Copyright © 1976, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1976.

This Edition published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 1843195259

Renegade of Kregen

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

A note on Dray Prescot

Dray Prescot is a man above medium height with brown hair and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and he carries himself with an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth century English Navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe — mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity — and of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, he has been taken to Kregen many times. On that savage and exotic world he rose to become Zorcander of the Clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce, and a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy. Against all odds Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragon’s Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in the face of her father the dread emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of Hai Jikai! Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. They are blessed with two pairs of twins, Drak and Lela, and Segnik and Velia. One of their favourite homes is Esser Rarioch in Valkanium, capital of the island of Valka, a part of Vallia, an island of which Prescot is Strom. In the continent of Havilfar Prescot fought as a hyr-kaidur in the arena of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa. He became king of Djanduin idolised by his ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs. In the Battle of Jholaix the ambitions of the Empress Thyllis of Hamal were thwarted leading to an uneasy peace between the empires of Hamal and Vallia.

Then Prescot was banished to Earth for twenty one miserable years. His joyful return to Kregen was marred by his ejection from the Order of Krozairs of Zy. Now he is determined to forget the Krozairs of the inner sea and return home to Valka and Delia and the children . . . Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

We ride into Magdag

We rode, Duhrra of the Days and I, into Magdag. Magdag, the city of the megaliths, the chief city of the Grodnims, those devoted followers of Grodno the Green, stank in our nostrils, us followers of the true path of Zair.

"This place is a cesspit of vileness." Duhrra spat, juicily, into the dust of-the roadway. "It should be smashed like my hand and cauterized like my stump."

"Amen to that, Duhrra. You know I am taking ship here for Vallia. You are gladly welcome to join me. If you wish to smash and cauterize Magdag, kindly give me time to go aboard and weigh." He gazed at me, his big moonface sweating, his foolish-seeming mouth gaping.

"Duh — you’re a hard man, Dak."

"Aye — and I should be harder. Now shut your black-fanged wine-spout. Here is a pack of Magdag devils in person."

We slumped in our saddles and half closed our eyes and let our heads droop on our breasts as we rode past a body of Magdaggian sectrixmen riding toward the west. I did not even bother to fleer them a searching glance as we lumbered by. Ahead lay the fortress city of Magdag, a place of great power and great evil, and I wished only to take myself as speedily as possible aboard a galleon from Vallia and tell her captain to sail me home as fast as his vessel could sail, home to Vallia and Valka. Home — back to Esser Rarioch, my high fortress overlooking the bay and Valkanium, home to Delia and the twins!

The dusty road led straight to the western gate, an imposing structure of many levels, battlemented, loopholed, a tough nut to crack in any siege. The road itself thronged with people coming and going, for as a large and prosperous city Magdag demanded the unremitting toil of many hands to keep its belly fed. Here, on the green northern shore of the inner sea, those working hands would be slave. Shadows of the gate dropped about us. The smells began in earnest. I intended to talk to no one. Straight to the harbor — the nearest of the numerous harbors of Magdag — and there seek information on the first ship of Vallia; yes, that was the plan. If I had to wait a sennight or so I felt I could just support the extra torment, for I had suffered much of late. The twin Suns of Scorpio streamed their mingled light upon the walls and battlements of the city, giving the evil place a spurious grandeur and glory. All the light and color of two worlds cannot in the end disguise true evil. So I thought then and, by Zair, so I think now.

The stupid sectrixes with their six legs and their blunt stubborn heads sensed the ending of their day’s labors and a comfortable stall and food, and they speeded up their lumbering trot. Maybe they were not so stupid after all. Jogging awkwardly up and down we passed the lofty pointed arch of the gateway beneath the hard, incurious stares of Magdaggian soldiery, hired mercenaries mostly, with a few Homo sapiens among them, and turned sharp right-handed for the harbor area. The eternal sounds of a great city rose about us, mingling with the stinks. The shadows clustered.

"And remember, Duhrra. You wear the green. Think like a Grodnim. Look like a Grodnim. Act like a Grodnim."

"Aye, Dak my master. Uh — Think, look, and act like a devil."

"Aye."

He shifted the stump of his right arm, severed at the wrist, and folded swathing rags more securely to conceal his hook.

"I do not forget I wear the red beneath all this green."

"That is well. Do not forget and strip off and reveal all to everyone. In all else — forget." He caught the tone of my voice and hawked and spat again and we cantered through the deepening twilight toward a certain sailors’ tavern where news was to be had. The shadows lengthened. A line of beggars along the decaying inner wall cried out and held up pitiful mutilations, rattling their wooden begging bowls. These were men who had been used by the overlords of Magdag in war, and being wounded or rendered unfit for further duty, had been cast off. They were not even of use as slaves. Somewhere a few good days’ ride back to the west lay the corpses of half a dozen devils of Magdag. The gold and silver oars that had once jingled in their purses made the same bright sounds in ours. Money has no cares over its owners. I drew out a handful of copper obs, that almost universal single-value copper coin of Kregen, and threw them, one by one, at the beggars as we passed. The act gave me no pleasure.

"Grodno bless you, gernu!" "May the delights of Gyphimedes be yours tonight, gernu!" The babbling cries lifted as we rode past. The gutter ran with slime here. "May you sup with Shagash, gernu!" "The sweet Greenness of Grodno upon you, gernu!"

I kept my ugly old face iron-hard as we passed. There was every chance, had this scene been enacted fifty years ago here, that some of those men might have come by their afflictions at the end of my longsword. Duhrra’s sectrix pushed close.

"Waste of obs," he said.

"Aye."

My thoughts pained me. In Holy Sanurkazz, the chief city of the Zairians of the southern shore of the inner sea, sights like this, of maimed and blinded men piteously begging, were almost unknown. The various orders of chivalry of Zair saw to that. That was one of their prime functions besides the greatest function of all, which was their sacred duty, the destruction of everything of the Green and of Grodno upon the Eye of the World. My thoughts should not pain me. Once I had been a Krozair of Zy, a member of the Krozair Order held in highest repute. I had been ejected, ignominiously thrown out, declared Apushniad, my longsword broken. Of all the fancy titles I held on Kregen, only being a Krozair of Zy had meant much to me. Now I must push all thoughts of the Krzy away. I was for home, for Vallia and Valka. And, too, I do my wonderful four-armed warrior Djangs a grave injustice if I say I did not hold being their king as of high importance and meaning in my life.

The names of places that have special significances to me ring and resound in my head. At that time apart from Felschraung and Longuelm, which were not places but the names of my wild Clansmen of Segesthes, a number of names could move me.

Strombor. Valka. Djanduin.

Yes, and Felteraz, too, here in the Eye of the World where I had been cruel to Mayfwy, widow of my oar-comrade Zorg. I can remember my thoughts, triggered by that pitiful line of broken men, mulling and jangling in my skull and giving me not so much a headache as an infernal feeling of wishing to get home to my Delia and finding some sense in this beautiful and horrific world of Kregen. I was just thinking that, too, under my alias of Hamun ham Farthytu, Paline Valley in Hamal had meaning for me, when I caught the suppressed breathing from the shadows of the next archway, the incautious chink of steel. The reins tautened under my fingers and I slowed the eager sectrix. Duhrra reined in alongside me.

"I came here in order to take a ship and sail away. I did not seek trouble." My right hand crossed my body and fastened on the hilt of the longsword scabbarded at my waist. "But sink me! If any cramph wants to make trouble I will accommodate him!"

Duhrra’s long exhalation of breath sounded like a benediction. His big face gleamed in the erratic light of a distant torch bracketed to a slimy wall. "I knew there could only be trouble in vile Magdag. By Zair!

Right happy this will make me—"

"You take the left-hand rasts, Duhrra."

"Aye, master."

Duhrra could swing a longsword with his left hand. I knew.

We rode another half a dozen yards and the tall pointed archway rose over our heads carrying either a cross street or a house above the harbor road we followed. The shadows blacked out the forms of the men waiting. I did not think they would be stikitches — professional assassins — but more likely would be desperate men ready to kill for money, and men of that stamp are to be found wherever men congregate together.

Well aware they could see me, I did not draw.

Surprise is a useful weapon. So is a longsword. Even the sword I bore, taken from the body of that Grodnim Jiktar who had attempted to stop me opening the caissons of the gate of the Dam of Days and so destroying a convoy of foemen’s ships. I held the hilt that was almost the hilt of a true Krozair longsword. The blade bore the device of a lairgodont, a most ferocious carnivorous risslaca, surmounted by a rayed sun. That device denoted a Green Brotherhood devoted to Grodno. The sword had served me well since we had left the Dam of Days and the Grand Canal at the extreme western end of the inner sea. Now it would serve again.

The lesten-hide grip over wood and iron ridged firmly into my hand. This thing would have to be quick

— quick and deadly. I saw the shadows move.

The thieves made the mistake of shouting. No doubt they sought to frighten us. As they leaped so they screeched.

"Gashil! Gashil! To Sicce with you!"

Duhrra bellowed a fruity oath and his sword blurred up and down. My blade leaped for the throat of the first attacker. He staggered back, trying to scream, with the black blood spouting. Twice more I struck as the leems of the sewers leaped. One reeled back, sightless, faceless, dying. The other, a Rapa, skewed his sword across and partially deflected the blow so that the blade sliced through the crest atop his gray vulturine face. He stopped screeching "Gashil," the legendary patron of bandits, and screamed out a string of Rapa oaths. But, for all that, his sword lunged in again. I leaned out and over, looped the weapon in a shadowy blur, lifted it, and so slashed down. The Rapa dropped his sword. He took a step from the shadows into the pink moonlight, his hands to his head. He had been cleft down to the bridge of that big vulturine beak. Only then did he fall. Rapas are fierce opponents and worthy to be called warriors, even if they do stink in the nostrils of apims like me.

Duhrra’s sectrix backed and collided with mine. I swung a swift glance toward him. The one-handed man’s sword skittered up into the air, spinning, catching the slanting rays of pink and golden moonlight. I saw beyond his sectrix the lithe vicious shape of a numim closing in for the kill.

"Look out!" I yelled, trying to kick my beast into action and so close. I would be too late. The numim, his golden lion-face a single blaze of ferocious pleasure in the moonlight, which slanted narrowly above the eastern roofs, leaped for Duhrra, a longsword upraised. I felt that my comrade was doomed. I reversed the sword ready to throw, and—

A bar of steel twinkled cleanly in the moonlight. It thrust straight at the numim. The lion-man’s leap ended in a shriek and a gurgle. He slumped to the ground. He tried to rise and run, and collapsed, and lay, groaning and cursing.

Duhrra turned his big face toward me. He looked more like an idiot than ever.

"The rasts," he said. He lifted his right arm.

Where he usually wore his hook, fitted for him by the doctors attached to the Akhram by the Grand Canal, now a brand of steel flamed black and gold in the moonlight. I knew why he had carried what I supposed was his hook concealed in rags, for we had wished to prevent news of a one-handed man being bandied about. Now I realized he had concealed more than a mere hook. He waved the blade at me, socketed into leather and wood over his stump, and his great idiot face showed pleasurable delight in a new toy.

"They did not expect this, Dak. They didn’t like it."

He slid a leg over his saddle and jumped to the ground. I was very conscious of the shadows about us, the darkness of the pointed archway in which the ambush had taken place, the comparative brilliance beyond as She of the Veils rose higher and cast down her light. Eyes could be watching us; but that was a thing I could do nothing about.

The wounded numim lay gasping on the ground. He had rolled over and so lay on his back, gasping and cursing, and glaring up at us. Blood stained his golden mane. I had known a numim who had been a great man and a good friend, even if he had been a citizen of hostile Hamal. I stopped as Duhrra bent.

"You, rast," said Duhrra of the Days, "may receive a boon at my hands. You may go to roister with Gashil, to sit on the right hand of Grodno in the radiance of Genodras. You are equally doomed, cramph. For Grodno is the true devil."

And Duhrra sliced the cripple-blade across the numim’s throat and so slew him. He stood back and turned to me.

"He had seen my hook — or, rather, the blade. He would have talked. I do not think you would care for that, Dak, my master."

All I could say was, "No."

Methodically, Duhrra cleaned the cripple-blade and its tang which fixed into the socket of the stump, turning with a cunning twist to lock. He unlocked it and cleaned the tang and the socket as we rode on, for we did not wish to tarry with the street cumbered with dead bodies. Magdag has a force of hired mercenaries to fight with her own people, and she had the night watch, who delight in catching thieves and ne’er-do-wells, for each one gains them a bounty when sent to slave at the oar benches of the galleys.

Presently Duhrra, his stump once more concealed, said, "You seem to know this devil’s nest passing well, master."

"Aye. I once lived here for a space — in good times and evil. And must I keep on telling you I am not your master?"

"No, master."

"What does that mean?"

A hurrying group from an alehouse passed, men and women of a number of different racial stocks, all swathed in dirty green garments, with link-slaves to light their way. They passed the sectrixes like a flood, opening out before and closing aft. I twisted in the awkward wooden saddle to stare after them. The torchlights scattered red and orange reflections. The shadows grew darker and swooped down, writhing. Silently, with only a rush of sandaled feet, those people passed us.

"Are they phantoms?" Duhrra’s face showed no shock, but I saw the coverings over his stump moving.

"No, you great fambly! They are workpeople going to their hovels after drinking as the suns set. They go in a group with torches because—"

"Yes. Well, there is one little lot who will not disturb them this night, by Za—"

"Onker!" I bellowed.

I had no need to say more. But Duhrra, who looked like a great muscle-bound idiot, could play games, also.

"By Grodno the Green!" he said loudly. "You call me onker, master!" I glared at him. Neither of us would smile. The moment was amusing. I shook the reins and we cantered past the alehouse with its sign of a broken pot — broken by skylarking children, I shouldn’t wonder —

and so turned into the Alley of Weights which would take us to the main waterfront of Foreigners’ Pool. The alley lay in darkness, but from the waterfront the sounds of rollicking and roistering lured us on. I had no real fear of another attempt on us so close to the clustered taverns of the waterfront, but we rode with swords in our hands, just in case. As to the carousing — the sounds rose thin and few. I had fancied the Pool would be jumping; perhaps it was too early.

She of the Veils had risen clear of the roofs now and as we reached the end of the Alley of Weights and saw the dark water before us a jaggedly rippling ribbon of pinkly golden light stretched, as though to welcome us back to the sea. Lights shone from the taverns and alehouses, for sailors’ work is thirsty work. Again I fancied business was slack. The tavern I wanted, known to be the favorite of the Vallian seamen who had sailed here all the weary way across the Outer Oceans, was called The Net and Trident. I knew little of it, for, as you know, my former residence in Magdag had been once in the slave warrens and once in the Emerald Eye Palace.

In those old days I had spied out a deal of Magdag, as I have mentioned, with a true Krozair’s eye for weaknesses in the defense against the great day when the call rang out and we of Zair went up against the hated men of Grodno.

Well, the call had gone out, and I had failed to answer the Azhurad, and so had been ejected, was no longer a Krzy, was Apushniad. I’d been on Earth at the time, banished for twenty-one terrible years; but how to explain that to a man of Kregen?

A couple of drunks staggered past. Our sectrixes let a silly snort escape their nostrils, and I kicked the flank of mine to remind him his work was not yet done. The third sectrix with our dunnage strapped to his back tailed along in the rear.

There were damned few ships tied up. I saw an argenter, one of those broad, stubby comfortable ships, probably from Menaham, although her flags were not visible in the harbor. Beyond her lay three of the broad ships of the inner sea, dwarfed by the argenter. Seeing both types of ship so close together gave me a true idea of the impressiveness of the ships of the Outer Oceans. The little merchant ships of the Eye of the World would never brave the terrors outside the inner sea. There was no galleon from Vallia moored up.

I looked hard as we reined up outside The Net and Trident. No. No, it was sure. I could not see a single Vallian ship.

Well, I was annoyed. It meant I must wait until one sailed in from the Outer Oceans, sailing in through the Grand Canal and along to Magdag. I would wait. There was nothing else to do. We tied the sectrixes to the rail, at which they showed their spite. Later, when I had asked the questions boiling in me, we could stable them properly. We pushed into the tavern and stood for a moment adjusting to heat and light and noise.

The place was not overly full, and the patrons were mostly sailors of the inner sea, with a mercenary guard or two, and at a table beneath the balcony of the upper floor a group of men who might be merchants in a small way of business.

A few serving wenches — I dislike the name of shif commonly given to these girls — moved among the tables and benches. We moved farther into the room, letting the door swing shut at our backs. My right hand hung at my side, ready. The sawdust on the floor showed itself to be old and in urgent need of replacement. The odors of old grease and burned fat and sour wine clung about the room. Nodding to a table in a corner where no one was likely to get at our backs, I went over and Duhrra followed. His right arm was buried in his green cloak. We wore the mesh mail beneath our green robes, but we had removed our coifs earlier. We sat down and stared about, rather as two hungry and thirsty travelers might do. And, in truth, that was what we were.

One of the girls hurried over, plastering a smile on her face. She was apim, and not happy, worn out and tired already even though the night’s drinking had barely begun.

Duhrra began an argument about the wine she might serve, and he went dangerously near perilous ground by asking if they had any Zairian wine recently come in from a prize. She tossed her hair back tiredly and said they had none, and she could recommend the local Blood of Dag which, she said, as a wine was, as was proper, a bright and beautiful green. Duhrra’s face did not express his distaste. But he started to speak.

"Excellent!" I said loudly. "And a rasher or two of vosk with a few loloo’s eggs. And pie to follow —

malsidge, if possible, or squish."

"Malsidge?" said Duhrra, not too pleased. "Make mine squish."

"We are taking a long sea voyage," I said. "Malsidge."

"Malsidge is off," said the girl. She wiped her mouth and smeared the red stuff over her cheeks. "Huliper pie today."

"Very well." I put my hand in one of the pockets of the robe beneath the cloak. I made a habit of carrying money spread out over my person. I let a little silver chink show through my fingers. Her brown eyes fixed on the silver as a ponsho fixes his eyes on a risslaca’s eyes.

"Tell me, doma, what is the news of the ships from Vallia?" She would know all the gossip, I guessed. Whether she willed it or not her life would be bound up with the men of the inner sea and their vessels. She would hear them talking.

"Vallia, gernu?"

Her tone had changed markedly since the gleam of silver between my fingers.

"Ships from Vallia sail into Foreigners’ Pool. When is the next one due? Has she been signaled yet?" She shook her head. She looked frightened. Still she had not taken her eyes away from that gleam of silver.

"No, gernu. Not for a long time. The ships from Vallia no longer sail to Magdag."

Chapter Two

The flash of a Ghittawrer blade

As I have said before, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the color green. It is a charming, restful color. Our green vegetation makes of our Earth a marvelous place. I know that if green suddenly vanished from the spectrum we would all be immeasurably the poorer for that. But as I sat there, in that squalid tavern on the waterfront of Foreigners’ Pool in Magdag, so overwhelming, so bitter, so malefic a hatred for all things Green overcame me that I shut my eyes and gripped onto the inferior earthenware pot so that it smashed into shards and the bilious green wine ran and spread over the table.

"Gernu!" cried this poor serving wench.

Then sanity reasserted itself. Of course! She did not mean that Vallian ships never came to Magdag. The inner sea lies at the western center of the continent of Turismond. It is separated from Eastern Turismond by a devilish cleft in the ground from which spurt noxious and hallucinatory vapors, and also by The Stratemsk, so monstrous a range of mountains that men believe their summits reach up to the twin glories of Zim and Genodras, the red and green suns of Antares. There was no way, as all men knew, across The Stratemsk on foot. And — there were no airboats in the inner sea. Equally, it needed a ship of the Outer Oceans to navigate in those stormy seas, all the way from the Dam of Days in the west, south and so past Donengil, and then north up the Cyphren Sea, sailing with the Zim Stream and so passing the northern extremity of the continent of Loh, and so at last due east for Vallia. No. No, this girl did not mean the galleons from Vallia no longer sailed to Magdag. She meant the seamen from the galleons no longer came to her tavern, The Net and Trident. I told her this, in a gentle voice, but still she flinched back.

"Indeed, no, gernu. I speak sooth. Since King Genod, may his name be revered, told them not to sail here, they have not come back."

"He did what? "

"Gernu . . ." Her voice sounded faint.

The door opened and on a gust of fishy, fresher air, men bulked in, apims, diffs, laughing and talking, scraping chairs and tables, bellowing for wine.

The girl cast one last longing look at the silver between my fingers, and fled. I sat like a loon.

Of course, I could take passage in an argenter. Sail to Pandahem. But — but there was no other answer. That is what I would have to do. I did not like it. There was no other way. Pandahem, the large island to the south of Vallia, had always been in trade and military rivalry with the empire of Vallia. Pandahem was divided into a number of different nations. I had friends — rather, I used to have friends — in Tomboram. This new and evil king Genod Gannius here in Magdag had arranged a treaty with my enemies in Menaham in Pandahem. He wanted to buy airboats from Hamal and use the Menaheem to transport them to Magdag and so gain an invincible sky force to crush the Zairians. I had put paid to that scheme, at least for now. No doubt he would try again. By then I would be well out of the Eye of the World, back home in Valka, my island off the coast of Vallia. But . . . in order to sail home I would have to ship in an argenter from Menaham.

By Vox! How the Bloody Menahem would crow if ever they discovered they had the Prince Majister of Vallia in their hands!

Duhrra was looking at me.

He put that moonface of his on one side, and a frown dinted in the smooth skin of his forehead. His scalp was bald and gleaming, with that small pigtail dangling down his back.

"You show nothing on your face, Dak. Yet is not this news bad? It is not what you expected."

"No. It is not."

"Then you cannot return to your home in Vallia. You will have to return with me to Sanurkazz — or Crazmoz, which is my home — and we will have fine adventures on the way." I could not answer.

This Duhrra, whom I had dubbed Duhrra of the Days, did not know all there was to know of me, even here in the Eye of the World, where years and years ago I had been a Krozair Brother and the foremost swifter captain of the inner sea. Those cramphs of Magdag had trembled at my name. I knew it to be true. Nursing mothers lost their milk, strong men blanched, maidens screamed, if they thought themselves in danger from me, from Pur Dray, Krzy.

Duhrra called me Dak, for that was a name I had adopted in all honor, even though I believed he had heard me addressed by my real name. He never referred to it. The Krozairs are a remote and exotic breed of men, even among their own countrymen who have not aspired to the honor and glory of becoming Krozairs.

The serving girl bustled about seeing to the ribald and vociferous demands of the newcomers. They were mercenaries, and even seated at table they swaggered and boasted. Presently she brought our vosk and loloo’s eggs, and the huliper pie, together with a fresh jug of that ghastly green wine, the Blood of Dag. I flipped the silver oar up. It glittered in the lamplight.

"You forget this."

She bobbed a quick curtsy, the same kind of submissive dipping of the head and bending of the knee as one saw on Earth, and caught the silver coin and dropped it safely down her blouse.

"Thank you, gernu. May Grodno smile on you."

Another man might have thought, Zair certainly is not. But I thought only of a scheme to return to Vallia and Valka and once more clasp my Delia in my arms, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

"Eat," said Duhrra. "Eat, my master, and afterward you will feel better." He was partially right, of course. I ate. The stuff tasted foul. I took up a handful of palines, for they are usually — although not always — to be found in a dish on every tavern table, and I munched moodily. Palines are sovereign cures for a headache, cherry-like fruits of exquisite taste, sweet firm flesh, and are an item sadly lacking on this Earth, this Earth of my birth four hundred light-years from Kregen under Antares.

This disastrous news had shattered me.

I had been through horrific experiences before, many times. But this feeling of being trapped numbed me. I had been trapped when the Star Lords had banished me to Earth for twenty-one years. Then there had been no possible way for me to do something and return to Kregen. I had made attempts and had scared up some response from the strange woman who called herself Madam Ivanovana on Earth and Zena Iztar on Kregen. But now I was actually on Kregen, my duties for the Star Lords for the moment discharged, and willing and able to travel at once to the only woman who means anything to me — and I was prevented by mere geography. Distance and time separated me, as I then thought. So be it. I remember I sat up and found myself looking at one of the mercenaries at the adjoining table. I would make my way back to my Delia, as I had before, and I would do so come hell or high water. With that decision made and already plans for that damned Menahem argenter forming in my mind, I was aware of the mercenary rising from the table.

Duhrra sucked in his breath.

The mercenary was a Fristle. His powerful humanlike body was clad in the mesh mail. His catlike head, with the striped fur and the slit eyes and the bristling whiskers, lowered on me most evilly. He advanced from his table and he loosened his scimitar, which all Fristles use no matter what other weapons they chance to be issued with.

"You are looking at me, dom," said this Fristle, very menacingly. He was vicious and tough, that was evident. "I do not think I like that."

I knew what had happened. So wrapped up in my thoughts had I been I had allowed some of my anguish and my anger to show on that iron-hard face of mine, thereby destroying any illusion I might cherish of being an iron-hard man. The Fristle had seen this and with his quick catlike temper had taken this as a deliberate affront, a challenge.

I sighed.

"You are mistaken, dom," I began. "I was not—"

That was a mistake, to start with.

"You are calling me a liar?"

"Not at all." I searched around for words. This situation was not quite unparalleled. I had acted the coward and the ninny as Hamun ham Farthytu in Ruathytu, the capital of Hamal. Now I wanted to avoid trouble. For Duhrra’s sake as much as mine, I wished no brawling here. "No, dom. I would not call you a liar — unless you were, of course."

"Cramph!" he said. Even in the simple word cramph he insinuated a cat’s hiss into his voice. Then, splendidly, hissing out into the tavern room and bringing everyone’s attention to center on us: "Rast!" A rast is a six-legged rodent disgustingly infesting dunghills. I have used the word a few times in my life. I stood up. I stood up slowly.

"I was not looking at you with intent. In that you lie. You call me a cramph. You lie. You call me a rast. You lie." My right hand slowly crossed my waist toward the sword hilt. "It seems, dom, you are a chronic liar."

"By Odifor, apim! His scimitar flamed. "I must teach you your place!" His comrades lolled back in their chairs, laughing, mocking, catcalling, telling this mercenary, whom they called Cryfon the Sudden, to be gentle with me and only knock one eye out and not to stick more than two fingers’ breadth of steel into me and so on.

He had no fear of my longsword. In these confined quarters with tables and chairs to entangle legs, the quick and deadly scimitar would do its work wonderfully well. His Magdaggian longsword, no doubt with the initials G.G.M. etched into the blade, hung disregarded, scabbarded from a baldric. I moved to one side so as to give myself room and whipped out the longsword. The lamps cast their glow upon the blade, for it had been newly cleaned and it shone lustrously. The mercenaries at the table suddenly fell silent.

The Fristle, who a moment before brandished his scimitar with every intent of giving me a good thrashing, short of slaying me, stopped stock still. His breath hissed between that catlike mouth.

"By the Green!" he said.

Duhrra moved at my back and I guessed he was swathing up his stump again.

"Gernu!" said this Fristle mercenary, Cryfon the Sudden. "I did not know — I had no idea. Your pardon, gernu, a thousand thousand pardons."

Where before he had been calling me rast and cramph, as well as dom, which is a friendly salutation, now he called me gernu, which is the Grodnim way of saying jernu or lord. One takes one’s chances on Kregen.

"I was not staring at you with intent."

"Indeed not, gernu. In that I lied. I lied most foully, as Odifor is my witness." One of the mercenaries, a bulky numim whose golden fur glowed gloriously in the samphron oil lamp’s gleam, called, "You always could pick the wrong ’un, Cryfon." The numim rose, bowing to me. "Gernu

— you will pardon the poor onker and take a sup of wine with us?" He was a Deldar, and the leader and spokesman of this little gang. I turned to face him and realized I still held the looted Grodnim longsword. I swished it in a little salute and sheathed it. Its flash was scabbarded. But in that movement I caught at some of the meanings here. The device! The lairgodont and the rayed-sun emblem. At the time I’d picked it up on the Dam of Days, with its headless late owner sprawled by the valve wheels, I had considered the problems of that device. I’d chipped out the emeralds and given the device a rub with a rough stone, but the quick eyes of these men had picked it out, and recognized it — and, too, no doubt, they had seen the condition, the lack of jewels, and had drawn conclusions from that consonant with a Green Brother patronizing a low-class drinking tavern like The Net and Trident.

Even a Green Brother, a Ghittawrer of Grodno, down on his luck was a man not to be trifled with. And, too, it was not only because of the longsword, which they now knew would have chopped the Fristle mercenary, Cryfon the Sudden, very surely, scimitar or no scimitar, close quarters or no close quarters. Also, there was in these men’s shocked deference to a Ghittawrer Brother the subservience to power and authority vested in mystic disciplines, the force of religion, the aura of invincibility. I had seen similar, although not so violent, reactions in Sanurkazz when an unthinking carouser came face to face with a Krozair Brother. But the Zairians are a ruffianly lot anyway, and they tend to joke more and to make rough good humor out of the mystic disciplines — making very sure first that no Krozair is within earshot. These Grodnims, in line with their religious character, took a more narrow view. They believed more fanatically. They were more fervent in their observances. For them the Green was all. Was this, I wondered, one reason why now the Green rose in ascendancy over the Red?

"I thank you, Deldar," I said, speaking stiffly, as a Ghittawrer Brother would. Truth to tell, I had been speaking as a Krozair might, and that seemed to serve. "You are kind. But I must go about my business." He nodded at once, quickly. "I understand, gernu. May the blessed light of Grodno go with you."

"And with you."

Well, if he meant it — so did I!

We threw down coins to pay for our meal and wine and went out. Duhrra took a tremendous breath once outside, under the stars, with She of the Veils rising up into the night sky.

"A po-faced lot, these Grodnims!"

"Aye. And you had best be, too."

He rumbled and moved his wing, but he remained silent.

We had come out of that well. But I determined to get rid of the device. I would not care to part with the weapon, for it was the finest I was likely to get my hands on for some time. Those mercenaries in there came from the galleys in the adjoining harbor. No doubt they found The Net and Trident more hospitable since the withdrawal of Vallian ships. There would be more room and better service, and a discount, too, I shouldn’t wonder. But they were hard, tough men. I had fought their like on the Eye of the World. How long would it take them to arrive at the truth? That the insolent apim who had fronted down their comrade, Cryfon the Sudden, had merely found the Ghittawrer sword?

Stolen it, most likely, with a knife in the back of the Brother in Grodno. Even if they reached that conclusion I fancied they would not be too anxious to rush out and test it. The power of the Green Brotherhoods is long and terrible, in ways quite foreign to the powers of the Krozairs.

Then I thrust all this petty business away.

Here I was, aching to return home, and stranded in the inner sea, thousands of miles from Valka. The thoughts tortured me. We mounted up. I had no real idea what to do now, for all my plans had envisaged my going aboard a Vallian galleon this night. I had not even seriously considered the alternative I had thought on, that I would have to wait a sennight or so.

Now, no galleon would come at all. . .

We rode past the argenter.

I said, "It seems, Duhrra of the Days, that we shall have to take passage in her."

"I will still sail with you, Dak."

"Aye." Duhrra had been earning a living as a wrestler when I first met him. I had a good idea he was no stranger to the sea. "It may well be I shall have to pay passage money."

"That seems just. Use the money you would have paid the Vallian captain." I humped along on the sectrix for a space, avoiding all the usual impedimenta of a waterfront. Then:

"There will not be enough for a captain of Pandahem." I could not explain that as the Prince Majister of Vallia all I needed to have done was convince the Vallian master that I was who I was. I could do that, all right.

"It would seem, master, that the Pandaheem are more greedy than the Vallians." That was a reasonable assumption on the facts.

"Probably. Let us find an inn and get some rest. I will talk with the master of the argenter in the morning."

"We must slit a few throats and gain ourselves some gold."

"Let us talk to the master first, and discover his price."

"As you say, master."

I reined in and Duhrra’s sectrix snorted and shied away. Both animals we rode and the pack animal were annoyed they had not been fed and watered, rubbed down, and bedded for the night.

"Listen to me, Duhrra of the Days. You act the part of a Grodnim here in Magdag. You understand that reason well enough."

"Aye. They’d draw out our tripes if they discovered—"

"When we go aboard the Menaham argenter, forget all mention of the word Vallia, except to give the place a round curse every now and then. Menaham and Vallia do not get on." His heavy-lidded eyes regarded me in the flaring torchlight from over a nearby dopa den.

"I see. That makes the problem a little clearer."

"Just remember — it’s my neck as well as yours."

We slept that night at the hostelry of The Missal Tree just off the waterfront but still in the harbor area. We were merely two weary travelers seeking a bed. The sectrixes were seen to by a lame Relt, one of that race of diffs who are cousins to the Rapas. The Rapas seem to have taken all the ferocity, the Relts all the gentleness. We turned in and, as I say, we slept. Old campaigners both, this Duhrra of the Days, and me, Dak.

Duhrra’s stump was well concealed, and the Ghittawrer emblem likewise was covered with a flap of green cloth.

The argenter captain did not ask our business or why we wished to sail out of the Eye of the World, for which I was grateful, for I had been cudgeling what brains I have to find a reason that would stand inspection. He stroked a hand through his broad black beard and stared at us with sober calculation showing on his heavy, seamed face. He wore a gold ring in each ear, which offended my aesthetic sense. He was a hard man, as he would have need of being, and he drove a hard bargain. When we left him amid the bustle of his ship’s company preparing for sea, with the seabirds calling, those ill Magbirds of Magdag, with the mixture of stinks of tar and oil and seaweed in our nostrils, and went down the gangplank, Duhrra favored me with a look that spoke volumes. On the quayside and heading for the tavern three along from The Net and Trident, Duhrra said, "A large sum, Dak."

"We will find it."

"Oh, aye, I never doubted that."

We found the money, and a couple of overlords of Magdag awoke with thick heads and a garbled tale of assault in the night as they rode beneath an archway, so I guessed, for I had not cared to slay them, realizing the furor that would cause. With their gold we bought passage, for they had been staggering home well loaded after a night’s gambling. Their luck was now our luck. The link-slaves had run, screaming, at the first sight of sword-twinkle.

A fair northeasterly breeze bore us on bravely after the towing boats had cast us off. With all plain sail set — and the argenters had only plain sail — we creamed along, leaning over only a little on the starboard tack. Our cabin was as well-appointed as one might expect. It was, to tell the truth, luxurious by many of the sea-standards I have known. The twin suns shone, the sky lifted high and blue above us, the seabirds were dropped astern, and ahead of us lay only the Grand Canal, the Dam of Days, and then the long haul south and east and north, to Pandahem. From thence I would find a way to reach Vallia. When the first of the black clouds appeared, boiling on the southern horizon, I felt the sudden gripping sensation at my heart. When I had been living in the inner sea before and had attempted to sail to Sanurkazz and to Felteraz, the Star Lords had sent a most violent rashoon. Rashoons, those sudden and tumultuous gales of the inner sea, are known and accepted as part of life. What the Star Lords sent was greater and more vicious, huge black clouds swirling, winds that tore canvas to ribbons, that smashed a ship over onto her beam ends.

The hands took the canvas in smartly enough. We snugged down. I recalled that the woman — so marvelous in her scarlet and ruby and gold clothing, astride a white zhyan, the woman whose use-name was Zena Iztar — had promised me I would not leave the Eye of the World just yet. She had said I would be prevented, and when I had asked if the Star Lords would prevent me, she had answered no. I stared at those ominous clouds, hanging dark and angry, and I cursed. The master, Captain Andapon, appeared confident. His beard lifted arrogantly.

"It is only a rashoon. That is a mere nothing to a sailor who has sailed the Outer Oceans." He was right, if it was only a rashoon, a local storm.

"It will pass, never fear."

And he was right. The black clouds rose a hand’s breadth into the sky above the horizon. The light shone strangely over there. I stared. The clouds were dwindling, were thinning, were withdrawing. I stared harder. A white speck appeared, diving down on the argenter. The ship wallowed. Captain Andapon bellowed and his men swarmed aloft to cast loose the canvas. The air felt still and warm, the breeze dying. Still that white speck flitted nearer. No one else aboard appeared to have seen it. The suns shone on that flying dot. And as I looked up so I recognized the white dove of the Savanti. Long and long had I seen this white dove, the Savanti’s counterpart to the bird of prey sent by the Star Lords to be their messenger and spy. I gripped the rail. I could not look away. The white dove hovered. I knew the Savanti, those mysterious men, mortal but superhuman, of the Swinging City of Aphrasöe, were once more taking an interest in me. They were the ones who had first brought me to Kregen. They had wanted to make of me a Savapim, an agent to work for the humanization of the world. I had failed them because I had cured my Delia; her baptism in the Sacred Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph in Aphrasöe not only cured her crippled leg but conferred on her, as it had on me, a thousand years of life.

What could they want of me now? Why did the Star Lords stand aloof? Was this what Zena Iztar had meant?

The argenter, Chavonth of Mem, wallowed and rolled in the windless sea. The sky cleared. The suns blazed forth and no speck of cloud obscured that wide expanse.

"This will not last for long," said Captain Andapon. I had to admire his hard grittiness, even though he was a member of the country I familiarly knew as the Bloody Menahem, those people who had allied themselves with Hamal against Vallia.

The watches changed and the bells rang and the lookout screeched from the maintop.

"Sails!"

"They bring a wind, Pandrite be praised!"

We all stared up uselessly at the lookout. He pointed to the south. His voice reached us, hoarse with yelling. "Swifters!"

Captain Andapon stamped upon his own deck, and swore.

"May the vile Armipand take ’em! Swifters!"

He meant they would be pulling, using their banks of oars, sailing independently of the wind. We were still becalmed.

The men of Menaham had no fear of the bitter struggle between the Red and the Green, for they were neutrals. Swifters flying the red or green flags would treat them merely as passing strangers upon the sea. Soon the swifters hove into view over the horizon. As they neared it became clear they had seen us and were bearing down to investigate this lone ship. That made sense. Captain Andapon bellowed and the Menaham flag rose up not only to the mizzen, but also to the main and foremasts. I looked at the colors: four blue diagonals and four green diagonals from right to left, divided by thin white borders. I thought back to the Battle of Jholaix when the yellow saltire on the red ground, the colors of the empire of Vallia, had borne down and trampled the colors of Menaham along with those of Hamal. Now those colors would protect me from the Red and the Green; for to the Greens I was a hated enemy Krozair, and to the Reds I was Apushniad, an unfrocked Krozair. The lookout bellowed again.

Captain Andapon leaped nimbly, for all his bulk, grasped the larboard shrouds, and climbed a dozen ratlines. He shaded his eyes and peered at the swifters. Before he descended to the deck he looked down at us, all standing there and looking up at him. His voice cracked, flat and brutally.

"They showed neither red nor green. They are small craft, less than ten oars a side. You all know what they are." His voice smashed at us. "Beat to quarters! Stand to arms! They won’t take us without a fight" So I knew, too.

Renders, pirates, sea-wolves of the Eye of the World. They took and looted and burned Zairian or Grodnim; it was all one. This fine fat ship of Menaham, all becalmed and idle, would be served up to them, like ponsho on a plate!

Chapter Three

Ringed by renders

If it was not the Star Lords, then the hand of the Savanti lay in this. This contrivance was not beyond them. Superhuman, their powers. They possessed powers I had not thought about overmuch and perhaps I had neglected a duty in that. If the Star Lords — of whose powers I knew so little it amounted to nothing apart from their capacity to hurl me like a yo-yo from Earth to Kregen and back — could hurl a sudden thunderstorm upon a ship, then surely the Savanti could attract a pack of sea-wolves to a becalmed ship. It would take very little to do that.

The renders pulled on. Now they were clearly visible. Four big, open pulling boats they were, scarcely swifters at all. The swifter is your true galley, lean and deadly; these boats, although slender of build, hauled their single bank of oars over the gunwales, in closed rowlocks of rope and thole pins, and they possessed neither ram nor beak that I could see.

"You look a fighting-man," said Captain Andapon. "But your man—?" Duhrra was standing near. "He is not my man," I said. "He is my comrade."

"Can he fight — with one arm?"

"I will fight with one arm," said Duhrra of the Days. How anyone could ever imagine him an idiot — even with that idiot’s face — amazed me then.

The master nodded briskly and went off shouting to his crew. The Bloody Menahem are accustomed to fighting. Thinking about that statement makes me realize that most nations of Kregen are accustomed to fighting, and there are many fighting-men; but not all men fight, as you know. Perhaps there is a greater proportion of warriors on Kregen than on this Earth in these latter days. This would be a bloody affray. If Captain Andapon struck without a fight the renders would probably butcher us all. There was the chance they might offer us the choice. If we fought I did not think we would win, for they outnumbered us. But from the tenor of the crew’s voices, and the way they handled their weapons, I knew they would fight.

The men were talking among themselves and I overheard the way they called on the Gross Armipand to blight, wither, and destroy these rasts of renders. The name of Opaz was called on, also, with pleas for a successful outcome. How strange it is that a man can feel fellow feelings for men who are supposed to be his mortal foes! I did not like the Bloody Menahem. But I felt a surge of spirit as these Menaheem prepared for battle. If we were all slain we would all go down to the Ice Floes of Sicce together — blade comrades. Odd — odd and unsettling, those feelings that would not be denied. The four boats pulled up and then separated out of varter range to take us on the two quarters and bows. The crews of the varters were busily engaged in greasing and winding and coddling, and selecting their best chunks of rock, their straightest darts. A kind of ballista, the varter, with great penetrative and smashing power, hurling a dart of iron, or a rock, in a hard, flat trajectory. Chavonth of Mem was not equipped with catapults. Their higher trajectory and longer range might have been useful; I could see artillery in the boats and so the varters would have to be adequate until the renders closed and boarded. Then it would be cold steel

I had no bow.

Standing higher out of the water, Chavonth of Mem could shoot her varters earlier than the boats might. With that thrilling screeching clang the first varter loosed. The rock plunged into the sea alongside the first boat, raising a water spout. The other three followed, and the rocks flew. Very quickly the varters in the boats opened up and scored. A rock flew to thud most messily onto our deck, smashing two men and a boy into red ruin. How this brought back the memories!

There were no grand concussions as the great guns fired, no leaping rumble through the decks, no swathing clouds of gunsmoke. But in all else — oh, yes, I had not been a sailor in Nelson’s navy for nothing!

The boats came on. One drifted away, her larboard bank of oars ripped and idle, water slopping inboard, men tumbling out and swimming desperately for the nearest boat. A Deldar of the top spun about, there on the deck, clapped a hand to what was left of his face, trying to scream and only gurgling. Lines parted aloft and blocks spattered down. A bowman fell from the maintop screeching like a leem pierced through with a lance. Blood stank on the air, bright in the sunshine over the deck.

"Prepare to receive boarders!" bellowed Andapon. He swaggered aft to his poop-ladder, clambered up, and so pushed through the afterguard clustered there to the starboard quarter. He wore a back and breast, and a huge helmet adorned with a mass of blue and green feathers. He swirled his rapier widely. I followed him, for the first boat to touch us was almost here.

Duhrra said in my ear, "It is said, sometimes, it is wiser not to wear mail when fighting at sea."

"So it is said. But you wear the mesh mail, as do I."

"I think, if I fall into the sea, it is too far to swim in any case."

"You must do as you think fit."

"Aye, I will — master."

His big, sweaty idiot moonface loomed above me. I turned back to face what might come. He had never once remarked that I had upended him and dumped him down flat on his back and thereby won myself a gold coin when I’d been starving. He’d had two hands, then. . .

So deeply had I been thinking about the Savanti and the Star Lords, and giving a part of my mind to Duhrra, and, as I have indicated, doing some not inconsiderable boasting to myself, I had neglected what was staring me in the face. I had simply thought of this affray as just another fight. I had given it no thought. When Andapon yelled in baffled fury and his party with the huge rock perched over the quarter ready to drop on the boat yelled also, I woke up.

I raced forward along the poop, leaped down the ladder, belted for the break of the quarterdeck, yelling and waving that damned Ghittawrer longsword above my head. I was almost too late. A torrent of yells and shrieks burst from forward and the men posted there on the forecastle tumbled back in ruin. There were no gangways so I ran along the deck, leaping onto the hatches and jumping down, taking the starboard side. Now more men appeared over the forecastle. If I knew the ways of renders they’d be in through the foreports, into the forecastle.

Men rallied with me. We charged forward and met the pirates face to face, hand to hand. They were wild, hairy men, clad in remnants of armor, some bare-chested, swirling their weapons with a will. Gold and silver glittered about them. Immense lace-knots and feathers flaunted above them. There were women among them, fighting alongside their men. That was unfortunate. The struggle broke free as our impetuous rush, reinforced by a clamor from our rear telling that Captain Andapon had realized how nearly he had been fooled, carried us on. We smashed them and drove them back, over the beakhead, down and into the sea.

A man crawled up onto the foot of the bowsprit, yelling. He backed up, his face filled with horror. Six arrows struck him simultaneously and with a pitiful howl he fell off to splash into his watery grave.

"Below!" I bellowed.

Swinging about to lead a rush down the forward hatchway I realized Duhrra was no longer with me. He’d followed me good and hard, breathing hotly down my neck. In the press we had been parted. By Vox! If these miserable renders had done for Duhrra of the Days I’d do woe unto them. Captain Andapon bellowed a group of his men about him. He saw that I was prepared to take a hand below. His second in command had been killed. A rock flew low over the deck, parting lines, but, thankfully, missing everyone. One of the render boats had resumed shooting then. Andapon would deal with the fellow trying to get aboard over the quarter. One boat had been sunk. So that left one to be accounted for.

"Where away that other Pandrite-forsaken boat!" I yelled. The Menaheem jumped. One shouted back from the waist. I did not think the pirates would attempt to board from there and the man pointed forward on the larboard side. In the next instant an arrow took him through the throat and, silently, he toppled back.

"Come on, lads!" I yelled, quite like old times, and went bashing below. In the dimness shot through with vivid streaks of sunlight through the scuttles — and also through a rock-smashed hole — the outlines of men appeared, struggling, flaming with the wink and glitter of steel.

"Chavonths!" I shouted as we ran forward. I had no wish to slay a Menahem or to be slain by one in the confusion. Truth to tell, for I was most annoyed by this time, the latter consideration far outweighed the former.

At that instant a gleam of sunlight speared through an opening where a man leaped down onto the deck. The light glanced off a gleaming, sweaty bald skull, highlighted a dangling scalp lock of hair.

"Duhrra!"

"You’re just in time! They’re breaking in like leems!"

The last boat’s crew poured in to help those of their fellows who had smashed in during the attack we had repulsed up on the forecastle. Now we faced them in the semi-gloom and, by Krun, there were a lot of them.

In among the rough furnishings of the forecastle we struggled hand to hand. It was all a dimly seen business of cut and thrust, of muffled chokes and gasping grunts, of men abruptly shrieking as the steel bit red.

They were sure of themselves, these renders of the inner sea.

My stolen Ghittawrer blade flamed. Men leaped and shrieked and died. Men were falling about me as the sea-wolves cut their way through. Duhrra and I stood together and presently we were back to back, our blades dripping red.

I’d fought with Viridia the Render, up along the Hoboling Islands of the Outer Oceans. She and her crew of cutthroats would have been at home here. So we fought. Step by step we were forced back, back to the low wooden door leading from the forecastle into the waist. I swirled Duhrra around so that I faced the pirates.

"Dak!"

"Get outside and chop the first cramph who follows me."

He ducked through without another word.

I leaped, slashed three quicktimes, left, right, left, dropped three of the screeching hellions, then turned and bolted for the door. As I shot through so Duhrra’s bulky shadow blotted the suns.

"Hold, Duhrra!"

"Aye! Do you think I’d take off your head?"

And down, swish, thwack, squelch, came his longsword, neatly decapitating the first render incautious enough to thrust his head and shoulders through after me.

The door could not be shut.

Other renders leaped through, swirling their blades, shrilling in triumph. I fancied that familiar victory yell would die in their throats now we had room to swing a blade. Duhrra and a few of the mercenaries of the ship — Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes — bashed in again. We held the pirates for the moment. The wind hung breathless. The suns burned down. The deck became slippery with spilled blood. And still our brands flamed and cut and thrust and kept that vengeful seeking steel from our own throats and guts.

For a short space the pirates drew back.

Duhrra appeared a gleaming mass of crimson.

"I think it will not be long now, Dak."

"We’ll have ’em yet! Look at their hangdog faces!"

" ’Ware shafts!" The cry went up from the mercenaries.

Arrows flew.

I spread my fists on the Ghittawrer blade as best I could, ready to ward off the arrows. Three I batted away and then the fresh howls shrieked to the brilliance of Zim and Genodras at our backs. I risked a quick glance aft.

Captain Andapon and the remnants of his crew were being bundled forward, struggling and laying about them. But the renders had broken through aft. Now the crew of the argenter was trapped between the two render parties, and, as Duhrra had said, it would not be long now.

"By the Black Chunkrah!" I said. "We’ll take a fine crew of ’em to sail with us across the Ice Floes of Sicce!"

We were ringed in.

Now the renders ceased loosing shafts for fear of hitting their own men. I sized up the men opposite me, selected a likely looking Kataki with his steel-armed tail, his low-browed face fierce and leering upon us. I sprang.

"Hai! Jikai!" I bellowed.

He swung his blade up and I sidestepped, caught the vicious stab of his tail in my left hand, pulled. He staggered. I took the time to slash right-handed at a fellow who tried to cut me down from the side and then brought the longsword blurring around to chop through the mailed junction of the Kataki’s neck and shoulder. He dropped. I dropped his tail, cut savagely left and right, and so leaped back to the ranks of the crew.

If I was going to take that last trip to the Ice Floes of Sicce, then this little affray was going to be a true Jikai. I’d see to that. I dislike using that great word Jikai except when the fight is a Jikai — if this was a mere pirate’s brawl on the inner sea, all well and good. If it meant the end of me, then it was damn well going to be a high Jikai.

The renders hesitated, hanging back.

The crew around me, no doubt heartened or depressed by that flashy show-off charge of mine, prepared to go down fighting. The renders yelled — deep wolfish howls and shrill wolfish howls; they were all one in the bedlam — and charged.

We met them fiercely. Blurred, scarlet impressions flashed before me: of smiting and hacking, of thrusting and ducking. Against mail a good solid meaty blow is necessary. I gave plenty of those. Now one or two strokes slid in from directions where a comrade should have been standing. I felt a smash against my left side and before the Brokelsh could recover my blade lopped his arm. I had to leap wildly thereafter to keep off a Rapa who insisted on engulfing my blade with his throat. He fell. Another took his place. The deck slipped and slimed in blood.

"Hai, Jikai!" someone was yelling.

"Fight, you cramphs!" I bellowed.

Captain Andapon was down, still shouting, weakly trying to flail his sword up against two men who would have taken his head had Duhrra and I not stepped across and spitted them both. There were precious few of Menaham left.

A squawking shrill lofted. The renders, still struggling, fell back. No one, for the moment, understood the meaning of the hail. Then a woman, high on the poop, shrilled and pointed. We all looked. For the moment the fighting stopped and we all gaped out to sea like loons. Smothered in green flags a swifter pulled in toward the argenter, white water smashing away from her ram. Armed men crowded the narrow deck aft of her arrogant prow and the beak was lifted, ready to be dropped and run out. The three banks of oars rose and fell, rose and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey.

"Swifter!" yelled a render. And then, immediately, "Magdag!" Thereafter we could watch the educational sight of the renders madly rushing from the sinking argenter, clambering down to jump and sprawl into their three boats, and to push off frantically. The crew began to row. Their oars worked in a frenzied manner, hauling the three away in different directions.

"Saved!" said Duhrra. "And by Magdag."

"Thank the good Pandrite they came up when they did," said Captain Andapon. He had staggered up and now, gripping his wounded side, stared hungrily at the swifter.

What followed was even more educational than seeing renders fleeing a sinking ship. Whoever commanded the swifter knew his business.

Every oar blade rose and feathered together, every oar in unison. We could hear the double roll of the drum-Deldar as he banged out the rhythm. White water creamed away from the long, low bronze ram, that cruel rostrum that could degut a ship and leave her shattered and sinking. Now the Magdaggian swifter captain swerved his ship as though on tracks, lined up on the first render boat. We all saw the ram hit, saw the planks fly up, bodies go pitching into the water.

The swifter did not halt. One bank of oars backwatered and the other pulled ahead. The swifter spun. Like a great leem pouncing on lesser predators she smashed the second boat. The third knew it could not escape. The oars faltered and came to a clumsy halt. Men were standing up in the boat, waving rags. The swifter did not hesitate.

Straight over the boat ran the galley, her sharp bronze ram crunching timber and flesh, strewing the sea past her lean flanks with wreckage.

We heard the yells and then the peculiar double rat-tat of the drum. Whistles blew. Every oar dug in and held. The swifter came to a stop in an incredibly short space. A boat lowered. Another boat swayed out from her center deck space. One boat went to pick up the half-drowned wretches of renders, the other pulled for the sinking argenter.

The argenter’s crew, or what was left, babbled with near-hysterical relief. Men were running below to bring up their possessions. Captain Andapon had quite forgotten he had just been saved from death, had near enough forgotten his wound. He raved on like a maniac.

"My ship! My beautiful Chavonth of Mem! Those rasts have sunk her!" He glared about, distraught, one hand in his hair, tugging, his eyes wild.

"You’ve your life, Captain."

"My life! My life! And my goods! The profit on the voyage! Oh, why has Opaz forsaken me now?" Well, it was understandable. He’d be stranded in the inner sea, too. The boat from the swifter hooked on and men came over the side, hard, tough men, overlords of Magdag. I nudged Duhrra.

These newcomers took in the scene: The deck cumbered with dead men, running with blood; the few survivors frantically hauling out their dunnage; the captain raving and moaning about his beautiful ship and his lost fortune; and two hard-faced fellows, smothered in blood, who stood where the fighting had been the thickest.

I realized we must stand out, must be noticeable.

"Get some of our dunnage up, Duhrra. Act like the others." The Hikdar with the green robes and the gleaming helmet and the mesh mail picked his way delicately between the corpses and sidestepped the worst patches of blood. He saluted the captain.

"Your ship is sinking, Captain. You will accept the hospitality of our swifter." He looked at me.

Again he saluted, his arm raised in that particular Grodnim way. I replied.

"You wear the green, dom. You are of Magdag?"

"No," I said. I had to say something. "I am of Goforeng." It was one Grodnim city of which I knew a little, having raided there and made myself a nuisance — many and many a year ago — and it was a damned long way away to the east.

"They breed fighters in Goforeng it seems."

I knew the correct answer to that.

"You are too kind. But it is we who must thank you for saving us. We were nearly finished."

"So I see." He did not look about him to underline his remark. He was probably the swifter’s first lieutenant, a Hikdar being a nice middle-of-the-hierarchy rank. "You had best come aboard at once. This vessel has not much longer to live."

"My beautiful Chavonth!"

"Yes, Captain. Now, if you will go. . ."

So he chivied us over the side and into the waiting boat.

Duhrra brought our effects. I hoped if by any chance a scrap of our breechclouts showed the Magdaggians would think them only drenched in blood. Duhrra had his right arm wedged into the front of his robe. I helped him with the dunnage. The Hikdar’s black eyebrows rose. He was a most supercilious young man.

The boat pulled across to the swifter. Captain Andapon could not take his eyes off his ship. The argenter, Chavonth of Mem, went down in a last froth of bubbles as we climbed up onto the swifter’s quarterdeck.

Oh, yes, the memories gushed up for me, who had been a slave in a Magdaggian swifter, and then a captain of a Zairian swifter, the foremost corsair upon the inner sea. We were escorted below and to the captain’s cabin. The men would be quartered on the upper deck, well away from the oar-slaves. Captain Andapon and I stepped into the ornate elegance of the aft cabin, and entered a world of luxury and wealth, of power and the naked display of arrogance and riches. Aides and orderlies sprang instantly to do the bidding of this swifter captain of Green Magdag. We were waved to comfortable upholstered chairs, wine was pressed into our hands. What the blood was doing to the upholstery seemed to give no one any cause for second thoughts. No doubt another raid would amply repay the cost. The captain walked in.

"Lahal, gernus. You have wine? Good. Now tell me the essentials." Captain Andapon was not only a tough hard seadog, he was also a man who had had dealings with the overlords of Magdag. He did not beat about the bush.

"Lahal, gernu. We were caught in a calm. We fought. They would have had us but for your timely arrival, for which I thank you from the bottom of—"

"Very good." This captain waved Andapon down. He looked at me. "My ship-Hikdar tells me you fought well. He says you are from Goforeng. I warn you I can smell untruths many dwaburs off. I want the truth."

How typical this was of overlords of Magdag. And, too, how refreshing! I’d been getting soft of late. I still sat as I spoke.

"Lahal, Captain. If you do not choose to believe I am from Goforeng, that is your concern." I heard the horrified gasps from his aides. Andapon drew a little away on his chair, as though to disassociate himself from this ungrateful and suicidal madman.

Before anyone could say any more, I said, in what I considered a reasonable tone of voice, "You have not told us your name."

Again the gasps from the aides. The ship-Hikdar, who had come in with some importance, half drew his sword. I glanced up at him. "Why do you draw your sword, dom? Do you wish to die?" The Hikdar’s face flushed with painful blood. He blazed out at his captain, "Gernu! Is this to be tolerated? May I have the pleasure of chopping this—"

"Softly, Nath, softly. There is more here than we supposed." He bent a frowning glance on me. I recognized it as a practiced expression designed to overawe. His black curly hair was bunched on his head, oiled and scented. His long green robe was belted in at the waist, and he wore a shortsword there, on his right side. His face was hawklike, bold, arrogant, two blue bolts for eyes, the chin of a swifter’s ram — yes, these were the externals. But in that face there was not only the consciousness of power, there was real power also.

"I think," he said, "that you should tell me your name before I tell mine. That would appear equitable." It was so, on the face of it, according to ship custom.

"Dak." I paused for only a hairbreadth of time. I had to think of some convincing name, and fast. "Dak ti Foreng." I stared up, my ugly old face hard and uncompromising. "And you?" The Hikdar bustled forward, outraged by my conduct and yet unwilling to allow the pappattu to be incorrectly made.

"You have the honor to be in the presence of Gernu Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King’s Striker, Prince of the Central Sea, the Reducer of Zair, Sea-Zhantil, Ghittawrer of Genod. . ." All the time this Hikdar Nath rattled off the titles, and there were many more in the wearisome way of Magdag, this Gafard sat watching me with a small ironical smile playing upon his lips. In this, if nothing else, he recognized the follies of panoply and pomp. But I fastened on one fact, one single vital item in all that long imposing list. He did not bear a surname. No man with the power and rank he had, starting from that rog — which equaled the roz of the zairians; the kov or duke of the Outer Oceans — would willingly stride the world’s stage without a surname. I knew him for what he was then. The anger and bitterness in me ought not to be present, save as a general principle. I had made up my mind to quit the inner sea. Why, then, worry my head over its intrigues, its deceptions, its treacheries?

When the ship-Hikdar finished and stepped smartly back to his place, this Gafard bent his eye on me and said, "Now you know."

"Aye," I said.

This man was no true overlord of Magdag. Had I spoken to an overlord as I had to him I’d have been run outside and something diabolical would be happening to me, had I not done as I intended and broken free among the slaves chained below. This Gafard had prevented me from doing that, whereat I cursed within me, impotent to do what I wanted. No novel situation, I know, by Zim-Zair!

Gafard said, "I wish to speak to this wild leem alone. Clear the cabin. Nath, stand close beyond the door with a guard. Come running at my hail."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu!" bellowed the Hikdar, saluting, turning, bellowing the others out. We were alone.

He sat for some time at the long shining table before the stern windows, his hands limp on the balass wood, his gaze unwavering, direct, on me. Then—

"You take terrible chances, dom."

"It is necessary."

"Do you not think you might raise a gernu?"

I had made up my mind as to my tack. It was a chance, but I fancied this Gafard would be in need of what I offered — or would seem to offer, to my shame.

"What do titles mean to such a one as you?"

"Ah!" He rose and walked about the cabin on the soft rugs, his hands at his back, his head jutting forward so that his arrogant beaked nose looked even more ferocious.

"And suppose I give the orders and you are stripped and thrown below, chained to slave at the oar benches."

I did not shrug. "You might try."

He sucked in his-breath at this.

"I need men like you," he began.

I felt a premonition that the banal words might cloak a real meaning, that I was on the way to winning. He could see I read the meaninglessness of his words, for he went on, "You say you know who I am. Very well. I own it proudly! The name of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, is known upon the Eye of the World. I am rich, wealthy beyond your dreams. I fight for King Genod. I am a Ghittawrer in his very own Brotherhood. All these things I am, but in Zairia I was nothing! Nothing! There was no Z in my name. I fought for the Red — aye! Fought well, and nothing was my reward. I was prevented from joining the Krozairs, from joining any Red Brotherhood."

"So you turned renegade."

"Aye! And proud of it! Now I take what is rightfully mine upon the Eye of the World!" He stood before me, alert, his right hand resting on the hilt of the shortsword. He turned, ready to draw. It would be a fifty-fifty chance whether or not he could draw and present the point at my throat before I could get out the longsword. I would not attempt to draw. . .

"You do appear to be doing well. And I compliment you upon your swifter handling." He saw the arrogance in my words. Yet he smiled.

"You know I am not an overlord of Magdag by birth. But I am an overlord now, by right! Any other Grodnim gernu would have had you chained to a rowing bench by now."

"Yes," I said.

"You wear the green. You carry a Ghittawrer longsword with the device removed. You fight well — or so I am told. Do you not think to ask yourself, you who call yourself Dak ti Foreng, why you were not thrown below, chained, whipped at the looms?"

I looked up at him. "Why?"

His smile mocked me.

"I am a renegade, yes, once of Zair and now of Grodno. And you — you were of Zair, also!"

Chapter Four

Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil

The secluded courtyard of the Jade Palace echoed with the clash of combat, the quick breaths of fighting-men, the spurting gasps of effort. The streaming lights of Antares flooded down to illuminate the yellow stone wall and the vines rioting in gorgeous colors on their trellises, sparkling in the upflung jets of water from the stone lips of stone fishes surrounding the lily-pool.

I switched up the shortsword and felt the shock of Gafard’s point hitting just below my breastbone. We were both stripped to the waist. Gafard’s muscular body glistened with sweat. He bellowed to me.

"Again, you fambly! You do not have a great long bar of steel in your hand! You have a shortsword —

a Genodder, the great slayer — fashioned by the genius of King Genod himself!" He stamped his right foot and lunged at me again with every intention of spitting me once more. I clashed the wooden sword across and this time I deflected his lunge. I had to force my muscles to lock. I had to stop myself — with some violence — from doing what was natural and looping the sword and riposting and so dinting Gafard in the guts, as he so delighted in dinting me.

He slashed at my head and I ducked, he sidestepped and I let him drive his wooden sword into my ribs. It was damned painful. I thought I had done with this kind of tomfoolery after those days I had acted the ninny among bladesmen in far Ruathytu.

Gafard leaped back and saluted me, ironically.

Slaves advanced to take his sword, to sponge him down with scented rose water, to press a glass of parclear into his hand, to fan him, to fuss about him as dutiful slaves should fuss about a kind master.

"I am a longsword man," he said, sipping his sherbert drink, and then with a single swallow downing the lot. Slaves handed me a glass of parclear, for which I was grateful. I do not usually sweat a great deal. I had had to leap about in the sunshine to work up a glow. Gafard threw the glass casually over his shoulder. A nimble numim girl caught it before it hit the flags. I wondered what the slave-master would do to her had she missed. Now this Gafard, this Rog of Guamelga, this Prince of the Central Sea, this man of many ranks and titles, this man of enormous power and wealth in Magdag — this renegade — looked at me and repeated: "I am a longsword man. But I recognize the power of the shortsword. The Genodder is a formidable weapon."

"Aye, gernu," I said. I wiped my gleaming body with a soft towel. Gafard had narrowed his eyes when I’d stripped off. "It is a knack, surely."

"A knack you must master if you are to be of use to me."

Only a few days had passed since Gafard and his swifter Volgodont’s Fang had rescued us from the renders. Much had happened in that time, but all the hurry and bustle amounted only to the one important thing. Duhrra and I, as one-time adherents of the Red, were now followers of the Green. Duhrra of the Days, and I, Dak, had turned renegades.

The scene in which I had tried to convince Duhrra of the wisdom of this course still had power to make me bristle. Of course I was right, and of course Duhrra was right. We’d been standing, facing each other, in the center of the bedchamber allotted to us in Gafard’s Jade Palace. The room was wide and tall and sumptuously furnished and we’d almost hit each other.

"Turn traitor! Bow and scrape to Grodno! You are mad!"

"Not so, and for the sweet sake of Zair do not shout so!"

"I am prepared to go out and cut down these evil rasts of overlords until I am cut down in my turn."

"You may be. I am not."

Duhrra eyed me. He was more worked up than when he’d lost his hand.

"I do not believe you lack spirit, Dak. But you talk like a mewling woman, heavy with child, with another at her breast, whining for mercy."

I compressed my lips. Then, unable to restrain myself, I burst out, "Sink me! Of course I’m after mercy, you great fambly! I’m long past the day when I will fight for the pleasure of fighting, or resist when resistance is hopeless! Have you learned nothing? To turn renegade now and pretend to follow the Green will not only save us from the galleys, or save our lives, it will give us the chance to escape — you great onker!"

"Now who’s shouting?"

Before Duhrra had finished his sentence I’d crossed the soft carpet in long vicious leem-strides and wrenched the sturmwood door open. The corridor beyond lay pale and empty, with a tall table bearing a jar of Pandahem ware, the cold sconces upon the tapestried walls, bars of mingled sunlight streaming in past barred windows at the end. I turned back and slammed the door.

"By the Black Chunkrah! I won’t shout if you will not shout."

"Duh — who’s shouting?"

I breathed hard, through my nose.

"You know where I want to go. We’ve won through so far. If we are to escape this little lot with our lives we have no choice but to do as Gafard wishes. He’s made a good thing out of it, by Krun!" And, as I said that, I saw a ruse I had overlooked. Well, you who have listened to these tapes will know what the ruse was and how I might have employed it in the argenter. As it was, it was too late now. So, here I was, a guest in Gafard’s Jade Palace, awaiting ratification of my application. King Genod welcomed with open arms all defectors from Zair. He took a dark delight in that. I didn’t have to be told that.

We went inside and Gafard insisted I play Jikaida. I like the game. We played jikshiv Jikaida, which is a middling size, for Gafard had an appointment later and could not spare the time for a larger and longer game. As usual we ranked our Deldars and set to. The game proved fascinating, for this Gafard had a cunning way with him that, if I was honest, was not so much cunning as straightforward ruthlessness applied cunningly.

[Here Prescot goes into some detail of the Game. A.B.A.]

Rising, Gafard motioned for a slave to clear the board. He looked not so much pleased by his win as puzzled. He nodded.

"Come into my chambers while I dress. I would talk with you." I followed him.

The rooms were furnished with a sumptuousness and display of luxury that clearly indicated cost had formed no part of the designer’s plans. Everything was of the finest. I did not go through into the bedchamber, and sat in a gilded upholstered chair as Gafard dressed. Silks and satins, gold lace, swathing artful folds of green and gold — gradually his clothes were built up. I noticed that he wore a fine mail shirt under his tunic of green and gold. That mail had never been made in the inner sea. That must have come from one of the old, old countries clustered around the Shrouded Sea, in southern Havilfar. He saw my interest, and smiled that slight, down-drooping smile that betrayed so much.

"Yes, Dak of Zullia. Only the best."

My short-lived pretense of being a Grodnim from Goforeng, naming myself as Dak ti Foreng, had given place to my naming myself from another well-known location. This time it was the small ponsho-farmers’

village south of Sanurkazz from which hailed my oar-comrade Nath. We had taken a trip there, Nath, Zolta, and I, riding lazily through the warm weather, drinking and singing. Nath had felt the urge to visit the haunts of his youth. One oldster — a man two hundred years old, with a white beard — recognizing Nath, had called him "You young rip Nathnik."

Zolta had near bust a gut laughing. "Nathnik!" he crowed, slapping himself on the thigh, rolling about. I can tell you, Nath and Zolta lost no opportunity to score off each other in the most outrageous ways, for all that each would gladly lay down his life for the other. They were far-off days now, long, long ago. .

.

So it was that I felt some confidence in naming Zullia. If Gafard had ever by chance been through the place and if by an even greater chance he remembered it, I could answer up. A long white robe was lifted and set so that the shoulders projected on small wings. Gold chains blazing with gems were draped over his chest. Slaves belted on a broad emerald and gold creation, glittering and gorgeous, and from it hung the jeweled scabbard of a brightly shining Genodder. The baldric for the longsword swung over his right shoulder; the scabbard, brilliant with gems, depending on the left. Finally, two things: the iron helmet swathed in green velvet and silk, with flaunting green and white feathers, and a last sprinkling of scented water.

Gafard, the King’s Striker, was ready for audience.

He would be carried there in a preysany palankeen, with link-slaves, and body slaves, and a strong guard party of his men clad in his personal livery. He affected the golden zhantil as his emblem. I sighed.

"The Sea-Zhantil," I said.

"Aye. It is a proud title. It is one I cherish. A certain man once carried that title upon the Eye of the World. A great corsair of the inner sea. A Krozair — a Krozair of Zy. He was the Lord of Strombor."

"I have heard of him," I said. But my heart thumped.

Gafard, in the usual way of Kregans, showed no real indication of age, and could have been anything from thirty to a hundred and fifty or so. I fancied he was much less than a hundred. I, for all that my physical appearance had remained much as it had been when I was thirty and had taken the dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism, could subtly alter the planes and lines of my face, as I have said. I could make myself look different enough to fool a lackluster eye. But beside the bulky magnificence of Gafard I looked the younger of us two — which I was, of course, as entropy if not chronology goes.

"Yes," he said, following my thought. "He disappeared from the inner sea before you were born, I imagine. A great man. The greatest Krozair of his time, this Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor."

"So I have been told."

I did not say that I practically never used the title of "Sea-Zhantil" conferred on me by King Zo of Sanurkazz. I believe I have not even bothered to mention it in these tapes. It was of no consequence. No title could mean anything in the inner sea beside the simple, dignified, immortal Krozair of Zy. Instead, I said, "So you, a follower of Grodno, relish using the title of a Krozair of Zy." He flashed me a look. I wondered just what I would do if he considered I had gone too far. But he boomed a laugh and gripped his longsword hilt where the gems blazed gloriously, and strode for the door.

"A title lost by the Zairians! A title won by the Grodnims! I glory in it! And, for another reason, another reason far too precious — I am behind my time. Practice your Genodder work with Galti. He is quick and strong and will test you well."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu!" I bellowed as they did in the Magdaggian service. I learned quickly when I wished.

He went out to his appointment with King Genod and I took myself off with Galti to bash around some more with the rudis.

Galti was quick and agile, clever with the shortsword. His chunky body was made for sharp in-fighting. His broken-nosed face with the scar over the left eye danced before me as I parried and shifted and swung and withdrew. I found myself realizing that in my contemptuous dismissal of that boastful title, Sea-Zhantil, I had allowed something of the old feelings about the Krozairs of Zy to come to the surface. The Krozairs of Zy had thrown me out and declared me Apushniad. It seemed that Gafard did not yet know this. So why should I condemn him for taking the title, when it meant nothing, when the Krozairs of Zy no longer meant anything?

Thus thinking as I fought Galti with the rudis I was aware of a blade flashing for my stomach. I found myself doing what I normally do when that happening happens. The wooden blades clashed once, my wrist turned over, my arm straightened, and Galti went backward with a thunk and a yell as the blunt wooden point punched into his belly.

"By Tangle, master! That was a shrewd blow!"

I did not reach out a hand to help him up, as I would ordinarily have done. I must think and act as a damned overlord of Magdag if I were to join their detested ranks.

"I must have slipped, Galti. That will be enough for now."

"Yes, gernu. Grodno have you in his keeping."

"And the All-Merciful, you."

He went out, casting back a look at me and rubbing his stomach. It had been a fair old thwack. The best thing I could do now was to have the bath I had promised myself, when Gafard had been bathed before dressing, and find Duhrra and make sure he did not drink so that his brave Zairian tongue wagged too much.

My mind had been made up, my course set. I wanted nothing further to do with the Eye of the World and the tangled politics of Red and Green. I was for Valka and Delia. Some way must be found. Already I had thought up a dozen impractical schemes. A ship of the inner sea would never successfully survive the long sea-journey back home. There were no fliers. But — this maniacal King Genod would probably bring in fresh fliers from Hamal. When that happened I would steal one. This time I would let my head rule my heart. Zair, Red, Krozairs — all meant nothing to me now.

So why did I feel a continuing repugnance for this Gafard, despite his friendliness, his help of Duhrra and myself, his obvious strength and power and tenacity of purpose, the clearly evident geniality of his personality behind the grim facade of authority he must maintain in his position? He was a renegade. He had destroyed all credence. Once a man of the Red, he was now a cringing cur of the Green. But — Red and Green meant nothing to me now. . .

All this talk of the great Krozair, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, had unsettled me. That was a long time ago. Now I was a Vallian and wanted to go home.

Finding Duhrra in our room with an opened bottle of Chremson I slumped into a chair and reached out my hand. Duhrra slapped the bottle in. This Chremson was not Grodnim wine; it had been looted from a sinking prize. For all his protestations, Gafard still preferred good Zairian wine.

"Good stuff, Dak."

"Go drink with moderation, Duhrra." I glared at him. "I am still concerned about you and your hook. If word comes back from the Akhram that they fitted a man with hooks and cripple-blades, and that information is joined with the novice Todalphemes’ account of what transpired on the Dam of Days, we could—"

"We could find ourselves with a coil of chains about us and our tripes being drawn out! Aye! And we might also find ourselves with brands in our fists smiting down these cramphs of Magdag."

"Your black-fanged wine-spout gapes too much."

"Aye, master, you are right. I will be a good Grodnim."

I did not laugh. But the invitation was there as I said, lifting the bottle, "Then you’d be a dead Grodnim." The expression, crude and cruel, is known on Kregen as on Earth.

Later a slave summoned me over to Gafard’s chambers. He was in jovial mood as his slaves disrobed him. He had been drinking and the flush in his hard face and the sparkle in his eyes told me that the drink was only a preliminary for the night’s activities.

"I spend the night in the Tower of True Contentment," he said, flinging his green tunic off himself so the slaves might unlatch the mesh shirt. "But, before I go, I have great news. The king accepts you! You have an audience on the morrow. You will be gladly enrolled."

I nodded, not wishing to speak. He took that as a favorable sign, an indication I was moved with joy.

"You will do as I have done. Once I was Fard of Nowhere. Now I am Gafard, a great Ghittawrer, a rog, Prince of the Central Sea. You will take the name Gadak. It is as Gadak that you join the ranks of the Green, serving Grodno, a true Grodnim!"

Chapter Five

Zena Iztar advises me in King Genod’s palace

I had been a seaman in the late eighteenth-century navy of England, Nelson’s navy, and an education does not come much harder than that. I had been a slave, whipped and beaten and slaving all the hours of the day. I had been a prince, living in luxury, a king, even, leading my ferocious warriors to victory. Also, I had been a spy, acting a part to steal away secrets from a hostile nation. As Gafard critically appraised the preparations made for my dress and appearance, and counseled me, sagely, on how to conduct myself during the audience, I reflected that I had had enough experience to pass off this coming ordeal without trouble.

But for all my protestations to myself, for all my newly won wisdom, for all my concern lest I had lost that old cutting edge, I did feel the dangers ahead. I might break out with a furious roar of "Zair! Zair!" and go on bashing skulls until they hacked me down and dragged me out by the heels. I might.

There was too much at stake for me to allow myself that luxury.

My island Stromnate of Valka, a part of the empire of Vallia, would soon be locked, I felt sure, in another bloody struggle with the evil empire of Hamal. My duty lay to Vallia. My Delia, the glorious Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, awaited my homecoming. I could not jeopardize all that for the sake of the heady satisfaction of swinging my sword against the hated Green. And — I was no longer a Krozair of Zy. Why then did I fear so much what I might do?

My kingdom of Djanduin had not seen their king for many a long day. Strombor, my noble house of the enclave city of Zenicce, no less than my Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm, must feel deserted by me.

No.

No, I must mumble and scrape and humble myself to this maniac, this Genod Gannius. He would never know that it was only because I had obeyed the dictates of the Star Lords on that long-ago day by the Grand Canal and saved the lives of his parents that he had been born at all. But for me he would never have been. I had brought woe to all Zairia with that action, all unknowingly, moved only by selfish aims, for I had dearly needed to continue upon Kregen. . . Immense and awe-inspiring is the city of Magdag. Enormous walls defend the many harbors. Tier upon tier rise the costly houses above the waterfront. Many glittering temples rise to Grodno, and the place is forever a babblement of people about the business of a great city.

The single stupendous fact about Magdag, which marks it off from most other cities, is the incredible area devoted to the megaliths. For dwabur after dwabur they stretch along the plain, colossal blocks of architecture, striding with the insensate hunger of continual growth. Thousands of slaves and workers toil ceaselessly, forever creating new halls and courts and pavilions, raising fresh towers and cupolas to the glory of Grodno the Green. Always, in Magdag, there is building as the overlords indulge their obsessive craze. As a slave, as a stylor, I had worked there, and, too, I had been caught up in the dark mysteries revealing the reasons for this fraught building mania.

As Gafard in his preysany litter and I, astride a sectrix and riding abaft him, made our way through the crowded streets, those enormous blocks, the megaliths of Magdag, fractured the far skyline. Dominant, impressive, brooding, they lowered down over the city of Magdag.

The reception at King Genod’s palace proceeded much as I had expected. There were all the usual panoply and pomp and circumstance, the frills and the rituals, the protocols. We were escorted through court after court, up marble stairways, and through immense arches in the tall pointed fashion of Grodnim. Everywhere stood guards, ramrod stiff, on duty, only their eyes moving as they watched every arrival and departure. They wore a variety of fancy uniforms, and I stored away details of armor and weaponry against future need.

The chamberlains in their green tabards and golden wands went before us. Trumpeters pealed a blast as we passed that was designed, I felt damned sure, to make the suppliants to the throne jump out of their skins with fright. On we went and, at last, came to the anteroom to the reception chamber. Like many of the palaces of Kregen of which I had knowledge, this Palace of Grodno the All-Wise contained a maze of rooms and chambers and secret ways. I held myself erect and I looked about openly, as would be expected; but I had loosened my longsword in the scabbard and my right hand remained limp and flexed, ready for instant action.

Trumpets pealed again, the anteroom doors were flung back, and preceded by the chamberlains, Gafard and I marched into the gleaming brilliance of the reception chamber.

Light, color, glitter. The sight of waving fans, bare shoulders, silk and furs, armor of iron and steel, and everywhere the green, that green, shining and refulgent, here in the reception chamber of King Genod Gannius of Magdag.

Designed to impress, the chamber weighed down on my spirits. What was I, who had once been of Zair, doing here, even if the Krozairs of Zy had rejected me?

The device of the lairgodont appeared in many places. Guards with spears and swords, in glittering mail swathed in green robes, stood dumbly along the walls. I marked their helmets. Atop each burnished helm rose the sculpted form of a lairgodont, in the round, fashioned of silver, shining and winking in the light streaming through the clerestory above. The artist who had created the master image had caught all the violent, vicious character of the lairgodont, portraying him with a half-turned head so the wicked fangs in that gap-jawed mouth showed prominently. The body scales were delineated to perfection, the spiked tail curled high and menacingly, the skull-crushing talons gripped like vises of death. We marched down the marble length of floor to the throne at the far end. There were three thrones and in the center, higher throne, sat King Genod.

Our studded sandals rang on the marble.

Gafard presented a formidable picture of a fighting-man, loaded with honor and wealth, harsh and cruel, superb in his strength.

I, this same Gadak, marched a half-pace to his left rear. Over the mail shirt he had given me I wore a white robe well splashed with the green decorations, with a green sleeveless jacket embroidered in silver over that, the Genodder scabbarded high on my right side, the longsword swinging from a baldric at my left.

Past the watching lines of guards we marched, past the crowds of courtiers and officials and high officers, past the clustering women who arranged, every one, to wear their flaunting green feathers in ways individual to each. The light streamed in above, the mass of gems and feathers and precious metals formed a chiaroscuro of brilliance, and over all the hated green prevailed. We halted where a golden line in the marble pavement indicated the distance by which we must be separated from the king and his magnificence. I halted, still that half-pace to Gafard’s rear, and the chamberlains wheeled to the side and stood, their heads bent, facing the throne. Deliberately, I looked at the smaller thrones.

The right-hand chair of gold held the small, shrunken body of a man I judged to be well past two hundred, well past the age he should have gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce or, in his case, up to sit in glory on the right hand of Grodno in the green radiance of Genodras. His role, I judged, would be that of court wise man, perhaps wizard, and his lined, pouched face and those dark darting eyes, like lizard eyes, confirmed the shrewd intelligence of the fellow. His frail body was so smothered in green and gold no indication of his figure was possible; I fancied he had little longer to spend on Kregen. In the left-hand chair sat— My breath sucked in and I forced my ugly old face to remain a carved chunk of mahogany.

Oh, yes, I knew her.

She had changed since I had last seen her. Plumpness had softened the lines of beauty in her face, making her appear more petulant than ever. But she remained superbly beautiful, still lithe and lovely. Her dark hair had been dyed the fashionable green. Her kohled eyes regarded me and I kept my face blank. The last words we had exchanged — so long ago here in Magdag as my old vosk-skulls surged forward to the victory that was surely theirs, that victory so cruelly denied — had been words of anger and unfulfilled yearning. She had said I looked ridiculous, standing there with an old vosk skull upon my head. She had slashed at my face with her riding crop, and I had ducked and the blow had glanced harmlessly from the vosk-skull helmet.

The princess Susheeng.

Oh, yes, I knew her.

Would she know me?

How she had recoiled when she had learned I was a Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor!

I stood dumbly and looked away, daring in the parlance of the overlords of Magdag to lift my eyes to the radiance of the king.

He was a man, this king Genod. I saw at a glance the fire in him, the fierce energy, the deep-banked fires of genius that could flame and flash as he led his men, driving them, leading them, inspiring them with all the magnetism of his powerful personality. And yet in those deep dark eyes I saw the callous cruelty of a leem. I saw in the bladelike nose, the arrogant jut of jaw, and the thinness of the lips signs that, brush them aside as you will, denote the man who puts himself and his own purposes always foremost in all he does.

He sat brooding upon us, and all the gaudy glitter of his clothes and jewels and arms paled beside the sullen power of that face.

"Lahal, Gafard."

"Lahal, majister."

That was all, between these two. Yet I swear I understood a little more of the bond between them. Master and servant, brain and tool, they complemented each other. Between them they could take the inner sea and wring it dry.

The princess Susheeng, who had once knelt weeping, beseeching, supplicating before me, naked but for the gray slave breechclout, did not move. I flicked her a quick glance and saw no outward change in her demeanor. It had been a long time, and that notorious Krozair Brother, the Lord of Strombor, was long dead and gone to his grave. And, perhaps I, too, had changed over all those years. Also, Gafard’s shadow from the clerestory windows fell across me, and my green silken turban wound around the plain iron helmet draped half across my face. I breathed more easily. Impossible to imagine she would recognize in this new renegade seeking admission to the king’s armies a man she had once known so long ago and who was now dead.

Gafard had warned me that this audience would form the public initiation. From this time on I was Grodnim. Later the king would see me privately, and there I might form a better opinion of what was required of me.

I recognized that Princess Susheeng had achieved much of her heart’s desire. She and her brother, that devil prince Glycas, had planned and plotted to raise themselves even higher in Magdag. Now this storming genius Genod Gannius had appeared on the scene and had led his armies in triumph over Magdag and ruled here in the city of megaliths. And he had chosen Susheeng as his consort. She, at least, had achieved much.

The thought that Glycas must be here, if he was not dead, made me realize the latter alternative to be far more preferable.

The short ceremony of admission was about to begin.

The chamberlains unhitched the Genodder from the high belt and carried it toward a Chuktar, a Chulik, who stood enormous and impressive in armor and green. He took the sword. After some mumbo-jumbo, the Genodder would be blessed by the priests, waiting in their green robes at the side, the king would kiss it, and I would receive it back, to kiss it and so hang it once more upon my person. The admission would have been completed.

So I stood there, waiting for the next move in this charade.

No one moved.

No one stirred.

I looked hard at the king. His right hand was half lifted in the sign to begin. That hand did not move, did not waver, did not tremble. The old wise man’s mouth was half open. That mouth neither opened nor closed. Susheeng’s hand turned at the wrist and fondled a golden brooch upon her breast. Nothing moved.

So I knew.

Not a sound rose from the mass of courtiers in the bright reception chamber, not a person moved. I shuffled my feet and turned around, nastily, to face the tall double doors. Now, I said to myself, now what does she want?

Zena Iztar walked in through the opened double doors and past the lines of petrified people. She looked, as always, supremely imposing. She wore her crimson and scarlet and golden robes, with a narrow green sash, and the jewels flamed from her to drown in magnificence the suddenly tawdry splendor of King Genod’s glittering reception chamber.

She halted a little way off from me. She shook her head.

"Dray Prescot!"

"What do you want, Zena Iztar?"

"I seek to know what you do here."

"It is obvious."

"Not to me, not to the Star Lords, not to the Savanti."

"Then are they — and you — of little wit."

That calm face, imperious, proud, beautiful yes, all those things, but also maternal and wise and sorrowing, did not smile. Again she shook her head and the jewels of her headdress flashed and sparkled. "If we used our wits, as you suggest, we might believe you did an evil thing here."

"Of course it’s evil!"

A tiny line dinted between her eyebrows.

I said, "We have met three times, Madam Ivanovna, Zena Iztar. Do you not yet understand I am an evil man?"

"Yet were you chosen by the Savanti and after they cast you off, by the Everoinye, the Star Lords."

"That was not of my seeking."

"Yet were you chosen."

I wasn’t fool enough to ask why I had been chosen. The Savanti, those superhuman men of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, selected many men from Earth and subjected them to a test and so, accepting them, trained them to become Savapim and go forth upon Kregen to uphold the dignity of apims, of Homo sapiens. I had been found wanting and so had been kicked out of paradise. I had fought and worked and created my own paradise upon Kregen. All I held dear lay with my Delia. The Star Lords used me when they willed for their own ends. The reasons behind the selection of myself were obvious; the ramifications of the conflicting desires of others were the causes of the way my life had gone upon Kregen. I had no stupid delusions that I was in any way special, destined for a great and glittering fate in this world four hundred light-years from Earth.

"I warned you, Pur Dray," said Zena Iztar, "that you would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World."

"I am no longer Pur Dray."

"That is sooth. But I would like you to become Pur Dray again, once more to take up your rightful place as a member of the Krozairs of Zy."

"I’m finished with all that!"

"You will never leave the inner sea until you do."

All along, all during the time of my boasting and planning, when I had ridden to Magdag, when I had taken the argenter, all the time, I must have known — had known — that I could not leave the Eye of the World. Those vast and implacable forces operating outside of the time and space I knew held me fast caught. Until what they desired occurred I must remain here, a free man within the confines of the inner sea, but imprisoned here as I had been imprisoned on my own Earth.

"The Krozairs of Zy mean nothing to me now. I am Apushniad. Had you forgotten?"

"I do not forget important things so lightly."

"It’s not important! Not any longer!" I was shouting. "I have put the Krozairs behind me, cast them off, shed them as a snake sheds a skin. There are other places of Kregen I hold more dear." She bent her gaze upon me. "As a snake, you said. . ."

"Well, then? I am evil, so a snake will serve. Although I detest the things, even though they live according to their natures."

"The man of your Earth called Shakespeare had a word for your conduct now, Pur Dray."

"He had a word for everything."

"And I have a word for you. You are held here. When you are once more a Krozair of Zy, then perchance you may return to your Valka—"

"And Delia?"

She put one long white finger to her lips. Those lips, red and soft, parted and I caught the gleam of white teeth. She cared for herself, this Zena Iztar. "You know your wife. You know her mettle. She is safe, as happy as she will ever be without you — poor soul! — yet will she risk all to find you again."

"And you condemn her to that!"

She was very brisk about that. "I condemn no one to anything. Men and women have suffered since the beginning and, assuredly, will suffer until the end."

"You told me I would face a choice, a hard choice—"

"Not this petty business, serious though it may be." She brushed my words aside. "The choice will come later. Also, I said that even Grodno might play a part, that stranger things have happened."

"I remember. That was the first time, in my chambers in London, before the séance—"

"And when I saw you for the second time, by the banks of the Grand Canal, I warned you afresh. You have a part to play. I would you would play it with all your heart."

"When I am parted from Delia, that I cannot do."

"I see that, and I believe it. Then I say this to you: you must pursue the path with every part of you that you can. Put as much of yourself into your struggle as you can possibly spend. I know whereof I speak. I salute you as Pur Dray."

I nodded my head at the thrones. "And if Susheeng recognizes me?"

"I do not think the — the princess Susheeng will know you. For her the Eye of the World revolves about the king. And she will not wish the king to know she once abased herself to you and that you spurned her."

"Aye. She didn’t relish that, by Vox!"

"But you did?"

I flicked up my evil old eyes to glare at her. "Sharp, Madam Zena Iztar! No, I do not think I relished seeing a silly hulu make a fool of herself. I do not think I took pleasure from that. But had I done so, I could have understood myself passing well."

"I have no more to say to you now."

I knew that in a moment she would walk off and the silent, motionless people all about would wake to life and the ceremony would proceed. Already the Chulik Chuktar, he who held my shortsword, had the piece of red cloth extended, still and unmoving. There were very many things I wished to ask this woman, and every time she sidestepped them and we got into an argument. I said, "Not the Star Lords, not the Savanti, then who, Zena Iztar?"

She saw my eyes and looked where I looked and saw the scrap of red cloth in the fingers of the Chuktar.

"They will make you—"

"Yes, I know."

"And it will mean nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Remember what I have said. Your only way out. Remember."

"But — tell me who you are and why—" But she was walking away with that lithe swinging gait, going out the doors. She had passed along all that long expanse of marble with supernatural speed; yet she appeared to be only walking naturally. The double doors closed of their own volition — or so it seemed. She was gone. The piece of red cloth in the Chulik Chuktar’s fingers jerked as he finished ripping it from his pocket. He held it up, ready for the king’s signal.

Silver trumpets pealed. The high room filled with the sigh and murmur of hundreds of people gathered together to witness the repudiation of the Red and the acceptance of the Green. The king finished making his signal.

So the sorry charade was gone through, when I spat on the red cloth — it was an old swifter flag — and trampled on it. I made various promises which, as they were made in the name of Grodno, meant nothing

— and all the time I heard those ominous words clanging about in my vosk skull of a head.

"To leave the inner sea — you must become a Krozair of Zy!"

Chapter Six

Gadak the Renegade rides north

"Such plans the king has!" said Gafard, guiding his sectrix past a broken tree stump in the forest trail.

"Such plans, Gadak, as gods must surely dream!"

I wasn’t fool enough to point out that the king was no god.

"You may rest assured, gernu, that I will do all I can to help the king." I looked at him as he rode, a tall, strong robust man with that iron profile eager and aimed always for the heights. I decided to take a chance. "I think, gernu, all I can for the king — after you." He turned his head to regard me. His Zairian face glowered. Then the sheer infectious bubbling of his good spirits broke down that overlaid Grodnim severity. "Aye, Gadak — I know what you mean, and I joy in it, for that is why I chose you. But, for all our good and health, never say it again."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu."

"Remember it!"

We rode for the northern mountains. We rode for battle. The leemsheads — outlaws — had allied themselves with the barbarians of the north and King Genod had arisen in his wrath and dispatched his favorite general to put down the disorders and to drive the barbarians back away from Magdaggian land and to hang all the leemsheads he could lay his iron hands on.

At the least, I had not, for my first task, been called upon to fight against Zairians. A sizable little force we were, a full ten thousand warriors, led by the overlords of Magdag. And, leading them, a renegade, this Gafard, the King’s Striker.

I wondered just when the moment would come when I would have to strike him down. That, it seemed to me then, was the only course left open to me.

The reasons why he had taken to me, helped me, secured my admission as a Grodnim to the service of the king through him, were perfectly plain. He had many enemies. Many and many a proud overlord of Magdag hated and despised this upstart renegade. That would be inevitable. So he looked for friends, men he could trust, allies in whom he could repose confidence. And of all his friends, bought by bribes and high office and the ear of the king, none would be more faithful than men like himself, once of Zair and now of Grodnim, traitors, turncoats, renegades.

One very simple and effective way of ensuring their loyalty had been spelled out to me by Gafard himself.

"My name is anathema to all Zairians. They know of me only too well. Rest assured, Gadak; your name also has been passed to the king and his nobles in Sanurkazz, to the Krozairs, to the Red Brethren. There is no return for us. Now we are of the Green. I do not believe you plan treachery against me, for I am your good friend and master; but think what will be your fate should you return to Zairia." Well, that was the rub. That kind of fate did not bear contemplation, and yet according to Zena Iztar it must be dared. How arrogant her display of power, there in the sumptuous reception chamber of King Genod! She had chosen her moment well. How clearly she had shown me my own puniness, the driveling paucity of all men, of Red and Green, here in the inner sea!

There was the other side of this coin of forwarding names of renegades. The Grodnims kept long lists of the names of Zairians who had wounded them. These rolls had been diligently searched and no record of one Dak of Zullia had been found thereon. Gafard had shown his relief.

"Had they found your name on the rolls, Gadak, you would have had to answer for your crimes against Grodno, after you had renounced Zair and taken the Green. The secular and the divine laws catch you between them, like Tyr Nath and his hammer!"

He also took the opportunity to tell me, in a strange tone of voice, that not one of the names on the Grodnim Rolls of Infamy bore a longer list of crimes than the name of Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy, the Lord of Strombor.

His attitude puzzled me. It seemed that he admired this Pur Dray and tried to emulate him from the Green side of the inner sea. More than once he used expressions that I could only construe as envy of the renown and prowess of that foremost corsair of the Eye of the World. "Yet he is dead and gone these many years," he said, as though ramming home a debating point.

We rode together near the head of the army, with a scouting force well ahead and covering parties of sectrix-men to the flanks. The flaunting green banners flew over us and the silver trumpets pealed ever and anon to give orders. In a long toiling column the infantry marched, men of many races, with the varter artillery spaced out, and at the rear trundled the strings of calsanys packed so heavily it was a marvel they could walk. Carts rumbled, harnessed to dour and shaggy krahniks, that special kind of tiny chunkrah, and following all that came the camp followers.

There appeared to be no quoffas, that large and patient draft animal of the Outer Oceans lands. The cavalry right out ahead in the scouting party rode the four-legged hebra, a saddle animal recently adopted from those very barbarians we marched out to chastise. Although not as heavy and stubborn as a sectrix, and that beast, as I have indicated, is barely up to the work imposed on it of carrying a mailed man, the hebras were quicker and more spirited. The whole trix family of six-legged saddle animals is not much to my liking: the sectrix of the inner sea; the nactrix of the Hostile Territories and elsewhere; the totrix of Vallia and Pandahem and Havilfar. I prefer the zorca, the superb four-legged, close-coupled nimble-footed animals combining marvelous fire and spirit with an endurance topped only by the legendary vove.

But all the same the hebramen cavorted about in fine style and could whoop up a rousing gallop to go haring away to investigate every plume of smoke or wisp of dust, every knoll and defile on the line of route.

We had left the inner sea far to the rear, marching north northeast. We had crossed the River Dag twice as it curved in one of its huge lazy arcs in its long journey from the distant mountains of The Stratemsk. The enormous river effectively contained the immediate hinterland north of the inner sea. There were many other rivers and mountains; none reached the size of the River Dag and The Stratemsk. Our march would take us for the best part of a hundred and forty dwaburs. We would cross the River Daphig, which flows southwest from the Mountains of Ophig and joins the River Dag almost due north of Magdag, a hundred dwaburs away. At the junction stands the important trading city of Phangursh. We would cross the River Daphig close under the Mountains of Ophig, some hundred dwaburs east northeast of Phangursh.

Depending on the difficulty of the way and the feet of the swods, the journey might take as much as a month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles.

The camp followers were not allowed to impede our progress. If they could not keep up that was their business.

Among the leaders of the camp followers a huge and ornate palankeen, a veritable house slung between thirty-two preysanys, swayed along. The drapings were of gold and green silk; the curtains were kept always tightly drawn. Beautiful apim and Fristle slave girls served the occupant of the palankeen. No lewd soldier eyes would ever behold the glories of the fair occupant. Every night a gorgeous, sumptuously large tent was set up in a reserved space, marked out and guarded by Gafard’s personal bodyguard. Every night he would bathe and change into crisp clean clothes, smothered with jewels, adorn himself with scents, and so, perfumed and handsome under the moons, would go into this magnificent tent and the flaps would be let down and no one would see him until reveille. As we rode in the long journey he took more and more to calling me up to ride at his side. I was uneasy. This sign of favor marked me among his retinue. Duhrra accompanied me and we slept lightly in our little two-man tent at night when we were not on guard duty.

Gafard summed it all up in a phrase. "I need men like myself, men I can trust, about me. I see in you, Gadak, a man who can go far. Your loyalty is what I ask."

I assented with the usual words. But I knew well enough that he had other men in his retinue who would dispatch me without a qualm if I angered him. Autocratic, absolute power — well, I knew all about those baubles and the paths they led a man’s feet into.

For my own good, perhaps, my periods of absolute power on Kregen had been heavily broken up by periods when I was the recipient of harsh authority. Although, as you know, I react with vicious hostility to most forms of authority when they are manifestly unjust.

We crossed the River Daphig at last, a brownish swirling flood running through eroded banks, and pressed on into the disputed territory. We had long left the cultivated areas behind, the enormous factory farms of Magdag, the immense pasture lands, the vast expanses of head-high grasses. Now we ventured into a sparser land, broken, where water became precious. Our goal was an outpost from which we would seek out the leemsheads and the barbarians after we had rested and recouped. That night Gafard said to me, "I hunt on the morrow, Gadak. You will ride with me."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu."

"Aye."

Of his immediate retinue there were a number of men, not all apim, with whom I rubbed along, quelling my distaste for the Green, consoling myself with the reflection that I planned for the future when the Red might once more rise.

On that morning Gafard rode out hunting. With him went five of his favorite officers, two women, and me, Gadak.

The beaters, simple swods earning a few obs, ran ahead crying up the game, and we rode slowly along after. We all carried the short simple bow of the inner sea. There were, I had noticed, no Bowmen of Loh among the mercenaries of the army. And another thing I took note of — this little army was composed of overlords to command, of mailed men-at-arms to obey and act as cavalry, and of mercenary swods, cavalry and infantry, some mailed, some not, some apim, some not. There was not a single sign of the superb fighting army created by Genod Gannius on the model set him by the slave phalanx of Magdag.

We rode along, bright and glittering under the lights of the Suns of Scorpio. I rode easily, looking about for quarry. We hunted what there was to find, for some would offer good eating and the others would offer the challenge of predators disturbed in their own hunting grounds. Presently I found I had trended to the left, going through a rocky defile where the sand puffed beneath my sectrix’s hooves. A shout from the rear brought back my attention. Gafard rode up with one of the women, sitting her sectrix in the fashion that told me she was a rider, for all she wore a long green robe concealing her and — most unusual in Turismond — a heavy green veil. Loh is the continent of secret walled gardens and veiled women.

I guessed this woman to be Gafard’s paramour, the woman of the sumptuous palankeen and luxurious tent. He made no offer to introduce me, and, with a bow, I went to fall in at the tail.

"Ride with me, Gadak."

So I reined in to his left. The veiled woman rode on his right, which is a privilege given to very few. I disliked anyone walking or riding on my right.

Even out hunting he could not desist from talking.

"The king’s plans, Gadak! I tell you, with our army we can sweep the southern shore of all the Red! We can turn the whole inner sea Green."

"If that is Grodno’s wish it will surely come to pass."

"You have not seen the army of the king. This is a mere rabble, a mercenary host hired to put down the leemsheads and barbarians. Down on the southern shore — that is where the battles are." I risked a question.

"And Shazmoz?"

Shazmoz, one of the last frontier seaport fortresses of Zair, had been heavily besieged. Pur Zenkiren, a Krozair Brother, now broken because of ill health and disappointment, held it against impossible odds. He made a gesture of irritation. "It holds, still." The woman remained silent, but I knew she listened.

"That old devil Pur Zenkiren holds the city. His days are numbered. Prince Glycas leads the army on toward the east, on to the fortress of Zy, and on to Holy Sanurkazz itself." So that was where the evil rast Glycas had got to. . .

I did not venture to ask why, if Gafard was the king’s favorite, he was not down there, leading this formidable army. Perhaps the king preferred him closer to hand.

We walked the sectrixes slowly, hearing the calls and shrill hunting horns of the beaters ahead and to our right. We were for the moment alone. Gafard went on talking.

"The king has fashioned an army like no other upon the inner sea — save for a contemptible slave army fashioned by this Pur Dray." Perhaps this would explain his obsession with the Lord of Strombor. I had learned that Genod Gannius, fruit of that Gahan Gannius and the lady Valima whom I had saved at the Grand Canal, hailed from Malig, a powerful but small fortress city of the northern coast some twenty dwaburs along from the Akhram. That explained the presence of his parents there on that fateful day so long ago. All that area lay under the sway of Magdag, the city of the megaliths. Even the important conurbation of Laggig-Laggu, near twenty dwaburs up the Laggu River and twenty dwaburs from Malig, owed allegiance to the king in Magdag. It also explained how I, knocked on the head and captured by overlords, had been shipped to Magdag. They took tribute of everyone for dwaburs about their city. Gahan, it seemed, had been in Magdag when I had led my old slave phalanx of vosk-skulls against the overlords. He had seen and he had remembered. The old king had been only too thankful that this dangerous insurrection had been crushed. He, like the Magdaggians, put his trust in mailed men riding sectrixes, armed with the longsword.

So Gahan had experimented and fashioned an implement. But it had been his son, Genod, who with all the ardent fire of youthful genius had seized on the implement and turned it into the most formidable fighting machine yet seen, who had used it to take Laggig-Laggu, to overturn the mercenary hosts of Magdag, to humble the overlords, and, eventually, to make himself king, the All-Powerful, the Revered, the Holder of Men’s Hearts.

I knew that fighting machine. The solid ranks of armored pikemen, the halberdiers and swordsmen in the front ranks, the wedges of crossbowmen shooting in their sixes. And, because the fighting-men of Segesthes and Turismond commonly derided the shield, the shield-protected phalanx could simply march forward and topple all the mailed chivalry sent against it.

"It was this same Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, who created the first phalanx. He was defeated and slain. And Genod Gannius now rules in Green Magdag."

"But suppose," I said, feeling the emotions in me boiling up in a rage comical and ludicrous, "this same Dray Prescot was not slain?"

He reined in his sectrix with a lunging thump of hooves.

"What mean you?"

"Only, gernu, is it certain sure he was slain?"

He eyed me. He licked his lips above the black beard.

"No," he said, at last, reluctantly. "No, it is not certain."

"And has there been no news of him since?"

He smiled, that ironic half-smile. "I can say what is common knowledge, that men tell stories of two Krozairs of Zy who claim this Dray Prescot as their father."

How my heart leaped!

"And do they speak false?"

He flicked the reins and kicked in his heels. "Who is to say what is false and what is real? I would that it was true, though, by the Holy Bones of Genodras!"

"Aye," I said. "So that we might go up against this great Krozair and measure swords with him."

"Not so, Gadak!" He spoke too sharply. He saw my expression and kicked in, harder, and sent his sectrix bounding off. The woman spurred up, also, and raced after him. I was left looking at their flying animals, and their tensed bodies, their capes flying, and wondering.

Well, there are none so blind as will not see. But, by the Great and Glorious Djan-kadjiryon, how could I be expected to see then?

I shook up the reins and cantered after them, the sectrix’s six legs going in that damned ungainly lumber. The hunting horns had shrilled and died; the cries of the beaters dwindled and faded to silence. The sectrix lumbered along. I heard a scream. I rammed in my heels and we picked up speed and came galloping out onto a scene that in all its ugly drama made me furious and, had I known it then, would have made me go cold with horror.

Gafard had shot cleanly and had dismounted to dispatch his kill, a small tawny-colored plains ordel. The hunting lairgodont had caught him totally unprepared. The sectrix had wrenched free of its reins and bolted. The woman’s sectrix, equally terrified, bolted also and bore her off. After that first scream, which I suspected had been ripped from her when Gafard and she had first seen the lairgodont, she remained silent, wrestling to keep her beast under control.

Gafard stood there, his longsword out, his feet spread apart. Dust puffed as the lairgodont drew itself up ready to charge.

Not so much large in their strength, the lairgodonts, as vicious and quick and damnably difficult to kill. Scaled and clawed, sinuous as to neck and back, with those skull-crushing talons and those serrated, steely fangs in the gap-jawed mouth, the lairgodont presents a terrifying spectacle of feral horror. Scarlet gaped the fanged mouth of the lairgodont. Pricked ears lay back on its scaled head. Hissing, it advanced, one taloned claw after another. That long forked tail rippled high. When that tail straightened and became a rigid bar. . .

I was minded to let Gafard, the renegade, go to his fate unmourned.

I knew I could not make the sectrix advance any farther. It pawed the ground, trembling, arching its neck and shrilling in fear. Hastily, I dismounted and hitched the reins to a projecting rock. If I was slain the sectrix would provide a fine second course.

Yes, Gafard, arch-traitor, a man who had betrayed the Red of Zair, yes, why not? Why not let him be pitched to the Ice Floes of Sicce under the fangs and talons of this vicious monster?

The bow in my hands spat four times as fast as I could draw string and let fly. The four arrows struck. Two bounced away, broken. The third penetrated one staring eye. The fourth took the lairgodont in the belly, for it leaped with the shock, not charging. I lugged out my longsword and ran in, yelling.

"Hai! Lairgodont! Your dinner is this way!"

It whipped about so that Gafard went into its blind side. Then its forked tail lashed sideways and knocked Gafard head over heels. There would be no support from him, then. . . What an onker I was! Charging into this mess when I should have wheeled my mount away and let nature take its course.

"The ordel is not yours this day, my friend," I said, and I leaped.

Chapter Seven

The Lady of the Stars

I leaped.

The longsword is a cruel weapon.

Even this longsword, this Ghittawrer blade Gafard had allowed me to keep without comment, could do its work with cunning and smashing power in the hands of a Krozair Brother. And, as I leaped, I even shouted: "Hai! Hai!"

The sword licked across the beast’s near foreleg and almost severed it, crunching into bone. I leaped nimbly away. The tail hissed above my head. Again I leaped and as the vicious head struck at me so I came down and went on, rolling, to come up with the sword blurring for the other eye. The eye vanished in a gout of blood and slime. A blow like — well, a blow like a ripping slash from lairgodonts talon —

raked down my side. I thanked Opaz I wore mail this day, even for hunting. I was knocked over and flying, landing in a spout of dust. I heard Gafard’s yell, feeble and coming from a long way off.

Somehow I jerked the sword up and thrust and the lairgodont screeched and hissed and drew back. Blood flecked its snout above the fanged mouth. I got to my feet, drew in a breath, cocked the blade. Then, again, I leaped.

A clawed leg lashed blindly at the sound. The beast’s other leg, half severed, collapsed. It toppled forward. I was able to brace myself, feel the ground under my feet, my legs hard, and swing the blade with full force. Full force from all that length of steel. . .

The lairgodont hissed once. Its head hung askew. Blood spouted from the hideous gash in its sinuous neck. It tried. Yes, it tried. Incredibly vicious and tough, the lairgodont. It tried to scrabble up to get at me and so, once again, I slashed. It fell. It rolled over and blood pooled away. Its body fell flaccidly. For the space of a few heartbeats I saw its belly heaving; then it slowed and stopped. Gafard was there. He looked ghastly.

"Hai, Jikai!" he said, and then: "My heart! My love!" He glared distraught after the bolting sectrix bearing the girl away. He staggered and gripped his side. "The pearl of my days! She is doomed!" I looked. I saw. This lairgodont had a mate. The mate, hissing and screeching, pursued the girl in swift, agile bounds.

There was time for no words, no comment, nothing besides leaping astride my sectrix, freeing the reins, a violent dig with the heels, and a jolting, bouncing, breakneck race to save the girl from certain death. As I went hurtling past, spouting dust, I heard Gafard yelling, but his words were lost. He called the woman of the palankeen, the woman of the tent, by the tenderest names. But not her name. The endearments might mean anything. But I knew he felt all he could ever feel for a woman and so, too, knew that if I failed I had best never return to the patronage of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the King’s Striker.

Head down I galloped, the neck of the sectrix outstretched. It would run for me, lairgodont or no damned lairgodont. I used the flat of my sword, all bloody as it was, on the back of the animal and it responded gallantly. We flew over the ground trailing a long plume of dust. Hard rattled the hooves of the sectrix, a drumming staccato that echoed the hoofbeats of the girl’s mount. The lairgodont kept up a hissing shrill that would have unnerved, as it was designed to do, the prey on which it lived. This Zair-forsaken risslaca was the emblem of the Ghittawrer Brotherhood founded by Genod. I cursed him, too, as I cursed everything else as I thundered along.

The thing would have to be done nip and tuck.

I gained on the risslaca as it gained on the girl. Again and again I hit the poor sectrix — and I felt sorry for the beast then — and we roared on. A sharp cry from the girl, the only one she had uttered since the first, heralded the plunging collapse of the sectrix. It went over in a sprawl of six legs and a wild confusion, dust spouting, the girl flying off to land with a crunch against rocks. I cursed for the last time, stood up in the stirrups, and swung the longsword high over my head.

We galloped madly up to the running risslaca, who was a mere half-dozen strides from the crumpled form of the girl. The long bloodily gleaming blade high above my head blazed as the head of the crazed sectrix reached the tail of the lairgodont, reached past its flank, panted and gasped alongside the very fanged head of the monster itself.

Side by side we raced those last few strides, and then the longsword fell with all the weight I could put into it.

It struck shrewdly, just abaft the head on that sinuous neck.

The shrill the lairgodont let loose rattled the stones of the hills. I swung back with a wrench, prepared to strike again, and saw there would be no need. The monster swerved in its dead run, collapsing, toppling, its head flopping, and skidded in a long swathe of dust on its belly before it swiveled about, its legs spread, to come to a stop, tail limp, stone dead.

I hauled up the sectrix and jumped down, keeping the reins in my left hand. I rammed the bloodied longsword into the ground and knelt by the girl.

The risslaca had sprayed blood as it skidded past. She was drenched. Her green veil was torn away. So I looked down on her as she lay there.

I saw the full firm beauty of her form in the green riding gown, splashed with blood. I saw the beauty of her face, superb beauty, a perfection of features such as is seldom seen — but I must not maunder. She opened her eyes as I gazed. Her face in all its blood-splashed purity tried to smile. She licked her lips, those soft, sweet perfect lips.

"The monster—?"

"The lairgodont is dead, my Lady. There is nothing to fear."

"Then you—" And she raised herself, turning that imperious head to look. She saw the lairgodont. She saw me holding the reins of the sectrix, and she smiled.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is all right now. Hai, Jikai!"

"Perhaps, my Lady," I said. "It was a small Jikai." Her hair was a deep glossy black, curled in the fashion of the inner sea. A shadow crossed her face and her brown eyes widened on me. She reached a small firm white hand and gripped my arm.

"My lord Gafard! He is — he is—?"

"He is safe, my Lady." I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, a sensation I could not understand or explain. I thought she would respond to a small jest. "Judging by his shouts he is very sound of wind and limb — my Lady."

She stared at me, a long, level look. "Yes. Yes — I have seen you about the camp. I think I can trust you. You are this Gadak of whom my beloved speaks?"

"I am Gadak."

"And you are — as is he—"

I interrupted, always a rash thing for a mere soldier to do when speaking with a highborn lady. "Yes, my Lady. We are both. But it does not matter — you are safe."

She was a highborn lady. I felt that. I picked her up and felt her firm and warm in my arms and so carried her to the sectrix, who stayed calm now that it could smell dead lairgodont instead of ravening lairgodont. I did not wish to put the longsword all bloody back into the scabbard, even though this scabbard had not been made up for me by my beloved Delia. . . I noticed the way she spoke so unaffectedly of Gafard. Perhaps, after all, there was a real affection, a deep love, between them?

How painful it must be for her, then! I knew nothing of her history, but if she was Grodnim by birth, then a love for a renegade would reduce her in the eyes of her family. If she was Zairian and had been captured, perhaps made slave, then how much more painful it must be to receive wealth and privilege and love from a man who had turned his back on Zair.

I looped the bloodied longsword through a rear strap and let it dangle. If it thwacked the beast a little it would help it along. It had done well. I would revise my opinion of sectrixes in its favor. Its name was Blue Cloud, and it was expensive, a gift from Gafard.

I took the girl in my arms again and mounted up, a trick I knew well from the days when I rode with my incomparable Delia. I held the girl close to my breast, supporting her, feeling her warm, firm body against mine, and she placed her slender arms about my neck. So we rode back to Gafard. We spoke but little, silly inconsequential stuff, for she was a great lady and the shock of her experience had not all worn off, although she affected to regard it as a mere incident. A fold of the veil tangled about her waist and the hunting gown were all of green, yet the lairgodont’s blood had splattered them with red. I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, for I judged she was still very young, and the perfection of her beauty would set any man mad and inflamed with passion. Yet I felt a strange otherly feeling for her in which my own profound and abiding love for Delia formed an inseparable part. As we rode back over the dust and left the dead monster behind, I thought about the many beautiful women I have known upon Kregen and of them all — even Mayfwy and certain others — none would have moved me had I never known Delia. But this girl might have. . . Had I never met my Delia, then this girl, I thought, might have come in her time to take my Delia’s place. And this, I thought, as I reined up, was blasphemy. Gafard had limped out after us, raving. He had seen most of what had gone on. Like a warrior he had brought his sword with him. He was shaking. His face showed dirty gray beneath the bronze suntan.

"My heart! My heart!" He limped forward, desperate.

I set the girl upon the ground and she tottered.

"My beloved!" she cried.

Gafard dropped his longsword. The gleaming blade and the ornate hilt encrusted with jewels, all the symbolic power of the weapon, went into the dust. He took the girl in his arms. They held each other close. I walked away.

Yes, I thought, yes, there is genuine love here.

I, a grim old fighting-man, can understand love.

After a space, when I looked back, I saw that Gafard had adjusted what was left of the green veil, drawing it up to hide the glory of the girl’s face. He called her his pearl, his heart, the beloved of his days. He did not use her name.

That, too, I understood.

When, after a time, others of his retinue found us, he became all harsh authority, damning and blasting, calling down the wrath of Grotal the Reducer upon the beaters. He shouted passionately for his guards to take the head beaters and flog them and if they would not die to draw out their bowels until they did. Old-snake, torture, hideous death, would be their portion for allowing for a single instant any danger to his divine beloved. He desisted in his anger against them only when the girl pleaded for their lives.

"Jikaider them!" shouted Gafard, incensed, holding the girl as she held him. "Punish them so that all may know their crimes!"

Flogging them jikaider, with a right-handed and a left-handed man to wield the lash, was horrific punishment. But Gafard was at pain to point out why he was merciful. "You deserve to be shipped out to the Ice Floes of Sicce! But my Lady of the Stars has interceded for you, and I deny her nothing within my power! Thank her, you cramphs! Her orders are my commands! Go down on your bellies, you rasts, grovel to show your gratitude to the divine — to my beloved."

The beaters flopped down, howling, crying, wailing out their gratitude that they were to be flogged jikaider.

They were flogged most thoroughly, jikaider, and that night their howls sounded uncannily over the camp, stopping the cowardly and the guilty from much rest. That vicious crisscross flogging opens up a man’s back to the bone. Mere raw lumps of meat, the beaters, by morning. But they would have unguents applied and they’d be carried in litters and, after they’d recovered, would go back to the ranks. Tough, the swod of Kregen, the ordinary common warrior soldier. I wondered if they’d be paid the few obs they would have earned beating for the hunt. The beating had been of a very different kind, poor devils.

And yet, thinking that, next morning as we prepared to get under way again, I realized I’d have done exactly as Gafard had done — more, probably — if harm had come to this girl he called the Lady of the Stars.

In only a few more days we would reach the area in which our operations could start. Then it would be man’s work once more. The hebramen scouting ahead kept more particularly alert, for these wild barbarians were notorious for their cunning and skill in ambush in this hard and sere region. Farther north the land of the tall forests led on and on until, at last, the land of everlasting whiteness was reached. I had no desire at all to journey there. What I did now was a part of the plan I had formed. Duhrra followed me still because I had promised him I knew what I was doing and he had had evidence of that in the past.

"We will for a time act the part of Grodnims, Duhrra of the Days. We do not fight Zairians—"

"No! Mother Zinzu the Blessed forfend!"

"Yet when we reach the Eye of the World again we will have proved ourselves of the Green. Then we may escape."

"Duh — let us crack a few skulls before that, Dak, my master."

"I am Gadak now."

"Aye! And they call me Guhrra, may Zair rot their—"

"Easy, easy. The camp has ears."

Duhrra had been about the camp, ears cocked, picking up all the scuttlebutt that forever circulates where fighting-men congregate. I wanted to know about this girl, this Lady of the Stars. There was precious little to know. The men speculated on the mysterious occupant of the palankeen and the great tent, of course, in the scabrous way of warriors. The story that had gained the most currency said that she was a Zairian, from Sanurkazz, and had been taken in a swifter by a squadron commanded by Gafard. He had found her in the aft state cabin and from that moment on no other man had seen her face.

"In a swifter?" I said. "Passing strange, for a woman to be in a swifter in action."

"It is known."

"Aye. It is known. And is that all?"

"None know her name, none know her face. Four men — trusted men — have been flayed alive by Gafard’s orders for trying."

The majority of the personal bodyguard maintained by Gafard about the tent were not apims. That would greatly reduce the dangers, of course, although no sane man trusted a woman to the protection of some races of diffs. Gafard chose wisely.

The moment came to which I had been looking forward with an interest that had led me to keep Blue Cloud always in perfect condition, a bag of provisions knotted to his harness, to sleep lightly and to have the edges and points of all my weapons honed razor-sharp.

The summons reached me carried by one of Gafard’s aides. I went with him to the campaign tent in which Gafard dictated his orders and kept his official being. Only when he had discharged his duties would he dress and anoint himself and go to the great tent where the Lady of the Stars awaited him. Among his retinue I had, as I have said, made no real enemies apart from his second in command. This was a certain man called Grogor. He was a renegade, also. The situation was obvious. Grogor feared lest I, the new friend of Gafard’s, might oust him from his position. I had been at pains to tell the fellow that I had no intentions of doing any such thing. He had not believed me. Now Grogor, a bulky, sweaty man, but a good fighter, motioned me into the campaign tent. Gafard sat at a folding table affixing his seal to orders and messages. He looked up and waved me to sit at the side and wait.

His stylor, a slave with privileges as a man who could read and write, was, as was common, a Relt. The Relt gathered up all the papers and their canvas envelopes in his thin arms and, bowing, backed out. The flap of the tent dropped. Gafard lifted his head and looked at me. I had not been called to ride with him since the episode of the lairgodont and the hunt.

"You have been wondering why I have been cold to you in the last few days, Gadak?" It needed no quick intelligence to understand why. I said, "Yes, gernu." He put his hands together and studied them, not looking at me as he spoke.

"I owe you my gratitude. I do not think I would care to live if my beloved no longer lived and walked at my side."

"I can understand that."

He looked up, his head lifting like the vicious head of a striking lairgodont itself.

"Ah! So you are like all the rest—"

There was no way out of this save by boldness.

"I saw the face of the Lady of the Stars. Yes, it is true. You have had men flayed for less. But when a lairgodont rips at one, and the green veil is already torn away, there is not much choice." He still stared at me. He measured his words. "Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman in all the world?"

I have been asked that question — and most often by silly women seeking to gain power over me —

many times, as you know.

Every time, every single time, the answer was automatic, instant, not needing thought. No woman in two worlds is as perfect as my Delia, my Delia of Delphond. Yet. . .

I hesitated.

He thought I feared, perhaps, to speak the truth, hesitated for the reason directly opposite to the truth. Often, although my own feelings needed no thought to arrive at the truth, that none could compare with my Delia, I had temporized — most particularly on the roof of the Opal Palace in Zenicce. Now my hesitation held none of calculation.

I said, "The lady is more beautiful than all women — save, perhaps, for one." He seized on that.

"Perhaps?"

"Aye. But beauty is not all. I know nothing of the lady’s perfections — and I do know a lady whose perfections are unmatched, in her beauty, her spirit, her love of life, her courage, her wisdom, her comradeship, her love—"

He sat back. That small ironic half-smile flitted on his lips and vanished.

"I do not think you lie. You speak too warmly for lies."

Here there was no need for me to go on. He would decide what to do with me. If he decided against, then I would decide if he must be killed at once or if I dare leave him merely gagged and bound. Perhaps something of those wild leem thoughts showed in my face, although I own I would have been extremely wroth had I thought that possible: perhaps he realized more than I gave him credit for at the time.

"You know little of my history, Gadak."

"I know little, gernu. Men say you were a Jikaidast. If that is so it is no wonder you always win." His smile broadened, became genuine, warm. "Were I not so busy — with this and that — I would call for the board at once, the grand board. Yes, I was a Jikaidast, in Sanurkazz." These Jikaidasts are a strange lot, strange in the eyes of ordinary men who love the game of Jikaida and play when they can. A Jikaidast lives only for the game. As a professional he plays to earn a living, and these men are found all over Kregen earning their living from the highest to the lowest levels. The greatest of them even aspire to the title of San, which is given to great savants, wise men, and wizards. There is much to be said about Jikaida and Jikaidasts, as you will hear. The odds would be against the manner of the master’s winning, not if he would win. Handicaps would be set, a simple matter of removing a powerful piece, say a Paktun or a Chuktar, or of giving the privilege of extra moves. Gafard, the King’s Striker, said, "I was known as a Jikaidast who could win after having surrendered my Pallan from the call of ’Rank your Deldars’."

I resisted the temptation to fall into the deadly trap of talking Jikaida. That way lies the engulfment of many burs of a man’s life.

"You were a hyr-San, gernu. But of aught else, I know nothing." He showed his pleasure. This was the first time I saw him as a human being apart from those traumatic moments when he had clasped his lady to him after the hunt of the lairgodonts.

"There is little to tell, as a Zairian. My home was too small, the people too small, my opportunities too small. When I fought for Zair men smiled. I was taken by the Grodnims. I did as you have done. I think the decision hardened me, made of me different flesh. I am a man among men now, the keeper of the king’s confidence, his Striker."

"And Sea-Zhantil," I said.

I couldn’t resist that little dig. He nodded. "Aye. I value that. You know it. It was borne by a man who—" He glanced up sharply at me, and I saw he felt his own surprise.

"You were brought here to listen to me, Gadak. I tell you this because I have taken a liking to you. But treachery is rewarded by a knife in the back, just under the ribs."

"Aye. Perhaps that is all it deserves."

Again that probing look. If I was to take him seriously, for he was a mortal powerful man in his own surroundings, I would have said, then, that he was puzzled by my attitude, realizing he dealt with a man who might be of more use to him than he could have imagined.

"That is sooth." He picked up a dagger that threw scattered shards of light from the gems packing the hilt, and he twirled it as he spoke. If there was a meaning here, he was underlining it too obviously. "I am a king’s man. King Genod is a wonderful man, a genius at war, commanding, powerful — he has the yrium. I do not forget that. But—" Here he again broke off and flicked the dagger into the ground. The sharp blade struck and stuck, the hilt vibrating just enough to fill the tent with leaping colors. "But he demands women. He takes women and uses them and discards them. It is his only weakness; and, for a man such as he, it is not a weakness."

"I can see that. But the princess Susheeng?"

"She carried much weight when King Genod defeated the overlords of Magdag and took the throne. She supported him and in return is his official queen — although, well, it is all in the loving eye of Grodno. I tell you this, Gadak—" He interrupted himself yet again, rising and prowling about the tent, his fierce face thrust forward. "It is all probably common knowledge. Susheeng has her powers. She must tolerate Genod’s caprices. Do not whisper this in your cups, for you may wake up minus your head."

"I believe I understand, gernu. The veil, the concealment so that no man may see her face — yes, I understand."

"Be sure that if you do understand you tell no one."

I felt it was about time he eased up from this fraught excitement. And, anyway, confidences like this were damned dangerous secrets. So, to goad him, I bellowed.

"Your orders, my commands, Gernu!"

He turned on me, saw me standing bolt upright, my ugly old face blank, and he caught himself and lowered his hand.

"Yes, yes you are right, Gadak. That is the way it must be. Regulations. Just remember. I let you live even though you have seen the face of the Lady of the Stars."

"I shall not fail you."

"I do not think you will. I would have you slain out of hand, you know that. And yet I would feel sorrow were that to be so."

As I went out I said to myself, rather obviously for all it was the perfect truth, "Not half as sorry as I would be, dom!"

Chapter Eight

Concerning the mystery of the escaped prisoners

There followed a short campaign that, although viciously and bloodily fought, contained nothing of interest apart from a demonstration of the overlords’ methods of maintaining order in their own lands and of dealing with incursions over their borders.

The people who lived beyond the river were mainly nomads, although cities existed as well, built by settlers in favored positions. No one knew very much of this whole vast area of Northern Turismond, and we were much less than two hundred dwaburs into a space of land stretching, it was estimated by the Todalpheme, for six hundred dwaburs to the pole.

These nomads did not remind me of my own Clansmen.

Oh, they possessed vast herds of chunkrah, and they lived in magnificent tents, and when they moved they shook the earth. I do not think the land was as rich here as it is in the Clansmen’s areas of Segesthes. These folk had their ways and their customs, traditions and folklore, and pretty and fascinating it all was to me at the time, to be sure. These people called themselves the Ugas, in their various tribes, and many races of diffs formed the tribes and nations. They had no zorcas. They had no rarks. Their weapons were inferior longswords and small bows. They did have the hebra, which I have mentioned, and a form of dog I believed they called ugafaril — the derivation is obvious — but which the Grodnims called rasts and cramphs and all manner of obscene things, for the dogs kept watch and alerted the camps and it was damned difficult to carry out a neat smart raid.

In all this I acted my part with as good a grace as I could muster. Duhrra, rumbling like a vessel of San Evold’s boiling with the cayferm, followed.

I will not weary you with the details of the campaign. We caught leemsheads who were very dreadful men with atrocities upon their heads, so that I had no compunction about dealing with them. The Ugas were another matter. But they were worthy foemen and after they caught a strong party of Grodnims and slaughtered them to a man the atmosphere eased. And, anyway, I did not see much fighting, being used by Gafard as an aide, a messenger, a trustworthy conveyer of orders and instructions. One day we surprised a war party of Ugas, and Duhrra and I had a taste of the reckless charge, swinging our swords, going up and down on the sectrixes, lumbering into a bone-crunching collision with the Ugas. Hebras went down. Swords whirled. The dust rose in driven clouds. When it was all over we inspected what we had captured.

This had been a slave caravan. The Ugas required slaves, as was common over Kregen except where Delia and I had stamped out the practice, and we were happy to release a number of Grodnims who fell on their noses and upended their bottoms and gave long howls of thanks to Grodno for their rescue. Among the slaves I saw a group of men and women with stark white hair. I thought, as was natural, that they were Gons, that race who habitually shave their white hair religiously until they are bald, out of shame.

"Not so, Gadak," said young Nalgre, the son of an overlord of Magdag on Gafard’s staff, and therefore one day to be an overlord himself and so a candidate for the edge of my sword. He would have been a smart young man had he worn the red. As it was, he had no chance to learn what humanity meant. "They are the Sea-Werstings. Best we slay them all, here and now, and so save trouble."

"Are they so dangerous?"

"Little you know, renegade." They liked to rub our noses in it, these puppies, when Gafard was not around. "They are a sea-people and they should be sent sailing to the Ice Floes of Sicce, by Goyt!" He half drew his Genodder, scowling at the huddled group of naked white-haired slaves, and thrust the shortsword back into the scabbard with a meaningful snap.

Later there was a chance to talk to these Sea-Werstings, for Gafard had issued orders they were not to be slain but were to be kept awaiting his pleasure.

Their language was but little different from the universal Kregish, an imposed tongue, and it would have been easy to talk with them even had I not been blessed by Maspero’s coded genetic language pill given to me in Aphrasöe, the city of the Savanti.

I selected a strong man in the prime of life, who sat with bound hands and feet in a protective fashion by the side of a woman who, although not beautiful in the accepted sense, was firm of body and pleasantly faced, with a fineness about her forehead where the white hair had been cut away.

"You have fallen on hard times, dom," I said, sitting at his side and offering him a piece of bread soaked in soup. He opened his mouth sufficiently to speak, and shut it at once.

"Thank you, master. Give it to my woman."

I did so and then gave him a second piece from the earthenware bowl. I kept my weapons well away from his bound hands, just in case he had been working on his bonds.

"You are Sea-Werstings?"

He scowled. "That is the foolish name given to us by these barbarians, and by you ignorant Grodnims."

"Then what is your name, and where is your home?"

As we talked so I fed them soup-soaked bread, and gave also to the others nearby.

"We are the Kalveng. We are a seafaring folk, with havens all along the western coast of Turismond. When our long-ships breast the foam and our weapons glitter across the dark sea, then all men tremble."

"I have never been there. Is it very cold?"

He looked at me as though I were an idiot. "No more than a warrior may bear, wearing mail and wielding a sword."

"And a woman?"

"They, too, are handmaidens of Veng."

We talked more. It seemed to me the spirit of these people would not be broken by fetters and chains. Had I been a king ruling a country menaced by their depredations, I fancy I might have heeded well the advice of that young puppy Nalgre, the Magdaggian overlord’s son.

This Kalveng, Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot, clearly a proud and stubborn character, told me much of the unknown lands of northwestern Turismond. In the map I roughly sketched out I indicated that coast with a mere scrawl, a line of no meaning, for the coast there had no part to play in my story then.[1]The inner lands are riddled with vast lakes and inlets of the sea; there are fjords and rapids and marshes, a whole vast area aswarm with life and people on the move and people in their keeps and towns. As the folk of the inner sea face inward, to the Eye of the World, so the nations of the northwest hold themselves aloof from others!

"What is your name?" said this Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot.

"I am called Gadak."

He looked astonished.

"And is that all?"

"Aye."

"You do not trifle with me, for sport?"

"No. You are bound and I am free. There is no sport in that."

"I have seen it, though, when the slaves ran and the torches flew and the brands bit. You are a man with a secret."

I stood up, easily enough, and stretched my shoulders under the mail and the white tunic and the green sleeveless jacket. I looked down on Tyvold.

"And if you escaped this night . . . would you return home direct?" The hunger in his face moved me.

"Aye!"

"Direct?"

He took my meaning. "Aye, master. Direct."

I said no more and turned away, leaving the empty bowl.

That night a thief broke into a stores tent and a quantity of food and clothing was taken. Also, in the morning, a Rapa guard was discovered unconscious but otherwise unharmed where the Sea-Werstings had been chained to stakes driven into the ground. The Sea-Werstings had vanished, every one, and a search failed to discover any trace of them. Gafard entrusted the leadership of the search party into the hands of his fellow-renegade, Gadak; and Gadak, although he searched diligently to the north, failed to find a single trace of the escaped slaves. With that, amid a smother of curses, the affair was forgotten. As Nalgre said, lifting his manicured fingernails to the gold lace at his throat, "They do not make good slaves. We would have had to slay them, in the end." He couldn’t leave it alone, for he added with selfish venom, "A fine opportunity for sport, lost!"

I did not answer, but walked away. I wondered what that cold northland of the Kalvengs was like. When the Grodnims said the Sea-Werstings would not make good slaves I knew what they meant. Some races seem destined to be enslaved and one must fight for them and put iron in their backbones, for no man is born slave in the eyes of Zair or Opaz.

Of the diffs of Kregen, the Xaffers are a case in point.

Other races breed men and women who will not tolerate slavery, and these simply will themselves to death, or seek release at the hands of their masters in the final death. I will not speak of these races now. And there are races of people with a stiff-necked pride that bends ill beneath the yoke. There are many of these. My fearsome four-armed Djangs will accept slavery if forced upon them; but they make their masters damned uncomfortable all the time these masters are foolish enough to enslave a Dwadjang. I had been slave many and many a time, as you know. So had my Delia, to my shame. I wondered how my children would tolerate slavery. I had last seen my eldest twins, Drak and Lela, when they had been fourteen, just at the time when they were burgeoning into manhood and womanhood. Now they were all of thirty-six. Prince Drak ran my island Stromnate of Valka and was a Krozair of Zy, and was a powerful man. Lela had refused the offers of marriage five times — at the last count. My other twins, Segnik and Velia, would now be twenty-five years old, and I had last seen them when they’d been three, running and laughing upon the high terrace of Esser Rarioch, forever plaguing Aunt Katri, joyous, gorgeous, wonderful children; and now Segnik would have himself called Zeg and was a Krozair of Zy, and Velia had received the same education as Lela with the Sisters of the Rose and was no doubt in her turn refusing offers of marriage. I wondered what they were like now, and if I would ever see them again, and so that made all the dark powerful forces of obstinacy rise up in me. I would play out this hand and act like a Grodnim and so use that as a springboard to escape with Duhrra and once more become a Krozair of Zy. Oh, yes, I’d set my hands to that task. I’d become a Krozair of Zy again, for only by doing that would I escape the Eye of the World and once more clasp my Delia in my arms, see my twins Drak and Lela, and my twins Zeg and Velia. As to the Red Brotherhood of Zy — the Krozairs — I swung a Ghittawrer longsword at my waist now and wore the green and swore luridly by Grodno. Nothing mattered besides escaping and going home to Valka and my family.

When the last barbarian chief in this area had been captured and had his head removed Gafard said we would return to Magdag. A strong force would be left against future disorders. None of these Grodnims seemed to realize that the Ugas were not barbarians. There were savages in the north, we all knew that, but they lived farther off, and they cut up the Ugas cruelly. One day, no doubt, the barbarians of the northern hills would foray down south, past the tribesmen and the citizens, past the Ugas, and come rolling down to find out what pickings the Eye of the World might offer. History and destiny follow their own paths, on Kregen as they do on Earth. On the march south a messenger rode up on a foundering hebra and was instantly escorted to Gafard, where he rode at the head. He had remained cold to me, reserved, but not hostile. Shortly thereafter Nalgre summoned me. Gafard looked at me stonily. He had given orders that closed up a bodyguard, ready to ride.

"Orders, Gadak, from the king. We ride for Magdag and must reach there faster than the wind." He bent closer from his mount. "There is serious trouble in the inner sea. I want you at my side, for I smell treachery." He lifted himself in the stirrups, a powerful, compelling figure. He waved his sword. "We ride!

On for Magdag!"

Chapter Nine

Museum pieces

The red sun of Antares, Zim, preceded the green sun of Antares, Genodras, across the heavens. A small but powerful body of men rode hard across the plain kicking dust in a straight line for the northern gate of sinister Magdag. All about on the plain stretched the megaliths, monstrous edifices, cutting enormous blocks of darkness against the radiance of the suns.

When the red and green suns passed in eclipse awful rites took place in those megalithic chambers, which only the highest of the land might see. The ordinary folk must huddle in their hovels and shudder at the wrath of Zair upon the land.

Always, Genodras would emerge from the pierced flank of Zim, and thus proclaim that Grodno still ruled.

We rode hard. The suns were drawing apart again in their cycle and were about a quarter of the way through that outward and inward movement. Our cloaks flared in the wind of our passage and our sectrixes labored with snorting nostrils, for they sensed the stables ahead and knew the journey was almost over. There was no time to reflect on the mysteries of Grodno and Zair within the spider-webbed shadowy chambers of the megaliths.

The sky held a high, drawn look, streaked with ocher clouds, and a few magbirds fluttered and cawed, whirling spots of blackness against the light. Heads low, trailing dust, we raced for the northern gate of evil Magdag.

Among our company, surrounded by Pachaks, rode a figure in armor and green robes glittering with precious gems. She was clad and accoutered like a warrior, but I could not mistake the erect, graceful carriage of the Lady of the Stars.

I was grateful that her protection had been entrusted to Pachaks. They are intensely loyal, honoring through their own system of nikobi the obligations of their hire; mercenaries whose code places them above the common herd. Two left arms has a Pachak, so that with a shield he is a formidable fighter. A long, sinuous tail equipped with a strong hand has a Pachak, so that he may slice you down from aloft or spit you clean as the blade leaps between his legs. Oh, yes, I employed Pachaks whenever I could. There were no Rapas among our company.

The hooves of the sectrixes rang loud on the stones beneath the gate. Passing archways with that pointed Grodnim shape, we saw the alert forms of guards and watchmen, the slanting rays of the suns bright on their weapons. The echoes bounced from the yellow stone walls and the dark granite walls as we clip-clopped along. People scattered from our path. A basket of gregarians overturned and the ripe fresh fruit rolled, squishing.

Straight to the Jade Palace we rode, and Gafard, lost in thought, led us, his head sunk upon his breast and his powerful body lumbering along in time to the ungainly gait of his mount. As in any well-run palace everything was prepared against the master’s homecoming. In the hullabaloo and uproar as slaves ran and men bellowed, Duhrra and I took ourselves off to the small chamber we had been allotted for our personal use. This lay under the roof to the rear, overlooking a courtyard where daily vast amounts of sweat were spilled by swods drilling. When Gafard needed us he would call. In the interim we spent the time arguing, as was inevitable, here in Green Magdag, about the best ways of getting back to the Reds.

I felt sure that Duhrra had either completely forgotten or had never really understood just who I was. After all, there had been only the scraps of quick conversation between Pur Zenkiren and myself, there in besieged Shazmoz, to afford any inkling that I was not the Dak I claimed to be. For Duhrra the task was simply that of escaping from Magdag and returning to the Zairian side of the inner sea. For me, of course, there awaited slavery at a galley oar in Zairia, for I was an unfrocked Krozair, Apushniad.

After we had bathed and eaten a huge meal and were thinking about emptying a few pots, the call came. I took care to dress in my mail and to bear my arms as I followed the Relt messenger along the corridors and so down to Gafard’s private suite, secluded in a separate wing of his palace with the windows cunningly angled so that the occupants might not be overlooked. The suns had long set and She of the Veils rose over the steep roofs and the flat roofs, set alternately in pleasing patterns. The long shadow of the Tower of True Contentment lay across the last corridor. The shimmer of golden light at each end burned unfocused. The Relt hurried on, silent on his foofray satin slippers, and I in my mail clumped on after in my studded sandals.

This was not a private audience. A number of Gafard’s chief officers crowded the anteroom to his study. Grogor, of course, was there, to favor me with a scowl as I entered. The others looked up without speaking and then went back, as I considered, to biting their nails. They knew far more than I of the intrigues festering in Magdag; whatever news Gafard had brought back from the king was not good. The close, oppressive atmosphere as we sat in silence and waited told me that. We were called in at last and trooped through the green velvet-draped doorway and so came into Gafard’s study. There were books here, papers and charts, maps and the paraphernalia of the fighting-man by both sea and land. Also on separate tables lay spread out six separate games of Jikaida, all in different stages of progress. Gafard waved us to seats.

We sat, expectantly, waiting for him to speak.

"Gernus," he began, and so we knew this was a serious business, for he used the usual euphemism, calling us lords. They do not go in for koters and horters in Green Magdag. They fancy kyrs and tyrs are below their gernus — as, indeed, they are — their overlords of Magdag.

"There is serious work afoot. I have to tell you the king is highly displeased with some of the recent actions over against the rasts of Zairians. Shazmoz is not taken. Shazmoz is relieved." There was a stir at this, a buzz, a murmur of speculation.

"Yes, well may you be astonished. For was not Shazmoz closely ringed, besieged, due to fall like a ripe apple? And now the king, may his name be revered, tells me that not only is Shazmoz undefeated, it is relieved, and the cramphs of the Red press on to the west."

I own I felt perky at this news. Mind you, I had given up any concern over the outcome of the internecine strife between the Red and the Green; but I own I felt a lift of the heart at this news.

"What, gernu, of Prince Glycas?" Grogor, Gafard’s second in command, spoke up.

"Aye, well may you ask, Grogor! The king has heard ill words of Prince Glycas, who commands our armies there against Zair. But the disaster cannot be put down to him. He was to the last, pushing ahead, when two things happened that deprived us of Shazmoz."

If Pur Zenkiren, who commanded in Shazmoz, was still the powerful force I had known, for all he had sadly fallen away after he had been passed over in the elections for Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy, then I was not at all surprised at what miracles he might achieve. Gafard went on speaking, and he ticked off two points on his fingers.

"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."

Not quite sure what he was talking about I cast a last look at the scraps and relics of what once were mine, and went with him back to the saloon.

My Lady of the Stars waited for us.

I bowed deeply, very deeply, going almost into the full incline, and this I did without conceit or embarrassment.

"Rise, Gadak, for I think you would be a friend to my lord Gafard and to me." Her voice, musical, filled with light, entranced me.

"I will serve you, my Lady. Your standard shall never be dishonored." She wore no veil. She was dressed, as was Gafard, all in white. Her black hair was piled in ringlets upon her head, and she held that head erect and yet, although she held herself with pride, there was nothing of arrogance in her. I looked at her, drinking in her beauty, and then looked away, for I felt the desolation within me.

"I wish you to wear this, Gadak. It is a trinket, a foreign bauble from some unknown place far over the Outer Oceans. Yet it has value. I would wish you to wear it in remembrance of me, and as a thanks for your Jikai with the lairgodonts." She held out a golden chain. "And, for what is far more important, you saved the life of my beloved."

I took the bauble. From the golden chain swung a miniature made from bright enamel and precious gems. Red and white. The semblance of a tiny bird in red and white, with spread wings and beak agape. A valkavol. This bird, this tiny harmless bird, could become frighteningly ferocious when attacked or if its young are threatened. I knew the valkavol passing well. Native to my island Stromnate of Valka, in far Vallia, the valkavol had been adopted as the emblem set atop my warriors’ standard poles. I looked at it, there in my hand, a tiny scrap of gold and red and white. I was to be her standard-bearer and she, all unknowingly, had given me the very symbol that decked my Valka’s standards.

"I thank you, my Lady. . ." I could say no more.

Gafard boomed his laugh again. "I can spare you two burs. Then my Lady and I return to the Tower of True Contentment."

I have absolutely no idea of what passed during those two burs. I regret that now, regret it bitterly, as you shall hear.