scruff of the neck, and twisting him up to me, and glaring down into his face. He glared back — and that dark, betraying shadow passed over his eyes.
“What is this of my Lady of Strombor! Speak, and quickly, or I’ll snap your neck like a rotten pitcher!”
He struggled, and a hand was laid on my shoulder preparatory to my being whirled about and struck. I back- heeled and a man screeched. I lifted Aighos, beating away his fists, for he had dropped his long knife, and I swung him about and I shouted at these Blue Mountain Boys.
“Listen to me, you creeping mountain cramphs! I mean you no harm. I visit your country and am set upon! If this rast is your leader then let him speak, or by Zim-Zair, he’s a dead man!”
I saw Korf Aighos’ eyes flick toward me, and, suddenly, he went limp in my fist.
“I will speak. But first, tell me who you are — and, for the sake of Opaz himself, put me down!”
I set him on his feet.
“I am Drak ti Valkanium,” I said — and then wondered if that had been the best thing to say. But habit had become ingrained.
He glanced at me, sidelong. He shook his head. “Now, by the Invisible Twins, I wonder!”
“Tell me of my Lady of Strombor!”
At this, as though abruptly recollecting himself and where he was, his face took on an expression of alarm immediately succeeded by grim determination.
He glanced around. He said, in a whisper, “If I tell you that, Tyr Drak, the Opaz-forsaken guards of Vektor will hear. Then we shall have to kill them all. My Lady of Strombor has expressly forbidden killing, although-” Here he spread his hands and glanced around, not, I fancy, with any too-guilty a feeling. He finished: “Sometimes the knife or the rock are the only solution.”
A pragmatist, Korf Aighos. We withdrew into a cleft in the rocks, and he eyed me so narrowly that I tensed up ready to beat him in whatever scheme he was brewing. Instead, and again the rocks of the solid mountains lurched, he said: “You called yourself Drak ti Valkanium. I gave you the honorable title of Tyr because you are clearly so. But I think if I called you another name you would answer.”
I looked at him. I know that old devil’s look flashed evilly from my face, for he swallowed, and hurried on.
“Pur Dray, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Zorcander of the Clan of Felschraung — I know I am not wrong!”
“Yes,” I said, shattered.
“The Princess said you would come. Long and long has she waited. By stratagem after stratagem has she fended them off. Her father, the Emperor, may Opaz have him in his keeping, and that perfumed idiot Vektor — and there are others. Welcome and thrice welcome, my Lord of Strombor, to the Blue Mountains!”
“Well, sink me!” I exclaimed.
Korf Aighos rattled on, his face eager, his whole bearing animated and intense. “The Princess uses her name as the Lady of Strombor as a disguise. She trusts me.” He spoke that proudly, and I could not condemn him for that. “This idea was hers. If there are no wedding presents, there can be no wedding. She it was, the dear daring Princess, who discovered the real treasure was coming in this caravan the hard and little-used way, and the great parade of servants and slaves and guards along the Quanscott Cut was the fake treasure!”
“That sounds like Delia’s style.”
“Every man of the Blue Mountains would die for her! And of them all, the Blue Mountain Boys are her most devoted and loyal subjects.”
I had to rise to this occasion. Implicitly, in all Aighos said, there was the fact that if he agreed with Delia that she would not marry Vektor, then he must agree to her marrying me. I had to show some fire, some spirit, act a part as the great man.
“I would thank you, Korf Aighos, for your love and loyalty. I agree that we should not kill Vektor’s guards. But, my friend, I do not think you should hurl the loot into the river.”
“No?” He sounded doubtful, at which I took heart.
“Carefully spread out and spent, it would bring in much for the people of the Blue Mountains.”
“Loot!”
Had I gone too far? Was he an honest man in the sense that he wouldn’t accept loot when it came his way? Was this stealing in the accepted sense of the word? I was sailing near the wind, even by Kregan standards which are notoriously laxer than Earth’s. Perhaps-
I said quickly, “But as we are all honest men, then the treasure must be gathered together and returned to Vektor when the Princess Majestrix and I are married.”
“Amen to that, my lord.” Then he screwed up his blue eyes, and said, with a chuckle: “And I will take counsel on the question of the treasure. We are great bandits in the Blue Mountains!”
They are great ruffians, the Blue Mountain Boys.
The missing Womox had leaped voluntarily to his death, rushing back down the track out of the defile and so over a precipice. The other, the one with the broken tusk, sat crouched in mortal terror of the Blue Mountain men. I had seen the Womoxes in action, aboard Viridia the Render’s swordship; now I saw how a member of that savage and sullen race was terrified in his turn. And yet — my Delia was the princess of this cutthroat bunch!
Aighos bustled about superintending the tying of the guards’ wrists. They would be set stumbling up the track the remainder of the distance to High Zorcady in the mist. The calsanys loaded with the treasure were prodded away down the track. I looked up and saw a line of airboats appear over a nearby crag. They followed in line astern formation as neat as a rulered line on a score, sailing through the upper levels. They did not see us, down among the rocks, and so serenely flew on. I could guess why the treasure had not been brought in by flier; no one was going to trust an airboat with all this treasure among these hostile crags. The thought drew from me a gesture of respect for the men of the Vallian Air Service. Hikdar Stovang stumbled up, blood on his face, his helmet gone, his bright gold and black butterfly insignia ripped and stained.
“Traitor!” he yelled at me as I stood with Aighos. “I trusted you, you Opaz-forsaken cramph! Drak ti Valkanium! I shall remember that!”
Ob-eye swung his cudgel and slanted his one eye at Aighos, but the korf of the mountains laughed and said: “Let the braggart go!”
His men respected Aighos, that was very plain, and even Ob-eye, inclined to rumbustiousness, stayed in line, and with them all accepted me as Drak, a friend of Aighos. The korf considered it best for the time being to conceal my identity from everyone, with the exception of himself. I saw, with an amusement tinged with a wry affection for this korf of the mountains, this bandit, that he relished this knowledge, this secret he shared with a princess and a lord.
From the zorcas Aighos selected the finest specimen, that ridden by Hikdar Stovang. I remounted my own animal. The other Blue Mountain Boys selected zorcas and preysanys, and in a straggly procession we wended down away from High Zorcady.
I looked back. High Zorcady! There was a ring about that, a fineness, a sense of high yearning. The grim rearing pile spearing up into the clouds, its towers ringed with mist, the crested-korfs wheeling past its battlemented walls, all made a reality out of a fantasy of imagination. I knew I was sorry not to have visited High Zorcady.
The plan was to get me in, or to get Delia out, and once we had met, to make further plans. I did not care which, just so long as I could hold my Delia in my arms again.
“Pur Dray,” said Aighos, and then coughed and fiddled with his reins and berated the poor zorca between his knees. “Kr. Drak! We shall find hospitality at my cousin’s village. You rode past it and never saw it, so well are the houses hidden.”
He spoke the truth. The walls and buildings constructed of the rock against which they stood remained extraordinarily difficult to detect. We drank strong Kregan tea and ate a specialty of the mountains, ponsho rolled in hibisum flour and baked slowly — baked for three whole days — and then drenched in a taylyne sauce and simmered for another day. By the time the meat reaches your lips it melts like the sweetest honey. Superb! We also, being good Vallians, drank a great deal of wine of various vintages. The messenger had been sent, a lithe young girl of the mountains, striding with her skirts tucked up, springing boldly over frightening chasms, carrying laundry. The laundry would get her past the guards, and once inside she was known to friends, who would conduct her directly to Delia. Perforce, I waited. We had been quartered in the largest house, a two-story structure whose
