“Gladly, Naghan. I am with you.”
And, with that jaunty mercenary swing, they marched off with a perfunctory: “Rember!” and a laugh. I stood by the door and breathed out and considered.
To break in would be easy. To slay a few of the cramphs in there probably also not too difficult. But Ros the Claw would fight. She had fought before, although sparing me in the end. I did not wish once more to face my daughter with naked steel between us.
A subterfuge of the simple-minded kind was called for.
No food had passed my lips for far too long, a most unhealthy and anti-social attitude that, for Kregen, by Krun, and I had not slept much lately, either. But one must accept the needle. I pushed the door open and slanted my head so that the helmet brim shadowed my face. The small chamber beyond was an anteroom, with doors in three walls, fast closed, and a rumble of voices reached me from the door with a strigicaw head in half-relief above the architrave. I put my ear to the wood and listened. A rumble of voices in which no words were clear left me, as ever, it seemed of late, no alternative. My hand reached out for the latch fashioned after a pair of entwined totrixes and then I halted, dumbstruck at my own stupidity. My hand withdrew and I looked about swiftly. The next door along, the one with the chavonth head above it. Yes — another alternative had presented itself, and the simple- minded stratagem had become positively imbecile.
The door opened soundlessly. Two young fops, all lace and embroidery, playing Jikaida, looked up with guilt stamped all over their asinine faces. They went to sleep peacefully and I pressed my ear against a grille in the wall adjoining the strigicaw room. The voices spurted, not particularly clear; but I heard enough to make me feel that my daughter was a scheming minx and a half, a worthy daughter to her mother.
“…voves! Nothing will stand before them.”
“So you say, Lady Ros. But the distances and the gold speak against you.”
“The clans are with us in this. Their hatred of Vovedeer Prescot is as the prairie fire. It rages up fiercely and is all-consuming. Beware lest you and your master are broiled in the blaze.”
“Threats?”
Dayra laughed, that ringing, silvery, contemptuous laugh of Ros the Claw. “You have put these chambers at my disposal, good Norgoth. How sits a threat against you here?”
“I am glad you remember this.”
Then another voice broke in, a more distant rumble, and scraping sounds indicated the movement of chairs so I took it the conversation was ended. A few strides took me back to the door and I peered through the crack. Norgoth and Rovard and their retinue sailed out like galleons of Vallia, proud and puffed and supremely conscious of their superiority. I waited.
When they had gone I eased across to the door of the strigicaw and tried the totrix-latch. The door was locked. I rapped my knuckles on the wood. How formal one becomes in these moments! The door made clicking sounds of sliding metal and opened a fraction and a young, handsome, boy’s face showed, slightly puzzled, perhaps a trifle apprehensive. I pushed up and spoke in a swod’s metallic bark.
“Message to be delivered personal to the Lady Ros.”
“She does not wish to be disturbed. She will not see anyone save the lord-”
“I think,” I said, “she will see me.”
The boy jumped, and his face twitched, and he closed the door and went away, whereat I smiled. Presently he returned, the door was opened, and I went in. My right hand rested at my side. The hilt of the drexer angled across most conveniently. If Ros came at me with a rapier or her damned steel claw I’d have to skip and dance a measure, and no mistake…
The room led onto another chamber of some refinement and luxury, with rugs and hangings and golden lamps on chains. A zhantil-skin pelt was strewn artfully across a couch whose strigicaw-head legs rested on ochre and white rugs. Long curtains at the far end parted and Ros walked in. She was in the process of buckling up a war- harness over her black leathers, and her face was tight with annoyance.
“Who demands to see me so intemperately?” She struggled with a bronze buckle which refused to close.
“There can be no more messages to which I will listen unless they bring firm promises of gold.” She looked up, breathing hard, and saw the Bowman of Loh who stood ramrod straight but submissively before her, as she must have seen so many in her time.
“Voves,” I said. “So you bring voves into Vallia.”
She jumped as though I had struck her.
Her naked left hand struck up before her face. The fingers extended. She wore no rings. Her nails were trimmed and polished, unpainted, neat. That left hand clawed at the air in reflex so automatic it left her gasping.
“Yes, Ros,” I said.
To give her credit she did not gasp: “You!” like some ignoramus of a heroine from one of the operettas of the flea-pits of Vondium. I enjoy operetta. She lowered that lethal left hand, naked of its lethal weapon, and gazed on me and her look passed from astonishment through anger to a brooding puzzlement. Then:
“What am I to do with you?”
“Nothing. It is what I am to do with you. Boy!” I turned to the lad, who was not yet full grown, a dimpled handsome boy wearing a rose-colored tunic and with a pretty little dagger swinging from silver chains at his waist. His brown Vallian hair tumbled in locks about his ears. “Boy! Pull out that carpet -
that long wide one with the silken tassels and spread it out on the floor.”
She knew at once.
“You would not dare!”
“How much do you hate me, Ros?” I kept to this name of hers, instead of Dayra, out of an instinctive feeling for the moment, where Ros the Claw was at home and Dayra not.
“Hate you? More than you can imagine — more than the whole world can encompass!” She had not moved since that first instinctive gesture. Her face — beautiful, ah, yes, beautiful and passionate, willful, stubborn, marked with a pride I could sigh over, and marked, also, with a vicious sadness I found desolating — her face bore now the high flush of a controlled anger. “Are you not deserving of all the hate and all the contempt of the whole wide world?”
“Yes.”
Her hand went to her throat, above the rim of the black leathers. She was surprised. “But-”
“Turn around, Ros the Claw, and I will fasten up your wrists. Stand, boy!” For the lad made to draw his toy dagger.
The footfall at my back was soft. It was not soundless. I should not speak to you had that footstep been soundless. I ducked and turned and the drexer was out and the giant who slashed a giant sword at me staggered on with the violence of his blow. He was quick. Off balance, before I could get back and the drexer into him he swung around, the giant sword sweeping. I hurdled it and landed cat-footed and so faced him.
Well, he was big. He was broad and wide and bulky and he went up and up and up, his thatch of straw-yellow hair overtopping me by seven good inches. He wore a bronze-studded leather kax, and arm-bands of beaten gold, and a war-kilt of ochre and bronze, pteruges which swung to his knees. His sandals would have carried a landing party from ship to shore. And his sword — massive, thick through and wide, with a solid pommel shaped like a zhantil-head — that sword was like no other I had seen on Kregen. I rather fancied it would be slow, even for him, even with his enormous muscles. Dayra laughed her silver tinkle.
“You have not met Brun before. I think the meeting opportune.” She was enjoying this. “Do not slay him Hyr Brun. His mangy hide has a certain value in certain quarters. We will grow fat on his profit.”
Despite the gross proportions of that sword, Brun carried it one-handed and the hilt was close, not fashioned for two-handed work, not even for hand-and-a-half. I took three quick backward steps. Brun’s cheerful face, open, mellow, clean-shaven and with a few spots on one cheek, broke into a delighted smile. His reactions were those of a cat stalking a mouse. The drexer snapped away into the scabbard. I reached around.
“So, master, you give in?” Brun’s voice carried a clarity of sound amazing, until you realized the enormous cathedral-cavity of his lungs. “That is wise of you. The mistress is to be obeyed in all things.”
“I don’t know where you got him, Ros,” I said, as I put my hand on the hilt of the Krozair brand. “But I’d like to make friends with a thousand or so. What a bonny regiment they would make for Vallia!”
