Avenger of Antares (11 page)

And, good as he was, he quickly realized that he faced a master swordsman, also. A tense look crept about his eyes. He essayed simple attacks, and complicated linked series of attacks; I knew them all and beat him back. So far I had not attacked. The steel rang and slithered, our feet stamped, and gradually his breathing grew louder and more ragged.

“Come on, Leotes!” yelled a frustrated onlooker. “Start slicing him up!”

“Yes, by Havil! Let’s see the color of his blood!”

The blades sang together, dagger and rapier, rapier and dagger.

He flung himself in, now, seeking no longer to slice me but simply to kill me and so have it over with. I pressed him off, forced him back, and then instigated an attack. As I say, he was very, very good. He survived, but now the sweat collected at the corners of his nose, and his mouth hung open as he breathed. His trousers were cut away as I had bet Jefan.

With a delicate touch, finicky, I’d say, I slid the steel into his left arm, my rapier and dagger crossed and down.

“First blood!” I shouted.

“No! No!” screamed the crowd. They were raging. “To the death!”

Leotes looked ghastly. I felt sorry for him. I was quite prepared to let it go at that, and see about Garnath. But the bravo-fighter from Ponthieu rushed in, his left arm still in action, the hand still gripping the dagger. “No!” he shrieked. “To the death!”

I circled him around the central area, for with rapier-and-dagger-work the simple small-sword style of straight up and down is overmatched. There followed a quick passade and he staggered back, his shoulder staining dark with blood.

I caught the judge’s eye. “First and second blood!” I called. “Take witness! I do not desire this man’s death. By the law of Hamal I abjure his death, and place it upon his own head!”

“Kill him, you fool Leotes! Kill him!” screeched Garnath. He bent swiftly and spoke to a slave girl in the gray slave breechclout, but with a silver-tissue bodice, who he had brought to hand him his spiced wine.

I swung back. “Do you want to die, Leotes?”

“I shall surely kill you, rast!”

And he tried.

Fully intending not to slay the onker, I played his blades, and as his left-hand dagger grew weaker I cut in and thrust, intending to spit his thigh and, I hoped, make him fall down and thus be incapable of continuing the bout. But he sought at the end to be clever with his swordplay and spun sideways and ducked down to let me have that long, lunging, desperate throw, with his left hand on the ground. My rapier went clean through his throat.

He jerked back, writhed on the blade, and as I withdrew, he toppled. Before his seconds could rush to him I bent over. He stared up, sick with his own knowledge. He could just speak with the bright blood pumping up.

“Who — are — you?”

I bent close. He had earned this.

“You know of Strombor, Leotes of Ponthieu?”

He nodded, unable to speak now. His eyes glared madly. I said, very softly, “I am the Lord of Strombor.”

Then he died, this Leotes, Bladesman, sword-master of Ponthieu, bravo-fighter of Zenicce.

There was some considerable confusion. Out of it all I bellowed in that foretop hailing voice: “Garnath the Kleesh! Garnath the Foul! Stand forth, Garnath, and make your bow!”

Like any onker, I, Dray Prescot, had overdone it.

I scooped up a glass cup of wine and drained it and flung the glass at Nath Tolfeyr. I strode to the mat, and waited.

After a moment Vad Garnath appeared. He was accounted a fine swordsman, I knew, yet all around me the bettors were frantically trying to lay off the bets they had made, and to wager afresh that I would win.

I stared at this Vad. “To the death, I think you said, cramph. I think so, too, for the sake of my friend, the Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind. You are not fit to—” And then I suddenly halted. I felt a wave of the most dizzying weakness pass over me. Vad Garnath smiled. He whickered his rapier about, very swashbuckling as to swagger, very powerfully proud.

“You were saying, Amak?”

“By the Black Chunkrah! You — you’ve—”

“To the death, I believe, Amak Hamun, boaster, coward.”

I stood, swaying, my rapier wavering, the whole vivid scene jumping erratically. The devil had drugged my drink! That silver-bodiced slave girl! I did not know the poison then, but its effects were subtly to overpower me and gradually to take away my strength and sense of balance. I staggered, and recovered, and the room swam.

The judge called for order. Garnath’s rapier flashed out, and, somehow, mine met it. The blades crossed and rang like tocsin bells.

In the next instant, with that infernal dizziness clawing at me and dragging me down into ever-increasing weakness, I was fighting desperately for my life.

Of the duelists’ mat and the nose of Vad Garnath

Weakness grew on me with dizzying speed. Garnath’s blade flamed before my eyes, streaks and dazzlement of blinding silver darting into my brain. I felt as though a wersting pack ululated at my heels to pull me down, or a pack of our powerful hunting rarks of the Great Plains of Segesthes bayed after me as they bayed after the slinking leem, until we might ride up astride our voves to dispatch the feline furies.

The dueling hall reeled about me. I could be back aboard a frigate beating about off Brest, forever servicing the ships of the line on eternal blockade. I did not feel as though I rode a swinger, hurtling between the colossal growths of Aphrasöe the Swinging City, for there no one would weave a net of blinding steel before my eyes and seek to bury that glittering blade in my guts.

Sheer instinctive bladesmanship kept out Garnath’s steel.

He pressed his attack, for he knew well that the drug his serving slave had slipped into that glass cup of wine would soon drop me, and the crowd would not fail to notice a swordsman who fell without a wound, and ask questions. He had to be quick and finish me. I struggled against the nausea, and the dizziness, and my wrist firmed a little, enough to beat away a savage attack and to make the beginnings of a counter.

Garnath looked surprised.

We surged together for a moment, body to body, our four blades locked and thrusting skyward. I glared madly into his eyes.

“You kleesh, Garnath! I shall not slay you now. I will let you live and tremble at my vengeance to come!”

“Boastful yetch! Be very sure I shall spit you — now!”

His rapier snickered free and darted for my ribs as he fell back to make a space and so with straightened arm attempted to thrust me through. My dagger came down with agonizing slowness, but the steel deflected Garnath’s blade. A moment later, a moment nearer, and he would have scored my side and so, whoever slew who, he would have drawn first blood and my wager would be lost.

This could not be allowed to go on.

If I say I summoned up all the vicious and dark energies in me, I do an injustice to the mystic disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy that came to my aid and saved me. I did summon up all my will, all that vision of the opponent as transparent, as though the force of will alone guided my arm and eye, gave me an uncanny foreknowledge of where he would strike. These disciplines came from long hours of contemplation and of weapons practice on the Isle of Zy where often and often during my long stay among the Zairians of the Eye of the World I had gone, season by season, to reinforce and continue afresh all that I had learned during my year of total concentration there. Being a Krozair of Zy is a continuous process, never stilled until at last one sets off for that long last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Now this Vad Garnath became transparent and far off to me; by calling on the will and making of the will a single central instrument, I was able for a short time to hold on, and grasp my blade, and so make a finish.

In a quick and savage flurry Garnath, laughing with his expected triumph, swaggered in, flicking and flashing and feinting. I met him stoutly, dazzled him with my rapier and slashed my long, narrow left-hand dagger across his right thigh. I stepped back.

“First blood!” I thought I shouted; but I knew I croaked.

Garnath stood for a moment looking for all of Kregen like an onkerish calsany, glaring at the line of blood welling from his slashed trouser leg.

“Fall down, you rast,” I said.

He tried to come at me again, and tottered, and his leg would not support him, and he fell.

I stood above him. He forced himself up on hands and knees, his head twisted up, glaring at me with a sick and awful knowledge.

“You are an abomination under the suns, Garnath. The Trylon Rees’s honor is intact, while your honor is shredded and worthless. You are shamed, Garnath! Now — down on your nose or I spit you through!”

Down he plumped on his nose.

I was not minded to reveal my disguise, to shout with great fierceness a battle cry that would betray me. I had worked hard and long at being the Amak Hamun; I would not throw that work away, for there yet remained much to be done for Vallia. But I did stagger forward, and I know the dueling hall rang and reverberated with the yells of the crowd, though I heard none of it. I bent and wiped the main-gauche carefully upon Garnath’s frilled shirt, jerking him up the better to get at it. He lay, trembling. I was trembling, too.

It is not my way to thrust a blade foul with blood into a scabbard given to me by Delia of Delphond.

The noise in my head was not the noise of the crowd. The mat swayed and swooped. I stepped back and someone gripped my elbow. In a narrowing circle of bright vision with a ring of black and purple shadows dropping down I saw Garnath’s seconds caring for him. I tried to shake my head. I felt, I saw, I experienced . . . then the darkness of Notor Zan claimed me entirely.

I awoke in Rees’s room high in his small villa, between Rees and Chido, the three of us lying there like three wounded soldiers in a hospital ward. There was much to learn.

“Thank Havil you are awake, Hamun!” Rees looked remarkably cheerful. His golden mane glowed. Chido chuckled and, between mouthfuls of palines, the pair of them told me what had transpired.

Nulty had come to them in terrible straits. Garnath’s men had visited my inn,
The Kyr Nath and the Fifi,
and sought to take me away. His loyalty to me, as a person, was never more fittingly displayed. Rees had immediately dispatched a strong party of his own retainers and a brisk little brawl had blown up there in the narrow streets of the sacred quarter. Rees’s folk had dealt with Garnath’s. Rees shook his great head.

“The rast sent that marvelous wrestler of his, Radak the Syatra. When Radak discovered he was to fight my people he refused. I suppose Garnath thought him thirsting for revenge because I had bested him in a fair fight. I have sent Radak away to the Plains of the Golden Wind, and now we face litigation over ownership and purchase and enticing a retainer. But these are small affairs beside your news, Hamun!”

“Absolutely!” cried Chido. “How did you do it? Where did you learn your rapier-work, Hamun? We heard such stories.”

Being Chido, he said “wapier,” of course, and I made shift to tell them I had met a wandering sword-master on his way to Zenicce, meeting by chance, and he had showed me a few tricks.

They both kept badgering me.

But there was nothing more I could tell them. I did promise to show them some of these astonishing tricks, and, indeed, this could be done. There are mechanical contrivances in swordplay that stand one in good stead; but for the inner drawing out of the will, the intuitive response to an attack even in its earliest stages of development, this is not mechanical. This is the art and soul and fiery spirit of swordplay.

When I asked after Casmas the Deldy, Rees pointed to a stout iron-bound lenken box on the floor.

“Stuffed with gold, Hamun!” he said. “We have not counted it, but that old rogue Casmas swears it is all there — less his commission, of course.”

“And the thousand from Jefan ti Nulvosmot for ripping off Leotes’ trousers?”

“It is all there — less, of course, Casmas’ collection fee.”

“Of course.”

They laughed, joying in my good fortune.

All my belongings had been brought and Nulty had overseen everything and was now ensconced as a privileged retainer in the household of the Numim, Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind. Being gentlemen the Trylon and the Amak had not poked around in my lenken chests. I felt relief at that, for some of the stuff in there was so obviously Vallian that all my carefully worked out explanations against such a discovery might not have sufficed. If I felt regret at deceiving these two, I had to subsume that regret into the much more profound regret that the stupidities of fate and the insane ambitions of their rulers set us apart, enemies by nation, friends by personal inclination.

Once I had recovered consciousness and could eat and drink hugely, the effects of the drug soon wore off. Rees nodded when I told him.

“A foul and cowardly potion,” he said. “And I heard what it was you said to this Garnath of the dunghill. I thank you for that, Hamun.”

“And this drug?”

“Memphees. Distilled from the bark of the poison tree memph, with subtle additions from the cactus trechinolc. It seeps through the body and gradually takes away one’s strength and senses. Enough will kill.”

I grimaced. “We have not heard the last of this cramph.”

“There is nothing we can do about this drugging of you, Hamun. Proof is lacking, for the rast will have slain that poor slave girl and written her down in his records, all fair, as Casmas knows, as the victim of an accident. Casmas may know, but it is a risk he takes. When one insures slaves it is good to make very certain the premiums bring payment.”

“Yes,” said Chido. “And that horror Garnath will have his records written up for the annual government inspection. The law is touchy regarding slaves in the old country.”

Why did it always distress me so much when these two spoke so affectionately of their country, the mortal enemy of my own?

“As to that,” said Rees, “what with all the new slaves in the country from the wars, Casmas is seriously thinking of closing down the slave-insurance side of his business. The profits are small enough, and people do not bother when it is almost as cheap and much less bother to buy fresh.”