Well, we know his type. He was a bravo-fighter. He lived by his rapier. One day — and he knew it -
he would die by a rapier or dagger. Rees faced him, and the bout began. I saw, at once, that Rees was quite out of his class. Even so, Rees balked him of a death, for Leotes’ blade took a chunk of flesh away from Rees’s side, and the blood being drawn, the bout might be called off. I leaped forward, shouting that honor had been satisfied. Rees looked abruptly shriveled. He was carried off and I swung about to follow him through the turmoil of shouting men and women, yelling to his attendants to carry him gently. The confusion was remarkable, for Rees had many friends as well as enemies. And the ladies of Ruathytu would not miss such a spectacle. I pushed after Rees, but the crowd pressed in, and the noise and bustle racketed from the high ceiling.
“Rees!”
“Keep back, keep back!”
I saw the lion-man lift himself from the stretcher. He looked terrible. A doctor was working busily away, but a dreadful red stained his bandages with terrible rapidity.
“Honor — Hamun,” said Rees, and I could just hear him through the din. “You. . keep off it. . old fellow. .”
Then the crowd closed in and he was whisked from my sight.
Strom Lart stood before me. I was aware of Casmas the Deldy, and Nath Tolfeyr, and Tothord of the Ruby Hills, in the press.
“So your champion has fallen, Amak Hamun!” Strom Lart was enjoying this. He was dressed in the off-duty rig of a soldier, a totrix cavalryman, and that big bloated face was flushed scarlet with greed for the enjoyment of pain and humiliation. “We have a debt unpaid, you and I, clum-lover!”
I went to push past. “Out of the way, you fat fool,” I said. “I must see how Rees is.”
He did not roar or bellow, although the scarlet of his cheeks deepened even more grotesquely. He lifted his glove. I knew what he was going to do and could do nothing myself. Before them all, Strom Lart of Hyr Rothy slapped me across the face with his gauntlet.
“And this time, Amak, do not run away!”
Chapter Thirteen
The person who was Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, struggled with the person who was Dray Prescot.
Dray Prescot might have bowed icily, and then seen about choosing a nice sharp weapon to redress the insult. He might — given that although these proceedings were lethal and savage in the extreme, we still were operating within the context of civilization — have smashed his fist into Lart’s face, and kicked him as he went down for good measure.
Hamun, of course, could do none of these things.
Hamun could only stutter, and look about, and excuse himself, and so flee with Strom Lart’s ominous words ringing in his ears.
“This time you cannot run away, Amak! This time I shall spit you like a roasting vosk!”
If I tell you that my thoughts of Vallia and Valka, of Djanduin and all my loyal peoples there, grew woefully thin and attenuated, shrinking beside the white flare of my rage, I think you will understand just how I felt. I do not pretend to take pride in things that have no moment. Pride is for the puffed up empty-headed of two worlds. But some things seem natural for me to do, and some things seem unnatural. Taking a blow in the face and then turning tail and running away are not things that seem natural to me.
When I obey the injunction to turn the other cheek — as I do on occasion — that seems natural. This last scene did not strike me as right then, nor does it seem right now, when I believe I may have grown just a trifle wiser than I was then, still a crack-brained hothead despite all my vows and good intentions to think first and not bash out first. I had thought this thing through. Hamun would have acted as I had acted; therefore it had been necessary.
The challenge was brought by the same pair of clowns who had come before, and things were arranged, and again I waived a second. These two, the Elten and the Kyr, sensed a change in my attitude. For one thing, I had withdrawn into my old taciturnity that had fallen away from me since my marriage. I shooed them away, collected Nulty with his hamper of wine and palines and sweetmeats and good things, and went off to see how Rees was coming along. His wound had turned septic and although Kregen’s doctors are past Earth’s medieval mumbo-jumbo about the necessity for a wound to be fouled with pus before it will mend, they tend to worry, not without cause, about infections. The wound had been cleansed and treated and everyone said it would knit and mend in no time. Rees managed a smile for me. Chido was there, having burst a fluttrell getting back.
We spent what was, in truth, a pleasant bur or two in conversation. As a Trylon, Rees was not as rich as he might be. The cause of this was, I gathered, the introduction of cattle onto his savannah lands. The topsoil had loosened under too heavy grazing, and the ominous name of his land had proved itself no idle nomenclature. The Golden Wind was a wind blowing Trylon Rees’s lands away. But he still kept up a reasonable villa within the sacred quarter, a villa tiny by comparison with some of the villas belonging to other Trylons, and Vads and Kovs. And so we sat talking and drinking on his balcony, where his bed had been wheeled.
He expressed himself as much concerned by Strom Lart’s challenge. I tried to turn his mind to other things, for I had already decided what I would do.
We spoke of this fine regiment he was forming, and against my better judgment, I said: “Are you sure it is wise to form a cavalry regiment of zorcas only, Rees?”
His tawny eyes flashed gold at me. I could imagine the great lion roar he would have given at other times.
“Do you think I should form a regiment riding totrixes?”
The contempt on his face was not for me.
“The zorca is a marvelous animal,” I said. Indeed, the zorca is royalty among saddle animals! But the zorca is so close-coupled, so slender as to leg, so dainty even within the toughness and the fiery spirit of the animal, that I always handle zorcas in a very special way. Voves, those massive eight-legged saddle-animals of Segesthes, were unknown here. Hamal did not even have the smaller voves of Zenicce. The totrix, now, that slate-hided six-legged animal of stubborn willfulness and damned awkward riding habits, that should figure in a cavalry regiment fighting in far Pandahem.
“Well, Hamun,” said Chido, railing me, “would you have us ride out on sleeths?”
“I do not like sleeths.” The sleeth, that dinosaur-like riding animal that walks like some menacing allosaurus and was the passion of the bloods here in Ruathytu as well as in Huringa in Hyrklana, does not please me. I am a zorcaman after I am a voveman.
I had to make myself laugh — a most hollow sound — and turn the conversation. I was in the act of giving advice — and damned good advice — to an enemy regimental commander! Such things spies have to do, no wonder it is a jealous profession.
“I’ll make a Bladesman of you yet,” said Rees. But I saw his wound pained him, and with a roll of my eyes at Chido I rose and bid him Remberee.
He bellowed: “Young Hamun! Listen to me, you stubborn onker! Get Nath Tolfeyr for a second — he has even agreed — and then drop out. You’ll never face that cramph Lart.”
“Don’t fret, Rees. Get better. I’ll handle the affair, as Havil the Green is my witness.”
“Some damned witness he’ll make!” shouted Rees, most blasphemously. Only his own people could hear, thank Zair.
We left and took ourselves off to a tavern where we spent the rest of the morning at Jikaida. Chido was good if a trifle reckless and I had no compunctions about beating him. Because the tavern was crowded and the table not overlarge, we played the smallest reasonable game of Jikaida, that called Poron Jikaida. The board has six squares upon it, two at the top and three at the sides, and each square is called a drin. Each drin is further subdivided into squares six a side. Poron Jikaida is an infantry game, very like chess with the addition of that useful Halma-like
