the broadest outline to calendar measurements. Most immediate date measurements are made by months of one moon or another. For the journey I must now undertake I fancied I’d need a whole sheaf of months, culled from all the seven moons.
What passed along the way remains hazy. Blurred snatches of memory jag through the mists. I think I met a group of little Ochs, who tut-tutted over my arm and gave me potions. Ochs are funny little puff-chopped folk, with six limbs, the center pair used either as hands or feet. I have been helped before by Ochs, as well as being savagely beaten by them when a slave.
They gave me a piece of clear crystal hung on chains from a circlet they cautioned me to wear on my head. Drunkenly I put the thing on and the crystal hung down before my eyes turning the world into a phantasmagoria as though I peered through the bottom of a bottle. I thanked them — I think I did -
giving them a proper Remberee, riding on, lolling in the saddle like a man sodden with dopa and too far gone to fight.
The way proved long and tiresome. Go north, Zena Iztar had said, and I had obeyed. Now I crawled along with an altogether more dreadful reason. Now, despite all, I must win through. Forests, tracks, trees, streams, boulders, defiles. I staggered along, reeling in the saddle. Yes, snatches of it come back to haunt me in nightmares, now. I was growing steadily weaker as the dreadful injuries that surely must have killed any normal man fought against the healing properties my body had acquired from the Savanti. Of all that painful journey only a few incidents stand out at all clearly. Of them, the most vivid, if not the most evil, wrenching in its violence, occurred as the gnutrix lolloped down a slope toward a stream bowered in trees where I could quench the torturing thirst and soothe my burning lips. My thirst tormented and drove me insatiably.
By this time I must have been pretty far gone. Only the memory of the incident remains, like a child’s picture torn from a book and mounted in a frame, isolate, individual, related to nothing else. Katakis moved about the stream, making a camp, busy in the familiar tasks of creating a base for the night. To one side the bound slaves, hallmark of the Katakis’ trade, moaned in their winnowed lines of suffering. I stared, sick, almost falling off the gnutrix, glaring madly upon these devils who debarred me from the water. My whole body wracked with cramps, I burned, yet coldness brushed me with ice crystals. Shuddering, reeling in the saddle, I had to face the terrible fact that there was no water for me at this stream, not with the Katakis and their slaving habits in the way. One look at me, the instant summation I was useless as merchandise, and they’d whip up a tail-blade and finish me. Even now, I believe no single thought occurred to me that this might be a blissful end to all suffering. Low-browed and with a gap-jawed mouth filled with snaggly teeth is a Kataki. His thick black hair is oiled and curled in a fashion far different from that of the Eye of the World. His eyes are wide-spaced, narrow and cold. Evil, vicious and rapacious, Katakis, slavemasters, man-managers, batteners on human misery. Perhaps the thing that gives a Kataki his greatest pride is his tail, a long sinuous powerful tail to which is strapped a sharp steel blade. So, sickly, I stared down on these vile diffs and I could not summon a single curse.
Jerking the gnutrix away was bewilderingly useless. He scented the water, parched as was I, obstinately thrusting his blunt head toward the inviting stream in the darkling light. He started off and I sawed the reins and he resisted, disregarding the pain in his mouth for the lure of the water. We picked up speed jolting down toward the stream.
Had I had the use of two arms; had I been even a little stronger, I would have held him. But he ran away with me. So I did the only thing I could do, plunging down to certain death, trying to husk up the last of my voice, to make a good shouting show of it.
“Khirrs!” I shrilled, and my voice wheezed and cracked. “Khirrs all about you!”
Croaking though my voice was, the Katakis heard. Instantly, like the black-hearted reivers they were, they gave thought only to themselves.
The camp boiled with frenzied activity. Pounding down I went, catching a guyline in a gnutrix hoof and pulling the whole lot down, knocking a cooking fire blazing, scattering pots and pans, bounding along like a scarecrow. Katakis were forming and each swung a crystal oblong before his face, so they knew about Khirrs. On lumbered the gnutrix for the stream. Katakis were running to the edge of the camp, their weapons bright, shouting in confusion, ferocious and malignant. The animal reached the stream and plunged in and I sailed over his head into the water. The sweet coolness helped. I lay for a moment, winded, and then tried to crawl, all lopsided like a beetle. The water sloshed about me and I sucked in thirstily. The far bank appeared dwaburs off.
The stream deepened. The current knocked me over and I rolled along banging against the bottom. I am not sure what I felt as what remained of my left arm scraped the gravel; but I expect some more pieces of me fell off.
Somehow the gravel oriented itself under me and I was staggering up out of the stream. But I was still on the same side as the Katakis and their shouts told me that no Khirrs had arrived and the Katakis wanted to know what was going on and to get their hands on the lunatic who had caused the furor. A zorca stood by the bank. He stood impossibly tall on those four spindly powerful legs, close-coupled. His magnificent twisted spiral horn stuck up arrogantly from his forehead. To his saddle were belted sword, bow, saddlebags. I grasped his reins in my one hand and tried to vault onto his back and landed on my belly, dangling across, and he snorted and bucked, so I kneed him, anyhow, and we went galloping off, bashing through the low bushes into the trees.
The next thing I recall, not so luridly, is trotting out into another glade with a rockface and a trickle of water and of falling off and still grasping the reins, of crawling until I could lash the reins around a broken stump and then plunge my head under the water.
I must have slept, for the shrilling of the zorca awoke me and I sat up, sluggishly, that awful dead feeling in my left arm and side reminding me my time was running out. I peered foolishly out into early morning suns shine.
They flitted out from the trees, their spindly legs twinkling, their harsh hairy bodies rotund and hateful in the mingled radiance. I blinked. Spitballs of Antares. Vermin. They crept upon me as I slept, eager to plunge their snouts into my body and drink of my substance and suck me dry. I tried to stand up and fell over. I was as weak as a woflo.
I was ripe game for these Khirrs. They would enjoy spitting at me, weak, feeble, barely able to crawl. With an idiot’s fumble I dropped the crystal rectangle before my face, and the world described whorls of distorted circular dizziness. The nausea had to be fought back, pushed away. The bow was useless, for I had but one arm. The sword, a solid, single-edged cut and thruster, somewhat too long for the balance, would have to serve — somehow. My scrabbling fingers fastened on the stirrup. Heaving and grunting I hauled myself up alongside the zorca. He was a fine animal, a fleet runner, strong, well-built. He shivered now and I could smell the sweat of fear.
That broad back of mine would have to be wedged against a support. I could not use the zorca, for the acid spit would burn into his hide. They’d spit their poison at his eyes and if he was done for then so was I. His tether twanged and he twisted and turned; but he remained steady as I pulled myself up, speaking to him, croaking.
“Hold on, my lad, my bonny zorca. Hold on and we’ll deal with these cramphs.”
I spoke as my father was wont to speak to his horses as he so patiently and skillfully doctored their hurts. The zorca quieted at the sound of my voice. But I lied to him, I lied. . Zorcas are animals of splendid intelligence. He was denied his usual method of dealing with foes. If he swung that magnificent head with the silky mane flying toward them and charged down with the spiral horn lancing to skewer and degut them, he would expose his eyes. And he knew that, he knew. . Holding to his saddle I slid the sword out awkwardly. Peering back owlishly through the crystal at the hideous advancing shapes, seeing their black hairy bodies, the crafty black beady eyes, the goggle effect of the protective rings of horn, the protrusions of the ridged snouts, I lifted the sword. Unsteadily, I slapped the zorca with the hilt and slashed on to cut through the tether. He sprang away. I fell against the tree stump. The fierce effort of turning about and wedging my back against the stump taxed me. I was gasping. But I stood up, shivering, plastered against the stump, and I lifted the sword and faced the shuffling advance of the Spitballs of Antares.
The ridged snouts quivered. They spat. The crystal smeared and blurred and a foul reek stank into the clearing. I felt the deep acid burn of the amber drops on my neck.
Alone, shaking, almost spent, I struggled to stand and face the loathsome menace advancing toward me, these Khirrs, all black and hairy and spitting, Spitballs of Antares, fit food for dogs. Around their small brilliant eyes each one had a horny ring, a protective circle of bone filmed with a membrane, for all the world like those heavy horn-rimmed spectacles that were once so fashionable on Earth.
The sword wavered. I tried to swash it menacingly and nearly dropped it. I, a Krozair Brother, to drop a
