which at the time I had deplored but acceded to at the sense of urgency these men shared — waited close. There were Magin, Wando the Squint, Uthnior Chavonthjid, Nath the Doorn and his boon comrade Nath the Xanko. There were, of course, Targon the Tapster, Naghan ti Lodkwara and Dorgo the Clis, his scar livid along his face.
As we waited for the ponderous arrival of Nath the Knife, Hyr Stikitche, what intrigued me was the apparent lack of a leader of the Sword Watch. Clearly those men I have named ran things. When they gave an order the zorcamen jumped. And they appeared to work together, with a consensus, each one supporting the next. I hoped that state of affairs resulted from the time we had spent campaigning together. There was no mistaking the smooth way things got done in the Emperor’s Sword Watch. The strange fancy struck me, as we sat our zorcas and waited, that we were arrayed as we would be when we waited in battle for the outcome, so as to go hurtling down to defeat or victory. With the flags waving in the slight breeze, with the trumpets ready to peal the calls, with the weapons bright and our uniforms immaculate, we looked just as we looked in battle. We were the emperor’s personal reserve, a powerful striking force under his hand. I may say it was most odd, by Vox, to remember that I was that emperor.
Just as a stir made itself apparent in the shadows of the Gate of Skulls I was thinking that the quicker Drak got home from Faol the better.
Alone, walking steadily and without haste, Nath Trerhagen, the Aleygyn, made his way to the table and passed around it and so sat himself down in that throne-like chair. I smiled.
“The impudent rast!” said Cleitar.
“It is clear,” offered Naghan ti Lodkwara. “He will sit. And there is no chair for you, majister.”
“Let me shaft the wretch!” suggested Dorgo the Clis.
He would have done so, instanter. But I nodded to the line of bowmen in the shadows.
“They are Bowmen of Loh. Each one would feather four of you before you could reach them. Hold fast!”
I rode out a half a dozen paces before my men and turned and lifted in the stirrups and faced them.
“I ride alone. Not one of you moves. My life is forfeit.” Then, to ram the order home, I said quietly to Volodu the Lungs, “Blow the Stand, Volodu.”
The silver trumpet with the significant dents was raised to those leathery lips. Grumbleknees turned again and walked sedately across the open dusty space toward the Gate of Skulls. His single spiral horn caught the mingled light of the suns and glittered. So it was and all unplanned, that the Emperor of Vallia rode toward this meeting with the pealing silver trumpet notes playing about his ears.
The villains of Drak’s City would not know what the call portended. They would probably think it was some kind of pompous fanfare that was sounded whenever the emperor rode out or did anything at all or even wished to blow his nose. I rode on, and I felt the amusement strong in me at the conceit. There was one thing of which I was pretty sure. I was not going to stand up while this stikitche lolled on his throne.
“By the Black Chunkrah!” I said to myself. “Nath the Knife must think again.”
No personal vanity was involved. This was a matter of policy and, of course, of will. Nath the Knife wore ordinary Vallian clothes, that is to say, the buff tunic, breeches and tall black boots. On his breast the badge of the three purple feather was pinned with a golden clasp. His face was covered by a dulled steel mask. When he spoke his voice was like breaking iron.
“Majister.”
I looked down on him from the back of the zorca. I debated. Then, carefully, I said, “Aleygyn.”
The steel mask moved as he nodded, as though under the steel he smiled, satisfied.
“Dismount, emperor, so that we may talk.”
“You might have killed me before this. I do not think you wish to talk without reason. Spit it out, Nath the Knife. There is much work to be done in Vondium these days.”
He sat up straighter. The power he wielded within the Old City was commensurate with the power I wielded in Vondium.
“There is a matter of bokkertu to be decided.”
“Once before you said that. You asked me to pay you gold so that I would not be a kitchew.” A kitchew, the target for assassination, usually has a very brief allotment left of life. But that matter had been settled with the death of the stikitche paid to do the job. That, I had thought, was finalized. Nath the Knife moved his hand. “No. It is not that.” He paused. There was about him a strange air of indecisiveness and I wished I could see his face beneath the mask so as to weigh him up better. “No. We had a bad time of it when those rasts of Hamalese captured Vondium.”
I said, “I heard how you held out in Drak’s City. You deserve congratulations for that. It has been in my mind to offer you masons and brickies, carpenters, so that you may rebuild and clean away some of the destruction.”
His head went up. “You are serious?”
It is damned hard to read a man wearing a mask.
“Yes. Perfectly serious.”
There seemed little point in adding that I wanted some of the mess in Drak’s City cleared up so as to lessen the risk of infection to the rest of the City. They policed themselves in the Old City; but I did not think they were too well-served by needlemen and once an epidemic got hold we would all be in trouble.
“You are not as other emperors-”
“No, by Vox!”
“And would you find men willing to enter here? Would not their tools be stolen, their throats cut?”
“Under proper safeguards and assurances, men would come in here and rebuild.”
“Because you told them to?”
I wondered what he was getting at.
“Not because I told them to. Because they understand the reasons. Anyway, I would pay them — pay them well — for the work will not be pleasant.”
“I think, Dray Prescot, they would do it for you.”
“They are not slaves. We do not have slaves anymore.”
Sitting the zorca, feeling the old itch down my back, darkly aware of that line of bowmen, I was all the time ready to get my foolish head down and make a run for it. But the trick of remaining mounted had given me just a little back of a hold on the situation. Nath the Knife waved his hand again. He wore gauntleted leather gloves; but a ring glowed in ronil fire upon his finger outside the glove. He came straight to the point, now, putting it to me.
“We have received a contract for you, emperor. Do not ask from whom, for that is our affair, in honor. I run perilously close to breaking the stikitche honor in this. But we stikitches remember the Hamalese and the aragorn and the flutsmen. We were cruelly oppressed. We rose when you and your armies broke into the city. Aye! We of Drak’s City hung many a damned Hamalese by his heels. We have seen what you have wrought in Vondium.” He pushed a paper that lay on the table. “The contract calls for immediate execution and the price is exceedingly large.”
I took a breath.
“And you wish me to pay you the price?”
Before he could answer, I went on: “You will recall what I told you when that was mentioned before-”
“No, emperor! By Jhalak! I know you to be a stiff-necked tapo; but will you not listen?”
I nodded and he went on speaking, and, I thought with a twinge of amusement, a little huffily. It seemed he could hardly understand just what he was saying, or why he was doing what he did. But he ploughed on, natheless.
The gist of it was that the folk of Drak’s City felt it would be to their advantage if I was alive and running Vondium. In this I fancied they did not put a great deal of store by the considerable army now at the disposal of the government. Their confidence in their own tumbledown city had been shaken by their defeat and enslavement by the Hamalese. What the chief assassin told me, quite simply, was that they intended to repudiate the contract, they would not accept it, and they wanted me to know. But-