Ten paces from me stood two Khamorros. Both were large, superbly muscled, fit and tough, and both stood with hands on hips regarding me as they might a plate of palines. Around their heads both wore wide bands of soft risslaca-leather and again a mixed assortment of objects hung down.
“They are only Khamorros, Turko,” I said, prodding. I wanted to get his spirit back.
“The reed-syples,” said Turko, in a strangled voice. “The headbands,” he added, for my benefit. “These are great khams, both. Without your weapons, Dray Prescot, you are a doomed man.”
Perhaps there was no mocking taunt in his voice. Perhaps I read into his words what my own guilty conscience put there. I do not know, but I acted as the most callow and vainglorious onker of a boaster could act.
“Great khams, Turko? I do not believe I need mere steel weapons to deal with them.”
And I pitched the two swords onto the stone floor, where they rang like tocsin bells, and swung to face the two Khamorros, my hands empty.
Chapter Twenty
“You great nurdling fool!”
Turko’s anguished cry racked up from the foundations of his being. Now he gave himself up for lost. Rapechak the Rapa shouted: “Now by Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls! You are a dead man, Dray Prescot!”
Saenda screamed almost incoherently: “You horrible onker, Dray! I’ll never forgive you for this!”
And Quaesa simply burst into a long howling shriek.
The two Khamorros stared as though they could not believe their eyes. One of them, the slightly smaller of the two, even went through a quick routine of flexing his muscles and rippling his strength at me. He looked up at the naked bodies of the girls and, again letting that stupid bravado overwhelm me, I clapped my hands.
“Excellent, nulsh,” I said. “A great performance. I hope you do as well when your head rolls into the north corner and your body rolls into the south.”
Oh, yes. It shames me now when I look back at that long-gone day, and seeing the whole scene as though brightly lit upon a stage, recognize my own youthful headstrong passions and my own stupidity! I was a bit of a maniac in my younger days, and here I’d been boasting to myself that I had been conquering that hasty arrogance of mine, that harsh intolerance, that desperate desire to kick and smash anyone and anything that smacked of authority and sadism and attempts to put me down. I had bowed the knee and kowtowed and done the full-incline — and here it had all ended with as foolhardy an act of onkerishness as any two worlds witnessed.
For these were great khams. They had reached enormously elevated heights in the hierarchy of the Khamorros, their khams sky-high. They were of a different syple from Turko — had they been of his own syple they might have rescued him — and they were as contemptuous of him as of me. They thought to make of it a sport, and, not without a certain charming politeness, debated one with the other who should have first crack at me. Remembering the sage counsel of old Zinki during those painful sessions of combat on the island of Zy in the Eye of the World, I was content to let them come to me. The shorter, the one who had gone through the quick exercise drill, stepped forward. He had yielded because he was that much fractionally the lesser of the two, as he admitted. “I am Boro, and I am a great kham.” He went on then to describe himself and his renown, his attainments and his exploits. At each word poor Turko moaned, and I heard him say: “By the Muscle! You have picked the wrong men to demonstrate to me, Dray! They are masters! Great khams!”
When this Boro had finished he stood waiting.
So, to humor him, and because if I did not end this farce soon guards with real weapons would burst in, I said, “I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.”
If he didn’t understand, as I didn’t understand all his titles and accomplishments, that was his loss. Then, very swift and deadly, he was upon me.
I did what I had planned to do. . almost. .
He was quick, and he was strong and he was very, very good. I felt his blows. I could feel it when he hit me. I slid his rush, for, of course, it was no blind-chunkrah rush, and he laid a hand on my arm and I had to do a quick double-twist and near break his fingers before he would let go. He stepped back and a great pleased smile lit his face.
“So you know the arts, Dray Prescot! I shall enjoy this!”
This time I managed to deflect his attack, and for a short space we twisted, body to body, doing all the things I had no desire to do. Everything he did I matched, but I was in defense all the time except for a single opportunity and that ended with Boro going up in the air and landing on his shoulder blades. He roared as I jumped on him, and rolled away, so that I missed and gouged the stone floor instead. Like a leem he was on his feet, and now his face was dark and congested with anger, which proved that his kham was a trifle shaky.
“I shall tear your limbs off and-” he started.
“Save it, Boro the Boaster! There’s no time!”
We set to again, and again he used all his skill and avoided the grips and blows that would have flattened a lesser man. I could feel my anger at his strong obstinacy boiling up and I had to keep it down. I’d gone into this childish exhibition and now I had to pay the reckoning.
He circled, came in from the side, and I bent and took him and he took me. We rolled on the floor and he tried to break my arm, as he had threatened, and I cross-checked him so that he cried out, shocked at the sudden pain, and managed to break and leap clear. My parting blow hissed past his ear. His comrade, the bigger Khamorro, said, “It seems, Boro, that he bests you.” At which Boro roared his anger. “I am Morgo. I am a greater kham than Boro. You will not escape so easily from me.”
I circled them both, warily, for they were both after me now. I shouted up to Turko, high: “Are all these Khamorros such braggart boasters and such spineless fighters?”
Turko said something, I know not what, and Boro and Morgo charged. I backed swiftly and in a succession of flurries of dodges and weavings, of arm blocks and of kicks, I won free. This could not be allowed to go on. The next time I would have to do something drastic. Old Zinki had laughed, one time, telling us of what Pur Zenkiren had done to a couple of Magdaggian overlords. I had a great affection for the austere Pur Zenkiren, who was Archbold- Elect. If I could pay him the compliment of imitating him, I would do so.
Boro and Morgo split me between them and came in from both sides. I backed again, circling, and my foot hit against a sword where I had tossed it down so contemptuously.
“Pick up your sword, Dray! For the sake of the Muscle, man! Use the weapon you understand! They have only been playing with you!”
If that was true, of course, life would become exceedingly complicated and remarkably interesting in the next mur.
Deliberately, I kicked the sword aside.
Turko moaned.
The two Khamorros flexed their muscles. The sweat stood out on their skins like liquid gold. Working as a team they rushed me again and in a flurry of chops and grips that failed and hooks that barely missed, Boro wrenched away the bandage around my head so that blood flowed down over my face and left eye. I blinked and cursed.
“By the Black Chunkrah! You fight foul!”
They did not answer; they were both panting, their magnificent chests heaving and glistening with sweat. This time, I saw, they meant to finish it. Boro came in a little ahead of Morgo, and he designed, I saw instantly, to feint an attack and then roll under me so that I would fall into the arms of Morgo. When Boro rushed I sidestepped. He came with me and our forearms smashed together and I stepped back. For an instant he had an opportunity, for the distance I had gone seemed to him to be overlarge, giving him the chance of taking two skipping steps and putting in the jagger. This is that blow delivered by the feet with the body wholly off the ground. He chose the double jagger, with both feet. He did it superbly well, and for any ordinary wrestler it would have been the end, for those iron-hard soles of his would have crushed into the chest and knocked all the wind out and smashed the fellow
