Secret Scorpio (12 page)

And then, well, I admit it fully and freely, I could not find it in my heart to blame Larghos, the owner and landlord. After all, into this place of conscious refinement and culture stumbles an unshaven common fellow, a wandering laborer, with a raggedy old brown blanket cast over his shoulders and a mop of untamed hair, and puts his odiferous sack on the beautiful embroidered tablecloth and sticks his naked feet out over the charming rugs woven in imitation of Walfarg Weave. Well!

Larghos, slender, oily, charming, with wavy hair, trotted over and his face showed such outraged fury that I almost laughed. I couldn’t see what was setting him going.

“Out, fellow! What do you think you’re at! Schtump!”

“I only wanted—” I began, beginning to understand.

“You’ll have a broomstick over your head! Schtump!”

I made a solemn promise to myself. I would not allow myself to become angry. No. No, this Larghos was right. I had no business bringing my old blanket cloak and my sack into this temple to culture and gracious living.

I sighed. “Is Koter Rafik Avandil here? I am supposed to meet him.”

“He is gone out! Paid his bill and gone. Now you go!” Then he lifted his voice and shouted squeakily, “Nath! Cochu! Come running and throw this fellow out, and his verminous sack with him!”

I stood up.

“Thank you for your hospitality, dom, I’m going.”

I hefted the sack and put out my hand for the bamboo stick which I’d placed on the table.

Now there are some men who cannot let well alone. Larghos stepped back, his face red, breathing heavily, scandalized at my intrusion into his establishment that had such a good name, but prepared to let me go without further ado. Not so the idler at the adjoining table who had watched all with a bright, birdlike gaze.

He was young, full-fleshed, bright of eye and erect of carriage, and yet about him there were plain to see the old familiar hateful signs of corrupt authority.

“Let Nath and Cochu give him a beating before you let him go, Larghos. The rast deserves a lesson, forcing his filthy self in here among decent people.”

Before I could stop myself, I’d said, “I’m not filthy, dom.”

He levered himself up from the chair. He wore foppish clothes, not of decent Vallian buff, but of a mixture of bright colors among which the black and white predominated. His rapier was overlong and the hilt was ornately set with jewels. Whoever he was, he was not a citizen of Arkadon.

Larghos began to wring his hands.

“Please, jen, my men will throw him out without fuss—”

“Silence, cramph!” This young lord — for Larghos called him
jen,
which is the Vallian form of addressing a lord — pushed himself up from the table. I saw by the glasses and bottles on the table that he had been drinking wine this early in the morning. So he had that problem as well.

His full-fleshed face flushed with blood. A vein beat in his forehead. His two companions at the table with him rocked back in their elegant chairs, thrusting out their boots, and egged him on with comments that suggested a little workout would do him good and a thrashing would do me good.

Larghos was wringing his hands. I could guess in his mind’s eye he saw spindly-legged chairs and tables smashing into costly ruin all over his inn.

There would be no profit in my telling this young bully that I was the Prince Majister of Vallia, for he was a racter and would joy in having the excuse to get his rapier between my ribs, claiming afterward that this filthy tramp could not possibly have been the Prince Majister. How was a loyal jen supposed to know that?

Nath and Cochu appeared, beefy apims in blue-striped aprons, bare-armed. Larghos started to say something and the young lord waved him down. “I shall deal with the cramph myself. I do not care for his manners. You, rast!” he shouted at me. “I shall teach you manners!”

With that, confident in his own limber strength against this bent-over fellow in his brown blanket cloak, he took a couple of dancing steps forward and struck out, with more power than skill. I slid the blow and stepped away from the table calmly. The bamboo stick was in my right hand, held by the end, the thick, ridged end.

The young coxcomb went mad with fury. He shook with rage. “Do you see that!” he yelled. “The calsany! He threatens me with his stick! A filthy tapo daring to lift a stick against me, against the Trylon of Tremi! I’ll prick a little blood from his mangy hide!” With that he ripped out his rapier and flung himself into a fighting crouch.

I sighed again, this time with real regret.

He lunged for me. I used the old bamboo stick to parry him off. I judged him to be reasonably skilled with the rapier, well able to take care of himself in an inn fracas, swishing and swashing; as to his caliber against real opposition, I was still unsure.

When he couldn’t quite get his rapier to cut me up, as he expected to do just as he expected the twin suns to rise each day, he grew even more angry. His face was blotched. His eyes glared. His lips twisted with rage and frustration.

His cronies at the table, laughing and hawking, did not help him with their crude advice and mocking injunctions to spit the old fellow and have done.

Here in my Delia’s Delphond, I knew, a murder would merit the strictest investigation. Delphond was civilized.

He blundered toward me and caught his foot in one of the elegant chairs and sprawled forward. His left hand raked up instinctively. He caught the bamboo stick. His face went mean.

“I’ve got you now, you cramph!”

He tried to wrench the stick aside and so slice me down the face, as a nice preliminary to what he intended to do to my carcass.

He twisted the bamboo, hauling back.

He was an onker, right enough. He twisted the bamboo. I felt the click and the sweet sliding of oiled metal. He staggered back clasping the hollow bamboo. All the people watching gasped, as this foolish young trylon fell back, pulling the bamboo free of the blade.

In my right fist I held the ridged wooden hilt. Two feet of oiled steel blade glimmered in the lights from the windows. That blade had been forged by Naghan the Gnat in the armory of Esser Rarioch. I had designed it with Naghan, and we had laughed as we’d mounted its slender length into the bamboo hilt, covering the murderous brand with the rest of the hollow bamboo. I keep calling this wood bamboo; it is not real bamboo. It is of a deep orange luster, ridged and grows in the marshes. Kregans call it pipewood, for it is often used for tubing work in plumbing and the like.

The blade glistened. The Trylon of Tremi stared and his face assumed a caricature of enraged fury, black with passion.

“You murderous rast! Now I’ll spit you clean through your filthy guts!”

And he set to, swirling his blade, thrusting and slashing like one demented.

His companions stumbled up from the table, their chairs going over with a smash. They ripped their own weapons free.

One came in from one side, the second from the other.

If I was in for a little exercise then I’d make it reasonably entertaining.

As I fought, foining off the two from the sides and beginning an amusing disrobing of the trylon, I reflected that this Rafik Avandil possessed a rare sense of humor. He had arranged to meet me here in this pseudo-cultural Running Sleeth knowing damn well what would follow. So I felt a double amusement as I cut the laces of the trylon’s fancy tunic and so stripped his clothes from him, garment by garment. When his two cronies pressed too close one was sent staggering and yelling away with a slit ear and the other with a punctured right forearm. The good old over and under stop-thrust worked beautifully.

This idiot trylon’s overlong rapier most often pointed at the ceiling or the floor, or angled toward one of the garish pictures along the walls, more often than it aimed at my guts. I played him long enough to cut away his clothes down to his breechclout — bright pink, would you believe? — and then I had had enough.

Disgust filled me.

This kind of petty mindless brawl leaves a foul taste in a man’s mouth. This kind of bestiality is for the morons of the world, for the morons of two worlds.

Once they had seen how they thought the fight would now go, the rest of the patrons began to laugh. In their stupid heartless way they laughed at the Trylon of Tremi. He, poor fool, gagged on his own spit. His face was now whey-colored, gray and green, his eyes staring, his mouth slobbering. His beautiful pink breechclout with the embroidered chavonths and zhantils looked pathetic. It had blue lace edging. I stripped a little away and then he jumped at the wrong moment and the blade nicked his flesh in a tender spot.

He screamed.

So, wishing to have done, I snaked his blade away and stepped in. I took him by the throat with my left hand. I choked him only a little.

“The next time you seek to bully and thrash a defenseless old man, think, rast. Think, you brainless cramph, and remember this day.”

Then I turned him around and gave him a hard toe up the backside and so kicked him staggering across the floor.

His cronies stood back, furious but cowed, unwilling to reopen the fray.

Blood had been drawn from both of them, splattering their finery and the black and white favors, but they had come out of this less injured than their lord. His hurts did not show on his skin. His hurts would not mend as fast as the scratches they had suffered.

The contrast between the conduct of this spoiled lordly brat and that of Rafik toward an old man was to me at the time most edifying. I felt an amusement toward Rafik, engendered as much by his trick as by the circumstances of his supposed rescue.

Larghos was visibly recovering his composure, seeing that no real damage had been done to his establishment. He began to flutter about. So I wiped my blade tip on the corner of my old brown cloak, picked up my sack, cast a last look upon the assembled gaping patrons — remembering to bend over as I did so — and bid them all a pleasant Remberee.

Then I stepped out of the Running Sleeth into the clean air and luminous suns-shine of Kregen.

Nine

Nath the Gnat misses the Princess Majestrix

Delphond is not as well served by the intricate canal system of Vallia as it might be, especially as it is an imperial province, descending in the imperial female line. This has served in the past as a distinct advantage and goes some way to explaining the surprising remoteness of much of the province, situated as it is relatively close to the capital. This fact, too, I suppose, does explain, as Delia maintains, why so many tides of conquest in the troubled history of Vallia have passed Delphond by with little destruction.

The zorca ambled along the dusty road, kicking the thick white powder into a floating trail, and I jogged along, sunk in thought, yet still keeping that old sailor-man’s weather eye open. The oiled steel blade was snicked back into its bamboo scabbard and now looked like any wandering laborer’s stick.

Making no attempt to discover the whereabouts of Rafik, I had simply ridden out of Arkadon. I could feel the muzziness clouding my head a trifle and a light-heaviness about my limbs; but, if necessary, I could go on swashing and fighting and drinking for another night or two without sleep yet. It is a knack. The rendezvous with Delia drew me on. The moment I reached Deliasmot where a canal trunk system terminated I would transfer to a narrow boat and be rapidly hauled all the way in first-class comfort.

If Rafik was headed this way we would meet. I fancied I’d not seen the last of that golden numim with the sense of humor.

The white road wound between cornfields, with orchards all green and shining beyond, rising and falling over the gentle countryside. The road remained deserted until a cloud of dust heralded a considerable party of country folk taking their produce into Arkadon. I was surprised. The quoffa carts trundled along. Men thwacked on krahniks loaded with bales and baskets. The calsanys trotted along in their strings of patient bearing. Women and children perched on the carts or walked together in the intervals. The men marched, I could swear, almost in the form of a guard, with a scouting party ahead riding preysanys, superior forms of calsanys, and carrying not only their sticks but spears and long-knives.

They gave me highly suspicious looks. But I was alone, and so we exchanged Llahals and parted, and I spat dust until free of their trail.

Logic told me that I did, indeed, look highly suspicious.

Here I was, a raggedy old laborer with a tattered brown blanket cloak, bareheaded and barefoot, riding a well-groomed and, if not first water, then reasonably high-quality zorca. Yes. Logic told me the country people might well have thought it their business to stop me and question me. There would be a reward for the return of the zorca to its owner. They were not to know the Rapa masichieri lay with his blood spilling out into the Kregan dirt.

But they had not stopped me. If anything, they had displayed so extreme a caution that it could be construed as fear.

And this, in Sweet Delphond, Delphond the Blessed, the Garden of Vallia!

The other interesting fact I had observed was simply that these country folk appeared to have shed their fat and lazy indifference. The men — abruptly, it seemed to me — presented an altogether new and different aspect. They had held their spears and long-knives with the firm determination of men intending to fight if they had to. This was remarkably unlike the usual attitudes I had encountered in Delphond.

Ahead along the road the lath and plaster walls of a country inn came in sight, the red tile roofs shallowly peaked, the twisted chimneys lifting in welcome. No smoke rose from the chimneys. A window pane caught the red light of Zim and flashed. I perked up. Here was where I would repair the deficiencies missing breakfast was causing my stomach.

I rode up, feeling cheerful, and the damned place was empty, deserted, with windows smashed and doors hanging loose and weeds choking the neat fenced gardens. I cursed. Just my luck to encounter a wayside inn that was derelict.

“By Vox!” I said, aloud, thoroughly miffed. “By the disgusting bloated swag belly of Makki-Grodno! My throat is like the Ocher Limits.”