now, and so I said we would descend and hunt for our supper.
One of the halflings pushed his way through the jumbled passengers at my back and, puffing a little, smoothed down the yellow fur around his eyes and mouth and polished up the laypom-colored fur beneath his chin.
“If you will continue for another four or five dwaburs, on this course,” he said in his smooth honeylike voice, “you will come to a fine city built by a great orange river. That is Ordsmot. There, I believe, you will find all the food and wine you may require. You see,” he finished, and I detected a huge relief and happiness in him, “I am Dorval Aymlo of Ordsmot”
Over the chorus of voices declaring that this was splendid news, I considered. This Dorval Aymlo was a member of the halfling race sometimes called Lamniarese — the Lamnias — of whom at that time I knew little. You must understand that, in accordance with my original plan, although surrounded by many different kinds of half-men I introduce them to you only when they come upon the stage of my story. I believed this Aymlo of Ordsmot to speak the truth.
“Done,” I said. “And many thanks to you, Horter Aymlo.”
Horter is, of course, the Havilfar equivalent to the Vallian Koter, or Mister. The airboat sped onward in the gathering darkness with only two of the lesser moons hurtling close by above.
We had traveled a considerable distance since leaving Faol — thanks be! — and I fancied this voller was a far speedier craft than any I had flown in before. Also, I had the hunch that the confounded thing would not break down as frequently as those the Havilfarese sold to Vallia and Zenicce and their other overseas customers.
Tulema was looking ahead and she saw the great bend of the river, shining faintly in the growing light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles rising away to our left, and she cried out in delight. A mass of twinkling lights in an immense circle, crisscrossed by the four main boulevards in a huge wagon-wheel demarcating the eight precincts, showed us without mistake where lay Ordsmot upon the orange river. I sent the airboat slanting down to an enclave near the river at Aymlo’s directions. The lights spread out around us. The dark masses of trees rushed past and I slowed our descent. Buildings flashed past beneath.
“There!” said Dorval Aymlo, pointing over my shoulder. “Where that tower rises, beside those warehouses and the beautiful godown!”
By his words and his tone of voice I knew he was pointing to his home. We landed in a courtyard with buildings on three sides and the river on the fourth. Doors opened and lights flared. The Maiden with the Many Smiles was hidden for a space by buildings and trees, and it was unusually dark upon Kregen where we were in Aymlo’s home in Ordsmot. He cried out in a great voice: “It is me! Dorval Aymlo! I am home, my children!
I know how I felt, and I am sure that everyone aboard felt just the same. How we longed to be able to shout the same words, filled with joy and happiness!
I climbed out and Aymlo, who would have alighted next, was pushed aside by Tulema. She hated to let me out of her sight. I stood on the hard-packed earth of the courtyard and I smelled the wonderful sweet scent of the night flowers, and I saw the people from the house running toward us, bearing torches that flared their glowing hair upon the night.
“It is me, Dorval Aymlo!” the Lamnia called again.
He started to run forward.
The youth Nath, who said he was from Thothangir, stood at my side. In his hand the guide sword gleamed from the torchlight. I had kept the other sword. Nath swore.
“The old fool! Cannot he see they bear weapons?”
Truly, in the torchlight the flicker of spears showed bright in the forefront of those men toward whom Dorval Aymlo ran with his arms up, crying aloud in his joy.
And a voice lifted, a harsh, brutal voice.
“Aye! We know you are Dorval Aymlo! This house and this business are yours no longer! Know that I am Rafer Aymlo, your nephew, and these are my men, and this house and this business is mine! And know, also, old fool, that you and all those with you are dead, dead, dead!”
Chapter Twelve
Even as Dorval Aymlo shouted in a high and shocked scream of utter disbelief and despair, I jumped forward, the sword low. This was no business of mine. But the old Lamnia had been so happy — he had been so overjoyed and he was a kindly old soul — and now, this!
So I jumped forward, like a headstrong fool, and Nath of Thothangir leaped at my side, his red hair black in the torchlight.
Aymlo screeched and stumbled and fell — and that for a surety saved his life, for the spear thrust passed above his prostrate body. In a twinkling I had thrust in my turn, and recovered from the lunge, and taken the next spear and so, twisting, hacked down the furry face of the Lamnia attacking me. Nath fought with a series of clever but overly vigorous cut and thrusts. I smashed into the other Lamnias, for I knew that they would in truth kill us all if they were not stopped, and that would not please the Star Lords. Among the Lamnias were Rapas and humans and these fought, on the whole, with more skill and viciousness than the Lamniarese, which was only natural. Very quickly I found three Rapas at my side wielding fallen spears, and these were released slaves, my fellows. We fought and for a space the compound resounded to the shrill of battling men, the slide and scrape of steel, the shrieks of the wounded, and the bubbling groans of the dying.
The very savagery of the ex-slaves’ rush, the sudden reversal of their own weapons, the blood spouting from gaping wounds, unnerved our opponents. One of our Brokelsh was down, with a spear in his guts, but that was the extent of our casualties. Our opponents fled. Dorval Aymlo stood up, holding his hands in the air in horror. The Maiden with the Many Smiles floated serenely above the rooftops with their notched outlines and upflung gable ends, and her pink radiance streamed out upon that scene of destruction.
“By Opaz the All-Merciful!” exclaimed Aymlo, scarcely able to speak. “What devil’s work is this?”
A Rapa laughed nastily, wiping his spear on the clothing of a dead Rapa he had slain. “It is very simple, old fool. This bastard nephew of yours stole your house and your goods and he would have slain you to keep them!”
“Well,” said Dorval Aymlo, in a voice of pain, “the deed has brought him nothing but sorrow. For, see, here lies the body of Rafee Aymlo, all dead and bloody.”
And, indeed there lay the nephew, with the laypom-colored fur beneath his chin dabbled with blood and bisected by a great swiping gash. I knew that was not my handiwork. The redheaded youth who said he was Nath of Thothangir was more than a little of a hacker with a sword. We all went into the great house, on the alert, and found a frenzied attempt on the part of female Lamnias to pack up the stolen wealth of Dorval Aymlo and to depart. We stopped them, Aymlo wanted nothing of revenge. We discovered his wife and six children, still alive, penned in a filthy basement, and we released them to hysterical scenes of sobbing and laughter, to which we slaves left them and so found ourselves food and drink. The business as merchant carried on by Dorval Aymlo was extensive and he was a relatively wealthy halfling. His nephew had trapped him and sold him into slavery, and he had wound up on Faol, sport for the great Jikai. Now he was home, and he could not do enough for us. The next day we had to consider what to do. From Ordsmot many of the released slaves could find their way home to various parts of Havilfar, and Aymlo was only too happy to give them, freely and without interest or thought of return, sufficient gold to get them comfortably home, broad gold deldys, the Havilfar coin corresponding to the Vallian talen.
Aymlo’s next-door neighbor, and others, crowded in to congratulate him, for he was a kindly man and well thought of. Among those whom the news brought hurrying to Aymlo’s house was a man. He was, in the Kregan way, tall and well built, with a handsome open face with a fine pair of black moustaches, and it would be difficult to
