Bladesman of Antares

Chapter Five

In the full determination to discover the secrets of the fliers of Hamal I made no urgent rush to the capital city. Nulty and I took our time. We had three mirvols between us, one the magnificent animal presented to me by Amak Naghan, the other two lesser beasts rounded up by Nulty after the raid, all that were left of the remudas perching on the mirvol towers up by the highest slopes of Paline Valley. There was no rush because it was necessary for me to learn as much as I could of the country. We swung slowly southward and eastward, for the capital, Ruathytu, is situated at the junction of the River Mak, the Black River, with the larger River Havilthytus, some sixty dwaburs inland from the eastern coastline. We had, according to Nulty, about two hundred and sixty dwaburs to go to the city in a direct line — as the fluttrell wings, in Hamalese vernacular. This 1,300 miles or so we greatly lengthened by making detours and visiting many of the towns and cities en route, and of generally, in Nulty’s case, getting over the shock of seeing his home so brutally destroyed. He had had no wife or children, desiring none; all he had cared for had been the old Amak and, as I knew, his son, Hamun. So we wandered along our way, and we had a few fine adventures, too, which I will not mention now but many of which would undoubtedly form vastly exciting stories in their own right.

Again I was reminded how strange are the ways of chance.

Because it was the fashion out on the frontier territories to wear a white robe, cinctured in with a tasseled cord, I had tried the fashion and found it convenient. The hem of the robe came down to just above my knees. Nulty, whose own robe was more in the nature of a smock, insisted I wear the gold-and-scarron chain of beads we had with reverence taken from Naghan. The scarrons blazed a true and brilliant scarlet. Because I have a fondness for the old brave color, as you know, I was persuaded to wear them, and the curved gold-and-jeweled dagger, and the gold-and-scarlet slippers. To Nulty this attire was proper for an Amak.

To me, it was light and comfortable, for, remember, on much the same latitudes far to the west lie the great deserts of Loh. Loh as a continent of mystery possessed great fascination for me. One day, Zair willing, I would go there and discover if all that men whispered about those secret walled gardens, and those girls with the veils, and all the other mysteries of Loh were really true. Nulty didn’t care much for Lohvians. And he did not care much for the Pandaheem, either, the people of that large island off the northeast coast of Loh, and just over the equator northwest of Havilfar. The chance of my attire came one day when, along with a party of pilgrims, we flew out to visit a shrine reputed to possess quite remarkable healing properties, through the magical powers of the bones of a Beng buried there. A Beng is, to give a near approximation, a Kregan saint. Nulty wanted to know if this notoriously powerful Beng Salter’s bones would cure a pain in his left hand, where the fingers, from time to time, abruptly cramped and the palm of his hand contracted, so that he had to bash it against a wall to flatten it out.

We landed by the simple marble shrine before the cleft in the rock, where a waterfall tinkled. Water is precious in these latitudes of Hamal. The grove was a pleasant and sweet-smelling place, and the aura of peace came fresh and comforting, so that no one objected when the guardians insisted we remove all weapons before entering.

Normally, of course, no one would voluntarily relinquish his sword on Kregen. But here, with the benign, smooth-faced guardians in their long robes, and the holy softness and tranquility of the scene, no one objected. There were about a dozen of us as we went into the shrine, carefully observing the fantamyrrh as we did so. Inside the place was cool with shadow, somnolent, tranquil, and I felt that faith would have a chance, here, to work its wonders.

The ritual was gone through by those who had come here with intent. We as mere onlookers watched. I hoped Nulty would find his cure.

The feeling of peace came to me, I remember with perfect clarity, with a benediction. This, in truth, was as life should be lived. Life was not always a mad business of rushing and pushing about, of flashing swords and flying bolts, with blood and death as permanent companions. I felt this pleasant relaxed emotion so strongly that I was perfectly well aware I was weaponless, and I did not mind. As we watched, those who had earnestly besought the dead saint to cure them rose and shuffled back, and already one or two were disappointed, one or two beginning to rub feeling back into a hand or limb they had thought paralyzed.

Nulty was working the fingers of his left hand, but he had not suffered an attack for some time, and so there was no real way of checking the efficacy of the Beng’s bones.

A man — he was apim — dressed very beautifully in dandy clothes jostled me as I turned for the exit. This fellow wore a blue shirt whose front foamed in a veritable avalanche of lace. His waist was nipped in by a massively wound cummerbund of bright green, and his gray trousers were strapped beneath his shoes. Over his right shoulder ran a brilliantly embroidered baldric. The scabbard was empty. These things I noticed about him, as well as the interesting fact that his face was far too apoplectic a red for his own good, his blue eyes protruded in an altogether repugnant way, his dark hair was cut too short for good taste, and his whole demeanor suggested a man of viciously quick temper. He gave me no time either to curse him out of my way or to apologize. I scarcely think I would have done the latter, and the former accorded ill with my euphoric, benign state of mind.

“Onker!” he bellowed. “Get out of my way, you rast!”

And, incontinently, his right hand whipped across his body and groped for the hilt of the sword that was not there.

I did not move.

“Cramph!” he said. He was panting, and into those protuberant blue eyes flushed a betraying bloodshot glare. “Stupid clumsy yetch!” And then he realized he was not grasping the hilt of his thraxter. Other people stopped to look. The fellow saw I had not moved. He brayed his contempt. “Ninny! Nulsh! You are a nothing! I can see from your clothes that you are no fighting-man! A warrior takes up arms-”

Soft-spoken guardians appeared, their robes rustling. I let them hustle me away, for I did not wish to kill the fool in these hallowed precincts.

When we were outside I retrieved my weapons.

Nulty came up, rubbing his hand, frowning.

“Tell me, Nulty; who was that cramph who insulted me?”

“I do not know, master. But he has departed. He and his retinue left in a fast voller.” And Nulty snickered, flexing his fingers. “You’ll never catch him on the back of a mirvol.”

Something of the tranquility of that place clung to me still, for I answered, and I admit with astonishment even as I spoke: “Let him go, Nulty. If he crosses my path again I’ll settle accounts then. Now I need a good long drink, and a full plate of cold vosk and a few loloo’s eggs — with a salad.”

Later we discovered the man’s name was Strom Hormish, from a town called Rivensmot in a small kingdom of the Empire of Hamal. I brushed the pesky idiot from my mind. I had cold vosk and loloo’s eggs to deal with, and although I did not care to spend the required amount to buy a flagon of wine of Jholaix, we drank a rather good local vintage that commended itself to us against parched throats. Nulty was beginning to get the hang of some of my idiosyncrasies.

“That idiot Strom Hormish took you for a spineless weakling, master. You did not immediately reach for your sword, as a fighting-man would do instinctively.”

“Am I not then a fighting-man, good Nulty?”

He made a comical face. “That is not what I mean, Notor.”

“I know. But — what did he mean about these clothes?”

Here Nulty’s face registered further aggravation.

“I am told that the — would you call them sophisticated? — people of the cities laugh at our clothes.”

He went on to wax enthusiastic over the white gown, cut to tunic length, as I wore it. He mentioned the different styles, and the embroideries, and all these names had meaning, but I will not weary you with them now. “So, because of your clothes, he thought you-”

“A yokel!” I brayed out, enraged.

“Aye, master.”

And then — I swear it as Zair is my witness! — once again chance threw an idea into my blockheaded skull. Through two chances I had a scheme. I wore clothes that dubbed me a yokel, a simpleton from the sticks. And I had not betrayed the hallmark of the warrior.

From these two things I could construct a device that should serve me in good stead in Ruathytu, and, into the bargain, afford me some considerable amusement.

Truth to tell, I needed a good laugh about then.

As you know, I, Dray Prescot, do not laugh easily. But I had been living in Valka with Delia, and we had the twins to occupy us, and what with this and what with that, I had been laughing so that the laugh lines had managed to find a lodgment in my grim, ugly old face. Seg and Inch had been there too after we had returned from Migladrin. For the various reasons of state, of politics, of economy, they had had to return to their Kovnates, and so, as was my wish, I had come to Hamal alone.[2]

So I nodded and said very seriously to Nulty: “Very well. I shall wear the clothes of a yokel and a simpleton. And I shall watch my sword hand with great attention. And you, good Nulty, brag no more of our fighting prowess, and give no one any idea that Hamun ham Farthytu is familiar with a sword.”

“Yes, master, as you command,” said Nulty. But I could see he was much put out by having the cool and comfortable clothes of his home regarded so contemptuously. A yokel. Well, so be it. I could play the part, and I fancied I could carry off the simpleton part of it with far too uneasy an ease. . We flew on apace toward Ruathytu, the capital, and I own to the traveler’s curiosity to see places of which he had heard much. I will not weary you with all the strange creatures and peoples and customs I encountered en route; suffice it to say that whenever it is essential for you to know, then I will talk of these things. There came a day when, with Stormclouds darkening the sky and the first heavy spatters of rain smoking into the dust, we alighted at an inn in some half-forgotten little town in the center of Hamal. We were within the boundaries of the Kovnate of Waarom, for, as I have mentioned, the Empire of Hamal is made up of a number of kingdoms and Kovnates owing allegiance to the Emperor of Hamal. Waarom was a dusty, idle, listless place, populated by peoples of a number of different racial stocks, and I believe the chief industry was ponsho farming, with a little surface mining here and there. Nulty and I needed fresh leather bottles of wine and provisions of various kinds, and so we were not too particular. Outside the inn on perching towers the various flyers huddled up against the rain with flurried feathers, their backs turned to the wind, shaking membranous wings.

“Look at them, master!” said Nulty, giving his mirvol a slap to send him scuttling up onto a vacant perch.

“This is a miserable dump, and no place for an Amak.”

“Miserable or not, Nulty, it is a roof over our heads.” I sent my first-class mirvol up onto his perch on the tower. “Although I could wish for a covering for our mounts. A poor place, indeed, this” — and I turned to look at the sign swinging over the amphora placed at the door — “this Crippled Chavonth.”

When we approached the entrance I ducked my head, for the doorway was made deliberately low with a massive oak beam, and went inside followed by Nulty.

The floor was sanded, the tables and settles of cheap purtle wood, the pine already splitting, the goblets of inferior pot-clay and crude as to shape. The wine was just drinkable; the ponsho chops, though, were tender enough, cooked by a smudge-cheeked girl in a flour-and-blood-stained apron. Nulty and I ate and drank in a companionable silence, while the other travelers in the room, apim, like ourselves, with only a few diffs to enliven the scene, talked in low voices. More than once I saw a pair of eyes lift to stare at the low ceiling.

This inn was strictly a place to take a meal, to buy provisions, and to leave. The Crippled Chavonth. Kregans have a delight in names. The local ponsho farmers, we learned, caring for their flocks, produced an animal with surprisingly high-quality fleece, and the chavonth, that powerful six-legged hunting cat with fur of blue, gray, and black arranged in a hexagonal pattern, has a partiality to fat ponshos. The local infestation of these predators had come about through an airboat crash. The voller had been bringing in prize specimens of chavonths for the Arena in Ruathytu, and after their liberation they had bred and increased and had come finally to terrorize the countryside here in this dusty little town of Urigal in the half-forgotten Kovnate of Waarom.

The ponsho farmers in this duchy of Waarom must have given uncomfortable little grimaces when they looked up at the sign of The Crippled Chavonth, no doubt wishing it to be so in fact. Peoples and animals are spread bewilderingly over the surface of Kregen, it often seems scattered at random, with only the haziest controlling influence of local evolution to be discerned. Much of this scattering of races and species, I believe, is due directly to the influence of the Star Lords; but quite a bit results from accidents like the one that brought hunting chavonths here to Waarom. The light coming through the low windows darkened and turned a deep umber. For a time, as the storm thrashed past overhead and the rain lashed down, the light vanished, and the pot-man brought out a few earthenware lamps. We finished our meal and then bought provisions to carry us through for the remainder of our journey. The storm grumbled and banged, but slowly the light came back and the lamps were extinguished. This was not one of the seasonal monsoon areas of Kregen; this rain was welcome in so dusty a Kovnate. The lingering after-rain smell carried overtones of quenched thirsty earth and green growths.

The landlord was not immediately available for us to pay the reckoning. Heavy thumps sounded from the room overhead, and then doors banged, and footsteps clumped down an outside stairway, and loud voices lifted outside. There was a confusion of shouting, laughter, and that particular kind of freewheeling, innocuous oaths that some men adopt in the presence of ladies.

“Fetch the mirvols, Nulty.”

“Yes, Notor.”

Nulty went outside — he did not have to duck his head — and I strolled after, expecting to find the landlord dealing with his important guests, who had been decently housed in the private upstairs room and served personally.

The twin suns streamed down welcome rays, and the air sparkled with brilliance. The pot-man dodged after me. He did not dare to touch my elbow to halt me.

“I will take the reckoning, Notor.”

This suited me, and I paid him, using a few sinvers from the vosk-skin bag at my waist, for I had not as yet adopted the Hamalese custom of wearing an arm-purse.

“Thank you, Notor, may Havil the Green smile upon you, Notor, Remberee,” the pot-man rattled off in a monotone.

I stepped outside the paved area before the door. Over at the perching tower flyers were being brought down and there was a flourishing of cleaning cloths as their feathers and hides and scales — for the different species — were dried after the rain and polished and made presentable for the great lady and her retinue who waited with growing impatience.

I looked at the arrogant, brilliant group of people.

They were apims.

The men were hard featured, fair of hair, thick of jaw, clad in flying leathers adorned with much jewelry and gold lace. Their weapons were those of Havilfar. The girl who was the center of this brilliant group appeared to me, grown somewhat cynical in the ways of the mundane world, I fear, as completely out of place in that company. Her bright fair hair gleamed in the lights of Antares. Her small face, pert, with rosebud mouth, pale blue eyes, and a creamy-white complexion, seemed to me that of a child let loose in a world she did not comprehend. She was beautiful, in a china doll way, someone you might admire from a distance but scarcely wish to touch.

She wore the pleated and flared skirt adopted by young girls of Hamal. It reached down halfway to her knees and glowed more with brilliants and stitchings of precious metals than with its original pale blue color. Her white shirt, also, overflowed with cascades of frills and lace. Over the shirt she wore a bolero of magenta. Flung back from her shoulders her short flying cape hung now demurely, folds of fluttrell-green. Astride her bird that cape would sweep back most proudly. Then all my attention was taken by the birds the handlers were bringing from the perching tower. Nulty was being forced to wait before he could fetch our mirvols. I saw these white-feathered birds and I marveled. I had not seen their like before in Hamal.

All of pure white were these birds. Large, they were, powerful, streamlined in body, and with wide pinions that could sustain them and their riders in level flight for dwabur after dwabur over the world of Kregen. All of pure white save for their legs and beaks, which were scarlet, are the streamlined bodies and the quadruple-wings of these magnificent saddle-birds. These are the famed zhyans, and in money value alone one zhyan is worth ten good-quality fluttrells. So I looked with the keen interest of the flyer as the zhyans were brought down, dried and cleaned and polished, and I saw the huge birds were in a vicious temper.

As well they might be, considering they are basically aquatic birds, with a great love for lakes. These zhyans had been called on to fly over dry dusty Waarom. The rain had given them a memory, a remembered longing for wide expanses of water. In bodily form the zhyan is not unlike a Terrestrial swan, although the feet bear taloned extensions, very fierce. And the beak, although of the wide and flattened variety of swimming birds, has a swanlike knob much enlarged into near raptor-like proportions, with a vicious, down-curved, meat-tearing hook. These very large saddle-birds of Kregen must, by the very laws of nature, have bodies of lesser proportionate bulk than their smaller Earthly counterparts. Their size lies in their length and in their wingspread.

Nulty stood at the side, fuming, waiting to get at our mirvols, as the zhyans were brought down. One zhyan struck with a hiss at his handler. The man, a gul in a brown smock, staggered back, yelling, his arm slashed.

One of the brilliant gallants, hitching his sword out of the way, strode across, bellowing. A kind of order was produced, and the swaggering group mounted up. I watched as they did so, noting the birds, looking at them rather than the aristocratic onkers mounting up.

The zhyan is noted for its short temper. That is, perhaps, the greatest failing of the magnificent bird. Conscious of his own superiority, the zhyan does not like to be hustled. Maybe, had that girl out there been Delia, and I in command, I would not have allowed her to mount her saddle-bird. Oh, she would have flashed those gorgeous brown eyes of hers at me, and called me a fussy old hairy graint; and, I like to think, she would have mastered the zhyan with all that consummate skill of hers. But this girl was no Delia.

I, Dray Prescot, am an onker, a get-onker! What girl in two worlds can ever match Delia, save my Delia of Delphond!

Almost in the saddle, the girl moved with a clumsy lurch that snapped the self-control of the zhyan. It lashed ferociously at the two handlers, first left, then right, cutting them with that deadly razored beak, stretching them senseless upon the muddy ground. It fluttered its two pairs of wings, a massive and -

even in the abrupt horror of the moment — a beautiful movement. The girl pitched off. She screamed. She tumbled in the useless flailing straps of the clerketer, twisted and fell beneath the hooked beak of the zhyan.

The bird’s bright intelligent eyes told me that he would take his revenge for past insults now. Well, it was no business of mine.

The men were yelling and one jumped forward, a flying-stick uplifted. Flying-sticks are the invention of any of a hundred foul devils of Kregen. I never used one. If a flying mount needed a lesson, as they sometimes did, in obedience, there were other and less unpleasant ways than to thrash the poor beast. This man was caught across the face by the slashing hooked beak. He had no time to scream. He spun about and bright blood spouted from his ruined face.

Uproar burst about the perching tower. Men were yelling, women screaming, and the mud churned as the zhyan clamped his massive claws down. The girl dangling beneath him encumbered him. In the next second he would either rip her slender body to pieces with his claws, or tear her head from her shoulders with his beak. The pandemonium grew — and yet after the awful finish of the one who tried, no one else showed the determination to rush in to help.

Still, it was no business of mine. .

I ran forward.

“Help! Help me!” the girl screamed.

She dangled there, half upside down, her brave clothes spattered with mud gobbets thrown up by the claws of the maddened bird. His beak flashed toward me, hissing.

Dodging that lethal beak on its long serpentine neck was something like slipping an arrow or a spear. I checked in my rush, so that the beak struck where I would have been. I thumped my fist against the side of his head, feeling the solid thunking sledge of the blow. I grabbed the girl. She was incoherent with fear now, a gibbering shrieking bundle. My sailor’s knife whipped from the sheath over my right hip and slashed through the tangling lines of the clerketer. I kicked the zhyan in the belly, and kicked again. If he took off now we were done for.

He hissed. I crooked the girl in my left arm. If I had to kill this beautiful white bird, I would have to do so; I would prefer to let him live to recover from his fit of bad temper. There was no way past his beak. He curved his head down on that long neck, beneath his body, and darted at me again. The girl hampered me, but I flashed the knife at his beak, and chipped the side, and he hissed, and withdrew. With a savage lunge — and savagery was needed here to spring us clear — I went out from under the bird, rolling head over heels, clasping the girl, feeling her heart beat in panic against mine, her fair hair clouded about my face.

Hands grabbed me and pulled the girl away.

“We’ve got her, dom!”

I let her go, heaving up on a knee, ready to flash the knife before me and so keep off that wickedly darting beak.

There was no need.

That gorgeous bird, that scarlet-billed, scarlet-clawed, pure white zhyan, lay jerking in the last throes of death.

Crossbow bolts showed uglily in his feathers, studding his white breast obscenely, with red blood befouling all that beauty. He hissed, and shuddered, and died.

I stood up.

The girl had fainted. Her women were caring for her.

The men with the crossbows were stowing their weapons away alongside their saddlebows. The fine-clothed gallants were shouting and gesticulating. The landlord was wringing his hands. The scene sickened me.

Here came Nulty with the mirvols.

“Mount up, Nulty. Let us drive into the clean air, away from this — this-”

“Yes, master,” said Nulty.

We took off astride our mirvols, and soared up into the clean air of Kregen.