black-clad assassins and kidnappers. All the same, at the first opportunity, Genod handed over command of the army to Genal Furneld, the Rog of Giddur, and called Gafard back to Magdag. A gloss was put on this by the announcement to the army that soon Prince Glycas would take over command of the combined armies and Gafard, the King’s Striker, was required for further duties.
This Genal Furneld was of the usual cut of unpleasant overlords of Magdag and I avoided him. Giddur was sited on the River Dag in one of the great sweeping bends south of Hagon. He had arrived on the southern shore breathing fire and slaughter and having fifty men of a pike regiment punished for dirty equipment. I thought the army was welcome to him. Gafard had said, lightly, concealing his feelings, that Genal Furneld could sit down in front of Pynzalo and freeze for all he cared. No one imagined that he would carry the city with the same panache as the Sea-Zhantil. That had cheered me a little. Little time was given me for moping.
My Lady of the Stars returned to her apartments in the Tower of True Contentment and Gafard called me in to tell me that he had decided, if I was to earn my keep now that he no longer commanded actively, that I was to stand guard with the others of his loyal squadron. I do not like guard duty. But I accepted this charge with equanimity.
'The matter is simple. Grogor will give you your orders. Do not fail me, Gadak. I am a man of exceeding wrath to those in whom I have reposed trust if they betray me.'
So, I bellowed, 'Your orders, my commands, gernu!' and bashed off to see what unpleasantness Grogor might dream up for me.
He surprised me.
He sat in the small guardroom in the wall hard by the entrance to the tower. It was plain and furnished with a stand of weapons of various kinds, a table and chairs, no sleeping arrangements, the toilet being outside, and was a harsh and unlovely room.
'Now, Gadak, who was once a Zairian, listen to me and listen well.' I was not prepared to strike him, so I listened. I had plans. I thought Grogor as a vicious killer was not worth my destroying what slender chances my plans possessed. But, as I say, he surprised me. A bulky, sweaty man, this Grogor. He said, 'You told me you did not aspire to take my place in the affections of our lord and I did not believe. I was wrong. I do believe you now.' He reached over a leather jack and drank with a great blustering of bubbles. He started to say 'By Mother-' and stopped, and swore, a rib-creaking oath involving the anatomy of Gyphimedes, the favorite of the beloved of Grodno.
I said, 'It is hard, sometimes.'
'Aye.'
'I serve my Lady,' I said. 'As you know well.'
He slapped the jack onto the scarred wooden table. His sweaty, heavy face lit up. 'By Grodno! But it was a good quick fight, was it not! We tore them to pieces like leems.'
'Yet you missed the battle.'
He looked up at me, for he sat while I stood. 'Aye. What of it?'
'Nothing. Except that you strike me as a man who enjoys a good fight.'
'I do.' He nodded to the interior door leading into the tower. 'And if anyone save the lord or people bearing his sign attempt to pass that door, it is a fight to the death.'
'I understand that.'
'Good. It is well we understand each other.'
There was no doorway at ground level leading into the tower from the outer four courtyards around the base. The only ingress was through the guardroom in the wall. And we guarded that room and that wall and that door.
A second chamber lay alongside the guardroom in which the guards on duty but off watch might sleep and clean their tack. This room smelled of spit and polish, of sweaty bodies, of greasy food. One day, Gafard said, he would have a fresh chamber constructed and so separate the various guard functions. As it was, our prime duty was to guard my Lady.
I sent in a formal request to see Gafard. When he received me, it was in the armory, where he was inspecting a new consignment of Genodders of a superior make. They would bear the Kregish block initials
'You want to see me?'
'Aye, gernu. I guard the tower and am happy to do so — honored-'
'Get on with it!'
'We guard the door. But the roof — we have all seen a certain flying boat-' He slapped a shortsword down so the metal rang.
'By Grodno! No honest man would think of such a thing — which proves you are no honest man and therefore of great use to me. By Goyt! We’ll fix any onkers who try to fly down like volgodonts onto my roof! We’ll impale the rasts!'
All this meant, of course, was that he had not lived, as had I, in a culture where vollers and flying animals and birds are regularly used. It was a thing he would not have thought of in the nature of his experience. But he sealed the roof as well as any roof was sealed in the Hostile Territories. Kregen is a harsh and cruel world for all its beauty, and there a man must protect his own, a woman protect her own. I had done precious little of that, lately, but I had supreme confidence in my Delia. She, at the least, would give me firm assurance that I did the right thing in thus helping to protect this unknown Zairian girl, this Lady of the Stars.
I felt sure I was right in this, and yet could give no real reason to myself. I have tried to explain as best I can the effect this maiden had on me, and although I intended to knock Gafard on the head when I could get him and the king together with a voller, I fancied I’d think of her as I hit him. One night I went on duty earlier than usual, because I was fretful and wanted to get away from some of the diffs of the squadron who were playing dirty-Jikaida (a game I do not care for), and so I wandered along by the wall thinking of Delia and all manner of distant dreams. The guardroom door was open and I went in and almost stumbled over the body of young Genal the Freckles. His neck had been cut open. The longsword was in my hand, a brand of fire in the torchlight.
The inner door to the off-duty room was shut and logs jammed it.
Three men in black swung about as I stumbled. They lunged at me. I shouted before I bothered to deal with them.
'Guards! Guards! To the tower! Treachery!' Then the blades met and rang in a glitter of steel. These three were good and they used Genodders. They would have had me, but I whipped out the shortsword and with that in my left hand fended a little, foining as I would with rapier and main-gauche. With a longsword and a shortsword this is not easy; but the second man dropped with the longsword slicing his throat out, and the third man screeched and tried to run as I chopped him as he turned. The first man was clawing up from the floor, the shortsword still transfixing his throat where I had hurled it. He collapsed in blood and then Grogor burst in from the courtyard.
'Aloft, Grogor!' I bellowed.
We kicked the logs away and the men inside, alerted by the scuffle and baffled by the jammed door, poured out. In a living tide of fury we went up the stairs. The fight was not long. The kidnappers had posted three of their number to watch the guardroom and sent three aloft. We had no mercy on them. We did not wish to hold them for questioning. We knew who had sent them. I did not see my Lady then, for she had taken her dagger and gone to her private rooms beneath the roof. We caught the kidnappers, but not before they had slain a beautiful numim maiden, her glorious golden fur foully splattered with her own blood. I cursed. When we trooped downstairs again, assured by an apim girl, a handmaiden to my Lady, that all was well, we took the three bodies and disposed of them along with the first three.
Gafard, livid, twitching, raced up the stairs without a word. He came back furious. I wondered what he would do. I knew there was nothing he could do — save send the girl to the king with a handsome note, a gracious gift.
'This is becoming expensive for the king,' he said.
That was all.
I think I admired him then, as much as ever I’d done.
We kept the guard even more alert after that.
Three days later I had occasion to go into Magdag on an errand for Gafard. This was all a part of my duties
