“Who is doing the buying? And to what end?”
He took a swig and wiped his mouth. “For one, the Racter Party. Oh, yes, they have a hand in everything in Vallia. But why should Naghan Nadler, who has been a paktun for twenty seasons and will make ob-deldar soon, take gold?”
“Why?”
“Why, because they want to buy his sword! And others like him. There are plots against the emperor. Everyone knows that. A little gold spread around now will buy loyalty when the plots hatch. That is my opinion.”
“And you have reported this?”
He opened and shut his lower left hand, and his right hand gripped and tugged at the pakmort around his neck on its silken cord. “I wanted to speak to you.”
I was not sure if he had done right. But this was no time to suggest he might better have taken another course. What struck me, forcibly and with a chill of foreboding, was the frightening thought that whichever of the parties — or perhaps all of them — that were bribing guards to fight for them had reached the swods. A simple swod may well be a terrible fighting man, but it is the captains and generals who carry the say when bribery is in the wind. I felt pretty confident that Laka had not been approached because all men knew once a Pachak had given his nikobi to serve an employer his loyalty remained steadfast. But a swod in the ranks, being given gold, told to obey orders that would not come from his employer, this typified the destruction of values, the end of one way of life and, if a new began, a system barely nameable as life.
So, as you can see, I was in a highly wrought state.
Hadn’t I suborned guardsmen before, to fight for me against their employer, and, by Vox, wouldn’t I do so again? But at the least, no mere petty ambition had driven me, to topple a throne for the sake of the power.
So we drank and talked and I watched the clientele, seeing the many different patterns of banded sleeves, each set of colors denoting a man belonging to a noble house. Even among these soldiers and guardsmen the white and black favors were flaunted openly, along with the white and green of the panvals and other color combinations. A Pachak hikdar, squat, leather-faced, roaring his good humor and slopping ale, plunked himself down on the bench opposite Laka and bellowed a greeting. When the confusion died down Laka introduced him as Nidar De-Fra, an old mercenary comrade newly arrived in Vondium with his master. This Nidar wore banded sleeves, for he was in uniform, the banded colors of unequal widths of blue and green and yellow, with two thin vertical stripes of white. It must not be taken that these color-banded sleeves of Vallia are like the tartans of the Scottish clans; but with their color-coding, once a man saw a combination of shapes and colors he would know it again and know the owner. This Pachak, Nidar De-Fra, had given his nikobi and his sword to Kwasim Barkwa, the Vad of Urn Stackwamor. He was in the capital because his master wished it. Anyway, as all men knew, the emperor was due to return from his journey around the far southwest. Here the Pachak laughed and said that the southwest was a joke and all men knew the future of Vallia lay with the northeast.
There is good comradeship among the Pachak mercenaries, and their intricate system of nikobi can sort out the rights and wrongs of employment and the puzzles of when a man may in honor fight a comrade under employment. Now these two talked of old days. I looked for a moment at Nidar. He did not wear the pakmort, but he was wholly convinced that northeast Vallia must demand self-determination and break away from the empire. This astounded me. I clamped my ugly old mouth shut and listened. When Nadar’s term of service with Kwasim Barkwa ended he might take employment with a noble of the south, and then he would be as vociferous that the empire should stay in one piece. A mercenary may not have to believe in his master’s cause to fight for him, but the Pachaks are deadly serious when they hire out as paktuns, and give their loyalty.
A couple of brilliant Fristle fifis came out with streaming silks and started to dance; they were soon chased off and then the swods began to sing.
So, as you may imagine, I let all my problems slide away for a space and gave myself up to hoggish relaxation. There are many finer things in two worlds than sitting in a tavern singing with swods, and this is so. But all the same, when you are singing and roaring out the old songs, the world takes on a marvelously brighter hue.
My Delia had gone off and left me at home. The idea intrigued me. I felt no indignation. She was as entitled as I was to her ownlife. Our shared life was so intense and passionate that nothing could interfere. I was dragged away by a great ghostly representation of a Scorpion, blue and shining, whirling me away to some other part of Kregen to fight for the Star Lords, or hurling me back to Earth in despair. Delia had gone because her vows, vows like mine to the Krozairs of Zy, impelled her. I had discarded at once any notion of following her secretly. That would shame us both. Anyway, with Melow along, she should come to no harm. And she could handle weapons with the best of men. I knew that. So I, Dray Prescot, left at home with the dishes, sang with swods in a tavern. We sang the Lay of Fanli the Fristle and Her Regiment of Admirers and the Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter and Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid. The Jikalla players stopped pushing their counters around the board and the dice fell silent in the cups. We roared out King Naghan, his Fall and Rise, and Eregoin’s Promise.
Then these hard-living, hoarse-voiced, hairy fighting men drew on a sudden maudlin melancholy, and led by a fellow with a thin reedy voice we warbled out The Fall of the Suns. This is a menacing song, for its cadences and images invite mournfulness. It tells of the last days when the twin suns fall from the sky and drench the world of Kregen in fire and blood, in water and death. I am not overfond of it, for all the deeper truths it expresses in its roundabout way.
So when a flushed fellow, bulging his tunic and wildly slopping his ale, leaped to his feet and started bellowing out the first lines of Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie, I, for one, joined in with a full-throated roar. And the rafters shook as the swods came to those famous lines that always crease them up, and great gusts of laughter swept across the room as we sang out: “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”
Yes.
We kept that refrain going until we were all well-nigh bursting. The serving girls scurried in with more flagons and great was the relishment thereof. We quieted down as the tall thin fellow with the reedy voice favored us with a solo, choosing parts of the song cycle composed from fragments of The Canticles of the Rose City concerning the doings of the part-man, part-god Drak. Naturally my thoughts winged to what my Delia was doing now, how she was faring, and I offered up a fervent prayer that she would be kept safe.
We did not sing The Bowmen of Loh, for almost all the Crimson Bowmen were away with the emperor. It seemed to me my course was reasonably clear. I would have to discharge all those mercenaries who had become untrustworthy by reason of accepting bribes. I would seek to discover who had paid them; I would make no attempt to match the bribes, gold for gold. If a man takes gold from another when in employment his trust is forfeited. I had experience of that when I’d been a renegade and contracted to Gafard the Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker.