Bladesman of Antares

Chapter Ten

The only result of the night’s work that affected me could as well be summed up in the words of young Chido ham Thafey. “He must have been a man,” said Chido. “For the fellow left a knife behind him. He isn’t the devil the guards would have us believe, by Krun, he isn’t!”

Chido, a young man who held a courtesy rank of Amak, for when his father died Chido would become a Vad, screwed up his chinless, watery-eyed, aimless face in a contortion expressing extreme amazement. We were in the throes of fencing practice and Rees was attacking Nath Tolfeyr with huge enjoyment. The high-windowed hall rang with cheerful shouts. Chido — well, Chido was Chido, a young man with much wealth, little sense, great charm, friend of Bladesmen, and with a burning desire to become a renowned duelist.

The only result of the night, I say. Well, four dead men, be they Rapas or not, are not so lightly glossed over by me. I have found a greater respect for human life than a casual observer of my carryings-on on Kregen might imagine, and although the Savanti must share a great deal in those initial impulses, the shedding of blood except in the direst of emergencies remains abhorrent to me. I think my Delia understands. And, Kregen is a world where violence can get out of hand unless a man seeks and holds on to a doctrine, whether from some easy and externally imposed religion, or from a much more difficult inner compulsion, which will make him understand that a human life is a human life no matter in what form the spirit is encased. The unpleasant religion of Len the Silver Leem thrived on violence and lust and cheap promises of fulfillment.

“Come on, Hamun, there’s a good fellow,” sang out Chido. “Take up your wapier and let’s have a set-to.”

“No, no, Chido. I feel too fragile just now.”

Chido always spoke like that, changing his R’s to W’s and affecting a high-pitched tone of voice, goggling eyes and all. I suppose no one can live in a country and fail to find someone for whom they can feel a spark of affection. Hamal was the bitter enemy of Vallia, and of my friends of Pandahem, and so that made Trylon Rees and Chido my enemies, too. But I did not hate them. They were jolly company. They amused me.

Excusing myself, I left the salle and strolled out into the city. My life had followed a strange path since I had come here, almost as though a curtain had gone up on a new act. No very great deal of time had elapsed since I had last been hurled back to Earth by the Star Lords, for I had been moving very fast; but there was no sign of anyone I had encountered in my previous sojourn in Hamal. The depredations of the wild folk from over the Mountains of the West continued. The estates of poor Amak Naghan had not burned alone in that endless and bitter struggle on the far frontiers. And the burnings had been savagely echoed here, nearer the capital, in the recent revolt. I had seen a city burn, I had fought in the ruins of a local estate. Now this local violence was over, the Queen in full power, the laws of Hamal firmly on her side. There might be bandit raids of flutsmen from time to time, but the flutsmen were a thorn in the flesh of all the countries of Havilfar. .

So now I strolled and watched the throngs of people, all busy about the essential everyday tasks that keep a great city alive. In the sacred quarter within the old walls and the curved helmet-shape of the fork of the rivers, the streets run higgledy-piggledy, often narrow and cramped, shadowed, lined with shops and stores and arcades, with the townhouses of the great ones secluded beyond iron-spiked walls. To the west beyond the old walls lies the new town, where the boulevards run arrow-straight, where the Jikhorkdun stands proudly, where the new temples rise, where the Horters and the lesser gentry sometimes mingle in the passing phases of social movements. The Walls of Kazlili encircle the city in a wide encincture, the new Walls, pierced by stupendous gates, enclosing all the hustle and bustle of a mighty city, proud and arrogant in its power.”

The little wheeled vehicles trundled on their tracks behind their amiths, up and down the broader avenues. I thought of my adventures with Avec and Ilter, and of the time when in just such an amith-drawn carriage I had plunged my face into a basket of ripe shonages. Well, still on the trail of the voller secrets, I was now embroiled with an entirely new set of people. By day I lounged with this raffish set, gambled, drank, swore, raced. By night I followed up the hints and revelations I had uncovered in my talks. Two other voller manufactories had been entered, with the same barren results. . dirt and air. Now I was going to find out what I could of the manufactories where the amphorae came from, which were used to convey this mysterious dirt, this infuriating air. I knew the dirt was very similar to that earth and mineral we quarried in the Heavenly Mines in conditions of utmost horror. There were additions to the earth before it reached the silver boxes. So there must be other mines, somewhere in Hamal, making their contributions to the mix in the silver boxes. In the manufactory called Zhyan’s Pinions — called that because an aerial view of the four blocks of brick-built buildings with their white stucco walls and roofs suggested the appearance of a zhyan in flight — the guls filled amphorae with this mysterious dirt. I had found that out from old Casmas, who had no ham in his name, was not of the aristocracy, and yet was tolerated — no, welcomed! — by these young bloods because his cognomen was Casmas the Deldy.

And Deldys he had too, in plenty. He was near enough to a banker for that to fit him as a description; but usuring ways were more to his predilection, more to his way of life, and those rich fat golden deldys he lent came back to him well multiplied — or the young bloods rued the day and ran the gauntlet of their fathers’ displeasure. Casmas the Deldy had ears and eyes everywhere. His corpulence fitted him. He wore a great black cummerbund swathed around his belly — and, I had more than half an idea, some kind of ribbed corset beneath to hold him in — and rich gem-encrusted robes, and he kept his smooth satiny skin oiled and sleek. Oh, yes, Casmas fitted his part in the hectic life of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu.

I had pumped him and gained information, but he had stonewalled on my request to be taken on a visit around the buildings of Zhyan’s Pinions. I was not to get in as easily as that.

“No, no, my dear Amak.” He was punctilious, was Casmas the Deldy, in his lubricious way. As I say, he fitted his part. “I am merely a poor money-lender scraping a living from young bloods. What those guls do down in Zhyan’s Pinions is a mystery to me. All I know or want to know is that I am paid my due for my lovely golden deldys.”

He shut up then. But I guessed the government of Queen Thyllis, desperate after the devastation and the expenses of the successful revolt, was borrowing money everywhere, as hard as it could. Damned war!

Always upsets the economy and makes it hard for a poor man to make a living. Just a simple straightforward fight between equals, one to one, as Trylon Rees had said, that should be the way of it. That would sort out the warmongers. But then, Hamal had the duel, developed to an art form and an entertainment.

So I spent my days, wandering, scraping up information, at the salle, circumspectly at the baths of nine, seeking to worm my way into establishments where it was clear Queen Thyllis and her Pallans wanted no one’s nose poking around. And, still, for all my working, for all my nighttime flittings over the rooftops, my cloak flaring under the moons, for all my smashing of amphorae, I came not a jot nearer. And, too, I guessed much more of this would arouse suspicions to the point where the Pallans must guess someone was after the voller secrets. They were sensitive about their vollers. They had already set heavier guard details. I had one or two merry fights to break clear, and left three more terchicks as evidence that the mischief was done by a man and not a demon with eight arms.

I had to cover my tracks somehow.

All the time these nocturnal expeditions were going on I ruffled my life away as one of the young bloods of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. I had now practically perfected that blank look of docile imbecility -

and damned difficult it was, too, with a figurehead like mine.

The precautions I took in the baths of nine so as to disguise my muscular development and the breadth of those shoulders of mine that, as a boy, had wrought such havoc with my clothes, to the despair of my mother, the sheer animal strength of the body God and adversity have blessed me with — all these precautions make me look back now with amusement. At the time it was deadly serious. The baths of nine — and they are worth a book in themselves — had to be most carefully indulged in, and I pleaded all manner of ingenious excuses. Only with Trylon Rees could I feel reasonably comfortable, and that because the lion-man thought he knew me best of all of them, and understood the burning desire in me to be a Bladesman, a desire frustrated by nature.

Once, I recall, Rees received a challenge from a man — an apim — from some outlandish tribe of Hamal renowned for its wrestlers. With his great booming laugh the lion-man accepted the wager, and we all gathered around the mat, with the rules and the laws all carefully detailed, to watch and hoot and roar encouragement, and to lay wagers that made old Casmas the Deldy rub his sly hands together. The lion-man was a truly remarkable specimen of humanity. His massive golden mane, the golden flecks in his eyes, that tawny skin with the muscles sliding and roping, that bunched bursting power of him -

only when I took a more careful look at his challenger did I give this man, one Radak, any chance at all. Then I looked more closely.

Radak the Syatra came from a tribe living far away over by the Mountains of the West, remote and half cut off, under constant threat of raids, although not, I fancied, as forgotten as Paline Valley. His physique had clearly been developed from barbarian ancestors only a generation or so removed. Like a solid block of metal with the muscles deeply etched, as though by acid, with a round head jutting from between massive shoulders, he stood with his fists on his hips, a primitive killing-machine, entirely savage, appearing invulnerable.

“Come on, Radak the Syatra! Let us see if you are made of steel or of flesh and blood!”

“With the blessing of Havil the Green. On your own head be it, Notor!”

Radak’s body moved with that blur of speed that betokens an athlete in perfect training or a barbarian in his natural state. I knew savages. Simple-minded a barbarian may be, but he is quick-witted and cunning because he wishes to keep his skin on his back and his head on his shoulders — and not decorating the trophy posts of his enemies. I looked at the superb chiseled body of Radak with all that dynamic, unstoppable killing power and I knew that I, Dray Prescot, walked about in a body like that, for all that I took great pains with paints and disguises to conceal the facts.

The fight took some time. Accompanied by the whistles and catcalls of the onlookers the two men wrestled. I knew with a little uncomfortable shiver that I’d best call into play those marvelous disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, if I was ever pitted against either of them, summon up the almost mystical tricks and systems that had given me the advantage in unarmed combat even over the fearsome Khamorros. These two wrestled country style. They grunted and grappled and heaved and fell with enormous splatting squashes and displays of colossal brute power. They streamed sweat. They roared and sledged each other, and twisted, and locked, and still each man remained on his feet. A few khamster grips and locks and they’d fall flat and down and out. I looked on, wanting Trylon Rees to win, of course, but feeling for Radak, named for the voracious man-eating plant of Loh.

Such a display of sheer primal energy! Crashings and bashings, simple barbarian strength pitted against only a fractionally more skilled civilized strength. In the end Rees managed to land so many elbow blows that Radak staggered back, his face a mask of blood, and Rees was on him, bearing him down, smothering him. For a few murs they twitched like a single dying beast, convulsively, each spasm following at greater and greater length, and then Rees patted Radak on the head and stood up, smiling and stretching, and it was all over.

Casmas the Deldy came off reasonably well, although he forked out my golden winnings when I held out my hand.

“You would bet on the Trylon Rees if he was sent against a chavonth,” Casmas grumbled. Rees was listening.

“Aye,” I said in my best toadying manner. “Aye! For the Trylon Rees is a man among men!”

Rees came over, hot and sweaty, and clapped me on the shoulder, roaring his good humor. I take no pride in all this: it was necessary, it was a distasteful task laid on me. The betting had not been entirely in Rees’s favor. Radak, this massive chunk of barbarism, had been imported into the raffish and decadent world of Ruathytu’s sacred quarter by a Vad who fancied he had a grudge against the Trylon of the Golden Wind. When the doctors had patched up Radak the Syatra he was led out. His Vad, an aristocratic shark called Garnath, had swung off with so black a look I knew the business had been nowhere near finished on the wrestling mat. Radak’s eyes held all the ferocity of the true savage, smoldering with the inner fires of pure rage, well exemplified in many of the cycles of ballads surrounding the mythical figure of King Kranak whose story has been sung these many thousand years around the hearth-fires of Kregen. The lilt in the songs of Kregen is ideally suited to bring out the true barbarian savage, limning him in fine detail, with his heavy-jawed, low-browed face and mighty-thewed body. That treacherous lilt can abruptly break its rhythm to pitch the imagination over into dark abysses of the mind. .

Radak the Syatra took the proffered hand and shook with Trylon Rees ham Harshur. His maniacal eyes glared into the tawny eyes of the lion-man.

“You bested me fair, Notor. Vad Garnath is like a leem with a thorn in its paw. Best be wary, Notor.”

“Aye, Radak. Your thews are like black iron — would you join me if it could be arranged?”

I saw the flare in Radak’s eyes, and understood much from that burst of passion.

“Aye, Notor! Aye!”

Then Vad Garnath yelled from the door, in his baffled fury so far forgetting himself as to call upon the name of Lem as he bade his servant follow him like a dog.

Rees eyed me. “Lem, Hamun,” he said, and his lips ricked up. “The foul beast grows stronger every day. There are riots. Soon there will be more than riots within the city.”

Chido said with anger: “The Queen will-”

“The Queen will what, good Chido?” Rees shook his head. “I know her guards control the flutsmen’s raids to a degree these days. The laws of Hamal are not to be flouted.”

“The laws have fallen away lately, Trylon,” observed Casmas.

“They have. The Queen is so often away, hidden somewhere with a few favorites in some secret palace. Once she is empress, why, then. .” The Numim stroked his golden moustaches. “Once, in the old days, the emperors held state in the castle, in the Hanitchik, instead as the Queen does in that damned island palace, the miserable Hammabi el Lamma. If the Queen-” Then he broke off, peering about from beneath those shaggy golden eyebrows, mumbling to himself. Spies — Opaz-forsaken spies were everywhere, in law-ridden Hamal under Queen Thyllis.

Clapping me on the shoulder Rees bellowed himself back into a good humor. I often wondered why he was not puzzled that these affectionate back-slappings of his did not tumble me over onto my nose, as they so often did people like Chido and Nath Tolfeyr. “Come, Hamun! Let’s go to the salle! I’ll make a Bladesman of you yet, by Krun!”

Always, during this time of my masquerade in Hamal, I had to keep my wits about me. A slip would reveal more than the interesting fact that the Amak of Paline Valley was not a spineless clumsy ninny. I made some proper answer, and so went through more torture in the salle. Truly, it was torture. For a man who knows he has a certain skill, to perform deliberately with less than that skill may sometimes afford him amusement, but I was in no mood for much more of this charade. Truth to tell, being no nearer the secrets of the vollers and with time running out drove me half crazy with evil frustration. A bunch of prisoners taken in Pandahem was paraded through the streets. I saw these men and diffs, halflings, man-beasts, beast-men, and recognized the blue-and-green insignia half ripped from their tattered clothing. I stood with the crowd, but even with my willingness to play a part I could not yell with the rest. I just stood there, numb. These poor devils were herded down the long straight boulevard called the Arrow of Hork, jeered and spat at on both sides, whipped on in a raggle-tailed bunch to the Arena. Once inside the Jikhorkdun of Ruathytu, they would make sport for the populace. The doom of each one was sealed.

Not Rees, not Chido, none of them in that raffish band of young bloods could get me to the Jikhorkdun to see the sport. Casmas licked his shining lips and vowed he would plunge his hands and arms elbow deep into golden deldys. Tothord, the Elten of the Ruby Hills, shouted eager wagers with Nath Tolfeyr. This Tothord, a dark-visaged man of about Rees’s age, much dissipated, had recently lost a younger brother in battle on the southern front. He was anxious to see vengeance taken out on any of his country’s enemies.

In our dissolute group we were continually being joined by men from the wars, home on some kind of furlough, and we listened to their talk, before they set off again for fresh dangers and battles. Mostly it was the younger sons who joined the army and the air service in Hamal; those who took the titles and the land remained at home. But, even so, I found out that Trylon Rees was personally raising a regiment of cavalry, equipping and paying them at his own expense. He spent a considerable time in deep conversation with hard, tanned men, Hikdars and Deldars mostly, as they reported the progress of training on his estates of the Golden Wind.

“You’ll ride with me, Hamun?”

This presented a quandary.

“I would be honored, Rees. When-?”

“As soon as my officers have licked the regiment into shape, I shall report myself to the Queen. No doubt some stuffy Pallans will give me my orders. But then, Hamun! Then I shall be off to strike a blow for Hamal!”

I hated the sound of all this.

“Which front-?”

“Who knows! Who cares! I detest wars and I love a fight. I shall not live long, I think, once we are engaged.”

And I admit I felt a twinge of regret at his words, these words of an enemy of my own land, and a friend, for I perceived them to be true.

From then on Rees took it for granted that I would be going with him and his fine new regiment off to war.

Most of the raffish gang with whom we passed our time refused to join. They had the security of rank and position and privilege, and they were of that character of men to whom watching other men going off to do a job — or to go to war — came always as more sweet than going themselves. Chido ham Thafey, screwing up his face so that for once its chinlessness became unnoticeable, stoutly declared that, by Krun, he would go with Rees. He’d be a staffer, a galloper, and go haring on his zorca all over the battlefield with vitally important messages, and by his own prowess sway the course of the fight. Rees nodded, and smiled his lion smile, and said, yes, and did not disabuse young Chido. Other factions running in the sacred quarter also were being drawn more and more into the war. News from the southern front merely confirmed that the armies of Hamal were still slowly pushing south into the ancient kingdoms and Kovnates there. From the Mountains of the West came grotesque stories of horror. But from Pandahem came the most thrilling news. Thrilling, that is, to any loyal Hamalian. I knew that Queen Thyllis had not been officially enthroned and crowned and had not taken up the symbols of her power. She was waiting for the psychological moment. A great victory, with its attendant triumphant parade and review and celebrations in the Jikhorkdun, this would be the time she would choose to be crowned Empress of Hamal.

So while these friendly enemies, or inimical friends, of mine shouted and raved in the Jikhorkdun and the prisoners from Pandahem met their various unpleasant ends, I set about worming my way into the confidence of a Hamalian Air Service officer. He was Hikdar Nath ti Hainlad, a jovial, wide-girthed man with reddish hair and veins breaking on his nose and cheeks. For a bottle and a wad of cham, which he chewed even as he drank, a fascinating contortion of his scarlet cheeks, he was willing to talk about the sky ships. I listened. I learned a great deal, facts and figures I had hitherto never dreamed existed, as we sat on a cool terrace facing south overlooking the Black River. We were in the Horters’ section of the city, where I had once lived with Nulty, west of the old walls that secluded the sacred quarter, to the east, on its V of land between the two rivers.

Going back to The Thraxter and Voller had proved fruitless, for the landlord of the inn had no knowledge of the whereabouts of Nulty, and all my possessions had gone, Havil the Green knew where. Even though I now wore a dandy’s ineffable outfit of gray trousers and green over-frilled and ruffled shirt, with a blue coat slung carelessly from golden cords over one shoulder, I drew quizzical glances. The story of how I, the Amak of Paline Valley, had fled from the duel with the Strom of Hyr Rothy had grown in the retelling. I answered all with a haughty look down my nose. Strom Lart was off to the wars. The landlord did say, heavily: “When he returns, Notor, he will seek you out.” To which I replied: “Let him, by Havil the Green!”

So I sat and sipped good Kregan tea while this Air Service Hikdar Nath swilled the wine I paid for, and we talked.

It was mostly technical information, and aerial tactics, for I posed as a man anxious to join the air service, and I will tell you of these technicalities when the time is ripe. I felt I had not wasted my day as I returned to the sacred quarter and a roistering night with Rees and the others. It was essential that I spend some nights out on the town gambling and drinking, as well as out on the town spying, so as to preserve my cover.

The city of Ruathytu, the capital of Hamal, the most powerful empire on the continent of Havilfar, is undeniably an impressive monument to power and glory and easy living. Aqueducts span the sky bringing sweet water from the hills. Broad avenues slice cleanly through the mass of buildings. There are colonnades, and arcades, small hills festooned with villas. There is much riotous vegetation, flowers, and the tinkle of fountains is never silent. Zorca chariots and sleeth riders throng the ways. The inhabitants sport jewels, and fans, and bright shawls and scarves. There are awnings of a bewildering variety of colors, ornate domes and terraces — a whole kaleidoscope of color and movement in the declining rays of the twin suns Zim and Genodras.

And yet, to me (who have seen on Kregen Sanurkazz and Zenicce and Vondium, as well as many another bright city), Ruathytu possessed no joy of living, no zest for life, no overriding sense of freedom and pride. Oh, the Hamalians boasted of their fine walls and towers, their domes and aqueducts, but I felt the place as a deadening weight upon me. I changed this, as you shall hear; but then — ah, then how I longed for Valkanium and the cool terraces on Esser Rarioch!

The main Arena in Ruathytu is situated midway between the old walls secluding the sacred quarter to the east and the Walls of Kazlili to the west, and about the same distance south of the River Havilthytus to the north. The island whereon sits the palace of the emperors in its artificial lake scooped from the river lies to the northeast, northwest of the sacred quarter. Great processions pass down the broad Boulevard of Victory from the water gate opposite the palace island to the Jikhorkdun. This is the Arena reserved for the nobility and the gentry. There are other Arenas in Ruathytu, of course, so that the guls and the clums, even, shall be sated with blood. .

The Maiden with the Many Smiles shone clear above me as I turned into the Street of Sweetmeats and headed for the tavern of Tempting Forgetfulness, moonlight pink and golden all about me, and the shadows plum and purple beneath the balconies. I could hear the sounds of roistering from the inns and taverns by the way, and drunken parties staggered past, shouting and singing. I kept my hand close to the hilt of my rapier. The sacred quarter was beset with sudden affrays, steel twinkling in an alley, a corpse stretched upon the stones for the Hamalian watch to find, blood congealed and black in the moonlight. The alley by the tavern lay half black, half gold.

I saw Rees step from the shadows into the moonlight, holding up his hand in greeting to me. I lengthened my stride.

Rees swung about with an oath.

“By Krun! I am beset!”

In the next instant he was ferociously at work swirling his rapier at the dark forms of six men who leaped upon him, silently, their cloaks flaring, the steel bright in their fists. Without a thought, I drew my blade and hurled myself forward into the affray.