A Fortune for Kregen (15 page)

Hunch and Nodgen stood, shaking. Hunch’s fear had gone. Nodgen was still getting over the smash on the head that had dizzied him. Two of the openings showed piled up treasure, and the other things of the good life that would delight an honest Tryfant or Brokelsh. Tarkshur saw. He sneered.

“Do not think—” he began.

A demoniac scream bounced in vibrating echoes from the walls. A shape, a shape from nightmare, bounded along the corridor toward us.

With a leap, we three slaves came to life and dodged out of the way. Let the two armed men tackle this monster...

It looked like a prickly pear, bristled with brown spines, with ten tentacular arms slashing about, each tipped with a poisonous sting. It bounced. It hissed. It gave off a stink like the sewers on Saturday night.

With a snap Tarkshur hurled his helmet down and closed his shield across. Galid did likewise. They faced the monster and they fought. They were both good fighting men. And, at that, the monster was not so very fierce, not so very frightening, after all. A poor bouncing stinging bristle ball. For a naked slave, unarmed, the monster might well have spelled doom. Against two tough and agile Katakis, armed and accoutered, the monster was slashed into a dozen segments in no time, its tentacular arms splaying out pathetically. From their tips oozed a yellowish fluid. Neither Kataki saw any value in that liquid.

One moment Hunch was at my side, trembling, saying, “I do not like this place at all — I am frightened clear through.” When I turned to answer him, he was gone.

“He has the right idea, our Hunch,” said Nodgen.

With that he raced across the corridor and threw himself into the opening of the fire-crystal wall. Beyond him lay a Brokelsh paradise. I did not doubt that Hunch was already well into his Tryfant paradise.

The two Katakis were stepping back from the dismembered monster. The smell became worse as the fluids seeped.

Tarkshur saw that I stood alone.

“Rast! Where are—” Then he realized, and sharply turned to Galid. “Stay, Jiktar! We carry the treasure
out
!”

“Yes, notor — but—”

I stepped away from the wall. I dropped the bundle from my shoulders and I turned to stare into the opening that would reveal my lack.

“Slave!” Tarkshur was yelling, and I heard his voice from a long distance. He gave his orders to Galid.

“Chain the cramph fast so that he cannot escape.”

But I looked into the opening, and saw...

No. What I saw really centered on the object that stood just inside the opening. Farther back misty shapes swam out of my vision. Around this precious object lay a rapier and main gauche, a drexer, the cut and thrust sword we had developed in Valka, a short-hafted clansman’s axe. Also there lay a folded length of scarlet cloth, of good quality, and a broad and supple lesten hide belt, with a dulled silver buckle. And, in a worn sheath a seaman’s knife. Leaning against the side wall stood a tall Lohvian longbow and a quiver of arrows, each one fletched with the feathers of the zim-korf of Valka. There was, also, a jeweled shortsword like those deadly shortswords that are used with such skill by my clansmen in the melee. All these objects surrounded the central object. At this I gazed.

“Slave!” bellowed Galid’s voice, from some dimension outside reality. “Hold still, you rast, while I hobble you with your own damned chains.”

The object within the opening held all my attention now.

It was one of mine.

It had to be. There was the nick — it had to be! — the tiniest of nicks where I had beaten down Rog Grota, a famous Ghittawrer of Genod, in that old swifter battle on the Eye of the World. And here! It was here!

I felt a hand on my neck, forcing me down, and another hand dragging at my chains.

Slowly I returned to this other dimension from that realm of reality that had for a few heartbeats claimed me. This was the reality, this frightful expedition down into a Moder, with monsters and magic, and a foul Kataki seeking to chain me fast.

And, for the first time in a long long time, I remembered I was Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy.

I hit Galid. He went flying back and the look on his face was so expressive of stunned astonishment that I nearly laughed.

“Rast!” shrieked Tarkshur, and his ichor-slimed sword raked for my guts.

The chains lopped his sword down and my left hand gripped onto his tail as the bladed steel sliced for my throat. For a space we glared, eye to eye.

“You will surely die, you rast, you—”

“I have chopped off many a Kataki tail, Tarkshur the Kleesh. Be very sure, yours will not be the last.”

He gobbled with fury; he struggled; but he could not move that deadly bladed tail. His shield was clamped between our bodies, trapping his left arm. His right arm was forced out and down as the chains bore remorselessly on his sword.

In his eyes I saw a nickering shadow.

Without thought I swung. We pivoted as though we were that very weathervane I had so recently been, blown hither and yon by every vagrant breeze. Galid just hauled his blow back in time, swinging his thraxter away down the side. I kicked him where it would do the most good, and shifted my grip on Tarkshur, and so wedging his sword down in the coil of chain, got a grip on his neck above the corselet rim.

I choked — only a little, enough to let him know what was happening.

“You are a Kataki,” I said. “I have no great love for Katakis. I have met one and one only who had any inkling at all of what humanity means. You are not that one.”

His lowering, low-browed, fierce Kataki face was slowly turning a rich plum color. His eyes started out, bulging with fury. He had no fear of me, a mere slave, who had for a moment caught him up with chains. I choked him again and he tried to butt me and I slashed at the bridge of his nose, an upward blow that rocked his head back. He glared up and over my shoulder and a fresh look, an expression of strangled surprise flashed into that ugly face.

I threw him away.

He had not hit the floor before I had leaped after him and to the side.

The damned chains tangled me up and I pitched forward.

There was, for the moment, no danger from the Katakis.

The thing that moaned down upon us breathed a more deadly menace.

White and leprous sheets and folds of some insubstantial gossamer, like swirls of smoke, like sheerest curtains in a breeze, wafted and writhed along the corridor. An aura of blue sparks sizzled and spat. It was forcefully borne in on me that a sword would be worse than useless against this monster.

Tarkshur had not lost his senses. I did not see Galid.

The Kataki slave master flung up his hand. He still gripped his ichor-smeared sword; but he did not use it. On the middle finger of his hand glistened a ring — I had noticed it as a mere foolishness of Kataki vanity — and now, as the writhing leprous-white monster approached, the ring sparked in reply.

Long flashes of blue fire sped from the stone in the ring. The stone glowed with life. The fires met and fought with the blue sparks. Gyrating and twirling in the air, the monster lashed and shrieked and so, gradually, sank fluttering nearer and nearer to the floor. As it sank so its struggles weakened.

Tarkshur was panting, and I saw the way he kept looking at the ring and then at the monster — and never at me. I understood that the power in the ring was being drawn off in proportion to the monster’s own strength.

Whatever sorcery was here in play, the power of the stone in the ring proved victorious. The leprous-white monster sank, fluttering weakly, beat at the ground and then slowly dissipated into wisps of vanishing white. A few little glittering stones scattered across the flags were all that remained.

The Kataki wiped his lips with his sword hand, and then looked at me.

“I have saved your life, you ungrateful yetch — and now, for the indignity you have inflicted, I will take it.”

“Where is Galid the Krevarr?”

Tarkshur lowered his head and looked about. The Jiktar of his bodyguard was nowhere to be seen.

“You Katakis are a miserable bunch, contemptible cramphs. He is no doubt enjoying himself now at the expense of some poor devil’s misery.”

“You—” Tarkshur breathed deeply and his flaring nostrils in his damned Kataki face broadened. “I shall enjoy carving you.”

The farce had gone on long enough.

“You, Tarkshur, will either go away now with your life, or you will die — here and now. The choice is yours.”

He just didn’t believe this. I felt — well, it is difficult to say, now, exactly what I felt. Imagine lying in a grave with a granite block on your chest pressing the air from your lungs. Then imagine you have summoned the strength to push the granite block away. You sit up in the grave. You put your hands on the sides. You heave yourself up. And, suddenly, the glory of the suns shines down. Yes, well, that expresses a tithe of the way I felt...

Something in my face must have warned him. Suddenly, he took me seriously.

“You are chained, slave. You will not be quick. I shall surely win.”

“Do not try, Kataki.”

But, even then, he was not afraid. And, although I do not like Katakis as a rule, there was much to be said for this evil specimen of that degenerate race. He moved across, and his helmet was down and his shield was up and his thraxter pointed.

“What, slave, can you do?” The sword gestured. “Your chains will not take me twice.”

I did not answer.

I took up the Krozair longsword into my fists, and I own, I own with pride, my hands trembled as I took up that superb brand. But do not mistake me. It had not been the longsword that had caused me to rise from a long sleep. And, I half think, it was not that I was a Krozair of Zy, and had called my membership of that Mystic and Martial Order to mind that spurred me. Perhaps it was a mingling. Perhaps it was that I had, with surprise, realized that I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, did have a responsibility to myself, that to deny my nature too long was to stunt my own growth.

So I faced this Tarkshur the Lash and in my fists the Krozair blade gleamed splendidly. I held the sword with that cunning two-handed grip, the fists spaced exactly, so that enormous leverage and tremendous speed are obtained with precision.

Tarkshur sneered.

“That lump of iron! A mere bar! You are a fool!”

“I shall not tell you again, Tarkshur. Why I do not wish to slay you passes my comprehension. But you may take your life, and depart—”

He sprang.

The fight was brief.

It was as though an explosion of released passion broke all along my muscles, driving my fists into the weaving pattern of destruction that finished with a smashed shield, a shattered thraxter, a sliced helmet —

and Tarkshur the Kataki running screaming along the corridor, spilling blood as he ran.

I had kept faith with myself. I had not slain him.

The blood was a pure accident. The fellow had tried to fight for just that amount of time too long, and one of the last blows intended to shred the other side of his helmet had cropped an ear.

And, the strange thing was, he kept his tail.

Two things occurred to me.

One was that I was still chained and Galid the Krevarr had the key. But there would be an answer to that. The other was that the Whiptail would know me again.

How interesting that, as slave, I had not thought to call Katakis by their slang name, Whiptail!

Aloud, I said, “There is a thing I lack. The key to unlock these chains.”

I looked into the opening of the fire-crystal wall. The key was there all right, a clumsy thing of iron. As I retrieved it, it occurred to me to wonder if this was the very same key that Galid had had in his possession, or was it a simulacrum. Was the Krozair longsword that old weapon of mine with which I had gone a-roving as a Krozair over the inner sea? The chains were unlocked and I threw them from me.

Whatever the answer might be, the key worked, the longsword was real.

I was alone in the Moder with its magics and its monsters.

Well, by Zair! And didn’t that suit me best?

Yes and no, I told myself. There is nothing to equal the fine free feeling of adventuring alone, and there is nothing to equal the sharing of adventures with a gallant company of good friends and doughty blade comrades.

So I took out that length of scarlet cloth and discarding the gray slave breechclout I wrapped the scarlet about me and pulled the end up and tucked it in and secured all with the broad and supple lesten hide belt. I pulled the belt in tightly and the dulled silver buckle snicked home sweetly.

Never having cared much for straps over my chest I secured the weaponry to belts around my waist, different belts each to its own weapon or pair of weapons. Equally, I do recognize the value of shoulder straps from time to time, and will use them when the necessity arises. As, now, I slung the water bottles back on. I will not tolerate dangling ends of scarves and belts and folderols. A fighting man must be trim.

A ravishingly exotic dangling scarf can be grabbed by your enemy to reel you in like a fish, to be gaffed

— through the guts.

Of that wonderful Kregan arsenal displayed I selected the rapier and main-gauche. Also I took the drexer, for that sword holds a place of especial affection, seeing that it is a superior refinement on the Havilfarese thraxter and the Vallian clanxer, and with elements of the Savanti sword — those we could contrive — embodied.

As to why there was not a Savanti sword among those articles I lacked — I thought about this, and came to the conclusion that whatever of sorcery and magic ran this Moder, it, he or she did not have the power to set against that of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe. This is not surprising. Those mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City would go through this place as a plough goes through rich loam.

My old seaman’s knife went over my right hip. When I handled it I own I gulped. I felt the awe. This was the knife I had first acquired on Kregen, seasons upon seasons ago. Could it be real? Or was it a mere semblance, fool’s gold, made of dreams and moonshine?