These two gangs at each other’s throats were damned inconvenient, by Krun. A girl staggered into my ale barrel and collapsed, an arrow through her throat. She gargled blood. Her grimy face carried a look of profound shock and her ripped-open tunic revealed a pallid body smothered in blood. She toppled and fell close by my side.
More arrows skimmed in, to chingle against the wall and tumble uselessly to the muddy ground. The girl twitched, dark blood pulsing with the last force of her heartbeats past the shaft. Her eyes glazed. The noise and confusion hammered on unheedingly.
What waste! What nonsense! Destruction, horror and death, and all for a measly hundred paces or so of tumbledown houses, filthy dopa dens and a muddle of ramshackle shacks. A spotted strowger with a broken arrow in his flank yip-yip-yipped across the road. I felt sorry for the little fellow; but — what could aid him now?
Mind you, I’d known a fat queen whose pet spotted strowgers loved nothing better than to chew on the bodies of her victims. The opposite cliff face glowed high up with the opaline radiance of the Suns; down here in the slot the shadows crawled as torches flared. The battle continued in mayhem and carnage. The Raging Volcanoes mustered a reserve and smashed back at Nagzalla’s Nasty Neemus. Weapons clashed all along the barricade. Men and women screamed. Bodies tumbled to fall in red ruin and be trampled on by the blood lusting combatants.
Well, by Vox! The sharper I got out of this mess the sooner I’d be on my way to finding young Byrom.
Crouching behind an ale barrel as a fight erupted in front of me seemed to me, Dray Prescot, Vovedeer, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, to be the most sensible course of action in two worlds, too right, by the diseased and pendulous nether parts of Makki-Grodno!
The sides of the hills here were capable of being climbed with great difficulty so this is where I’d been led down, for where I wanted to go was hemmed in by practically vertical cliffs. There’d been no difficulty in contacting Naghan Raerdu through one of his men, for we’d arranged to have a reliable person on watch. Milsi the Slinky had given me no recognition; but at my jerk of the head she’d led off to where Naghan the Barrel could be found at this time. He moved around the city, logically enough. After that he simply detailed a party to escort me down, grumbling at the danger I insisted on placing myself in, and I sent them off long before reaching the bottom. Now I found myself embroiled in this infuriating fracas. By the hairy and infested nostrils of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! It was enough to make a fellow mad clean through!
A move had to be made soon if I was to succeed.
Nagzalla’s Nasty Neemus held three arms of the crossroads and they wanted the fourth arm, currently in the possession of the Raging Volcanoes. Whatever treaty had been agreed in the past had fallen through, as was the way down in the warrens of Oxonium as up on the hills. I was on the Nasty’s side of the barricade and my target lay somewhere down at the far end of the Volcanoes’ street.
Among the frantic figures fighting to defend the makeshift wall a dozen or so wore the olive green of Fonnell’s old gang. So that explained why Byrom had been spirited away there. Prince Ortyg had maintained his connection with the olive green gang members.
This poor dead urchin girl at my side represented so much of what was wrong with two worlds. This profound if obvious thought was abruptly shattered. Something exceedingly hard and sharp pushed into my back. A voice like a bottle emptying growled: “Skulking, hey! I’ll soon sort you out, by Reder, yes!”
That damned uncomfortable object prodding my back was a sword. Slowly I turned my head. He was hairy, broad, flat of nose and coarse of lip. In the nature of the fellow a glisten of scar ran down his left cheek and the eye above was puckered up. He was a Brokelsh. “Up, skulker!” He jabbed. “Up and at that barricade!”
In all the noise the door at my back had opened silently. I didn’t sweat; the ugly thought crossed my mind that perhaps I was getting slow. One thing an old leem-hunter and a fighting man must never be is slow. I stood up and pointed to the dead girl.
“Easy, dom. Came back to see—”
“Save your whining excuses. I don’t know you. I’ll know you again, skulker, by Reder, I’ll know you.”
Nagzalla’s Nasty Neemus must be a sizeable gang, then. Fair enough that anyone wouldn’t know personally all the members. I’d get by all right. When no one recognized me, as must inevitably follow, then, by Krun, would be the time to worry.
He took the sword away. He pushed me out from the barrel into the street. Mud slicked underfoot. There were more torches now and shadows lay uncertainly across the furious scene. A fresh onslaught developed as the Nasty’s hurled once more at the defenders.
Caught up in the attack I found myself trying to clamber up an overturned hand barrow. A Rapa made determined efforts to degut me with his spear. My left fist wrapped around the shaft and I pulled.
He yowled and flew over the barrow to land on his beak. My new acquaintance stuck his sword through the Rapa who twisted and shrieked and tried to wriggle away.
“Stinking Beaky!”
A crossbow bolt flicked over my shoulder. The Fristle ahead threw down the weapon and dragged out a scimitar and slashed. My own return blocked the blow and sent the braxter darting at his chest. Startled, he backed off. The Brokelsh jumped up beside me. More Volcanoes were running up to guard this sudden breach. It was a matter of skip and jump, of cut and thrust, as we tried to hold the hand barrow for Nagzalla. An advang whose porcine features were convulsed with fury leaped alongside us to help hold the barrow. He swung a broad-bladed polearm and swept the head from the shoulders of a poor devil who failed to dodge in time. Blood spouted everywhere.
“To me!” roared the Brokelsh, hair flying all over the place. “Neemus! Neemus! To Brory the Bold! Neemus!”
A couple more Nagzallas ran up and for a space we held the barrow, trying to force our way on and being pressed back. In the erratic torchlight every move was dangerous. Keeping a balance and picking a target, hitting and trying not to be hit, the whole crazy combat proved difficult. A loud crack splintered up followed by two more splitting bangs. The barrow’s bottom just caved in. Down we all tumbled, inextricably mixed up, arms and legs and heads all jumbled together like crabs in a basket.
Something clunked against my nose and water started into my eyes. I gave an almighty heave. Smelly hair thrust against my lips. I bit. I bit damned hard, I can tell you, not caring whose hide it was. In all the uproar any yell was lost. I got a good purchase and shoved the hairy one aside and rose up out of the shambles. The stink of blood roughened on my tongue. The Fristle clawed up beside me. He tried to give me a thwack but his scimitar had no room to swing and I just belted him on the nose with a clenched fist. He flopped back into the pile of bodies.
A bellowed roar: “Back! Set back, fanshos!” and we Nagzallas tumbled back out of the wreckage.
They were all panting, blood-smeared, evil of eye. We pulled back to rejoin the rest of the gang in their positions. For a space now it would be shooting until another charge could be mounted.
“By Reder, Brory!” The advang’s snout was all aquiver. “We nearly did it! Another push and—”
“And we’d be cut off and chopped!”
That was true, by Krun. More Volcanoes had been closing on the barrow in the moments before it collapsed.
Brory the Bold eyed me. He were standing in the shadows of a doorway and every now and then an arrow fleeted in. “You fought well, skulker. Your name?”
“Kadar the Hammer.” The name popped into my head. I’d used it before and it was serviceable.
He grunted. “Stick close by me when we attack again.”
When I’d kitted myself out for this jaunt I’d selected a simple tan leather jack with a few greenish brass studs here and there. I’d taken off the shamlak and under the jack wore a common brown tunic. The braxter was munitions quality from Nandisha’s armory and I was surprised and pleased the thing hadn’t snapped across yet. In view of that almost inevitable happening I carried another scabbarded alongside the rapier. Brory the Bold gave the rapier a leery look.
“Fancy yourself with the toothpick, do you, dom?”
I summoned up a casual shrug. “When necessary.”
He grunted again in that coarse Brokelsh way.
He did not comment on the short-hafted single-bladed axe I had slung over my shoulder. Axes are useful in some fights. This specimen was not unlike one of the axes wielded by my Clansmen on the Great Plains of Segesthes. That, of course, was not surprising as those fair grazing and hunting grounds lay to the north over the mountains.
High above our heads a cluster of lights traveled slowly from one hill to the next. Up there, riding in the calimer on the invisible cables, haughty folk wouldn’t even bother to look down at the chasms beneath. The lights of the cable car, high against the dark sky, did look romantic and mysterious. Down here it was all blood, dirt and death.
Most of the gangs organized themselves into sub-divisions called chapters and with conscious ostentation named their leaders with military ranks. This Brokelsh, Brory the Bold, turned out to be a chapter Jiktar, meaning he ran the chapter. Dimpy had told us he’d been a chapter deldar in his broken-up gang. Now the Jiktar busied himself putting together a fresh force for the next attack.
In my not un-extensive experience of street fighting I’d found that charging maniacally up an open street was usually a sure recipe for disaster. We generally burrowed our way through the buildings flanking the street. It seemed to me that Brory considered the barricade no real obstacle. Well, by Djan, it was a ramshackle enough structure; it had already proved too tough a nut for these bully boys to crack.
A pang shot through me. By Vox, yes! I could envisage my swods of the Emperor’s Sword Watch or the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets cleaning up this street like a giant broom. And the brumbytes of the Phalanx — they’d just swarm over the chairs and tables and carts like a tidal wave. Oh, well, they were far away and no doubt busy.
So that the next whooping charge met with the same fate as the previous efforts.
Although the valley was narrow the central roadway was flanked by buildings. I eyed them meanly. In my bones I could feel strongly that the Star Lords would not allow me to disport myself like this for much longer. They’d want me back on duty. They’d hoick me out in the very near future, that I darkly surmised. It behooved me to get that move on I’d promised myself some time ago when the Suns were flooding the opposite crest with opaline radiance. Now the slot lay in total darkness, and The Maiden with the Many Smiles would drift down a fuzzy pinkish light soon that would do something to relieve this infernal imitation of a night of Notor Zan.
Brory had taken a slight cut over an ear and his head was bound up in a red-stained yellow bandage. He grunted when I spoke to him; but he listened. He told me, curtly, that to go through the houses would destroy what they were fighting to gain. I said that they’d gain nothing but more dead and wounded if they didn’t, whereat he grunted again. “You may crave violent action,” I said. “But action has to be directed. If you weren’t the chapter Jiktar I’d say you were acting like a tanzy.”
He didn’t grunt at that. Oh, no, by Djan! He bristled up in his uncouth hairy Brokelsh way. “Who the hell do you think you are? I run the chapter — not you! I don’t even know where you come from. Nobody seems to know you.”
“Did I or did I not fight on the barricade?”
“You did.”
There were no torches near us so I could stand out in the street and point — dramatically! — at the barricade.
“Send your people to their deaths, Brory! Have them shot down and cut up! I’ll find a way through the buildings.”
The blessed or cursed power I have, the yrium, blazed forth. The Star Lords had chosen me to be this impossible Emperor of Emperors. Wishing it were otherwise, still, I knew they had chosen well. Brory wilted. He caught the blast of the yrium in full flight. He obeyed.
Not sullenly, as might be expected, but in a sprightly way he organized afresh. He ran the chapter responsible for this end of the street. Other streets had their own chapters. He called in his hikdars and told them and they told the deldars and they shouted at the — I hesitate to call these ragamuffin rapscallions swods — at the bedraggled gang members who’d been beaten back so many times.
I did discover that Nagzalla’s Nasty Neemus were in fact attempting to retake this section of streets they’d lost a season or so ago. They’d been weaker then. They’d been called Nagzalla’s Neemus then. As they rebuilt their strength they’d put in the word Nasty to remind them that they had a debt to pay and territory to take from the Raging Volcanoes.
Brory might obey authority when he could see the sense of it. That did not mean he would forget his own position. He said: “You are not a member of the Neemus.”
“No. I’m tazll at the moment.”
By that he knew I was an unemployed mercenary.
He nodded emphatically. “When this shindig is all over and we’ve taken Nath Market Street and if you’re still alive, I feel we will accept you as a full member.” He brushed hair away from the bandage. “As a paktun you understand these things.”
“Aye.”
Most of the runnels of Oxonium crossed a trifle askew of right angles so we chose the diagonal point with the least houses on the corner. Pickaxes were brought up. Unlit torches were handed out. There was a tenseness among these Neemus, a way of holding the breath, of speaking in clipped syllables. They’d taken a beating in their attempts to take back what they considered rightfully theirs. Now they were about to embark on what could be a crazy adventure. They could die more certainly this way than on the barricade.
And — at whose say so?
Some unknown plug-ugly who had suddenly appeared among them, telling their leaders what to do, handing out orders, cutting them down to size — merciless in his criticism.
Oh, yes, by the ruptured entrails and dangling eyeballs of Makki Grodno! This fellow Kadar the Hammer drove ’em, drove ’em good.