Of the nine islands of Kregen not one is lesser in area than Australia. There are, of course, uncounted numbers of smaller islands scattered about, and who, still, can say who or what lives there?
We floated, Delia of the Blue Mountains, and I, Dray Prescot, in our crippled airboat far out onto the Great Plains of the continent of Segesthes.
We talked but little. I, because I felt the hurt in this girl against me, the natural feelings of disgust and contempt she must have for me, despite that I worshiped her as no man has worshiped a girl in all Earth or Kregen, for she did not know, must not know, of that selfish passion.
At first she refused my offer of the scarlet cape; but before dawn when the Maiden with Many Faces paled in the sky she accepted, with a shiver. The red sun rose. This was the sun which was called Zim in Zenicce. The green sun was called Genodras. I doubt if any scribe knew the numbers of names there were all over the planet for the suns and the moons of Kregen.
“Lahal, Dray Prescot,” said Delia of Delphond when the sun’s rim broke free of the horizon.
“Lahal, Delia of the Blue Mountains,” I replied. I spoke gravely, and my ugly face must have oppressed her, for she turned away, sharply, and I saw she was sobbing.
“If you look in that black box under the control column,” she said after a time, her voice still choked, “you may find a pair of silver boxes. If you can move them apart, just a little, just a fraction-”
I did as she bid, and there were the two silver boxes, almost touching, and I forced them apart with a grunt, and the airboat began gently to descend.
My surprise was genuine. “Why did you not-” I began.
But she turned that gloriously-rounded shoulder on me, and pulled the scarlet cape higher, and so I desisted.
We touched down at last and once more I stood on the prairie where I had spent five eventful years of my life. I was a clansman once again. Except-I had no clan about me.
Our only weapons were my dagger, our hands and our brains. Soon I had caught a prairie fox, good eating if rolled in mud and roasted to remove the spines, and we drank from a bright clear spring, and sat before the fire, and I stared at the beauty that was Delia’s and I found it in my heart to be content.
We had passed over the wide fertile cultivated strip of land that borders this sea-the sea into which the River Nicce flows, the sea men hereabouts call the Sunset Sea, for it is to the western edge of the continent. It reminds me, nowadays, of the sea into which the sun of San Francisco descends in those fantastic evening displays. We were in the outskirts of the Great Plains proper. Zenicce draws her revenues, and her slaves, the minerals from her mines and the produce from her fields, from all the coast and for far inland. There are settlements of small size all along the coast and for some way inland. I had hopes that if we were lucky we would run across a caravan before we decided to walk back to the city.
I had decided to wait a week. The chances of clansmen finding us were grave; for I could not hope that the Clans of Felschraung and of Longuelm would happen by. Any other clan might well be hostile to us. The girl, then, would be a burden in negotiations. We waited six days before we saw the caravan. During that time I had found a dawning break in the granite barrier that separated Delia and myself. She was beginning to lose that reserve and to be the impulsive, lovely, wayward girl she really was. She would not speak to me of Delphond, or of her family or her history. The only people who might have told me where Delphond was I had not asked-the House of Eward-and the slaves were ignorant of it.
We had made our little camp and Delia helped willingly about the chores. I had fashioned a stout sharpened stave from a sturm tree, and would twirl this about, remembering. Once I had to fight an outraged she-ling. It had crept from a bush and sought to snatch Delia away. The ling lives between the bushes and rocks of the small- prairie, where there are trees and streams, and is as large as a dog of the collie variety; but it has six legs, a long silky coat, and claws it can extend to four inches in length and open a rip in chunkrah-hide. From the pelt, I fashioned Delia a magnificent furred cape. It suited her well. She looked gorgeous and feminine in the furs.
Our first intimation that the caravan was near was not the tinkle of caravan bells, or the thud of calsany pads, or the shouts of the drivers; but the shrill yammer of men in combat and the gong-like notes of steel on steel.
I leaped for the fringe of bushes above our camp, the sharpened stake gripped in my fist. This period with Delia had become very precious to me. Had I deluded myself, or had there been a softening in her attitude to me? Always, she was correct, polite, meek and obliging about the camp in the small matters of domestic chores. When we avoided the agreed taboo subjects we could talk, lazily, for hours on topics ranging from that vexed question as to who was the first creature on Kregen, to the best way of dressing the silky white ling furs, and all manner of delicious speculations in between. Yes, very precious to me was that time beneath the moons of Kregen around our campfire at night. These thoughts rushed through my head as I saw a small caravan under attack by clansmen. Why should I embroil myself?
Far better to wait until it was over and the clansmen had taken their booty and such prisoners as would bring a ransom and had ridden off, singing the wild boisterous clan songs. Any interference on my part might well result in an ax-blade through my thick skull, and would certainly destroy this too short sweet period of growing friendship between Delia and myself.
“Look, Dray Prescot,” said Delia from where she lay at my side, peering down through the bushes. “Powder blue! Eward-a caravan of the Noble House of Eward.”
“I can see,” I grunted.
The clansmen were from a clan I did not recognize. When I rode the Great Plains as a clansman, had we met, there would have been bloodshed between us, perhaps; if we lived, the giving and taking of obi. They meant no more to me than the men of Eward. But Delia compressed her lips, and looked at me, and her eyes sparkled dangerously-at least, that is how they appeared to me, for whom, in two worlds, there was no other woman fit to hold the hem of her dress.
“Very well,” I said. Lately I had been speaking a very great deal. Naturally taciturn except when a subject excites me, with Delia lately I had, as a newer time would have it, been shooting my mouth off. Having decided, I wasted no time. I stood up, hefted my hunk of timber, and charged down into the fracas.
Men in powder blue were riding their half-voves in furious combat with zorca-mounted clansmen. That gave the men from the city some chance. Rapiers sliced past clumsy guards and pierced brawny chests; axes whirled high and descended to split skulls and spill brains. It was a small raiding party of clansmen-the zorcas told me that-and they must have stumbled on the caravan unexpectedly. I was down and among them before anyone realized a new force had been added to the conflict. I did not utter a sound.
In an instant I had dismounted two clansmen, seized an ax, swung violently against a group of three who sought to rip the hangings from a sumptuouslyappointed palanquin. I had discarded the notion of making a noise as though I were the forerunner of an army. I was not dressed as a clansman, nor as a city man-I was dressed as a hunter of Aphrasoe-and both sides would immediately have seen through the ruse and all surprise would have been lost.
The ax parted a neck from its trunk, sliced back to sever a cheek and knock the man from the saddle. The third man reined up his zorca, its hooves flashing, ready to swipe down on me, fully extended. I convulsed back and his blow swept through empty air. The hangings parted and a head crowned in a wide flat cap poked unsteadily out. Beyond the man about to attack me again I saw a man in powder blue sink his rapier into the throat of a clansman, the blade caught, and he jerked for a moment unavailingly. To his side a clansman lifted a bow string drawn to his ear. The next instant would see that iron bird buried in the man of Eward’s back.
I hurled the ax high and hard, in the old clansman’s cunning, and the daggered six inches of bladed steel sank into the zorca rider’s breast. He looked down stupidly and then fell off. Then the man facing me was spurring forward and bringing his ax down. I went in under the sweep of the blow, avoided the zorca’s mouth-with a vove I would have been already a dead man-and sprang upward and took him about the waist. We both toppled to the ground. When I arose and looked alertly about my dagger was brightly-stained.
“Well done, Jikai!” I heard a croaking voice call.
The zorca riders had had enough. What should have been a nice leisurely killing and plundering had turned into a bloodbath. With wild and baffled shrieks they rode off. We avoided their last Parthian discharges as the bolts thunked into the ground. If they stood off, we had bows enough to give them a spirited return to their shooting.
Often these days I am forced to smile when reading the ill-informed and ignorant usage of words when
