The other two stepped back, their blades snaking up, free of mine, and so for a space we looked at one another.
“What do you wait for!” Melekhi stamped her foot — a futile, stupid gesture. “Slay them both!”
And Nath the Iarvin spoke.
“He is a great swordsman, my lady.”
“And so are you — better, by all accounts.”
“Then let me-”
“Wait!”
The Chuliks were filled with the blood lust and the purport of this exchange passed them by. They leaped in, still deadly, still ferociously anxious to spill my tripes. Well aware that this brooding Nath was watching my play I tried to play the next one cleverly and foin a little and a Chulik blade sliced down my face. I cursed and jumped aside and my brand scorched across his face, not where I had intended and I felt the steel jar against a tusk. He screamed. This was turning from a pleasant little passage at arms into the bloody and squalid fight it truly was. There was no Jikai here, I surmised.
Blood ran down my chin.
The two were heartened at this and came on. The emperor was still thrashing and swashing about, and he near-nicked me a couple of times.
“Keep you back, you great onker!” I said. “By Zair! I don’t want your nose sliced off for my Delia to see!”
“Let me at ’em!” he was yelling, kicking the chair, the table, the bed, foaming. My blade licked in and out, and the Chuliks, who can handle weapons, played me, one against the other; but I had them in the end, although not as I had expected.
The right hand one stepped back. He stepped away from the struggle of his comrade. Swiftly he thrust his rapier under his left arm and whipped out a throwing knife. It was not a terchick, being altogether heavier and not so finely balanced; but it would do the emperor’s business for him. Fight fire with fire. There was no time. I lifted the left-hand dagger. I hurled it as my Clansmen hurl the terchicks, riding the backs of their voves. Left-handed, right-handed, it makes little difference to a Clansman.
At the same time I slid the point of the last Chulik and presented my point to his throat. The main gauche flew true. It smashed into the Chulik’s face, staggering him, bringing a great splashing spurt of dark blood. And the rapier point slid, cutting through the windpipe and the jugular of the Chulik before me. The distant yellow-tusk screeched, flailing about, spraying gobbets of blood, screaming. The one before me glared madly, trying to wrench the blade from his throat, and that damned fool the emperor came up — well, not between my legs, but close by them — surged up to take a juicy whack with his blade at the wriggling Chulik.
The mercenary flailed over backwards taking my rapier with him.
I stood there, glaring myself, furiously angry,
“Get back out of it, you fambly!” I roared.
And Ashti Melekhi, in a voice like steel, said: “Now, Nath. Now.”
Nath the Iarvin drew his rapier and main gauche with the single fluid motion that told of a master fencer. He advanced on me and the look on his dark powerful features meant only one thing in the whole wide world of Kregen.
I stood before him, my hands empty.
“Dray!” screeched the emperor, squirming about between bed and table. “A sword — here — take mine!”
“Too late for that, rast,” said this Nath, speaking up, very jovial, very purring-pleased now he had been unleashed.
“True,” I said, brightly. “True.”
Nath leaped in with that smooth skilful poised motion of the bladesman. So, with a sigh, I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, unlimbered the deadly Krozair brand, and with spread fists, met that headlong charge.
His first swift passage aimed at sliding past the long blade was met and repulsed. He dodged back, the main gauche fending. He blinked.
“You’d best put up that old bar of iron, dom. Make it easy on yourself. Just relax and, by the Blade of Kurin, I swear to make it quick and painless.”
And, as he spoke, cunning bladesman, he leaped again and so twinkled his blades before my eyes. Cunning, cunning! Oh, yes, he was very good as a bladesman, this Nath the Iarvin. But I have been a bladesman in my time — still am, I suppose. He had not met a Krozair brand before. All that old agony of indecision of mine about a Krozair brand facing a rapier — well, that has been settled. The beautiful blade, perfectly balanced, rotated smoothly, oiled, flaming with power, scorched in past his darting blades, sank in over his silver-studded black belt, sank in and in and burst on through. I withdrew.
He stood, gaping, bewildered. Even as he began to shake and topple and the weapons fall from his hands, the door opened.
A man stepped through, very alert, intense, filled with an eagerness of spirit I could recognize. My gaze switched back to Nath as the blood bubbled out over his brown tunic. His outspread arms with the brown and green banded sleeves quivered; his hands gripped and relaxed, gripped and relaxed, and they would never more grasp rapier or main gauche. The irony was not lost on me. By the rapier he had lived, and by the longsword he had died.
“What!” I cried. “Another ponsho for the slaughter.”
The man who had entered stopped stock still.
He wore Vallian evening clothes, a deep crimson robe, embroidered with silver risslacas, circled by a jeweled belt, very thin, from which swung on gemmed lockets a long dagger. Around his neck a chain formed of gold links and rubies and laybrites caught the samphron oil lamp’s gleam and winked and shone magnificently, the red and yellow gems blinding.
“Layco!” cried Ashti Melekhi, and she lifted her arms imploringly.
“Majister!” said this newcomer, this man I now knew to be Kov Layco Jhansi. “You are unharmed?”
“Never better,” growled the emperor. “And these rasts are dead, and that she-leem is the blackest traitor this side of Cottmer’s Caverns.”
“Layco!” shrieked Melekhi again. Her white scornful face caught up all the agony in her, and she screamed. She ripped the dagger from her belt and crouched, ready to spring. Layco Jhansi appeared to be in the prime of life, short, with closely cropped brown hair. His face was regular, unmarked by suffering, his eyes large and luminous. He carried within himself a shining spirit that marked him out as a man who would adorn any walk of life he chose to inhabit. Ashti Melekhi poised, the slim dagger held high. In a heartbeat she would hurl it straight at the emperor
— it was written clearly on that white and twisted face.
No one there could know the Krozair brand would flick the flying dagger away. The moment hung with menace. Then Jhansi stepped in close to Ashti Melekhi. He whipped his own needle-slim dagger out. She saw him from the corner of her eye.
She screamed and fell back as the dagger plunged into her bosom. The green leathers punctured and as Kov Layco withdrew the blade blood welled.
“No! No — Layco!” she screamed. “Please — please-” The dagger in the Chief Pallan’s hand lifted again. This time it would finish her. “Please, Layco! I could not help it!”
“You could not, Ashti,” said Jhansi. “But you are a traitoress. Foresworn. The life of the emperor is not to be taken lightly or without punishment.”
And his dagger flashed down and buried itself in her heart.
Thus died Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga.
“A just retribution for a foul traitoress, majister,” said Jhansi. He calmly left his blade where it jutted from the bosom of the corpse. He walked across to the emperor and bowed.
“You are unharmed, majister?”
“I’m perfectly all right. This great hairy graint of a Clansman stopped me from having any fun again -
it’s always the same.”
I held down my disgust. What did he know of the actual hurly-burly of battle? What fun was there in that? He
