Well aware they could see me, I did not draw.
Surprise is a useful weapon. So is a longsword. Even the sword I bore, taken from the body of that Grodnim Jiktar who had attempted to stop me opening the caissons of the gate of the Dam of Days and so destroying a convoy of foemen’s ships. I held the hilt that was almost the hilt of a true Krozair longsword. The blade bore the device of a lairgodont, a most ferocious carnivorous risslaca, surmounted by a rayed sun. That device denoted a Green Brotherhood devoted to Grodno. The sword had served me well since we had left the Dam of Days and the Grand Canal at the extreme western end of the inner sea. Now it would serve again.
The lesten-hide grip over wood and iron ridged firmly into my hand. This thing would have to be quick
— quick and deadly. I saw the shadows move.
The thieves made the mistake of shouting. No doubt they sought to frighten us. As they leaped so they screeched.
"Gashil! Gashil! To Sicce with you!"
Duhrra bellowed a fruity oath and his sword blurred up and down. My blade leaped for the throat of the first attacker. He staggered back, trying to scream, with the black blood spouting. Twice more I struck as the leems of the sewers leaped. One reeled back, sightless, faceless, dying. The other, a Rapa, skewed his sword across and partially deflected the blow so that the blade sliced through the crest atop his gray vulturine face. He stopped screeching "Gashil," the legendary patron of bandits, and screamed out a string of Rapa oaths. But, for all that, his sword lunged in again. I leaned out and over, looped the weapon in a shadowy blur, lifted it, and so slashed down. The Rapa dropped his sword. He took a step from the shadows into the pink moonlight, his hands to his head. He had been cleft down to the bridge of that big vulturine beak. Only then did he fall. Rapas are fierce opponents and worthy to be called warriors, even if they do stink in the nostrils of apims like me.
Duhrra’s sectrix backed and collided with mine. I swung a swift glance toward him. The one-handed man’s sword skittered up into the air, spinning, catching the slanting rays of pink and golden moonlight. I saw beyond his sectrix the lithe vicious shape of a numim closing in for the kill.
"Look out!" I yelled, trying to kick my beast into action and so close. I would be too late. The numim, his golden lion-face a single blaze of ferocious pleasure in the moonlight, which slanted narrowly above the eastern roofs, leaped for Duhrra, a longsword upraised. I felt that my comrade was doomed. I reversed the sword ready to throw, and-
A bar of steel twinkled cleanly in the moonlight. It thrust straight at the numim. The lion-man’s leap ended in a shriek and a gurgle. He slumped to the ground. He tried to rise and run, and collapsed, and lay, groaning and cursing.
Duhrra turned his big face toward me. He looked more like an idiot than ever.
"The rasts," he said. He lifted his right arm.
Where he usually wore his hook, fitted for him by the doctors attached to the Akhram by the Grand Canal, now a brand of steel flamed black and gold in the moonlight. I knew why he had carried what I supposed was his hook concealed in rags, for we had wished to prevent news of a one-handed man being bandied about. Now I realized he had concealed more than a mere hook. He waved the blade at me, socketed into leather and wood over his stump, and his great idiot face showed pleasurable delight in a new toy.
"They did not expect this, Dak. They didn’t like it."
He slid a leg over his saddle and jumped to the ground. I was very conscious of the shadows about us, the darkness of the pointed archway in which the ambush had taken place, the comparative brilliance beyond as She of the Veils rose higher and cast down her light. Eyes could be watching us; but that was a thing I could do nothing about.
The wounded numim lay gasping on the ground. He had rolled over and so lay on his back, gasping and cursing, and glaring up at us. Blood stained his golden mane. I had known a numim who had been a great man and a good friend, even if he had been a citizen of hostile Hamal. I stopped as Duhrra bent.
"You, rast," said Duhrra of the Days, "may receive a boon at my hands. You may go to roister with Gashil, to sit on the right hand of Grodno in the radiance of Genodras. You are equally doomed, cramph. For Grodno is the true devil."
And Duhrra sliced the cripple-blade across the numim’s throat and so slew him. He stood back and turned to me.
"He had seen my hook — or, rather, the blade. He would have talked. I do not think you would care for that, Dak, my master."
All I could say was, "No."
Methodically, Duhrra cleaned the cripple-blade and its tang which fixed into the socket of the stump, turning with a cunning twist to lock. He unlocked it and cleaned the tang and the socket as we rode on, for we did not wish to tarry with the street cumbered with dead bodies. Magdag has a force of hired mercenaries to fight with her own people, and she had the night watch, who delight in catching thieves and ne’er-do-wells, for each one gains them a bounty when sent to slave at the oar benches of the galleys.
Presently Duhrra, his stump once more concealed, said, "You seem to know this devil’s nest passing well, master."
"Aye. I once lived here for a space — in good times and evil. And must I keep on telling you I am not your master?"
"No, master."
"What does that mean?"
A hurrying group from an alehouse passed, men and women of a number of different racial stocks, all swathed in dirty green garments, with link-slaves to light their way. They passed the sectrixes like a flood, opening out before and closing aft. I twisted in the awkward wooden saddle to stare after them. The torchlights scattered red and orange reflections. The shadows grew darker and swooped down, writhing. Silently, with only a rush of sandaled feet, those people passed us.
"Are they phantoms?" Duhrra’s face showed no shock, but I saw the coverings over his stump moving.
"No, you great fambly! They are workpeople going to their hovels after drinking as the suns set. They go in a group with torches because-"
"Yes. Well, there is one little lot who will not disturb them this night, by Za-"
"Onker!" I bellowed.
I had no need to say more. But Duhrra, who looked like a great muscle-bound idiot, could play games, also.
"By Grodno the Green!" he said loudly. "You call me onker, master!" I glared at him. Neither of us would smile. The moment was amusing. I shook the reins and we cantered past the alehouse with its sign of a broken pot — broken by skylarking children, I shouldn’t wonder -
and so turned into the Alley of Weights which would take us to the main waterfront of Foreigners’ Pool. The alley lay in darkness, but from the waterfront the sounds of rollicking and roistering lured us on. I had no real fear of another attempt on us so close to the clustered taverns of the waterfront, but we rode with swords in our hands, just in case. As to the carousing — the sounds rose thin and few. I had fancied the Pool would be jumping; perhaps it was too early.
She of the Veils had risen clear of the roofs now and as we reached the end of the Alley of Weights and saw the dark water before us a jaggedly rippling ribbon of pinkly golden light stretched, as though to welcome us back to the sea. Lights shone from the taverns and alehouses, for sailors’ work is thirsty work. Again I fancied business was slack. The tavern I wanted, known to be the favorite of the Vallian seamen who had sailed here all the weary way across the Outer Oceans, was called The Net and Trident. I knew little of it, for, as you know, my former residence in Magdag had been once in the slave warrens and once in the Emerald Eye Palace.
In those old days I had spied out a deal of Magdag, as I have mentioned, with a true Krozair’s eye for weaknesses in the defense against the great day when the call rang out and we of Zair went up against the hated men of Grodno.