Nath the Muncible held his rapier down over Delia’s outstretched arm. She panted, heaving with the effort of drawing air into her lungs. Her legs and arms trembled. Her hair swung forward over her face, half-obscuring the fury and desire to kill blazing there.
“Lord! Your sister—”
“Then if you will not, I will!”
Cranchar’s rapier was in his fist. It snouted up.
Delia drew in a painful lungful of air, twisted herself around. Nath’s rapier withdrew. For a horrid instant, as she lay sideways against the table, panting and naked, she thought he would thrust her through.
The next instant, as Cranchar drove forward savagely, she slipped away, fell along the floor, and the dagger remained fast wedged in the table. Cranchar’s rapier hissed past her head.
As she rolled over she saw a pair of thick and hairy legs above her. A bloated belly jutted above. A red face lowered toward her.
“Stay there, slave!”
The man who had ridden her in the race shouted. He shouted hard and high.
“The gold! Lord! I won — the gold you promised!”
Cranchar looked bewildered. His rapier flicked back, ready for another thrust when he could see his target. The slave girl had vanished beyond the table. Now he shook his head.
“The gold? Magero? What gold?”
A bedlam of shouts broke out at this from the men.
Magero hollered louder than all the rest, bloated, red-faced, triumphant, and not to be cheated of the gold he had fairly won.
“The bag of gold for the winner. Lord! I claim my right!”
If she’d had the dagger now she’d have stuck it straight up and Magero would have been less of a man than he was.
But he had told her to stay there, to lie still. Now he was yelling angrily that, by Vox! he’d won the gold promised. He reached for the bag upon the table, near where the dagger jutted.
“My gold!”
Something soft crashed into Delia and she sprawled half-under the table. A naked girl with limbs flailing fell with her and the man riding the girl’s back toppled over them. The rest of the field followed. Most of the girls dragged forward in complete exhaustion. Blood stained the floor in their tracks. One girl, with blonde hair and a heavy body, screamed and screamed as the man riding her whipped her on.
Magero was yelling for his gold. Cranchar was shrieking for the slave wench to be dragged up for him to spit. The girls were crying and sobbing, two or three simply flopping over and sprawling still, and their riders were fiercely arguing that Magero’s mount had cheated. Nath the Muncible appeared.
The whole scene sickened Delia. She felt nauseated.
“You said you do not owe me anything, Alyss. This may be so. I do not stand to suffer for you.” The Muncible’s face was pale, his nostrils pinched. He reached for her and took her shoulder in a firm grip. “Up! And speak small before the lord.”
She was standing, swaying with Nath’s hand on her shoulder. She realized she would probably fall if he had not supported her. That made her think. She had thought very little since she’d first said “No!” to Cranchar the Cranchu.
“The girl won fair and square,” said Nath. “Magero has won the gold, lord. Your sister the kovneva—”
The rapier in Cranchar’s fist glittered in the torchlights. He moved uncertainly, scowling.
“I know, Muncible — and you run in peril—”
Nath let go of Delia’s shoulder.
Instantly, she fell down.
Truth to tell, that collapse was not entirely fake. She felt as though she could not have stood up a moment more. She fell and sprawled on the floor, covering herself, and so lay motionless.
Let the bastards sort this one out!
A considerable commotion persisted, with catcalls and yells boiling up as men argued intemperately among themselves. Delia lay still. Some said she had won fairly, others that she had cheated by standing up.
The man who had come in second struck his girl.
“You stupid shif! Why did not you run?”
The girl held her knees and crooned in pain.
“I could not, master—”
“My gold!” Magero would not be put off.
“Cheat!” shrieked the man he had beaten.
“Say that again—”
“Cheat!”
Magero roared into action. He and the man who had come in second, Naghondo the Squint, tore into each other.
In a wild and unscientific flurry of heavy-handed blows they started to bash each other about the head. Magero landed a pile-driver and Naghondo staggered back, only to yell and spit out a tooth and come windmilling in again. They wrapped their arms about each other, massive hairy bodies fast locked, and fell down, struggling and writhing and trying to throttle each other. Delia lay still.
Nath hoisted her up.
Over the din he shouted: “The slave has fainted. You!” to a scared slave girl, whose pitcher of wine slopped in her terror. “And you!” to another, who dropped her platter of palines. “Take this stupid slave girl to her quarters!
Grak!
”
Helped by Nath, the two girls somehow heaved Delia up and started to carry her off. The fight between Magero and Naghondo rip-roared on. Men ran out from the tables to form a ring and cheer. The girls, trailing blood from their knees, staggered away. The bag of gold lay on the table by Cranchar, the left-hand dagger sticking up at the side. Cranchar stared hotly at Nath and the two slave girls, at Delia’s form as she was carted off, a limp and lovely burden.
“I haven’t forgotten!” he said. He slapped the rapier down. “She will recover from her faint. Then we will see.”
Nath, bent over, hurried on. The two slave girls, whimpering, grasped various portions of Delia’s anatomy and helped.
Swinging back to the fight, Cranchar, his blood up, bellowed his bull roar over the noise. He was caught up at once in the new combat.
“Fight for your gold, Magero! If you win, you win the gold. If you lose, then your mount cheated!” He looked enormous, bloated, scarlet-faced, once more in command. “Let the gods decide!”
Magero’s Gold Piece for his Little Paline
Most of the next day Cranchar spent with his women closeted in the chambers of the tower reserved for his use. His men rampaged within this tower, and the noise broke over the walls and roofs of the fortress like surf driven before a gale. Slaves cleared up the refectory and put the place to rights before the kovneva returned.
Of the other three towers built of stone, one contained Nyleen’s quarters and the small rooms of her handmaids and slaves. The next contained her fighting women bodyguards. The last tower’s contents were unknown to Delia.
She felt humiliated, dirtied, her pride grossly affronted.
She tried to tell herself these were irrational reactions. They left her alone that next day to recover. This was, she surmised vaguely, because Cranchar was either roistering on or sleeping it off, and there was no one left prepared to take action. As for her own feelings, these were murky and passionate.
Some of the girls, apart from the pain in their knees, had accepted the Shishivakka race as a mere part of entertainment, what men expected, and therefore tolerated because there was nothing else they could do. Certainly, and to Delia incongruously, Magero sent up to her by a little slave girl a single gold piece.
“Magero the Obstreperous bids me give you this, Alyss,” said this girl, wiping her nose. She was scrawny, unkempt and as appealing as a cold haddock. The gold piece shone on her dirty palm.
“Put it on the table, Limi,” said Delia. “And go.”
“Do you not send thanks?”
“Get out!”
The door cracked shut. Poor Limi... And, this gold piece in thanks from Magero meant he had won the fight with Naghondo the Squint. He was big enough, the hairy monster.
So then, of course, to add to her woes she had to feel guilty about shouting at poor Limi, who was just a skinny little slave girl. As soon as she was up and about she’d make it up to her; probably an extra helping of whatever was the tastiest dish of the day would soothe Limi’s hurt feelings. Delia was only too well aware that slaves had feelings.
Jumbled up with her own feelings about the race were the problems surrounding this Nath the Muncible. Certainly, when she brought her armies down on this place, this sink of iniquity, why should he not die along with the rest?
He had gone out of his way to afford her what protection he could. He had run perilously close to disaster. If this puffed-up bladder, this Cranchar, had been half the lord he fancied himself, then Nath would be walking around headless. Had Cranchar been of that breed of lord of Kregen who did not lightly tolerate interference with their desires, Nath would be done for.
Only the thought of Nyleen, the kovneva, kept her brother in check. Nath had played on that. Delia found, and with alarmed surprise, that she was actively looking forward to the return to Nyleen.
Almost unimaginable!
During the late afternoon she found strength enough to rise. She bathed and washed her hair and brushed it out. The thought of that flagstone with its loot hidden beneath tempted her. Well, and why not? Surely there would be fresh unpleasantness when Nyleen got back. Cranchar would fabricate some story to have the impertinent slave girl up to her neck in trouble. Gold was gold, and pride was pride. The two Gillois hungered for the one and allowed the other, perhaps, to overpower their actions. Once Nyleen was persuaded, Cranchar would have a free hand. Delia did not relish that prospect. Tonight, then, and may the luck of Eos-Bakchi the Five-handed be with her!
She prepared herself, physically and mentally, for the tasks ahead. Stealing a kerchief of food was not over difficult, the most dangerous part being to dodge the swipes of Nan the Bosom’s third largest ladle.
Silly Nath was all agog about the race; but Delia shooed him away — very gently — and skulked back to the room she shared with Sissy. The odd thing was, without the girl there the room appeared bare and lonely. She locked the door with Sissy’s bed jammed against it, put a pot to hand in case anyone tried to break in, and then composed herself on her own ramshackle bed.
Obnoxious.
Yes, that was the word she would use about this place. The slaves were cowed in their fashion, and full of energy when a master or mistress appeared. They carried on their own way of life, as it were below stairs, and contained their own febrile strengths. But this place was obnoxious. She did not know its name, although she’d heard Nyleen and her cronies speak of Veliganda as though they might be referring to this fortress. Anyway, whatever its damned name, it was obnoxious.
She lay on the bed, then she got up and prowled about the room. She picked up the earthenware pot, and hefted it, and swung it through the air a few times.
Here she was, cowering in her room until dark, frightened of every footstep in the corridor outside, wondering if some drunken lout would break in. It just wasn’t fair. Girls could learn tricks, stratagems, cunning twists and grips to deal with men, but a man’s brute strength remained a man’s brute strength. By Vox! If any drunken bastard broke in here he’d have a smashed head and caved in ribs and go reeling out clutching himself and with a face as green as Green Genodras!
It was all very well taking a lofty world view when you sat on your throne in your palace wearing a crown and with regiments and fleets and aerial forces at your beck and call. But when you sat in a little room with only an earthenware pot to defend yourself with — world views reduced in importance and took a back seat.
Cunning, intelligence, skill and courage. They were just about the only weapons she had. She might have taken a pride in her use of the old standby of women through the ages down in the refectory. Women who were blinded by anger, like Nyleen, would condemn and have only contempt for that particular stratagem. But the faint had been splendid. She’d fainted clean away, swooning beautifully, and that had got her out of it.
Footsteps passed in the corridor, and she tensed up, and then only half-relaxed as the heavy tread passed on.
If she could have taken on in a fight all Cranchar’s men, and bested them, she would have. But that behavior did not belong in the logical world, that was of the stuff of the shadow plays and mimes hawked along the souks of the great cities of Kregen. Actors might fight whole armies and win, tiny girls might put to rout regiments; she was a mortal girl.
The slot of light falling from the window in mingled streaming jade and ruby slanted further along the floor, began to creep up the wall. The Suns of Kregen were declining. When the shadows fell, she would move. And woe betide anyone who got in her way!
With these brave thoughts to make an attempt to sustain her, she waited.
Once, and once only, she allowed herself to think of her husband. If he was beside her now, had he been there, last night, in the refectory — well, and perhaps the shadow plays would have been proven true.
Even though he had changed greatly, she knew with utter conviction that before anyone bestrode her in the Shishivakka race, her husband would be dead. And, equally, the refectory would have been awash in the blood of Cranchar’s men. As for the Cranchu himself, a Krozair longsword would make his head leap from his shoulders... Idle dreams, girl! she told herself. It’s all up to you, and you alone...
The gold coin sent up to her by Magero lay on the table. It gleamed erratically as the slanting light of the suns glanced across the surface. It showed a worn portrait of Delia’s grandfather on the obverse, and a trophy of arms on the reverse with the exhortation to Support Vallia.
She did not touch the coin. The exhortation to support Vallia reminded her that these people here causing all this woe were Vallians. She had demonstrated her reactions to Magero the Obnoxious and his gift by shouting at a poor little slave girl. Limi had jumped with fright. That reaction, it seemed to her, was perfectly natural. But, wait a moment... Magero had bothered. He had shouted at Cranchar. There seemed the distinct possibility that he held some petty rank, that he was not as cowed as the other henchmen. This gave her to ponder.
When he’d changed his grip on her, she had promised to chop him. But he might merely have been making sure of his hold, not wishing to fall off. That reading of what had happened was admissible, grotesque though it might seem. The way nature had constructed men and women with only two arms meant that certain holds could not but fail to fall in certain places, willy-nilly.