered over and finished with pastel-pigmented whitewash.

Thanasset’s house was larger than most, a sprawling two-story building. On the side facing the street, there were windows only in the upper story, and the front wall continued away from the house to enclose a large yard area. There were two massive parquet doors: one directly into the house; the other one, through which Keeshah and I passed, into the patio garden. It was carefully arranged and tended, patterns of green broken up with colorful and fragrant flowers. A cool and pleasant place.

A broad pathway, inlaid with large flat stones, led through the garden and split. Half of it led to the back of the house on my left. Keeshah and I followed the other half, which took us to the end of the large enclosure. Here there were small storage buildings and a large stone structure that was Keeshah’s home. Double doors made of heavy wood stood open, braced against the outer walls on either side of the archway. Inside was a big square room with a roof twice as tall as a man.

Against the rear wall, a broad ledge had been built of stone and laid over with grasses and leaves. In one corner, there was a wide pit filled with sand; in the opposite corner, a stone trough had been built against the wall and lined, as at Yafnaar, with tile. The walls had been built with a pattern of openings in lieu of windows; it was well ventilated, but it had the cool semi-gloom of a cave.