I made my position clear. I would find a boat and go to Vallia. I saw Tom looking at Theirson. Tom would marry Bibi as soon as that could be contrived, and between them they could look forward to no life at all. Unless. .
No one did any work in the fields that day. That night we ate well and drank wine for the first time in many a long day.
Then we commanded the dancing girls, who were half dead with fright and horrendous expectations, to dance for us. The ordinary dancing girl, such as one finds in taverns and dopa dens and even in higher establishments of pleasure, never appeals greatly to me, almost certainly on account of my experiences with my clansmen where the girls dance gaily and freely and with a fierce joy that finds its greatest expression of art — and where they’d stick you with a terchick if you called them dancing girls. Slavery and dancing are obscene bedfellows.
I had never touched the Triangular Trade, but I knew.
After that I called the three of them over and said: “Have you chosen?”
They fell on their knees, the tears streaming — and, of course, I could not let the cruel farce continue any longer. I told them, simply, that they must henceforth cut themselves off from the aragorn, and help the villagers. Later, when things had worked themselves out, they might be dancing girls again. It was not a satisfactory solution, but I was afire to find a boat and sail to Vallia. Tom was doubtful I’d find a single boat along the west coast of Valka. When he understood that I had no objections to stealing a boat from the slavers or the mercenaries, and if necessary, bashing in a few skulls in the process, he said that, yes, there were boats; but the skull bashing would be hectic and heavy. That suited me only in one way; but Valka, however pleasant an island it really was despite the depredations, could not hold me at all, and if skull bashing was necessary, then skull bash I would. Speed, now I had almost reached my goal, seemed to me the prime requisite. Tom accompanied me back to the beach. The prisoners were astonished to see me. Under the direction of their self-elected leaders, of which Borg was one, they had begun to sketch out a camp for themselves off the beach and on the banks of a little river where we tracked them. They were warned about the water in the canals, whereat Borg laughed hugely, a true canalman.
Tom and I departed, and after some difficulty, discovered a slaver camp where we stole a boat. The skull bashing did not, in the event, prove necessary. Tom waved goodbye. “Remberee, Drak!” and:
“Remberee, Tom!”
I hoisted the dipping lug and the little boat curled out across the sea. I felt at last my peculiar destiny was running in ways I could understand when the black clouds gathered and a gale blew with incredible, immediate violence and the waves broke mountainously high; with a sick heart I recognized all the symptoms I had met before. This had happened on the inner sea. The Star Lords were forcing me back. I could not go on. The Star Lords were saying plainly: “You may not go to Vallia! Return to Valka, Dray Prescot, and perform there the work to your hands.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I would not accept this dictate of the Star Lords.
What did I know of these mysterious and lofty beings then? Practically nothing of value, save their power. They had flung me back and forth between Earth and Kregen like a tennis ball. They could rouse the wind and the sea against me.
The boat grounded and waves sheeted over me, and I stood up and shook my fist at the sky and cursed the Star Lords, horribly and comprehensively. The wind slackened and the stars shone through the cloud wrack.
She of the Veils, the fourth moon of Kregen, drifted like a wan ghost, and against the pallid orb the shape of a giant hunting bird stretched like an accusing brand.
“The Gdoinye!” I yelled up, my head thrown back. “What do I care for you? It is Vallia and Vondium for me,” and I finished with a fine rattling series of foul oaths.
The raptor up there, black in the starlight, catching an occasional gleam from She of the Veils, was the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. A giant bird with, I knew, a scarlet coat of feathers and golden feathers about its eyes and throat, it circled above me now in wide planing hunting circles. That raptor had watched over many of the crises of my life on Kregen. Now I picked up a stone from the beach and hurled it aloft. Oh, yes, believe me, I was mad clean through.
And then — then something happened that had never occurred to me before on Kregen and was never likely to occur on Earth.
The Gdoinye folded its wings and stooped. It dropped like a shot from a tower straight toward my head. I shouted aloud in my glee and hauled out my sword and threw it up, the blade a pinkish-silver brand in the night.
“I’ll tickle your feathers for you, you kleesh of a bird! You won’t spy for the Star Lords when I’ve spit you and roasted you and thrown you to the vosks!”
With a harsh cry the bird spread those gorgeous wings all black in the moonlight and swooped over my head. It circled insolently low above me, contemptuous, out of my reach. At my side swung a main-gauche Tom had insisted I take, and I could have drawn it and hurled it fairly into that scarlet-feathered breast. But I continued to shake my sword and rave at the Gdoinye. Looking back, I know I had forgotten I carried the dagger. My rage was terrible and ludicrous, pathetic. Then — then the thing happened that stunned my brain.
“Dray Prescot!”
I fell silent, numb, gaping.
The bird — the bird spoke to me!
“Dray Prescot, you are a fool.”
How could I argue that?
“Dray Prescot, we did not bring you to Valka. Had you a grain of common sense you would have understood. Was not the lad Hunter from the Savanti? Were you not brought to aid him?”
My sword felt as heavy as the chest of gold we dragged from Dorval the Render’s tower.
“Vallia!” I shouted up. “I must go to Vondium!”
“Not so, Dray Prescot. You have been selected. Therefore you must.”
“As I did in Magdag? When you dragged me away in the hour of victory?”
“If you presume, you will be put down.”
“Presume! I served you as I thought fit! Star Lords! You are less than rasts that crawl upon a dunghill!”
“We are what we are. The Savanti try to be what they are not. They brought you here untimely.” Then the bird emitted a shrieking squawk that might have been the laughter of the gods, or the gloating of demons. “Your Delia does not miss you, Prescot-”
I interrupted. “In that you lie!”
“Listen, fool. You remember that Delia saw you the very next day after her capture in the Esztercari enclave, yet you had wandered and adventured and swaggered like any ruffler for years?”
Now I understood, or thought I did, and a tide of pure relief flooded me through and through. I had spent years with my clansmen and had been back to Earth, and for Delia it had all been like a single day. I saw the Gdoinye rising higher and I shouted something after it, but it merely screeched an accipiter-like insult at me, and winged away, vanishing in the moon-drenched shadows. But — I felt free! I felt released from a bar of constricting steel. I would make my way to Vondium in Vallia and claim my Delia — and only I would suffer the pangs of parting and separation. To me, then, these thoughts came as a great benediction, for I did not care how I suffered so long as not a single hair of the head of my Delia was harmed.
A flutter of white beneath She of the Veils made me turn my head and there flew the white dove of the Savanti. It flew around, and I thought its flight as agitated as ever I had seen it. The white dove spied for the Savanti. I shook my fist at it and shouted: “And what have you to say for yourself?” But the dove merely circled and then flew off, a white fluttering speck, pink-lit, inconclusive under the moons of Kregen.