hunting leathers; and I cut from his tunic enough to wind about my left arm. His boots fit me well enough. I slung the sword over my shoulder, its scabbard suspended from a leather baldric, and I felt that when I ran across these cat-people again I would kill very many of them before they could once again wrest Delia of Delphond from me.
The sound of hooves would be muffled to a succession of steady thumps in the sand. At the sound I drew the sword and turned to face the rider who approached. The wind blew grains of sand across the hoofprints; there had been no chance of tracking those who had taken Delia.
“Lahal,” the rider called when he was fairly up with me.
“Lahal, Jikai.”
“Lahal,” I likewise replied. I had learned what Jikai could mean in the various inflexions put upon the word. It could mean simply “Kill!” It, could mean “Warrior” or “A noble feat of arms”
or a number of other related concepts, to do with honor and pride and warrior-status and, inevitably, slaying. It had been used in admiration by Delia of the Blue Mountains, as it had been used by her as a command. I studied the stranger, as I said: “Lahal, Jikai.”
For, clearly, he was a warrior.
I had made a mistake in custom and usage; for he made a face and pointed to the dead rider and his mount. “Indeed, it is for me to call you Jikai; what have I done that you know of?”
“As to that,” I said, “I doubt not that you are a mighty warrior. But I seek a girl these-things-took.”
He had an open, frank face, burned brown by the suns of Antares, with light-colored hair bleached by those suns. He carried a steel helmet at his saddle bow, and his mount was of the same strange high-stepping breed as the dead one at my feet. He wore Leathers, russet-brown, tasseled and fringed after the fashion in New England, and he sat his saddle with the alert carriage yet relaxed air I knew bespoke a master rider. I could not say horseman, although no doubt from sheer familiar usage the word crosses my lips from time to time.
“I am Hap Loder, Jiktar of the First Division of the Clan of Felschraung.” The last word, as you can hear, was pronounced deeply with a great sound as of clearing the throat. The way Hap Loder said it, made it sound menacing, prideful, arrogant.
“I am Dray Prescot.”
“Now that we have made pappattu, I will fight you at once.”
Very little would startle me now. Any other time I’d have been pleased to fight him, if he so desired; but at this imperative time I must find Delia. He dismounted.
“You have not told me if you have seen a girl-” I began. His lance flashed before my eyes.
“Uncouth barbarian! Know you not we cannot speak of anything save obi until we have fought and given or taken obi?”
Furious anger flooded me. Pappattu, I understood, meant introduction. The formalities had been observed; but now this idiot would not tell me of Delia until he had fought me! Well-my captured blade flashed. I would not take long over this. He went back to that tall-legged animal, stuck the slender willowy lance in its boot, came back with two swords. One was long, heavy, straight, a swashbuckling broadsword. The other was short, straight, simple of construction, a stabbing short sword like a gladius. “I have challenged. Which sword, since that is what you have, will you choose?”
I looked him in the eye. Impatient or not to have the thing done, I recognized honor when I met it. This young man, Hap Loder, was offering me a chance of life, and of death for himself. The powerful broadsword, of course, would not stand against my scimitar, except perhaps on sand. I nodded toward the shortsword. He smiled. “It matters not to me,” I said. “But make haste.” Then, for he was a fine-looking young man and, as I was to discover, Hap Loder was steel-true honest and fearless, I added: “But I think you would do well to choose the shortsword.”
“Yes,” he said, and took it up by its grip, replacing the long broadsword in its scabbard strapped to his mount’s saddle. “Should you win I do not mind giving obi; but I have no wish to die unnecessarily.”
On which fine point of logic we fell to.
He was a fine swordsman, yet the very advantages of the quick and deadly shortsword were lost to him now. The shortsword is at its best when used with a shield, packed with room to play in the long ranks of a disciplined army, each man relying on his neighbor. Or in the close and sweaty melee of the press, when the elbow has room only to move within the compass of the body, does the shortsword rule. The great broadsword, too, can be outfought by a wily and nimble opponent, and I think he had made the better choice. But he could not match the demon-driven needs that obsessed me.
“Jikai!” he shouted, and lunged.
I made a few quick passes, left his blade short and faltering, and then, with the old over-underhand loop, sent his blade flying. My point hovered at his throat. He stared up, his eyes suddenly wide.
“Now, Hap Loder, tell me, quick! Have you seen a girl carried off by such carrion as this dead thing?”
“No, Dray Prescot. I speak truth. I have not.”
He scrambled up, backing away from my point. He drew himself up in the position of attention. He put his palms to his eyes, his ears, his mouth, and then clasped them over his heart.
“I make obi to you, Dray Prescott. With my eyes I will see only good of you, with my ears I will hear only good of you and with my mouth will I speak only good of you. And my heart is yours to feast upon.”
“I don’t want your bloody heart,” I told him. “I want to know where Delia of the Blue Mountains is!”
“Had I that knowledge it would be yours.”
I stood looking at him, at a loss. He was a young man, proud and upstanding, and a fine swordsman. If he got into many fights he’d be taking obi all the time.
He stirred awkwardly and then bent and retrieved his sword. I watched, alert, but he fingered the weapon and then walked across to his animal. He spoke to it for a moment, soothing it, and a pang of remembrance touched me.
Then he came back leading it by the reins.
“My zorca is yours, Dray Prescot, seeing that you are afoot, which no clansman may be.”
A zorca! So this was the type of animal from which Delia had fallen.
“Are you not a clansman? Would you then not have to walk?”
“Yes. But I have made obi to you.”
“Hmm.” Then the obvious question asserted itself. “Which way lies Aphrasoe, the City of the Savanti?”
He looked blank.
“There is only one city. I have never heard of any other.”
This was the answer I had feared to hear. I must be stranded in some remote and forgotten region of Kregen. Then the truth presented itself painfully. It was Aphrasoe that was isolate and hidden; these people were of the planet Kregen, living a natural human life. I thought of the cat-people-or as natural as their customs and environment allowed.
All I could do was go along with Hap Loder and learn all I could from him. I would find Delia, I would! And to find her I must learn, and quickly, damn quickly, everything I could. I studied the zorca with its twisted single horn. The saddle was richly decorated, but it was functional, comfortable, and the stirrups were long so that there was nothing here of the bent-legged crouch of the Rotten Row jigger up-and-down. One could ride a long way in that saddle. I fancied I would.
Besides the pair of swords and the willowy lance, Hap Loder owned an ax of a peculiar and deadly character, double-bitted, daggered with six inches of flat-bladed steel. Also he had a short compound bow. I looked at his arsenal with amusement; then again at the bow, with respect. He could have shot me down with that long before I could reach him. I cocked an eye at him.
“Show me your skill with the bow, Hap.”
He responded willingly. He strung it with a quick practiced jerk, looking up apologetically. “This is a light hunting bow, Dray Prescot. It has no great power. But I joy to show my skill to you, obi-brother.”
A piece of driftwood lay in the sand fifty yards off. Hap Loder put four arrows into the wood-
Maybe that was all the weapon he needed, after all.
