two.
“Your name, lad?”
“Tim, if it please you, ko- prince.”
“Right, Tim. Which way?”
He pointed.
The wide expanse of Arial’s Mound covered with the booths and stalls and wild-beast pens and stabling lines, with the now more than a little ludicrous high dais at the center, was rapidly clearing of people. They were running off in all directions. Some, at least, must be heading straight for the viciously-waiting arms of the Kataki slavers.
Tim pointed to the east, a direction that paralleled the coast, distant some two ulms. Dredd Pyvorr reined across, his face furious, highly colored, intense.
“Briar’s Cove, lad? Am I right?”
“Yes, prince, you are right!” sang out the lad with Turko.
“Fambly!” said Turko, incensed. “Only the prince is the prince.”
“For the Order!” I bellowed. As of its own volition, it seemed, my rapier had appeared in a twinkling at the first mention of the Katakis, and had scabbarded itself when the lads had run up, so now, once more, the glittering blade snapped out. I waved it high and pointed forward.
As a group we rode out, past the last scattering fugitives, screaming and wailing, out along the narrow track that led through this neck of the forest, to curve down to Briar’s Cove. It appeared to me the Katakis, with the Fair as cover, had struck inland to take the chief town of Nikzm by surprise. Once they had possession of that, they could sweep up the people as they arrived. Long memories of pirate raids, of slavers and aragorn snatching away whole families, dictated that only those villages that needs must, say by reason of the fishing, would be built on the coast. In this, this section of the Outer Oceans resembled the Inner Sea, the Eye of the World of Kregen. As we rode furiously along, a fresh thought rose to torment me. The Katakis are a race strong and powerful, with a tail that, equipped with bladed steel, makes of them formidable opponents. They are also low-browed, dark, with thick black hair, oiled and curled, with gape-jawed mouths fanged with snaggly teeth, and generally of an evil, pestiferous nature. But we had met and bested them before. The thought that occasioned me some agony was simply this; no force of Kataki slavers would raid here, in the very shadow of the puissant empire of Vallia, for all the empire’s internal problems, unless they raided in strength. They must be a strong and determined band.
And we were few.
I led my men into a battle that could easily end with us all dead or enslaved. Yet no one had thought to count the cost. No one had thought to reck the consequences. Katakis had had the nerve to land on one of my islands to raid and enslave; therefore my band of brothers followed me into headlong action.
Through the coldness of these thoughts the warmth flowed that we were a band of brothers, we fought together as comrades in arms. This would be the first real test of the Order, for every man who rode with me had been invited to become a member, and had joyfully accepted. He had accepted the strictures laid on him, the demands that membership of the Order would entail. The simple, pure-minded and naive chivalry of the first rules of the Order may make me smile now; but they remain as true as ever, despite all that has happened since. We were idealistic, believing that too much violence on Kregen was being used by the wrong people, that we should do what we could to redress the balance. And these Opaz-forsaken Kataki slavers had turned up, right on our doorstep, to present us with our first challenge, our first test.
Certainly, as we thundered along the forest trail, kicking dust and twigs, a bright and colorful company, I did not count the discomfiture of the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. That evil creed had been bested in Vallia, for the time being, and the beating of it had not been at the hands of the Order as an Order. If I am a credulous man, that is understandable, seeing the marvels I have witnessed in my life. But I detected a fundamental and powerful current of fate in this meeting between slavers and the Brotherhood.
Ahead the track twisted around a giant lenk, the oak-like tree growing to an enormous girth and shedding a deep and somber shadow upon the trail. We roared around the angle and beyond a sharp declivity the trees ended and a long greensward opened up. I reined in, my hand upflung, my zorca skidding and sliding.
Slowly, I cantered out into the open.
The others followed.
We stared.
The ground was littered with color, with steel, with bodies and with blood. Slowly, we walked our zorcas through the shambles, the animals restive, not liking the stink of fresh-spilled blood, but obedient and going on, well-trained to the stark realities of war.
“So here are your Katakis, Tim.”
Tim was being sick.
The ground was littered with bodies and with blood — Kataki bodies and Kataki blood. I dismounted. As I looked up I saw for the first time that Young Oby had snatched up the scarlet flag with the great yellow cross upon it, my flag, the battle flag that fighting men call Old Superb. It shone in the mingled suns-light.
“These devils have been killed handsomely,” observed Seg. He bent over a corpse, kicking the limp tail away so that the bladed steel strapped to the tip clinked against a fallen helmet. He picked up a bow. Oh, it was not a great Lohvian long bow; being of a compound reflex construction; but in Seg Segutorio’s hands any bow is a deadly weapon par excellence. He smiled up at me. “I feel only half naked now.”
The Katakis had fought hard. They lay in windrows at the end, piled high. Their wounds were all in front. But they were all dead, methodically butchered.
“Who could have done this?” said Dredd Pyvorr. He looked pinched of face. “Katakis are notorious -
Chuliks?”
Chuliks and Pachaks command the highest fees as mercenaries, for different reasons. Our small guard of Pachaks remained mounted, instinctively carrying out soldier’s work, scouting ahead, sniffing out the devils who had slain devils.
The body of one Kataki intrigued me. He was a big fellow, although Katakis are as a rule not overly tall. His helmet had fallen off. His face reminded me of that of Rukker. The arrow had punched through his bronze-studded scaled corselet.
At my side, Seg whistled.
“A goodly shaft. .”
He bent to pull it out.
I said: “You’ll find it will come hard. As a wager, I’ll venture there are six or seven barbs a side. That’s no Lohvian shaft, Seg.”
“But it is as long — what bow is there that — oh!”
“Yes,” I said. And I nodded and felt the anger in me, and the despair, the sorrow, and the vengeful fury.
“I have never met an archer who can best a Bowman of Loh,” said Seg Segutorio, speaking softly. “But you have told me of these devils, and it seems we are to meet them, now.”
“They must be devils indeed to destroy these Katakis, who are devils spawned from Cottmer’s Caverns,” said Dredd Pyvorr, feelingly.
“From around the curve of the world,” I said. “From whence no man knows. They sail in their swift, magical ships, raiding, destroying, looting, burning. They are diffs unlike any in the whole of Paz. They are not men like us. They are the Shanks, the Shants, the Shtarkins, Leem Lovers, vile, to be destroyed, vermin — and yet, and yet, I know they are courageous to sail their ships all those untold dwaburs across the open seas. They are not men like us; but they are men.”
“And they’ll slay us all as soon as look,” said Inch, sourly.
Dredd Pyvorr gripped onto the hilt of his rapier. His pinched mouth shook; then he had control of himself.
“I know of whom you speak, prince. We call them Shkanes — they have many names, all vile. Fish-Heads — yes, their horror goes before them.”
I turned to young Tim, who had recovered and was now busily plundering the dead bodies, a most sensible occupation.
“You said they rode sleeths, Tim.”
“So they did, prince,” Tim looked up, his hands full of rings and chains and brooches, with a wicked-looking
