Had I gone too far? Was he an honest man in the sense that he wouldn’t accept loot when it came his way? Was this stealing in the accepted sense of the word? I was sailing near the wind, even by Kregan standards which are notoriously laxer than Earth’s. Perhaps-
I said quickly, “But as we are all honest men, then the treasure must be gathered together and returned to Vektor when the Princess Majestrix and I are married.”
“Amen to that, my lord.” Then he screwed up his blue eyes, and said, with a chuckle: “And I will take counsel on the question of the treasure. We are great bandits in the Blue Mountains!”
They are great ruffians, the Blue Mountain Boys.
The missing Womox had leaped voluntarily to his death, rushing back down the track out of the defile and so over a precipice. The other, the one with the broken tusk, sat crouched in mortal terror of the Blue Mountain men. I had seen the Womoxes in action, aboard Viridia the Render’s swordship; now I saw how a member of that savage and sullen race was terrified in his turn. And yet — my Delia was the princess of this cutthroat bunch!
Aighos bustled about superintending the tying of the guards’ wrists. They would be set stumbling up the track the remainder of the distance to High Zorcady in the mist. The calsanys loaded with the treasure were prodded away down the track. I looked up and saw a line of airboats appear over a nearby crag. They followed in line astern formation as neat as a rulered line on a score, sailing through the upper levels. They did not see us, down among the rocks, and so serenely flew on. I could guess why the treasure had not been brought in by flier; no one was going to trust an airboat with all this treasure among these hostile crags. The thought drew from me a gesture of respect for the men of the Vallian Air Service. Hikdar Stovang stumbled up, blood on his face, his helmet gone, his bright gold and black butterfly insignia ripped and stained.
“Traitor!” he yelled at me as I stood with Aighos. “I trusted you, you Opaz-forsaken cramph! Drak ti Valkanium! I shall remember that!”
Ob-eye swung his cudgel and slanted his one eye at Aighos, but the korf of the mountains laughed and said: “Let the braggart go!”
His men respected Aighos, that was very plain, and even Ob-eye, inclined to rumbustiousness, stayed in line, and with them all accepted me as Drak, a friend of Aighos. The korf considered it best for the time being to conceal my identity from everyone, with the exception of himself. I saw, with an amusement tinged with a wry affection for this korf of the mountains, this bandit, that he relished this knowledge, this secret he shared with a princess and a lord.
From the zorcas Aighos selected the finest specimen, that ridden by Hikdar Stovang. I remounted my own animal. The other Blue Mountain Boys selected zorcas and preysanys, and in a straggly procession we wended down away from High Zorcady.
I looked back. High Zorcady! There was a ring about that, a fineness, a sense of high yearning. The grim rearing pile spearing up into the clouds, its towers ringed with mist, the crested-korfs wheeling past its battlemented walls, all made a reality out of a fantasy of imagination. I knew I was sorry not to have visited High Zorcady.
The plan was to get me in, or to get Delia out, and once we had met, to make further plans. I did not care which, just so long as I could hold my Delia in my arms again.
“Pur Dray,” said Aighos, and then coughed and fiddled with his reins and berated the poor zorca between his knees. “Kr. Drak! We shall find hospitality at my cousin’s village. You rode past it and never saw it, so well are the houses hidden.”
He spoke the truth. The walls and buildings constructed of the rock against which they stood remained extraordinarily difficult to detect. We drank strong Kregan tea and ate a specialty of the mountains, ponsho rolled in hibisum flour and baked slowly — baked for three whole days — and then drenched in a taylyne sauce and simmered for another day. By the time the meat reaches your lips it melts like the sweetest honey. Superb! We also, being good Vallians, drank a great deal of wine of various vintages. The messenger had been sent, a lithe young girl of the mountains, striding with her skirts tucked up, springing boldly over frightening chasms, carrying laundry. The laundry would get her past the guards, and once inside she was known to friends, who would conduct her directly to Delia. Perforce, I waited. We had been quartered in the largest house, a two-story structure whose roof of sharply-angled slates would have towered over the other buildings but for the cunning use of overhanging rock-shelves. Each slate had to be fixed in place with severity; where torrents could wash over the rocks and sweep everything away the roofs had to be steep. There could be none of the shallow roofs of the valleys where the slates could lie and slumber without fear of slipping off.
I sat in a carved black-wood chair that must have been all of two hundred years old, and talked with the men. I had a strange peace, a tranquility, a sense of time standing still. So near I was to Delia that all my recent frantic scurryings appeared ludicrous. I had merely to sit here, eat and drink and talk, and she would appear in the doorway, radiant, glorious, alive!
In the corner stood a two-handed sword, fully seven feet long, of that peculiar kind used on Earth around the sixteenth century. Contrary to popular belief, these enormously long swords of war were used in combat, and not merely for color guards of honor or as symbols, but the man to wield them must be a man indeed. This one had a leather-wrapped grip, wide quillons, and also a wrapping of velvet around the blade before the quillons. The cotton would have come from Donengil and the silk, probably, from Loh. To protect the hand when grasping this shortening-section a pair of semi-quillons had been neatly set into the metal. The thing looked clean, without rust, but a casual test with my thumb showed it to be blunt.
“The great sword of war of the Blue Mountains,” said Korf Aighos. He half laughed, half sighed. “They are out of fashion now. There was a time when men raced through the ravines wielding the swords of war and none could stand against them.”
These men had never seen a Krozair longsword. Beside this enormous brute a Krozair two-hander was a subtle instrument. I had the sudden craving to feel a real Krozair longsword in my fists again. The feeling made me realize why Aighos had recognized me. He had heard me use a Krozair oath -
“By Zim-Zair!” — and no doubt Delia herself had let the resounding words fall from her lips, also, from time to time. She was fully entitled to do so.
A fracas started in the narrow walk and we went out, laughing and joking, carrying blackjacks of wine, expecting to see sport. A man raced past, screaming, his hair streaming, his face sweating, the eyes like livid coals.
“The shorgortz! The shorgortz!”
A woman screamed and snatched up her child and ran inside, slamming her lenken door. Aighos dropped his blackjack and the rich dark wine spread across the stones.
“The shorgortz,” I said. ‘Tell me, Korf, what is that?”
‘Truly you are not yet of the Blue Mountains, Kr. Drak!”
“Bring fire!” a man yelled.
“Shelter within doors and pray!”
“Fire!”
“If you light torches,” I said, at once adjusting to the peril, “you will tell the guards where we are.”
“Better the Emperor’s aragorn, or the mercenaries, than the shorgortz!”
So it was that serious, then. .
I couldn’t have them running about with torches alarming the neighborhood and alerting the men brought back by Hikdar Stovang. And, far more importantly, if there was some monster out there in the mountains, my Delia was coming. . I did not hesitate. I went back into the house, snatched up the great sword of war, brushed past its protesting owner, and strode out into the street. Men were milling. I shouted loudly, stilling them by my anger.
“Tell me, you Blue Mountain Boys! Where is this Zair-forsaken shorgortz?”