The Tides of Kregen [Dray Prescot #12] Page 16

  He held the nikzo out.

  “This is rightfully yours. You floored me."

  I wanted to be canny. “More by luck than judgment.” I hoped that would pass. “Still, a bet is a bet, and I need the cash.” I took the money. Pride and I had fallen out.

  The truth of the matter was that I held for this big man the same admiration I held for a zhantil: the wild, untamed savagery on the Zhantil's part matched by the controlled docility of the savagery on Duhrra's. The apparent dichotomy is only apparent. The idea that he would accompany me pleased me. But that was all.

  Duhrra lifted his stump swathed in bandages and stared at it critically. “I must wait for my hook. Tell me what you think best. There is Shazmoz ahead, but it is besieged. They could fix my hook there."

  My mind was made up in the time a zhyan strikes.

  “We go to Shazmoz. There is a man there I must see. After that it will be the Akhram."

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Of a Pachak hyr-Paktun and a Krozair

  Making our way into Shazmoz was not going to be easy.

  We eased our sectrixes on the rise and let them blow gently while we looked down the long slope toward the army of Zairians encamped below. The sea glittered blue to our right. Not a speck of sail broke that wide expanse. The sky lifted high, high above, blue and distant, and the radiance of opaline light streamed mingled down about us.

  “I hear there are thirty thousand,” said Duhrra.

  “And how many have the Zair-forgotten Grodnims?"

  He waved his stump, still wadded in bandages. “No one knows. Men talk. Uh ... sixty thousand."

  “But they must lay siege to Shazmoz and at the same time front our field army. It is not easy for them."

  “May Zair rot their bones and turn their livers green."

  Shazmoz itself was distantly visible at the end of an inlet, a vision of white cupolas and towers, long white walls baking under the suns. Over there the bestial scenes of siege were being enacted; below us the camp seemed to slumber in the light.

  I had heard that the general in command here was a certain Roz Nath Lorft.[5] Men spoke well of him. He was not a Krozair. His task, relieving Shazmoz, appeared daunting and I held the shrewdest suspicion that this Nath Lorft would keep his army in touch, feeling the enemy, keeping them in play for as long as he could. Then, when Shazmoz fell, he would fall back. It seemed the Zairians had lost the ability to meet the Grodnims in the open field with any hope of success.

  [5 Roz: title of nobility similar to outer oceans’ Kov, Duke.]

  Scattered parties of men were about the eternal tasks of soldiers. Very few people chose to live close to the shore of the Eye of the World; from time immemorial raids have devastated the inland coasts. If there was no secure fortress very close at hand, the coastline would lie empty and deserted under the suns, so these men were totally dependent on the supply trains. They might try to send forage parties inland, but the hated green ruled there by virtue of its greater numbers and this devil-inspired confidence of winning any open encounter.

  Duhrra waited my commands. His assumption of my mastery irked me. I found him dour and taciturn as a rule, which suited me as I was alike in the matter. But I wanted him to feel and act the part of a companion. This he was either unable or unwilling to do. I shook the reins.

  “Let's go down and make a start."

  The camp merits no detailed description, being an army camp, except for the one particular that it was a camp of men of the red southern shore of the inner sea, and therefore a camp of highly individualistic Zairians. I doubt there was one single straight row of tents. Higgledy-piggledy, set down in the best site available, to the Ice Floes of Sicce with regimentation—this was the attitude of the Zairians. Oh, they were formed up in formations as to title and number and function, and no doubt in some dusty office of the Pallan responsible papers were to be found with the details scribbled down. But the Zairians fought as they lived, sprawling, rambunctious, riotous, each man anxious to get to hand grips with his opponent. The cavalry would lower lances and charge the instant anything approached they considered chargeable. The footmen would rave and yell and boil over in their efforts to keep up. Only the varterists held some discipline, and this because the craft and science of their art demanded rule and order.

  Swashbuckling—aye, that is a good word for Zairians.

  We trotted our sectrixes down the slope. Duhrra had come into all of Naghan the Show's possessions, and the cash was used to buy what was necessary for our journey. I found I still did not like the sectrix. This was the first of that species of six-legged saddle animals I had encountered. The nactrix is found in the hostile territories. The totrix in the lands of the outer oceans. Poor Rees! What had happened to his regiment of totrixes? And to Chido? I must not think of them—twenty-one years must have destroyed the last vestiges of their feelings for Hamun ham Farthytu. I imagined Nulty at Paline Valley would be the Amak in all but name by now. These dusty memories enraged me, so I bashed the sectrix in the flanks and we went careering down the last of the hill and flying into the camp.

  A group of men were formed into a ring and as I went up and down in the saddle to the awkward, cross-grained gait of the sectrix, I saw dust flying up from the center of the circle.

  “Stand away there!” I bellowed. The sectrix was maddened now, its head rearing up and sideways against the bit. On we thundered. The backs of the ring of men came nearer and nearer.

  “Out of the way! Stand clear!"

  Now one or two faces turned my way. The noise was really rather wonderful. The swods yelled. The ring of red backs switched around. Faces contorted, mouths yelled, arms and legs swayed up and out—and I was rolling past in a bellow of noise. Then the stupid sectrix tangled all its six legs among the gang of men struggling over the open ground and down we all came in a whirling flurry of collapsing bodies.

  Head over heels and away, rolling among a welter of red uniforms and naked chests and a Pachak's tail-hand gripping my arm and a pair of studded marching sandals beating a tattoo on my head and—I surged up, gulping for air, stood there with the Pachak bellowing angrily, the swods toppling aside, the dust and noise in the sunshine perfectly splendid.

  “Silence, you pack of famblys!” I roared. I took my left hand to my right and removed the Pachak's tail-hand. He coiled his tail over his head and glared about ferociously.

  His red uniform was torn. He had a few cuts on his face. I saw the faces of the swods, so I knew what was going on here.

  “Who in the name of Zogo the hyr-whip are you, you rast?"

  I jumped for the swod who spoke, took his throat in my hand, squeezed—only a trifle—and bellowed: “Who I am is my business, you nurdling onker. But you speak to me with respect, or I'll ring Beng Kishi's Bells so loudly in your skull your brains will spout out your ears."

  A couple of the men liked that image. They laughed. I let the man go and stepped back. To the Pachak I said, “Now is your chance to walk off with dignity."

  Pachaks are diffs of middle height, with two left arms, a whip-like tail equipped with a hand, straw-yellow hair, an intense loyalty and a fighting capacity that has caused great argument among the professionals of Kregen.

  The Pachak said, “I shall stay and fight them with you."

  I said, “I do not intend to fight them, dom."

  “A pity."

  Then Duhrra rolled up on his sectrix and started edging the animal in through the ring. The dust was settling. An ord-Deldar appeared and began bellowing, as all Deldars bellow, and the men shuffled off. They cast longing looks back.

  “You,” I said to the Pachak, “will have some recreation if those fellows get off early tonight."

  “They are apims,"

  I did not laugh. “So am I."

  “True. But you have a heart that weighs its decisions."

  The laugh was very near now, incongruously near. “If that were only so, then I would not be here."

&n
bsp; “Nor me. I am Logu Pa-We. At the moment my nikobi is given to the Roz, Nath Lorft na Hazernal."

  “I am Dak, and this is Duhrra.” I let my glance dwell just long enough on the small gold zhantil-head he wore on a silk cord threaded through a top buttonhole. “You are a hyr-paktun, Logu Pa-We. We are honored."

  His straw-yellow hair fell about him, ripped free of its braids in the fight. Now he swept it back over his forehead with a gesture of pride. Any man, no matter what race, who gains the coveted pakzhan, the gold zhantil-head that indicates his status as a highly renowned soldier of fortune, a notorious mercenary, will be proud.

  “And you who call yourself Dak. You also are a paktun?"

  I had to ignore his choice of words. “I have been a paktun in my time..."

  “Then you still are."

  “But I have never worn the pakzhan.” I couldn't add that during my periods of mercenary service I had, indeed, worn the pakmort, for he would never understand why I had taken it off, unless I had been disgraced. It requires a court of fellow paktuns to bestow the pakmort, and a court of hyr-paktuns to bestow the pakzhan. As for that wild and feral beast, the mortil, he is almost as large and powerful as the superbly impressive zhantil; he is just as savage and free.

  This Pachak hyr-paktun fingered his golden pakzhan. The pakmort is fashioned from silver but it is also worn on a silk thread looped through a convenient top buttonhole or on the shoulder knot over armor. “You will drink with me?"

  “Aye, gladly,” said Duhrra.

  The Pachak glanced at him and curled his tail in a single cracking acceptance. I have a great deal of respect for the Pachaks as people. I like to hire them as mercenaries, for they are intensely loyal to their employers and will fight to the death. So we three went off to the nearest tent offering refreshment. I demanded tea, that superb Kregan tea, for I was thirsty.

  We talked as fighting men will talk, a rapid shorthand of professional jargon that conveyed much information in few words.

  The army here was in trouble. The Grodnims always seemed able to best the Zairians in battle. “They lack discipline,” commented the Pachak, Logu Pa-We. “I think I will not renew my nikobi when the contract expires."

  “You would fight for the Grodnims?” Duhrra showed his ignorance then, as almost all Zairians were ignorant of the diffs of Kregen and their ways.

  Logu flicked his tail-hand around his jug, but he answered equably enough. “That would not be ethical."

  “You great onker,” I said to Duhrra, and drank tea.

  “Yes, master."

  “And I'm not your master, by the diseased intestines of Makki-Grodno!"

  “I do not agree with you in that, Dak."

  The Pachak, evidently summing us up as just two more unstable and highly unprofessional Zairians, drifted into more general conversation. I learned what I could. When I said we wanted to get through the lines and into Shazmoz he pursed his lips.

  “You would run great risks."

  “There is a man I must see there."

  “And I need a hook."

  “Yes, there is a man renowned for that there."

  The contract the Pachaks entered into with their employers they called their nikobi. That is, it was a weak approximation to the obi which gave authority and working arrangements to my clansmen of Segesthes. It was half an obi. Chuliks and Rapas and Fristles worked a different system. The myriad different forms of human beings on Kregen never cease to fascinate me. They are as different in their bodily forms as they are in the working processes of their minds. Yet they are all human and share human attributes. It would need an insensitive clod of a very high order of cloddishness to regard them as freaks, as candidates for a zoo or a menagerie. They are men and women. How odd we must look, we two apims, Duhrra and me, in the eyes of this Pachak. He would regard us as being crippled. We had only one left arm each, and so would always have trouble in taking powerful blows on a shield. We had a bare bottom each, with no incredibly useful tail with its grasping hand. He would find it laughable and impossible that a whole world swung in space peopled by cripples like us. I had the notion, fed by thoughts about the Everoinye, that very possibly a world existed peopled only by Pachaks. It made sense. No, the multifarious forms call forth no slighting or disbelieving comments about inmates of zoos or menageries; menagerie men contribute to the life and color and adventure of Kregen. I would have it no other way, clods or no clods.

  The drinking was now bringing out the singing. Men love to sing on Kregen, and women too, in their own way.

  The suns were declining now and, in the casual way of the Zairian military, the soldiers had had enough for the day. The songs lifted. A group of Pachaks serving with Logu Pa-We sang too, but the apims of the southern shore sang alone.

  Logu was telling us of that remote and eerily mysterious land of Tambu, off the southwest coast of the continent of Loh. He was one of the very few men I had heard claim they had been there. He was saying the experience had scarred him in his ib. He would never go back. He was as well aware of the lands of the outer oceans as I was—better, probably—and it was clear he was now regretting his decision to bring his men into the inner sea. Or regretting that he had joined up with the reds instead of the greens. But his ideas of paktun ethics must be admired.

  The Zairian swods were singing The Destiny of the Fishmonger of Magdag, a highly colored and lurid account and one calculated to bring mirth to the voice and tears to the eyes, with the crashing down of the jugs onto the sturm-wood tables on the refrain “For the fish heads came off red, came off red, the fish heads dropped off red, red, red."

  The pang struck me then: what did these fine roistering fellows, snug in their inner sea, know of the fishheads of the outer oceans?

  Panshi had told me there had been no further raids after the one in which I had gone wandering on my travels, as he had phrased it. But I knew the internecine battle between the red and the green, here in the Eye of the World, was of scant importance beside the greater conflicts waiting outside in the greater world.

  That very snugness had, I know, been a great deal of the charm of the Eye of the World, of my affection for the Krozairs.

  The Swifter with the Kink went up—how we all dreaded a swifter whose lines were not true, as with the galleys’ inordinate length-to-breadth ratio they so often were! And then the Chuktar with the Glass Eye battered against the stars. Oh yes, the swods sang.

  I caught Duhrra's eye and motioned. Logu caught the signal, for Pachaks are quick in these matters, and we three rose and went out, away from the campfires and the singing.

  “So you wish to steal into Shazmoz?"

  “That is our intention."

  “Maybe a way can be found. You will need to be silent and quick ... and to bear up."

  I think Logu was going to say we would have need of courage, but he had the sense to halt himself.

  “You must leave all preparations to me."

  I thought it fair to warn him: “That is agreeable. But we shall keep our fists upon our swords and the blades loose in the scabbards."

  He chuckled and his yellow hair glowed strangely under the light of the moons.

  We went through the moons-lit darkness toward the shapes of tents which seemed in less of a muddle than the others. A small body of Pachaks formed about us, grim men with blades already gripped in their tail-fists. It took very little time before we were all mounted up and riding softly out of the camp. This army of Zairians comprised detachments from many free red cities of the southern shore and other lands from further south; there were parties of Krozairs and Red Brethren also. We were able to pass through the last picket lines—these were men from Tremzo, stalwart fellows with pickled hides from drinking of their own produce—and so walk our sectrixes slowly off into the no-man's-land between the contending armies.

  “You are determined to get your hook?"

  “Aye, Dak. As you are to see this man you prate of."

  In a little dell we dismounted and th
e Pachaks opened their saddlebags. I did not make a face, but the sight of the green robes and the green feathers filled me with disgust.

  “It is necessary,” said Logu peremptorily, “that you wear these garments."

  We did so without arguing. When we resumed our movement we were a returning patrol of Grodnim scouts. I thought perhaps we were a little early for that, but after we had passed the first sentries with quick and harshly intemperate words from the hyr-paktun who led us, I realized Logu knew what he was doing. The way led us through a well-packed road where the moonslight glittered on the ruts of wheeled traffic. Supplies and varters. The damned Grodnims were organized. I knew how well they could handle slaves; even the Katakis could teach them little in that nauseating department of economics.

  The breathing mass of a camp showed on our left. A few lights hung in regulation intervals. We pressed on. After a time we angled sharply to our right, toward the coast Sand shushed and shirred beneath the sectrixes. A dark shape rose ahead to bar our path and the moons shone on a lifted spear. What Logu said in a whisper I did not hear, but we went on with the spear returned to the upright position and the sentry stepping back from our path. He was a Fristle, his cat-face and slanted eyes turning to watch us go. We passed in silence.

  Presently Logu reined alongside me.

  “My brother is near now. You swear that your mission has nothing to do with the armies here, with the fight we have?"

  “Nothing, as Zair is my witness.” It was true.

  “And as Papachak the All-Powerful is mine, if you lie your tripes will spill steaming on the ground."

  He meant it. I meant what I said. We understood each other.

  His brother turned out to be cut from the same cloth. They conferred for a moment, their sectrixes close, and I caught the words “...paktun not in employment."

  If you marvel that two brothers could serve in armies opposed to each other then the rigid system of mercenaries on Kregen has escaped you. If they met in battle these two would fight. That was a part of their mystique, why they were paktuns; if asked they would look puzzled and say, probably, “It is in our nikobi."