“Ha, Fropo! I have you now!”
“Hold off! Hold off! I’ll slice your hair!”
“You dare!”
And with the speed of a striking chavonth the big apim, his yellow hair coruscating about his head in the light, leaped and struck — and the sword hovered an inch from the Fristle’s throat.
“D’you bare the throat?”
“Aye, may Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor pardon me, Dav. I bare the throat.”
With a great bellow of good-natured laughter the apim whipped his sword away and clapped a meaty hand around the Fristle’s golden-furred shoulders. “You let me best you, Fropo, by thinking of my hair. It never gets in my eyes — ever.”
Now they were at rest the two looked an oddly assorted couple, the Fristle and the apim. The apim, this Dav, was a splendidly built man, bulging with muscle; but I fancied his beginnings of an ale-gut might slow him down in a season or so if he did not temper his homage to Ben Dikkane. So looking at these two as they snatched up towels to wipe the sweat away I saw reflections in the brilliant polish of the breastplate. The Och had dropped his piece of bread and bent to retrieve it. In the polished kax I saw four distorted figures. One was Rapa, one Brokelsh, and two were apims. The Rapa lifted his hand and light splintered.
Even as I turned sharply away prepared to duck in the right direction, the big apim called Dav poised his sword and threw. It hissed through the air. It buried its point in the Rapa’s breast, smashing through his leather jerkin, crunching into his bones, spouting blood.
In the next instant I had drawn and was running upon the Brokelsh and his apim comrades. With a clang the blades crossed. I was aware of the Fristle, Fropo, and the apim, Dav, running up. Somewhere, someone had shouted: “’Ware your back, dom!”
The Rapa was done for, the dagger spilled into the dust. His viciously beaked face lay against the earth. But as my sword felt the savage blows of these would-be stikitches, I felt a new and wholly unexpected sensation — an unwelcome and treacherously deadly emotion.
I recalled that last fight with Mefto, and the way he had bested me. My blade faltered. The apims had sized me up and were pressing hard and somehow and, I think of its own volition, my thraxter leaped to parry their blows. But I saw again those five lethal blades of Mefto flashing before my eyes. My throat was dry. I leaped and slashed the blade about and caught the Brokelsh in the side. The Brokelsh are a squat-bodied race of diffs, and he staggered and recovered and came for me again. Then Fropo’s sword switched in and took the Brokelsh in play, Dav took one of the apims, and I was left to face the last. Whatever my emotions had been, however the feelings had scorched through my brain, I felt the old secrets flowing along my arm and through my wrist and into my hand. I turned the sword over and beat and twitched and so lunged, and stepped back.
Fropo and Dav were standing looking at me. The Brokelsh and the other apim were coughing their guts out.
“You were a mite slow, dom,” said Dav, in his affable way. “You need to sharpen up.”
“Yes,” I said. I took a breath. “My thanks-”
“Against them? The apim I took I know. Naghan the Sly, he was called. Look.” Dav bent and ripped away the big blue favor. Under it the hard yellow showed. “They tried to cowp you from the back, the yetches. Well, they’ll never report back to Mefto the Kazzur, may he rot in Cottmer’s Caverns.”
I said, “My thanks again. But I do not think they could have known you — who know them — would be here. They would not have been so bold.”
“Right, dom. They would not. And,” Here his big smile burst out. He wore a little tufty beard bisecting his chin, and he was burly, no doubt of that, genial. “And no Lahal between us. I am Dav Olmes. Lahal. This is Fropo the Curved.”
“I am Jak. Lahal, Dav Olmes. Lahal, Fropo the Curved.”
“And now I need three stoups of best ale, one after t’other,” quoth Dav. “Instanter, by the Blade of Kurin.”
So I knew he was a swordsman, and we went into the courtyard and found the ale and washed the dust away down our throats. And, for me, Dray Prescot known as Jak, the dust went down bitter with unease.
No need to ask where the sword with which Dav had made such pretty play had come from. The little Och was wailing away and scrabbling around picking up the scattered items of the harness that Dav had ripped to pieces from its hangings on the post. The beautifully polished kax had fallen with a crash. The gilt helmet with the brave blue feathers still rolled about, like a balancing act. Now Dav threw the sword at the Och, who caught it with the unthinking skill of the man who spends his life with weapons, free or slave.
“Thank you, notor, thank you,” chattered the Och.
“That,” said Fropo, “was the kov’s own blade.”
“Aye. And very fine, too. Now where is this ale?”
“The Och called you notor,” I said. Notor is the usual Hamalian way of saying lord. We say jen in Vallia. Before Dav had recovered from his gutsy laugh at my words, Fropo, with sudden seriousness, said:
“Aye. This is Dav Olmes, the Vad of Bilsley.”
A vad is a high rank of nobility indeed, and they had mentioned a kov. I said, “And the kov?”
Fropo sucked through his teeth. “Konec Yadivro, the Kov of Brugheim.”
Ineldar the Kaktu could have told me I was going to see a kov, by Krun!
Dav had found the ale and after he had demolished the first stoup in two swallows, he said: “The kov and I do not parade our ranks here in Jikaida City. We have work to do that-” Here he took the opportunity of destroying the second stoup. Then: “By this little fracas I take it you have run afoul of Prince Mefto the Kazzur the yetch?”
“Aye.” I told them I had fought Mefto, and lost, and had been saved by the drikingers. They expressed the opinion that I must be somewhat of a bladesman after all, not to have been slain in the first pass or two. And, I knew, I had stood like a loon, shaking, when I had crossed swords with these stikitches. Kov Konec and his comrades had reached Jikaida City a few days earlier in a caravan whose master was Inarartu the Dokor, the twin brother of Ineldar the Kaktu, and this explained Ineldar’s knowledge, I thought.
The kov turned out to be a strong, frank-faced man with charming manners. I formed the opinion that he placed great reliance on the opinions and advice from Dav. Their estates, those of Brugheim and Bilsley, lay in Mandua, a country immediately to the west of Mefto’s Shanodrin. At once I realized the rivalry existing, and determined that it had nothing to do with me. Mefto could go hang; Vallia counted for me, and nowhere else. I was wrong there, of course.
However, I did take the opportunity in conversation of remarking that I knew a Bowman of Loh who swore that shafts fletched with the blue feathers of the king korf were superior to any other. I thought it tactful not to mention that Seg had also revised his opinion and had been heard to admit that the rose-red feathers of the zim- korf of Valka were as good. He wouldn’t admit, as many a bowman felt, that they were superior.
“You know about the king korf, then, Jak?”
“A little. Not enough, kov.”
“You call me Konec, Jak, here in Jikaida City.”
“Konec.”
“You have no love for Mefto?”
“He bested me. It was a fair fight-”
“A man with four arms and a tail?”
It rankled; but I had to say it, if only to show myself that I was not blinded by self-esteem. “It was not that, Konec. He is just simply superb. I think, perhaps, with other weapons he might… But it would be a brave man who would go up against him, man to man.”
“Aye,” said Fropo, and he riffled his whiskers.
“His ambitions are overweening. He must be stopped before he brings ruin to all the Dawn Lands. It is here in Jikaida City that we stand the best chance, paradoxical though that may appear.”
Dav chipped in to say, “If you are with us, Jak-”
I said, “There is the story in the old legends, true or false who can say after thousands of seasons? The legend of Lian Brewis and his enchanted brush. He was the artist for the gods, he could draw and paint so beautifully that his creations came alive, and peopled the world, and what the gods spoke of, Lian Brewis created
