When news arrived that part of one of the towers of Khon the Mak’s palace had fallen down I had to laugh.
By Zair, yes! This damned incompetent Wizard of Loh was at it again. This time he’d blown the palace roof off. It was given out that the tower’s fall was a late result of the earth shock.
Now, along the routes the coronation procession would take, stands were being erected. Workmen were everywhere. The confounded noise of banging and hammering went on from dawn to dusk — and well into the night, too. The racket made a fellow’s head ache.
Nandisha outfitted her guard with new uniforms. Of a tasteful pale blue, they were well enough. I was glad most of the color was obscured by a good quality brigandine. Not of iron but bronze, the plates were riveted to stout buff leather. We all had new helmets, too, a type of pot helm of iron with a nasal and crest. Naturally, in that crest a whole mass of floating feathers were fixed to give us the imposing impression rightful to a lady of so exalted a position as the Princess Nandisha. Well, she was a good soul, and I could not find it in me to mock her too outrageously. For all she was a princess, she had a hard enough life. And she and her children remained in peril.
A couple of mornings later we had altogether grimmer news to chew over at the first breakfast.
A young girl, Jenni Farlang, who worked in a jeweler’s shop, had been discovered in Ruby Alley torn to pieces. Her body was ripped apart, scattered, the hideous work of a maniac.
The murders in Oxonium had begun again.
In one of her hands — discovered some fifty or so paces from other parts of her pitifully shredded corpse — had been found a scrap of red cloth. This had clearly been torn from the hem of the clothes worn by her murderer. This was the first clue the City Guard had. It pointed up the correctness of the theory that the murders were the work of the adherents of Dokerty.
Having to relieve Fweygo on duty might be a nuisance, but it was entirely fair. After all, hadn’t I been swanning off a great deal lately? He had, this morning, a rendezvous with his mysterious lady. I took myself off to the solarium. Two competent lads, Nath the Frogenstal and Herpato Froth, both apims, were already on duty. They greeted me cheerfully enough, for Fweygo and I had, as it were, pushed in to comfortable positions in the household guard. Paktuns all, we accepted good fortune in others.
Presently the young prince and princess accompanied by the numim twins came in. There were servants in attendance. The glass-roofed solarium was pleasantly warm and soon the youngsters threw off most of their clothing. We guards sweated it out in our armor.
There was nothing to do save stand and watch. I was looking forward to the end of the watch when a dark shadow abruptly hovered over the glass roof. In a rending shriek of timbers and the shattering of glass, the whole lot caved in. A lifter smashed down and settled on the floor.
An arrow sped towards me from the bow of the first man over the side of the airboat. I swayed aside and the arrow hissed past.
Herpato Froth was not so fast, and he was certainly unlucky, for his arrow took him clear through the eye. He went down, jerking. Nath the Frogenstal jumped and the shaft intended for him missed.
At once he ripped out his sword and charged headlong for the men leaping from the lifter. In that action he followed me. Uproar broke out. The servants were trying to pull the children out of the room. Young Byrom had drawn a little dagger and was struggling not to be carted off. As for young Rolan, the lion boy was running forward with us, a dagger in his fist.
“Keep out of it, Rolan!” I shrieked.
Opaz forfend! If he was slain, now — I’d be back on Earth for how many miserable years, if not for ever.
The fight blossomed into a red roaring insanity.
My braxter flashed this way and that, and all my efforts were directed to keeping Rolan’s head on his shoulders and the life in his brave body. Naturally, after a few of the attackers had been knocked over my braxter snapped.
I flung the hilt in the face of a Rapa, kicked a Fristle, whipped out the second braxter and laid to with that. Blood splashed Rolan; thank Opaz it was not his. He fought as numims fight — well.
Yet he was not fully grown. He could not expect to stand against professional assassins, stikitches cunningly trained in the arts of murder.
Nath the Frogenstal was wounded, a nasty gash down his thigh; but he went on battling like a leem. There was no time to take stock of the airboat or of the commanding figure in the bows gesturing his assassins on. He stayed back and did not join the men he so ardently drove on with signs and imprecations.
Keeping Rolan out of trouble as much as possible meant that the Prince Byrom ran more risk than I liked — or that he should. Here was where the cruelty of having to choose from selfish motives made me revert to the old madcap, reckless, intemperate Dray Prescot ways of carrying on.
The blow with which I hit a polsim was far, far too powerful. His head jumped off his shoulders, true, trailing bloody streamers. But my blessed braxter broke.
A Fristle saw that and charged me, scimitar glittering.
“Sink me!” I snarled. “I’ll have you, catman!”
I slid his blade and kicked him. A blur in the corner of my eye made me swing violently away. The rapier hilt was in my fist, the blade half-drawn when the blur turned into a Brokelsh, burly and hairy, mouth agape, swinging in with a rush.
He wielded a kunsan, the short spear very like a Zulu assegai, very like the similar weapons used by my Clansmen of Felschraung. In the right hands they are more deadly than they appear. He thrust and I avoided and drew the rapier fully from the scabbard. The Brokelsh brought the butt end of his kunsan around in a vicious arc. He hit my hand with stunning force. The rapier span away across the floor.
“Now you are dead, apim!”
I ducked and surged forward. Our bodies collided with a thud and before he could recover I clouted him across his hairy jaw.
Before I could chase after either his kunsan or my rapier a Rapa slashed at me with his sword and I had to skip and jump. Facing him I got myself in front of Rolan who was just reaching down to pluck his dagger from the eye of the man he’d just downed.
My right hand was numb.
With my left I drew the main gauche and fronted the damned Beaky. He laughed his peculiar Rapa cackle and charged in and I had to swerve and thrust the left hand dagger into him as he went past.
The confounded onker took the dagger with him embedded in his feathered body.
After that everything becomes a blur. Scarlet flashes of faces, of blood, of wretches falling away with their arms ripped off, their faces smashed in, of wights doubling up in agony, flashes that bring some memory of that horrific fight.
I really thought we were all done for.
In the end it was with the wonder of a snow filled morning unexpectedly seen from the window that I saw crossbow bolts sizzling past us. The quarrels dug their cruel steel heads into the bodies of the assassins — and very few of them there were left, by Krun!
Nandisha’s guards trampled in and the stikitches, what was left of them, scrambled the lifter up and away through the hole she’d made in the glass roof. Crossbow bolts followed them.
“Well,” snapped Ranaj, crossly. “What a mess!”
“Aye,” said Fweygo in his calm fashion. “You have to give credit to that blintz Prince Ortyg for trying.”
There was no doubt this was the handiwork of Ortyg — the commanding cramph in the bows of the lifter was recognized as one Nath ti Fangenun, by his insignia holding the rank of Jiktar. He had recently been taken on by Ortyg. Ranaj’s sources of information were positive on that point.
“So why send a man in command we would know?” demanded Ranaj.
“The little fool must be getting desperate,” said Nandisha, her children clinging to her skirts. “I do not like this turn of events one little bit.” She was badly shaken.
Ranaj stroked his golden whiskers. “We shall double the guard on a permanent basis, princess.”
As for me, I brooded on the miserable quality of Tolindrin steel. As you know, during all my hectic career on Kregen I had never depended on one single favorite — and named — weapon to the exclusion of all others. A veteran fighting man will use any weapons that come to hand. As an example, young Tiri’s handbag had dealt a doughty blow in combat. No. I’d have to get Ambassador Larghos Invordun to send to Vallia for a proper fighting man’s sword. A great Krozair longsword in my fist — aye, by Zair! That would make a few eyes water!
Of course, really and truly, if I was honest, I’d have to admit that the fault lay with me. I just hit too damned hard.
During the course of the day Ranaj hired on a wersting pack. Their controller was Hikdar Nalan C’Cardieth, whose last employer had embarked upon a hazardous overseas holy pilgrimage to the birthplace of Benga Prodacta, one of the patron saints of sandal makers. He gave the Hikdar a glowing reference. We were very quickly left in no doubt that C’Cardieth was enormously proud of his double-initialed name, as a cadet branch of a famous family. Fweygo and I did not tease him on that score.
Anyway, his pack of werstings were a most ferocious bunch. The four-legged black and white striped hunting dogs, vicious, always in turmoil, should prove a most efficacious deterrent to further assassination attempts. These animals were dogs, yet I knew that, like the hyenas of Earth, they were born with fangs, and the moment their caul was licked clean by their mother they’d fight savagely amongst themselves for subsequent supremacy among their fellows. I was glad Hikdar Nalan and his assistants kept the animals on strong leashes.
The very next morning as ever was another murder was reported. Tansi the Lily had had her throat cut and been disemboweled on the steps of the somber Temple to the red god of blood — Dokerty.
That day Naghan Raerdu sent word that the body of an ordinary man had been stumbled upon in the gutter perhaps half a hundred paces from the house where the ibmanzy had caused such confusion. The fellow was thin to the point of emaciation, as though the life had been drained out of him. He wore a red robe. Pieces of skin were dislodged from his fingernails, and he was smeared in blood.
Down in the warrens where life in the favelas was cheap no one took much notice of another dead body in the gutter. The Watch had him taken up. He’d probably end in the crematorium where the ovens disposed of corpses properly, under strict supervision. There was little room for burial grounds down in the canyons and the poor folk could not afford to avail themselves of the cemeteries outside the city.
No one claimed him before the funeral service. It was certain sure no one would claim his ashes.
He was, I felt convinced, the poor devil who’d been turned into the ibmanzy.
Also on that day the familiar blue radiance formed as I practiced alone in the salle d’armes. A face looked out from the blueness. This was not the face of Deb-Lu nor yet of Khe-Hi. It was not, and for this I was profoundly grateful, it was not the face of the fumbling sorcerer recently imported by Khon the Mak.
There was little color in the features, save for the scarlet mouth. The hair was red, as any self-respecting wizard from Loh should have. Blue were the eyes in that sculptured face, formed as though by the hand of a master craftsman from the ivory of Chem, firm of rounded chin, with not a single trace of sagging skin anywhere. The scarlet mouth widened and now that was not a mere movement of the lips but a genuine smile, warm and affectionate.
“Ling-Li!” I said. “Lahal!”
“Lahal, Dray. Everyone is so busy these days; but we are anxious to do all we can whilst you — ah — potter about here in Balintol.”
I felt my lips start to rick into a grimace, and so stopped that betrayal to what I had to do here.
“There’s a new damned Wizard of Loh poking and prying about in Oxonium.” I went on to tell her what had happened and she promised to make immediate enquiries. The Wizards and Witches of Loh like to keep track on what their associates are up to.
I asked after her husband, Khe-Hi, and the children and she gave me the latest news on the folk at Esser Rarioch that I so hungered to learn. Delia was off somewhere, and I knew she was, as was I, about the business of the Star Lords.
Just before we parted, I mentioned casually: “Oh, and, Ling-Li, you might let Deb-Lu know I found an object of antiquity that should interest him. It’s a trident engraved with the old signs and language of Loh. I—”
She interrupted. “You have it?”
“Nope. It was left lying about when we had trouble with that blasted ibmanzy.”
She pursed those red lips. “Deb-Lu will be interested, yes, and cross because you lost it, Dray.”
“It was very old and I was busy and I didn’t give another thought to it.”
Among the information she gave was the satisfying fact that Dimpy’s mother Velda and his sisters were safely in Valkanium. A letter would follow. Among many of the cultures of Kregen where there are people who cannot read or write a somewhat more subtle system of making one’s mark at the foot of the paper against your name written by the scribe is in being. Signet rings which, instead of being impressed in a wax seal, are smeared with ink and then stamped alongside the written name. There are millions of different identification rings, called queyfors, and whilst forgery is a fine art on Kregen, the system does give some guarantees.
Dimpy would recognize the mark made by his mother’s queyfor.
The various knocks and cuts I’d been taking recently all cleared up with the miraculous speed conferred by my dips in the Sacred Pool of far Aphrasöe. Mother Firben, clicking that needle-sharp tongue of hers, had rubbed garlic into the wounds, a sure preventative of gangrene. Mind you, if I’d had decent weapons in my fists I might not have been so easily cut up, by Krun.
As Princess Nandisha told me, briskly, she was pleased I was healing. She wanted Fweygo and me near her with Ranaj, and she was not too enamored of plug-uglies with unhealed wounds in her vicinity.
This was as we set off for the palace of the Kings of Tolindrin. Apparently there was some argument among the priests connected with the earthquake of unhappy memory. Just about everyone went. Ranaj did not intend to leave any of his charges as hostages to fortune. Hikdar Nalan C’Cardieth and his pack of snarling werstings preceded us through the streets. I, for one, was glad they were there and on our side. Too right, by Krun!