Thoughtfully, I wiped my blade on the sorzart’s breechclout, picked up all his weapons, and walked on south. Soon the darkness was complete and I could gaze upward at the Kregen night sky and see those strange yet blessedly familiar constellations wheel above my head. A comfort could be taken from the distant chips of light that fancifully formed animals and people and monsters, pinpricks of light that could form meaningful patterns only in a man’s mind, his own rationality plucking form from an inchoate star-spattered infinity. I saw the stellar images, and I stumbled over a thorn bush and I cursed, and thereafter kept my eyes fixed on my path with only the occasional navigating glance aloft.
All the warmth of combat had passed from me. I did not shiver, for the night was mild, but inwardly I felt once again the essential futility of blind killing. How often — I remember musing as I trod southward to fulfill whatever of destiny the Star Lords would allow me — I had seen men who appeared actually to enjoy inflicting pain on others. These were the uniformed men of the bludgeon and thewhip, who recruited their own warped desires into the punishment of the unfortunate. Did I enjoy the sensation as I cut a man down? Did I thrill to the jolt as my sword pierced a man’s guts? God forgive me if I did — but I did not then and do not now. Perhaps my punishment is that in a situation in which it is kill or be killed I choose the easier path and kill to save my life and the lives of my loved ones. Thus musing in a somber frame of mind — for I missed my Delia of the Blue Mountains beyond the mortal capacity to endure, or so I thought — I came to a rearing mass of toppled stone, twisted columns, broken arches, and collapsed domes all shining pinkly in the first of Kregen’s nightly procession of moons.
The little stream broadened here and washed the worn steps of a landing jetty. Shadows jungle-hostile hung between truncated columns. I caught strange glimpses of pagan sculpture, serpentine forms that twined upon the surfaces of the blocks, hints of a demonology older than any current civilization thriving on this continent of Turismond.
The men of the sunrise had built their cities along the shores of the inner sea. Today, the shores lie mostly barren and untended except where the vicinity of a strong castle or fortified town or city affords some protection from corsair raids. I had raided the north shore myself, that shore of the green-sun deity Grodno; I had heard horrific tales of similar raids upon the red southern shore, dedicated to the sun Zim’s deity, Zair. And the sorzarts raided both north and south and the eastern shore of Proconia — where I must now be — with the impartiality of the true unbeliever. I touched the hilt of one of my swords — for I remembered with affection the impressive armory of Hap Loder and my Clansmen of Felschraung -
and went on.
“Stand and declare yourself — or you are a dead man!”
The voice sounded hard and confident and reckless. It was the voice of Seg Segutorio. I could not see him.
Undoubtedly, then, he was a warrior of skill.
“Dray Prescot,” I said, and did not stop.
Seg and the Lady Pulvia waited beside the stone lip of a wide and shallow basin, shell-shaped, into which an arm of the stream poured continually, pinkly silver in the moons’ light. Above them a chipped and defaced statue of a woman whose marble wings hung splintered from narrow shoulders cast a peaked shadow.
“You are safe, Dray?”
“Safe, Seg.”
We had fallen into names thus easily, then.
“Thank the veiled Froyvil for that, then!”
“And you — the Lady Pulvia?”
She lifted her head from above her child as I asked, and gave me a blank, unseeing stare that told me that we would have to support her on whatever further voyage we must undertake. She bent her head and crooned softly to the child, who lay, his soft mouth stoppered by a plump thumb, fast asleep. For a moment I could not recall when I had last slept. In all my bones that laxity of alert feeling told me that I was tired, deadly tired, but a sea officer of a King’s Ship comes early to learn the knack of using his strength against long periods of wakefulness. I could go on for a space yet, but I considered the situation, knowing that sleep now would set store of strength by for later emergencies. A movement in the purple shadows beneath the statue’s splintered wings brought my sword out instantly, but Seg laughed and said: “Easy, Dray, you wild leem! That is Caphlander. A stylor, one of my lady’s servants.”
The man stepped into the moonlight. Tall, he walked with a stoop, and his sparse hair glinted in that wash of pink light. He wore a white robe bordered with a checkered design of red and green — a sight I must admit bewildered me for a moment with all the fierce clash of red and green still echoing in my skull
— and his face reminded me somewhat of the ugly bird-head of a Rapa. There were significant differences, however, and his humanity seemed to me more pronounced than the remnant left to a Rapa. He was a Relt. Numbers of these usually gentle people when made slave pined near to death; others found reasons for living in serving their masters as librarians, stylors, accountants. His bright bird-like eyes studied us from a face held to one side, so that I knew his sight was affected in one of those eyes.
“Llahal!” he said, and then waited, stooping, subservient.
Brusquely, Seg said: “And?”
Caphlander the Relt wilted. “All burned,” he said. “All dead. Such sights-”
“There’s no going back, then. The Lord of Upalion having gone on his expedition will return to dust and ashes and corpses.”
The impression I gained then, briefly and fleetingly, was that Seg was not overly dismayed at this catastrophe to his master, the man who owned him as slave. And — no wonder.
“Is there no safe place for this woman, Seg?”
He looked at her and sucked in his lower lip.
“The city — that is the only safe place. And we would never reach it on foot now. The sorzarts must be out in force.”
“The day of our doom is here.” Caphlander spoke with complete subjection and acceptance of his fate.
“I do not believe that my day of doom is to be brought by a bunch of lizard-faced scaled beast-men. There are other ways to cities than by walking,” I told Caphlander and Seg.
“All the sectrixes were taken-”
I lifted my head and sniffed. On the night air, whose lush odors of nocturnal plant life told of many of those immense moon-drinking flowers twining among the ruins, the tangier smell I knew so well infiltrated like liquor at a funeral.
“The sea is not far. This city-”
“Happapat,” said Seg.
“This Happapat — is it a port?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
We reached the coast. Seg carried the child and I carried his mother. She lay in my arms, a soft flaccid sexless bundle, a human being for whom my only concern had been dictated by the Star Lords -
whoever they might be. We rested in a rock cave halfway up the cliff as the night passed. With the gaining light, and refreshed by a few burs’ sleep, we could plan again. I think, even then, Seg Segutorio had realized something other than mere concern over the safety of his mistress impelled me, for his people may be wild and reckless and filled with song, but they also possess that hard streak of practicality that has maintained their independence.
As the first sheening light of Zim spread in scarlet and golden radiance across the calm waters of the inner sea we looked out and down onto the ships of the sorzarts.
“Eleven of them.” Seg spat. I did not waste good saliva. “They have to voyage in company, for they cannot face a Pattelonian swifter in fair fight.”
On the curved beach the ships had been drawn up stern first. Ladders were lowered with the dawn and the anchor watch began their preparations to welcome back their comrades with loot and gold and prisoners. My hand tightened on the hilt of one of the swords. We could wait here until the sorzarts sailed away. .
Call me a fool. Call me a windbag full of braggadocio.Call me prideful. I do not care. All I know is that while my Delia sought me from her island home of Vallia by rider and flier and I yearned above all things to hold her dear form in my arms once more, I could not thus tamely crouch hiding in a cave. On the hilt of the sword were marked
