Lart rushed, using a quite clever system of connected passes (all the terms of Earthly fencing could be brought in; suffice it to say Lart used a passage linked by a strict discipline taught him by swordsmen from Zenicce), and I yelped aloud, and twisted, awkwardly and with smooth subtle cunning, and then stepped back, my left hand high, withdrawing the blade from Lart’s right arm. His rapier, snared by my dagger, snaked up alongside my dagger, and my rapier snaked up, also, through his arm. He dropped his main-gauche before he dropped his rapier.
For a single and fleeting instant, as I recovered, I let my point hover at his throat. I looked into his eyes. I laughed at him.
“How easy it would be, Strom Lart!”
“You — you-” he gobbled. He held his arm and the blood was already dribbling between his fingers. I swung away.
The judges declared the duel ended in blood and honor and we could collect our winnings and go home. Casmas was so exuberant he actually came up and slapped me on the back.
“By Havil, Amak! You have done me a good turn this day! No one expected you to live! And the bets
— all the lovely golden deldys — you are to be congratulated, Amak Hamun!”
Casmas was raking in the deldys. He had made a killing here if no one else had. I did not reply. Chido was wringing my hand and bubbling, quite forgetting to collect his winnings from Casmas. I willingly allowed them to carry me off in triumph to a late supper. Casmas, who lived in a sumptuous villa, but not in the sacred quarter, excused himself, smirking, saying his passionflower awaited. Rosala’s family went with Casmas. They were brilliant, foppishly dressed men, yet hard and flint eyed.
We settled down to serious drinking, Chido, Nath Tolfeyr, Tothord of the Ruby Hills, old fussy Strom Dolan, and others of our cronies. We missed the Trylon Rees, for the Numim was acknowledged the leader in all our escapades.
“Let us go to him and turn him out of bed, and tell him the news!”
“No, no!” I shouted weakly. “He needs his rest.”
“He’ll rest all the better when he hears, Hamun! Come on!” And Chido and Nath Tolfeyr laughed and yammered and would not listen to me, and so we trooped out into the night, ruffling it in our cloaks, with our rapiers swinging, beneath the moons of Kregen.
Well, I will not weary you with our antics that night as we traversed the sacred quarter, hunting trouble. A spirit of adventure, sheer mischief, floated in the warm air.
We ran yelling with laughter from the watch, and they, despite the strict rules and laws of Hamal, were never so anxious to catch us. We drank from bottles, and we lost stupid old Strom Bolan, who fell down the steps into a dopa den, and yelled at us as he staggered up that since he was down here he would stay, and crack a bottle or two of dopa, and we yelled down that he was a fool and an onker; he hiccupped and pushed through into the den and we, cursing him for his folly, left him and pressed on to Rees’s villa. Well, as I say, we were young and high-spirited, for all that our ages would have made us appallingly old on this Earth, and we roused Rees and he roared his joy at our news and fresh bottles were brought.
By the time I slipped away the Maiden with the Many Smiles floated serenely above, and the Twins were eternally orbiting each other midway down the western sky. The light was far too great for the kind of enterprise on which I embarked, but I would not wait.
I insist I am not a man puffed up with pride. Pride is for fools. But I knew then, as I swung off for Casmas’ luxurious villa in the shining quarter — a select area of secluded villas tucked into the southwestern corner of the city between the Walls of Kazlili and the Black River — that this fraught emotion I experienced, which led me into harebrained schemes, was as near to baffled pride as I care to admit.
I unslung the bright green pelisse. I took off the white frilled shirt. I stripped off the dark blue trousers and the boots. Clad only in my old scarlet breechclout, with rapier and dagger belted to my waist, with my sailor’s knife over my hip, I stalked off. I had the sense to throw the great gray cloak over all; but it was touch and go, in my frame of mind, whether I damned ’em all to the Ice Floes of Sicce, and left it with my clothes bundled up and slung into a bush beneath Casmas’ walls. I did however — and not without a curse of annoyance — don the mask.
Casmas the Deldy’s outer wall was frosted with razor-edged glass. I simply tore up a bush, hurled it onto the glass, handed myself up, and leaped down on the inner side. Without a snarl, without a screech, the great vicious black-and-white form of a wersting launched itself at my throat!
Werstings are bulky, black-and-white-striped hunting dogs of Kregen, lethal in their vicious savagery. I had met them before, but not about the same kind of business I was engaged in now. The wersting leaped. I saw the fangs in his gaping red mouth and I flung myself sideways and the rapier licked up and in, silver bright under the moons, black and greasy as I rolled away, dragging it clear. The beast let out a whining grunt of pure astonished pain. A second thrust finished him. I padded on over the turf, beneath the shade trees, between the graceful fountains, toward the villa of Casmas the Deldy. I held the rapier gripped in my fist.
Lights from mellow samphron-oil lamps still shone from windows. I selected a first-floor window above a balcony and handed up the greenery, peered in past hangings. The room contained Casmas himself playing Jikaida with one of Rosala’s family. Two other men sat drinking and polishing their weapons. So the family was keeping the proprieties before the marriage. Very right and proper, too!
As I watched, Casmas, with a fat chuckle, swept up a swod from his opponent’s central drin. The swod in Jikaida, named for a common soldier, a private, is almost equivalent to the pawn in chess. I chinned myself up, mentally working out the next move I would have made to confound Casmas — his king’s paktun stood perilously exposed — and so worked my way along to the next window. This was in darkness, with a faint moonglow reflecting from the dark panes. My knife eased the catch and I slipped to soft rugs inside.
The room was empty, with a bed ready, and I guessed it was a guest room for one of Rosala’s family of hawks. I padded along the corridor to the back of the house and soon found a door that looked promising. This door was smaller than the usual, and stood in an angle between two larger doors. It was typical of the doors to rooms for body-servants, in instant attention upon their masters or mistresses. The girl in the bed inside awoke to my brown hand across her mouth, a dagger flashing in her eyes, and my evil old face glowering down upon her.
She tried to scream and then to bite, and I showed her the error of her ways.
“Do you know the Hortera Rosala of Match Urt?”
Her eyes, wide with shock, blinked. I tickled her and said, “Blink twice if you know-” She blinked twice. I said, “Very good. Blink twice if you will keep silent if I take my hand away.” Instantly, two more blinks. I took my hand away, ready to slap it back at once if she yelled. She took a breath — she was a slip of a thing with lustrous dark hair in the cheap oil dip’s light — and said: “I am Paline and the lady Rosala is my mistress; have you come to rescue her?”
Those romantic plays and books that are the rage of Kregen with their foolish notions of high passionate love, and excursions and alarms! They have much to answer for.