Strom Lart ham Thordan” — I chanced my arm — “a very peculiar fellow.” A few snickering laughs rose at that, so I had guessed right, and I pressed on: “I was out of town for some time and, really, I haven’t got around to seeing the tiresome fellow again. If he’s still around.”
The sneering one was clearly taken aback, particularly as Rees said in his best lion voice: “Well, if this Strom wants to make something of it, let him see me! I’ll fry his ears in a pan for him, if he’s a mind to!”
All our cronies laughed, and the sneering fellow took himself off, much discomfited. There were gangs, and clans, and clubs, and enclaves of friends in this sacred quarter of Ruathytu, and one would stand by one’s associates. I breathed again. .
So, then, just as I was making my preparations for the night’s work, a loud rapping on the door heralded the entrance of Trylon Rees. He bore a bottle of wine.
“And tell me about this cramph of a Strom, Hamun, you cunning rascal! Taken sick just before a duel!
Hey!”
We cracked the bottle and I told him a story and he laughed and promised he would stand as my second if Strom Lart persisted in the challenge, and he added: “And then, Hamun my boy, get sick again. Then
“That is most kind of you, my dear Rees.”
“Kind? Kind nothing! I’ll stick him and joy in the doing of it, by Krun!”
We proved the bottle honest — that is, we emptied it and so checked its measure — and then Rees rolled off, roaring a song about a lion-gal and her proclivities, and I could get on with my mission. The interruption had made me late. I had to reach the factory called the Blind Wall over on the far side of the Black River, down in a heavily guarded quarter, where, I had been informed in idle conversation, “. . the jolly old guls who can be trusted filled up the voller what’s-its, don’t you know, old son.”
The incredible idea had occurred to me that these rich idle layabouts had no more idea than I how a flier worked. If they needed service, they told their slaves to take the voller to the repair shops, where guls would do the work. Only guls who had proved completely trustworthy were employed on the work. The state kept voller production, as one of their infernal laws, very much under their thumb. The decision not to fly was an easy one to make. I had to keep to the shadows, slink from cover to cover, make sure I was not seen. With a thrill I believe you may try to imagine, I belted up soft hunting leathers about me, drew the gleaming gold buckle tight, brought the broad leather belt around my waist, and cinctured it home. I strapped on a fine rapier given me by Delia, and a main-gauche. Over my right hip I carried a trusty old sailor’s knife. Also, as a little swank, I suppose, I carried a sheaf of terchicks over my shoulder. The terchick, the throwing knife of my plainsmen, could well be even quicker and more deadly this night than a Lohvian longbow — although I wouldn’t let Seg hear me say that. I took no shield. The dark russet-brown of the hunting leathers brought back memories of hunting in Aphrasoe and I sighed. As always, I vowed that when the current excitement was over, I would go and seek out the Todalpheme of Hamal and find out directions to the Swinging City. As a final gesture to the fates, I glued a beard onto my smooth-shaven chin. This beard was made up -
so Delia had told me with much laughter — from hairs I had myself sprouted and she had cut off. She had saved them and worked them up into a neat daggerlike beard, and used cunning silk bases to hold them in position. When I looked at myself in a tall pier mirror, I looked much as I had appeared out on the trail.
Over all I swirled a great dark gray cloak and then I padded out. If mere costume could get me past the guards, I was in and among the silver boxes already.
My soft leather hunting boots made no sound. I walked steadily across the Bridge of One Thousand Vosks over the Black River. Here lay rows of dark houses, suburbs where the guls lived. This kind of dark desperate errand struck me as very different from previous occasions when I had been about nefarious business on Kregen. Far sooner would I be back in Valka with Delia and the twins. But what I did now I did from the duty I conceived I owed my people of Valka, and to Vallia, also. In addition it was terribly clear that the Hamalians were conquest-bent, desirous of creating a huge empire, perhaps one to rival the old and half-remembered Empire of Loh. That meant the Miglas would suffer. That meant Djanduin would be overrun. That meant I had to do my utmost to put together some kind of alliance against Hamal, and equip the fighting forces with vollers that would not constantly break down. The darkness between moons was not that of Notor Zan, for one of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtled across the night sky.
Keeping to the shadows and creeping stealthily along the dark streets I avoided detection, a sly furtive creature indeed. Few people were about, for the guls were working long hours and they needed their sleep. The gates of the Blind Wall were patrolled by watchful Rapa guards, mercenaries who would not hesitate to kill to fulfill the terms of their hiring contracts. The strict laws of Hamal ensured the Rapas would carry out their guard duties with the same faithfulness to orders as a soldier of Hamal. Slinking along in the shadows, which lay so thick the small fleeting dot of light of the lesser moon merely served to heighten the intervening darkness, I made my way around the circuit of the walls. The Black River washed the northern face of the building and here I found the only place I thought might afford me ingress. Water plants grew along the wall, their hair-fine roots clinging to narrow cracks in the masonry. Up these vines I went, testing each handhold, my legs kicking free. I can move silently when necessary, an art learned even before I spent those educational seasons with my clansmen, and the parapet felt hard under my hands as I looked down from the summit of the wall. Darkness, silence, mystery, lay below. It did not take me long to find steps down from the parapet and a path across to the likeliest-looking building. The wooden door was padlocked; but with a muffling fold of my cloak and a savage wrench with the knife, the padlock snapped. I eased inside.
Well, I will not weary you with a recital of my disappointment. And yet — what else was there, truly, to find? Here lay the piles of boxes, some filled, some waiting to be filled. Piles of minerals, earth, and sand lay neatly ranked, the scoops and shovels — and every one with a stamped number! — regimented in their racks. I sifted the earth through my fingers, barely able to see. I had brought a globe of fireglass containing fire, with a wood-and- metal carrying box with shutters. I chanced opening one of the shutters and the firelight within flashed upon the piles of earth, on the ranked rows of silver boxes. I felt anger, and crushed it down.
With two silver boxes in a voller, you could fly.
By bringing the boxes closer together or moving them farther apart, and by changing their attitude, you could control a flier, make it rise or fall, move faster or slower.
I knew what the silver boxes contained.
Earth and air.
Air and earth.
I looked around. Dirt and air! How could they be the secret I sought?
This shed contained silver boxes for the mineral half of the controls. The next shed contained silver boxes that were empty of all but air. The faint smell of tainted malsidges, a fruit of which I am fond, made me wrinkle up my nostrils. Well, I did not think they crushed up malsidges and somehow conveyed the smell into the boxes. But they might. Then I forced myself to realize this was in reality a reconnaissance mission. I was establishing parameters of action here in Ruathytu. Soon, by listening to my rich acquaintances during the day, and following up the clues by night, I would work nearer to a solution of the mystery.
Besides being a world of great beauty, Kregen is also a world of great and sudden violence, and there was no anticlimax to this night’s work. Or, rather, the true anticlimax of my failed mission was masked by a flurry of action as four Rapa guards, carrying flaring torches, burst into the shed as I bent over an opened silver box.
The sight of them in the torchlight with their ferocious beaked faces, the war-feathers flaunting from their helmets, and the swords and shields, snapped some link in my brain. I flung myself upon them, ripping the rapier free, my left hand still cumbered by the small cube of the fireglass box. They shrieked in their high obscene Rapa way as our blades crossed glittering in the torchlight. My cloak flared out, swirling, as I spun away, slicing a Rapa beak down, avoiding the vicious thraxter slash, stuffing the box back into my breechclout.
“Apim rast! Die!” They were shrilling at me, incensed by the death of the first of them, absolutely confident they would overpower me. They were making an infernal racket, and as the blades crossed and rang and screeched, the noise grew and I knew guards would come running to reinforce these three. I dropped the next, my main- gauche slapped into my hand, and deflected the next one’s thrust. My blade gonged against a shield and I had to skip and duck away. A sword-and-shield-man against a rapier-and-main-gauche-man provide endless room for argument; but it always all boils down in the end to who is the better practitioner with the weapons he uses.
Luckily for me I was able to prove superior. The torchlight splintered from the blades as they chopped and
