His frame was far less well filled than when I had seen him last, at the time of the abortive duel with Strom Lart ham Thordan. I dropped the blood-, brain-, hair-, and intestine-smeared sledgehammer and reached for the knife that, as a gul, I was allowed to carry.
The knife slashed through his thongs and I caught him as he dropped. A hoarse voice wheezed from whipping-frame number five.
“Nath, old friend! You would not — not leave me!”
By this I knew Nulty had told them his name was Nath.
Nulty swallowed and managed to stand up. His nose was still as bulbous as ever, and this cheered me.
“It is for the Notor to say, Emin.”
Could I leave the other two slaves, and free just my friend? I damn well could, of course, but I did not. The knife slashed Emin free. He was an apim, bulky and strong, not a Hamalian, I judged, by the language he used about them. Number six was in worse case, and had to be helped down. She was a Fristle. (A Fristle is a furred diff after the fashion of a cat. The females are considered among the most beautiful of Kregen.) Like all Fristle women younger than middle age she was lissome and furrily attractive; she had been sent here to be punished from the retinue of some Hamalian officer’s wife. She sobbed her gratitude, tears streaking the soft down of her cheeks, her eyes glistening.
“No time, no time,” I said, deliberately harsh. “We have to run for it now. Can you run, Fristle?”
“I can run faster than a furless apim, apim!”
“Good! Then let us run.”
We ran.
Nulty and Emin had taken up thraxters for themselves from the dead guards, and — as was proper -
the officer’s sword for me. They had also ripped off four of the soldiers’ short green capes for us. We ran beneath the moons of Kregen, out through the shrubs, beyond the trees, leaving the barracks. We heard the beginnings of the alarm and saw flaring torches as we left Zhyan’s Pinions. . We ran due south.
I guessed the guards would assume we had taken to the guls’ quarters, to the eastward or northward, for due south over the Bridge of Swords lay the sacred quarter. No fugitive gul or slave would find much of a haven there. So we were able to slink through the shadows, following my well traveled routes, closing up into a compact body when we traversed an open space, pressing ever on to the inn. Getting them inside presented the problem only of sliding them down the roof and onto the balcony. Everything was as it had been when I’d left here to assume the identity of Chaadur, the gul. Now we all crowded into my room and I whispered to them with great fierceness to be quiet in their joy. I said: “I will help you on your way to escape, or-”
Nulty coughed, and scraped his foot, and when I glared at him, he said: “Truly, Notor, I thought you were dead. You vanished from the duel — aye! That was a bad time. But these two — they are my friends. We were caught in a little enterprise, and would have been flogged but for you, Notor.”
“So?”
But I had guessed what the old reprobate would say.
“Emin and I, and the Fristle Salima, wish to stay and serve you, Notor.”
All I could say was, “I have been away on business. I will say I have brought you back with me from Paline Valley. Nulty will advise you of Paline Valley-”
“Nulty, lord?” said the girl Salima, her cat eyes as wide as they would go. Nulty’s face was a picture. Then he mumbled something and rumbled, and I understood. He had been ashamed of what I had done, and, as I learned, that foul cramph the landlord of The Thraxter and Voller had sold him into slavery. Then Nulty, as a slave, could not bear to bring further dishonor to the name of Paline Valley. So he had called himself Nath. There are many Naths on Kregen, a result of the ancient tale of rollicking adventure called The Quest of Kyr Nath. I think Kyr Nath may be likened to our Earthly Hercules.
A freshly inked mark had to be scored in the little black book.
The two Hamalian servants I’d hired had been discharged before I had gone off adventuring as the gul Chaadur, although I had retained the rental of my rooms. Now the three fugitives could sleep next door. In the morning Nulty, temporarily rigged in some of my old clothes that would fit him somehow, went out for clothes for them all. I squared the accounts away with the landlord, and expressed surprise he had not heard me come in last night, hinting at a drunken sleep on his part, and so, in fine, the affair was smoothed over.
Chido ham Thafey, Amak by courtesy, came to see me, full of all the latest engrossing news of the sacred quarter. It was all mediocre stuff, a mere series of trifles, and his evident engagement with this pettiness made me see that I had been falling into the very pit I swore could never entrap me. He commented on my new retainers, and I passed them off with the remark that Paline Valley was a surprising place. The slave brandings of Nulty, Emin, and Salima, all in correct numbers by Hamalese Law, I had removed with a concoction the formula of which had been shown me in Zenicce. That great enclave city was not overly liked upon the high seas of Kregen, and this was a reason for that dislike. For themselves, the folk of Zenicce think it great sport to take slaves, and wash out their brands, and so rebrand them as their own for all the world to see.
Chido’s main item of news concerned a new sword-master from Zenicce. Because the Horters and nobles of Hamal had been brought up to the thraxter as their national sword, this new craze for rapier-and-dagger fighting meant they imported men to teach them. This new sword-master from Zenicce, so Chido said, was the best anyone had ever seen — and he had been brought in by none other than Vad Garnath.
I admit I felt interest at this news. This was not petty. “So you see, Hamun!” cried Chido. “This wast Garnath will challenge Trylon Rees again, will call on Leotes ti Ponthieu as his second, and then, and then-”
“Aye, Chido, and then!” I glowered at Chido, but he was busy looking about my room for a glass and wine. “Is this Leotes ti Ponthieu then so great a swordsman?”
The wine bottle clinked against the glass as Chido poured. It was early for him. “I have never seen a better. He is quick, strong, vicious.” As always, Chido made Ws of his R’s, so that he said, for example,
“Twylon Wees,” and “stwong,” but I do not care to imitate him so faithfully. He looked deucedly upset now, though, and no mistake.
Now I perceived a little irony here, a tiny thing that would have swayed the idlers of the sacred quarter when this sword-master from the enclave city of Zenicce came among them. My enclave of Strombor, of which I am Lord, is honored to wear the brave old scarlet. The colors of Ponthieu are purple and ocher. And the colors of this Queen Thyllis of Hamal were purple and gold. So this Leotes had landed with a head start.
By the Black Chunkrah, I said to myself, but it was a dolefully long time since I had been to Zenicce and Strombor!
And I had, here in enemy Ruathytu, to be very careful what oaths I let fall. There could be no carefree bellowing of “By Vox!” or “By Pandrite!” or any other of my old favorites. “By Zair!” would go unrecognized, of course. “By Opaz!” would be dangerous, for all that I knew there was a strong following in the city for Opaz, the spirit of the Invisible Twins, as there was for Lem the Silver Leem, in direct opposition.
And the various diseased portions of the anatomy of Makki-Grodno had received no attention from me lately at all, at all. .
So I said, as gently as I could: “Oh, Chido, you are a great fambly! Rees will eat this Leotes and spit the pips out.”
Chido shook his head, clutching his glass. “You have not seen the Zeniccean fight, Hamun!”
The rapier-and-dagger-men of Zenicce are most skilled, as I knew, for I had once swaggered as a bravo-fighter of Zenicce. The fumbling attempts of the aristocracy of Hamal to take up rapier-work, to become, in their terms, Blades-men, would make a sword-master of Strombor or Eward — or Ponthieu!