Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14] Read online

  “Superstitious nonsense!"

  “Fairy tales for numbskulls!"

  Oh, yes, those fierce Renders caterwauled bravely enough as the pink and golden moonlight flooded down and we sang and drank around the camp fires. But I saw more than a few of them cast up a quick and surreptitious glance at the pale stone-glimmer of the ancient ruins.

  In the very nature of these men, for there were no women with us, fights broke out. These must be settled according to whatever code of honor and conduct was acceptable to both parties. I have not mentioned the detailed protocols involved in challenges and combats of Kregen, outside of a few remarks on the obi of my Clansmen, and the formal dueling of Hamal. But now, and with horrific suddenness, the finicky demands of honor and the protocol of fighting became of supreme importance to me.

  It began with Vax, who had sworn off the dopa, swearing away, as was his wont, about his cramph of a father. One of the Katakis, no doubt as bored by Vax's obsession as the rest of us, bellowed some remark and tossed back his wine. This Kataki was Athgar, called the Neemu, and it was whispered he chafed under the yoke of Rukker's authority. Vax stood up, limber and lithe, and I caught the flare of madness in his eyes.

  “You said, Athgar?"

  No one had heard what Athgar had spoken; the moment could have been allowed to lie, and so dwindle and die.

  But Athgar, wiping a hand across his face, bellowed out a curse to Targ the Untouchable. His low-browed, narrow-eyed face, as malignant and devilish as are all Katakis’ faces, even the dark face of Rukker, bore down on the slim erect figure of Vax.

  “If your father was the rast you claim him to be, then your mother must be a stupid and unholy bitch to have married him in the first place and so give birth to—"

  That was as far as he got.

  There was no heroic posturing from Vax. He did not bellow out; he did not request Athgar to repeat his words. My son Vax, who was Jaidur of Valka, Prince of Vallia, simply lashed out with his fist and knocked Athgar the Kataki, called the Neemu, head over heels into the fire.

  When the uproar subsided and Athgar was held by Rukker's Katakis, and Vax was held by Duhrra and Nath the Slinger, the ritual challenges and responses were gone through, the lines drawn and the demarcations between edge and point, between death and maiming, the rules and observances were finalized with all due solemnity. The rules of Hyr Jikordur would apply. I stood still and silent, watching, for the matter was passed from the hands of mortal men and lay now with the gods. Honor and passion ruled all. Words had been spoken. A blow had been struck. Now the answer, in the whims of the gods, must be found in steel and blood.

  Moon-mist lay over the camp and the fires flared strangely.

  In the sand the lines were drawn out.

  Men ran from the other fires to form a great circle of intent staring faces. A Jikordur happened every now and then and gave fuel for gossip for sennights thereafter. The matter was grave and full of a prestigious death-wish, filled with blood and death.

  Instinctively, in the very moment a challenge had become inevitable, I had stepped forward to take Athgar the Neemu on and so shield my son. But that was impossible. Ideals and honor, however misplaced and distorted, now dictated all actions.

  This was to be a Hyr Jikordur. I made an effort. I said, loudly, “Let no life be taken. Let the result be adjudged in the first blow."

  Athgar sneered back his thin Kataki lips. “If it be first blood, Dak the Tenderhearted, then I will take the cramph's head off."

  And my son said in his ferocious way, which a calmness made all the more vulnerable and bitter, “Let it be to the death, for, by Zim-Zair, I do not care."

  At that Krozair oath all my defenses went down. I must stand and watch my son fight a predatory member of a feral and cruel race, vicious, fully armed and accoutered, equipped with a deadly bladed tail. I must stand and watch. To do anything else would impugn the strict codes of conduct, bring the Jikordur into disrepute, and as well as insuring my own death, bring my son humiliation and disgrace.

  The Jikordur meant nothing to me. My own death little more. And I would so contrive my interference that Vax was spared that humiliation...

  Rukker checked his man. He favored me with a slow glance that I felt meant more than he cared to say. I stood before Vax. I drew the great Krozair longsword. I tendered it hilt first. Vax looked up, and something got through to him, for his lips compressed. Then he smiled.

  “I thank you, Dak."

  A sword-blade struck a helmet like a gong. The combat began.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Blood in the Hyr Jikordur

  Pachaks have been blessed by nature—or the dark manipulations of genetic science—with quick and lethal tail hands. Katakis must strap their steel to their whip-tails. I am partial to Pachaks, as employed mercenaries, as friends. In long talks with them around the camp fires on the eve of battles I have learned much of the art of tail-fighting. There are tricks. As the gong note clanged with grim promise from the sword-struck helmet, I leaned down to Vax and said, “His tail may be numbed by—"

  “I know,” said my son.

  They always seem to know, these cocky youngsters. I stepped back. I did not waver from my resolution to court personal dishonor and destruction if they were necessary to save my son. The chances were he would know. Planath Pe-Na, my standard-bearer who carried Old Superb into action, must have known Vax as the lad grew up into manhood. Along with all my friends of Esser Rarioch—Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat, Oby, Melow the Supple, the Djangs who were a regular part of the people there; all must have contributed their knowledge toward the education of Vax no less than they had to Drak and Segnik—no, I must call him Zeg now. And, of course, there were Seg and Inch and Turko the Shield. If Vax had taken in what they had to tell him then the combined knowledge should make him a formidable fighter—and he was, indeed, as I had seen, a bonny lad with a sword.

  Planath must have told Vax of the tricks an apim might get up to with the tail of a Kataki. Planath would have relished the telling.

  With no more relish in myself at the idea of this fight, but with some feeling of relief, I watched as Athgar stalked forward—arrogant, completely confident—to knock over and slay this slim and supple apim lad.

  I cannot do justice to that fight, for I was far too intimately concerned for my own good. I had picked up the look from Duhrra and he had slipped me his longsword. I held it ready, and I must give thanks that the fight occupied the attention of the men there, for had they seen my face in the firelight glow and the radiance of the moons, they would no doubt have run shrieking.

  Athgar launched himself, his sword blurring, his tail-blade high and deceiving. Vax lunged right, checked and reversed, came back. The two combatants passed. Now was the danger! The tail hissed around. Vax jumped. I let out a grunt of relief. Vax dropped down hard. He made no attempt at that cunning tail-numbing trick. Athgar had expected him to duck, as would be the instinctive response to the threat of that arrogant high-held blade. Athgar struck low. Vax jumped. And the great Krozair longsword flamed.

  Athgar shrieked.

  The tail spun and looped away, the strapped blade glittering, flicked like a limp coil of rope into the fire. It sizzled.

  Blood pumped from Athgar. He stood disbelieving. He stood for perhaps two heartbeats.

  Rukker yelled, “Athgar the Tailless!"

  The Neemu screeched and swung his sword in a ferocious horizontal sweep. Vax met the blow, slanting his brand, and let the blades chink and screech in that demoniac sound of steel on steel. His broad back muscles tensed and bunched, drew out in a ripple of massive power. The blade struck forward. The point burst through Athgar's throat above the mail, smashed on to eject itself in a spouting gout of blood.

  Without a word, Vax withdrew and stepped back. He looked on silently as Athgar dropped his sword and gripped his crimson throat, his eyes glaring madly. He choked, trying to say something. Then he fell. He pitched down to spr
awl at Vax's feet.

  Vax looked down. He was my son. Without a word he spit on the corpse. Then he walked away.

  No one said a word.

  It was left to Vax, turning to speak over his shoulder, to say, “I will clean your sword, Dak, before I return it."

  I wanted to say—how I wanted to say!—the words hot and breaking in me ... I swallowed. I said, “Jikai—keep the sword, Vax. It is yours."

  For a moment he stood, silent, limber, lithe and young, staring at me. The firelight painted one half of his face ruby; the moons shone fuzzily pink and gold upon the other. He nodded. Again he did not speak. He just nodded and lifted the sword, and saluted, and so walked into the darkness beyond the fires.

  I handed Duhrra his sword. “Take Nath. Follow."

  “Yes, master."

  Duhrra and Nath melted into the moon-drenched shadows. Other men of my crew followed. They would see that Vax came to no harm. They were good fellows. If I do not mention them overmuch, surely it is obvious that concern for my son dominated all my thoughts.

  Rukker said, “There is no need for that, Dak."

  “No."

  He looked down at the corpse. “He was my man and yet he was not my man. I think this Vax Neemusbane is your man and yet not your man. It was a Hyr Jikordur. There is no blood between us."

  “None,” I said. “And you are right about Vax. I think he has done you a favor."

  “Probably. But I do not wish to discuss that."

  It amuses me now to think how Rukker regarded me. He treated the other Renders sharply enough, and they respected or hated him for it, according to their natures. But he must have come to terms with his own ruthlessness in his dealings with me, or so I think. Maybe he did not forget our first meeting, or the way he would have been flogged on the oar bench had I not spoken. As I say, Rukker possessed a scrap of humanity.

  All the same, I meant to repay him for his trick when he had loaded all the treasure aboard his swifter and attempted to sail away. He might not wish to speak of that in the future; I had a few words on the subject—and these words would not be spoken but acted on.

  In any company on Kregen one feels naked without a sword. A weapon is needed most everywhere. Even the unarmed combat skills developed by the Khamorros of Havilfar, and the Krozairs of the Eye of the World, cannot fully compensate for the lack of a weapon if the unarmed combat man goes up against an opponent skilled in his weapon's use. And it does not have to be a sword, of course; but legends and myths cluster about swords.

  In our reiving over the western end of the inner sea we had built up an armory and in my cabin in Crimson Magodont a useful array of weapons I had taken a fancy to awaited my inspection. As I went up the ladder I turned and saw in the moons-light Vax and Duhrra and Nath walking back to the fires, and already Vax was working away at the blood on his new sword. Satisfied, I went into the cabin. There was no real choice before me; just the one sword I fancied. There had been no other Krozair blade come into our possession; but I had taken a fine Ghittawrer blade. The Grodnims produce fine weapons and, as in the case of the Zairians, the finest are made by and for the Brotherhoods of Chivalry of the Green. This Ghittawrer sword had borne the device of the lairgodont and the rayed sun and I had had them removed. I picked it up and swirled it a trifle, feeling the balance as being good but not as perfect as the Krozair brand I had given my son, honoring his Jikai.

  That thrice-damned king Genod, self-styled genius at war, had instigated his Ghittawrer Brotherhood, the lairgodont and the rayed sun. The blade was good. It would serve to lop a few Green heads and arms.

  A shouting on the beach, and a distant calling from higher up, drew me to the deck. The night lay calm and sweet under the stars and moons; yet mists trickled down like thickened waterfalls from the headland. I looked up. Lights speckled the ruins. Many torches flared among the aeons-old walls and columns.

  “What is it, Sternen?” I shouted at the watch.

  “I do not know, Dak. But whatever it is, men have gone up to find out.” He shivered. He was a tough apim with a scarred face and quick with a knife. “By Zogo the Hyrwhip! Those screams never came from a human throat!"

  About to check him roughly, I paused. The shrieks from the ruins sounded unnatural. Sternen made several quick and secret signs. These were rooted in a time before Zair and Grodno parted into enmity. I slapped the Ghittawrer blade into the scabbard, for the Grodnims attempted to copy the dimensions of a Krozair blade, and rattled off down the ladder. Many men were running up the steep track in the cliff toward the ruins, carrying torches, bearing weapons. Renders out to prove they feared not a single damn thing in all of Kregen. I followed.

  Panting up at my side Nath the Slinger said, ‘The lights up there aren't ours."

  I halted. Duhrra and Vax appeared. Some way beyond them a knot of men I knew would be loyal not only to Zair but to me pressed on, I shouted at them, intemperately, and they clustered around. Before I spoke I looked up. In the lights of the moons the mass of Renders ascending into the ruins looked apelike, crowding up, bearing torches. The Katakis were there. I looked at Vax and Fazhan and Duhrra. I told them what I wanted them to do. I did not mince my words.

  “And if there's a watch,” I said, most unpleasantly, “knock him on the head and spirit him away. Do not kill him, though."

  Duhrra rumbled a hoarse chuckle.

  “Duh—master! A fine plan!"

  “Aye,” said Fazhan. “Just rewards, by Zair."

  “And if there is a fight,” said Vax, half drawing his beautiful new sword, “I shall joy in showing this boastful Kataki Rukker he may join the cramph Athgar."

  “You will not fight him unless I tell you.” I looked hard at Vax in the streaming moons-light. “He will not succumb so easily as Athgar."

  “Yet is he a Kataki, and Katakis have tails."

  “And with them they rip out throats of young coys."

  He was beginning to know a little of me, enough to understand that I might argue with him in some matters, and in others he had best obey, schtump. All the same, he looked daggers at me.

  “Take Tamil the Palinter with you. He is adept at weighing and measuring."

  “Aye, master."

  “I shall entertain Rukker until you signal. Now, jump!"

  I intended to be scrupulously fair. What I intended was perfectly obvious, of course; but if my men did not do a quick clean job there would be a fight. Renders habitually quarrel and fight; it is all a part of their image, Articles or no. As they took themselves off I wondered if I was doing this out of mere irritation with myself, out of a sense that time was rushing by and I had made no progress, and played this trick not so much out of evil boredom as out of self-contempt.

  Then I ran lightly up the trail in the cliff toward the ruins of the Sunset People and the mysteries that might await me there.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Among the ruins of the Sunset People

  From the concealment of a screen of bushes we looked upon a scene at once hideous and horrific. The Renders had extinguished their torches and they did not speak above an awed whisper. The lights illuminating those time-weathered stones were not our lights. The flaring torches wrapped tendrils of golden brilliance about the old columns and arches, lit gray walls and time-toppled cornices. Shattered domes like eggshells smashed wantonly glittered starkly in the pink moons-light. We crouched silently and we stared upon that pagan scene.

  Next to me crouched the trembling form of Fazmarl the Beak. I could feel his body shaking against my shoulder.

  “I warned them, the fools,” he whispered to himself, and I could feel the tenseness in the words he scarcely knew he uttered aloud. “It is Oidrictzhn himself! The Abomination!"

  I nudged him. “Silence, you fambly. Is this all you know?"

  He glared mutely at me and shook his head.

  I drew him down farther into the shadows.

  'Tell me. And speak low."

  “Oidrictzhn!" />
  I clapped a hand across his mouth and shot a glance over the bushes. The figures prancing in the torchlights were concerned over their own pursuits and we did not appear to be observed; but I fancied they'd have someone on the lookout. I shook Fazmarl the Beak.

  “You bear an honored name. These Abominations. Is that what they're up to out there?” I released his mouth.

  He drew in a whooping gulp of air. “Yes. It is old, older than anyone knows. Long before Zair and Grodno, whose name be cursed, separated out of—"

  “Yes, yes. I know that. Will they slay the girl?"

  “Assuredly. They have come from many little villages inland and they would travel to the west of us. I know, for I lived in one of those small villages, like a vosk in swill—and all knew the old stories of Oidrictzhn and his Abominations."

  “You do not mind saying his name now."

  He did not laugh; but he emitted a sour grunting kind of cough. “No—for it is too late. The evil one has arisen from his sleep. He has been conjured. Do you not see his gross form, there, where the shadows cluster, although the torches shine the brightest?"

  There was a puzzling splotch of shadow against an ancient gray monolith where the torches shone, where one would expect light and the reflections brilliant against the masonry.

  “How?"

  “Who knows? No one owns to knowledge. Yet all know there are those who possess the secret powers. The Abominable One has risen and he will not return until he is sated."

  I was not prepared to dismiss all this as fear-induced madness.

  On Kregen as on Earth there are the darker myths, hideous stories of hideous beings from out of time and space. Normally one gives no credence to them. But to hear of them among tumbled and time-shattered ruins, ancient before ordinary man ventured to tame fire and crouch at his cave-mouth brandishing a stone hand-ax, with the shifting light of the moons streaming across a scene of naked savages—for rhapsodic belief had turned these people savage—screaming and chanting, circling a stake whereon hung the bloody corpse of a ponsho, closing nearer and nearer to a raised stone slab on which lay a young girl, ripe for the sacrifice ... as I say, to hear these horrendous myths of demons and devils in circumstances like those is to make belief all too easy.