Rees pushed him off to die on the floor.
“Naghan Largismore,” he said. “He should have known better.”
Blood sprayed from an apim as he sprawled past, his neck efficiently slashed by a Kataki tail. The Kov of Thoth Uppwe, this Nath ham Livahan men called Nath the Crafty, fought with a terrible cold fury which had swiftly succeeded his hectoring words and hot-tempered anger. But there were more diffs than apims. Another apim sprawled to the floor, grasping his neck and looking surprised as the blood spurted between his fingers. The Kataki who had flicked his tail with such virulent purpose swerved to get at another young apim whose thraxter glistened with fresh blood. It was increasingly difficult for me to sit. I cannot analyze my feelings. I glanced at Rees. He looked disgusted with the whole proceedings. I wondered. . suppose Rees had been with other Numims this night, instead of two apim friends? How often we behave so vastly differently with different company!
But I felt I could not sit much longer and watch young apims being slaughtered by Katakis and Chuliks. A man stood in the doorway. I had not seen him enter. I looked at him from the tail of my eye — and I knew! I knew!
I knew what he would do and I knew the brand he wielded. Under an enveloping black cloak he wore hunting leathers, with the addition of a gray shirt. As he burst forward into the fray I saw his sword, that Savanti sword of superb balance and inconceivably cunning design, fashioned of steel far surpassing anything we have so far forged.
A man serving the Savanti! He had not been thrown out of Paradise, as I had. He had gone through all the tests and had been proved fit to be numbered among the elect. Now he worked with great purpose for the Savanti in their high designs for Kregen.
I admit I felt all the pangs I had thought dead and buried as I watched this man go about the business for which he had been selected, tested, and trained: to alter fate.
Once on a beach in Valka I had seen a young man try to do what the Savanti required, and fail. And so I had come into the possession of Alex Hunter’s Savanti sword. Do you wonder that I gazed at this man who had come from the Swinging City, and hungered for his blade?
Oh, yes, of course there were all the other reasons. But although I did not harbor a grudge against the Savanti for so contemptuously dismissing me from Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, I felt under no obligation to go out of my way for them; rather I would go on doing what I had always done, knowing that much of it paralleled what the Savanti were attempting to do on Kregen.
The fight did not last too long after that. This man was no novice, no amateur like Alex Hunter. He kept his eyes open and ducked the thrown knife, the wickedly flicking tail. He had been trained well. And he had a great deal of experience.
Soon the diffs were calling it a day and running. The tavern’s occupants boiled out into the street, here in the Sacred Quarter where brawls were a way of life, running and shouting and hullabalooing. In any second the watch and the police would be here, and the laws of Hamal would swing into action. I stood up.
“Right gladly, Hamun,” said Rees.
Kov Nath stood, shaking a little, staring around at the carnage. The Trylon with him, holding a bloody arm, looked sick.
Rees and Chido made for the door. Going with them, for I had no wish to tangle with the law again, I watched the man sent by the Savanti. He walked quickly to the door, waited for Rees and Chido to pass out — had he raised his marvelous blade against Rees he would have been a dead man, for my rapier was loose in the scabbard — and swiftly followed. I went after them. The street, indifferently lighted here, with the moons casting enough light to see sufficiently well not to trip over the first corpse on the doorstep, showed blank and empty. The link slaves had run. The guards had fought among themselves. I may be cynical, but I felt sorrow over that. Fully prepared to make my own opening, Chido saved me the gambit.
“Warm work, dom,” he said in his shrill voice.
“Aye,” said this man, swirling his black cape about him, “for a tavern fight.”
“Do you hate us so much then?” Rees spoke heavily.
“It were better you did not ask that question, Numim.”
Walking up, I said, “Do you have a bed for the night, dom?”
“No. I am but newly arrived.”
I could believe that.
“I have rooms,” I said. “You would be welcome.”
Rees stared at me. I hated to hurt him, but I fancied he would remember our words in the voller. No explanation was possible.
The man from the Savanti hesitated only a moment, then said, “I am grateful, dom.”
“As for me, I am for home,” said Rees.
“And I,” piped up Chido. “I will walk with you.”
Rees did not say good night or Remberee. I was grateful for that. What I was about to do would betray Hamun ham Farthytu, and I had spent a lot of time and pain building up that young man. When Rees and Chido had gone we walked the other way. We had gone perhaps six paces when I heard the shouts and I yelled, “Run!”
He ran without question. The Savanti train well.
We eluded the watch and the patrols and so walked to my old inn, the Kyr Nath and the Fifi. Absences in time of war are a common occurrence, and Nulty had seen to payment for the rooms. How was he faring in Paline Valley? We went up to my room and I closed the door. The man from the Savanti unclasped his cape and threw it swirling on the bed. I looked at him. He smiled. He was apim, of course, with thick fair hair and a square-set face, exceedingly grim as to the set of the jaw. I liked the brightness of his eye and the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. Strongly built, as, of course, he must be, he looked like what he was, a powerful, professional fighting man. I said, “Happy Swinging. And how are things in Aphrasoe?”
Before I had even finished, that superb, deadly Savanti blade had flashed from the scabbard and the point pricked my throat.
“Speak, rast! What do you know of Aphrasoe? Speak quickly and speak the truth — or you are a dead man!”
Chapter 13
Could I take this man? A fighting man trained by the Savanti, in as ferocious form as I had seen a man on a hair-trigger of violence? And, moreover, a man armed with that Savanti sword which is, I truly believe, the most perfect sword on the face of Kregen, not excepting the fantastic Krozair longsword?
Could I take him?
“Hurry, rast! My patience wears thin! Speak up!”
I jerked my head back. I saw — a mere glance in passing — a drop of my blood on the gleaming blade he had so thoroughly cleaned on dead men’s clothes.
He took that as a signal of treachery and drove in instantly.
I had only a rapier and main-gauche. There was scarcely time to explain to him that I was not in the habit of speaking up with a sword at my throat — not, that is, unless absolutely no other course lay open. The other course here was starkly plain. I could get my fool self killed. I skipped back and the main-gauche came out of its scabbard seemingly of its own volition; his blade screeched against it. The following rapier thrust — the rapier had leaped into my hand, out of the scabbard, and pointed at him as though alive — passed through thin air. He danced away.
“You fight well. But I think you are a dead man.”
Could I possibly face a man armed with a Savanti sword? I had never done so before except in practice in Aphrasoe, and that, clearly, was a different kettle of fish.
“Damn!” I burst out. “You’re a bunch of rogues in Aphrasoe these days! Can’t a fellow wish you Happy Swinging without a sword at his throat?”
“Tell me what you know of Aphrasoe and I will not slay you.”
“And if you don’t speak civilly I’ll have to teach you a lesson! Do you know Maspero?”
“Yes.” The brand gleamed in the lamplight as he let it drop a fraction.