“How do you know, Paline, that I have not come to ravish you?”
She giggled. She was thoroughly at home and enjoying every minute of it.
“You wear a mask, and you carry a sword, and you are a Notor, sure. These things are not necessary to ravish Paline.”
I did not chuckle. I said, “Where is the lady Rosala?”
She rose at once, clad in a long white nightgown, and on bare feet she led me out of her room and into the one next door. Rosala lay sleeping in the wide double bed, beneath a canopy ostentatiously woven of gold thread, with blue flowers and yellow faerlings embroidered upon it. Paline shook her awake. She sat up, her fair hair gleaming in the light, and saw me, and put a hand to her mouth.
“The great Jikai has come to rescue you, my lady! We must dress and fly! Hurry, my lady, hurry!”
“We?” I said.
Rosala looked at me.
“Surely, you who drew me from the zhyan’s claws would not leave my faithful Paline? You would not desert a defenseless girl?”
Almost — almost but not quite — I laughed at this.
“Get dressed, Rosala, and you too, Paline. I would prefer to leave without a fight.”
At this Paline pouted. She was a vivacious girl, very much a gypsy with her dark hair and brilliant eyes. They dressed and I growled at them to wear dark sensible clothing and, by Krun, to hurry. At which, in a silent twitter — a state very easily induced in the middle of the night when a masked madman storms into your bedchamber, I assure you — they hastily gathered up this and that, knickknacks, combs, brushes, mirrors, silver boxes, shawls, toiletries. Significantly, Rosala had pitifully few poor gems to carry away.
“I will carry these things, Notor,” said Paline. “For, doubtless, you will be engaged in fighting.”
Callous? Brave? Or merely a silly head stuffed with romantic nonsense from millennia-old adventures on Kregen?
We crept out on tiptoe. Paline, it was clear, didn’t mind if we did make a noise. She thirsted for my rapier to tickle the guts of these cramphs of Casmas the Deldy’s household. Casmas employed a sizable retinue of servitors and guards, besides his slaves. They were originally from a variety of social strata and of a jumble of diffs; under the lure of his gold they would serve as reasonably well as one might expect.
“This way, Jikai,” said Rosala. She was, by her use of that great word, now convinced that I was all kinds of hero. I just wanted to get this thing done with and set about my real tasks in enemy Hamal. We went through a rear passage.
I thought we would win free without trouble.
Then, as we came out of the shadows of the last flight of stairs with the rear door bolted and barred before us, Paline let out a squeak and cowered next to her mistress. Both girls huddled, shaken, petrified with fear.
Two guards stepped from a doorway at the side. They were fully armed and accoutered in the fashion of Hamalian swods. They saw the girls and me and they did not hesitate. The Rapa’s big vulturine beak parted as he let out a hoarse shriek of rage, and the stux fairly flew toward me in the lamplight. The Brokelsh, his hairy body huge and ominous under the armor, drew his thraxter and charged up the stairs after the stux.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Rosala.
Paline licked her lips, recovered. “Now, Jikai! Fight!”
Chapter Fifteen
Whatever Amak Hamun of Paline Valley would have done was neither here nor there. I knew what Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, would do. The stux was snatched from the air in my left hand, reversed, and in a twinkling sent flying back. It took the Brokelsh in the throat above the collarband of his lorica. He could not shriek, but his eyes glared madly, and he clawed at the javelin embedded in his throat; then he toppled and fell with a smash.
I hurdled his prostrate body, whirling the rapier. As I passed Paline I slapped her bottom with my left hand, and yelled: “Unbolt the door, wench! And jump to it!”
The Rapa faced me bravely enough. These bird-faced diffs are a fierce and predatory folk, serving as mercenaries all over the place, and adept with weapons. Not so cruelly fearsome as Chuliks, perhaps, and Chuliks are devils from hell, but tough adversaries. My rapier crossed with his thraxter, he threw up his shield, and then I had slipped in, and, knocking the shield aside, gripped him by the throat in my left fist and drove the rapier into his body, fatally low. He writhed, but I held his throat, glaring madly into his face, and so prevented an outcry as he died.
Paline was standing watching, her face shining and rapt.
“The door, girl! Or must I whip you!”
She shrieked and fled for the door. Rosala was there to help. Between them they unbolted and lifted the bar, struggling, until I dropped the Rapa corpse and leaped to aid them. The door opened and pink moons-light flooded in.
“Wait,” I grunted. I peered out. No sign of any guards — but the leaping black-and-white shape of a wersting.
He yowled and leaped. Damned intemperate, these hunting dogs. But he did not know me, and so was legally entitled to rip out my throat. I had no business here. I let him have the rapier, but he died shrilling in the wild ululating cry of the wersting.
“Hurry!” I yelled and we belted heads down for the glass-topped wall. A fold of Paline’s dress smothered the sharp edges. I hefted the two girls up, fairly hurling them over to fall shaken and scratched into the bushes on the far side. As I went over I heard an uproar behind me and caught the fiery gleam of torches. More werstings were ululating. I picked myself up, tore down Paline’s dress, all ripped. I thrust the rapier through the dress in two quick passes, cleaned it, and then snapped it back into the scabbard. As I say, I do not like to foul with blood a scabbard Delia has given me. I grabbed the two girls, one under each arm, holding them around their stomachs, their arms and legs dangling, and ran for the shadows of the trees.
As my clansmen of Segesthes say: “In for a zorca, in for a vove.” Rosala knew who I was, despite the mask. She had no business wedding old Casmas, anyway. I collected up my clothes and we bundled off into the dark streets of the golden quarter, hurrying up the tree-lined avenues, going through the narrow lanes of the Horters’ quarter, passing right by The Thraxter and Voller, going on toward my inn in the sacred quarter. Our cloaks muffled us. We moved with purpose. Link slaves were about, but I did not hire one for the journey. Slaves may be made to talk.
No sign of pursuit developed. I own I felt relief that I did not have to kill one of Rosala’s family. As I have indicated, I had shifted billets from the first inn I had patronized here, finding one in a narrower alley, with a convenient tree growing up giving me a quick passage from the adjoining roof. This inn was called The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, a reference to a more disreputable incident in the career of the Kregan Hercules.
I hefted the girls up by their rumps, slid them along the tree branch, ignoring their squeaks, maneuvered them down onto my balcony. The window opened as Paline landed, and Nulty took her into his embrace, very familiarly, I thought, and dragged her inside. I pushed Rosala through and slammed the window and the shutters — and we had done it!
Rosala of Match Urt would demand explanations, and I was not prepared to give them. I fobbed her off with as little information as I could; the problem remained. What was to be done with her and her maid?
If I felt that chance owed me some recompense, I do not think that was an unreasonable attitude. Chance and my own stupid cleverness had brought me into my present position, and chance must have relented, at least in the matter of Rosala.
With the girls safely hidden in the next room, and Emin and Salima sworn to secrecy, a secrecy I felt confident they would maintain, for as much as I would trust anyone in their position I trusted them, we were in fit state to receive Chido on his morning call. The duel and its aftermath had left him with a fragile head, but a dish of palines soon cured him. We settled that we would walk out, and he told me he was in need of a new slave, for he had freed his slave of the zorcas, and was thus perfectly handicapped, dear fellow, in the zorca races.