A fellow muffled in a cloak stumbled out of the little canvas shelter the sentries had rigged up and tried to stick a spear into my throat. I swayed to the side, and as he rushed past helped him on his way. He went over the edge with a long wailing scream that was lost in the rush of the wind. I collected the rope and started for the head of the stone steps leading down.
Annoyance and regret over the foolish death of that fellow made me cross. Now I would have to find someone else to ask where away lay the Jasmine Tower.
The stairs curved down to aid defense and I paused at the landing to listen. The place might have been stuffed with corpses. At the foot the door was a tough oaken affair with iron bolts; they opened with not more than a regulation screech. The ward beyond lay rain-lashed, sodden and completely uninviting.
A few lights fell from interior windows, but most were shuttered. The rain sluiced down and the storm grew and the stars were expunged. What a foul night! Mind you, the very wetness of the night aided me. I recognize that. But the water trickled down my neck and my feet were sodden and my hair was plastered down to my scalp like a devotee of Curdium-Ferang’s mud-oil caked hairstyle when they scalp the sacrifices.
“By Krun!” I said to myself. “The first door it is, and no mistake.”
The first door led onto a stone corridor with a few cressets leading to a maze of storerooms. No one was there. Useless. Fuming, I barged out into the rain and plodded through pools of water among the uneven flags to the next door along. This was shut and bolted. I hit it with my fist, and then drew the thraxter and hammered on the thick wood.
“Open up! Open up!”
After a space the bolts shot back and the door eased in a crack. I put my shoulder to it and barged in. A man staggered back almost dropping his lantern. His hair fell over his eyes. His mouth opened.
“What is it? What’s all the racket about?”
Beyond him in the dimness lay an anteroom of sorts with tables and chairs stacked against the walls, and tubs and barrels piled in the corners. A bed to one side showed where the man had staggered from. I lifted him up by the nearest portion of his anatomy to hand and said, “Where is the Jasmine Tower? You have two heartbeats to tell me before I push your face in.”
He told me.
I put him gently on the bed and closed the door after me.
The second tower along, he’d said, the one with the lantern in a niche over the door. The lantern was out, drowned, as I hove up. I eyed the tower lofting above me, lost in darkness. Up there, in some room and well-guarded, waited Princess Lildra...
So far I had not been detected, but this was a busy castle where other things went on, I did not doubt, than the detention of a princess. Despite the rain and the foul night, guards would be changed, sentries prowl. Time was running short. The door was locked and bolted. I fumed. I bashed the sword hilt against the wood. After a time it pulled back and a light glowed dimly.
Before the man could say anything I bellowed. I was just a dark shape to him, lacerated with raindrops, squelching, foul of temper and brutal of tongue. I advised him of his antecedents and probable destination and roared on: “The lantern is out! You know the regulations! See to it before your backside is roasted, rast!”
He started to mumble and I bellowed him to silence. “You bungling fool! Out of my way.” Then, pulling the name from the four given me by the Fristle fifi back at the rain-drenched camp: “Is Hikdar Podar awake, or does he sleep in a drunken stupor?”
“Hikdar Follando has the guard, notor, but, but—”
I was in. The light, weak though it was, dazzled. I squinted and took the fellow’s throat between fingers and thumb. His face glared up. He was apim. The room was a mere box, pierced with arrow slits in three inner faces and with murdering holes above. I had little time to get out of this trap. The farther door stood open, with a wash of sorry-looking light across the stone walls.
Gently putting the man down, I stepped over him and went out of the door. The corridor led to the foot of the stairs in one direction. The other way the guardroom was open, without a door, and containing half a dozen men lounging on benches and half-asleep on tables. One shouted: “What was that infernal racket, Nath?”
I tried.
“The lantern is out—”
The man looked up from his folded arms. He was a Deldar, fleshy, an ale-lover, with an enormous mustache. His eyes went mean.
“Stand where you are, cramph.” He lurched upright, dragging out his sword. “Seize him, you idiots!”
They were slow. If they subsequently blamed the tempestuous night and the pervading dampness, they might be right; more probably they subconsciously relaxed after the previous attempts to rescue Princess Lildra had failed. They were still standing up and drawing weapons as I went into them. My thraxter whistled about merrily. I thumped them smartly, on heads, behind ears, turning and dodging a few return blows and kicking out to finish the job. The six guards slumbered. I went back to the outer door and closed and bolted it. Then I started up the stairs.
Two guards came clattering down, all a jingle of weaponry, swords in fists, to discover the cause of the uproar below. They were tripped and fell headlong — always a nasty trick on stairs, that — and I went on and up.
The stone stairs smelled musty and fusty and damp as everywhere else, yet into that depressing scent scenery crept a strongly pungent tang of a smell I did not recognize. I sniffed as I padded up — something like old socks? No — that was from another time and another place. The smell reminded me of damp fleeces hung before a fire. The first landing was bare and with a torch sputtering in its bracket. Without needing a light on, I went up the next curving flight, alert for the next pack of guards to come rushing down. They were the queen’s men, and they could be excused much on a night like this, but the fact remained, I’d not get out of this without a fight, by Krun!
Almost certainly Princess Lildra would be quartered at the topmost section of the Jasmine Tower. The next landing contained an enormous animal whose coat gave off that distinctive aroma, whose jaws opened and whose fangs gnashed — and whose yellow eyes regarded me malevolently from a face that was a mere mask of hatred. Instantly I hurled myself back, slipping on the damp stone, and the beast’s charge carried him over the topmost step before the iron collar and iron chain hauled him up fast. He slavered after me, his tongue lolling and those glistening teeth clashing together.
His gums glistened black and his teeth stuck up like needles. His mouth spattered foam. Shaggy hair dangled like tangled seaweed. He growled and barked and snarled and leaped against the restraining chain. He was thoroughly at home on a vile night like this, being a hound dog from Thothangir in South Havilfar, and if he fastened those jaws in me he wouldn’t let go without taking his hundredweight of flesh.
Then — and even I find this hard to credit — I heard myself saying, “Good dog, good dog.”
He nearly took my outstretched hand off in one gulp.
Someone called down from above — a rough voice, most unfriendly.
“Quiet, Zarpedon, you hound of hell!”
The hound dog yowled and nearly tore his head off trying to get at me. I looked at him and drew in my breath.
“It’s you or me, Zarpedon.”
Even taking him with the flat presented an interesting problem, for he was quick. But then, I have been accounted quick also, and the sword blade thudded alongside his head. His eyes rolled. He fell over on his side and lay there, for all the world like a friendly collie taking a rest. I stepped over him, looking down, moving gingerly. Then I went on up. Zarpedon could not be blamed. He had raised an outcry, and the oaf above had taken no notice. Well, by Krun, that suited me.
At the head of the stairs I paused for a moment outside the door. The dog-abusing oaf had left it partially open, no doubt to hear if the dog made any more fuss, and to come out and shout again. I listened before I went in. That is a useful habit.
There were two voices, a woman’s and a man’s, and the dog-abuser was saying: “... hellhound. Worse than the risslacas at the main gate.”
“Poor Zarpedon,” said the woman’s voice, a harsh, unpleasant croaking kind of voice. “You treat him shamefully.”
“And you, you hag, treat him better than you do the prisoner.”
“No worse than you, Charldo! No wors’n you!”
The sounds of a blow and a yelp were followed by dragging footsteps, and the woman’s whining voice faded, mingled with the man’s bad-tempered growlings. I pushed the door open and peered inside. Just an anteroom, with a few sleeping furs piled on a ramshackle bed and bits and pieces of furniture added to relieve the starkness. A light fell from a half-opened door in the far wall. Listening, moving soundlessly, I heard the man and woman grumbling again. But this time they had joined forces and were speaking in ugly tones to a third person.
The clank of iron and a heavy curse from the adjoining door made me realize that in there rested the guards. How many were there? However many, they would be considered by the queen to be up to the job of guarding her niece. I listened thoughtfully for a few moments, considering the thunderstorm outside, the dampness of the night and the hellhound dog below on the stairs.
“Now, then, missy
[2]
.” The woman fairly snarled the words. “No more nonsense out of you. Drink it up or Charldo will take the strap to you again.”
The sounds as of a leather strap being thwacked down into an opened palm made me almost instantly burst in. But I peered carefully through a knothole. Charldo was beating his palm with a leather strap. He was a most venomous-looking Kataki, a race of whip-tailed diffs with lowering faces and jagged teeth with whom I have had my fill of trouble over the seasons. Interestingly enough, he had unstrapped the bladed steel from his tail, and the flexible appendage coiled like a whip above the bed. The woman was a bent-over Rapa woman, missing a quantity of feathers, and her drab clothes bulged here and there, hiding the person who lay on the bed. The Rapa woman held a pottery cup in her hands. “Drink it, missy. Now!”
The Kataki’s whip-tail flourished in time to the leather belt thwacking into his palm.
The girl on the bed spoke in a voice that trembled only a little, and the desperation in her and the low almost controlled words filled that dismal chamber with a courage anyone would respond to. Anyone except these two — and Queen Fahia and her guard.
“It is disgusting and I think it is taking away my reason. I will not drink it!”
Smack went the Kataki’s tail down on the bed and that was quite enough of that.
“The princess will not drink your gunk today, kleeshes,” I said, and jumped into the room — fast.
The Kataki fell down with a broken nose. I kicked him as he lay there as I grabbed for the Rapa to silence her. I got a hand wrapped around her mouth and her big beak clashed and she tried to nip me so I hauled her in, still gripping her tightly.
“I do not, princess,” I said, “much care for striking women. But sometimes—”
“Let me,” said Princess Lildra.
Princess Lildra
She stepped over the Rapa woman and started to run for the door and I took her arm and said, “We can’t just run out like that, princess. There are guards.”
“Of course there are guards. There are always guards.” She looked puzzled, hurt, not afraid but withdrawn. “I have planned long and long what to do when my prince rescues me. So I know. We—”
I didn’t listen to any more. I was too wet and in too foul a temper. She carried herself well and was young although fully formed, and her long white nightdress would be no garment for a night like this. In her face the lineaments of her mother, Lilah, could be plainly discerned. Also, there was more than a hint of the startlingly fair beauty of Ariane nal Amklana, her aunt who had ordered her killed.
“Are you a great Jikai or are you not? Who are you and why do you seek to rescue me if you are not my prince?”
“I see they allow you books to read in your imprisonment.”
“You dillydally, fellow!”
“I am called Jak and have been called Jak the Sturr and Jak the Shot and Jak the Sudden. You may call me Jak the Onker, if you wish. Now, lady, put on some suitable clothes for a wild night.”
She didn’t care for my tone. I judged that before her parents had been murdered she’d led a life of some privilege, and these dolorous surroundings were relatively recent. As for her aunt, Queen Fahia, some credit — if credit is the right word — had to be given to that fat unhappy queen for refusing to slay her sister and sister’s husband and child. And if we stood lollygagging around now we’d all wind up arguing on the way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.
“Get changed, lady. Move!”
She jumped and the flush stained her cheeks. But she went behind a holey curtain and rustles and clickings indicated she was putting on clothes better able to withstand the rain than her flimsy nightdress.
She still wore a dress, whereat I sighed. But perhaps she did not have anything else. I dragged a blanket from the bed and draped it across her head and shoulders. Her hair gleamed liquid gold in the lamplight.
“Keep your head down, keep behind me, and do not scream or run. Only run when I tell you to. And then, lady,
run
!”
She drew a breath and I took her shoulder, twisted her toward the door and started off.
The conventional view of a young girl in these circumstances did not require an intense imagination to visualize. Sympathy and a lively determination to escape safely with her might be all that was required of the average rescuer. But I fancied that her long absorption with the details of the rescue she was convinced would one day occur had acted as a kind of pre-sensitizing agent. Now that the long-awaited rescue was taking place the whole process acted on her as a drug. Her calmness, her decisiveness, the way she wanted this affair to run, all convinced me of her condition. As to my own expected feelings of sympathy and compassion — of course I felt them, as who, apart from those I have mentioned, would not? But Lildra’s actions and ready acceptance of this rescue as a mere acted-out appendage to dream-planning afforded me the opportunity to move fast and not to fear she would collapse.