“You affront me, Obolya. But, as I do not wish to deprive you of your few remaining teeth, black and stinking though they be, I will refrain from fighting you now.”
The crowd roared at this and Naghan the Paunch came running up, sweating, starting to yell and drive us back to our duties. But Obolya waved him down and Naghan, seeing how the wind blew, took himself off, sweating even more over the safety of the caravan he had contracted to protect. The crowd roared again as Obolya threw down his spear and crouched. He used a large and variegated collection of foul Makki-Grodno oaths. He advanced on me to, as he informed me with great relish, tear my head off and stuff it between my knees.
He wouldn’t kill me, as he knew I would not kill him. This was a bull moose confrontation, to decide who was who in the hierarchy of the caravan guards.
I handed the longbow to Pando. “Hold it off the ground, Pando. The bow is more valuable than this kleesh.”
A kleesh is violently unpleasant, repulsive, stinking — and the name was guaranteed to drive Obolya like a goad.
His infuriated roar was quite up to the standard of a leem caught in a pit. He charged.
He sought to grapple me to his breastplate and, holding me there, bend me back until I cried quarter. I stepped to one side and drove my fist into his jaw — and Obolya was not there. His speed was surprising. He hit me higher on the chest than he’d intended, because I moved; and in that I was lucky, for a blow from those massive arms would have taken my breath.
“Dray!” yelled Pando, mightily excited.
I did not deign to rub my chest, where the dint spread a pain I ignored. This time I rushed — halted, with a twist — took the blow on my upraised forearm — smashed Obolya in the breadbasket — drove him to a knee — chopped down on the back of his neck — and so laid him on the grass, insensible. Someone let out a screech. Someone else was swearing by the gross Armipand. Another was laughing. In truth I had welcomed the exercise and now I regretted hitting Obolya hard enough to knock him out. A little more of fisticuffs would have suited me, then, for I was strangely slow in getting back to my usual form. The Phokaym and the Klackadrin had drained more from me than even I realized. Pando bent and retrieved a yellow object from the grass. He held it out to me, holding it gingerly.
“This fell from your loincloth, Dray, when you fought.”
I took it. It was a six-inch fang I had taken from the jaw of a Phokaym as a memento. About to stuff it back, I stopped. Pando was looking at it with undisguised curiosity.
“What is it, Dray? It looks like — like a risslaca fang.”
If I told him what it truly was, he wouldn’t believe. No one who did not know me, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, would or could believe.
“It’s a risslaca tooth, Pando. Here.” I tossed it to him. “Keep it as a memento of the fight. Boys collect anything — your friends won’t have anything to match that for a space, I’ll wager.”
Pando took it eagerly. But, turning it over in his hands, he said: “Young Enky has a risslaca fang almost as big. And Wil had a claw he said his father cut off a risslaca himself.”
I was, as you may imagine, duly cut down to size.
Pando went babbling on about the fight. I took my bow and nocked an arrow — for Naghan the Paunch only half jested — and resumed my station. Guards who had felt Obolya’s fist were helping him up. I saw him shake his head, looking dazed, and he dragged his feet as they helped him along. All this time the caravan had not halted, and we were well into the outer cultivated areas surrounding Pa Weinob. I said, “Don’t let your mother hear you singing The Bowmen of Loh,’ Pando. You’re only nine.”
At his reproachful glance, I went on, “As for me, it is a fine song, and you may sing it as you will. I do not think anyone else will tell you to stop.”
“By the glorious Pandrite, they will not, Dray!”
A shouting at the head of the caravan followed by a series of shrieking roars heralded fresh trouble. I doubled up past the plodding calsanys, but by the time I reached the van the problem had been solved. The zhantil had been slashed to death by many thrusts from the broad-bladed spears of the advance guard. This zhantil was of moderate size, about the length of a leem, although his massive mane and forelegs lent much greater weight to his foreparts than has the weasel-shaped leem. He was magnificently banded in tiger-stripes of glowing umber and ruby, and his richly golden mane fell about him. His blood pumped out to foul all that rich and gaudy marking. I felt sorry for the beast, and I know many of the caravan felt as I did. Although, of necessity, we must defend ourselves from zhantils when they attacked us, we did not feel for them the loathing and determination to destroy with which we regarded leems. Naghan the Paunch, puffing, rolled up and at once began berating the guards.
“Fools! Imbeciles! Look at the pelt! Aie, aie — that would have brought many dhems had you not slashed it to pieces!”
An archer guard, one Encar the Swarthy, cursed and said, “We slashed it, good Naghan, because it was trying to slash us!”
“Well,” persisted Naghan, wiping his forehead and neck, “you might have slashed with a little more care not to spoil the pelt.”
Pando and I looked at each other, and Pando broke first, and held his belly and roared. Some of the other guards and drovers, knowing Naghan the Paunch, chuckled at the jest. I said, “Naghan — will you spare a portion of the pelt — a trifle — to give Pando here a fine new tunic?
Remember, he is the son of Tilda the Beautiful.”
Naghan put a foot into the stirrup of his zorca, who sniffed once at the zhantil, and finding it smelling dead, thereafter ignored it. He twisted around, his paunch straining that brilliant blue cummerbund.
“A tunic for Pando? Of zhantil skin? Ho — I think Tilda of the Many Veils would like that. Ay! She would part with a whole amphora of the best wine of Jholaix for such a zhantil tunic for her adored son!”
Jholaix, I knew, was the extreme northeastern country of Pandahem, which island is split up into a number of nations of the Pandaheem, and, further, I knew Jholaix wine to be scarce, dear, and extremely potent and pleasant to the tongue.
“You mercenary old rascal, Naghan the Paunch!” I said.
But he merely mounted his zorca, with an almighty belch, and winked down at me, whereat I nodded and said, “Done.”
Between us, Pando and I took enough of the zhantil skin to make him a fine tunic, and, also, I cabbaged enough to make a belt for him, also. I would pay the cost of the amphora of Jholaix wine — and, thereby, put back the time when I could buy a passage out of Pa Mejab. But, looking at the rosy glory of Pando’s young face, and the sparkle of sheer delight in his eyes, I knew my Delia of the Blue Mountains would forgive me.
Zair knows, she had much for which to forgive me. .
Naghan’s servant, a one-eyed shaven-headed Gon, remained with us to take the rest of the skin and the mane, all of which, by virtue of his office, were the property of Naghan. The caravan had gone perhaps a little farther on than was altogether advisable by the time we had finished, and I made Pando step out smartly. The bloody pelt, rolled, I slung over my left shoulder.
The shout for help, when it reached me, made me whirl about and fling the pelt down and draw my bow fully.
There was no need immediately for violence.
The man who crawled toward us from a clump of missal trees was smothered in blood, and the long ax he bore glistened with gore. He tried to stand up to run toward us, but collapsed and fell. He twitched once and then lay still.
“Dray!” yelled Pando.
“Pick up the pelt, Pando. Go back to the caravan — and hurry!” I shouted at the one-eyed Gon. “Run, too! Warn Naghan — the caravan is attacked!”
For, beyond the man collapsed in his own blood and that of his enemies, I could see the wolfish shapes of halflings riding preysanys coursing toward the caravan, their fleet forms half-hidden by the missals. The opaz glitter from the twin suns speared back blindingly from their brandished weapons. In scant seconds they would be upon the caravan.
I loosed at the nearest rider and then slung the bow, ran toward the fallen man, and hoisted him upon my back. He was incredibly tall and thin. As I lifted him his eyes opened and he gasped. His right hand did not relax its
