and the Khamorros were throwing people about like ninepins. Against the high khamsters our people would have had a more tricky time; but Turko waded in with all the venom engendered by being hung up like a chicken on a meat hook, and I took my part, and in short order we broke back through the door and ran down the stairs in a shouting, laughing mob. No one offered to stop us as we ran out of The Wristy Grip into the pink radiance of the Maiden with the Many Smiles and the rosy golden light of She of the Veils.
Chapter fifteen
The experiences through which I had gone since escaping from the Humped Land formed a distinct pattern in my head. Finding Turko was not quite the last knot of that pattern. He was, of course, unwilling to leave the Golden Prychan and his wrestling comrades until the business of Andrinos and Saenci had been settled. But, for all that — and I warmed to the idea — he was ragingly eager to return to Vallia. Born in Herrelldrin though he had been, trained as a Khamorro, rising to a high kham, he now made his home in Valka and regarded himself as a Vallian. Well, did not I, also?
The last knot in this chain would be, of course, Hyrklana.
And that must wait until we had returned to Vallia.
“He has had a fright, that Jimstye Gaptooth,” quoth Kimche. “But if you leave us, Turko, we face a hard time of it in the contests.”
This was a matter I must not interfere in and must leave to Turko.
“When I joined the consortium of the Golden Prychan,” said Turko, and he spoke slowly and with gravity, “I was beholden to you. But I did warn you, fair and square-”
“Yes. You said you would have to leave us one day-”
“And that day is now. Black Algon must be made to see reason.”
“I have gold,” I said.
They all stared at me.
“But I will not interfere.”
Andrinos, one arm about Saenci as we talked in the bamboo-lined snug, said, “If we win free, I will go with Turko.” He did not know where Turko was bound. Saenci would go with him. “And for the gold -
that I will earn and repay and thank you with all my heart.”
I nodded.
With a lift of her Khibil head, Saenci said, “Tell Black Algon I will never return to him. If he refuses the gold, tell him I shall surely kill myself. Then he will have neither gold nor me.” She made herself smile.
“And he is very avaricious.”
So that was the way of it. Turko said to me, “Andrinos is a lucky fellow.”
And I said, “Yes.”
Now Turko the Shield is an extraordinarily handsome man. With the superb athletic build of a Khamorro and that brilliant profile, he must have wreaked havoc in many a female heart. When he married and settled down, then, I judged, a shadow would come over the bright days of many and many a beauteous maid.
And, as you shall hear, I had the confounded problem of Korero the Shield to attempt to solve… Perhaps it was just blind luck; perhaps it was fate; perhaps it was some beneficent god or spirit of Kregen taking a hand, but what fell out heartened every one of us. On the very day Turko, Andrinos, and Saenci prepared to walk with me up that lonely, jungly path, the Khibil’s gold having been paid over and her manumission processed very smoothly, three fearsome Khamorros arrived at the fairground and were immediately taken into the consortium of the Golden Prychan. Kimche rubbed a thick hand over his glistening yellow pate.
“Now may Likshu the Treacherous smile, doms! Our comrade Turko leaves us and we replace him with three of his compatriots!”
So, laughing, filled with good cheer, we set off for the flier hidden away in the jungle. Fliers are rare craft in Pandahem. Andrinos and Saenci walked on ahead of us, close together, so I was able to have a private word with Turko as we followed. When I expressed myself as being surprised that so many Khamorros came to Mahendrasmot, he smiled that ironical, infuriating damned smile of his.
“Mahendrasmot is well known. The fairground attracts people from far away. And, Dray, as you saw, the Khamorros were not high khams.”
“And you?”
He repeated what I had heard from our comrades of their shattering surprise when they had been sorcerously hurled back to their homelands. Turko had begun to work his way back to Vallia and had bogged down here, out of cash, and taking the fairground job to earn his passage money on. At this time there was no real volume of trade between Pandahem under Yantong and our sections of Vallia, apart from smuggling. He would have landed in an inhospitable section of Vallia, and he told me how concerned he had become at the rumors and stories out of Vallia.
He was avid for news. I told him of the changed circumstances in the island empire, how the old emperor was dead, and of how I had been fetched to be the new. I said we must all act as our consciences dictated, and there were new men in the world, and Vallia was most miserably divided up and many of her people cruelly mistreated by Yantong and his minions, by riffraff, flutsmen, aragorn, and by the Hamalese.
“There are stern battles ahead, Turko-”
“And I shall be there, with my shield.”
“It is in my mind to make you-” And then I stopped myself. I had been going to say I would create Turko a kov, that exalted rank similar to that of duke, as a preparation for broaching the subject of Korero. I saw that as contemptible.
I said, “I have fought in a few battles since we parted, Turko. I have a fine Kildoi to guard my back with his shields. You will meet Korero the Shield.”
His eyebrows lifted and he half-turned. Then, in stony silence, he walked on up the jungly path. Andrinos and Saenci were laughing. The suns burned down.
I ploughed on, my throat on fire. “Since you will have no truck with steel and edged weapons, in which you have my admiration, I think it right-”
Then he said, “So you are casting me off?”
“My Val!” I said. “Sink me! Of course not! You are a fambly to think it, let alone say it!”
“So what is in your mind for me, then, Dray? Or should I call you emperor, majister-?”
“Do you wish to try a few falls, dom? Listen, and shut that black-fanged winespout!”
Then he laughed. “You are the same, at any rate, thanks be to Morro the Muscle!”
“Seg and Inch are both kovs of Vallia. I see no reason why you should not be a kov also. I shall arrange this. And, as a kov-”
“You can get rid of me and my shield at your back in the day of battle?”
“Not so. Oh, no! When we fight the Hamalese, as we must, and the clansmen, and the riffraff tearing the heart out of our country, I shall count on you, Kov Turko, to be in the thick of it, as usual.”
He kicked a jungly frond that tendriled across the path.
“And, being a kov, and high and mighty some of them are, as we both know-” He stopped speaking then and scowled.
We walked for a space in silence.
Khamorros have reflexes as quick as thought. Turko’s hand whipped out and his fist cupped a sparkling fat, blue insect. It was harmless. It buzzed in the prison of Turko’s fingers for a space; then he opened his hand and the fly buzzed free.
“Yes,” he said. “Seg is a kov and Seg is damned unhappy with his kovnate. Oh, Thelda loves it-” He saw my face. “What? Is Thelda dead? What has chanced with Seg?”
Very firmly, I lied to him. “Thelda is reported dead, seeing no one has seen her in Vondium since we were all parted. Seg is getting over it.” As I spoke I realized these were not lies, for Seg’s wife, Thelda, although not dead
