Rogue Dragon

VII

“That was just for formality,” said a voice from the now hostile night. “We have guns, too. Yield!”

And added, for further formality, “—in the name of His Serene Supremacy, the Chairman of Drogue, who keeps the peace of The River.”

“We yield,” said Trond, sullenly. And the dark, swift craft were all about them.

“Go forward, boaters,” the voice directed. Two of the three played their paddles in silence, a silence broken by occasional calls from those guard-boats that had gone in search of Henners… evidently without success, for they by and by rejoined the formation.

They landed at a wharf bright with lamplight, and Jon-Joras, finally and completely emerged from the doze, or daze which engaged him through most of the trip, now observed the men who were surrounding them — after having emerged with precision from the flotilla. Challenges were evidently not the only things done with formality in Drogue; its armed force, in form-fitting black with adornments of crimson and gold, made a considerable contrast to that of Peramis, which (he remembered) was clad in loose greendrab.

“You are now under charge of arrest,” said a tall and grim-faced officer. “My report will note that you yielded on the second challenge.” He asked and received their names, proceeded: “The man Henners — who has succeeded in evading us for now — was indicted in absentia for grand robbery, lese majeste, and sedition of conduct. You, the man Trond—”

“I can produce a hundred witnesses that I was nowhere near Drogue when Henners—”

“—by your presence with the man Henners tonight, have become guilty of consorting with criminals.”

Trond shrugged. “The outworlder has nothing to do with all that,” he said. “He was lost and were guiding him back down to Peramis — that’s all.”

As if Trond had not spoken, the officer continued, “You, the man Jon-Joras, by your presence with the man Trond, have become guilty of consorting with criminals.”

Aghast, Jon-Joras cried, “But how far can you carry that?”

The officer, who had turned away with a gesture, now half-turned his head. “Infection never ceases,” he said. And continued on his way. Even before he had spoken, the black-clad river troops had closed in on Trond and Jon-Joras, bound their arms at wrists and elbows. No sooner had he uttered his last sibilant and turned his head away, than the two prisoners were led off at a fast half-march, half-trot that left no moment for anything but compliance.

The boaters had not been mentioned in the charges of arrest, had stood by with mournful faces and drooping heads, as if they knew what was coming. What came was a brusque grunt of a command from a petty officer. A pair of axes glinted, raised in the air. The rivermen broke out into a wail. The stove boat burned slowly. But it burned.

Jon-Joras, well aware that he was unlikely to find here any faintest reflection of the enlightened penal policies of his homeworld, had conjectured vision of cells dank and narrow and festooned with fetters set into dripping walls. The reality was rather different.

They passed through a series of bleak and empty rooms whose desks and cabinets hinted at some activity during daylight hours. They passed through a room full of bustle and smells of food and drink — a sort of canteen for the troops — where a few score men in black and red and gold glanced at the prisoners and then returned to their eating and guzzling and gaming. Someone of them did indeed fling a question at the convoy’s guards—

“What’s ye got, Blue?”

“Candidates for Archie,” was the curious answer. The questioner looked at them with briefly quickened interest and pursed his lips. Then he bent to his meat and turnips as if nothing else concerned him.

They passed then through a series of apartments in each of which (so it seemed) a grumbling turnkey rose up from his pallet on the floor to let them into the next, wife and children sometimes opening a sleepy eye to peer a moment, sometimes — more often — continuing to snore on. And, finally, the last thick and barred door behind them, the guard in charge rasped a metal-tipped rod against a great reticulation of a grill-work gate.

And then, impatient, seized hold of a rope and began to toll a brass-voiced bell. And at least a hundred human voices broke into clamor.

Din and tiny lights burned overhead at intervals in the vast room, filthy rushes scattered underfoot, and from heaps of these reeds prisoners were still rising as the two new ones were let in through a narrow door in the great grill.

“Fresh meat!”

“New blood!”

“Who’s them?”

“What’s ye charges?”

The warder, roused from a little wooden room like a dog-kennel, cursed ineffectually, produced (after some search) a grubby and grimy little tattered book, signed in his new charges with his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth. By the time he was done the other troopers were gone and many of the prisoners had returned to their sleep. Others, however, still crowded around and still put their questions.

The place — it was not so much a room or a hall or keep as simply a large leftover space inside the building — the place stank abominably, and many of those now thrusting forward their eager, open mouths, stank worse.

Trond, wincing, shoved them away — not gently. He peered through the rancid gloom, demanded, “Where’s the Poets’ Corner? Any poet here?”

The crowd muttered, milled around a bit, parted, finally, for a tall and thin and stooped old man who came blinking forward to be identified by Trond before he had focused his own blear old eyes.

“Serm. Still here, poor ancient?”

“Still here… Who’s that? Trond; don’t tell me; it’s Trond. Well… I don’t know this young sprig. Give me a rhyme, my sib, with your name in acrostic.”

But Jon-Joras, depressed, made no answer. He breathed through his mouth. Trond and Serm mumbled, low-voiced, in each other’s ears. The warder had meanwhile simply returned to his shed. Most of the other prisoners went back to their heaps of rushes and committed themselves, sighingly, to sleep. Serm shuffled away, Trond beckoned, Jon-Joras followed.

Followed to a corner by a narrow, slitted window, with its own lamp, and — actually — a cleaner heap of rushes than were elsewhere, a crude table, rickety chair, jug of water, and a very worn blue riding cloak. Only the three of them shared it. “This is what’s called ‘Poets’ Corner,’” Trond said, with a gesture and a quirk of his mouth. “It don’t look like much — but compare it to the rest of this rat-trap: it’s palatial. And it’s ours by right of tradition.”

Old Serm nodded. “Used to be a flower in a pot and a little bird in a cage. Died, both of them.” He drew in his breath with a gusty noise.

With an abrupt change of manner, he said, “Young outworlder, tomorrow you must see the Chairman. Insist on it. Do you hear? Insist on it!” Then, with groans and creaks, he settled down on his heap of reeds, took a corner of the cloak, and invited the two other occupants of Poets’ Corner to share the rest between them.

Jon-Joras, when the sun had finally penetrated the prison-room, did insist on it. He insisted on it the next morning… and the next… and the next… It became a ritual.

“Want to see The Man With The Hairy Nose, do y‘?” asked the warder, with a small smile. Long years of constant communication with criminals had give him a complete command of their argot.

“I am informed that it’s my right to petition the Puissant Chair for attention to grievance,” said Jon-Joras.

The warder grunted, scratched his naval. “Your right, hey?”

“And I insist upon it.”

Yawn. Stretch. Scratch again. The warder craned his neck to watch the progress of a nearby dice game. “Well…” after a long moment, “I’ll pass the word along, sib. I’ll pass the word along…”

And so, eventually, the word was passed back.

“You, there. Archie-bait,” said the warder one afternoon. “Strip down and wash your crummy rags and ribs. I’ll open the water-room for y‘, there’s wood for fire and pots to boil the fleas in.”

“Good!” said Jon-Joras, peeling off his clothes and taking the little shovel of embers from the man. And—“What? Soap? Why—”

“Mustn’t smell bad when you’re up before The Man,” the warder said. So Jon-Joras heated water and boiled his clothes and enjoyed the luxury of soap for the first time in — how long? — as he scrubbed himself down in the dank and seldom-used water-room. He wrapped himself in the riding-cloak and waited for the garments to dry.

Serm said: “Tell him you’ll pay any fine within reason. That dragon-cod can’t even read his own name unless it’s written in gold ink.”

And Trond said: “Your line has to be, that you realize it’s been all a mistake, in fact, it’s kind of amusing, and you’re not mad at all. But High King Pung-Pickle, or whatever his name is, will be getting ready to tear the states apart, board by board, if you don’t show up — and soon.”

Serm said: “You must get word to our band. To the Poets.”

And Trond said: “You were lost in the woods and we offered to guide you back for a fee. That’s all. It’s a true word, isn’t it? So — that’s all. Hue? You never even heard of Hue.”

And at last the clothes were dry and Jon-Joras followed the guards who held his tether, out into the starlit, sweet-smelling night. A pony-wagon was waiting, its sides enveloped in black curtains. They did not bother to explain or apologize for binding his feet and gagging him. The conclusion came to Jon-Joras, not for the first time, that the exercise of civil rights in the City-State of Drogue left a good deal to be desired.

Facing them at the other end of the long hall was The Chair itself — so far, an unoccupied piece of furniture. It was, however, the most elaborate piece of furniture he had seen anywhere at anytime: high, enormous, carved profusely, polished, gilded, cushioned in velvet and damask. He thought of the noisome and verminous rushes on the hard, stinking, sodden floor of the prison room. A bitter taste was in his mouth.

The guards jerked him to a stop, removed his gag. He, familiar, after all, with the intensely sophisticated court of King Por-Paulo, watched with the interested eye of a connoisseur the ceremonies which accompanied the entrance of His Serene Supremacy, the Chairman, as the latter took his seat on The Chair. Roelorix III was a swift and slender man in his late thirties; tucking his purple-slippered feet under him, he made slight movements of head and hand. The guards nudged Jon-Joras.

Who identified himself as, a Private Man of his king, stated his reason for being here on Prime World… “Earth,” he corrected himself… and went on to say, “I address The Puissant Chair for attention to grievances.”

The Puissant Chair, looking a little weary, a little cynical, invited him — by the smallest change of expression, to continue his address. He explained his being present at the impromptu dragon hunt, described that melancholy scene. The Chairman at once became intent, and more and more so as Jon-Joras proceeded with his description of the Kar-chee Castle and what went on therein. He had only hesitated an instant, recalling Trond’s advice to say nothing of it; then decided that it was best to tell the whole truth.

Indeed, he spoke freely of everything… omitting only the matter of his duel to the death with Thorm. It did not seem to him to be pertinent, and, besides, he could not bring himself to dwell upon those still horrifying memories.

“The two men of the people called Poets agreed to guide me back to Peramis,” he said, concluding, “and therefore I went with them.”

“And therefore,” said the Chairman, speaking for the first time; “and therefore you traveled at night and concealed yourself during the day.”

“I–I never considered the implications of that,” Jon-Joras stammered. It was true; he never had. “It was night when we decided to leave, and it seemed natural to rest during the day… Conceal? I didn’t… I suppose I took it for granted that it was the local customary way—”

The Chairman, in a movement so swift — yet completely unhurried — that Jon-Joras scarcely observed the details of it, rose to his feet. Pointing his finger at Jon-Joras, he said, in a clear, quick voice, “You lie. You have consorted not only with thieves but with outlaws, and with rebels — the worst, the most dangerous kind of outlaws — at that. You have condemned yourself by the imprecations of your own mouth, and this is the verdict which we have reached in Our capacity as Chief Magistrate: that at a time to be decided upon you be taken to a place to be decided upon and there bound hand and foot and hanged by the heels and shot to death by archery.”

Dumbfounded, and too incredulous to feel either anger or fear, Jon-Joras watched the chairman walk out with quick, concise strides. He barely felt the gag forced back into his mouth. And then the guards led him away.

Trond winced, grunted, shook his head. Serm was remorseful, full of self-reproach. “I should never have put that notion in your ear,” he moaned, “about asking to see the Nose. Who’d have thought it? It passes understanding — doesn’t it. Trond? Never heard of such a thing — arching an outworlder! Did you, Trond?”

“No! And I’m not going to hear about it now, either,” Trond said, vigorously. “Don’t you let your cullions crawl, young fellow — this is a time for desperate measures, and I’m going to take them, too!”

The warder looked at them, as they approached, with melancholy satisfaction. “Sometimes, don’t pay, to insist,” he observed.

Trond shrugged. “Well, like I tell him, no one lives forever, anyway. Right?”

“Right.”

“‘Don’t wiggle,’ I tell him; ‘hang still, give the archies a clear target, soon be over.’ Right?”

“That’s what I always tell ’em. Right.”

“So, what we want to do, we want to give him a big good-by party — drinks, eats — the works.”

The warder slowly drooped his right eyelid and his lower lip in understanding and assent. Then he rubbed a thumb and a forefinger together. Trond slipped a ring from off one of his own fingers, placed it in his palm. Instantly, the warder said, “That bandy won’t bring much.” But he didn’t stop looking at it. A glint of light reflected in his eye. He didn’t stop looking at it.

“It’ll bring enough. What do you says, Wards? Sell it and keep half for yourself and buy booze and bites with the rest.”

He held out the palm. The warder took the band with restrained eagerness, sighed with hypocritical regret. “Too bad… too bad… a nice ring… a nice fellow… Sure. Sure. Glad to do what I can. Glad to. Never mind my cut. I won’t take a thing. Depend on me. I’ll see you get what you need.”

The ring vanished into a pocket inside his greasy old shirt. Trond thanked him, led Jon-Joras away. “There’s a rogue, if you like,” he muttered. “‘Won’t take a thing’! He won’t take more than two thirds of it, is what he means.”

Only now did the fear of death enter the younger man’s heart. He felt it chill and swell. “Listen,” he said, uncertainly, “I don’t want to have any parties, I want to—”

“Want to get out. Right.” Trond took his hand and patted it. “Have no fear, friend. Wards can’t dispose of that bandy in any regular jewels shop. One look at him, they’d call the guards. No… Only a fence will buy it from him, and there’s only one fence in Drogue that handles bandies of that value: Old Boke: Old Boke will have the whole story out of him before he pays him a penny.

“And—” he gave Jon-Joras’s cold and sweating hand a final pat-pat, “Old Boke will pass the word along where it will do the most good. The Poets have their friends in town. Have no fear, I tell you again. And sleep light tonight. You listening? Sleep light…”

In fact, of course, Jon-Joras didn’t really sleep at all. As, one by one, the scant oils in the tiny slut-lamps of the prison room were used up and the smoldering wicks vanished into winking red little eyes in the darkness and then were gone, he sank into a kind of feverish phantasmagora. He felt ill and dizzy; the vertigo helped persuade him that he could feel what it was like to be upside down; the ankle-bands of his shoes became the bonds fastening his feet; and every rough rush penetrating his loosened clothes became the shaft of an arrow penetrating his frightened flesh.

Then, suddenly, the illusion changed. All, all had been a dream: the raid on the great, gaunt Kar-chee castle, the time spent with the nomad tribes, the duel with Thorm, the long trip down the great river, capture and imprisonment: all a dream. He was still in the Kar-chee castle and none of the rest had happened. But — and this he knew with frightening and absolute certainty — it was all going to happen, every bit and detail of it. And he could not prevent it, it had already begun, and the proof of this was that once again he smelled the smoke of burning torches.

With a stifled groan and a sigh, chiefly of relief — for even the uncertainty of life with Hue was better than lying under sentence of death — he raised his head in order to see the light of the flambeaux he was sure he smelled. He wondered, as he did so, if he must follow the predestined pattern of events indeed… or if there were not some possibility of escape. And then his mind became suddenly as wide-wake as his body.

There was a curious scuffling sound faintly over his head. A change in the rhythm of their breathing told him that both Trond and Serm were also now aware of something unusual going on. They rose cautiously in the darkness without speaking. Someone took Jon-Joras’s arm, felt along it to the hand, guided the hand, unresisting, through the darkness. He felt rope… a stick of wood… more rope. Trond — it must be Trond, those sturdy arms — pushed him upwards. He seized hold of the rope ladder and began to climb.

The door from which the ladder depended had probably once been intended to open onto a corridor in an upper floor which had never been built. For uncounted years it had opened onto nothingness, onto air — except, of course, that it had never been opened at all. Along with the rest of the wall the door had once been whitewashed, along with the rest of the wall it had long since been covered with dust and dirt and soot. Jon-Joras, below, had never even noticed it.

The torch which he had smelled burned at the end of the corridor above. At first he did not know any of the faces belonging to those who held the other end of the rope-ladder. Gradually, in the darkness, as, first Serm, then Trond, mounted to join him, his eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light. And when one face turned, having carefully seen to the careful closing of the door behind it, he recognized it at once.

Henners!