blows in the floggings of a half dozen slaves. What they had done would be meticulously entered in the daybooks of the officers, so that the Under-Pallans might scrutinize them for misdemeanors, for floutings of the law. The first screams scythed through the moonlight as I slid between bushes, heading for the huts where the tools were stored.
Torches flared from a ring of posts; She of the Veils cast down her fuzzy pink haze over the scene. The slaves had been suspended from whipping-frames, all according to the book. A massively muscled Deldar had started in on number one. The poor devil’s back would be a raw red pudding before the regulation number of blows were given. He writhed and screamed, and then fell silent, his head hanging. I looked along the line of whipping-frames.
Number four was Nulty.
Even as I looked I saw in the torchlight how his left hand, extended and the wrist thonged to the wood, contracted and cupped, the fingers whitening and contorting. So much for the bones of Beng Salter!
Well, Nulty was a Hamalian, one of the men of the country of my enemies. I had important work to do tonight. The whip smashed down again, brutally. It was a cart whip, not a knout or a sjambok — had it been the man would have been dead already — and not a cat-o’-nine-tails. If Nulty was whipped. . But I had my job to do. I remembered the Amak Naghan, and his death, and Nulty one living sheet of blood, back in the ruined house of Paline Valley.
Was it any business of mine?
The Deldar doing the flogging was clearly enjoying his work. His lips ricked back at each blow. He struck with all his strength. Well, was he not far more of an enemy than ever poor Nulty could be?
My business?
Number two screeched in anticipation as I went off for my sledgehammer. I bashed the shed door open. I came out with the sledgehammer in my fists. No, it was no business of mine. The sledgehammer glimmered evilly in the moonshine as I went toward the whipping-frames and a business that was no business of mine.
Chapter Twelve
I, Dray Prescot, of Kregen and of Earth, am so often a spineless ninny when it comes to seeing friends of mine being knocked about. I knew, even as I stalked forward with the ugly black iron of the sledgehammer cocked ready for action, that I should not be doing this. I should be hammering this sledge at the iron-bound doors, smashing them in, racing into the secret halls to discover the mysteries of the vollers.
Instead I was sacrificing all that to go to the aid of an Hamalian, an enemy, just because I didn’t like the idea of his being flogged.
But then — how on this terrible world of Kregen could I call Nulty an enemy?
The Deldar was joyously putting his back into the flogging. There was a Hikdar in command of the punishment detail; he was a lowly holder of his rank, a so-Hikdar.[5]There were ten swods, lined up on parade, their shields to the side and their thraxters in their hands, point up, ten glimmering pink-gold blades in the moonlight. A pace to the front on their left flank stood their Matoc. A pace to the rear of the so-Hikdar stood a drummer. As is the case in so many armies, the army of Hamal employed young lads as drummers. This one stood there, beating a brave rat-a-tat on his drum, brilliant in all the gaudy trappings of a drummer-boy, but his face a trifle green.
If he didn’t run for it he’d be sorry.
The whip-deldar had just finished with number three. Numbers one and two were hanging senseless; number three was making a disgusting blubbering moan of agony. Nulty was number four. I broke a cardinal rule.
To give Nulty hope, as I raced forward, I yelled.
“Hai!” I shouted. “Hai! Kleeshes! Fight a man who is not lashed to a post!”
Nulty’s head jerked around as though he already tasted ol’ snake.
The Hikdar jumped. He stared as I burst from the shadows into the torchglow. The sledgehammer whirled about my head in that cunning two-handed grip that is normally given to an ax of the Saxon pattern, descendant of the great Danish ax. The clansmen of Viktrik use a single-bitted ax in that fashion. .
The line of swods broke as the Hikdar yelled. They rushed me.
The facts of the matter are that I should have stood no chance.
But I was thoroughly annoyed with everything, and mostly with myself, and so I swirled the hammer and crushed the ribs of the first and ducked the thraxter of number two and kicked him in the belly in passing and split open the skull of number three and on the continuous circle splattered blood and intestines out through the crevices of number four’s lorica. It was swing and jump and swirl and bash and crash. I let the head of the sledge go on swinging, merely guiding it onto the next target, and straightening it and giving it fresh impetus after each collision. This was the way our ancestors fought at Hastings, before the shield wall broke. This was the way an unedged weapon might smite through the bronze hoops of a lorica, crushing and smashing the ribs and inner organs beneath.
Nulty was shrieking; thankfully he was not using my name.
Through a trail of mangled wrecks I forged across to the whipping-frames. The whip-deldar tried to lash me and I caught the thong around the hammer. The Deldar yelled, then, thinking he had me and need only jerk the hammer from my grasp. Instead I hauled him in as a fisherman hoicks in a tarpon. As he spun toward me I shifted grips, took his throat in my hand, and squeezed. As I squeezed I whirled about and the flung stux bit into his back, stripped as he was for the flogging. He grunted, and bright blood gushed from his mouth. I did not simply fling him from me. Dead, he was still a weapon. I hurled him at the Matoc who had flung the stux, and before the non-com could recover I had brained him. The Hikdar, mouth open and frozen, stared at me. He was stricken with the horror of what had happened. The drummer-boy had stopped his retaplan. He hovered, first on one leg, then on the other, uncertain. I glared at him. Blood dripped over the disguise on my cheeks; I had to be quick if he was to live.
“Run, boy! Run for your life!”
With a squeak he abandoned his drum and fled.
My shout brought the Hikdar to life. His thraxter glimmered in the moonlight as he leaped for me, thinking me distracted, seeking to bury the sharp point in my guts. I backhanded him and brained him. I looked up at Nulty.
His frame was far less well filled than when I had seen him last, at the time of the abortive duel with Strom Lart ham Thordan. I dropped the blood-, brain-, hair-, and intestine-smeared sledgehammer and reached for the knife that, as a gul, I was allowed to carry.
The knife slashed through his thongs and I caught him as he dropped. A hoarse voice wheezed from whipping-frame number five.
“Nath, old friend! You would not — not leave me!”
By this I knew Nulty had told them his name was Nath.
Nulty swallowed and managed to stand up. His nose was still as bulbous as ever, and this cheered me.
“It is for the Notor to say, Emin.”
Could I leave the other two slaves, and free just my friend? I damn well could, of course, but I did not. The knife slashed Emin free. He was an apim, bulky and strong, not a Hamalian, I judged, by the language he used about them. Number six was in worse case, and had to be helped down. She was a Fristle. (A Fristle is a furred diff after the fashion of a cat. The females are considered among the most beautiful of Kregen.) Like all Fristle women younger than middle age she was lissome and furrily attractive; she had been sent here to be punished from the retinue of some Hamalian officer’s wife. She sobbed her gratitude, tears streaking the soft down of her cheeks, her eyes glistening.
“No time, no time,” I said, deliberately harsh. “We have to run for it now. Can you run, Fristle?”
“I can run faster than a furless apim, apim!”
“Good! Then let us run.”
We ran.
Nulty and Emin had taken up thraxters for themselves from the dead guards, and — as was proper -
the officer’s sword for me. They had also ripped off four of the soldiers’ short green capes for us. We ran
