Haggopian and Other Stories (23 page)

He wriggled back from the rim, stood up, loped around the edge of the bowl toward the waterfall. Almost there he stopped, used his broken sword’s scant inches of blade to cut a bow, strung it with the thong from his middle. Two straight, slender stems for flightless arrows—crude but effective at short range—and he was ready. Except…

It is never a wise move to come upon a man suddenly, when he may well be shocked into precipitous and possibly violent reaction. Tarra went to the head of the water-carved steps, leaned casually upon a great boulder and called down, “Halloo, there!”

The basin took up his call, adding it to the thunder of plummeting waters: “Halloo, there—
halloo, halloo, halloo—there, there, there
!”

Down below the lone fisherman scrambled to his feet, saw Tarra Khash making his way down slippery terraces of stone toward him. Tarra waved and, however uncertainly, the man by the pool waved back. “Welcome!” he called up in a tremulous croak. “Welcome, stranger…”

Tarra was half-way down. He paused, yelled: “Be at your ease, friend. I smelled your meat and it aroused a small hunger in me, that’s all. I’ll not beg from you though, but merely borrow your hook, if I may, and catch a bite of my own.”

“No need, no need at all,” the other croaked at once, seemingly reassured. “There’s more than enough here for both of us. A suckling pig and a skin of wine…which way have you come? It’s a strange place for wanderers, and that’s no lie!”

Tarra was down. Stepping forward he said, “Across the Nameless Desert—which is just a smidgeon dusty this time of year!” He gave his head a shake and dust formed a drifting cloud about his shoulders. “See?”

“Sit, sit!” the other invited, fully at his ease now. “You’ll be hungry as well as thirsty. Come, take a bite to eat and a swig of sweet wine.”

“I say gladly to both!” answered Tarra Khash. “But right now, the sweetest thing I can imagine is a dip in these crystal waters. What?—I could drink the lake dry! It’ll take but a moment.” He tossed his makeshift bow and arrows down, stepped to pool’s rim. The scabbard and hilt of sword stayed where they were, strapped firmly to his back.

“Careful, son!” the oldster cautioned, his voice like dry dice rattling in a cup—but the Hrossak was already mid-dive, his body knifing deep in cool, cleansing waters. “Careful!” came the warning again as his head broke the surface. “Don’t swim out too far. The water whirls toward the middle and will drag you down quick as that!” He snapped his fingers.

Tarra laughed, swilled out his gritty mouth, turned on his back and spouted like a whale. But the oldster was right: already he could feel the tug of a strong current. He headed for the shelf, called: “Peace! I’ve no lust for swimming, which seems to me a fruitless exercise at best. No, but the dust was so thick on me I grew weary from carrying it around!
Ho!
” And he hauled himself from the water.

A moment later, seated on opposite sides of the fire, each silently appraised the other. The old man—a civilized man by his looks, what Tarra could see of them; possibly out of Klühn, though what such as he could want here the Hrossak found hard to guess—was blocky turning stout, short of stature and broken of voice. He wore loose brown robes that flowed in the nomad fashion, cowled to keep the sun from his head. Beneath that cowl rheumy grey eyes gazed out from behind a veil of straggling white hair; they were deep-set in a face much seamed and weathered. His hands were gnarled, too, and his calves and feet withered and grey where he shuffled his open leather sandals to scuff at the pebbles. Oh, he was a grandfather, little doubt, and yet—

Tarra found himself distracted as the other teased a smoking chunk of pork as big as his fist from the spit and passed it over the fire on a sharp stick. “Eat,” he growled. “The Nameless Desert is no friend to an empty belly.”

Feeling the sun steaming water from his back, Tarra wolfed at the meat, gazed out over the lake, dangled a toe languidly in its water. And while he munched on crisp crackling and tore at soft flesh, so the other studied him.

A Hrossak, plainly, who beneath his blisters and cracked skin would be bronze as the great gongs in the temples of Khrissa’s ice-priests. Not much known for guile, these men of the steppes, which was to say that they were generally a trustworthy lot. Indeed, it was of olden repute in Klühn that if a Hrossak befriends you he’s your friend for life. On the other hand, best not to cross one. Not unless you could be sure of getting away with it…

The old man checked Tarra over most minutely:

Standing, he’d be a tall one, this Hrossak, and despite his current leanness his muscles rippled beneath sun- and sand-tortured skin. Hair a shiny, tousled brown (now that dust and dirt were washed away) and eyes of a brown so deep that it was almost black; long arms and legs, and shoulders broad as those of any maned and murderous northern barbarian; strong white teeth set in a wide, ofttimes laughing mouth—aye, he was a handsome specimen, this steppeman—but doubtless as big a fool as any. Or if not yet a fool, then shortly.

“Hadj Dyzm,” he informed now, “sole survivor of a caravan out of Eyphra.We had almost made it through a mountain pass and were headed for Chlangi—our planned watering place, you understand—on our way to Klühn. Mountain scum ambushed us in the eastern foothills. I played dead, as did two others…” (Tarra, still munching, glanced quickly about and to the rear, his keen eyes missing nothing.) Dyzm nodded: “Oh yes, there
were
three of us, myself and two young bucks.” Tarra could almost taste him biting his lip. Well, he wouldn’t pry. The old man could keep his secrets. Anyway, it was easier to change the subject.

“Khash,” he said.”Tarra, to my friends. I’m heading for Hrossa—or should be! Now—I suppose I’ll rest up here for a day or two, then get on my way again. Go with me if you will, or is your aim still set on Chlangi the Doomed?”

The other shrugged. “Undecided. Chlangi is a place of brigands, I’m told, and your Hrossa is likewise somewhat…wild?”

“You’d be safe enough with me, and there’s sea trade with Klühn—though not much, I’ll admit. Again, I’ve been away for many a year; relations may well have improved. One thing’s certain: if a man can pay his way, then he’s welcome in Hrossa.”

“Pay my way!” The other laughed gratingly.”Oh, I can do that all right. I could even pay you—to be my protection on the way to Chlangi—if you were of a mind.” He dipped into his robes and came out with several nuggets of gold, each big as a man’s thumb.

Tarra blinked.”Then you’re a rich merchant, Hadj Dyzm, or at any rate a man of means! Well, I wish I could be of assistance. But no, I believe it’s Hrossa for me. I’ll think it over, though.”

Dyzm nodded. “Fair enough!” he barked in that strange rough voice. “And in my turn I shall give some thought to your own kind offer. But let me say this: of all my treasure—of the veritable
lumps
of gold which are mine—those nuggets I have shown you are the merest motes. For your help I would pay you ten, nay twenty times what you have seen!”

“Ware, man!” Tarra cautioned. “Men have been killed for a toothful! Speak not of lumps—at least not so carelessly!” It was a true statement and a sobering thought.

They sat in silence then, eating their fill for a long while, until the pork was finished and the wineskin empty. By then, too, the sun was riding high in a sky so blue it hurt, and Tarra was weary nigh unto death.

“I’m for sleeping,” he finally said.”I’ll be happy to find you here when I awaken, Hadj Dyzm, and if you are gone I’ll not forget you. Peace.”

Then he climbed to a shady ledge almost certainly inaccessible to the oldster, and with a single half-speculative glance at Dyzm where he sat in the shade of the willows below, and another out across the glittery pool, he settled himself down to sleep…

II

Tarra Khash was not much given to dreaming, but now he dreamed. Nor was his dream typical, for he was not a greedy man; and yet he dreamed of gold.

Gold, and a great deal of it. Heaps of it, ruddily reflecting the flickering light of a torch held high in Tarra’s trembling fist. Trembling, aye, for the dream was not a pleasurable thing but a nightmare, and the treasure cave where the dreaming Hrossak waded ankle deep in bright dust not merely a cave but—

—A tomb!

The tomb of Tarra Khash! And as behind him its great stone slab of a door pivoted, shutting him in forever—

—Tarra came awake in a moment, jerking bolt upright with hoarse cry and banging his head on jutting rim of rock whose bulk had kept the sun from him. But now…the sun already three parts down the sky and shadows stretching; and already the chill of evening in the air, where overhead kites wheeled against a blue degrees darker, their keen eyes alert for carrion; and the great pool grey now where it lay in the shade of the basin, and the spray from the cataract a veil of milk drifting above the fall.

Tarra lay down again, fingering his skull. He shivered, not so much from chilly flesh as a chill of the spirit. A dream such as that one were surely ill-omened, whose portent should not be ignored. Tarra touched his bump again and winced, then grinned however ruefully. What? A Hrossak full-grown and troubled by a dream? Terrors enough in this primal land without
conjuring more from surfeit of swine-flesh!

“Ho!” came a gritty, coughing shout from below.”Did you call me? I was sleeping.”

Tarra cloaked himself in his wits and sat up—this time more carefully, “I wondered if you were still there,” he called down. “I couldn’t see you in the shade of your tree, and the fire appears to be dead.”

“What?” Hadj Dyzm came from cover, stretched and yawned. He poked for a moment at dull embers, then snorted a denial. “No, not dead but sleeping like us. There—” and he propped a dry branch over hot ashes. By the time Tarra had climbed stiffly down, smoke was already curling.

“Fish for supper,” said Dyzm. “If I may depend on you to see to it, I’ll go tend my beasts.”

“Beasts?” Tarra was surprised. “Beasts of burden? Here?” He stared hard at the other in the dying light. “You said nothing of this before. Things take a turn for the better!”

“Listen,” said Dyzm. “While you slept I thought things over. I’ve a tale to tell and a proposition to make. I’ll do both when I get back. Now, will you see to the fish?”

“Certainly!” the Hrossak answered, kneeling to blow a tiny flame to life. “Beasts of burden, hey? And now maybe I’ll reconsider your offer—my protection, I mean, en route for Chlangi—for it’s a shorter way by far to the so-called Doomed City by yak, than it is to the steppes on foot! And truth to tell, my feet are sore weary of—” But Hadj Dyzm was no longer there. Humped up a little and wheezing, he made his way carefully upward, from one rock terrace to the next higher; and he needed his wind for breathing, not chattering to a suddenly gossipy Hrossak.

Tarra, however, chattered only for effect: chiefly to hide his hurried re-appraisal of this “stranded merchant”. Stranded, indeed! How so? With beasts of burden at his command? There were deep waters here for sure, and not alone in this crystal pool!

Using his broken blade the Hrossak quickly gutted the fishes, spitted them together on a green stick and set it over the stinging smoke, then checked on Dyzm’s progress up the side of the bowl. And…he could climb surprisingly well, this old man! Already he was at the rim, just disappearing over the top. Tarra let him get right out of sight, then sprang to his feet and raced up the terraces. At the top he followed Dyzm’s trail beneath the cliffs to where the water came down in a near-solid sheet from above, its shining tongue lunging sheer down the slippery face of the rock. No need for stealth here, where the thunder of the fall deadened all else to silence.

Then he spotted the oldster, but—

On the other side of the fall? Now how had he managed to get across? And so speedily! The old fellow was full of surprises, and doubtless there were more to come; Tarra must try to anticipate them.

He watched from the shelter of a leaning rock, his gaze half-obscured by rising spray from the lake. Dyzm’s animals were not yaks but two pairs of small camels, which he now tended in the pale evening light. Tethered to a tree in the lee of the cliff, three of them had saddles and small bags, the other was decked more properly as a pack animal. Dyzm put down a large bundle of green branches and coarse grasses collected along the way and the camels at once commenced to feed. While they did so, the old man checked their saddlebags. And furtive was old Hadj Dyzm as he went about his checking, with many a glance over his brown-robed shoulders, which seemed a little less humped now and, oddly, less venerable. But perhaps that was only an effect of the misty light…

Keeping low and melding with the lengthening shadows, Tarra retraced his steps to the bowl, down the terraces to the lake, and was just in time to keep the fishes from ruin as the fire’s flames blazed higher. So that a short while later, when Dyzm returned, supper was ready and the fire crackled a bright yellow welcome, its light reflecting in the water along with night’s first stars.

Seeing that all was well, Dyzm handed Tarra a blanket he’d brought back with him from his camel-tending; Tarra threw it gratefully across his shoulders, drawing it to him like a robe. Hunching down, they ate in silence; and then, with the last rays of the sun glancing off the western rim of the bowl, the old man shoved a little more wood on the fire and began to talk:

“Tarra Khash, I like you and believe that you’re a trustworthy man. Most steppemen are, individually. Oh, it’s true I know little enough about you, but we’ve eaten together and talked a little, and you’ve given me no cause to suspect that you’re anything but a right-minded, fair-dealing, strong-limbed and hardy Hrossak. Which are all the qualifications you need to be my partner. Hear me out:

“If you hadn’t come on the scene when you did—indeed, only half an hour later—then I’d have been long gone from here and even now on my way to Klühn via Chlangi, and to all the many hells with trail brigands and bandits! And fifty-fifty I would make it unscathed, for I’m a survivor, d’you see? Not that I’d normally complain, even if I didn’t make it: a man has a life to live and when it’s done it’s done. Being a Hrossak, you’d agree with that, I know.