A pile of straw moved. A hand showed and, even as I watched, the hand gripped my ankle. I saw the straw slide away and I was staring down into the face of a Rapa, his fierce beaked birdlike face bloody and gashed, one eye missing, and in the remaining eye a dying glare of mad, vengeful terror. He gobbled at me, and blood ran greasily.
“Yetch! Nulsh! By Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls! You will die!”
“Steady, dom!” I spoke with some acerbity. “I’m on your side.”
He did not hear me. His grip was just tight enough for me to have to kick harder to free myself than I would wish to kick a dying man. The Rapa’s wounds were very terrible, and he lurched from his hiding place, the straw falling away and glistening red with blood. I forced myself to remain upright, but I was not going to allow him, dying or not, to continue to grip my ankle. He was trying to trip me, and his strength would not have matched a woflo’s.
Like a stupid onker, I stood there with a dying man hanging on to my ankle and feebly trying to pitch me over. I heard two voices, two short sentences, the second following hard on the heels of the first: “Hai Jikai! For the Emperor!” And then:
Then someone hit me under the ear. He hit hard enough for me to go headfirst over the prostrate Rapa, to break his grip on my ankle, to send me pitching into the bloody straw. I spat mouthfuls out, and in my head those famous old bells of Beng-Kishi rang and rang and dizzied me. Blearily I looked out on the stables.
The wounded Rapa was now dead. Another Rapa, dressed in blood-smeared half-armor, was also dead, his head near severed.
I blinked, I swallowed. Then I put a probing finger very gingerly to the tender spot under my ear, and I winced.
“He didn’t pay quite enough for your passage to the Ice Floes of Sicce, dom! Or else you have a skull as thick as a vosk’s!” said that second voice.
“As stupid as a vosk’s,” I said, staring blearily up at the man who boomed in so jovial and stentorian a voice, the man who had shouted to warn me, the man who had dispatched this poor pair of Rapas. He was not apim. He wore bronze lorica and helmet, with workmanlike straps of plain leather. He held a thraxter, shining with blood, in the professional grip of the fighting-man. In his helmet feathers glowed, brave feathers of purple and gold. He wore greaves, and they were gilded and shining. His face showed the glorious golden mane, now mostly confined beneath the helmet, and the equally glorious golden beard under his chin, of the Numim. He was not apim, like me. As I have promised you, I introduce types of people on Kregen when they impinge on my story. I had met Numims many times: they had served with Viridia the Render; they had marched under my flag, Old Superb, many times; I had fought with them and against them. The nearest approximation to their faces I can give you is to liken them to a human lion. If I refer to Numims as lion-men, you will understand why.
Now this Numim yelled at me as he put down a hand and hauled me to my feet.
“I can see by your clothes you are no fighting-man, dom!” He took in my rapier. “And I see you have taken up this fancy notion of the young bloods. Rapiers and daggers, they’re all the rage with the young aristos in Ruathytu these days!”
He pulled me up and I winced as pain flowed over my scalp. I brushed bloody straw away, and so the Numim must have taken flutsmen blood upon my white tunic for Rapa blood from the straw. Many races do not have red blood on Kregen, but red is the color mostly seen on battlefields.
“You did well, dom!” the lion-man roared again. He was in high good humor. Truth to tell, I seldom knew when he was not in high good humor. “We cleaned out this rast’s nest of emperor’s men; cleared them out with fire!”
“The Rapa shouted for the emperor,” I said, cautiously.
A thought occurred to him, and he drew himself up. “Llahal and Llahal,” he said, with the double-L
sound that is the greeting for strangers upon Kregen. “Your name?”
I knew he was an important personage, from the ornamentation of his dress and the jewels in the hilt of the thraxter. As part of my plan I would humor him.
“Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. Llahal.”
“I am Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind.”
So we made pappattu.
“You are fit enough to move, Amak Hamun?”
“I can move. But my voller cannot.”
He laughed. The Trylon of the Golden Wind was seldom able to pass a bur without breaking into great gusty laughter.
“The flutsmen are as always anxious to earn their hire. You must accept my hospitality. I return to the city now that our work here is done. I was checking its thoroughness when I came across you. You are keen, I will say that, Amak; but not overly skilled, by Krun!” He was laughing away now. “To be caught and held by the foot by a stinking dying Rapa while another clouts you over the head! That is a story!
You were fortunate he hit you with nothing worse than a wooden beam.”
“Yes,” I said.
We went out into the suns-shine to his voller. A Trylon is the next rank of nobility above a Strom. He was an important man. These Numims are a boisterous crowd, and they do not share that strong attribute of Earthly lions — they are not lazy. Trylon Rees was a bundle of energy.
“I had best fetch my things from my-” I began.
He waved a gauntleted hand most airily.
“Leave them, Amak Hamun. We will send a voller from the city to collect yours and bring it in. Climb aboard.”
Observing the fantamyrrh, for I did not wish to offend this lion-man, I stepped aboard his flier. She was a nice handy craft, with a smart Hikdar as captain, and a crew who wore the purple-and-gold favors in colored feathers and in scarves around their waists and shoulders. We went into the cabin and the voller lifted off for Ruathytu.
What Trylon Rees told me as we lolled in the cabin, drinking wine, a nice light pale yellow vintage from Barrath, interested me mightily. The emperor had been overthrown. Now Hamal was ruled by Queen Thyllis, who would soon be proclaimed empress. She was the old emperor’s niece, and she was, by the Trylon’s account, a remarkable woman. Any hopes I had that the outward expansion of Hamal’s frontiers and the consequent eternal wars would now cease were crushed as Rees said: “The old emperor was past it. He was leading us to disaster. Now that we have cleared him and his followers away — you had a hand in that, Amak, and therefore you have our thanks — we can get on with the job of prosecuting the war as it should be fought.” He shook that massively maned head. “Although I like a good fight, man to man, I am not overly fond of war.”
“You share my sentiments, Trylon.”
“What! You relish a fight — ah! I see.” He winked at me. “You would be a young blood and ruffle it with the best in the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. Well, we shall see what we shall see.” He poured more wine. “But as to this Krun-forsaken war — if only the rasts of Pandahem would leave us alone, we would not be under the necessity of fighting them.”
“Do the Pandaheem then war on us?”
I’ll admit now, that I slid in that word “us” very smartly indeed, getting my tongue around it and so squashing the “you” I had been about to say.
“You know they do, Amak!”
It was no part of my plans to fall out with a powerful man who could materially assist me to betray his own country.
“Of course. I was just wondering if, perhaps, the empire is not too far stretched-”
“Ah!” He leaned forward. “There you touch upon the nub of the question. We are stretched, but the empire is strong. There are thousands of clums available to fill the ranks of the army. And we can call on the guls, if need be. And we have wealth enough to hire mercenaries from overseas. We shall fight on the three present fronts — aye! And if necessary we can open more fronts to destroy our foes!”
You can’t really argue coherently against a belief like that. You have to show a fellow the error of his ways. One way of showing him would be to provide Vallia with a strong and
