“Hai Jikai!” they were yelling, some in feeble croaks from narrow lips. “Jikai. .”
In this stupid affray against these devils of slavers that was the first time any idea of calling it a Jikai had crossed my mind. Was it a Jikai? To dub any feat of arms a Jikai meant it was a superb example of honor and glory and nobility, as well as a crafty use of downright cunning where necessary. You will know how I regard the use of the word Jikai, and so I decided there, as I swooped and fought, that this might be a little Jikai, a very little one. .
And so, thus boasting to myself, I came to grief.
A stux transfixed the throat of the fluttrell. The broad and heavy head of the flung javelin jutted through, clotted with blood. The fluttrell would have been hard to manage, anyway, after his ferocious primeval instincts had been allowed full play in tchik, and so that stux was one way of settling the matter. I half fell, half leaped off, sprawling head over heels onto the dust. There was no time to lie winded. How different the scene when viewed from the ground than the view aloft!
A pack of people were already chained. Slavers were strutting past them, some flicking whips, some beating them with the flats of their thraxters. The lance-sword was much too unhandy a weapon down here.
I took the longsword into my fists again, and charged.
This time the flutsmen must have decided to get rid of me as the first priority. I had been hampering their operations and they had so far not killed me. They had tipped me out of my voller, they had brought down my wind-eater; now they would cut my legs from under me, and see how I liked that. A bird with widespread wings dived for me, skimming the ground, his legs tucked up. The flutsmen with slaves to carry back to whatever hell-hole they had oozed from would not risk crying “Tchik!” to their birds. The problems of bringing the fluttrells under control after that ferocious call had clamored bloodily in their pin-brains were too long-winded. This is just another reason why the fluttrell does not appeal overmuch to me, magnificent bird though it is. Some of the other flying animals of Kregen can do a bloody enough job of tchik and still be guided by their riders.
Now I could swat the long tongue of the lance-sword away and fling myself sideways and, leaping up, slice the longsword in a stroke that parted torso and thigh. That is a canny stroke when given to a rider on the ground; it is more difficult and thus more aesthetically satisfying when delivered to a rider flying. Then the swordsman must fling himself, all doubled up, under the flashing wingbeat and time it just right if he does not want his head staved in.
My head remained intact.
Other flutsmen attacked.
They came singly, and then in pairs, and threes.
About this time I knew that eventually one of them must finish me. It was not that I was growing tired -
for tiredness is a sin I do not admit into my consciousness — but that the odds were stacked. Amid a welter of flashing steel one blade would slip past as I dealt with another and so drink my life’s blood. The fury in me would have melted the Ice Floes of Sicce.
That I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, should perish thus miserably!
The battle roared on. Men were yelling. Women were screaming. The flutsmen shouted strange high oaths calling on their gods and saints and devils, and rushed at me, and fell before the level, lethal sweep of my longsword.
But, for all that, a stux grazed across my chest, drawing a line of blood. That came from leaping away from three stuxes flighted together at my back. Now, had Turko the Shield stood, superb in his muscled strength, in his wonted place at my back, those stuxes would have been deflected and I would not have turned into the glancing blow from the front. The shield in the voller had gone down with the rest of my belongings. She hadn’t smashed up, but in the scant seconds I’d had before tangling with the flyer I’d seen she’d cracked up with due finality. So the battle roared on. These slavers, from whatever racial stock they came, were scrawny fellows, much addicted to beads and chains and flourishing trinkets of silver and brass. Twice I was able to let slip my hand and so, reaching out, grasp a string of beads, and jerking the fellow in, give him a knee in the groin, and thunk the hilt of the sword down onto his leather-capped head. They didn’t get up again, after that treatment.
Still and all, time was running out for me. This wouldn’t go on for very much longer. A few shouted words from a huddled group of slaves — although, truthfully, they weren’t slaves yet, nor would be until I was dead — revived me.
“Hai Jikai! Fight, Jikai, fight the evil rasts!”
Well, it seemed that even if these poor people were the old and the young, the women and the children, the sick and the lame, and could not fight in deeds, they could fight with words. What those oldsters started in catcalling the slavers would have done credit to the flintiest hearted paktun in all Kregen, and a paktun, a mercenary who has gained renown far above the mass of his fellows, knows a juicy vocabulary indeed. I braced myself again and struck and struck. About me whirled the beige-white wings of the fluttrells, feathers flurried in the power of their smiting, bringing thronging memories of other combats against other flying monsters of the skies. The scene in the dusty outskirts of the burned village, which stood at the head of a valley trending from the foothills, must have made a macabre sight. A lone man, blood splashed, his brown hair wild, the long brand in his fists stained with gore, jumping and dodging, smiting and slashing, always on the move, always striking out with ferocious blows that degutted and decapitated, this man must, I think with no little remorse, have struck terror into the hearts of the bravest of the flutsmen. But, to give them their due, they did not flinch from their assaults.
A line of tethered flyers with their rows of saddles already half full of dazed and unhappy captives waited to the side. These extremely large flying beasts were rofers, able to carry whole families through the upper levels. I maneuvered myself toward them, past chopped slavers who sought to bar my path, and soon came up to the first rofer. He was a docile enough beast and did not try to bite me as I struck down his rider and began to slash the thongs fastening the prisoners. They gaped at me.
“Run!” I bellowed at them as I freed them. “Run and hide, get to safety!”
I had to dodge a flying stux then, and the shaft thudded into the earth. An oldster with white hair — which meant he was two hundred years old at least — quavered at me as he slid from the high saddle.
“And you, Jikai? And you?”
A javelin hurtled toward the oldster. I took a step and with that old Krozair skill beat the stux away so that it caromed over and flew upward again.
“Never mind me, dom! Run!”
The fugitives could scarcely comprehend what had happened to them. They scrambled down. What with slashing at binding thongs, and beating away javelins, and striking down flutsmen foolish enough to come too close, it was a warm few minutes’ work. I bellowed at the people again, yelling at them in fury.
“By Vox! Run, you famblys! Get to safety!”
A fambly is a gentle word for a genial kind of idiot, an affectionate insult. They ran. The oldster lifted his empty hands.
“By Hanitcha the Harrower! Were I but a hundred seasons — no, fifty seasons, by Krun! — younger than I am, I would seize a weapon and join you! Hai Jikai!”
There was no time for heroics.
There was precious little time left for anything.
The very fact that these miserable slavers were bothering to capture old folk meant they were mean souled, and desperate for slave-fodder. Only slavers frantic for the foul substance of their foul trade would trouble to enslave these old folk. There were a number of young mothers there, clutching their babies to their bosoms, and these would fetch a high price on the block. Fresh blood dripped from me, and now much of that blood was mine.