He wore soft leathers cincturing his waist and drawn up between his legs, the whole held in position by a wide belt the buckle of which gleamed dully gold. On his left arm he wore a stout leather bracer. He wore soft leather gloves. On his feet he wore leather hunting boots. I had worn that gear once, myself, in the long ago. .
And his sword. .
Oh, yes, I felt all the strife and evil of two worlds flowing out and away from me and the beginnings of a new and altogether glorious promise. Here, before me, was my passport to paradise!
“Hai!” shouted this gallant young man, and he charged headlong for a group of guards who withdrew their reeking blades from the corpses of their victims and sprang up to face him. Before me, half crouched on the beach, a naked man clasped a woman close, the black iron of their chains harsh against their skin. They were middle-aged, with faces lined with care, and yet for all that, the man could look up at the young man with eyes wide with wonder.
“Now in the name of the twins! Where did he come from?”
“Hush, Jeniu, hush!” His wife dragged him down into the black shale, burrowing for shelter. I jumped over them, and because it seemed the right thing to do, as I leaped I shouted down to them.
“Remain quiet and you will be safe.”
“Opaz the all-glorious preserve us!”
So far I had seen no beings other than humans among these guards and the slaves they were butchering to prevent their escape. There were no representatives of the half-men half-beasts of Kregen, those other races of intelligent beings who share the planet with human men and women. The young man — I had the fleeting wonder if he might not also come from the planet Earth — had engaged nobly with the guards, and in pressing them back, was displaying fine swordsmanship. As I fought, indeed, as I do almost anything, I kept a weather eye open and alert. If a fighting-man sought to leap on me from the rear he more often than not found me suddenly facing him with a naked brand in my fist.
If you tread dangerous paths that is an essential to staying alive — on Earth as on Kregen. So it was that I had to stop twice more to deal with inopportunely-pressing men in black leather, with their red and black sleeves, and their morionlike helmets. I observed a naked man, with a shaggy mop of brown hair and brown hair on his body so that he resembled a great brown bear, wrapping his chains about the neck of a guard and apparently on the point of severing head from body. This huge man, as thick in the chest as the barrels in which palines are shipped for sea use, roared his delight. I saw the suns-light glisten and gleam along the hairy muscles of his forearms as he leaned back. He saw me as I stepped outside a guard’s lunge, dazzle him with what — I confess — was a flamboyant flourish of my dagger, and bring the rapier in for the terminal thrust; and Brown Bear yelled, hugely delighted. “Hai, Jikai!”
“Hai, Jikai!” I roared back. “We will finish them all very soon — and then I will strike off your irons.”
“Not until I am done with using them. Never, by Vaosh, would I have believed I could love my chains so much! Ha!”
All over the beach and the soil-covered rocks just above, the bodies of slain men and women sprawled. But many more had reached some kind of sanctuary among the rocks, and among the dead lay many more guards than any of the escaping slaves had any right to expect. Brown Bear had accounted for his share, and I, mine — and this glorious youngster to whose aid I now sprang had fought right well and nobly.
Perhaps he was too noble; certainly, for all his skill and training he lacked experience. Twice I had dodged flung javelins. I saw it all. I shouted — uselessly, vainly, stupidly. There was nothing else I could do but shout and hurl my dagger; but long before the dagger found its mark in the javelin-thrower’s throat, the cruel steel head of the flung spear smashed bloodily red out through the chest of the gallant young fighter.
It is not easy for me to speak of that moment. I can clearly remember that sharp steel javelin-head sprouting from the lad’s chest. I can recall with exact clarity the way the twin streaming mingled light of Zim and Genodras cast sharp ugly shadows down over the muscles of his chest and the smooth tanned stomach, before he doubled up and fell sideways, drew his legs in, and began to cough up blood. After that my next memory is of drawing my rapier from the leather-clad body of a guard, and looking around for more, and finding them all lying dead in the abandoned postures of complete destruction along the beach. Evidently, at the end, they had tried to flee from me.
I looked back up the beach.
A small clump of naked men and women had gathered, and more were creeping out from their hiding places among the rocks and boulders and thorn-ivy bushes.
The huge brown bear of a man stood a little way in front.
All stared at me.
None would approach.
I ignored them.
I went back to the dying youngster.
He lay still on his side, for the javelin prevented him lying in another posture. He was conscious and his eyes followed me as I approached. Those blue eyes were still bright and brilliant, but the face had drained of blood.
“Llahal, Jikai,” he said painfully, dribbling blood. “You fight right merrily.”
I did not reply with the rolling double-L of the nonfamiliar greeting of “Llahal” of Kregen; instead I said:
“Lahal,” which is used only to those one knows.
He looked surprised, but his weakness made him incurious and unable to ponder the matter overlong. I knelt by his side. There was nothing material I could do for him.
I looked at him, and I waited until I felt a light of intelligence in those eyes, struggling up past the engulfing waves of blackness seeking to drag him down forever.
I spoke.
“Happy Swinging,” I said. My voice was not my own; it was hoarse, strange, harsh. “Happy Swinging.”
He looked at me with the same shock his face had shown when the javelin pierced him through.
“Happy Swinging-”
“Tell me, dom. Where lies Aphrasoe, the Swinging City?”
He coughed and blood dribbled from his mouth, for he was almost gone.
“Aphrasoe!” He tried to move and could not. “I was there — there in Aphrasoe — only moments ago. I talked with Maspero and bid him Remberee — and then I was here. And-”
“Maspero is my friend. He was my tutor. Where lies Aphrasoe?”
The cords in his throat moved and shuddered, and I saw he was trying to shake his head. His voice was faint.
“I do not know. The transition was made — cold and darkness — and then — here. .”
I had to know where Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, was situated on the planet of Kregen. Next to my concern for my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, next to my love for her, I must know the whereabouts of Aphrasoe. For Aphrasoe was paradise.
He was trying to speak again.
“Tell Maspero — tell him — Alex Hunter tried — tried-”
“Rest easy, Alex Hunter. You have come a long way from Earth, but now you are with friends.”
He looked up into my ugly face with its gargoyle-look strong upon it, and the bright blueness of his eyes faded and he sighed, very softly. His blood-smeared mouth smiled — he smiled, looking upon me, Dray Prescot — and then he died.
I stood up.
I turned to face the gathered naked people.
“Are any guards left alive?” I called. My voice rose harshly, bitter and cutting. The big brown bear of a man shouted back. “They are all dead.”
I nodded.
“As well for them they are. By dying they escape my wrath.”
Then I turned and looked out to that unknown sea and I did not weep. For many memories had poured upon me and I could face no one until I had purged myself of weakness.