A Fortune for Kregen (7 page)

“We don’t want your sort in here,” shouted one of the roughs, a cloth around his neck stained greasily with sweat.

“Prince Mefto was a great man!” declared another, a runt of an Och slopping ale.

“Aye,” said another. “Prince Mefto may have lost our wagers, because his side thought he would be chopped. But you can’t say things about him here. He’ll be back to win again—”

Sweat rag chimed in. “You’d better clear off, schtump, five hands or no, before we blatter you.”

“You misunderstand me, my friends—” began the Kildoi.

“No we don’t. You’re asking questions about Mefto the Kazzur and we’re all his friends here, and you bear him no good will.”

A flung dagger streaked from the gloom of the counter. The Kildoi put up a hand and deflected the dagger. The action was instinctive and unthinking, and I recognized the superb Disciplines that gave Korero such wonderful command of his shields.

“I see you are not friendly,” said the Kildoi. “So I will retire—”

A blackjack swung for his head, and he leaned and moved and the blackjack spun away, harmlessly.

The very contempt of his actions, innate in their display of consummate skill, incensed these fellows.

Mefto had always been a favorite, and these people did not know the full story. In the next instant, summoning their courage, they leaped upon the Kildoi.

I started in to help, intrigued by all this, and, after a pause, Pompino joined me. There was a deal of shoving and banging, and swearing, and a collection of black eyes and bloody noses before the three of us burst from the door of the tavern. On a wooden bracket the inflated skin of a vosk swung in the wind, and the inn was called The Jolly Vosk.

“Whoever you are,” said the Kildoi, with a jerk of the thumb of his upper right hand, “my thanks. The sign over the tavern proclaims the denizens within.”

We walked off along the sidewalk, and we began to laugh. Snatches of the bizarre flying acrobatics of the fellows in there as the Kildoi threw them hither and yon recurred to us, and we laughed.

“Lahal, I am Drogo, and a Kildoi, as you see.”

We made the pappattu, me as Jak and Pompino with his full name. Then Pompino burst out with: “And, Drogo, this is the same Jak who cut off the tail hand of that bastard Mefto.”

Drogo stopped dead. He turned that magnificent head to study me more closely. I looked back.

His eyes carried that peculiar green-flecked grayness of uneasy seas, of light shining through rain-slashed window panes — the images are easy but they convey only a little of the sense of inner strength and compulsion, of dedication and awareness, the eyes of this Kildoi, Drogo, revealed.

Presently he took a breath. His arms hung limply at his sides. I noticed that one end of his moustaches was shorter than the other. His teeth were white, even, and showed top and bottom when he smiled.

He smiled now, a bleak smile like snow on the moors.

“I am surprised you are still alive.”

“That’s what we all say,” burbled on Pompino.

“Mefto was foolish,” I said, deliberately turning along the flagstones and walking on, forcing them to keep pace.

“Any man who faces Mefto in swordplay is foolish.”

“Aye,” I said, and with feeling. “Aye, by Zair!”

As is generally the case on Kregen no one pays much attention to the strange gods and spirits by whom a man swears; it is only when they give away your country of origin when you do not want that information revealed that they attract attention.

Pompino laughed, a little too high.

“We never did get that wet.”

“I see I was the unwitting cause of your thirst—”

“No, no, horter, not so.” Pompino, I felt sure, was now uneasy, had come to a slower appreciation of smoldering passions in this man. He kept walking on, a little too swaggeringly, and laughing. “Oh, no—”

I said, “You were not the cause of the thirst. You merely prevented our quenching it.”

He gave me another expressionless look that, with those eyes and that face, could never be truly expressionless. I thought he was trying to sum me up, and running into difficulty.

“I am remiss,” he said, and the note of ritual was strong in his voice. “Let me buy you both a drink. I insist. It is all I can do, at the least, to express my thanks.”

So we went into the next inn, a jolly place where they served a capital ale, and we hoisted stoups. We went to a window seat and sat down just as though we were old comrades. I fretted. I was shilly-shallying over this business of the voller.

Now, in other times I would have gone raging up to the roof, a scarlet breechclout wrapped about me and a sword flaming in my fist, and down to the Ice Floes of Sicce for any damned Hamalese who got in the way. But, now, I was taking my time, making excuses, seizing every opportunity to prevaricate.

Many times on Kregen I have noticed that when I shilly-shally for no apparent reason, when things do not work out with the old peremptory promptness, there is usually an underlying cause. Often to have rushed on headlong would have been to rush headlong into disaster. And, Zair knows, that has happened, often and often...

But the voller beckoned, and I hesitated and did not know why.

The Star Lords had discharged us from our immediate duty, the Gdoinye had so informed Pompino.

Then why hesitate?

But it was pleasant to sit in the window seat of a comfortable inn in the grateful afternoon radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, with a cool flagon of best ale on the clean-scrubbed table... And, believe me, doing just that is just as important a part of life on Kregen as dashing about with flashing swords.

My thoughts had taken me away a trifle from the conversation. I heard Pompino talking and the words:

“...a capital voller...” leaped out at me.

I listened. This Drogo was clearly seeking Mefto — and it was no great guess that he was seeking with no good will. He could be a bounty hunter. He could be a wronged husband. He could be a stikitche.

But Pompino must have told him that Prince Mefto had returned to Shanodrin, the land the Kazzur had won for himself in blood and death. Now Drogo wished to get out of Jikaida City as fast as he could —

and a caravan, besides being slow, was also not on the schedule for departure for some time.

“An airboat? Aye,” said Drogo, and drank.

“It is a great chance—” Pompino was not such a fool, after all.

To have this Kildoi with us when we essayed the airboat would make success much more certain.

I pushed aside the startled inner reflection that this was not how I would have thought and acted only a few years ago. There were wheels within wheels here, and I was canny enough by now to let the wheels run themselves for a space.

Drogo said, “If you will have me, I will join you—”

“Agreed!” said Pompino, and he sat back and quaffed his ale.

I sat back, also, but I did not drink.

Drogo did not look at me. He made rings with his flagon on the scrubbed wood.

“And you, Jak?”

“Why, Horter Drogo, is it that you Kildoi always seem to have only one name?”

His smile was again like those damned ice floes of the far north.

“But we do not. We do not parade our names, that is all.”

“Point taken — and, as for your joining us, why, yes, and right heartily.” I put warmth into my voice.

Foolish, I felt, to antagonize him for no reason.

“Then no harm is done.”

What he meant by that I was not sure. I did know that the old intemperate Dray Prescot might well have challenged him to speak plain, blast his eyes.

He went on, “We are of Balintol, as you know, and we keep ourselves to ourselves. There are not many of us. All the first families know one another. The use of family names is felt to be — to be—”

“Drink up, Horter Drogo,” I said, “and let me get you the other half.”

That, at the time, seemed as good a way as any of ending that conversation.

Once again I promised myself I’d have a good long talk with Korero when I got back to Vallia. My comrade who carried his enormous shields at my back was a man of a mysterious people, that was for sure.

It was, naturally, left to Pompino, when I returned with the drinks, to say, “And you are chasing this rast Mefto to—”

“One of us will kill the other.” Drogo took his flagon into his lower left hand. The other three hands visible clenched into fists. “I shall not face him with swords. So he may die. I devoutly hope so.”

Like Korero, this Drogo did not habitually swear by gods and demons as do most folk of Kregen.

“You are no swordsman yourself?”

He glanced across at me, and his fists unclenched, and he took a pull of ale.

“Oh, yes, I own to some skill. But my masters suggested I would be better served by taking up some other weapon—”

“And?” interrupted Pompino.

Drogo made himself laugh. His teeth were white and even, and his tongue was very red.

“I manage with an axe, polearms, the bow, a knife—”

I said, “All at once, no doubt.” As I spoke I heard the sour note of envy in my voice.

“When necessary.”

By Vox! But I had walked into that one with my chin!

“You have met Katakis?”

Offhandedly, he answered obliquely. “The little streams run into the great river.”

I nodded. “And Djangs?”

He frowned. “No — I do not know of them.”

“Oh,” I said. “I just wondered.”

I stood up.

“If we intend to take this confounded voller, then let us be about our business.”

Most men are not mere walking bundles of reflexes. Most men have deeper layers of thought and emotions below the superficialities of life. Among the many people a man bumps into on his way through life there must be some, a few, for whom he feels enough interest to be fascinated by those deeper levels.

And this really has little to do with friendship, which is by way of being an altogether different idea.

As we walked along in the radiance from the twin suns of Antares, I pondered the enigma of this Drogo the Kildoi.

Pompino was prattling on about Jikaida and his own honest conviction that he did not have a head for the game, and Drogo was nodding civilly and saying that, yes, he quite enjoyed the Game of Moons, if he was in the mood, and that he found Vajikry surprisingly challenging for what appeared so simple a game although the version they played in Balintol, his homeland, was markedly different from that played here in the continent of Havilfar. I wondered how he had got here and his adventures on the way. Korero never spoke of himself. Balintol is a shrouded land and a fit birthplace for the men it breeds.

Onron, the lady Yasuri’s coachman, caught up with us as we passed through the colonnades surrounding the Kyro of the Gambits. His bright yellow favor glistened. We were about to cross into the Foreign Quarter, where the Blue and the Yellow held no favor one above the other.

“I’ve been looking for you all over, you pair of hulus,” he puffed out. He was riding a freymul, the poor man’s zorca, with a chocolate-colored back and streaks of yellow beneath, and Onron had ridden the animal hard. Clots of foam fluffed back from his patient mouth. Sweat stained all down his neck, matting the fine brown hairs.

“Hai, Beaky!” greeted Pompino, jovially.

“May your whiskers shrivel, you—” Onron threw the reins over the freymul’s head and stood to face us.

“My lady demands your presence — at once. The word she used was Bratch.”

“Why should we jump for her any more?”

The Kildoi, Drogo, had disappeared into the shadows. Onron scratched his beak. He was not used to this kind of address respecting his lady.

“You had better go at once,” he warned.

Pompino glanced at me, and his bright eye told me that the Star Lords had relieved him of a burden. The case appeared to me, suddenly, and I confess somewhat startlingly, as being different. A tug at his sleeve pulled him a little apart.

“The Everoinye have discharged you of the obligation to Yasuri, Pompino. The Gdoinye spoke to you.

But not to me...”

His foxy face took on a shrewd, calculating expression, and yet, I was grateful to see, a sympathetic look also.

“You could be right. The Gdoinye did not speak to you.”

“Hurry, you famblys!” called Onron.

“Yet, the voller—”

“Drogo will turn up when Onron is gone. I shall go to the lady Yasuri and see what she requires. If you and Drogo can manage the flier, you will command the air. You can pick me up later at the inn.”

“Yes.” He stroked his whiskers. “Yes, Jak. You have my word as a kregoinye. I will return for you.”

“Good — then we must both hurry.”

He turned away at once and started off along the colonnade, his lithe form flickering in light and shade past the columns. He heard Onron’s indignant yells right enough; he just ignored them. I turned to the Rapa.

“I will come, Onron — so stop your caterwauling.”

He stuck his beak into the air, offended, and climbed back on the freymul. There was no question of my riding, so, perforce, I walked smartly off for the Star of Laybrites.

The thought crossed my mind that more stikitches, assassins, had come in with the caravan that had brought Drogo, and Yasuri’s life was again in peril. But that did not make sense. For one thing, this King Ortyg would not know his men had failed. And, for another, had there been assassins there would have been no time for Yasuri to dispatch Onron in this fashion.

One objection to the first point could be that the new King Ortyg of Yasuri’s country employed a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out for him what was happening here. That was possible. I quickened my steps, although recognizing the validity of the second point.

The Rapa coachman took off on the freymul, yelling back that he would tell the lady that I was obeying her and convey to her the news of Pompino’s ingratitude and treachery. Onron shot off along the avenue among the crowds, and I took a shortcut.

There are shortcuts in life and there are shortcuts. This one took me through a poor quarter where they spent their time in tiny workshops making tawdry souvenirs of Jikaida for the visitors to pay through the nose for in the souks. And, this shortcut was a shortcut to disaster. The Watch was out, backed up by soldiers in their armor and hard black and white checkered cloaks, helmets shining.