Renegade of Kregen

the Eye of the World, where years and years ago I had been a Krozair Brother and the foremost swifter captain of the inner sea. Those cramphs of Magdag had trembled at my name. I knew it to be true. Nursing mothers lost their milk, strong men blanched, maidens screamed, if they thought themselves in danger from me, from Pur Dray, Krzy.

Duhrra called me Dak, for that was a name I had adopted in all honor, even though I believed he had heard me addressed by my real name. He never referred to it. The Krozairs are a remote and exotic breed of men, even among their own countrymen who have not aspired to the honor and glory of becoming Krozairs.

The serving girl bustled about seeing to the ribald and vociferous demands of the newcomers. They were mercenaries, and even seated at table they swaggered and boasted. Presently she brought our vosk and loloo’s eggs, and the huliper pie, together with a fresh jug of that ghastly green wine, the Blood of Dag. I flipped the silver oar up. It glittered in the lamplight.

'You forget this.'

She bobbed a quick curtsy, the same kind of submissive dipping of the head and bending of the knee as one saw on Earth, and caught the silver coin and dropped it safely down her blouse.

'Thank you, gernu. May Grodno smile on you.'

Another man might have thought, Zair certainly is not. But I thought only of a scheme to return to Vallia and Valka and once more clasp my Delia in my arms, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

'Eat,' said Duhrra. 'Eat, my master, and afterward you will feel better.' He was partially right, of course. I ate. The stuff tasted foul. I took up a handful of palines, for they are usually — although not always — to be found in a dish on every tavern table, and I munched moodily. Palines are sovereign cures for a headache, cherry-like fruits of exquisite taste, sweet firm flesh, and are an item sadly lacking on this Earth, this Earth of my birth four hundred light-years from Kregen under Antares.

This disastrous news had shattered me.

I had been through horrific experiences before, many times. But this feeling of being trapped numbed me. I had been trapped when the Star Lords had banished me to Earth for twenty-one years. Then there had been no possible way for me to do something and return to Kregen. I had made attempts and had scared up some response from the strange woman who called herself Madam Ivanovana on Earth and Zena Iztar on Kregen. But now I was actually on Kregen, my duties for the Star Lords for the moment discharged, and willing and able to travel at once to the only woman who means anything to me — and I was prevented by mere geography. Distance and time separated me, as I then thought. So be it. I remember I sat up and found myself looking at one of the mercenaries at the adjoining table. I would make my way back to my Delia, as I had before, and I would do so come hell or high water. With that decision made and already plans for that damned Menahem argenter forming in my mind, I was aware of the mercenary rising from the table.

Duhrra sucked in his breath.

The mercenary was a Fristle. His powerful humanlike body was clad in the mesh mail. His catlike head, with the striped fur and the slit eyes and the bristling whiskers, lowered on me most evilly. He advanced from his table and he loosened his scimitar, which all Fristles use no matter what other weapons they chance to be issued with.

'You are looking at me, dom,' said this Fristle, very menacingly. He was vicious and tough, that was evident. 'I do not think I like that.'

I knew what had happened. So wrapped up in my thoughts had I been I had allowed some of my anguish and my anger to show on that iron-hard face of mine, thereby destroying any illusion I might cherish of being an iron- hard man. The Fristle had seen this and with his quick catlike temper had taken this as a deliberate affront, a challenge.

I sighed.

'You are mistaken, dom,' I began. 'I was not-'

That was a mistake, to start with.

'You are calling me a liar?'

'Not at all.' I searched around for words. This situation was not quite unparalleled. I had acted the coward and the ninny as Hamun ham Farthytu in Ruathytu, the capital of Hamal. Now I wanted to avoid trouble. For Duhrra’s sake as much as mine, I wished no brawling here. 'No, dom. I would not call you a liar — unless you were, of course.'

'Cramph!' he said. Even in the simple word cramph he insinuated a cat’s hiss into his voice. Then, splendidly, hissing out into the tavern room and bringing everyone’s attention to center on us: 'Rast!' A rast is a six-legged rodent disgustingly infesting dunghills. I have used the word a few times in my life. I stood up. I stood up slowly.

'I was not looking at you with intent. In that you lie. You call me a cramph. You lie. You call me a rast. You lie.' My right hand slowly crossed my waist toward the sword hilt. 'It seems, dom, you are a chronic liar.'

'By Odifor, apim! His scimitar flamed. 'I must teach you your place!' His comrades lolled back in their chairs, laughing, mocking, catcalling, telling this mercenary, whom they called Cryfon the Sudden, to be gentle with me and only knock one eye out and not to stick more than two fingers’ breadth of steel into me and so on.

He had no fear of my longsword. In these confined quarters with tables and chairs to entangle legs, the quick and deadly scimitar would do its work wonderfully well. His Magdaggian longsword, no doubt with the initials G.G.M. etched into the blade, hung disregarded, scabbarded from a baldric. I moved to one side so as to give myself room and whipped out the longsword. The lamps cast their glow upon the blade, for it had been newly cleaned and it shone lustrously. The mercenaries at the table suddenly fell silent.

The Fristle, who a moment before brandished his scimitar with every intent of giving me a good thrashing, short of slaying me, stopped stock still. His breath hissed between that catlike mouth.

'By the Green!' he said.

Duhrra moved at my back and I guessed he was swathing up his stump again.

'Gernu!' said this Fristle mercenary, Cryfon the Sudden. 'I did not know — I had no idea. Your pardon, gernu, a thousand thousand pardons.'

Where before he had been calling me rast and cramph, as well as dom, which is a friendly salutation, now he called me gernu, which is the Grodnim way of saying jernu or lord. One takes one’s chances on Kregen.

'I was not staring at you with intent.'

'Indeed not, gernu. In that I lied. I lied most foully, as Odifor is my witness.' One of the mercenaries, a bulky numim whose golden fur glowed gloriously in the samphron oil lamp’s gleam, called, 'You always could pick the wrong ’un, Cryfon.' The numim rose, bowing to me. 'Gernu

— you will pardon the poor onker and take a sup of wine with us?' He was a Deldar, and the leader and spokesman of this little gang. I turned to face him and realized I still held the looted Grodnim longsword. I swished it in a little salute and sheathed it. Its flash was scabbarded. But in that movement I caught at some of the meanings here. The device! The lairgodont and the rayed-sun emblem. At the time I’d picked it up on the Dam of Days, with its headless late owner sprawled by the valve wheels, I had considered the problems of that device. I’d chipped out the emeralds and given the device a rub with a rough stone, but the quick eyes of these men had picked it out, and recognized it — and, too, no doubt, they had seen the condition, the lack of jewels, and had drawn conclusions from that consonant with a Green Brother patronizing a low-class drinking tavern like The Net and Trident.

Even a Green Brother, a Ghittawrer of Grodno, down on his luck was a man not to be trifled with. And, too, it was not only because of the longsword, which they now knew would have chopped the Fristle mercenary, Cryfon the Sudden, very surely, scimitar or no scimitar, close quarters or no close quarters. Also, there was in these men’s shocked deference to a Ghittawrer Brother the subservience to power and authority vested in mystic disciplines, the force of religion, the aura of invincibility. I had seen similar, although not so violent, reactions in Sanurkazz when an unthinking carouser came face to face with a Krozair Brother. But the Zairians are a ruffianly lot anyway, and they tend to joke more and to make rough good humor out of the mystic disciplines — making very sure first that no Krozair is within earshot. These Grodnims, in line with their religious character, took a more narrow view. They believed more fanatically. They were more fervent in their observances. For them the Green was all. Was this, I wondered, one reason why now the Green rose in ascendancy over the Red?