Lord Tyger (29 page)

"What do you intend to do?" Ras said.

Gilluk looked thoughtful. The head dangling by its long hair from his hand looked much like Gilluk. The skull was narrow; the face, lean and long. The eyebrows were bushy, and the eyelashes were so long and thick they looked like flower petals. The nose was thin and arched, the upper lip was long and broad, and the chin was cleft and pointed. The eyes were closed. Surprisingly, the mouth was also closed. The expression was that of downcast thought, as if the head were pondering this new state of death. A drop of blood fell from the jagged neck.

Gilluk finally said, "What am I to do with you?"

Ras thought that if Gilluk took long deciding, he would not have to make up his mind. Ras was sinking, and although his rate of descent was much slower than farther out in the mire, he would be completely under within a few minutes.

Gilluk must have realized this, yet he spoke slowly. "That mire has killed many animals and men. There is a very hideous and powerful god who lives at the bottom with his two wives. He seldom lets a victim get away. Yet you got away--to this point, anyway. You must be a favorite of the gods or else hard to kill. Or both. But then you said you were the son of the god you called...?"

"Igziyabher," Ras said. "Not
a
god.
The
God."

"Of course there is one God," Gilluk said. "But He has many forms and many lives, all at once. Can you understand that? This sword is a god. I am a god, though I can die. However, I am not standing here to discuss religion with you."

"Why are you standing there?" Ras said.

"If I killed you and took your head back, the people would be amazed. And I would be regarded as a great king indeed. The minstrels would sing of me until the end of the world, when the sky will break into frozen pieces of blue stone and the great crocodile will lead all the devout Sharrikt past the ice and the fire to the land of plenty and of much war, where a man can fight all day and even be killed and yet arise at evening to eat all he wants and bed all the women he wants."

"That's interesting," Ras said.

"Not since the great king Tabkut has a king killed a demon," Gilluk said.

"The Wantso say that I am a ghost," Ras said.

"You can be killed, so you're a demon, not a ghost," Gilluk said.

"What's the difference between the two?" Ras said. "Also, how do you know that I can be killed? Have you ever seen me dead? Have I not been bitten by a green swamp adder and lived, fought a leopard with my bare hands and lived, been struck by lightning and lived? Why do you think I can be killed?"

He was talking to gain time, although he could not gain too much or he would just disappear from the conversation. He thought of trying to throw the knife, since it seemed the only thing to do. But, though he was now up to his knees, he did not want to force Gilluk to attack him. He would rather wait another minute.

Gilluk smiled and said, "I saw you cut yourself while you were building my house. Ghosts don't bleed, and demons have green blood that boils."

"My blood is red and doesn't boil."

"That was only an illusion to fool me. But you couldn't
trick me enough to hide the fact that you do bleed."

Ras shrugged. Everybody he had known could think up reasons to justify his actions.

"Why are you here?" Gilluk said. "Are you running from the Wantso men because they would no longer tolerate your laying their women? Or do you still have that ridiculous idea of becoming king of the Sharrikt?"

"All the Wantso, except for one, are dead," Ras told him, and he described what had happened.

Gilluk was upset. "All dead?" he murmured. "That is unbelievable. And sad. On whom, then, will we make war? We have no enemies now--except you."

"I am no enemy," Ras replied. "Unless you insist that I am. But don't forget the Bird of God. It killed the Wantso because it thought they would kill me. Igziyabher, my Father, is looking out after me. If He saw that you Sharrikt had killed me, or even intended to do so, or even held me prisoner..."

Gilluk had seen the Bird a number of times during the past twenty years, although never close. To him, it was not the Bird of God. It was itself a god of the air--Faalthunh.

Ras noticed that the raven that had flown over him when he had been sinking in the mire had returned to settle down on a branch above Gilluk. Its hopes for Ras were renewed, and it probably lusted for the head dangling from Gilluk's hand. In fact, now that Ras thought about it, the raven would benefit no matter who won or lost here. Being a scavenger was not a hard life at all, unless a bigger carrion-eater came along.

"I can't believe," Gilluk said, "that the gods could care more for you than for any Sharrikt, and especially the king of
the Sharrikt. Besides, I hold the divine sword, and surely it will protect me."

"It didn't protect the man you took it from or keep the Wantso from capturing you," Ras said. "How do you know it hasn't decided to give itself to me?"

Gilluk looked upset again. There was a long silence. Ras pulled his legs up one by one and moved to one side a little without objection from Gilluk. Now the mire was only up to his calves, but he was beginning to sink again. Gilluk said, as if the matter had been settled once and for all by indisputable logic, "You're not a Sharrikt. The divine sword wouldn't permit you to take it."

"Let me up on the bank, and we'll see about that," Ras said.

"No. It would be ridiculous," Gilluk said. "I think I'll..."

He jumped as the raven cawed loudly and flapped off the branch. Ras shouted, "Watch out behind you!"

Though he had seen no one, he knew that somebody--or something--had alarmed the raven.

Gilluk whirled. A man screamed something in Sharrikt. Gilluk ran out of Ras's view. Ras slogged out of the mire and crawled up the bank. Peeping cautiously over the edge, he saw Gilluk swinging with his sword at a Sharrikt who held a big club. The club had spikes of copper on the knobbed end and seemed to be of very hard wood. When the sword struck it, the sword bounced off and left only a dent in it. Its wielder was as tall as Gilluk, younger, and more powerfully built. His face had the same features as Gilluk's and the severed head's. The head was now lying on its back on the edge of the bank, where Gilluk had dropped it, and it was staring upward, the shock of falling having opened its lids.

Ras thought that, if he had been Gilluk, he would have thrown the head at the attacker instead of dropping it, and then rushed him as he dodged the head. Or he would have waited until he was close to the man and then hurled the head in his face.

Ras cleaned the mire from his hands and his knife and from his feet and then waited. The combat had a ritualistic form, or so it seemed to him. The contender would swing his club, and Gilluk would block it with his sword. The contender, instead of replying with a straight-in thrust of the spiked club at Gilluk, thus using it as a sword or spear while Gilluk's guard was down, would step back and wait. Gilluk would lift his sword, the contender would bring his club down against the raised sword, and so it went.

The two grunted at every impact of weapons. Their dark-brown skins gleamed, and their once-white robes were darkened with sweat. After a while, it became evident that Gilluk was tiring faster than his opponent. His previous battles must have taken much strength from him.

"Stab him!" Ras called. Gilluk paid no attention. "Use the point of your sword!" Ras added.

Gilluk was soon backed up against a tree. A few more blows from the club would knock the sword from his weakening hand. Then, Ras supposed, Gilluk would stand as steadily as the tree behind him to receive the death-blow. It was disgusting. A battle for your life was no time to subscribe to ritual or to any conventions. It was time for every trick you knew and any you might invent at the moment.

Gilluk's sword was torn from his grasp, and he
did
stand, erect, glaring, and unflinching. There was something to admire
in this noble attitude, but not to imitate. Nor did Ras see why he should allow the execution to take place.

He picked up a heavy branch and walked toward the victor to knock him out. He was silent, but Gilluk's expression must have warned the other. Whirling, he lifted his club and charged. Ras dropped the stick, shifted the knife from his left to his right hand, and threw it. The Sharrikt screamed and fell on his side. Ras pushed him over to his back and removed the knife from the pit of the stomach.

"I would have reasoned with him if I'd had time," Ras said.

Gilluk did not reply. Ras supposed that it was because he did not know what to do next. He had never been in a situation like this. He did not make a move to pick up the sword and only murmured something unintelligible when Ras took the sword.

"Are there any more contenders?"

Gilluk nodded, the Sharrikt gesture for no.

"I asked you once what you intended to do"

Gilluk slid down with the tree trunk against his back. "You're not going to kill me?"

"Not unless you force me to."

"I can't go back as king. I can't go back at all. I lost the sword to another, and..."

"So here it is back in your hands," Ras said. He hefted the sword, admiring its length and heaviness and sharpness and hardness and the strange symbols on its guard and hilt. Then he threw it down so that its tip plunged into the earth and it remained upright.

"You're now king."

Gilluk said, "It isn't right."

"You croak like that raven," Ras said. He squatted down to be face to face with Gilluk. Tears made Gilluk's eyes shine like polished ebony in a dismal rain.

"Don't be so distressed," Ras said. "Look at it this way. The divine sword is a god, right? And it determines who becomes the king, right? So it has ended up in your hands, and the contenders are dead. So the sword has decided that you are still king."

"I am weeping, not because I don't know what to do, but because my young brother, Tannup, is dead."

Gilluk pointed at the head. "And because my cousin, Gappuk, is dead. And because the other two I killed are my nephews. I loved them all. And because, in a few years, my son Tinnup will be trying to kill me."

"If they loved you as much as you loved them, why did they try to kill you?" Ras said.

Moaning, Gilluk raised himself and pulled the sword from the earth.

"It is the custom for men of the Sharrikt to go into the Great Swamp and there try to kill the king. I killed my father, almost on this very spot, many years ago."

He raised the sword on high and brought its edge down upon the neck of Gappuk. The blade must have been dulled, or else Gilluk was weak from the fighting and from grief or both. It took two more strokes before Gappuk's head rolled free. Gilluk picked up both heads by their long hair and, holding them with one hand and the sword with the other, strode away. They circled the quagmire, crossed the fallen log, and came to an open space. Two bodies lay side by side here. Gilluk, still weeping, took their heads from a hollow trunk, tied the hairs of each into a large knot,
plaited the free ends of each together, and then slung all four over his shoulder. He walked off westward. Ras accompanied him on his left side. He was making sure that he was not within reach of the sword.

"Aren't you going to bury the bodies?" Ras said. "Or at least sink them in the quagmire?"

"I'll send slaves to bring them in. Then I'll conduct the funeral--I am the chief priest, also--after which the bodies will be given to Baastmaast."

"Oh, yes, the crocodile god."

"God
as
the crocodile," Gilluk said. "I believe I told you about him when I was your... guest."

He gave Ras such a peculiar look that Ras wondered what he was thinking.

Ras said, "I am placing myself under your protection."

"You may trust me to act as a king should," Gilluk said.

"You don't seem grateful that I saved your life," Ras said. "If I had known that it was going to make things so complicated for you and distress you, I wouldn't have interfered."

"It's just that there is no precedent. I'll work something out. However, don't you say anything about what happened. I won't lie to my people, even if it is for their own good. Not unless I'm forced to lie, that is. I'll just show them Gappuk's head and let them assume that I killed him."

After wading through a mile of swamp, they came to higher and drier land. Gilluk led the way on a winding path through thick woods. On emerging into more-open country, they were near the riverbanks. The river had re-formed at the edge of the swamp. The earth sloped gently down from that point.

Another stretch of dense trees and brush had to be crossed before they again came to the river, which had resumed its wandering. They climbed a high hill, from which Ras could see the country for several miles. The river abruptly widened to become a heart-shaped lake about a mile across, where it was widest. There were many boats with white-garbed fishermen on the blue waters, and, on the far side of the lake, a pink cloud. This, Ras knew, had to be a great flock of flamingos. There was a small island near the middle of the northern shore. On its humped back was a circular, open-roofed building of stone gleaming whitely in the sun.

"The House of Baastmaast," Gilluk said. "The bodies will be placed inside it, and Baastmaast will eat them and so conduct their souls in his belly to the underworld."

Near the lake shore was a steep hill, on top of which was a building, the largest Ras had ever seen. It was circular and of large, white-and-dark-stone blocks. Four tall and slender towers rose from the roof at the north, south, west, and east.

Between the lake shore and the east foot of the hill was a cluster of smaller buildings, which Gilluk said was the town, where the artisans, fishermen, and slaves lived. Cultivated areas ran out on three sides of the hill for several miles. Their green was crossed by brown paths and roads and a number of blue canals fed by the lake.

Ras was amazed. He had visualized a small, stockaded village and a field like the Wantso's. Gilluk had described many things about the Sharrikt while he was a prisoner, yet he had said little about this. Now that Ras thought about it, he knew why. Gilluk's descriptions had always been in answer to Ras's
questions. These had been mainly about the language and customs and attitudes of the Sharrikt. He had asked very little about their dwellings or artifacts, except for the art works and musical instruments.