Chapter Eleven

Prince Mefto the Kazzur

“By Horato the Potent!” exclaimed Pompino. “I am drier than a corpse’s shinbone.”

I said nothing but sucked on my pebble.

The caravan wended along, a brightly colored succession of carriages and wagons, with clumps of people, apim and diff, trudging along in the dust, and the outriders flanking us, their weapons ready. Ineldar the Kaktu had been wroth with his caravan guards, although, in all honesty, they had fought well and driven the drikingers off. But we all guessed we had not seen the last of those skulking rasts. Before we reached the water-hole they would attack again — with a new leader in command, no doubt. When a straggling line of black dots showed in the southern sky I felt the muscles beside my eyes tighten. At bellowed commands the caravan halted at once. Dust hung about us, slowly dissipating. Everyone stared aloft, to the south, away from the twin suns. Those flyers there must be flutsmen, out reiving, and if they attacked us we’d be caught between two foes. But, and I do not think the flutsmen missed seeing us, the big birds wheeled away in the air and soon vanished. Probably they were in insufficient strength to attack our caravan, which was clearly large and well protected. This being Havilfar, one would expect many flyers to be seen. That group was the only one we saw on the journey. The exigencies of the war being waged against mad Empress Thyllis of Hamal demanded hordes of flyers and the land here was almost denuded. The same was true of vollers and we saw not one. Some of the countries of the Dawn Lands manufacture their own fliers, and these were in constant demand and short supply. Hamal, as I knew to my bitter cost, had a stranglehold on that particular industry.

We were traveling generally westward toward the rugged chains of mountains running through the heart of Havilfar. These were the same mountains that in their northern reaches the Hamalese call the Mountains of the West, and against which nestles Paline Valley. But that was around four hundred and fifty dwaburs north. We were about halfway between the River Os north of us and the Shrouded Sea to the south. In their southern extremities the mountains swing somewhat to the west and beyond them lie broad rivers and wide lakes, all terra incognito to me. The folk in the caravan called the mountains there

— for they have a plethora of names, as common sense must indicate by reason of their extent — the Snowy Mountains.

We were within a day or so of the water hole and the drikingers had not attacked us again. A group of brilliantly attired riders went past the caravan at a good clip, apparently reckless of our short water supply situation. They had ridden out in defiance when the flutsmen vanished. I had asked Sishi about them and their leader soon after the caravan had started on its journey. There was no gainsaying their splendid appearance. There were some twenty of them, clustered about their leader. They were diff and apim; the leader was a Kildoi. He reminded me so much of Korero that I had started up the first time I espied him as he cantered past on his swarth. He had the same beautiful physique, the same four hands and handtail, the same golden beard, glinting in the light of the suns. His eyes were lighter than Korero’s and, when I got a good look at them, held a lurking distaste in their depths I recoiled from in instinctive antipathy. In this, he was poles apart from Korero. The swarths they rode were powerful beasts but two or three hands less in height than those we had fought at First Kanarsmot. Their scales were of a more greenish-purple than the swarths we had defeated, which were of a more reddish-brown. The swarths’ wedge-shaped heads which protruded from their bodies on necks that were extensions of body and head, diminishing in diameter from body to head, all in a smooth curved line, so that of neck, really, they had nothing, were decorated barbarically with metals and jewels. Their trappings blazed. From the front a swarth presents a picture of a massive humped mass with that wedge-shaped head thrusting down and forward, the jaws sharp and pointed, the teeth bared and serrated like razor-edged saws.

The Kildoi who led this brilliant and barbaric group wore link-mesh of that superb quality that is manufactured in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. He affected a gilt-iron helmet. He wore a short slashed robe of white liberally encrusted with cloth of gold. His cape was short and flared spectacularly when he galloped. It was a bright hard yellow in color, edged in gold and silver. His feathers blew in white and yellow, fixed into a golden holding crest.

Yes, he looked magnificent, proud, barbaric, blazing with light under the suns.

“Who,” I had said to Sishi, “is that man?”

Sishi knew all the gossip of the caravan, and the scandals, too. She had looked and her color mounted.

“Is he not splendid? So brave, so bold and handsome—”

“Who is he?”

“Why, everyone must know! He is Prince Mefto — Prince Mefto A’Shanofero, Prince of Shanodrin!”

As she continued to stare after the Kildoi and his companions I shook my head. Shanodrin was a country situated in the heart of the Dawn Lands, west of Khorundur. It was a full rich land with great wealth to be won from the rocks and rivers.

Then Sishi heaved up a great sigh.

“Oh,” she said. “I do so love a prince!”

“And why not?” I said, I fear somewhat drily.

If there was one thing certain sure about Prince Mefto, he liked to show off. He and his swarthmen would gallop around the caravan like gulls circling a ship, affording visible proof to the people of their presence and the sharpness of their weapons.

And then Sishi, still enraptured with the dazzlement of the prince, said: “Prince Mefto — he is the best swordsman in the world.”

Well, for all I knew, he could be. I will have no truck with this nonsense of proclaiming boasts about the best swordsman of two worlds. I have expounded some of my philosophy anent the perils of swordplay and the doom by edge or point that lurks — if expound is not too pompous a word. So I made some light quip, whereat Sishi flounced around, blushing, and tried to hit me with the length of sausages she happened to be carrying for the lady Yasuri’s midday snack. With that deeply philosophic reminder, I went off to see about my duties as a paktun earning his hire.

The rich personages in their carriages had taken the obvious and sensible precaution of providing a supply of water for their own personal use. We knew Yasuri had her amphorae stacked in her coach, which we louts of her escort were not permitted to enter. Ineldar the Kaktu was cognizant of this trick, of course, and he did his best to share out the water on an equal basis. But, as Master Scatulo was not slow to point out with his sharp Jikaidast’s wit, the caravan water was paid for and for the use of all. What he, Master Scatulo, happened to have in his coach was by way of an extra and, by the Paktun’s Swod’s Gambit! was none of anyone else’s damn business.

These sentiments were shared by the lady Yasuri and the other upper crusties of the caravan. Poor old Deb-Lu-Quienyin, for all he was an apparently dried up old stick, seemed to be in need of water, and I had fallen into the habit of sharing my ration with him. I am often wholeheartedly glad that I can scratch along with little to drink, although preferring unending cups of tea, and when it comes to push of pike and there is a serious shortage of drink — I can manage, somehow. We had passed the stage where he would say how kind I was, and that people who assisted a Wizard of Loh usually wanted something in return, and now we would sip the water companionably and talk while our mouths were moist.

“Do you notice that our famous Master Scatulo usually talks in terms of Jikaida?”

“I had noticed.”

“An affectation. He plays all day. He plays against his slave, Bevon the Brukaj, and always he wins.”

“Well, he is a Jikaidast. They are professionals. They have to win to eat.”

“True. But watch Bevon. He is a skilled player. I believe he makes stupid moves deliberately so as to lose.”

“Scatulo would see that at once!” I protested.

“Maybe. Maybe he is too puffed up with pride.”

It was not exactly true to say Scatulo played all day. The board would come out the moment we halted and the Deldars would be Ranked; during traveling periods he read from the many books of Jikaida lore he carried with him in his coach.

I had fallen into friendly conversation with Bevon the Brukaj and had learned some of his history. His gentleness seemed to me to sit strangely with his evident craggy toughness. He carried no sword, although he confided to me that he could use a blade, and as a slave was equipped with a stout stave to defend his master. I knew Scatulo had a sword in his coach that Bevon might use if pressed. The Jikaidast’s orders to Bevon resounded with the ugly word “Grak!” It was grak this and grak that all day. Grak means jump, move,obey or your skin will be flayed off your back or you must work until you drop dead. It is, indeed, an ugly word.

I said to Bevon one day: “Are you a Jikaidast, Bevon?”

“No, Jak.” He fetched up a sigh. “I might have been back home but for my tragedy.” He looked mournful as he spoke. Well, his story was soon told, and ugly in the telling thereof. He had been accused of a cowp, and, as you know, a cowp is a particularly beastly and horrible kind of murder, in which sadism and mutilation form part. The people had cried out against him and he had been locked away and would have been slain in lawful retribution. “Had I been guilty, Jak, I think I would have stayed and let them kill me. But I was innocent, so I escaped.”

“I can’t see how anyone could think you would commit murder, Bevon.”

“The man who died had made advances to a girl with whom I was friendly. I do not know, but I think she slew him. But I was blamed. So I ran away to be a soldier and was taken up as a slave. I do not really mind, for my heart is not in life—”

“By Havil!” I said, incensed. “Now that is just not good enough. So you are slave. Why not escape when we reach Jikaida City—?”

“You know little of that place, I fear.”

“I know nothing.”

“They play Kazz-Jikaida there.” Kazz is Kregish for blood.

That did explain a great deal. It also explained a little of Prince Mefto’s vaunted nickname, for he was traveling to Jikaida City to play in the games, and his sobriquet was Mefto the Kazzur. That splendid prince was pirouetting his swarth about a little to the side of the space where the caravan had halted. I looked at him, and grew tired of his antics, and resumed our conversation. Whenever Bevon found the time away from his master’s Jikaida board we would talk, and he joined Deb-Lu-Quienyin and me at night around our fire. The Wizard of Loh regarded the Brukaj not as he did his own slave but rather as a potential Jikaidast who had temporarily fallen on evil times. Often Pompino would join us, and, to tell the truth, we played Jikaida as well as Jikalla and the Game of Moons. This latter is near mindless; but it amuses many folk whose brains for whatever reason are not able to grapple with Jikaida or any of the other superior games.

So, as we neared the water hole and the drikingers had not put in an appearance and we were hot and thirsty and fatigued, I fancied that we might find the damned bandits waiting for us at the water, mocking us, taunting us to try to reach the water hole against their opposition. Ineldar shared the thought, too, for he hoarded our water meanly. The caravan guards stood watch like hawks. During a halt when the suns burned down we drank little if at all, for the sweat would waste the precious fluid. That last night before the water hole, with the stars fat in the sky and the cooking fires burning with eye-aching brilliance, we took our water rations thankfully. What happened happened in a kind of copybook way, as though this were the moment I had been waiting for many seasons to arrive. When it did, I found I could not identify my emotions with any accuracy.

It turned out this way... At our fire the lady Yasuri and Master Scatulo finished their meals and retired to their coaches. Bevon, Pompino, Quienyin and myself lingered for a space, for we had hoarded a little water and were about to share it out between ourselves. It was legal water; that is, it was ours issued to us by Ineldar the Kaktu. Sishi slipped past her mistress’s coach to join us, giggling, for she had a little sazz with which to sweeten the water. She had probably stolen it from Yasuri, a procedure I regarded with both disfavor and applause. In return for the sazz, which would freshen the water and make of it a pleasant drink, Sishi was to receive her share. We would split the sazz five ways. Ionno the Ladle might come in for a few mouthfuls, also. To get the sequence right is not easy. In the starlight with the Twins just vaulting over the horizon and the flare of the fire we crouched around like conspirators. The rattle of a window shutter announced Master Scatulo’s peevish voice.

“Grak, Bevon! Grak, you idle, shiftless rast! Bring some water — Pallan’s Hikdar’s Swod to Pallan’s Hikdar’s sixth! Bratch! You useless cloddish lumop, Grak!”

With a sigh, Bevon stood up, a massive bent shape against the starlight. Quienyin murmured that he was not enamored of Scatulo’s notation. The fire struck sparks from a glinting figure that appeared, striding along between the caravan and the fires. I saw this was Prince Mefto. Bevon took up his goblet and started for Scatulo’s carriage. Prince Mefto, leading his swarth, approached. There was nothing any of us could say to halt Bevon and to persuade him that the water ration was his. His master had demanded it and Bevon was slave.

A fellow who had been slave a long time and grown cunning in slavish ways would have gulped the sazz down instantly and then whined that there was no water — and if he got a beating for it would regard that as quits doubled, once for drinking the water himself and second for depriving his master of it. But Bevon was gentle and unschooled in the devious ways of the world. And, too, there is every chance that he really felt his master required the sazz — oh, yes, absolutely. Something like that must surely have been in his mind in view of what occurred.

Mefto was swigging from a bottle. He resealed this and moving to the side of his swarth thrust the bottle away. He patted the swarth’s greenish-purple scaled head. He saw Bevon.

“Hai, slave! Kraitch-ambur,[4]my swarth, is thirsty. Give me that water.”

Bevon halted.

Better he should have run into the darkness.

Prince Mefto frowned. We could see his resplendent figure reflecting our firelight. His lower right hand fell to one of his sword hilts.

“Slave, the water! Grak!”

“Master,” stammered Bevon. “It is for my master—”

“To a Herrelldrin Hell with your master! I shall not tell you again, slave. The water!”

Bevon just stood, his dogged face perplexed, his massive shoulders hunched, it seemed, protectively over the goblet. Scatulo yelled again and Bevon jumped and Mefto reached forward to snatch the water and the goblet fell and the sazz-flavored water spread into the dirt.

“You onker! You stupid yetch!”

Prince Mefto was incensed. He whipped out the sword he gripped and with another hand patted his swarth affectionately. “My poor Kraitch-ambur! There is no water for you. But the slave will be punished!”

With that Mefto the Kazzur began hitting Bevon with the flat of his sword. Desperately attempting to protect himself with upraised arms, the Brukaj was knocked over onto the ground. The Kildoi went on hitting him sadistically with the flat.

I stood up.

Pompino rose at my side and put a hand on my arm.

“No, Jak. He will take it amiss if you interfere.”

“Had I my powers,” sighed Quienyin, and took a sip of his drink.

Sishi was gasping and her hands were pressed fiercely to her breast, her face shining in the firelight. Now Bevon was beginning to yell, the first cries of pain that had passed his lips. The sword rose and fell with wet soggy sounds. Bevon rolled this way and that, a huddled quivering mass, defenseless.

“No, Jak!” Pompino pulled me.

I shook him off and walked across to this gallant Prince Mefto the Kazzur.

“Jak! He will slaughter you!”

The prince paused in the beating to look across Bevon’s prostrate and groaning form. His golden eyebrows drew down menacingly. His upper right hand dropped to the second sword hilt.

“Well, rast?”

I said, “Prince. You chastise this man unjustly—”

I got no further. Soft words were not the currency of Mefto the Kazzur. He simply said, “Yetch, you presume to your death!”

He leaped Bevon and charged full at me, two swords whistling. Both were thraxters. I drew my thraxter and parried the first blows. I gave ground, circling, already realizing I was in for a fight. To be forced to kill this fellow would lead to most unpleasant consequences, for he was a prince and I a hired paktun.

It seemed to me in the first few moments of the fight that I dare not slay him and must therefore seek to stretch him out senseless. He would have to be tackled as I tackle a Djang, with the added complication of his tail-hand. He was rather like a Djang with his four arms and a Kataki with his tail rolled into one. I have fought Djangs and Katakis, and one Djang can dispose of — well, of a lot of Katakis. This unpleasant cramph was a Kildoi.

Nine inches of daggered steel whipped up in his tail-hand and twinkled between his legs at me. With a skip and jump I got out of the way. I did not slash the tail off. As we fought I fancied I had not sliced his tail off because that was the beginning of more trouble, that he had to be knocked out. As we fought I realized that he had not let me slice his tail off.

He was a marvel.

We fought. The blades flashed and rang with that sliding screech. Oh, yes, he had three blades against my one; but that was not it, not it at all. I knew and he knew, after a space. He drew back. He was smiling. He looked pleased.

“Whoever you are, paktun, I have never met a better swordsman. But I think you must number your days now.”

The best swordsman in the world, Sishi had called him.

I didn’t know if he was that. But I did know that I had, at last, met my match.

Chapter Twelve

The Fight Beside the Caravan

Every swordsman must be aware that one day he may meet his match and so enter his last fight. One reads so often of our intrepid hero who is so vastly superior as a swordsman, fighting other wights, and toying with them, cutting them up, with the outcome never in doubt. As you know I had always entered each fight with the knowledge that this could be the time I met my master. Oh, yes, I have cut up opponents, as I have related. One reads of the way in which the hero goes about his task. But now, here under the fatly glowing stars of Kregen, with the Moons rising and the crimson firelight playing upon the halted caravan, I was in nowise being gently admonished and taught a lesson, rather I was being sadistically tortured before the end.

With a convulsive snatch I managed to get my dagger out and into play. That made two blades against three. But this Kildoi was a master bladesman. The swords wove their deceptive patterns of steel. He knew every trick I essayed. He showed me three or four I’d never come across and only by desperate efforts I managed to escape, and even then I believe he let me, for the fun of it. Once a swordsman sees a trick he knows it — as I have said — otherwise he is dead.

I learned.

But I knew that he knew more than I did. And, all the time, his two left arms poised prettily and the hands hung gracefully. If he wished, he could bring two more blades into the fight. Well, to take some ludicrous credit, after a space he hauled out a short sword with his upper left hand, and pressed me. I knew now I was fighting for my life and any thought of merely hitting him over the head was long flown. I rallied and fought back, and the swords clashed and clanged, and then, and I saw the fact as proof of something and as a final death warrant, his lower left fist pulled out a long dagger. So now he had five weapons against my two, and some of the smile was gone from his handsome face with the golden beard blowing.

Could Korero, I wondered, fight like this?

I’d have to see when I got back to Vallia.

And then... The truth was I wasn’t going to get back to Vallia... Not after Prince Mefto the Kazzur had finished with me.

As some fighting men do, he talked as he battled.

“You are good, paktun, very good. I would love to talk to you about your victories, your instructors. But I am a prince and I do not tolerate your kind of conduct.”

He cut me about the left shoulder and I swirled away and then used a risky attack to land a hit on his left shoulder. I saw the blood there, a smear in the light. We both wore light tunics, having doffed our armor. His face went mean.

“You think, you rast, you can better me? Me, Mefto the Kazzur, who fought his way to a princedom over the bodies of his foes? Fool!”

Well, yes, I was a fool, right enough.

I hit him again, a glancing blow across his face and severed a chunk of his beard. Those two hits were the only ones I scored.

He pinked me again and I slid two of his blades and a third and fourth chunked a gouge out of my right side.

He was beginning to enjoy himself.

He didn’t like the cut on his face. I hoped it left an ugly scar, the rast. Swordsmen have their little foibles. He had me in his toils, right enough. But as we fought and I tried the old trick of dismembering him piecemeal, being unable to finish him with a body thrust, I began to pick up hints as to his favored techniques. The trouble was, it was not just that he had five blades, or that his technique was well-nigh perfect, but that he was just supremely good. He was not quite as fast as me; had he been I’d have been stretched lifeless by now.

So I began to work out a last desperate gamble that would break all the rules and would make or break. Truth to tell, I had little real hope. The moment I began the passage I fancied he would detect instantly the attack and know the correct counter. But desperate situations demand desperate remedies. I was bleeding profusely now; but all the cuts were shallow and I knew he but toyed with me. He was chattering away as we fought.

“I joy in this contest, paktun! By the Blade of Kurin! You are indeed a master bladesman.”

Maybe — but I was like to be a dead bladesman, master or not...

With a sudden and ferocious passade he began an attack aimed at slicing off my left ear — I think. I defended desperately, and gave ground, and faintly I heard screams and guessed Sishi and Pompino were riveted by this spectacle.

Time for the last great gamble... I positioned myself and a long arrow abruptly sprouted from Mefto’s right shoulder, between those cunningly swiveled double joints.

He screamed.

He fell back, screeching, and he dropped all his weapons.

Another arrow hissed past my head and went thwunk into the painted wood of Scatulo’s carriage. Without a thought I dropped flat and dived under the coach.

Well — yes.

The drikingers had played us and now they drove in to finish us completely and steal all we had. Logic indicated they had chosen their time well. We were at rest, we were short of water, we were tired and apprehensive, and we ought all to have been asleep but for the sentries, and they, poor devils, would no doubt be sprawled with slit throats. The fight had given the bandits pause and some intemperate hothead had loosed at us and so the alarm was raised.

The drikingers were blessed by me, then, I can tell you.

And, to be honest and all the same — that second arrow would have pinned me but for the instinctive move I’d made when the first one shafted Mefto. Speed — that was all I had as advantage over Mefto, and it was speed of reaction that in the end had saved me.

The caravan roused and the paktuns turned out and Bevon took up his sword from Master Scatulo’s carriage and we fought.

The fight was savage and unpleasant with much carving up of leathery hides and stripping of bright feathers; but at last we drove the drikingers off and collapsed, exhausted. These skirling events were just those I had been missing as emperor in Vallia... How far removed this brisk little encounter was from the ordered and planned evolutions of the Phalanx!

But, death attended both in equal measure.

In the morning we buried our dead or cremated those whose religious convictions demanded that ingress to the Ice Floes of Sicce. Various gods were apostrophized for good fortune for the ibs of the departed. As for the drikingers, we found only three of them, twisted in death by the wagon wheels, and these, too, we buried. They had been lean hardy men, apims, with leathery skins and ferocious bunches of hair dyed purple, and with scraps of armor looted from previous caravans. Of the other bandit dead, they had been all carried off by their comrades.

So, groaning and protesting, the caravan moved off and safely reached the water hole and from then on the journey across the Desolate Waste proceeded as such a journey should — filled with alarums and excursions but with a happy arrival at the end.

The country opened out and grew fat and rich once we crossed the River of Purple Rushes. There was a ford and a strong fort and parties of warriors of Aidrin to escort us in. They greeted us in jocular mood, making light of our problems, telling us of the troubles that previous unfortunate caravans had endured. There were caravans that set out from Songaslad, the town of thieves, that never reached the River of Purple Rushes. White and yellow bones scattered over the Desolate Waste marked their endings. From the fort by the ford, Prince Mefto was carried swiftly ahead of us, with his men, to Jikaida City. He left the caravan. He had not spoken to me and was reputed badly injured — and at the time I suspected that an arrow in the cunning double-joint had done more harm than it would do to a fellow with only two arms to fight with. I had kept a strict watch for revenge; but nothing transpired. What honor code he followed, if any, I did not know. But I had the strongest — and nastiest — suspicion that I had not heard the last of Prince Mefto the Kazzur.

If I do not dwell overmuch on my reactions to that fight I think you will respect that. I had had a shock, all right; and, too, I had grown in understanding. In future, fights would not be quite the same again; but I fancied I knew enough of Dray Prescot to guess what he would do. One is as one is, and like the Scorpion, must hew to nature’s path.

The Wizard of Loh, Deb-Lu Quienyin, was overjoyed to have reached his destination safely.

“I shall seek out San Orien at once. He, I feel sure, I hope, will be able to cure me — to retrieve my powers.”

Saying remberee to him I brought up the subject I had been harboring for long. “I am confident he will do everything he can to aid you, San. Tell me, do you know of a Wizard of Loh called Phu-Si-Yantong?”

“Dear San Yantong! I have not heard of him for ages.”

Well, now...

How Wizards of Loh kept in touch was a subject not for ordinary men. But old Deb-Lu-Quienyin burbled on happily about Yantong, the biggest villain unhanged, and I wondered if there could be two Wizards of Loh with the same name. But now, Quienyin would have none of that. He had not heard of Yantong for many seasons, and when last he had been in contact Yantong had been building up a useful practice in Loh. “Of course, I always felt he was marked for great things. There was an aura about him, despite his difficulty. I do hope he prospers.”

There was no point in arguing about that; but I did pick up one or two useful hints from Quienyin. He was reticent about this “difficulty” of Yantong’s, and would not be drawn, and I wondered if Phu-Si-Yantong was indeed the cripple he had pretended to be and that was his difficulty. We watched Master Scatulo’s coach trundling off to the superior inn where the Jikaidast would stay until, as Bevon put it: “He has established his credentials.”

LionardDen, Jikaida City, was given over to one thing in life. Jikaida. The game consumed the people. Of course, they lived by it and it paid them handsome dividends. Their country of Aidrin was rich in worldly goods, the fields and mines and rivers yielded a bountiful harvest. People flocked from all over to play Kazz-Jikaida. There were enormous fortunes to be made. There were reputations to be made. Standing saying remberee to the Wizard of Loh, Pompino said to me, “I do not fancy staying here overmuch. But it seems we may have to.”

Quienyin nodded. “When a caravan returns across the Desolate Waste, I think. It is suicide to attempt the crossing alone or in small numbers. And all west of here across the lakes is dreadful, so I am told by those who know — leem hunters and the like.”

I said: “D’you fancy the life of a leem-hunter, Pompino?”

Quienyin laughed and my fellow kregoinye made a face. “By Horato the Potent, Jak. No!”

“You could take employment in the games.”

“How so, San?”

“Why, stout fighting men are always wanted. I, myself, do not care for Kazz-Jikaida. But it has its attractions.”

“We will, I think, find out a little more first,” Pompino told me, whereat, feeling my wounds still a little sore, I nodded agreement.

Jikaida City certainly was beautiful, with airy kyros and broad avenues and with houses that were graceful and colonnaded against the heat and thick-walled against the cold. The climate, by reason of the lakes, was not too extreme this deeply in the center of the continent. Everywhere the checkerboard was used as decoration. One could grow tired of the continual repetition. Even the soldiers’ cloaks were checkered black and white.

Quienyin shook his head. “If you go as a warrior you will be expected, as part of your duties, to act in the games. That is understood.”

“I have no wish to be a soldier,” said Pompino. Truth to tell, we two kregoinye were stranded here. And there was not a single sight of a golden and scarlet raptor circling arrogantly above us, mocking us with his squawk.

The lady Yasuri paid us off, and she had the grace to thank us for our services. But paid off we were, and so were at a loose end. I said to Pompino: “I am for going back across the Desolate Waste. I have urgent business that will not wait.”

“No business,” he said sententiously, “is more important than that of the Everoinye.”

One could not argue with that sentiment. But I was serious.

“If we can buy or steal a couple of fluttrells—”

“They are more precious than gold. And how many have you seen since we arrived?”

“None.” There were volroks and other flying men abroad on the streets of the city; but we saw no aerial cavalry. That there must be some seemed to me probable. I’d have a saddle-bird, I promised myself; but in the interim until I gained one we had to find something to do. So, as we had known, the games drew us.

“Anyway,” I said as we hitched up our belts and went off to find a suitable tavern, “Ineldar the Kaktu will be taking a caravan back across the Desolate Wastes. We have only to sign on with him as caravan guards.”

Chapter Thirteen

In Jikaida City

Before we patronized a tavern there was a duty Pompino and I must do vital to any good Kregan. We retained the shirts and trousers given to us by the lady Yasuri; but all else had been returned. We could feel the golden deldys wrapped in scraps of rag and tucked into our belts. Our first port of call was the armorers.

The fashion of rapier and main gauche imported from Vallia and Zenicce into Hamal had not yet reached this far south into Havilfar. We chose good serviceable thraxters, and swished the cut and thrust swords about in the dim shop with its racks of weapons and armor. The proprietor was a Fristle. He stroked his whiskers as we pawed over his goods.

“Nothing better in Jikaida City, doms. Friendly Fodo — that’s me — can set you up with an arsenal for the finest caravan across the Desolate Waste.”

“Just a sword and dagger,” I said, pleasantly. “And a brigandine, I think?” with an inquiring look at Pompino.

“I have this beautiful kax,” said Friendly Fodo, giving the breast and back a vigorous polish. It was iron, with scrollwork around the edges. We did not even bother to inquire the price as we refused. We had to make our pay spin out until we found fresh employment.

The reason I had chosen a brigandine, in which the metal plates are riveted through the material, instead of an English jack, where the plates are stitched and threaded, was simply that even a cursory inspection of the workmanship of the jack Friendly Fodo displayed showed it was Krasny work, inferior. Pompino chose a brigandine and then he touched the forte of his thraxter. Neatly incised in the metal was that familiar magical pattern of figure nines interlocked.

“You’re in luck, dom,” said Friendly Fodo. “A high-class weapon. Came from a Chulik who died of a fever.”

Examination of the thraxter I eventually chose for its feel and balance revealed a tiny punched mark in the form of the Brudstern, that open-flower shaped form whose magic is whispered rather than spoken. I nodded, amused, and paid over the gold required.

Pompino bought solid boots and, after a moment’s hesitation, I bought softer, lower-cut bootees. Walking barefoot is no hardship for me, an old sailorman, within reason. Then, after a few other necessary purchases in the Arcade of Freshness, we placed our new belongings into a small satchel and rolled off to the tavern to begin the next important duty laid on a good Kregan. Truly, Beng Dikkane, the patron saint of all the ale drinkers of Paz, smiled on Jikaida City. We had a whole new city and its inhabitants to explore, a happy situation, and after the rigors of the journey Pompino certainly, and I, I confess a little wryly, without too many reservations, set about easing the dust from our throats and seeing what there was to be seen and generally winding down. The wounds I had taken, although superficial, itched nonetheless, and the soreness persisted. Pompino did remark with a twitch of his foxy face that, perhaps, that rast Mefto the Kazzur used poisoned blades. But that is unusual on Kregen.

Very soberly I said, “He has no need of that kind of trick. He is the best swordsman I have ever met.” I drank a long swigging draught, for by this time we were on our second and the alehouse was filling up with mid-morning customers. “But he is a rast, more’s the pity. All his prowess and skill has not taught him humility.”

“He’s a yetch who ought to be—”

“Quite. He is the best swordsman. But he is not the greatest.”

“Yet, Jak, if I had his skill with the sword would I feel humble?” Pompino pondered that. “I do not think so.”

“If you had been picked by the gods to be favored with a great gift, as Mefto surely has, would you feel arrogance over that? Or would you feel awe — and a little fear?”

Pompino stared at me over the pewter rim of his goblet.

“Jak — we are kregoinye. We have been marked!”

“By Havil!” I said, and I sat back, astounded.

After a space in which sylvie glided over to refill our goblets and Pompino spilled out a couple of copper coins, I said, “All the same. It is not the same — if you see what I mean. Mefto’s gift and our tasks cannot stand comparison.”

Pompino was staring after the sylvie and licking his lips.

“I’m surprised a place like this can afford to hire a sylvie — slave or not. They tend to — to distract a fellow.”

That was true.

“We should, I think,” I said, “find Ineldar the Kaktu and make sure he will hire us for the return journey. We must know when he is starting.” I looked around and lowered my voice. “I begin to think we will not find a fluttrell or mirvol to steal in this city.”

“Agreed. But another stoup first, Jak.”

By the time we left to explore the city, Pompino was very merry. We quickly discovered that Jikaida City was not one but two. Twinned cities under the twin suns flourish all over Kregen, of course. The extensive shallow depression between low and rolling hills cupped the twin cities in a figure-eight shape. Between them rose edifices of enormous extent whose function was to house the games. We strolled along in the sunshine, admiring the sights, and Pompino kept breaking into little snatches of song, half to himself, half to any passersby who took his fancy. Despite myself, I did not pretend I was not with him. After all, he had proved a comrade.

Many of the more important avenues radiated away from the central mass of the Jikaidaderen and the buildings reflected the architectural tastes of many nations and races. In one avenue we saw a low-walled structure over the gate of which hung a banner, flapping gently in the light breeze, which read: NATH EN

SCREETZIM.

Underneath, in letters only slightly less loud, was the Kregish for: “Patronized by the leading Jikaidasts.”

Pompino ogled the sign owlishly. “Are you a leading Jikaidast, Jak? I can rank my Deldars and — and reach the first drin. But after that—” He paused to bow deeply to a couple of passing matrons, who eyed him as though the flat stones of Havilfar had yawned and yielded up their denizens. “After that, dom, why

— it all gets confusing.”

“Stick to Jikalla.”

“No, no. The Game of Moons for me. Then the dice decide.”

For some perverse reason I defended the Game of Moons. “And skill, also, Pompino. You can’t deny that.”

He staggered three paces to larboard, smiled, and lurched four paces to starboard.

“Deny it? I love it!”

“Come on. They’ll have you inside with a sword in your fist before you can call on Horato the Potent.”

He nodded his head with great solemnity, his face glazed, his mouth slowly opening and then closing with a snap, only once more to drop open. I took his arm and steered him along the avenue away from Nath the Swordsman’s premises.

Nath’s place was not the only establishment we saw where the arts and skills and disciplines of fighting were taught. After my contretemps with Mefto I wondered — and not altogether in the abstract —

whether or not I might benefit from a fresh course of instruction. One fact seemed clear to me from what I had pieced together of Mefto’s career. As a Kildoi he was by nature possessed of formidable advantages in the fighting business. He had left his native Balintol seasons ago and had ruffled and swaggered his way through the Dawn Lands as a mercenary, rapidly rising through paktun to be hyr-paktun and privileged to wear the golden pakzhan at his throat. Then, with all the raffish and bloody accompaniments to revolution, he had taken command of a band of near-masichieri and with their help overthrown the old prince of Shanodrin and taken over the country, the titles, the wealth and the power. His legal acceptance had soon followed. By all the laws of Kregen, he was now Prince of Shanodrin. The revolution by itself would not have been enough — in law — to give him the right. The bokkertu had to be made. Then Mefto the Kazzur became Prince Mefto and could take the name of A’Shanofero as his own.

From what little I knew of the man I wondered why he had chosen a principality and not a kingdom. But, probably, he had his avaricious gaze already fixed on his next victim. Looked at completely dispassionately, Mefto the Kazzur had merely done what I, myself, had done. All the same, the idea of Mefto lording it as Emperor of Vallia sent a little shudder up my backbone.

“You ill, Jak?”

“Not as much as you, you old soak, Pompino.”

“Don’t get away from the wife enough, that’s my trouble.”

“Then may Havil the Green smile on us, and the Everoinye set another task to our hands.”

“Amen to that, by the pot belly of Beng Dikkane!”

The twin Suns of Scorpio, the red and the green, are not called Zim and Genodras in Havilfar, but Far and Havil. Usually on Kregen, Jikaida boards are checkered in blue and yellow or white and black. There are places where the red and green are used; Jikaida City was not, as far as I knew, one of them. As we neared the imposing pile of the Jikaidaderen the walls assumed something of their true stature, and we saw the palace was large, perfectly capable of accommodating many laid-out Kazz-Jikaida boards. The place was a maze of inner buildings, a vast complex not, I suppose, unlike the Jikhorkduns surrounding the amphitheatres and the arenas of Hamal and Hyrklana and other places. We strolled along, and Pompino was singing a charming if foolish ditty about a Pandaheem who kissed the baker’s wife and went floury white to see the sweep’s wife, whereat he became sooty black. The song is called

“Black is White and White is Black” and I will not repeat it.

The city within Jikaida City in which we thus swaggered along was bedecked with yellow. The other city claimed the blue. They had names, long rigmaroles of high boasting; but folk usually called them just Yellow City or Blue City. I had to stop myself from joining in some of Pompino’s songs. And, I wondered how long it would be before the Watch employed by the Nine Guardians would heave up to arrest us.

Each city was run by its own Masked Nine, and they had no kings or queens here. They did have a nobility, and from this aristocracy were drawn the Guardians of the Masked Nine. The system employed was a democratic one that extended only to these nobles and their families; but within that limitation they voted for office and did not fight for it. Jikaida drew the fires of the blood, so it was said. As a secret ballot was used, the successful candidates remained anonymous, masked, inducted into office by their peers. This system had, so far, proved effective in preventing unrest from developing into revolution. The army and the Watch obeyed the orders of the Masked Nine Guardians and enforced their edicts. We had heard of punishments for disobedience that would give nightmares to a seasoned paktun. All was balance, force countering force, and, over all, the games of Jikaida dominated the twin cities of Jikaida City.

The truth would not be served in saying the inhabitants of Blue City and Yellow City hated one another. They were rivals, at times deadly rivals; but all their hostility was played out on the Jikaida boards. Yellow against Blue. Blue against Yellow. Their loyalties to their color city and their partisanship were alike intense. They were dedicated. The forces aloof from this rivalry, the religious orders, the army —

and very few others, by Krun! — were still infected by the Jikaida fever and wore black and white checkerboarded insignia. Havil the Green was a noted deity here, with his temples and priests; but there were others, plenty of them in apparently equal prominence. On the surface there appeared no sign of Lem the Silver Leem, for which I was thankful, although I kept my eyes open on that score. Managing to drag Pompino off without further problems and keeping the Watch well in the offing, I found a suitable hostelry in the middle-sections of Yellow City called The Pallan’s Swod. Here, after due payment, I was able to deposit Pompino in a bed and close the door on his snores. Useless to detail my doings after that; they boiled down to confirmation of the absence of flyers, the vowed testimony from seasoned leem-hunters that only death by suicide awaited across the lakes, and that Ineldar the Kaktu would be returning when a caravan had been assembled and when that would be, by Havil, he had no idea. In the meantime he was going to drink up and visit the public games and have himself a good time and that was what Pompino and I should do. He’d be pleased to hire us as caravan guards when the time was ripe.

Then he lowered his flagon and laid a long brown finger against his nose. The uproar in the tavern around us masked our words from all but ourselves. He winked.

“That run in you had with Mefto the Kazzur. You are lucky to be alive. He is a marvel with his swords.”

“Aye.”

“You bear him no rancor?”

“Not for beating me. But, as to himself, as a man—”

“Agreed. Listen. Go to see Konec na Brugheim. He puts up at the Blue Rokveil. Speak of the king korf. Do not mention my name.” He drew his finger down his nose and reached for his flagon. He looked at me, once, a shrewd hard glance, and then away. “I have spoken.”

“Thank you,” I said, not completely sure of what I should thank him for, but detecting his intention to help. He drank noisily and then bellowed for more wine, for the suns were declining. I joined him in a flagon of Yellow Unction, and then hied myself back to The Pallan’s Swod to find Pompino not holding his head and groaning, but cursingly trying to pull his boots back on and thirsting for more singing and amphorae of wine.

I draw the veil on that night’s doings. But Pompino rolled back to the tavern with his head flung back and his mouth wide open, yodeling to the Moons of Kregen.

In the morning I took myself off to find this Konec na Brugheim at the sign of the Blue Rokveil, and to discover what secrets would be unlocked at the mention of the king korf.

Chapter Fourteen

Of the Fate of Spies

As the Zairians of the Eye of the World say: “Only Zair knows the cleanliness of a human heart.” I had said I held no rancor against Mefto, and I believed that. But, humanly fallible as I am, perhaps a lingering resentment impelled me to watch my back with a sharper scrutiny even than usual as I walked gently along in the early morning opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. That vigilance which may have been caused by bitterness and suppressed longings for revenge served me well on that morning I walked in Jikaida City to talk about the king korf to a man I did not know.

They picked me up a couple of streets from the hostelry and they paced me, fifty paces or so to my rear. They kept to the shadowed side of the street. There were four of them and they wore swords and were dressed in inconspicuous gray and blue, as was I, save that their favors were of a hard bright yellow. There were two apims, a Rapa and a Brokelsh. I walked on, placidly, and pondered the indisputable fact that no man or woman born of Opaz knows all the secrets of Imrien.

The decision I reached seemed to me common sense. With a succession of alterations in course and speed, and with a swift vanishing into the mouth of a side alley where a stall loaded with appetizing roasted chingleberries smoked in the early light, I lost them. I kept up a good pace, but not too obtrusive a bustle in the morning activity, and so circled the Jikaidaderen and came into Blue City. Would those rasts with their yellow favors follow here?

Finding the Blue Rokveil was simplicity itself; the first person I asked looked as though I was a loon and jerked his thumb, marked with ink, for he was a stylor, to a broad avenue lined by impressive buildings. The place was there, clearly signposted, and looked to be an establishment more properly called a hotel than a hostelry. Only persons of standing and wealth would gain admittance as guests. I walked calmly to a side gate where Fristle slaves were trundling amphorae and shrilling orders at one another, and went in. The yard led by way of odoriferous stables to a long gray wall, mellow in the light, clothed with moon blooms, their outer petals extended and the inner tightly folded. From over the wall came a familiar sound

— the ring and chingle of steel on steel and the quick panting for breath, the scrape and stamp of feet seeking secure purchases. A wicket gate showed me men at sword practice. I half-turned, prepared to move on.

Hung on a wooden post just within the gate, and already burnished to a shining brilliance, a silvered iron breastplate was being lovingly polished up by a little Och slave. He had three of his upper limbs busily polishing away and with the fourth he was surreptitiously stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth between those puffy jaws. And good luck to you, my old dom, I was saying to myself as, being an old fighting man, my eye was caught by the sudden and splendid attack one of the energetic and sweating combatants within the courtyard essayed against his opponent in this early morning practice session. The opponent, a strongly built Fristle, gave ground. The assailant, an apim with strands of extraordinarily long yellow hair swirling, leaped in, roaring his pleasure, his good nature blazingly evident on his round, cheerful, pugnacious face. The men at practice in there all wore breechclouts and sandals. The apim whirled his sword in a silvered pattern of deceptive cunning and the Fristle, ducking and retreating, must have felt that steel net whistling about his whiskers perilously close.

“Ha, Fropo! I have you now!”

“Hold off! Hold off! I’ll slice your hair!”

“You dare!”

And with the speed of a striking chavonth the big apim, his yellow hair coruscating about his head in the light, leaped and struck — and the sword hovered an inch from the Fristle’s throat.

“D’you bare the throat?”

“Aye, may Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor pardon me, Dav. I bare the throat.”

With a great bellow of good-natured laughter the apim whipped his sword away and clapped a meaty hand around the Fristle’s golden-furred shoulders. “You let me best you, Fropo, by thinking of my hair. It never gets in my eyes — ever.”

Now they were at rest the two looked an oddly assorted couple, the Fristle and the apim. The apim, this Dav, was a splendidly built man, bulging with muscle; but I fancied his beginnings of an ale-gut might slow him down in a season or so if he did not temper his homage to Ben Dikkane. So looking at these two as they snatched up towels to wipe the sweat away I saw reflections in the brilliant polish of the breastplate. The Och had dropped his piece of bread and bent to retrieve it. In the polished kax I saw four distorted figures. One was Rapa, one Brokelsh, and two were apims. The Rapa lifted his hand and light splintered.

Even as I turned sharply away prepared to duck in the right direction, the big apim called Dav poised his sword and threw. It hissed through the air. It buried its point in the Rapa’s breast, smashing through his leather jerkin, crunching into his bones, spouting blood.

In the next instant I had drawn and was running upon the Brokelsh and his apim comrades. With a clang the blades crossed. I was aware of the Fristle, Fropo, and the apim, Dav, running up. Somewhere, someone had shouted: “’Ware your back, dom!”

The Rapa was done for, the dagger spilled into the dust. His viciously beaked face lay against the earth. But as my sword felt the savage blows of these would-be stikitches, I felt a new and wholly unexpected sensation — an unwelcome and treacherously deadly emotion.

I recalled that last fight with Mefto, and the way he had bested me. My blade faltered. The apims had sized me up and were pressing hard and somehow and, I think of its own volition, my thraxter leaped to parry their blows. But I saw again those five lethal blades of Mefto flashing before my eyes. My throat was dry. I leaped and slashed the blade about and caught the Brokelsh in the side. The Brokelsh are a squat-bodied race of diffs, and he staggered and recovered and came for me again. Then Fropo’s sword switched in and took the Brokelsh in play, Dav took one of the apims, and I was left to face the last. Whatever my emotions had been, however the feelings had scorched through my brain, I felt the old secrets flowing along my arm and through my wrist and into my hand. I turned the sword over and beat and twitched and so lunged, and stepped back.

Fropo and Dav were standing looking at me. The Brokelsh and the other apim were coughing their guts out.

“You were a mite slow, dom,” said Dav, in his affable way. “You need to sharpen up.”

“Yes,” I said. I took a breath. “My thanks—”

“Against them? The apim I took I know. Naghan the Sly, he was called. Look.” Dav bent and ripped away the big blue favor. Under it the hard yellow showed. “They tried to cowp you from the back, the yetches. Well, they’ll never report back to Mefto the Kazzur, may he rot in Cottmer’s Caverns.”

I said, “My thanks again. But I do not think they could have known you — who know them — would be here. They would not have been so bold.”

“Right, dom. They would not. And,” Here his big smile burst out. He wore a little tufty beard bisecting his chin, and he was burly, no doubt of that, genial. “And no Lahal between us. I am Dav Olmes. Lahal. This is Fropo the Curved.”

“I am Jak. Lahal, Dav Olmes. Lahal, Fropo the Curved.”

“And now I need three stoups of best ale, one after t’other,” quoth Dav. “Instanter, by the Blade of Kurin.”

So I knew he was a swordsman, and we went into the courtyard and found the ale and washed the dust away down our throats. And, for me, Dray Prescot known as Jak, the dust went down bitter with unease.

No need to ask where the sword with which Dav had made such pretty play had come from. The little Och was wailing away and scrabbling around picking up the scattered items of the harness that Dav had ripped to pieces from its hangings on the post. The beautifully polished kax had fallen with a crash. The gilt helmet with the brave blue feathers still rolled about, like a balancing act. Now Dav threw the sword at the Och, who caught it with the unthinking skill of the man who spends his life with weapons, free or slave.

“Thank you, notor, thank you,” chattered the Och.

“That,” said Fropo, “was the kov’s own blade.”

“Aye. And very fine, too. Now where is this ale?”

“The Och called you notor,” I said. Notor is the usual Hamalian way of saying lord. We say jen in Vallia. Before Dav had recovered from his gutsy laugh at my words, Fropo, with sudden seriousness, said:

“Aye. This is Dav Olmes, the Vad of Bilsley.”

A vad is a high rank of nobility indeed, and they had mentioned a kov. I said, “And the kov?”

Fropo sucked through his teeth. “Konec Yadivro, the Kov of Brugheim.”

Ineldar the Kaktu could have told me I was going to see a kov, by Krun!

Dav had found the ale and after he had demolished the first stoup in two swallows, he said: “The kov and I do not parade our ranks here in Jikaida City. We have work to do that—” Here he took the opportunity of destroying the second stoup. Then: “By this little fracas I take it you have run afoul of Prince Mefto the Kazzur the yetch?”

“Aye.” I told them I had fought Mefto, and lost, and had been saved by the drikingers. They expressed the opinion that I must be somewhat of a bladesman after all, not to have been slain in the first pass or two. And, I knew, I had stood like a loon, shaking, when I had crossed swords with these stikitches. Kov Konec and his comrades had reached Jikaida City a few days earlier in a caravan whose master was Inarartu the Dokor, the twin brother of Ineldar the Kaktu, and this explained Ineldar’s knowledge, I thought.

The kov turned out to be a strong, frank-faced man with charming manners. I formed the opinion that he placed great reliance on the opinions and advice from Dav. Their estates, those of Brugheim and Bilsley, lay in Mandua, a country immediately to the west of Mefto’s Shanodrin. At once I realized the rivalry existing, and determined that it had nothing to do with me. Mefto could go hang; Vallia counted for me, and nowhere else. I was wrong there, of course.

However, I did take the opportunity in conversation of remarking that I knew a Bowman of Loh who swore that shafts fletched with the blue feathers of the king korf were superior to any other. I thought it tactful not to mention that Seg had also revised his opinion and had been heard to admit that the rose-red feathers of the zim-korf of Valka were as good. He wouldn’t admit, as many a bowman felt, that they were superior.

“You know about the king korf, then, Jak?”

“A little. Not enough, kov.”

“You call me Konec, Jak, here in Jikaida City.”

“Konec.”

“You have no love for Mefto?”

“He bested me. It was a fair fight—”

“A man with four arms and a tail?”

It rankled; but I had to say it, if only to show myself that I was not blinded by self-esteem. “It was not that, Konec. He is just simply superb. I think, perhaps, with other weapons he might... But it would be a brave man who would go up against him, man to man.”

“Aye,” said Fropo, and he riffled his whiskers.

“His ambitions are overweening. He must be stopped before he brings ruin to all the Dawn Lands. It is here in Jikaida City that we stand the best chance, paradoxical though that may appear.”

Dav chipped in to say, “If you are with us, Jak—”

I said, “There is the story in the old legends, true or false who can say after thousands of seasons? The legend of Lian Brewis and his enchanted brush. He was the artist for the gods, he could draw and paint so beautifully that his creations came alive, and peopled the world, and what the gods spoke of, Lian Brewis created out of paint.”

“The story is known over Kregen and is very beautiful,”said Dav. “So—?”

“So when the evil gods grew jealous in their wrath they took up Lian Brewis. He was cut off in full flower, a plump, jolly, wonderful person. And the gods for whom he had created so much beauty arose likewise in their just wrath and placed Lian Brewis as that constellation of stars that adorns the Heavens of Kregen. He can never be forgotten.” I looked at them, at their serious faces, and understood the intensity of their determination to halt Prince Mefto in his career of conquest. “Be sure the gods do not—”

“They will not,” said Konec, and he spoke with power. “You may rest assured on that.”

There was always the chance that the Rapa, the Brokelsh and the two apims had been sacrificed by their master just so that he might infiltrate a spy into the enemy camp. The trick is known. So I was not accepted whole-heartedly all at once, and of course my hesitation in dealing with my opponent added to the suspicion. But Dav was genuine and genial and my mention of the king korf, which was by way of being a secret signal, allayed much of the natural suspicion. They did not think that Mefto had penetrated that far into their schemes.

As for myself, I pondered just why I was here; how could these folk help me back to Vallia?

In the succeeding days I came to know them better and Pompino made the pappattu as my partner. We shifted quarters and Konec placed a room in the hotel of the Blue Rokveil at our disposal alongside the others. We spent the time practicing at swordplay, and, by Zair, I felt I mightily needed that sharpening up. The remembrance of Mefto’s five blades seemed to have mesmerized me. This party from Mandua were here ostensibly to play Jikaida, and Konec was a player of repute. Their intrigues against Mefto were kept very quiet; but if assassination formed part of them, it stood little chance. Mefto was surrounded continually by his brilliant retinue of followers. He lay abed, recovering from his arrow wound. So Dav insisted we go with him to watch a well-touted game of Kazz-Jikaida. It was to be between rival factions of the twin cities, and was the usual Kazz game and not the Death game, that is, the pieces did not face certain death if they lost.

We went along to take our seats in the public galleries of one of the game courts of the Jikaidaderen and I watched the Kazz game — and I was not enthralled. There was a powerful fascination in Kazz-Jikaida, an appeal to deeply hidden emotions and a dark pull on the blood; but I kept seeing the magical blades and the scornful and triumphant face of Prince Mefto the Kazzur before my eyes.

Chapter Fifteen

How Bevon Struck a Blow

The game turned out to be the Pallan’s Kapt’s Gambit Declined. That was how the encounter began. Because this was Kazz-Jikaida, the precise and elegantly contrived moves broke down after a time when a piece refused to be taken. The game proceeded interestingly enough, despite that. One swod, a Chulik whose fierce upthrust tusks were banded in silver, fought very well, defeating two Deldars sent against him successively. This upset the right hand drins of the game as far as Yellow was concerned, and pretty soon Blue was sweeping through the center with a line of Deldar-supported swods and pieces. When the two Kapts were brought into play they swept aside a Chuktar and a Hikdar and, but for an interesting contest between a Hyr-Paktun and the Aeilssa’s Swordsman, the game was over. Here in democratic-aristocratic Jikaida City the piece around whose capture the game revolved was called not King or Rokveil but Aeilssa, Princess. Well, I liked the romantic ring of that, and having married a princess and having others of that ilk as daughters, I could not in all conscience find fault. When the game was done, the sand already being raked neatly back into the blue and yellow squares ready for the next game — there being time for two encounters in that afternoon — Dav and I shouldered up to leave. Being Dav, his first thought was to discover the nearest alehouse. With a flagon in his fist and his elbow on the counter, he said, “The pieces fight differently when it is a Death game.”

I nodded, and drank. I was thirsty.

“How often do they—?”

“Very seldom for the public contests. Death-Jikaida is expensive. The inner courts. They are the places for the highest stakes and the most bloody of encounters.”

“I have heard it said,” I remarked, quoting Deb-Lu-Quienyin as we had talked around our caravan fire under the stars of the Desolate Waste, “that there is no skill in Jikaida where the outcome of carefully planned moves can be upset by mere brainless warriors fighting.”

“So they say.” Dav supped companionably. “But Konec says there is skill, albeit of a different kind. There is the skill of sizing up your opponent’s powers and of arranging within the moves to place your best fighters to bear on the weakest of your opponent’s, and of protecting your own lesser pieces.”

“That Chulik swod with the silver-banded tusks—”

“In the next game he will be a Deldar, you mark my words.”

“Chuliks are ferocious fighters. He’ll be a Pallan yet.”

“On the Jikaida board only, though! By Spag the Junct! The blue and yellow sand will drink much blood before they put him away in the balass box.”

Pompino found us then and wanted to catch up with the flagons, and some of Konec’s people arrived, and the alehouse began to liven up. We’d all put in some time in the practice court, and we lived and messed shoulder by shoulder, for Konec paid for everything in the Blue Rokveil with funds provided by contributions from Mandua against Mefto, and I’d practiced in a kind of daze. Dav regarded me as a better than middling swordsman. Pompino he rated much higher. I felt, in the turmoil that I couldn’t plumb, that maybe he was right.

Now, with the flagons being refilled by Fristle fifis, who squealed as they did their work, well-knowing that the customers liked that, Dav broached the question. He opened up the reasons behind what had been going on.

“You are a fighting man, Jak. You are good. You could be better, I feel, if — but then, if we all knew that if, we’d all be Mefto the Bastards, eh?”

“I suppose so.”

“Cheer up, you miserable fambly! I’m offering you a task you should joy in — we fight for Konec in Kazz-Jikaida. Will you join us?”

Pompino, who had just lifted a fresh flagon to his lips, blew a head of froth a clear six feet and into the cleavage of a fifi. She yelped. She put her finger down and wiped — and then she licked the finger, making a face. But she didn’t deceive us. We laughed — even I laughed.

“All right,” I said.

“We-ell,” said Pompino.

“It depends on the size of the game we get into,” Dav said, speaking to Pompino with intent to induce him. “Konec has brought first-class fighters; but we may need many more to make up the pieces. What say you? You know the pay is good, and the inducements offered by the Nine Masked Guardians add up to a handsome sum.”

In Poron Jikaida, which is the smallest size reckoned to be worth the playing, there are thirty-six pieces a side. In Lamdu Jikaida there are ninety pieces a side.

In the end Pompino gave his assent; a qualified assent which, as he said, depended on getting the hell out of this city. We were both of the opinion that the Everoinye, having used our services, would not bother us again for a space and therefore we must use our own efforts to escape. For we regarded it as an escape. “There is no chance I shall stay once Ineldar the Kaktu begins to form his caravan,” said Pompino, and he meant it.

“By Spag the Junct!” burst out Dav. “You eat Konec’s food and sleep under his roof—”

“I shall pay,” said Pompino, and his foxy face bristled. “I shall pay — you will see.”

“Very well. We shall hire swods from the academies. The higher pieces are named. I think you two may be Deldars—”

“What?” Pompino was outraged. “I am a paktun—”

“We have hyr-paktuns with us in this, with the pakzhan.”

Pompino stared furiously at me. I hate to see friends wrangling. “If you could at least give Pompino a decent harness it would—”

“The weapons and the armor are prescribed by law. It is all in the Jikaidish.”

Well, by Vox, that was true. Each piece on the board was represented on the blue and yellow sands of Kazz-Jikaida by a fighting man. Each piece was equipped according to the laws of Jikaida as prescribed in the Jikaidish Lore — that is, in this sense of the Kregish word, the hyr-lif written in the Jikaidish. Swods wore a breechclout and held a small shield and were armed with a five-foot spear. The Deldars wore a leather jerkin and carried a more effective shield. Mind you, the Jikaidish Lore provided for an amazing variety of equipments. One of the most important facts to remember about Jikaida is that the ramifications, combinations, extensions and sheer prolific variety of the game demand that before any game begins each player is aware of the exact rules under which the game is to be played. This is cardinal. Much blood has been shed because players were too stupid or lazy to make sure they agreed on the rules they were going to use before they started playing.

Pompino rubbed his whiskers.

“Arrange for me to have a sword, and, maybe—”

“It is difficult.” Dav screwed up his face and then reached for the flagon. “It may not be possible to arrange the bokkertu for Screetz-Jikaida. But I will speak to Konec.”

“Do so.”

“Who is Konec playing?” I said to attempt to bring the conversation down a few degrees. It had been growing too warm.

“Some old biddy called Yasuri.”

“Ha!” snapped Pompino. “I might have guessed.”

“She didn’t hire us to fight for her — she must be using the academies.”

Dav nodded sagely. “I am told they train ’em here to fight in ways adjusted to the Jikaida board. It is cramped.”

“Wise old lady Yasuri,” sneered Pompino.

“Don’t tell me the name of her Jikaidast, Dav,” I said. “Let me guess. One Master Scatulo, yes?”

Dav shook his head. “No.”

I was surprised.

“She put great store by him. Fawned on him.”

“If he arrived with you then he wouldn’t have had time to Establish his Credentials.”

“Bevon the Brukaj mentioned that,” said Pompino.

We learned what that meant. Jikaidasts could earn fortunes here in Jikaida City. The great ones who could afford to come here and pay for the privilege of playing Kazz-Jikaida would all be devoted to the game, that went without saying; but they might not be quite as good players as they imagined. It was customary for each player to employ a Jikaidast to be at his or her elbow and to advise. A very conspicuous and ornate clepsydra marked off the time allowed for each move, and when the time was up the water-clock beat a resounding stroke upon a great brazen gong. In some games if a player had not made the move by then he was required to forfeit a piece. As for the Establishment of Credentials, this took place in the Hall of Jikaidasts.

The Hall was long and narrow. Along each side was ranged a column of Jikaida boards. The newcomer seated himself at the end board and played Jikaida against his opponent. If he won he moved up a board. There was a constant stream of Jikaidasts moving up or down — down and out to await their turn to begin the ascent of the ladder again, or up to the topmost table where they would have established their credentials and could then seek employment as advisers to wealthy players. Master Scatulo, I fancied, would go up the ladder like a dose of salts. As to my own chances of improving in the Jikaida pieces’ hierarchy, I was not so sanguine. It was clear that the party with Konec, including Dav and Fropo, regarded me as a reasonably expert swordsman —

they found it difficult to believe I had lasted even a couple of passes with Mefto — but were less than confident about letting me take the part of a superior piece. The Pallan, as the most important piece on the board, wore a full harness of that superb mesh steel. If he came up against a half-naked swod with a spear, the outcome would not be in doubt.

When I questioned the sanity of men prepared to fight as swods, the explanations I was given ranged from blind passionate partisanship for the Blues or Yellow, simple greed, a desire to get on in Jikaida, fear of retribution for a crime — there are many foibles and quirks of human nature that Opaz has given us and that remain dark and shrouded in our inmost beings.

Also, archers ringed the stands. If any piece, including a Pallan, shirked a fight and attempted to run, he would be shafted instantly at the signal from the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians who presided at every game.

As the archers posted up there were Bowmen of Loh; everyone knew they would not miss. Some games of Kazz-Jikaida employed the rule that to make the powers of the superior pieces more representative of those the pieces really had on the board, more than one warrior took the part of a piece. Chuktars and Kapts might be represented by two fighting men, a Pallan by three. On other occasions all the pieces were armed in the same fashion. Once the stranger realized that Kazz-Jikaida was not quite like the Jikaida he had played as a boy against his father, or as a girl against her mother, then the anomalies were seen in their true perspective.

In the board game a piece landing on the square of a hostile piece captures. In Kazz-Jikaida the square is contested in blood.

To the death in Death-Jikaida.

In most games, but not all, the Jikaidish Lore states that when an attacking piece wins he may be substituted by a fresh fighter of the same force. If a defending piece wins he must remain where he is, on the square for which he has fought so valiantly — bleeding, dying, it makes no matter. Thus a successful defense, which is contrary to board Jikaida, is penalized. The Substitutes lined along the benches wait to go in.

Because like our Earthly game — coming possibly from chaturanga, shatranj — Jikaida has matured over the centuries and, also, because different folk play different rules in different parts of Kregen, there are many similarities and many divergences. The swods — the pawns — move one square diagonally or orthogonally ahead, and take on the forward diagonal. If a Deldar stands on a square adjacent to a swod, then that swod, of the Deldar’s color, cannot be taken by an opposing swod. This leads to fascinating situations which abruptly erupt into furious action.

This rule unique to Jikaida with its possibilities of Deldar-supported chains, is generally believed to have given rise to the traditional opening challenge of Jikaida: “Rank your Deldars!”

The jikaidish for this particular protection is propt, and as we left the alehouse to set off for our quarters and an enormous meal, Dav said, “When the propts collapse the blood will fly, by Spag the Junct!”

Because the prospect was both exhilarating and forbidding, making our fingers tingle, we swaggered and strutted, I can tell you, on our way to one of the six or eight square meals a day any Kregen likes to fuel the inner man. Pompino was more than a little put out by the unspoken imputations. His red whiskers bristled. But he was in the right of it. Our business was not taking part in blood games; it was in getting out of here.

As we walked along he kept rotating his head, looking, as I alone knew, for that magnificent scarlet and golden raptor of the Star Lords. He regarded the Everoinye with none of the scorn and hatred I had once shown them; they had treated him well and fairly and he repaid them in loyal service. In addition, he was possessed of a species of religious rapture at the idea that he was so closely involved with the doings of the gods.

Everybody in the twin cities talked in terms of the game, of course, and someone made a remark as we crossed into Blue City, that we had crossed a front. The Jikaida board is divided up into drins. Drin means land. Or, if you will, a number of drins are joined together to make the board. In general games a drin consists of a checkered board of six squares a side, making thirty-six in all. Six of these drins make up the board for Poron Jikaida, two by three. At the meeting of drins the line is painted in thicker markings. Some pieces have the power of crossing from drin to drin across a front on their move; most must halt at the front and wait until the next turn to cross.[5]

On the day appointed, Konec led us to the Jikaidaderen where we were to play. The lady Yasuri had hired herself a Jikaidast off the top of the tree. Konec, in his turn, had taken into employment for this game an intense, brooding, nervous Jikaidast called Master Urlando, who wore a blue gown with yellow checked border. For the professionals blue or yellow meant only the angles of the game, for the opening move was decided by chance and not by tradition.

The game was an ordinary one and open to the public and the benches and covered arcades were filled. In the event Pompino gave in as much to his own estimation of himself as a fighting man as to outside pressures and took up his position as a Deldar. As I had expected, I was to act the part of a swod. The game was not distinguished. We ranked our Deldars after the impressive opening ritual, where prayers were spoken and the choirs sang suitable hymns and the incense was burned and the sacrifice made. The ib of Five-handed Eos-Bakchi here in Havilfar was represented by the ib of Himindur the Three-eyed. For the first time I realized, with a pang, that five-handed really did have a strong and terrible meaning. So, with due propitiation made and the fortunes of Luck and Chance called upon, we took our places upon the blue and yellow sanded squares.

For a considerable period of the game I stood with a Deldar on an adjacent square and a swod — a Pachak with a brisk professional air about him, determined to get on — on the square to my left diagonal. He could not attack me by reason of the Deldar. We fell into an interesting conversation, although this was against the tenets of the game, and I learned of his history. I like Pachaks with their two left arms and their absolute loyalty in their nikobi to their oaths. Luckily for both of us we did not fight, the main action sweeping up the left hand side of the board and then, as Konec plunged, angling directly to the center and the Yellow Princess. Konec was a bold player, ruthless when he had to be. Dav was acting as Pallan. He was thrust forward, crossing a front, plunging into a direct confrontation with the Yellow Pallan. The fight was absorbingly interesting; Dav won, the right wing Kapt and Chuktar swept in and, with a Hikdar angling for the last kaida, the triumphant hyrkaida was made by Dav, sliding smoothly in and, challenged by the Yellow Princess’s Swordsman, defeating him in a stiff but brief battle. The various shouts of acclaim went up, the Blue prianum, the shrine where the victory tallies were kept, notched up another win, and it was all over. I had neither struck nor received a blow. I bid a shaky remberee to the Pachak swod and we all went back to the hotel.

Anticlimax — no. For I had seen what went on in Kazz-Jikaida, and was not much enamored of it. Konec said, “In two days’ time I meet a fellow from Ystilbur. You will be a Deldar, Jak.”

I nodded. There was little I felt I could say.

Pompino, who had had to beat a swod, told me he was not going to act again. We were standing in the shade of a missal tree growing by the wall of the courtyard and the shadows from the walls crept over the sand. The sounds of the twin cities came muted. The air smelled extraordinarily fresh and good.

“Ineldar is forming his caravan. I shall be one of his guards. You, Jak?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Excellent. By Horato the Potent! I cannot wait to get out into the Desolate Waste!”

A shadow moved among the shadows.

Our thraxters were out in a twinkling.

A voice said, “Jak? Pompino?”

Pompino pointed his sword. “Step you forward so that we may see you. And move exceeding carefully.”

A dark form lumbered out into the last of the mingled light. Jade and ruby radiance fell about him. His hunched shoulders, his bulldog face, all the gentle power of him was as we remembered from the nights under the stars.

There was blood on his right hand.

Bevon the Brukaj said, “I have run away from my master. He abused me cruelly. And I struck a guard

— I do not think I killed him; but his nose bled most wonderfully, to my shame.”

“Well, by the Blade of Kurin...” whispered Pompino.

“Will you help me? Will you take me in?”

The sound of loud voices rose from the street, approaching, and with them the heavy tramp of footsteps and the clank of weapons, the chingle of chains.

“Inside, Bevon. Pompino, find Dav. Explain. We cannot allow them to take Bevon.”

“But—”

“Do it!”

Pompino took Bevon’s arm and guided him into the inner doorway. Fixing a blank look on my face and sheathing my sword, I turned to the gate and stood, lolling there and picking my teeth.

Chapter Sixteen

Kazz-Jikaida

Over the seasons I have taken much enjoyment and indulged in merry mockery and silly sarcasm from that fuzzy look of blank idiocy I can plaster all across my weather-beaten old beakhead. But as the guards and the Watch strode up, clanking, I felt the pang of a realization that, perhaps, this stupid expression was truly me, after all.

“Hey, fellow! A slave, a damned runaway slave. Have you seen him?”

I picked my teeth. “Was he a little Relt with a big wart alongside his hooter?”

“No, you fambly—”

“I haven’t seen anyone like that.”

“A hulking stupid great oaf of a Brukaj—”

“Best look along by the Avenue of Bangles — they’re all notors in here.” I screwed my eyes up. “D’you have the price of a stoup of ale, doms? I’m main thirsty—”

But, angry and waving their poles from which the lanterns hung, flickering golden light, they went off, shouting, raising a hullabaloo. The black and white checkers vanished along the way and I, still picking my teeth, went back into the rear quarters of the hotel. They had given me no copper ob for a drink. They had cursed me for a fool, unpleasantly, and had there been time they’d have drubbed me for fun. Not nice people. I would not like Bevon to fall into their clutches. After a quantity of shouting and arm-waving we persuaded Dav that Bevon wouldn’t murder us all in our beds. As a runaway slave he was a highly dangerous person to have on the premises; but Dav’s good nature surfaced. He was a man who knew his own mind, and he summed Bevon up shrewdly. Runaway slaves are not tolerated in slave-owning society for the bad examples they set. It was left to Bevon to say the words that got us all off the hook.

“Here in Jikaida City,” he said in his pleasant voice, having got his breath and composure back and washed off the guard’s nose bleed, “I am told that a slave may gain his freedom by taking part in the games.”

“That is true, Bevon. But he has to act the part of a swod and he must survive a set number of games. It has been known — but is rare, by the Blade of Kurin.”

“Enter me in the next game, and I shall be safe from Master Scatulo. My blood-price will be paid by the Nine Masked Guardians, for they always welcome anyone willing to take part in Kazz-Jikaida as a swod. You know that. I cannot be touched by the law until I am free or dead. That is the law.”

Kov Konec, when consulted, agreed to Dav’s proposals, and it was settled. I own I felt relief. Bevon seemed to me to be far too gentle a fellow actually to take up sword and fight; but as he said himself, rather that than being slave any longer.

The day of the game against the player from Ystilbur was set as Bevon’s introduction to Kazz-Jikaida, and the authorities were notified. Also, this day coincided with the decision about the caravan out of here. Pompino was in no doubt.

“If we do not give our undertaking to Ineldar by tonight and conclude the bokkertu, he will have to employ other guards.” Pompino stood with me watching as Dav stood facing a table on which a huge ale barrel was upended. The spout gushed ale into an enormous flagon. Dav stood there, hands on hips, his head thrust forward, licking his lips, and, I am sure, feeling the tortures of the damned. There was no ale for Dav on the day of Kazz-Jikaida.

Rather, there was no ale until we had won.

“I have promised to fight—” I said.

“Well, I shall not. They have been good friends to us, yes, I agree. But our duty lies elsewhere.”

“I thought you said you didn’t get enough time away from your wife?”

“True. But I’ve had enough time, now, by Horato the Potent!”

By just about any of the honor codes of Kregen there could not really be any faulting of Pompino’s logic. I said, “I’ll just play in this game for them and then I’ll come with you to sign on with Ineldar.”

“You might get chopped.”

“Then the problem wouldn’t arise.”

Dav rolled across, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth just as though he’d demolished a whole stoup, and told us that the cramph from Ystilbur had hired the best the academies could offer. “Those rasts up there have gone in with the Hamalese, may Krun rot their eyeballs.”

Very carefully, I said: “They are a small nation. They were overrun by the cramphs of Hamal, just like the folk of Clef Pesquadrin. D’you know what happens when a country is subjected like that, Dav? Put in chains?”

“Aye. And not pretty, either. But this Coner is half Hamalese, I’m told. There is a plot in this, and I don’t like it.” He frowned and shook his shoulders. “I’ve tried to warn Konec; but he sees this as merely another step in the games.”

The many games of Jikaida all served to enhance or not the prestige of the various participants. There were league tables. This was the Two Thousand Five Hundred and Ninety-Eighth Game, and they played a Game a season, so that shows you. The champions went away from Jikaida City far wealthier than when they arrived; but also they took with them the intangible aura of the victor. The twin cities lived and breathed Jikaida. That cannot be emphasized enough. Everywhere, in the taverns, along the boulevards, in the parks, people sat all day playing. Those who could visited the public games of Kazz. The highest nobility of Havilfar and anywhere else who were apprized kept strictly to their own private games, where Death Jikaida ruled. These were the games in which the highest honors were conferred. Everyone gambled, of course. I had heard stories of whole kingdoms being staked on the outcome of a single game. People bet on the results, on just which pieces would survive, how long it would be before certain positions were reached, how many pieces would be wounded or slain. They bet on anything.

Pompino said, “Plot or no, Dav, I’d put ten golden deldys on you; but no one will give me reasonable odds.”

Dav said, “I’ve been lucky so far.” The truth was, he was a fine fighting man, clever and quick with his blade, and the betting public had seen that and he commanded odds to gamblers. Remembering how I had met a flutsman of Ystilbur in peculiar circumstances, a Brokelsh height Hakko Bolg ti Bregal known as Hakko Volrokjid, I reflected that the Hamalese had all Ystilbur in their power. Perhaps some of the schemes of Konec also were known to them? Certain sure it was that the Hamalese, despite recent setbacks in the Dawn Lands, were intent on further conquest there. So Konec led us off to play Kazz-Jikaida against Coner, and Pompino got himself a seat in the stands to watch. The day was fair. The preliminaries were gone through as before, with the rituals and the choirs chanting and the sacrifices and the libations, and mightily impressive it all was. Konec and Coner seated themselves on the playing thrones, one at either end, and we pieces marched out to take up our places on the board.

As a Deldar in this game I carried a shield of wicker and a five-foot spear. I had a leather jerkin. Dav, massive in his mesh, gave me a cheery word. Fropo the Curved, acting as a Kapt, strained his bulk against his lorica. Each piece was equipped according to the rules prescribed in the hyr-lif known as the Jikaidish Lore. I settled myself. Extremely beautiful girls, clad wispily in draperies of white and purple, danced about the board to carry the commands of the players to their pieces. Up on the throne dais each player had his Jikaidast at his side. The feeling of ages-old ritual, that this was the way the game should be played, the way it should be run, held everyone fixed in complete absorption. The fascination was there, like a drug, a dark compelling pull drawing on the deep tides of the blood. Golden trumpets blew. The banners broke free. The first move was made. Well, I will not go into it. It was a shambles.

We ranked Deldars and started off in fine style, and then we ran into disastrous trouble as a whole rank of swods was swept away. Red-clad slaves with litters and stretchers carried off the casualties. Other slaves raked the blue and yellow sand neatly back into the squares, and fresh sand was sprinkled over the blood. But Yellow surged on and on, triumphant, and we were pressed back, losing men like flies in winter.

The fighting men trained in the academies had been taught all the tricks of fighting in the admittedly limited space of the Jikaida squares. If a warrior stepped outside the square he was adjudged the loser, of course. If he stepped out too smartly, without giving of his utmost, if he shirked and sought that way out of the horror, then black-clad men ran onto the board. What they did ensured that pieces would fight, grimly and with thought only of victory.

Three swods I fought and dealt with them. Each little conflict took place on two squares, by virtue of the fact that the attacker and the defender occupied adjacent squares and the whole of these two squares could be used. Then a Hikdar came at me, whirling his axe, and I had a sharp set-to before I got my spear between his ribs.

Konec swung the play across to the other wing then and I had time for a breather. The game had rapidly degenerated from the classical simplicity of the Aeilssa’s Swod’s Opening into a blood bath. Well, we Blues fought.

With consummate skill Konec made a space for fresh development in the center and a diagonal of pieces formed leading to Yellow’s Right Home Drin. That would be Blue’s Far Left Drin. Every drin has its name; everything has a name; I was concentrating on what I could see coming up. At the far end of the diagonal of pieces stood a Yellow Chuktar. The Yellow Pallan had been busy and was absent; the Yellow Aeilssa stood, just for the moment, vulnerable. But the Chuktar barred the way. An enchanting little Fristle fifi danced across from the Blue Stylor. He was positioned level with the board and beneath the player’s throne to pass on the move orders. Konec moved a Blue swod onto the end of the diagonal line of pieces, and into the square diagonally off from me. So that meant I was sure what was going to happen.

Yellow made his move, a nasty threatener down the right wing, and then the fifi, who had been given my orders all ready, for Konec was a shrewd player, said to me: “Deldar to vault and take Chuktar.”

I hitched up my belt and put my spear into my left hand. I spat into my right, not having an orange handy, and then took up the spear. Calmly, I started to walk along beside the diagonal line of men. This simulated the vault. What a sight it must all have been! The twin Suns of Scorpio blazing down into the sprawled representation of a Jikaida board, the blue and yellow squares a bright checkered dazzlement, the brilliantly attired figures of the pieces, the color, the vividness, the raw stink of spilled blood — and the tension, the indrawn breaths, the hunching forward of the spectators. The passions were being unleashed here. I walked gently along, and I held my shield just so, and the spear just so, for the moment I put my foot into the square occupied by the Chuktar we would fight. Because I was coming down off the end of a vault, having leaped over a line of pieces, there was no empty starting square. I would come down slap bang on top of the Chuktar. We would contest the square in its own narrow confines.

The man representing the Chuktar was a Kataki. Unusual to find a member of that unpleasant race of diffs doing much else besides slaving, for they are slavemasters above all and know little of humanity —

although Rukker had given certain glimmerings of humanity, to be sure — and this fellow was clearly in Kazz-Jikaida because of some ill deed. He was licking his lips as I approached. He wore an iron-studded kax and vambraces, and carried a good-quality cylindrical shield. His thraxter caught the light of the suns. I walked up to the right of the diagonal line of pieces, which surprised him, for any shielded man likes to get his left side around.

One thing was in my favor: that hyr-lif the Jikaidish Lore specifies what weapons may be used; the Kataki was not allowed to strap six inches of bladed steel to his tail. His lowering brows, flaring nostrils and snaggly-toothed gape-jawed mouth complemented his wide-spaced eyes. They were narrow and cold. His thick black hair which would be oiled and curled was stuffed up under his iron helmet. Formidable fighting men, Katakis, known and detested — and steered clear of. As I marched up with my wicker shield and the spear, wearing a leather jerkin and helmetless, to face this armored man with his professional sword and shield, I reflected with some amazement that I must be very like a wild barbarian facing an iron legionary of Rome. So — act like a barbarian... When I got within three squares of him I launched myself forward in a bursting run, wild and savage. I went straight in, the spear out thrust, the shield well up. I saw his ugly face go rigid with shock and the thraxter begin to flick into line. But I was pretty desperate and I had to banish a phantom image of Mefto the Kazzur that sprouted shockingly before my eyes. Straight at him I sprang. His sword clicked against the wicker and a chunk flew off, sprouting strands of painted wood. The spear went straight on, over the rim of the iron-studded breastplate, punched into his squat neck. He tried to shriek; but could not make a sound with sharp metal severing all his vocal cords. He flopped sideways and I hauled the spear out and lunged again and he went on down and stayed down. We were playing Kazz-Jikaida, the ordinary game and not the Death Jikaida — we might as well have been for that Kataki.

The stands broke into a bedlam of noise and stamping; but I had not attacked until my foot was inside the square. And he had struck first — a last unavailing blow.

What Yellow’s move was I have no idea. He made a desperate scrabbling attempt to get a piece back to defend. But on Konec’s next move Fropo the Curved, as a Kapt, vaulted over the same diagonal and then pounced on the Princess. The Aeilssa’s Swordsman stepped out to challenge, as was his right, and Fropo finished him off and — amazingly — Blue had won.

In the racket going on all about us, as the young girl who had taken the part of Yellow’s Princess stood there with the tears pouring down her face, Fropo wiped his sword on the yellow cloak of the Swordsman and spoke cheerfully to me.

“I never thought you’d do it, Jak. A bonny fight. I was able to vault right home. Konec will be pleased.”

“I doubt it, Fropo. We have lost a lot of good men.”

At once the Fristle’s cat face sobered. “You are right. Now may Farilafristle have them in his care. Good men, gone.”

The final rituals were gone through and the Blue notched up another win in the prianum. Our player, Konec, also moved up in the league tables. We marched off. But it was hard. There were many gaps in the ordered ranks. Kov Konec’s people had been drastically thinned. And that, I reasoned as we trailed off to our hotel, was the core of the plot against us.

The captured Yellow Princess was brought along in our midst; but she did not make up for all the good men lost.

Chapter Seventeen

I Learn of a Plan

We held a Noumjiksirn, which is by way of being a wake, an uproarious and yet serious evening in which we mourned our vanished comrades. There was huge drinking and singing of wild songs and much boasting and leaping about and the odd clash of blade. Those who knew something of the history of the slain stood forth and cried it out, clear and bravely, and we applauded and drank to them, and called on all the gods for a safe passage through the Ice Floes of Sicce. The Yellow Princess sat enthroned on a dais in our midst, stripped of her yellow robes and chained. But this was tradition only; the days when the captured Aeilssa belonged to the victorious side were long gone, for that kind of boorish behavior smacked too much of the uncouth. She would be ransomed by her losing player, of course, and Konec would distribute a donative and pocket a tidy sum himself. This was just one of the perks accruing to a winning side.

The girl who had acted as our Blue Princess was the daughter of Nath Resdurm, a splendid numim who was a strom at the hands of Kov Konec. His lion-man’s face bristled with pride as his daughter, Resti, danced the victory dance, taking a turn with every one of us pieces who had survived. The drink flowed. Dav took on a load. He danced and pranced with Resti, who laughed, her golden hair flowing, mingling with Dav’s as they swirled across the floor and the orchestra Konec had paid for scraped and strummed and banged away.

Strom Nath Resdurm had acted as the other Kapt, with Fropo. We had lost all our Hikdars, our Paktuns and Hyr-Paktuns, all good fighting men laid to rest. Truly, the lion-girl Resti would not dance breathless with the survivors.

When Dav laughingly yielded her to a Deldar, who pranced her off across the floor, Dav bellowed his way across to the ale table and seized up a foaming stoup. He spied me.

“Aye, Jak,” he said, and drank thirstily. “Aye — it takes strength to grasp a spear in that fashion — or skill.”

“It did for the Kataki.”

“But that bastard Coner has done for us. We are too few, now. And who else will fight for us?”

“Konec has only to hire pieces from the nearest academy—”

“Onker!”

I allowed that to pass. He was by way of becoming a friend, and in the passionate despair at plans gone wrong he knew more than he said and so cried out against fate. Or, so I thought.

“Yes, Jak,” he said, after moment, with the uproar going on all about us. “Yes, you are right. We will hire pieces to fight for us. But Mefto — Mefto—” He drank and was swept up by a mob who shouted him into a song, which he sang right boldly, “King Naghan his Fall and Rise.” The songs lifted, after a space, “The Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter,” “Eregoin’s Promise.” We did not sing that rollicking ditty that ends in “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.” The mood was not right. And that perturbed me. So I started in my bullfrog voice to roar out “In the Fair Arms of Thyllis.”

After the first couple of lines when they’d digested the tune and the name of Thyllis, Konec stepped forward, his face black.

“We sing no damned Hamalian songs here, Jak!”

“Aye!” went up an ominous chorus.

“Wait, wait, friends! Listen to the words carefully.”

And I went on singing about Thyllis. That song is well known in Hamal, and is beloved of the Empress Thyllis, as it refers in glowing terms to the marvelous deeds of the goddess from whom she took her name and her scatty ideas. One day back home in Esser Rarioch, my fortress palace of Valkanium, Erithor who is a bard and song-maker held in the very highest esteem throughout Vallia, being half-stewed, concocted fresh words about Thyllis the Munificent. The words were scurrilous, extraordinarily melodic, quite unrepeatable and extremely funny.

By the time I was halfway through the second stanza the people of Mandua were rolling about and holding their sides. I do not think Erithor ever had a better audience for one of his great songs. At least, of that kind...

When I had done they made me sing it again, stanza by stanza, and so picked it up and warbled it all through, again, four times.

Feeling that my contribution to the evening had been some slight success I went off to find a fresh wet for my dry throat. Kov Konec joined me, with Dav and Fropo and Strom Nath Resdurm. We all wore the loose comfortable evening attire of Paz; lounging robes in a variety of colors. Konec, for once wearing a blaze of jewelry, looked a kov.

“You do not care overmuch for the Hamalese?”

“Not much.”

How to explain my tangled feelings about the Empire of Hamal? I had friends there, good friends, and yet our countries were at war. As for Thyllis, I felt sorry for her and detested all she stood for, and yet often and often I had pondered the enigma that she saw me in the same light as I saw her. Truly, the gods make mock of us when they set political and class barriers between the hearts of humans. Of course, anyone of the many countries attacked and invaded by the iron legions of Hamal dedicated to obeying the commands of their empress, anyone suffering from oppression and conquest, would not see a single redeeming feature in Thyllis. That seemed only natural. Now Konec began speaking in a way new in our relationship. After all, I was merely a paktun, in employ, and he was a kov, conscious of his power and yet charmingly accessible.

“Mefto the Kazzur, who calls himself a prince. He is hated in Shanodrin by the people he claims as his. Only his bully boys sustain him against the people. Masichieri — scum.”

“He never rode with less than twenty,” I said. “But there were more in the caravan, that he uses in Kazz-Jikaida. When I fought him he had been visiting a shishi. I know, for Sishi told me. But when we fought I know there were others of his men in the shadows, laughing at my discomfiture.” I went on, briskly. “That saved us from the drikingers.”

“So assassination is difficult. Very. Stikitches have been sent — Oh, aye, Jak,” at my raised eyebrows.

“Honor is long gone from desperate men. And we of the countries of the Central Dawn Lands are desperate.”

“Against a single prince hated by his people, dependent on hired swords?”

“No. You do well to question thus. Against Hamal.”

“But—”

“Mefto is the key. Through him Hamal can extend her power where now she must fight.”

I shook my head. “I believe you, Konec, for I have found you an honorable man. But I have been told that Mefto is a real and regal prince, splendid in gold, beloved in Shanodrin—”

“Stupid stories of shifs, brainless giggling serving wenches.”

There ensued a pause in this fierce half-whispered conversation then as we all drank, thinking our separate thoughts.

“A great one is coming from Hamal. A kov, or even a prince. He and Mefto meet in Jikaida City under the cloak of Jikaida. It will arouse no suspicion. Our spies have the story sure.”

In the world of intrigue secure meeting places are valuable. Jikaida would explain even a meeting between a Grodnim and a Zairian. But as I listened to Konec talking, I began to see more than I had bargained for.

A pot-bellied ceramic jar of Neagromian ware sprouting wildly with the drooping tendrils of heasmons stood in its alcove and Kov Konec bent to partake of the fragrant aroma of the violet-yellow flowers. He swiveled his eyes to regard me, and I saw that he, like his men, was not a conspirator born.

“By Havandua the Green Wonder!” said Konec, standing up from the sweet-smelling plants, his face revealing all the passions struggling for utterance. “Mefto must be stopped! If his schemes and this rast’s from Hamal succeed — well—” He paused, and his fists clenched. He had sworn by Havandua the Green Wonder. Well, you know my opinion of the color green; I enjoy its serenity, and it is the finest color for Rifle Regiments, and racing cars and Robin Hood and railway engines and passenger rolling stock; but it seemed my fate on Kregen had thrown me into opposition with green, through no will of my own. Men said that the sky colors were always in conflict. The red of Zim, or Far, and the green of Genodras, or Havil. Truly, I confess, the feeling of fighting for the Blue against the Yellow had come on me strangely and strongly; I would take yellow in Jikaida if I could.

“You are with us in this, Jak?” demanded Konec.

“You have not confided any plan as yet,” I reminded him, gently.

If they still harbored any lingering doubts that I was a spy this was a good way to get a sword through my guts.

“Plan!” broke in Fropo, twirling his whiskers. “We are plain fighting men. We have our swords—”

“Aye,” said Dav, with all the fervor in him.

The numim, Strom Nath, bristled up his golden whiskers in complete agreement. Then he said, “But there is a plan. That is why we are here.”

“Ah,” I said, and waited.

Useless to sigh and think back to the brave old days when I was newly arrived on Kregen and would as lief bash a few skulls in as listen. Being an emperor — even a king or a prince or a strom — shackled the old responsibilities on a fellow. But I missed the skirling days of yore. That explained, I fancied, my acceptance of this enforced absence from Vallia. I needed to get the cobwebs of intrigue out of my head and the blood thumping around a body bashing into fights. Mind you, the last time that had been an unmitigated disaster, and I was not likely to forget Mefto the Kazzur in a hurry. Maybe I was getting slothful, complacent, too ready to take the easy way out.

I said, “If you have a scheme to do a mischief to Mefto and the Hamalese, I think I might be your man. If you trust me.”

From what they said, and not only to me, I gained the impression, the reassuring impression, that they did trust me. They saw things in their own lights, of course; they had no real reason apart from our first meeting to suspect me. And Dav and the others, for all their geniality, would keep an eye on me, and cut me down, too, if I played them false.

The rest of the story made me feel again that sense of destiny taking me by the throat and choking all the sense out of my stupid head.

“By Makki Grodno’s diseased left armpit!” I said, in a pause. “I am with you, a thousand times over!”

For what they said boiled down to this — Konec pulled his lip as he said, “The Hamalese are in trouble in Vallia, some island or other far north of here over the equator. I feel comradely sorrow for them. The Hamalese have withdrawn from their insanely ambitious attempts toward the west. Only a horrible death awaits any honest man there. Ifilion between the mouths of the River Os stands aloof.” He eyed me.

“And they have not struck at Hyrklana—”

They believed me to hail from Hyrklana. I said, “The island is relatively large and is wealthy. We have many troops. She would find it a toughnut, this bitch Thyllis.”

“So — it is we here in the Dawn Lands and Vallia. Thyllis seeks to conclude a treaty with certain countries here who tremble at her name, with Mefto acting for her. By this means she will gain the alliance of powerful states. She will have at her disposal thousands of fresh men, professionals, paktuns, mercenaries, regulars. She will be able to advance against us, who await her coming, and free many strong armies to launch afresh against Vallia.”

So I said what I said.

“Yes, Jak. The states will follow the strongest lead. Prince Mefto is the coming man, powerful, glittering, his charisma bright. If he can be taken out of the game, thrown back into the velvet-lined balass box, Mandua can take the lead. We stand firm against Hamal. The balance can be tipped.”

“Jikaida—?”

“Precisely,” said Dav Olmes, and he smiled, and quaffed.

They told me their plan.

Assassination had proved unreliable and a costly failure. Mefto went everywhere he was known with his bodyguard of swarth riders. They did indicate that they wished the gods had directed my sword between his ribs when we’d fought by the caravan; but, as they pointed out with the fatalism I recognized in them, no man could best Prince Mefto the Kazzur in single combat. So they would play in these Kazz-Jikaida games. And when it was the turn of Konec and his people of Mandua to meet Mefto and his people of Shanodrin, why, then, they would simply move their pieces up the board, and consigning the strict rules of Jikaida to a Herrelldrin Hell, charge him in a body and before his pieces could react butcher him and have done.

That was their plan.

I said, after I closed my mouth and swallowed and so opened my crusty old lips again: “The Bowmen of Loh will not tolerate so flagrant a breach of the rules. They will shaft you all.”

“Of course,” said Strom Nath. “But Mefto will be gone and our country will face the future with hope.”

“And you would all give your lives—?”

“If there was more we could give, that, too, we would willingly pay,” said Konec, and there was no mocking his dignity as he spoke — although I wanted to mock this so-called plan. By Zair! What a lot!

And what I had got myself into!

They were standing, all looking at me with a hard bright regard. Konec said, “You look— You are not willing to give your life to save your country?”

“Only if there is no other way. But I have as tender a regard for my own neck as I have for my country.”

At that they would have grown angry; but I said: “Let me think. There has to be another way.”

“You disappoint me, Jak,” said Dav. And, in truth, he looked cast down. “I had thought you a man among men.”

The time was not suitable for me to make the classic rejoinder to that one: “I’d sooner be a man among women.” But, by Vox, there had to be another way!

Then I saw Bevon the Brukaj, drinking quietly to himself in a corner. He had acquitted himself well today and proved himself a fine swordsman, for that, he had said, was his weapon.

“Bevon,” I said. “He was by way of becoming a Jikaidast. Let me speak to him. He has a head on his shoulders.”

The arguments went on a long time; but they were tired and wrung out, and the drink was working on them, and, truth to tell, although I did not doubt for a single instant their burning determination to give their lives, they would welcome another and better way in which they did not face certain death. So we parted, amicably, with my promise that if we could not discover a method of dealing with Mefto, I would join their party and take part in their suicidal plan.

The clincher came when I said, “Your force has been reduced. You are too few to get at Mefto in a body and fight off his men; and they will fight, mark it well.”

“D’you think we don’t know that!” said Dav, and the agony in him twisted in me, too, for him... “And there is no one here we may ask or trust — save you, Jak the Nameless.”

“And yet you would still have gone on?”

“Aye!”

After we left the Noumjiksirn with the bokkertu of the ransom of the Yellow Princess duly finalized, I met Pompino. He came into the room we shared looking the worse for wear. He threw himself on the bed, and yawned, and said, “By Horato the Potent! If I had a golden deldy for each copper ob I spent tonight I would be a rich man.”

“Lucky you.”

He regarded me, sharply enough, and sat up. “I have to see Ineldar the Kaktu first thing. He has kept open two places, but he will not hold them past the Bur of Fretch.” That was two burs after the suns rose. “We must be up betimes.”

“I shall not be taking a place in Ineldar’s caravan guard.”

“What?” He scowled at me as though I’d sprouted a Kataki tail. “You don’t mean that? What of the Everoinye—”

“There is a task I must do—”

“You said you were desperate to go home — back to Hyrklana.”

“I was. But now—”

“You are going to act as a piece in Kazz-Jikaida!”

“Yes.”

“Fambly! Onker! You’ll be chopped. What in Panachreem can?”

“There is a duty I owe which must be honored. A task has been set to my hands and I must do it.”

“Ah!” He suddenly understood, or thought he did. “The Gdoinye has visited you. You have a service for the Everoinye—?”

“No. What I do is not for the Star Lords.”

He looked shocked. “There is nothing in Kregen more important than laboring for the Star Lords!”

“Yes,” I said. “There is.”

Chapter Eighteen

Of an Encounter in an Armory

Pompino shared my view that the Star Lords had acted in a way far different from their usual abrupt course when they had set us the task of protecting the lady Yasuri. For one thing; we had both been aware that the threat of the Ochs was more apparent than real. I had been warned of the impending mission in a new way, although Pompino told me that he usually received some prior notice. We felt that the Ochs had been laid on in some way so as to introduce us to the lady Yasuri and secure our employment with her.

“Her escort under that rascal Rordan the Negus returned in time. We did a good job, but—”

“Yes, the escort would have just been in time. So the Star Lords set that up for us. Not like most of the times I have been dumped down unceremoniously right in the thick of it.”

Pompino was intrigued. I told him a little of some of the occasions when I had done the Star Lord’s bidding, and he expressed astonishment. We were up early and making his preparations to leave. I would be sorry to see him go, and I felt he shared that opinion of me; but nothing he said could make me change my mind. We drank early-morning ale companionably together as we watched the suns rise.

“So you actually arrive when the action has begun?”

‘Too right. Usually I have to scout around pretty sharpish for a weapon.”

He shook his head, his foxy face surprised.

“When I am called the Everoinye place me carefully, and I can size up the situation and take the best course.”

“Ha!” This, of course, merely confirmed my own early opinion of the Star Lords that had been changing over the seasons. “If I don’t get stuck in pretty sharpish I’d be done for.” Then, to be fair, I added:

“Well, most of the time.”

We talked around this puzzling fact — puzzling to Pompino although to me merely a part and parcel of my life on Kregen — and then he came out with a sober observation that shook me.

“I had a comrade once, a fine man, a Stroxal from a town near us in South Pandahem. We never went on a task together; but we talked. One day he just disappeared and never showed up again. He was, I feel sure, slain on a task for the Everoinye.” Pompino looked shrewdly at me. “I think, Jak, that sometimes the Star Lords send a kregoinye to work for them and he fails. He is slain and does not do their bidding. Then, it is an emergency. They have to throw someone in as a last desperate attempt—”

“By Zair!” I burst out. “So I am the forlorn hope!”

“When all else fails they put you into the ring of blood.”

I felt the seething anger boiling away and I held it down. After all, wasn’t this just another reminder of my powerlessness? And then a thought occurred. “Hold on a mur, Pompino — the Star Lords have thrown me back in time, into a time loop, so that means they can choose the moment to put me into the action.”

“I think that after the action has begun they cannot affect the course of time — I, too, have been through a time loop.”

“Well, that is possible.”

And, too, I had felt this so-called powerlessness ebbing of late. There was the rebel Star Lord Ahrinye to be taken into consideration. The Star Lords were not infallible, as I knew from my arrival in Djanduin. If what Pompino said was true, and it made good sense, I had another weapon against them.

“Well, Jak, time to be off.”

He gathered up his gear and hitched his belt. He smiled at me, his fox-like face suddenly looking remarkably friendly.

“I have greatly enjoyed your company, Jak, by Horato the Potent. I grieve we will not travel the Desolate Waste together. Will you not come? There is still time...”

“I thank you, Pompino, and I have enjoyed our time together. You are a good comrade. But my allegiance is with — is with another area that—”

“Hyrklana?”

I smiled. “Think it, dom, and do not fret.”

Companionably we went out and through the crowded streets and past the boulevard tables where folk were already hard at Jikaida, the ranked armies of miniature warriors marching and counter-marching in frozen brilliance, and so came through the Kyro of Calsanys to the dusty drinnik where the caravans formed. The pandemonium was splendid. The colors, the brilliance, the movements, the stinks, the shouting and bawling — Kregen, ah, Kregen!

Ineldar had a go at making me change my mind; but he was in a hurry to get his motley assemblage into sufficient order for them to move off. There’d be confusion for a couple of days yet before he got them drilled. The Quoffas lumbered off, rolling, their patient enormous faces calmly considering the state of their insides, probably, indifferent to the pains of the journey before them. The calsanys were given a wide berth and their drivers wore bright scarves wrapped around their faces. The carriages and the wagons, the vakkas riding a wide variety of the magnificent saddle animals of Kregen, the swarms of people afoot, all moved along, jostling to find a good spot in the procession. A slave brought up Pompino’s totrix and strapped his gear aboard. I shook hands. Pompino mounted up and stuck the lance into the boot. He shouted.

“Remberee, Jak! Come and visit me in Tuscursmot. I shall make you a great bargain from my armory.”

“Aye, Pompino the Iarvin. I shall look forward to that.” I waved. “Remberee!”

“Remberee!”

And Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot, known as Pompino the Iarvin, cantered off to take his place among the caravan guards.

With a deep breath that some folk might dub a sigh I turned away and swung off through the departing crowds. The dust hung. The stinks prevailed. Well, a little wet and then a trifle of business with Friendly Fodo...

People were looking up. Pointing fingers strained skyward. I looked up. An airboat fleeted in over the twin cities. She was a large craft with a high upflung poop and fighting castles amidships and for’ard; but she was not as large an airboat as the enormous skyships of Hamal. But she was from that nation. Her purple and gold flags flew proudly, and in the Kregan custom she flew as many flags as she could cram flagstaffs in along her length.

So I knew who had arrived — not who, as far as name and rank and dignity went — but who in the sense that this was the great one of Hamal who came to talk the Dawn Lands into destruction with Mefto the Kazzur — and, with them, Vallia.

Some faint spark of the old Dray Prescot flared up then. Something that made me say, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy. There was now a voller in Jikaida City. So, perhaps, if I was lucky and bold enough and lived long enough, I had me my means of conveyance back home to Vallia. Feeling ridiculously cheerful I slaked my thirst and then saw Friendly Fodo. I showed him the thraxter I had bought from him. The rivets of the hilt had frayed through the bindings. He made a face and stroked his shiny whiskers.

“Oh, a trifle, dom, a mere trifle, why that can be fixed for you in the shake of a leem’s tail.”

“No doubt. But I have a little more gold now—”

“Ah!”

The cupidity of him was transparent. Well, he had a living to make, and I had a weapon to buy on which my life would depend.

For a hoary old fighting man this dickering over weapons is always a pleasant business, and Friendly Fodo, assured of my gold, entered into the spirit of the occasion. A table was brought and laid with a purple cloth, and tea, ale, miscils and palines appeared, brought in by a slave Xaffer, distant and remote; but willing enough. I sat in the chair and partook of the goodies as Friendly Fodo paraded his wares. No thought entered my head other than that I would buy a new thraxter. Fantasies are for fairy stories, sometimes for grim businessmen of the world, occasionally for poets. The thraxter, your hefty cut and thruster of Havilfar, is adapted to do its work. It is superior, even Vallians will tell you, to the Vallian clanxer. The drexer we had developed in Valka is far superior. I looked at the glittering and lovingly polished blades on the counter. I said, “You are cut off from the world, here in Jikaida City, behind the Desolate Waste—”

“Oh, yes, cut off. But the caravans bring in many strange articles from Havil knows where.”

“There is a new fashion in Hamal,” I said, and immediately added, “That pestiferous rast-nest. They have taken up fighting with a longer, more slender blade — perhaps—?”

He nodded, interested in talking shop.

“Aye, I have heard from the brethren in my craft. Rapiers, they call ’em. Whether they be as quick as they say—” He lifted his shoulders. “But I have not seen one, so cannot say.”

“A pity.”

We talked on, and I ate palines and examined the weapons. The Kregish for sword is screetz. I seldom use it in this narrative, for, like the Kregish for sea and water, it is not adapted to terrestrial ears. The same goes for princess. There are other Kregish words I do not use here for the same reason. At last, seeing I was determined, Friendly Fodo brought out his better wares, blades he valued. These stood in a different class — and their price accordingly. But a fighting man does not care to set a price on the weapons of his trade; how to value your own life in terms of gold?

The best — that is the cardinal rule — the best you can afford.

In the end I selected a thraxter with a finer blade than most. The fittings were plain. There were secret marks on the blade, and Friendly Fodo claimed it had belonged to a kov slain in Death-Jikaida, although he did not offer any explanation of how it had come into his possession. The shop pressed in about me, hung with weapons and armor and glinting with steel and iron and bronze. The air hung heavy with the scent of the violet-yellow heasmon flowers. I took another paline, savoring the rich fruity flavor. The Xaffer brought forward a sturmwood box containing a blade; but a single gentle twirl told me the balance was untrue. This is, despite all, a weakness of the Havilfarese thraxter. When I say the blade of the example I chose was finer, I mean the lines were slightly more slender, the fullering that much more exact. I made up my mind.

“Fodo, can you have this blade fined down a trifle — I can draw you the lines. The curve of the cutting edge, so—” I traced a thumbnail down the blade.

He nodded, twitching his whiskers. “I can have that done in my workshop which is, as everyone knows, the finest in all Jikaida City.”

“Good. If you will bring paper and pen I will draw it out.”

Following my usual custom I had turned the chair as I sat down so that I faced the door. This is a habit, as you know. A shadow moved beyond the panels, and the brass bell chimed. I caught a glimpse of a hard bright yellow tuft of feathers vibrating ahead of the helmet beneath them, and I was out of the chair and back into the shadows of the shop past the counter, pressing up against a reekingly oily kax wrapped about a stray dummy.

The two Shanodrinese swaggered in, throwing their short capes back, laughing, making great play with the rings on their fingers. They wore armor. They guffawed, between themselves, talking of their prince in terms that betrayed respect and obedience but little affection. The two were masichieri, well enough, little better than bandits masquerading as paktuns.

“Hai, Fodo, you lumop! Where is the dagger you repair for me, eh? You useless rast!”

Not, as you will instantly perceive, a pleasant way to talk.

Fodo’s Xaffer bustled forward in that indifferent way that strange race of diffs have, and produced the dagger. It was minutely scrutinized and reluctantly passed as serviceable. It would not have surprised me if these two specimens of Mefto’s guard refused to pay, and broke Fodo’s nose for him if he objected. But they rustled out the coins and made a great show of it, and then turned to leave. I heaved out a sigh of relief. Oh, yes, I, Dray Prescot, hid and ached for these cramphs to begone. You will easily see why. Dav Olmes had cleared up the mess after the death of the four would-be stikitches and nothing further had transpired; but Mefto’s men would still be wondering what had happened to their comrades. They had followed me, and therefore were obeying orders; but Mefto’s men could not know I served Konec, at least, not yet, not until we met.

So they turned to leave and then one of them, the apim with the black moustaches and the lines disfiguring his mouth, saw the spread table, and the miscils crumbled on their plate and the dish of palines. He halted and, idly as I thought, picked up a paline and, as one does, popped it into his mouth. His companion was a Moltingur, one of that race of diffs who, of the size of and not unlike apims, yet are diffs with a horny carapace across their shoulders, atrophied relic of wings, so it is believed. Their faces would be looked on as hideous on Earth, with an eating proboscis and feelers, and faceted eyes that loom large and blank and frighteningly ferocious. His tunnel mouth opened to reveal its rows of needle-like teeth that tore his food for the proboscis to masticate and swallow down. His words were hissed, as all Moltingurs seem to hiss whatever they speak, chillingly.

“You have a customer, Fodo. An honored customer, I think.”

“Aye,” said the apim. “By Barflut the Razor-Feathered, you are right, Trinko.” So by these words I knew he had been a flutsman in his time.

“Just a customer—” began Fodo.

Now it was plain these two thought highly of themselves, as members of the entourage of Prince Mefto of Shanodrin. The clear evidence of the rapid departure of Fodo’s customer must either have puzzled them and aroused their suspicious nature or piqued them because of the fancied slight. Either way, with gentlemen of that kidney, it did not matter. They were insistent on meeting this mysterious customer. If I say, again, in the old way: I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, I would add only that I would say those great words with a kind of sob, a despairing feeling of emptiness. Oh, yes, Dray Prescot could leap out and with drawn sword confront these two cramphs. Dray Prescot would have done that. The Dray Prescot who had not, as Jak the Nameless, fought Prince Mefto the Kazzur — and lost.

The naked thraxter shook in my fist. The blade had not been paid for yet. And the magniloquent thoughts clashed. The piece of paper and the pen lay to hand. What dreams I had had of getting Fodo to fashion this sword into a more perfect instrument of death — and how insubstantial and meaningless they appeared when I could not even leap forward into action and use that new blade!

“Sink me!” I burst out — but silently, to myself.

What might have happened Zair alone knows. I do not. I do remember that the thraxter was no longer shaking, and that I took a half step forward. The world was fined down to the shadows around me and the brilliant figures of those two men in their armor, tall and bright, and the hard yellow favors and feathers.

What might have happened... The apim reached for more palines and he tossed one to Trinko, the Moltingur.

With a gulp that echoed, Fodo said: “It is a lady of reputation, come to buy a dagger for her husband. Her lover and his men await. It would be—” He hesitated.

The apim laughed.

Trinko hissed, “Passion and daggers and lovers. It is no business of ours, Ortyg.” He flapped his yellow cape around and hitched his sword. Well, that familiar gesture can mean many things. But Ortyg, the apim, read his Moltingur comrade aright, and he laughed, and said, “So perish all blind husbands, may Quergey take them up. You are right, Trinko. Anyway,” and he popped the last paline, “if there are men waiting...”

“By Gursrnigur!” said Trinko. “You have the right of it.”

So, their fists on their sword hilts, they swaggered out.

A space passed over before I emerged from the shadows. I did not ask Friendly Fodo the reason for his words. Perhaps he just did not like Mefto’s men. Perhaps. Perhaps he had seen something in my sudden flight that revealed much to his shrewd Fristle eyes.

Chapter Nineteen

“Vallia is not Sunk into the sea.”

Events moved rapidly in the ensuing days although in ways that surprised me and, by Vox! that mightily discomposed Konec and Dav. My own emotions remained opaque and murky in relation to my feelings about myself. Eventually I had emerged from my hiding place and with no word of the two Shanodrinese between us had completed my business with Friendly Fodo. He would produce the finer lines in the thraxter blade and he would charge me well.

We heard reports that Mefto the Kazzur was recovered of his wound. His animal-like powers of recuperation aided in this sense of that certain possession of the yrium that aided him in his control of his people. But I wondered. Certainly, had one of my clansmen, or Djangs, been wounded in a wing, as Mefto had, he would not have dropped all his weapons. Those on the wounded side, yes, perhaps; but not all of them.

The day on which Konec’s entourage visited the Jikaidaderen to watch Mefto and his people play a game comes back to me now as a day of suppressed passion and seething anger. We took our seats in the public galleries and settled down to study the play. The crowd was of the opinion that the prince would win, and resoundingly. This he did. We studied the way his men fought, their swordplay and techniques, tried to detect any weaknesses, and marked the men to whom he assigned the posts of most danger. On that occasion Mefto took part in only a single encounter. He and his Jikaidast worked the play admirably, and Mefto was able to put himself in as a substitute and deal with the opposing Princess’s Swordsman. This man was a Rapa, beaked, proud, fierce and an accomplished bladesman. He had made a name for himself. But against Mefto the Kazzur he just did not stand a chance. As I watched the glittering blades and the dazzling, nerve-flicking passes, I stared hungrily, desperately searching for a flaw in Mefto’s art. He appeared to me perfect at every point. When it was over the crowd applauded. At Konec’s fierce urgings we clapped, too.

As the games were played and the positions on the league tables changed leading to the final tournament, the patterns of the final opponents emerged. We were at last advised of the day on which we would meet Mefto, for both he and ourselves had fought through successfully. The lady Yasuri, too, was well positioned with a handful of nobles and royalty from various countries. The play-offs would sort out the final positions. The wealth at stake in this session of games was breathtaking. As Konec remarked, dourly, “Let them keep their gold. We fight here for higher motives.”

Yes. Yes, I know that sounds banal, juvenile almost, but if you had seen the burning determination of these people of Konec’s and understood what they were prepared to sacrifice for what they believed in, I do not think you would mock.

One of the questions to be decided before a game could begin was the notation to be used. A simple grid-reference, or the English notation where squares are named from their superior pieces, were in use, as was the typically Kregan system in which each drin, having its own name, gives drin co-ordinates. Well. As you may imagine, Mefto in the preliminary planning stages insisted on using his system. Konec, who in other times might well have argued with the authority of a stiff-necked kov, gravely assented. We didn’t give the chances of an arbora feather in the Furnace Fires of Inshurfraz what rules were used, just so we could get our swords at the cramph. But Dav screwed his eyes up.

“Do not agree too hastily to everything, Konec. The rast will suspect. I have the nastiest of itches that tells me he guesses we harbor plots against him—”

“You say so?”

“I do not say so. Just that I have this itch.”

By this time I had formed enough of an opinion of Dav Olmes to respect his itches of intuition. During this period when we all fenced consistently in the sanded enclosure at the rear of the Blue Rokveil I took much delight in bouts with Bevon. We used the wooden swords, the weight and feel nicely balanced to simulate the real article. With the rudis Bevon and I dealt each other many a shrewd buffet. He was a strong swordsman, blunt and workmanlike. His skill improved daily as he learned the tricks, his dogged face clamped with effort, the grip-jawed look lowering and determined. Some of his history, clearly, he had not revealed, although he did mention that his uncle had been a paktun. I caught a glimpse of many a warm summer evening when uncle and nephew would steal away down to the bottom pasture and then go at it, hammer and tongs with their wooden swords; and, later, of the tall stories the scarred old mercenary would tell the boy. But, all the same, Devon’s main interest then and now lay in Jikaida, the purity of the game, the disciplined concentration that drove out every other thought, the sheer intellectual challenge.

“You hit a man shrewdly, Jak,” he said once, after we desisted from a session and sought ale, wiping our foreheads with the yellow towels. “By Spag the Junct,” he said, having picked up that beauty from Dav.

“I swear your sword obeys your inmost spirit without thought. I never saw the last passage at all.”

“It is a pretty one.” I sliced the wooden sword about. “Look, like this. And, as to the sword and the spirit being one, yes, you have the right of it. Thought is too slow.”

Although, I said to myself, I had thought when fighting Mefto the Kazzur. Aye, and the thought never put into practice...

Bevon looked troubled as we drank. “This so-called plan. It is suicide, and that I do not like. Yet it seems I can see no other sure course.”

“Well, there has to be. Or, as some of my friends would say: We must saddle a leem to catch his ponsho.”

He eyed me. “Aye. And I have noticed that Kov Konec and Vad Dav Olmes speak with you in a way they do not with others. Me, they expect miracles from in Jikaida. But you, I think they see in you something that perhaps—” He paused, and drank.

I made no direct response. But it was true. For the simple paktun I appeared to be, these powerful men handled me with great attention. I know Konec listened to Dav. Perhaps they, at the least, could see something in this Jak the Paktun that was a faint and far off echo of Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy. I prayed Zair that this was so.

Some of the party from Mandua went to see Execution Jikaida. Most of us stayed away. When criminals were sentenced to death, as opposed to being sentenced to take part in Kazz-Jikaida, there still remained a chance. They took the part of pieces on the board. When they were taken, their execution happened, there and then, the taking piece striking them down. The Bowmen of Loh maintained order. And there was the chance that they might not be taken in a game. They could go onto the board, with many a wary glance to the position they had drawn, and hope. After all, many a game has been settled in just a few dramatic moves...

One aspect of Execution Jikaida most unlikely ever to be found in Kazz-Jikaida was that, despite the blood-letting, real games of Jikaida still could be played. And one aspect of Kazz-Jikaida most unlikely to be found in Execution Jikaida — although sometimes this, too, was enforced — was the sight of the player taking his place on the board. Usually he or she would take the part of the Pallan, sometimes of the Princess. Mefto had taken part, gleefully, as we had seen.

When the player stood upon the board his professional adviser must be near him for consultation. So the Jikaidast was carried about the board in a gherimcal, a dinky little palanquin with a hood and padded seat and carrying poles. Too much ornamentation was generally considered vulgar; but there were examples finely decorated in precious metals and ivory and silks. Each would contain a conveniently slanted board with holes in the squares and pegged pieces for play so that the Jikaidast might keep track of what plans were afoot. Also there would be reference books, and, most important, shelves for food and drink. Slaves carried the gherimcal about the board, always keeping in close contact with the player and the pretty girls who carried the orders for the moves to the pieces. In the game for which so much anticipatory apprehension was felt by the people from Mandua, there was no question but that Konec would play and act on the board. He would take the Pallan’s part and Dav and Frodo would be Kapts. There was still some uncertainty as to the size game we would be playing, and Strom Nath might, if the game was a large variety, be a Kapt also; otherwise, he would be a Chuktar. They told me I would have to be a Chuktar, and I said that, by Havil, that was rapid promotion in any man’s army, whereat they laughed.

Our nerves were fine drawn during this period. Men would suddenly laugh, and clap a fist to sword hilt, and so guffaw again, for nothing, and then turn away, and be very quiet. Nothing was heard of the man the flier from Hamal had brought in; but Konec told us that he was confident that unless Mefto was stopped the alliance would go through and the countries of the Central Dawn Lands would fall like ripe shonages. I was not a party to the quarrel that occurred between Mefto and Konec when they met to finalize the bokkertu for the game; but the upshot was that Konec returned to tell us that it had been agreed the game would be Screetz Jikaida. We pondered the implications.

On balance, we felt little had changed. We would have to hire men from the academies to take the places of our pieces, and they would be trained to the sword. In Screetz Jikaida all the pieces are armed with sword and shield alone, as the name suggests, and are naked but for a breechclout. There would be no spears or axes or different shields. Screetz Jikaida holds its own charm, as different and as bloody as Kazz Jikaida of the usual run.

Bevon was pleased. “Swords,” he said. “Aye, that will serve.”

But, all the same, we had deciphered no other plan in the mists ahead than the one which would encompass all our deaths.

In the last sennight before the game was scheduled zorca riders came in with news that the caravan that had arrived at the fort on the River of Purple Rushes would soon reach the city. One messenger rode straight to the Blue Rokveil and was closeted with Kov Konec.

When we met that evening for our usual lavish meal and general good-natured horseplay, Konec’s mood was at once jovial and grim, as though he must plunge his hand into scalding water to snatch out a bag of gold.

“I have had word, certain word. Our spies have done well. If Mefto can be placed back in the velvet-lined balass box all Shanodrin will rise and expel his puppets and followers. The country is held in an iron grip; but with the threat of Mefto removed, the people will strike. Then Khorundur and Mandua will breathe easier, and the smaller states, the kovnates of Bellendur and Glyfandrin. We here, in Jikaida City, hold the key.”

“We hold the sword, Konec!” growled Dav.

“Aye!” they chorused.

This news from the outside world affected me in a way different from these men of Mandua. I hungered to know what was happening in Vallia. I had not fretted over this absence, for there were good men there to run things, and Drak had returned. But, all the same, I wanted to know what was going on. There was a chance, a slender one, true, that some news of that distant island empire might have filtered down here, particularly as the people of the Dawn Lands must be aware that Vallia, far away in the north, stood shoulder to shoulder with them in the struggle against Thyllis. Dazzling schemes of a great combination of forces marching from north and south on Hamal and crushing that empire until the pips squeaked rose in my mind. But they were dreams, dreams... Dreams, yes. But, one day, all of Paz, this whole island and continental grouping, must unite. It must. That was the task that, more and more clearly, I saw set to my hands — and as I often thought, with the blessing of the Star Lords and the Savanti. There must be a reason why I had been brought to Kregen. Oh, of course — the Star Lords employed me as a useful tool to pull their hot chestnuts out of the fire; but they had other kregoinye I had now learned. And the Savanti, those aloof and superhuman but mortal men and women of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, had first summoned me to Kregen for their purposes to civilize the world. And, because I had not done as they wished, I had been thrown out of Paradise —

well, that was no Paradise for me now nor had been these many seasons. But, I felt with a conviction I could not justify in view of what had happened and yet clung to with stubborn will, I was here on this marvelous and terrible world of Kregen for a purpose. I had to be. If not, then it was all a sham, all of it, save Delia and the family with whom I seemed to be at such odds, them and my friends. And then, well, they say don’t dice with a four-armed fellow.

The lady Yasuri had changed her accommodation to a better class of hotel called The Star of Laybrites. The name tells you it was situated in Yellow City. There had been some business of a Rapa attempting one of her handmaids. If it had been Sishi I fancy the Rapa was nursing a dented beak right now. Happening to be taking a short cut through Yellow City — and when I say happened I found, when I was there, I wasn’t quite sure why I should be — I passed the hotel and gave a quick glance for the circlets of yellow painted stars along the arcade above. Why I had come here was made immediately plain to me.

People were passing along the avenue and giving me no attention, for I found I was wearing a blue favor. A figure staggered suddenly from a side alleyway that led to the rear of the hotel. He was stark naked. He was smothered in dust and unpleasant refuse, and straw stuck out of his hair. I recognized him at once. With a huge guffaw, and a quick snatch at the cords of my cape, I slung it off and swung it about his broad shoulders.

“By Horato the Potent! Of all the infernal—! Jak!” He grabbed the cape and pulled it about his nakedness and, at that, it only just hung down enough to be decent — just about. I still laughed. I knew exactly what he was thinking and the furious sense of frustration seething in that sharp foxy face. And then, well, it was strange to experience this with someone else who experienced it, also. A gorgeous scarlet and gold bird flew down the avenue and with wide spread wings cut in over the heads of the people who walked stolidly on with not so much as a single glance at the Gdoinye. Well, why not? They couldn’t see this supernatural messenger and spy of the Star Lords. Pompino the Iarvin looked up, and his face slackened off wonderfully, so that all the fury lines vanished, to be replaced by an expression of obedient wonderment.

“Pompino! Pompino!” called the bird, perching with a great feather rustling on one of the circlets of yellow stars. “You have been given no leave to abandon the Everoinye.”

“But—” began Pompino.

“You know your task. You must hew to your path—”

“You stupid great onker!” I bellowed up at the bird. “What are we waiting on that stupid woman for?

Let us depart from here — give us a fight, if necessary — you brainless bird!”

Pompino said something like: “Awwkk!” And he looked at me as though expecting me to be struck down in a blaze of blue fire.

Well, I might have been. But the way the Star Lords had been treating me and my recent thoughts on all the pressing work that needed to be done on Kregen braced me up powerfully.

“Dray Prescot! You onker of onkers! Hearken to your fate and submit—”

“Ask Ahrinye about that, fambly!”

“He is young and without caution, as you are. You fret on your Vallia. Rest easy on that score—”

“Rest easy! There is work to do there.”

“And it is being done. Your cause prospers. But the Star Lords will not be baulked and they call upon you for a higher service.”

Pompino was goggling away at me and at the Gdoinye. He’d been flung back here, just as I had been flung back to the scenes of my labors for the Star Lords when I had taken myself off. He must be annoyed; yet he could only goggle away at me as though staring at a demon from Cottmer’s Caverns.

“Tell me about Vallia, you bird of ill omen.”

“Why do you struggle against the Star Lords when they seek only your good? They have treated you with great kindness and you repay them with abuse and you miscall me most devilishly. Yes, your Vallia is safe as you left it. Nothing has gone wrong—”

“Has anything gone right?”

“Of course. Do you think you are irreplaceable?”

“No.”

Pompino put a hand to his eyes. He was swallowing nonstop.

“Do the business here and ensure the safety of the lady Yasuri. The business of Mefto is yours alone.”

The scarlet feathers riffled. People were walking past all the time and no one cast so much as a glance in our direction. The Gdoinye lifted into the air. His wings beat strongly. As he had so often done he squawked down at me most rudely. And then he screeched out: “Dray Prescot, get onker, onker of onkers.”

Well, we shared that, at the least. We’d established that kind of comradely insult between us, and I pondered his words.

Pompino gathered himself together. He pulled the cape more tightly about himself. It was green, I noticed, with yellow checkered borders. He stopped swallowing. He straightened his shoulders. The Gdoinye lifted high, flirted a wing, swung away and vanished over the rooftops across the avenue.

“The damned great fambly,” I said.

“Jak.” Pompino stopped shaking. “Jak — to talk to the Gdoinye like that — I’ve never heard — you might have been — I do not know...” He shook his head, goggling at me. Then: “But, Jak, he was talking about someone called Prescot. It seems to me I have heard that name—”

“Some other fellow,” I said. “More likely, two other fellows. And the Gdoinye and I have an understanding. We rub along. But, one day, I’ll singe his feathers for him, so help me Zair.”

There, you see... Stupid intemperate boasting again.

We sauntered away and Pompino looked halfway respectable. He said, “How did you come to be so close when I was brought back?”

“Thank the Star Lords for that. I had no intention of walking this way; but I am here. And the cape; it is not mine.”

He shook his head and I marveled at how quickly he had once again reconciled himself to the Star Lords’ demands.

“This lady Yasuri,” he said, pondering. “What is so special about her that she is so cherished?”

“She may be an old biddy, but she’s not too old to have children if she wills it.”

“I’m not sure—?”

“I once rescued a young loving couple out on a spree and they had a child who overturned cities and nations. He is dead now, thankfully, along with many others.” How Gafard, the King’s Striker, a Master Jikaidast, would have joyed to be here! And how I would welcome him, by Zair!

When Pompino heard of the Sword Jikaida coming up with Mefto he put a lean finger up and rubbed his foxy face. He looked wary.

“I do not think this thing touches my honor.”

“Agreed.”

He stamped his foot. “You are infuriating! What in Panachreem—?”

“Look, Pompino; you must carry out the duties of a kregoinye and that does not include being chopped. The Gdoinye gave me leave to deal with Mefto, if it is possible. That can only mean the Star Lords have an eye in that direction. But your duty lies toward the lady Yasuri.”

“Duty to her! Ha!”

“She looks like a little wrinkled nut, true. But if she took off that stupid wig and let her hair loose, and washed her face with cleansing cream, and wore shapely clothes, why, many a man would delight in proving his duty to her.”

“With a nose and a tongue as sharp as hers?”

“They could both be blunted, given love.”

“Well, if that is what the Everoinye plan, we are in for a long and tedious wait!”

So, half-cross and half-laughing, we strolled back to the Blue Rokveil.

“As San Blarnoi says,” observed Pompino as we went in to find Dav and ale. “The heart leads where the eyes follow.”

The incoming caravan was due to arrive the day before the game and, expressing a wish to go down and see the entrance, I was joined by Bevon and Pompino. The others all declined. I pressed Dav; but he excused himself. He had a girl to attend to. Well, that was Dav Olmes for you, big and burly and fond of ale and women and fighting. A combination of great worth on Kregen. The scene when we arrived presented just such a spectacle of color and noise and confusion as delights the heart. Many cities of Paz boast a Wayfarer’s Drinnik, a wide expanse where the caravans form up or disperse, and we stood under a black and white checkered awning and sipped ale as we watched. The Quoffas rolled patiently along, the calsanys and unggars drew up in their long loaded strings, men dismounted from totrixes and urvivels and zorcas, all thirsty, all glowing with their safe arrival. The wagons rolled in. A group of Khibils dismounted from their freymuls, that pleasant riding animal that is often called the poor man’s zorca, a bright chocolate in color with vivid streaks of yellow beneath. Willing, is a freymul, and as a mount serves well within his abilities. Pompino eyed the Khibils and then strolled off to pick up what news there was. The dust rose and the glory of the suns shot through, turning motes of gold spinning, streaming in the mingled lights of Zim and Genodras. I sipped ale and watched, and at last saw a man I fancied might be useful.

He was apim, like me, limber and tough, and as he dismounted and gave his zorca a gentle pat I caught the fiery wink of gold from the pakzhan at his throat. He was a hyr-paktun. His lance bore red and blue tufts. I rolled across carrying a spare flagon.

“Llahal, dom. Ale for news of the world.” He eyed me. He licked his lips. His weapons were bright and oiled. He stood sparingly against the light of the suns.

“Llahal, dom. You are welcome.” He took the flagon and drank and wiped his lips. “Now may Beng Dikkane be praised!”

“The news?”

He told me a little of what I hungered to hear. Yes, he had a third cousin who had returned from up north. Told him that paktuns were being kicked out of Vallia. He’d never been there — fought in Pandahem, though, by Armipand’s gross belly, nasty stuff all jungles and swamps down to the south. Yes, Vallia was, as far as he knew, still there and hadn’t sunk into the sea. They’d had revolutions, like anywhere else, and a new emperor, and there had been whispers of new and frightful secret weapons. But he knew little. His third cousin had been hit behind the ear by a steel-headed weapon he’d claimed was as long as four spears. Clearly, he was bereft of his sense, makib, for that was laughably impossible.

“Surely,” I said. “My thanks, dom. Remberee.”

This third-cousinly confirmation of what the Gdoinye had told me had to suffice for my comfort. Bevon and Pompino reappeared and we prepared to leave Wayfarer’s Drinnik. And then the slaves toiled in. Well. The slaves had struggled over the Desolate Waste on foot. They wore the gray slave breechclout or were naked. They were yoked and haltered. They stank. They collapsed into long limp straggles on the dust and their heads bowed and that ghastly wailing rose from them. The sound of “Grak!” smashed into the air continuously, with the crack of whips. The slavemasters were Katakis. We caught a glimpse of this dolorous arrival of the slaves and then a protruding corner of the ale booth shut off the sight.

“No,” said Bevon, and there was sweat on his pug face. “No.”

Pompino and I knew what he meant.

“I had news from home,” said Pompino. “Well, almost home, from a town ten dwaburs away and they’d heard nothing so it must all be all right.”

Such is the hunger for news of home that even the negation of news is regarded as confirmation of all rightness. We did not hurry back and stopped for a wet here and there and admired the sights. We wore swords, of course, and our brigandines, and if Bevon tended to swagger a little in imitation of Pompino, who is there who would blame him over much?

The avenue on which stood the Blue Rokveil was blocked by a line of cavalrymen, their totrixes schooled to obedience, their black and white checks hard in the brilliance of the suns. People were being held back, and a buzzing murmur of speculation rose. We pushed forward, puzzled.

“Llanitch!” bellowed a bulky Deldar, sweating. At his order to halt we stopped, looking at him inquiringly. He shouldered across and people skipped out of his way. Just beyond the line of cavalrymen the hotel lifted, its ranks of windows bright, its blue flags fluttering. People craned to see. The Deldar eased back to his men, keeping them face front. We moved to a vantage point and so looked on disaster.

They say Trip the Thwarter, who is a minor spirit of deviltry, takes delight in upsetting the best-laid plans. We saw the dismounted vakkas hauling out their prisoners. There were many swords and spears in evidence, and no chances were being taken, for these men being taken up into custody were notorious and possessed of fearful reputations. We saw Kov Konec being prodded out, dignified, calm, his hands bound. We saw Dav turn on a swod and try to kick him, snarling his hatred, and so being thumped back into line. The swords ringed in the important people of Mandua, Fropo the Curved, Strom Nath Resdurm, Nath the Fortroi and others. Only the lesser folk were not taken up. We stared, appalled.

“Treason against the Nine Masked Guardians,” a man in the crowd told us.

“A plot to murder them all in their beds,” amplified his wife, a plump, jolly person carrying a wicker basket filled with squishes in moist green leaves.

“Lucky for us Prince Mefto discovered the plot in time to warn the Masked Nine. By Havil! I’d send

’em all to the Execution Jikaida, aye, and put them all in the center drin!”

We stood as though frozen by the baleful eyes of the Gengulas of legend. Konec saw us.

With a single contemptuous jerk he snapped the thongs binding his wrists. He stuck both arms out sideways, level with his ears. Then he drew them in and thrust them out again level with his hips. He brought his hand around to the base of his spine and swept it in a wide circling arc up over his head. The pantomime was quite clear. Then — then he drew his forefinger across his throat, forcefully, viciously. I remained absolutely still.

The guards leaped on him then; but he did not resist as they tied his hands again. He had delivered his message, a chilling and demanding message. His eyes blazed on me.

Between files of the totrix cavalry Konec and his people were led away to imprisonment. The plot against Mefto the Kazzur was stillborn.

“What—?” said Bevon. He looked bewildered.

“It is all down to you, Jak,” said Pompino.

We were alone and friendless in Jikaida City, and it was all down to me to halt this glittering Prince Mefto the Kazzur in his ambitions and to prevent the total destruction of Vallia. As this thought struck in so shrewdly there rose up before my eyes the phantom vision of Mefto, brandishing his five swords and beating down in irresistible triumph.

Chapter Twenty

Death Jikaida

“You must be a fambly, of a surety,” said Nath the Swordsman, screwing up his scarred face in hopeless wonderment. “But if you wish to act against Mefto, that is suitable for me. I do not give the lady Yasuri more than one chance in ten.”

“You are finding the pieces for the lady Yasuri. Put me down on the list.”

“And me,” said Bevon, at my side.

Pompino had disappeared. I harbored no grudge; this was no affair of his and he was mightily conscious of his duty for the Star Lords. We stood in Nath the Swordsman’s room that looked out upon the inner square of his rambling premises. Men and women were being put through their paces out there, and the quick flitter and flutter of sword blades filled the dusty area. The room was plainly furnished and contained as its centerpiece a finely executed picture of Kurin, delineated as some long-dead artist of Jikaida City had visualized him, blade in hand, in the guard position and, as this was Havilfar, covering himself with a shield. The picture served as the focus of a kind of shrine, with flowers and atras and incense burning, which exuded a stink into the room.

“The lady Yasuri was fortunate in the misfortune of Konec,” said Nath. His gaze seldom left the people practicing out there, and he would suddenly leap up and go striding out, yelling, to reprimand some poor wight whose clumsy technique had aroused Nath’s displeasure. The women out there were all strapping girls, of course, for they fight hard in Vuvushi Jikaida.

“Yes,” said Bevon.

The league tables led up to the final tournament and Yasuri had placed third, because she had already lost to Konec. That was her only defeat. With the absence of Konec, who was due to play Mefto in the final, Yasuri had been switched in. We were here to act as two of her pieces. Neither of us could see any other way of getting to Prince Mefto.

I had, in my old intemperate way, started to make a sally toward his hotel and had fought a few of his folk trying to get through. I had not succeeded and the darker the veil drawn over that chapter of misfortunes the better. I had had the sense to wear a mask. Now we presented ourselves at Nath en Screetzim’s premises and he welcomed us like water in the Ochre Limits. Once we had been accepted, the formalities went through like sausages on a greased plate and very quickly we found ourselves joining the lumpen gaggle Yasuri had been able to find. We waited in a long, wide, tall hall with arrow-slits for windows far higher than a man could jump. We were in the heart of the Jikaidaderen. The game was to be a private one. The public would be able to see most of the other tournament games; but they would not be permitted here to see the final. That they were prepared to accept this indicates something of the obedience rife in Jikaida City. We rubbed shoulders with criminals, with men who had been delegated this duty, slaves fighting for their freedom and few, very few, men who fought for the lady Yasuri.

The atmosphere in that anteroom to the games clogged on the palate, the stink of sweat, the stink of fear

— and the silly bravado men put on in times like these to mask their deeper feelings. Well, Bevon and I endured.

We studied the Jikaida pieces waiting to go on. We tried to pick the stout from the weak, the brave from those who would be unable to perform adequately through fear — everyone knew the penalty for running. I said to Bevon: “One or two will run, I think, and welcome a Lohvian shaft through them rather than a chopped-up death at the hands of Mefto’s bully boys.”

“Yet some look capable. That Chulik, he’s here for slitting the throat of a Rapa. And that group of Fristles, and see those Khibils? They will fight.”

Rumors and buzzes swept through the men. There was weak ale to drink and no wine. There was ample food. We understood that the lady Yasuri had obtained the services of a lady Jikaidasta whose name, we gathered, was Ling-li-Lwingling, or something like that. Bevon listened to the swift gabble of a Fristle, and turned to me. I did not know if he was laughing or cursing.

“Who do you think Mefto has as his Jikaidast?”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, Bevon, now you have a personal grudge in it doubled.”

“Aye.”

Och slaves at last brought in the equipment. These formalities differed markedly for us from our previous experiences. Then we had been part of a noble’s entourage, playing for his honor and glory; now we were assembled from the academies of the sword and from the prisons and stews. The bagniossupplied their freight. The lady Yasuri apparently relied entirely on the resources of Jikaida City for her pieces, for we saw none of the small bodyguard she kept up. As for the equipment, that was simple. A blue breechclout, a thraxter and a shield. Plus a headband decked with varying numbers of blue feathers and, for some of the superior pieces, blue favors on sashes. Bevon and I each received a reed-laurium[6]with two blue feathers. This marked us as Deldars.

The swords were thraxters and Bevon and I, by arrangement as volunteers, received our own weapons. The shields were laminated wood, bronze rimmed but not faced, and were smaller than the regulation Havilfarese swod’s shield, being something like twenty-seven inches high by sixteen inches wide, and were rectangular.

The shields were painted solid blue with white rank markings as appropriate, and a fellow would take the shield fitting his position as a piece when he left the substitutes bench. The lady Yasuri had been obliged to play blue, as she was filling in and, no doubt, overjoyed at her own good fortune. She was a Yellow adherent, I knew; but the glory and profit of winning meant more to her, and it is proper that a Jikaida player should take either color for the experience of the different diagonals of play.

Wrapping the blue breechclout about me and drawing the end up between my legs and fastening it off with the blue cord provided reminded me, with a pang, of the times I had gone through this first stage of dressing with the brave old scarlet. But now there would be no mesh steel, no kax, no leather jerkin; now the blue breechclout was all. Well, by Zair! And wasn’t this what was required? Wasn’t it high time I went swinging into action wearing just a breechclout and with a sword in my fist?

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said. “I think Mefto—” But I did not finish the thought. Black and white checks filled the room and we were being herded out. The smell of fear stank on the air, and, also, the sweat of men determined to fight before they died.

We all received a goblet of wine — a thick, heavy, red variety like the deep purple wine of Hamal called Malab’s Blood. I do not care for it; but, by Krun! it went down sweetly enough then, I can tell you. The preliminary ceremonies went as usual, with the prayers and the chanted hymns and the sacrifices. When we came out of the long stone tunnel from the gloom onto the brilliance of the board, the brightness of the light smote our eyes. Ruby and jade radiance drenched the playing board. This was a very select, very refined Jikaida board. There was no noisy hum from an excited crowd of plebs. Around the board and raised on a plinth extended a broad terrace, shielded by black and white checkered awnings. The thrones facing each other at either end were ornate. On the terrace were set small tables and reclining couches, and the high ones of LionardDen lolled there, waited on by slaves, sipping their drinks and daintily picking at light delicacies. They had chairs which could be carried around the terrace by slaves so that they might watch the play from the best positions. No action would begin until the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians was satisfied that all the spectators were in position for the finest view.

“By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh!” growled a Brokelsh near us. “Why don’t they get on with it.”

“There is all the time in the world to die, as Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls knows full well,” a Rapa told him.

The Brokelsh spat, which heartened me.

A Pachak hefted his shield in his two left hands. “I have given the lady Yasuri my nikobi,” he said in that serious way of Pachaks. “And by Papachak the All-Powerful! I shall honor my pledge. But I think this is like to be the last fight for us.”

The Chulik slid his sword neatly under his left arm and then polished up his tusks with a spittled thumb.

“By Likshu the Treacherous!” he said. “I shall take many of them down to the Ice Floes of Sicce with me.”

“Numi the Hyrjiv fights with us,” said one of the Fristles. “But I wish I had my scimitar instead of this thraxter.”

So, as we waited to march out with our backs as straight as we could contrive and take our places on the board, we called upon our gods and our guardian spirits. This is human nature. And how the exotic variety of Kregen can respond! Truly is it said, on Kregen are joys for all men’s hearts. As we marched out we presented a spectacle at which, I suppose, many a person of limited intellect would scoff, dubbing us a collection of menagerie-men. Yet we were all men, all human beings, and we marched out to fight for our lives.

Even the Chulik shared some reflection of those feelings.

And, there was among our number a single Kataki.

“By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!” The Kataki swished his bladeless tail about like a leem in a temper. “Would that Takroti would slit all their gizzards!”

“Careful with your tail,” snapped one of the Fristles. “By Odifor, you nearly tripped me.”

The guards stepped in with upraised bludgeons to separate out the violently bawling combatants in the ensuing melee. Truly, we presented a horrifying and a pathetic spectacle as we marched out. As we stepped onto the board we saw that the Princess’s square was already occupied. The woman standing waiting wore a long white gown of sensil, lavishly embroidered with blue and yellow and black and white checkers. An enormous crowning plume of blue feathers rose above her head, surrounded by tufts of blue. She glittered with gems. As I passed her, and the carrying chair for her Jikaidasta, I saw her face. Most of the lines were gone, her flesh filled out, and I guessed many of those lines had been caused by apprehension for the journey across the Desolate Waste. Her hair was a dark brown, curled, and I caught its perfume. Her shape in the white sensil was a world away from the shape in the shiny black bombazine and lace.

She saw me and a muscle twitched in her cheek. But she made no movement and ignored me. That suited me. I was not here to fight for the lady Yasuri, but to fight against her opponent. The eight slave girls who carried the Jikaidasta’s chair were Gonells. The male Gons habitually shave off their white hair, believing it shames them. But some peoples of the Gon race take a proper pride in the silver hair of their females, and these eight Gonells were splendid girls, well-formed, clad in wispy blue, and their silver hair shone lustrously, sweeping in deep waves to their waists. The occupant of the carrying chair was invisible to me and the gherimcal rested on its four legs, carved like prychans. We marched past and so fanned out to take up our positions. As the trumpets blew and the Suns of Scorpio shone down on us, we Ranked our Deldars. The game opened with Mefto taking the first move and soon his pieces were extending down the board toward us, like rivers of lava from a volcano. Our own lines extended toward Yellow. Truly, Mefto’s pieces looked splendid in their yellow breechclouts and with tufty masses of yellow feathers. Their shields formed a field of daffodils. He had picked his best men, no doubt of that; they were brawny, tough, adept. Like us, they were a mixture of diff and apim, and they were confident of victory. The beautiful girls in their wisps of clothing ran about the board carrying the orders to the pieces. Men moved in obedience and soon the opening clashes began. Swords flashed and blood flowed. We played Death Jikaida.

It chanced that I was formed into a diagonal line with a swod each side, and there I remained. Mefto had not put in an appearance on the board. I could just see him in the Yellow throne, giving his orders and the stylor below repeating them to the girls who ran so fleetly, their limbs rosy and glowing, or brown or black and splendid in the light. The lines formed and pieces fought and were taken or took, to be tossed back into the velvet-lined balass box or to be replaced from the substitutes’ bench. The opening proved to be the Princess’s Kapt’s Gambit Accepted, and my diagonal remained fast, the action taking place on the right wing.

The young swod by me licked his lips. He was apim, a lithely built lad, without the bulky toughness of the fighting man who has campaigned for seasons on end. Despite the regulations, we talked, as the pieces did. What could the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians do about that now? Have us all shafted?

There were things he could order and which the black-clad men would carry out; but this infringement of the rules was minor.

“I only borrowed the chicken,” said this lad, by name Tobi the Knees. “Mother was starving and Father

— well, I do not know what happened to him. I would have given the next chicken back, as I always do.”

So he had been taken up by the Watch and condemned, and sent to the academy to be trained for Kazz-Jikaida. He came from the teeming sections of the city in which many poor folk eked out a precarious living. There were too many of these poor quarters. The contrast between their squalor, and the lavishness of Yellow or Blue City, condemned the Nine Guardians — at least, in my eyes. As for the Foreign Quarters, where visitors who were impartial as to color stayed, they were as palatial in their hotels as the palaces of the City nobility. Tobi the Knees was not alone in his misery.

“I was going to be a wheelwright — always get work as a wheelwright. And I can shape the wood perfectly. But, mother was ill and I lost my job, and—”

“You borrowed a chicken.”

“They got the feathers back!”

“I see.”

“And they showed me this sword and this shield and I can make a pass or two. But I still don’t understand it all.”

“Keep the shield up and keep sticking the sword out, Tobi. You’ll make a bladesman yet.”

“But I—” He swallowed. He was keeping up a brave front and smiling and swishing his thraxter about; but he was scared, frightened clear through to his ib.

A flash of legs and a wisp of purple drapery and a girl’s clear voice saying: “Swod to vault to Prychan D

Four.”

Prychan Drin was the third drin toward Yellow on the left of the board. Dermiflon was the home drin on that side, and then Strigicaw Drin. These drins do not appear in Poron Jikaida. Tobi the Knees looked. He gripped his sword. Then, without a word to me or the girl he walked up along the diagonal line. Prychan D Four was unoccupied. Tobi came down off the end of the zeunt and stood on the square and looked around. He was right out in the front of the Blues.

I just hoped Yasuri and her lady Jikaidasta knew what they were doing. D Four is a blue square.

Over on the right of the board Mefto made a bold advance, vaulting a Hikdar down through Neemu Drin to the end of Wersting Drin, and as Yasuri brought a Hikdar across to Boloth Drin to cover, so Mefto advanced a Chuktar. I began to think the crucial action would take place over there, on the front between Wersting and Boloth Drins. I hoped so. I didn’t give a damn who won this silly game; I owed Konec and his comrades from Mandua and I owed Vallia to make sure of Mefto when he appeared on the board.

The charming little girls with their blue or yellow feathers who carry the orders are equipped with long light wands of red-painted wood wrapped in blue or yellow streamers. With these they tap the pieces on the shoulders if, as so often happens, the men are staring in sick fascination at the fighting. So I felt the tap, and turned, and the girl said: “Deldar to Prychan E Three.”

I vaulted. This placed me diagonally ahead of Tobi. He greeted me as though we’d met on an Ice Floe in You Know Where.

The next instant Yellow’s orders were carried out. A fellow wearing the Yellow favors and feathers stalked across the squares from Krulch Drin toward me. Mefto had decided to put an end to this advance.

I recognized the Yellow piece at once. He was acting the part of a Chuktar; but I had last seen him eating palines in Friendly Fodo’s Weapons Shop. He halted for a moment on E Two, for as a Chuktar he had come straight on, and then, instantly, flung himself on me.

As his sword beat down on my upraised shield I fancied I’d stir him up a little.

“Why, Llahal, Trinko. Fancy meeting you here.”

His muscular body shielded with that shiny carapace across his back bore on, and his Moltingur face, all eating proboscis and feelers and terrifying faceted eyes, showed shock. I thumped forward with the shield, let the thraxter snout to the side and below. The resistance was soggy, and then the blade slid in. I stepped back.

He toppled over and his tunnel mouth emitted a long hissing wheeze. The slaves in their red tunics ran out with a stretcher and carted him away. Other slaves raked the blood and sprinkled fresh blue sand. There was no lifting uproar from the refined onlookers lounging in their chairs along the terrace. Yasuri made her move.

The red wand touched me again and the blue streamers tickled my face.

“Deldar to take Hikdar on Prychan C Three.”

This fellow, a Rapa, had watched the previous contest with his blue-feathered beak stuck high in the air. The yellow feathers in his reed-laurium outweighed his racial feathers. I stalked across and we set to. He was good — all Mefto’s men were good — and the shields gonged like pale echoes of the Bells of Beng Kishi before I slid him and so stretched him out on the blue sand. The red-clad slaves bore him off. Still there was no sound from the terrace and I did not expect any. They were connoisseurs up there, lolling in their fancy chairs and sipping their wines. Yasuri, as was her privilege because I was the attacking piece, recalled me then. I trailed off to the substitutes bench with a word for Tobi as I went.

“That’s how it’s done, Tobi. Keep your chin tucked in and your shield up. Jikai!”

“It is to you the Jikai, Jak.”

What could I say? I gave him a hard nod of encouragement and walked slowly back across the blue and yellows.

Up to this point the game had been reasonably equal, for Yasuri’s scratch team had fought like wild leems when it came to push of pike. But the tension would increase with each succeeding move, as the pieces drew closer together and the skillful maneuvering gave way to the blood bath. The palanquin of the lady Jikaidasta rested quietly near Yasuri, who, as the Aeilssa, had not so far been forced to move. As I walked back Yasuri looked at me. “Well done, Jak. I give you the Jikai.” Only lower and upper case initial letters can attempt to indicate the quality of meaning in the same word here.

“Watch his center, lady. I recall Scatulo favored a thrust—”

A voice spoke from the palanquin. The golden cords of the carrying-chair’s curtains loosened. The voice said: “Go to the substitutes’ bench, tikshim, and do not presume.” And the curtains at the side parted and a woman’s face looked out.

Red hair, she had, a glowing rippling auburn mass piled atop a small face, a pale face with the sheen of ivory of Chem. Her eyes were blue, and direct and challenging. Small her mouth, and scarlet, and pursed above a firm rounded chin. Beautiful? Yes, beautiful, like a stalking chavonth, lissom and slender and feline. Even then I did not liken her to a leem.

I halted stock-still at once. I was very near her chair. The silver-haired Gonells waited, stupidly transfixed by the blood and violence — and, at that, not stupidly. It was we who partook of the blood and violence who were the truly stupid. So I stood, not going to the bench as she had so impolitely ordered me, using that word tikshim that so infuriates those to whom it is addressed, being considerably worse than the condescending “my man” of Earth.

“I was talking to the lady Yasuri.” I spoke softly.

The Jikaidasta’s face resembled a mask at first sight; the sheen of ivory of Chem, the delineation of line of lip and jaw and nose, the flesh firm and compact as though carved from that smoothest and mellowest of ivories. But, as I stood there, a trifle lumpen and boorish, a faint mottling of color appeared on her cheekbones. She had a most perfect bone structure, fine-drawn, distinct, and in no single place could be seen any sagging of flesh. The effort with which she controlled herself was quite admirable, quite; here was a lady used to having her own way, and highly conscious of her own worth.

“Do not allow the blood to rule your head just because you have won two encounters. This is a game to win.”

“You think you will win it — against Mefto?”

“If the creatures we have to fight for us do as well as you then perhaps. Nothing else will do.”

I felt the pang in me. What I had done — would that be any use against Mefto the Kazzur?

And then, well, I was a trifle wrought up. So I said, “You are the Jikaidasta they call Ling-li-Lwingling. You are from Loh.”

Three men in black appeared on the board heading in our direction. I will not describe the instruments they bore.

Yasuri said: “Be off with you, Jak.”

“Aye, my lady.” And then, before I went, I said: “We shall win today, by fair means or foul.”

Ling-li-Lwingling, of Loh, let the side curtains fall back into place and I trotted off to the substitutes bench. I think, if the three men in black had followed me and attempted to use their instruments I would have dealt with them, not recking the consequences; but they looked malevolently, and then turned away. The man chosen to replace the piece I had acted on the blue square was a Khibil. Yasuri was bringing her left flank into play with a nicely calculated precision of timing that, had this been other than Death Jikaida, would have placed Mefto’s pieces in a cramped and unfavorable position. I fancied the lady Jikaidasta’s hand was in this strategy. But this was Death Jikaida. Mefto sent a hulking swaggerer of a fellow, acting as a swod, to deal with the Khibil Deldar. The Khibil was carted away, dripping blood on the sand. The victor bore ghastly wounds and Mefto would quite clearly replace him. Yasuri responded by switching her attack, hoping to get our Chulik into action, and then — and at last, at long last — a response was elicited from those languid watchers on the terrace.

With the accompaniment of a long sigh susurrating around him, Prince Mefto the Kazzur strode onto the board.

Useless for me to race toward him. I had almost the length of the board to go, and long before I reached the rast I’d be shafted by those vigilant Bowmen of Loh. No, I had to be on a square and near the cramph before I could break all the rules and leap for his throat. He stood on his square and looked about. He preened himself. Well, he was a master bladesman and I would not deny him that. While I would admit I did not know his full character and guessed there was good in him, somewhere, he did seem to me to vaunt his prowess, to take a dark pride from his own gift that, somehow, repulsed me. This is subjective. May Zair forgive me if I swagger in the same way. I do not think I do. And, this was strange. The great swordsmen I have known usually revere their gift, assessing it humbly as a gift of the gods, however much sweat they distribute in training and understanding the Disciplines. Perhaps I was still sore and vengeful, still filled with resentment. I sat down, and watched as Mefto went to work.

Tobi the Knees stood next in line. Mefto declared his move and pounced. He did not slay Tobi in a simple quick passage as he could have done. He toyed with him, and feigned alarm that he was under pressure, and poor Tobi thus drawn on pressed hard, and was cut, and then cut again, and so, all bewildered and uncomprehending, was sliced into pieces.

I suppose the old intemperate Dray Prescot would have leaped up and gone hurling forward. He’d have swatted the flying arrows away in the old fashion as the Krozairs of Zy do. But I do not think that maniac of a fighting man would have lived to reach Mefto the Kazzur, let alone have had time to cross swords with him.

The Dray Prescot that was me sat lumpen on the bench. But a change did come over me. As the remains of Tobi were carried away and the blue and yellow sand was sprinkled I felt I would not wait too long. And the game went badly for us. Our Kataki came up against Mefto, and his tail sliced this way and that, emptily, and Mefto laughed and his own tailhand gripped the Kataki’s bladeless tail as he sank his thraxter into his belly.

But our Chulik fought well, and dispatched his men, and Yasuri recalled him. We were being pressed back now, and over the lines of blue and yellow men the yellow of Mefto’s pieces vaulted long into our home drins. That unique vaulting move in Jikaidish is zeunt, and the Yellows were zeunting in on us with a vengeance.

The carrying chair pressed close to Yasuri, and the two ladies argued long and fiercely over their next move, and the water dripped in the clepsydra and time fleeted away. The Blues out there began to cast anxious eyes toward the water-clock. The water dripped. The ladies conferred. Some of the pieces began to beat their swords against their shields. The hollow drumroll made no difference to the ladies. Still they talked. And the water dripped.

We all saw the long lenken arm of the gong lift ready to descend with a resonant boom against the brazen gong. Then a purple wisp of gossamer and a flash of spritely legs and a girl was off to order the move. It was made before the gong struck. But even as the Chuktar ordered to move complied, the gong crashed out — too late.

“Well,” said Bevon next to me. “I do not wish to be on the board if the ladies do that again.”

“Nor me, by Odifor!” quoth the Fristle next to us on the bench. Sweat stank on the air, and both ladies used perfume bottles. Move followed move, and it was clear that Mefto had sized up the play and was ruthlessly pushing everything forward, not caring for finesse, just using the superior skills of his fighting men. Our ranks thinned. It was soon perfectly clear that we were going to lose, for a set-up was approaching in which the Yellow Pallan could sweep down in a long zeunt and coming off the vault turn sharply and so pin the Princess. Yasuri saw it and was helpless. Her every move was beaten by superior swordplay.

Yes, I know — this was an example of the futility of Kazz-Jikaida, and a confirmation of the pure Jikaida player’s views.

But, do not forget, this was Death Jikaida. As the final move in Mefto’s play was made, a long and satisfied sigh rippled up from the terrace. The men and women up there, sipping their delicate wines, perfumed lace at their noses, appreciated what they were seeing.

Prince Mefto, acting as the Yellow Pallan, made the last zeunt in person. He came off the vault opposite the Princess and his next move would capture her. She threw in our Chulik. He did well, he fought bravely; but he died. He died on Mefto’s blade.

Now it was Yellow’s move. As the winning defender, Mefto could not replace himself; but everyone present knew he had no intention of doing that. He was unmarked. Glitteringly in the sunshine he stood there, a golden figure of superb poise and accomplishment. He made his move. In a loud, ringing voice, he called: “Pallan captures Aeilssa. Hyrkaida! Do you bare the throat?”

Yasuri drew herself up, a diminutive figure yet shining and oddly impressive in her long white gown with the tall blue feathers nodding over her head.

“I do not bare the throat! En Screetzim nalen Aeilssa!”

The Princess’s Swordsman!

Her prerogative, available only in Kazz-Jikaida, and she had taken it — as, indeed, she must. Mefto knew that. He smiled. We all saw that smile, small and tight and filled with genuine pleasure. Mefto was a bladesman who loved to fight, who enjoyed his work, and who had never met his master. The man who had been waiting all this time as the Princess’s Swordsman started up. His face was green. He was apim. His eyes protruded grotesquely, and glistened like gouged-out eyes on a fishmonger’s slab. With a shriek he threw his shield away and ran. He had no idea where he was running. He just fled from horror.

In a blundering crazed gallop he ran over the blue and yellows and the long Lohvian shaft skewered him through the back and another pierced him through the throat and as he fell a third punctured into and through one of those ghastly staring eyes.

His shield still rocked on its face in the mingled sunslight.

Bevon stood up.

“I think I shall see what I may do against this—”

I pulled him by his blue breechclout.

“Stay, Bevon the Reckless!”

So it was I, Dray Prescot, Prince of Onkers, who stepped forward and picked up the fallen shield with its proud marks of the Princess’s Swordsman and walked straight and purposefully onto the blue and yellow squares of the board of Death Jikaida to face a man I knew had the beating of me in swordplay.

Chapter Twenty-one

The Princess’s Swordsman

Traditionally in Kazz-Jikaida whenever the Princess called on her Swordsman to fight for her the drums rolled. Black and white checkered tabards, black and white checkered drum cloths, all rippled and flowed as the drummers plied their drumsticks. The rataplan hammered out. Long thunderous rolls and flourishes, repeated and repeated, roared and boomed over the Jikaida board. And I walked forward, almost in a dream, feeling the blood in my head and the weight of the shield and the heft of the sword and the grip of the sand beneath my naked feet.

These were physical feelings. They bore in on me. They were tangible and real, like the sweat that beaded my forehead and trickled down my face from under the reed-laurium, like the taste of blood and sweat on the air. Physical, material impressions: the glitter of burnished steel, the gloating faces of the privileged onlookers as they crowded from their chairs to catch a closer look at this climactic butchery, the waft of a tiny breeze on my heat-soaked face — how refreshing that breeze, how vividly it brought back pungent memories of other days, of the quarterdeck of a seventy-four, of the scrap of decking of a swifter, a swordship, and the wind in my face and all the seas of two worlds! But I was pent in this stone-walled enclosure, this amphitheatre of death, and I recalled the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, and felt again the concussion of blows given and taken, and the leem’s tail and the blood, and all the time as these jangling memories sparked through my head so I walked quietly and steadily out over the blue and yellows to take up my position beside the lady Yasuri.

“En Screetzim nalen Aeilssa! Bratch!” She called again, briskly, for she had not taken her gaze off Mefto, and did not turn, and she waited for her champion to stand at her side.

“I am here, lady,” I said, and she turned, and saw me.

“Jak. Fight well. Fight well to the death—”

“Aye, lady, I shall fight as well as I am able and as Zair strengthens my sinews and gives cunning to my fist. And to the death, as it seems. But, lady, I do not fight for you.”

She flinched. What she had thought I do not know. But she flinched back, and a look of pain crossed her face.

“This is a game to you, lady. A mere pastime, lady. So that you may wear the diadem of triumph, lady. But the drums roll and blood will be spilled and men will die, and not for your sake, lady.”

The curtains of the carrying-chair rustled back. The ivory white face looked out and the glory of the suns caught in the red Lohvian hair. “Still your tongue, tikshim. You are condemned to fight, so fight and do not chatter.”

I regarded her as I stood there, waiting for the drumroll to end. I did not look at Mefto — not yet. Ling-li-Lwingling put a hand as white as her face, as slender as a missal, to the golden cord and her fingers toyed with the golden tassel. I knew who she was, now — rather, I knew what she was. The drums rolled. And I said: “Ling-li-Lwingling. By the Seven Arcades, woman, you are a Witch of Loh!”

“Yes, Jak the Condemned. I am a Witch of Loh, and better for you to—”

“Save your pretty threats, Witch. I would give you the Sana; but other and more pressing matters await.”

Her red red mouth widened. I did not think she knew how to smile.

“Your fears for Vallia are well-founded — you will fight for the lady Yasuri — and you will fight for me!”

I felt the whole enormous expanse of the Jikaida board tilt beneath me, and coalesce into the single square upon which I stood. I noticed it was a yellow square. Ling-li’s smile slowly died and her face resumed that fixed foreboding expression as though expertly carved from solid ivory of Chem. The long-drawn drumroll ended.

Absolute silence engulfed the Kazz-Jikaida board.

And I looked squarely upon Prince Mefto the Kazzur.

Arrogance and power and pride, yes, of course, they were all there, stamped upon him indelibly by his own prowess. I tried to see more. Men and women are more than mere bundles of flesh and blood hung on bones and walking the world in the light and darkness; this Mefto was a man, a five-handed Kildoi, and yet a human being. His presence smote me as a shell, a hard and shiny yellow carapace concealing the humanity within.

The vivid sensory impressions bombarding me as the drumroll rattled to silence contained all of the physical world; I dare not seek to pry into the world of feeling, of emotion, of fear or courage. I was here. Was not that enough?

Yet feeling decided all. Physical sensations were colored by the emotions, so I tried to look past the blue and yellow and the waiting silence and the spectators and the Jikaida pieces, past Yasuri and Ling-li and Mefto, tried to peer into the darkest depths beneath myself.

To find oneself... In that moment even the central core of existence sought its meaning. I was a Krozair of Zy. Did that matter so much?

Mefto’s voice lifted, high and hard and challenging.

“I know you, apim!”

I said nothing.

Perhaps, had the question been put to me, I could not have said anything. But, at the very end of that somber tunnel there might be a light. It was just possible. All I had to remember was one single fact in all the universe: I was Dray Prescot. That was all.

I am Dray Prescot.

Mefto twirled his sword with great dexterity, shoved up his shield and with a jovial bladesman’s bellow, charged.

We fought.

Useless to try to peer past the physical — the feelings must come of their own accord. Our blades met and scraped and clung and parted. The power in his muscles was a dynamic force. It was sword and shield against sword and shield. Oh, yes, he had two left hands to grip his shield and thus afford a superior leverage; but as we fought and circled, and sought the openings, and thrust and recovered to the gong-notes of steel on shield, so I accepted my fate. My only advantage, I thought, lay in that belief I had that I was a shade faster than he was. That was all. But he was a marvel. Often and often have I said that about swordsmen I have fought; but this Mefto the Kazzur was a marvel among marvels. This marvel went about cutting me up as he went about cutting up all his victims, as he had chopped Tobi the Knees. But I resisted. The thraxters flamed in the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio. The sand beneath our feet spurted blue dust; for we fought for the square on which the Blue Princess had taken her stand, the Princess’s Square, and this would be hyrkaida when I lost. For I felt I would lose.

The feeling appeared to me like a strange object in some precious golden-bound balass chest, to be taken out and examined and pondered over. A new experience. A thrilling vibration along nerves and sinews, a dark space in the mind...

Although I took no notice of her, I knew that Yasuri, who had moved back from her square, would be watching this combat with glowing eyes, her lip caught between her teeth, and, probably, her hands clenched over her breast. What the Witch of Loh, Ling-li-Lwingling, was doing I did not know, nor cared; setting out the pieces for a new game, probably.

Mefto the Kazzur sliced me along the right bicep; not deeply enough to hurt, just to draw blood, just to open the scoring. I had not touched him. He cut me again, and I found his thraxter a leaping silver flame, torturing, dazzling, infuriating. I kept myself inwardly, holding in to myself. We circled again, seeking the advantage that was not there, for the circumscribed lines of the blue square hemmed us in with honor. The technique — more a trick, really — I had pondered during the fight by the caravan might serve. But Mefto must be primed before I could use that last desperate throw.

Thinking clogged reactions; the sword must live with the body and become a part of the living being, free and uncontaminated by lethargic thought. But Mefto’s reactions and skill negated the usual unthinking skill I exerted. Where he had been trained and who his masters had been intrigued me and I would one day visit Balintol myself. But, then, that was foolish, a child’s dream of an impossible future, for I was due to die here, on the blue sand, chopped and bloody and done for.

As the combat went on and time stretched out and I was cut and cut again, a distant howling sound drifted in fitfully. The lethargic watchers on the terrace were responding, and losing all their languid affectation. The blood-sport caught them up in its choking coils.

With an infinite patience I accepted this punishment and worked on him. I found certain weaknesses I do not think he suspected existed. Certainly, I became sharply aware of several glaring deficiencies in my own technique. He feinted a thrust and as my shield flicked to cover and I went the other way, he allowed the almost imperceptible tremor of his body to force my instant unthinking reaction to drive me back. My own skill recognized that body tremor, and reacted to it, and so his original thrust slid in past my shield and sliced a ribbon of flesh from my ribs.

The next time he tried a variation of that I did not react as he expected, and his thrust missed and I leaned in and nicked him on his lower right arm. He sprang back, furiously.

“So you think to best me, Prince Mefto the Kazzur, apim! I have thrashed you before and this time—”

Well, sometimes I have a merry little spot of chit-chat when I fight. I did not reply, then, to his taunts. The swords clashed again and I felt the power as he sought to overbear me and I resisted and, for a half-dozen heartbeats, we struggled directly together, body against body. His strength was a live ferocious force. He compelled my sword arm down, and down. And I resisted, and so thrust him back, and slid his blade and sliced at him as he flinched and dodged backwards. I chopped only a strand of his hair. His face, which had been jolly and filled with good humor at indulging in the sport he liked best, lowered on a sudden, and his brows drew down. If this pantomime was meant to frighten me, well — by Zair, I will not lie.

For he bore in now with a more deadly intent.

Useless to attempt to describe the passages of that fight in detail, but it was talked about for season after season as the greatest encounter seen on the Kazz-Jikaida board.

He had taken a gouging chunk out of my shield and the wood splintered away from the bronze framing. Now his blade smashed down on the rim and wrenched the bronze into a distorted ribbon. With a few skillful blows as I defended myself he chopped half the shield away. His own yellow shield bore the marks of my sword; but it remained intact.

And, all the time, he kept up his chatter, taunting me, threatening me, deriding my efforts, sometimes patronizingly praising a last-minute defense that barely kept his sword from my guts.

“You fight well, for an apim. Truly, I admire your skill.”

I grunted with the effort of parrying with the dangling remnant of shield. I would not throw it away yet, for it still served in a pitiful fashion, and if I hurled it at him he would merely duck, and laugh. As he talked on, leaping and swirling and attacking and springing back and so coming in again, I remained silent.

My body was now a single shining sheet of blood. I felt no pain, for a Krozair of Zy, no less than a Clansman or a Djang, must refuse to acknowledge pain that will hamper his fighting ability. But I was weaker. I could feel that. Nothing could disguise the sluggishness in my limbs, no pushing away of pain and denial of torment could conceal my growing feebleness.

This Kildoi was a rara avis among fighting men, no doubt of that. So I must put in the last throw before it was too late.

With a sudden and shattering series of blows, with a wild smashing onslaught, Mefto came for me and I saw that this time he meant to finish me. I defended. I ducked and weaved and dangled the sorry scrap of shield before him and I flailed his blade away. Somehow I resisted and held my position in the blue square and he drew back, baffled. But my weakness was now on me. I was near the end. So, positioning myself, I tried to remember who I was, that I was plain Dray Prescot. He was talking again, not quite so jovially, clearly annoyed that he had not finished me in that passage.

“I said you were a fighter, apim. You have a little skill. I have joyed in our contest; but now—”

And then I spoke. For the first time.

I said: “I, too, have enjoyed this little swordplay. You have tried and you have failed. I have sounded you out.” My voice was thick and my throat felt as though it was filled with all the sand of the arena.

“But, now, Mefto the Kleesh, it is my turn.”

And, instantly, I swept through the dazzlement of the attack I had long pondered, and thrust. I’d have had him. I would have. But I was weak, too weak. The blows I had taken had punished me, and the blood that leached away took with it my strength.

He just managed to drag his shield across. His Kildoi face, handsome, handsome, with its golden beard and clear-cut features, drew down in shock. He knew he had been caught. He reacted with a primitive violence.

He dashed in on me and his shield collided with my own scraps of wood and twisted bronze. His bulk forced me on and over. I was down. Down on one knee, the dangling shield remnants held aloft in my left fist. For a space, a single heartbeat, I put my right hand and the sword flat on the sand, supporting myself, getting my wind, seeing the world revolving in black stars and icy comets. He towered over me. He laughed. His thraxter slashed down. Somehow the remnants of my shield slid into the sword’s path, and he lifted to strike again, and I forced up my right arm and gripped my sword and took the blows, refusing to go down.

“Die, you rast!” he screamed. “Die!”

The attempt to rise and stand on my own two feet was too much for me. I was on one knee, the shield held up and the sword feebly pointing, and I gasped and wheezed and fought to clear the black demons in my head and see through the leaping whorls of light and shadow encompassing me. His passion controlled him now, and he struck and struck as though hewing wood. He had had a scare and he could not understand the emotions that corroded within him like poisons — so I guessed, seeing that never had he met his master. But, for all that, I was nearly done for. The pathetic bits of shield still held together and kept out his thraxter; but that was all.

So I tried to stand up. I made a last convulsive effort.

He saw that. He saw the way I lurched and recovered and struggled my foot under me and so started to rise.

“Rast! Yetch! Die!”

Toppling, swaying, I struggled with a despairing savagery to stand up. And I knew I could not. Mefto saw the way I moved, saw my body begin to rise, and it was clear he imagined I was about to stand up. Zair knows what kind of demon he thought I must be, after the way he had chopped me, and the blood, and the punishment, and the state I was in. He thought I was going to stand up. That golden face contorted into a look of bestial unbelieving fury. He took three slow steps back, right to the very edge of the blue square, and then with a howl he launched himself at me.

And, then, Prince Mefto the Kazzur made his mistake.

The blows from his thraxter smashed down viciously on the chunk of shield I held aloft, twisted so that a remnant of bronze framing held against the blows. Mefto was a Kildoi. A Kildoi has been blessed by the gods with a tail hand. Mefto in his blind fury reached out with his tail hand and seized the rim of this infuriating frustrating chunk of shield, ready to tear it away and so leave me open for the last blow. That hard brown hand gripped onto the bronze before my eyes. I saw the nails, trimmed and polished, the thin bristle of golden hair, the whiteness of constricting violence between the knuckles. The hand gripped and pulled. The shield moved.

With a final lurch I lifted halfway up, reached out with the sword, cut off that tail hand. Prince Mefto the Kazzur screamed.

His golden body convulsed away, and he shrieked, a high howling screech of agony and fury, of humiliation and despair.

Somehow, do not ask me, for I cannot say, I was crouched over his body as he twitched and convulsed on the blue blood-spattered sand. He held the gory stump of his tail in all his four hands, and he screamed and slobbered and cried.

I said, “Mefto the Kleesh. I have cut Kataki tails off before this, and those yetches did not cry like you do.”

All that effort of speaking, of boasting, when I was bleeding to death, exhausted me, such is the stupidity of pride. There was little time. I lifted the thraxter, and it trembled. Mefto was wrapped up in his own horror and was not aware, not aware at all that the steel point hovered above his throat. He was a master swordsman, he could hand out the punishment with a laugh; but he could not endure punishment, He was the best swordsman I had so far encountered; he was not the greatest by a very long way.

I raised the sword a last inch, grasping the hilt in both blood-stained hands. I took a ragged breath. I started to bring the sword down, to plunge it through Mefto’s throat and on to bury the point deeply in the blue sand — and hands grasped my shoulders and the thraxter was taken away as a nurse takes away a baby’s bottle and I was placed flat on the sand and there was noise and confusion and a needleman with his acupuncture needles and miles and miles of yellow bandages.

“Why—?” I tried to say.

Yasuri bent over me.

“Mefto’s people resigned the game to save his life.”

“Then,” I gasped out, “Then I have failed!”

A stupid game, and its rules, had saved the rast to bring horror to the Dawn Lands and to Vallia, when a straight and simple fight outside the rules of Kazz-Jikaida — why had I listened to brave Konec and Dav? I should have — I should have — but the words went away and there was blackness like the blackness of Notor Zan. I awoke to see Yasuri looking down on me with the strangest of expressions on her face.

I felt light-headed and empty and very very thirsty. She told a slave girl to fill a goblet with water, and this I drank straight down. Someone with a reedy voice said: “No more for now. He is weak but will mend with care.”

“I shall care for him,” said the lady Yasuri, and I could see no lines on her face at all. A shadow moved at her side and the lady Jikaidasta stood there in what must be a private room in Yasuri’s suite at her hotel, The Star of Laybrites. Ling-li’s pale face glowed in the reflected radiance and her blue eyes were very bright upon me.

“I must leave Jikaida City now. I did not aid you in the fight — Jak.” She paused on the name. Then:

“The Nine Masked Guardians maintain San Orien, who is a Wizard of Loh of great repute, to warn them of any sorcery practiced in the games. You fought your own fight — and won.”

I could not shake my head, for it would probably have fallen off; but I wondered if it was possible for me to agree with her, that she might be right. Had I won? The crucial factor was, it didn’t matter if I had won that fight or not.

Then there was a deeper rumble of voices, and shadows, and presently Kov Konec and Vad Dav Olmes stood by the bed. They were smiling with great broad smiles of triumph, for Prince Mefto the Kazzur had left Jikaida City, his stump tail bandaged, left it the very day after the fight, which was a sennight ago, and because there was no evidence against the people from Mandua they had been freed, and with an apology, too.

The words croaked from my throat. “And the rast from Hamal?”

“He remains. He plays in the Mediary Games, for there are always games of Jikaida going on in Jikaida City.”

He smiled down on me, and Dav, with a finger to his nose, said, “Yes, the Mediary Games begin, and the lady Yasuri is the Champion, reigning Champion.”

“And now the people of the Dawn Lands will take their own destiny into their hands.” Konec’s fist rested on his sword hilt. “The alliance between Hamal and Shanodrin never took place. I think, I hope, I pray, Prince Mefto is finished.”

Maybe I did not know what the Star Lords wanted with the lady Yasuri. But I did know that, for me, the work I had had to do in Jikaida City was finished. There was nothing to keep me here now. Vallia called. If the Star Lords brought me back here, then I would have to think again. But the Witch of Loh, Ling-li-Lwingling, also, knew more than she allowed. This was all tied up together; but I had fought a fight, and, by Krun! I knew I had been in a fight. I lay back on the yellow pillows. My way home to Vallia still remained in Jikaida City.

As soon as I could move I would be off.

The Hamalese flier would speed me across the continent and take me home. Home to Delia.

“Let us praise Dromo the Benevolent,” said Konec. “We have won. It is all over now. The game is finished.”

As I drifted off to sleep I said to myself: “For you it may be finished. But the game is not finished for me, for plain Dray Prescot who happens to be the Emperor of Vallia.”

Appendix: Jikaida

The smallest form of Jikaida, known as Poron Jikaida, is here described. I should like to acknowledge the advice and interest of John Gollon of Geneva in the preparation of these rules for publication. I must also thank my son for his enthusiasm and expertise in playing Jikaida. He has helped to clarify game situations and contributed to the strategical shape of Poron Jikaida. As a matter of convenience the terminology of terrestrial chess is used when practical.

The board consists of six drins, arranged two by three, each drin containing thirty-six squares, arranged six by six. The dividing line between drins is called a front and is painted in more heavily than the other lines to facilitate demarcation.

The squares are almost always either black and white or blue and yellow, although other colors are known. On Kregen red and green are seldom used. The players have a yellow square on the right of the first rank.

Blue is usually north and Yellow south. Each player has two drins before him, his home drins, and the two wild drins in the center. From Yellow’s point of view each drin is lettered A to F from left to right, and numbered one to six from south to north. Each drin has a name.

In Poron Jikaida the six drins are named and arranged:

Wersting Chavonth

Neemu Leem

Mortil Zhantil

By using the drin name followed by the coordinates any square is readily identifiable, and this system has been found to be quick, simple and efficient.

It is possible to place artificial features on the board — rivers, hills, woods, etc. — by prior arrangement between the players. Most often these are not employed, Jikaida purists contending that they interfere with the orthodox developments and powers of pieces in combination on the open board. The object of the game is to capture the opposing King. This piece is variously called Princess, Aeilssa, Rokveil, and in Loh, Queen. When any piece is in a position enabling it to take the King the player calls:

“Kaida.” When the King cannot evade capture, “Hyrkaida.” At any time he thinks he is in a winning position, a player may ask his opponent: “Do you bare the throat?” If his opponent does, he resigns. Each player has thirty-six pieces, arrayed in his first three ranks. The pieces are: one King, one Pallan, two Kapts, two Chuktars, two Jiktars, two Hikdars, two Paktuns, twelve Deldars, twelve swods. The King moves as in Terran chess. Notation: K.

The Pallan moves as Terran Queen plus Knight and may pass from one drin to the next, once only, during his move. The Pallan has the power of taking any friendly piece except the King. Notation: P. The Kapt moves as Pallan, but may not take a friendly piece. When crossing drin front, must continue direction of travel. Notation: Ka.

The Chuktar moves as Terran Queen. May cross drin front once per move continuing direction of travel. Notation: C.

The Jiktar moves as Terran rook. Must halt at drin front and cross on next move. Notation: J. The Hikdar moves as Terran Bishop. Must halt at drin front and cross on next move. Notation: H. The Paktun moves as Terran Knight. Notation: Pk.

The Deldar moves and captures one or two squares in any direction, orthogonal or diagonal. A two square move may not involve a change of direction and is not a leap. Notation: D. The swod moves one square, straight forward or to the two forward diagonals and captures only to the forward diagonals. Notation: S.

The Paktun may leap twice on his first move. The Deldar may move twice on his first move, being able to move one, two, three or four squares, but changing direction only after the second square. The swod may advance or capture one, two or three squares on his initial move. In these initial moves of Paktun, Deldar or swod, and in the case of the two-square move of the Deldar under normal circumstances, the move of such a piece ends when he makes a capture. The Paktun, for example, cannot on his initial move leap and capture, then leap again. After his initial move, the swod moves and captures one square only. In some areas of Kregen, Dray Prescot notes, players contend that the Deldar may only move and capture for a two-square move. Other areas allow a single square move without capture. These variations are considered interesting, and frustrating, as the piece’s power cannot then extend to adjacent squares and would be limited to eight Squares at a straight two-square range diagonally and orthogonally. The Paktun crosses drin fronts in the normal course of his move. The Jiktar, Hikdar, Deldar and swod must halt at a front and cross on the next move. If the Deldar’s normal two-square move is halted by a front after one square, he must halt and wait until a subsequent move to cross. The Chuktar and Kapt may cross a front once only during their move and must continue on in the same line of travel. The Pallan has this privilege; but also he may change direction at the front (like light through the surface of water.) When a Pallan comes up to a front orthogonally he may continue straight on or take either of the two diagonals ahead. If the square adjoining the front is yellow on the hither side of the front, the two diagonals he may follow will also be yellow. If the square is blue, the diagonals will be blue. If the Pallan comes up to a drin front diagonally he may continue on the same diagonal or take either of the two orthogonals enclosing the diagonal. One of these orthogonals will always lie alongside the front. He cannot turn at right angles to his line of advance. The paktun-leap of the Pallan is his move and cannot be taken as well as another move.

A move through an interior drin corner would allow the player to move into any one of the other three drins.

Unless halted by a piece in the way, the Jiktar and Hikdar may move the full distance of a drin up to the front. The Pallan, Kapt and Chuktar, unless halted by a piece, may move the full distance of one drin and the full distance of the next. To cross a front, all pieces with the exception of those with trans-front movement and the Paktun must stand on a square adjacent to the front in order to cross. There is no en passant capture in Jikaida.

There is no castling as such in Jikaida, but a near-equivalent is employed. If the King is not under attack and the square on which he will land is not under attack, and if the King and the other piece involved are on their original squares (whether or not they have previously moved) once only during the game a player may switch the place of the King with that of a Kapt or a Chuktar. The King would then be moved to the square of the Kapt or Chuktar, and the other piece moved to the King’s square. It does not matter if there are, or are not, pieces in the way, nor if the intervening squares are under attack. This move is known as the King’s Fluttember. Because of zeunting, this rule is strategically less vital in Jikaida than the castling rule in chess, but nevertheless can be important tactically. The use of drins and the power of pieces to vault make Jikaida unique. The Kregish word for vault is zeunt.

Any piece (some variations exclude the King) may move from one end of a straight unbroken line of pieces to the other end. The line may be diagonal or orthogonal and be of any length. The piece vaulting must stand on the square immediately adjacent to the end of the line, diagonally if a diagonal line and orthogonally if an orthogonal line, may move along the line and come to earth on the immediately adjacent square at the far end, diagonally if a diagonal line and orthogonally if an orthogonal line. Exceptions will be noted below.

A line for vaulting must consist of three or more pieces.

The pieces in the line may be blue or yellow or a mixture.

If there is a break in a line the vaulting piece must land there and finish his move. A piece may land on an opposing piece and capture anywhere along the line, providing he has already vaulted over at least three pieces, and he is not a swod landing on an opposing swod propt by a Deldar (see below). Whenever a vaulting piece touches down, to capture an enemy, at the end of the line, or in a break, his move is ended.

The Pallan who may capture a friendly piece may do so in the normal course of a vault. Any piece may vault across one or more drin fronts providing the line to be vaulted extends unbroken across those fronts. Pieces which would normally have to halt at a drin front when moving do not have to do so when vaulting. However, if a piece moves to a square abutting on a front and the line to be vaulted begins on the other side of the front he must wait until the next or subsequent move to vault. Vaulting instead of moving normally counts as the player’s turn.

Swods vault forward orthogonally or diagonally only.

If a line to be vaulted ends at a front the piece vaulting may touch down in the adjacent square as noted, or capture, over the drin front.

It should be noted that a vault may change a Hikdar’s color.

In Poron Jikaida as usually played the Pallan is the only piece with the power of using two other features of the vault. The Pallan may, in his turn, move legally as specified in the rules, to the end of a line and in the same turn vault. The Pallan may make one change of direction when vaulting, but must follow a continuous line of pieces of three or more from one end to the other with a single bend in the line. The Pallan may move diagonally to the end of an orthogonal line and vault, and vice versa. The change of direction can follow any single bend in the line.

A player wins by either checkmating (hyrkaida) or stalemating (tikaida) his opponent, or by baring his opponent’s king, unless the opponent then immediately (on the move) bares player’s king also, in which case the game is drawn.

If a Deldar stands next to a swod of the same color an opponent swod cannot capture that swod. Adjacency, to afford this protection, may be orthogonal or diagonal. In the Kregish, this protection is called propt. One Deldar may propt as many swods as he is adjacent to. Dray Prescot points out that the idea of a rank of Deldars standing against an advance of swods, thus forcing heavier pieces into action, probably gave rise to the traditional opening challenge of the game:

“Rank your Deldars!”

When a swod reaches the last rank of the board he may promote to any rank, including Pallan but excepting King, regardless of the number of pieces of the chosen rank already on the board. The initial array of Yellow pieces from Yellow’s point of view is: First rank: from left to right: Chuktar, Jiktar, Hikdar, Paktun, Kapt, Pallan, King, Kapt, Hikdar, Jiktar, Chuktar. Second rank: twelve Deldars. Third rank: twelve swods.

The initial array of Blue pieces from Blue’s point of view is: First rank, from left to right: Chuktar, Jiktar, Hikdar, Paktun, Paktun, Kapt, King, Pallan, Kapt, Hikdar, Jiktar, Chuktar. Second rank: twelve Deldars. Third rank: twelve swods.

Kings stand on squares of their own color.

First move is by agreement, either color may open the game.

Variations

Whatever rules or variations of rules are used, it is essential that players are aware of them and agree before play starts. It is particularly important that the rules governing vaulting should be completely agreed upon.

These variations are similar to differences in chess rules on Earth before advances in communication and transportation allowed standardization. Poron Jikaida is the smallest form of Jikaida. Jikalla will form the subject of an appendix in a subsequent volume in the Saga of Dray Prescot. There are other sizes of board and numbers of pieces employed. Great Jikaida is the largest. Many forms employ aerial cavalry. Jikshiv Jikaida is played on a board six drins by four drins.

Hyrshiv Jikaida is played on a board three drins by four drins. The Lamdu version of Hyrshiv Jikaida employs ninety pieces a side.

In the larger games with more pieces the power of the superior pieces increases with the additions, the Jiktar taking on the powers of the Chuktar for example. Some additional pieces are: the Hyrpaktun, who moves in an elongated Paktun’s move, three squares instead of two before the sideways move. The Flutsman, who moves four spaces, diagonally or orthogonally, over intervening pieces, must touch down on an unoccupied square, and then move or capture one square orthogonally or diagonally. This simulates the flutsman’s flight to his target and then the attack on foot. There are other aerial moves of similar character.

In some areas of Kregen the Hyrpaktun is allowed a single square move, like the King, to facilitate color changing.

The Archer moves one square diagonally and then as a rook. The Crossbowman moves one square orthogonally and then as a bishop. Trans-drin restrictions with the missile pieces vary. Vaulting rules vary considerably and have been the cause of great controversy. With the larger games the Pallan has the power of more than one change of direction during a zeunt, and may come down off the vault and continue moving. Sometimes the Kapts have the power of moving to a vaulting line. The pieces with a knight-like leap may come down off the vault to one side or the other, as though continuing their leap. This confers a very great power to these pieces, as they would then cover the entire sides of the vaulting line from three pieces away.

Trans-drin restrictions also vary, as, for instance, the Kapt being allowed to change direction at a front, and the Jiktars and Hikdars being allowed trans-drin movement. The Pallan may be allowed to cross two drin fronts, and this is particularly important during diagonal moves near the center of the board or where fronts meet. On the larger boards increased freedom of movement has been found to be essential, but this is often restricted to the home and central drins, and does not extend to the opponent’s home drins. The powers of the swods and Deldars also vary by agreement, and it is a pleasant game to play Poron Jikaida with two ranks of swods each. In Porondwa Jikaida there are two ranks of Deldars. The larger boards build on the basis of the Poron board, the additional drins of the Hyrshiv Board are as follows... From Yellow’s point of view: The right-hand home drin is Krulch. The drins above that are Prychan and Strigicaw. Blue’s home drins are Boloth, Graint, Dermiflon.

In notation it is usual to give only the initial letter of the drin, followed by the letter and number of the coordinates.

Prescot says an interesting variation developed in Vallia where the swods were called brumbytes and the Deldars were called Hakkodin; but he gives no details of the play, except a mention of the brumbytes being arrayed initially in three ranks of eight, and provided they are on adjacent squares being allowed to be moved three at a time. One assumes this privilege would end by at least the front of the opponent’s home drins.

The above description is necessarily brief; but enough information has been given to enable the game to be played and enjoyed and some of the ramifications and developments to be explored. The construction of a board is a simple matter. It is suggested chess pieces are used where applicable, and the new pieces represented by model soldiers of a suitable scale and color. It is possible that a range of figures from the Saga of Dray Prescot will soon be available.

Finally, it is left to me to say, on behalf of Dray Prescot, enjoy your Jikaida and — Rank your Deldars!

Alan Burt Akers

Notes

[1]deren: palace

[2]risslaca: dinosaur

[3]ron: red

[4]Kraitch-ambur: Thunder

[5]It is not necessary to understand how to play Jikaida to appreciate what follows. Dray Prescot relates in detail the description and rules of the game. A brief description of Jikaida is given at the end of this volume as Appendix A, together with sufficient rules for Poron Jikaida as to enable anyone to play an enjoyable game. A.B.A.

[6]reed: headband; laurium: rank.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer’s works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

Dray Prescot

1 – Jaidur is Annoyed

2 – The Star Lords Disagree

3 – Of a Meeting with Nath the Knife, Aleygyn of the Stikitches

4 – Delia Thinks Ahead

5 – Of the Theatre, a Gale and a Surprise

6 – The Battle of First Kanarsmot

7 – An Axeman Drops In

8 – Vondium Dances

9 – Pompino

10 – Into the Desolate Waste

11 – Prince Mefto the Kazzur

12 – The Fight Beside the Caravan

13 – In Jikaida City

14 – Of the Fate of Spies

15 – How Bevon Struck a Blow

16 – Kazz-Jikaida

17 – I Learn of a Plan

18 – Of an Encounter in an Armory

19 – “Vallia is not Sunk into the sea.”

20 – Death Jikaida

21 – The Princess’s Swordsman

Appendix – Jikaida

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series