— smile the wide wicked grin of a shark. Vallians are most nimble with the rapier, and I have met fine swordsmen from Pandahem. Despite my brave words and despite my confidence in Rees, I felt strongly that if this Leotes ti Ponthieu was a sword-master of a high quality in Zenicce, he would do Rees’s business for him.
There are twenty-four Houses in Zenicce, noble and lay. Chance had directed that Vad Garnath in his pursuit of revenge should choose a bravo-fighter from the noble House of Ponthieu, a House which at that time was a deadly foe to my own House of Strombor. I would have no compunction with this Leotes.
The preparations for the inevitable duel went ahead, Just as they had before, with one exception. Nath Tolfeyr cried off from being Rees’s second. Chido would have jumped in, but Rees sternly bade him away. The lion-man looked in truth as noble as a lion does in the imagination, as he glanced around the upper room of the tavern where we had gathered on the night before the encounter. It was scarcely an affair of honor any longer, but it was holding up my own work.
I said: “I shall stand as your second, Rees.”
“Very well, Hamun. As I shall most certainly thrust this dog of a Zeniccean through the guts after a few passes, it will serve.” But he did not thank me, and I knew that he was more worried than he cared to admit. His confidence remained high.
Chido swore most vilely, but Rees had a duty for him that had nothing to do with duels. Chido was packed off to the wide Plains of the Golden Wind to pick up the rudiments of military lore necessary for his appointment as a staffer.
I had my own private thoughts about the regiment Rees was putting together, but I did not speak my thoughts to the lion-man.
Casmas the Deldy announced, with an oily smile, that even though he was contracted to be married -
and to a charmer! a marvel! a passion-lily of scarlet fervor! a most luscious armful! and rich into the bargain! — he would be taking bets. This time the betting so heavily favored the Zeniccean bravo-fighter that it seemed no one gave Rees a chance. I laid a bet and Casmas smiled and fingered his chin, chuckling, already counting the money as his. So, rather dolefully on the part of Rees’s friends, we trooped down to the hall ready for the duel.
The first man I saw inside was Lart ham Thordan, Strom of Hyr Rothy. He started when he saw me, then sneered, and passed a comment to a crony that some Amaks ran away from duels and hid behind the rapiers of lion-men friends. I ignored him. I had to.
Everyone crowded around. I carried out my duties as second, and, as everyone expected, Vad Garnath successfully satisfied the judges that he could not fight and his second must do so in his place. Leotes ti Ponthieu stepped forward.
Well, we know his type. He was a bravo-fighter. He lived by his rapier. One day — and he knew it -
he would die by a rapier or dagger. Rees faced him, and the bout began. I saw, at once, that Rees was quite out of his class. Even so, Rees balked him of a death, for Leotes’ blade took a chunk of flesh away from Rees’s side, and the blood being drawn, the bout might be called off. I leaped forward, shouting that honor had been satisfied. Rees looked abruptly shriveled. He was carried off and I swung about to follow him through the turmoil of shouting men and women, yelling to his attendants to carry him gently. The confusion was remarkable, for Rees had many friends as well as enemies. And the ladies of Ruathytu would not miss such a spectacle. I pushed after Rees, but the crowd pressed in, and the noise and bustle racketed from the high ceiling.
“Rees!”
“Keep back, keep back!”
I saw the lion-man lift himself from the stretcher. He looked terrible. A doctor was working busily away, but a dreadful red stained his bandages with terrible rapidity.
“Honor — Hamun,” said Rees, and I could just hear him through the din. “You. . keep off it. . old fellow. .”
Then the crowd closed in and he was whisked from my sight.
Strom Lart stood before me. I was aware of Casmas the Deldy, and Nath Tolfeyr, and Tothord of the Ruby Hills, in the press.
“So your champion has fallen, Amak Hamun!” Strom Lart was enjoying this. He was dressed in the off-duty rig of a soldier, a totrix cavalryman, and that big bloated face was flushed scarlet with greed for the enjoyment of pain and humiliation. “We have a debt unpaid, you and I, clum-lover!”
I went to push past. “Out of the way, you fat fool,” I said. “I must see how Rees is.”
He did not roar or bellow, although the scarlet of his cheeks deepened even more grotesquely. He lifted his glove. I knew what he was going to do and could do nothing myself. Before them all, Strom Lart of Hyr Rothy slapped me across the face with his gauntlet.
“And this time, Amak, do not run away!”
Chapter Thirteen
The person who was Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, struggled with the person who was Dray Prescot.
Dray Prescot might have bowed icily, and then seen about choosing a nice sharp weapon to redress the insult. He might — given that although these proceedings were lethal and savage in the extreme, we still were operating within the context of civilization — have smashed his fist into Lart’s face, and kicked him as he went down for good measure.
Hamun, of course, could do none of these things.
Hamun could only stutter, and look about, and excuse himself, and so flee with Strom Lart’s ominous words ringing in his ears.
“This time you cannot run away, Amak! This time I shall spit you like a roasting vosk!”
If I tell you that my thoughts of Vallia and Valka, of Djanduin and all my loyal peoples there, grew woefully thin and attenuated, shrinking beside the white flare of my rage, I think you will understand just how I felt. I do not pretend to take pride in things that have no moment. Pride is for the puffed up empty-headed of two worlds. But some things seem natural for me to do, and some things seem unnatural. Taking a blow in the face and then turning tail and running away are not things that seem natural to me.
When I obey the injunction to turn the other cheek — as I do on occasion — that seems natural. This last scene did not strike me as right then, nor does it seem right now, when I believe I may have grown just a trifle wiser than I was then, still a crack-brained hothead despite all my vows and good intentions to think first and not bash out first. I had thought this thing through. Hamun would have acted as I had acted; therefore it had been necessary.
The challenge was brought by the same pair of clowns who had come before, and things were arranged, and again I waived a second. These two, the Elten and the Kyr, sensed a change in my attitude. For one thing, I had withdrawn into my old taciturnity that had fallen away from me since my marriage. I shooed them away, collected Nulty with his hamper of wine and palines and sweetmeats and good things, and went off to see how Rees was coming along. His wound had turned septic and although Kregen’s doctors are past Earth’s medieval mumbo-jumbo about the necessity for a wound to be fouled with pus before it will mend, they tend to worry, not without cause, about infections. The wound had been cleansed and treated and everyone said it would knit and mend in no time. Rees managed a smile for me. Chido was there, having burst a fluttrell getting back.
We spent what was, in truth, a pleasant bur or two in conversation. As a Trylon, Rees was not as rich as he might be. The cause of this was, I gathered, the introduction of cattle onto his savannah lands. The topsoil had loosened under too heavy grazing, and the ominous name of his land had proved itself no idle nomenclature. The Golden Wind was a wind blowing Trylon Rees’s lands away. But he still kept up a reasonable villa within the sacred quarter, a villa tiny by comparison with some of the villas belonging to other Trylons, and Vads and Kovs. And so we sat talking and drinking on his balcony, where his bed had been wheeled.