A Sword for Kregen (28 page)

His shield still rocked on its face in the mingled sunslight.

Bevon stood up.

“I think I shall see what I may do against this—”

I pulled him by his blue breechclout.

“Stay, Bevon the Reckless!”

So it was I, Dray Prescot, Prince of Onkers, who stepped forward and picked up the fallen shield with its proud marks of the Princess’s Swordsman and walked straight and purposefully onto the blue and yellow squares of the board of Death Jikaida to face a man I knew had the beating of me in swordplay.

Chapter Twenty-one

The Princess’s Swordsman

Traditionally in Kazz-Jikaida whenever the Princess called on her Swordsman to fight for her the drums rolled. Black and white checkered tabards, black and white checkered drum cloths, all rippled and flowed as the drummers plied their drumsticks. The rataplan hammered out. Long thunderous rolls and flourishes, repeated and repeated, roared and boomed over the Jikaida board. And I walked forward, almost in a dream, feeling the blood in my head and the weight of the shield and the heft of the sword and the grip of the sand beneath my naked feet.

These were physical feelings. They bore in on me. They were tangible and real, like the sweat that beaded my forehead and trickled down my face from under the reed-laurium, like the taste of blood and sweat on the air. Physical, material impressions: the glitter of burnished steel, the gloating faces of the privileged onlookers as they crowded from their chairs to catch a closer look at this climactic butchery, the waft of a tiny breeze on my heat-soaked face — how refreshing that breeze, how vividly it brought back pungent memories of other days, of the quarterdeck of a seventy-four, of the scrap of decking of a swifter, a swordship, and the wind in my face and all the seas of two worlds! But I was pent in this stone-walled enclosure, this amphitheatre of death, and I recalled the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, and felt again the concussion of blows given and taken, and the leem’s tail and the blood, and all the time as these jangling memories sparked through my head so I walked quietly and steadily out over the blue and yellows to take up my position beside the lady Yasuri.

“
En Screetzim nalen Aeilssa! Bratch!”
She called again, briskly, for she had not taken her gaze off Mefto, and did not turn, and she waited for her champion to stand at her side.

“I am here, lady,” I said, and she turned, and saw me.

“Jak. Fight well. Fight well to the death—”

“Aye, lady, I shall fight as well as I am able and as Zair strengthens my sinews and gives cunning to my fist. And to the death, as it seems. But, lady, I do not fight for you.”

She flinched. What she had thought I do not know. But she flinched back, and a look of pain crossed her face.

“This is a game to you, lady. A mere pastime, lady. So that you may wear the diadem of triumph, lady. But the drums roll and blood will be spilled and men will die, and not for your sake, lady.”

The curtains of the carrying-chair rustled back. The ivory white face looked out and the glory of the suns caught in the red Lohvian hair. “Still your tongue, tikshim. You are condemned to fight, so fight and do not chatter.”

I regarded her as I stood there, waiting for the drumroll to end. I did not look at Mefto — not yet. Ling-li-Lwingling put a hand as white as her face, as slender as a missal, to the golden cord and her fingers toyed with the golden tassel. I knew who she was, now — rather, I knew what she was. The drums rolled. And I said: “Ling-li-Lwingling. By the Seven Arcades, woman, you are a Witch of Loh!”

“Yes, Jak the Condemned. I am a Witch of Loh, and better for you to—”

“Save your pretty threats, Witch. I would give you the Sana; but other and more pressing matters await.”

Her red red mouth widened. I did not think she knew how to smile.

“Your fears for Vallia are well-founded — you will fight for the lady Yasuri — and you will fight for me!”

I felt the whole enormous expanse of the Jikaida board tilt beneath me, and coalesce into the single square upon which I stood. I noticed it was a yellow square. Ling-li’s smile slowly died and her face resumed that fixed foreboding expression as though expertly carved from solid ivory of Chem.

The long-drawn drumroll ended.

Absolute silence engulfed the Kazz-Jikaida board.

And I looked squarely upon Prince Mefto the Kazzur.

Arrogance and power and pride, yes, of course, they were all there, stamped upon him indelibly by his own prowess. I tried to see more. Men and women are more than mere bundles of flesh and blood hung on bones and walking the world in the light and darkness; this Mefto was a man, a five-handed Kildoi, and yet a human being. His presence smote me as a shell, a hard and shiny yellow carapace concealing the humanity within.

The vivid sensory impressions bombarding me as the drumroll rattled to silence contained all of the physical world; I dare not seek to pry into the world of feeling, of emotion, of fear or courage. I was here. Was not that enough?

Yet feeling decided all. Physical sensations were colored by the emotions, so I tried to look past the blue and yellow and the waiting silence and the spectators and the Jikaida pieces, past Yasuri and Ling-li and Mefto, tried to peer into the darkest depths beneath myself.

To find oneself... In that moment even the central core of existence sought its meaning. I was a Krozair of Zy. Did that matter so much?

Mefto’s voice lifted, high and hard and challenging.

“I know you, apim!”

I said nothing.

Perhaps, had the question been put to me, I could not have said anything.

But, at the very end of that somber tunnel there might be a light. It was just possible. All I had to remember was one single fact in all the universe: I was Dray Prescot.

That was all.

I am Dray Prescot.

Mefto twirled his sword with great dexterity, shoved up his shield and with a jovial bladesman’s bellow, charged.

We fought.

Useless to try to peer past the physical — the feelings must come of their own accord. Our blades met and scraped and clung and parted. The power in his muscles was a dynamic force. It was sword and shield against sword and shield. Oh, yes, he had two left hands to grip his shield and thus afford a superior leverage; but as we fought and circled, and sought the openings, and thrust and recovered to the gong-notes of steel on shield, so I accepted my fate. My only advantage, I thought, lay in that belief I had that I was a shade faster than he was. That was all. But he was a marvel. Often and often have I said that about swordsmen I have fought; but this Mefto the Kazzur was a marvel among marvels.

This marvel went about cutting me up as he went about cutting up all his victims, as he had chopped Tobi the Knees. But I resisted. The thraxters flamed in the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio. The sand beneath our feet spurted blue dust; for we fought for the square on which the Blue Princess had taken her stand, the Princess’s Square, and this would be hyrkaida when I lost.

For I felt I would lose.

The feeling appeared to me like a strange object in some precious golden-bound balass chest, to be taken out and examined and pondered over. A new experience. A thrilling vibration along nerves and sinews, a dark space in the mind...

Although I took no notice of her, I knew that Yasuri, who had moved back from her square, would be watching this combat with glowing eyes, her lip caught between her teeth, and, probably, her hands clenched over her breast. What the Witch of Loh, Ling-li-Lwingling, was doing I did not know, nor cared; setting out the pieces for a new game, probably.

Mefto the Kazzur sliced me along the right bicep; not deeply enough to hurt, just to draw blood, just to open the scoring. I had not touched him. He cut me again, and I found his thraxter a leaping silver flame, torturing, dazzling, infuriating. I kept myself inwardly, holding in to myself. We circled again, seeking the advantage that was not there, for the circumscribed lines of the blue square hemmed us in with honor. The technique — more a trick, really — I had pondered during the fight by the caravan might serve. But Mefto must be primed before I could use that last desperate throw.

Thinking clogged reactions; the sword must live with the body and become a part of the living being, free and uncontaminated by lethargic thought. But Mefto’s reactions and skill negated the usual unthinking skill I exerted. Where he had been trained and who his masters had been intrigued me and I would one day visit Balintol myself. But, then, that was foolish, a child’s dream of an impossible future, for I was due to die here, on the blue sand, chopped and bloody and done for.

As the combat went on and time stretched out and I was cut and cut again, a distant howling sound drifted in fitfully. The lethargic watchers on the terrace were responding, and losing all their languid affectation. The blood-sport caught them up in its choking coils.

With an infinite patience I accepted this punishment and worked on him. I found certain weaknesses I do not think he suspected existed. Certainly, I became sharply aware of several glaring deficiencies in my own technique. He feinted a thrust and as my shield flicked to cover and I went the other way, he allowed the almost imperceptible tremor of his body to force my instant unthinking reaction to drive me back. My own skill recognized that body tremor, and reacted to it, and so his original thrust slid in past my shield and sliced a ribbon of flesh from my ribs.

The next time he tried a variation of that I did not react as he expected, and his thrust missed and I leaned in and nicked him on his lower right arm. He sprang back, furiously.

“So you think to best me, Prince Mefto the Kazzur, apim! I have thrashed you before and this time—”

Well, sometimes I have a merry little spot of chit-chat when I fight. I did not reply, then, to his taunts.

The swords clashed again and I felt the power as he sought to overbear me and I resisted and, for a half-dozen heartbeats, we struggled directly together, body against body.

His strength was a live ferocious force. He compelled my sword arm down, and down. And I resisted, and so thrust him back, and slid his blade and sliced at him as he flinched and dodged backwards. I chopped only a strand of his hair. His face, which had been jolly and filled with good humor at indulging in the sport he liked best, lowered on a sudden, and his brows drew down. If this pantomime was meant to frighten me, well — by Zair, I will not lie.

For he bore in now with a more deadly intent.

Useless to attempt to describe the passages of that fight in detail, but it was talked about for season after season as the greatest encounter seen on the Kazz-Jikaida board.

He had taken a gouging chunk out of my shield and the wood splintered away from the bronze framing. Now his blade smashed down on the rim and wrenched the bronze into a distorted ribbon. With a few skillful blows as I defended myself he chopped half the shield away. His own yellow shield bore the marks of my sword; but it remained intact.

And, all the time, he kept up his chatter, taunting me, threatening me, deriding my efforts, sometimes patronizingly praising a last-minute defense that barely kept his sword from my guts.

“You fight well, for an apim. Truly, I admire your skill.”

I grunted with the effort of parrying with the dangling remnant of shield. I would not throw it away yet, for it still served in a pitiful fashion, and if I hurled it at him he would merely duck, and laugh.

As he talked on, leaping and swirling and attacking and springing back and so coming in again, I remained silent.

My body was now a single shining sheet of blood. I felt no pain, for a Krozair of Zy, no less than a Clansman or a Djang, must refuse to acknowledge pain that will hamper his fighting ability. But I was weaker. I could feel that. Nothing could disguise the sluggishness in my limbs, no pushing away of pain and denial of torment could conceal my growing feebleness.

This Kildoi was a
rara avis
among fighting men, no doubt of that. So I must put in the last throw before it was too late.

With a sudden and shattering series of blows, with a wild smashing onslaught, Mefto came for me and I saw that this time he meant to finish me. I defended. I ducked and weaved and dangled the sorry scrap of shield before him and I flailed his blade away. Somehow I resisted and held my position in the blue square and he drew back, baffled. But my weakness was now on me. I was near the end.

So, positioning myself, I tried to remember who I was, that I was plain Dray Prescot.

He was talking again, not quite so jovially, clearly annoyed that he had not finished me in that passage.

“I said you were a fighter, apim. You have a little skill. I have joyed in our contest; but now—”

And then I spoke. For the first time.

I said: “I, too, have enjoyed this little swordplay. You have tried and you have failed. I have sounded you out.” My voice was thick and my throat felt as though it was filled with all the sand of the arena. “But, now, Mefto the Kleesh, it is my turn.”

And, instantly, I swept through the dazzlement of the attack I had long pondered, and thrust.

I’d have had him. I would have. But I was weak, too weak. The blows I had taken had punished me, and the blood that leached away took with it my strength.

He just managed to drag his shield across. His Kildoi face, handsome, handsome, with its golden beard and clear-cut features, drew down in shock. He knew he had been caught. He reacted with a primitive violence.

He dashed in on me and his shield collided with my own scraps of wood and twisted bronze. His bulk forced me on and over. I was down. Down on one knee, the dangling shield remnants held aloft in my left fist. For a space, a single heartbeat, I put my right hand and the sword flat on the sand, supporting myself, getting my wind, seeing the world revolving in black stars and icy comets.

He towered over me. He laughed. His thraxter slashed down. Somehow the remnants of my shield slid into the sword’s path, and he lifted to strike again, and I forced up my right arm and gripped my sword and took the blows, refusing to go down.