The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (22 page)

-

             
Vakar came to an indefinite time later, lying in a corner of the stockade. He tried to move and groaned. His body seemed to be one vast bruise. He inched up into a sitting position and found that he was nursing a swollen nose, a split lip, a pair of black eyes, and a few loose teeth. They must have stamped on him.

             
He peered through swollen lids at the others, who huddled on the far side of the enclosure around some game of chance. For the time being they ignored him. He chewed his bruised hps with hatred. If he had thought that he could get away with it he would have planned to wait until they were all asleep and then to murder the whole lot with his poisoned dagger. As it was he could only huddle miserably and wait for his hurts to heal. He thought of using the dagger on himself; what had he to look forward to save a life of deepening misery and degradation?

             
The sun was low when the gate of the stockade opened and a man stepped in with two buckets, one full of water and the other of a repellant-looking barley-porridge. The men crowded around the buckets, scooping up water and mush with their hands. A couple of fights broke out. Vakar, though hungry, felt that he had no stomach for such rugged competition in his present state. The turmoil around the buckets subsided as the men stilled their most acute pangs of hunger.

             
"Here, stranger," said a voice, and Vakar looked up from his broodings to see the Black standing over him with an outstretched fist.

             
Vakar held out his cupped hands and received a gob of mush. The Negro said:

             
"You did not look as though you could get any for yourself. Next time the boys want a little fun with you, do not be a fool."

             
Vakar said: "Thank you," and fell to eating.

             
The following morning the same man came in, this time with an apronful of pieces of stale bread. Vakar hobbled over and snatched up a piece that rolled to his feet out of the scrimmage. He turned back towards his solitary place to eat it when a long arm came over his shoulder and tore the bread from
his
grasp.

             
He whirled. The tall blond Atlantean who had taken his bread was already turning away and beginning to eat it, confident in his superior size. He was the biggest man in the enclosure, and Vakar had inferred that he was the unofficial leader.

             
Vakar saw red. His hand darted inside his shirt and came out with the dagger. A second later he had buried the blade in the Atlantean's broad back. The Atlantean gave a strangled noise, jerked away, and collapsed.

             
The rest of the men chattered excitedly in a dozen languages. They looked at Vakar, standing over the dead man with the dripping dagger, with more respect than they had shown before. One said:

             
"Quick, hide that thing! They will be here any minute!"

             
It sounded like good advice. Vakar wiped the dagger on the Atlantean's leather kilt, took off the harness under his shirt, sheathed the blade, dug a hole in the dirt with his fingers, buried the weapon, and stamped the earth into place over it.

             
He had hardly done so when a pair of Tritons entered. When they saw the corpse one of them shouted: "What happened? Who did this? You there, speak!" The man addressed said: "I do not know. I was relieving myself with my back to the rest, and heard a scuffle, and when I looked around he was dead."

             
The Triton asked the same questions of the others, but got similar answers: "I was throwing knucklebones and was not watching
.
..."

             
"
I was taking a snooze
...
"

             
"Line up," said the Triton and passed down the line searching the men's scanty clothing. He finally said: "We could torture you, but you would tell so many lies it would not be worth while. Off you go to drill.
Lively, now.
Ho, you!"

             
Vakar saw that the Triton was addressing him. "You looked battered. Have they roughed you up?" Vakar, who had been limping towards the gate, said: "I fell."

             
"Well, you need not drill today.
"

             
"
I am Prince Vakar of Lorsk, and I wish to speak to your king."

             
"Shut up before I change my mind about the drill," said the Triton, following the recruits out.

             
Vakar found an uncontaminated spot and sat down wearily. After a while a couple of slaves come in and dragged out the Atlantean. The day wore on until Vakar became so restless with boredom that he wished that he had gone to drill despite his hurts.

             
In the afternoon the men came in again to loaf, gamble, or chatter until the evening meal. Vakar wondered how some of them seemed able to do nothing ^definitely without going mad.

             
The next day he felt better and went to drill. He found that the men were being taught the rudiments of marching and handling a spear. As an experienced rider and swordsman he was told off to supervise some of the others. He asked the drillmaster to be allowed to see the king, and was told:

             
"One more of those silly requests, young man, and you shall be beaten. Now shut up and get back to work."

             
After about the tenth day Vakar lost track of the time he spent in the stockade. He learned that life among these unwilling soldiers was on a lower level than he had ever known to exist; no self-respecting savage would live like that. Dirt was ubiquitous and perversations were
rampant.
The only kindly gesture he ever saw was from the Black
on
the first day. When he had murdered the A
t
lantean the men had protected him not because they liked him, but because they hated him
less than they did the Tritons. For their own protection they recognized one iron law: death to tattie-tales. It was lucky for Vakar that he had not complained about his hazing.

             
For the rest he found little among them but stupidity and mutual hatred. They seemed for a while to have been willing to take him as their leader, since he had killed the old, but when he did nothing to confirm his tide they turned to a swarthy, thick-thewed Atarantian who had gouged out a man's eye in one of the daily fights.

             
So long as Vakar wore his dagger nobody molested him. When he had somewhat recovered from the despair induced by his beating, he engaged some of his fellow-inmates in conversation, picking up what information he could about the peoples and customs of the surrounding regions and a few words of their languages. In line with the scheme that he was concocting he asked what the Tritons deemed their most sacred oath.

             
"They swear by the horns of Aurnon," a small Pharusian told him. "That is some sheep-headed fertility-god of theirs. While they break all other oaths, that one holds them. Though why any right-minded people should choose such a stupid and timid beast
...
"

             
Before a month had elapsed, a day came when the Tritons announced that as the men were now well enough trained, they would be moved elsewhere. But instead of sending Vakar off with the rest, one of them told him:

             
"You shall see the king after all. Step lively, and bear yourself respectfully in his presence."

             
"What am I supposed to do? Kiss his butt, or bang my head on the floor?"

             
"No insolence! You shall kneel until he te
ll
s you to rise, that
is
ah."

             
Vakar was conducted back to the waterfront of the city of
Menê
and aboard a large red galley. On the poop, in a chair of pretence, sat the man whom he had come to see:

             
King Ximenon, big, stout, clean-shaven, in bright shimmering robes, with a golden wreath on his curly graying hair.
Beside him stood a man in gilded snakeskin armor, and
a
pet cheetah lay purring at the king's feet. On the middle finger of his left hand, Vakar saw, he wore
a
broad plain ring of dull-gray metal.

             
The Ring of the Tritons.

             
"Well?" said the king.

             
Vakar gathered his forces. "Have they told you who I am, King?"

             
"Something about your being
a
prince in some far-western land, but that means nothing to us. We cannot prove you are not lying. Get to your business, or by the fangs of Drax it will go hard with you."

             
Vakar suppressed an urge to make pointed remarks about his unroyal reception in Tritonia. Back in Lorsk his sharp tongue was always getting him into trouble, but now that it was
a
matter of life and death he found that he could control it. He said:

             
"All I wish to suggest is that I may be able to end your war with the Amazons."

             
The king's porcine eyes glittered with interest. "So?
Some new weapon or stratagem?
I listen."

             
"Not exactly, sir, but I think I could negotiate
a
treaty of
peace with them."
             

             
The king leaned forward with an impatient motion. "Peace?
On what terms?
Have you reason to think these doxies are ready to surrender?"

             
"Not at all."

             
"Then are you proposing that
we
give up? I will have you flayed—"

             
"No, sir.
I had in mind a half-and-half arrangement, whereby each should respect the rights of the other. It might not give you all you would like, but at least thereafter you could strive with them as men and women should strive, on a well-padded bed
...
"

             
Vakar gave King Ximenon another quarter-hour of argument, with an eloquence that he had not known he possessed. He depicted the beauties of cohabitation until the king, squirming with concupiscence, said:

             
"A splendid idea!
We should have tried it sooner, but after the bloodshed and bitterness between us no one on either side would make the first move. As an outsider you are in
a
position of advantage. Queen
Aramnê
is
a
fine-looking woman; could you arrange for me to wed her as part of the peace-settlement?"

             
"I can try."

             
"If you can do that along with the rest you can practically name your own reward.
"

             
"
I have already chosen it, my lord.
"

             
"
Huh? What then?
"

             
"
The Tritonian Ring."

             
"What? Are you mad?" shouted the king, looking at the dull circlet on his finger. "I will have you—"