Between them, Lord Sergios and Master Titos managed to persuade Demetrios not to order his blacks to spear the old pirate, pointing out that, as the man was obviously free, such might be considered murder hereabouts, and the cashless High-Lord called upon to pay a blood price. Far better, they argued, to discuss the incident at a propitious time with Lord Pardos, leaving punishment for the old man’s unpardonable crimes to his own sovran.
The sprawling, three-story residence of Lord Pardos occupied most of an artificial mesa and was built mostly of the dark native stone. For many long minutes after arriving on the hilltop, Demetrios had to lean, gasping and shuddering, his red face streaming sweat, against the wall near the entrance. None of the black spearmen, nor Lord Sergios, nor even the little slave, was in the least winded, but it had been years since the High-Lord had been forced to walk up an entire half mile of hillside.
Within an outer court, lamps and torches flared an orange glow above the wall, while the mingled sounds of bellowing laughter, shouts, feminine squeals, and snatches of wild, barbaric music smote on Demetrios’ ears, and his nose registered the smells of roasted meat and wine.
Outside the high, double-valved gate hung a scarred brass gong. When Demetrios had recovered-sufficiently to stand erect, Lord Sergios drew his sword and pounded on the gong. Abruptly, most ef the noise from within subsided. Then one of the portals was swung half open and they were confronted by a gap-toothed, one-eyed giant of a man, wearing a well-oiled tunic of loricated armor and a brass-and-leather helm, with a huge, spiked ax on his shoulder.
“Well?” he snarled. “State your business, an’ it better be good!”
Sergios sheathed his blade, cleared his throat, and spoke formally: “Sir, please announce to your Lord that Demetrios, High-Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, requests audience with his cousin, Pardos, Lord of the Sea Isles.”
The mammoth pirate squinted his eye and demanded, “An’ be you him?”
The High-Lord roughly shoved Sergios aside and took what he hoped was* as arrogant stance in front of this smelly, frightening man. “We are Demetrios, my man!” He tried to say the words firmly and deeply, but as he was still a bit out of breath, what came from his lips was a piping falsetto.
The squinted eye widened. “You be the cousin of 01’ Short-Nose? Well, I’ll be damned!” remarked the warrior. Then he slammed the gate in Demetrios’ face.
When the gate was reopened, the axman was backed up by a half dozen well-armed men, two of them blacks of very similar build and features to the High-Lord’s guards.
“You,” the one-eyed man said, pointing a dirty finger at Demetrios, “can come in, you and your boy. And your guard-captain, too.” He indicated Lord Sergios, who was wearing a real cuirass and helmet in addition to his sword and ornate dagger. “First your guard-captain has to be disarmed and searched for hidden weapons. The resta your guards gotta stay here.”
He spun about, then growled over his shoulder. “Now, come on. 0l’ Short-Nose don’t much care for waitin’.”
The High-Lord’s gaze had never before rested on so ] villainous a throng as the fifty-odd men who sat on benches or sprawled on cushions the length of the courtyard. Few seemed to possess more than a trace of Ehleen blood; most were obviously barbarians, and barbaric in taste as well as in lineage. Priceless jewelry adorned greasy tatters of once fine clothing or canvas jerkins; plain and well-worn sword hilts jutted from ornate scabbards. Ears and noses had been pierced to receive golden hoops or jeweled studs. Many were clad only in short trousers and, on their hairy skins, savage tattoos writhed around and across networks oi white or pink or purple scars. Some were missing a part of an arm or a hand or fingers, many lacked front teeth, all or parts of ears, and one had replaced a missing eye with a huge opal. Another had painted the multitudinous scars on his chest, joining them with lines of color so as to spell out obscene words and phrases in Ehleenokos.
Though the laughter of the men was loud and frequent, the faces of one and all were hard—hard as the muscles under their dirty, sweaty hides. The high walls stopped most of the cooling breezes and the courtyard had to be smelled to be believed. Alone, the mingled odors—of fish and cooked flesh and wine and ale, of cooking oil and lamp fat and wood smoke, of unwashed bodies and sweat—would have been more than sufficient to turn Demetrios’ stomach; but there was more, and it was, by his lights, even more sickening.
Where, at Demetrios’ parties, each guest was provided with a pretty, little slaveboy, these uncultured primitives actually had women at their sides or sprawled across them! And most of the vile creatures were less than half clad, while some were completely nude. To the High-Lord it was painfully obvious that none in this court was in any sense of the word civilized, for what civilized man could force himself to eat and drink while within proximity of so many utterly disgusting creatures?
Advancing up the cleared space between the revelers, he was fighting to hold down his gorge when, ere he could be aware of her intentions, a brown-haired strumpet flung both her arms about his neck and kissed him full on his mouth.
It was the final straw! Demetrios frantically fought his way out of the laughing woman’s noisome embrace, pushing her with such force that she measured her length ,upon the floor tiles. For a moment he just stood, stock-still, his face a greenish white. Then it came—doubling over, he spewed out the contents of his stomach.
All the confusion stilled to a deathly silence, broken only by the tortured gagging of the vomiting man. Then one of three men seated behind a scarred table at the end of the courtyard slammed the palm of a four-fingered hand onto the wine-wet table and, lolling back in his chair, began to roar and snort with laughter. His two companions joined in, as did some of the other men and women. A few cracked ribald jests at the wretched High-Lord’s condition, but most simply chuckled briefly, then went back to the business of the evening—eating and drinking and kissing and fondling.
He retched in agony until, at last, his heaving stomach became convinced further efforts would yield no further results. As he straightened—gasping, livid, his bloodshot eyes streaming tears—the little minion snatched a nameless piece of clothing from off a nearby stool and began to dab at the wet stains on the High-Lord’s attire.
Demetrios felt well served. Here was an object on which he could safely vent the anger provoked by his embarrassment and frustration. His foot lashed out viciously; it caught the hapless child in the ribs, propelling him six feet to crash into a full wine barrel. As the stunned slaveboy crumpled, one of the women rushed to kneel beside him and took his bloody little head into her lap. Dipping a piece torn from her sheer skirt into the top of the barrel, she commenced to wipe the child’s forehead and cheeks.
Despite an unsteadiness in his legs, Demetrios—horrified that one of his favorite minions should be defiled by the touch of a woman—started toward her, hissing, “You putrid, stinking bitch, you, get your hands off him this instant! Do you hear me, shameless she-thing?”
The woman appraised him briefly, sneered, then turned back to the boy. Infuriated, the High-Lord advanced until he stood over her, raised one be-ringed, fat-fingered hand to strike her… and was suddenly frozen by the coldest, hardest voice he had ever in his life heard.
“Touch her, you mincing pig, and you’ll lose every finger on that hand, one joint per hour!”
The speaker was seated on a low couch beside a tall, red-haired woman. He wore finely tooled knee boots, loose trousers cinched with a wide belt, and a cotton-lawn shirt open to the waist. A slender dagger was thrust into his belt, but he was otherwise unarmed amongst the weapons-bristling throng.
However, when Demetrios got a good look at the speaker’s face, he could have again been ill. A wide scar ran from high on the left temple and on down to the chin, barely missing the eye; the tip of the man’s nose was gone and so was half the right ear; but most hideous of all, at some time an inch-wide hole had been gouged or cut into the man’s right cheek and, in healing, had never closed and his eyes and hair and bone structure led the High-Lord to think that this man could be a Kath’ahrohs—a pureblood Ehleen.