I swung about, slamming the rapier back, and there was Lobur the Dagger, beaming away, his merry face alive with laughter, chuckling and shaking his head where the dark curls danced in his long hair. He still wore the silver belt of interlinked leaping chavonths. He was dressed, as was I, in the height of fashion.
“Lobur the Dagger!” I said. And, then, recovering: “Lahal! Well met.”
“Lahal, Jak. And well met. I did not think ever to see you again, even though Prince Ty relieved my mind when he recounted his adventures down the Moder. You and he — you had a fine time of it after we got out.”
His face clouded.
So, quickly, I said, “There was nothing you could have done, Lobur. We know that. Your duty was to Prince Nedfar and Princess Thefi. You had to see them out safely.”
“That is true, Jak the Sturr, and you are a true horter for so saying.” He laughed, delighted. “And Prince Ty tells me Sturr was a use name, that you are Jak the Shot.”
I brushed that aside. I’d been the Jak the lot, it seemed to me. “And Princess Thefi?”
He smiled and frowned at the same time, a useful trick.
“I am still — and she is — and there is no real hope. And, Kov Thrangulf hovers like a damned black crowbird. Damn him!”
That was a triangle of the classical persuasion, and one I had then, as I say, no inkling of solution or of relevance to me beyond a sympathetic feeling for lovelorn Lobur the Dagger.
“And what are you doing in Ruathytu, Jak?”
Boldly, without hesitation, I said: “I thought to join the Air Service.”
“Ah! A very wise ambition. You are a fighting man, that I know from what I’ve seen with my own eyes and what Prince Ty told me of the Moder. We’ll be delighted to enroll you.”
“Well—”
“Capital! That’s settled. Now, old fellow, I can’t delay. Kov Thrangulf, confound him — I’m on the way to his villa now with a message from Prince Ty to Prince Nedfar. I shan’t be long, then we can crack a few amphorae and talk of that dark, doomed bloody Moder.”
He took my arm and we started back the way I’d come. He rattled on, nothing like dear Chido, of course, but very merry and free and good-hearted. The small group of people I’d heard on the graveled path now appeared on the pathway, still laughing. The lights shone on jewels and gold and lace. The air hung heavy with the scent of night flowers, the sound of laughter rose and singing reached us from the nearest tavern in Veilmon Kyronik. She of the Veils shed her diffuse golden light.
A screech of pure hatred ripped through that leisurely scene.
“Spikatur! Spikatur Hunting Sword!
Kill
!”
Dark forms leaped from the narrow slot of blackness between the walls. Feral bodies hurtled down on the startled group of Hamalese nobles. Steel glittered like icy fire in the pits of hell.
As one, Lobur and I drew our rapiers and launched ourselves forward. Affrays continually burst into the jollity of the Sacred Quarter and no one paid much heed to a fracas here and there if it was no business of his. As the blades screeched with that horrid scrape of steel on steel and we smashed into the dark-clad forms attacking Prince Nedfar and his party, it was clear this was no ordinary flare-up among Bladesmen. The cries of “Spikatur” told us that. The blood lust smoked into the night air.
“Get that big bastard, Jak!” and: “Your back, Hallam!” and: “By Krun, I’m stuck through the leg like a vosk!”
But, all too soon, the cheerful yells of Bladesmen in combat died away as the party with Nedfar fought for their lives.
We were out matched in numbers; but Lobur proved a fine swordsman, and Prince Nedfar stood like a rock, unmoved, and I did a mite of skipping and leaping. But the killers bore in. Screaming forms staggered from the fight. Men with slashed faces and guts pierced through, men with eyes suddenly blotted out, men who hobbled off to collapse and vomit up their lives, men reeled shrieking away from the knot of combat.
It was nip and tuck, as it so often is; I had a persistent fellow who wanted to drive past me and sink his brand into Prince Nedfar. I caught his blade, twirled, and the sword nicked up into the air. He panted, thick coarse gasping under the bronze mask. The attackers wore nondescript clothes, but each one wore a bronze mask over his face. Their gray floppy-brimmed hats, without feathers or ornamentation, were pulled low.
I grabbed a wight by the neck and jerked him to me.
“I do not want to kill you.” The yells resounded about us, the stamp of feet, the slither of steel. I put on a face that bore the mark of Cottmer’s Caverns; a devil face with upflung eyebrows and outthrust jaw, and the deep grooves beside the mouth counterpointing that devil-vee above. I bent close. “By Sasco!” I said, with meaning. “You make a mistake to attack Nedfar. He is of value to the foes of Hamal, you onker. Draw your people off. I do not wish to see friends of Spikatur slain.”
“You—!” He choked as I eased my grip.
“Get off, fambly. Or you will all be dead.”
My face pained me as if I’d been galloped over by a squadron of cataphracts. I couldn’t keep that devil mask going much longer.
Someone tried to hit me over the head with his thraxter and I swerved and kicked him, and shook the fellow in my grip. “Call them off! By Sasco! Are you witless!”
“You — strive for Spikatur?”
“Of course! Now — go, or you’ll drink steel.”
A man pitched into me and coughed bright blood, red in the torchlights. I dodged away and threw the fellow I’d been gripping off. I kicked him up the rump as he staggered.
“Run!” he shrieked. Then he let rip a wild ululating scream that would have frozen the blood in a bullfighter. His companions — who had been taking a severe hammering — checked their onslaughts. “Run, brothers! Flee!”
Lobur’s face expressed the utmost fury.
“By Krun! They’ll not escape my vengeance!”
He stood hard by Nedfar as he shouted, and I judged Lobur spoke thus not only out of honest anger. The attackers picked themselves up, gathered themselves together, panted. But — they ran. Lobur flourished his rapier after them.
“Come on, Jak — let’s crop a few ears.”
I did not wish to kill folk who fought against Hamal.
“I’m with you, Lobur!” I hollered. I dissimulated, remembered to put away that devil face and that silly face, and wearing the face of Jak the Shot, I galloped off after Lobur. We lost the hunting party of Spikatur Hunting Sword in a maze of warrens past Veilmon Kyronik. They just vanished. The place was potholed with dopa dens and kaff pits, and an army could hide in there and escape detection. Lobur panted, dashing sweat from his forehead with the back of his right hand which gripped his sword.
“Well, we showed them what Hamalese can do, the rasts.”
“Aye,” I said. “Did you understand any of it? Who were they?”
“Cramphs who swear on Spikatur. They have caused us much injury. By Krun! I’d like to spit ’em all!”
“A worthy ambition, Lobur. If you can find them.”
He didn’t like that, and we trailed back to Prince Nedfar.
Nedfar greeted me with warmth, for we had gone together through some of the horrors of the Moder. And I had assisted his son, Prince Tyfar, to escape. He knew about Jak the Shot.
“You are thrice welcome, Horter Jak. Lahal and Lahal.”
“Lahal, prince. I am glad to see you are uninjured.”
Lobur said, “Jak wishes to join the Air Service—”
“Excellent.” Nedfar, a resolute, honest, admirable man, smiled approvingly. “Hamal fights on too many—” Then he checked himself. He shook his head. “Welcome, Horter Jak.”
He’d been about to say that Hamal fought on too many fronts and was overextended. That was true. When the invasion broke into their damned homeland they’d have another front, only it would be at their front door.
“I am at your disposal, prince.”
Slaves summoned in haste from Kov Thrangulf’s villa ran up, and with them the resident needleman. The doctor bent to the wounded. Some of them were bearing their wounds stoically; only a couple screamed and groaned and writhed. This was the ugly face of striving to a good end.
One of the hunters devoted to Spikatur had not been killed. His wounds prevented him from running off. As Lobur approached, no doubt to make some searching and unpleasant inquiries as a preliminary to horror in the dungeons of the Hanitchik, the wounded man drew his dagger and slit his own throat. It was done quickly and efficiently, very bloodily, and most oppressively. The commotion that caused gave me time to get my wind back, metaphorically speaking. I knew Prince Tyfar must have spoken to his father, and to his sister, Princess Thefi, as well as Lobur, about Jak the Shot. At first I’d led them to believe I hailed from Djanduin; later they believed I was Hamalese. I could lay no claims to titles or estates in Hamal, thus Nedfar had called me horter, a plain gentleman. For the moment, this suited me. I had labored long to preserve the integrity of the ham Farthytu name. I would not jeopardize it now.
Lobur delivered Tyfar’s message to Prince Nedfar, a simple affair of delay in some voller sheds and that he would meet the party later at The Golden Zhantil. Everyone in Ruathytu had heard of that famous tavern, for it was of the highest possible class, and catered exclusively to a clientele from the upper strata of nobility. During my stay in the Sacred Quarter I had not supposed I’d ever need to go there. Now, it seemed, I was included in this evening party as of right. I found this charming, by Krun!
High up outside the tavern and supported on convoluted iron brackets the massive golden representation of a zhantil lowered down on all who entered. That magnificent eight-legged savage animal glittered in many torchlights. It was reputedly fashioned from solid gold. No one was likely to make the attempt to discover the truth of this story, put about by the owner, Thorndu the Wine, for invariably a crowd of muscle-bulging sword-swinging guards checked on the patrons. If you were not accepted, then you’d go headfirst out onto the cobbles.
The raffish blades of the Quarter used to laugh, and swear by Krun the thing was solid lead with a smear of leaf.
Be that as it may, the interior of The Golden Zhantil was luxurious and sweet-scented and awash with wine and the good things of life. There was no stinting here. Hamal might be at war, and struggling with increasing desperation against the foes she had raised up against her; here decadence breathed lushly, replete with wealth and privilege.
I wondered what Nedfar wanted in a place like this, for he was a man of rectitude, upright and honest, and not much given to the sleazy kind of debauch. When Tyfar turned up, a couple of glasses later, I found out. As for Tyfar — how his eyes popped when he saw me!
The last time we’d seen each other, he’d been haring off with a wounded Jaezila, urged intemperately by me to think of his honor and save our comrade, while I fought off those who sought to slay us. He stood for a moment, the old Tyfar, open, honest, twinkling at me, and then he clapped me on the shoulder, unable to speak.
“I haven’t clawed my way back from the Ice Floes of Sicce, prince.” I clapped him on the back. I had to remember to speak as though to a prince who did me honor in even acknowledging my existence here in Hamal. “I joy to see you again.”
“By Krun, Jak! I hoped, and yet I could not believe — but one should expect miracles where you are concerned, I think.”
We two had no truck with mawkishness, valuing a comradeship forged in blood above mere sentimentality.
With the arrival of Tyfar, Prince Nedfar’s party, which did not, I was intrigued to notice, include Kov Thrangulf, got down to business. The men they had come to see, high-ranking officers in the Air Service, wanted to finish this business and then devote themselves to the pleasures offered by the tavern.
“There is now no doubt whatsoever, prince,” said one of the Air Service Kapts, a Vad Homath. He was a lean man, with a scarred face and bristly hair, much decorated with gold lace. “Our spies confirm the rumors in every detail.”
“But you do not know where he has gone?”
Vad Homath stroked a finger down his scarred cheek. “Back to Vallia, I expect, the cramph.”
My ears, I felt sure, must have stuck an arm’s breadth out of my head. Vallia!
“Well, Homath,” said another Kapt impatiently, “that is as may be. But we have to strike at Hyrklana, now, and strike fast, before they are ready to attack us.”
“By Barfurd! You have the right of it.”
This other Kapt nodded in a truculent way. He was called Kov Naghan, and was a bullet-hard, leather-faced professional fighting man. Astride a saddle-flyer, commanding from the deck of a skyship or ordering the iron legions of Hamal into action, this was the type of man we had to meet and overcome.
But — Vallia! And — a cramph, going back there? I decided to loose a shaft and see what target popped up.
“You speak, notors, of that gretchuk empire of Vallia?” I looked at Nedfar as though seeking his permission to continue. He nodded. “But, Hyrklana? Are they not our allies?”
Tyfar favored me with an odd look.
“Only because we imposed our will, Horter Jak.” Kov Naghan spoke with a civility he owed me as a valued associate of Prince Nedfar, who had spoken warmly of our exploits and of my desire to join the Air Service. “But I can tell you, for the news will be general by the morning. Hyrklana has declared against us. The Emperor of Vallia had a hand in that, the Havil-forsaken rast!”
“The Emperor of Vallia!” I said. Then, and I could not stop myself, indulging in this deplorable habit I had of putting as many spokes in as many Hamalian wheels as possible, I said, “That is bad news. I am told this new Emperor of Vallia is a most formidable figure who will destroy the Empress Thyllis if he has the chance.”
Now Tyfar did stare at me, hard. I looked back at him, and said, “We fight for Hamal, do we not?”
Nedfar frowned. So I guessed I’d gone too far. Nedfar might be the second cousin of Thyllis; he might detest what she was about; but he was Hamalese and he understood duty and loyalty.
My blade comrade Tyfar saved me. “What Jak is saying makes uncomfortable hearing. But it is true. This is a setback for us. We do fight for Hamal, and we must succeed.”