Captive Scorpio

Four

There are many Naths on Kregen, partly because of the affection felt for the myth hero Nath, who bears to Kregen much the same kind of physical prowess as the terrestrial Hercules does to us here on Earth, and among that number are good men and rogues, heroes and cowards, ordinary folk and men with the charisma about them that transcends goodness and evil. Also, among the many Naths there are many called Nath the Knife.

This particular Nath the Knife bore a reputation at once unsavory and yet respected, a blemished fruit, feared, of course, and yet still remaining very much the man of mystery. As, indeed, he must. No assassins are going to put on fancy uniforms with favors proclaiming their trade and go off about their business. The community into which one such came with the avowed intent of committing stealthy murder would get together to deal with him. If anyone of the community refused, then it would surely be reasonable to suppose he had hired the damned stikitche in the first place. So, once that was established, the community could dispose of them both. I say reasonable. Of course, it might be the case that the community would not be sensible, or be frightened, or for some reason or another not collaborate. But that would scarcely happen on Kregen, where folk are hardier than most despite the weaker ones and the revolting aspects of slavery and all that that entails, no matter what pundits speculate may occur on other less-favored planets.

In the event I managed to persuade Barty to remain at the Gate of Skulls. I put it to him that he was on watch. He fingered his rapier and shuffled restlessly. We were both dressed roughly, with old brown blanket-coats, our weapons hidden. Around us swirled the never-ending stream of humanity going and coming, busy, screeching, quarreling, thieving, living.

“But I said-”

“And I thank you for it, Barty. But I truly think I will fare better on my own.”

As you can see, I was very tender with this young man.

“Well. .”

“So that is settled. You stay here and keep watch.” With that I marched off through the bedlam at the gate without risking another word. For — what was he watching for?

If I did not reappear within a few burs what could he do? The soldiers and mercenaries would eventually venture into the Old City; but they would do so by mounting a proper battle-group. It was not that they were over-hated by the denizens of Drak’s City or that they, in their turn, ever created wanton destruction. It was just that the law of Vondium did not run within the Old City and people preferred to let that lie, and not to disturb the sleeping leem.

The fly in this ointment was that Barty might take it into his head to go in after me if I did not return after a seemly interval.

The bedlam assumed a more bedlamish proportion within the Old City. People still jostled and pushed and shoved, yelling their wares, trying to thieve from the stalls and booths, trying to buy or sell at a profit. The stinks increased. People lived here jammed together. The ancient buildings tottered. Lath and plaster and moldering brick were far more in evidence than honest stone. The noise, the shoving, the stinks, all blended, as they so often do, into a picture that — seen and heard and smelled at a distance -

presented a scene of great romantic attraction. This, one would think, was how a glittering barbaric city would carry on, heedless, drinking, wenching, laughing, uncaring, filled with cutpurses and daring cat-burglars and fences and shrill-voiced women and avaricious thief-takers on the prowl and grimy naked-limbed urchins learning all the tricks to take over when their elders went a-sailing down to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Pushing through the throngs along the Kyro of Lost Souls, which extends within the Gate of Skulls, I kept myself out of mischief and out of trouble and headed for the tavern called The Ball and Chain. If you wish to call the place a Thieves’ Kitchen, I shall not prevent that description. A straggle of ponshos wandered about, bunching, baaing, getting in everyone’s way. Their fleeces were white. It is a fact that Vallians are a cleanly people, and even here in this run-down, brawling, odoriferous stewpot of a wen, and despite the spilled cabbages and rotting fruits and discarded skins, the place and people were surprisingly clean. There are towns on Kregen where even the aristocracy are clean, as there are towns where everyone is filthy. But Vallians take a pride in themselves and their country. The Ball and Chain looked as though if the loafers moved away from the pillars of the front porch the whole lot would tumble down onto the heads of the throngs in the street. I stopped under the awning of a man selling second-hand sandals and fingered a pair of curly-toed foofray slippers. They must have been stolen from some luxury-loving lord. The proprietor eyed me and prepared to sidle up to extol his wares. So, looking at the tavern, I became aware of two things. A thin and incredibly dexterous hand was fingering delicately along my belt seeking the strings of the leather purse. And Barty heaved up, red faced, panting, shoving through, opening his mouth to yell over the hubbub. First things first.

I took the thin and sinewy hand in my fist and pulled. An urchin flew out before me, swinging around the elbow socket, starting to yell, rags and tatters of clothes fluttering. It was a young girl, scrawny, with a mass of brown hair, with grimy streaks down her cheeks. I eyed her with some severity.

“Diproo the Nimble-Fingered abandoned you, it seems, shishi.”

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Oh, aye. I’ll let you go. And I will not even box your ears.”

“Get away! Get away you hulu!” screeched the owner of the sandal stall. I felt the second hand stealing around the leather purse strings, and I stepped back, dragging the girl, and took the lad — who was probably her younger brother — with my other hand. I surveyed the pair of them, and shook my head. Products of a city, living by thieving of any description, free and not slave, well — what were their futures to be? What the futures of a thousand or more like them in the Old City? A thousand — there must be thousand upon thousand of half-naked urchins like this running wild in Drak’s City.

“Let us go,” panted the girl, her brown hair falling across her thin face. She’d be about twelve or thirteen. “We’ll be thrashed.”

The lad tried to kick my shins.

Then Barty arrived, almost losing his brown blanket which he was totally unaccustomed to wearing. He wanted to hand over the cutpurses to the authorities.

“The only authorities in Drak’s City are the people who employ the fellow who employs these two,” I told him.

He was a Vallian and so would know that; but it was not a fact easily digestible. The Laws of Hamal are notorious. The law runs differently, more quietly, in Vallia. Here in the Old City of Vondium the law ran as a mere trickle, the greater torrent passing outside the walls.

I managed to get the girl’s raggedy collar jammed up under her ear, and with the lad picked up and stuffed under my other arm I had a hand free. I pulled out a silver sinver. Awkwardly, for the little devil was kicking and squawking — and no one was taking the blind bit of notice of all this — I gave the sinver to the girl. I released the collar of her tunic and let her go. I looked steadily into her face. She did not run away. Then I dumped the lad on his feet, and gave him another sinver. The two coins, here, were like spitting twice into the middle of a vast and burning desert — but it seemed to me there was little else in truth to be done. I had once fought a duel over seven copper obs.

“Now be off with you, you scamps, and next time Diproo may smile upon you.”

The girl looked back at me. Her brown Vallian hair, her brown Vallian eyes — her gauntness could not conceal the beauty she would one day become.

“I give you thanks, dom. And would you be telling your name to any who inquire?”

“I am Jak Jakhan. It is not important.”

Barty, wheezing alongside me, tried not to think. He eased closer and whispered. “Should we not ask them about The Ball and Chain — about Nath the Knife? They could give us useful information.”

As I say, Barty was trying to think.

“I think not.” I glared with great sorrow on the girl and her brother, doomed urchins of Drak’s City. The silver had vanished from sight somewhere inside their raggedy clothes. “Be off. Get a decent meal. And may Opaz shine upon you.”

The girl said: “My name is Ashti and my brother is Naghan and — and we give thanks. May Corg bring you fair winds.”

They ran off and in a twinkling were lost among the crowds past the ponsho flock. Barty was a Strom, which is, I suppose, as near an earthly count as anything, and a noble and he felt like a stranded whale in these rumbustious surroundings. He gawked about at the spectacle and kept his right hand down inside his blanket coat. That particular gesture was so common as to be unremarked.

“Come on,” I said. “You can’t just stand around here. Half the urchins will be queuing up for their silver sinvers and the other half of the varmints will be out to pinch the lot.”

We kept to the wall and walked along toward the tavern. Once we left the Kyro of Lost Souls the press became less thick. What to do about Barty puzzled me.

He said: “I wanted to ask what I was supposed to keep watch for, prince-”

“Jak Jakhan.”

“What?”

I did not laugh. “You have not done this sort of thing before? Not even when you succeeded to your father’s stromnate?”

“No, pri — Oh. No, Jak.”

“It is sometimes necessary. It amuses me. At the least, it is vastly different from those popinjays at court.”

“I do not believe there is any need to remind me of that.”

A sway-backed cart stood outside the tavern. Cages of ducks were being unloaded. The racket squawked away and there was no need to inquire what the specialty of the house was going to be this day.

“Look,” I said. “Do go into that tavern across the way and buy yourself some good ale and sit in a window seat. And, for the sweet sake of Opaz, don’t get into trouble. Keep yourself to yourself. And if you are invited to dice — remember you will lose everything you stake.”

“Everything?”

“They can make dice sit up and beg here, that’s certain.”

“You said you had never been into Drak’s City before.”

“No more I have. But these places have a character. There are many in the countries of Paz.”

The tavern across the way was called The Yellow Rose. Barty took a hitch to his length of rope that held in his blanket coat and started across. He was almost run down by a Quoffa cart which lumbered along, lurching from side to side, scattering chickens every which way. A thin and pimply youth had a go at his purse as he reached the tavern porch but he must have felt the feather-touch, for he swung about, shouting, and pimple-face ran off. I let out a breath. I should never have brought him. But — he was here. I put that old imbecilic look on my face, hunched over, let my body sag, and so went into The Ball and Chain.

There is a keen and, I suppose, a vindictive delight in me whenever I adopt that particular disguise. I can make myself look a right stupid cretin. There are those who say the task is not too difficult. With the old brown blanket coat clutched about me, the frayed rope threatening to burst at any moment, I shuffled across the sawdusted floor.

The room was low-ceiled, not over-filled with patrons as yet. Tables and benches stood about. A balcony ran around two sides, the doors opening off at regular intervals to the back premises. A few slave girls moved about replenishing the ale tankards. It was too early for wine. I sat near the door, with my back to the wall, and contrived to hitch myself about so the longsword at my side did not make itself too obtrusive.

Outside in the street rain started to drift down, a fine drizzle that quickly spread a shining patina across everything.

A girl brought across a jug of ale and filled a tankard for me. I gave her a copper ob. I stretched my feet out and prepared to relax and then jerked my boots back quickly. They were first-quality leather boots and someone would have them off me sharply, with or without my consent, if I advertised them so blatantly. I was a stranger. Therefore I was ripe game. I fretted about Barty. I should have run him back to the Gate of Skulls first.

This Nath the Knife, the chief assassin, had arranged to meet me here, so close to the walls of the Old City, clearly as a gesture of trust. His bolt-holes would all be deeper in Drak’s City. He ventured within a stone’s throw of the walls and this gate so as to show me he meant to talk. That, I understood. If they were going to try to assassinate me, they would not have requested this meeting. My plan, a usual one in the circumstances, misfired.

Before I could get into conversation and so ease my way in and then seek a back entrance to the upper floor, the serving wench pattered across. Already, this early in the day, she looked tired.

“Koter Laygon the Strigicaw is waiting for you upstairs, master.” She looked nervous. “The third door.”

My imbecilic expression altered. I had put on a medium-sized beard. Now I stroked it and looked at her owlishly.

“Koter Laygon is waiting, master.”

“Then he can wait until I have finished the tankard.”

“He is — he will have your skin off, master-”

“You are sure it is me he is waiting for?”

“Oh, yes. He was sure.”

“Who is he? What is he like? Tell me about him?”

I started to pull out a silver sinver. Her face went white. She drew back, trembling, terrified.

“No, no, master! No money! They are watching — they know what you are asking-”

She backed off, her hands wide, and then she ran away, her naked feet making soft shushing sounds on the sawdust. I glanced up under my eyebrows at the balcony. Up there any one of a hundred knot holes could hold a spying eyeball.

I shifted on the settle against the wall. A tiny sound, no more than the furtive sounds a woflo makes scratching in the wainscoting, made me look down.

A small slot had opened in the wall. A pair of scissors on extending tongs probed from the slot. They moved gently sideways toward me. Had I not moved, the fellow operating the tongs would have snipped away to get at my purse. As I had now vanished from his gaze the tongs drew back, the scissors vanished and the slot closed. I waited, intrigued.

Presently another slot opened close to me. The scissors probed out again, silently, ready to snip most patiently.

I picked up the half-full ale tankard.

No doubt the cramph had a whole array of tools he could fix to the tongs. A curved knife would slice away leather clothing. With all the noise of the taproom that usually created such a massive sound barrier, he could probably even use a drill to get through armor, and not be heard. With a smooth motion I swiveled and slung the ale clean through the slot. A splash, a yell of surprise, a series of choked squishing gulpings gave me a more general feeling of well-being. Petty — of course. But it was all a part of the rich tapestry of life — or, as this was Kregen, of death.

I bent to the slot and said in that fierce old biting way: “Thank Opaz it was only ale and not a length of steel.”

With that I stood up, hitched the blanket coat around me, and stalked off to the blackwood stairway. Over my left shoulder I had arranged snugly a quiver of six terchicks. The terchick, the little throwing knife of the clansmen, is often called the Deldar, and a clansman can hurl them right or left-handed from the back of a galloping zorca and hit the chunkrah’s eye. Of course, the women of the Great Plains of Segesthes use the terchick with unsurpassed skill.

The drinkers in the area below watched with some curiosity as I climbed up. This Ball and Chain might be situated close to the walls of the Old City and the Gate of Skulls; I fancied the Aleygyn of the Stikitches, Nath Trerhagen, had packed the place with his men. Deep rivalries no doubt split the people of Drak’s City, as they do in most places, unfortunately, and Nath the Knife would have chosen the meeting place carefully. I went up and I was ready to leap aside, to draw and to go into action, or to fashion a smile and a Llahal and listen.

The third door opened onto a narrow corridor that led via a rain-swept open walkway to the next-door building.

I had not envisioned this.

Barty could watch The Ball and Chain to no avail.

I pressed on. I remained firmly convinced that the stikitches did not mean to kill me. All this rigmarole would not then have been necessary — I had dealt with assassins before. Two men in tatty finery met me at the far door and I was able to duck in out of the rain. They wore three purple feathers, all curved the same way, ostentatiously pinned to the breasts of their tunics. They carried their rapiers loose in the scabbards. Their faces, dark and lowering, with strips of dark chin beard, were entirely unprepossessing; but they greeted me cheerfully enough, evidently assigned merely as guides.

“Laygon the Strigicaw?” I said.

“He is waiting, dom. This way.”

We went into the building and along dusty and unused passages to the far side. We descended a flight of stairs. The slope of the land here meant we were still one story above the street; but all the windows were covered with torn sacking.

Mineral oil lamps illuminated the dusty, half-wrecked room into which I was ushered. Houses were often left to fall down in the Old City, or knocked down. Rebuilding was on an entirely casual basis. The air smelled musty. Dust hung in the beams of the lamps.

A table had been pulled across a corner and a tall-backed chair positioned before it. At the table sat three men and one woman. All wore steel masks. Their clothes were unremarkable, save for the badge of the three purple feathers.

My two guides indicated the chair and I sat down.

For a moment a silence ensued.

Then the woman said: “Llahal, Dray Prescot.”

I said: “I do not like stikitches. You have asked me here. I am to meet Nath the Knife. Is he here, hiding behind a mask?”

The man on the extreme left said in a voice like breaking iron: “I am here. But you will talk with Laygon the Strigicaw.”

“Which one is he?”

The man on the right said: “Here.” His voice sounded mellow, full of the rotundity of roast beef and old crusty port.

“Well, Laygon, speak up.”

“You are the Prince Majister of Vallia. The writ of Vondium and Vallia does not run in Drak’s City.”

“I have never cared much for laws that cannot be enforced. Spit out what you want. I am due at the Temple of Opaz the Nantifer two burs after midday.”

“We do not much go in for temples, here in the Old City,” said the woman. Her voice gasped just a little, as though she had difficulty in breathing. Maybe it was just the stale air. “And you had best keep a seemly tongue in your mouth-”

‘Tell me what you want, now, and stop this shilly-shallying.”

Nath the Knife nodded his head, and the steel mask caught the lamplight. All the masks were perfectly plain, and covered the whole face. I looked at the other parts of the bodies of these four, studying their hands, the way they held themselves, the angles of their heads.

‘Tell him, Koter Laygon.”

“The position is, Dray Prescot, the bokkertu has been signed and sealed upon you. You are accredited a dead man and due for the Ice Floes of Sicce.”

“I think twelve of you tried, and there were twelve holes in the canal. I, too, can write a fine bokkertu.”

The word bokkertu, as you know, can mean any number of legal arrangements. Laygon plunged on, and if he grew warm, I, for one, felt pleasure.

“I have taken out the assignment upon you. You are my kitchew. But-” He paused. The chill menace of the situation was inescapable.

These men were assassins, dangerous, feral as leems. They would unhesitatingly kill — but they liked to get paid for their work.

Now Layton the Strigicaw said heavily: “Half the money was paid to me. So far I have not completed the assignment.” He paused again, as though expecting me to comment. Again I remained silent. “The irregularity is that the person hiring us is dead. We will not be paid the balance of our fee.”

I shifted back in my chair and leaned to the side a little, so I could get the exact position of the two guides fixed.

“That is nothing to me. Stikitches can be killed like anyone else.”

He went on, and again I detected the note of suppressed anger. “The Aleygyn is not pleased with the situation. The Stikitches of Vondium possess the highest possible reputation. Our honor is in question.”

“I will not ask you with whom this precious reputation is held in such great esteem.” I waved a casual hand. “Probably the rasts of the dunghills.”

They did not react. I give them credit for that, at least.

“You are a dead man, Prince Majister-”

I interrupted. “Ashti Melekhi is dead. Would you work for nothing?”

Nath the Knife, clearly a most important man here, letting Laygon do the talking because it was Laygon who had taken the contract but prepared to step in with all his authority, said harshly, bending the mask toward me: “We do not mention names.”

“You may not. But the fact remains. You are working for nothing.”

“Precisely. The offer is this: Pay us the balance of the fee and the contract is then closed. If you do not pay, we shall fulfill it ourselves.”

The instant intemperate indignation that flooded me had to be squashed. I took a breath. I said: “You have not mentioned the amount.”

“Ten thousand gold talens.”

I didn’t know whether to be impressed by the value put on my life or insulted.

“My life is worth more than ten thousand.”

“We abide by the legal contract. Pay us five thousand in gold and the contract is fulfilled and you live. Otherwise-”

I shifted on the chair again. It seemed to have a spongy feel to the legs, as though it was not firmly anchored to the floor. Probably it was a trick chair, with a trapdoor below. I’d have to be quick.

“I am not in the habit of paying gold to cramphs to save my life.”

“You can always start.”

This Nath the Knife was an intriguing fellow. He spoke evenly enough. He took no offense from my crude remarks. He wanted his money, or he would kill me.

“When do I pay?”

“At once.”

“I am due at the Temple of Opaz the Nantifer, as I told you-”

“Then immediately your kow-towing is done.”

With genuine curiosity, I said: “It is clear you know who I am, for your bowman delivered the message correctly. Yet I think perhaps you do not know me.”

This trembled on the brink of boasting; but I am who I am, Zair forgive me, and I was intrigued.

“We know your reputation is very high in certain quarters,” said the woman. She leaned forward and I caught the lamplight’s sparkle from her eyes in the eye-slots of the mask. “But we have certain information that this great reputation is a sham, a bolstered creation because you are the Prince Majister. Of course, the most puissant prince of Vallia must be a great warrior, a High Jikai, for anything less would demean the empire.”

“It’s a theory,” I said.

“So you will pay five thousand gold talens and you may live. It is settled.”

I pondered. It seemed clear they believed the story. They would never have taken out the contract to kill me if they did not. I have amassed a certain unsavory reputation, as you know, and there were places on Kregen where no one — not even a raving idiot — would even contemplate trying to kill me. But, here in Vondium, the capital of the Vallian Empire, I was not in one of those places. The four people at the table believed this business was settled. They began to stir, ready to take their leave. The two guides shuffled their feet and stepped back. I put my feet under me, ready for the leap, and looked across the table.

“Settled? Why, you onkers, I wouldn’t pay you a single clipped toc!”

The four figures stiffened as though I’d jammed a polearm up each one of them. These four formed the High Council of the Assassins of Vondium. Their powers were frighteningly great. For that single betraying heartbeat they could not believe they had heard aright.

The woman let out a gasp and leaned forward on her forearm and her hand splayed against me. Jewels flashed. Nath the Knife put a hand to her hand, and restrained her. Laygon the Strigicaw started to curse, his hand reaching to his belt. The fourth man, who had not spoken, yet remained silent. It struck me then that these assassins couldn’t see the funny side of all this. They didn’t think it was funny. To me, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, it was hilarious. What my ferocious Djangs would say of it — their King of Djanduin solemnly being asked to pay someone for being kind enough not to kill him! They would bellow their mirth!

In the instant of the ensuing silence, when everyone in the musty room remained fixed, static, enwrapped with their own personal turmoil of emotions, the heavy beating of rain pelted against the closed windows. The mineral oil lamps nickered.

Then, and only then, speaking in that iron voice, Nath the Knife said: “You will pay. You will pay — or you are dead.”

“Not,” I said, “a single clipped toc.”

As the instant action followed I commented to myself that my rhetoric was entirely false. A toc is a tiny coin, one sixth of an ob, and who was going to bother to clip that?

Then the chair groaned and grated and flapped back into a black and cavernous hole and I spring-heeled up and onto the floor, and naked steel flashed in the lamplights. This, then, was more like it. .