Both of the moons were up. Kashi’s dim ochre light mingled with Gayel’s paler green radiance to splash weird double shadows over the sheds and crumbling pilings. Water gurgled and bubbled beneath the platform, and she felt a momentary twinge of fear of falling through some rotted board into the slime below. Slaves huddled under sleeping-shawls around the black bulk of the supply cart, and she saw that Chnesuru had loaned some of his elegant Khirgari carpets to provide cover for the women and children. Not out of any altruistic motive, she thought wryly, but because there was no profit in merchandise all red and puffy with insect bites.
Cawing, alien laughter eddied to her from the Shen tents across the platform. The reptiles would not be bothered with insects-they were probably snatching them from the air and eating them! Tlayesha was a little afraid of Shen. She almost stumbled over a pair of slaves rhythmically copulating under a coarse sleeping-shawl. At least that never stopped, no matter what else! Chnesuru must have given permission tonight for the male slaves to sleep with those women who were willing. Not only did it keep his wares occupied and uncaring of their insect tormentors, but there would also be more babies to add to his sales. A woman with a child drew a better price, and such a one could expect less arduous duties than a female who had none.
Something was happening there by one of the tents. She paused to squint, and the slave boy stepped on her heel from behind.
A struggle was going on. Two men-they looked like soldiers, though they wore mantles with cowls-were wrestling with somebody. Whose tent was it? One of the merchants? No, the pavilion belonging to the noblemen. Clan tabards dangled limply from the pole before the entrance.
Looters? Bandits? Drunk, perhaps? She started forward with the vague intention of calling to the guards in the tower.
A flapping black shape loomed before her, and she gave an involuntary squeal of fright. It was another soldier, an officer in dully gleaming armour, a thick cloak about his shoulders. He held a naked sword.
“Be still and return whence you came, my Lady.” His voice was calm, almost detached. “What is not perceived makes no tangled knots in one’s Skein.”
As her eyes adjusted Tlayesha had a better look at him: a tall, gaunt man, his face shadowed by the helmet visor. His armor glinted with the red-gold of copper: an officer of one of the Legions devoted to Lord Sarku or his ugly Cohort, Durritlamish, probably. A man of status anyway. His cheeks bore the triple cicatrices of one of the mountain clans of the Kraa Hills. She started to obey him, motioning blindly behind her for the slave boy to move back as well.
The struggle before the tent was apparently over. The two soldiers had subdued a third man-the nobleman or one of his servants (did he have any-she had not noticed?). He hung between his captors as though unconscious. Light flared up within the tent. Someone had uncovered a lantern, and dancing shadows upon the tent walls told her that the nobleman’s possessions were being ransacked, the Gods alone knew why.
Three more men appeared in the doorway of the tent. Two were soldiers, and the third was a bent, sharp- featured old man attired in a voluminous robe that showed black-brown in the light. They seemed to have found what they sought, for the elderly man pushed past his two comrades and made an imperious gesture to the officer who still barred Tlayesha’s way.
The captive was almost halfway across the open space in the middle of the platform. As the soldiers brought him nearer Tlayesha recognised the young nobleman, a thin, raffish-looking fellow, now wearing only a breechcloth of some fine material. He had obviously been surprised as he slept.
• Without warning the prisoner jerked one arm loose from one soldier and dealt the other man an openhanded blow in the face. The trooper’s head rocked back, and his helmet went rolling and clattering upon the planks. Then the young nobleman was free of both of them and racing on bare feet towards the guard tower.
He could have reached it easily. But he seemed to falter and change his mind. Then he sprinted off in a tangent toward the Shen commander’s pavilion. The soldier he had struck still stood spraddle-legged, hands to his face; the other ran out to intercept him.
Tlayesha knew better than to interfere. There were sounds behind her now, and heads appeared from under sleeping-shawls. A Shen guard arose to bark a question at the soldiers but went unheeded. On her own side of the platform she heard Old White-Side’s bass voice rumble a challenge as well.
The officer in front of her shouted to the soldiers still before the tent, and these sprang off to block the nobleman’s access to the roadway. Only the elderly man stood motionless, staring, seeming to concentrate without actually looking at the scene before him. He raised one hand toward the fleeing prisoner.
The half-naked young man was apparently confused-or bewitched? He had almost reached the Shen guardsman when suddenly he threw up his hands as though confronted by some terrible apparition. He gave a hoarse yell, veered away, and stumbled over a just-awakening slave. He ended with his back against the western parapet, that which overhung the blackness of the swamp below.
The first soldier came up to cut his quarry off from any further flight, feinting with his sword but not actually striking a blow. The nobleman must be wanted alive! The second trooper was almost there too, running hard, and the remaining pair were not far behind. The officer cursed and left Tlayesha to join his men.
The nobleman dodged his opponent’s clumsy swing, reached nimbly past the man’s guard, and caught his wrist. A deft twist, and the sword went skittering away along the planks, its owner after it to sprawl headlong. Before the second soldier could interfere, the thin-faced dandy had scooped up the weapon and swung to face this new foeman.
The second soldier saw his doom, but his momentum was too great to stop. Horrified, Tlayesha watched the sword point skid against the lacquered cuirass and slip smoothly up to lodge in the man’s throat. He jacknifed, coughing blood. The noble youth retreated gracefully to the parapet again, like a trained duellist after a match. Somewhere in the darkness a slave snapped his fingers in applause, the way the crowds praised a winning gladiator at the Hirilakte Arenas.
The first soldier was on his feet, dark blood oozing from an abrasion on his cheek. The remaining two men joined him and circled in from opposite sides, their officer just behind them. The latter bawled a command to surrender.
Their quarry swung his weapon from side to side, assessing the situation. He was outnumbered. There was only one avenue of escape, perilous though it was. Before anyone could stop him he whirled, took one quick stride up onto the wooden railing, and teetered there undecided for a long moment. He seemed to be looking for help-did he have accomplices amongst the slaves? His servants? No one moved.
He shouted something then. Tlayesha thought he cried, “-I told you mother-suckling clanless dung-eaters that it would never work-!”
He turned and jumped outward, into the swamp. A splash and an oily squelching sound came up from below. Then silence.
Without knowing how she got there, Tlayesha found herself at the parapet, jostled by merchants, slaves, overseers, soldiers, and some of the Shen. People seemed to crowd in from everywhere now that danger was past. A trooper called for torches, and a youth in the shabby livery of the Sakbe road guards (and now cleverly they had stayed out of the fray!) shouted for a rope. A crag-faced older man, a tanner by his leather tunic and the checkerboard design on his headband, snatched a spare tentpole from a cart and pushed it down to probe the dark bog beneath. A little fellow with a huge hooked nose-the tanner’s apprentice, probably-came up beside him and took the pole from his master’s hands.
There was a form down there, spreadeagled upon the quivering surface of the marsh. The ycung nobleman lay in no more than a finger’s breadth of water. Under any other circumstances he should not even have been stunned by the fall-and ought to have been away, free, into the darkness by now. But all around the bases of the gnarled pilings Tlayesha saw the bloated pods and stunted fronds of the “Food of the Ssu!” The young man struggled, face down, in the midst of the stuff! Even as she watched, his body thrashed weakly, he made gagging sounds, and his fingers tore at the dark-veined tendrils upon his face.
Then Tlayesha witnessed a thing that capped all of the other horrors of this frightful night. The tanner’s apprentice shoved the tentpole down to touch the nobleman’s bare back. Yet instead of using it to roll the victim out of the deadly foliage, or give him its end to pull himself free, the ugly little man set the tip of the pole against the base of the nobleman’s skull and carefully, deliberately, pushed his head further down into the black-violet, pulpy vegetation! The body twisted spasmodically, and the hands came back to paw futilely at the pole. The young man made a last spluttering sound and lay still.
“He perished, masters, before I could aid him!” the apprentice cried. The tanner hastened to agree. None of
