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Fires of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #29]
by Alan Burt Akers
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Science Fiction/Fantasy

Mushroom eBooks
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

Copyright ©1983 by Kenneth Bulmer

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Fires of Scorpio

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

Copyright © 1983, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published in USA in 1983 by Daw Books, Inc..

This Edition published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

eISBN 1843196484

Fires of Scorpio

Fires of Scorpio chronicles the headlong adventures of Dray Prescot on the marvelous and mystical, beautiful and terrible world of Kregen, under the twin star Antares, four hundred light-years from Earth.

Dray Prescot's own words convey most strongly the sense of a powerful and dominating personality. He claims he is a “plain sailorman” and, certainly, he received his early education in the horrendous conditions of Nelson's Navy, but his character is complex.

He is described as a man above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, brooding and dominating, with enormously broad shoulders and powerful physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and an indomitable courage. He moves like a savage hunting cat, quiet and deadly, sudden.

The bright lands of Paz are threatened by the Shanks, reivers from over the curve of the world; yet most of the peoples of Paz continue on in their own feckless ways. As an adventurer who, among a list of titles, has collected the job of Emperor of Vallia, Prescot knows that he faces a dark future. At the moment he is on the island of Pandahem after a brush with adherents of Spikatur Hunting Sword and their witch leader in the many recesses of a mountain, about to go hurtling into a fresh series of adventures.

Facing a dark future? Yes ... But we know from what he says that for Dray Prescot no future can ever be totally dark, that he will never give up hope, while life holds Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, and he may clasp her in his arms under the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio.

Alan Burt Akers

Chapter one

Seg learns what frightened me

Stumbling around at night in a jungle alive with ravenous monsters is not a pastime to be heartily recommended. Particularly when that jungle sprawls hungrily on the horrific if beautiful world of Kregen four hundred light-years from Earth.

The fetid stench of the place choked from rotting vegetation, putrid stink-flowers, decomposing—things—of indeterminate character. The darkness pressed down as black as the armpit of a demon from hell. All I wore was a scarlet breechclout and all I carried was a longsword. Those two items have seen me through many fraught adventures in the past. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind they will see me through many more in the future.

Each step was a probing forward venture. Dagger-sharp spines, a mass of corruption, a razor-edged leaf or a killer vine all could lie waiting for the next unwary step.

An incautious movement might precipitate me into a spiny-ribcrusher, and the spines would close with a meaty chunk and the juices would melt me down to a puddle.

Ahead in the pervasive darkness a faint line of pinkish radiance fuzzed into view and a coughing roar growled menacingly at my back.

Instantly, I was down on one knee, crouched, glaring back. To anything following me I would be silhouetted against that faint wash of moonlight. The sword snouted.

Breathing lightly, unmoving, poised, I waited.

Waiting, patience, silence, these spell survival in the jungle.

The coughing grunt smashed out again to be followed by a piercing scream and a thrashing crunching pandemonium of noise among the trees. Whoever or whatever had hunted, stalked, leaped and fastened fangs on his victim had seized a tougher prey than he had envisaged. Bad cess to the both of you, I said to myself, and cautiously rose and shuffled along to the slot of light.

Keeping bent over to make myself as small as possible against the radiance, I moved on and I did not press too close to any vegetation.

A tentacular looping horror, a spiny vine insensate with blind hunger, slashed. There was just time to see the whiplash against the rosy moonlight. The longsword switched up.

The killer vine coiled and thrashed and half of it swished back among the trees and the other half wriggled underfoot like an overturned can of worms. I stepped over and went on.

Shadows moved across that slot of fuzzy pink and golden moonlight. I stopped stock still.

Without a sound, without a movement, I peered from the blackness of the jungle out into the moonlight of the tangled clearing.

A face showed clear in the radiance. Sharp, in focus, the face turned directly toward where I stood.

The skull-face, covered by a tightly stretched pebbly skin of gray and green granulated texture, was blunt of jaw with the roots of the teeth exposed, the nostrils sunken slits, and the eyes, overhung by bony projections, of a smoky sullen crimson. The radiance of the moon fell full on that face, illuminating the rotting teeth, the decomposed nose, the crimson demon's eyes. Out of nightmare, that face, out of the deepest levels of subconscious horror...

I stepped out into the clearing.

“Hai!” I said. “Now I am mighty pleased to see you!"

The rotting teeth parted in a gasp. A sword flashed.

Then: “Lahal. I thought you were dead."

“And I, you."

“You are alone?"

“Yes. I was told a falling block of stone parted you from the main company. Your people are nearby, Skort?"

Skort nodded that ghastly head which was merely the normal head and face of a Clawsang, one of the many magnificent races of Kregan who are not made in the image of Homo sapiens.

“Yes. I think we are thoroughly lost. It seems to me that block walled us off from the rest of you and when we followed obvious tunnels in the mountain we came out into the jungle through a cave exit. We are lucky to be alive."

His people clustered a little way off and they had a shielded fire flickering. The smell of roasting meat made my mouth water. Skort saw the way I licked my lips.

“Come and sit down. It is little use trying to move off until dawn. Eat and drink."

“Thank you."

They had cleared an area of unpleasant jungle inhabitants of the smaller and creepier kinds, and I sat down on a tuft of dry ground. They made me welcome, and soon I was chewing on a bone. It was pointless to inquire what the meat might be. Some of Skort's men were patiently cleaning their swords and spears. They were a hardened lot, tough and experienced, and by reason of their graveyard faces inured to the askance look, the repressed shudder. I asked Skort what he intended to do now.

He paused for a moment, and the moonlight caught in those crimson eyes. “First, tell me what befell you in that place of horrors."

“The party adventured farther after gold and treasure. Some were killed. There is a Witch of Loh in there.” I stopped. Skort flinched back when I mentioned a Witch of Loh. That is a very proper reaction to any reference to those powerful wizards and witches. Mind you, they are not your Satany black-magic kind of witch, who is not really a witch at all. A witch is merely the recipient of the old religion, attempting to carry on in face of the newer religions, abhorring the blasphemies of those who take her name in vain. Skort motioned for me to go on, and I pushed the finer nuances of nomenclature away for the moment.

Here we were, trembling in a clearing in a horrendous jungle outside a cave-riddled mountain in which lurked untold treasures and untold horrors. Any normal man would be forgiven for wishing to be gone from this accursed spot as fast as possible.

I said, “I have to go back in there to find out what happened to my friends."

In the short time I had known him, during this expedition, Skort had said little. He appeared anxious to talk now. His crimson eyes widened.

“I, too, must return. But—not for friends."

Waiting, not wishing to probe, knowing if he wanted to tell me he would, I gnawed on my bone. The Star Lords who had brought me to this wonderful world of Kregen to help in rearranging the planet's destiny had lifted me out of the caverns and tunnels to show me a vision of Delia. She had gone through experiences that had made me shout and bellow like a callow child, made me tremble and shudder. All I wanted to do now was leave this accursed spot and return to Vallia where I would find my Delia, as she would find me. But, first—and I knew Delia would approve—I had to make sure Seg was alive and well. Seg Segutorio was a blade comrade. He and I—well, we'd been through the fire together, as the saying has it.

Skort addressed himself to some of his people, and they stopped making too much noise.

“You do not ask me why I wish to return."

“You have your reasons. I have told you mine."

His skull face turned fully toward me. He said, “Did you find the queen?"

“No. We found a cell block and a lady, the Lady Milsi—"

He nodded, quickly. “She is handmaid to the queen."

Slowly, I said, “She is well but saddened. There was another woman in an adjoining cell who was dead. The Lady Milsi was sorely disturbed."

Skort put a hand to his head.

“That then, is the end of my duty. I serve Queen Mab. She and the Lady Milsi were seldom parted. I sorrow for a great one of the world."

He was moved, that was clear. Also, this did serve to explain why he had joined the expedition to venture into the area where first the king and then the queen had disappeared.

I spoke a few words of condolence, and then said: “This means you will not be going back with me?"

“I think not."

Before I could make a fool of myself, or a faux pas, or say something else stupid—for Skort's decision was so eminently sensible it warranted no comment—a shrill shocked scream ripped across the clearing. In a boil of shrieking confusion men spilled away from the fire.

A thing reared above them, swarming from the jungle in tendrilled bunches of horror, smashing down on waddling clawed feet, sweeping with those tentacled clumps. A man was seized up and stuffed whole into the maw slung low and rimmed in writhing feelers which swayed all together and so closed on him.

A smell as though a compost heap had been opened up prematurely belched from the monster. It reeked. And it scooped up men and stuffed them into its insides.

Skort ripped out his sword. He flung himself forward. He had a rapport with his people, and would account for every one. I did not fling myself headlong after Skort.

Instead among the bedlam of yells and shrieks and the confusing criss-crossing of shadows as men ran and fell and the monster-thing swept its tendrilled bunches of horror upon them, I dived forward. I kept low. I skirted the damn thing with its gray rotten hide and its hairs and its swinging tentacles. My target was the fire. That had been abandoned at once as the thing burst in from the jungle.

A whiplash flicked at me and I went head over heels along the ground. My ear went into a plate of cold porridge and I skidded. That—probably—saved me. The tentacle that slashed down to seize me completely misjudged my distance as I went sliding along on my ear. I hit the ground, let out a great “Ooof!” and then was up. The longsword flamed into my fist and a single slice cut the tentacle into a little wriggler upon the ground.

But there were far too many tentacles for one sword to amputate in time. The fire! The longsword snicked back into the scabbard, blood and ichor or not, and I seized up a flaming branch and flung it full at the ghastly monster-thing. Another followed, arching in a wheel of flame, spitting fire. I tried for the thing's eyes; but they were well-protected under hanging mats of coarse hair. Tentacles flicked my way; I burned the first one off.

After that, Skort's men saw what was needed, and we simply threw firebrands at the monster thing until we drove it off. Either that, or we'd have burned it up. It was, said a man who knew about these things, an oiklt, and not a very big one at that. It made a strange mewling cry at the end, drawing off. It had lost tendrils, and much hair had been burned off, and it was discomfited. But the oiklt had eaten four of Skort's men, and this was cause for lamentation.

Despite that, we had seen the thing off relatively easily, and—truth to tell—I had experienced no feelings of imminent doom when we fought. Perhaps that was merely the after effect of our experiences within the mountain.

Carefulness for other peoples’ feelings, as well as sheer common sense, made me draw away from the Clawsangs as they set about their tasks. They would observe all the necessary rituals for their lost people. This was all a part of life on Kregen, as of any world where men and women of sensitivity are to be found. Their religious observances, although obscure to me and entailing a quantity of wailing and of plastering mud upon themselves and of doing nasty things with twig-made quirts, still conveyed their own deep appreciation of the sanctity of human life and of their grief that life had been wantonly spilled.

I kept an old sailorman's eye open in case the monster's mate happened by, or the first oiklt decided to come back and risk a burning for some more dinner.

The night passed thus, and presently Skort came across and said that having remembranced the dead, he would post guards and I could therefore go to sleep—if I wished.

Odd, the way a boon is presented. Of course I was deathly weary. Of course I wished to sleep. But if I did so I might never wake up. If I did not, I would insult Skort. All a pretty little entanglement of motive and feeling, race and race.

Eventually I thanked Skort and sat myself down and closed my eyes and Skort put a hand neatly on my shoulder and I woke up and it was full daylight. I had slept.

In the mingled streaming radiance of the Suns of Scorpio slanting into the clearing and lighting up the world for us, the dark events of the night passed away as though mere dreamstuff. I stretched and sniffed and Skort made that hideous grimace, all rotting teeth and glaring eyes, that is a Clawsang smile.

“Yes, you smell correctly. Breakfast."

As we ate, I sensed some reservation on Skort's part. He clearly wished to say something, and nerved himself to utter the words, and then withdrew and said some inconsequential observation of our present situation.

So, guessing what he wished to say, I said: “I wish my duty was concluded, as is yours."

The green-slime around the exposed roots of the rotting teeth glimmered. Skort nodded. He was well-pleased.

“Yes. I must return to report the queen dead. It is a sad duty."

I swallowed the last of the food and took a last mouthful of tea. I stood up. All I owned was—one, a scarlet breechclout, and, two, a Krozair longsword.

Skort stood up. His people looked on. They were travel-stained with ripped and torn clothing; but at least they had escaped from the mountain intact. What my friends would be like—well, that I had to find out.

“Remberee,” said Skort.

“Remberee,” I said, and struck off along the trail leading from the clearing toward the mountain.

The face of the mountain, caught at this early morning sun angle, bewildered by its vastness and variety of carvings. Vines looped and trailed across the rock; but the very profuseness of decoration could not be concealed. The lake opened out to my left with the usual activity on the brown sandspit. One proceeds with caution under these circumstances. I did not leave the concealment of the trees at once, and with daylight and the twin suns I could see the damned vines that sought to loop my neck and throttle me. I could see the nasties and the creepy crawlies, and that, by Vox! is a great help.

My skills as a hunter and stalker are not inconsiderable. Well, to stay alive on Kregen in some of the more robust spots such skills are de rigueur. But I have known men and women who can move through any terrain like ghosts, unheard, unseen, unsuspected until they strike. I do not profess skills of that high order; but, crouched unmoving in the cover of leaves that did not seek to choke or chew me, I was at a considerable advantage. So in the long level streaks of suns light as Zim and Genodras, the great red and the smaller green sun of Kregen, rose over the treetops, I blinked my eyes with shock.

A figure appeared soundlessly beside the track. It was concealed from all observation except from where I crouched, I judged, and that due to a casual alleyway between the leaves. I most certainly had not arranged that slot of vision. The figure did not move, made no sound, and had made no sound in reaching its present vantage point.

Often my comrades joyed in stalking one another, seeking to leap out with a joyous shout of surprise. Seg Segutorio was our master and our mentor. Inch and Turko and Balass—Balass the Hawk!—and Korero were very good indeed, and Oby had learned much. When we could we played pranks, one on the other, and led a riotous life. But that very life had sent us off about business in the world, and our days of laughter in mutual comradeship were circumscribed by duties reserved to nobles and lords of the land.

So now I watched that alert figure beside the trail. The man carried a bow. The bow was a Lohvian longbow. It was held in a certain way. I own it, although the superhuman Star Lords had shown me a picture of Seg and the others escaping safely from that deadly maze within the mountain, I had barely dared to believe. Now I believed.

I pursed up my lips and fashioned a bird call. That bird would never be found in this jungle, here on the island of Pandahem, maybe; the call fluted across the space and the man beside the trail did not move, made no sign—but the return call whistled out, true and golden on the morning air.

Presently, after a long space of waiting, unmoving, silent, watchful, we judged that no one spied on us. We met in the shadows of an aromatic bush whose small blue and white flowers brought back the memories.

“What in a Herrelldrin Hell happened to you?"

“And you! I found a tunnel which led to the jungle—"

“As did we,” said Seg. He stared at me accusingly. “You were going back in there—"

“It seems to me you were in front of me going back—"

“Well, my old dom, I thought you were still in there somewhere."

Seg's dark hair brustled up, it seemed aggressively, and his fey blue eyes looked wild. Tough, competent, kind-hearted, the best archer in all Kregen, as I devoutly believe, Seg Segutorio was not about to become maudlin over me. Rather, he'd take a deuced mocking line, and cut me down to size in no time.

“So you were going back into that ghastly place to look for me.” I shook my head. “We're all maniacs, Seg, all of us, and I verily believe you are the biggest maniac of all."

“Well, Dray—it seemed like a good idea at—"

“Aye,” I said, dryly. “I don't doubt it."

“The others are waiting farther along. I simply said I'd scout a little—"

“The Lady Milsi?"

“Fine. Still very quiet, of course, over the death of the queen. I think you saw how—"

“Yes.” I knew that Seg and the Lady Milsi had, as they say on Kregen, been shafted by the same lightning bolt. I told him what Skort the Clawsang had told me. Seg looked thoughtful.

“There is a power vacuum now, in this kingdom."

“Well, Seg, I've told you. If you wish to become Emperor of Pandahem—now's your chance."

“Cretin!"

“Yes. I agree."

“Which hole did you discover? I saw only the one, and we came through that one. You could not have done."

I looked at Seg. We were blade comrades. Why should I not confide in him? I said: “There are things that I wish to tell you, Seg, and that you will not believe at first. When you get home to Vallia, ask Delia. She will confirm what I have to say."

At once he was almost serious, and made only a few mocking remarks about the chuckle-heads. I told him that I was never born on Kregen, that I came from a planet called Earth and, moreover, a world that possessed only one little yellow sun and only one silver moon and only apims, Homo sapiens, without any of the splendid array of diffs that make of Kregen so wondrous a world.

He shut his eyes and leaned back when I finished speaking.

“I believe you, my old dom. You've always been more than a trifle apt to go flying mysteriously off somewhere. Next time you disappear, I refuse to worry my head about you. If you prefer one little yellow sun and one silver moon—"

“No!"

“—and only looking at people with faces like our own, then the best of Eos-Bakchi to you!"

“The Star Lords constrain me, that is all."

“That is all!"

“No, Seg.” I made up my mind. As so often happens when confidences begin, others spurt out like a flood. “When I was up in Falinur of which at the time you were lord—"

“Yes, I was the Kov of Falinur. I am glad I gave it up and let Turko take it on."

“When you returned to us from your adventures, I met a man called Lol Polisto."

“Oh, old Lol,” said Seg. “I knew him—only a little. Something to do with wanting to be a farmer and having nothing to do with politics or fighting. I marked him as a good likely man."

I looked straight at Seg.

“He is now married to Thelda. They have a fine child. His Thelda is—"

Seg stared back. His expression stopped me.

Then he said, “You are hard on a man, Dray. When I had that great wound in my back, then, was it?"

“Aye."

“Funny thing. I sensed there was more to your concern for my back than I could fathom—"

“Look, Seg. If you'd gone rushing off up there—you'd have killed yourself—"

“I wonder now—and this shocks me—I wonder if I would have gone rushing off. I thought Thelda must be dead. She was cut off in Evir; I had searched for her there.” He stopped speaking, and shook his head. Then, quickly, like a reptile striking: “She was happy with Lol Polisto?"

“Very. She thought you dead. She would never have married Lol if her first husband was alive. You know that."

“I loved Thelda, in a funny way. Then she was dead. And I stopped loving a corpse, a ghost, and merely cherished a memory. Now there is the Lady Milsi. And, as you know, she is the first..."

“I know.” Then, to soften the stupid arrogance of presuming to know all of Seg's life, I added: “That you have told me of or that I have seen.” And then, in case Seg began to feel something of what I'd expected him to feel in this, and therefore to give him a chance to slang me, I said: “Anyway, a lot of folk predicted that you and Jilian would—"

“Jilian? Jilian Sweet-tooth?"

“That's right."

“She's a bonny lass, what with her Whip and her Claw. But—not for me.” We sat more comfortably now under the leaves and we watched the trail both ways as we talked, and no one beyond three or four paces would have heard our voices. “And, I tell you, my old dom, I knocked out a fellow's teeth who linked your name with that of Jilian's—"

“One expects that kind of foul-minded slander from the meaner sorts of intellect. You've probably heard many filthy rumors of Delia—"

“So far,” said my blade comrade Seg Segutorio in a flat and neutral voice. “So far I have only had to kill four people who mentioned Delia in that connection."

I was surprised. I stared at Seg.

“Killed four!"

“They were well rid of."

Massive emotional overtones are not for Seg and me. But I knew. I swallowed. Good old Seg!

But, all the same, four deaths for mere words...!

If that is Kregen, as it is, it is, then, perhaps...?

“If it was my wound,” said Seg, in a ruminative way. “But, why didn't you tell me?"

“I guessed you'd say that."

“Well, why?” He wanted to know why I had not told him that his wife Thelda was not dead but was married to another man and, apart from her mourning for Seg, was very happy with her new child. “Why?"

“I could say I don't know why. That was true, once, after your wound had healed. But I'll tell you the truth."

“Yes?"

“I was frightened—"

“Frightened? You, Dray Prescot, frightened!"

“Too right, my old dom, too bloody right. I was frightened. Scared right through to the soles of my feet."

He shook his head in amazement, a small gesture that would not be observed should hostile eyes be watching.

Now Seg is a man of parts. No one with normal human emotions is going to remain unaffected under the impact of news such as had just hit Seg. He had suffered a shock. He had loved Thelda, and she had, he thought, died, and he had gotten over that, and now had found the Lady Milsi. Life was going to be exceedingly unpleasant for Seg in the next week or so, or for however long it took him to adjust. That his marriage to Thelda was now over admitted of no question. That Thelda was happy with Lol Polisto was important. That Seg might find happiness with Milsi was also important.

I knew Seg would also consider as vitally important the happiness of the Lady Milsi. She, he would say, must not suffer on account of Seg's past thrusting itself awkwardly into the present.

Eventually he heaved up a sigh and said, “When I tell the Lady Milsi, I believe she will understand. I've already spoken to her of Thelda, and she has told me that her husband is dead. Opaz rest his ib."

The mention of Opaz made him go on: “And this story of yours of a world with only one sun and one moon—that is blasphemy in the eyes of the religious. What of Opaz? What of the Invisible Twins made manifest in Opaz, in the glorious light of Zim and Genodras?” He squinted up. The red sun and the green sun shone refulgently, and the streaming opaz radiance poured down splendidly.

I said, “Gods are not suns."

“Agreed. But, all the same—"

“All the same, we'll have to get back to the main party before they start after us and raise devils better left sleeping."

Quickly, slurring details, I told him of the black sorcery within the mountain. “So we'd best be off. Nothing remains to detain us here."

“And when you vanish in a puff of smoke, you'll be gallivanting about somewhere else on Kregen?"

“Or Earth."

“Aye."

A lightness of spirits affected me now that I had told Seg. Two items of news had been dovetailed into a seeming one; and that economy pleased me in its use of emotional resources to the best advantage. Seg had killed to protect the honor of Delia, had filled a fellow's mouth with blood and broken teeth in defense of mine. Deplore the violence though I might, in hard times on a hard world, honor—that tawdry bauble—sometimes has to be upheld to the utmost.

I'd do the same for Seg. That went without saying.

We went along the backtrail like a couple of savage hunting beasts—no. No, as I have said before, we were not like a pair of savage hunting beasts. We were.

Yet the chill conviction remained that against the dark sorcery within the tunnels of that gargoyle of a mountain, all our warrior skills would not prevail. We'd escaped, and had achieved a kind of victory. Now we had to make good our escape.

Seg's reference to my disappearance in a puff of smoke was uncomfortably close to the truth. When the Star Lords sent their gigantic blue Scorpion to fetch me away from wherever I happened to be and plonked me down somewhere else it must in all seeming appear to any onlookers that I did vanish in a puff of blue smoke.

The problems we faced immediately were simple. We had to get out of this pestiferous jungle and back to civilization. Seg had to see the Lady Milsi safely home. I wanted to return to Vallia and Delia. The Star Lords had shown me that she was safe and handling her problems—handling them! She's smashed the opposition that had enslaved her, and had taken command with all the imperial majesty and grace that makes her the supreme Empress of Vallia.

So that although Delia was safe and well, I hankered to get back to my island empire of Vallia and try to unify the place and make the place a real empire again, as it had been in the old days before the Times of Troubles.

“One sun, one moon,” Seg said to himself, half disgustedly, half with the pleased confrontation with a new idea that sounded impossible.

“And no diffs."

“I can't see how a world can have only apims like us. It is against nature."

“Yet the apims of Earth might call the diffs of Kregen menagerie men—"

“Bone-skulled idiots! Ask your pal Unmok the Nets about that. He's in the beast-catching business."

“Probably,” I said, cautiously. Unmok the Nets would for a surety be on a dozen different schemes at once, if I knew him. A small animal broke cover ahead of us, and darted away to vanish into the greenery to our right. A thin screen shielded the lake here, the carved wall of the mountain lay to our rear, and ahead stretched the way we must go to win free.

“You are a kov without a province to govern,” I said. “There are provinces in Vallia. Will you take the Lady Milsi there—if she wishes to go?"

“If she wishes it—yes. I regard Vallia as my home."

“As do I..."

“But I shall have to fight for my province."

“Would you wish it another way?"

He heaved up another sigh and slapped his bow up and drew the arrow already nocked, and let fly. The rumbling bulk of the dinosaur that broke the screen of bushes and started for us took the shaft clear through one yellow eye.

Before the enraged beast's bellow crashed out again a second shaft followed the first. Seg loosed a third time. Blinded, stuck through the pulsing skin of his throat, staggered, the dinosaur—all scales and fangs and claws—screeched and turned tail and blundered back into the bushes. A tremendous sloshing splash sounded. After that a succession of sucking noises, and splashes, and a screech or two, indicated where the denizens of the lake were feasting.

“Quick,” I said.

“No. The first shaft hit before I loosed the second."

“True. Slow, then."

“No. The third was in the air before the second struck."

“True.” I cocked my head judiciously. “There was no wager on it, though. Had there been—"

“One, two, three,” said Seg.

And I laughed.

More than one person had judged this little foible of ours—of gambling on the outcome of shots in battle—as degrading, decadent, altogether horrible. In truth, it was some of those things. But, also, it served a deeper and more fundamental purpose in the horror of battle. My daughter, Princess Majestrix of Vallia, the Princess Lela whom we called Jaezila out of love, had instantly perceived the inner truths we men so clumsily sought to express by this betting on shots.

We had gone adventuring across the face of Kregen, Jaezila and I. Now, as Seg and I walked along the path leading to the camp where the rest of the party waited for us, I reflected that I was like to do much more of this adventuring than of ruling as an emperor. And, I would have it this way. My son Drak, the Prince Majister, would run the Empire of Vallia, and run it well. We had superb advisers, men and women we could trust.

Echoing my thoughts, Seg said: “So we'll be off adventuring again, then?"

“We will, Seg, if the Star Lords do not demand some fresh service from me. There is no way, as yet, that I can stand against them, for they are superhuman. But I am working on some few ways of attempting to resist them. One day, I hope, I shall be able to take charge of my own destiny."

The smell of woodsmoke reached us. In daylight, away from the jungle, the air was freer, we could talk, and not feel the pressures of instant destruction all about us.

Seg laughed. “It seems to me you've run your destiny pretty much as you willed it. By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! Look what you've accomplished!"

“Titles, ranks, some property here and there. They mean little, all save one. I count as far more important the family and our blade comrades."

Pursuing his thoughts, Seg said: “And you've no idea where you will be sent by the Everoinye?” He used the word Everoinye, Kregish equivalent to the Star Lords.

“None whatsoever. If I disappear, do not think harshly of me. Just remember I do all in my power to rejoin my family and friends."

“There is a great deal still to be done in Vallia—"

“Yes. But the Star Lords pursue their interests over all of Paz, over all of this side of the world. To them, Vallia is no more important than this island of Pandahem, of the continent of Havilfar, or any of the others."

“They must be a right weird lot. And you've never seen them?"

“Not one. They are superhuman. But not, I judge, immortal."

“I wish,” said Seg, “I wish they'd take me along with you—"

“So do I!"

“A scorpion, did you say?” Seg pointed. “Look!"

He strutted out from a rock beside the path, reddish brown, glitteringly black, his stinger held arrogantly aloft, waving from side to side—waving at me.

I felt the familiar constriction in my throat.

The scorpion of the Star Lords—would he herald the Scorpion, the phantom blue Scorpion so huge he encompassed the world?

He did.

Blueness caught me up in a chill embrace. Unseen winds howled. I was falling. End over end, stark naked, winded, I was seized up by the Everoinye, tossed end over end and dumped down blinded and gasping upon some other part of Kregen to sort out a problem for the inscrutable purposes of the Star Lords.

If ... if they had not contemptuously tossed me back through four hundred light-years of space to the planet of my birth.

Chapter two

Of the donning of a Silver Mask

The sea bellowed and roared less than a hundred paces off across a sandy beach, spuming in white foam fountains against jagged rocks that stuck out into the surf like the teeth of a Clawsang. Inland the jungle began where the beach ended, its greenery lush and profuse and deadly. Was I, then, still on the island of Pandahem?

The Star Lords make no great fuss over the people they select to do their dirty work for them. As usual, I was stark naked. The scarlet breechclout and the Krozair longsword were gone. No doubt Seg was even now stooping to pick them up, bewildered by my disappearance. Well, now he knew who had taken me up and why I was gone...

Farther along the beach a headland walled off what lay beyond and the jungle dripped over the beach. In the shadows lay an upturned ship.

She was an argenter, a broad comfortable trading vessel, and clearly she had been there some time. Her upper works were vanished away—I did not think they extended down into the sand—and her keel was well-covered with green growing things. A group of people clad in brown robes hurried toward the ship and vanished into the dark opening cut into her side.

Feeling exposed, I ran swiftly up the beach into the treeline. The vegetation here based on sand was sparse; I wondered which would win this eternal natural battle, the sand or the jungle.

A pathway opened out onto the beach a few paces along and a further group of people walked out from the trees into the radiance of the suns shine. They talked together quite naturally, their voices a mere rumble, so that I judged they had no fear either of hostile denizens of the jungle or of enemies lying in wait for them.

Now, being dumped down naked and unarmed to sort out a problem for the Star Lords has been my lot for a long time. I was not prepared to take it for granted. An order of precedence had to be established. First—just what was it that the Everoinye required of me this time? Second—I had to find a weapon. Oh, I am privy to the Disciplines and can throw people about in unarmed combat; but on Kregen a man without a weapon in his fist remains at a disadvantage. Only last would I worry about clothes.

Edging closer to the trail, I stopped as three people walked along, deep in conversation. Their words came muffled. But, clearly, striking out as a risslaca's tongue licks out, the words hit me.

“My Flem! It is not to be borne!"

And the quick answer uttered in temper: “You are right, By Glem! We will tell Pudor and have done."

“I am with you, in the name of the Silver Wonder!” said the third.

I felt sick.

Now I knew what I was up against. These people were worshippers of Lem the Silver Leem, an evil cult—evil as judged by ordinary people with ordinary morals and outlooks on human life—a cult dedicated to the overthrow of every other religion and the enslavement of all those who did not bow down to Lem the Silver Leem.

The three men wore brown robes, decked with silver.

They carried weapons.

In that upturned ship they had set up their secret temple. Their confidence was plain. No one was likely to interfere with them here. And, also, if they were acting as they always acted during their religious observances, they'd have a baby in there, a child, and they'd slit its throat and disembowel it and offer up its heart to the blasphemous silver image of the leem.

The task of stopping them from indulging in their other obscene practices and their orgies could wait. Right here and now I had to get that child away to safety. If this was not the task the Star Lords had set to my hands, then it was the task I set myself.

And, as usual, this would be a task of the most difficult and dangerous nature.

Once I had rescued the child and restored it to its mother—it, of course, because the baby could be male or female and of any race of diffs or apims—then I could set my face to the north and start off for home.

The three men stepped out onto the sand and began slurping their way toward the ship temple.

Belted to their waists they carried swords. A glance showed me these weapons were the Pandahem pallixter, a straight cut and thrust weapon very much like the familiar Havilfarese thraxter. More often than not these swords were called thraxters. It seemed to me that I would need a sword in the immediate future.

The chance of cutting these three down had gone. They were in sight of anyone watching from the ship. I turned quietly back to the jungle. Some more of these perverted worshippers of a vile creed would be along soon.

The next two worshippers came in sight along the trail not long after, and of the two one was a woman. Well, as women claim equality in most things and more than equality in the rest, that made no difference.

The man went to sleep most peaceably, and the woman followed him before she had time to cry out. I dragged them off the trail into the bush. They would slumber for some time but I judged it best to tie them up. The brown robes ripped easily enough—I used those from the woman—and I gagged them for good measure. Pulling on the robes and adjusting the fastenings and the silver tassels, I quelled a feeling of distaste. From a leather pouch I drew out the man's silver mask. This was a quality item, stamped and fashioned into the likeness of a leem's snarling face and covering forehead, eyes, nose and cheeks and sweeping down to cover the jaw bones. It was held by leather straps. I put it on. I fancy my eyes glared as madly from the eye slots as those of any leem.

The suns shine lay warm and mingled in radiance across the sands, mocking what went forward in that upturned ship. There would be guards, heavy men, sweaty in leather harness, and well-armed. They would have to be dealt with.

The woman carried a canvas bag of provisions—white bread, cold meats, cheeses, fruits, and the man a straw-wrapped flagon of a middling Stuvan. Their purses yielded golden deldys and silver dhems, and a mixture of other coins, so what with the Pandahem pallixters, I judged I must still be on the island of Pandahem.

From the position of the suns I was on the south coast of the island, and the jungle at my back confirmed that. Where I'd left Seg at that Opaz-forsaken mountain was in the southeast corner of the island, so I was farther along to the west. So, very well. After this little lot I'd simply walk along toward the east. If I could find a riding animal, even better. I would not, I fancied, find an airboat very easily. They were still rare in Pandahem.

Sounds reached along from the trail. More worshippers were hurrying to their blasphemous rituals. I heard a heavy voice saying: “And after we've conulted him, we'll sew him in a sack and dump him in the sea."

“Agreed!” cried a second voice.

If they were talking about this fellow called Pudor the first group had been contuming, he was in for a bad time. Conulting someone is to deliver him a tremendous buffet about the heart, either physically or psychically. It is not a pleasant experience.

Conulting, though, was just the kind of experience that would suit these worshippers of Lem the Silver Leem.

Letting this next batch go past and keeping well down, I waited until they were well out across the sands. With a most careful check of the backtrail, I rose to my feet, stepped out onto the sand and started off for the upturned ship.

She had once been a fine craft, broad and bluff-bowed and high-pooped, able to breast the waves and send the white spume scudding. Now she was just an upturned keel. It seemed to me there was another sacrilege going forward here, that a once-fine ship should have sunk into so low and degrading a function.

The followers of Lem have themselves branded upon a sensitive portion of their anatomies. Down south in the city of Ruathytu, capital of the Empire of Hamal, I'd once been dragged out of a nasty situation by Nath Tolfeyr. At that time he was still a figure of mystery to me. He'd hauled me into a secret temple of Lem, and there I'd perforce gone through the disgusting rites to make me an initiate. The brand I'd suffered had long since worn away, owing to my immersion in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph. That was in far Aphrasöe, the Swinging City of the Savanti. If anyone asked to see my brand—and I much doubted anyone would—then the action would begin that much sooner.

The thought occurred to me, as it had done off and on, that perhaps Nath Tolfeyr was a Kregoinye like me, a person doomed to serve the purposes of the Star Lords. I did not think so. But he could be...

Anyway, all that mattered at the moment was that I was in possession of the ritual information that would allow me to pass muster as a follower of the Silver Wonder. The priests and the acolytes, the initiates and the hierophants, all had their grades and ranks. They had their secret signs and secret formulae. My knowledge was of a temple in Ruathytu down by the aqueduct by the Jikhorkdun of the Thoth. Well, what I knew would have to serve.

The silver mask proclaimed me as a Hyr-Jik, a fairly middling rank in the cult. I'd have to browbeat those below, cringe to those above, and stick anyone who argued.

The ship neared. A little breeze got up and blew grains of sand in silken patterns before me. The twin suns would soon be gone, down past the western horizon. Already the sea sheeted with crimson and jade. I fancied there came a touch of coolness upon the air. I breathed in deeply.

Once in a temple of Lem the Silver Leem a fellow would breathe the stink of incense and the raw choke of spilled blood. Thinking back to that unpleasant interlude with Nath Tolfeyr in the temple of Lem, I realized that in all probability the reason the Star Lords had chosen me to handle this situation was precisely because I'd gone through that initiation. The Star Lords, although they had done me a deal of harm in the past, had done so through sheer indifference. They were not actively malignant. They were not chuckleheads, either. They knew a good sound tool or weapon to be used in the heat of combat when they saw one. And, by Zair! they'd used me!

A movement beside the opening cut in the hull of the ship took my attention. Two guards in their harness of brown and silver stood there, spears slanted, on guard.

They passed me through without comment and I brushed aside hanging curtains of brown with silver tassels and so entered the antechamber. Racks and hooks were here provided for the impedimenta not required within. I stacked the canvas bag and the flagon. I drew the robe about me, and, a hand on the hilt of the sword, marched on.

The place was just the same as the temple in Ruathytu, and vastly different.

Constrained by the shape of the upturned ship, the temple had been cunningly laid out. The arching ribs of the vessel lent the space the appearance of a fane. Brown and silver hangings covered the old wooden hull. Torches flared from tall silver stands, four and five torches arranged around each stand in brilliant clumps. The incense was being burned in strength. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to breathe too deeply.

The people stood about in casual attitudes, talking quietly. Every now and then a star glitter would strike from the corner of a silver leem mask. The air of ease here struck me painfully. These debased characters waited for their diabolical rites to begin, and as they waited they chatted together, of this and that, and took a delight in the expectation of coming pleasures.

To one side of the altar stood the tall iron cage. It was not empty.

The sacrifice was a girl child, not above three or four years old. She wore a white dress, short to her knees, and flowers in her hair, which was left free and shining softly brown in the lights from the cressets at each side. That light shone on the black basalt slab.

I looked away. High over the altar reared the shape of the leem—silver, glittering, rampant, ferocious. The image, I judged, was formed of beaten silver over a wooden core. The sculpture was not of the first quality; but it captured the sheer ferocious impact of a leem. Leems have wedge-shaped heads equipped with fangs that can strike through solid oak. They have eight legs and two hearts and they are feral beasts who kill and joy in the killing.

A normal weasel-shaped leem is of the size of a full-grown large leopard; this image was over one and a half times life size. The torchlights glittered from its ruby eyes. I looked away.

The sacrifice was not crying. She was eating sweets of some kind, trifles of sugar and honey and candy in brilliant sticky whorls children love to buy from the local banje shop. Sticky goo ran down her chin.

I tapped the heel and then the toe of the sandal I wore, a simple enough artifact suitable for hot climates. The fellow, now tied up in the bushes, from whom I'd taken the sandals favored solid leather soles, with rope thongs. The sole made a sharp tap through the sand strewing the floor.

These people had used the deck of the ship, then, as their floor, interesting.

Priests with golden decorations superimposed upon the colors of Lem moved about, preparing the knives and flails. The congregation talked in hushed tones, at ease, the incense stank and the torches and cressets burned brightly. I kept the hood of the brown robe half across the silver mask.

A vivid, a scarlet, lightning bolt of memory hit me. I could see just such a scene as this, out in the open air with the priest about to plunge his knife into the body of the sacrifice. And then a flier swooping in with me whirling a Krozair longsword and Barty Vessler leaping out and severing the child's bonds. An elegant, refined, very proper young man, Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev, a man with high ideals of honor and duty. A fine young man now dead, struck down by the cowardly blow of a kleesh whose come-uppance had been too long delayed. Vengeance is for fools. But some redress for Barty's death was long overdue.

Moving slowly, head half-bent, I approached the iron cage. Chains lapped the stone slab. The light threw contorted shadows from the bars across the girl child within the cage. The sweet stickiness ran down from her mouth and shone.

She had to be freed. Also, to perform this duty properly, another act must be done. I eyed the priests.

One of them, bulky in his robes, wore more gold than anyone else. He would be what they called the Hyr-Prince Majister, or some such nonsensical title. I marked him. Keys swung at his waist, and he wore a sword.

An under priest approached.

“Not too close,” he warned.

“I would have words with the Hyr-Prince Majister—"

“Who?"

“I said—” Then I stopped. I saw that I had blundered. That was not the title of the chief miscreant.

A cresset flared in its bronze cage hard by my left shoulder. Another stood a few paces to the right. Between them stood the cage. The basalt slab under the idol stood to the side of the cage, at the center of attention by the altar. I moved forward, striking like a leem.

I kicked the priest twixt wind and water. The left hand cresset went over backwards from a single sweep of my arm. Without pausing I slashed across to the right-hand cresset and knocked that flying. Live coals hissed out to scatter across the floor. The stink of smoke thickened.

I took the chief priest's neck in my left hand and I stuck a finger in his eye.

“Open the cage, rast! Move quickly and quietly, or you are dead."

He could not gobble his fright because his air was choked off in my fist. He scrabbled at the keys. He was useless. I dumped him down, raked off the bunch of keys and selected the largest. It did not fit the lock.

Now shocked shouts burst up in the confines of the ship's hull. People were running and screaming. I intended them no good. I did not look back. I sniffed. The smell of burning grew. There would just be time...

Three keys later the lock snicked open.

The girl child looked up, past me, staring in wonder past my shoulder. Brown drapes burned fiercely. The fire spread. If the floor was well alight by now, fine. The ship was old, her timbers tinder-dry. She should burn well. That would be a more fitting end for a proud ship than this blasphemy.

I scooped the girl up. She started to cry.

Flames broke up in my face as I swung back from the cage. The uproar was now prodigious. So far no guards had burst through the smoke to find out what was going on.

And, still, I had not drawn a sword...

“It is all right,” I said to the girl. “I am taking you home."

She just cried.

Cradling her in the crook of my left arm I took hold of the chief priest by the ear and dragged him along.

I spoke to the girl again.

“What is your name?"

She did not answer; just cried. Perhaps she had been chosen with smiles and garlands of flowers and had been happy to be given sweets and taken off. Perhaps. That could be attended to. I gave the priest a kick up the rump as he wriggled and dragged him along past the wafts of black smoke.

Ahead hung a blue and brown curtain, in checks. The way lay forward. Through that curtain extended the bow section of the old ship. My plan—such as it was—was to make my way forward and escape through the hawsehole. I had not failed to note that the hawsehole still existed, just a few feet above the level of the beach.

Once, years and years ago upon this planet Earth, I had clawed my way through the hawsehole to stand, brave in gold lace, upon the quarterdeck, an officer in Nelson's navy. That effort had been immense. It differed merely in kind from the effort needed now to escape from this stinking den of iniquity.

Two guards blundered up through a narrow corridor lit only by a torch in a becket. They looked wild. Their leather brass-studded armor was spattered with grease.

It was necessary to let go of the chief priest to deal with the two guards, that and shield the child. The guards went over, yeowling, and I trod on them as I dived after the Chief priest. He tried to duck and scuttle away, screaming.

“C'mere, you rast!"

The collar of his robe felt hot and greasy. I hauled him back. He squirmed like a trodden-on lizard, and howled, and held one hand to his injured eye. His noise did not muffle the ululations and hullabaloo going on beyond the blue and brown checked curtain. The two guards rolled away as I kicked them out of the path and went on, head down shielding the child, dragging the chief priest.

At the end of the corridor an open door against the roof reminded me the ship was upside down. A narrow slot had been sawed in the bulkhead to allow passage. I stepped through and dragged the priest after. The space out there, dark and suddenly chill, stank of old rast's nests. I forged ahead.

From some way to my rear a sudden burst of shouting indicated the congregation had recovered from their surprise.

Just how long it would take for the ship to catch well and truly afire, or for the Leem lovers to quench the flames, I had no way of telling. Certainly, the flat tang of smoke persisted, slick on the tongue among the stink of rasts.

Knowing your way around a ship comes naturally to anyone who has served some long time at sea; even upside down as the old vessel was, the ways remained familiar. Up ahead, in the sweep of the bows, lay the hawsehole I sought.

Through the darkness ahead a light glimmered. The light was sickly, sallow; but it shone as a welcome.

I hurried on.

Hurrying was a mistake and there was no welcome awaiting me when I debouched into the forward hold and saw what lay in wait for me.

The stench of leem filled the air.

The chief priest was shrieking in soul-destroying fear. I took a pace forward—and stopped.

There were two leems.

They snarled. In that sickly light their jaws opened widely, and the blackness of their gums showed their yellow fangs in glistening horror. They hissed and leaped.

Chapter three

Of two leems and one torch

The girl child cried and dribbled. The priest shrieked and writhed. The stench of the leems belched foully in that confined space.

The leems leaped. In that instant I dropped the priest and switched the girl around behind me. I drew the thraxter. The sword cleared scabbard—and the leems hauled up in midair, choked on broad silver chains and collars about their necks.

They crashed to the floor and were up in an instant, howling, spitting, all a bristle of fang and claw.

I glared at them. Foul beasts! They'd come sniffing around the chunkrah herds to cut out a straying animal and chew her up for their dinner. The priest tried to run.

I twisted the sword about and let him see the point and he cowered back, shaking.

“They are death—death, you fool!"

“Aye! Your death for certain."

He slobbered.

The leems were chained one each side. The sweep of their claws at the ends of the chains practically met along the center-line. There was no way past them while they slashed at anything that approached them there, and while there was probably a wheel and ratchet mechanism for drawing the chains back taut, there was certainly no time now to find it and put it into operation.

There was no way back through the fires and the enraged worshippers, and there seemed no way ahead.

The chief priest fell to his knees, wailing. I lifted the child higher on my arm. The leems snarled and slavered, the foam frothing upon them. Their hides hung loose and matted, slimed in filth. The sickly light fluttered as the fires at our backs sucked air past and made the shrunken torch-light waver and fleer.

With the child to protect, the sword would not serve here. The blade snicked back into the scabbard. The torch was a greasy, poor affair, not one of the great torches of Kregen. But it would do its duty. It must.

The leems leaped against their chains, snarling, and fell back. I pushed the child more securely—yet again!—into the crook of my arm. I kicked the priest. And I thrust the torch ahead. The flame sizzled hair. The nearest leem yowled, desperate to get at me and tear out my throat and sink his fangs into me.

“Back, you misbegotten creature!” I yelled, incensed.

The torch thrust again, burning him about the muzzle. He shrank back. My own back was to his mate; now, with a single step forward, I dare not step back.

Shaking his head from side to side to avoid the flame, the leem tried to burst past that fiery barrier and get at me. The torch thrust and withdrew, flicking him with fire. His frenzy mounted, as did my own fury, so that we were just two enraged beasts, fronting each other.

Each step must be judged and taken carefully. The floor, which was in reality the underside of the old ship's deck, was rotten in places, treacherous with splinters. And there was the priest to kick ahead, like a cringing, mewling football. The leems’ chains rattled. Their roars shook the timbers of the ship. The girl child continued to cry, turning her flushed and tear-streaked face into my shoulder against the brown robe. I held her gently—gently and yet with a grip of iron. After all this, I would not lose her.

A dozen paces, and the torch a mere sickly waft of flickering flame and greasy smoke, and we were through.

I hurled the torch at the leem, who yowled and cringed away and the brand struck the far bulkhead and scattered in a pyre of dying sparks.

Ahead shone a small ragged opening of light.

The danger of the leems passed, the priest appeared to regain some of his senses. He stood up when I kicked him and hauled him by the scruff of the neck.

“You are a dead man, unbeliever, defiler—"

“Shut that claptrap! And keep moving."

The roaring at our backs increased as we pressed on for those last few steps. The waft of smoke drew ahead gossamer-like, and the priest choked on a lungful, so that I laughed at his discomfiture. We must have presented a strange spectacle, half-demented with fear, stinking with leem-stench, half-burned, rushing through the decaying hulk of an upturned ship.

Up to this time the priest appeared to have forgotten he wore a sword belted to his waist. Or, if he had not forgotten, he had made no attempt to draw the weapon.

As I pushed up toward the jagged opening where the rim had long since fallen away and the planks had begun their last rotting decay into powder, the priest bethought himself of his sword. No doubt, at the same time, he bethought himself of his own congregation, that he was the chief priest, and of his own proper manhood.

For whatever reason it may have been, he chose that moment, as I bent to peer out of the opening, to draw and essay the task of chopping off my head.

The thraxter whispered its tiny chuckle of metal against metal as it hissed from the scabbard.

The priest was no fighting man. I simply moved—sideways and down and around, the child shielded away—moved so that the priest's blow, delivered with a panting, ferocious, desperate force, struck the timbers. The sword hit and stuck and he could not pull it free. He struggled with the thing, tugging on the hilt, and then he cast a look at me, such a look as would freeze the marrow in his own bones.

I said: “Tell me, why should I not slay you now?"

He blinked and swallowed, still tugging at the sword stuck fast in the timber. “You brought me here from the temple for some other reason than to kill me."

“So I did,” I said, as though suddenly remembering. “So I did. Now get through the hole—Bratch!"

He jumped at that savage word of command, and hitched his robes up and swung a leg over the rotted opening. I gave him a push and he let out a yell and toppled away out of sight.

The last of the sun's radiance fell past the hole, deeply emerald and darkest ruby, twinned sky colors eternally orbiting each other, in love and in hate. Well, this night I'd have to skip and jump before I was free of the brown and silvers. I took a quick look back, past the waft of smoke and the leem's area. Their racket kept up. It would take time for the Leem Lovers to draw back the chains. Time to be moving before they rushed out onto the beach to cut us off.

A glint halfway up the bulkhead took my eye as I put my foot on the splintered coaming of the hole. I stopped and looked. The last of the suns, breaking for a moment free of cloudbanks low on the horizon and flooding the world with a rusty patina, pierced through the opening. The light fell on the three steel tines of a trident, still embedded in the wood.

The leems were screaming and snarling, which indicated they were being drawn back on their chains; the chief priest was probably running like a drunk over the sands to escape by now; the child was crying harder and was soaking wet; the debased followers of an evil cult were after my blood and no doubt some of them were already out on the beach ... I stepped away from the hole, crossed to the bulkhead and reaching up wrenched out that narrow three-tined trident.

Then, and only then, I made for the hole and leaped through.

As I had expected, the chief priest was running for it. He was a dark flapping shape against the sunset glow. My foot kicked something hard in the sands. It was the silver mask discarded by the priest. I picked it up, musing. Shouts lifted past the entranceway to the hull. Time to go. The chief priest had escaped. That was his good fortune. I'd not risk the child's life chasing him—let alone my own.

We set off together, the girl child and I, up the beach toward the trees.

I carried the trident in my right hand, hefting it from time to time. Around the haft, just below the three long narrow and cruel tines, a ribbon of brown had been tied, a silken ribbon of brown with silver fringes.

Once we'd reached the shelter of the trees one problem would have been put behind us, and another and more colorful would face us. I'd not pitch our luck too high, and so did not venture too far into the trees. The jungle remained sparse at the sand's edge. There would be no point in going back to find the man and woman I'd left tied up. For one thing, their comrades, backtracking my movements, would have discovered them by now; and, two, they would have no idea, I judged, from which village the girl sacrifice came.

She sniffled and snuffled. I was loathe to keep her quiet with a hand over her mouth; but after I'd cleaned her up and she'd found a piece of sticky sweet goo in a pocket, she quietened. Cleaning her up did not present a difficult task, not in a forest where there were a myriad different leaves. As they say, in a forest of Kregen you can find a leaf to suit every purpose. They are not far wrong.

The suns at last sank and the sky changed from a sea of rust to an ocean of darkness shot with the stars of Kregen. Soon Kregen's first moon, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, would rise and then her fuzzy pink light would provide illumination enough.

When the second and third moons, the Twins, rose, the light would sparkle most pleasantly—if you were going for a stroll in some pleasure-section of a city, say. If you were trying to escape from enemies, you might not relish such prodigious quantities of light during the night time.

Making the most of the small time of darkness before the Maiden with the Many Smiles rose, I hurried along the beach, skirting the trees. The coolness had not come with the going of the suns; the air sweltered.

Now that the priest had escaped me—and I clutched the trident in my fist—I decided to head eastward. If the girl came from a village to the west, then I'd be unlucky. Wherever she came from, someone would know apart from the priest. Taking him along had been showing off to the gallery, really. And, in the end, he'd given me the slip.

The sand shushed under my feet, and the girl on my arm, lulled by the motion, at last fell asleep. Her tiredness overcame the excitements and fears. And I still did not know her name.

The old ship burned splendidly.

Little though there might be of a Viking funeral in those flames, the thought occurred. Orange light stained the sky. The stars glittered and dimmed—for a space. Dry, that old argenter, dry and tinder for consumption. She burned away and fell into ashes, and so the darkness took her.

I hurried on with my burden into the shadows.

Pausing every now and then to take a careful look around and particularly backwards, and seeing nothing of pursuit, we made good our escape—for I tended to regard the girl-child sacrifice as one of the party. Adventure has that effect. I did the looking around and she slept; but it was we who made our escape.

The beginning of this day had seen me encompassed by jungle, and the end saw me striding along the edge of a jungly forest, skirting the greenery, trudging along in the sand. By the light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles and later of the Twins, I kept going. Tiredness did not touch me. I'd be tired later on. Now I had to find the nearest village or town and see about the sleeping charge the Star Lords had placed into my care.

An eventful day had passed. Perhaps the excitements had come along in fine style, maybe they clustered thickly around each passing hour, but I didn't regard this as an unusual day for Kregen. Well, not too unusual ... The truly unusual day on Kregen, that world of beauty and terror, is when nothing happens.

Chapter four

Ashti of the Jungle

The folk who lived in their scattered villages along the brown rivers running through the jungle might not have advanced so far along the so-called road of civilization as many another peoples of Kregen; but they only tried to kill me once and then, when I'd explained, became very friendly.

Three villages along we ran into someone who knew my charge. The leaf-roofed, rush-walled houses were round like beehives in this village. The ground was packed hard by equally hard naked feet; to turn into a quagmire when the rains fell. The headman did not wear a bone through his nose; had he done so it would have suited his regal magnificence well.

A woman wearing a remarkable sarong-like garment of gemmed greeny-blue silk told us the child was probably from the next village. She seemed to recognize something about the cut of the child's jib that must be peculiar to one village out of them all. As for the remarkable garment, artificial though the gems might be and the silk not a true silk, nonetheless, it looked out of place.

I thanked them, and went on. News of my coming preceded me by this time, and, no doubt, a warning that I meant no one any harm. If they wanted to kill me and do a proper job, that would have been very easy. A few arrows, a few darts, a sudden shower of spears from the undergrowth—they could have done for me. But, with the child on my arm, clearly seeking her mother and bearing no one ill will, no one challenged me after that first time.

The girl's mother was not at all pleased to see me.

Her face expressed the utmost consternation. We spoke in the universal Kregish tongue which had been arbitrarily imposed on all of Paz, and she just did not want to know, about the girl, about me, about how I had found the child—whose name, now revealed, was Ashti.

I did not smile at the remembrance of another Ashti I'd known—known only as an enemy—now dead and buried and tried to be forgot. This Ashti yelled and reached for her mother, with her hands nice and clean and her dress white and clean and a shining clean face. The mother backed away as though skeletal plague hands reached for her.

“Ashti is your child,” I said. We stood outside her hut with the blue shadows about our feet, the mingled rays of the twin suns falling across the earth of the compound where chickens, dogs, naked children, pigs, led a communal and interesting life of their own.

“No more. Take her away. Take her back."

This woman, whose name was Fischili, wore a remarkable garment, sarong-like, of orangey-green silk, and the gems, artificial though they undoubtedly were, gleamed and glistened splendidly.

So I thought—cautiously—I could see some of the answers.

“Woman! Fischili! Will you take your child Ashti back into your home?"

“Man! No!"

A fellow put his head out of the hut door, pushing aside the reed curtain. He did not wear a bone through his nose either, but he did sport a pair of wondrous gold earrings; maybe not gold, maybe brass, and maybe they'd turn green in his ears before long; but they, like the woman's dress, looked spontaneously splendid.

“Go away, man,” he said. “You interrupt my sleep."

“You heard I was coming. Did not the drums tell you?"

“We did not know you brought back the dead to us."

“Ashti is not dead."

He jumped out and stood next to the woman. He shook a spear in my face. He was wrought up and excited. His skin of that superlative golden-red copper color glowed with sweat. I held Ashti and saw that her skin was much paler than her parents’ but that, I did not doubt, would glow with that coppery-red tint as she grew older.

“Dead!” he shouted, waving his spear.

“Go away!” shrieked Fischili.

Now when I'd taken the spear away from Fischili's man and thrown it into the earth of the compound, and started to shout, a most wicked and selfish thought occurred to me.

If I did not persuade these two to take their child back, and why they refused was obvious, I'd stand precious little chance of persuading anyone else. The damned Leem Lovers had gone sniffing around and had bought the child. Bought a living human being with tawdry dresses and brass earrings. Well, slavery was a fact of life on parts of Kregen, and we'd do for it one day and banish slavery. But this was different. If the law did not proscribe this act, an act common enough on Earth, then I had no rights at all. The parents had sold the child; ergo, the child was dead.

And the selfish thought was this: What was I to do with a little girl child if I went hopping and skipping under the Moons of Kregen swinging a damned great longsword?

What, indeed...?

Common sense told me that I could easily knock sense into Fischili's man, if not into Fischili herself, and make them take Ashti back. Oh, yes, that would be easy.

But what would Ashti's life be like after that?

Far better for me to find her a good home where she was wanted.

And, of course, I realized where—if the Everoinye left me alone—I could find such a home. I hoped.

So, instead of doing anything else, I said: “I will go now."

I turned and walked off. Then, pausing and turning back and shouting so that not only Fischili and her man heard me, I yelled: “I shall care for Ashti. If you try to follow me I shall probably kill you."

Ashti had stopped crying some time back in our short journey. She did not cry when we left her mother and her—probable—father. I believe little affection had ever existed there. Ashti had been pleased to be back where she recognized faces and places; from now on I would have to see that the faces and places she saw were all friendly.

Continuing eastward seemed the best bet at the moment, for the jungle folk mentioned a town as being situated on the estuary of a river in that direction. I did not think it would be any town I knew—Mahendrasmot was well over to the west—but I stood a chance of picking up passage in a ship.

No one appeared to want to change the life-style of these folk who lived in the jungle. They were not primitives. Their style was simple, with quantities of home-made products and a living based on minimal cultivation and maximum hunting and gathering. Mahendrasmot was a steel town, as its name implies, and there was no lack of metal implements among these folk of the jungle, which suggested that iron and steel manufacture might also figure in the town I approached.

I should perhaps mention that very early on in this jaunt I'd ripped up the brown robes to make a breechclout for myself and a sacklike holdall to carry the two silver masks. With a sword at my waist, Ashti on my left arm and the trident in my right fist, I looked an odd character, I judge, from the expressions on the faces of those people I spoke to.

There had been some serious trouble with Ashti when I'd wanted to take her dress off to wash it. It was pretty sticky and grubby by that time. She wore nothing else. So, very firmly, and chattering away all the time to her, I got the dress off. We happened to be beside a stream at the time, which seemed the logical place to be if you wanted to wash a dress, and I washed dress and child at the same time. This was just before we reached her own village and was in honor of meeting her parents. Ha!

Anyway, by the time we reached the town of Hukalad we'd reached an agreement. Ashti could talk well enough; but it was going to take a little time to loosen her tongue into full confidence. I recognized that. Also, at this time I was not an altogether wonderful forager in a jungle. If you don't know what to look for you can starve in a jungle. If you do know, and find the things you seek, you can live like a lord—at least, like a lord of the jungle.

I must confess that by the time we approached the outskirts of Hukalad I was mightily looking forward to unending cups of superb Kregan tea, real steaks, real vegetables, palines and, quite probably, quite probably, a glass or two of wine...

The money I had without any compunction removed from the Leem Lovers, would keep us well enough until we could find a ship. Sailing would be far the quickest way of reaching Vallia—the only way—in the absence of airboats, or saddle-flyers.

Ashti said, “I'm thirsty."

“We'll soon find some parclear—"

“Want sazz. An’ I'm hungry, too."

“So am I, isn't that funny,” I said, and smartened up my pace. She wasn't above giving me a kick or two to keep me going. Parclear is a refreshing sherbet drink, and sazz is the same with the addition of fruit juices that make it colored. Either one serves its purpose.

We attracted only perfunctory interest. Most of the buildings were of wood, the road was unmetalled and would be a quagmire in the rains, and there were no proper walls as such around the town, merely a stockade. This was of a good size, and sturdily built; but I had seen what sea rovers could do against wooden stockades.

The biggest buildings looked to be temples and palaces—overgrown villas with three stories, really—and inns and taverns. I chose a modest-looking place that stood on the corner of an open space, and, going in, concluded for a meal for two, lots of sazz, lots of tea, some wine, and a room for the night. Gold changed hands.

Always there is the problem with gold in a strange town.

That night I wedged the door shut, stuffed pillows in the bed, made Ashti sleep on blankets by me—and that was a luxury compared to the jungle—and so sat half-awake all night. The precautions were unnecessary; I felt tired, but I'd recoup the lost sleep somehow.

“Ship out, dom?” The landlord, bleary-eyed and with a runny nose, sniffed. “No ships looked in here since the bar silted up."

I used some bad language.

“They've took all the trade, them down the coast,” went on the landlord. “Hukalad is finished. I'm selling up myself, soon, and moving to Tuscursmot."

My ears went up like those of a leem scenting ponsho.

“Tuscursmot!” I said. “Is the town far off?"

“You'd do better to ride, rather than walk. I can sell you a fine freymul—or a hersany—I have a splendid pair of hirvels—"

“Stay, stay, landlord! No doubt you could lay your hands on a zorca if—"

He shook his head.

“Gold dust."

“Well, my feet have carried me this far, they will carry me the rest of the way."

As the rascal hadn't told me how far it was, and as Tuscursmot must be in a position to benefit from the unfortunate happening to Hukalad's sandbar, I judged the next town to be not very far off at all. I'd buy myself a saddle animal for a half a day's ride, if I listened to this sales talk.

In the end I found that Tuscursmot stood on the eastward arm of the river on whose western stood Hukalad. So, after an enormous breakfast of vosk rashers and loloo's eggs, quantities of tea, heaps of palines, bread done in the shan'feran fashion, with red honey, we set off. We walked, and in the early suns shine, tripping along, Ashti walked for a time, too. She danced on ahead, a sprite in a little white dress, and we talked and laughed as we made our way to Tuscursmot.

Chapter five

Ashti plays in The Swod's Revenge

Tuscursmot turned out to be a charming town, strung out along the banks of the River Curstouran, as the waters were called here, and extending for some distance north and south. The houses were not all wood, many were of mudbrick and stucco-finished, with tiled roofs. As of nature, they were bowered in greenery; but there was a considerable agriculture around the town, and it was clear that these cultivations were prodigious in production and also, I judged, needed constant damned weeding.

The white houses thickened toward the town center into a regular crisscross of streets and avenues. Temples rose. There were hotels, with signs proclaiming the joys to be found within. Palaces dedicated to the Baths of the Nine indicated that Tuscursmot well understood the refinements of culture. The theatres might tell a different story, true...

All in all, Tuscursmot was of that species of town that is your comfortable, county, provincial, market, well-off town, and highly satisfied with itself. Somnolent, perhaps, sleepy, filled with scandals of the frilly petticoat and the embezzling kind.

All, that is, except for the stout brick walls encircling the central portions of the town, the watchtowers manned by bright-helmeted men bearing spears, and the way no houses or vegetation were permitted within a bowshot of the walls. Mind you—the bowshot was a short bowshot; the impression was gained that as bows improved the folk of Tuscursmot had not bothered to keep their killing zone in step with changing technology.

So, an interesting town. Industry was decently concealed away in a curve of the river out of sight of the town. No doubt there were shanty towns down there. If this was true of Earth, it was no less true of Kregen.

As far as I knew, the name of the street I wanted had been Lower Squish Street. This ran from the cleared space fronting the South Gate down alongside the river bank and so trailed away at last when no more houses were built beside the track. Bushes—even trees—loaded with squishes grew everywhere, and I thought of Inch, and sighed, and went along to a neat little tavern halfway along Lower Squish Street, under the trees.

Carts pulled by krahniks passed, loaded with produce. The air smelled sweet with that particular aroma that is of Pandahem South—much invigorated here, I might add, by the scents of squishes. This close to the equator they'd get ripe harvests on a regular basis. A gang of Rapas wearing striped aprons busily unloaded a cart of its barrels. Grapes could be produced readily enough, but ale—that might present a problem. The Kregans have ways of producing wine and ales in the most unlikely circumstances—which is a thirst-quenching miracle.

“Hai, doms,” I said pleasantly. “Warm work."

The beaked faces turned to me, the feathers bristled, and then the biggest Rapa—the one with the yellow feathers beside his beak—contorted his face into the grimace that passes for a smile among Rapas.

“Aye, dom, warm work. You'll be quenching your thirst inside.” He nodded toward the tavern into which he and his mates were unloading the barrels. The sign said, beside the swinging flagon, The Swod's Revenge.

I smiled. I liked that name.

“Aye. If the ale is good."

Ashti decided it was time she took a hand in all this chatter that wasted time. After all, she had walked quite a long way before I'd picked her up.

She jumped down and started for the tavern steps, her white dress like a flitting moth in the suns light. The Rapas smiled. Truly, Tuscursmot was a friendly place.

“Come on, Jak!” she admonished me over a shoulder. “I'm thirsty."

“You're never anything else."

The tavern, low-ceiled, seemed to me of that order of establishment that would boast a cheery mine host, a good wine list, an ample cellar, good honest plain fare that melted in the mouth, and, if you stayed, beds that enveloped you in soft slumber. Well, I was half right.

The landlord greeted me in a friendly fashion. He was a Khibil, and his fox-like face with the arrogant moustaches and that air of supercilious superiority that most Khibils have did not, in this context, set my teeth on edge.

All the same, in the tap room I recognized as being either a copy of or an attempt at a tap room of Hamal, I wouldn't come to the point at once.

He put the jar of ale on the counter. There were two Ochs giggling in a corner, a couple of Fristles playing dice by the window, and three apims at the other end of the bar. I sipped.

“By Beng Dikkane, I needed that,” I said.

Ashti piped up.

“Sazz! Sazz! Sazz!"

The foxy landlord poured and placed the glass on the counter. I gave it to Ashti, who drank it off like a trooper. I wondered if I was getting her into bad habits. Well, she was nearly four years old. Kids are tough at that age, far tougher than I was likely to be.

The silver winked as it lay on the counter.

The two Ochs stopped giggling and, hand in hand, went out. The landlord picked up the silver dhem and bit it. Well, that was fair comment on the wicked ways of the world.

The two Fristles stopped playing dice, and went out.

The three apims pushed away from the bar. They looked nothing special, although two wore their hair colored and tortured into the fashionable towser cut—I say fashionable ... that towser-cut had been fashionable in Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, some seasons ago. No doubt the style had just reached this outpost. The three of them wore tunics and trousers cut short and ragged to the knee, mostly of greens and browns. They carried knives and cudgels. Their faces—well, now, as I glanced at their faces I realized that not all the people of Tuscursmot were friendly to the wandering stranger in their midst.

The trouble was, I had Ashti to look after. And she'd as lief walk down and start to talk to these three bully boys.

So, I tried to handle the affair as though it wasn't happening. All these snaggly-toothed, leering-mouth three had done was stand up away from the bar. And the diffs, the Ochs and the Fristles had left. I put my back to them, with my ears flapping, I dare say, to listen for them, and looked hard at the landlord. He was a Khibil.

“Landlord,” I said.

“I am called Palando the Berry."

“Palando the Berry. Can you direct me to the house of Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot? You know, Pompino the Iarvin."

The Khibil landlord said straight into my face: “Duck!"

He had no need to warn me. The sound of the footfalls on the floor, the way in which tunics rustled when arms are lifted, the sound of a wheeze on an indrawn breath, all these betraying things told me what the three tearaways were trying to do.

I not only ducked, I went sideways, turned around and looked at the situation.

The cudgel smashed onto the counter, the fellow with the towser cut in green and yellow quite unable to halt his blow. I kicked him twixt wind and water and before he fell down screeching I hit the other one with the orange and vermilion towser cut in the ear. That happened to be nearest. The third fellow swung his cudgel and I swayed away and knocked him down inside his blow. The three of them lay on the floor like three little fishes, stranded, gasping and wheezing. It was all not very clever, a trifle messy—the last one sprayed blood from his nose everywhere—and of no real credit to anyone. I should have spoken up first.

With that feeling strong on me, I said: “I crave your pardon, Palando the Berry. There is blood on your floor."

“Rogoglopher!” the landlord bellowed at the top of his voice. Moments later the chief Rapa looked in.

“Yes, master?"

“Heave these outside, Rogoglopher. They met more than they bargained for this time."

“My pleasure,” said the Rapa, and bellowed for his mates to give him a hand. I sensed undercurrents of local conflicts and politics here. Maybe these were just locals, terrorizing their local tavern. Maybe they were more. I did not care; it was of no concern of mine.

“Pompino?” I said.

“Aye. You know him?"

“Yes.” My voice sharpened. “Ashti. Stop playing with that blood. You'll get it all over your dress. And it's hard work to get blood out."

The landlord leaned forward and looked over the counter.

“Rogoglopher!” he bellowed.

The Rapa came back from dumping senseless bodies.

“Yes, master?"

“Get that floor scrubbed out."

“Yes, master."

The Khibil landlord brushed his whiskers. “I keep a clean house here, in the Swod's Revenge."

“Aye, Palando the Berry. Pompino—"

“Oh, aye, Pompino. He is away at the moment."

I compressed my lips.

“Just tell me where away lies his house. That is all I ask."

“It's no good going there. There are only his wife and twins—"

“Two sets of twins, I believe."

“That is right. I see you do know him, then."

“Look, Palando. If you are trying to protect Pompino—forget it. He is a friend. If you were to turn me away he would be most wroth, believe me."

Palando nodded. “I remember the way you put those three Durkin brothers out. Nasty customers. Oh, I believe you. But he is away—"

“Just tell me where his house is."

“But he is not there."

I looked at the counter. I looked at the low ceiling. I studied the rows of flagons and bottles and glasses. I saw the amphorae in their tripods in the area beyond the bar. Many were stacked against the wall all leaning like the drunks they might make. I looked back at the counter, where Palando the Berry swiped with a cloth.

I said, “I may have to start at the beginning and go to every house in Lower Squish Street. I should find the right house then. But it would be easier—do you not think, landlord, it would be easier?—if you told me which house."

“Would you care for a refill? Your glass is—"

I did not grasp the landlord. I did not touch him. Nor, for that matter, did I blow up. I said, “Ashti—leave that Rapa's bucket alone—"

Too late.

The Rapa, swabbing at the floor with his mop, let out a yell. The bucket spilled. Bloody water swilled across the clean floor. Ashti laughed delightedly.

I took a breath.

“Palando the Berry. Tell me. Where does Pompino live? I ask for the last time."

He said: “I will tell you before that little she-pinki destroys my tavern and my relationship with my servants."

Ashti laughed as a Rapa coming in the door slipped on the blood and skidded into a table and so brought that down on his head. Truth to tell, Ashti hadn't done anything yet. I would promise Palando Ashti's full resources of mischief if he didn't cooperate.

But, in the end, he said: “The fourth house along. You can't miss it, it has a red door."

“Oh? Why red?"

“I thought you said you knew Pompino?"

“Maybe his fondness for red is something new."

Ashti was red now, the hem of her dress, where she was banging the bloody froth. I bent down and hoicked up the squealing, kicking, struggling handful—the reason I hadn't pulled her out of it before. There would be a stern contest of wills in the immediate future between clean dresses and having further mucky fun.

“Well, he did have that front door repainted when he came back from one of his excursions, recently, I'll say that. It always used to be a decent blue."

Having at least wormed out the secrets of Pompino's whereabouts from his fellow Khibil, and having sorted out all I could in the way of Ashti's dress, and not being in the frame of mind to hang about in the Swod's Revenge any longer, I hoicked up the struggling handful and said the remberees and started off along Lower Squish Street.

Eventually I had to let her run ahead. And then I noticed that although she wanted to get down and run, freely, off, she didn't go over far. She ran and played within easy distance. She, as it were, kept her radius of action located on where I happened to be. I own I felt highly perked up at that, and, also, dismayed.

The fourth house along stood within what was obviously a pleasant evening stroll down to the Swod's Revenge. Pompino was not one to miss a trick like that. The house looked charming, white-walled, freshly painted, with two stories and with highly polished windows. The roofs were blue slate. That was probably imported, for Tuscursmot had a busy trade, and was a clear indication of conspicuous wealth. If the jungle folk could use honest leaves for roofs what was the need to import slate? Well, there are ways among men and women not explicable by logic.

The area before the house was set out as a gravel garden. The gimmick—no, that is the wrong word—the art in a gravel garden is not to let anything grow. It is all stone and gravel and chipped flints, split rocks to yield a fascinating spectrum of colors. The suns bring out the shine and the glitter of mica and the fleck of semi-precious stone. Cunning sculptors earn vast sums designing gravel gardens, and contractors earn vast sums laying them out. When it comes to the slave who goes around uprooting the weeds, vast sums are conspicuous by their absence.

So Pompino did all right for himself. By the word “ti” in his name, meaning “of” he was a man of importance.

I walked up the gravel path through the gravel garden, and an enormous one-eyed, one-tusked Chulik stood up from the porch and glowered one-eyed at me.

He was taller than me, yellow-skinned, his pigtail hanging down his back dyed blue. He had only one tusk thrusting up from the left corner of his mouth. I judged he'd taken a back-handed slash in some old fight. There was a scar above the gap in his jawline. His piglike eye regarded me solemnly. The missing eye was decently covered by a blue patch on a string around his ear. He wore a leather kax and pteruges, and looked uncomfortable in the warlike costume.

“Llahal, dom!” I called, getting in with the friendly greeting early. “I am a friend to Pompino the Iarvin."

He said: “Go away, master. You can do no good here."

I felt the astonishment. The Chulik spoke as though I had come forewarned of some disaster. All I wanted to do was pass the time of day with my fellow kregoinye, Pompino, chew the fat about old times in Jikaida City, and then take off. I also, I must admit, hoped I'd get him to help in the way of transport. So I said: “I just want to have a word with him. We have not seen each other for some time."

“Best leave now, master."

He carried a short spear and that was all in the way of weapons. Now I knew he'd be expert in the use of the spear, for Chuliks on their islands are trained up from birth to become mercenaries and to handle any kind of weapon. They usually adopt the weaponry of their employers. But this little spear which looked as though it would snap the moment the Chulik put his strength behind it?

Despite all the comicality of getting through locals and their clannish close-mouthed remoteness, I suddenly began to fancy there might be something amiss, after all.

“Are you servant to Pompino, Chulik?"

“You had best leave, master. Go—now!"

He was speaking in a hoarse penetrating voice, as though desperate not to be heard. And, he did not sound like your true overpowering Chulik would sound like, telling a mere apim to do something. He sounded like a slave. I judged that if Pompino was as important a man as, suddenly, I conceived him to be, he would have Chulik servants, and, also, that very much could be amiss with him and his family.

Thinking that perhaps my kregoinye comrade Pompino was in serious trouble, and prepared to go barging forward to sort it out, I became aware of an absence.

I looked about, sharply.

“Ashti! Ashti!"

But the girl was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter six

Puzzles for the Brown and Silvers

No sign of Ashti in the gravel garden ... The left side of the path was walled off by a profusion of flowering shrubs twice man-height ... To the right the path led around the side of the house. That way, then...

The Chulik regarded me somberly. I started off, going along the path right-handed.

“Hold!” he called in a stronger voice. I looked back. He hefted the little spear as though about to cast.

“For a little girl, dom?” I said. “You would not try to stop me, surely?"

His one good eye rolled in its socket, making a hideous grimace. He rolled that eye toward the solid door. In the door and at about eye-level for a well-built man the slot of darkness suddenly winked silver. I paused.

The Chulik, in his small un-Chulik-like voice, said:” Aye!” Then: “You are a friend to Pantor Pompino?"

“Yes."

I have said many times that Chuliks are ferocious fighting men, and their women as well. I have also said that they know little of humanity. Well, I'd met a Chulik in a wrestling booth on the south coast of Pandahem, in Mahendrasmot, who approached a good long way to humanity. And his tusks had been barbarously sawn off. Maybe this Chulik also had glimmerings of humanity?

I said: “Your name, dom?"

“Men call me Chenunga the Ob-eyed—"

“Well, Chenunga the Ob-eyed, I must find the little girl. If you wish to try to stop me you must make up your mind to it.” I waited, glaring at him. I would not wait long.

He must have seen that in me. The spear lowered.

“I will cast.” His voice barely reached me. “You must run fast..."

Without another word, without a signal of movement, I took to my heels and belted around the corner of the house. I did look back as I passed the corner of the stuccoed brickwork. The little spear flew past. I smiled. So something was amiss...

At the side of the house a small arbor of climbing flowers, hung and limp in the heat, cast a welcome blue shade. A small green door showed, half-open. If Ashti had ventured in there I could well be at a serious disadvantage. If I knew the little minx, and I was coming to know her ways better each day, she was after sazz and biscuits, palines, anything sweet and sticky. I ignored the little green door and went on looking for an alternative way in.

A trap door in the gravel was flung back on its supports and two amphorae lay there, propped against a wooden tripod. Wine stained across the gravel from a third amphora smashed and leaking. I realized that if Ashti had seen that she, with her nose newly accustomed to the scents of a taproom, might well decide that down there lay the drink she loved. Sherbet drinks, sticky sweets, they would lure her on. She might be a child of the jungle, and trained already to take care of herself there, as a modern day child of Earth is trained to take care crossing the busy road and dodging traffic, but she would be lured on.

The head of a ladder thrust through the trap. I looked down, quickly, scanning what lay below and immediately withdrawing. Barrels, boxes, amphorae lay neatly stacked against the wall I could see. Also, there was an open door...

With a single bound I went up in the air, caught the ladder, slid down it as a sailor slides down a companionway. I was running the instant my feet hit the stones. The shadows engulfed me. I crouched beside the open door, unmoving, scarcely breathing, and I cocked an eye aloft to see if the Chulik had retrieved his spear and followed me. The trap gaped bright and empty against the sky.

The only other person in the cellar was a dead woman who lay against the far wall, half in shadows. She wore a decent blue dress and her face upturned in a hideous grimace. She was a Fristle, and her cat-face looked ghastly. Both her hands were clasped about the broken haft of a spear deeply embedded in her chest.

I looked away, through the open doorway. The corridor was just a corridor, with doors to either side and a staircase at the end. These were the cellars to Pompino's house. Up aloft, then, I judged the mischief—and, also, Ashti.

I unslung the narrow trident from my back and held it over my right shoulder, tines forward, my fist gripping comfortably at the point of balance, ready to thrust or throw. If I had to switch grips into a two-handed hold for some foining, that could be done in an instant.

Padding silently along, wary of each door, I reached the staircase and looked up.

The door at the top, over a small landing, did not look particularly inviting. Down in the cellar the coolness struck in gratefully, and the shadows up there concealed enough to make me wonder if the door was locked or not. Up I went, rapidly, silently, wondering if I was making a fool of myself. But one does not ordinarily find dead Fristle women in cellars unless there is something seriously amiss...

I kicked the door open and leaped through the opening, ducking away and to the side and colliding with a fellow about to open the door. He looked more surprised than I was. He carried a big sword—I say big, the thing was like a falchion, curved and single-edged, and he instantly slashed at my head.

The trident caught the sword. I twisted. If I made a mistake I could only take comfort in the thought that he might mistake me for one of the desperadoes causing the mischief. I put my left fist into his mouth and nose and knocked him over. He was an apim and went flying back.

Farther along the passage, which was paneled in light woods and with rush matting upon the wooden floor, two men appeared from the corner. They were armed and armored. They carried tridents not unlike the one I wielded. They wore brown tunics trimmed in silver.

They rushed on and then halted, staring in perplexity at my trident. The brown breechclout might not show much silver; enough did show to slow them down.

Now, therefore, I was certain.

“Hai!” shouted the first fellow. He wore a large black beard, and I say wore for it looked false to me. “Hai! In the name of Lem the Silver—"

He did not finish, for my trident took him in the throat. He pitched back, spraying blood. His companion shrieked and rushed, slaying-fury in his eyes. My sword snicked out, I slipped his first thrust and then the thraxter slid between his ribs. He sank down, gasping.

The stink of spilled blood gusted up.

I do not slay wantonly. The man at my back, his face a bloody mask, tried to stab me. I slashed back, and he fell.

The noise must have attracted attention by now.

Nothing else for it ... A straight bash on, sword whirring, a hefty charge into whatever lay around that far corner...

What lay around that corner and through the doorway was a tableau. There were four of them, an apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa and another fellow whose race I did not then know. They brandished weapons and wore leather jerkins studded in brass. Their faces were mean. The Rapa's feathers bristled around his beak. The thick body hair of the Brokelsh gave him that particular spiky bristly Brokelsh look.

The apim said: “Stand still!"

I stood still.

In a chair sat a Khibil woman of exceptional grace. She was quite clearly in a long-gone state of fright. But she held her head erect, her foxy features composed, and her hands were folded in her lap. There was a bruise beside her cheek, near her mouth, and her white dress was torn from one shoulder. She looked at me without expression.

I saw her—and then I saw past her and past the legs of the four hulking ruffians. Another white dress showed there, and two twinkling feet, and Ashti ran out, through their legs, yelling.

“Jak! Jak!"

I said, “You are the lady Scaura Pompina?"

She nodded. I do not think she could find the spit to moisten her mouth to speak.

The big apim with the whiskers and the scar down his left cheek snarled at me again as I went to move forward.

“Stay there, unless you want to see this woman dead."

“I do not know who you are,” I said, and I kept my voice down, kept it even, kept it un-Dray Prescot-like. “I have no quarrel with you.” This was not true. “Just let the lady go and walk away, and we may consider this thing finished."

They laughed. Well, they would, of course.

The Rapa reached out and caught Ashti by the dress and reeled her in as a fisherman reels in a catch. He held her most familiarly, and she writhed and kicked and yelled.

I held very still.

Ashti had come to mean a great deal to me in our stroll along the shore of Pandahem in the past days.

There had been a man at the front door with a crossbow bolt aimed at the Chulik. That seemed clear. The Chulik must be servant to Pompino. He had tried to warn me off, knowing that his mistress might be murdered at any moment if he did anything foolish.

I said, “The children? The two sets of twins?"

The bearded apim guffawed.

“Tied up in bed. Now, dom, before we kill you, tell us where this rast Pompino is."

I nodded at them. “You carry tridents and wear the brown and silver.” I put a snap into my voice. “By the Silver Wonder! Are you then all fools?"

They gaped, not grasping what was going on. If I leaped now—but Ashti squirmed and kicked and yelled, and the Rapa clouted her on the bottom. At this she let out an almighty yell and almost struggled free.

He took a fresh grip on her, and turned her so that her head lay inside the crook of his arm.

“What do you know of—?” said the apim.

“Lem must be witless to employ loons like you,” I said, and the snap in my voice lashed at them. “If you have harmed the children or the lady—or if you harm that child—you are all dead men."

The Brokelsh looked past me. I did not turn. I'd left three dead men there, and heard no one else.

“Where are Halki, and Nath?” he said.

Things were just beginning to get out of hand. If I did not leap soon I would be too late. Yet a single slash and Pompino's lady would be dead, and Ashti too. I looked at these four, and I held the thraxter at what must appear a negligent angle. I said, “Which question do you wish me to answer first?"

This puzzled them. While it was clear they were not over-bright, they were deadly dangerous. I moved forward a few paces, and I managed to summon a grimace that might pass for a smile. “Pompino, or Halki and Nath?"

The apim said, suddenly, high, screeching: “He is not one of us! Slay him!"

So they tried.

There were four of them. An apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa, and the other fellow.

The big apim, all whiskers and scar, remained with the lady Scaura Pompina. The Rapa held Ashti. That left the Brokelsh and the other fellow to shriek and leap at me.

If I give the impression these lay brothers of Lem the Silver Leem were not over-bright, I do them no injustice.

Hard, they were, brutal and rapacious. Serving their masters who were the initiates of the cult of the Silver Leem, they aspired to no more than to bash a few skulls, skewer through between a few ribs, take a few purses of gold, get drunk a few times. They bristled and snarled and hurled themselves at me.

Just the two of them—the Brokelsh and the other fellow.

Descriptions of fights are not boring if you consider the circumstances. In this case, if I dealt with these two in too rapid and summary a fashion, the big apim might just slit the lady Scaura's throat before joining the fight. And the Rapa would have no compunction over Ashti, none whatsoever...

The whole affair had to be balanced on a pivot of exceeding smallness.

So, of course, being more than a trifle warm, I hit the other fellow on the nose. I hit him hard. His nose opened up like one of those gorgeous scarlet and orange and blue flowers of Balintol. He tried to blubber through his mouth, which was of a large, squarish, full character, highly purple in color—even before I hit him. His eyes were most prominent and affixed somewhat high on his face, so that his cranium partook of a very shallow dish. I left that alone. I didn't want to risk my knuckles on bone of that evident sharpness. The frills stuck up around the top of his head like the defenses of a dinosaur, or the frilled fins of a fish. As he carried on blubbering, I ducked away from the Brokelsh's blow.

The thraxter in my right hand clicked across. I had, of course, struck the other fellow with a left. The Brokelsh looked for me where he expected to see me, and I wasn't there. Well, of course I wasn't. Who wanted to hang about when swords whickered—as they say—for your guts? I gave the surprised Brokelsh a cheerful kick up his bristly Brokelsh rear and launched myself for the apim and the Rapa.

Chapter seven

The four terminations of the Lady Scaura Pompina

From somewhere the sweet smell of squishes wafted into the room. The taste twined in the warm air. For a single and scarlet moment, I recalled Mefto the Kazzur, who had featured in my life at the same time as Pompino. Mefto the Kazzur, who had bested me in sword fighting.

The headlong leap left me no time to brood on past misfortunes and mishaps. The apim's hairy face screwed up. He dragged back on the lady Scaura Pompina's head and his blade glittered.

The Rapa bristled. Ashti squirmed. I caught a glimpse of her face, golden, shining, furious, and then it seemed her face disappeared behind two rows of teeth. She opened her mouth and bit. The Rapa screamed.

“Good for you, Ashti,” I said and went full tilt into the apim.

My sword flicked away his blade. The hilt lifted and descended and thunked, and the man toppled and sprawled, his eyes crossed, his mouth glugging open.

Without pausing to see if the lady fell off her chair or not I whirled. Ashti was doing all right; but the feathered Rapa with his vulturine beakhead would soon master her. So I tapped him on the back of the head and snatched Ashti from him as he pitched onto his beak.

“Jak!” she said, chattering. “He hit me!"

'And you bit him."

“Serve him good—nasty man."

The Brokelsh, all hair and uncouth roaring noises, recovered from the kick up the backside, charged at me. He was brave if not over-bright. When he, too, lay slumbering with his three comrades, I took stock of the situation.

There was the fellow with the crossbow at the front door who, it seemed to me, must come running in to investigate the cause of the uproar. Cautiously, I poked my head around the other door and looked along the corridor. The light glimmered from side windows, fell across the floor and across the humped shape beneath the far door. That had to be the front door. The shape did not move—but the door jerked against it, opened and pushed, and then closed, only to open and push against the shape once more.

Very carefully—just in case there were more of these bandits—I walked along the corridor. The shape on the floor was the dead body of a Stroxal, with a spear through his face. I recognized the spear. I pulled the body away and called out.

“Hai! Chulik! You got him. It is all safe now."

You will observe I called Chenunga the Ob-eyed merely Chulik, and not by his name. Even then, after so many seasons on Kregen, I remained still bristly around Chuliks. As for Katakis, with the exception of Rukker—and he was a marginal case—I'd so far never met a halfway-decent Kataki. Which was a tragedy, for all of Kregen. And Chuliks—the door opened and he came in, looking suspiciously around. He saw the body and he saw me.

“Yes,” I said. “The others are unconscious."

“The mistress—?"

“She is safe."

“The children?"

“Bound in their beds, so I am told. I have not seen them."

“I will attend them at once."

All the deference dropped away as he asked his questions. Something of the old coldly ferocious Chulik manner broke through, an echo of the time before he lost his eye and his tusk.

The quick light patter of feet along the corridor brought the Chulik around. His hand reached for the spear.

“All right, Ashti,” I said. “The Chulik is on our side. Don't bite him.’”

She turned her head. She looked sorry not to get the opportunity to fasten her teeth into the Chulik.

“They will wake up in there—” she said.

“Then we must tie them up."

Chenunga the Ob-eyed went off to find the two sets of twins and Ashti and I went back into the room where we'd had the fight. We stopped on the threshold. The stink of spilled blood gusted up, raw and vile.

Ashti looked quite calmly on the scene.

The lady Scaura Pompina was just about to rise from her knees. The front of her dress was a mere red shining mass. There had been four of them, an apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa and the other fellow.

Scaura Pompina had slit all four throats.

Ashti wandered across and picked up a discarded trident. She started to poke at the Rapa's dead body.

“All right, Ashti. He's on his way to the Ice Floes of Sicce now. He can't feel you sticking him."

“But I can feel me sticking him."

Against logic of that kind it is difficult to argue.

The woman laughed suddenly, throwing her head back, letting her hair swirl, laughing.

“The child is right! Look at the four bullies now! Dead! May Horato the Potent thus destroy all scum like that!"

“What were they after, my lady?"

“After?” She drew herself together and took a look at me as though seeing me for the first time.

I had to be patient. Faint sounds of yells drifted in, so that meant the Chulik was releasing the twins.

“They were after Pompino,” I said. “I came here to see him, also. But what could they want with him?"

“Lem,” she said. By the way she spoke I saw she was not an adherent. “The Silver Obscenity."

The ways of the folk along the southern shore of Pandahem varied enormously. The jungle people lived quite unaffectedly cheek by jowl with constant danger and death, the jungle their home also their mausoleum. Death was merely another stage to them. Ashti, already, held a contempt for other death that just might, I considered, just might extend to her own.

The people who lived in the towns and cities had, it seemed, settled there. They were not indigenous. The jungle folk tolerated them up to a point. A clash of cultures had not happened, which was not to say that, this being Kregen, it would not do so.

So I could harbor a vile suspicion of my comrade Pompino. Maybe he had become an adherent of Lem the Silver Leem?

It was possible. He was a kregoinye, like me, a man picked out by the Star Lords to go about the world for them and pick their hot chestnuts out of the fire. Unlike me, he believed the Everoinye to be some kind of god, and he was bursting with pride that he had been chosen. All Khibils share that feeling of conscious superiority, of course. But for Pompino, pride upheld a shrewd understanding of his own worth. He might have been dazzled by promises. Maybe the adherents of Lem had caught Pompino at a bad time. If he did not get away about business for the Star Lords from time to time he brooded and fretted. He had told me this himself. If he felt slighted, and the Leem Lovers happened by ... Oh, yes, it was eminently possible.

Then the two sets of twins burst in, all a-yelling and a-screaming. They threw themselves on their mother. If they noticed the blood and the dead bodies, they were not as important as making sure their mother was unharmed.

I grabbed Ashti and went off, out of the room.

There remained a considerable quantity of clearing up to be done, and I had no desire to become involved in that. Ashti kicked—once—and then said: “I'm thirsty."

“Good,” I said. “We will find some sazz for you."

Chenunga the Chulik came out and started up the corridor. He was going to retrieve the little spear and begin the disposal of the dead. He saw Ashti and me.

“Master?"

“We're off to Swod's Revenge for a wet."

“But—the lady Pompina will require you to dine here."

“Undoubtedly. But I dislike the smell of blood with meals."

His Chulik face grew more yellow. “Everything will be cleaned."

“Then we will return later. Tell me, Chulik, where is your master?"

He spoke up openly.

“From time to time he is called away on business. He is on a trip now. I do not know when he will be back."

“And why did these Leem Loving scum wish to see him?"

“I know that—"

“Then, Chenunga the Ob-eyed, tell me."

His pigtail wiggled as he spoke. His one piglike eye regarded me with what appeared to be a baleful stare.

“They wished the master to join them. He refused. On the last occasion he slew three of them. This was their way of revenging themselves at the same time as they forced their wishes on him."

“It seems to me they do not know Pompino very well."

“No, master."

“Well, you did your duty as you saw it. And you caught that Stroxal in the end, thank Pandrite. So we will be off. Remberee."

We went out, and I was conscious of the construction that could be put upon my actions by those with limited vision. And to say I wanted Ashti out of that house of death, while true, was also laughable as a reason. A jungle child, she'd seen far worse already in her four years.

At the well in a secondary yard, walled in at the rear, we washed off. Ashti's white dress was, once again, in need of laundering. Also a large rip was spreading along the hem. And, it seemed to me, the cloth was decidedly thin under the arms. Ashti, of course, being perfectly used to running about without the encumbrance of clothes, was resolutely determined not to be parted from her white dress.

Eventually, looking as spruce as we could, we set off along Lower Squish Street for the Swod's Revenge.

The thraxter, cleaned up, snugged in the scabbard. And I'd taken a couple of tridents. If they represented ill luck or a talisman of good fortune, I did not know. But they would act as a catalyst, that seemed certain sure...

The dusty road had no appreciable affect on Ashti's bare feet. And I'd been going barefoot when I was her age—aye, and much later, when I was a powder monkey in Nelson's fleet and, later still, in my adventures on Kregen. The vegetation bordering the road gleamed a brilliant dark green. Each leaf appeared freshly polished. Humming from the greenery and the quick flitting darting of insects told of the myriad life forms all fighting and struggling for existence. How life mocks us all! We fight and struggle and think ourselves grand and proud and mighty because we achieve a few shining goals, and, in the scheme of things, each one of us is just the same as any one of those gauzy-winged shining insects, flitting among the leaves.

And so, with these maudlin—if arguably true and demonstrably banal—thoughts echoing in my old vosk-skull of a head, I trudged on along the dusty road and a high and a fierce voice roared: “Duck!"

So, grabbing Ashti, I dropped and rolled full length. Ashti let out a startled yell.

The flung billy hissed through the air where my head had been a heartbeat ago.

She was quick on the uptake.

“Durkin!"

“Aye.” One of the Durkin brothers—the one without the towser cut—dodged back into the leaves.

“Who shouted?” Demanded Ashti. She wriggled around and half-sat up. “Hai!” she called. “Durkin cramph!"

“Ashti!"

The fierce, dominating voice that had told me to duck, roared again: “Still in trouble, then, Jak! I don't know how you've survived without me to look after you."

So I stood up. Ashti clung to my fingers. A man flew up out of the bushes and landed on his head. He landed, to be accurate, on his towser cut. His brother followed. Then a Khibil broke through the screen of leaves dragging the man who had flung the billy at me. He was being drawn along by an ear. He was not very happy about the situation. The Khibil landed a soggy kick and the third Durkin brother reeled away.

“Clear off!” ordered the Khibil, not even bothering to gesture. “Schtump! Before I lose my temper."

The three tearaways picked themselves up, groaning, and slouched off along the road. It had not, all things considered, been their day.

“I don't know,” said Pompino. He looked full at me.

I looked back. It had been some time.

He was grandly—no, no, sumptuously dressed. He wore silken robes of a brilliant blue, emerald sharp, sapphire soft. A quantity of gold chains hung about him and bullion and lace decorated the cunning curves and folds of the garment. He carried a thraxter and a dagger in jeweled scabbards. His hat was a broad floppy feather-fluttering creation. He looked, in short, splendid.

I said, “You look splendid, Pompino. Been to a fancy dress party?"

“And you, apim, look as though you've just been in a fight and not come off well."

Very calmly, and quickly, I said, “Ashti. Do not bite the Khibil—no! Do not kick him, either. He is a friend and he just saved our heads from being knocked off."

Ashti swung back. Pompino looked at her. He smiled.

“Ashti, is it? I shall like you, Ashti. You are smart and quick."

Ashti just glowered at Pompino. She said, hard and determined and with a mind made up: “I'm thirsty. Sazz."

Pompino's ferocious whiskers bristled up. His foxy face with that supercilious curl to his mouth and the damyoutohell eyes regarded me with lofty scorn.

“You keep a lady waiting for a drink, Jak? What has become of your manners?” Then, very gallant, very polished, he bent down and crooked his arm. “My lady Ashti. Pray, allow me to escort you to the Swod's Revenge, where my good friend Palando the Berry will provide sazz in abundance."

She gave a swift, liquid, upward glance at me. I nodded. Then, and only then, she took Pompino's arm. They set off for the tavern.

Time enough when Pompino was settled with a drink under his belt to tell him of the attack on his family. They were safe now, there was nothing Pompino could do. Ergo, let us get comfortable in our relationship again before we opened up new problems.

Palando the Berry looked at us, swiped his cloth at the counter, and said: “So you found them, then, Pompino."

“Aye, Palando. The child fooled me."

We sat in a corner and it being almost time, wine was brought. Ashti looked at the flagon, and I said: “Stick to sazz or parclear for as long as you can, my girl. They bear less hard on the stomach and the purse."

“My girl?” said Pompino.

So I sketched in how I'd run across Ashti. Then I said: “We parted on a scheme to steal a voller. I know you took her. I also can guess you waited for me. But, I was otherwise engaged."

“We waited for you, Jak. Then the Kildoi, Drogo, became impatient. It was not wise to argue with him."

“No. I can see that. Anyway, no harm was done.” I told him what had happened and how I'd indulged in Death Jikaida, and then I said: “And you've been working for the Star Lords again?"

“Of course. It is all that keeps me sane. My wife—well, enough of that. And I've been importuned by these confounded idiots of Lem recently."

I told him what had chanced at his house.

He did not jump and go rushing up there. He held his glass steady. He said: “And the children are safe?"

“Yes."

“And the lady Pompina?"

“Your wife is safe.” I put a fist to my chin, and then said, “There were four of them, as I have told you, an apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa and the other fellow. The lady Pompina slit all their throats."

“Well, Jak, what else did you expect?"

I drew a breath. “What else, indeed?” Still talking, finishing the wine, we brought ourselves up to date. Then Pompino rose. “Well, I shall have to go home some time. You will be dining with us, of course. Chenunga will have the place cleaned up by now if I know him. Come on, Jak. Let's go and eat and talk. Maybe, if we are lucky, the Star Lords will send us out on an adventure for them."

Chapter eight

Pompino and I plan a Jikai

In some societies on Kregen, custom demands that a host and hostess sit at either end of a long table with their guests between them. Other cultures ordain that a host and hostess sit side by side with their guests around them. Others place the host and hostess each within a circle of guests in semi-obliviousness one circle of the other. Where there are more than one host and one hostess—as in the quadrim people of Loghrangipar—more variations ensue.

In Tuscursmot, wherever originally the people had traveled from to settle here, they held dinner parties with style. And you have to remember that on Kregen, besides the differences of location and culture, you have also the differences of racial stock in a form far more violently different from anything here on Earth.

The Khibils of the inner sea, the Eye of the World, accustomed to the ways of the folk there, might have been surprised at the social mores of the Khibils of South Pandahem. The Khibils of other parts of Paz would have their own customs. The variety remains enormous.

The three of us—the Lady Pompina, Pompino, and me—sat each at a small separate table facing three long mirrors. We sat side by side, and could see one another in the mirrors. Ashti had been sent to a comfortable bed along with the two sets of twins, who were growing apace.

This custom does have advantages; it is also diabolically inconvenient. But Pompina insisted on high culture. Everything had to be done perfectly and by the strictest code of etiquette. Pompino looked fed up.

The greeting between the two Khibils had been casual to the point of exiguity.

Satisfied that his wife was safe, and his pairs of twins still whole, Pompino seemed—to me at least—to lapse into a private world of his own. He acted the host as the strict etiquette demanded by Pompina dictated. Beyond that he spoke only when spoken to, and shortly. He drank sparingly. So that wasn't the problem. The servants served a fine meal. That one of the cooks had been killed, that the place had been reeking with blood, that the mistress had nearly been murdered, could not be allowed to interfere with the proper entertainment of an honored guest.

That I was an honored guest followed in the nature of the events. Being a crusty old shellback, I could handle that kind of attention, and keep a hand over my goblet when the flagons came around.

Pompina did not so much become drunk—and I would be the last to blame her had she done so—as merry. To use a technical word known to the sorority, she became sloshed. She uttered fervent thanks to a variety of gods and spirits, and Beng Dikkane, the patron saint of all the ale drinkers of Paz, got in there along with Pandrite and Opaz and Shenorveul the Sceptered Scourge.

Pompino caught my eye in the mirror opposite.

He made a face.

“My wife is happy, Jak. I must—"

“Don't, Pompino."

“Yes. You are probably right. I think the Star Lords picked me for my last mission because of my familiarity with this little problem in life's rich armpit."

“Oh?"

“Later."

I nodded, and allowed a charming Fristle fifi—all the servants, after the death of the woman in the cellars, had been locked in the woodshed in the yard—to fill my goblet.

The wine was not Jholaix, from the northeast corner of Pandahem. It was a clear golden Markan and highly prized.

“Captain Logan brought it in from his last cruise,” Pompino told me. He twirled his goblet, looking at the clear golden liquid. “A successful captain, Logan. He commands Tuscur Castle."

My ears pricked up. If Pompino knew someone connected with shipping I'd put in for a passage out. That would be far faster than riding or walking around the coast. Already I envisaged myself back with Seg and my comrades.

“You did not seem particularly surprised to see me, Pompino."

“Palando the Berry told me a hulking great brute of an apim, with a little golden child, sought me. I'd an idea, from his description, that hairy apim brute must be you."

“I have a confession—"

“Yes. You did not just happen to be here and thought to look up a fellow kregoinye."

“The Everoinye sent me on a mission along the coast.” I outlined what I'd been up to, from a more professional angle this time and in more detail. Pompina hiccoughed and her head touched her breast. She started erect, and then stood up. We mere men rose also.

“I shall now retire, Pompino. Good night, Jak. I am in your debt. Please partake of my hospitality for as long as you wish."

“You are very kind, my lady. I do crave a boon—"

“Ask."

“Ashti. You have heard how she came into my care. I do not relish taking her with me into danger—"

“Of course. She has a home here for as long as the gods allow. I like her.” Pompina chuckled and tears squeezed from her beautiful foxy eyes. “I loved the way she bit that stinking Rapa."

“Again, my thanks."

When she had gone, Pompino walked across to a lounging chair and flung himself down. He did not spill a drop. “Very grand, the lady wife. She lives partly in a world of her own, a world of fantasy. I have done well, as you can see. But Pompina affects the ways of the nobles. She feels she should be a vadni, at least. And I am a mere horter...

He used the word for gentleman—equating with the Vallian koter—used mainly in Havilfar which was used also in many other places. A horter was a cut above your ruffianly riffraff. Yet Pompino had that word “ti” in his name, and therefore was of importance.

I turned the subject back to shipping.

“Tell me, Pompino. What chance is there for me to ship out? I have to get—"

“You've only just arrived!"

“Aye. But I have unfinished business—"

“Everyone who is not yet dead has unfinished business."

“That is true, by Zair."

“Must you go so soon? I want to tell you what the Everoinye had entrusted to me. Because of that I've been pestered by these vile Leem Lovers."

“Oh?"

He nodded and quaffed his wine. His whiskers were marvels of grace and proportion, ferocious when he brushed them back.

“Aye! I was sent up north to smoke out a temple of Lem, and although I had the place gutted, I was not satisfied with my work or that I had finalized my commission."

Thorough, Pompino, when he got his teeth into a problem. Unlike me, he was devoted to the Star Lords. Although, to be fair, I'd come to a much better understanding of those remote and superhuman beings in these latter days.

He went on: “They passed information down through their network to the south here. I'd masqueraded as an adept of Lem, having gained some insight to their foul rites, and the local temple insisted I join."

“They didn't know you'd worked against them, up north?"

“Of course not! But, with this last ugly attack it seems they may have discovered that."

“So the unpleasantness is likely to recur?"

He did not look pleased, sitting erect holding his goblet, his foxy face compressed and fierce.

“Maybe we will have to discover what they know.” I ruminated. “If we follow up the local temple, and—"

“It will be razed to the ground tomorrow. I have passed the information to the town governor. We are an independent town, and soon we will be a city and will cease to be Tuscursmot, and become—I think—Tuscursden. But even so, some of the rasts may escape."

“Would it be possible for us to attend the razing?"

“Yes, it would. It would also be not a politic act. The main source of infection stems from the north."

“Where you were?"

“Aye. In Tomboram."

To say that I was shafted by a bolt of illumination might be extravagant. I did not gasp. But I know my craggy old face drew down into that frightening beakhead some folk describe as the devil's frown.

Pompino said: “What—?"

I said: “In Tomboram, a kingdom up there in North Pandahem. To the west lies Menaham, whose people are called the Bloody Menahem by their foes. Aye! And your wife—and you said the Everoinye selected you because you were married to her and understood her ways—you went to the Kovnate of Bormark. The kov is, I guess, Pando. And his mother, Tilda the Beautiful, Tilda of the Many Veils! That is it, is it not? Tilda is much like your wife—"

He gaped at me.

He licked his foxy lips.

“How—?"

“There is no magic in this, Pompino. I knew Pando when he was an imp of mischief, seasons and seasons ago. And his mother—” I paused. I would not stand condemned in my own eyes over Tilda the Beautiful. If she had begun to drink because I treated her correctly and as a great lady, had helped her to gain the kovnate for her son Pando, and had then left—I would not feel guilt. All my affection, love and life are dedicated to Delia.

“Pando, Kov of Bormark,” said Pompino. He drank hugely. “Well, he may have been an imp of mischief when you knew him. I tell you, my friend, he is a right tearaway now."

The last time I had to my knowledge seen Pando and Tilda was right after the Battle of Tomor Peak. After the Battle of Jholaix, where Hamal had, for a time, been sent reeling back, I had not stopped to see Pando and Tilda but had flown directly back for Vallia and Valka.

Any king or emperor must keep a finger on the pulse of his world. I had kept abreast of much of the news out of Pandahem. I knew that King Nemo of Tomboram had reinstated Pando as the Kov of Bormark. Nemo was now dead and a relation, a dark and narrow-minded man from the distaff side of the family, now reigned. This King Nemo the Second had confirmed Pando in his estates.

I kept my voice even.

“How fares it with them, Pompino?"

He drank and refilled his glass.

“Bormark is not a happy kovnate, Jak. It is sour. I think—and, mark me, I have no proof—that the cult of Lem the Silver Leem has taken the heart out of the province."

“And this temple you burned? It did not—?"

“No. That will not settle it. There is more to be done, in Bormark, before the place smells clean again."

Slowly, I said, “I count Pando and Tilda as friends, Pompino. Even though I have not seen them for many seasons."

I did not add, as I might once have done, that when those two in their rags and misery had been dragged up before me, all clean and sweet in fresh clothes, and they had not recognized me after the battle, I had felt hurt. I had kept a straight face. But they had not recognized me as Dray Prescot, their old helpmeet. If that did cut me, I had passed it off, had taken the blame and the guilt to myself.

In all these years there had not been time to go to Bormark. All that could be done by the agents I had sent, I had thought done. But Tilda drank, and Pando was—was what? A right tearaway. Could he be anything more?

Somewhat heavily I went on: “And you think that Kov Pando is in league with the cultists, is perhaps an initiate; he encourages the Leem Lovers?"

“There is no proof. I would not willingly stand between you and your friends, Jak. You know that. But if Kov Pando does follow the Silver Wonder, I would not be surprised."

Thinking of the wildness in young Pando, of the streak of rebelliousness in him, I shared that feeling.

I said: “The Everoinye set a task to your hands, Pompino. You did what they asked. But it is not finished. It seems good to me that I should go up to Bormark and see what more may be done. You would not object?"

He lowered his glass. He sat up. His foxy whiskers bristled.

“Object? Object! Why, dom, I'm with you. We will go up north together, and show them the error of their ways!"

I smiled, whereat Pompino looked at me as though the wine disagreed with my stomach. So that my grimace became wider still.

He let out a sigh. “It seems to me someone up there is in for a mighty unpleasant experience—when you get there."

We made a middling long night of it. We made plans. I own it was extraordinarily pleasant to be able to sit in a comfortable room in a splendid house, quaffing good wine, nibbling at palines, talking to an old comrade. And, do not forget, Pompino was the only other kregoinye with whom I was able thus to talk. There were others; but our paths had not crossed in quite the same way. He remained still in awe of the Everoinye, anxious to do their bidding, and conscious of his own pride in being chosen to serve them.

So I had to watch my tongue and refrain from cursing and blinding against the Star Lords. Anyway, as I have said, at this time I was beginning to get onto an altogether new relationship with the Star Lords and, perhaps, to discover a little more of what it was they sought to do on Kregen.

Pompino said we would sail in one of his ships.

“One of them?"

“Oh, aye. I have a fleet of five argenters, and I run two swordships to keep an eye on them. The pirates still infest the seas. The wars brought the renders out, to our mystery, their immediate profit and eventual destruction."

“Amen."

I marveled. Pompino, a shipowner! It fitted, of course. A man of substance, but careful, shrewd, and as a Khibil a man who would not be regarded as an expert sailor. He was a cunning old devil, and my heart warmed to him. Now that Ashti was to be cared for, what could life offer better than to carry on this crusade, to carry on this Jikai against the evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem? Seg and his party were safely away. They would make their way to the coast. If we sailed along there, we could meet up with them. The future opened out splendidly. And, as soon as Bormark had been settled, it would be a fair wind for Vallia and Valka—and Delia!

I lifted my glass. “To the morrow then, Pompino. To the Jikai against the Leem Lovers!"

Chapter nine

The complement of Tuscurs Maiden signs on

No one on Kregen takes a Khibil lightly. Supercilious, conscious of their own worth, the fox-faced Khibils know they are favored of the gods. Yet they are in no way as offensive in their attitudes as many another race of diffs. One can get along splendidly with Khibils. Because when we had first met down in Havilfar chance had taken Pompino into action ahead of me as we charged down brandishing our lengths of lumber, he had without another thought always assumed he was the leader of our partnership. This quite suited me then, and I was content to let the matter remain so.

Now we were off on our own, and although we fancied we were very clearly carrying on work the Star Lords wished, we were off doing a mission for ourselves and, as it were, moonlighting. Pompino insisted on bringing a veritable warehouse of food and clothes and weapons.

You may well imagine that this, too, amply suited me.

Pompino knew me as Jak. Once, when he'd thought himself quitted of a task for the Star Lords, and had gone off, they'd dragged him back. They'd dumped him down beside me. And the scarlet and golden bird, the Gdoinye, had told him in no uncertain terms to finish his duty. Also, the bird had called me an onker, which is a brand of idiot, and calling me an onker of onkers, had also used my name. Pompino, hearing that name, and even saying he had heard of a Prescot, still did not believe, did not know, that I was Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia. I was only profoundly grateful that he did not know. I valued him as a friend and a blade comrade.

His famous honor, also, had not been overly conspicuous in the short time I had been reunited with him. That honor had tumbled him into a few scrapes before this. Honor is a prickly bedfellow, and something to be steered clear of if you are a plain sailorman like me.

Honor had done for Barty Vessler, and I never ceased to rue that evil day's doing.

There was the expected trouble in saying good-bye to Ashti.

She just did not see why she had to stay here, even though the Pompino pairs of twins looked likely, and would prove a source of sazz and sweets and practical jokes. She insisted on coming with me. I had to say no. And there was a funny old lump somewhere in my throat as I tried to explain. But explanations were impossible. In the end, stony faced, I had to shout the remberees and walk off, and leave Ashti struggling in the gentle grip of Pompina and the twins.

“And make sure you mind her carefully until we are gone. She will escape and try to follow else."

“Jak!"

She was crying and struggling, a wild, biting, scratching jungle girl.

I walked off. I felt terrible.

But a little four-year-old girl had no place in a world filled with the deadly glitter of naked steel.

Although ... Mind you ... If Ashti got those teeth of hers fastened in your leg you'd not go skipping about so easily, no, by Vox!

The difference in the Pompino of his home and the Pompino of the outside world was remarkable. He came alive among his ships, their people, the impedimenta, the bills of lading, the tarry rope, the barrels and amphorae—in short Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot, known as Pompino the Iarvin, turned out to be a consummate shipping magnate. Well, if not with five ships in quite the magnate league, at least a man of substance.

I took a great interest in the technical side of the business, having been away from the sea for some time. I was always amused by a culture which produced barrels and amphorae, one from the north, the other from the south, in the northern half of the world, reversed in the southern, and took that fact for granted. The ships themselves, too, in their ranked mast-raking mass alongside the wharves filled me with a delighted sense of well-being. We went aboard Tuscurs Maiden—Captain Linson, master—and were made welcome.

“We shall be sailing in Captain Linson's vessel, Jak. So get settled in."

Linson, master of Tuscurs Maiden, did not appear to be of the usual run of sturdy old sea dogs. He was an apim, which was not at all unusual for shipmasters, and looked to be in the prime of life, clean-shaven, sharp-eyed, hook-nosed, very erect and correct. But, all the same, there was about him an air of devilment I found intriguing—and bracing.

As we stood on the quarterdeck with a tiny breeze fanning our cheeks, watching the busy bustle of provisioning ship, a black smudge rose into the bright midday air. The source of the fire was an old ship, an argenter whose days were long past for sailing the high seas. She lay in an abandoned area an ulm off, and she burned, black and stinking to the sky.

Linson looked disturbed, as any man looks disturbed at a burning ship.

“Do not distress yourself, Captain,” said Pompino.

So I knew that was the temple of Lem the Silver Leem going up in flames. No wonder the wind brought down a sharp unpleasant smell.

Walking across to the rail with Pompino, I said: “I hope they take them all. I do not like leaving before we know there will be no more attacks."

“Should one or two wretches escape, I do not think they will harm my family, or Ashti. I've arranged for a more strict watch. By Horato the Potent! I've paid good gold to buy guard paktuns. Can a man do more?"

I was not going to be drawn into that discussion.

“All the same,” said Captain Linson, joining us and tucking his telescope under his arm. “Fire is a mortal fearful thing in a ship, by Heisha of the Fiery Flukes!"

“You are right, Captain,” I said pleasantly. And then, copper-bottoming the bet, added: “You run a fine ship."

Despite that air of sharpness about him, he looked pleased. His sharp eyes sharpened and this time with pleasure.

“Thank you, horter. You are kind.” And then, like a rapier going in: “You perhaps have some knowledge of ship craft?"

I liked it.

“Some, Captain."

“I am glad to hear it."

No flies on this one, by Krun!

Pompino and I had adventured across the land dry enough to make men kill for water. He wouldn't know how much knowledge of ship craft I possessed. I caught a sly pleased smile on his face. The crafty old devil was lapping this up, thoroughly enjoying it. I made up my mind that, if a chance of showing how clever I was at sea occurred, I would resolutely refuse it. I'd show ‘em what a landlubber I was, and joy in fooling them.

A Relt stylor came aboard and Pompino was closeted with him, going over the accounts. Linson went off ashore. I was left at a loose end. We were due to depart with the evening tide, for you do not just step into a ship and close the door and whip up the horses. You have to wait for nature's pleasure in matters of the tides and weather and the state of the wind. We had no oars, being an argenter. So I explored the ship.

Like all argenters she was broad and round and high and comfortable. Her sail area, as usual, was just sufficient to send her along at a stately pace without any danger of capsizing or of proceeding at a dangerous heeling rate. The gimcrack work and gilding were not ostentatious. Her lines were full and she was capacious. I found only a couple of places where the carpenter must be called to cut out rotten wood and replace it with new. Her rigging, not taut, was in good condition. She carried her artillery well-positioned and the varters snouted their menace out from her fore and stern castles. These ballistae could shoot either darts or stones. Her armory was tightly locked up and a Chulik mercenary stood there, armed with a boarding pike and a sword, and after a few words I found I had no burning desire to inspect Pompino's ship's resources in the way of weapons.

“If we are attacked by renders, no doubt you'll see inside,” said the Chulik. He wore leather and blue and green feathers, and an iron cap, and he let the boarding pike hover around my midriff.

“No doubt,” I said, and took myself off.

Up on deck gulls flew across, shrieking either cheerfully or menacingly depending on the mood of their auditors. They were headed for the fish quays farther along the shoreline. Tuscursmot lazed under the heat of the twin suns. My feet had no difficulty in leading me to the staterooms aft, where I found Pompino just finishing his business with the stylor. The Relt was packing up his satchel of papers and files, his feathers much ink-stained. Pompino sounded brisk.

“You will take a glass before you go, Rasnoli. Ah, Jak! You have come just in time. All arrangements have been made.” He went on to say that Tuscurs Maiden was now cleared for a voyage to the north, some trifles of cargo for the south having been cleared from the ship. She had just taken on a parcel of local produce. We were all set to go with the tide.

“Just in time for what?"

“Why—I do not believe in paying mercenaries to lollygag about. You shall sit with me when we hire on our paktuns for the voyage. They are waiting on the quay."

This seemed an interesting prospect, for being an old fighting man myself, I take a delight in observing fellow mercenaries. On Kregen, that trade is not held in the low esteem it holds on Earth. For some mercenaries, perhaps, it should be. Masichieri, who are little better than bandits, are bad news anywhere.

But your correct and upright paktun is—or should be—a man or woman of honor. Once they hire out, they take their pay and keep and fight to the death. In theory.

I said, “Are there any Pachaks?"

He screwed up his face. “Four only, I'm afraid."

“H'm. How many do you take on?"

“I would like two dozen.” In the Kregish he said jikshiv, which is one way of saying twenty-four.

“So you have to find twenty more?"

“Aye. And not a Khibil among them."

So, up on deck we went and sat on the folding chairs on the quarterdeck, in the shadow of the sterncastle, and watched as the mercenaries trooped up the gangplank.

“That Chulik of yours guarding the armory,” I said. “He looks likely."

“Nath Kemchug. He costs a lot; but he earns his hire."

The first two mercenaries up the gangplank and onto the quarterdeck were twins. They wore leather, iron caps, were barefoot, and their hair was cropped short. They were varterists.

One said, “I am Wilma the Shot and this is my sister Alwim the Eye. We know our business, and—"

“Yes,” said Pompino. “I have heard of you. You are welcome and will be paid the top rate. Next."

The four Pachaks were in no hurry to come aboard. They guessed we would hire them, for when a Pachak gives his nikobi he will fight for his employer until death or a formal renunciation releases him from his vows. The next fellow was a Rapa, big, beaked, feathered, clad in mail, carrying three swords and a dunnage bag over his shoulder. Also, he carried a shield, an oval thing of wicker, bronze rimmed.

“Rondas the Bold,” he said. Indeed, the feathers around his beak and eyes were red. Sometimes it is difficult to judge if a Rapa's feathers are his own or decorations. “Churgur.” This meant he was a sword and shield man.

“You have served in ships before?"

“No. But I can learn."

Gently, Pompino said: “I am more in need of archers."

“I can shoot—"

“You do not carry a bow."

“That is true. Try me."

Pompino leaned a little toward me and spoke softly.

“I like his style, the blowhard. Your thought?"

“If you can get him cheap, hire him. I judge he can fight. Although he may wish to remove that mail and don leather."

Now that the enormous conflict between the Empire of Hamal and what seemed to be the rest of Paz was over, there were many unemployed fighting men. They sought employment where they could. To be tazll, unemployed, was unpleasant.

Eventually we hired on twenty-five paktuns. In fact, only five were real paktuns, that is, mercenaries elected by their peers to wear the silver mortilhead, the pakmort, at their throat. This marked them as renowned fighters. We did not sign on a single hyrpaktun, who could wear the golden pakzhan at throat or on shoulder knot. But, as I have said, in these latter days almost any mercenary, if he—or she—was not an obvious youngster, a coy, tended to be called a paktun.

Of the twenty-five, fifteen were apim and ten were diffs.

Smells of cooking made all our mouths water, and everybody went off to their various quarters to eat. The aft staterooms were partitioned off so that, as Pompino said, we could indulge in privacy when we wished. My cabin was small, clean, smelling of sweet ibroi, and would serve admirably. I own I craved for the evening to arrive and the tide, and then we would be off. A tug, a low many-oared vessel, came to haul us out past the boom. I remarked on this extravagance.

“Yes,” said Pompino. “It is a waste of gold pieces when you have stout arms and backs in your crew. But it keeps the harbor master happy—he is a distant cousin of my wife's—and the crew feel I intend to look after them."

With the feel of the ship under me, the sky darkening above and scintillating with the myriad stars of Kregen, I felt a tremendous liberating gust of spiritual well-being. We were off. Off to start the Jikai against the Leem Lovers.

There were many other undertakings I might be about in Kregen right now; but this was a task set to my hands. Apart from Delia and my family and friends, it seemed to me I did not do wrong in thus setting my face toward this adventure.

Chapter ten

Decision at the Mermaid's Ankle

No compunction troubled me in allowing Pompino the Iarvin to outfit me in style. We were kregoinye. When it came to push of pike we shared our possessions, and made the best of it. At the moment, Pompino held the money and goods; ergo, he outfitted me.

I wore a decent blue tunic, and grey trousers cut to the knee. I went barefoot. I had a red scarf tied around my head. I swung a thraxter from a broad leather belt. If we got into a fight I would have the choice of Pompino's armory to arm and armor myself.

The days passed sailing along the coast. We sighted a few other vessels, and all was well.

Tuscurs Maiden rolled along, breasting the swell with a deal of white smother from her forefoot. The breezes blew and the weather remained fine. To keep from idleness was not difficult.

Pompino himself supervised the handling of the mercenaries, the marine component of the ship's complement.

Captain Linson, the master, kept his seamen well in order. They were a bright bunch, and the sails went out and came in in a handy fashion.

The Ship-Hikdar, the first officer, knew his duties and played a mean game of Jikaida. He did not drink. He had a tongue that could cut, in a figurative sense, as well as the Whip of any Sister of the Rose. The Ship-Deldar, the Bosun, an enormous man with an enormous red beard and enormous belly, rejoiced under the name of Chandarlie the Gut. The Ship-Hikdar, Naghan Pelamoin, ran a taut ship, and the Ship-Deldar used his rattan rarely. Tuscurs Maiden was, I judged, as happy a ship as one might expect to find, given the misery of much sailing ship life.

More rather than less of the coastlines of Kregen are festooned with myriads of islands. Here lurked danger. We sailed well out into the offing, and Captain Linson knew these waters. We were stopped by a swordship off the town of Hanmensmot where we were due to offload some cargo. Everyone crowded to the bulwarks to stare across the water as the swordship closed.

Pompino chased his Relt stylor to have the papers and passes ready for inspection. The swordship, long and low in the water, hauled her oars into a smothering wash of foam and lost way. A boat lowered and started across for us.

Studying the swordship, I became aware of Pompino at my side. He nodded across the suns-glinting water.

“A prickly lot, the citizens of Hanmensmot. But I suppose they have every right to be. Pirates are active."

“They cannot imagine we are renders in Tuscurs Maiden!"

“Perhaps they can. Towns have been sacked by renders pretending to be honest seafaring merchants."

The boat bobbed closer. She flew a huge blue and green flag in some exotic design. The swordship was smothered in flags. Her oars rested, quiescent. Her thole pins were arranged in groups of three, very close together. There were nineteen banks, giving the ship a total of a hundred fourteen oars. She was, thus, propelled on the old system of alla sensile. Sometimes it is rendered as zenzile.

Pompino sniffed. “Not like my swordships. I admit that Whitefang is old; but she rows on the modern system."

By this I knew his swordship Whitefang employed the style known as al scaloccio, that is, more than one man to an oar. Less than three men on an oar is a system not as efficient as three oars each with one man; four or five or more men to an oar yields much greater rewards in propulsive effort. I use Terrestrial terminology here, not Kregish, for the sake of simplicity.

I said: “If we are to sail up to the Koroles, and those islands, I understand, are infested by pirates, we might do well to have Whitefang with us."

“Do you think me a ninny? My other four argenters sail in company with fleets of my associates. Whitefang must serve her duty with them as guardship.” By his way of talking I knew he held back a secret. Guessing that was easy enough.

“So your other—and your wonderful new modern slap-up-to-date swordship—waits for us farther on?"

He growled. “Of course, fambly."

We discharged our cargo and took on water and so weighed and set off eastwards once more.

Where there are islands and where the governments are weak or divided, then pirates tend to flourish. At the next port along, Febranden, a large and sprawling city up a sizable river, we joined a convoy bound for the east. We all felt easier in our minds as we set off, one among a press of sail. Counting ships, I made the convoy to be twenty-three argenters, ten of the small coasting type vessels, a few oddments of ships—boats, really—tagging along for protection and no less than ten swordships and risslacters spreading out around us. This was impressive.

Also, it was alarming.

“If they provide this many warships, Jak, it must mean they anticipate trouble."

“Aye. You had no news in the marketplace?"

“Only the normal scares, price fluctuations, scandals. Maybe this is standard practice for a passage through the Koroles."

I lifted one eyebrow.

“Well!” he flared out. “As I am kept so busy for the Everoinye I do not often have the opportunity of sailing in my own ships. Much as I would like to."

We consulted Captain Linson.

He was affable in his piercing way, aware of his responsibilities and position. “I have known a convoy of this size to warrant five swordships, or eight or so risslacters. But not, I must admit, six swordships and four risslacters."

“Your conclusion, Captain?"

“We are headed for trouble."

“Nothing more specific?"

The air of devilment Linson carried, with his hooked nose and clean-shaven darkness, sparkled strongly now.

“Yes. I picked up a scrap of gossip in the masters’ saloon ashore. They were talking of a render called Quendur the Ripper. The topic was one not popular. But his is active at this time. They said he had put together a squadron of pirate vessels. This is the answer to honest sailormen."

Pompino looked across the gunwale. Across two argenters, bluffly bursting the sea asunder as they wallowed on, the sleek shape of a swordship showed, almost lost under the sea as she cut her way through. His arrogant Khibil head lifted.

“Over there is my new Blackfang. Let this Quendur the Ripper taste her steel!"

“A fine craft,” agreed Linson. “And captain Murkizon is a fine skipper. As for his crew—"

Pompino rounded on the master.

“Well?"

Linson spread his hands in a tiny gesture.

“They are not what I would like to see. I would not tolerate them in Tuscurs Maiden."

Pompino bristled up his whiskers. His foxy face looked fierce, and then shrewd, and then alarmed.

“D'you know how much I paid for that ship? And what I gave Captain Murkizon to sign on a top-class crew?” Pompino breathed heavily. “By Horato the Potent! If he has played me false—"

“No, no, horter!” Linson, in his turn, looked alarmed at the damage his words had wrought. “Captain Murkizon is a fine officer. Just that he did not have the best opportunities for picking up a good crew, and the ship is not yet run in. Give him time, and plenty of rope's end, and he'll have them all shipshape and Vallian fashion."

This expression was not new to me—it was much of a muchness with “all shipshape and Bristol fashion"—but it did indicate what the sailors of Kregen's outer oceans thought of the splendid galleons of Vallia.

“I hope so, by the Merciful Pandrite, I hope so."

I walked away across the quarterdeck to take a better look at Blackfang. As the days progressed in convoy I was able to size her up, her and her sisters in the escort. She was indeed a superior swordship. Her hull was painted an entire jet black. Her flags were the blue and yellow of Pompino's sailing house. She pulled twenty-nine oars a side, and Pompino told me that six men hauled on each loom. More could be assigned in moments of emergency to haul on ropes fastened to the looms. Her upper deck bristled with artillery—varters and catapults. Her end castles were not overlarge, and her beakhead lifted long and slender. Her ram cut the water ferociously, and Kregan sailors have the knack of using both ram and beak. Perhaps, although superior, she was not the absolute best of her kind, but she was a fine well-found vessel and one I'd joy in the command.

Very soon now we would call in at Mattamlad, a town situated at the mouth of the River of Bloody Jaws.

Over that river, going northwards, Seg and I had flown in pursuit of a voller carrying adherents of Spikatur Hunting Sword. We had not heard the last of that little lot yet, I felt sure. It seemed to me that after I had been snatched away from Seg on that jungle path by the lake and the great carven rock face, he and the party would backtrack. Eventually, they'd arrive here, at the mouth of the river. The Kazzchun River was a place where one did not go swimming. Everyone was extraordinarily careful getting into or out of boats. We went ashore as soon as we arrived, and I made inquiries.

No. No, horter. Our apologies. We have not had a party—or a man—as you describe through here. I started at the customs office and went to the local government bureau for foreigners and then from various taverns to various inns along the waterfront. No one had heard of Seg or the party.

So, I was in a quandary.

If I just went charging up the river and hoped to run across them I could easily miss them. Then we would just go on and draw farther apart. If I stayed here I'd miss the adventure with Pompino. If I went with my kregoinye comrade I might be leaving Seg in the lurch. So—a conundrum.

A fellow with one ear and a hang dog expression followed me out of the Mermaid's Ankle, accosting me with a leer and a sniff. I looked at him stony-faced. Oh—and the tavern's name merely gave expression to that warped Kregan sense of humor. The story was simple; the mermaid was no mermaid but a shishi dressed up in a skin of scales, which had rotted through and exposed one shapely foot. Where the ankle and its gold bangle came in follows on—but I will not repeat that.

“Your pardon, horter. If you want to go upriver I'm your man."

He wore skins, his hair was a stringy mess, and he carried a long knife—in his belt.

“I am not sure,” I said.

“I have a canoe and ten willing paddlers. I whip them only to keep them happy. You will not regret hiring me, horter. By the Bloody Jaws of the Brown River Herself!"

The offer was tempting. A few gold pieces—croxes they were called hereabouts—would hire him. If he tried treachery his knife would avail him nothing. And I did want to know what had happened to Seg...

And then common sense prevailed. “Sink me!” I burst out. “Seg can take care of himself!"

“Do what, horter?"

“Nothing. Here.” I handed over a single gold piece. “Thank you for your concern. Have a wet on me."

I walked off, feeling that I had behaved like a fool. Seg was probably the toughest orneriest critter in this part of South Pandahem. He'd shaft anyone who tried to harm him or the lady Milsi.

Going back to the ship I met a fellow who looked to be wider than he was tall, an optical illusion enhanced by the vast leather carapace he wore. His face appeared to have been cut ruggedly from the side of a barn. Brick red, bewhiskered, sharply blue of eye, that face bore the marks of a man accustomed to throwing his weight about.

“Hai!” he called, rolling up to me. “Horter Jak! We've been looking everywhere for you. I've looked in all the sleaziest stews this side of Hamal!"

I stopped. “Llahal, Captain. You are?"

“Why, Lahal, Horter Jak! I'm Cap'n Murkizon of Blackfang. Who else, by the Black Moustache of the Divine Lady of Belschutz!"

“I do not have the honor of the lady's acquaintance, Captain. But thank you for looking for me. I am on my way back to the ship."

“Aye! To that Cap'n Linson's sea-scow!"

Any ideas I might have entertained of going aboard Blackfang were quashed by Pompino. As I went up onto the quarterdeck, observing the fantamyrrh as I did so, Pompino hurried forward.

“Jak! We were all worried. Thank you, Captain Murkizon. I shall want to see you later. Now, Jak, listen—"

“It might be amusing if I shipped in Blackfang—"

He looked stricken. He drew me aside. “What, Jak, have you lost your senses? I lead our partnership. Do you think I intend to endure the miseries of a swordship when I can sail in comfort in this splendid argenter? And we must stick together. You know that."

In the end I acquiesced. Thereby hang the threads of our fates.

The smell of mud permeated this place. Mattamlad slumbered under the suns. The heat rotted everything. Sweat was copiously shed. The quicker we were away the better. At last, joined by seven ships from the port, we weighed and let loose our sails and picked up a breeze and so set forth to confront the pirates in their lair.

Chapter eleven

Cap'n Murkizon mentions his Divine Lady of Belschutz

“What do you make of her, Captain?"

Captain Linson did not for the moment reply to Pompino's question. He balanced easily, staring at the speck infuriatingly rising and falling on the horizon. The fleet sailed around us, and every glass would be trained on that distant dot of mystery. Linson lowered his telescope.

“Impossible to say. But a single ship would not sail these waters voluntarily if she was crewed by honest men."

“Ah!” said Pompino, and brushed up his whiskers.

I looked around at the fleet. The crowding ships presented a marvelous spectacle, a sea filled with sails. Around our flanks patrolled the swordships and risslacters, long and low and lean, their oars driving them half the time through the water, it seemed, the other half over it. Their rams snouted hungrily. The commodore in charge of the convoy was reputed to know these waters thoroughly, and had given guarantees to the owners that he would get their ships through. Certainly, we had sighted nothing suspicious, and had penetrated a goodly distance into the Koroles, maintaining a course through deep water and avoiding too close proximity to any island.

All the same, that vessel hovering on the horizon was clearly a spy, sent out to keep observation on our progress. The charts we had of the area were sketchy, and Linson explained this in the old and timelessly frustrating way.

“The local people feel their waters should be charted by them. It is difficult to come by reliable charts of these waters."

So now we would have to wait to be attacked. Sooner or later, and no matter how well the commodore guided us, we would have to pass near to one or other of the islands. When we did, then we could be pounced upon and devoured piecemeal.

We now sailed the Sea of Chem, although strictly speaking we had left that sea to enter what Vallians called the Southern Ocean. To me, a fellow accustomed to dealings with the southern continent of Havilfar, the idea of the Southern Ocean being north of Havilfar remained as a reminder of the strong parochial natures even of great peoples of Kregen. The people hereabouts, including the commodore, called the stretch of waters the Pandakor Sea. It would make no difference what the name of the water happened to be if it closed over our sinking hulls.

Pompino in his affronted way, said: “Why doesn't the commodore despatch a swordship to sink or drive off this pestiferous fellow?"

I left it to Captain Linson to explain something of the arcana of the sea to Pompino who was, to be sure, a landlubber who happened to own a fleet of ships.

“She hovers away there upwind of us, Horter Pompino. She has the weather gage. She can control how far down to us she runs before beating away. And a swordship would never catch her—"

“Why not? A swordship has oars, does she not?"

“Against the wind, the oarsmen would be destroyed in the amount of time required to pull that distance. And when the swordship reached that spot, the shadower would be long gone."

“It is not,” Pompino delivered himself of the opinion with considerable force, “like riding a zorca."

Low down and to the northeast appeared a wide dark smear across the horizon.

Pompino borrowed Linson's glass and studied that dark streak. He braced his shoulders back.

“If we are to sail this close to an island, we must prepare."

Forgetting all about my cunning scheme to pretend ignorance of nautical ways, I was jolted into saying: “That's no island, Pompino. That's foul weather."

Captain Linson pivoted to regard me. His sharp face with that damned great hooked nose tautened. “Without a glass, horter Jak? You are so confident?"

So, of course, I had to say, “Well, out in the desert that's what bad weather looks like sometimes."

The lame explanation passed, and I contumed myself for so petty a deception. Truth to tell, despite the companionship and keeping myself busy, I fretted. The Leem Lovers waited, and I wanted to get about this private venture for the Star Lords.

The gods and spirits of the oceans evidently decided to balk me a little further. The gale was due. Judging by the extent of that ominous bar of blackness across the horizon, she was going to be a big blow.

Swordships are cranky and wet and uncomfortable craft. Something like a galleass of Earth, a swordship pulls her oars as her main propulsive element; but she has masts and canvas and can sail reasonably handily. Not so a risslacter. A risslacter is closer to the galley of Earth, even lower, even leaner—and far wetter and more uncomfortable. They'd have to run for shelter if the blow steepled the waves to overtop their freeboard. That would not take much of a wind.

Linson shared that view.

“The commodore is signaling.” Bunting broke across the flagship's rigging; this brought back the memories. Perhaps I was taking this whole naval excursion too matter-of-factly. I had simply drunk in the naval atmosphere, feeling back at home, and had taken for granted the romantic and dangerous elements inseparable from sea voyages on Kregen.

The signals brought a change of course. I judged the commodore had no thought of avoiding the storm; he must be heading to gain the lee of an island. I scanned the horizon to larboard. No sign of land broke that shining surface. And the blackness of the gale reached higher and higher into the glowing sky.

Presently the outriders of the storm arrived. The sea got up. The sky darkened. Tuscurs Maiden began to respond to the sea and her motion increased. The warships pulled ahead, angling their yards, trying to make a run for it. We watched them go, and lumbered along after.

Thunder and lightning pelted down. The sky grew black. The sea writhed, and still no rain came sizzling down. Safety lines were rigged. The hatches were inspected. The canvas was reefed until we ran under a storm jib and a scrap aft. I would have preferred to have taken the canvas off the yards altogether; but Linson was the master.

Pompino went below. The Relt stylor, Rasnoli, who to his surprise had been included in our expedition, took a bucket below. He, too, did not look too happy about the feathers. Poor Pompino.

The gale, when at last it struck full force, was not as bad as I had expected. We managed to creep into the lee of an island and so rode out the worst. The darkness persisted. We heard a tremendous crash and the following yells and shrieks, and guessed two ships had collided. Linson looked calm and confident; but he strode his quarterdeck at a more rapid pace, trying to be everywhere at once.

The gale lasted the rest of the day and most of the night. Linson handled his ship well. We kept up against the sea, only running away at the moment when to do anything else would have seen us dismasted and swamped. Toward morning the motion of the sea appreciably abated. A few stars pricked out above. We had lost no one overboard. The mercenaries were packed away below and no doubt were as green faced as poor Pompino.

As the dawn broke luridly across the horizon and the sea, churned into long deep green rollers, bore on away ahead of us, Tuscurs Maiden began to resume her status as a sea-conquering vessel and not a mere half-drowned scrap of driftwood.

A man climbed up onto the deck and, crossing to the side, looked over. He was apim, a paktun—he wore the silver mortilhead—and an archer. He wore a green tunic and gray trousers, and he looked useful. He saw me watching him.

“Good morning, horter."

“Morning, Larghos.” His name was Larghos the Hatch, not a talkative man, and hired at the top going rate for a mercenary bowman who was not a Bowman of Loh.

He pointed over the side. “I think he is done for."

I joined him and looked where his finger pointed.

A man floated in the water. He clung to a splintered spar, and the sea spumed over him as though he were a submerged rock.

“I do not think so. If he has been afloat all night—"

“Then,” quoth Larghos the Flatch, stripping off his tunic, “he may be saved.” With that, he jumped over the side.

The lookout was already yelling. Everything must be done nip and tuck, or we would lose Larghos. I could not fault his conduct; but Linson would probably rave.

The air struck sweet and crisp after the gale. The Suns of Scorpio rose in their blaze of splendor. The sea opened out—empty of ships. We sailed alone upon that hostile sea in the dawning light.

Linson and Naghan Pelamoin, his Ship-Hikdar, proved themselves fine seamen as they took way off the ship and rounded her to in the swell. A rope's end was chucked down and Larghos the Flatch was hauled inboard. With him was pulled up a cursing, sodden, raving barrel of a man who shed water all over the deck and glared balefully about.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” said Linson. He spoke with great urbanity, but the transparency of his enjoyment was lost on no one.

The fellow sputtered, spraying water. His hair hung plastered to his scalp. He looked obsessed with fury. Brick-red his face, ferocious his whiskers, brilliantly blue his eyes. He stamped and water squelched.

“Aye, Cap'n Linson! You may laugh, by the Cross Eyes of the Divine Lady of Belschutz!"

Pompino, looking gaunt, hurried on deck. He stared, appalled.

“Captain Murkizon! Blackfang! Where is my beautiful Blackfang?"

“Do not upset yourself, Horter Pompino! Blackfang still sails, Pandrite rot ‘em! Sailed off and left me when the damned sea washed me overboard. I'll have ‘em all, I'll trice ‘em all up and strip their skins off jikaider—so help me!"

“Fell overboard, did you, Captain?” said Linson. He radiated enjoyment.

“Not fell overboard, you—you—” Murkizon dragged in a great breath of air and swung his arms. “Washed overboard!"

I said casually, “Better get below, Captain, and dry off. Although you may have trouble finding dry clothes to fit you."

He swung to regard me, must have recognized me, must have practically decided what to reply, when the masthead lookout sang out, high and clear.

“Swordship! Swordship!"

“Thank Pandrite,” said Pompino, rushing to the rail. “It must be my lovely Blackfang."

We all stared, but of course we would not see the swordship for a space yet. The suns shone, Linson set the hands to their duty with a few dryly cutting words, and Murkizon took himself off to the galley to dry out. I perked up. Life was undoubtedly going to be more entertaining from now on.

I was right in that. But the entertainment was far different from what I was expecting.

The lookout called down information on the estimated course and speed of the swordship. He could not distinguish her colors at the distance, even with a balanced telescope, and her build meant she was low in the water and much like any other swordship—not all. I fancied that if some men I had known in my career were in command of Tuscurs Maiden they'd be up the ratlines like monkeys to take a damned good look at the fellow for themselves. Old Abe would, for a certainty.

The breeze veered and backed uncertainly. Towards the hour of mid it settled down to a stiff westerly breeze. I sniffed the air. This amount of wind would be just about the maximum a swordship would tolerate. Here an interesting feature of the ships of Earth and of Kregen came into play, for ships and their rigging are designed in different ways on different coasts where the prevailing winds dictate what is the best sail plan. The argenters of North Pandahem usually carried a crossjack on their mizzen mast. Whilst the lateen was not unknown on Kregen, down south, instead of a pure lateen they used a kind of standing lug on the mizzen. The effect was to enable the argenter to sail a little more stiffly and keep her head more up into the wind. We were thus able to steer a good northerly course, resuming our onward progress.

The lookout bellowed down that the swordship had disappeared. Pompino looked worried.

“If my beautiful Blackfang is sunk..."

“That could have been a rascally render,” I said. “If so, let us hope he is sunk."

Presently the lookout, a new man relieving the old, shouted down that smoke wafted over the horizon.

“There,” said Captain Linson. “She was a Pandrite-forsaken render and she is burning one of our convoy."

Truth to tell, these distant events did seem to bear out that theory.

Captain Murkizon came on deck wearing a long roll of blue cloth swathed about him. His hair bristled everywhere. He rolled as though he was a part of the ship.

He and Larghos the Hatch put their heads together and spent some time talking. Although I saw no gold change hands, I felt sure a man of Murkizon's stamp would for the sake of his own honor richly reward the man who had jumped into the sea to save him. This seemed fitting.

A vague shape on the larboard horizon that vanished astern was probably the island under whose lee we had sheltered during the earlier part of the storm before we had at last been blown downwind. We sailed on, a fine bluff argenter, smashing into the sea, leaving a broad creamy wake aft.

Pompino was so far recovered as to sit down to a light meal toward the latter end of the afternoon. He made a number of uncomplimentary observations upon the habits of waves and storms, and mentioned that his insides must have been reamed out cleaner than a milk churn before milking time. We were all, in our various ways, kind to him. I managed to refrain from mentioning fatty vosk rashers; but with Pompino to goad into a frenzy the temptation was sore.

Captain Murkizon reassured him, insisting that Blackfang still floated and was a perfect sailing and fighting instrument when he'd last seen her—in everything except her captain.

Linson put a hand to his face.

“It is a pity, Captain, that you did not have the time to knock your crew into shape.” He kept his hand half-concealing his smile, very sharp. “I'll allow that if it had been me I'd have been tempted—with a crew like that—to have jumped overboard."

“Why, you—!” began Murkizon in a strangled scream.

A sailor burst unceremoniously into the cabin.

“Swordship!” he shouted. He looked wild, clinging to the door. “Swordship! She broke through a squall—she's right on top of us!"

In a yelling rout we broke for the deck. Sure enough, a squall feathered darkly away across the sea. Ahead, all her oars rising and falling like the wings of a bird of prey, the narrow shape of a swordship hurtled down on us.

“Beat to quarters!"

The scurry and rush, the slap of bare feet across planking, the clang and scrape of metal on metal as the varters were prepared, the insane racket of the alarm drum, all these things blended into a pandemonium that ceased as the Ship Deldar, Chandarlie the Gut, blew a long trill on his pipe. The ship stilled.

“Cleared for action, Captain!"

“Very good, Hikdar,” said Linson to Naghan Pelamoin.

The hush laced with the slap of the sea, the creak of rigging and groan of timbers, impressed us all. One had to admit that Linson ran a taut ship.

“Who is she?” demanded Pompino. He was clearly agitated. “She is not Blackfang?"

Linson handed across his telescope.

“See for yourself, horter."

Pompino studied the racing shape ahead.

“All I can see is a black wedge and oars like wings."

“Aye. And her flags?"

I caught Pelamoin's eye. “Your telescope, Hikdar, if I may?"

He handed the brass bound leather wrapped tube across without comment. I put it to my eye and studied the onrushing vessel. Well, yes, she was a swordship, and Pompino's description was apt. The shape of her, wedgelike, low, with those banks of oars glistening and rising and falling, beating her on. The smother of white around her ram passed swiftly away aft. Her flags? Blue and green, with gold devices, stiff in the wind, difficult to make out.

“You know her, Captain?"

“She is not one of our escort, horter."

“I see."

Bearing to quarters was not a precautionary measure, then. I handed the telescope back.

“I'll just fetch a few weapons from the armory, Pompino. Maybe we can fletch a few before they board."

At this he changed completely. From a landlubber who had recently bought a fleet of ships—with the gold given him by the Star Lords, of course—and in constant anxiety for the well-being of his beautiful vessels, he became my companion of old, a rough tough fighting man contemptuous of opposition, ready to fight with the best. Out of his element he had been becoming almost querulous. Now there was the prospect of a few handstrokes in the offing, he reverted to his usual arrogant happy Khibil self. He brushed his whiskers up fiercely.

“Aye Jak! We'll show the cramphs!” We fetched weapons. We prepared. With the men at their stations and the girls at their varters, the complement of Tuscurs Maiden waited for the coming attack.

Chapter twelve

Concerning the Swordship Redfang

The Suns of Scorpio hung low above the horizon streaming their mingled opaz radiance across the sea in paths of viridian and vermilion. A scattering of sea birds screamed and swung away. The dark blot of an island showed stark against the sky as the squall whisked past. The swordship had shot from the island's shelter. The squall had concealed her. Now she bore down upon us with her cruel bronze ram slicing through the sea as it would slice through our timbers.

Although clearly Captain Linson was a consummate seaman, the task of handling Tuscurs Maiden in battle against a swordship was of the order of scaling a mountain peak with your hands tied behind your back and wearing skis.

His sharpness was never in more evidence.

His orders rapped out. The hands rushed to obey. The yards braced around, the argenter's head fell off, and with the wind up her tail Tuscurs Maiden took off directly eastwards. The evolution was conducted smartly. With a vessel of even moderate speed, speed equal to that of the swordship chasing us, or the speed of a Vallian galleon, he would have outrun our pursuer. But the vessel was an argenter, slow and lubberly.

The swordship balked in her first initial rush to ram, swung about to follow, sheeted in spray, like a crocodile smashing through the water.

Pelamoin said: “Nogoya. She's a damned swordship out of Nogoya."

Pompino shook his sword at the pursuing vessel.

“That Pandrite-forsaken island is too big for its boots. They think they own the seas."

“At least, they control the seas here, and we have strayed into their area. They will not seek to destroy us, Horter Pompino, but to board and enslave us. They use slaves."

“Then my hand is turned against them,” I said.

Captain Murkizon swaggered forrard from the after castle. He carried three swords in various hangings from his belt, and he swung a vicious looking double-headed axe.

“The best way to deal with these rasts is to hit ‘em before they know! Hit ‘em, knock ‘em down, and jump on ‘em!"

This seemed an eminently sensible idea. As to its practicability, that would have to be proved.

On a dead run to leeward the swordship hoisted a scrap of sail on her foremast. She leaped after us. I walked aft, up through the sterncastle, and peered out alongside a varter which snouted from its port.

Wilma the Shot said: “I'll guarantee to land a rock right on the head of that fellow up front."

A light laugh from the gloom of the aftercastle drew my attention to Wilma's sister. Alwim the Eye patted her varter. A heavy and exceedingly ugly-looking dart lay in the trough. The dart was of iron, and multi-barbed.

“And I'll shove this right down the gullet of that archer next to your fellow, sister."

From the armory I'd taken one of Pompino's bows. It was compound, reflex, a sound weapon if without the range of a Lohvian longbow. For the kind of work we envisaged, this boy would suit perfectly.

“And what do you ladies leave me?"

“Why—that rast at their bow varter."

“I see him.” He wore a leather jerkin whose brass studs winked brightly in the dying light. As I watched he bent to the weapon. “He is about to loose."

“More fool him,” said Wilma.

The rock struck somewhere below. The water muffled its force. The brass-studded figure bent frantically to his windlass. In only a moment more, as the ships neared, the range would be admirable. Had Seg been here, with his bow, he'd have shafted the whole forecastle party, the whole lot of the prijikers who clustered ready to leap onto our deck.

Pompino joined me with Murkizon. We watched as the swordship swept in on our tail.

“He'll have a job trying to ram and board from there,” said Murkizon, “may the Crooked Left Arm of the Divine Lady of Belschutz smite him."

Chandarlie the Gut appeared, squinting over the stern.

“The cap'n says for me to shout when that damned swordship is about to ram."

“Aye,” said Murkizon. “Then he'll swing his stern. He'll make the cramph miss, if he's lucky and fast enough."

Pompino looked at me and I said: “Don't pin your hopes on it. Swordships have a habit of sticking their teeth in."

“I do not relish being made slave."

“Who does?"

Men clustered above us on the open top of the stern castle. Their feet drummed on the planking. Wilma bent to her varter. The arms were drawn fully back, the string taught, the rock positioned. Her sister called across. “My dart first, I think, sister."

“Aye, sister."

The dart flew.

The archer took the dart in his midriff, and the fellow abaft of him took the dart, also, as well as the third in that group. Alwim the Eye let out a delighted crow and bent to the windlass. The Rapa, Rondas the Bold, bulky in his mail, bent to help her. I felt surprise, and then pleasure.

The other varter clanged. The rock squashed down on the head of the fellow Wilma had pointed out. She, too, let out a pleased cry. I lifted the bow. Before I loosed, an arrow streaked across the narrowing gap and pierced through the varterist who had been my target. Someone on the top of our sterncastle, with the advantage of height, had loosed first.

That, then, was where I should have been—as an archer. As a swordsman I would be better where I was.

My own shaft took the varterist's mate.

Then a shower of arrows whistled toward us, and some stuck in the wood and a few shrieked through the stern ports. No one was hit. I nocked another shaft and loosed. The varters clanged again. The ram of the swordship foamed on, drawing closer and closer. The shadows angled more levelly across the deck from the stern ports, and soon the swordship would be a mere lump of darkness against the suns set.

“We're lit up like puppets on a stage,” grumbled Pompino.

A huge midriff bumped me and Chandarlie craned to get a better look. He was wheezing like a runner dragging his feet out of mud at every stride. His eyes screwed up as he measured distances. If our vessel could be swung at precisely the right moment we stood a good chance of letting the swordship overrun us and of smashing up his oars. Chandarlie poised, watchful as a hawk above a sparrow.

If the maneuver was not carried out correctly, by employing the headsails rather than the rudder, the argenter would simply present her quarter and beam to be rammed. Maybe, I was thinking, just maybe it might be better not to try to be clever and swing at all—just let the fellow's rostrum go into our stern and hope it would be forced down below us. He could be swamped, then...

“Now!” bellowed Chandarlie.

In the midst of drawing and loosing, of picking likely targets and moving with the swing of the vessel, the first sideways swing went unnoticed. Then the ram of the swordship veered away, the foam of water spouted up. A rock hit the wood near us and splinters flew. A shriek from aloft and a heavy thump on the planking told of one poor devil who'd been shafted on our sterncastle.

Had Linson's topmen been quick enough—had he backed his main topsail and maincourse, and thus, in taking way off us suddenly, allowed the swordship to swoop past and smash up his oars—had this happened we might have gotten away with it. But the helmsman, no doubt hoping to hasten the swing of the vessel, put just too much rudder into the evolution. It happened very rapidly. One moment we were sensing the swing, watching the bow of the swordship and the cluster of prijikers there, the next the whole ship shook with the crunch of the ram hitting us.

If the swordship skipper observed our movements and compensated by turning into us must remain conjectural. I grabbed for support, regained my feet, and saw the whole howling mob of warriors come swarming inboard.

“Hit ‘em!” Murkizon foamed and roared into action.

There was a dead feel to Tuscurs Maiden. We met and fronted that first savage attack. Swords blurred down. It was hard brutal work in the confines of the after castle. We had a great advantage in that the attackers must force their way through the ports. We cut them down as they strove to gain entrance. In a sudden and deathly affray we stopped them and flung the remnants back. Murkizon peered out, ignoring a few shafts that winged toward us.

“By the Tangled Lice-Ridden Hair of the Divine Lady of Belschutz,” he raved. “I'll settle your hash for you, you—!"

With that he leaped bodily onto the small forecastle of the swordship. Pompino, shoving forward and whirling his bloody sword, leaped after. The Rapa pressed up. There was little I could do but follow. We had smashed their first attack, now we could carry the fight to them. We stood a good chance of smashing them utterly.

So, over the stern I went and down onto the swordship's forecastle. The jump was steep. I landed agilely enough, but a rolling lurch of the ship toppled me forward. Pompino's sword flashed above my head. I rolled, hacked the legs from under a fellow with a pike, dove headlong at three men clustered together and wielding axes. Three blows, mingled with two feints and a duck, disposed of them. I looked about, the sword dripping.

Wilma and Alwim extended their swords, and both were as bloodied as mine. Three of our Pachaks, their tail-hands gripping gory daggers, finished off the last of the swordship's forecastle party.

Naghan Pelamoin raged up, shouting.

“Tuscurs Maiden! Look!"

There was a moment, before the next assault, to look back. The argenter, under full sail, was drawing off. The swordship's oars ceased to beat. In the heat of the combat, the skipper and the oarmaster had ordered the men to stop pulling. They would be near exhaustion after the pursuit, and no doubt it was felt that the swordship had rammed and the prey was theirs. Well, in that they miscalculated. The turn had done enough for the ram to strike obliquely. Tuscurs Maiden was not decisively rammed. The bronze rostrum had not smashed through her timbers. Now she sailed on—and we were left stranded in the swordship.

The imminent approach of suns set struck me forcibly. With the argenter sailing so grandly off, we'd be more than likely to lose her during the night. So there was nothing else left for it.

“Forward!” I yelled, like any storyteller's tin pot hero. “Hit them! We must take the ship!” With that, and a rousing yell of: “Hai! Jikai!” I bounded down onto the catwalk.

Soldiers clustered by the foremast, and someone shot an arrow. I flicked it away and went bullheaded on. There was an awareness of bodies at my back, pressing on swiftly after me. We hit the group at the foot of the foremast and swept them away and roared on aft. Up on the stumpy sterncastle the wink of steel glowed crimson and jade in the dying light.

“Jikai! Jikai!"

We smashed up the ladders, they were hardly companion-ways, and roared in a shouting, struggling melee across the scrap of deck. The men at the whipstaff went down like sickled wheat. A confused impression of uplifted arms, of striking steel, of men shrieking and blood spouting, and we staggered back to our senses. We looked about. A man ran away from us, ran forward along the gangway, screaming. He threw himself off the beakhead over which we had entered his ship. He was the last.

Pompino said: “Well, and what now?"

Darkness fell about us.

Murkizon boomed: “We showed ‘em, the cramphs!"

“Aye, Captain,” said Pelamoin. “But, as Horter Pompino says, what now?"

“Why, we take possession of the ship and rejoin that imbecile Linson. When I see him I'll—I'll—"

“Yes, Captain,” observed Pompino, gently. I saw that my comrade was fully himself, ready to put the boot in or ready to soothe, as the mood took him. I did not doubt that I would have to listen to an account of his exploits in thus taking a swordship—and from an argenter. Indeed, this would mightily enhance his own prowess in his eyes. Veritably, so!

The oarsmen were slave.

Chained to their benches, eight to an oar, they sat slumped in the apathy of exhaustion. It took some time for them to understand that we would not enslave them in our turn.

Lanterns were lit. Some of the people who had leaped into the ship with us went off to see about food. Wine was discovered and brought on deck. Chandarlie the Gut went off to inspect for himself the forepart of the vessel. She might not have rammed in the sense of a real ram; but she could have sustained damage there. He came back to reassure us. All was well...

Pompino said, “Then this is a new addition to my fleet. Very well. You, Captain Murkizon, will take command. Naghan Pelamoin, you will be Ship Hikdar. Chandarlie, if you can get your gut about the narrowness of the vessel, will be Ship Deldar."

We all laughed. It was the aftermath of battle, and men and women do strange things at those times.

The two varterist sisters took up goblets of wine and went off to inspect the ballistae upon the forecastle. We had lost one of the Pachaks, and only the three remained. Larghos the Flatch had a scratch down one cheek. A Brokelsh was stuck through the guts and would die by morning. We made him comfortable. Then we totted up accounts.

There were twenty-one of us, twenty-one fighting men and women. Well, that was ample to run the swordship if we were cautious. I do not think anyone of us had much idea of being cautious. Incessantly the paktuns and the seamen went over the details of the fight. By Vox! They seemed to remember far more of it than I did, or cared to do...

We were in the process of unshackling the oarsmen, slaves no longer, when Rondas the Bold came on deck prodding with one of his swords. So the fellow who had run the length of the gangway and flung himself overboard had not been the last, then...

“Found him cowering and mewling in a little cubbyhole,” announced Rondas. He poked. “I thought I'd get some shut-eye and this confounded miserable specimen woke me up."

Someone yelled, high and delighted. “Chuck him overboard!"

“Hold on,” I said.

Now I was well aware that my position was an ambiguous one. I had no obvious function aboard. I was the friend of the owner; that gave me no right to question the captain or his officers.

“Why should we not chuck the scum over the side?” Demanded Murkizon. He looked ready to bristle up.

“He can give us information. And,” I said, nodding to the rowing benches where the poor naked shock-headed mass of humanity was groaning and coming back to life. “It might be amusing to let him pull an oar for a time."

“Aye!” roared our fellows.

“Well—"

“Ask him,” said Pompino, and that settled that.

The fellow turned out to be the purser, the officer Kregans call the palinter, and his stomach, while no rival to the splendor of Chandarlie's, bespoke a man who lived well. He was in a dreadful state. He looked as though his world had crashed in ruins about his head. Well, in a very real sense, it had. He told us that this swordship was out of the island kingdom of Nogoya, which we knew, that her name was Flame of Nogoya, which made us laugh and jeer, uncaring. We inspected the name, and found it to be painted over an area of woodwork planed clean, so this ship had been taken from somewhere and renamed by the Nogoyans. The palinter, this miserable Nog the Rations, also said that we would all be taken and hanged by the heels by his king, for his king was puissant upon the oceans and demanded tribute from all who sailed his waters.

“I see he keeps slaves,” I said conversationally.

“That is all they are good for, to pull an oar."

“Are they criminals, prisoners, of your country?"

“No. They have been taken at sea for not paying the just dues demanded by the king, and—"

“And that is what would have happened to us peaceful seamen if your Pandrite-forsaken captain had taken our ship!” bellowed Murkizon. “All the honest sailorfolk know of your rotten island kingdom!"

“The pirates—"

“You're no better than pirates, yourself. At least they pull their own oars."

So, after this Nog the Rations had told us things needful for us to know, he was taken down to the rowing benches and shackled up. I abhor slavery. But I viewed this in the light of sentence passed by a court of justice. At least the fellow had his life, such as it was. He'd be set free at the end of this adventure, if he still lived.

Murkizon and Pelamoin, with the ready paunch of Chandarlie, sorted out the oarsmen. When it was put to them, they saw the justice and wisdom of continuing. After all, if we were to succeed in our mission, we needed strong backs and arms to haul the oars. They were no longer slaves. They were free men and women with us, consigned to fetching up safely at a port and there resuming a life of liberty. They cheered.

We collected up the whips and threw them overboard.

More cheers greeted this. And then a hairy wretch with many scars across his naked shoulders shouted out fiercely, “And where is the whip to lash on Nog the Rations?"

“Leave him to me,” said Chandarlie the Gut.

Pompino announced, with a flourish of his whiskers, that for good and sufficient reasons—and obvious ones, to boot—he intended to name this ship Redfang. The name pleased us.

Chapter thirteen

The Star Lords call for action

Redfang sailed north. We were now entering waters where in the old days sailors from Pandahem kept a ceaseless lookout for the swift raiding galleons of Vallia.

During the Time of Troubles in the island empire of Vallia most of her splendid galleon fleet had been dispersed or destroyed. Then we had built up our aerial squadron. Still, galleons were being built once again and much trade was carried on, and every now and again some venturesome Vallian captain would snuff about looking for an enemy to board and plunder.

If my dreams of uniting all the lands of Paz became the reality it could be and, by Zair, ought to be in any decently run world, fellow seamen from Pandahem and Vallia, instead of fighting, would join in opposing the fish-headed Shanks who raided us all. Vallia had concluded treaties of friendship with a number of countries after the defeat and expulsion of the Hamalian forces; diplomacy must continue to bring forward fresh treaties. And making treaties is an activity to drive a fellow to exhaustion. Down in Ruathytu we'd had some...

“Sail ho!"

The yell brought everyone hurrying up, in the usual way, when only the lookout perched in the cross-trees could see that distant speck of the horizon rim. This time, I did go up and have a look myself, carrying one of the telescopes we'd found in the swordship's miniature charthouse.

Once the far-off sail had been centered in the glass, a single look told me she was no galleon out of a Vallian port.

“What d'you make of her?” bellowed up Murkizon.

The lookout screeched down what information we had, that the vessel was on a reciprocal course and appeared to be of sufficient size to warrant a goodly crew of renders changing course to intercept and cut her off and cut her up and devour all her goodness. I stared at the lookout, not so much shocked as in surprise.

He saw me looking at him after his outburst.

He wore nondescript clothes, a blue shirt and a breech clout, was bare of feet and with a green scarf knotted around his head. His face, of the narrow kind, held a taut constipated look, as though he seethed impotently within.

“You've been a render, then, dom,” I said.

“Aye. This swordship—with a fine gang of cutthroats. We could make a fat living for ourselves here."

“Well, Asnar the Grolt, you would have to speak to Horter Pompino on that score—aye, and your comrades."

Watching the distant speck of sail, we continued this odd conversation. “As to the owner,” said Asnar the Grolt, “we signed on to serve, and that is why we sail north now. But—"

“There are more important things to do in life besides piratically storming peaceful ships."

“You, then, have never roved the seas in search of plunder."

I did not disabuse him. I'd been a render in my time fighting with that remarkable lady pirate, Viridia the Render. She operated among the Hoboling Islands, off the northwest of Pandahem. As always, as always, I wondered what had happened to her and her cutthroat crews.

The sail vanished over the horizon rim, but I did not descend to the deck. The motion of the vessel, the light, the glorious tangy Kregan air, all combined to detain me. I thought of Viridia the Render, and naturally this led me on to think of many of those other folk I had met during my life on Kregen.

During that life on Kregen, I have met very many people of all kinds. Some of them simply wandered across my path, busy about their own purposes and impinging only to the extent that their actions, thoughts and emotions affected mine. Then they drifted away. This fact of life is generally learned by children when they first lose a bosom friend whom they met yesterday or the day before. Nursery and Primary Schools, First Grades, are filled with these tragedies. People just encounter, communicate, part, like vollers passing on a night of Notor Zan, ships passing in the night. Sometimes we spend a fraught period in the company of fresh acquaintances, and then call the remberees and go our separate ways.

Some folk, particularly on this Earth, still have not caught up with this simple fact of life. They complain when what one might call minor characters appear and disappear. One can only suppose that these critical complaints are voiced by people who are in constant communication with every single person they have ever met in their whole lives.

Bringing me back to the cross-trees of Pompino's Redfang, Asnar the Grolt observed: “The breeze is turning fluky."

“Aye. We're in for a spell of calm—"

“I think so, too. At least we have oars."

“And that is interesting in view of your comments about renders—"

He laughed, narrow-faced, dark, mocking himself as much as the concept of piratical brotherhood. “You mean we all take our turn at the looms?"

“Precisely."

He lifted his telescope and trained it forrard.

“What do you make of that?"

I looked. A dark wedge of smoke lifted above the horizon rim.

“A ship burns."

I swept the circle of the horizon. The line lay bare of all save that ugly blot of smoke.

Something was happening and we could not see, could not know what that might be. We could only guess. This situation where one saw little clues, caught faint whiffs of reality, this was the very stuff of life to an old ship captain, a tactician and strategist in naval matters. Piracy? Or something more sinister? Even as that thought occurred to me I heard the raucous squawking from over my head.

The old feeling of resentment hit me, to be immediately brushed aside. I knew that Asnar the Grolt could not hear that mocking croak. He could not see the glorious scarlet and golden bird that planed on stiff wings down out of the suns glare, circling around my head. I looked up. I shook my fist. Asnar sat, rigid, unmoving, a lump carved from stone.

Circling in the air the giant raptor from the Star Lords regarded me from bright black eyes. This was the Gdoinye, messenger and spy for the Everoinye.

“Well, you bird of ill omen,” I roared up, “and now what do you want?"

“You act as though you carry the approval of the Star Lords, Dray Prescot. You and the kregoinye, Pompino."

“We act because we wish to act, bird!"

The screech mocked. “Onker! There are more than one brand of Leem Lovers—as you know—"

“I know!"

“The Everoinye do not wish you to fail in this."

Staring up at the gorgeously glinting bird, a blaze of gold and scarlet, I wondered who was the onker, the idiot, in this situation. There was no sign of the white dove from the Savanti to keep an eye on me. I bellowed.

“By Makki Grodno's disgusting diseased liver and lights! D'you think Pompino or I wish to fail? Onker!"

“Make sure you do not."

With a final insulting screech the bird winged up, turning, shimmering in light, vanishing.

Asnar said: “There is a sail,” and then he roared down to the ship: “Deck below! Ship ahoy!"

No time had elapsed in the real world since the bird appeared up to the point he vanished. Now life jumped into motion again. Above the horizon rim showed the speck of a sail, glinting in the suns light. I steadied the telescope. I looked.

So...

So I understood what the Gdoinye had been saying, and why he had visited me at that particular moment. Leem Lovers, he had said, there are more than the one kind ... Oh, yes.

I recognized the shape of the sail approaching us.

Tall, narrow, more planing with the wind than catching it as an ordinary sail does, that tall shaft of canvas on a polacre mast indicated clearly—and terribly—just what that ship was.

Asnar the Grolt bellowed down, “Can't make her out yet."

Without wasting any more words, I shinnied down the backstay and jumped onto the deck. I went across to Pompino and Murkizon. They saw my face, and a muscle twitched beside Pompino's eye. Murkizon almost—not quite—took a step back.

“What, Jak? What is it?"

I didn't shilly-shally.

“Shanks."

The word whistled around the ship like wildfire.

Shanks!

Fish-heads; rapacious, murderous, merciless sea rovers from over the curve of the world. They were called, among many insulting names, Leem Lovers. They were not of Paz. They were diffs, alien, enemy, who would slay us and glee in the slaying.

“We cannot fight them,” said Captain Murkizon.

The silence that ensued, punctured by the slosh of the sea and the dying sough of the breeze, the slap and bang of loose tackle, reminded us all of the importance of this moment. No one was going to suggest that Captain Murkizon was frightened of the Shanks. We were all aware of the ferociously formidable reputation of the Fish-heads. It took twice the normal amount of killing to slay one of them.

Pompino cocked an eye at me. Quietly, I said to him, “You saw the Gdoinye?"

“Aye. We have been summoned."

“Yes."

“Well,” demanded Murkizon. His face resembled a sunset of the great red sun Zim. He burned. “What do you say?"

Naghan Pelamoin and Chandarlie the Gut looked at the captain, and away, and then at Pompino. Pompino did not hesitate.

“We may not wish to fight the Fish-heads. It is true they raid our coasts and slay us and burn and kill. It would be feeble of us not to try to stop them."

“Have you fought the Shanks before?” demanded Murkizon.

The Rapa, Rondas the Bold, shouldered forward.

“I have. They may be killed like any other man."

The two girl varterists said, more or less together, “We have shot them before."

Murkizon shook his head. “You said, Rondas, that you had not shipped as a marine mercenary before. So you fought the Shanks ashore. I tell you, they are a very different proposition afloat and in their damned magical ships."

“Their ships are not magical,” I said, very sharply. “They are well found, with good lines and a remarkable sail plan. But they are only ships. They may be rammed and sunk."

“Have you tried?” boomed Murkizon. “I have. They sail fleeter than the wind itself."

“Well,” declared Pompino, brushing up his whiskers. “You may not wish to fight them as I said. But they are sailing down upon us with the breeze. Look!” He pointed. Sure enough, the Shank was foaming along, the bone between her teeth spouting only a little, her tall narrow sails all slanted so that the breeze sucked her along. “She seems to fight us!"

“And she'll be upon us very soon,” said Pelamoin.

The hesitation in Murkizon was undermining the resolution of the crew. They respected the barrel-like captain as a fighting man who knew his business. If he hesitated, the dangers must be immense.

The moment hung with dire consequences. These men had to face the hard facts of life, and that life spent on the marvelous and terrible world of Kregen. The Shank bore on, creaming down on us, and apparently bringing the wind with her. Her superstructure was of the square, boxlike construction favored by the Fish-heads; her underwater lines would be sweet and clean and of a very high order of marine expertise.

“They will be on us!” I bellowed. “Beat to quarters! Captain Murkizon, I respect your decision. You may go below and keep out of it if you—"

He didn't let me finish. I thought he would explode.

“Go below!” he fairly foamed. “Not hit ‘em and knock ‘em down and jump on ‘em! I shall remember that! I only said we should not fight them if we did not have to!"

“Well spoken,” said the Rapa. “By Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls! Now I shall find out how different fighting them on water is!"

“Aye!” raved on Murkizon, incensed. “And by the Nauseating Nostril of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! My axe will drink their green slimy blood before they send me down to the Ice Floes of Sicce!"

At the moment I felt any mention of Makki Grodno would be superfluous. But I stored away Murkizon's colorful remarks about his Divine Lady of Belschutz.

“Then let each of us offer up a prayer to the gods,” said Pompino. “Pandrite and Opaz shine on us this day."

“Aye!” And then they started to yell: “Jikai! Jikai!"

So, that settled it. We were in for a fight, whether we wanted it or not.

The Shank drew on apace. Now we could see the dots of scaled helmets, glimpse the wink of steel. They had various kinds of artillery. Our varters were prepared, the windlasses cranked, the strings drawn back, rocks and darts positioned in the troughs. I saw to the bow I'd borrowed from Pompino, and made sure the quiver of arrows was full.

The breeze fanned our cheeks. That breeze fluttered, died, blew strongly again, vacillated, shifted around the compass—died, and did not blow again.

The Shank sailed on and then, gently, her sails not quivering as ordinary canvas would, she slowed. Presently, we were two ships, idle upon a painted ocean.

Pompino glowed.

“Now we have the cramphs!"

At once Murkizon's attitude changed. He glared.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, Horter Pompino. We have oars. But, look, the damned Shanks are putting out sweeps."

Sure enough, five long sweeps a side slid out from the Shank Vessel, struck the water, began to pull in a long slow rhythm. Gradually, she began to move through the water toward us. Her progress was painfully slow. She would take some time to reach us at that speed.

“Any man with sense would pull away from her,” said Murkizon. He cocked an eye at me.

The Rapa, Rondas the Bold, and the Chulik, Nath Kemchug, stood talking one to the other. Not races of diffs who ordinarily got on, Chuliks and Rapas. But it was clear they both shared the same opinion here. The archer, Larghos the Flatch, joined them. The girls remained at their varter positions on the foredeck. Chandarlie the Gut prowled the ship. I spoke to Pompino.

“We will have to talk to the oarsmen, Pompino."

“We will. I'll tell ‘em. That will be the end of that."

He went below the gratings. Redfang pulled a mere twenty-two oars a side; but eight men pulled and pushed on each. We could turn up a fair rate of knots. The drummer we had appointed, a seaman with a shock of black hair and a face with a nose knocked out of shape, went below. Nath the Slide would keep the time going, hammering out the rhythm.

Murkizon was drawn into the conversation on deck. He waved his arms about. His face shone. Then he stamped his foot, hard, and bellowed so that all could hear.

“That is the best plan! I agree! But if you are all killed do not come whining to me that it is cold on the Ice Floes of Sicce!"

Intrigued by this talk of a plan, I felt inclined to add fuel to this flame of enthusiasm. I shouted, in a high mocking voice.

“Ice Floes of Sicce! And the Shanks? Why all of the demons and devils there wouldn't have the Fish-heads—not if you paid them!"

That raised the kind of groaning laugh it deserved, and Pompino reappeared on deck. “Plan?” he called. “I heard. What plan?"

They left Murkizon to spell it out.

“The Shanks make slow progress. With all our oars pulled by willing hands we can run rings around ‘em. We use our superior speed and turning circle under oars, dart in, ram ‘em on the broadside and pull clear. Pull clear quick, mind! Instanter! So they don't get the chance to board. Then—” and here he spoke with evident relish. “Then we stand off and watch ‘em sink."

“Aye!” went up the full-throated roar.

Against that vociferous approval, I had to be the idiot to say, “And what about the treasure they carry?"

That was shouted down in a tumult of yells. The gist was that the only treasure aboard was likely to be stinking fish.

There was no arguing with them now, and with Pompino agreeing to the plan, that motion carried the day.

The oarsmen who so recently had been slave agreed that for this business they'd pull their hearts out. They could make the ship move! They'd show what they could do as free men hauling at the hated oars...

A terrible anger at those who had oppressed them became evident in this, as though the ex-slaves were happy to strike out at this new foe in lieu of the old. They were perfectly confident that they could carry out their part of the plan. On the instant of ramming they would be ready. Those who had been pulling would push, those who had been pushing would pull. They'd backwater with such skill and precision we'd be out of the hole our ram had made, the proembolion would help us to back free, and we'd be away and laughing before the first Shank recovered from his fright. So help ‘em all the gods and goddesses of the Sea!

Our motive power thus secure, we set about preparing ourselves for the coming ordeal. For ordeal was what it would be. People stood to their posts. The varters were manned. The prijikers stood tensed, ready to repel any attempt at boarding that might, despite the plan, eventuate. The drummer gave his preliminary warning rat-tat.

Pompino called.

“Redfangs! Are we ready?"

“Aye! Ready!"

“Then—Hai, Jikai!"

The drum roll smashed out, every oar rose as one, struck in a welter of suds.

Like a stone flung from a catapult, Redfang shot across the sea, leaping for the sinister shape of our foe.

Chapter fourteen

We drop in on the Shanks

Smashed into a million splinters of light, the sea sprayed away from the thrusting ram of the swordship. The vessel heaved herself through the sea at every stabbing thrust of her oars. Straight as an arrow she hurled herself for the flank of the Leem Lover's craft.

Somebody on the forecastle began to sing those outrageous verses from the more boisterous sections of the song “The Worm-eaten Swordship Gull-i-mo."

Others took up the refrain, beginning low-voiced, building as Redfang surged onward into a full-throated chorus. A chanted paean of defiance, flung before us at the Shank, rolled across the sea.

The breeze remained dead. The sweeps across that narrowing gap of water churned with a motion betraying the frantic efforts of the oarsmen to propel their craft out of the killing crunch of our ram. Spray flew back like fabled diamonds flung across sable velvet. We stood braced against the speed and we roared our defiance in a rollicking barroom song, chanting out the defects and the mishaps of that nauseous swordship Gull-i-mo.

The flags fluttered. Roughly fashioned from scraps of colored cloth we'd found aboard, they flaunted Pompino's blue and yellow. The air tasted like wine. Everything swam into a focus brilliant and brittle. Every sound spurted with meaningful force. Onward we plunged.

The Shank was turning.

Murkizon shouted his helm orders. The men on the whipstaff braced themselves, and the head of Redfang swung with a barely perceptible motion to line with deadly accuracy on the enemy beam. Now we could see the heads of men over the bulwarks. We could see the suns glint from scales. In only short moments the arrows would rise, the varters loose.

The two varterist sisters, Wilma the Shot and Alwim the Eye, bent to their ballistae, taking a cool sight, lining up. When the moment was right—and not before—they would loose. Larghos the Hatch lifted his bow, not yet fully drawn, waiting his moment. I followed his action, taking as my mark the head of a man near the afterdeck who looked as though he might be the helmsman.

Many heads crowded above the enemy bulwarks. Spears showed, a few. Mostly they used long narrow tridents. I knew about those tridents.

Pompino scrambled up to join us on the forecastle. He looked inflated, wrought up, brilliant of face.

“By Horato the Potent! We're going to catch them slap bang in the middle."

“Amidships,” said Asnar the Grolt, hefting his boarding pike. He wore three thraxters in his belt, and three daggers.

Naghan Pelamoin, ready to return to his post as the Ship-Hikdar, spoke sharply.

“Remember, we do not board! We ram, backwater, and leave the cramphs to sink."

“Aye!"

Asnar the Grolt shook his pike again; he made no comment further.

Rondas the Bold and Nath Kemchug stood together, not speaking but clearly standing shoulder to shoulder. From this sign I took heart. When Rapa and Chulik stood side by side against a common foe, then perhaps all of Paz would come together in common union far quicker than I had judged. The breeze of our passage blew in our faces. The suns shot shards of fire across the sea. And the side of the Shank drew nearer across the water.

A rock rose from the Shank. Turning over and over in the air it arched up to splash into the sea twenty paces short. A howl of derision sparked from our prijikers.

The two girls remained calmly at their varters.

Another missile flew to drop short.

Again that derisive yell broke from our ranks.

If one of those rocks hit our group, there would be yells aplenty.

Wilma said, “I will take the forrard varter, sister."

“Aye, sister,” said Alwim. “And I the aft."

A couple of spare men apiece had been detailed to wind the windlasses for the girls. Wilma and Alwim were by way of being Varter Chujiks, a corrupt term and a slang way of saying they were gun captains in Earthly parlance. By this time I had formed a high opinion of their accuracy and expertise. If they could knock out the enemy artillery we stood a much better chance of carrying out the plan.

The next rock sloshed down just overside to larboard. The spray went whipping aft.

We roared on, with the ship leaping under the thrust of the oars. The Shank's waist ahead of us swarmed with men. Her sweeps lashed the water, clumsily trying to turn her. For a single instant only a flashing remembrance of the time we went roaring down to attack a Shank leaped into my mind. Then we had smashed into the Shank and after a tremendous fight had bested him. But then we had been fighting with hardened Vallian seamen from a Vallian galleon, and we had a strong contingent of Chulik marines. Now we had a swordship and a handful of fighting men.

No, this time was going to be far different, if they got aboard us, from the time of Captain Lars and his splendid galleon Ovvend Barynth.

The two girls let fly their varters and the rocks crunched in. Then the arrows began to crisscross. We shot all the way in. And we were shot at all the way in.

Unlike the shanks in the ship Maskinonge we'd fought in the old Ovvend Barynth, these Fish-heads had two arms. We could see them busily drawing and shooting their reflex bows. Our archery replied. Arrows fleeted in. They were yelling over there as the ships closed. Rather, the noise was that thin devilish screeching any man, hearing, must shudder at. My shaft glanced off something in the way, and missed my aim. Philosophically, I drew and loosed again. One cannot always hit one's target with the first shaft. Not like Seg.

Asnar the Grolt said: “Uhoongg!” or something that sounded like that. I gave him a quick glance. A long barbed arrow pierced his face, tearing away his cheek and exposing his teeth and eyeball. Blood ran. He did not speak again; but fell down onto the deck. In those closing moments as we bore in to ram, all a fighting man could do was commend poor Asnar the Grolt to his particular gods, and turn more sternly to face the enemy.

A rock appeared to me to be aimed straight at me.

It lolloped on like a friendly puppy about to lick your outstretched hand, only this puppy would rip off that hand and pulp the body attached to it.

The rock skimmed over our heads. In the din I did not hear it crash. The screams ripped out as though tearing men's lungs with them. The stink of fish grew as we closed with the Shanks, that odious fishy stink that makes any man of Paz wrinkle his nose in disgust.

From our perch in the forecastle we could look down on the waist of the Shank. That space was crowded with men, with beast-men, man-beasts, halflings, all with scales and stinking fish heads and squabby fish tails. There was no drawing away as we foamed in to ram. Pompino saw that.

“Remember!” he yelled, hoarsely, making himself heard in the uproar. “Keep them off. We do not board."

“Aye, horter,” said Rondas the Bold in his vulture's voice. As a paktun his humor tended to the macabre kind. “We might not want to board; they will."

“Then,” said the Chulik, Nath Kemchug, “we stop them.” Their sense of humor is atrophied, Chuliks; but they have voracious appetites for a fight. “By Likshu the Treacherous! I will take a double handful of them with me if I go down to the Ice Floes this day."

“We just need to keep them from getting aboard in the few moments between ramming and drawing off!” shouted Pompino.

My Khibil comrade had not, I judged, seen a very great deal of sea-borne action. If those devils of Shanks got their hooks into us, we'd have the self-same devil's job to break free.

An arrow sprouted suddenly from Wilma's arm. She gave a scream of shocked surprise; then tried to carry on. She bent to her trigger as her crew finished winding. Pompino saw.

“Wilma! Go off the castle—"

“If someone will snap the arrow it can be drawn—"

“Go down, Wilma. D'you want to look like a pincushion?"

A rock hissed past so close it stirred our hair.

And, all the time these incidents had been occurring, little splinters of hardness in a sea of noise and stink and movement, we had been forging on and on toward the Shank.

“Prepare to Ram!” screeched Chandarlie the Gut. His voice bashed back to Murkizon. The drum beat increased, a frantic blam-blam that got into the blood and vibrated the nerves.

Redfang fairly leaped the last few paces into the flank of her quarry.

Those last few moments before we hit passed as though I observed them in a dream, and all the fighting that followed, slow, hazy, almost perversely unreal, while the real events took place swiftly and in stunning flashes of rapid action. This strange dilation of time meant only that one lived through the horror for longer than it really lasted.

We hit.

The ram struck shrewdly along the Shank's underbelly and so nicely timed were Murkizon and Chandarlie's commands, that the oars flurried into powerful backwatering on the same instant.

Everything lurched forward. People clung onto whatever happened to be close. The jolt of impact juddered through Redfang. Some careless idiots lost their grips and sprawled headlong. Ropes strained and some parted. The ship jolted as though she'd run head on into a brick wall.

The Shank rolled. Now we should slide off neatly and our proemblion prevent the ram from entering too far into the side of the rammed vessel. Our oars, smashing the sea into foam, would haul us off.

Grapnels soared up against the sky.

Hard three-hooked iron shapes, they swung up and over and slogged down to bury their barbed fangs into Redfang. We had been hooked.

“Backwater!” Chandarlie yelled and heaved his gut around. “Their lines won't hold!"

The drum rolled and rattled.

The oars dug deeply, all in perfect rhythm, all pulled through the sea together. The sea roiled away, churned into suds, and Redfang did not move.

“The ropes hold us,” said Pompino.

A boarding axe was grasped in my fist. Do not ask me how it got there, and my thraxter stuffed away in the scabbard and the bow discarded. The axe was there. I leaped from the forecastle down onto the beak. Grapnels stood there, their arms stuck, their shanks up and taut with the strain of the ropes. Like any sensible sailor who wishes to grapple a ship, the Shanks had used chains for a goodly length before bending on their ropes. I'd have to crawl right forward to get past the iron chains and slash the ropes. There was not a chance in hell of prying the grapnels loose under the strain on them, and the axe wouldn't look at the chains. An arrow stood up by my head, going thwunk into the wood. Damned arrows! They would have to be ignored. I went on crawling forward.

“Cover him!” Pompino must have shouted that before he jumped down after me. I guessed it would be him.

The first grapnel rope parted—and believe me I hit the thing only a hand's-breadth up from the link to the iron chain!

The second went and an arrow struck the blade of the axe as I withdrew. The haft vibrated like a harpstring. I held on to it and struck at the next. By this time I was beginning to become a trifle warm.

The height of Redfang over the Shank waist meant they had to shoot upward from there. The archers in the ungainly square end castles were shooting down on me. This was not, I may say, a particularly comfortable position. I hit the next grapnel rope and she parted, and that cleared all along the beak. At the time I was doing that, others of Redfang's company were busily parting grapnels nearer to them.

And, just as I was about to congratulate myself on a job well done and to feel satisfaction that we'd denied the Shanks the chance of boarding us easily, I looked down over the enemy's waist.

As I looked down on that crowding mass of scaled helmets and scaled men, a rock swathed through them. It chopped down five of them and mangled them in spraying green ichor. At least one of the girls was still in action, and archers as well, as the shafts spat in. Down there on that alien deck they were screeching their chants, waving their tridents, desperately trying to stop us from pulling back.

“Ishtish! Ishtish!” they screeched, in their own tongue, fishy and hissing and nasty as it was.

Then, as I looked down on that scaly mass a Fish-head somersaulted away from a door that evidently closed off a companionway leading below. He sprawled on the deck. In the doorway stood a man—an apim. Naked, hairy, he glared madly upon the scene on deck, and then looked up. He stared directly at me.

“Help!” he yelled over all the din, a ferocious bellow. “Help!"

The Fish-heads heard him. Tridents menaced him and the other apims and diffs of familiar features of Paz who came trooping up from below. It took little deductive skill to deduce these men were slaves, maintained to pull the oars in the fluky winds off the coast. No doubt when the Shanks were finished here they'd hurl the apims and diffs of Paz overboard.

Chandarlie the Gut bellowed at my back.

“That's Quendur the Ripper! And I'll wager that's his foul pirate crew with him!"

“Leave ‘em!” someone else shrilled. “Pull back!"

“For the sake of Opaz!” screamed Quendur the Ripper.

“Let the renders go hang!"

An arrow scorched past my ear.

Pompino spat his words out in the uproar. “What now, Jak?"

“Why, Pompino, we cannot leave a fellow human to these fishy horrors, can we?"

“Back!” Chandarlie was yelling, and I could imagine him waving his arms, his stomach aheave-ho.

“They are pirates, and would have done us no good had they taken us."

“Aye, you are right. But, by the Black Chunkrah, I would deny the worst fellow you could imagine to these Shanks."

With that I threw the axe at a tall Fish-head who looked important and knocked his head all sideways, and snatched out my thraxter, and leaped down onto the deck.

Pompino's despairing yell bounced after me: “Jak—you get onker!"

And then he was jumping with me and, as we had been before, we were in action shoulder to shoulder.

All a mad bedlam, a welter, a chaos, a leaping and skipping and slashing ... We battled the Shanks on their own deck. Tridents against swords, the Fish-heads tried to bring us down. The rescued renders were not wholly helpless, for they had snatched up weapons in their escape. They began to bash their way from the companionway door toward us.

A little fellow with a droopy moustache and spaniel eyes screeched and flopped forward with a trident lodged in his back. He'd go no more a-roving across the wine-dark sea...

Our Rapa and Chulik comrades joined us, and we battled on. For a space it was touch and go; but the very audaciousness of the hairy filth, as the Shanks called us, leaping down into the attack confused them in their own onslaught. We had, as it were, thrown a spanner into the works, and now we had to extricate said spanners without loss. We could see no crossbows among the Shanks, and so they had none to span, but they'd know what a spanner was in this context—a fellow of Paz to be slain.

Fish-heads hissed and gibbered away around us, scales glistened. They wore ornamental branches of coral of various colors in their helmets. They carried spears and swords as well as tridents. They used heavily-curved bows. And they knew how to fight. By Krun, they knew how to fight.

We lost more men from the render crew before they could be hoisted up at our backs. The muscled body of the pirate chief, Quendur the Ripper, covered with the weals of the lash, pressed past. His face was a single black blot of anger. He held a trident and he stabbed and thrust and slashed with it as though a demon jerked his muscles.

“Fish-heads,” he kept on saying, over and over. “Fish-heads. Fish-heads.” Saliva spittled his lips. He looked mad enough to be loaded with chains against himself.

“Get aboard, dom,” I called across. “Sharpish."

He kept on alongside us, slashing his trident about, and croaking out: “Fish-heads. Fish-heads."

I put some snap into my voice. My words were interrupted twice by the need to knock a Shank over in the interim.

“Quendur! Get aboard the swordship! Bratch!"

He glared sideways at me. A trident hissed past and I grabbed it out of thin air, reversed it, hurled it back.

“You—!” he croaked.

“Get aboard.” I did not repeat that harsh word of command, bratch, for he had the message. He turned and leaped for Redfang. I didn't know him. Maybe he knew me, or thought he did ... Unlikely...

“Get going Rondas!” I bellowed it out. “Up with you, Nath Kemchug."

They were both still alive, which was miracle enough, although both wounded. Pompino was still untouched. We fought for long enough to get the mercenaries away and then it was the old duel between my fellow kregoinye and myself. I was not prepared to make an issue of it. To do so would get us both killed.

“Are you going, Pompino, you stiff-necked Khibil?"

“I am in command here, Jak, you pompous apim. Get aboard and leave the man's work to me."

“Fambly,” I said, and leaped for Redfang. Before I hit the beak I was yelling for archers. Larghos the Flatch and his comrades laid down a carpet for Pompino, and I contributed as soon as I laid my hands on a bow, and the two girl varterists shooting superbly, swathed away the raging Shanks. Wilma's wound was barely bound, and leaked red blood. But the mercenaries of Kregen are not quite like your mercenaries of Earth. The outmoded concepts of honor and pride and service rendered for payment given are not outmoded on Kregen. Perhaps the nearest to that you'd get on Kregen would be the masichieri; bandits who call themselves paktuns, to their shame.

Pompino was hauled inboard. He was laughing. Well, let us not go too closely into the question of why he laughed.

And, on that instant, Redfang began to withdraw from the wound she had inflicted in the side of her foe. The Shank began to heel. As we drew off, she slowly turned over and sank.

Chapter fifteen

Of a galleon, a rapier and honor

In an outward wash of foam-tinged green bubbles the Shank vanished.

Subsequently we carried out those necessary rites and services for our dead, consigning each to his or her own god or pantheon and releasing their bodies over the side.

Wilma recovered of her wound; many of our wounded did not. Captain Murkizon remained a most subdued man. Everyone felt sympathy for him. He had been right—of course he had been right!—yet such is the contrary nature of humankind that right though he was we felt that deep undercurrent that in this case being right was not the right course. Do not ask any explanation. I deplore racial hatred, as you know. I deplore slavery. In the dealings of the folk of Paz with the raiding sea rovers from over the curve of the world, Fish-heads called by many unpleasant names, rights and wrongs and instinctive feelings jumbled and became confused.

We put into the free port city of Matta, where they charged us exorbitant docking fees, the mercenary slit-eyed devils, and saw to our needs. The released oar slaves naturally wished to return home. We were sailing north. Those sailors contracted to Pompino would continue, and the mercenaries indicated they would remain hired to him. We could hire oarsmen, and they were not cheap, we could buy oarslaves, or we could see about a different vessel. The knot was cut by the timely arrival of what was left of our convoy. They straggled in over the space of three or four days, those that had survived, and among them to Pompino's gratitude, sailed Tuscurs Maiden and Blackfang.

He went up to the most imposing temple to Horato the Potent and registered his thanks. The priests reciprocated.

This free port city of Matta maintained a sizable fleet of swordships, and they swept their part of the seas clean of pirates. After the Koroles the seas were not so infested by renders; but wherever there are coasts and islands, no less than extensive trade routes, there will, it seems, be pirates.

“So, friend Jak. What next?"

“You ask me?"

“Aye. I saw the Gdoinye, as did you. But I am puzzled.” Pompino's haughty Khibil face expressed concern, and by the way he brushed up his whiskers I knew he was troubled. “We are adventuring as it were on our own account. You and I, together, are setting about work for the Everoinye. Yet we must pay our own way, make our own passage, suffer all these delays. I ask you, Jak, is that right?"

“You should know that nothing is right, when you want it to be. Life is not fair."

“Oh, I know that, fambly!"

“It would probably be best to sail in Tuscurs Maiden."

“You think so? I confess, I am beginning to wonder if I was altogether wise to invest in a fleet of ships. They are a great worry to a man."

“Oh, aye, assuredly."

“But we saw the Gdoinye. He has a sister, the Gdoinya, who is, as I and Neil Tonge can testify, as great an onker. That must mean the Everoinye wish us to continue."

“Yes."

“I just wish—” And here Pompino sounded positively petulant. “I just wish they'd set us down where we are to set about our work for them!"

I almost laughed, for Pompino's expression and attitude were downright comical. But this was serious business. And that, as any sane man knows, is comical in this insane world, anyway.

“As they have not, we must make our own way. And, Pompino, my friend, think of the things we have done, to fight our way through the pirates of the Koroles, to have taken a swordship—to have saved our lives."

He sniffed. “You think these things constitute a Jikai?"

“Oh, no. Nothing as grand as that."

“To tell you the truth, Jak, I am not sorry to get out of a swordship. The noise of the oarslaves distresses me, the way they all rise up and then hurl themselves backwards, the clashing of their chains, their grunts of effort. I did not think it would be like that."

“You do not mention that sometimes they stink—"

“Not in my ships! I pay good gold for sweet ibroi—"

“You may disinfect their smell. You cannot disinfect the blot that slavery imposes on civilization by its very existence."

He stared at me, taken aback at my tone.

Then: “I share much of your philosophy, Jak—by the Pink Cheeks of Dandy Pullhard, I must do for we both serve the Everoinye!"

“Aye."

His words reminded me of the reaction of John Evelyn when in 1644 he went aboard a galley out of Marseilles. He was “amazed” at the “discomfort” of the galley slaves. He mentioned their rising and falling as one, the noise of the chains, the splashing crash of the “beaten waters” and how the slaves were “ruled and chastised without the least humanity.” Yet, he said, for all this they were “Cherefull, and full of vile knavery."

The vile knavery my comrades and I had been up to, when we'd been galley slaves, had been, besides conjuring a better share of food and water and ponsho fleeces, dreaming up ways of escape.

With an intake of breath and a gusty sigh, Pompino said, “Very well. We sail in Tuscurs Maiden. And I think Captain Murkizon will return in Blackfang. As for Redfang—"

“You could do worse than give her command to Naghan Pelamoin."

“My thought, exactly. Captain Linson has trained up a new Ship Hikdar to replace Pelamoin. But Chandarlie the Gut will sail with us."

We walked down through narrow streets to the jetties where Pompino's little squadron was moored. The air struck fresh and sweet, the suns shone. Now this free city of Matta was interesting to us—well, almost every city, not all, is interesting—by reason of one singular fact. The latest fashion craze here was for men to wear tightly restricting corsets. They were made from various bright materials, boned and laced, and worn over a tunic. The men strutted about with wasp waists. The women strode about uncorsetted and free, swinging, lithe and limber. As I say, fashion is a tyranny best steered clear of.

A breeze curled in off the sea. We rounded the last warehouse corner and Pompino stopped. He shaded his eyes.

“Now that,” he said, “is a ship. If I could buy the likes of her for my fleet, I would be a happier man."

I turned the corner. A Vallian galleon sailed into the port. Her flags flew bravely, the old Vallian flag, and the new, the new Union, with the yellow cross and saltire on the red ground.

“Yes,” was all I could say. I felt myself responding to that ship from my adopted homeland. She sailed superbly, her canvas trim and taut, a curl of spume under her forefoot. We watched as she took in her canvas and noted the smartness of her evolutions. Later on I managed to make an excuse and left Pompino to see about stores while I had myself rowed out to the galleon. Her name was Schydan Imperial, out of Vond. I knew her master, Nath Periklain, and my first words hushed the welcome on his lips.

“Jak, majister?"

“Aye, Cap'n Nath. Jak. Now let us go below and you must tell me all the news of Vallia."

This he did when we were ensconced in his stateroom, with wine and palines upon the shining table. The array of stern windows let in the light. Everything was as smart and spick and span as was to be expected in a galleon of Vallia. These beautiful ships were being built again, and were now venturing on trading missions to places—such as here in Pandahem—where seasons ago they would have been regarded as enemies.

The news Nath Periklain conveyed reassured me. Vallia might still not yet encompass all her lost domains, but what we had prospered. Our enemies were contained. Time alone would see the whole of Vallia once more united. He had nothing to tell me of the Empress of Vallia, and while I grieved over this blankness in my life, I felt strengthened. If mischance occurred and there was ill news of Delia, I would hear. Also, and this I did not forget, the Wizards of Loh who were our comrades would apprise me should events take place that would necessitate my immediate return. I could breathe easier. By Zair! I'd not spend another moment adventuring out in these foreign lands if Delia or my own country needed me. And there is no pretension, no pride, in this, merely a sober matter-of-fact statement.

I took the opportunity of writing letters, many of them, for Nath Periklain to deliver when he returned to Vond.

“An argenter?” he said at one point. “But, majister—I mean, Jak—my ship is at your disposal."

“Thank you, Cap'n Nath. But you have your duty and your living. I have my own duties to perform.” I sipped the wine, a splendid Gremivoh. “Our foes thrive in north Pandahem."

“May Opaz in his glory strengthen your arm, maj—Jak—as you strike them down!"

“I do have a request—"

“Name it!"

I did not smile; but these crusty old seadogs dearly love to display their adaptability, and their capacity to produce miracles. “All I would ask is a length of scarlet cloth."

He called in his steward and in no time a length of high-quality scarlet cloth was produced. I nodded, pleased.

“My thanks, Cap'n Nath."

“And is that all?” He nodded to my waist where the thraxter hung. “A rapier and main gauche?"

“We-ell...” I was tempted.

They were brought in by the steward, a matching pair in a balass box. They were fine work, balanced, sprung, elegantly finished. My resistance crumbled.

“A gift, majister, a token of esteem."

To refuse would have insulted him. So with a single guilty twinge, I strapped them on. They felt good.

“More wine?"

So we talked and drank companionably and the suns descended across the land and the lamps were lit. Presently I rose.

“It is time for me to go, Cap'n Nath. I give you my thanks for your hospitality and your gifts. I shall not forget."

“And you are for Tomboram? Bormark? I have been there but once. The folk do not much care for Vallians."

“Unfortunately, that is so. But do you not think that after we helped eject the Hamalese they will look more kindly upon us?"

“By Vox! They should!"

“Well, that I shall soon find out. Remberee, Cap'n Nath."

“Remberee, majist—Jak!"

He'd told me a little of his history, for he was known as a captain among the Captains of Vallia. His eldest son, having gone for a mercenary, had been lost to all knowledge until the Times of Troubles. Then he'd returned to take up sword in defense of his own country. He was now, this strapping son of his, said Nath Periklain, a shiv-Hikdar in the 2EYJ—the Second Regiment of the Emperor's Yellow Jackets.

“A rapscallion bunch,” I said. “And with the ESW the best fighting fellows an emperor could have around him."

Examination of the rapier revealed the neatly incised mark of the Brudstern, that magical flower shape, on the forte close to the guard. Magical or not, many a fighting man of Kregen will not handle a weapon that does not bear some such mark to draw mysterious forces into the blade.

“By the Blade of Kurin!” exclaimed Pompino when he saw the matched set of the rapier and left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar. “A fine weapon, indeed, and the dagger also."

We had talked of the fashion—new to these parts—of rapier fighting, and Pompino was aware that up north the fashion had been well-established over the seasons. “All the same, I doubt these rapiers in the midst of a battle."

“Sometimes,” I said. “It depends on the battle and what your opponents are using and doing. A rapier can be extremely useful. But, of course,” I added with some judiciousness, “it is always a sound principle to carry a second battle sword."

“Oh, aye."

My suggestion that I'd picked up the matched set from a sailor down on the docks who had no real idea of the true worth passed muster. Pompino merely indicated that, if it pleased me, he would like to foin a little and see how this rapier went compared to others.

We only got into two fights during that short stay in Matta, and they were scrapes, hardly worth the mentioning save for the fact that in the second Pompino used the rapier and main gauche. Afterwards, as we strolled along in the moons light with the scent of Moon Blooms in our nostrils, he confided: “A handy weapon, if a trifle long. I think I may take it up, for I have seen, and you have told me—"

“Sometimes a rapier is perfect, sometimes it is a fool's weapon. Just be prepared for all eventualities."

“We sail with the tide on the morrow. So?"

“So a further wet would seem to be in order."

“By the pot belly of Beng Dikkane, you speak sooth."

We found a tavern smothered in Moon Blooms, the sign cracked but still with enough paint to tell us this was The Spotted Llancrimoil. In we went. The ale was good and the wine a trifle better, all imported and not cheap. We sat back and stuck our feet out and surveyed the company. These folk were mainly seamen, a few merchants and the sprinkling of rogues.

Captain Murkizon found us there.

He had been drinking. His red face looked like the monstrous countenance of Zim witnessed through a sandstorm. He blurted out the words he had evidently been storing up in his heart.

“Horters! I am being sent back in Blackfang in disgrace! I hew to my own convictions. If events prove me wrong, that does not dishonor me! Horter Pompino! I crave your forbearance."

I remained very quiet, pushed back in my seat against the paneled wall. No one took any notice of us, and a fight was developing further along where a thief had been caught with the coins between his fingers.

Speaking quite mildly for him, Pompino said: “We sail with Captain Linson in Tuscurs Maiden, as you know."

“Very well! Let me sail in her. I will serve as Ship Hikdar, Ship Deldar—I will hand and reef and steer!’”

“Captain Linson—"

“Oh, I know!” Murkizon vented his bitterness. “He dislikes me. He considers me a loud-mouthed buffoon. But I know what I know. Let me sail with you, Horter Pompino. You will not regret the decision."

Pompino hesitated and cast a look in my direction. I leaned forward. “It is a matter of honor,” I said, and sat back.

“This means, Cap'n Murkizon, that Larghos Standur, who was Ship Hikdar in Blackfang and has been acting Captain, must now be confirmed in that rank. You understand that?"

“I understand, Horter Pompino. I agree!"

So the deal was concluded. Murkizon would sail with us. Pompino exhibited his customary Khibil skill and avoided any argy-bargy over-position by taking Murkizon on as supernumerary.

During this whole interview, Captain Murkizon had not once called upon any part of the anatomy of the Divine Lady of Belschutz.

Chapter sixteen

Of the recantation of Quendur the Ripper

One Kregish word for coward is Jikarna. This is a compression of the universal word Jik for martial matters, and arna, which means the absence of. Captain Murkizon by his manner clearly realized and feared that the imputation that he was jikarna would be made against him. I, for one, and Pompino for two, knew he was no coward. He had been right. But he was in that truculent, bellicose mood in which he might do anything foolish and reckless to redeem himself in his own eyes.

“I shall go with you, Horter Pompino, and you may rest assured that—"

“Queyd-arn-tung,” said Pompino, and the brick-red-faced barrel of muscle had the sense to know when enough had been said and to shut his black-fanged winespout.

So Tuscurs Maiden joined a local convoy and sailed north.

Having formed an opinion of Captain Linson I was not at all surprised that however sharp-tongued he was, however cutting, and however amused at Murkizon's expense, he did not make any capital out of Murkizon's clear inner turmoil. Linson, like us all, respected the red-faced barrel of a swordship captain and understood the reasons for his conduct vis-à-vis the Shanks. He and Larghos the Flatch spent a deal of time in each other's company. The argenter sailed on and with various ports of call astern of us we rounded the northeastern corner of Pandahem. We sailed along the coast of Jholaix.

Ah, Jholaix! No need to elaborate on the thirsty comments made by the hands as we watched the land draw near, and headed the moment we made port for the nearest tavern. Jholaix!

Here it was that we had put a first check to the crazy ambitions of the Empress Thyllis of Hamal. She'd started up her insane schemes again, of course, with the help of the Wizard of Loh Phu-Si-Yantong, whom she knew as the Hyr Notor. Well, both of them were dead and gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce. There was the uhu, the hermaphrodite, Phunik, to concern the future. We had not heard the last of her, him or it.

Because even in the lowest taverns of Jholaix the wines were superior—except for the dopa dens, of course—the hands might reel back to the ship yodeling their hearts out yet never have a black-dog the next morning. Hangovers were bad for trade, said the folk of Jholaix.

Due north of where we now sailed lay the island of Valka.

A mere miserable thousand miles or so away—Valka! No, I would not think of my paradise island stromnate, and always I thought of that jewel island, of the high fortress of Esser Rarioch, of the gardens and calmness and the joyousness, the laughter of my friends and family. No. Those days would come again, they must, in the belief of the light of the Invisible Twins made manifest in the glory of Opaz.

“Dreaming, Jak?"

And, sunk in thoughts, at first I did not recognize my chosen name, and so turn to smile at Pompino.

“Dreams? Aye, Pompino."

“Well, you are lucky you have no wife to get away from."

I turned away, sharply, and concealed the expression on my face.

But willy-nilly, the days passed. We passed the border between Jholaix and Tomboram, and the port city and capital of Pomdermam lay ahead. We had been shuffling along in convoy and doing the usual business of tramp ships, picking up cargo here and discharging it there, hiring our carrying capacity and earning a living. For Pompino and me, this chartering was mere cover to our deeper designs.

For Captain Murkizon, this chartering and carrying and chaffering—not to mention chattering—seemed an affront, a mere matter of base business to a swordship captain.

For Captain Linson, master, this was how he made his living, and he was sharp at it. For every copper ob that was recorded in the accounts meticulously kept by the Relt stylor Rasnoli and which would, after necessary deductions, arrive in Pompino's coffers, perhaps as much as a quarter ob reposed with Captain Linson. This was not to do him an injustice. He, like any sensible skipper, looked out for an early retirement.

Expressed in latter-day terms, twenty percent was a fair rake-off.

Pompino was as well aware of this habit as any other shipping owner. He closed that eye. He had to. So we sailed on westwards. The northern coast of Pandahem had been a fairy-tale place to the reivers from Vallia. In the old days the galleons and swordships prowled these coasts, snapping up prizes, and the enmity smoldered between the two islands, to break into flames of violence and hatred when interests clashed.

At the least, the ambitions of Hamal and their frustration had brought a cessation to most of the hostility between Pandahem and Vallia. I say most. Men and women do not change their ways overnight, in normal life, very easily.

Westward lay the country of Menaham, and its people, the Bloody Menahem. They posed problems for the future. They had welcomed the arrival of Hamal, had cooperated, had sought to conquer and enslave their neighbors. Their next-door neighbor to the west, Iyam, had suffered. Beyond them, in the northwest corner of the island, lay Lome. Now there reposed a puzzle for me personally.

Queen Lushfymi of Lome, known as Queen Lush, had sought our aid and protection in Vallia after she had managed to throw off the yoke of Phu-Si-Yantong. She was quite clearly determined to marry my son Drak. Delia did not approve. We would like Drak to marry Seg's daughter, Silda. Well, the future held some thorny projections there, assuredly...

At the moment my attention must concentrate on trying to rid Pando's kovnate of Bormark of the vile Leem Lovers of Lem. If the cult was widespread in Pandahem, then that would be a beginning of a clearance. And you may well and easily guess at some of my dark thoughts and apprehensions. Pando, whom I had known as a young imp, might so easily have been swayed, turned, drawn into practices that in other circumstances he would have spurned. If Tilda the Beautiful was drinking as heavily as rumor suggested, Pando would receive no support from his mother.

Captain Linson was anxious to get into Pomdermam, the capital and chief port city of Tomboram. Tuscurs Maiden was in need of an overhaul. She had sailed a goodly distance and her bottom, although not as foul as would have been the case on Earth, was still in need of cleaning. Pompino pulled his moustache and frowned at the news.

“Does that mean there will be a delay, Captain?"

“A careen will take time, horter."

“I see."

I wondered if Pompino did see. Shipping magnates tend to move the colored markers on their maps and expect their ships magically to move from spot to spot about the globe. Mere fiddly details like fresh rigging and clean wood and careening to scrub the bottom somehow often fail to become integrated into the calculations.

“We can take passage in a coaster to Bormark,” I suggested.

“Four days, perhaps,” said Linson. “To take off the worst."

Difficult to judge. That, to me, indicated a reasonably thorough job, given the area of the ship's bottom. I kept my mouth shut.

Most of the pirates we had rescued from the Shanks had disappeared in the port of Matta. But Quendur the Ripper and three of his fellows had elected to join us. Their swordship had been burned. They had nothing else. Captain Linson, in his acid way, had sniffed and acquiesced, and appointed Nath Kemchug among others to keep a damned sharp eye on the renders. During a long life on Kregen a man or woman might do many things between birth and the Ice Floes of Sicce—hoping as ever to advance to the sunny uplands beyond. Quendur had once been an honest sailorman, and he fitted in, having been severely shaken by his experiences with the Shanks.

Now he stepped forward on the deck to speak.

“Four days, horters. It is not long. And a coaster is subject to many perils here."

“You would know, indubitably, by Horato the Potent!"

“Aye, horter."

The odd fact about Quendur, known as the Ripper, was his continuing perplexity in the face of life. One took the impression that life had rushed on him, taken him unawares, driven him into deeds and adventures that were as much a surprise to him as a challenge. He'd explained how he'd become a render, a familiar story of unjust oppression and the lash, of chains and starvation, and of a breaking out and a lusting after revenge.

He conceived he owed Pompino and me, as well as the company, a debt of gratitude. Well, he did, after a fashion. That we had not had him strung up in Matta was no doubt a weakness on our part. But he proved himself a good fellow, once he'd got the dark bitterness out of him. The bloodlust died after his experiences with the Shanks. Only the bloodlust against the Leem Lovers remained.

Salvation does exist.

A great shock, a traumatic experience, the realization that one has thrust one foot over the abyss, this can haul a person up short. It makes them look afresh at the situation, makes them take stock. Salvation? Well, in Quendur the Ripper's case he forswore his old ways, vowed with a sincerity we took as genuine to hew to the ways of honest commerce upon the high seas and among the islands. He was transformed.

The three who elected to stay with him, two men and the woman, Lisa the Empoin, appeared to share his views. Lisa, in particular, clearly relished this fresh chance at life as an honest woman. And, make no mistake about it, they were useful about the ship and excellent seafarers.

Lisa and Quendur made plans to earn enough to buy an old ship and so go into the merchanting trade themselves. I fancied they would receive substantial, if surreptitious, help.

So we drew near the port of Pomdermam. One of the two lighthouses lay in ruins. The pharos had the appearance of having been struck by lightning. This was not the pharos built and operated by the Todalpheme, the wise savants who monitor the weather and the tides; but the one owned by the king. Its ruins depressed me as we glided past.

Was this an omen, a reminder of what had happened in Tomboram, a portent of a future dark and ominous?

Pompino's own view of his achievements here I knew would be harsh to himself, strict in his ruthless disparagement of any performance less than perfect. He had had a temple burned and scattered the worshippers. He'd told me enough for me to grasp at what he had achieved, and, also, at what was left to do. Down in Tuscursmot the adherents of the Silver Leem were in confusion; up here they still needed attention.

How many more were there? How many others of the abominable temples were there scattered about Pandahem, about the other lands of Paz? Now that I believed the Star Lords had turned their faces against the Silver Wonder, it seemed to me I stood a good chance of finding out, a damn good chance, by Krun!

“Brassud, Jak! Brace up! You look as though you've lost a zorca and found a calsany!"

“Finding the calsany,” I said in a voice far too heavy, “would be a triumph."

“Oh!” Pompino put his crafty Khibil head on one side, very foxy, very bristly red, very shrewd. Ahead of us the dock area of the port opened out. “Oh? You're a close-mouthed fellow, all right, full of secrets. So you won't tell me—"

“If there was anything substantial to tell, I'd tell."

“Just a feeling, is it? A deliquescence of the bowels?"

“A hollow insides, Pompino, hollow."

“A breath of the Ice Floes has touched you, my friend.” Pompino spoke briskly, perking up, his whiskers arrogant. “You need a long draught and a laugh—although a laugh would, I think, crack your face to pieces."

He was right, of course. On Earth we say that someone has walked over our grave; on Kregen they refer to an icy breath from Sicce. I shook my shoulders, saw that we'd take a bur or two to get in, and went below with my kregoinye comrade. We downed a few glasses; but they made no difference. I was awash with reluctance to carry on, to see Pando and Tilda again, to fight the Silver Leem, to carry out the wishes of the Star Lords. I had to do these things. But I felt I would do them unwillingly.

Yet I would like to see Pando and Tilda again and hear their news and find out how they fared. I hungered to see Lem the Silver Leem and his evil cult banished for good. And I was achieving a better understanding of the Everoinye with every meeting. So—why?

Ridiculous to suggest I felt this unease because I was going into the future without a plan and with no idea of what I was up against. By Vox! That is my usual situation!

Yet—yet that is not quite true. I do have plans, quietly tucked up my sleeve. I eyed Pompino.

“If we just burn the first temple we run across—"

“We will burn the first and the last, Jak!"

“Oh, aye. We can do that. By ourselves or with help. But—what then?"

“Why, then we go home."

“Yes, but, if the temple burns, the beliefs will linger on. They'll rebuild—"

He drank and poured fresh and did not answer.

I went on: “We can hardly kill them all."

“This King Nemo the Second. I hear he is a flat slug. If we can sway him, make him see with clear eyes, he will see to all that end of the business for us."

“If."

“Well—” and here Pompino spoke with some brusqueness. “Have you some better scheme?"

“No."

“Drink up! We will find the temple and burn it and then see what the Leem Lovers do."

Privately, I wondered just how far this haughty Khibil comrade of mine would get with fat King Nemo the Second.

Tuscurs Maiden duly picked up her moorings, and discharged her cargo, and then the master and the hands set about the task of cleaning her bottom. A small creek an ulm along the coast provided a nicely sloping beach, and there were careening lines and stakes provided. Pompino did not hire slaves for any of the work, whereat a few dark looks drifted about the ship. I hung about taking a note of what went forward, a professional interest not blunted over the years giving me an insight. Pompino just imagined you simply tilted the boat over and scraped away.

“There is more to it than that."

“Well, I am for the races. Some fool is backing his sleeths against zorcas—"

“Then he'll lose his money."

“Assuredly. Quendur the Ripper is going along, for he has business—I did not ask. So is his woman. They have been given leave. You're coming, of course—"

“Perhaps."

But, in the end, I went along with them to see the races in Pomdermam's merezo, the race track carved out of the side of a hill. The view was splendid from the terraces. As was duly surmised, the idiot's sleeths lost to the zorcas. Well, I ask you, in this day and age, to find anyone who still thought a sleeth could outrun a zorca!

Then we hied ourselves off to the town to find a wet.

On the shady side of a small tree-bowered square a tavern swung a sign proclaiming it to be The Trident and Crown. An interesting name, although I took scant notice of it at the time. Just as we were about to enter, Pompino's eye was caught by the shop abutting. A smaller sign said that this was the time of opening. Pompino looked and walked across. Above his head on bronze brackets a down-at-heels signboard creaked as though ready to fall apart. The paint flaked everywhere, and the boards warped. Originally the sign had read NALGRE THE EDGE. At some time past, judging by the fractionally brighter paint, the word EDGE had been obliterated and the word POINT substituted.

Rapier and dagger work were well established here in North Pandahem.

“I left here somewhat hurriedly,” commented Pompino, pushing open the door. “I've a mind to buy myself a good matching pair, similar to those you swindled that poor sailorman out of."

I hung my head, and we went into the swordsmiths.

When we emerged into the suns light Pompino swung a goodly rapier on his left hip and a matching main gauche on his right. I gave him a wide berth.

“You'll do me an injury with those things,” I said. “After you've done one to yourself, of course."

“I've handled these pig-stickers before—"

“Oh, aye."

In the Trident and Crown we found a quiet corner by a window and ordered up ale. This was not particularly fine ale, and Pompino made a face. He leaned back, and then came out with what had been on his mind, among other things. “Anyway, that rascal Quendur, oh, yes, he may have repented of his evil ways. But he spoke up against going on by coaster just so he could see about his business here."

“I don't doubt it. He is a reformed character; but he is still as cunning as a leem.” I sipped. “What was the business, do you know?"

“I've no idea.” Pompino leaned forward to the window. “But there he goes now, with his woman. He looks hangdog enough. Let's ask him."

Pompino shoved open the window and called. Quendur looked up as though stuck in the rump by Pompino's new rapier. He saw us in the window of the tavern. He smiled, took Lisa's arm, and hurried across. When he sat down at our table with Lisa, he and she both looked bright of face, flushed, and they breathed rapidly.

When the serving girl brought ale, Quendur drank the lot off in one go. He rubbed his right hand reflectively. Lisa smiled.

“Business all settled?"

“Aye, horter Pompino. Settled and settled well."

“That's good, then."

“Aye. And bad for some.” And Quendur laughed.

A brightness about him kept breaking through that hangdog look. He bubbled with some inner excitement, as though still high on adrenalin, as though he'd just pulled off a deed to remember. Lisa hung on his arm.

Not too long after that a carrying chair borne by four Brukaj diffs with patient bulldog faces and liveries of blue and white halted outside the Trident and Crown. The curtains were half-drawn. A Rapa stuck his beaked nose toward the tavern door, twirling a thick stick. Two more Rapas, following on, halted. One immediately turned back and ran off. I watched this byplay in the drowsy square with faint interest, trying to summon up some enjoyment from the thin beer and making up my mind to take off and find a better eating establishment.

The lead Rapa turned to the curtained chair and spoke to the occupant. The Brukaj chair-carriers squatted down, resting. The square rested, too, in the declining suns.

Presently a double file of soldiers marched up, wearing the king's livery, as I recalled. They were led by a Hikdar, who strutted on in a way at once important and grotesque. The men halted by the palanquin and the Rapa spoke to the Hikdar.

Just about then, I suppose, the old itch breezed. I should have suspected mischief sooner. But the air here breathed sweetly, conducive to ease. Guards could be lowered, it had appeared. On Kregen—most parts of Kregen—that is a mistake.

I stood up.

“What, Jak—?"

“Quendur—was your business of—?"

Before I finished he leaned past me to look out the window. His face drew down. The woman put a hand on his arm.

“That is the rast!” he said. “I gave him a good hiding and the impudent cramph returns for more! Well, I can accommodate him!” With that, Quendur leaped up and fairly hurled himself through the open doorway. He roared straight at the carrying chair, screeching his fury and hatred...

Chapter seventeen

Cash for Lash?

It was all our own fault. Well, it was really Pompino's fault. That fiery Khibil turned into a real tearaway when he sensed his honor was imputed. But, then, no. No. Really it was my fault. As usual. I ought to have tripped Pompino up as he roared out of the tavern after Quendur while we sized up the situation.

As it was—here we were.

In chains.

No novelty for me, for that intemperate Dray Prescot who ran headlong and foolishly into danger. But for Pompino the harsh iron chains galled with much more than mere physical restraint. His honor was affronted. He felt degraded.

The occupant of the carrying chair, one Pamcur Ovin, a notable merchant and slave dealer, had been the business Quendur had occupied himself with. Pamcur Ovin had received a thorough thrashing. Now he brought up the king's guards, the law and order here, and sought revenge.

When the guards restrained Quendur, we might perhaps have made a case for ourselves and argued it all out. But when they callously beat Lisa and knocked her to the ground, Pompino's hot Khibil blood sent him passionately to her assistance. So I'd been drawn in. And the iron nets and the chains had risen and fallen, and here we were, bound by chains and lying in a stinking dungeon cell awaiting punishment.

Quendur attempted to apologize; but Pompino, his whiskers electric with fury, would have none of that.

“Had I known, Quendur, I'd have been more forceful with them! You are not to blame. When I see this King Nemo I'll let him have a piece of my mind. Aye, by all the devils of Armipand!"

“This Pamcur Ovin is the rast who ruined my family and had me sold into slavery.” Quendur's savage face bore the marks of bruises. The single torch outside the cell fluttered dark shadows across his eyes. “But I think the law will not bring you to that, horters."

“They've put me in chains,” said Pompino, with a wealth of evil meaning in his words.

“Yes; but that is because you resisted, and you too, Horter Jak. I will be sold again; you may receive only a flogging and a fine—"

“Only!"

“It will be painful."

“Wait until I get my hands on that cramph Ovin!"

“That is what I swore."

I said, “What are our chances of escape?"

His mouth twisted. “Precious few."

“Still, there must be a way."

Lisa, hanging in her chains as we were, said, “I will offer to—"

“No,” said Quendur.

Pompino and I, sensibly, said nothing on that score.

Our jailer brought in pannikins of water and rinds of dry bread and moldy cheese. His name was Trai Naghan. The atra swinging on its chain about his neck was large and ornate. This amulet afforded him great comfort. He was in body long and thin and wiry. There was, really, only half a body there, for his left ear, eye and arm were missing, and he limped favoring his left leg. He'd been chewed up by a leem in youth, and had escaped with his life. Trai is one Kregish word for luck, so that he was called Lucky Naghan.

“They're putting up the flogging frames now,” he said in a cheerful voice. “They've a left-handed Brokelsh and a right-handed Rapa."

So we were to be flogged jikaider, until the lashes crisscrossed over our backs and diced our flesh to the bone.

“And the woman?” Pompino said.

“Maybe. She kicked the Hikdar of the guard where it did him no good.” Trai Naghan spat reflectively. “I wish I'd been there to see that."

We drank the stale water and ate the hard bread and green cheese. It kept us alive. They were in no hurry to deal with us, and we heard from Trai Naghan that they awaited a great lord to oversee the proceedings. This made no sense to us, and so we hung and suffered others’ pleasure.

“Of course,” he told us in his chirpy cheerful way, “If you cannot pay the fines, they will not flog you so hard."

Quendur emitted a nasty-sounding snort of disgust.

Pompino lifted his head. “Oh. Why?"

“Why, dom, they won't want to damage the merchandise."

That was explanation enough. If we couldn't pay the fines, the authorities would chastise us in some unpleasant but not too-damaging a way—and then they'd sell us as slaves.

We had to pay to be flogged, and to be thankful we could afford that punishment.

A nightmare quality of incongruousness in our situation afflicted me either with a sense that this could not really be happening or that it was a typical Dray Prescot imbroglio. Here we were, storming up to Tomboram to put down the followers of the Silver Wonder, and finding ourselves smartly locked up in chains awaiting chastisement for a stupid brawl. It was enough to make a fellow spit granite chippings.

The torch sputtered and banged and smoked and dimmed. Quendur let out a groaning laugh in his best sound-effects way.

“Even our light is to be taken from us."

Kregans grow up accustomed always to objects having two shadows, the word for shadow is singular but refers to the two—one reddish, the other greenish—cast by the suns. In a surprisingly large number of countries the folk are psychologically disturbed if there is only one light. One torch, one candle, is a catastrophe not to be borne. I have seen a family cut a rushlight in half, shaking, to light both ends and reinstate normalcy in the world of their home. The Great Death and the Great Birth of the Overlords of Magdag, when they cower away in their newly built and dedicated megaliths, is occasioned perhaps as much by the eclipse of the suns’ effect in throwing just one shadow, as by their dread belief that the red sun swallows up the green. I'd seen the horrors then, and had escaped, somehow. I recalled that I, Dray Prescot, was a Krozair of Zy. I'd broken free then. Was I any less a man now that I'd done so much on Kregen and gone through so many ordeals, and discovered such happiness with Delia?

Was I less of a man than that foolish, headstrong Dray Prescot who bashed so intemperately against anything and anyone who sought to do him a mischief?

The feeling of self doubt was—at first—heightened by what then passed between Quendur and Lisa. This fear of a single light source and a single shadow, so odd to terrestrials accustomed to having just one little yellow sun in their sky, is not explicable by geography, nation or race. Some people experience the fear; others do not. Those who do make a point of staying safely indoors with two lamps burning when there is only one moon in Kregen's night sky.

Now Quendur said: “Lisa. They must kill me before any harm comes to you."

Even as I wondered if that could be any comfort to Lisa the Empoin, she turned her head to stare at Quendur. His eyes were fast shut.

“Quendur,” she said. “We will survive, as we have before and will again. You will see, mishme, I promise you."

When she called her man mishme a host of memories rushed to torture me. It seems to me that in reporting on the languages of Kregen I have leaned heavily toward insult and harsh command, of the harder and uglier aspects of that beautiful tongue. Maybe this is a mere result of many of my experiences there. The languages are filled to overflowing with words of love. Expressions of respect, affection, comradeship, admiration, fill page after page of the dictionaries, the hyr-lifs of the spoken and written word. If I neglect them, often substituting terrestrial terminology, that may perhaps be because tenderness comes to me only from a few, a very few people. Mishme. What does that word mean? My love, my heart, dear one—all these and nothing of sickly sentiment about the meanings, either. Kregans—or most of them—are robust when it comes to talk of love.

So I thought of Delia, and hungered, and felt lost, and so grew a fresh resolve that was almost shattered as Pompino burst out with all his fiery Khibil passion:

“Pay good broad red gold pieces to be flogged! That is a strange custom! Do they think I'll pay to have my back striped?"

“If you do not,” said Quendur, still with his eyes closed, “then, Horter Pompino, they will sell you as slave."

“And so they shall!” bellowed my comrade. “I'll be a slave and slit the throats of the guards and disembowel the damned slavemasters and slaveowners, and all that before I escape!” He swung his reddish whiskers at me. “Are you with me, Jak?"

“Oh, aye,” I said in a desert-dry voice. “Oh, aye. I've been slave and escaped. But think on this, Pompino the Rash. Here in Tomboram the king will send you to the swordships, if he wills. You have seen the oarslaves—"

Pompino blinked his eyes, twice, very rapidly. Then: “Oarslaves! Oarslaves! If I set my mind to escaping no miserable whip-deldar will stand in my way! I tell you this when by our comradeship there should be no need."

“There is no need. As you very well know. But—"

Quendur interrupted, in a hoarse breathy voice.

“Think on, Horter Pompino! A flogging is one thing, but to serve in the swordships at the looms..."

“Oh,” I snapped out, somewhat tartly. “Oh, he'll survive, Quendur, he'll survive."

Pompino bristled up his whiskers and looked murderous.

Lisa spoke in her turn, hushed but tart with it. “As San Blarnoi says: ‘Blowing the frothy head off is one thing.’”

Quendur let out his gurgling groaning laugh and Pompino sniffed with audible affront. I did not laugh. By Zair! This was no situation in which to break down. There were things we could do, one of which was to pray, which we did fervently; the other was to work on our chains, which we abandoned very quickly. Apart from that we could only think and talk.

Each country of Kregen has its own peculiar little ways, in large things as in small. Customs strike across geographical boundaries irrespective of creed or race. As in this devilish business of flogging. Ol’ Snake appears in many hideous guises. The Cat's claws are variously unsheathed. Over in the Flower Country in Balintol they pronounce ferocious sentences larded with intimidatory inventories of thousands of lashes. The victim is stripped and tied up. The whip-deldars use what they call the lintash or the tashlin depending on who wields the instrument. This lash consists of a bunch of full-petalled flowers of many varieties. When the victim is struck the petals caress his body. Each petal is counted as one stroke. The velvety flowers do not break the skin, do not sting, do no physical harm whatsoever. But the victim is shamed and chagrined, scored by mental blows far more savage than any lacerations of the skin. The Flower Country of Balintol is a peace-loving, gentle land, with its own concepts of integrity.

Here, in North Pandahem, we were to be flogged jikaider, criss-cross like a chequer-board, and we'd be lumps of raw sausage meat at the end.

The lord who was to oversee our flogging turned up and we were dragged out into a courtyard where the stone walls overhung in menace and the suns did not shine. The flogging frames awaited their human freight. There were many guards.

We were tied to the flogging frames, mother naked.

The lord appeared. Well, he was a notor of Tomboram. His black beard was trimmed short, and pebbled sweat drops studded its edges against his skin. He looked just a man, an apim, handsome in a cruel way, sharp of feature, haughty of demeanor, sumptuously clad. Something about him reminded me of Pando, a mature version of the Pando I had last seen as a bedraggled young man dragged from under the feet of calsanys.

This was the way Pando would look in these latter days...

Pinned to the front of the lord's ornate robes a small silver device glinted. I looked closer, squinting. A silver leem, a small imago of a silver leem, and with brown and silver ribbons...

Well, now...

Clearly, he was there in his official capacity as overseer of the king's justice. In this, Tomboram aped the ways of law-ridden Hamal.

The Rapa and the Brokelsh, wearing black breechclouts and stripped to the waist, rippled their lashes. Big, burly men, powerfully muscled, they took up their positions one a side to strike alternately. I looked at the lord, magnificent in his plumage and gold lace, and wearing that silver leem with the brown and silver ribbons. Just an ornament? I did not think so.

I turned my head a little and spoke to him gently, putting meaning into my words.

“By Flem! This is a poor pass. The rast Pamcur Ovin spoke against the Silver Wonder. He was justly chastised, by Glem—"

The great lord allowed a single ripple of surprise to disfigure his face. He did not look at me. He lifted a beringed hand.

“Shindi!"[i] He pointed at the whip-deldars and the guards. “Retire. I will interrogate the prisoners. Move!"

The guards and the two floggers stiffened up. With habitual unthinking obedience to a great lord's commands they obeyed instantly and trotted off. The lord turned a hard eye on me.

He used a formula I had heard in the temple in Ruathytu. I was able to give the correct reply. He said: “You are not of Tomboram?"

“No, notor. From Hyrklana and about the business of the Silver Wonder. I am honored to meet you. Llahal and Llahal, my name is Jak.” If lying would prevent my back being bashed into mincemeat I'd lie like a trooper.

“Llahal. I am Murgon Marsilus, Strom of Ribenor, Pallan of Prisons."

“Ah!” I said, with a wise air and foolishly. This did explain a great many items. It did not, for the moment, get us down off the flogging frames.

“In Hyrklana the man I wish to see is called the Hyr Prince Majister—"

“As here."

“Good, notor. Apart from fraternal greetings there is a message I carry—"

“Tell me."

“Well, notor—"

He gestured in an irritated way. “You are in Pandahem. You call me pantor, not notor."

“Yes, pantor. But if you are not the Hyr Prince Majister then you will appreciate my difficulty."

He may have been hard, a trifle vicious in his overweening authority; he was not a fool. He saw the situation.

“Agreed."

I said, “You will see, pantor, that we are in a somewhat unfortunate predicament here through no fault of our own."

He did not turn his head. He simply called out: “Lart!"

A Relt came running in, ink-stained, fluffy of feathers.

“Yes, master."

“The punishment has been carried out. So enter it in the records. Dismiss the guards and the whip-deldars. Bratch!"

The Relt stylor bratched, and this Murgon Marsilus took out his dagger and cut us free. Pompino would have jumped on him there and then. Luckily for Murgon Marsilus, he cut me down first because I was nearest, and so I was able to trip Pompino up and tip him onto his Khibil nose.

“He is wracked by cramp, pantor,” I said, swiftly, and took a good grip on Pompino's shoulder and so held him.

“Traitor!” he said with an evil look.

“Keep your black-fanged winespout shut, you fambly! We are in with a racing chance here."

Marsilus cut down Quendur last. Quendur and Lisa were well up with my scheme, empty-headed though it might be. We chafed our wrists and ankles. Lisa made no attempt to cover her nakedness; anyway, it would have been ridiculous after what we had been through. Marsilus marched us off through a tunnel doorway and into a square stone-walled room empty of everything save a table. On the table stood a jug of parclear. We drank—thirstily, damned thirstily, by Krun!

“You will have to pay the fines,” said Marsilus.

Pompino started to bristle up again at this; but I managed to stick an elbow into his ribs and he whoofled for a space. I sighed. “My comrade is still feeling the effects, pantor.” Holding down Pompino was like trying to stop a starving cat from a bowl of meat and milk.

“If you cannot pay—"

“We can pay, pantor."

“Then that is settled."

I did not think, then, what he was going on to say.

Our clothes were brought in by a small fellow, an apim, with a loose, wet-lipped mouth, whom Strom Murgon treated as a part of the furnishings. He was called Dopitka the Deft. With him came a hulking great Chulik wearing armor and weapons, breathing hard, his trunk a barrel of muscle, his tusks gilded and polished, his pigtail a dangling length of brilliant blue. His name was Chekumte the Fist, and he looked it, too.

“You may strap on your weapons,” said Strom Murgon. “These men are to be trusted, seeing they owe their livelihood to me. We shall go up to the temple and I will make the arrangements.” He looked around on us, brilliant and commanding. “And walk small. I risk much by my actions here."

“They will not go unrewarded, pantor,” I ventured to say. I ventured successfully, for he nodded briskly and marched us out of the door. We entered another courtyard where a closed carriage waited. The driver sat in a blue cloak, hunched, his whip over his shoulder. We entered the carriage and Dopitka the Deft closed the door.

Just as Marsilus sat down opposite me, I glanced out of the window. A man passed across the courtyard, walking fast, short cape billowing. He was dressed grandly, more grandly than Strom Murgon. The strom's face drew down into a black scowl.

“A friend of yours, pantor?” said Pompino, before I could kick him.

Murgon Marsilus, Strom of Ribenor, Pallan of Prisons, did not react as I expected. He continued to stare from the carriage as the man crossing the courtyard swung away and vanished in the arched entranceway.

“Friend? He is my cousin, Pando Marsilus, Kov of Bormark, and I shall surely kill him if he does not kill me first."

Chapter eighteen

"Dray Prescot! Let me go and I will surely kill you!"

Strom Murgon opened the door and jumped out. He bellowed up to the coachman: “Shindi!” and went loping into the entranceway after Pando.

Pompino looked at me. His look would have curdled steel at a hundred paces.

I said, “At least your back is not diced up."

“You degrade my honor, Jak! Why, I would have—"

“Quiet. Coachmen have ears as well as whips."

Quendur leaned forward.

“I did not understand all that went on. But whatever it was, horter, I thank you. I could not bear to see Lisa flogged."

“It's about time you called me Jak, like everyone else. As for what is going on, it is why we came to Tomboram. Now, Quendur, and you, Lisa, will take off as soon as we can get free of this handsome young Strom Murgon."

Pompino scrubbed up his whiskers.

“If that was the Kov of Bormark, he has changed mightily since I last glimpsed him."

“But we cannot leave you now!” protested Lisa.

“Your quarrel with Pamcur Ovin may have smoothed our way, Lisa the Empoin. Now you must not run more needless dangers."

“But—!"

I said: “Quendur, you must take care of your lady. We thank her. But this is our affair."

Quendur sat back. He looked suddenly raffish, like a pirate about to pounce. He looked—cocksure.

“Your affair it is and may be, Jak. But I will take thought about that."

“Mightily changed,” said Pompino. “He looked as though his best friend had died and his worst enemy had gained a crown."

My own view from the opposite direction had been of Pando's cape flowing out as he almost ran. Now what had that young imp of deviltry been up to?

We four sitting in the darkened carriage were still recovering from the shock of our recent experience. I took heart from Pompino's clear determination to push that aside and to concentrate on the future. Quendur suggested we do a mischief to the coachman—"Blatter him good and proper"—and take the coach and disappear into the city.

“Pompino and I have business with this Strom Murgon. He will prove of great use to us. We will play him along like a salmon.” We four spoke in conspiratorial whispers, there in the half-darkness of the carriage.

Pompino the Iarvin was not a crafty Khibil for nothing. He favored me with a quick bright glance of those shrewd eyes.

“Aye, Jak, we can do that. And then we burn the abominable temple. Then—"

“Then,” I interrupted with some warmth. “Then we see what this flat slug of a King Nemo can do. Is that your plan?"

“Aye."

Quendur and Lisa were listening with rapt attention.

“This Strom Murgon must be the son of Murlock Marsilus, brother to Marker Marsilus, who was Pando's father. Murlock usurped the kovnate; but Pando won it back.” I did not elaborate on the part played by Inch and myself in that. “I would guess this Murgon hankers to take the kovnate and succeed where his father failed. He is a strom of some potty little stromnate or other, this Ribenor. That will not satisfy him."

They stared at me as I whispered.

“He is a villain, then,” said Pompino.

“Probably. Certainly, if he is mixed up with Lem."

No reaction from Quendur or Lisa convinced me that Lem the Silver Leem was able to conceal the activities of his devotees from the ordinary folk. We were privy to the secrets only because we already had information enough to let us pry past that initial veil of secrecy. “If we destroy the temple and scatter the devotees we will materially aid Pando against his cousin."

“He seems,” said Pompino, “this Pando, Kov of Bormark, to mean a great deal to you."

How reply? I cursed my loose tongue and then attempted to brazen it out. “A great deal? Only as a tool to crush Lem."

Pompino sniffed. “You said you knew him—"

“When he was small. He would not remember me."

“It's always a chancy business dealing with great lords,” said Lisa.

Given the nature of lordship on two worlds, the instability of power, the corroding effect of authority, this often—too often—was Opaz's Literal Truth.

“And I'll tell you what this strom's face reminded me of,” said Quendur. “It was just like a sculpture in our temple of the demon face of the Devil of the Ice-Wind who guards the north shore of Gundarlo."

Something in this Strom Murgon's actions made me say: “Oh, come now, Quendur. He is not much like a Kataki, is he?"

“No. But the likeness was there, all the same."

“Each sculptor has his own ideas,” said Pompino, impatient at this talk. “Why do we wait? I agree with Quendur. Let us blatter—"

“Here he comes now,” said Lisa, quickly. We quietened.

Indeed, if the strom's face did not quite remind me of that of the Devil of the Ice Wind who hoots so mournfully and menacingly along the north shore of Gundarlo, he most certainly did bear a marked resemblance to any one of the host of minor demons whose portraits are so faithfully recorded from the bad dreams of artists all over Kregen. This was a trick of the indentation of his eyebrows over his nose. He breathed heavily.

“May Armipand take him!” he said, more to himself than us but not giving a damn if we heard. “You! Out! The kov wishes to inspect you. Bratch!"

This, I felt, was shouted as a sop to his own esteem. At his shoulder the Chulik, Chekumte the Fist, scowled down, hand on the hilt of one of his swords.

Pompino breathed in my ear. “Let us deal with these now, Jak, and get clear away—"

“Tsleetha-tsleethi,” I said. “Softly-softly. We must remember to maintain the aim. We play this fellow and use him to our ends."

Breathing as heavily as Strom Murgon, Pompino stomped out of the carriage. We followed and trooped back into the small bare room. The strom halted his Chulik outside and did not offer to go in with us. We halted in the center of the room. Pando waited for us.

Well, he did look splendid in everything except the cut of his jib. He'd been a young rip, an imp of deviltry, and lovable through all his pranks. Then he'd become a kov and it had gone to his head, and his mother, Tilda of the Many Veils, had begun to drink. And then—well, and then what? He had seen his army defeated in battle, he had crawled back, somehow, into the king's favor. He had held onto his kovnate. There were lines in his face, of course; but no more than any Kregan who can hope for better than two hundred years of life might expect. There was a nervousness about him, a jerky irritability I did not much care for. He kept rubbing the palm of his left hand over the pommel of his sword. The weapon looked to be plain enough, useful, and at odds with the rest of his gaudy get-up.

He stared at us. His brows drew down in a practiced grimace designed to intimidate. He saw me.

His expression did not change. His glance passed over me, over Pompino and Quendur, lingered on Lisa. We four just stood there like balass blocks.

“You have been allowed to go scot free. This has been done without my authority. What is your explanation?"

Pompino opened his foxy mouth and I said: “The Silver Wonder binds us all in comradeship, pantor."

He let a small twisting movement of his lips convey displeasure, hauteur, disgust with us lower orders—anything we wished to deduce. I own it, I began to entertain doubts about that young imp Pando in these latter grown-up days.

“You claim allegiance to Lem the Silver Leem?"

He didn't beat about the bush; bashed it straight out.

I did not answer at once. Caution in using the name of Lem was habitual to all devotees. Caution derived as much from chauvinistic pride as anything else, I judged, motivated the Leem Lovers in this. Pando nodded then, young, handsome, with betraying blueish smudges under his eyes and that continual rotating rubbing motion of his palm on the sword pommel. Before I'd decided to bash on with the story—in for a ponsho in for a vosk—he said: “You forswear allegiance to the Silver Wonder?"

“No, pantor,” I said. “Just that some names are not usually spoken before a Llahal, or the pappattu that Furry Silver and Dried-Blood Brown demand. That is all."

His eyes opened wide and he stood up straighter.

“You speak in a way to have your tongue torn out, rast!"

And, still, I couldn't be sure. Would Pando have joined up with Lem? If he had not, we would be lost to claim allegiance. And yet, and yet—Murgon must have told him, and the strom would not have done that if Pando was not a devotee.

“We mean no harm, pantor,” said Quendur, speaking up stoutly. Pando ignored him. He eyed me.

“You are the one called Pompino, from Tuscursmot? That is in South Pandahem.” He said that in a cuttingly dismissive way, a North Pandaheem barely tolerating a Pandaheem from the South.

“No. I am Jak."

He started, suddenly taking on a strange, wary look. He inclined his head a little, looking at me with those damned eyes of his bringing back the memories.

“You who call yourself Jak. I think I know you. We have met before."

I made no reply.

“Where was it, tiksum! Speak up. You would not have forgotten me, that is sure. I cannot recall everyone I have met in life. And you are one ripe for punishment."

I said: “I've given your backside a thumping before now, Pando, and I should have given you a few more, had your mother Tilda not been so—"

He rushed and tried to hit me.

I held his arm and we stood, glaring into each other's faces. His whole demeanor took on the frightful appearance of a fellow having a fit. He glared. He tried to speak, and swallowed, and his lips writhed. He spat in my face.

“Dray Prescot! You—you—let me go and I will surely kill you!"

“My name is Jak. I told you, Pando. My name is Jak."

“Yes, yes, yes! That I believe!” He called me all manner of vile and odious creatures. “You pretended to be called Dray Prescot, you pretended to be the Lord of Strombor, and I believed you! And then when the real Dray Prescot made himself Emperor of Vallia, mother and I knew he was not you! You—"

“Behave like a man, Pando, like a kov.” I hoped these stupid words might make him empty out his hatred, and then we could start over.

“I've met the Emperor of Vallia, when he was the Prince Majister. A cool, polite, stuck-up cramph—"

“Really? What was he like?"

“Nothing like you. Let go my arm and I shall thrash you and kill you—"

“How is your mother, Pando? Tilda the Beautiful?"

“You dare ask! You dare speak her name—"

“I am told she drinks."

He opened his mouth wide and, now, it was perfectly clear he would shout for his guards. I put my hand on his mouth, and pressed, and said: “We must talk over old times, Pando. When you are yourself again. But if your mother drinks then you had better not blame me."

He slobbered against my hand and tried to bite and I twisted him away. I whispered fiercely into his ear, downbent as I held him. “You remember me, Pando. I was your friend and I remain your friend. If you blame me for what has happened in your life you do me an injustice, and one I will not stand for. Inch was right. You needed to be shown more than I was prepared to show you, out of respect for your mother—"

He got a lip around my palm and slurped: “Let me go!"

That was what he meant; it sounded like porridge slopping from the saucepan to the plate.

I let him go and stood back. I said: “Remember. I remain your friend. If you insist on calling me enemy—"

His sword was out of the scabbard. He held it as though he had no idea on Kregen how it got there. He swayed. He sagged back against the bare table.

“We will see. Because once I—I will not have you killed out of hand. You must prove your friendship, for I have never forgotten you."

“That is something, then, you young imp."

His head snapped up. “I am the Kov of Borm—No. No, kings and kovs never meant much to you, did they?"

“No."

This meeting had not gone as any rational man might have expected it to go. The recriminations—yes, they were expected. After all, as far as Pando and Tilda knew, I'd simply walked out on them. They didn't know that treacherous King Nemo had had me drugged and shipped off like a bundle of washing to slave at an oar in a swordship.

And I was pushing away the central and most dire concern—Pando—Pando was an adherent of Lem the Silver Leem.

That did not bear thinking of.

My three companions had remained silent, and if I suggest this was an awed silence, that would not be too far from the truth. Now Pompino drew a breath and said: “We'd better—"

“Silence,” said Pando, and ignored my comrade Pompino and addressed himself once more to me.

“What happened to Inch?"

This did not surprise me. When Pando had been nine or ten—a goodly time ago now—he'd met us and we'd helped him and his mother and secured his kovnate of Bormark for him. Then I'd disappeared, and then Inch had disappeared. Inch had been around longer than I had. Pando, a young rip, would not forget these events of an impressionable youth so indelibly imprinted on his memory.

I said: “I have not seen Inch for a long time."

This was true, Zair forgive me. I went on: “Your King Nemo, the old King Nemo we woke up out of bed with a dagger at his throat—you remember?—had me chained and sent to the swordships—"

Pando flinched.

“Aye! And, after me, he had Inch likewise packed off to slave. Inch escaped, praise be to his Ngrangi. D'you think, lad, I'd have so callously abandoned you or your mother?"

“You should have said sooner—"

“Is all well?” Strom Murgon's voice floated in.

Pando's face took on a dark and hateful aspect.

“My cousin takes good care of me.” He shouted back: “All is well, Murgon. We shall be out presently.” He spoke without a quiver, a strong young man's voice, used to command. Then, to me: “Very good care. There is a matter between us I do not think can end but with steel."

“You will tell me when you want to, Pando. Now, I would like to see Tilda of the Many Veils—"

That down-droop to his face drew lines around his mouth.

“Yes, you are right, Dray—Jak. She does drink."

“And you do not blame me?"

“I did!"

“I thought so. But—"

“If King Nemo were not already dead and wandering the Ice Floes of Sicce, crying despairingly to find the way to the sunny uplands beyond, I think I would have sent him there."

“There is a new King Nemo, now, they tell me."

“A flat slug. He stands with Murgon against me."

“So you're in trouble—as usual."

At this he gave a small, half-smile that changed his face some way toward the impish look I remembered.

“And you! I need not be surprised that you're in trouble, that is endemic with you. I owe you much, and I have never forgotten. But, now is no time—I have to see the king and discharge tiresome business. Murgon will take care of you. I assume you have talked your way out of this predicament."

“A matter of punishment for a justified chastisement, and the Silver Wonder—"

“Ah! I own I am surprised that you..."

For a moment we stood silently, staring one at the other.

Then he said, “We will talk more on this.” He raised his voice: “Cousin Murgon!"

The strom slid in through the doorway, his sword half out of its scabbard. The shadow of the Chulik bulked at his shoulder.

“I am satisfied that you have acted correctly. I shall wish to see these people later. See to it."

Murgon's lips twisted above the beard. But he got out a polite reply. Pando swirled up that short cape, slapped his sword down hard, and took himself off. He strode out, to be exact; but that would convey an impression that was absent. Pompino glanced at me. I shook my head. So—out we all went and climbed once more into the waiting carriage.

This meeting with Pando had gone in a strange, almost eerie, way. What would the meeting with Tilda be like?

Chapter nineteen

Tilda

“But I am not ill!"

“Yes, you are."

“No, Horter Jak! I am not ill—"

“Lisa looks all right to me,” said Quendur. “She is a remarkable woman—"

“I agree,” I said. “I hold Lisa the Empoin in the highest esteem. Yet she is ill—or, she will say she is ill."

“Ah!” said Pompino the Iarvin.

“I'd never seen the sea until they took me away to be slave.” Lisa sat next to Quendur, very close, and his arm lay around her shoulders. “Then Quendur took the ship I was in, and threw overboard the disgusting wretch I was slave to. Quendur saved me—"

“As you have saved me a hundred times!"

These two looked at each other, and Pompino looked at me with an expression that said they'd forgotten anyone else existed. We were waiting in the carriage by a gateway where Strom Murgon had alighted to see about his business. I wanted to get Quendur and Lisa away, for Pompino and I would have to skip and jump before we burned Lem's temple. For Lisa to pretend to illness after the experience she had endured would be perfectly in keeping and understandable. By Krun, yes!

“They swear by the Gross Armipand up in these parts,” observed Pompino in a musing way. “This mass of corruption is the very antithesis of Pandrite the All Glorious. Or so I am told. I think, Lisa, you will have to call most groaningly upon the Witch Mipanda, vile wife of the Gross Armipand, when you are ill. And that will be in short order, believe me."

Lisa half-turned from Quendur's clutch. “Yes. I will be ill.” She smiled a pale smile. “That will not be difficult."

Pompino brushed up his reddish whiskers and looked pleased with himself. He was not named the Iarvin for nothing. “Then I shall take it upon myself to blatter this strom with some severity. Yes. By Horato the Potent, yes!"

“Ah...” I said. The caution in my tone brought Pompino's head around very smartish.

“What, Jak?"

“The plan is for us to continue on with the strom."

He looked disappointed.

“So it is, so it is. Well, there is always another tide."

“The Tides of Kregen roll forever,” quoted Quendur. “And you have to pull into your moorings sharpish to catch the right one."

“And when this one rolls in, it will not extinguish the fire we shall set.” Pompino bristled this out, all red and whiskery and his fierceness quite betraying his shrewdness.

I looked out of the carriage window and then, turning back, said: “As San Blarnoi says: ‘Every inch a gentleman and every foot a rogue.’ That sums up our Strom Murgon."

“Aye!"

“If it was not for Lisa—” began Quendur.

“We know."

“No one knows much of this cult of the Silver Leem. It is spoken of only in whispers, among sure friends. I know nothing of it. But I have been told not to ask questions.” Quendur had been a pirate, a ferocious render of the oceans; he looked sweaty and uneasy as he spoke of Lem the Silver Leem, knowing nothing of that debased religion. Humanity fears the unknown and we all know we fear the unknown, and knowing it is unknown and we fear it doesn't help at all.

A noise of footsteps and distant voices and the shake of the carriage as the coachman roused himself took my mind away from the habitual way Quendur and Lisa had avoided any recognition of the name of Lem when we'd used it before. Not allowing unknown and therefore unpleasant facts into your sphere of cognizance is one defense. The door opened and Strom Murgon climbed in. He looked murderous, as one might expect, and the carriage jolted into movement at once. We rolled out and ground across cobbles, lurching to the right as, I guessed, we negotiated the archway.

No one spoke. The sound of half-suppressed breathing filled the coach with the effect of underground bat caves, geysers of fury, exhalations of menace. I found, as is all too often the case, Zair forgive me, that I couldn't take all this overly seriously. The comic aspects came through too strongly. We were all into a desperate adventure; but it was a real laugh, all the way along...

Then, as we rolled through the streets in the darkened carriage, I fell into an introspection about our motives. Pompino just believed in bashing on and burning the temples of Lem. That would show ‘em, he'd claim. The Star Lords would be pleased and would reward him. But—but was this going to do any real and lasting good? The temples could burn; the Leem Lovers could build more. If someone hit you over the head and said: “Stop loving him—or her—and love me instead!” would you switch your love? If something in which you believed was destroyed, would you give up—or would you build again, and stronger?

We believed that Lem the Silver Leem was an evil cult. They tortured and killed little children, and this was reprehensible. But in a slave society where a child was mere property, like a chicken, an otherwise normal and decent person would see nothing remiss in these actions. If you could kill and eat a chicken for the gratification of your physical appetite, then to sacrifice a slave for the benefit of your spiritual wellbeing, to give worship to your god, was a perfectly normal act. It could reflect only credit upon yourself, gain you luster, store up treasure in heaven against the day of judgment.

We, Pompino and I, were committed by the Star Lords to oppose Lem the Silver Leem. We would burn the blasphemous temples and scatter the worshippers. But we had to do more than this. We had to do more than this. We had to set something better in view; we had to show the adherents of the Silver Wonder that they erred. That was the true task laid on us. That, then, was the battlefield where our future strife would be fought.

Yet, doubts remained. As I'd once been told, oligarchy was giving way to oligopoly. In religion, self-interest in worldly affairs overwhelmed self-interest in spiritual affairs. Once, Phu-Si-Yantong had attempted to obtain domination by his evil and pseudo cult, artificially created, of the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. That had failed. Always, the question remained: were the followers of Lem slipping into this materialistic method of gaining power and of retaining it?

Then Lisa the Empoin went into her fainting act, and I was once more in action. Well, by Vox, action is a great anodyne to thinking. And, as they say, wicky-werka.

“What is the matter with her?"

“She is overcome, pantor,” said Quendur, grabbing at Lisa who flopped all over Murgon. He drew back, sweaty, looking offended even in these circumstances that someone of the lower orders had touched him. Lisa let out a beautiful groan and clutched at Murgon.

“Stop!” he bellowed, and banged a ringed hand against the carriage roof. The carriage lurched and halted. The door opened and the loose-lipped face of Dopitka the Deft appeared.

“Pantor?"

“The woman is ill! Get her out of here—"

Lisa furnished up a superb slurping hiccough, quite clearly the prelude—at least to Murgon—of being violently sick all over him. Quendur was shouting out a string of nonsense, and Pompino joined in and managed to nudge Murgon along into Lisa. She retched. She brought up an enormous throat-clearing belching roar and opened her mouth wide—right over Murgon.

“Out!” he shrieked and pushed her away. Dopitka caught at Lisa's shoulders and she slid sideways. Quendur, still bellowing incoherently, poised and then pushed alongside Lisa. Together they more fell than stepped from the carriage. Shaking with disgust, Strom Murgon took out a yellow silk square and flapped away at forehead and beard.

The door slammed shut.

Just before the wood hit wood and the lock caught, I heard another bang from outside. Murgon flailed away with his silk. Outside a voice—I did not think it was Dopitka's, but it could have been—shouted: “Drive on, coachman!"

The carriage started. Murgon looked up.

I said: “It is all taken care of, pantor. She was clearly unwell.” Then, steeling myself, I rattled on: “It is very kind of you, pantor, to take care of us."

“Humph,” he said, or something like that, and wiped away sweat. “Dopitka is not such a fool as he looks. He will make sure they are safe."

If that thump I'd heard was what I thought it was, Dopitka would be in no position to take care of anyone—least of all himself—for some time.

It began to rain, the drops spitting against the roof and hissing at the closed windows.

The sound of rain did not muffle the grinding of metal-shod wheels on cobbles. That changed to a softer slurching as we rolled along a rutted way. Presently the rain stopped. Or, as the door opened and torchlight flared, to be more accurate, we had entered into a roofed enclosure. We alighted.

I looked back through the gateway. Stark against the lowering sky rose a pinnacled, turreted fantasia, a castle glimmering in the rain, frowning down. Between the gateway and the entrance to the castle the rain hung a sheeting curtain of glancing silver. The smell of damp ferns floated from the gate and the drops bounced like sprites.

“The king's palace,” said Murgon, shaking his shoulders. He still clutched his square of yellow silk, as though to be ready in case Lisa swooped down on him from the rain, mouth open. “The Chun-el-Boram. I must say it makes a splendid sight in the rain.” A stroke of lightning stitched blindness across our eyeballs; the thunder rumbled moments later.

Hostlers saw to the horses and the carriage trundled away. Murgon led us to a narrow door in the far wall. What the building in which we were might be I had no idea. There was no sign of Dopitka, or of the Chulik; Murgon made no comment. I guessed they were expected to be quick about looking after their lord. I did not think Dopitka would be so quick.

The place appeared to be a deserted palace. The rooms were large and well-proportioned, full of dust and cobwebs, and echoing our footsteps in a chancy fashion.

The Chulik, Chekumte the Fist, marched in after us carrying a torch. The light in its swirling illumination did ghastly things to the shadows to anyone of a nervous disposition.

“Where is Dopitka?"

“I do not know, master. He was not with the coach when I arrived.” The Chulik's face and pigtail glittered with raindrops.

“That tiresome woman,” said Murgon, and waved us to follow. Pompino glanced at me, and essayed a cheeky smile, and winked, and I kept my battered old beakhead graven as a heathen idol, and we all trailed off along the dusty corridors after Strom Murgon.

We went down stone stairways into the bowels of the earth.

Well, the adherents of Lem the Silver Leem habitually hid their temples. And the bowels, as I may have remarked before, are conspicuously correct for the adherents of Lem. The torch light fleered ahead of us, driving away the shadows, which clustered again at our backs. We shuffled along, heads down; but there was little need. This way had been traversed many times, and I would not have been surprised to learn the dust was carefully scattered by slaves after each secret meeting.

At the closed leaves of the entranceway ahead of us stood a single Chulik. He was armored, clad in brown and silver, and made a most respectful salute when Murgon appeared. The doors opened. Inside lay the temple.

The layout, all flash and glitter and dread horror, was much the same as in previous temples I had seen. Pompino nodded. He knew, too. Murgon led us to a side door, past the iron cage and the altar and the slab. He motioned for us to enter.

“Wait here. I will see the Hyr Prince Majister and tell him you are craving an audience. I do not know how long I shall be. You will find refreshments."

“Thank you, pantor."

Murgon and Chekumte went and we looked at the waiting room. “Refreshments?” said Pompino, perking up.

The viands were typically Kregan, fresh fruit, crusty bread, a selection of cheeses, light wines and parclear, palines. A Sybli woman smiled nervously, wiping her yellow apron, and ready to wait on us; but we sent her away and she was pleased to be let off lightly. We slumped down in chairs and set to.

I picked up a round and juicy onion and bit. Splendid!

Pompino went straight for the important business and poured two goblets of yellow wine—a middling Pantuvan—and we drank companionably. A small wooden door under a groined overhang opened and a cloaked figure stepped into the room.

The two lamps on the table flamed upon the blades of two swords that instantly menaced that unexpected figure.

“Who are you?” demanded Pompino. “What d'ye want here?"

“Put up your swords, gentlemen,” said a woman's voice; mellow and yet bloated with a breathiness I thought might have been occasioned by treading down steep and narrow stairs. “I mean you no harm—"

“I crave your pardon, madam,” said Pompino, ever the gallant where women except his wife were concerned. “Pray, sit down. A glass of wine?"

“Thank you, horter—parclear, if you please."

This was a pantomime. I just stood there, glowering, as Pompino did his fussy man-looking-after-woman routine. Mind you, he was naturally graceful and good at the task. The dark blue cloak hood concealed the woman's face; but there was a lot, a damned great lot, of cloak swathing her.

She pushed the hood back only as far as it had to go to enable her to drink. The parclear went down in one gulp and she held out the glass again. “Now, horter, if you please. Wine."

When two glasses of that middling Pantuvan followed the parclear, she held out the glass again. Pompino poured.

So I said, “The kov has not yet arrived, kovneva."

The glass in her beringed hand shook, and some slopped.

And, despite all, she drank that third glass of wine before she spoke.

“How do you...? Who are you...?"

The lamp cast me in shadow, and I was grateful for the space it would give me. Pompino smiled. “We are waiting while Strom Murgon—"

“Him!"

She tried to stand up, and her bulk dragged at her, so that Pompino put a hand under her elbow. He grunted as he felt her weight. I felt the weight of the years crushingly upon me.

“I must see the kov!” Her voice indicated no trace of drunkenness. She spoke with that breathlessness habitual to her. I guessed she was never truly drunk: just permanently in a state of lushness.

I said: “How did the kov—how did you—come to believe in Lem the Silver Leem?"

She twisted her head to look at me, and the hood fell away.

I felt the pity and then condemned myself. This was what life did to people. This puffiness under the eyes, this flabbiness of the skin, this coarsening, this trebling of the chins, glistening like vosk-skin, this whole obscene rendering down of a beauty that had once given this woman the sobriquet of The Beautiful.

“We have not exchanged a Llahal—” she said. “What do I know of the Silver Wonder, save what my son has told me?"

“You do not believe?"

“And you will slay me for that, you will kill me for venturing here, where I am forbidden to go?"

Pompino said, “I see!” And, then, with a touch of excitement he could not conceal: “You are safe with us, Kovneva Tilda."

“Tilda of the Many Veils,” I said. “Tilda the Beautiful."

Her face, gross and ruined by drink, closed up, glistening, frowning, her befuddlement struggling under a sudden and impossible conjecture. She stared at me, muzzily.

“You...?"

“Oh, yes, Tilda. It's me. I've spoken to Pando ... I've told him why I left—fat King Nemo had me sent to the swordships. And you—"

She collapsed into the chair. That gross body shook under the enveloping cloak. She would never dance again to make a man's blood go thump around his body like a cavalry charge.

“You abandoned me—left me—"

“No. I told you—"

“If you loved me you would have come back."

“But I couldn't come back. And, if I could have done, I would not. You know that. I told you.” That was brutal and horrible, and the truth.

Her hand reached for the glass again and in a grotesque parody of gallantry Pompino poured wine for her.

I said, “You do not ask me about Inch."

“I did not love Inch."

Season ago—seasons and seasons ago—we had met and in all that elapsed time she might have passed but a single hour. Memory rushed back, fresh and scalding. I had expected drama, histrionics, hysteria, not this befuddlement, this puzzled struggle to understand.

“Inch,” I said. “He was sold as slave to the swordships also—"

“Poor Inch ... Was that his real name?” Her hand held the glass poised at her lips. Wine glistened there. “Would you tell me your name, if I asked? I often wondered. Pando and I, we met Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor. It was not a happy time for us. He did look a little like you; but he was a smooth, distant, sanctimonious prince—"

“Sanctimonious?” And I swear my mouth hung open, foolishly.

She went on as though I had not spoken, sunken in a reverie that encompassed too many memories and too many years. But when I said men called me Jak, she heard, and nodded, and then went on as before, in a low breathless voice, to talk of those days we had spent together with Pando and Inch fighting to gain his kovnate. Pompino shifted restlessly.

“The damned temple's here, Jak. There are plenty of materials. I think I'll take a look around."

“...he wants her for himself and Murgon wants her for himself, and Pynsi is in tears.” Tilda's voice droned on without taking the slightest notice of Pompino. Now she began to tell me of the problems facing Pando, of his quarrel with Murgon, which, as is the way of two worlds, concerned the love of a young woman. It all seemed a rigmarole at the time, although frighteningly important later on, as you shall hear, and I wanted to get on and help Pompino. But Tilda held me, held me by what she said, her whole defeated attitude, her dejection. She drank. She drank like a fish. But in that desolate face still remained traces of the beauty that had once conquered without artifice, still she was a woman. I would not admit pity into my thoughts of her—for that would demean us both—I did admit a spontaneous feeling of affection.

The Vadvarate of Tenpanam, whose borders marched with those of Pando's Bormark, had recently lost its vad. Now a young and charming girl claimed the vadvarate. The Vadni Dafni Harlstam—vivacious, quick-witted and well aware that powerful men would wish to woo her for the sake of her province—appeared to have settled on Strom Murgon as the man for her. Then Pando, seeing great advantage in uniting the houses of Marsilus and Harlstam, had presented himself as a suitor, so that the issue hung in the balance. And the Mytham twins—Pando's friends of long standing and loyal to Bormark—were in despair; Poldo for the Vadni Dafni, and his twin sister Pynsi for that young scamp Pando himself.

As I say, a rigmarole, droned out by Tilda between healthy swallowings of wine—any wine to hand—and yet a net to entrap the wariest of politicos in the passions and greed of ambitious people.

“I thought Pando, after Shamsi died—a tragedy, a tragedy—would settle down again and marry Pynsi. But no. No, he must aggrandize the kovnate and take this Vadni Dafni. I fear that his cousin Murgon will kill him for the sake of it."

I glanced at the door, there was no sound beyond and I fretted to be with Pompino and about our business. But I had to say: “Shamsi?"

“A lovely girl. She made Pando very happy, and the twins are a joy. But she died, she died. I wept for a sennight."

So Pando had made a life for himself, and it had been smashed up and his wife snatched from him. Maybe there lay one answer. My agents had not kept as full an observation as they might have done; and while this was understandable, I promised myself to find out just why that was. Tilda drank more wine.

“Why did Pando join up with the Silver Leem?"

Her glass trembled. “I came here to plead. Even although I know it to be useless. The foul wretches of Lem would have me killed without a care, if they could. Pando joined so that he might better stop his cousin, who is an adherent. I know a little, a little. Pando has plans for Murgon, and Lem offered him a chance to strike without suspicion..."

I felt much better. Pando had become an adherent of the Silver Wonder not out of love for the Silver Leem but with an ulterior motive. He was using the cult for his own ends; he might yet prove an ally.

Then, suddenly, she said, “Do you remember The Red Leem?"

“Aye."

“I danced in the tavern—I could dance, could I not?"

“None better."

“You saved me in The Red Leem, and we came here back home, and then you left me...” Not quite maudlin; not quite, but Tilda of the Many Veils was fast approaching that state. I could not wait any longer. I stood up.

“I do not think it will serve any purpose for you to remain, Tilda. I have to tell you that this evil temple will soon be burned to the ground, and—"

“But the king!” She was shocked into an emotion I could not identify.

“Nemo the flat slug has no part in this—"

“But you are wrong! The king is the Hyr Prince Majister. This temple lies directly beneath his palace!"

As she spoke I sniffed. Smoke wreathed in under the door. Pompino had been busy.

He came bouncing in and slammed the door after him. He rubbed his hands together briskly.

“We have done that,” he said. “Or, rather, I have done it, while you've been chatting away here."

“The king is the chief villain,” I said. “And his palace is directly above us."

“Capital! He'll be burned out with the rest of the cramphs. The whole place will go up in flames in a moment or two. No one will get through there. We can leave quietly by the way the kovneva came in."

Smoke billowed under the door, thickly and more thickly.

“Then let us be off,” I said. “Tilda, my arm."

She appeared dazed. “My chair—"

I guessed that her gross body would be carried about everywhere; her entrance here must have exhausted her strength. Pompino and I would have to carry her. She weighed a ton.

“The things one does,” observed Pompino. And, then, he said, “You have—interesting—friends, Jak."

“Aye. And if the stairway is steep—"

He groaned. “Don't say it!"

We reached the small wooden door set in the shadows of the groined overhang. I tried the handle and it opened outward.

In that instant a torch flared in the passageway beyond. Heavy metalled sandals rang against stone. A harsh voice called out.

“Lock them in!"

The door slammed shut. The grating slide of iron bolts rattled against the door. I gave the wood a savage thrust of my shoulder, and it did not budge.

“We're locked in!"

“And the temple at our backs is a sea of flame!"

Chapter twenty

Fire

When Pompino the Iarvin set the temple of an evil cult alight, he set it alight in no uncertain fashion.

Sea of flames or no damned sea of flames, we wouldn't be leaving this place via that route.

Pompino let rip a few fruity curses, and came up and kicked the door nastily. Tilda let out a single small shriek. Then she fainted clean away. She weighed a ton and a half.

We were in a serious predicament. If we were not suffocated to death, we'd be burned to death, and if we somehow managed to bash this door open, there were armed men beyond ready to cut us to death. And yet, despite the gravity of the situation, I continued to find it extraordinarily hard to take this seriously. I kept thinking of what a ludicrous sight we must make. More than one of my comrades would find the sight we presented comical. Mind you, they'd be up there figuring a way out, ready to blatter anyone who wanted to stop us. But, all the same...

Now I have often mentioned that in these enormous castles and palaces of Kregen the walls are riddled with tunnels and secret passageways and entrances. So I suppose some of my feelings of levity arose from this fact; that I was confident we'd find a way out. We began to search.

Tilda had to be arranged as comfortably as her bulk and the chair and table would allow. She flopped over, a billowy blue mass, and I made sure she wouldn't slip off before I joined Pompino. Now we could hear the crackle of the flames. Heat, although not as yet excessive, began to blast at us through the door to the temple. No sound reached us from the small door under the groined overhang.

“If that is the only way out—"

“If it is, Pompino, there is one desperate way of breaking down the door—"

“Burn it down?"

“Aye."

“Do you continue to search. I will prepare."

“If you do halfway as good a job as you did on the temple, we should be all right."

He favored me with a look that said, more or less, “Go on! Blame me!” and bustled off. I went on tapping at the walls with my dagger.

Pompino wasted no time. Labyrinthine though Kregan palaces are, that is no guarantee that every room has a secret exit. He collected up combustibles, the stuffing of chairs, a spindly-legged side table. He had to shift Tilda and place her on the floor, a blue mound, and so break up that table and chair. The pile grew around the door. He sprinkled wine, judiciously some wine burns splendidly, some fizzes and some would put out the Hell Fires of Shurgurfrazz themselves.

My dagger kept on going “thud” instead of “ching."

By the time I had circumnavigated the walls, Pompino was ready. I called across: “Fire her up!"

The door to the temple emitted jets and wisps of smoke from all over its surface. No flame played directly upon it yet; but it would burn and the heat would lick through in tongues of flame. Pompino struck flint and steel and the pile of combustibles roared. He stepped back, looking pleased.

“It's a race, a race between which door goes first."

“Are you quoting odds?"

“Not me.” He twirled up his moustaches. “I started both these runners!"

“As we have to wait and see which lot of flames gallops past the winning post, I am thirsty.” I licked my lips. “This is, indeed, thirsty work.” The heat in the room was now intense. We moved to the center. Pompino brought over a flagon and we drank. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth in a deliberate and theatrical gesture, for I saw that Tilda's eyes were open and she was regarding me. “By Mother Zinzu the Blessed,” I said. “I needed that!"

“Dray!—Jak! What—I am hot—"

“We didn't have the key of the door, Tilda—no need to fret. We'll be out of this soon. Here, have some wine."

That was an invitation she understood very well. The next flagon we happened to snatch up contained a light rose, Morceling, generally regarded as unassuming and satisfying. The wine all went down Tilda's throat, red white or blue, it made no matter. Her face shone with perspiration. That glorious dark hair that in swirling out as she danced so quickened up the pulse, now lay dank and slick against her skull. I thrust sadness for her away. Very few, if any of us, choose our lives. We just have to make the best of what we get shoved onto us, tough though that may be, tough often to the point where it becomes insuperable. I condemn no one for that.

“Hot work,” commented Pompino, and he upended a jug of parclear over his head.

“Hold steady,” I said, somewhat sharply. “Have we plenty of parclear left?"

“At least four amphorae, over in the corner. Why?"

“I'm hot,” Tilda more moaned than said. She lay gasping, her breath a rattle of desperation. Pompino bent at once, wiping liquid around her forehead and cheeks. She shook that gross head pettishly; but Pompino persisted. The heat now roared at us from the door to the temple, pulsing waves of physical oppression. The door the other way flamed up, burning where Pompino had piled his combustibles. I studied the door carefully. We had precious little time left.

We were trapped between furnaces, flames leaping and shooting up, the very air drying and scorching our throats.

“Come on, come on!” I said, my impatience with the laggard flames turning my voice into that old ugly harshness. The orange and crimson filaments curled upwards mockingly, the smoke puffed impudently, the roar crackled out threateningly.

We waited between fires for fire to free us.

“I think...” said Pompino, at last.

We could scarcely breathe. The air scorched. The pain stabbing my lungs was not confined to me; Tilda now lay puddled and glazed, barely able to groan.

“It's got to be now,” I husked out.

If we miscalculated, we'd be done for properly.

Pompino hefted one amphora of parclear, I took another of the sherbet drink. With flaps of our clothes over our heads, we approached the door under the groined overhang. In that instant the door at our backs leading to the temple burst into a gouting whirl of flame. It bellowed and shattered. Sparks shot everywhere. Flames licked in as though deliberately seeking us out individually to burn and crisp and devour.

Black smoke choked into the room, writhing like the coiled hair of demons.

“Bring the kovneva!” Pompino rushed on. “I'll open the door."

I did not argue. My amphora went flying through the air alongside Pompino, hit with his. I swung back without looking again and swooped on Tilda. She weighed, by Krun! She weighed!

With her in my arms I ran like a crippled crab for the door. Pompino had simply put his head down and charged. He wrenched the last few bits of smoldering wood aside, the black charred edges glistening. Smoke wisped. The whole room boiled in an inferno of flame and smoke. We smashed through the door, ripping clothes, leaving a great chunk of Tilda's blue cloak, battled on.

The stone corridor beyond led onto a small room in which the smell of raw blood mingled with the stink of the smoke flattening in streamers after us. Here lay the bodies of four Womoxes, clad in blue with the red zhantil badge of Bormark upon their breasts. They had been slashed to death. Tilda's carrying chair still stood where they had put it down to allow her to make the last effort to totter into the inner room.

We bundled her into the chair. It had four carrying handles, a wooden varnished roof and hanging curtains. This gherimcal with Tilda aboard was regarded as a fit burden for four Womoxes, large, horned, strong people. Men and women who carry gherimcals are often dubbed calsters, and these four calsters had served their last time for their mistress. Now we two, Pompino and I, had to stand in their stead.

“Don't hang about, Jak! The rasts who did this and locked us in might still be about."

I said: “When you fired up the door I imagine they took it that the fire from the temple had reached there. I do not think they expected a fire."

Pompino laughed. He was very pleased with himself.

“We'll make it even more hot for ‘em!"

We took the poles and lifted. We carried the chair and Tilda. We went along the stone corridors. We saw no one. And, by Vox, the chair and Tilda weighed two tons.

Pompino led. He called back: “Those poor devils of Womoxes never carried this lot down a spiral staircase."

“Keep your eyes open."

The scorching feel of the fire still lay on me. I felt as though the insides of my lungs had been scraped out. I still kept coughing to get rid of smoke. My eyes stung. But we tramped on, carrying Tilda, and presently Pompino called: “Stairs!"

The flight of stairs was just wide enough. I got the poles up onto my shoulders, and Pompino kept his end low, and up we went. It was like pushing a boulder up The Stratemsk.

By now the chair and Tilda weighed three tons.

At the top we paused for a breather. I looked back, saw nothing but the dim reflection of the fire, and went to stand by Pompino. Ahead of us the corridor extended left and right, a little dusty, high-vaulted, bare. A few torches here and there lightened the gloom. Pompino jerked his head to the left.

“Is that daylight?"

In the distance, faintly, a wash of light lay across the wall. I squinted. My eyes hurt.

“Probably. Possibly. There is nothing the other way."

Without another word we picked up the carrying chair and started.

The light was not daylight.

Along this left-hand corridor the light glimmered against the far wall to starboard. We reached the cross-corridor where the ruddy light reflected from the wall and looked to our left. We saw what we expected to see, what, in a real sense, we had dreaded to see.

Fire.

Against the orange glow which reached as high as we could see under the roof, distant some two hundred paces, the black imp-like silhouettes of people ran with frantic movements. The effect was like peering down into a demon-haunted inferno.

“That,” said Pompino with great satisfaction, “is this flat slug Nemo's palace burning."

“Aye."

“I hope he crisps up with it in bed."

“Any king whose basement catches alight is not going to hang about, now is he? He'll be off out of it. Like us."

The corridors below and above ground had brought us to an exit of the dusty old palace not too far from the entrance Strom Murgon had used. A dozen paces along we were able to assure ourselves that the door really was a door out. Pompino put his end of the gherimcal down. Tilda began to slide to the front until I slapped the rear legs down hard.

“What—?"

“Guards. Why, Jak—did you think we'd just stroll out of here carrying the kovneva?"

You had to hand it to my fellow kregoinye, my comrade Pompino the Iarvin. He had a fine cutting way through all his smartness and fierce whiskery attack on life. I did not smile; but I inclined my head in acquiescence.

“The thought had crossed my mind as a pious hope."

Then he struck a serious note through all the nonsense.

“Pious hopes are for the gods. And if all the Gods of Kregen were against you, and the Everoinye for you, you would succeed."

This remark brought up such a storm of doubt and confusion in my stupid old vosk-skull of a head, I just shook that offending object, and blurted out: “Probably. Come on. Let's knock the poor devils over and take to our heels—"

“I like your sentiments. But I do not think I shall run, taking heels or no taking heels, carrying the kovneva."

In that, he was right, by Krun!

We peered cautiously around that corner. The distant fires as the palace burned limned the space between king's castle-palace and this dusty and abandoned palace with radiance. The rain still wanted to fall, and wetted the stones before us; it would be struggling with the fires, quenching some, over others turning to steam. The smells were a wonderful compound of charring, of wetness, of pungencies released by this commingling of fire and water. And the guards out there were keeping back the crowds who ran up, all agog to see the sight of the king's palace burn.

This scene contained the ingredients of a Walpurgis night, people gyrating around a fire, screeching, some attempting to extinguish the flames, others trying to rescue property, others just gawping, and some making surreptitious efforts to impede the fire fighters. We saw a party of guards in the king's livery dragging two poor wretches screaming away, caught red-handed. This explained the guards’ activities. King Nemo the Second was not universally loved by his people. But the guards bore down with hard ferociousness on anyone who stepped out of line.

“There is a way,” I said. “Tilda's blue cloak is large. Torn down the middle it will cover both you and me. We can carry her out as just a couple of calsters—"

“Right. But you had better tell her and get the cloak."

“Of course."

When we'd entered this dusty little palace Murgon had commented that the sight of the king's palace, dominating across the way, looked splendid in the rain. Now that palace looked infernal in the rain and fires. Nemo, as the Hyr Prince Majister, kept this palace dusty and empty so as to use it as the entrance to the subterranean temple beneath his own palace. That way he kept the secret of the Silver Leem. Also, it afforded others besides ourselves the means of egress.

“Watch it!” called Pompino in a hushed penetrating whisper. I let my hand whip away from the carrying chair curtain and looked back. Dark figures spilled out behind us.

If we would have attracted their attention, if they would have attacked us, I do not know. A creaking sound from the carrying chair heralded Tilda's head as she forced her body up and opened the curtains.

“What is it now, Jak?"

The glowing reflections of the fires played across her face. That hot light pitilessly revealed the grossness and the wrinkles, the ravages of drink.

A bulky figure rushing up bellowed.

“The kovneva! It is the Kovneva Tilda!"

Another voice, sharp, vicious: “Kill her! Kill her and all with her!"

So that settled that...

With a movement not noteworthy for twinkling speed, Pompino drew his rapier. Then he drew the main gauche. He grasped the weapons and fell into a fighting crouch. I sighed. The fellows rushing upon us carried bludgeons, or stout swords, or pallixters, the Pandahem thraxter. Chekumte the Fist, who urged them on, wielded a thraxter. The big Chulik bulked in that erratic firelight and at his side the slimmer lethal shape of Dopitka the Deft hurried on, the long dagger a glimmer of steel in his fist.

I said, “I won't say ‘Is that wise?’ for that would be to invite ridicule.” I had to step with exquisite care here where the fiery honor of a Khibil was concerned. “But I had hoped that, as a fellow kregoinye and my comrade, you would take care of my back. I see that to be no longer so."

“Oh?” He started to bristle up.

I nodded at the rapier and left-hand dagger. “The work will be brutal stuff, Pompino—"

“Aye, Jak. Aye, you are right.” He fetched up a sigh. He slammed the rapier and dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar, away into their scabbards, and drew his thraxter. “But I had hoped to get in a few shrewd whacks with my new rapier before they ship me off to the Ice Floes of Sicce."

I did not say, although the thought occurred to me, that he might yet do that if his thraxter snapped.

So, in the lurid glow of a king's burning palace, we fought in the rain.

In the first dazzling onslaught, Pompino hit Chekumte such a wallop with his hilt as sent the massive Chulik over sideways, slipping on the wet pavement, to crash smack onto his nose. Dopitka the Deft, oddly enough, was not in the front rank. We foined them off and split a few skulls, and kept them away from the carrying chair. Tilda took one look, withdrew her head, slapped the curtains to, and—I had no doubt whatsoever—fished out her private bottle and lay back to await the outcome of the fight, however it went.

There were a lot of them, more than I'd thought. They kept scurrying up out of the firelit shadows like glinting ants. Pretty soon the regular king's guards would run over to find out the cause of the fracas, and a very few words would bring them in against us. And yet—we couldn't run off. We couldn't carry the chair and fight. To carry Tilda over my shoulder and continue to fight was something that, although I did not want to do, I could do. Trouble was, she could be killed as she acted all inadvertently as a shield.

The incendiary roaring and spittings of the furnace fires spouted to the dark heavens as the rain fell, soaking everyone and doing nothing to quench that enormous conflagration.

I began to think that this was going to be the last fight of all. Regret touched me that I'd not measured my blade again against Mefto the Kazzur. But that was all a foolishness, dreamstuff fit for the nursery. Here and now on wet slick stone, with a bonfire to light us, the fight was to the death.

“There they are!"

The sound of that voice, so hoarse and menacing, did not reassure me one bit. I was kept busy hopping and skipping in dealing with a couple of fellows, one of whom, armed with a sword and a bludgeon, was intent on either spitting or braining me. It was clear he didn't mind which he did, so long as he did one or the other quickly. I dropped his companion, a bristly Brokelsh, and heard that fruity bellow break out again.

“Hit ‘em! Knock ‘em down! Trample all over ‘em!"

Pompino yelped. “Cap'n Murkizon!"

“Aye,” I said, avoiding my man's bludgeon, catching him on the chin with the hilt as I straightened my arm to take another man rushing up. He went down yeowling like a degutted cat. “The gallant Cap'n Murkizon—and him—"

“The ship's company! It is glorious, glorious!” sang out Pompino.

And, I suppose, he was right, in a way...

Various delectable portions of the anatomy of the Divine Lady of Belschutz were remarked on with considerable freedom. Quendur the Ripper was there, yelling, driving on to put a hedge of steel between us and Murgon's followers. These shrank back, at first, at sight of these formidable and high-smelling reinforcements. High-smelling ... Quendur and Lisa had marked where Strom Murgon had taken us, had stolen zorcas, and brought up the crew of Tuscurs Maiden. They hadn't stopped to wash off the muck. Bilge-scrubbing, careening and scraping, lend men and women a certain effluvium. We sniffed. But for all that it was a bonny fight while it lasted.

Rondas the Bold, his Rapa beak savage, his feathers whiffling, launched himself into the fray, screeching. Larghos the Flatch, running fleetly at Captain Murkizon's side, loosed but the once before getting stuck in with cold steel. The two girl varterists, brilliant, effective, raced swiftly on, Wilma the Shot and Alwim the Eye, battling with superb élan. Chandarlie the Gut thrust that pronounced object into a yelling Fristle and knocked the catman head over heels; someone else kicked him and he did not rise again. Pompino's Chulik, Nath Kemchug, in rushing forward trampled all over the fallen form of Chekumte the Fist, and barely noticed. Oh, yes, it was a fine free-wheeling shindig as the men and women of Tuscurs Maiden stormed up to help the Owner.

The rain pitter-pattered down in lines of silver and the fires roared and glinted orange-red in the stalking drifts of rain. Steel flickered and clashed and the uproar was prodigious.

“By the profuse moustache of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! Blatter ‘em into the mud! Knock their heads together!"

“This,” said Pompino, ducking a wild bludgeon swing and clouting the fellow over the head. “This cannot go on much longer. The king's guards—"

“Get four of your stoutest fellows onto Tilda's carrying chair—then we'll make a run for it."

“Aye!” Pompino yelled orders. His people, caught up in the bedlam and rapture of a knock down, drag out fight, were slow to respond. But, eventually, we sorted things out and having disposed of the immediate threat of Murgon's retainers, were able to pick up Tilda in her gherimcal and go bundling off into the rain. We splashed along, and were stopped only once, and that briefly, by a posse of king's men who melted away very rapidly when we leaped on them. No one wanted any more trouble, that was clear.

We halted just before we reached the jetty to look back.

The whole sky blazed and roared with the conflagration. The palace of Chun-el-Boram burned. And, under the palace, the temple of Lem the Silver Leem would now be a charred and blackened shell. Bad cess to it.

“I trust,” said Pompino with a devout mien. “I sincerely trust the palace will fall and collapse into the temple."

“Rely on it."

“By Horato the Potent! I do!"

“I just hope Pando's not foolish enough to get himself trapped in the holocaust. You can still feel the heat from here."

“We will have to let him know his mother is safe."

“Yes. We'll have more dealings with that young rip. And, this time, I'll make sure he understands a little more of what being a kov entails. It's not all wine and palines."

“Quite.” And here Pompino favored me with a quizzical look I had to ignore.

Chandarlie wanted to know what to do with Tilda's chair. They'd manhandled Tilda herself into the boat in which they'd arrived. Pompino opened his mouth, and I said quickly, “Chandarlie—if you can bring the gherimcal in the boat, do so. Otherwise the lady will require a formidable amount of carrying."

Captain Murkizon, coming up, roared his merriment. “Aye! I swear the lady here and the Divine Lady of Belschutz have a deal in common!"

Give or take a few anatomical vagaries, you couldn't say fairer than that.

Turning around so that his gut projected magnificently, Chandarlie bellowed: “Quidang!” and bustled off to supervise the loading of the carrying chair. Eventually we all clambered into the boat and pushed off. If there was pursuit, we saw no sign of it.

The hands bent to the looms of the oars. Chandarlie took the tiller up in the little kiosk at the extreme stern. Cap'n Murkizon sat in the stern sheets, and Pompino and I sat a little farther forward where we could talk low-voiced.

“We have accomplished much, Jak. The temple in Pomdermam burns. The Everoinye should be pleased."

“On a private excursion, too. But,” I said, “but if Pando's kovnate is infected—"

“Oh, it is, rely on that. Bormark festers. It is nowhere finished yet."

“Nowhere near."

“Unless the Everoinye call us to some other task."

“By the Black Chunkrah! They're unpredictable enough to do anything.” With the breeze on my face and the scent of the sea about me, and alive with the satisfaction of a task accomplished, I should be feeling if not happy at least some way fulfilled. As Pompino the Iarvin said, the Star Lords ought to be pleased with us. By Zair! That was a new and strange concept to me in these days.

But, pleased or not, the Star Lords would have other tasks for us. That was not a case of probably, but of certainty. If the Star Lords had turned their superhuman faces against Lem the Silver Leem, then we would be used to the full in that campaign. We had, as Pompino said, accomplished much. Much remained to be done, and I hankered after continuing along the lines my fuzzy thoughts had been taking me. Fire cleansed, but there had to be other ways than by fire...

The oars came in and a scrap of sail ran up the mast. The boat swayed rhythmically and we creamed along. Tilda snored. The hands found their own bottles. I would not—not just yet—think of Delia. In the morning I would think what to do next.

There was Seg to be contacted. The future of Ashti of the Jungle had to be settled to her best advantage. There were the problems of Empire to be considered, there was the next meal to dwell on.

I knew with joy that, despite all, there was just one person I would think of all night, sleeping or waking.

Over all, dominating all plans for Lem the Silver Leem, ousting all my commitments to the Star Lords, dissipating the problems of Empire, the single most important fact of my life remained always and forever as a guiding light my devotion to Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer's works were published along with the works of other authors under “house names” (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series.

More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Visit www.mushroom-ebooks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.