Earthmen speak of barbaric weapons. How often one reads that arrows are “fired” in combat. I have used flint and steel to fire a musket, and a percussion cap to fire a pistol, and have fired a high-velocity rifle many and many a time-I have even used a lighted match wound around a linstock to fire a thirty-two pounder in the pitching gundeck of a three-decker-but in all this smoke and flame I have never “fired” an arrow. One does not “fire” bow and arrows. Except, perhaps, if you allow that term to those occasions when we clansmen set blazing rags to our shafts and used them to set fire to the wagons and the roofs of our foemen, as we did that wild day in the Pass of Trampled Leaves.
The half-vove rider had freed his rapier. He looked at me with curiosity all over his bronzed, keen face, with the black eyes and the cropped hair beneath the steel cap, and he sized me up as I sized him up. Lithe and strong, he rode well, and I had seen his swordplay-with the last exception of those neck-bones, and they can be lubbers at letting a blade free-and he handled himself superbly well.
He rode over.
He passed me with an intent, anxious look on his face, bent to the palanquin.
“Great-Aunt Shusha! Are you all right?”
The old head in its wide flat hat poked out again. This time more of the old woman appeared, I saw she carried a dinky little dagger in her gloved right hand. Her face was old-old-and lined and pouched with the record of her years; but her eyes were lively enough, bright and malicious on her nephew.
“Don’t prattle so, young Varden! Of course I’m all right! You don’t think I’d let myself be fretted by a miserable bunch of scallywags like these pesky clansmen, do you?”
She was thrashing about now in attempting to alight, and men ran to let down the steps of the palanquin from its height, slung between two calsanys. She stepped down, small, incredibly vital, dressed in a powder blue gown that had scarlet stitching threaded all over it like sunshine on water.
“Great-Aunt Shusha!” The young man, whom I knew now to be the Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward, protested in mock horror and despair. “You mustn’t keep tiring yourself.”
“Tush and bottlecock! And you haven’t even said Lahal to this young man-” She peered up at me with her faded eyes. “Look at him, walking about half-naked, and killing men as easily as I push a needle through a tapestry.” She hobbled over to me. “Lahal, young man, and thank you for what you have done. And, it minds me-”
She broke off, and Varden leaped from his high saddle and caught her to support her. “The color-the color! It reminds me so vividly…”
“Lahal, my lady,” I said. I made my voice as gentle as I could; but it still came out in the old forbidding growl.
Varden, holding his great aunt, stared at me. His eyes were frank on mine. “Lahal, Jikai,” he said. “I own to a fault, it was remiss of me, not to thank you seemly. But my great-aunt-she is aged-”
She tapped his bronzed hand with her gloved finger. “That is enough of that, you young razzle-dazzle, insulting me. I’m no older than I should be.”
I knew that on Kregen men and women could look forward, if they were not killed or fell sick, to a life considerably longer than that on Earth, and this old lady, I judged, must be nearer two hundred than one hundred years old.
All this time I had not smiled. “Lahal, Prince Varden Wanek of Eward. I am Dray Prescot.”
“Lahal, Dray Prescot.”
“You did not see Dray Prescot save your hide, did you, nephew?” She explained how I had thrown my ax to save Varden as the man about to kill me charged. “It was true Jikai,” she finished, a trifle breathlessly.
“I had my Hikdar, my lady,” I said, holding up the dagger. She chuckled and coughed. “As I had my little Deldar.”
I looked, and, it was true, the dagger was a terchick. A shout of surprise brought our attention back to the scene around us. Delia of the Blue Mountains walked down the little slope toward us. Clad in the scarlet breechclout and with the white furs swinging, swinging in time to the sway of her lithe body, her long lissom legs very splendid in the suns’ light, she brought a gasp of awe and wonder to the lips of the men. I caught my breath. She was magnificent.
After the introductions were made it only remained for us to ride back to the city with the Eward caravan. It had been to fetch Great-Aunt Shusha from her annual pilgrimage to the hot springs of Benga Deste. Benga, I should hasten to say, is the Kregish word most corresponding to “saint” in English. Beng is the male form and Benga the female, the suffix letter “a” playing a similar part in Kregish as it does in Italian.
I cannot explain why; but when I asked my habitual question of fresh acquaintances on this occasion I felt a taut sense of expectancy. A vague look came over Great-Aunt Shusha’s wrinkled face.
“Aphrasoe? The City of the Savanti? It seems I
Chapter Seventeen
Now life took a completely fresh turn for me, Dray Prescot. If I had missed companionship before, finding that rare commodity at last on Kregen among the tents and wagons of the clansmen with Hap Loder and his like-for Maspero and those, as I thought godlike beings, of Aphrasoe created always in me a breath of awe-I found it once again with Prince Varden and his drinking companions in the House of Eward of the city of Zenicce. And, too, most strangely, I found a compelling sense of friendship, warm and human and very luxurious to me, in the wise companionship of old Great-Aunt Shusha. I owned she might one day recall what she knew of Aphrasoe; but I did not need that hope to make me respect and admire her, and I admit my fondness for her grew almost foolish, if affection can ever be called foolish. Airboats are rare and precious objects in Segesthes and Wanek sent a party to repair and bring back the one Delia and I had escaped in, regarding it as another trophy wrested from the hated Esztercari. Delia said that she was familiar with airboats, and added that they were not manufactured in her land. That ruled out Havilfar, where I understood the mining was done on which the airboats depended for their lifting force.
I had entered with some spirit into the plans of the House of Eward to take down more than one peg the House of Esztercari. Dressed in the powder blue of Eward I would ruffle it with the other young blades as we strolled through the arcades, patronize the drinking taverns, watch the varied amusements in the Barbary Coast area of Zenicce. I went to the impressive Grand Assembly buildings, and watched as the never-ending debates took place, with men and women walking in and out to leave or resume the seats allotted to their Houses. We even got into one or two bravo-fights, all flurrying cloaks and the clink and rattle of rapier and dagger, and shouting and laughing, and hurried retreat as the crimson-and-emerald of the city wardens was espied hurrying to break up the fracas.
Once across the canal and within the cincturing walls of our enclave, of course, we were absolutely safe. To break into a House enclave would take an army and although many sporadic raids took place-often, I learned with an amusement so grimly ironic Prince Varden was surprised, to steal a girl-no House felt strong enough alone to challenge another directly. The Esztercari’s had by chicanery, murder, corruption and then naked force, ousted the previous House from the enclave and further estates in which they had now settled some hundred and fifty years ago. Some of Great-Aunt Shusha’s venomous hatred for the emerald green was explained when I learned she had been a Strombor, a girl of the previous House and recently married into the Eward’s, when her family, her friends, her retainers were killed and scattered. Some had been sold as slaves, some had gone to the clans, some had vanished in their ships over the curve of the world and never returned.
By the twin forces of law and custom all the rights, ranks and privileges of the House of Strombor had passed to the House of Esztercari.
Each House enclave was a city in itself: tasselated pavement, marble, granite and brick walls, domed roofs, colonnades, towers and spires, all the whole gorgeous jumble of splendid architecture enclosed and supported a living entity within the greater entity of the city. The Eward beer was extremely good; Zenicce was famous for its
