out of paint.”
“The story is known over Kregen and is very beautiful,”said Dav. “So-?”
“So when the evil gods grew jealous in their wrath they took up Lian Brewis. He was cut off in full flower, a plump, jolly, wonderful person. And the gods for whom he had created so much beauty arose likewise in their just wrath and placed Lian Brewis as that constellation of stars that adorns the Heavens of Kregen. He can never be forgotten.” I looked at them, at their serious faces, and understood the intensity of their determination to halt Prince Mefto in his career of conquest. “Be sure the gods do not-”
“They will not,” said Konec, and he spoke with power. “You may rest assured on that.”
There was always the chance that the Rapa, the Brokelsh and the two apims had been sacrificed by their master just so that he might infiltrate a spy into the enemy camp. The trick is known. So I was not accepted whole-heartedly all at once, and of course my hesitation in dealing with my opponent added to the suspicion. But Dav was genuine and genial and my mention of the king korf, which was by way of being a secret signal, allayed much of the natural suspicion. They did not think that Mefto had penetrated that far into their schemes.
As for myself, I pondered just why I was here; how could these folk help me back to Vallia?
In the succeeding days I came to know them better and Pompino made the pappattu as my partner. We shifted quarters and Konec placed a room in the hotel of the Blue Rokveil at our disposal alongside the others. We spent the time practicing at swordplay, and, by Zair, I felt I mightily needed that sharpening up. The remembrance of Mefto’s five blades seemed to have mesmerized me. This party from Mandua were here ostensibly to play Jikaida, and Konec was a player of repute. Their intrigues against Mefto were kept very quiet; but if assassination formed part of them, it stood little chance. Mefto was surrounded continually by his brilliant retinue of followers. He lay abed, recovering from his arrow wound. So Dav insisted we go with him to watch a well-touted game of Kazz- Jikaida. It was to be between rival factions of the twin cities, and was the usual Kazz game and not the Death game, that is, the pieces did not face certain death if they lost.
We went along to take our seats in the public galleries of one of the game courts of the Jikaidaderen and I watched the Kazz game — and I was not enthralled. There was a powerful fascination in Kazz-Jikaida, an appeal to deeply hidden emotions and a dark pull on the blood; but I kept seeing the magical blades and the scornful and triumphant face of Prince Mefto the Kazzur before my eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
The game turned out to be the Pallan’s Kapt’s Gambit Declined. That was how the encounter began. Because this was Kazz-Jikaida, the precise and elegantly contrived moves broke down after a time when a piece refused to be taken. The game proceeded interestingly enough, despite that. One swod, a Chulik whose fierce upthrust tusks were banded in silver, fought very well, defeating two Deldars sent against him successively. This upset the right hand drins of the game as far as Yellow was concerned, and pretty soon Blue was sweeping through the center with a line of Deldar-supported swods and pieces. When the two Kapts were brought into play they swept aside a Chuktar and a Hikdar and, but for an interesting contest between a Hyr-Paktun and the Aeilssa’s Swordsman, the game was over. Here in democratic-aristocratic Jikaida City the piece around whose capture the game revolved was called not King or Rokveil but Aeilssa, Princess. Well, I liked the romantic ring of that, and having married a princess and having others of that ilk as daughters, I could not in all conscience find fault. When the game was done, the sand already being raked neatly back into the blue and yellow squares ready for the next game — there being time for two encounters in that afternoon — Dav and I shouldered up to leave. Being Dav, his first thought was to discover the nearest alehouse. With a flagon in his fist and his elbow on the counter, he said, “The pieces fight differently when it is a Death game.”
I nodded, and drank. I was thirsty.
“How often do they-?”
“Very seldom for the public contests. Death-Jikaida is expensive. The inner courts. They are the places for the highest stakes and the most bloody of encounters.”
“I have heard it said,” I remarked, quoting Deb-Lu-Quienyin as we had talked around our caravan fire under the stars of the Desolate Waste, “that there is no skill in Jikaida where the outcome of carefully planned moves can be upset by mere brainless warriors fighting.”
“So they say.” Dav supped companionably. “But Konec says there is skill, albeit of a different kind. There is the skill of sizing up your opponent’s powers and of arranging within the moves to place your best fighters to bear on the weakest of your opponent’s, and of protecting your own lesser pieces.”
“That Chulik swod with the silver-banded tusks-”
“In the next game he will be a Deldar, you mark my words.”
“Chuliks are ferocious fighters. He’ll be a Pallan yet.”
“On the Jikaida board only, though! By Spag the Junct! The blue and yellow sand will drink much blood before they put him away in the balass box.”
Pompino found us then and wanted to catch up with the flagons, and some of Konec’s people arrived, and the alehouse began to liven up. We’d all put in some time in the practice court, and we lived and messed shoulder by shoulder, for Konec paid for everything in the Blue Rokveil with funds provided by contributions from Mandua against Mefto, and I’d practiced in a kind of daze. Dav regarded me as a better than middling swordsman. Pompino he rated much higher. I felt, in the turmoil that I couldn’t plumb, that maybe he was right.
Now, with the flagons being refilled by Fristle fifis, who squealed as they did their work, well-knowing that the customers liked that, Dav broached the question. He opened up the reasons behind what had been going on.
“You are a fighting man, Jak. You are good. You could be better, I feel, if — but then, if we all knew that if, we’d all be Mefto the Bastards, eh?”
“I suppose so.”
“Cheer up, you miserable fambly! I’m offering you a task you should joy in — we fight for Konec in Kazz- Jikaida. Will you join us?”
Pompino, who had just lifted a fresh flagon to his lips, blew a head of froth a clear six feet and into the cleavage of a fifi. She yelped. She put her finger down and wiped — and then she licked the finger, making a face. But she didn’t deceive us. We laughed — even I laughed.
“All right,” I said.
“We-ell,” said Pompino.
“It depends on the size of the game we get into,” Dav said, speaking to Pompino with intent to induce him. “Konec has brought first-class fighters; but we may need many more to make up the pieces. What say you? You know the pay is good, and the inducements offered by the Nine Masked Guardians add up to a handsome sum.”
In Poron Jikaida, which is the smallest size reckoned to be worth the playing, there are thirty-six pieces a side. In Lamdu Jikaida there are ninety pieces a side.
In the end Pompino gave his assent; a qualified assent which, as he said, depended on getting the hell out of this city. We were both of the opinion that the Everoinye, having used our services, would not bother us again for a space and therefore we must use our own efforts to escape. For we regarded it as an escape. “There is no chance I shall stay once Ineldar the Kaktu begins to form his caravan,” said Pompino, and he meant it.
“By Spag the Junct!” burst out Dav. “You eat Konec’s food and sleep under his roof-”
“I shall pay,” said Pompino, and his foxy face bristled. “I shall pay — you will see.”
“Very well. We shall hire swods from the academies. The higher pieces are named. I think you two may be Deldars-”
“What?” Pompino was outraged. “I am a paktun-”
“We have hyr-paktuns with us in this, with the pakzhan.”
Pompino stared furiously at me. I hate to see friends wrangling. “If you could at least give Pompino a decent harness it would-”
