dangerous land we had perforce to take him with us. He was a bright lad, full of wiles and mischievousness, and yet with an endearing streak of pleasant loyalty and quickness of wits, and a readiness to learn that I knew would stand him in good stead on Kregen, where a man must be a man if he wishes to survive.
His greatest vice was his inveterate untidiness. Nothing he touched could be found in the same condition, and even to enter his tiny cubicle-like room in
Tilda often wore a green gown; and I was used to that now.
Naghan the Paunch kept Pando very busy about the calsany lines, and the youngster learned very quickly not to be anywhere near them when they became frightened. Naghan himself rode a zorca — a fine powerful specimen of that graceful riding animal. It had been a long time since I had seen a zorca -
a long, long time. In the lands fringing the Eye of the World men rode sectrixes, and in the Hostile Territories they rode the near cousin of the sectrix, the nactrix. I looked at that beautiful zorca and I felt my hands clench in envious longing, for I had to pad along on my bare feet. This zorca, like all the breed very close-coupled and with four impossibly tall and spindly legs, possessed a particularly fine horn, twisted and proud, flaunting from the center of his forehead. I would march along and look at the zorca and think.
What little money I earned — heavy silver pieces of Pandahem coinage called dhems, and duller and often- chipped copper coins called obs, one eightieth of a dhem — I saved for my food and keep and lodging, and, most particularly, to buy myself a zorca. I had seen no voves. You must remember that this city and zonal region of Pa Mejab was civilized, or as civilized as any area of Kregen given its situation had any right to be, and I could not just knock over the first person I ran across and take his gear and weapons, mount and cash, as had been my lamentable habit in more savage times. I had to earn what I needed, as I must earn a passage to Vallia. Often I have laughed since to think that the great and puissant Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, had been placed in this position; but there was no shame in it at all. Nothing had happened to me here to give me an opportunity, and a great deal of the blame for that must lie at the door of my terrible weakness that debilitated me as a result of my experiences. You will know that after my immersion in the pool of baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasoe I could look forward to a thousand years of life, and, equally, that I did not take to disease and mended quickly from wounds, so that my weak state gives some inkling of the ghastly passage of the Klackadrin.
Here I was once more in the sphere of influence of men and institutions that had surrounded me when I had first carved my way in Segesthes. Between this eastern coast of Turismond and the western coast of Segesthes lay the northern tip of Loh, that mountainous and mysterious land of Erthyrdrin, and Vallia, I was back among rapier and dagger men, among tall ships, among zorcas and voves — gone were swifters and sectrixes and the Krozairs of Zy.
Although — the Krozairs of Zy held now my undying loyalty.
Gone, too, were impiters and corths, although it was foolish to dream that those great flying beasts of the air might bear me across all the pitiless dwaburs to Vallia over the shining sea. When I made inquiries to discover if the Pandaheem possessed airboats, those fliers manufactured in distant Havilfar and widely used by the Vallians, I was met by a curse and a shrug. Evidently, Havilfar did not sell their fliers to Pandahem. Equally evidently, the snub to trade was resented. A light cheerful voice singing fragmentary snatches of the robust ditty “The Bowmen of Loh” brought me back to the present with a start. How that cunning and hilarious song brought back memories of Seg! Of how he and I, with my Delia and poor Thelda, had marched through the Hostile Territories singing!
Before I could yell, Obolya, an exceptionally tall and heavily-built man with a bristle of black hair all over his muscular body, cuffed Pando around the head.
“Sing somewhere else, you pestiferous brat! Little rast! Your screechings make my guts rumble!”
Obolya was a guard, a man whose profession as a mercenary had made of him a man embittered, callous, unfeeling. Whatever he once had been, growing as a young man at his mother’s knee, seemed all to have been wiped away during his years of hard fighting and long tramping. He owned a preysany, a kind of superior calsany, used for riding by those whose estate in life did not extend to the purchase of a zorca. He considered himself invaluable to the caravan, and Naghan the Paunch treated him with some respect.
It was with Naghan himself that I had taken service, as I have related. Now Obolya was being tiresome again.
The word “one” has many definitions and names on Kregen, of which “ob” is — if you will pardon the pun — one. Obolya,[4]a common name in various forms, indicates that its recipient was the firstborn of the family’s children. The Obolya who had just knocked Pando flying was tall, over a knuckle taller than I. Others of the guards on this left flank of the caravan with a few drovers crowded across to see the fun. Zair knew, walking caravan duty was monotonous enough so that any break in the routine was welcome. And Obolya was known of old; until every fresh guard knuckled down to him he would be ever seeking to force a confrontation which poor Naghan the Paunch, who valued Obolya’s massive thews in defense, must condone.
Pando just managed to avoid the nearest calsany’s instinctive response and scrambling up flew toward me.
“Just rest quietly, Pando,” I said, “while I speak with this limb of Armipand.”
Armipand was one of the devils in which many of the more credulous of the Pandaheem believed devoutly.
“Cramph!” roared Obolya. “You have a mouth wider than the Cyphren Sea! I must fill it — with my fist!”
“May Pandrite aid you now, Dray Prescot!” said Pando, overwhelmed by what had happened. He had known me long enough to know I would not shrug off an insult; but also he had seen me only as a weak and ill man, lucky to be employed by the overseer Naghan on the personal request of Tilda of the Many Veils. Pando sucked in his cheeks, and his eyes grew very round.
“Crawl back into the hairs of a calsany’s belly where you belong,” I said to Obolya. He stuttered. The black bristles on his cheeks and chin quivered. He pointed at me, and threw back his head, and roared his contempt.
“You! Cramph-begotten rast! You who carry the leavings of a blacksmith’s shop upon your back!”
This was a reference to the Krozair long sword. Now, in this culture of rapiers and daggers, I carried the long sword on my back, still in the sheath Sosie had made, beneath the quiver of which I have spoken. The weapon was in many respects anachronistic here. The guards carried short broad-bladed stabbing spears for butcher work until the rapiers came into action. This would be after the bows had taken the first toll, and it was as a bowman that I had been engaged by Naghan. He would say to me, half surly, half jesting: “You carry your bow in your hand, strong, and with an arrow nocked, Dray Prescot, when you guard my caravan. That is what I pay you for.”
The hope that by carrying the long sword over my back and thereby escaping its notice had not, in the case of Obolya, succeeded. Just how long he would go on hurling insults before he got down to action I did not know. I was almost back to my full strength, the fresh air and the suns-light and the daily marching had all combined in my recuperation. But, as always, hot though I am to resent authority, I attempted to avoid an unnecessary clash and a dangerous enmity. Pride and a hot temper are all very well for those who do not think; my trouble is that I think first — and then still go berserk, to my sorrow. Obolya wore a bronze breastplate of a reasonably high standard of workmanship; but for more complete protection he had under it only a leather tunic. On his arms and legs were boiled-leather strappings, and he wore a boiled-leather cap reinforced with straps of iron. He was as well-enough armored as many men who work as mercenary guards for a living; his armor, of course, would have made my clansmen smile and evoked mirth from the mail-clad men of the inner sea. I wore only my scarlet breechclout. My sleeping gear, along with Pando’s, was carried aboard one of the guard detachment’s plains asses.
