She saw me and a muscle twitched in her cheek. But she made no movement and ignored me. That suited me. I was not here to fight for the lady Yasuri, but to fight against her opponent. The eight slave girls who carried the Jikaidasta’s chair were Gonells. The male Gons habitually shave off their white hair, believing it shames them. But some peoples of the Gon race take a proper pride in the silver hair of their females, and these eight Gonells were splendid girls, well-formed, clad in wispy blue, and their silver hair shone lustrously, sweeping in deep waves to their waists. The occupant of the carrying chair was invisible to me and the gherimcal rested on its four legs, carved like prychans. We marched past and so fanned out to take up our positions. As the trumpets blew and the Suns of Scorpio shone down on us, we Ranked our Deldars. The game opened with Mefto taking the first move and soon his pieces were extending down the board toward us, like rivers of lava from a volcano. Our own lines extended toward Yellow. Truly, Mefto’s pieces looked splendid in their yellow breechclouts and with tufty masses of yellow feathers. Their shields formed a field of daffodils. He had picked his best men, no doubt of that; they were brawny, tough, adept. Like us, they were a mixture of diff and apim, and they were confident of victory. The beautiful girls in their wisps of clothing ran about the board carrying the orders to the pieces. Men moved in obedience and soon the opening clashes began. Swords flashed and blood flowed. We played Death Jikaida.
It chanced that I was formed into a diagonal line with a swod each side, and there I remained. Mefto had not put in an appearance on the board. I could just see him in the Yellow throne, giving his orders and the stylor below repeating them to the girls who ran so fleetly, their limbs rosy and glowing, or brown or black and splendid in the light. The lines formed and pieces fought and were taken or took, to be tossed back into the velvet-lined balass box or to be replaced from the substitutes’ bench. The opening proved to be the Princess’s Kapt’s Gambit Accepted, and my diagonal remained fast, the action taking place on the right wing.
The young swod by me licked his lips. He was apim, a lithely built lad, without the bulky toughness of the fighting man who has campaigned for seasons on end. Despite the regulations, we talked, as the pieces did. What could the representative of the Nine Masked Guardians do about that now? Have us all shafted?
There were things he could order and which the black-clad men would carry out; but this infringement of the rules was minor.
“I only borrowed the chicken,” said this lad, by name Tobi the Knees. “Mother was starving and Father
— well, I do not know what happened to him. I would have given the next chicken back, as I always do.”
So he had been taken up by the Watch and condemned, and sent to the academy to be trained for Kazz-Jikaida. He came from the teeming sections of the city in which many poor folk eked out a precarious living. There were too many of these poor quarters. The contrast between their squalor, and the lavishness of Yellow or Blue City, condemned the Nine Guardians — at least, in my eyes. As for the Foreign Quarters, where visitors who were impartial as to color stayed, they were as palatial in their hotels as the palaces of the City nobility. Tobi the Knees was not alone in his misery.
“I was going to be a wheelwright — always get work as a wheelwright. And I can shape the wood perfectly. But, mother was ill and I lost my job, and-”
“You borrowed a chicken.”
“They got the feathers back!”
“I see.”
“And they showed me this sword and this shield and I can make a pass or two. But I still don’t understand it all.”
“Keep the shield up and keep sticking the sword out, Tobi. You’ll make a bladesman yet.”
“But I-” He swallowed. He was keeping up a brave front and smiling and swishing his thraxter about; but he was scared, frightened clear through to his ib.
A flash of legs and a wisp of purple drapery and a girl’s clear voice saying: “Swod to vault to Prychan D
Four.”
Prychan Drin was the third drin toward Yellow on the left of the board. Dermiflon was the home drin on that side, and then Strigicaw Drin. These drins do not appear in Poron Jikaida. Tobi the Knees looked. He gripped his sword. Then, without a word to me or the girl he walked up along the diagonal line. Prychan D Four was unoccupied. Tobi came down off the end of the zeunt and stood on the square and looked around. He was right out in the front of the Blues.
I just hoped Yasuri and her lady Jikaidasta knew what they were doing. D Four is a blue square.
Over on the right of the board Mefto made a bold advance, vaulting a Hikdar down through Neemu Drin to the end of Wersting Drin, and as Yasuri brought a Hikdar across to Boloth Drin to cover, so Mefto advanced a Chuktar. I began to think the crucial action would take place over there, on the front between Wersting and Boloth Drins. I hoped so. I didn’t give a damn who won this silly game; I owed Konec and his comrades from Mandua and I owed Vallia to make sure of Mefto when he appeared on the board.
The charming little girls with their blue or yellow feathers who carry the orders are equipped with long light wands of red-painted wood wrapped in blue or yellow streamers. With these they tap the pieces on the shoulders if, as so often happens, the men are staring in sick fascination at the fighting. So I felt the tap, and turned, and the girl said: “Deldar to Prychan E Three.”
I vaulted. This placed me diagonally ahead of Tobi. He greeted me as though we’d met on an Ice Floe in You Know Where.
The next instant Yellow’s orders were carried out. A fellow wearing the Yellow favors and feathers stalked across the squares from Krulch Drin toward me. Mefto had decided to put an end to this advance.
I recognized the Yellow piece at once. He was acting the part of a Chuktar; but I had last seen him eating palines in Friendly Fodo’s Weapons Shop. He halted for a moment on E Two, for as a Chuktar he had come straight on, and then, instantly, flung himself on me.
As his sword beat down on my upraised shield I fancied I’d stir him up a little.
“Why, Llahal, Trinko. Fancy meeting you here.”
His muscular body shielded with that shiny carapace across his back bore on, and his Moltingur face, all eating proboscis and feelers and terrifying faceted eyes, showed shock. I thumped forward with the shield, let the thraxter snout to the side and below. The resistance was soggy, and then the blade slid in. I stepped back.
He toppled over and his tunnel mouth emitted a long hissing wheeze. The slaves in their red tunics ran out with a stretcher and carted him away. Other slaves raked the blood and sprinkled fresh blue sand. There was no lifting uproar from the refined onlookers lounging in their chairs along the terrace. Yasuri made her move.
The red wand touched me again and the blue streamers tickled my face.
“Deldar to take Hikdar on Prychan C Three.”
This fellow, a Rapa, had watched the previous contest with his blue-feathered beak stuck high in the air. The yellow feathers in his reed-laurium outweighed his racial feathers. I stalked across and we set to. He was good — all Mefto’s men were good — and the shields gonged like pale echoes of the Bells of Beng Kishi before I slid him and so stretched him out on the blue sand. The red-clad slaves bore him off. Still there was no sound from the terrace and I did not expect any. They were connoisseurs up there, lolling in their fancy chairs and sipping their wines. Yasuri, as was her privilege because I was the attacking piece, recalled me then. I trailed off to the substitutes bench with a word for Tobi as I went.
“That’s how it’s done, Tobi. Keep your chin tucked in and your shield up. Jikai!”
“It is to you the Jikai, Jak.”
What could I say? I gave him a hard nod of encouragement and walked slowly back across the blue and yellows.