“I am not one to be taken by a khamster,” he said. “You have no weapons. So, it follows you will surely die.”
“As to that, we shall see. Klaiton, is it?”
He stared. “What-?”
“Get on with it, Miklasu, get on with it!”
“Before he starts,” I said, “tell me — if I am to die it will prove of illusory comfort. Where is Turko?”
Again he laughed. “Oh, you will die. There is no swordsman in all Pandahem like unto Miklasu. And, Turko-” He jerked his thumb toward that inner door. I sighed.
Now I remembered my encounter with Mefto the Kazzur, when that superb Kildoi swordsman had bested me in fair fight. I thought it highly likely that I could beat this Miklasu; but, as always, there was the chance that he would have the beating of me. And Turko was my first concern. I ran for the door, kicked it down, and burst through.
The three of them were in there, hung up like chickens on hooks. They were all mother naked. The room gave ingress to other bedrooms. The sound at my back heralded the vicious onslaught of Miklasu. I turned to face him.
I shouted, “I — Nalgre ti Hamonlad — caution you, Miklasu. I do not wish to slay you-” And then he ran in on me with his rapier doing all the flash and the dagger ready to rip into my guts. A pretty bravo-fighter’s trick, that. I swayed, took his wrist, but he hacked back and so I ducked away. He was good.
Turko said, “I might have known…”
The two Khibils, Andrinos and Saenci, hung in their bonds, gawping. I noticed that the Khibil maiden had not been crying. Andrinos’s foxy face showed determination as well as a goggling surprise at my eruption.
Miklasu foined around; but he was too canny to let me get close to him. Gaptooth appeared, shrieking for the bravo-fighter to get on with it.
Working my way around out of the reach of that sharp rapier, I came along the wall where the three captives hung. There was not much time left, for the row would surely bring the wrestlers arunning. I whipped out the kalider, slashed Turko’s bonds. He fell to his knees and, for two heartbeats, his head hung down. Then he was up, flexing his superb muscles. He did not say anything. I threw him the dagger and turned to make a feint at Miklasu and so draw him away. Turko could have handled the rapierman, I knew, but his muscles would be stiff and the blood must be giving him one hell of a time right now. He made no sound, but slashed the other two free.
When he had done that, he moved with his ferocious speed toward Jimstye Gaptooth… Long before that man could escape, Turko had his neck in one fist. He looked across at me.
“Do you remember Mungul Sidrath?”
“Aye.”
“So do I.”
He put Jimstye Gaptooth to sleep. Miklasu shouted, and leaped, and the rapier and dagger swirled in a twin cyclone of glittering steel and the Khibil maiden let out a tiny scream and Miklasu was suddenly upside down, his head crashing into the floor, and the rapier and main gauche were in my fists.
“And about time too,” said Turko. “Nalgre, was it?”
I bent to the bravo-fighter. He was not dead, and his eyes opened and fluttered. “Nalgre Stahleker,” I said. “I know him. I knew his wife, too, Princess Nashta.”
Miklasu’s eyes rolled up.
Disgust shook me. I stopped what I was going to say, some stupid boasting about the Lord of Strombor. I turned to Turko.
“Let us get out of this pestiferous place.”
“With all my heart, Nalgre. My limbs appear to have returned to me.”
“But,” said Andrinos. “How?”
I ripped the cloak away from Miklasu and handed it to Saenci. She was a beautifully formed girl. Turko ripped off Gaptooth’s shirt-tunic and Andrinos donned that.
“We go out the way I came in,” I said.
Then Turko smiled. “Hark,” he said.
The uproar outside took on a new and suddenly splendid difference. We went into the main chamber and saw a very large and knobby club with a six-inch nail embedded in the head going up and down like the head of a sissingbird snapping insects. A thraxter was slicing away with all the Chulik skills. Other weapons were being used, and the Khamorros were throwing people about like ninepins. Against the high khamsters our people would have had a more tricky time; but Turko waded in with all the venom engendered by being hung up like a chicken on a meat hook, and I took my part, and in short order we broke back through the door and ran down the stairs in a shouting, laughing mob. No one offered to stop us as we ran out of The Wristy Grip into the pink radiance of the Maiden with the Many Smiles and the rosy golden light of She of the Veils.
Chapter fifteen
The experiences through which I had gone since escaping from the Humped Land formed a distinct pattern in my head. Finding Turko was not quite the last knot of that pattern. He was, of course, unwilling to leave the Golden Prychan and his wrestling comrades until the business of Andrinos and Saenci had been settled. But, for all that — and I warmed to the idea — he was ragingly eager to return to Vallia. Born in Herrelldrin though he had been, trained as a Khamorro, rising to a high kham, he now made his home in Valka and regarded himself as a Vallian. Well, did not I, also?
The last knot in this chain would be, of course, Hyrklana.
And that must wait until we had returned to Vallia.
“He has had a fright, that Jimstye Gaptooth,” quoth Kimche. “But if you leave us, Turko, we face a hard time of it in the contests.”
This was a matter I must not interfere in and must leave to Turko.
“When I joined the consortium of the Golden Prychan,” said Turko, and he spoke slowly and with gravity, “I was beholden to you. But I did warn you, fair and square-”
“Yes. You said you would have to leave us one day-”
“And that day is now. Black Algon must be made to see reason.”
“I have gold,” I said.
They all stared at me.
“But I will not interfere.”
Andrinos, one arm about Saenci as we talked in the bamboo-lined snug, said, “If we win free, I will go with Turko.” He did not know where Turko was bound. Saenci would go with him. “And for the gold -
that I will earn and repay and thank you with all my heart.”
I nodded.
With a lift of her Khibil head, Saenci said, “Tell Black Algon I will never return to him. If he refuses the gold, tell him I shall surely kill myself. Then he will have neither gold nor me.” She made herself smile.
“And he is very avaricious.”
So that was the way of it. Turko said to me, “Andrinos is a lucky fellow.”
And I said, “Yes.”
Now Turko the Shield is an extraordinarily handsome man. With the superb athletic build of a Khamorro and that brilliant profile, he must have wreaked havoc in many a female heart. When he married and settled down, then, I judged, a shadow would come over the bright days of many and many a beauteous maid.
And, as you shall hear, I had the confounded problem of Korero the Shield to attempt to solve… Perhaps it was just blind luck; perhaps it was fate; perhaps it was some beneficent god or spirit of Kregen taking a hand, but what fell out heartened every one of us. On the very day Turko, Andrinos, and Saenci prepared to walk with me up that lonely, jungly path, the Khibil’s gold having been paid over and her manumission processed very smoothly, three fearsome Khamorros arrived at the fairground and were immediately taken into the consortium of the Golden Prychan. Kimche rubbed a thick hand over his glistening yellow pate.
“Now may Likshu the Treacherous smile, doms! Our comrade Turko leaves us and we replace him with three of his compatriots!”
So, laughing, filled with good cheer, we set off for the flier hidden away in the jungle. Fliers are rare craft in Pandahem. Andrinos and Saenci walked on ahead of us, close together, so I was able to have a private word with Turko as we followed. When I expressed myself as being surprised that so many Khamorros came to Mahendrasmot, he smiled that ironical, infuriating damned smile of his.