“I have only a moment, Horter. You saved me once, in Urigal. You risked your life for me, a stranger, and I could not thank you then, for my guardian and his men prevented, and you were gone. But now, Horter, I beseech you! I need a strong arm to defend me once again.”
Chido was staring in bewilderment, beginning to stutter a question. She ignored him as I half rose, a serviette to my lips, bowing to her.
“I am Rosala of Match Urt. My father was the Strom there, but he is dead now and my fortunes have fallen away, and I am being forced to marry that fat disgusting Casmas.”
“Jolly bad show, that,” burbled Chido. We ignored him. She was imploring me with her great pale blue eyes, the tears dropping down her deathly white cheeks, pleading with me.
“You are a brave warrior. I know that. You have proved it, Horter. . I do not know your name. No one knew. . or would not tell me. I beseech you, sir, help me! Take me away from that horrid Casmas!
Please!”
Of course! Nothing simpler! Just leap on the nearest zorca and away!
But I was not Dray Prescot here. I was Hamun ham Farthytu, with a certain reputation to uphold. What a situation!
I was aware of movement on the other side of the table and then of course laughter breaking through Rosala’s words as she pleaded.
“Please, Horter! You are brave! You will find a way. I beseech you, for the courage you have already shown, the kindness to me — save me from that wretch!”
“Courage, Hortera, courage?” Strom Lart bellowed his amusement. “The man is a poltroon!”
“He is a ninny,” boomed Strom Hormish, “a swordless weakling, fit only for rast-nest fodder.”
Rosala of Match Urt stared speechlessly at me, her hands clasped together, all her vulnerable beauty crying out for rescue.
I put down the serviette.
“I am Hamun ham Farthytu, Hortera. I regret I do not know you. You are mistaken. I cannot help you.”
Chapter Fourteen
A blank followed that performance until I found myself back in my rooms in the inn, with Chido much perplexed and worried and declaring that, by Krun, he’d never known me like this before, old fellow. I took a stiff drink of wine; the stuff tasted foul, unmixed as it was, and I spat it out. I said to Chido: “You’re a good fellow, Chido. But leave me alone right now. I have some thinking to do-”
“If that’s the way of it, Hamun. .” He brightened. “I’ve engaged to race old Tothord.” He hovered, hesitating. “Well, Remberee, Hamun. I’ll see you.”
“Remberee, Chido.”
When he had gone, shaking his head, I stretched out on the bed, shooed Nulty away, threw a boot at the Fristle, Salima, who wanted to comfort me, and I fell into dark and evil thoughts. How low I had sunk!
And yet, it was all my own doing. Every step of the way I had been the master of my own decisions. I had chosen to act this part, thinking how clever it would be. I had forfeited my primitive ideas of honor to what I conceived of as my duty.
Well, this day’s sorry doing was an end to the business.
The unsettling thought occurred to me that given the situation of war between Hamal and Vallia — an eventuality I dreaded — my duty would be to kill this Strom Lart in any way I could, duel or no duel. But I had already made up my mind not to kill him, for affairs of that nature tended in Hamal to drag on with potential litigation and all kinds of entanglements. The situation baffled and infuriated me. All manner of common sense attitudes are scattered to the winds in wartime. How could I conceive of Nulty, and Chido, and Rees, as mortal enemies? Was this not a situation similar to that which made of my friends Tilda the Beautiful and her son Pando the boy Kov of Bormark my enemies through the hostility of Pandahem and Vallia?
Stupid, stupid. .
The duel had been set for late evening (all the murs of Kregen have their own names, varying with the seasons, of course), and at last I roused myself, had a meal, bathed, and, again, hurled the other boot at Salima as she purred in with a sponge to scrub my back. I dressed carefully. Around my waist I wrapped the old scarlet breech-clout. With that drawn up and buckled I donned a fresh frame of mind. Over that I wore a fine white ruffled shirt, dripping with lace. A pair of dark blue trousers, strapped under my boots, concealed them completely. I slung a fur-trimmed satin jacket of a lurid green color over my shoulder by its golden chains, rather after the fashion of a hussar’s pelisse. The rapier and dagger I selected were a matched pair given me by Delia. They were superb weapons. I had declined the Trylon Rees’s kind offer of a set of his own weapons. Most of the rapiers in use in Ruathytu had been purchased in Zenicce, part payment for vollers, probably, and were of good quality. My friends of the House of Eward were fine swordsmiths. Soon the Hamalians would be forging rapiers themselves, although the armories were hard at work turning out thraxters and stuxes for the army. But these two, the Jiktar and the Hikdar, the rapier and main-gauche, were of pure Vallian make, superb. That thick-bladed knife I always refer to as my old sailor’s knife, for all that this specimen had never been to sea, went as ever strapped over my right hip.
“Now,” I said to my wavering reflection in the mirror. “To sort out Strom Lart. And, sink me!” I burst out, all to myself, puffed up with anger and bile. “If he tries to be clever I’ll skewer him, by Makki-Grodno’s diseased left eyeball!”
In the event I had to be clever myself, for as I entered the dueling hall, and saw the eager faces of friends and enemies, and heard the bets being called — a fatuous business, that, with the bets on just what Strom Lart would do and how he would do it, and the artistic execution of his designs — I realized it would still pay me to preserve my cover. Chido was there, but Rees was not well enough to attend. Casmas the Deldy was there. He had brought his passionflower, his lily of desire, the china doll beauty, Rosala of Match Urt. She looked dreadful, I could see, beneath the paint and powder. Casmas, I saw at once, had been unpleasant to her.
When a noble family falls on hard times and they plan to recoup their fortunes by marrying off a beautiful and nubile girl of the family to a fabulously wealthy moneylender, they do not much care for the girl to ask strangers to rescue her. Her family, those prideful, hard-eyed, hard-lipped men I had seen outside The Crippled Chavonth, no less than Casmas, would have been vile to Rosala. Again that unsettling thought struck me — they were all Hamalian.
I remember the duel that followed with some warm affection. I clowned about, as I had done in alley-fights with Rees. At the last moment my blade would flick across, as though purely by chance, and deflect Lart’s thrusts. I stumbled about, and flailed the rapier as though it were an ax, and retreated with my legs twinkling, and slipped so clumsily as to let Lart stagger past barely missing by a whisker the blade that had no intention — then — of sinking into his vitals. I needed to keep clear of public entanglements with the confoundedly pedantic laws of Hamal.
The crowd yelled and hullabalooed, and I had plenty of time to take my eyes away from Strom Lart and his bloodthirsty swashbucklings to look at Rosala. She sat frozen like a lump of black ice — black ice, despite her whiteness.
Chido was beside himself, yelling: “Keep him out, Hamun! Bladesman! Bladesman!”
Strom Lart’s followers were chanting also, and the din built up into an inferno of sound. Having clowned around long enough, I decided to finish the thing. Lart had skill, of that there was no doubt. But he did not have the experience that might have told him I merely toyed with him. As I was not acting the part of a master swordsman baiting an inferior, toying with him in that sense, but, instead, acting as though I were in terror of my life and only managing to keep alive by the most atrocious series of passages of good fortune, I fancied the keen eyes of the master swordsman from Ponthieu, Leotes, might not have penetrated my antics. Leotes stood at the side, limber and lithe, his dark handsome face intent on the bout. I marked him. I took care when the climactic point came that Strom Lart’s gross body blocked Leotes’ view.