"One, a new, fresh strong force came up out of the hinterland and caught the besiegers of Shazmoz unprepared. They were led by a damned Zairian noble, a Roz Nazlifurn. He coordinated his thrust with the commander of their eastern army, Roz Nath Lorft."
Now I understood what Pur Zenkiren had stopped himself from saying, and I rejoiced. How the Krozairs must be laughing!
Gafard went on, "And, two, a freak tide swept away the shipping. We lost a great deal of supplies. Explanations are being sought from the Todalpheme, whose task it is to prevent such catastrophes in the Grand Canal."
I kept my hard old face straight. So the tide had reached Shazmoz and had swept away the damned Grodnim shipping! Well, that was good news. No doubt, also, the tide had created havoc on its way, and many a good man had lost a boat, a shed, a house. I felt sorrow, I felt the guilt I carried, but most of all I felt some deep pleasure that the tide I had created had not only swept away the Menaham argenters carrying King Genod’s damned vollers, but had also contributed to the Zairian victory at Shazmoz.
"So we are for the southern shore, gernu?"
"Aye. We take a swifter squadron, and broad ships with mercenaries and men-at-arms. We make a landing and we strike at the rear of the combined Zairian army. The king, whose name be revered, is confident we can restore all that has been lost."
Here, then, was a task set to the hand of the king’s favorite general and admiral.
Preparations were already well under way under the aegis of the king’s hyr gernu admiral — his lord high admiral. He was a man past a hundred and seventy who would be only too grateful not to have to command the expedition, for he was a hedonist much given to the daily inspection of the bottoms of many glasses. He held the titular rank, to keep up the face and the pretense for the overlords of Magdag; it was Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil, who held the real power.
In all the bustle, as the final details were attended to, I had to take serious stock of my position.
For Duhrra, the future was clear. The moment he reached the southern shore he would break free and rejoin his comrades. With contempt he would hurl the name Guhrra back in the teeth of the Grodnims, and as Duhrra would joyfully embrace Zair.
I said, in the privacy of our room, "The Grodnims have sent your name to Zo, the king in Sanurkazz. You are renegade."
He swelled his enormous plated chest. "Maybe so, Dak — Gadak — but I shall explain. As you have explained to me. The king will understand, for he is wise and just."
I hadn’t seen King Zo in fifty years; I did not smile.
"As to his wisdom, it would be impolitic to doubt that. But his justice — you will run a mortal danger."
"I know. We both will. But I have faith in the justice of Zair."
You couldn’t say fairer than that.
What I did say, and at that merely giving expression to a thought that had been building for some time, was, "And if when we were thrown down before King Zo, crying piteously for mercy, we could bring with us, in chains, this same Gafard, the renegade?"
Duhrra turned slowly to stare at me. His idiot-seeming face bloomed with blood, a flush seeping from forehead to neck. He half lifted his good left hand, and let it fall slowly to his side. His hook trembled.
"That would be a deed, by Zair!"
"Think on, Duhrra of the Days."
He surprised me.
"I hate the Green as any man of the Red must hate the Green. I do not forget my brother. All my friends who are dead and gone. But, yet — for all his villainy, I would not joy in delivering up my lord Gafard to his enemies."
I looked at him. He was sincere. He shared my thoughts.
In so many ways the early life of this Gafard — who had then been Fard — paralleled my own. From a humble birth he had faced a life completely without prospects. He had striven to improve his lot and had become a Jikaidast, and a good one. Then he had fought for the Red, and fallen foul of Zairian justice — from what I gathered he had knocked the teeth out of a Red Brother — and had for a space served in the galleys and then had been taken by the Grodnims. As he had said from the moment he had changed his allegiance, aiming for the main chance, his fortunes had dramatically improved. Would I, having served a similar apprenticeship, not have embraced the Green? Was I not a newly converted enthusiast to Zair? All my early convictions remained unimpaired, merely overlaid with newer convictions of Kregen.
"No, Duhrra," I said. "He is a man, for all he is a renegade. He is very likable, for all his villainy. And, do not forget, the Lady of the Stars loves him dear."
"There must be good in him." Duhrra rubbed his hook flat over his bald head, a trick that, at first, had quite turned my stomach. Now I was used to it. He put his thoughts awkwardly into words, reverting to his old ways. "Duh — I wonder if his good outweighs his bad. A rogue, yes, but I believe his heart still belongs to Zair."
He could have said "his heart is still in the right place," but that would not have conveyed the flavor of his thoughts.
"Then," I said, "he has sent a damned lot of good Zairians up to Zim to spy out his welcome."
"That, of course, he will pay for."
For my own plans to prosper I needed something like the enormous prize that Gafard would represent. If I could haul him in at the end of a chain and dump him down in the Krozair Isle of Zy, display him a captive to Pur Kazz, the Grand Archbold, might not that win me back my place as a Brother of the Krozairs of Zy?
I believe the sight of my Lady of the Stars affected my decision, even then. I had seen her face, and talked with her, and I felt this spiritual attraction, and I felt absolutely confident she loved Gafard as he loved her. And there was the man himself, confident, hard, but likable, generous, friendly. The two halves of his personality were not any the stranger than the two halves of my own.
The thought of betraying him so basely, after his extended hand of friendship, despite all the hidden threats, sickened me.
I’d do it, of course, like a shot, for my Delia.
Nothing could remain undone for Delia.
Even this Lady of the Stars could not stand against Delia, could she. . . ?
My unforeseen, too familiar brush with the Lady of the Stars led Gafard to appoint me to a task of some honor on Kregen. I have indicated how the banners and standards of armies and ships are regarded with deep veneration — not the tawdry bit of cloth, but the meanings the bright colors and symbols contain — and men have had their arms hacked off rather than give up the standard. This is known on our Earth, also. In certain armies men vied to carry the standard into action and when honored prepared everything for their own deaths. The honor of bearing the banner into action was so great they were prepared to give their lives, for they knew as everyone knew that the standard-bearer was the target for the most violent attack. So they would dress themselves in their full-dress uniforms, clean and smart, would go through their necessary religious observances, make their farewells of their friends, and then take up the standard and march into battle, expecting to die. Usually they were not disappointed.
Summoned to the presence of Gafard, I found him lounging in a long white silk robe, his concerns for the moment thrust aside. He had chosen one of the luxurious saloons of his palace, with padded walls and soft furnishings, mellow lamps and many potted flowers, the scents heavy in the close air. There was a great quantity of different wines from which to choose. He waved the majordomo away and beckoned me in. I wore mail and my weapons, a custom I had faithfully followed since I had turned Grodnim.
"Sit down, Gadak — wine? There is a matter I wish to tell you, and, after that, another matter."
"I await your commands, gernu."
A Fristle slave girl dressed in bangles and pearls poured wine. Gafard waited until she had finished and then waved her away. We were alone. He handed me the wine goblet; it was all of gold with great rubies set about the bowl and stem. I sipped, making the sign to him of salutation and thanks. It was Zond.
"When we used to drink this, gernu," I said, wishing to get him started on this interview, "we would say: ’Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that.’"
"Those days are best forgotten." He drank quickly. He looked not so much agitated as keyed up. "You, Gadak, will carry the standard of my Lady of the Stars."
I gaped at him.
"Close your mouth, you fambly, and listen."
I shut my mouth with a snap.
"My Lady will accompany me on this expedition. She will dress and travel as a man, a great gernu. This for reasons that need not concern you. Arrangements have been made for her cabin in
Volgodont’s Fang.
She will not be seen. But, as an overlord, she must needs have her deviced banner. This will be your charge."
I knew what was required of me. I bowed my head, and then looked up. "The honor is undeserved, but I will serve till death."
To a Green Grodnim, such a promise meant nothing; it was rote.
"Good." He stood up. "I have taken a liking to you, friend Gadak. After this expedition, who knows, you may well be Gadak of some honorable title. Come — there is that I would show you."
He led me toward a tall single door, which he unlocked with the bronze key on his belt, and we went through into a tall narrow room lit by lancet windows. The room flamed’ with color.
Red!
Banners and standards of all kinds hung from the walls. There were stands of arms of Krozair manufacture — although there were no Krozair longswords I could see — and I looked.
"Aye, Gadak. This is my trophy room. These are the trophies of my battles and actions."
I swallowed down hard. I recognized some of the devices.
There was much there I was dismayed to see. This man, this King’s Striker, had roamed the inner sea like a leem. I walked slowly along, looking up. At the far end in a small alcove stood a balass-framed glass case. The light struck across it and lit its contents. I looked.
A scrap of red cloth, not eighteen inches square, with faded gold embroidery, and, along one edge, a strip of yellow cloth. Also in the case lay what was clearly a fragment of mesh mail. Also a main-gauche. . . A main-gauche? The left-hand dagger was not a familiar weapon in the inner sea, for they were not rapier-and-dagger men.
I looked back at Gafard. He stood there, one hand to his beard, staring at the case with an expression I found hard to read.
"You wonder at these pitiful relics, Gadak?"
"Trophies of your first action?" I suggested, doubtful.
He smiled. "No, Gadak. My first victim sank in a bubble and all was lost." He came closer and stood looking down at the red cloth, brooding. "No. These are precious to me. Most precious. You will not understand, and yet, I sense in you a spirit, a spark that can ignite if fanned with skill."
"Swifter actions are violent and bloody—"
"Aye! And the man who owned this red flag, and this mail shirt, and this dagger, was violent and bloody above all."
So I knew.
I looked closer.
Well . . . the bit of red cloth with the yellow edging could be a quarter ripped from my flag, that yellow cross on a scarlet field fighting-men call Old Superb. The colors were faded and, like museum pieces, gave a fusty, dusty faded look. The mesh mail, a scrap from a left shoulder and breast, might also have been mine. As for the main-gauche — my mind went back fifty years. . .
Yes, I was almost sure it was one given to me by Vomanus, the young man who had so recklessly come seeking me in the inner sea because he had been told to do so by Delia. He was Delia’s half-brother. He was now Vomanus of Vindelka. I thought he was a good friend. Yes, it could be his. A spot of dirt about the ornate hilt where the metal had corroded bore that out, for he was always careless of his weapons.
And damned funny it was, to be sure, to stand and look down at bits of one’s own belongings all solemnly laid out in a glass case in a museum, relics to be sighed over with awe.
I tapped the case lightly. "How can you be sure these belonged to Pur Dray?"
He smiled, and the smile was neither ironic nor wolfish; it was the smile of the collector who has paid a price for a dearly desired object of his affections.
"I know them to be. I have been given proofs."
I decided I had best display some of the chauvinistic ignorance of the warriors of the Eye of the World.
"This dagger. It is of strange design." I put my hand on the glass and twisted it about — my right hand. "You would hold it, but with difficulty."
He laughed. This, the first genuine laugh I had heard from him, for he could contort his face to a polite grimace when the occasion warranted, sounded light and happy and carefree.
"Your left hand, Gadak."
So I went through the pantomime of putting my left hand on the glass and holding the main-gauche. I was suitably amazed.
"You have heard of Vallia? The king no longer desires to trade with them, for now we are allied to the empire of Hamal, wherever that may be, and the ships of Menaham ply here. But there are many things of Vallian make in Magdag. This dagger is one, and it was owned and used by the Lord of Strombor."
He did not offer to take the precious objects out of the glass case. I hadn’t the heart to ask him. I could feel the weight of all those years rolling down on me, like the peaks of The Stratemsk toppling upon me, and I felt my spirit reducing, as though Grotal had me in his grip.
Truthfully, I, an Earthman, had not yet adjusted to the normal and accepted life-span of two hundred years usual to the people of Kregen, let alone the thousand years that stretched ahead. To Gafard as well as other Kregans, the past fifty years was like twenty to an Earthman.
And I knew what twenty years trapped on Earth was like, Krun rot the Star Lords!
Gafard was speaking again, and I roused myself to listen.
". . . honor of the most high. She will be waiting in my saloon now. Show no surprise, Gadak, I caution you, for she has chosen this from the Vallian goods I have told you of. It is a bauble, but it augurs well for your future with me."