So I commented on the slaves and he grunted and said the wind had weakened a guy rope of the Bridge. If that was not put right — now! — Pallan Horosh would be dealing out a few of the nasty punishments of Hamal, and every one legal. I spent a few more murs in conversation so that those exchanges dealing with the destination of the binhoy loads of pashams would not stand too starkly in his memory, and then bid him Remberee.
In a culture as hard and authoritarian as Hamal, and many another country of Kregen, there are of necessity many cruel words shouted at slaves and workers, words that mean hurry up, get a move on, and all that intemperate display of power being ruthlessly used. So far I have adhered to English, but one word the Hamalians favored is, in the Kregish,
The sky-god of draft beasts in Magdag is called Grakki-Grodno, as you know, and those Grodnims of the northern shore of the inner sea know what they are doing when it comes to making slaves run and haul and work. Among the megaliths of Magdag, as among the warrens and the swifters, the yells of
“Grak” resound to the misery of those in bondage. Well, one day I would revisit the Eye of the World away there to the west of Turismond, and how I would joy to see my two oar comrades again, Nath and Zolta! How we three would roister through all the succulent taverns of bright Sanurkazz!
I do not forget I am a Krozair brother, a Krozair of Zy.
There were family plans to be made. . and when I thought of what Delia would say to what I proposed I hastily turned to thinking about something else.
These volgendrins floated in the air like massy clouds, drifting in their own silent rhythms in vast orbits for dwabur after dwabur that covered many a kool of land beneath. The sight of their blocky hardness against the real white clouds high above, the wind catching a tree here or a high platform there, the very implacable nature of their onward progress, all these things combined to impress the volgendrins most forcibly on my brain.
We had drifted far enough now to leave the worst of the barrens to the north and the Mountains of the West a good few dwaburs off; below us a river tumbled along, still white and rapid from the hills. Scattered vegetation showed, gradually clumping and thickening. One could find a living down there, but I saw no single sign of any habitation. The volgendrins moved, I judged, at about five knots. At that speed they would tire a man on foot to keep up. The speed also meant that their shadows, never exactly the same on any following orbit, did not stunt or destroy the vegetation below. Before I went to report to Pallan Horosh for orders I saw four separate clumps of Gerawin flying high, their tridents winking brilliantly in the streaming light of the suns. They were watchful, prowling, on patrol. I noticed that every soldier from time to time cocked his head aloft and searched the bright bowl of the sky.
I, the Amak of Paline Valley, had no need to be told for whom — or what — they watched so carefully. As I went through into the Pallan’s quarters, the Pachaks passing me through without comment, I heard Horosh talking about that selfsame threat to a man who stood with his back to me.
“Three times like leems, during the last month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles!” Horosh sounded fretful, angry, and a little fearful. I fancied he was not frightened of the wild men who flew over the Mountains of the West from the Wild Lands beyond to lay waste. Rather, he was frightened of the queen in Ruathytu when his production schedules slipped. “My Gerawin fight bravely; indeed, they are fearsome warriors. And my soldiers are brave, as is any soldier of Hamal. But those wild ones still attack us, like werstings foaming at the mouth.”
“I know about werstings,” said the man with his back to me.
I stood stock still. I knew about werstings, also, and I knew this man who stood talking about them. The last time I’d heard him he’d been bellowing and screeching at the door of a voller manufactory, blaming me for the death of his wife, the Kovneva Esme, and threatening to let his pack of slavering werstings rip me limb from limb, until he’d thought of a better way of dealing with me.
“Come out, you Kovneva-murdering rast! Come out so I can plunge my hands into your guts and rip out your evil stinking heart!” That’s what this man, this Ornol ham Feoste, this Kov of Apulad, had shouted and screamed at me there in Sumbakir.
He would know me as Chaadur, the gul, the worker on vollers.
I half turned to leave but Pallan Horosh, looking past Ornol ham Feoste, called, “Ah, Horter Lamahan. You are late, sir! Here are the reports! Use your best speed back.”
Half turned, I hesitated. There was a chance. .
And those reports would be going to the place where they processed pashams. The risk was worth the prize, for Vallia. .
Swinging back and hunching my right shoulder a fraction against the Kov of Apulad, I went to the desk. Horosh lifted the wrapper with its shining seal.
The Kov of Apulad said, “As Malahak is my witness! Chaadur! The murdering nulsh who slew my wife!”
His thraxter cleared the scabbard with a screech of steel.
I made a grab for the wrapped report; Horosh jerked it back as he stumbled to his feet with a startled oath. The thraxter lunged for my midriff. I knocked it away with my right hand and, there being two Pachaks at my back, whirled away intending to grab that report and then do what was necessary. Action exploded in that sumptuous apartment.
Chapter 17
“The man’s a maniac!” I bellowed, leaping away from that swishing thraxter. “He’s mistaken me for somebody else!”
“I’d know you, Chaadur, in the mists of the Ice Floes themselves! Take him alive! Guards! Guards!”
“No, no, you onker!” I shouted, and the two Pachaks came running in, shields up, thraxters out, their tail blades coiled above their close-fitting helmets. If I couldn’t convince Pallan Horosh in the next half-mur that this Kov was mistaken, the Pachaks would attack and seek to overpower me.
“I know you, gul! Sumbakir knows you! You may have run away to Ruathytu and joined the political guls there — call yourself a Horter now, do you! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I’ll fry your liver for breakfast and gnaw on your bones for supper.”
He was quite possessed. Given that his wife had indeed been foully murdered — with her own dagger at the hands of Floy, the Fristle girl who had been one of Esme’s Chail Sheom — he was entitled to be angry to the point of madness. That he had proved himself to be a most evil Kov, joying in his power for the capacity it gave him for the infliction of pain, meant that sympathy for him came hard. One last try: “Pallan Horosh! Call this madman off or I will not be answerable for the consequences!”
There was little time to finish what I was saying as ham Feoste hurled away the chair that impeded his progress and lunged after me with his thraxter. I had to avoid that dangerous implement and watch out for the Pachaks. They were looking at the Pallan for orders.
Kov Ornol ham Feoste clinched it when he bellowed: “You know me, Hennard! I’m your cousin’s son!
I am the Kov of Apulad! This is a gul, a cramph, calling himself a Horter-”
I really believe it was mainly my own odd behavior since arrival here that tipped Horosh’s decision, that and the fact that the man calling for my head was a relation and a Kov.
“Take him, guards!”
So, feeling sorry for the Pachaks, I was finally forced into an action I had sought to avoid. The two Pachaks slumped to the carpets with a sighing wheeze from one and nothing at all from the other. Each Pachak wore a terchick through the eye.
“In Havil’s name!” screeched the Pallan, completely shattered, horrified. He began to yell for guards in a voice that quavered up and down the scale. The Kov of Apulad bolted for the door. He did not yell until he was well outside; he saved all his breath for running. I let him go. To the Pallan I said, “I’ll take that report now, and do my duty. You will have to explain the dead guards.” The Pallan stopped shouting to look at me, dazed. “They were good
