The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (33 page)

             
"Then hear me. I am no Gwedulian, but a traveler on his way to Tartaros. I am minded to free you. Have you enough food to take you back to settled country?"

             
"Yes."

             
"In addition I need a servant to accompany me to Tartaros. If
you"
(he indicated Yoju) "would like to ride home instead of walking, you may come with me, earning your food and fare. If I release you and carry you as far as Tartaros, will you swear by your gods to serve me faithfully until I find the man I am seeking there?"

             
The man swore. Vakar freed the Negroes, stripped the corpses, and rounded up the unwounded ass. He found that he had acquired a good woolen tunic to cover his nakedness, several gold ri
ngs and a fistful of copper torcs
, and a bronze sword: a two-foot chopper with a double-curved blade like a Thamuzeiran sapara.

             
As his own wound had begun to sting abominably, he looked at his reflection in the water of the oasis. The luxuriance of his beard, now all matted on one side with dried blood, startled him. He thrust his face into the water to wash away some of the blood and dirt, and pinned the
edges of the wound together with a small golden pin that he had found among the effects of the dead traders.

             
One of the Negroes spoke to Yoju, who translated: "He says that as whites go you are a good man, and if you ever come to his village you need not fear being eaten."

             
"That is kind of him," said Vakar dryly. "If you are ready we will set out."

             
He mounted the camel and signalled it to rise. Yoju mounted the ass and together they started southward. The remaining Negroes waved, after them.

-

             
Twenty days later Vakar arrived at Tegrazen, at the mouth of the Akheron, and once again heard the boom of the surf. The town was formidably walled against a possible Gorgon raid. The language was similar to Gamphasantian and Belemian, but many of the people spoke Hesperian. The houses were mixed: some of the mudbrick Gamphasantian style, some stone
Kernean
-type dwellings, and some beehive thatched huts like those of the Negroes to the south. The population was equally mixed: tall brown Lixitans, bullet-headed ye
ll
ow-skinned renegade Gorgons, bearded
Kernean
s, Tartarean blacks, and all intermediate shades.

             
Vakar thrust through the teeming tangle, towing his camel. The town boasted
an
kin where Vakar took a place on a bench with his back to the wall. (He had made a habit of doing so ever since his
experience in the house of the Ogugian witch
Charsela.) The inn-keeper set down big blackjacks of tarred leather and filled them with barley-beer from a gourd bott
l
e. Vakar was setting down his mug when he observed a curious expression in the eyes of Yoju.

             
"What is it?" he asked.

             
Yoju pointed. Vakar craned his neck and saw, on the end of the bench, a man dressed as a
Kernean
trader, a horny-skinned fellow with a full black beard speckled with gray—but the man was less than two feet tall. This midget was drinking barley-beer too, but out of a child's cup.

             
When the innkeeper came to refill Vakar's blackjack, the latter jerked a thumb, saying: "What on earth is that?"

             
"Him?
That is Yamma of
Kernê
. When his accident happened he did not dare return home, but settled in Tegrazen as a dealer in metals. Would you like to know him? He is a friendly litt
l
e fellow."

             
"I should indeed," said Vakar.

             
The innkeeper picked up the midget by the slack of his tunic and set him down upon the table in front of Vakar, saying: "Here is a traveller named Vakar Lorska, Yamma, who would like to know you. Tell him the story of your life: tell him what happened to you when you told that witch-doctor he was full of ordure."

             
"I should think it was obvious," said Yamma.

             
"What witch-doctor is this?" asked Vakar.

             
"Fekata of Gbu, the greatest smith of Tartaros. If
I
had known who he was and had not been drunk I should have been more careful."

             
"Tell me more of Fekata. He sounds like the man
I
seek."

             
"It is said he can pull down a star from heaven with his tongs and hammer it into shape on his anvil. He is headman of Gbu, in the middle of the peninsula of Tartaros, halfway to the Abiku country.
When you find him, spit in his soup for me, though he will probably turn you into a scorpion for your trouble."

-

             
Gbu was, like all Tartarean towns, a cluster of beehive huts, whence came the barking of dogs, the yelling of children, the tinkle of the bells hung round the necks of a
Kernean
trader's asses, and the buzz and clang and clatter made by the craftsmen of Tartaros as they plied their trades. Vakar threaded his way among the stalls of woodcarvers, bead-drillers, jewel-polishers, shield-makers, and goldsmiths until he found the premises of Fekata, Headman of Gbu, smith, and wizard.

             
Fekata had his smithy in an open shed alongside the clump of huts that served him and his wives for a home. A fresh leopard-skin hung at the back, drying in the sun. A young Negro tended the
furnace,
while in the middle of the shed Fekata himself hammered a bronze ax-head into shape with a stone-headed sledge-hammer. He was a middle-aged Negro of about Vakar's height, but much broader, with a prominent potbelly and the most massive and muscular arms that Vakar had ever seen. One eye was blinded by a cataract, and a short grizzle of gray wool covered Fekata's head.

             
As Vakar approached, the smith looked up and stopped hammering. The buzz of flies became audible in the quiet. Vakar identified himself and asked:

             
"Are you he who made a ring from the metal of a fallen star?"

             
"That is true, and if I ever catch the blackguard who swindled me out of my price on that job
...
"

             
"
What happened?"

             
"Oh, it was long ago, though I, Fekata of Gbu, do not forget such things. There was a beggarly trader from
Tritonia, one Ximenon, who had been in the Abiku country when the thing fell with a great flash and roar and buried itself, and he had tracked it to the spot and dug it up. He promised me enough ivory and gold to break the back of that camel of yours if I would make
him a ring of the metal of the star. I did, though it took a crocodile's lifetime to learn how to work the stuff. Then when he had the ring he started off on his ass as jaunty as you please. 'Ho,' said I, 'where is my price?' 'Come to Tritonia when
I
have made myself king and I will pay you,' said he, and away he galloped. I threw a curse after him that should have shriveled him to a centipede—not knowing then that the star-metal was a protection against all magical assaults. Later I heard he had become king of the Tritons by the help of this ring, but I did not see fit to travel half-way across the world on the slim chance that Ximenon would honor his promise. What do you know of this?"

             
"King Ximenon is dead, if that pleases you," said Vakar. "As for the fallen star, is this it?" He produced the Tahakh.

             
Fekata's eyes popped. "That is it! Where did you get it? Did you steal it from Ximenon?"

             
"No, from another king: Awoqqas of Belem. How he got it I do not know, though I should guess Ximenon gave it to him in return for help in making himself king of the Tritons. Could you make more rings from it?"

             
Fekata turned the lump over in his huge hands, his good eye gleaming.
"For what price?"

             
"I have several ounces of gold, and some copper
...
"

             
"Pff!
I, Fekata of Gbu, have little need of gold and copper. I make enough from my regular work to keep myself and my six wives and twenty-three children in food and drink.
But to work on a new metal...
I will tell you.
I
will make one article for you—one only—from this piece, and in payment you shall give me the rest of the piece. How is that?"

             
"What? Why you damned black swindler—" The smith shot out a hand and gripped Vakar's arm. The great fingers sank in and in, and Fekata pulled and twisted until Vakar thought his arm would come off. Though a wiry and well-muscled man he was like a child in the hands of this giant.

             
"Now," said the smith in a deadly-soft voice, "what was that again?"

             
"I said I thought your price was a little high," grunted Vakar, "but perhaps we can agree."

             
The crushing grip relaxed. Vakar, massaging his arm and inwardly cursing the cross-grained temper that got him into these tiffs, said: "Will you agree before witnesses to make one article, anything I demand, in return for the rest of the star?"

             
"I agree." Fekata spoke in his own tongue to the youth, who trotted off.

             
"What did you say?" asked Vakar.

             
"I told my son to fetch the heads of the Ukpe, our secret society, to act as witnesses."

             
In time four men with ostrich-feather headdresses and faces painted with stripes and circles, wrapped in buckskin blankets and an immense dignity, showed up.
Vakar and Fekata repeated their engagement before these. Fekata asked:

             
"Now, how big a ring do you wish?"

             
"Who said a ring? I will have a sword-blade, made to my measurements."

             
The smith stared blankly; then his face became distorted with rage until Vakar feared the fellow might spatter his brains with a hammer-blow. But then Fekata's expression changed again and he burst into a roar of laughter, slapping his paunch.

             
"You damned whites!" he bellowed. "How can an honest craftsman make a living with you rascals cheating him? But I will make your sword. I, Fekata of Gbu, keep my word, and the biggest sword an insect like you could swing will take less than half the star. Give me that thing. Angwo, fetch a few of your brothers; we shall need all the lungs we can get on the blow-pipes. You see, Vakar, the trick in working the star-metal is that it must be forged at a bright-red heat where copper or bronze would shatter, and with a hammer of double the normal weight
...
"

-

             
Vakar bid farewell to Yoja and rode back to Tegrazen, where he found
little
Yamma of
Kernê
drinking barley-beer in the same tavern. Yamma was telling the story of his life to a shaven man with the yellowish skin of a Gorgon.

             
"Hail," squeaked Yamma as Vakar sat down. "You are that
fellow
who was on his way to see Fekata, are you not? Did you spit in his soup?"