"My heart! My heart!" He limped forward, desperate.
I set the girl upon the ground and she tottered.
"My beloved!" she cried.
Gafard dropped his longsword. The gleaming blade and the ornate hilt encrusted with jewels, all the symbolic power of the weapon, went into the dust. He took the girl in his arms. They held each other close. I walked away.
Yes, I thought, yes, there is genuine love here.
I, a grim old fighting-man, can understand love.
After a space, when I looked back, I saw that Gafard had adjusted what was left of the green veil, drawing it up to hide the glory of the girl’s face. He called her his pearl, his heart, the beloved of his days. He did not use her name.
That, too, I understood.
When, after a time, others of his retinue found us, he became all harsh authority, damning and blasting, calling down the wrath of Grotal the Reducer upon the beaters. He shouted passionately for his guards to take the head beaters and flog them and if they would not die to draw out their bowels until they did. Old-snake, torture, hideous death, would be their portion for allowing for a single instant any danger to his divine beloved. He desisted in his anger against them only when the girl pleaded for their lives.
"Jikaider them!" shouted Gafard, incensed, holding the girl as she held him. "Punish them so that all may know their crimes!"
Flogging them jikaider, with a right-handed and a left-handed man to wield the lash, was horrific punishment. But Gafard was at pain to point out why he was merciful. "You deserve to be shipped out to the Ice Floes of Sicce! But my Lady of the Stars has interceded for you, and I deny her nothing within my power! Thank her, you cramphs! Her orders are my commands! Go down on your bellies, you rasts, grovel to show your gratitude to the divine — to my beloved."
The beaters flopped down, howling, crying, wailing out their gratitude that they were to be flogged jikaider.
They were flogged most thoroughly, jikaider, and that night their howls sounded uncannily over the camp, stopping the cowardly and the guilty from much rest. That vicious crisscross flogging opens up a man’s back to the bone. Mere raw lumps of meat, the beaters, by morning. But they would have unguents applied and they’d be carried in litters and, after they’d recovered, would go back to the ranks. Tough, the swod of Kregen, the ordinary common warrior soldier. I wondered if they’d be paid the few obs they would have earned beating for the hunt. The beating had been of a very different kind, poor devils.
And yet, thinking that, next morning as we prepared to get under way again, I realized I’d have done exactly as Gafard had done — more, probably — if harm had come to this girl he called the Lady of the Stars.
In only a few more days we would reach the area in which our operations could start. Then it would be man’s work once more. The hebramen scouting ahead kept more particularly alert, for these wild barbarians were notorious for their cunning and skill in ambush in this hard and sere region. Farther north the land of the tall forests led on and on until, at last, the land of everlasting whiteness was reached. I had no desire at all to journey there. What I did now was a part of the plan I had formed. Duhrra followed me still because I had promised him I knew what I was doing and he had had evidence of that in the past.
"We will for a time act the part of Grodnims, Duhrra of the Days. We do not fight Zairians-"
"No! Mother Zinzu the Blessed forfend!"
"Yet when we reach the Eye of the World again we will have proved ourselves of the Green. Then we may escape."
"Duh — let us crack a few skulls before that, Dak, my master."
"I am Gadak now."
"Aye! And they call me Guhrra, may Zair rot their-"
"Easy, easy. The camp has ears."
Duhrra had been about the camp, ears cocked, picking up all the scuttlebutt that forever circulates where fighting-men congregate. I wanted to know about this girl, this Lady of the Stars. There was precious little to know. The men speculated on the mysterious occupant of the palankeen and the great tent, of course, in the scabrous way of warriors. The story that had gained the most currency said that she was a Zairian, from Sanurkazz, and had been taken in a swifter by a squadron commanded by Gafard. He had found her in the aft state cabin and from that moment on no other man had seen her face.
"In a swifter?" I said. "Passing strange, for a woman to be in a swifter in action."
"It is known."
"Aye. It is known. And is that all?"
"None know her name, none know her face. Four men — trusted men — have been flayed alive by Gafard’s orders for trying."
The majority of the personal bodyguard maintained by Gafard about the tent were not apims. That would greatly reduce the dangers, of course, although no sane man trusted a woman to the protection of some races of diffs. Gafard chose wisely.
The moment came to which I had been looking forward with an interest that had led me to keep Blue Cloud always in perfect condition, a bag of provisions knotted to his harness, to sleep lightly and to have the edges and points of all my weapons honed razor-sharp.
The summons reached me carried by one of Gafard’s aides. I went with him to the campaign tent in which Gafard dictated his orders and kept his official being. Only when he had discharged his duties would he dress and anoint himself and go to the great tent where the Lady of the Stars awaited him. Among his retinue I had, as I have said, made no real enemies apart from his second in command. This was a certain man called Grogor. He was a renegade, also. The situation was obvious. Grogor feared lest I, the new friend of Gafard’s, might oust him from his position. I had been at pains to tell the fellow that I had no intentions of doing any such thing. He had not believed me. Now Grogor, a bulky, sweaty man, but a good fighter, motioned me into the campaign tent. Gafard sat at a folding table affixing his seal to orders and messages. He looked up and waved me to sit at the side and wait.
His stylor, a slave with privileges as a man who could read and write, was, as was common, a Relt. The Relt gathered up all the papers and their canvas envelopes in his thin arms and, bowing, backed out. The flap of the tent dropped. Gafard lifted his head and looked at me. I had not been called to ride with him since the episode of the lairgodont and the hunt.
"You have been wondering why I have been cold to you in the last few days, Gadak?" It needed no quick intelligence to understand why. I said, "Yes, gernu." He put his hands together and studied them, not looking at me as he spoke.
"I owe you my gratitude. I do not think I would care to live if my beloved no longer lived and walked at my side."
"I can understand that."
He looked up, his head lifting like the vicious head of a striking lairgodont itself.
"Ah! So you are like all the rest-"
There was no way out of this save by boldness.
"I saw the face of the Lady of the Stars. Yes, it is true. You have had men flayed for less. But when a lairgodont rips at one, and the green veil is already torn away, there is not much choice." He still stared at me. He measured his words. "Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman in all the world?"
I have been asked that question — and most often by silly women seeking to gain power over me -
many times, as you know.
Every time, every single time, the answer was automatic, instant, not needing thought. No woman in two worlds is as perfect as my Delia, my Delia of Delphond. Yet. .
I hesitated.