death-grip on the haft of his ax.
“Bandits!” He choked the word out, and I knew from the way he spoke he had summoned up all his strength of purpose to run and warn the caravan and had been struck down. “Bandits!”
“Quiet, dom,” I said. “Rest easy.”
Then I raced back toward the caravan where already I could hear the shrieks of men engaged in mortal combat, and the slither and clang of iron weapons.
CHAPTER SIX
The guards around the center flight of calsanys were already in dire trouble. The caravan had come to a halt and the beasts were milling. Hastily dumping down that impossibly tall man with his ax beside Pando, and yelling to him to keep out of sight and trouble, I drew the longbow. The time had almost passed when archery could help; but I was able to feather four of the bandits before a gang of them swung their preysanys and coursed in at me, waving their spears. Getting the long sword out of Sosie’s scabbard over my shoulder demanded a convulsion of effort, and I had to jump up and bend over in a most undignified fashion to do it. But, once the deadly Krozair brand was in my fists, I was ready to meet these throat-slitting bandits, and to earn the wages Naghan the Paunch paid me.
Since that long-gone day when I had met Hap Loder on the beach and we had made pappattu and then I had taken obi of him, I had learned much of sword fighting. Then I had been accounted a useful man with a cutlass, and had learned a great deal with those wonderful swords of the Savanti; but, all the same, when my clansmen armed with broadsword and short sword had gone up against the sophisticated rapier and dagger men of the city of Zenicce, I had worried about them. Now, I had all the skills and scientific knowledge, and the art and mystic practice, of the Krozairs of Zy to drive my nerves and impel my sword arm.
The rapier and the left-handed dagger are excellent weapons, as I have indicated, and they can between them take on much variegated weaponry. By this time the bandits and the guards were at it hammer-and-tongs, their broad-bladed spears flung down, and the rapiers and main-gauches, the Jiktars and the Hikdars, flaming and slicing, cutting and stabbing, in a welter of slivers of finely-honed steel. I charged the bandits running at me with a great shout of: “Hai! Jikai!” and at once that terrible Krozair long sword was whirling a path of destruction through the bandits. My own rapier and dagger bounced scabbarded at my side.
The long sword took the head off the first bandit — he was a man of uncertain origin (but of certain destination) — and sliced back to lop the rapier-wielding arm of the next one. They spurred their preysanys in to get at me, and this, I believe, led to their own destruction, for I could reach them with the long sword and they could not reach me. This fight roared and bloodied away. At least to me it appeared topsy-turvy, for the mounted men used weapons shorter than they should, given the fine length of their rapiers, and I had no long pole arm. In this fight I did not learn, truly, of the full problems of long sword against rapier and dagger. The fight taught me only that I had to get it over fast, for I caught a distorted glimpse of young Pando, with a snatched up dagger, trying to hamstring a bandit preysany. If anything happened to him. .!
Already Tilda must be frantic with worry over where the little devil had got to — and if I returned and told her he had been with me, and had been killed. . I couldn’t face that. So my long sword became a bloodied blur. The bandits fell before me. They were of many races of men and half-men: Fristles, Ochs, Rapas, Gons; alike they fell before my brand. Obolya I saw, fighting like a demon, spitting his man, taking another’s attack on his dagger, twirling with a laugh full of braggadocio, lunging into the belly. Naghan the Paunch I saw, also, striking about him with a broad-bladed spear that from his height on the zorca kept the bandits at bay. I shortened the long sword and drove it carefully into the neck of an Och, sliding above his out-thrust shield. I body-swerved to avoid the thrust that his last involuntary movement impelled. I jumped over his falling body. Right-handedly I slashed away a Rapa who, wasting time screeching, tried to spit me. He went over with his beak sheared off.
I jumped over a preysany, my Earthly muscles back to full power and tone, chopping short and hard down onto the man who ducked far too late. I landed neatly enough, removed another Rapa beak, swung and slashed and so forged my gory way toward Pando.
He came up screeching, scooped under my left arm. I laid the flat of the sword across his rump, whereat he yelled like a trapped leem, and left a long blood smear there.
“Quiet, you imp of Sicce!”
Obolya was down.
A Rapa, his fiercely predatory bird face gobbling with blood lust, was in the act, seeming so deliberate, of thrusting his rapier down into Obolya’s belly. Without pausing in my run I swung the long sword in a flat arc that intersected first with the Rapa’s right arm, thus removing it and the rapier from Obolya’s intestines, and then sheared on into the Rapa’s side. He was wearing a bronze corselet. The Krozair blade smashed through in a screeching splintering of metal.
I wrenched the brand free, spun, caught a rapier and, with the supple wrist-twist that is easy enough with a rapier, damned difficult with a long sword, managed to thrust the blade into the bandit’s throat. He vomited blood and went over.
Obolya was up. He glared at me.
“How many more are there, Obolya, in Zair’s name?”
“Enough for me to repay you my life, Dray Prescot.”
There was no time to wonder about that. The bandits pressed and we guards earned our money. When I had contrived to deposit Pando back among the plains asses — who were more restful and far less impossible than the calsanys, to whom everyone fighting gave a wide berth — and sorted out another group of bandits, I began to think we would best them.
They had waited for us here, on the outskirts of the cultivated areas, thinking that having traversed the dangerous lands we would relax our guard. As it was, with Naghan yelling us on, with Obolya fighting like a demon, and with my long sword that simply destroyed them, they had had enough. The last we saw of them was the dust their preysanys kicked up as they ran. Without pausing I ran across to a preysany from whose saddle a man hung with his foot entangled in the stirrup. I put my foot on his face and kicked him free. Then I swung up into the saddle. Naghan yelled: “Don’t pursue them, Dray. They won’t be back.”
I rode across to another preysany which stood nuzzling the bloody rags around the head and shoulders of the Gon, its late master. The head and the shoulders were separated by a space of bloody grass. I remembered that one. Grasping the reins, I pulled the animal away and, a little reluctantly, it followed. I said to Naghan the Paunch: “I claim these two preysanys for Pando and me. Agreed?”
He huffed his paunch more comfortably in the saddle and nodded. “You may claim them, Dray Prescot, with pleasure. Under the terms of our contract they are mine, as you well know. You can work them out of your pay.”
“Naghan the Paunch!” I yelled.
He was chuckling and wiping the blade of his spear and reveling in it. I did not chuckle; but I suddenly shouted: “Hai!” and the zorca started and leaped and Naghan went careering across the grass, wildly grasping anything to keep from falling off.
I heard a deep belly-rumble of laughter and turned and there was Obolya with his black-bristle face all crumpled with malicious mirth.
“You treat men hard, Dray Prescot.”
No surprise showed on my face. This was only a petty border skirmish, a thing to be done and forgotten and not to be placed alongside the great battles and campaigns of my life; but a man can be killed as easily in a skirmish as a world-shaking battle.
“True, Obolya. To their deserts.”
He eyed me a moment, and then went off about the business of a mercenary guard — stripping the dead of their valuables. In this I heartily agreed. Pickings are hard-come-by. But when I saw Pando engaged in the same occupation I started off at once to check him, outraged, wondering what Tilda would say if she could see her son — and then I stopped. This was life. This was what fighting and killing were all about. Let Pando learn the true facts,
