The men were halted at last by a line of blank yellow-faced Chuliks. Their long pigtails were dyed green. They wore mail and they would cut down anyone at the order of their Chuktar. Grogor advanced confidently. The king and his advisers had passed beyond the line of Chulik mercenaries, into a cleared space where a small flier rested. They were talking gravely together, with much nodding of heads and gesticulations.
Grogor said to the Hikdar in command of the Chulik detail, “Lahal, Hikdar Gachung. I must speak with my lord Gafard. This man is with me.”
“Lahal, Jiktar Grogor. You may pass.”
The Chuliks are usually stiff and formal in military matters.
As we passed their impressive line and walked toward the group of high dignitaries by the voller, I said to Grogor, “Nothing was said, then, about your shot at the bird? You escaped?”
“Gafard accepted the loss of his Lady of the Stars. It hurt him. I know that. But the king has the yrium, and the king may do all. My lord Gafard interceded for me, and pleaded I did not know it was the king. There were politics involved.” Grogor’s face showed what he thought of politics. “My lord Gafard is sorely tried by Prince Glycas.”
“The king plays one off against the other? This I do not like, for I believe my lord Gafard to be the better man as mergem is better than dilse.”
“Aye.”
“And did my lord Gafard truly reconcile himself to the king, afterward? His lady was dead, and it was the king’s doing.”
“I did not see. No one knows how she died. They say you were with the body. But you went to the swifters. I think Glycas had misbehaved himself at the time, and the king inclined toward our lord.”
The king stood with his back to us, talking and waving his hands about in graphic gestures. His voice was mellow and strong and everyone listened intently. Gafard saw Grogor. Then he saw me. His eyes widened. He switched back at once to listening to the king; but I saw his hand grip the hilt of his Ghittawrer blade.
A fussy aide bustled up and Grogor cut him to size and told him we waited for Gafard with news. The king must be allowed to finish his instructions. We moved off and I heard Genod saying importantly, “I shall fly over the city now and inspect the defenses. The rasts of Zairians will never stand against us, as we descend upon them from the skies. But, by Goyt, I must conserve my army against the assault on Zamu. And there is Sanurkazz after.” He swung his arms violently. “You, Gafard, will accompany me.”
Glycas, stung, said, “I would fly with you, Majister.”
“If you wish, for you may see what has held you up so long.”
Glycas, it was clear, was in King Genod’s bad books.
During the time we waited and looked like gawping onkers at the voller, the continual hum and buzz of a great military camp rose about us. The sense of impending great deeds filled the air with tension. The suns-light smoked more brilliantly in every bright trapping and gem and sword-blade. We all shared the feeling we were gods, treading no mortal path.
When we heard the sounds indicating that the group was breaking up, Grogor said, “Let us go and see my lord.”
“Yes,” I said, and stumbled and sprawled in the dust.
Grogor laughed. “Onker.” Then, as I lay there, “You are all right, Gadak? Nothing broken?”
“My leg,” I said. “By Iangle! It stings like the bite of a lairgodont!”
“Do not move and I will fetch a needleman.”
As Grogor ran off I felt again that I would stay my hand in battle against him, even though he was renegade, hulu.
I heard the men on the other side of the voller. The air-boat itself was a roomy craft, with an open central well with seating around the sides. Her hull was wood over wooden formers. She was a simple commercial craft, cheaply produced in Hamal and sold to Genod. The bloods of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu I had known would never give her room in their vollerdromes. Yet her petal shape conveyed enormous powers here in the Eye of the World.
I stood up when Grogor vanished around her prow, and peeked over the coaming. Gafard was assiduously climbing into the airboat and managing to push Glycas out of the way. The king already stood just aft of the pilot, his back to me.
Glycas — and how I remembered his evil rast-face! — said most petulantly, “Let me up, gernu, you rast.”
“Up as high as you like, Prince, cramph,” said Gafard.
There was no love lost between these two even in semi-privacy. The king did not move. The pilot sat petrified at his controls. He was a Grodnim. I put both my hands on the coaming.
Men have said I am quick. Well, Djan knows, I have need to be, to stay alive on Kregen.
With a single heave I went up over the coaming. I heard a distant yell, “Onker! Stand aside from the king’s flying boat,” and I knew no guard in the whole army would risk a shot with the king so near. I jumped across the airboat and knocked the king aside. I hit the control levers, hard and full, to send the boat leaping skyward. I heard an abrupt shriek from the side and rear and guessed Glycas had not made it and had fallen back. If he’d broken his neck it would save the hangman a job. King Genod stumbled back, clearly not understanding what was going on. I caught the pilot around the waist and heaved the poor devil over the side. He fell and did not kill himself.
Then the voller sped up into the bright sky and King Genod, Gafard, the King’s Striker, and I faced one another.
No one drew a weapon.
The king hauled himself up. He stared at me with the puzzled look of a man finding a cockroach under his salad.
“You realize you are a dead man?”
I ignored him.
“Gafard,” I said. “You know me.”
“Aye.” He half turned to the king. “This is that wild leem Gadak, who was sent to the swifters.” He shook his head. “He must have been remitted, although I did not know.”
“What do you here, dead man?” said Genod.
I said, “I was not remitted, Gafard. I escaped. Do you remember what passed between us the last time I saw you? In the Zhantil’s Lair, when you heard this kleesh had stolen away my Lady of the Stars?”
Gafard sucked in his breath. The king’s hand hovered over the hilt of his Genodder. That hilt blazed with gems. The blade would be the finest the smithies of Magdag could produce.
“I — I do not fully remember. But the king has the yrium. Surrender yourself to his mercy. We must return to the ground.”
“You poor fool! Know you not this genius king of yours is evil? Evil and vile and ready for the justice of Drig’s heavy hand?”
The king had had enough. This Genod Gannius had made himself king of Magdag and led the Grodnim confederation. He had humored me. Now he would slay me. He whipped out the Genodder and threw himself into an attacking crouch. The blade gleamed.
“I shall cut you up myself, rast.”
“Surrender, Gadak! The king has no equal with the shortsword. Throw yourself on his mercy,” Gafard pleaded.
“He knows nothing of mercy.” I drew the Genodder at my right side. “Let me show you what he thinks of mercy.”
Genod had not come to power merely because he was a genius at war. Anyway, I suspected shrewdly that his genius was a propaganda fiction; he had been successful because of the new army his father had created on the model of my old vosk-skulls from the warrens of Magdag. With a screech our blades met.
He was very good with the shortsword. As always in a fight I go into the combat with the stark knowledge that this could be the last fight, the final conflict, and that I will be shipped out to the Ice Floes of Sicce at the end. This evil king had risen to power as much through his prowess as a fighting-man as through his war genius.
His skin was extraordinarily smooth. Pale and soft like a woman’s skin, it covered muscles whipcord tough. He feinted and lunged and I covered and showed the point. He parried and the blades ground resonantly and parted. He jumped back. “Give yourself up, cramph, to the kingly justice!”
I leaped in and twisted the Genodder about in a way that owed nothing to the skills of Green Magdag but rather to the wild outlandish skirlings of my Clansmen. We used the shortsword out there on the wide Plains of Segesthes. In shortsword work a Clansman would have cut up any Genodderman of Magdag, aye, and quaffed his wine as he fought. Hap Loder would have.
Genod’s face took on a sudden strained look as he feinted and lunged. Gafard cried out, expecting the blow to be mortal, but the king’s blade went nowhere near me and I slashed and his bright green cloak fell away, the golden cords cut through. He stumbled back. But he had courage, the rast, and he came in again. And again I parried and foined with him and so cut away the brilliant gold and green tunic to reveal the mail beneath, and went on and so slashed and cut him about until all his gorgeous apparel had been ripped away and he stood in the mail alone. Then, and only then, I used the old but always cunning lever on him and the Genodder spun from his hand and flew up and out to plunge down to the ground beneath.
He panted. His face had turned lemon-green. His eyes were wild upon me as he shrank back.
“If you are the best Genodderman in Magdag, you cramph,” I said, “your Zair-forsaken land is doomed, and praise to Zair for that!”
“Who are you?” he croaked.
Gafard did not draw. I flicked the sword about, between them, and I said to Gafard, “Tell him who I am.”
“You—” Gafard’s hands trembled. He gripped the hilt of his Ghittawrer longsword and the scabbard shook. “You are Gadak, who was Dak, and yet I think—”
“Yes, Gafard. You think?”
“What you said, there in the Zhantil’s Lair. I have tried to think. You would not go after my Lady of the Stars, even though I pleaded as best I could — and you knew I loved her — and—”
“Aye, you loved her, Gafard. She told me that. And she loved you. Never was man more blessed than to receive the love of my Lady of the Stars.”
“Yes — you would not go — and then — then you did go. Did I say something, anything — I cannot remember—”
I did not know if he was speaking the truth. Yet the horrific scene in the hunting lodge when I had discovered that the Lady of the Stars was my daughter could have been so painful to him that he had shut it out of his mind. It is known. I glared at him.
“You told me, in all truth, who my Lady of the Stars was.”
“Ah! And then you went?”
“Yes.”
He trembled uncontrollably now. He had doted on his lady, and he had yearned to emulate the exploits of her father, saying there was a matter between him and Pur Dray. Now I had realized he did not mean he wished to fight me, as I had then thought. He had wished to talk to his father-in-law. As was, in very truth, proper. For I would have a hand in the bokkertu.
The king roused himself. He looked ghastly. “What is all this nonsense, Gafard! Kill the cramph, here and now!”
“I do not think I can do that, Majister.”
“Then try, you ungrateful cramph!”
“Tell him who I am, Gafard.”
Gafard’s face had lost all its color. His bronze tan floated on his skin. He looked frenzied. “I — I think—”
“Why should I not slay you now, Gafard — you who bow down to his kleesh of a king? Oh, yes, Gafard, you know who I am. You have dreamed of this meeting. You save relics. You say there is a matter between us. By Zair! There is a matter between us!”
He gasped and tried to speak and his mouth merely opened and closed.
“There is a matter! I want to know why you fawn on this foul object, and let him steal away my daughter, Velia!”
He did not fall. In truth, the shock of the meeting would have felled a lesser man with all the passionate longings he had put into just such a confrontation. He wet his lips. The cords in his neck strained like ropes in a hurricane. He croaked, and tried again, and, at last, he could say the words.
“Pur Dray! Pur Dray Prescot! The Lord of Strombor! Krozair of Zy!”
The king shrieked at this, and cowered away, his hands fumbling at his throat. Like a fool, I ignored him.
“No, Gafard —
son-in-law!
I am no longer a Krozair of Zy, for I am Apushniad. But — yes, I am Dray Prescot!”
For a moment no one spoke. The moment was too heavy for mere words.
The king levered himself up. His anguished face bore the look of a madman. His hand fumbled at his neck.
“Dray Prescot! The Bane of Grodno!” His hand whipped the cunning little throwing knife from the sheath at his back. “Then die, Dray Prescot, die!”
“Die, Dray Prescot, die!”
The glittering throwing knife hurtled from the fingers of the king straight at my face.
And, in that selfsame instant, as though time shuttered through a macabre repetition, I caught a single flashing glimpse over the side of the voller of a gorgeous scarlet and golden bird of prey in full diving vicious attack upon a shining white dove.
The two scenes merged and melded in my eyes and became one.
The golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords, their spy and messenger, striking with black-taloned claws at the white dove of the Savanti, and the glittering terchick, the Kregan throwing knife, hurled full at my face, were one and the same. I saw the Savanti dove hesitate and swerve and the lancing blow of scarlet and gold shriek past. The Genodder in my fist sprang up and twitched in the old cunning Disciplines and the terchick rang like a gong-note of despair, clanging against the blade and springing in a gleaming curve away into the vast reaches of the sky. The king’s mouth slobbered wetly and he began to claw out his Ghittawrer longsword.
“He is a Krozair, Majister,” said Gafard, staring at me with hunger and despair.
“You call this object ‘Majister,’ Gafard. Yet he stole my daughter away from you, and now she is dead. You are a man. I know that. You prated on about the Lord of Strombor, and you emulated my deeds and sought my renown. I would surrender all those deeds and give all that renown if my Velia were back with me, alive!”
He pushed himself up. He had stopped shaking. “I, too, Pur Dray, would give everything I own, everything I am—”
“The girl was a fool, a shishi!” shrieked Genod. “I am the king. It is my right to take—”