Strom Hierayn, the lord who knew Orlan and would get us in, pushed on and we followed. A few slaves moved among the outbuildings and children were playing at kaidurs with wooden swords among the chickens as we passed. Before we attracted attention we were inside the main building. Strom Hierayn, a fattish man with too much paunch and too much jowl and not — quite — enough humility, pressed on down a corridor known to him. The place appeared near deserted. A slave told us that the lord rested in the Fountain Room, and thither Strom Hierayn led us. And, I began to get that uncomfortable old itch up my backbone.
I glanced at Jaezila. She looked at me, and that perfect face drew down into a scowl.
“You feel it too, Jak?”
She continued to call me Jak out of common caution. I nodded. “I do. It smells like Makki-Grodno’s left armpit.”
Jaidur said, “If that fat Hierayn has played us false... By Zogo the Hyrwhip! I’ll have his innards for zorca harness.”
One or two others of the party looked concerned, and Hierayn led through an ornate doorway — pale blue and seashell with fern fronds all adangling in marble — into a patio where fountains splashed and the rays of the suns lay muted through crystal. A few slaves moved about carrying towels and basins and a party of girls danced and laughed among the fountains. They saw us. With squeals and shrieks they darted away, and I surmised they had no business there. I saw Jaidur’s fist wrap around his sword hilt.
Orlan Mahmud walked out from the shadows of the colonnade into the diffused light among the splashing fountains. He wore a plain blue tunic and he did not wear a sword or dagger. So that, alone, convinced me. He held up his left hand. He was not smiling. Hierayn moved forward quickly, his body wobbling, and called out a greeting. I guessed that fat Strom Hierayn was no part of the plot. But plot there was, by Krun!
“Into cover!” I shouted. “Run!”
Even as I shouted, Orlan threw himself sideways, and he shouted too. A high desperate call. “We are betrayed!”
The javelin that would have destroyed him for his refusal to betray us darted from the colonnade’s shadows and barely missed. He was on a knee, stumbling, and then he was half up and staggering. The party with us was fleeing madly away, trying to find shelter. Jaezila, Jaidur and I remained — but only for a moment. Together, the three of us hurtled toward Orlan. Jaidur hoisted him up; Jaezila snapped up her bow and let fly into the colonnade shadows. She is a superb mistress of the bow, deadly with the fletched shaft. I went headlong, with her arrows cutting beside me, slap bang into whatever skulked in the shadows.
Queen Fahia’s mercenaries were there, ready to snap us up. In that tricky half-light our blades flickered like quicksilver, erratic, and dreadfully quickly my brand fouled with blood. Jaidur roared into action at my side. Four of the paktuns were down with shafts skewering them, and a fifth, and the fight was too hot and close and Jaezila put her bow away and ripped into the fray with her sword. I truly believe we three would have done the business ourselves. The mercenaries were good, a mix of diff and apim, and we had the beating of them. But others of our party joined in, and Strom Hierayn laid about him with his sword, and after a space we stopped, for there were no foemen left.
Orlan came across. He looked distraught. “Thank Opaz, you are here! But — as you see — I have been betrayed.”
“They were waiting for us!” said Jaidur. He spoke accusingly.
Orlan nodded and swallowed; he was sweating. “You were seen flying in. The games may be on, but the queen’s paktuns do not sleep because of that.”
“We suspected it was too easy,” said Jaezila.
“It was that new damned spymaster from Hamal. He ferreted it out. I am finished in Huringa now.” Orlan looked at his villa, the fountains, the colonnades, the glowing flowers. He shook his head. “It seems we are all finished.”
“There will be more guards.” I spoke in a nasty fashion, to brace them up. “And we are not finished yet. You will fly back to the camp, Orlan. With your family and whomever—”
“I have no saddle flyers. They have all been taken.”
“Then we must all make room on ours.”
“But—”
“Help Pallan Orlan,” I said. “And be quick. We must be off and flying before anybody turns up to find out the cause of the disturbance here.” And then I said, “
Bratch
!” in a most unlovely way, and some of them abruptly realized that they were being commanded by an emperor, so they bratched.
When we had it all sorted out, I had the opportunity for enough words with Orlan to have grasped the situation. He was very down. The queen’s new mercenaries were her trump card, and we had nothing to pit against them. The army was divided. The people wanted the games in the Jikhorkdun, and excitement, and bread and wine, and whoever could give them those could be queen for all they cared. It was not quite like that, but Orlan’s words conveyed those sentiments. The Hyrklese are a tough old lot, having survived on their isolated island for five thousand years or so against all who sought to subject them. The Shanks in their raiding had made of the Hyrklese a hard lot. I nodded when Orlan finished. Jaidur came up and said all was ready for departure.
“Good. Jaidur, you will have to look out for Jaezila — for Lela—”
He snorted derisive amusement. “She can look out for herself, as you well know.”
“Good. I will not be flying back with you.”
They stared. Then they started protesting. I quieted them.
“We need fighting men. We need a force inside the city to rise and strike when we attack from outside. By Vox! We did it with Vondium, we can do it with Huringa.”
“But there is no great force in the city loyal to Lildra!” Orlan protested wearily, almost beaten. “There is no one in the city who will strike a blow for Lildra against Fahia.”
“Oh yes there is,” I said.
Jaidur perked up. “I will come with you—”
I glared at him. I own I glared in hot and frenzied fury.
“You will not! You will not come with me! You’ve been an imp of a son, hating me—”
He protested at this, shouting that he’d never hated me, only that his discovery of his parentage had been a shock.
“All right, Vax Neemusbane!” I bellowed at him. “But you’ve always been disrespectful and sullen and cheeky — and I don’t care, for that is your right, now you are a grown man. But in this you will do as you are told, and lump it! You will not come with me!” I was shaking. By Zair! The idea of my lad Jaidur in the Jikhorkdun! “Hasn’t your mother told you about the Arena and what goes on there? Don’t you know what they did to her with their silver chains and that damned great boloth? Haven’t you listened to Balass the Hawk, and Oby, and Naghan the Gnat? Well? They’d start you as a coy, greener than Havil, and you’d not last—”
“I’m as good a swordsman as you, any day!”
“Maybe. But they’d chuck you onto the silver sand with a little dagger to face a strigicaw, or a chavonth. Or maybe a hulking great Chulik in full armor would have a go at you with all his weapons and you with a short spear—”
“I can use a short spear—”
“And you’d have your insides all over the sand; they’d have the iron hook in your ankle and your mother would say what to that, hey? You perverse, ungrateful child!”
He was scarlet. He was bursting. He was a man, a great warrior, a Krozair of Zy, and he worked in secret for Vallia through the Sisters of the Rose, and here he was being talked to as though he were a child. Well, by Zair, and wasn’t that what I should have done when I was flung back to Earth instead?
All the same, I added, “You have the right to throw your life away in the Jikhorkdun. You have the right to do as you see fit. I can only advise you and try to guide you, and your honor is your own concern. My view of your honor in this pickle is for you to work for the rebellion and lead on what forces you can against the city as I get the kaidurs to rise inside. I think you would impugn your own honor if you did otherwise. But it is for you to decide. And listen to me, Jaidur, I respect you as my son too much to order you about.”
Jaezila said, “Respect!” She did not laugh but her eyes were brilliant on me. And I think she understood even if my own stumbling unhappy words could only convey a tiny fraction of what I felt.
“Well, you’ve changed your tune,” said Jaidur. “First it’s ‘You must not go,’ like a weeping mother as her son goes off to war, and now it’s ‘You must do as you see fit,’ like a Jikaidast mockingly advising an opponent on his next move. Well? You are supposed to be my father, and I your son, and this is Lela my sister, and what do we know of you—”
“Vax Neemusbane.
[3]
Jaezila.”
“Yes, very well, I grant you — but to skulk outside while you have all the fun in the Jikhorkdun—”
That did it.
“
Fun
? I lifted a fist. “In the Arena?
Fun
!”
“Well...”
“If I catch you so much as sniffing at the Arena, young Jaidur, I’ll tan your backside so you won’t ride a zorca for a month! What would your mother say? Think of her, for Zair’s sake! Kregen is dangerous enough without asking for it.”
Now Jaezila did laugh, and stepped forward, and in her own authoritative way said, “You are changing your tune once again, Jak. Jaidur sees which way lies his duty. We will bring all the forces we can against the city when we receive the signal that you are ready to rise. Sooner rather than later.”
“Agreed.”
“And father, may Opaz through the Invisible Twins guide your sword and strengthen your arm—” Jaezila looked woefully at me. “I don’t like this at all, by Vox, not one little bit!”
“Well—” began Jaidur.
I settled it.
“Get flying. Keep up your spirits. When the signal comes, you must be ready, or we will all be chopped.”
The woeful look on Jaezila’s face, lightened only sporadically by her laughter, depressed me. She was a girl, although of strong mind and iron will, fashioned for sunshine and laughter. When Lela got down, the reasons were hard and cruel. Of course, I felt guilty about causing her unhappiness yet again.
Orlan confirmed that he had been arrested and confined in his own villa in order to trap messengers and visitors. He had not been put to the Question, although, no doubt, that would have followed when enough of the rebels had been captured. Fahia was alternating between confidence and doubt, and no man was safe in her presence. Her pet neemus, black as hell, fed to repletion.
The remberees were said softly and then the fluttrells lifted away. I stared up anxiously. If a Hyrklanian air patrol came sniffing around, or a skein of aerial cavalry investigated, my people up there would be in trouble. But on a day of the games, the games were the thing, and Huringa dozed outside the Arena. So, not without a premonitory shiver, I started off for the Jikhorkdun.
Foolish to run my head into fresh horror? Of course. But what else was there to do? It is easy enough now to think of a dozen different courses of action I might have taken, but of them all, none, I venture to think, would be as swift and efficacious as the course I was now embarked on. Through the level rays of jade and ruby I strode toward the lifting pile of the Jikhorkdun, with the high fortress of the Hakal rising alongside. The beast roars swelled and grew enormous as I approached.
How, I was already wondering, fared the ruby drang?
The Queen’s Kaidur
“Not so well, Chaadur,” said Cheldur Adria. “Not so well, by Kaidun!”
“Then it is opportune I have come back—”
“More fool you!”
“Mayhap, Cleitar, mayhap. But there is a task set to my hands.”
We walked toward the local drinking den. Cleitar Adria, because of his position, could ease me back, saying in explanation that my absence had been caused by illness. There was, in these latter days of the Jikhorkdun, a certain laxness which worked to my advantage. The needleman was rubbish, as we all knew, and a word or two in the right direction settled that. There was no difficulty in getting myself into the Arena. The problems started when I began to lay out the plan of action.
“But you work for the queen, Chaadur!”
I knew this was going to be tricky. Cleitar believed I labored for Queen Fahia, and to this I owed immunity from a deal of unpleasantness. Now I had to persuade him I did not, that I wished him to join with me — more, to lead — a rebellion against the queen. Fahia was generally detested. The coils and twists and turns of intrigue are not particularly difficult to grasp for anyone involved in them; for a bluff cheldur like Cleitar Adria they presented a certain baffling front he failed to penetrate. But he would not admit to ignorance or lack of brainpower. He nodded wisely. He drank and nodded again, and drank more, and listened and I laid it all out.
“So you see, Cleitar, Princess Lildra will be a boon to us all. For a start, you will receive a handsome pension, and a title too, I don’t doubt. There will be no need — unless you so desire — to act in the Jikhorkdun ever again.” I was on dangerous ground here, for the Jikhorkdun had been Cleitar’s life. But his face and absent eye told their own story.
He drank again. He held onto the jug. “I am grown more weary of the Jikhorkdun than I could ever have believed. You see that in me, Chaadur?”
“Yes.”
“Never make friends in the Arena. We were never true comrades when you were Drak the Sword. And we were wise. But—” He drank again. “But there was a Khibil lad, Kranlo, brought him up from a coy, very quick with a sword, a good eye — I made a friend of Kranlo, more fool me. He was chosen last sennight by Tipp the Thrax to fight the Queen’s Kaidurs.”
“I am sorry, Cleitar.”
“Aye. Aye. They dragged him out.”
His head hit the table and his arms flopped and the wine jug spewed purple Hamish over the floor. I hoisted him up and carted him off to his rooms and dumped him on his bed, and let his slaves care for him. Then I took myself off to the barracks.
Many new faces were apparent, and many faces that might have been new and might not have been, seeing a kaidur takes little notice of the regular passage of arena fodder. Frandu the Franch and Norhan the Flame were pleased to see me, and I more than pleased to see them. I had work for them.