“May Kaidun forfend!”
We went down to our assembly place where the coys shuffled away with many a long look, at once apprehensive, fearful, envious, at the kaidurs. Cleitar greeted me. So did Rafee the Render, a giant of a kaidur who had been a pirate before being captured and offered the usual alternatives. He was a huge ruffian and a great hand with his ax. With the other kaidurs of the red who were fighting this day we took our places on ponsho-fleece covered benches behind the iron bars where we might sit and quaff wine and swap stories and stare out upon the silver sand. One by one the combats took place. Cleitar disposed of his Rapa, as I disposed of mine. At this time there might be as many as fifty separate combats going on in the arena, and wherever the public might sit, strictly in the color-quarters they would support from the day of their birth to the day of their death, they would have a fine close-up view of the fighting.
The suns crawled up the sky. The wine we drank, that raw rough red stuff the kaidurs called Beng Thrax’s spit, served to slake our thirsts. It was practically nonalcoholic. But — it contained the hidden drug distilled from the sermine flower.
The day wore on and the most important of the combats especially staged as wagers went on increasing. We lost a great kaidur, one Fakal the Sword, who slipped in a patch of sand-strewn blood and so recovered to stare at a thraxter as it plunged over the rim of his corselet into his neck. We yelled and rattled our swords across the iron bars and made the shrieks and ululations from the paid mourners, starkly dramatic in their black robes, separated in their special boxes, seem like thin chittering whistling.
“Ornol the Chank!” yelled Nath. “We have him marked, by Kaidun!”
Ornol the Chank was a great kaidur of the yellow, and we saw poor old Fakal the Sword’s head offered up as a tribute to the diamond zhantil. Out of deference to custom we must remain mute while the observances were being made. But we all looked at Fakal’s dripping head, and we all wanted to get onto the silver sand and cross thraxters with Ornol the Chank.
I checked in horror.
This night I had planned an escape. What then, by Zair, was I doing vowing to revenge our injured red honor by dealing with Ornol the Chank in the future? I had no future I wanted here in the Jikhorkdun. Rather, having established what position I had, I would reject it all as trivial for the realities of my life which were, as you know, Delia and — well, the rest might go hang. Delia, and little Drak and Lela were all I wanted.
So — why shout and rave and shake my sword at the triumphant yellow benches?
There was no denying the excitement of it all, the thrills and terror, the narrow escapes, the great shouts of triumph or of raging despair that roared up at victory or disaster. I was one of the reds. We fought for the ruby drang. Out across that sun-soaked arena of silver sand lives were staked. The huge sums of money and jewels and property were all behind the scenes. Here, in the blood and the agony, the swift clash of combat, here was where it all happened.
Oh, yes, I was caught up in it all. I was a kaidur, and conscious of that, proud even, and I fought for the reds and as much as I joyed in my own victories I gloried in the victories of my fellow reds. I even think that a great kaidur, when at last he was beaten and so fell with his opponent’s bloody weapon drinking his life blood, felt greater sorrow that his color had gone down in defeat than that he was losing his own life.
Eerie and powerful are the ways men may be twisted by systems and customs and the hot passions of blood.
The proud and remote land of Hyrklana gathered men from many other lands and nations and races to fight in the Jikhorkdun. The demands of the arena were insatiable. Of poor people to be used merely as fodder, to whip up the blood appetites, few might be found outside the criminal classes and the political opponents, and those betrayed by hidden enemies. But the land of Havilfar is wide, and there are very many different countries upon its surface, even if the wild lands in the central northwest are relatively barren. Slave dealers thrived. It had taken a mighty empire to support the arenas of our Earth’s ancient Rome. But that empire, large as it was, could not compare with the resources open to the swift vollers of Havilfar.
Fighting in the arena were men from Pandahem, from Murn-Chem, from Ng’groga — their seven-foot height and incredible thinness could not be mistaken — men from Walfarg and Undurkor and Xuntal. Men like my good comrade Gloag from Mehzta who was not apim. There were the wild black-haired, blue-eyed men from the valleys and mountains of Erthyrdrin. There were men from Vallia, too. And, I believe, from Zenicce.
On a day before my plans for escape were complete, I had been engaged in the melee and the reds had been steadily wearing down our yellow opponents. The diamond zhantil remained in the ascendant over the red drang; but we were doing what we might to redress that balance. The four huge colored images on their movable staffs situated at one end of the gigantic oval of the amphitheater showed by their relative heights the state of the colors. If the reds emerged victorious we would lift the red drang another notch higher and bring the yellow zhantil a notch lower.
So, on this day, as we fought and I dispatched my man — for this was a skilled melee, where like fought like, and we were matched — I swung about to smash away a thraxter aimed at my back and so slew that one, also. Cleitar Adria was just stepping back from his man.
The yellow lay gasping on the sand, his face agonized. His oiled curly black hair in tight ringlets gleamed in the steaming light of Far and Havil as his helmet rolled away. Cleitar bent to finish him, as was proper, given that this was a fight-to-the-finish melee.
I saw the man lying there turn his eyes up. His face lost its writhing reflection of the agony he felt. He watched as Cleitar’s sword lifted high against the suns. And then he spoke, quick, simple words, breathy and blood-filled. Words I heard in a kind of stupefied daze.
“I join you, my brothers, Krozairs of Zamu! I join you to sit on the right hand of Zair in the glory of Zim!”
Shattered, I sprang forward.
“No, Cleitar!”
I was too late. The sword slashed down. A Krozair brother had indeed gone to join his comrades in Zair. Aye, his comrades as a Krozair of Zamu — but, also, my comrades as a Krozair of Zy!
Cleitar bent to wipe his thraxter, there in the arena of Huringa in Hyrklana, so many many dwaburs from the Eye of the World and from Sanurkazz.
“What is it, Drak the Sword! What ails you? Are you hit?”
“It is nothing, Cleitar Adria.”
But it was something.
I could not find another man from the inner sea fighting in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana. I would ask, when I saw a man who looked as though he knew what a swifter was, who knew the difference between Zair and Grodno. But I never did find one, then.
So, now, on this day I was to escape, I watched as Cleitar Adria went out to fight his graint. He won. He managed to kill the great and noble beast. When he came back he was ripped and scratched and one arm hung useless. He stared at me, and licked his lips. His beard had been torn and bloody flesh showed.
“I did as you counseled, Drak. I took him, limb by limb.” Cleitar looked all in. “I think — I think you counseled well.”
I had to say it, for all that the words nearly stuck in my mouth. “You did well, Cleitar. Hai Jikai!”
I had never used those great words in the arena before. I considered the place and occasion base and unworthy. But Cleitar had fought well. He deserved the “Hai Jikai.” “Jikai” is for warriors, I thought, hardly for kaidurs.
Nath the Arm had overheard. He glanced at me curiously.
“Now, by Kaidun, Drak the Sword! I had often wondered, but now I am sure. You have been a paktun
— perhaps a Hyr-paktun.”
A Paktun, as I have said, is a great warrior of fortune, a mercenary leader, or one who has achieved some feat of great renown. It has become a little debased in usage, and is often applied to any noteworthy freelancer. But, to be a paktun is to be a leader of a free company, or a mercenary so famous as to be hired at the highest fee obtainable. Many Chuliks were paktuns — and many were Hyr-paktuns, also; “Hyr” being a word for great.