Bladesman of Antares

We found a comfortable inn catering to the more permanent kind of lodger. The inn was called The Thraxter and Voller, a clean house with a clientele composed mainly of high-ranking Horters, Tyrs, and Kyrs, people of the same rank as myself in my guise as Amak Hamun, an Elten or two, and a Strom who made no secret of his higher rank and so was condescending or contemptuous to the rest. I steered clear of him. A Strom is more like an Earthly count than an earl. I have always felt earls far superior to counts. For the first few days I felt my way around the city, learning. The city proper is situated in the fork between the two rivers, but the environs spread around for some distance, traversed by wide avenues along which the young bloods would race their saddle animals. Aqueducts bring in plentiful supplies of a crystal water from surrounding hills. The climate is equable. There is a considerable waterborne traffic down to the sea, and also inland along both rivers. I had taken a trip on one of the three-decked flat-bottomed boats on the Black River from Dovad to Hemlad. I had not cared to retrace my steps when with Ilter and Avec I had wandered Central Hamal in areas southerly of the Black River.[3]

Once I had a firm impression of the city, once I felt I knew my way about, I would start inquiries concerning the vollers.

No sense of impending doom darkened those early days in Ruathytu, and I admit, not without a proper sense of shame, that the sight of beggars, and of poor ragged starving people, came to seem to me merely an unsavory part of the city’s life, quite distinct from me, completely unnatural on Kregen and yet something I was forced to accept here. The depth of my purse as Amak of Paline Valley would have clothed and fed a derisory percentage of those in need. I had given alms in such a fashion as to raise the supercilious eyebrows of the Strom lodging at The Thraxter and Voller. Then I reconsidered. I took a common course of action — or non-action. I did not give away my goods to the poor, I did not even tear my cloak in half. I had given a very great deal, and then I considered what I was doing. If I had nothing, how could I prosecute the designs that had brought me here? The greater plans I had were a part and parcel of a grand design that would free not only the slaves but also these clums. So I had to harden my heart.

If you think that was an easy task, then I think you have not read me right. . Like any fashionable gentleman of Hamal I walked abroad with my thraxter belted to my waist. The other non-Havilfarese weapons were safely stored away with our other belongings, under my bed. I looked a perfect Horter of Hamal — if I say a perfect gent, you will understand. I continued to wear the short white tunic with the embroideries, the gold-and-scarron beads, and I practiced smoothing out that old devil look on my face.

Nulty would say to me, “You feel sick, master?”

And I would growl back, “No, you mutinous fambly! Can’t a man put on a pleasant expression for a change?”

“Oh, Notor,” he would say, “was that what it was?”

Still, I persisted.

I was put to a stringent test.

The Thraxter and Voller stood in a quiet street beneath the upflung face of one of the sheared-off hills between the two rivers. Higher terraced houses were bowered above the inn in bushes and vines and flowers. The street was lined with high-class shops, although not of the very highest class, which were to be found within a smaller enclave at the very point of the V-junction of the rivers. It was not unusual to see clums crossing the end of the street where a main thoroughfare crossed on the northwest axis of the city, halting, and turning, and venturing a little way down our street, their hands open and cupped. Shopkeepers would send out assistants to beat them off.

I saw a young girl of no more than five or six, dressed in a single filthy garment, ragged and falling to pieces, pulling her brother who might have been a year older in a little wooden cart on wooden wheels. He had no legs, and his body was wizened and lopsided. He drooled.

“Spare an ob, master,” the little girl was saying, as she pulled her brother along. What good was an ob, one of those universal bronze coins, to her?

To give her a silver sinver, or a golden deldy, would have been foolish. I turned out my vosk-skin bag and found seven obs. Seven. The Kregish word for seven, as you know, is shebov.

“Here,” I said. The correct word to use in addressing her completely escaped me. “Here. Here are shebov obs.”

She looked frightened.

“I only asked for one, lord.”

“Take the seven, and hide all but one. Go on.”

“Yes, lord.”

She took the money and I turned away, for the sight was beyond my bearing, when a Rapa, his fierce birdlike beaked face furious, rushed from a shop doorway. He brandished a broom. He wore shopkeeper’s clothes, and an apron spotted with preserves and jam and marmalade.

“Get away, vermin! Clear off or I’ll beat you.”

The girl cowered back, then tried to run, and so, stumbling, tripped over her brother’s cart. The Rapa started to bring his broom, a sturdy implement, down on her prostrate form. A crowd had gathered. I stepped forward and caught the broom. I did not break it, either in my hands or over the Rapa’s head.

“Let her get up and go in peace, dom,” I said.

He started to yell at me, saw my clothes and the jewels, saw the thraxter at my side, and so, suddenly bowing and rubbing his hands together, he backed away.

“Certainly, Notor, as you command. A mere nothing — a clum where she should not be.” Then, because he knew I was in the wrong, he plucked up courage to say: “My broom, Notor?”

I threw it at him, not hard.

A coarse laugh spurted at my back.

I turned around slowly.

The Strom from The Thraxter and Voller stood, eyeing me in great derision, laughing, taking a bellyful of delight from my antics.

“By Krun!” he bellowed. “A dirty little clum-lover!”

The Horters and Horteras in the crowd laughed at this.

They were all well-dressed, fashionable, well-off Hamalians, although not the racy, sporty set of the sacred triangle by the two rivers. Now they jibed at one of their own wealth and class going out of his way to assist a clum.

I did not say anything.

I put that idiotic smooth bland look on my ugly face and, I suppose, it succeeded only in infuriating the Strom further.

“You idiotic cramph!” he shouted. He waved his fist at me. “You encourage these vermin into our streets! They bring filth and disease with them! If you love clums so much, take your precious perfumed self down to their hovels.”

This, I could bear.

I turned to walk away.

A woman in the crowd, vastly excited by the spectacle, shouted: “Is that all you can do, coward?

Stinking clum-lovers!”

Again, I would take no notice. I would not jeopardize my mission for the sake of these fools. The Strom laid an elegant hand on my shoulder. He pulled me around to face him. He was a big, limber man, well set up. He carried his thraxter swung low on workmanlike lockets. His dress was gray, foppish, but practical when it came to leaving his sword arm free.

“Coward!” he shouted full in my face. His breath was unpleasant. “Rast! You do not walk away when the Strom of Hyr Rothy speaks to you!”

I said, “I have nothing to say to you.”

Looking back, I recall that scene vividly, and also I experience again my shame: my shame at not holding steadfast to my purpose but, instead, of allowing the ordinary, arrogant, intemperate Dray Prescot, who is — alas! — perhaps the only real Dray Prescot, to overwhelm this new meek and mild image I had sought so hard to attain.

“Well, I have something to say to you, you insolent rast!”