I couldn’t stop myself. I was exhausted — as were we all — and I was in a foul temper as may be imagined. I had been a king, and now I was a mere puppet dancing to the tune played by superbeings who refused to treat me seriously.
“Where are we, by the diseased and stinking right eyeball of Makki-Grodno?”
They stared at me, both of them, shaken by my tone.
When they saw my face glowering upon them, they were more mightily shaken still. Then Avec, with something of a bluster in his voice and manner, said, “Why, in Orlush, of course.”
Ilter Monicep regarded me with his dark eyes half veiled, and a pucker to his lips. He had recovered from that instinctive panic, that insubstantial terror, that seems to grip people when I glare at them with purpose. He spoke softly, and yet with meaning.
“You are in Orlush, as this great fambly Avec has said. And Orlush lies in the kingdom of Pwentel, and Pwentel has the great and glorious honor of being part of the Empire of Hamal.” He chuckled harshly. Then he said bitterly, “Not a large or important part, for King Rorton Turmeyr whom men call the Splendid, is a frightened king. And Orlush, as you see, is not a great and famous town, for our Elten, Lart Lykon, is a corrupt bladder of vileness.”
“You have said it, Ilter, although I shall beat you for calling me a fambly, you clever onker!”
While I digested this information the people of the town secured themselves on the highest terraces, clustering near the irrigation trenches which poured downslope from tier to tier. There are many degrees in the various peerages of Kregen, and I have not detailed them to you except when necessary. Suffice it to say that an Elten is two ranks lower in the hierarchy than a Strom. And I was in Hamal!
Something of what the Gdoinye had said made sense now.
Food had been saved from the disaster and we could eat the portion of the crop that was already ripe. All the rest of the day and the next night we huddled as Muruaa spouted into the air and poured his molten fury down the slopes. In the evening of the third day the fires slackened. Toward the decline of the twin suns — Zim now followed Genodras below the horizon — and with She of the Veils floating smokily between the stars, we saw a cavalcade drop down swiftly through the last level rays of emerald and ruby. It came to rest on the broadest and driest of the terraces encircling a low hill. Surrounding a large and ornately decorated voller flew a squadron of mirvols, their riders flamboyant with flying silks and furs, with slanted weapons and the glitter of gems and steel.
“That will be Strom Nopac, come to find out what has happened,” said Ilter Monicep. From his tone it was perfectly clear he had as little love for Strom Nopac as he had for Elten Lart.
“Who’d be a Notor?” Avec offered as his contribution to the philosophy of the evening. “It’d worry a man’s guts out.”
We were eating palines, and precious little else we had had, too, and we leaned in the last of the twin suns’ glow, resting our elbows on a brick wall and looking down the slopes in the gathering dusk. Men moved urgently about down there, and Elten Lart would no doubt be pushing as hard as he could for help and relief in the disaster. The town showed like a patchwork of roofs protruding from the cooling lava.
Soldiers were climbing the stairs cut in the terrace walls. Zim and Genodras winked from the armor and the weapons.
“I just hope they’ve brought food,” said Ilter, and he belched with a hungry hollow sound. I remembered the whip-marks upon Avec’s broad back, lash-stripes that were newly healed. Avec pushed up from the wall and flexed his arms and then rubbed his hair and nose. “They’ll put me back in the Opaz-rotten cells,” he said. He sighed. “Well, it was a rouser to be out, if for such a short time.”
“They’ll flog you again, Avec,” said Ilter.
“Ah!” Avec spoke with a crowing kind of pleasure. “But they can’t jikaider me! The law doesn’t allow that to an Elten, by Krun!”
The soldiers approached.
In the last of the light they looked bulky, powerful, wearing uniforms which to me smacked of the overly ostentatious. I had been in Hamal before, at the Heavenly Mines, and I had no love for the Hamalese -
although, Zair knew, Avec and Ilter were shaping up as interesting companions for a fight. I readied myself in case Avec would put up a fight; but he held his wrists out, together, crossed, and said, “Here I am, boys. Anybody got a bottle of dopa handy?”
One of the soldiers laughed and a Deldar put his hand on Avec’s shoulder. “You are Avec Brand the Niltch? You will come with us.” Before the Deldar had finished speaking a voice lifted farther back in the shadows beyond the group of soldiers.
“There he is! There is the cramph who wounded two of my guards! Seize him, instantly!”
Ilter Monicep swung before me, so that his body blocked off my instinctive reaction to belt the first soldier over the head with his own stux. The soldiers closed in, their spears pointing for me, deadly in the fading light.
Monicep whispered, swiftly, frantically: “You resist, they’ll kill us all!”
Helpless, I was taken, my hands bound. With stuxes prodding my back I was marched down the terraces and flung like a sack of refuse into the bottom of the voller.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Avec Brand, also, was flung down with me. He was a Niltch. At the time I had no idea what that could be.
The bottom of the voller did not smell as pleasantly as I suspected a voller should smell, although for a man like myself who knows what an eighteenth-century seventy-four’s bilges smelled like after eighteen months on blockade, smells are usually merely information clusters. This voller had been carrying gregarians, squishes, and malsidges. I saw no reason, now, to wait before freeing myself.
“Avec!” I said, not loudly, but not whispering, either. “Is your crime so serious?”
I wanted to know if he was just a petty criminal who was always in trouble, or if he had just done one thing wrong.
“Serious?” He chuckled, there, tied up in the malodorous hold of the voller. “Had I not left to go to Sumbakir I would have challenged him earlier, for although I am not a Horter neither am I a slave! Elten Lart is corrupt. I told the cramph what I thought of him, then I threw slursh at him — slursh with best red honey stirred in, too!”
Slursh is a remarkably fine porridge, which may be cooked in a number of different ways according to taste, and is so common on Kregen that if I have not mentioned it previously it is surely for that reason. Slursh and red honey, now — superb.
“Slursh wouldn’t hurt him, Avec. Not enough to flog you-”
“I did not trouble to take it out of the pot, Dray.”
“Ah!”
“The pot was that cheeky shishi Sosie’s, a brave iron pot exceedingly thick and heavy, with the story of Kov Logan na Hirrume and the two Fristle fifis molded around the rim.”
“What will they do to you?”
“For thumping a Notor? The Jikhorkdun, for sure. The Strom has jurisdiction, I think. The law is very strict. That rast Lart Lykon must bow to the Strom, as he bows to the king.”
“You do not appear to me to be worried, Avec.”
“No. Ilter Monicep is a clever lad, schooled, and no more of a fambly than I am. He will get me out. He is my sister’s son.”
“I had thought, Avec, I might break out soon.” I did not wish to enter the Hamalian Jikhorkdun. I moved my wrists and the thongs burst. “About — now.”
He could barely see me in the reflected glow of oil lamps shining through the hatchway from the deck above. “You have freed yourself of your bonds? By Krun! That is a deed!”
I reached over in the dimness, found his wrists, said, “Hold steady if they cut, Avec,” and jerked his thongs apart.
He rubbed his wrists for a few murs in thoughtful silence. Then he belched. Then he said, “I have read you, Dray, I have read you. You are a paktun. A Hyr-paktun, in all probability.”