Fliers of Antares (17 page)

Kov Nath bored in, his four blades wheeling with as much ferocity as when we had begun.

“You are a dead nulsh now, Notor Prescot!”

I had discarded the idea of throwing a djangir. I could have done so — as could he — but I think we both realized we had the skill to slip a blade. But the hurling of a djangir was something he could afford better than could I, for he had four.

“Prepare to meet your pagan gods!” he bellowed again, and charged, and the four blades sang and whistled about me. I thought of nothing much thereafter, except a memory of three things — of Zair, of dealing with the savage beasts of Kregen, and of Delia.

I concentrated on cutting him up piece by piece. I would not be clever, or go for the big one. As I had the shorgortz and the Ullgishoa and the boloth, three out of many memorable combats, I would deal with this wild leemshead piecemeal.

He was very quick and very clever and he bored in without allowing me a moment’s respite, now that he thought he had me and I was done for. I let him come in and so twisted and leaped far to the side, away from the point of his attack. As I leaped both my djangirs came down onto his upper right arm. I hacked with tremendous force, and, together, the blades struck, cutting and shattering the arm so that the white bone showed bloodily through the skin.

Immediate yells broke out from all around the sacred court. Kov Nath staggered back, looking stupidly at the ruin of his arm. His fingers could no longer hold the djangir and they opened, and the blade — it had some of my blood upon it — slid jangling to the floor.

I did not give him time to recover from the shock.

I came in low, almost bent double, surged up, and hacked across his lower left forearm, taking off the wrist, the hand, and the djangir in a splashing gout of blood.

The Djangs have an astounding agility and an almost superhuman strength. Shock and amazement shattered Kov Nath, but he came back at me with fearful courage and ferocity. I had to hack and slash and slice and fend him off, but, all blood-smeared with his two ruined arms flailing, like some ghastly monster from the deepest hells of Kregen, he pursued me. I backed up and turned and waited. Then, as he lunged with a fearful scream to sink the djangirs in my throat, and I fronted him and smashed them aside, I saw the first faint crack in his psychology, the first chink in his armor of courage.

But he would not give in as easily as that. The stump of his left lower arm battered my body, bruising me around the ribs. I swung away, and as he bellowed and charged to follow I let him have a Krozair of Zy foot-kick. I missed the target, but he screamed and backed away, and I slashed — rather foolishly — at his throat, for I wanted to finish this ghastly business quickly now. His return sliced down my arm, drawing blood and making me grip the djangir tightly, for I thought I’d lost control of my arm then.

He saw that, and the chink in his armor closed. He stood for a moment glaring, his chest heaving, blood and sweat rivering down his magnificent body.

“By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds! You will die now, apim!”

I felt that I might usefully add an observation to the so far one-sided conversation.

I said, “By Vox, you nurdling onker! You have but two hands now! You are less than an apim now! And, by Zim-Zair, you will be less than a dead apim before a mur or two!”

He flinched back.

Oh, yes, he was magnificent, even pathetically smothered with blood, with his two useless arms dangling. But the two he had left still clutched sharp steel, and he made a final enormous effort to bear me down with him. He jumped and roared and the two djangirs lanced for me, one to the eyes, the other to the belly.

I parried them both.

He knew then, did Kov Nath Jagdur, that this was his end.

For, marvelous fighter that he was, he recognized that I had not instantly followed the parries with attack. I had held back, poised to destroy him at my pleasure. He saw all that.

He was too fine a fighter not to recognize the truth. He had tried all his tricks, and they had failed him. He knew that I had not riposted through fear of closing with him; he understood I had him at my mercy now, for I had read all his cunning and skill and bested them.

It was in my mind not to kill this man, for I valued him as a fighter and as a man, even if he was a wild leemshead who had brought near-destruction to the country I loved.

“Kov Nath!” I called to him. “I am minded to spare you your life, if you will—”

“No bargain, rast! The Kov of Hyr Khor does not bargain with rasts of apims!”

“It is your own blood.”

I spoke as mildly as I could, but he flinched back, seeing that old devil look upon my face. Brutality and war wreak a fearful havoc upon a man.

“Aye, my own blood! And I would shed it all again to rid my country of Obdjang and apim!”

“In that you are an onker, Kov Nath.”

“I am the King of Djanduin, cramph!”

“You were, for a short space only. But you brought the country to ruin. I would rather not have your blood on my hands — or any more than there already is.” At this I heard the roar of coarse and appreciative laughter from those watching. The Kregan often has a bloody line in jests.

He was bleeding profusely now, and he dropped one of the djangirs to grip the shattered arm. He felt it with great and ghastly disbelief. He glared at me, his coppery hair wild about his face, the silver fillet long since lost.

“What bargain do you offer me — the Kov of Hyr Khor?”

There appeared no strangeness in that the two of us, who were in the midst of so violent a combat, could talk thus.

“If I am to be King of Djanduin, as men say I am, for the good of the country, I would not relish a wild leemshead within the realm.”

“That would not be wise, I promise you.”

“So you would find a new home, somewhere in Havilfar.”

“That I could never do, Notor Prescot.”

I did not fail to perceive his change of tone.

I decided to press a trifle. “You are a dead man if we fight again. I can slap you, my two arms against your two. But I see in you some good you cannot see in yourself. Kregen would do ill to lose too many men like you, leemshead though you are.”

A growl ran around the packed men watching. I wondered what their reactions truly were, and then forced them out of my mind. Slaying for the sake of slaying is a pastime for the perverted, for the insane, for the kleeshes of two worlds.

He rallied. His blood dropped ever more rapidly upon the mosaics, making their colors blot with a more dreadful stain.

“And if I leave Djanduin, what is to become of my people of Hyr Khor?”

“They will be treated with honor. Hyr Khor is a part of Djanduin. If I am to be king I will not permit one part of Djanduin to set itself above another part.”

There might be explanations due to Kytun; he would get them.

Kov Nath sagged back. How near death he was without treatment we did not know, but he would not leave here until he had given his word.

He knew that. That subtle chink in his psychological armor, opened when he recognized he had met a man who could best him — and that man an apim! — widened more as he saw a way out. He forced himself to stand upright, panting now, the blood running, the sweat sparkling redly upon him. He threw the last djangir upon the floor.

“I accept! If I am to leave Djanduin, then it is to you, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, that I pass on the Kovnate of Hyr Khor! To you I bestow Hyr Khor!”

This was perfectly legal, although I fancied the little crippled girl with the Bolinas would have to be seriously consulted. But, too, I saw his cunning ruse. He would hand me his Kovnate of Hyr Khor and with it, he surmised, the enmity of his people, who would seek to revenge him upon me.

I was prepared to accept anything to get this great gory, sweaty man out of here as safely as might be.

“I accept, Nath Jagdur. I take upon myself the title of Kov of Hyr Khor and release you from that burden. Now, I will see to your wounds, and bind you up, and care for you—”

My men were lax.

I do not blame them, for the drama had been compelling, there in the torchlight of the sacred court of the warrior gods, as the warrior gods themselves seemed to parade around the friezes above us. Out of the torchlights flew a stux. I had sensed its flight instantly, like any Krozair brother, and could do nothing.

Straight for the heart of Nath Jagdur, who had been Kov of Hyr Khor and King of Djanduin, flew the stux. The spear penetrated and such was its force it staggered him back and threw him to the ground.

He had time to look up at me, his handsome face drawn with the bitter knowledge of failure. The blood gushed from his mouth and he died.

I heard a chunking meaty
thwunk
from the side, and knew the man who had thrown the stux was dead, also.

Kytun said, “It was that Nundji-lover Cleitar! He could not believe his master had done what he had done. Truly, loyalty and revenge are entwined plants.”

After that Coper’s people could organize everything. I have learned to live with and to defeat fatigue for long periods, and, truly, I believe, my immersion in the sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe confers on me the ability to stay awake and alert long after other people have fallen in stupor. But the tiredness would not be denied now. My wounds were bound up, the court was cleared, the mosaics scrubbed and washed. All through that night of Notor Zan we worked on, and men stumbled away, to collapse with exhaustion, as we started to put Djanduin back on its feet. It had taken me seven years since I had come here. Well, there were three more to go in this enforced prison of time before I would be free.

In those three years we accomplished much. I ordered the coronation to be a serious affair, swiftly done and yet seen to be done. Food was unearthed from its caches. We were blessed by good harvests, in the due time of harvesting for every crop, rotation by rotation. Gradually in the first two years we hauled Djanduin back. Then the army mobilized and we marched up against the Gorgrens. By moves that outfoxed that unpleasant people we swarmed down out of the Mountains of Mirth, defeated three separate armies in three separate battles, and drove the Gorgrens clear back to the Yawfi Suth and the Wendwath. We did not really care if they were sucked down by the bog and quagmires, or if they succumbed to the wiles of the Maidens of the Dreaming Lake, just so long as they left the soil of Djanduin. Once we were back where the frontiers had for so long been placed I was content to halt. We might gather our strength, plan, and arise to strike into Gorgrendrin itself, but that must come later.

I hankered after releasing Herrelldrin from the yoke of the Gorgrens. Turko the Shield would welcome that, for he had spoken so little of his home, out of shame, as I believed. There was no doubt but that the Djangs would follow. For one thing they loved a fight and wished to teach the Gorgrens a sorely needed lesson; and, two, by this time they regarded me as a king who could do no wrong, and would have followed me to the Ice Floes of Sicce if need be. The only pleasure I could take from that was that the country was recovering, people could look up and laugh again, the good days were returning.

As for the Lady Lara, I had with great cunning avoided whatever she might have thought, and the issue was now clearly joined between Felder Mindner and Kytun Dom.

I visited the Kovnate so uncannily thrust upon me by a bleeding man near to death, and found it to be rugged and wild as to country, and even more rugged and wild as to people. Kytun had clapped me on the back and roared out that — by Zodjuin of the Glittering Stux — he had a good neighbor now!

I agreed with him, for I meant to make this gift of a Kovnate into a place to be proud of; but that, too, had to take its turn in the round of days.

On Hyr Khor I was taken to see a marvel of the island, a marvel, indeed, of all of Djanduin, and whose fame had spread eastward to the Shrouded Sea.

This marvel was the Kharoi Stones.

An enormous area covered with the time-shattered wreck of an ancient city, stones tumbled in indescribable confusion, columns, shafts, arcades, walls, towers, hanging gardens now slithered into pyramids to dwarf those of Egypt, channels cumbered with chipped marbles and vast tessellated areas, all smothered with vegetation and the home for wild beasts of many descriptions, this, then, was the eerie place called the Kharoi Stones. I have seen Karnak, and Angkor Wat, and other famed relics of the past on our own Earth, and I have seen other of the ancient monuments of the Sunset People on Kregen; the Kharoi Stones holds a mystery and a deep secret all its own. At this time, as you know, I had not seen the Dam of Days, which controls the tides through the western end of the Grand Canal of the Eye of the World. But I walked among the tumbled masses of the Kharoi Stones and I marveled.

Everywhere was to be seen, sculpted boldly in relief or in the round, the magnificent representation of the Ombor, the mythical flying monster of immense size and fiery heart, who dying is yet reborn, whose breath scorches cities, whose tears water the oceans, whose hearts beat for all humankind, and, as I knew, for whom my enclave in Zenicce had been named.

Coupled with this plethora of ornamentation was the symbol of the double-ax — not the Minoan double-ax but an ax double-bitted yet narrow of blade, eminently suitable for the sweeping blow and the lethal chop from the saddle of a vove.

You may well believe I promised myself much future exploration of the Kharoi Stones.

On a day in Djanguraj after I had been up all night by the light of four of the moons, reading reports, dictating answers and orders to my stylors, planning for the well-being of the country, I met for breakfast by prearrangement with Ortyg Coper and Kytun Dom.

We sat drinking that glorious Kregan tea and eating crisp vosk rashers, and eggs, and finishing with palines from a silver dish. Food, transport, law, education, security, all were now practically back to normal in Djanduin, and I had but a single sennight left of my prison sentence. The Todalpheme had been explicit, and my own calculations confirmed their findings.