A Sword for Kregen (16 page)

I said to Bevon one day: “Are you a Jikaidast, Bevon?”

“No, Jak.” He fetched up a sigh. “I might have been back home but for my tragedy.” He looked mournful as he spoke. Well, his story was soon told, and ugly in the telling thereof. He had been accused of a cowp, and, as you know, a cowp is a particularly beastly and horrible kind of murder, in which sadism and mutilation form part. The people had cried out against him and he had been locked away and would have been slain in lawful retribution. “Had I been guilty, Jak, I think I would have stayed and let them kill me. But I was innocent, so I escaped.”

“I can’t see how anyone could think you would commit murder, Bevon.”

“The man who died had made advances to a girl with whom I was friendly. I do not know, but I think she slew him. But I was blamed. So I ran away to be a soldier and was taken up as a slave. I do not really mind, for my heart is not in life—”

“By Havil!” I said, incensed. “Now that is just not good enough. So you are slave. Why not escape when we reach Jikaida City—?”

“You know little of that place, I fear.”

“I know nothing.”

“They play Kazz-Jikaida there.” Kazz is Kregish for blood.

That did explain a great deal. It also explained a little of Prince Mefto’s vaunted nickname, for he was traveling to Jikaida City to play in the games, and his sobriquet was Mefto the Kazzur.

That splendid prince was pirouetting his swarth about a little to the side of the space where the caravan had halted. I looked at him, and grew tired of his antics, and resumed our conversation. Whenever Bevon found the time away from his master’s Jikaida board we would talk, and he joined Deb-Lu-Quienyin and me at night around our fire. The Wizard of Loh regarded the Brukaj not as he did his own slave but rather as a potential Jikaidast who had temporarily fallen on evil times.

Often Pompino would join us, and, to tell the truth, we played Jikaida as well as Jikalla and the Game of Moons. This latter is near mindless; but it amuses many folk whose brains for whatever reason are not able to grapple with Jikaida or any of the other superior games.

So, as we neared the water hole and the drikingers had not put in an appearance and we were hot and thirsty and fatigued, I fancied that we might find the damned bandits waiting for us at the water, mocking us, taunting us to try to reach the water hole against their opposition. Ineldar shared the thought, too, for he hoarded our water meanly. The caravan guards stood watch like hawks.

During a halt when the suns burned down we drank little if at all, for the sweat would waste the precious fluid. That last night before the water hole, with the stars fat in the sky and the cooking fires burning with eye-aching brilliance, we took our water rations thankfully. What happened happened in a kind of copybook way, as though this were the moment I had been waiting for many seasons to arrive. When it did, I found I could not identify my emotions with any accuracy.

It turned out this way... At our fire the lady Yasuri and Master Scatulo finished their meals and retired to their coaches. Bevon, Pompino, Quienyin and myself lingered for a space, for we had hoarded a little water and were about to share it out between ourselves. It was legal water; that is, it was ours issued to us by Ineldar the Kaktu. Sishi slipped past her mistress’s coach to join us, giggling, for she had a little sazz with which to sweeten the water. She had probably stolen it from Yasuri, a procedure I regarded with both disfavor and applause. In return for the sazz, which would freshen the water and make of it a pleasant drink, Sishi was to receive her share. We would split the sazz five ways.

Ionno the Ladle might come in for a few mouthfuls, also. To get the sequence right is not easy. In the starlight with the Twins just vaulting over the horizon and the flare of the fire we crouched around like conspirators. The rattle of a window shutter announced Master Scatulo’s peevish voice.

“Grak, Bevon! Grak, you idle, shiftless rast! Bring some water — Pallan’s Hikdar’s Swod to Pallan’s Hikdar’s sixth! Bratch! You useless cloddish lumop, Grak!”

With a sigh, Bevon stood up, a massive bent shape against the starlight. Quienyin murmured that he was not enamored of Scatulo’s notation. The fire struck sparks from a glinting figure that appeared, striding along between the caravan and the fires. I saw this was Prince Mefto. Bevon took up his goblet and started for Scatulo’s carriage. Prince Mefto, leading his swarth, approached.

There was nothing any of us could say to halt Bevon and to persuade him that the water ration was his. His master had demanded it and Bevon was slave.

A fellow who had been slave a long time and grown cunning in slavish ways would have gulped the sazz down instantly and then whined that there was no water — and if he got a beating for it would regard that as quits doubled, once for drinking the water himself and second for depriving his master of it. But Bevon was gentle and unschooled in the devious ways of the world. And, too, there is every chance that he really felt his master required the sazz — oh, yes, absolutely. Something like that must surely have been in his mind in view of what occurred.

Mefto was swigging from a bottle. He resealed this and moving to the side of his swarth thrust the bottle away. He patted the swarth’s greenish-purple scaled head. He saw Bevon.

“Hai, slave! Kraitch-ambur,
[4]
my swarth, is thirsty. Give me that water.”

Bevon halted.

Better he should have run into the darkness.

Prince Mefto frowned. We could see his resplendent figure reflecting our firelight. His lower right hand fell to one of his sword hilts.

“Slave, the water! Grak!”

“Master,” stammered Bevon. “It is for my master—”

“To a Herrelldrin Hell with your master! I shall not tell you again, slave. The water!”

Bevon just stood, his dogged face perplexed, his massive shoulders hunched, it seemed, protectively over the goblet. Scatulo yelled again and Bevon jumped and Mefto reached forward to snatch the water and the goblet fell and the sazz-flavored water spread into the dirt.

“You onker! You stupid yetch!”

Prince Mefto was incensed. He whipped out the sword he gripped and with another hand patted his swarth affectionately. “My poor Kraitch-ambur! There is no water for you. But the slave will be punished!”

With that Mefto the Kazzur began hitting Bevon with the flat of his sword.

Desperately attempting to protect himself with upraised arms, the Brukaj was knocked over onto the ground. The Kildoi went on hitting him sadistically with the flat.

I stood up.

Pompino rose at my side and put a hand on my arm.

“No, Jak. He will take it amiss if you interfere.”

“Had I my powers,” sighed Quienyin, and took a sip of his drink.

Sishi was gasping and her hands were pressed fiercely to her breast, her face shining in the firelight.

Now Bevon was beginning to yell, the first cries of pain that had passed his lips. The sword rose and fell with wet soggy sounds. Bevon rolled this way and that, a huddled quivering mass, defenseless.

“No, Jak!” Pompino pulled me.

I shook him off and walked across to this gallant Prince Mefto the Kazzur.

“Jak! He will slaughter you!”

The prince paused in the beating to look across Bevon’s prostrate and groaning form. His golden eyebrows drew down menacingly. His upper right hand dropped to the second sword hilt.

“Well, rast?”

I said, “Prince. You chastise this man unjustly—”

I got no further. Soft words were not the currency of Mefto the Kazzur.

He simply said, “Yetch, you presume to your death!”

He leaped Bevon and charged full at me, two swords whistling. Both were thraxters.

I drew my thraxter and parried the first blows. I gave ground, circling, already realizing I was in for a fight. To be forced to kill this fellow would lead to most unpleasant consequences, for he was a prince and I a hired paktun.

It seemed to me in the first few moments of the fight that I dare not slay him and must therefore seek to stretch him out senseless. He would have to be tackled as I tackle a Djang, with the added complication of his tail-hand. He was rather like a Djang with his four arms and a Kataki with his tail rolled into one. I have fought Djangs and Katakis, and one Djang can dispose of — well, of a lot of Katakis.

This unpleasant cramph was a Kildoi.

Nine inches of daggered steel whipped up in his tail-hand and twinkled between his legs at me.

With a skip and jump I got out of the way. I did not slash the tail off. As we fought I fancied I had not sliced his tail off because that was the beginning of more trouble, that he had to be knocked out. As we fought I realized that he had not let me slice his tail off.

He was a marvel.

We fought. The blades flashed and rang with that sliding screech. Oh, yes, he had three blades against my one; but that was not it, not it at all. I knew and he knew, after a space.

He drew back. He was smiling. He looked pleased.

“Whoever you are, paktun, I have never met a better swordsman. But I think you must number your days now.”

The best swordsman in the world, Sishi had called him.

I didn’t know if he was that. But I did know that I had, at last, met my match.

Chapter Twelve

The Fight Beside the Caravan

Every swordsman must be aware that one day he may meet his match and so enter his last fight.

One reads so often of our intrepid hero who is so vastly superior as a swordsman, fighting other wights, and toying with them, cutting them up, with the outcome never in doubt. As you know I had always entered each fight with the knowledge that this could be the time I met my master. Oh, yes, I have cut up opponents, as I have related. One reads of the way in which the hero goes about his task. But now, here under the fatly glowing stars of Kregen, with the Moons rising and the crimson firelight playing upon the halted caravan, I was in nowise being gently admonished and taught a lesson, rather I was being sadistically tortured before the end.

With a convulsive snatch I managed to get my dagger out and into play. That made two blades against three. But this Kildoi was a master bladesman. The swords wove their deceptive patterns of steel. He knew every trick I essayed. He showed me three or four I’d never come across and only by desperate efforts I managed to escape, and even then I believe he let me, for the fun of it. Once a swordsman sees a trick he knows it — as I have said — otherwise he is dead.

I learned.

But I knew that he knew more than I did. And, all the time, his two left arms poised prettily and the hands hung gracefully. If he wished, he could bring two more blades into the fight.

Well, to take some ludicrous credit, after a space he hauled out a short sword with his upper left hand, and pressed me. I knew now I was fighting for my life and any thought of merely hitting him over the head was long flown. I rallied and fought back, and the swords clashed and clanged, and then, and I saw the fact as proof of something and as a final death warrant, his lower left fist pulled out a long dagger. So now he had five weapons against my two, and some of the smile was gone from his handsome face with the golden beard blowing.

Could Korero, I wondered, fight like this?

I’d have to see when I got back to Vallia.

And then... The truth was I wasn’t going to get back to Vallia... Not after Prince Mefto the Kazzur had finished with me.

As some fighting men do, he talked as he battled.

“You are good, paktun, very good. I would love to talk to you about your victories, your instructors. But I am a prince and I do not tolerate your kind of conduct.”

He cut me about the left shoulder and I swirled away and then used a risky attack to land a hit on his left shoulder. I saw the blood there, a smear in the light. We both wore light tunics, having doffed our armor. His face went mean.

“You think, you rast, you can better me? Me, Mefto the Kazzur, who fought his way to a princedom over the bodies of his foes? Fool!”

Well, yes, I was a fool, right enough.

I hit him again, a glancing blow across his face and severed a chunk of his beard.

Those two hits were the only ones I scored.

He pinked me again and I slid two of his blades and a third and fourth chunked a gouge out of my right side.

He was beginning to enjoy himself.

He didn’t like the cut on his face. I hoped it left an ugly scar, the rast.

Swordsmen have their little foibles. He had me in his toils, right enough. But as we fought and I tried the old trick of dismembering him piecemeal, being unable to finish him with a body thrust, I began to pick up hints as to his favored techniques. The trouble was, it was not just that he had five blades, or that his technique was well-nigh perfect, but that he was just supremely good. He was not quite as fast as me; had he been I’d have been stretched lifeless by now.

So I began to work out a last desperate gamble that would break all the rules and would make or break. Truth to tell, I had little real hope. The moment I began the passage I fancied he would detect instantly the attack and know the correct counter. But desperate situations demand desperate remedies. I was bleeding profusely now; but all the cuts were shallow and I knew he but toyed with me.

He was chattering away as we fought.

“I joy in this contest, paktun! By the Blade of Kurin! You are indeed a master bladesman.”

Maybe — but I was like to be a dead bladesman, master or not...

With a sudden and ferocious passade he began an attack aimed at slicing off my left ear — I think. I defended desperately, and gave ground, and faintly I heard screams and guessed Sishi and Pompino were riveted by this spectacle.

Time for the last great gamble... I positioned myself and a long arrow abruptly sprouted from Mefto’s right shoulder, between those cunningly swiveled double joints.

He screamed.

He fell back, screeching, and he dropped all his weapons.

Another arrow hissed past my head and went thwunk into the painted wood of Scatulo’s carriage. Without a thought I dropped flat and dived under the coach.