Bladesman of Antares

Chapter Eleven

This sudden deadly affray was what living in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu was all about at this time of war.

Even as I ripped my rapier from the scabbard and plunged forward, my thoughts were cynically that this kind of murderous set-to must be going on in a score of other alleyways and moonlit courtyards about the city. So it was that I contrived to spit the nearest attacker through his side ribs, and withdraw and so swirl to the next, at the same time as Rees dealt similarly with one of the remainder, without so much as a thought to my role in Hamal.

Rees’s blade clanged against the thraxter of his man, and I felt my own rapier automatically slide up to deflect a savage downward chop from the fellow who leaped at me, all hairy whiskers and glittering eyes and gleaming teeth.

“No, Hamun, no!” yelled Rees, whirling his blade in a masterful over-and-under. “Keep clear! You will be cleft in two!”

Well, this Trylon of the Golden Wind had courage. No one could deny him that. And so began a fight typical of a number that I was forced to engage in during this time of disguise in Ruathytu. I pranced about, swirling my blade, getting in the way of men determined to hack down the Trylon. As though by accident my rapier whistled across to take a thraxter from the open side of Rees, as though by chance my main-gauche caught a blade descending upon his neck. He fought! Oh, yes, he fought magnificently; but I knew he would have been done for had I not clowned and stumbled and shouted and flummoxed about and so, to Rees’s surprised and joyful shout, thrust my brand through the guts of the next man. Rees had disposed of another.

“Keep out of my way, Hamun!”

I tripped over my own feet and so was able to sprawl forward, yelling “By Krun” and thereby letting my rapier skewer up as though by pure chance and sink its length in the guts of the man roaring at Rees as he dealt with the last on the other side.

This last one hesitated. These would-be stikitches (assassins) were no true stikitches at all; I could see the outline on their cloaks and shirts where their insignia had been cut away. It seemed clear enough that Vad Garnath had sent six of his men to waylay and murder the Trylon Rees. They had set on him as he stepped out of the tavern to greet me. They wore cloths bundled about their left arms (for no honest man might walk the streets at night carrying a shield — that would be too obvious an admission of evil intent

— unless he were a soldier or had lawful permission to carry a shield, duly issued by the local Under-Pallan of the district).

“The rasts run!” bellowed Rees, although there was only one left. He still hadn’t realized I’d downed those I had. He went roaring after the luckless fellow who took to his heels and hared off down the alley. I did not laugh. But, in truth, it was an occasion for a laugh. Rees trailed back after a moment, swearing, having lost his man.

We bent to examine the corpses.

One was still alive, but even as Rees seized him by the throat to haul him up to be questioned, he choked black blood and died.

“Scum!” bellowed Rees. He was furiously enraged.

“Vad Garnath?”

“Probably. Although there are others who would wish for my death.” Rees began to clean his weapon on the clothes of the dead man, and I fell to doing the same, companionably, at his side.

“You must take greater care, Hamun, my friend. You could have got yourself killed, skipping about like that in the way of the swords.”

“Yes, Rees.”

If ever I wanted to laugh. .!

So that was some relief to me in that hateful business of subterfuge and disguise in Hamal; there were other fights to follow in which I lumbered about, tripping over, sticking foemen before they realized it, to the roaring accompaniment of Rees bellowing at me to take care, and look out, and mind my fool hide out of the way. I enjoyed that part of it, for I was able to do Rees a good turn, and relieve some of the black bile in me. Also, I have little compunction where a stikitche is concerned. Assassination is developed to different levels in the various parts of Kregen, for the world is a world, diverse and strange and nowhere uniform. And, too, there is such a thing as a Stikitche Khand, as I afterward discovered. A khand is not quite the same as a guild; it is an association of experts, and that will perhaps do to sum up what a Kregan khand is. At the time I had suspicions that a Stikitche Khand, an Assassins Guild, did exist in Hamal. Of course, no assassin worth the name is going to parade around in a uniform and proclaim himself a member of his guild. Assassins do not work like that on Kregen, or here on Earth, for that matter.

One result of that night’s work came a sennight later when on a pretext Rees managed to issue a challenge to Vad Garnath. The answer could only be made in blood. I will not go through the preparations, the procedures, in which Chido and I made the arrangements to hire the hall, and see about the tickets, and arrange the concessions for the bookmakers. All that side of the business was mere rote. Rees said to me: “I will not ask you to stand as my second, Hamun. You know why. I have asked Nath Tolfeyr.”

There was no answer to that. So, instead, I said: “Will this miserable cramph Vad Garnath fight, Rees?”

“By Krun! If he will not I’ll cut up his second and then belt him in the mouth and challenge him again!”

The chronology of my stay as a spy in Ruathytu is, even to me, a little jumbled after all these years, but it must have been around this time that I first heard the rumor that Casmas the Deldy had contracted with due bokkertu to be married, and that I found Nulty.

There had been a stiff little fight and a swift retreat from the wall around Zhyan’s Pinions, I recall. The white stucco buildings leered in the moonlight, flushing pink at me, most hurtfully, as I beat off a maddened guard patrol and went flying up onto a balcony, swinging to the next, and escaping over the rooftops beneath the moons. Zhyan’s Pinions were not to be broken into so easily. And the guards were maddened because as I knew they had been given orders to capture this nighthawk at all costs, or else.

At this time I felt it wise to wear a mask, for despite the beard my face might be recognized. I was taking more chances, too, as the time slipped by, in daytime foolery and nighttime espionage, and still the secrets of the vollers eluded me.

The city seemed to mock me as I sped back, a leaping figure in the moon-glimmer, my cloak flaring out from my shoulders, hurtling from purple shadow to purple shadow. Yet I had made some progress, in talking, in listening, and knew for a certainty that a mix of minerals was essential. I had heard it claimed that there were five minerals in a silver box; and others knowledgeably told me there were nine. What these minerals were, they did not know. Hurdling over the rooftops of Ruathytu, I came to the conclusion that I must give up my raffish circle in the sacred quarter and become a gul and try to work my way into Zhyan’s Pinions, or any of the other manufactories where they mixed the minerals. That would not be easy, for obvious reasons, but unless I did something more positive I felt the whole scheme would come to nothing and my bowing and scraping would have been wasted. The manufactory of Zhyan’s Pinions lies north of the River Havilthytus, in a gul suburb. To return to the sacred quarter due south I had to cross the Bridge of Swords. This bridge is so called because it affords ingress for the soldiers quartered all along the north bank of the river opposite the palace island to the sacred quarter in the V of the rivers. Ahead of me as I raced south I could see the three lofting green domes of the Great Temple of Havil the Green. They shone with a sickly patina of mingled light beneath the moons. This great temple stands on the very tip of the V, connected downstream by a bridge to the dominating castle on a spear-point island extending downstream. The interesting phenomenon I have mentioned, that the waters of the Black River do not at once mingle with the more ocher waters of the Havilthytus, is well shown here, for south of the castle the waters are inky black, to the north they are rolling ocher. This sharp division extends downstream for a good long way before, at last, the waters of the two rivers commingle into a muddy brown.

The castle reared to my left. The name of the castle is the Castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, but the folk of Ruathytu call it simply the Hanitchik.

I’ve known a few dungeons in my time. I heard then of the dungeons of the Hanitchik and determined they were not going to hear me yelling my head off in there, chained to the slimy walls. By the time I had crossed the Bridge of Swords and passed swiftly beneath the shadow of the Great Temple of Havil the Green, I could remove my mask. Enveloped in the swathes of my old gray cloak I strode along, heading south into the sacred quarter, past the expensive villas in their own grounds and the colonnaded squares and the wide boulevards. There were people still about in these open spaces, but I pushed on into the festering warrens of the taverns and dopa dens and infamous palaces of all delights, past the stables where zorcas snorted softly in their sleep, past the flyer perching towers, and so back to my inn with my mind firmly made up.

The very next day I set about the inquiries that led me at last to a Horter — although he bore the title Horter, he was no gentleman — who employed guls and hired them out at a fat fee and pocketed a good sixty percent of it for himself. The guls had to consent to be plucked, or resign themselves to not having work. This system could only work, I thought, in a city. The labor exchange systems operated for the clums — the great mass of free men in even worse case — were even more diabolical, where they existed.

This Horter, one Larghos ti Frahthur, looked me up and down as I stood before him clad in a decent gul costume of brown shirt and trousers: patched and darned, but clean. I just hoped his beady eyes would not penetrate the cosmetics on my ugly old face that disguised what I know to be the face of a devil. We stood in an outer room of his house. There were desks and shelves, and various files by which he kept track of his villainous proceedings.

“And you say, Chaadur, you have experience with vollers?”

“Yes, Horter Larghos. I seek a place in Zhyan’s Pinions.”

“Do you now? Well, it is true we have need of more vollers than anyone could have dreamed before the war.” He grunted and stuffed a wad of cham in his mouth, chewed somewhat discontentedly, staring at me. “You look strong. Why do you not join the army?”

“I would join the air service, but my experience here-”

“All right, all right! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I have my job to do, Havil knows.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper, folded it, sealed it with his ring and a dollop of wax (so it was important enough for him not to use a wafer and so risk my managing to open it), and half flung it at me. “See Deldar Ramit. Now, be off with you!”

And away he went back to his house and his luxuries, secure in the comforting knowledge that I would work and he would pocket sixty percent of what I earned.

It might be interesting to upend him and shake him, in the presence of some guls, and let them take what fell out.

Instead I trudged off and found Deldar Ramit in the echoing corridor surrounding Zhyan’s Pinions. The twin suns shot a brave emerald-and-ruby fire across the flagstones. The corridor was patrolled ceaselessly by parties of soldiers. The swods — that is, the common soldiers — looked seasoned tough men, and I guessed they were pulling this duty as a rest from the front. Their officers, too, looked efficient.

This kind of essential but boring guard duty can wear down a soldier. The swods at the Heavenly Mines had been — were, still — real right cramphs. These men of Hamal reminded me sharply, as I followed Deldar Ramit to the work area, reminded me with a pang of those soldiers of Canopdrin with whom I had talked around a campfire after a battle — and not so long ago, either. Well, these were the men who were the enemies of my people.

No matter that I could feel for them as one fighting-man for another. They were the foe. And, as the foe, they must be slain.

How dreadfully simple are the black calculations of war!

I studied these soldiers of Hamal as I followed Deldar Ramit, grumbling away to himself, a rolled list under his arm and his sash of office dangling loose around his fat belly. A Deldar, as you know, is the lowest of the four chief ranks of officer on Kregen. An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get, as any swod will tell you, but here in Hamal, as, occasionally, elsewhere, they employed an intermediary rank below Deldar. In Hamal they called a man who had been given a little petty authority, and a green badge, and the right to boss the swods about, a Matoc. I was given into the charge of Matoc Ganning, a miserable fellow with tufty eyebrows, a lantern jaw, and an itch in his guts he could not control. In Hamal, military ranks are given to workers in the government-controlled voller manufactories.

“Chaadur? Well, get hold of that broom, and sweep up the mess here!” Matoc Ganning bellowed, and held his guts, which rumbled like the volcano of Muruaa.

So began a period in which I did all the dirty jobs. When I thought that I was actually sweeping up the droppings of the minerals that powered vollers, I swear the broom trembled in my fists. Getting anywhere near the guarded rooms where the mix was made was impossible for a mere sweeper. I complained to the Hikdar of the Floor, and with many dirty looks from Matoc Canning, I was put on to humping loads from the leather-lined wooden boxes into the troughs feeding into the inner rooms. I kept my eyes open. The proportions of the mix must be established. I did not think that even Vallia, my home country, possessed men capable of analyzing the minerals and their mix. The guls might go home to their miserable row-houses to sleep at night, or, as many did, to sleep in the barracks in the grounds around Zhyan’s Pinions. I chose to sleep in. I put in a few nights’ good shut-eye, and then I went prowling. I had to break the necks of only two guards.

I could not get into the iron-bound lenken doors; they remained obstinately shut. I returned to the barracks in so evil a frame of mind, I would have jumped on the first person to say boo. Some uproar followed the discovery of the guards. I had to banish the specters. These people were busily engaged in building machines with which they would invade my country, slaughter my people, destroy everything I loved in Vallia and Valka. Twice more I tried, and on the last occasion, a borrowed thraxter in my fist, I had to fight like a demon to win clear and back to the barracks. It was so close a shave I knew my chances here had to be considered finished.

Once again, I had failed.

The idiocy of employing a gul to do work that might ordinarily be done by slaves was simply another pointer to the fanaticism with which the Hamalians protected their secrets. Slaves were used mercilessly outside, on heavy work. Inside Zhyan’s Pinions, guls — and on occasion clums — who could be trusted to be loyal to Hamal were employed. I would not get near the amphorae as they were filled in the normal course of promotion for a very long time.

Smarting under my feelings of inadequacy, I determined to get out of Zhyan’s Pinions. I had another string to my bow, and now if ever was the time to use it.

Had I had the vision to foresee what was going to happen before that bow was strung. . Perhaps Zair knew what he was doing when he denied to frail humanity the gift of prediction. Perhaps, as I often thought, those who claimed that gift, like the Wizards of Loh, were not the happiest of mortals. A fit of fury possessed me. I could not thus abjectly leave without one last try. This time I would find a sledgehammer and batter the doors down. Inside this one of the four halls of Zhyan’s Pinions I must find the secret. I must!

Dirt and air!

How I hated the very thought of the mystery, taunting me with my own shortcomings, my own failings. I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, would not let myself be beaten by a stupid iron-bound lenken door and a regiment of guards!

Down by the slave quarters would be the place to find a sledgehammer, neatly numbered and docketed and hung up in its place. From the gul barracks the distance was not far and I arrived in time to witness the opening blows in the floggings of a half dozen slaves. What they had done would be meticulously entered in the daybooks of the officers, so that the Under-Pallans might scrutinize them for misdemeanors, for floutings of the law. The first screams scythed through the moonlight as I slid between bushes, heading for the huts where the tools were stored.

Torches flared from a ring of posts; She of the Veils cast down her fuzzy pink haze over the scene. The slaves had been suspended from whipping-frames, all according to the book. A massively muscled Deldar had started in on number one. The poor devil’s back would be a raw red pudding before the regulation number of blows were given. He writhed and screamed, and then fell silent, his head hanging. I looked along the line of whipping-frames.

Number four was Nulty.

Even as I looked I saw in the torchlight how his left hand, extended and the wrist thonged to the wood, contracted and cupped, the fingers whitening and contorting. So much for the bones of Beng Salter!

Well, Nulty was a Hamalian, one of the men of the country of my enemies. I had important work to do tonight. The whip smashed down again, brutally. It was a cart whip, not a knout or a sjambok — had it been the man would have been dead already — and not a cat-o’-nine-tails. If Nulty was whipped. . But I had my job to do. I remembered the Amak Naghan, and his death, and Nulty one living sheet of blood, back in the ruined house of Paline Valley.

Was it any business of mine?

The Deldar doing the flogging was clearly enjoying his work. His lips ricked back at each blow. He struck with all his strength. Well, was he not far more of an enemy than ever poor Nulty could be?

My business?

Number two screeched in anticipation as I went off for my sledgehammer. I bashed the shed door open. I came out with the sledgehammer in my fists. No, it was no business of mine. The sledgehammer glimmered evilly in the moonshine as I went toward the whipping-frames and a business that was no business of mine.