A Victory for Kregen

Chapter thirteen

Black Algon’s marquee was tightly shut and his slaves told me he had gone into the city about important business. There was no sign of Turko. When I mentioned Saenci, the Khibil slave girl, the slaves ran off. Annoyed, I walked around the fairground, spying it out, seeing the bright booths and sideshows and all the gaudy come-ons and money-taking-offs revealed in the pitiless light of the suns. The air dried up the mud. Shortly after the hour of mid the rains would fall down in solid masses of water, and the mud would ooze again into its sticky consistency. I took myself back to the Golden Prychan.

“It is time for ale, Jak the Sturr,” Kimche greeted me. He took me through the wide, sawdust-sanded floor into a back snug. The bamboo-paneled room contained about a dozen wrestlers. They looked a ripe assortment of battered humanity. The ale was brought in by Fristle fifis, and we sat to drink. I was reminded of Dav Olmes and his penchant for stopping at the least provocation for a stoup of ale. These men were drinkers.

Food, very naturally, was brought in and no one seemed to be concerned if I would pay the reckoning. There were Khamorros among these wrestlers. Kimche wiped suds, and leaned forward, and said, “You know the story of Lallia the Slave Girl, Jak?”

“I know the story of Lallia the Slave Girl.”

“Well, it is not quite like that, Kimche,” put in broken-nosed Naghan the Grip.

“I know, I know. But Andrinos and Saenci worry our Turko. That is what concerns us. He is our best Khamorro and Jimstye Gaptooth has three high kham Khamorros — and what may a mortal man do against them?”

The other wrestlers, florid and bulky and coiling with muscles, grumbled and grunted, and drank. Truthfully, there are few mortal men who may go up in handgrips against a Khamorro and stand a chance in a Herrelldrin hell of winning.

I asked the obvious questions, and learned that the wagers dictated the relative powers of the contests. In catch as catch can the ordinary wrestler, with Turko available, handled his opposite number and called in Turko in the inevitable crisis. As Jimstye Gaptooth could put more Khamorros onto the canvas than the consortium operating from the Golden Prychan, Turko was called on frequently. The smell of sweat in the bamboo-walled snug was barely noticeable, for these wrestlers were particular about themselves. But the smells of oils and liniments rose pungently. Some of the men wore bandages, tightly strapped and pasted, and two carried broken arms in slings of clean yellow cloth.

“And,” said Nolro, a young Khamorro whose headband indicated he had barely begun his climb through the khams, “where is Turko, anyway?”

“And Andrinos?”

“By Morro the Muscle!” declared Nolro. “We fight tonight and if Turko is not here-”

Kimche reached for the ale. “He will be ready to step onto the canvas, Nolro. You, of all men, should know that.”

“I do. But — I worry…”

When they questioned how I had come to know Turko I simply said we had met in the past and as I was passing through I thought to look him up. I made no big thing of it, and went on to question them as to the advisability of all this ale-drinking if they fought this night. They guffawed.

“This ale gives us our strength, dom!”

Well, it might, too, given that it was brewed from top-quality Kregan barley and hops and was filled with good things. I drank and wiped my lips, and we talked of this and that. And still, Turko did not appear. He was never once referred to as Turko the Shield. A couple of times they called him Turko the Rym, and I will not advise you of what that means. So the time passed and then the note of exasperation in their voices sharpened. They were a consortium of wrestlers, and if one let the others down, his shares were forfeit. Also, his honor was smirched, that was plain. I sighed. I had no desire to step into a ring and take Turko’s place. But, if I had to, I had to…

The secret disciplines under which the Khamorros train in Herrelldrin, the syples, their allegiances and their kham status, are all shown on their reed-syple, the headband with its symbols. I could read a paltry handful of those, from previous experience, and recognized none of the reed-syples of the Khamorros here.

Turko, of his own desire, wore a plain scarlet reed-syple. By this he proclaimed his allegiance, his disdain of other syple disciplines, and to hell with anyone who questioned his kham status. A bit of a rogue Khamorro, our Turko the Shield. And he had a fine mocking way with him, too!

I looked at Muvko the Breaker, who appeared to be the likeliest of the khamsters present.

“Muvko,” I said, with a smile. “I mistook good Kimche’s offer of a fall or three. After we have finished our bout, would you do me the honor of gripping wrists?”

He laughed good naturedly. I guessed these Khamorros were not high khamsters, lacking the refinement of skill to take them into the master class, and were happy to find employment in a fairground booth. For all that, no ordinary unskilled mortal in the arcane lore of wrestling stood a chance against them in fair combat.

“If Kimche leaves you with any bones joined together.”

“By Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall!” quoth Kimche. He was mightily pleased and showing it for a Chulik. But, remember, he was minus his tusks. “You are my man, Jak, after all!”

“Then let us begin,” I said, and stood up.

Their practice ring was functional. An alcove with a neat little bronze statue of Beng Drudoj, the patron saint of wrestlers, faced a broad table with medical impedimenta at hand. Most of the medical assistance, as far as I could see, consisted of bottles of liniment and unguents, bandages and slings, and copious buckets into which a man might spit his teeth. And over this table on which a defeated combatant would be laid out frowned the intolerant bronze features of Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall. These spartan surroundings were enough to perk a flutter through the heart!

Because I have had the good fortune to go through the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, which teach a man wrestling and unarmed combat tricks — all the martial arts — that leave the best syples of the Khamorros far in the shadows, I had been able, without actually fighting Turko, to convince him that I had the besting of him and many a high khamster.

So, Kimche and I stripped off and began and it was not made too swift and there was a deal of grunting and straining before he gave me best. I stood back.

“You fight well, Kimche. But-”

“By Likshu the Treacherous!” he panted, standing up and shaking himself like a dog run from the sea.

“You must be a Khamorro!”

“No, Kimche. I am not a Khamorro.”

“Then,” said Muvko the Breaker, stepping forward, “let us see what you can avail against a true khamster.”

Muvko was, as I had suspected, competent within the syples. Again I made nothing great of it, and the contest prolonged itself long past the moment when Turko, for one, would have had Muvko flat on his back. But it is foolish to puff up one’s abilities if there are skullduggeries to follow.

“Now may Morro the Muscle be my witness!” declared Muvko, sitting up and staring at me. “If you are no Khamorro — what manner of man are you?”

Useless to answer, “A Krozair of Zy.” So I smiled, and said, “I had luck and the knack of it, Muvko. Now, who is for ale?”

My intentions were plain to them. And, having seen me in action, they were fully in agreement.

“And when Turko returns, we will have a few words to say!”

“Aye!”

The daily downpour had come and gone outside, no doubt adding a fair quantity of fresh growth in that voracious jungle, and we started to prepare seriously for the evening’s contest. Hoping that I had not created too great an impression, I joined in. After all, ordinary wrestlers stand no real chances against Khamorros. The wagers and rules reflected this, as they would have to do. So -

how could I be explained? As a freak, that seemed the only answer, and thus I was accepted. They made plain I was standing in for Turko, and could have no share of the consortium’s profits on my own account. This seemed reasonable.

A smart trot across to the marquee of Black Algon revealed the place open and girding its magical loins for the night’s doings. Black Algon, himself, was still not there. Neither were Saenci and Turko. And Andrinos was still missing.

Back at the Golden Prychan, Kimche expressed himself of the opinion that mischief was afoot but that, by Beng Drudoj Triceps and Biceps, he had no inkling what it might be.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If he’s got Turko and the others chained up in some infernal chundrog, I’ll-”

“So would we all, Jak, if we knew if and where!”

“There is one way to find out, a very old and still reasonably efficacious way.”

“If you can find any rast to question.”

‘True, may the black lotus-flowers of Hodan-Set breathe on the cramph!”

“Jimstye Gaptooth may know,” said Nolro. “He must put in an appearance tonight when his men fight us.”

“By Morro the Muscle! Could we do it?” demanded Muvko.

A hubbub ensued. Of one thing I was sure, in all the bicep-rolling, muscle-flexing, stomach-tautening going on around me, these fellows would be ugly customers to cross on a wet and windy night, by Krun!

Kimche, the Chulik, a man who had been trained from birth to bear weapons and who now, tuskless, worked as a wrestler in a fairground booth, struck a note of warning.

“Remember, doms! Jimstye Gaptooth employs swordsmen. Who among you can handle a blade?”

The reaction to this unwelcome reminder brought scowls and fists gripping wrists and twisting so the muscles jumped, and a coarse variety of oaths heating the atmosphere. But the fact remained and real; just as these wrestlers were masters of their craft, so swordsmen hired by Jimstye Gaptooth would be masters of theirs. Only Kimche could face them with steel in his fist, and only the Khamorros could hope to live against pointed and edged weapons with empty hands.

“I have a large club,” shouted Fat Lorgan, and his belly shook. “With a nail in the head!”

“And I a dagger,” said Sly Nath the Trivet, looking fierce.

They looked at my little arsenal stacked to hand.

“When is this expedition to be, doms?” I said.

“After the bouts, when the credulous public are all drunk and chasing women and Jimstye Gaptooth is counting his money.”

“A remarkably fitting time,” I observed.

Each office of the consortium was held by a wrestler, and they were punctilious in the discharge of their duties. They employed a tall and supercilious Ng’grogan to present a front to the public, and to call their titles and stations before the contests. He was not, this Abanch from Ng’groga, anything at all like Inch, Kov of the Black Mountains. In a spirit of devilment I offered Abanch a juicy portion of squish pie as we took our meal, the fifth or sixth of the day.

“Thank you, master Jak,” he said, and took it and wolfed it down. I waited. Abanch looked around. “Is there more? For I am inordinately fond of squish pie.”

Kimche handed across the rest.

I said, “I knew a man who stood on his head-”

“Ah!” said Abanch, and spluttered rich juice down his chin and crumbs onto the table. “He is your high and mighty, hoity-toity Ng’grogan, too good for the likes of me.”

I did not hit him. He was like Inch in only one thing; he was tall. But, in the public address he made as the crowds flocked into the enormous marquee where the contest would take place, Abanch earned his hire money. The public paid. They were mostly men, with a sprinkling of women, seafaring folk, and I did not doubt there were a number of renders among them, pirates who had crept in a longboat into some jungly creek and stolen ashore for a night’s jaunt among the flesh-pots. As for the swordshipmen, they preened in fancy uniforms and flashed their smiles and their swords and gold lace.

Many steelworkers and city folk, of course, patronized the fairground. The place was brilliantly illuminated by mineral-oil lamps, with bits of colored glass to lend a fairyland lighting. The noise was prodigious and quite drowned out the eternal sound of the sea. Refreshments were served continually, and many a honey cake was flung in the wrath of an argument along the benches. As for drink, that flowed in a broad river of ale and wine and fermented in the brains and bloodstreams of the spectators. The whole scene in the marquee was rough and rowdy and heated. Everyone hungered to see the fights. As for betting, that was a nicely calculated art and anyone whose skill was lacking would go home with his pocket linings hanging out — if he was not hit on the head in the firm belief that he walked thus to conceal the waist belt stuffed with gold and silver.

Before Abanch had finished two men were carried out, unconscious or dead, it did not seem to matter. The crowds yelled.

The contest began.

Well, by the offensive stink of Makki Grodno’s disgusting diseased liver and lights, it went ill for the consortium from the Golden Prychan.

In the singles only two of our fellows scored outright wins.

When the tag matches began we were on to a hiding to nothing.

Four of us stood on small raised platforms outside the ring, which was fenced with a single bronze chain at waist height. The canvas covered sturmwood planking, and the whole was raised a little. Four of us stood on these platforms, and four of Jimstye Gaptooth’s men stood on platforms adjacent. One from each side leaped into the ring and started to twist each other’s arms and legs off. Kimche was controlling this bout. He faced me across the canvas where squirming bodies writhed. The crowd wanted blood.

Our man, it was Sly Nath the Trivet, hoicked himself on top of his opponent and started banging his head on the canvas covered sturmwood. This was highly pleasing.

The leader of the opposition bellowed, and a hulking Gon, his head a sheen of buttered baldness, leaped into the ring and caught Sly Nath around the throat and choked him back.

“Fat Lorgan!”

Fat Lorgan leaped and used his belly to knock the Gon down. He sat on his head. The first two crawled away on hands and knees. The crowd bellowed. Presently two more were at it, and then I was called in and got my man down, and was only just in time to avoid a diabolical kick in the ear. Kimche loomed up and threw that one away, and we looked about, and, lo! we of the Golden Prychan remained in the ring. Of Gaptooth’s men, none remained. Two were spitting blood on the platform around the outside of the bronze chain; one was lying head down, out to the wide; and the last was being sick all over a plump gentleman in the front row of benches.

Mind you, Sly Nath had an eye that would, come the morning, be a single gigantic purple lump. And Fat Lorgan was staring at a finger that bent backward and dangled when he pushed it. The yelling lessened by a fraction, and Kimche said, “Next foursome.”

Slowly, we of the Golden Prychan overhauled the lead Jimstye Gaptooth’s wrestlers had opened. A singles win counted as one, and one was scored for every man remaining in the ring after the opposition had been thrown out.

Then Muvko said to me as we sat on the participants’ benches, “Now they start in earnest. Their Khamorros come on.”

So I looked at the four men on their platforms, as Kimche, Muvko, and Nolro walked across to our platforms. I joined them, studying the Khamorros belonging to Gaptooth. They were all, instantly seen, of high khams. They were all deadly.

So Kimche began, for Muvko was leader of this bout. The Chulik did not last more than a few murs against the khamster and Nolro went in. Then another one from the other side was followed by me. As I jumped the bronze chain a single scarlet thought flamed across my vosk skull of a head. What was I doing here? What on Kregen was the Emperor of Vallia doing playing tag with a bunch of bone-breaking Khamorros? In a sleazy fairground booth by the light of cheap mineral-oil lamps and surrounded by a blood-hungry mob? It was crazy.

And then, of course, all that went from my mind and I leaped on the fellow who was about to snap Kimche’s arm, hauled him off, twisted him in the grips, and hurled him over the bronze chain. After that it was a splendid blur.

I saw no reason to injure these Khamorros. They were only employees. So I caught them by an ear, or a wrist, or by some more interesting part of their anatomy, and threw them away. The bout was over very quickly, The marquee held a complete silence for six heartbeats, and then the benches erupted.

Muvko was shaking his head.

“You are a marked man now, Jak.”

“Just let us get this over with honor and then we can go and ask Jimstye Gaptooth the questions.”

“May Morro the Muscle have you in his keeping.”

Four more bouts took place with fresh Khamorros or the ones who had been defeated returning. That made no matter. Between us, Muvko, Nolro, Kimche, and I threw them all over the bronze chain. Yes, yes, it was petty, all sweaty men heaving and grunting; but, too, there was a panache about it. They were shouting now, from the benches, shouting that great word that is the unarmed combatman’s equivalent to the Jikai of the swordsman.

“Hikai!” they shrilled. “Hai, Hikai!”

It was quite a night.

And that night was less than a third over.

“What!” I shouted at Kimche as Abanch took his inordinate length into the ring to shout our triumph.

“Not over!”

“We were the first contest of the night. There are two more to come.” He saw my face. “We are not involved-”

“Thank Pandrite for that!” Then I glowered at the backs of the Khamorros as they trailed away up the aisle between the seats. “All the same, I was just getting the blood flowing nicely and freely… Perhaps it is a pity, after all.”

“But the third contest will be fought by Jimstye Gaptooth’s people — some he has in reserve, these who will have recovered.”

I glowered. I felt the old blood climbing up inside my head and I ground down on that scarlet rage.

“I can’t wait all damned night to see this cramph!”

“There he is, just come in, and passing strange it is, too, that he was not here to see his men in action.”

Kimche nodded his bald yellow Chulik head. I looked where he indicated. Jimstye Gaptooth — well, yes, his two front teeth were missing. He lowered himself to a padded seat at the front reserved for principals. He wore sumptuous clothes of blue and ivory, with much gold lace. He was bulky and fatter than he ought to be, with a full-fleshed face that concentrated into a single crimson scowl. At his side sat a man who took my closer attention.

I knew this man — I had never seen him in my life before, but I knew him. He wore gray leathers all over his body, except his head, and his face was very pale, with dark hair cropped short. His mouth, a mere thin gash, his sharp nose — and his eyes! Dark, piercing, intent, concentrating on all he saw with the power of an incisive instinct — revealed him to me. Revealed him as clearly as the rapier and main gauche he wore in the bravo-fighter’s unmistakable fashion.

A bravo-fighter from the enclave city of Zenicce.

By his colors of gray and blue, worn discreetly, I knew him to belong to the noble House of Klaiton. I had no quarrel with that House. My own House, the House of Strombor, had more than once assisted in an insurance loss for young Nalgre Stahleker, Prince of the House of Klaiton, and his seductive wife, Nashta. So what was a bravo-fighter of Zenicce doing sitting next to a professional wrestling owner in South Pandahem?

Kimche told me, and my face darkened.

“And the story is true, Jak. This swordsman, Miklasu, eloped with the Princess Nashta. He was the house champion. The prince did not seek him, so we are told, because he said if his wife wished to go she would go, and if she did not she would return.”

“And?”

“She chose to return. And her ship sank off the coast of Segesthes in a great storm, sent, it was said, by one of the Sea Lords, Notor Shorthush of the Waves. So Miklasu hires his sword and, it was said, he told his cronies he was well quit of the woman.”

I had known Princess Nashta. Her seductiveness had destroyed her, that and the weakness of her will. And I felt for Prince Nalgre, even though I could not guess at the real reasons why his wife should leave him. Perhaps Quergey the Murgey would know, for all reports spoke well of Nalgre. Delia had said he was a fine young man. Of such puzzles is the world constructed.

“So we must wait until the end of the contests,” said Kimche.

“No,” I said. “I do not think so.”

Whatever Jak the Sturr might do in these circumstances was one thing; but I knew what Jak the Drang would do — aye, and Dray Prescot!

The changing rooms yielded my clothes. The other wrestlers were clearing their things out. We went outside, under the stars and the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. I had brought the kalider taken from Trylon Nath Orscop. With this naked in my hand I prowled around the outside of the marquee. The others, led by Kimche, followed.

“What, Jak-?”

“I can’t lollygag about all night,” I said.

The first guy rope parted under the keen steel.

I went around the marquee methodically, slicing the guy ropes asunder. The marquee began to sag. By the time I had reached three-quarters of the way the roof billowed in. The roars of excitement within changed to yells of alarm. The marquee billowed like a collapsing dermiflon, speared on the field of battle. It rippled and sagged and flapped, and the rest of the ropes parted. The whole lot collapsed.

‘There,” I said, standing up with the dagger in my fist. “Now perhaps that rast will come out!”