cities. She was a large craft with a high upflung poop and fighting castles amidships and for’ard; but she was not as large an airboat as the enormous skyships of Hamal. But she was from that nation. Her purple and gold flags flew proudly, and in the Kregan custom she flew as many flags as she could cram flagstaffs in along her length.
So I knew who had arrived — not who, as far as name and rank and dignity went — but who in the sense that this was the great one of Hamal who came to talk the Dawn Lands into destruction with Mefto the Kazzur — and, with them, Vallia.
Some faint spark of the old Dray Prescot flared up then. Something that made me say, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy. There was now a voller in Jikaida City. So, perhaps, if I was lucky and bold enough and lived long enough, I had me my means of conveyance back home to Vallia. Feeling ridiculously cheerful I slaked my thirst and then saw Friendly Fodo. I showed him the thraxter I had bought from him. The rivets of the hilt had frayed through the bindings. He made a face and stroked his shiny whiskers.
“Oh, a trifle, dom, a mere trifle, why that can be fixed for you in the shake of a leem’s tail.”
“No doubt. But I have a little more gold now-”
“Ah!”
The cupidity of him was transparent. Well, he had a living to make, and I had a weapon to buy on which my life would depend.
For a hoary old fighting man this dickering over weapons is always a pleasant business, and Friendly Fodo, assured of my gold, entered into the spirit of the occasion. A table was brought and laid with a purple cloth, and tea, ale, miscils and palines appeared, brought in by a slave Xaffer, distant and remote; but willing enough. I sat in the chair and partook of the goodies as Friendly Fodo paraded his wares. No thought entered my head other than that I would buy a new thraxter. Fantasies are for fairy stories, sometimes for grim businessmen of the world, occasionally for poets. The thraxter, your hefty cut and thruster of Havilfar, is adapted to do its work. It is superior, even Vallians will tell you, to the Vallian clanxer. The drexer we had developed in Valka is far superior. I looked at the glittering and lovingly polished blades on the counter. I said, “You are cut off from the world, here in Jikaida City, behind the Desolate Waste-”
“Oh, yes, cut off. But the caravans bring in many strange articles from Havil knows where.”
“There is a new fashion in Hamal,” I said, and immediately added, “That pestiferous rast-nest. They have taken up fighting with a longer, more slender blade — perhaps-?”
He nodded, interested in talking shop.
“Aye, I have heard from the brethren in my craft. Rapiers, they call ’em. Whether they be as quick as they say-” He lifted his shoulders. “But I have not seen one, so cannot say.”
“A pity.”
We talked on, and I ate palines and examined the weapons. The Kregish for sword is screetz. I seldom use it in this narrative, for, like the Kregish for sea and water, it is not adapted to terrestrial ears. The same goes for princess. There are other Kregish words I do not use here for the same reason. At last, seeing I was determined, Friendly Fodo brought out his better wares, blades he valued. These stood in a different class — and their price accordingly. But a fighting man does not care to set a price on the weapons of his trade; how to value your own life in terms of gold?
The best — that is the cardinal rule — the best you can afford.
In the end I selected a thraxter with a finer blade than most. The fittings were plain. There were secret marks on the blade, and Friendly Fodo claimed it had belonged to a kov slain in Death-Jikaida, although he did not offer any explanation of how it had come into his possession. The shop pressed in about me, hung with weapons and armor and glinting with steel and iron and bronze. The air hung heavy with the scent of the violet-yellow heasmon flowers. I took another paline, savoring the rich fruity flavor. The Xaffer brought forward a sturmwood box containing a blade; but a single gentle twirl told me the balance was untrue. This is, despite all, a weakness of the Havilfarese thraxter. When I say the blade of the example I chose was finer, I mean the lines were slightly more slender, the fullering that much more exact. I made up my mind.
“Fodo, can you have this blade fined down a trifle — I can draw you the lines. The curve of the cutting edge, so-” I traced a thumbnail down the blade.
He nodded, twitching his whiskers. “I can have that done in my workshop which is, as everyone knows, the finest in all Jikaida City.”
“Good. If you will bring paper and pen I will draw it out.”
Following my usual custom I had turned the chair as I sat down so that I faced the door. This is a habit, as you know. A shadow moved beyond the panels, and the brass bell chimed. I caught a glimpse of a hard bright yellow tuft of feathers vibrating ahead of the helmet beneath them, and I was out of the chair and back into the shadows of the shop past the counter, pressing up against a reekingly oily kax wrapped about a stray dummy.
The two Shanodrinese swaggered in, throwing their short capes back, laughing, making great play with the rings on their fingers. They wore armor. They guffawed, between themselves, talking of their prince in terms that betrayed respect and obedience but little affection. The two were masichieri, well enough, little better than bandits masquerading as paktuns.
“Hai, Fodo, you lumop! Where is the dagger you repair for me, eh? You useless rast!”
Not, as you will instantly perceive, a pleasant way to talk.
Fodo’s Xaffer bustled forward in that indifferent way that strange race of diffs have, and produced the dagger. It was minutely scrutinized and reluctantly passed as serviceable. It would not have surprised me if these two specimens of Mefto’s guard refused to pay, and broke Fodo’s nose for him if he objected. But they rustled out the coins and made a great show of it, and then turned to leave. I heaved out a sigh of relief. Oh, yes, I, Dray Prescot, hid and ached for these cramphs to begone. You will easily see why. Dav Olmes had cleared up the mess after the death of the four would-be stikitches and nothing further had transpired; but Mefto’s men would still be wondering what had happened to their comrades. They had followed me, and therefore were obeying orders; but Mefto’s men could not know I served Konec, at least, not yet, not until we met.
So they turned to leave and then one of them, the apim with the black moustaches and the lines disfiguring his mouth, saw the spread table, and the miscils crumbled on their plate and the dish of palines. He halted and, idly as I thought, picked up a paline and, as one does, popped it into his mouth. His companion was a Moltingur, one of that race of diffs who, of the size of and not unlike apims, yet are diffs with a horny carapace across their shoulders, atrophied relic of wings, so it is believed. Their faces would be looked on as hideous on Earth, with an eating proboscis and feelers, and faceted eyes that loom large and blank and frighteningly ferocious. His tunnel mouth opened to reveal its rows of needle-like teeth that tore his food for the proboscis to masticate and swallow down. His words were hissed, as all Moltingurs seem to hiss whatever they speak, chillingly.
“You have a customer, Fodo. An honored customer, I think.”
“Aye,” said the apim. “By Barflut the Razor-Feathered, you are right, Trinko.” So by these words I knew he had been a flutsman in his time.
“Just a customer-” began Fodo.
Now it was plain these two thought highly of themselves, as members of the entourage of Prince Mefto of Shanodrin. The clear evidence of the rapid departure of Fodo’s customer must either have puzzled them and aroused their suspicious nature or piqued them because of the fancied slight. Either way, with gentlemen of that kidney, it did not matter. They were insistent on meeting this mysterious customer. If I say, again, in the old way: I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, I would add only that I would say those great words with a kind of sob, a despairing feeling of emptiness. Oh, yes, Dray Prescot could leap out and with drawn sword confront these two cramphs. Dray Prescot would have done that. The Dray Prescot who had not, as Jak the Nameless, fought Prince Mefto the Kazzur — and lost.
The naked thraxter shook in my fist. The blade had not been paid for yet. And the magniloquent thoughts clashed. The piece of paper and the pen lay to hand. What dreams I had had of getting Fodo to fashion this sword into a more perfect instrument of death — and how insubstantial and meaningless they appeared when I could not even leap forward into action and use that new blade!
“Sink me!” I burst out — but silently, to myself.
What might have happened Zair alone knows. I do not. I do remember that the thraxter was no longer shaking, and that I took a half step forward. The world was fined down to the shadows around me and the brilliant figures of those two men in their armor, tall and bright, and the hard yellow favors and feathers.
What might have happened… The apim reached for more palines and he tossed one to Trinko, the
