the lumber a young man in red fought two Chuliks in green.
The young man was yelling — screaming — as his sword blurred this way and that. He would not last long.
He screamed in high desperation: 'Dak! Dak! Aid me now! For the sweet sake of Zair, Dak, to me! To me!'
Past the Chuliks were three other Chuliks and two Rapas, their vulturine beaks gaping with the passions of battle. Ringed by these five stood a man whose white hair blazed with pink highlights and roseate shadows, an old man, a man past two hundred years old. Yet, as I staggered about feeling the effect of that sprawling fall, I saw this white-haired man surge against the nearest Chulik, duck the blow, strike the Chulik’s legs, cut back against the nearest Rapa, screech his blade along the diffs side. The longsword whirled underhand. The white-haired man shouted, a high full voice that drew every ounce of effort from him.
'Hold, Jernu! Hold! I am with you!'
And then — it was wonderful, courageous, bold; it was the true Jikai — this man, this old white-haired man called Dak smashed his way past the two Chuliks, ripped the guts from the last Rapa and so hurled himself at the two opposing his lord.
He had no chance. He exposed his back as he struck shrewdly at the first. The blow was parried. I saw the slowness of this Dak’s reactions, saw that the strength had been drained from him. He knew his end was come and he flashed his longsword before his eyes and so drank for the last time of a foeman’s blood.
As he fell beneath the slashing blows he shouted for the last time.
'Zair! Jikmarz! Jikmarz!'
He fell.
The whole incident took practically no time at all, less time than it took me to scrabble up from the corpse and shake the infernal ringing of those famous Bells of Beng Kishi from my skull, take a fresh grip on my sword and leap forward.
The young man screamed now, screamed high and shrill like a dying leem with the long lances of my clansmen transfixing its lean and evil body.
'Dak! Dak! Sweet Jikmarz!
'Hold!' I bellowed, surging forward. 'I am coming!' As I smashed into the Chuliks and the group of apims I had been pursuing, Duhrra came to my side. Together we fought against the foemen, seeking to save the young man. We slew until our arms ran red with Magdaggian blood, until the last Chulik fell with his body hacked and butchered before he would drop, but when we reached that young man, that Brother of the Red Brethren of Jikmarz, he was dead. Duhrra, his plated chest expanding and contracting evenly as he drew in enormous lungfuls of air, regarded me somberly.
'You fight well, Dak. Yet is this boy slain.'
That be called me Dak was a mere mistake of the moment, a chance that he understood the Red Brother of Jikmarz to be calling on me when he screamed for Dak. The amazement was in his way of speaking, with no hesitation, no idiot’s repetition of the opening 'duh' to every sentence, no slurring of speech. Was this only the result of battle?
'Yes. It is the will of Zair.'
I looked up. The mass of lumber moved. A beam toppled, twisting, falling.
'Stand clear, Duhrra!'
I leaped back. Duhrra braced to spring and the side of the stack of timbers bulged as a grain sack bulges in the moment it is slit open. The enormous weight of the logs rolled smashing down on Duhrra. In the leaping dust I caught a single glimpse of his left arm outflung toward me with the moon-oval of his face glimmering pinkly through the shadows. I grasped his hand and pulled. His mouth opened, but in the rolling noise of toppling logs I did not hear him. He would not budge. A beam struck my legs away from me and I cursed and surged back, then, mercifully, the logs lay still. The dust plumed in the air and drifted down. There was a sickly smell of rotting vegetation puffing from the lumber. I looked at Duhrra. He was trapped.
His body lay on the ground, with his right hand caught between two squared beams of timber. I knew, looking, that his hand would be squashed flat, ironed out, ground into a flat and useless pulp.
'I cannot move, master.'
Bending to look closely, I was aware that I could see very well. A quick glance back showed me that the loose timber among the stacks was on fire, burning fiercely. The beams, thick and massive though they were, were tinder-dry. They would burn.
And Duhrra lay trapped in the path of the flames.
'It is finished for me, Dak. You had best leave-'
'Shut up Duhrra! I will not leave you.'
'Then you too will burn.'
Down past the spouts of flame shooting horizontally from the crevices in the stacks a shimmer of movement came closer, the wink of firelight on steel. I peered. In the red firelight the colors down there looked black. Green.
Turning his heavy round head Duhrra saw too. He licked his lips.
'Put my sword into my left hand, Dak, my master. I would die well.'
'You are an onker, Duhrra! There is no need to die. I cannot move the beams-'
'Aye. I could not move one. Together we could not move one. And they are piled up on my hand.'
'Yet is there a way, if you will take it.'
His heavy-lidded eyes regarded me with the shock of a new idea forcing its way into closed and resigned determination.
'Another way? Besides striking until I can strike no more and so go down to the Ice Floes of Sicce?'
'Aye. If you will take it. Many men would prefer to die. .'
'I see, Dak, my master. It is clear now.'
'Well?'
He regarded me with a maddening slowness, almost complacency.
'It is for you to choose, Dak, my master.'
'I’m not your damn master! And there is a saying where I come from: Where there’s life there’s hope. So that’s settled.'
Don’t think I was unaware of what the decision meant to a man like Duhrra, a superb physical specimen
— somewhat on the heavy and bulky side, to be sure — who had lived by wrestling. To any man the decision would be hard. But I had seen the way Duhrra had used his longsword in his right hand, all heavy swishings and smashings as though he cut down trees. With his great physical strength that method of using a longsword would serve, at least in the yelling confusion of a battle. He would not have lasted long against just one of the Chuliks with space to display technique and bladesmanship.
'The green sea-leems come on,' said Duhrra. 'I am no calsany in these matters. Why do you hesitate?'
'I would like to know you are resolved first.'
'I am resolved.'
The fires spurted closer; the green cramphs from Magdag approached with hungry weapons. Perhaps the choice was not as difficult as I had imagined.
From one of the corpses I ripped a strip of humespack and tore the cloth with vicious fingers. As I had seen the skilled doctors of Valka do so I bound a strip around Duhrra’s arm and knotted it until I brought a dinting furrow between his eyebrows, all the signs of pain this man-mountain would condescend to show.
I stepped back and took up my longsword.
He said, 'Do not tarry, Dak. The rasts of Magdag are almost here, and the fire burns.' The longsword slashed down.
I dragged Duhrra to his feet, leaving his squashed hand and a tiny portion of his wrist to burn away between the logs. The blow had been good, the aim true. Blood spurted, of course, but he would survive until I could have a doctor treat his stump.
The fires roared and crackled and the smoke beat down as the breeze blew. I held Duhrra. More figures appeared, men wearing the red. Now I deliberately moved away from a fight. A Hikdar shouted, high, triumphant: 'We have the cramphs on the run!'
