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“Bevon,” I said. “He was by way of becoming a Jikaidast. Let me speak to him. He has a head on his shoulders.”

The arguments went on a long time; but they were tired and wrung out, and the drink was working on them, and, truth to tell, although I did not doubt for a single instant their burning determination to give their lives, they would welcome another and better way in which they did not face certain death. So we parted, amicably, with my promise that if we could not discover a method of dealing with Mefto, I would join their party and take part in their suicidal plan.

The clincher came when I said, “Your force has been reduced. You are too few to get at Mefto in a body and fight off his men; and they will fight, mark it well.”

“D’you think we don’t know that!” said Dav, and the agony in him twisted in me, too, for him… “And there is no one here we may ask or trust — save you, Jak the Nameless.”

“And yet you would still have gone on?”

“Aye!”

After we left the Noumjiksirn with the bokkertu of the ransom of the Yellow Princess duly finalized, I met Pompino. He came into the room we shared looking the worse for wear. He threw himself on the bed, and yawned, and said, “By Horato the Potent! If I had a golden deldy for each copper ob I spent tonight I would be a rich man.”

“Lucky you.”

He regarded me, sharply enough, and sat up. “I have to see Ineldar the Kaktu first thing. He has kept open two places, but he will not hold them past the Bur of Fretch.” That was two burs after the suns rose. “We must be up betimes.”

“I shall not be taking a place in Ineldar’s caravan guard.”

“What?” He scowled at me as though I’d sprouted a Kataki tail. “You don’t mean that? What of the Everoinye-”

“There is a task I must do-”

“You said you were desperate to go home — back to Hyrklana.”

“I was. But now-”

“You are going to act as a piece in Kazz-Jikaida!”

“Yes.”

“Fambly! Onker! You’ll be chopped. What in Panachreem can?”

“There is a duty I owe which must be honored. A task has been set to my hands and I must do it.”

“Ah!” He suddenly understood, or thought he did. “The Gdoinye has visited you. You have a service for the Everoinye-?”

“No. What I do is not for the Star Lords.”

He looked shocked. “There is nothing in Kregen more important than laboring for the Star Lords!”

“Yes,” I said. “There is.”

Chapter Eighteen

Of an Encounter in an Armory

Pompino shared my view that the Star Lords had acted in a way far different from their usual abrupt course when they had set us the task of protecting the lady Yasuri. For one thing; we had both been aware that the threat of the Ochs was more apparent than real. I had been warned of the impending mission in a new way, although Pompino told me that he usually received some prior notice. We felt that the Ochs had been laid on in some way so as to introduce us to the lady Yasuri and secure our employment with her.

“Her escort under that rascal Rordan the Negus returned in time. We did a good job, but-”

“Yes, the escort would have just been in time. So the Star Lords set that up for us. Not like most of the times I have been dumped down unceremoniously right in the thick of it.”

Pompino was intrigued. I told him a little of some of the occasions when I had done the Star Lord’s bidding, and he expressed astonishment. We were up early and making his preparations to leave. I would be sorry to see him go, and I felt he shared that opinion of me; but nothing he said could make me change my mind. We drank early-morning ale companionably together as we watched the suns rise.

“So you actually arrive when the action has begun?”

‘Too right. Usually I have to scout around pretty sharpish for a weapon.”

He shook his head, his foxy face surprised.

“When I am called the Everoinye place me carefully, and I can size up the situation and take the best course.”

“Ha!” This, of course, merely confirmed my own early opinion of the Star Lords that had been changing over the seasons. “If I don’t get stuck in pretty sharpish I’d be done for.” Then, to be fair, I added:

“Well, most of the time.”

We talked around this puzzling fact — puzzling to Pompino although to me merely a part and parcel of my life on Kregen — and then he came out with a sober observation that shook me.

“I had a comrade once, a fine man, a Stroxal from a town near us in South Pandahem. We never went on a task together; but we talked. One day he just disappeared and never showed up again. He was, I feel sure, slain on a task for the Everoinye.” Pompino looked shrewdly at me. “I think, Jak, that sometimes the Star Lords send a kregoinye to work for them and he fails. He is slain and does not do their bidding. Then, it is an emergency. They have to throw someone in as a last desperate attempt-”

“By Zair!” I burst out. “So I am the forlorn hope!”

“When all else fails they put you into the ring of blood.”

I felt the seething anger boiling away and I held it down. After all, wasn’t this just another reminder of my powerlessness? And then a thought occurred. “Hold on a mur, Pompino — the Star Lords have thrown me back in time, into a time loop, so that means they can choose the moment to put me into the action.”

“I think that after the action has begun they cannot affect the course of time — I, too, have been through a time loop.”

“Well, that is possible.”

And, too, I had felt this so-called powerlessness ebbing of late. There was the rebel Star Lord Ahrinye to be taken into consideration. The Star Lords were not infallible, as I knew from my arrival in Djanduin. If what Pompino said was true, and it made good sense, I had another weapon against them.

“Well, Jak, time to be off.”

He gathered up his gear and hitched his belt. He smiled at me, his fox-like face suddenly looking remarkably friendly.

“I have greatly enjoyed your company, Jak, by Horato the Potent. I grieve we will not travel the Desolate Waste together. Will you not come? There is still time…”

“I thank you, Pompino, and I have enjoyed our time together. You are a good comrade. But my allegiance is with — is with another area that-”

“Hyrklana?”

I smiled. “Think it, dom, and do not fret.”

Companionably we went out and through the crowded streets and past the boulevard tables where folk were already hard at Jikaida, the ranked armies of miniature warriors marching and counter-marching in frozen brilliance, and so came through the Kyro of Calsanys to the dusty drinnik where the caravans formed. The pandemonium was splendid. The colors, the brilliance, the movements, the stinks, the shouting and bawling — Kregen, ah, Kregen!

Ineldar had a go at making me change my mind; but he was in a hurry to get his motley assemblage into sufficient order for them to move off. There’d be confusion for a couple of days yet before he got them drilled. The Quoffas lumbered off, rolling, their patient enormous faces calmly considering the state of their insides, probably, indifferent to the pains of the journey before them. The calsanys were given a wide berth and their drivers wore bright scarves wrapped around their faces. The carriages and the wagons, the vakkas riding a wide variety of the magnificent saddle animals of Kregen, the swarms of people afoot, all moved along, jostling to find a good spot in the procession. A slave brought up Pompino’s totrix and strapped his gear aboard. I shook hands. Pompino mounted up and stuck the lance into the boot. He shouted.

“Remberee, Jak! Come and visit me in Tuscursmot. I shall make you a great bargain from my armory.”

“Aye, Pompino the Iarvin. I shall look forward to that.” I waved. “Remberee!”

“Remberee!”

And Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot, known as Pompino the Iarvin, cantered off to take his place among the caravan guards.