He waved the blade at me, socketed into leather and wood over his stump, and his great idiot face showed pleasurable delight in a new toy.
"They did not expect this, Dak. They didn’t like it."
He slid a leg over his saddle and jumped to the ground. I was very conscious of the shadows about us, the darkness of the pointed archway in which the ambush had taken place, the comparative brilliance beyond as She of the Veils rose higher and cast down her light. Eyes could be watching us; but that was a thing I could do nothing about.
The wounded numim lay gasping on the ground. He had rolled over and so lay on his back, gasping and cursing, and glaring up at us. Blood stained his golden mane. I had known a numim who had been a great man and a good friend, even if he had been a citizen of hostile Hamal. I stopped as Duhrra bent.
"You, rast," said Duhrra of the Days, "may receive a boon at my hands. You may go to roister with Gashil, to sit on the right hand of Grodno in the radiance of Genodras. You are equally doomed, cramph. For Grodno is the true devil."
And Duhrra sliced the cripple-blade across the numim’s throat and so slew him.
He stood back and turned to me.
"He had seen my hook — or, rather, the blade. He would have talked. I do not think you would care for that, Dak, my master."
All I could say was, "No."
Methodically, Duhrra cleaned the cripple-blade and its tang which fixed into the socket of the stump, turning with a cunning twist to lock. He unlocked it and cleaned the tang and the socket as we rode on, for we did not wish to tarry with the street cumbered with dead bodies. Magdag has a force of hired mercenaries to fight with her own people, and she had the night watch, who delight in catching thieves and ne’er-do-wells, for each one gains them a bounty when sent to slave at the oar benches of the galleys.
Presently Duhrra, his stump once more concealed, said, "You seem to know this devil’s nest passing well, master."
"Aye. I once lived here for a space — in good times and evil. And must I keep on telling you I am not your master?"
"No, master."
"What does that mean?"
A hurrying group from an alehouse passed, men and women of a number of different racial stocks, all swathed in dirty green garments, with link-slaves to light their way. They passed the sectrixes like a flood, opening out before and closing aft. I twisted in the awkward wooden saddle to stare after them. The torchlights scattered red and orange reflections. The shadows grew darker and swooped down, writhing. Silently, with only a rush of sandaled feet, those people passed us.
"Are they phantoms?" Duhrra’s face showed no shock, but I saw the coverings over his stump moving.
"No, you great fambly! They are workpeople going to their hovels after drinking as the suns set. They go in a group with torches because—"
"Yes. Well, there is one little lot who will not disturb them this night, by Za—"
"Onker!" I bellowed.
I had no need to say more. But Duhrra, who looked like a great muscle-bound idiot, could play games, also.
"By Grodno the Green!" he said loudly. "You call me onker, master!"
I glared at him. Neither of us would smile. The moment was amusing. I shook the reins and we cantered past the alehouse with its sign of a broken pot — broken by skylarking children, I shouldn’t wonder — and so turned into the Alley of Weights which would take us to the main waterfront of Foreigners’ Pool. The alley lay in darkness, but from the waterfront the sounds of rollicking and roistering lured us on. I had no real fear of another attempt on us so close to the clustered taverns of the waterfront, but we rode with swords in our hands, just in case. As to the carousing — the sounds rose thin and few. I had fancied the Pool would be jumping; perhaps it was too early.
She of the Veils had risen clear of the roofs now and as we reached the end of the Alley of Weights and saw the dark water before us a jaggedly rippling ribbon of pinkly golden light stretched, as though to welcome us back to the sea. Lights shone from the taverns and alehouses, for sailors’ work is thirsty work. Again I fancied business was slack. The tavern I wanted, known to be the favorite of the Vallian seamen who had sailed here all the weary way across the Outer Oceans, was called
The Net and Trident.
I knew little of it, for, as you know, my former residence in Magdag had been once in the slave warrens and once in the Emerald Eye Palace.
In those old days I had spied out a deal of Magdag, as I have mentioned, with a true Krozair’s eye for weaknesses in the defense against the great day when the call rang out and we of Zair went up against the hated men of Grodno.
Well, the call had gone out, and I had failed to answer the Azhurad, and so had been ejected, was no longer a Krzy, was Apushniad. I’d been on Earth at the time, banished for twenty-one terrible years; but how to explain that to a man of Kregen?
A couple of drunks staggered past. Our sectrixes let a silly snort escape their nostrils, and I kicked the flank of mine to remind him his work was not yet done. The third sectrix with our dunnage strapped to his back tailed along in the rear.
There were damned few ships tied up. I saw an argenter, one of those broad, stubby comfortable ships, probably from Menaham, although her flags were not visible in the harbor. Beyond her lay three of the broad ships of the inner sea, dwarfed by the argenter. Seeing both types of ship so close together gave me a true idea of the impressiveness of the ships of the Outer Oceans. The little merchant ships of the Eye of the World would never brave the terrors outside the inner sea.
There was no galleon from Vallia moored up.
I looked hard as we reined up outside
The Net and Trident.
No. No, it was sure. I could not see a single Vallian ship.
Well, I was annoyed. It meant I must wait until one sailed in from the Outer Oceans, sailing in through the Grand Canal and along to Magdag. I would wait. There was nothing else to do.
We tied the sectrixes to the rail, at which they showed their spite. Later, when I had asked the questions boiling in me, we could stable them properly. We pushed into the tavern and stood for a moment adjusting to heat and light and noise.
The place was not overly full, and the patrons were mostly sailors of the inner sea, with a mercenary guard or two, and at a table beneath the balcony of the upper floor a group of men who might be merchants in a small way of business.
A few serving wenches — I dislike the name of
shif
commonly given to these girls — moved among the tables and benches. We moved farther into the room, letting the door swing shut at our backs. My right hand hung at my side, ready. The sawdust on the floor showed itself to be old and in urgent need of replacement. The odors of old grease and burned fat and sour wine clung about the room.
Nodding to a table in a corner where no one was likely to get at our backs, I went over and Duhrra followed. His right arm was buried in his green cloak. We wore the mesh mail beneath our green robes, but we had removed our coifs earlier. We sat down and stared about, rather as two hungry and thirsty travelers might do. And, in truth, that was what we were.
One of the girls hurried over, plastering a smile on her face. She was apim, and not happy, worn out and tired already even though the night’s drinking had barely begun.
Duhrra began an argument about the wine she might serve, and he went dangerously near perilous ground by asking if they had any Zairian wine recently come in from a prize. She tossed her hair back tiredly and said they had none, and she could recommend the local Blood of Dag which, she said, as a wine was, as was proper, a bright and beautiful green. Duhrra’s face did not express his distaste. But he started to speak.
"Excellent!" I said loudly. "And a rasher or two of vosk with a few loloo’s eggs. And pie to follow — malsidge, if possible, or squish."
"Malsidge?" said Duhrra, not too pleased. "Make mine squish."
"We are taking a long sea voyage," I said. "Malsidge."
"Malsidge is off," said the girl. She wiped her mouth and smeared the red stuff over her cheeks. "Huliper pie today."
"Very well." I put my hand in one of the pockets of the robe beneath the cloak. I made a habit of carrying money spread out over my person. I let a little silver chink show through my fingers. Her brown eyes fixed on the silver as a ponsho fixes his eyes on a risslaca’s eyes.
"Tell me, doma, what is the news of the ships from Vallia?"
She would know all the gossip, I guessed. Whether she willed it or not her life would be bound up with the men of the inner sea and their vessels. She would hear them talking.
"Vallia, gernu?"
Her tone had changed markedly since the gleam of silver between my fingers.
"Ships from Vallia sail into Foreigners’ Pool. When is the next one due? Has she been signaled yet?"
She shook her head. She looked frightened. Still she had not taken her eyes away from that gleam of silver.
"No, gernu. Not for a long time. The ships from Vallia no longer sail to Magdag."
The flash of a Ghittawrer blade
As I have said before, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the color green. It is a charming, restful color. Our green vegetation makes of our Earth a marvelous place. I know that if green suddenly vanished from the spectrum we would all be immeasurably the poorer for that. But as I sat there, in that squalid tavern on the waterfront of Foreigners’ Pool in Magdag, so overwhelming, so bitter, so malefic a hatred for all things Green overcame me that I shut my eyes and gripped onto the inferior earthenware pot so that it smashed into shards and the bilious green wine ran and spread over the table.
"Gernu!" cried this poor serving wench.
Then sanity reasserted itself. Of course! She did not mean that Vallian ships never came to Magdag. The inner sea lies at the western center of the continent of Turismond. It is separated from Eastern Turismond by a devilish cleft in the ground from which spurt noxious and hallucinatory vapors, and also by The Stratemsk, so monstrous a range of mountains that men believe their summits reach up to the twin glories of Zim and Genodras, the red and green suns of Antares. There was no way, as all men knew, across The Stratemsk on foot. And — there were no airboats in the inner sea. Equally, it needed a ship of the Outer Oceans to navigate in those stormy seas, all the way from the Dam of Days in the west, south and so past Donengil, and then north up the Cyphren Sea, sailing with the Zim Stream and so passing the northern extremity of the continent of Loh, and so at last due east for Vallia.
No. No, this girl did not mean the galleons from Vallia no longer sailed to Magdag.
She meant the seamen from the galleons no longer came to her tavern,
The Net and Trident.
I told her this, in a gentle voice, but still she flinched back.
"Indeed, no, gernu. I speak sooth. Since King Genod, may his name be revered, told them not to sail here, they have not come back."
"He did
what?
"
"Gernu . . ." Her voice sounded faint.
The door opened and on a gust of fishy, fresher air, men bulked in, apims, diffs, laughing and talking, scraping chairs and tables, bellowing for wine.
The girl cast one last longing look at the silver between my fingers, and fled.
I sat like a loon.
Of course, I could take passage in an argenter. Sail to Pandahem. But — but there was no other answer. That is what I would have to do. I did not like it. There was no other way.
Pandahem, the large island to the south of Vallia, had always been in trade and military rivalry with the empire of Vallia. Pandahem was divided into a number of different nations. I had friends — rather, I used to have friends — in Tomboram. This new and evil king Genod Gannius here in Magdag had arranged a treaty with my enemies in Menaham in Pandahem. He wanted to buy airboats from Hamal and use the Menaheem to transport them to Magdag and so gain an invincible sky force to crush the Zairians. I had put paid to that scheme, at least for now. No doubt he would try again. By then I would be well out of the Eye of the World, back home in Valka, my island off the coast of Vallia. But . . . in order to sail home I would have to ship in an argenter from Menaham.
By Vox! How the Bloody Menahem would crow if ever they discovered they had the Prince Majister of Vallia in their hands!
Duhrra was looking at me.
He put that moonface of his on one side, and a frown dinted in the smooth skin of his forehead. His scalp was bald and gleaming, with that small pigtail dangling down his back.
"You show nothing on your face, Dak. Yet is not this news bad? It is not what you expected."
"No. It is not."
"Then you cannot return to your home in Vallia. You will have to return with me to Sanurkazz — or Crazmoz, which is my home — and we will have fine adventures on the way."
I could not answer.
This Duhrra, whom I had dubbed Duhrra of the Days, did not know all there was to know of me, even here in the Eye of the World, where years and years ago I had been a Krozair Brother and the foremost swifter captain of the inner sea. Those cramphs of Magdag had trembled at my name. I knew it to be true. Nursing mothers lost their milk, strong men blanched, maidens screamed, if they thought themselves in danger from me, from Pur Dray, Krzy.
Duhrra called me Dak, for that was a name I had adopted in all honor, even though I believed he had heard me addressed by my real name. He never referred to it. The Krozairs are a remote and exotic breed of men, even among their own countrymen who have not aspired to the honor and glory of becoming Krozairs.
The serving girl bustled about seeing to the ribald and vociferous demands of the newcomers. They were mercenaries, and even seated at table they swaggered and boasted. Presently she brought our vosk and loloo’s eggs, and the huliper pie, together with a fresh jug of that ghastly green wine, the Blood of Dag.
I flipped the silver oar up. It glittered in the lamplight.
"You forget this."
She bobbed a quick curtsy, the same kind of submissive dipping of the head and bending of the knee as one saw on Earth, and caught the silver coin and dropped it safely down her blouse.