The spikatur cycle, p.15
The Spikatur Cycle, page 15
“By Gaji’s bowels! And these are the famous beasts I have waited to see! They are a mangy lot.”
The thomplods stood with drooping heads in the walled courtyard of Vad Noran’s villa. Missal trees lent a merciful shade. The sanded area was neatly raked. Watchful guards, mostly blegs and Rhaclaws, stood at the gates. Noran was bright and contemptuous and he did not deceive Unmok.
“The queen...” said Unmok, and paused, artfully.
“Yes, yes, I shall buy them. But the price—”
Casually, I eased away and walked a little space as though to examine the ornate well in one corner. A slave — she was a Fristle woman much bent over — hauled up the gleaming copper bucket and poured water into a copper bowl for me.
I placed an ob on the stone coping. The small coin vanished into her ragged slave breechclout like a fly on a lizard’s tongue.
The haggling could be left to Unmok. That was his trade. As a beast purveyor he had no real need to wear one of the colors of arena allegiance. Just about everyone in Huringa wore a favor. A man sauntered across to me. He wore fancy clothes and his thraxter in an embroidered scabbard thumped his thigh. His face was over-red, filled out and petulant. But he was still Callimark. Again, I had absolutely no fears that he could possibly remember me, a man seen for a few burs one evening seasons ago.
“You wear no favor, horter.” His own red cockade shone.
“Lahal,” I addressed him, and by omitting the double L indicated his lack of politeness. His eyebrows drew down, but I went on smoothly, “I have had my red so long its stitching has quite worn through. It lies somewhere now, no doubt being trampled upon by a green, or a blue or—”
“By Clem! That is not to be borne!”
Instantly, by reason of this exchange, we were on friendly terms. He rummaged around in his scrip and produced a red favor, small, crumpled, but wearable.
“You would do me the honor—” he began.
I found that grizzly old smile and nodded, and took the red favor.
“I am in your debt, Horter...?”
“Callimark.”
“Jak.”
Unmok had completed the preliminaries, and Callimark, looking across, called out cheerily. Noran and Unmok joined us and there was mention of sazz or parclear, depending on one’s preference for white or colored sherbet drinks, and palines, and perhaps banber sandwiches. Unmok winked at me. The atmosphere was genial, and that augured well for our partnership’s financial well-being.
Here in Hyrklana we were somewhat closer to the equator than we would be in Vallia, but because of the enormous spread of Kregen’s temperate zone the temperature remained comfortable. Noran’s villa proved to be the sumptuous palace one would expect. We sat in cane chairs in one of his refectories and drank our sazz and talked. The conversation quickly turned on the execution — in the arena, of course — of the criminal lunatics who had attempted to burn one of Noran’s voller factories.
I perked up.
“By Gaji’s slimy intestines!” exclaimed Noran, flushed, vindictive. “They may not like the queen, but that does not mean they have to destroy my livelihood!”
“No, indeed, Noran,” said Callimark, sipping parclear.
Now, seasons ago I had told these people I was Varko ti Hakkinostoling. The name was mouthful enough, the land far to the south had been ravaged; no one was going to bother overmuch about it. I had learned enough to pass muster, and indeed, had told Unmok that I was from Hakkinostoling.
So it was that I could venture an informed opinion.
I said, “Surely they do this, vad, as much in resentment of Hamal as of the queen—”
“Yes. You have it right, Horter Jak. But it is I who suffers!”
“The vad is constrained to sell to Hamal,” put in Callimark, acting perfectly the part of the confidant to one in high position. “The Empress Thyllis is quite mad, of course, quite unlike our own dear queen. We must stay out of the insane war she wages.”
“Yes.” Noran exerted his own authority, overriding his friend. “We profit by her stupidities. But the thought of Hamalese skyships over Huringa — no. Better to sell to Hamal.”
Now a vad is a very high rank of nobility, and Noran was being very gracious and condescending in his manner. This, I judged, was to impress Unmok and to bring down the price. So I risked another shaft...
“I agree with you absolutely, notor.” I spoke in a soft, almost philosophical voice and trusted he would take no offense. “This, I am told, is the queen’s wish. The only trouble is that this makes Hamal stronger.”
Noran nodded. He didn’t like it, but it was the truth.
“If only—” he said, and stopped.
I went on, “If we could sell to other countries we would benefit Hyrklana immensely.”
“I know that! By Flem! It is enough to make a man take up sword himself!”
“Perhaps one day you will be afforded that opportunity.”
Both Noran and Callimark looked sharply at me. I saw their reactions, transparently reflected in their faces. The next moment might see a little hop, skip and jumping...
Unmok was a mere beast purveyor, but he had standing.
Slowly, Noran worked his way around to what he fancied might be an answer to my manner.
“You speak as though—” he started, and then: “You do not talk like a beast handler, Horter Jak.”
“The queen—”
“Ah!”
Unmok was looking at me as though I’d started spitting fire like the Spiny Risslacas.
I said, “A man has to turn his hand to many things in life, and must do what those in authority demand, in loyalty and affection. This is so, is it not, Vad Noran?”
“This is so, Horter Jak. But if you are not here as I had thought, have you anything specific to ask?”
This was brass-tacking with a vengeance.
“At the present moment, no. But your sentiments do you credit — and I mean no disrespect, as I hope you will understand.”
“Go on.”
Go on! I was fishing around desperately as it was, filling the air with noise. Go on... I’d had a hard time getting here! So I leaned back in the cane chair and sipped my drink and looked wise — emperors are good at looking wise when their heads are empty — and told him, “The time will come, and I hope soon, when the queen will make her decision.”
That appeared to satisfy him, for he banged a little silver gong, and we all rose as the slaves advanced to clear the tables. We went out to the courtyard and the business of the thomplods was concluded. As Unmok said to me, “Whatever was going on in there, Jak, he didn’t haggle afterward.”
So I said, “That’s what partners are for, Unmok.”
Chapter thirteen
Of an encounter in a skyship
During the considerable time I had spent in Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, I had rarely visited any of the arenas there. Huringa was not so large a city as Ruathytu, and life was to a far greater extent dominated by the arena. Everywhere were reminders. Folk wore their colors of allegiance as a matter of course. They might live cheek by jowl, the baker being a follower of the diamond zhantil, and the cobbler an adherent of the sapphire graint, but always they were aware of the corners in the arena for which they shouted.
And they shouted. By Krun, but they made a din!
When the games were being staged the noise was clearly audible all over the city.
“For my part,” said Unmok the Nets, during the next games when we could not bring in any of the remainder of our animals, “I do not care to choose a color. I do my work, and although it does not please me, it gives me a living.” We were heading for an open-air eating place where we looked forward to roast vosk, momolams and enormous helpings of squish pie. “Now, when I get me my cage-voller...”
The people moving slowly on the boulevards and sitting at the tables all wore a pinched look, a grayish cast to their gizzards. They spoke in high-pitched voices, and laughed a great deal, with exaggerated gestures. They fooled no one. They were not in the Jikhorkdun, and therefore were, for the time being, out of the main pulsating current of life.
We sat down to eat. This was a good time for service. Nothing much happened outside the Jikhorkdun when the games were on.
The Jikhorkdun itself comprised all the inner courts and practice yards, the barracks, the cells, the animal cages and, as the focal point of all the effort, the arena within the great amphitheater. My job was to get Tilly, Oby and Naghan the Gnat out safely. Before that, I must make sure of a voller. Despite the importance of airboats to Vallia, I would not jeopardize my task of freeing my friends for the sake of a single flier. First things first.
“I am not an overly religious man, Jak,” said Unmok, leaning back, “but sometimes I question the judgment of Ochenshum in arranging my life for me. As for Havil the Green, I think his days are numbered.”
“How so?”
“Why, did you not hear that Vad Noran and his crony. Callimark? It was Flem this and Glem that, and anything-lem, all the time.”
I knew exactly what Unmok was talking about. I felt the hateful repugnance for the evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem. I looked hard at Unmok, hoping he was not involved with that blasphemy. Right or wrong, my friends and I had determined that Lem the Silver Leem should never sully Vallia.
“Some secret religion of theirs. I’ve heard of it vaguely.” Unmok’s middle left stump twitched. “I know nothing of it and wish to know nothing. But there’s a lot of it about.”
“From what I know,” I said, speaking with caution, “I fancy even Havil the Green is preferable.”
“Every week you hear of babies gone missing.”
I buried my face in squish pie. My thoughts were far too black and my face would have expressed my murderous feelings for the monsters who butchered babies to the greater glory of the Silver Leem.
We had managed to rid the martial race of Canops of the cult of Lem the Silver Leem, and the whole nation had been peacefully resettled on the island of Canopjik, situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Wracks which leads from the Ocean of Clouds into the Shrouded Sea. The island was considerably larger than their original home of Canopdrin and they flourished and maintained friendly relations with Migladrin, among other peoples and nations of the Shrouded Sea and the Dawn Lands.
When our meal was finished, Unmok said he would go to see a client who, because of an indisposition, was confined to his bed and unable to take his reserved seat in the amphitheater. I excused myself with a vague comment that Unmok would make a better fist of it than I. I sauntered along the boulevard with the infernal din from the arena booming like the thunder of the Ice Floes of Sicce. The noise rose and faded away and each punctuation marked the end of some poor devil on the blood-soaked silver sand.
Vollers cost money.
After my adventures the money remaining would not buy me the kind of voller I required, even if I could find someone to sell the craft. Production was tightly controlled, and the information that Vad Noran was engaged in voller manufacture came as a revelation to me.
So that meant I would have to liberate an airboat. I have done this before and was to do it again. All the same, I fancied in this case I’d recompense the person from whom I borrowed the flier. That seemed only fair. Vallia was not at war with Hyrklana. Ludicrous though the notion may be, it does have weight, this idea that stealing from one’s enemies is not stealing in the true meaning of the word. Well, it is not, true, but you have to ponder the question and, sometimes, come up with unpalatable answers.
While the blood-antics went on in the arena was as good a time as any and better than most for work of this nefarious nature. The flierdrome I selected lay beyond the Walls of the Sapphire, between them and the new walls. The suns burned down as I walked gently along. Unmok had been as good as his word, and I wore decent Hyrklanan clothes: a blue tunic, a gray wraparound and high-thonged sandals. I wore only the thraxter — and my old knife, of course — and had left the rapier and dagger at our camp.
Many roofs jumbled below me in a little valley. On the flat ground to the side rested many airboats, of different descriptions but all of a moderate size. It slowly dawned on me as I approached that this was now a factory as well as a flierdrome.
Large numbers of slaves were in evidence as well as men of the artisan class, those they call guls in Hamal. The place looked busy. Here they built airboats for Hamal. Guards patrolled, mostly Rhaclaws and Rapas; but I fancied I could elude them for the vital amount of time required.
The blue tunic and gray wraparound were detestable garments. But they had their part to play. Passing through the shadows of an outlying block with a gate and a guard before me, I stopped. Because there are two suns in the sky of Kregen everyone expects everything to have two shadows. So the word for shadow, umshal, is a plural, rather naturally. In a room where there is a single lamp, or at the times of solar eclipses, when a Kregan wishes to talk of a single shadow, he will say a nikumshal, half-shadows. In the shadows I put on a new face, as Deb-Lu had instructed me. The bees began to sting, but I would have to endure that. I marched briskly on.
“Lahal, dom,” I said as I came up to the guard. He was a cat-faced Fristle, bored and yawning, wishing he was in the Jikhorkdun — as a spectator! My use of the familiar word dom, pal, half disarmed him. I rattled on. “Vad Noran sent me, urgent word within — you know how it is with these notors.”
“Aye, dom, I do know. What is the latest?”
I had my wits enough about me to know what he was on about. I improvised as only an old kaidur could. I told him that one bout had seen off twenty Brokelsh coys and not a hair of the heads of their opponents scratched. This Fristle wore a blue favor. So I added to flavor the dish, “And the blues are doing well so, as a red, you will pardon me from laughing.”
He laughed and opened the gate and I went through.
Strutting along with the importance of the petty official about business, I penetrated between the buildings, and penetrated is a good word, there, by Krun! The place was alive with men and women scurrying about. The slaves ran. The guls walked to show their free status. The sounds of hammering and sawing floated from various buildings. This was Sumbakir on a large scale.
If I knew nothing at all about voller production, I knew that the silver boxes would not be made and filled here. They’d be freighted in for fitting to the vollers. Rhaclaw guards prowled. I ignored them, and my nose went up a few inches. The right petty bureaucrat, me!
My face was beginning to sting uncomfortably, but I did not want to relax in case I did not put on exactly the same face again.
Rounding a corner I looked up at the edge of the flat area. Steps led up. Only one Rhaclaw guarded them, and he was more interested in the lines of slaves hauling half-built vollers up to the finishing sheds crowning the edge. The slaves made a din. I judged that the valley had been chosen as the site because it was thought easier to defend against aerial attack. Towers studded the place, and archers moved in the fighting tops. They’d shaft an aerial attack, and they’d shaft runaway slaves. And — they’d shaft clean through anyone who attempted to steal a voller.
My lips drew down in that new face. This was not looking good.
Well, as long as I was here I might as well see how far I could get.
Now the weird thing was, and I swear this is absolutely true, as Zair is my witness!, the fact of stealing a voller and the story I had told, or rather hinted at, to Vad Noran brought vivid impressions into my mind. As I started up the slope I was thinking of Prince Tyfar and of Jaezila.
Prince Tyfar and I had gone through a few adventures together and he was a good comrade. Also, he was a Prince of Hamal, which was unfortunate. The son of Prince Nedfar of Hamal, Tyfar was intelligent, studious, a lover of good books, honorable and upright. Also he was a superb axeman. He’d gone back to Hamal after our last adventures and, I confess, I missed his company.
As for Jaezila — well, now! That commanding and beautiful woman, mistress of the bow and the sword, had plagued Tyfar cruelly with her manner and her willfulness. She worked for Hamal, although I was not certain she was Hamalese, and had been attempting to obtain fliers for the Empress Thyllis. She was a marvel, that girl, ravishing, alluring and damned temperamental, as Tyfar had discovered. When we’d been forcibly parted she could easily have gone with Tyfar back to Hamal, and there made the shattering discovery that the ninny she so contumed was a noble prince and highly thought of. I’d have liked to have witnessed that revelation, by Vox!
Maintaining that brisk gait I ascended the stairs. The Rhaclaw half turned to look. His leather armor was liberally studded with bronze and he carried a stux, one of the throwing spears that can burst clear through you. He was a Rhaclaw, a race of diffs more commonly found in Havilfar, with the enormous domed head fully as wide as his shoulders. He looked at me suspiciously.
I started my rigmarole of bearing a message as I neared him. As I reached the top, I paused, theatrically holding my side and gasping for breath.
“My Havil! That climb takes it out of a fellow.”
“You have no business here—”
Beyond him and beyond the edge of the finishing sheds I could see row after row of vollers. These were all the same, over at this end of the field. Six-place fliers, they were military craft, most useful for scouting purposes with enough punch if they got into a tight squeeze to scrape clear.
“Wait a minute, dom, till I get my breath.”
“You have no business.” He didn’t bother to finish talking to me. He half turned and opened his letter box of a mouth. He was going to holler for the Deldar of the guard.
So, unwillingly, I leaped forward and laid him down gently enough, and then ran on leaving him slumbering.
Security at this voller factory was not so slack as I’d assumed.
A hell of a racket began. As I ran I realized this was a bedlam of bells and gongs and ratcheted clackers, all kicking up their own brand of inferno. A file of Rapas doubled around the end of the finishing shed. Evidently, each sentry post was overseen by the next. Some system of checking could alone account for the rumpus.
