The Tides of Kregen

Then Duhrra rolled up on his sectrix and started edging the animal in through the ring. The dust was settling. An ord-Deldar appeared and began bellowing, as all Deldars bellow, and the men shuffled off. They cast longing looks back.

'You,' I said to the Pachak, 'will have some recreation if those fellows get off early tonight.'

'They are apims,'

I did not laugh. 'So am I.'

'True. But you have a heart that weighs its decisions.'

The laugh was very near now, incongruously near. 'If that were only so, then I would not be here.'

'Nor me. I am Logu Pa-We. At the moment my nikobi is given to the Roz, Nath Lorft na Hazernal.'

'I am Dak, and this is Duhrra.' I let my glance dwell just long enough on the small gold zhantil-head he wore on a silk cord threaded through a top buttonhole. 'You are a hyr-paktun, Logu Pa-We. We are honored.'

His straw-yellow hair fell about him, ripped free of its braids in the fight. Now he swept it back over his forehead with a gesture of pride. Any man, no matter what race, who gains the coveted pakzhan, the gold zhantil- head that indicates his status as a highly renowned soldier of fortune, a notorious mercenary, will be proud.

'And you who call yourself Dak. You also are a paktun?'

I had to ignore his choice of words. 'I have been a paktun in my time. .'

'Then you still are.'

'But I have never worn the pakzhan.' I couldn’t add that during my periods of mercenary service I had, indeed, worn the pakmort, for he would never understand why I had taken it off, unless I had been disgraced. It requires a court of fellow paktuns to bestow the pakmort, and a court of hyr-paktuns to bestow the pakzhan. As for that wild and feral beast, the mortil, he is almost as large and powerful as the superbly impressive zhantil; he is just as savage and free.

This Pachak hyr-paktun fingered his golden pakzhan. The pakmort is fashioned from silver but it is also worn on a silk thread looped through a convenient top buttonhole or on the shoulder knot over armor.

'You will drink with me?'

'Aye, gladly,' said Duhrra.

The Pachak glanced at him and curled his tail in a single cracking acceptance. I have a great deal of respect for the Pachaks as people. I like to hire them as mercenaries, for they are intensely loyal to their employers and will fight to the death. So we three went off to the nearest tent offering refreshment. I demanded tea, that superb Kregan tea, for I was thirsty.

We talked as fighting men will talk, a rapid shorthand of professional jargon that conveyed much information in few words.

The army here was in trouble. The Grodnims always seemed able to best the Zairians in battle. 'They lack discipline,' commented the Pachak, Logu Pa-We. 'I think I will not renew my nikobi when the contract expires.'

'You would fight for the Grodnims?' Duhrra showed his ignorance then, as almost all Zairians were ignorant of the diffs of Kregen and their ways.

Logu flicked his tail-hand around his jug, but he answered equably enough. 'That would not be ethical.'

'You great onker,' I said to Duhrra, and drank tea.

'Yes, master.'

'And I’m not your master, by the diseased intestines of Makki-Grodno!'

'I do not agree with you in that, Dak.'

The Pachak, evidently summing us up as just two more unstable and highly unprofessional Zairians, drifted into more general conversation. I learned what I could. When I said we wanted to get through the lines and into Shazmoz he pursed his lips.

'You would run great risks.'

'There is a man I must see there.'

'And I need a hook.'

'Yes, there is a man renowned for that there.'

The contract the Pachaks entered into with their employers they called their nikobi. That is, it was a weak approximation to the obi which gave authority and working arrangements to my clansmen of Segesthes. It was half an obi. Chuliks and Rapas and Fristles worked a different system. The myriad different forms of human beings on Kregen never cease to fascinate me. They are as different in their bodily forms as they are in the working processes of their minds. Yet they are all human and share human attributes. It would need an insensitive clod of a very high order of cloddishness to regard them as freaks, as candidates for a zoo or a menagerie. They are men and women. How odd we must look, we two apims, Duhrra and me, in the eyes of this Pachak. He would regard us as being crippled. We had only one left arm each, and so would always have trouble in taking powerful blows on a shield. We had a bare bottom each, with no incredibly useful tail with its grasping hand. He would find it laughable and impossible that a whole world swung in space peopled by cripples like us. I had the notion, fed by thoughts about the Everoinye, that very possibly a world existed peopled only by Pachaks. It made sense. No, the multifarious forms call forth no slighting or disbelieving comments about inmates of zoos or menageries; menagerie men contribute to the life and color and adventure of Kregen. I would have it no other way, clods or no clods.

The drinking was now bringing out the singing. Men love to sing on Kregen, and women too, in their own way.

The suns were declining now and, in the casual way of the Zairian military, the soldiers had had enough for the day. The songs lifted. A group of Pachaks serving with Logu Pa-We sang too, but the apims of the southern shore sang alone.

Logu was telling us of that remote and eerily mysterious land of Tambu, off the southwest coast of the continent of Loh. He was one of the very few men I had heard claim they had been there. He was saying the experience had scarred him in his ib. He would never go back. He was as well aware of the lands of the outer oceans as I was — better, probably — and it was clear he was now regretting his decision to bring his men into the inner sea. Or regretting that he had joined up with the reds instead of the greens. But his ideas of paktun ethics must be admired.

The Zairian swods were singing The Destiny of the Fishmonger of Magdag, a highly colored and lurid account and one calculated to bring mirth to the voice and tears to the eyes, with the crashing down of the jugs onto the sturm-wood tables on the refrain 'For the fish heads came off red, came off red, the fish heads dropped off red, red, red.'

The pang struck me then: what did these fine roistering fellows, snug in their inner sea, know of the fishheads of the outer oceans?

Panshi had told me there had been no further raids after the one in which I had gone wandering on my travels, as he had phrased it. But I knew the internecine battle between the red and the green, here in the Eye of the World, was of scant importance beside the greater conflicts waiting outside in the greater world.

That very snugness had, I know, been a great deal of the charm of the Eye of the World, of my affection for the Krozairs.

The Swifter with the Kink went up — how we all dreaded a swifter whose lines were not true, as with the galleys’ inordinate length-to-breadth ratio they so often were! And then the Chuktar with the Glass Eye battered against the stars. Oh yes, the swods sang.

I caught Duhrra’s eye and motioned. Logu caught the signal, for Pachaks are quick in these matters, and we three rose and went out, away from the campfires and the singing.

'So you wish to steal into Shazmoz?'

'That is our intention.'

'Maybe a way can be found. You will need to be silent and quick. . and to bear up.' I think Logu was going to say we would have need of courage, but he had the sense to halt himself.

'You must leave all preparations to me.'

I thought it fair to warn him: 'That is agreeable. But we shall keep our fists upon our swords and the blades loose in the scabbards.'

He chuckled and his yellow hair glowed strangely under the light of the moons. We went through the moons- lit darkness toward the shapes of tents which seemed in less of a muddle than the others. A small body of Pachaks formed about us, grim men with blades already gripped in their tail-fists. It took very little time before we were all mounted up and riding softly out of the camp. This army of Zairians comprised detachments from many free red