I did not waste breath answering but got myself back to the splintered door and held him off yet again. I had to allow my fighting instincts full play. There had to be a way of beating him. While he leaped and sprang so agilely before me and I ducked and weaved in my turn his men would not chance a stux throw or the loosing of a bolt. This gave me heart.
The three men who, on fire, had charged into the fight were fully occupied. They were yelling and screeching strange oaths at one another, calling on outlandish gods and devils, and the way these four-armed diffs fought filled me with admiration. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation and wherever on Havilfar I might be, I had landed in a country of warriors, by Vox!
Kov Nath drew back a space, and I saw a face at the window at my side. At first I imagined a monstrous mouse-face looked at me. There were brilliant dark eyes, a trembling tender nose above wide white whiskers, and a small mouth which showed small even teeth in evident terror at the fire-filled scene outside. A scarlet velvet cap with a jaunty white feather stuck lopsidedly in it covered this diffs head. He squeaked.
“May all the Warrior Gods of Djanduin aid you now, apim!”
So now I knew where I was. And, as before, the very sound of that name, Djanduin, struck a responsive chord in me. I had experienced the same uncomprehending but thrilling spark of uplift when I had first heard the name Strombor and the name Valka. And now — Djanduin!
Perhaps all that has happened in the intervening years has given me a false hindsight; perhaps the names of Strombor and Valka and Djanduin and — but they must wait for now — ring and thunder in my head so much, enough to echo back over the years. All I know is that as the mouse-faced little diff yelled at me, the name Djanduin struck shrewdly. These four-armed diffs were Djangs. I had used their national weapon, the djangir, on a notable occasion in the arena of Huringa.
A crossbow bolt shattered into the window frame and the little diff jumped, squealing.
“Get your head down, onker!” I roared at him, and with the thraxter belted a stux out of the air. The keen iron point would have pierced him just where his whiskers joined beneath the quivering nose and above the trembling mouth.
“Mother Diocaster!” he yelped, and vanished.
The fire-fanned flames lay their burning hair across the inn and more of the roof fell in; but I was heartened to note that the splintered lenken door and the smashed window with the crossbow bolt embedded in the frame lay upwind. Here was a tiny portion of hope for the cause in which I fought. That I had no idea what that cause was all about added a spice I — thinking of the Star Lords — did not relish.
The far end of the inn was now doomed. I continued to fight, keeping a circle about the door, and with an evil cunning drawing Djangs in for combat so that they would screen me with their own bodies from their comrades’ shooting.
Kov Nath, with his smooth helmet-head of coppery hair, tried again to get at me with that confounded great sword of his and I had to leap and then bend double to avoid the crunching back-handed swing. I circled him to his left, flickering the thraxter in and out like the tongue of a risslaca of the Ocher Limits, and then darting back and trying to cut him up in his right side. But those two damned right arms of his kept whacking the great sword about so that I had to take it on my blade and let a supple wrist twist slide it free. When, with the fighting-man’s instinctive attack following defense, my blade merely scraped across his shield I grew hopping mad.
“Sink me!” I burst out. “You’re a bonny fighter, Kov Nath!”
“Aye, apim,” he said merrily, and came at me again. “And I’ll split your head on my sword to prove it.”
We clashed and banged and every now and then I had to jerk away and flick my thraxter up to swat a quarrel off or snatch at a flying stux. It seemed to me then that this could not go on much longer. I did not take a stux cleanly with my left hand and the broad iron blade scored up my forearm, at which I let out a curse.
“By the Black Chunkrah, Kov Nath! Let you and me settle this between ourselves, like true Horters.”
He laughed.
“I am no Horter, apim. I am Nath Jagdur, the Kov of Hyr Khor!”
That betrayed him. For although I am not a gentleman, and do not pretend to be, having seen too much of their nasty ways, I do know that the Horters of Havilfar and the Koters of Vallia and all the other gentlemen of Kregen consider themselves Opaz-elect. Any noble considers himself a gentleman, by birth and right, except in those cases or men who — like myself — fought and struggled to become Notors from lowly origins, and then they are nobles by right only. But, such is the custom of Kregen, birth means far less than achievement in the eyes of most peoples.
As we thus struggled before the lenken door of the blazing inn a Djang screeched and ran out from the streaming smoke.
“Kov Nath! They come! They come!”
Kov Nath went mad. His great sword whirled into a silvery-blue blur, for he had not tasted blood with it as yet. He bellowed his anger.
“By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds! I’ll spit you yet, yetch!”
His face congested with blood. Apart from his four arms he looked exactly like an apim, and his face was darkly handsome, with bright merry eyes, a thin black moustache, and a chin that jutted with a dark bristle to show he had not shaved that morning. He bore down on me again even as his men yelled and began to decamp.
“Rast!” he yelled at me, and spittle flew. “I’ll degut, debrain, dissect you, you two-armed weakling!”
“By Vox!” I ducked a swing and surged up to him and so took his throat into my left hand and dragged his handsome head forward. I glared into his congested face. “You’ll know you’ve met me, Kov Jagdur the Boaster!” And I slashed the thraxter down. The blow would have finished any ordinary man. But this Kov Nath Jagdur was a Djang. He had four arms. The shield came around and caught me in the side, just beneath the ribs, and I grunted and let him go, and he brought the great sword around and down to finish me.
I rolled away and my thraxter came up just in time and slid that long wicked blade. The steel bit into the turf.
A crossbow bolt went
He roared and straightened up and another bolt hummed past his ear. From the smoke more Djangs appeared, running and loosing crossbows, holding their shields high, their thraxters low. At their belts swung djangirs.
“Now by all the devils in a Herrelldrin hell!” bellowed Kov Nath.
He hesitated — he stood there, balanced, ready to lunge one way for his sword and the other in flight. A bolt pranged glancingly from his lorica, and that decided him; with a final blood-curdling curse he ran around the far end of the inn. Moments later the thud of animal hooves sounded and the band of rogues burst into view, racing with straining necks and heads low, riding fast away along the white dusty road. I looked up into the point of a stux.
The Djang holding the stux looked as though he would like nothing better than to thrust down. Just as I was about to teach him the error of his ways in thus treating a Krozair of Zy, four arms or no four damned arms, the little diff with the mouse-face came running out of the inn, squeaking. His whiskers were all a-twitch as he pushed the stux aside and dropped on a knee at my side.
“Apim! You still live! Now may Mother Diocaster be praised!”
I did not fail to notice the offhanded way this little fellow thrust the stux aside, nor the way the Djang soldiery stiffened up at sight of him. These were signs I recognized. He was most solicitous.
“You are hurt, sir, you are hurt. You bleed!” He leaped up and tore into the gathered newcomers.
“Deldar! Take this Horter into the unburned room and care for him. Bandages, water, needles, palines.”
He swung about. “Sinkie! Sinkie! I am coming, my love! It is all right now, the Opaz-forgotten leemsheads are gone! You may come out from under the table now.”
I had to let myself be hoisted up to keep a smile off my face. Lord knew, I needed a smile then!
As we went into the unburned end of the inn I observed how the Djangs were going about dousing the flames, working with a swift eager efficiency that heartened me. Hauling water from the well in the rear courtyard, they had the fire under control very soon. Truth to tell there was little left of that end of the roof. The little fellow pranced at my side very solicitously.
“I have the honor to present myself to you, sir. I am Ortyg Fellin Coper, Pallan of the Highways.”
He looked at me expectantly, his bright eyes alert, his whiskers quivering. He wore rich robes of a dark blue
