naked and given a sword and turned out to face a wild leem.”
Chapter Twelve
All the familiar sights and sounds and stinks of the arena rose about me again. This was a special occasion, a gala arranged by the queen for her own special pleasure. The stands and terraces bulged with spectators, for all they had been let in free this day, and wine had been distributed, also, so that the canaille might cheer and yell for the queen. All the nobles’ and dignitaries’ boxes had been carefully decorated, and now they were filled, for not a soul there would offend Queen Fahia. She controlled not only the army, who were loyal to her out of consideration for the pay they received, and not only the Hyrklanian Air Service, for the same reasons, but also a large and formidable force of hired mercenaries, paid for out of treasury funds, but answerable to her alone. Rebellions did not last long in Hyrklana.
After my hair and beard clipping done by Tilly, my frisky little Fristle fifi, I had been easily recognizable to Orlan Mahmud nal Yrmcelt. I was not, by the same token, as easily recognized by anyone who knew me as Drak the Sword, kaidur of the Jikhorkdun. The irony of my situation was not lost on me. Because there were remnants of red favors on my clothes when I had been chained and flung before the queen, and because she was a somewhat vindictive little person, she saw to it that I was equipped for the Jikhorkdun by any other color than red. It happened she chose the green color — and I guessed that was no chance, for sacred to the greens was the emerald neemu.
A gruff old hyr-kaidur with a potbelly and graying hair and with his green favor stained with grease about his shoulder looked me over, behind the bars of the green coys’ entrance. He pulled his thick lower lip. He was apim, a man like me, and a comfortable sort, called Morok, and because he was a green, only a day ago I would have cheerfully killed him.
“Well, my lad,” he said, pulling his lip. “You’re in a right old leem’s nest, and no mistake.” And then he roared until the tears squeezed past his eyelids at his own jest.
Mind you — it made me feel like a good belly laugh, too.
This leem’s nest was likely to be the last bed I lay upon, either here on Kregen or upon the Earth of my birth, four hundred light-years away.
When he had recovered himself a trifle, he spluttered out: “Can you use a thraxter, lad?”
“Aye.”
He took me by the arm, looking swiftly about at the coys who had been shouted off from us, here up at the bars with the shine of the silver sand waiting beyond. “Hush, lad! We’ve had orders to give you a weapon you might perchance not savvy the use of. You slew the black neemu with a thraxter?”
“Aye.”
He furtively looked around again, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He was a green -
but I had to pull myself out of this Jikhorkdun nonsense. He was a man, and he didn’t much care for what he was being forced to do, sending a man up against a wild leem.
“Forget you said that, lad. I’ll see you get a thraxter.” Then he hawked and spat at a scuttling liki, and drowned it in the sand, its eight legs feebly writhing in a lake of spittle. “The leem will serve you like that, lad. Thraxter or stux or spear or anything.”
“Perhaps.”
“You’re a cool one, by Kaidun! I’ll say that.” He looked at me and so did not see the tall gaunt form of the Pallan Mahmud walking from the milling coys toward us. “You’ll get a thraxter, my lad, or my name ain’t Morok the Mangier.”
Pallan Mahmud spoke in that detached icy voice: “Your name may well be Morok the Mangled, kaidur, if you disobey the queen’s express orders.” He gestured behind him as Morok shrank back, his potbelly quivering, his face stricken. “The queen has given commands that this yetch, since he fancies the sword so much, is to be given a strange sword. One the like of which is unfamiliar to us. She believes the thraxter will give him too much advantage, and what the queen believes is so, kaidur!”
“Indeed, yes, Notor Pallan, indeed yes!”
Two Rapas came forward at the pallan’s bidding. I was looking at Morok the Mangier and thinking how strange are the ways of men. Had he known I had fought as kaidur for the reds he would have cursed me, and here he had almost run headlong into punishment on my behalf. So I took no notice of the Rapas.
“We had a slave who swore by outlandish gods and blasphemed Havil the Green,” said Mahmud. He, like the queen, no doubt gave only lip service to the state religion. “He wished to fight for the reds, and so, naturally, he was given to the greens. He brought his own outlandish and uncouth weapon with him; but we took it from him as a curiosity, and the queen hung it in her trophy hall.” Pallan Mahmud sniggered. “No man can really swing the sword, so monstrous is it. But, Dray Prescot, by the queen’s express command you are to go up against the wild leem bearing this steel monstrosity.”
So saying Mahmud gestured again to the two Rapas. Between them they carried the monstrous object forward, bowed, and presented it to Mahmud. He stepped back, pettishly waving them away. “Give it to this loudmouthed Morok the Mangled! Yetches, must I tell you everything!”
Mahmud flicked a lace handkerchief — a group of coys out there had just been butchered and the smell was warmish — and the kaidur Morok the Mangier, of the green, stepped forward to take this queen’s gift of a sword from the two Rapas. He whistled his astonishment.
“Now, by Kaidun! You are doomed with this useless rubbish, Dray Prescot! It is a show sword, heavy and slow. .”
I stared.
I, Dray Prescot, stared at the weapon this kaidur held all uncomprehendingly. What did he know of its magical secrets?
A man had once died out there in the arena, at my feet, and had gasped a last word of greeting to his Krozair brothers of Zamu. And another man had come from the Eye of the World, and he had brought with him that which Morok now held, and these kleeshes had not allowed him to use it in the arena. Had he done so he would have become the greatest of hyr-kaidurs.
I had fancied the evil queen had designed to send me up against a leem with a rapier; that would have been a jest much to her liking.
But she had surpassed herself.
They would not let me take the weapon yet, for fear I ran berserk before I was thrust out with the iron rakes into the arena. I glared hungrily upon that sword. I knew what manner of sword that was. It had come here, to the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, in the land of Hyrklana, in far Havilfar, all the way from the Eye of the World.
Could I believe that the Savanti — even, perhaps, the Star Lords — had intervened on my behalf?
That was the reading I thought then to put on this miracle.
Neither the Grodnims of the north shore nor the Zairians of the south shore of the inner sea go much afaring in the outer oceans as mercenaries. But a Krozair had once done so, for reasons I knew were not important, and had fought his way around the wide curve of the world, and so, at last, found himself taken up by the foul slave- masters seeking fodder for the Jikhorkdun. I saluted his memory. There was only one other possible sword I could have preferred for the work in hand, and that was the Savanti sword.
But I was content with the beautiful blade that Morok the Mangier so contemptuously condemned, and tucked under his arm with a curse for the retreating backs of the Pallan Mahmud and his Rapa slaves. I kept trying to look more clearly at the scabbard, for both scabbard and hilt, as well as blade, are marked.
This happening, I felt convinced, marked a new and important phase in my relations with those unseen forces that controlled my life.
Brazen trumpets blasted the hot air above our heads. A huge roar welled up from the packed seats. The time had come. I was naked. I held out my hand to Morok.
He looked sorrowful. “You’re a dead man with this, Dray Prescot.” He hefted the sword. “By Kaidun!
