“Which side were you on?”
“Well, by Vox, I’m here, aren’t I?”
“So you were on the right side.”
They laughed. The paktuns of Kregen can see the humor in the situation, when from day to day they may be victors or slain. It gives them the old zest to life.
A whole day to get through. Forty-eight burs to the day. Fifty murs to the bur. And a Kregan bur is roughly equal to forty terrestrial minutes. A long time to keep out of mischief for a wild leem of a fellow. Not that, recently, I’d felt much like a leem. Like a calsany, perhaps. And everyone knows what calsanys do when they get excited. Nalgre and Dolan talked on about the female warriors — Battle Maidens they called them, Jikai Vuvushis — and we sent a camp slave for a couple of bottles of parclear to ease our throats. The suns rolled across the heavens and everything was going splendidly, for these two like myself were tazll mercenaries, unemployed, determining to enlist with the trylon’s regiments or none. I did not tell them Udo had returned overnight; the information had not yet percolated through. Even when the dust of a squabble rose beyond the next row of tents I felt no inclination to become involved.
But when Nalgre and Dolan stood up and peered across and said: “That looks interesting,” I realized I would have to go, for to do otherwise would be most odd in a paktun. So we yelled at the camp slave — he was shared by the two comrades and for a fee I could join in the syndicate — to guard our gear. We strapped on a sword or two and ambled across to see the fun. The dust billowed up from a cleared space and rose over the heads of the gathered swods. I call them swods, P.B.I., soldiers; in truth they were much more of a hastily gathered rabble, with a leavening of hardened professionals among them. No doubt, given time, Trylon Udo would smarten them up. By the time they’d marched all the long way to Vondium they’d either be an army or they’d be long since dispersed. We had little difficulty in shoving our way to the front of the ring. Bets were being wagered all around, and the excitement fizzed.
The sharp smell of the dust peppered nostrils and stung eyes. I was pleased Nalgre had thought to bring a bottle of parclear, that sherbet drink that so refreshes. The noise blattered skywards. The Suns of Scorpio shone down. On the morrow I would see my daughter Dayra. I knew the house. This time I would not wear a stupid dangling clanging object and the Krozair longsword would find business. Two girls fought in the dust.
I grimaced my distaste.
So that was why the swods were so wrought up.
Inquiries elicited the fact they were not fighting over a man but over the ownership of a fine string of amber beads. So they remained girls despite their martial kit, and the daggers, and their spitting snarling invective. The blonde girl was having the worst of it, the redhead being altogether quicker and deadlier. I wondered, with a shiver of disgust, if they would fight to the death, for, as we quickly learned, this was not a Jikordur but merely a common brawl.
A knot of Battle Maidens on the far side of the ring screamed advice and insults and encouragement. There were two sides here. The two girls fighting were not naked; but they might just as well have been. For an agonizing instant I wondered what Delia, if she were so unfortunate as to be here, would make of this spectacle. Then I brought myself up with a shock. Why should not girls fight and brawl in camp like men? Just because I viewed the scene with reservations meant nothing. If girls could tend wounded men and see the ghastly sights of the battlefield at, as it were, second hand, and if they could don boots and armor and wield weapons, as they did, who was I to say they could not act completely as warriors? Did I not demean them by suggesting otherwise?
Each person must act out his own nature, as the scorpion said to the frog, always — and this proviso is one I hew to for it is so often overlooked and disregarded, always provided that the free-doer does not harm his or her fellows in the liberated exercise of his or her own psyche. And by harm I do not mean the harm one of these girls was going to sustain in this free-for-all. Blonde hair, damped with sweat and slicked with dust, bent to the ground. The redheaded girl, who was screamed at as Firn in wild excitement, had the upper hand. She had fought cleanly. All saw that. And now she was on the point of victory.
Already coins were jingling, changing hands as the bets were paid out. With a wild scream a third girl bounded into the informal arena. Clad in green leathers, she wielded a rapier and main gauche. Her dark hair flowed loosely. Her face was brilliant with malice and vicious determination. She raced toward the two girls, the blonde submitting and Firn, the redhead, triumphant. With a shriek the girl in green leathers kicked the dagger from Firn’s hand. The rapier twitched down. Its point hovered at the redhead’s throat.
A hullabaloo broke out in red riot. Girls yelled, men cursed. Through it all no one took a single eye away from that central tableau as the dust fell.
“Firn! I challenge you! Prepare to die, here and now!”
“Karina the Quick!”
The noise lessened as we all struggled to hear.
Someone threw a rapier and dagger onto the settling dust.
A ferocious-looking apim at my side said: “Karina the Quick is notorious. Firn is as good as dead if she does not submit.”
“Firn! Firn!” came the screeches and yells.
“Karina! Karina the Quick!” flew from the other group of Battle Maidens. I felt the sorrow for redheaded Firn. To submit would bring life and to fight might bring death; but in these circumstances she had no choice.
Firn threw back her heavy head of red hair and picked up the weapons. She held them in a practiced grip. But at the first handstrokes those who knew about these things saw that Firn faced a swordmaster
— or, in this case, a swordmistress. Karina played with her, pinking that bright skin, bringing forth the ugly spottings of blood and all the time she taunted, foul-mouthing Firn, taunted her with torture and death.
This was a case for the Krozairs to decide. Could I, a man, step forward and stop the fight? No — this was not a case for the Krozairs, or for me. This was Savage Kregen, alive, vibrant, pulsing with blood -
and ending with a life and a death.
If I attempted to intervene I’d probably be torn limb from limb by everyone present who could get a hand on me.
Now Firn’s superb body was splashed with her own blood. Her scanty clothes hung in bloodied ribbons. Her hair swirled. The green leathers of Karina the Quick glimmered in the suns’ light, unspotted, unfouled.
Very soon if Firn did not yield she would be dead.
The Battle Maidens had now clearly separated into two groups. If there was a preponderance of green about one group and of red about the other, I put that down to coincidence and my own views on those two sky colors. Looking across the swirling dust that billowed up as the girls stamped and retreated and stamped and advanced, I saw, abruptly, clearly, as though focused in a telescope, the face of one of the Jikai Vuvushis. The face swam clear through all the confusion and tumult. Open of countenance, glowing with the excitement of the moment, her brown Vallian eyes wide, Vad Kolo’s daughter, Leona nal Larravur, stood and stared hungrily upon the fight. She wore the green leathers, with a profusion of purple feathers. Now I understood why the topmost purple ronil gem had snapped away from her jeweled badge of the samphron bush. Rejecting the Sisterhood, she must have hurled the brooch from her in negation and disgust, and then, calculatingly, have picked it up to wear to the emperor’s reception for Queen Lushfymi. The missing gem not being found by her cowed slaves, perforce the missing socket had to be painted over. Yes, Leona nal Larravur was a real right scheming miss.
Dust puffed across as the struggling girls grappled and swung about. Firn was clearly weakening. Her blood glistered darkly upon her body, and dust patched her like camouflage. The group of Jikai Vuvushis who wore russet leathers began to shout. “Ros the Claw,” they called. “Ros the Claw.”
In all the confusion others took up the yell. Money which had changed hands twice now returned. The issue was, then, still in doubt. A girl in black leathers was thrust into the ring by the Battle Maidens, who chanted her name. Slowly, she walked to the center. Firn, panting, shrieked out: “She will slay you, Ros!”
The girl in the black leathers moved forward. The fighting girls staggered apart. Karina the Quick looked as lithe, as ferocious, as deadly as ever. She stood back, her blood-smeared rapier and dagger slanting up, smiling lopsidedly as Ros the Claw moved in. Firn collapsed, panting, disheveled, done for.
“Do you challenge me, Ros the Claw?”
“If you will it. Either way — you cease and desist from tormenting Firn.”
“Then you must make me.”
“It is the Jikordur, then.”
