was still sore and vengeful, still filled with resentment. I sat down, and watched as Mefto went to work.
Tobi the Knees stood next in line. Mefto declared his move and pounced. He did not slay Tobi in a simple quick passage as he could have done. He toyed with him, and feigned alarm that he was under pressure, and poor Tobi thus drawn on pressed hard, and was cut, and then cut again, and so, all bewildered and uncomprehending, was sliced into pieces.
I suppose the old intemperate Dray Prescot would have leaped up and gone hurling forward. He’d have swatted the flying arrows away in the old fashion as the Krozairs of Zy do. But I do not think that maniac of a fighting man would have lived to reach Mefto the Kazzur, let alone have had time to cross swords with him.
The Dray Prescot that was me sat lumpen on the bench. But a change did come over me. As the remains of Tobi were carried away and the blue and yellow sand was sprinkled I felt I would not wait too long. And the game went badly for us. Our Kataki came up against Mefto, and his tail sliced this way and that, emptily, and Mefto laughed and his own tailhand gripped the Kataki’s bladeless tail as he sank his thraxter into his belly.
But our Chulik fought well, and dispatched his men, and Yasuri recalled him. We were being pressed back now, and over the lines of blue and yellow men the yellow of Mefto’s pieces vaulted long into our home drins. That unique vaulting move in Jikaidish is zeunt, and the Yellows were zeunting in on us with a vengeance.
The carrying chair pressed close to Yasuri, and the two ladies argued long and fiercely over their next move, and the water dripped in the clepsydra and time fleeted away. The Blues out there began to cast anxious eyes toward the water-clock. The water dripped. The ladies conferred. Some of the pieces began to beat their swords against their shields. The hollow drumroll made no difference to the ladies. Still they talked. And the water dripped.
We all saw the long lenken arm of the gong lift ready to descend with a resonant boom against the brazen gong. Then a purple wisp of gossamer and a flash of spritely legs and a girl was off to order the move. It was made before the gong struck. But even as the Chuktar ordered to move complied, the gong crashed out — too late.
“Well,” said Bevon next to me. “I do not wish to be on the board if the ladies do that again.”
“Nor me, by Odifor!” quoth the Fristle next to us on the bench. Sweat stank on the air, and both ladies used perfume bottles. Move followed move, and it was clear that Mefto had sized up the play and was ruthlessly pushing everything forward, not caring for finesse, just using the superior skills of his fighting men. Our ranks thinned. It was soon perfectly clear that we were going to lose, for a set-up was approaching in which the Yellow Pallan could sweep down in a long zeunt and coming off the vault turn sharply and so pin the Princess. Yasuri saw it and was helpless. Her every move was beaten by superior swordplay.
Yes, I know — this was an example of the futility of Kazz-Jikaida, and a confirmation of the pure Jikaida player’s views.
But, do not forget, this was Death Jikaida. As the final move in Mefto’s play was made, a long and satisfied sigh rippled up from the terrace. The men and women up there, sipping their delicate wines, perfumed lace at their noses, appreciated what they were seeing.
Prince Mefto, acting as the Yellow Pallan, made the last zeunt in person. He came off the vault opposite the Princess and his next move would capture her. She threw in our Chulik. He did well, he fought bravely; but he died. He died on Mefto’s blade.
Now it was Yellow’s move. As the winning defender, Mefto could not replace himself; but everyone present knew he had no intention of doing that. He was unmarked. Glitteringly in the sunshine he stood there, a golden figure of superb poise and accomplishment. He made his move. In a loud, ringing voice, he called: “Pallan captures Aeilssa. Hyrkaida! Do you bare the throat?”
Yasuri drew herself up, a diminutive figure yet shining and oddly impressive in her long white gown with the tall blue feathers nodding over her head.
“I do not bare the throat!
The Princess’s Swordsman!
Her prerogative, available only in Kazz-Jikaida, and she had taken it — as, indeed, she must. Mefto knew that. He smiled. We all saw that smile, small and tight and filled with genuine pleasure. Mefto was a bladesman who loved to fight, who enjoyed his work, and who had never met his master. The man who had been waiting all this time as the Princess’s Swordsman started up. His face was green. He was apim. His eyes protruded grotesquely, and glistened like gouged-out eyes on a fishmonger’s slab. With a shriek he threw his shield away and ran. He had no idea where he was running. He just fled from horror.
In a blundering crazed gallop he ran over the blue and yellows and the long Lohvian shaft skewered him through the back and another pierced him through the throat and as he fell a third punctured into and through one of those ghastly staring eyes.
His shield still rocked on its face in the mingled sunslight.
Bevon stood up.
“I think I shall see what I may do against this-”
I pulled him by his blue breechclout.
“Stay, Bevon the Reckless!”
So it was I, Dray Prescot, Prince of Onkers, who stepped forward and picked up the fallen shield with its proud marks of the Princess’s Swordsman and walked straight and purposefully onto the blue and yellow squares of the board of Death Jikaida to face a man I knew had the beating of me in swordplay.
Chapter Twenty-one
Traditionally in Kazz-Jikaida whenever the Princess called on her Swordsman to fight for her the drums rolled. Black and white checkered tabards, black and white checkered drum cloths, all rippled and flowed as the drummers plied their drumsticks. The rataplan hammered out. Long thunderous rolls and flourishes, repeated and repeated, roared and boomed over the Jikaida board. And I walked forward, almost in a dream, feeling the blood in my head and the weight of the shield and the heft of the sword and the grip of the sand beneath my naked feet.
These were physical feelings. They bore in on me. They were tangible and real, like the sweat that beaded my forehead and trickled down my face from under the reed-laurium, like the taste of blood and sweat on the air. Physical, material impressions: the glitter of burnished steel, the gloating faces of the privileged onlookers as they crowded from their chairs to catch a closer look at this climactic butchery, the waft of a tiny breeze on my heat- soaked face — how refreshing that breeze, how vividly it brought back pungent memories of other days, of the quarterdeck of a seventy-four, of the scrap of decking of a swifter, a swordship, and the wind in my face and all the seas of two worlds! But I was pent in this stone-walled enclosure, this amphitheatre of death, and I recalled the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, and felt again the concussion of blows given and taken, and the leem’s tail and the blood, and all the time as these jangling memories sparked through my head so I walked quietly and steadily out over the blue and yellows to take up my position beside the lady Yasuri.
“
“I am here, lady,” I said, and she turned, and saw me.
“Jak. Fight well. Fight well to the death-”
“Aye, lady, I shall fight as well as I am able and as Zair strengthens my sinews and gives cunning to my fist. And to the death, as it seems. But, lady, I do not fight for you.”
She flinched. What she had thought I do not know. But she flinched back, and a look of pain crossed her face.
“This is a game to you, lady. A mere pastime, lady. So that you may wear the diadem of triumph, lady. But the drums roll and blood will be spilled and men will die, and not for your sake, lady.”
The curtains of the carrying-chair rustled back. The ivory white face looked out and the glory of the suns caught in the red Lohvian hair. “Still your tongue, tikshim. You are condemned to fight, so fight and do not chatter.”
I regarded her as I stood there, waiting for the drumroll to end. I did not look at Mefto — not yet. Ling-li-
