'Coward's weapon. No fighter should ever have to die of poison. Here, I'll help you,' she said matter-of- factly, and Vandien sat quietly, expecting a quick knife slice across the throat. LastFriend, the Brurjans translated knife, and were rumored to carry special ones to dispatch their own wounded. But instead she hauled him to his feet and began wrestling him into the chain mail. The cold was squeezing his chest now. He had neither the strength to resist her, nor to help her. In a moment more Korioko was setting a crested helm crookedly atop his head, and the other Brurjan, addressed only as Tiyo, was buckling the Duke's jeweled sword onto his other hip. Their hot meaty breath enveloped him as they laughed their way through the task of arraying him in the Duke's personal battle dress, right down to the heavy purse the Duke had been carrying. Then Halikira stood back and nodded her satisfaction.
'Looks better,' she said affably. 'Always turned my gut to see Pig-eyes in Brurjan harness. Man should fight like a Brurjan before he wears Brurjan harness.' She glanced around the room, then turned back to Vandien. 'You want any of his other stuff?'
He shook his head slowly. His good arm cradled his numbed one to him. Cold, spreading cold. His answer seemed to astonish them. Avariciously happy snarls broke out on their faces. They looted like children, competing and squabbling and bragging, and occasionally bringing some special piece to him and offering it to him. He always refused it, and with each refusal, their respect for him seemed to grow. Korioko bared his yellowed teeth in a Brurjan smile, and commented, 'So were the Old Ones, whofought only for blood and weapons. So we are, even today, when we have made a Great Kill. You honor the harness.' He glanced to Halikira and Tiyo. 'Let's drink with him.'
Tiyo tucked his chin into his chest, a Brurjan gesture of surprise, but Halikira cuffed him roughly. 'It's a good idea. We'll do it.' She stuffed the last of the Duke's jewelry into her shoulder pouch, and stood.
When she dragged Vandien to his feet, he nearly blacked out. Dimly he heard her say something about 'His ass is still bleeding,' which seemed to occasion much merriment among the threesome. His vision cleared slightly to find they were walking him down the stairs. He wasn't sure if his boots were touching the steps or not. As they passed the doorway to the common room of the inn, Halikira paused and leaned in. 'Duke's dead!' she announced to the Brurjan patrollers lounging there. 'VandienScarface killed him.' She paused a moment. 'It'd sound better in Brurjan. KeklokitoVandien. Now there's a proper name. Keklokito will drink with us! He leaves the spoils of the Duke to such as want them. And he says the town is yours! Celebrate a Great Kill as befits it!'
The Brurjans dispersed like bees from a smashed hive. Vandien heard the racketing of feet up the stairs, but as Halikira dragged him out into the cool night, it seemed an equal number of Brurjans had followed them. He was aware that they cut a swath of destruction through the town. Festival booths crashed down in their wakes, door leathers were casually torn from the ties and flapped out into the streets. He heard screams and harsh Human shouts that drowned in Brurjan roars and curses. He felt strangely untouched by all of it.
They were in an unfamiliar part of Tekum now. They passed a small corral of cattle and then entered a low-eaved building with no windows. Even Vandien had to duck to get inside, and the Brurjans dropped to their knees. But within, the building opened up to a peaked ceiling. The tables and stools were massive, making Vandien feel a child again in a world engineered for adults. And the smell was overpowering. Blood. Old blood, new blood, blood mixed with milk. Cutting even through the stench of the blood was another smell, abrasive and hot. He couldn't identify it. The floor was packed dark earth, and flies swarmed up from it as they entered. Light came from torches set in sconces on the wall and from fat candles on the tables. It did not illuminate the place very well, but Vandien did not mind. He had heard enough of Brurjan Bloodhalls that he didn't need to see more. He heard an animal scream briefly in an adjacent room. A Brurjan entered, a small animal clasped expertly under one arm. Blood pumped from its cut throat into the beaten silver vessel he held beneath it. He looked up in mild surprise at the throng of entering Brurjans. Glancing about, his eyes settled on Vandien. He pointed a black-nailed finger in his direction. 'No pets!' he said sternly.
'Not a pet,' Halikira contradicted him irritably. 'Keklokito made a Great Kill tonight. The Duke fell to him, and he has ceded to us all that was his, save his armor and arms.'
Her words penetrated a corner of Vandien's mind. Was that what he had done when he told them he wanted nothing else of the Duke's? Given it all, town and Dukedom, over to the Brurjans? He knew he should feel appalled but could only feel the deadly spread of the cold. He hitched himself up onto one of the massive stools, tried to sit so that his hip didn't pain him. Halikira was still talking. '... bull, or maybe two. We all drink with Keklokito tonight. Here!' She drew a gold neckpiece set with red gems from her shoulder pack, crashed it onto the table. 'Let that pay for all! And don't be slow!' She drew up a stool next to Vandien's and sat down heavily.
The rest of the table filled up rapidly. Halikira began loudly telling the tale of Keklokito's Great Kill. Her words seemed to blend with the swirling darkness of the Bloodhall and the muffled bellowing of a bull in the next chamber. The table had dissolved in helpless panting laughter and Halikira was struggling to add how Korioko had eaten the pig's eye when the Bloodhall's master appeared with an enormous basin. Heset it atop the table, and a small red wave broke over the lip of it. As if from a great distance Vandien watched drinking horns set out, and then the master came again, bearing a small metal bucket that steamed. The contents appeared silvery as he upended it over the blood, and Vandien caught again the hot, abrasive odor. The master swirled it through the fresh blood and then stepped back from the table. All grew suddenly still.
Halikira gave him a nudge that nearly knocked him off his stool. 'It's your kill; you fill your horn first,' she told him.
Obeying seemed easier than arguing. His sword arm Was useless. Even in the dim light of the Bloodhall, its color was appalling. With his off hand he picked up a drinking horn from the table; it was a fancy one, spiraled, with hunting scenes etched into it. He dipped it into the blood, and no sooner had he lifted it than a dozen others were plunged in.
His cup was heavy with warm blood, his fingertips red and wet with it. Whatever had been mixed with the blood made swirls of silver through the redness. He looked into it, felt he was falling into its depths. Halikira jogged him again.
'Drink it before the blood cakes,' she advised him, and when he looked vaguely reluctant, she reminded him, 'Hells, man, you're dying anyway! Look at your arm!' This evoked another chorus of panting laughter, and Vandien found himself joining in it. And when it ended with the lifting of drinking horns, his rose with the rest. And he drank.
He drank fire and sandstorms and curling whiplashes. The drink ignored his throat and belly and cut its own scorching passage through his guts. He couldn't even get the breath to gasp, and the Brurjans howled admiringly at what they judged his impassivity to their drink. His breath burned out through his nostrils and mouth. He forgot all pain from his hip, all coldness. He suddenly tasted the bull's blood in his mouth and nostrils, and it was hot and wet and alive, like sparks leaping on his tongue. His darkening arm on the table before him was suddenly funny, almost as funny as the Duke's eyeball. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Being alive was all that mattered, and using life up to the very last instant. Blood was life and life was in him. He swayed slightly as he turned to Halikira.
'What the hell are we drinking?' he managed to ask.
'Bull's blood,' she said simply.
He ripped the Duke's purse free of its strings, smashed it down on the table. 'Blood man! Kill another bull!' he roared, and Halikira crushed him in a hug.
'I like this Human,' she announced to the assembled folk. 'I think he should live!'
Someone near him began a panting laugh, and others took it up. Vandien laughed with them, unsure of the joke but having a wonderful time nonetheless. More blood was brought, and he drank another hornful, and it burned its way down his scalded throat in an agonizingly delightful way. It seemed to him that the Brurjans began to get silly after that. One of them wanted the Duke's helm for a piss-pot, and Vandien gladly traded it away for a Brurjan one twice the size of his skull. It hung over his eyes most of the time so that he frequently was unsure who he was talking to, but after a while that didn't seem to matter either.
Someone else bought another bull sometime later, and it was later still that Halikira sat down beside him again. He was a little surprised to find she had been gone. He was in the middle of trying to learn a newsong, made trickier by the fact that it was all in Brurjan and he wasn't sure what he was singing about. She had a leaf laden with an ugly, tarry substance, and she wanted him to eat it. He explained to her several times, amid much panting laughter from the rest of the table, that he never ate anything that particular shade of brown. Someone offered to bet a bull against the Duke's sword that he couldn't keep it down if he did eat it. Vandien won the bet
