The Tides of Kregen (18 page)

All kinds of coins circulated among the Zairians. There were the Zo-pieces, minted by King Zo in Sanurkazz. There were many other mints of other free cities of the southern shore. There were the coins of great mercantile houses, banks, lords of the southern shore. And there were the gold and silver oars of Magdag.

The price to engage in combat with Duhrra the Mighty Mangier was a bronze so. That is, a three-piece. I did not possess even an ob, a one-piece.

About to make my move, for I felt confident that I could take this man despite his massive body, I checked. A bulky dwa-Deldar of the varters stepped forward, flinging off his red cloak, baring his hairy chest, bulging his muscles. He tossed a so to the barker with a confident shout of: "I’ll show this hunk of vosk-steak how to fight!"

"Hai!" they shouted. "Hai for Nath the Biceps!"

I studied the ensuing instructive combat.

This Duhrra knew his business. His head was shaved bald, with a small peak and a descending pigtail, somewhat after the manner of an Algonquian or a Chulik, but far less flamboyant. His face bore a blank, expressionless flatness, with a smudge of a nose, upturned upper lip, and a general air of idiocy I felt belied the keenness he would show in hand-to-hand combat. He uttered a low gurgling cry of pleasure as the dwa-Deldar surged forward to come to hand grips.

The dwa-Deldar circled, lunged, gripped, tried to hoist Duhrra and throw him, as doubtless he had done many times to unruly swods in his outfit. Duhrra grunted. He scarcely moved. His corded thighs ridged as he grasped this Nath the Biceps. I saw the smooth heavy face abruptly blaze with power, the small dark eyes suddenly filled with great joy. Then, with a mighty heave, the dwa-Deldar, Nath the Biceps, flew into the air to land with a dust-billowing crash on his back.

The crowd yelled. There were a few boos. But the gold coin continued to flick up and down in the clawed palm of the barker and he chuckled his mirth.

"Undefeated! Duhrra the Mighty Mangler, champion still, winner by a fall!" And then: "Step up, doms!

Step up! A gold piece to be taken this night!"

The crowd began to drift away.

I sidled quickly to the barker and said, "You are losing their interest, dom. Your man wins too easily." He flicked me a liquid glance.

"Aye, dom. I know. But Duhrra is a real champion."

Across the aisle between tents a brilliant concentration of torches lit a crude stage upon which half a dozen girls danced. They wore beads and feathers and they writhed enticingly. The soldiers gaped up, licking their lips. Further along a man kept swallowing balls and snakes of fire, helping them down with daggers. His barker bellowed louder than the one before me.

"I will wrestle with Duhrra," I said.

"Where is your so?"

"If I lose you shall have your so."

One swod with the patches of a sectrixman heard and swung back, calling to his comrades. I stared at this barker who let the gold piece fall to lie in his palm.

"If my old father could see me now!" he cried. "Me, Naghan the Show! Reduced to shilling for nothing!"

"Hurry!"

"He gonna fight or ain’t he gonna fight?" demanded the cavalryman. The crowd hovered. I made up this Naghan the Show’s mind for him.

"I will fight," I declared and threw off my old red cloak. The belt with the longsword and the sailor’s knife followed. Clad only in the old scarlet breechclout I walked into the marked space. Duhrra the Mighty Mangler eyed me. I saluted him.

"You are a man, my friend," I said. "I bear you no ill will." His dull eyes sized me up. He said: "Uh . . . no, dom . . . uh . . . no ill will." Somewhere a woman screamed, "Duhrra’ll kill him!" And another, shriller still, joying: "No! Lookit him!" I fancy my good comrade Turko the Shield, who is a very high kham indeed in the syples of the Khamorros, would have disposed of the Duhrra with no less difficulty than I. The Khamorros are mightily dangerous men in the disciplines of unarmed combat, able to kill or maim with a blow. Yet I had proved my own disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy were superior even to the khamster skills of the Khamorros. Could this Duhrra have benefited from Krozair training? I did not think so. That, as you well know, made me a cheat, for Duhrra stood little chance. Yet he was a massive man, ridged in muscle, iron-hard, with that bald domed head like a battering ram. I would have to be very careful indeed and imagine the mocking bantering eyes of Turko upon me all the time. The fight is scarcely worth the chronicling, for I was minded to be merciful to Duhrra. He attempted to seize me as I advanced and I drew him on. Then, as we had done so many times in the unarmed combat drills in the fortress of Zy, and later as I had with Turko in our little practice area in Esser Rarioch, I took him and turned and twisted and for all his enormous bulk he rotated about the grip and flopped back, toppling, to fall ponderously on the flat of that massive back.

I could not stop myself from saying "Hai Jikai!"

But that was a saying from other places and times.

The crowd stood silently and then, suddenly, burst into roaring applause. I merited no applause. I reached down and took Duhrra’s hand and hoisted him to his feet. I stared into his dark dull eyes and saw an expression there I recognized; I did not know whether to be joyful or shiver with the apprehension of a new responsibility.

Naghan the Show waxed highly indignant.

"The gold piece, Naghan!"

In the end he handed it over.

I had the thing, warm from his claw, in my hand, and was bending to don my cloak and belt when the first shrieks and screams laced the air with panic.

Everyone was running. Pandemonium broke out further along where the bulk of the piled stores cut against the stars. I heard the fierce warlike yells, the battle cries, and I heard again that hated shrilling of:

"Magdag! Magdag! Grodno! Green! Green!"

The longsword shivered in my grip.

Naghan the Show was screaming. He ran. Duhrra scooped up a red cloak and ran with him. I followed. They ought to know their way about this showground outside the base store camp. The devils of Grodnim were raiding from the sea. They aimed to destroy the stores here, in the rear of the army. These civilians, the tail of the army, the camp followers, were mere meat to be butchered. They must flee for their lives. I was not minded to flee, but I wished to fight where I felt success would attend my efforts. To be killed now in a stupid affray would nullify all I fought for in the wider realities. I had to quell that perfectly natural feeling that I ran like a nulsh from a fight. A fighting man who does not pick his field usually does not last long. But I admit I felt the shame and the indignity of running before those hated cries of "Magdag! Grodno! Magdag!"

I owed the Overlords of Magdag. Once I had nearly defeated them with my old slave phalanx of vosk-skulls. Now I must find the guard detail here and form with them to bash these green sea-leems back to their ship and burn them there.

So you see I had changed from the old Dray Prescot who had once roamed and fought over the Eye of the World.

Or so I thought in my folly.

Naghan the Show panted out, "Into the ruins! There we may hide from these cramphs of Magdag." Duhrra gave a low grunting cry, unintelligible. When Naghan stumbled he caught the slight body up and carried him as one would carry a feather pillow.

Behind us the sky began to light up as the Grodnims started their fires among the stores. Away to our right along the shore the dark masses of tents and the long sectrix lines remained silent. If the guards did not counterattack soon they might as well shut up shop. The crazed mobs of people were running every which way. Ahead up a slight incline, sandy and scattered with thorn-ivy under the light of the moons, lay the sere gray skeletal arms of the ruins.

"Careful of that damned thorn-ivy, Duhrra," I said.

"I will . . . uh . . . take care, master."

"I am not your master."

He did not reply but ran on, carrying the complaining form of Naghan the Show over one brawny shoulder.

Still no sign of the necessary counterattack. We had broken clear of a mass of people. There were soldiers in that mass. I stopped running.

"Damn it!" I burst out "This won’t do! By Zair, I’m not running from some kleesh of a Magdaggian!" Duhrra stopped also. His smooth massive head turned and that blank, heavy-lidded idiot-face gave me no inkling of what he thought or felt Then:

"I shall fight with you, master."

"There is no call. You are not a soldier."

"Yet I can fight."

"Aye. Aye, by Zair, you can fight, Duhrra."

He put Naghan the Show back on his feet. He patted the fancy clothes into place, perched the tall miter cap squarely on the narrow head. Naghan squealed.

"What are you trying to do, Duhrra? Ruin me!"

"Zair needs all our arms this night, master."

Turning back, I spread my arms and yelled, as I was wont to yell hailing the foretop in a gale of Ushant or bellowing at my Djangs in the arrow-storm, halting the running mob. Quickly I roared a dozen or so soldiers back to a semblance of their duty. One, stricken with fear, insisted on running. Him I struck senseless with my fist and gave his sword to Duhrra. Then, with little hope but with hard determination, we went back to face the leems of Grodno.

Fortunately, for the fight would have gone ill for us, the guard eventually turned out and we smashed and bashed our way against the hated green. In among tall piles of lumber, massive lenken logs needed in fortress construction by the army engineers, we fought and chased the raiders of Magdag, as they fought and slew us.

The erratic light from the Twins cast pinkish reflections from burnished armor, caught rosy stars in the twinkling weapons that withdrew darker red, made seeing difficult. Pursuing a group of Magdaggian swods — they were apims like me — up an alleyway between stacked lumber, I sprawled headlong over a corpse whose dark red blanket-cloak completely deceived me in the rosy glow. I cursed and stumbled up. Ahead of me and backed against the lumber a young man in red fought two Chuliks in green.

The young man was yelling — screaming — as his sword blurred this way and that. He would not last long.

He screamed in high desperation: "Dak! Dak! Aid me now! For the sweet sake of Zair, Dak, to me! To me!"

Past the Chuliks were three other Chuliks and two Rapas, their vulturine beaks gaping with the passions of battle. Ringed by these five stood a man whose white hair blazed with pink highlights and roseate shadows, an old man, a man past two hundred years old. Yet, as I staggered about feeling the effect of that sprawling fall, I saw this white-haired man surge against the nearest Chulik, duck the blow, strike the Chulik’s legs, cut back against the nearest Rapa, screech his blade along the diffs side. The longsword whirled underhand. The white-haired man shouted, a high full voice that drew every ounce of effort from him.

"Hold, Jernu! Hold! I am with you!"

And then — it was wonderful, courageous, bold; it was the true Jikai — this man, this old white-haired man called Dak smashed his way past the two Chuliks, ripped the guts from the last Rapa and so hurled himself at the two opposing his lord.

He had no chance. He exposed his back as he struck shrewdly at the first. The blow was parried. I saw the slowness of this Dak’s reactions, saw that the strength had been drained from him. He knew his end was come and he flashed his longsword before his eyes and so drank for the last time of a foeman’s blood.

As he fell beneath the slashing blows he shouted for the last time.

"Zair! Jikmarz! Jikmarz!"

He fell.

The whole incident took practically no time at all, less time than it took me to scrabble up from the corpse and shake the infernal ringing of those famous Bells of Beng Kishi from my skull, take a fresh grip on my sword and leap forward.

The young man screamed now, screamed high and shrill like a dying leem with the long lances of my clansmen transfixing its lean and evil body.

"Dak! Dak! Sweet Jikmarz!
Dak!"

"Hold!" I bellowed, surging forward. "I am coming!" As I smashed into the Chuliks and the group of apims I had been pursuing, Duhrra came to my side. Together we fought against the foemen, seeking to save the young man. We slew until our arms ran red with Magdaggian blood, until the last Chulik fell with his body hacked and butchered before he would drop, but when we reached that young man, that Brother of the Red Brethren of Jikmarz, he was dead. Duhrra, his plated chest expanding and contracting evenly as he drew in enormous lungfuls of air, regarded me somberly.

"You fight well, Dak. Yet is this boy slain."

That be called me Dak was a mere mistake of the moment, a chance that he understood the Red Brother of Jikmarz to be calling on me when he screamed for Dak. The amazement was in his way of speaking, with no hesitation, no idiot’s repetition of the opening "duh" to every sentence, no slurring of speech. Was this only the result of battle?

"Yes. It is the will of Zair."

I looked up. The mass of lumber moved. A beam toppled, twisting, falling.

"Stand clear, Duhrra!"

I leaped back. Duhrra braced to spring and the side of the stack of timbers bulged as a grain sack bulges in the moment it is slit open. The enormous weight of the logs rolled smashing down on Duhrra. In the leaping dust I caught a single glimpse of his left arm outflung toward me with the moon-oval of his face glimmering pinkly through the shadows. I grasped his hand and pulled. His mouth opened, but in the rolling noise of toppling logs I did not hear him. He would not budge. A beam struck my legs away from me and I cursed and surged back, then, mercifully, the logs lay still. The dust plumed in the air and drifted down. There was a sickly smell of rotting vegetation puffing from the lumber. I looked at Duhrra. He was trapped.

His body lay on the ground, with his right hand caught between two squared beams of timber. I knew, looking, that his hand would be squashed flat, ironed out, ground into a flat and useless pulp.

"I cannot move, master."

Bending to look closely, I was aware that I could see very well. A quick glance back showed me that the loose timber among the stacks was on fire, burning fiercely. The beams, thick and massive though they were, were tinder-dry. They would burn.