with sureness I dismounted from Whitefoot. The hirvel had served as well as he was able, not unlike a nightmare version of a llama, with that tall round neck and shaggy body. I took up the reins of the only other zorca left by the Rapas. Koter Rafik looked on. If he wished to claim both animals as his own he would have a fight on his hands. But he offered no comment. Numims are loud and boisterous, with their golden fur and golden manes and fierce bristly mustaches. Lion-folk are numims, and the lion-maidens are glorious under the rays of the suns. They are also extraordinarily seductive under the moons, or so I am told.
I mounted up with a sack and my bamboo stick. I took up the reins. “I am for Arkadon, Koter Avandil. I am in a hurry. I give you my thanks again for your assistance.” He was not to know that I’d been in no real danger. If the Rapa masichieri had turned nasty and attempted to use the edges of their swords I’d have been forced to unlimber the bamboo stick and settle their business. But he had come charging in like a knight errant and so deserved his due of praise and thanks. “I ride fast, Koter, so will bid you Remberee. May Opaz the All-Glorious have you in his keeping.”
“Eh?” he said, a little put out. Then, with a real numim bellow, “Oh, yes! By Vox! I don’t hold with religion! A man’s right arm and his sword, they are the gods of Vallia.”
He wore a rapier and a dagger, I noticed, but the clanxer, the cutlass-like weapon of Vallia that is so often derided, had proved a good choice against the thraxters of the Rapas. I set spurs to the zorca and took off. He followed, keeping pace, but made no attempt to engage in conversation which was, in any event, not too easy as we galloped along the dusty road. There was an odd, eerie sensation about that wild nighttime ride across Vallia under the moons of Kregen. Only the sounds of the zorcas’ hooves and the wind in our ears and the thumping feel of our onward passage kept us in touch with reality. With some thankfulness I saw the sharp-cut outlines of the fortress of Arkadon rising up against the star glitter, and soon made out the circuit of the walls and a few scattered lights from tower and window within.
We made enough hullabaloo at the arched gate to arouse the sleepy sentry. My Delia’s Delphond is a quiet, lazy place, but any town near the coast must needs stand a watch. This is one of the ways of Kregen that can never be forgotten, if you wish to keep your head on your shoulders or your wrists and ankles free of chains. The slavers and the aragorn prowl many lands and seek to snatch away slaves where they can. Even here, in civilized Vallia, in sweet Delphond, the slavers sought to carry on their foul trade.
The response was quick enough to surprise me.
A yell and a curse from the ramparts, and then: “What’s all the noise! Quiet down, you great villains, you’ll wake the town!”
We managed to convince the sentry and the ob-deldar guard-commander he called that we were not slavers or bandits, those drikingers of the wild places unknown in Delphond. The ob-deldar was surprisingly suspicious. My few experiences of Delphond had led me to believe the easygoing people would have welcomed a pack of rascally kataki slavers with a proffered flask of ale. Rafik Avandil bellowed out in his numim way, quite out of patience.
“Open the gates, you onker! Jump to it!
The gates swung open, well-oiled and uncreaking, admitting us to the cobbled street.
“I need a bath and a meal and a bed,” bellowed Rafik. “I’ll stand the same for you, old man, and you will.”
This was munificence.
“I thank you, Koter Avandil. But I think it best for me to finish what I must do. Perhaps-”
“Aye! That will serve admirably.” He waved a violent hand at the guards sulkily trailing their spears back to the guardroom under the archway. “These southerners are a puny lot! By Vox! I’d smarten ’em up!”
These sentiments appeared to put him in a better humor, for he finished in a roar: “We’ll meet on the morrow at an inn that has some pretence to fashion. I’ll see you at Larghos’s Running Sleeth.”
“Until tomorrow, Koter Avandil, at the Running Sleeth.”
He cantered off and he began to sing, one of those rollicking numim songs that always bring back memories of Rees and Chido and wild days rioting as a Bladesman in Ruathytu. I took myself off to rout out men and mounts and weapons for the rest of my night’s work.
I had to reveal my identity to the town governor before I got any sense out of him, sleepy-eyed in his night attire, tousled of hair, roused from bed. He held the title of Rango and was your usual plump, easygoing, smiling, lazy Delphondian. But I impressed on him, this Rango Insur na Arkadon, the importance and the urgency of the night’s business, and soon thereafter I rode out on a fresh zorca at the head of all the zorcamen he could spare, a miserable thirty of them, all sleepy-eyed and cursing away and rolling about in their saddles trying to ride off the fumes of the evening’s wine. She of the Veils vanished beyond the horizon and the Maiden with the Many Smiles would follow and then the suns would rise and a new day would dawn over Kregen. By that time we reached the Temple of Delia. Harshly I ordered the party to dismount and giving them no time to rest their aching backsides gave instructions in a cutting voice to their hikdar and the deldars to spread out and surround the central roofed area, which gleamed in the first chinks of morning light, ominously silent. Birds were chirping merrily away in the trees, and the dew sparkled everywhere, fresh and sweet. The air tasted like the best Jholaix. But, I, Dray Prescot, took no comfort from all that beauty. We crept in, and I held a rapier borrowed from Rango Insur, and we stole between the pillars ready to leap upon the congregation engaged in their blasphemous rites to the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan.
I knew, I supposed, when I heard the birds singing.
We burst in, and the place was empty. We scoured all the tumbled ruins, peering and prying, prodding with our swords. Nothing. Not a single thing gave any evidence of a soul having been there for a thousand years.
“It seems, Prince, we have had a wasted ride.”
The hikdar spoke a little sourly. His head was still ringing, I judged, from the party of the previous evening.
“The birds have flown, hikdar. I’ll grant you that. But as to a wasted ride, I think you’ll eat a better breakfast this morning than you would otherwise have done.”
He made a face, but bellowed out, “Too right, Prince!”
It was so, of course.
There, was nothing here. I had failed in this night’s business. Then I walked quietly around to that crumbled corner of masonry and bent among the dew-bright ferns. The hikdar stared at me curiously, hands on the hilts of his weapons, his booted feet thrust wide. I straightened up. In my hand I held the scrap of rusty black feather.
“Not altogether wasted for me, hikdar, either.”
Then we mounted up and I shook the reins and turned my zorca’s head for Arkadon and the Running Sleeth and this Rafik.
Eight
Sleep would have to take its turn. I’d been up all night haring about Delphond. If I bothered to ask myself why I should care tuppence about this Koter Rafik Avandil, I suppose, then, I would have answered that the fellow had conceived he was saving my life. And a lone koter against a rascally gang of Rapa masichieri demanded a high brand of courage. So I banished the idea of sleep and rode up to the inn run by Larghos, the inn with the revolting name of the Running Sleeth. One positive thought I had. I would question Rafik about the airboat that had taken off just before the Rapas attacked. It seemed perfectly clear to me that Phu-si-Yantong had observed me in his trancelike state of lupu and had then whistled up his gang of bully boys to take me. The airboat had dropped them to lie in wait. Rafik might have seen something useful.
All the same, although I kept my usual careful lookout as I rode, I remained firmly convinced that the wizard’s orders that I was not to be killed remained in force. His ludicrous desire to rule, physically and in person,
