The bow went into the grass. The Krozair long sword ripped from my belt — that belt given me aboard the airboat by Delia — sliding against the fold of scarlet cloth on my thigh. I gripped the hilt in both fists, spreading them, the left against the pommel, the right hard up against the guard. That way the two-handed sword wielded by one cunning in its use could strike past and through the spears and axes of these white-skinned barbarians. They rushed against me, whooping, charged with anger, probably unable to comprehend just where I had come from or who I was — a man like themselves and no half-beast half-man of Kregen.
Like any man of Kregen who carries weapons they were skilled. But they could not match the swordsmanship of a Krozair. There is no boast in this; I merely state a fact. By the time they had realized this, it was too late, and as I chopped the last of them — a wild and reckless stroke that took his head clean away from his shoulders — I was aware of the ostentatiousness of my behavior. They were men and not half-men; but they had been behaving like subhumans. That, I submit, is the only excuse I can offer for my savage conduct.
When I reached Sosie she was crying. Her slender body shook with her sobs. As tenderly as I could I lifted her.
“Where lies Arkasson, Sosie?”
“Over there.”
She pointed due north.
I grunted. North in the compass bearing had bedeviled my progress through the Hostile Territories. So, bearing a naked black girl in my arms, I set off to take her home.
CHAPTER TWO
“You cannot just go walking off across the Owlarh Waste, Dray Prescot!”
Sosie na Arkasson glared at me in a positive fury, her hands on her hips, her eyes bright; but her full lower lip quivered betrayingly.
“I have to, Sosie, and I must.”
“But, Dray! There are leems, and stilangs, and graint, and even risslaca, besides those devils of Cherwangtung. You just can’t go!”
I have never been a man who laughs easily — except in moments of stress or passion — and I could not force a laugh now. Had I done so, it is doubtful if it would have soothed Sosie’s real fears. Arkasson had proved to be an interesting town, built against a sheer cliff of stone in which giant gems twinkled in the mingled light of Scorpio. The architecture ran to much convoluted tracery and scrollwork carved in stone, and massive drum towers capped with round pointed roofs built from the heavy slates from local quarries. There were open spaces in which greenery grew; but, still, echoing the inflexible rules of all towns and cities to the west within the Hostile Territories, no handy perching places had been overlooked. The defense against aerial attackers was not carried out with quite the same fanatical attention to every detail in Arkasson, and the walls cincturing the town were battlemented against ground troops as their first priority; but a force of aerial chivalry would stumble attempting to alight in Arkasson. Mangar, who had died so cruelly, had been a leading man of the town; and although I met a number of the notables and was treated with universal kindness by them, I itched to press on to the east, to Vallia, and to Delia.
My pale skin, tanned by the Suns of Scorpio though it was, aroused intense interest in the black-skinned people of Arkasson. Sosie, indeed, had had to speak with rapidity and with lucidity to prevent a spear degutting me on that first arrival.
The people of Cherwangtung roamed the land all about during the nights, the land that hereabouts was called the Owlarh Waste, and retired to caves and hidey-holes during the day. From Arkasson they were regarded with loathing as beasts who made life difficult and dangerous. The farms ringing the town were all heavily defended by wall and moat; but the fiends from Cherwangtung would creep through by night and raid and burn and kill. Sosie’s farm lay in ruins, blackened by the flames, her mother dead and now her father dead, also. The white-skinned savages had done that.
I still retain a vivid mental picture of that torture stake with the slim black form of Sosie bound naked to it, and the torchlight flickering wildly on the gyrating bodies of the white savages in their bells and feathers as they circled her screeching their menace, shaking their weapons, lusting for her blood.
“If you go, Dray Prescot — I shall never see you alive again.”
“Oh, come now, Sosie! I can protect myself.”
This was, in truth, a strange conversation.
When, at last, Sosie and her friends and the relatives with whom she was staying in Arkasson — until she had found a man and married and so ventured forth to rebuild her farm — understood that I fully intended to walk on toward the east, they insisted on loading me with presents. Any town must have food brought into it, and manufactures to sustain it, and Arkasson was no exception. The farms were the lifeblood of the town, and the white savages of Cherwangtung were attempting to bleed that lifeline dry. Similar situations must exist all over the Hostile Territories; this one was none of my business. I had fulfilled my oath to Mangar na Arkasson; now I must be on my way.
From Sosie I accepted only food and drink, and a finely built Lohvian longbow. Memories of Seg ghosted up, to be firmly repressed. The longbow was all of six feet six inches in height, and the pull I judged to better a hundred pounds. It was a bow with which I would acquit myself well; had I not been trained by Seg Segutorio, the master bowman of Erthyrdrin?
Sosie smiled as she handed me the quiver fully stocked with shafts. There was in her eyes the look of a woman who bedecks a corpse for its final journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce. Out of politeness I examined the quiver, and noticed the exquisite bead-embroidery covering it, animals and flowers and border motifs, all stitched in brilliant colors. The beads glinted in the suns-light — and at that I frowned.
“These gems were gathered by myself from the cliffs, Dray. I have spent many years stitching this quiver. It-” She stopped, and her black face shone upon me and her everted lips trembled and she lowered her eyelids with their long curling black lashes. I thought, then, that I understood. Her aunt confirmed my suspicions.
“A maiden of Arkasson, on marriage, is expected to hand to her bridegroom an embroidered quiver, and tunic, and shoes of buckskin, stitched with gems she has gathered from the cliffs with her own hand, and polished to perfection, and drilled without a flaw or chip. You are a strange man, Dray Prescot. But for the color of your skin you would be a worthy member of the noblest of Arkasson.”
“And will no young man take her to wife if she cannot provide him with these trinkets?”
The aunt — one Slopa, with a lined face and graying hair, which meant she must be well over a hundred and fifty — looked affronted. “No.”
“Sink me!” I burst out. “I can’t take the quiver from Sosie! It’s taken her years to make. If no gallant will have her without it, then she’ll wait years and years more, gathering gems, polishing them, drilling them, stitching them to a new quiver. And what of her farm? Aunt Slopa — I can’t take it!”
“You will hurt her cruelly if you do not.”
“I know, by Zim-Zair, I know!”
Aunt Slopa pursed her full lips. “Sosie would not have done this just because you saved her life. There is more to this business than that.”
“Can you bring me an undecorated quiver?”
“I can. But that-”
“Just bring it, please, Aunt Slopa.”
When I had transferred all the shafts from the brilliant embroidered quiver into the plain one and had time to mark the perfection of the feather-setting — every feather was jet black — I took up the quiver that was the gift of Sosie na Arkasson and sought her out where she sat on a bench in a courtyard, the anti-flier wire stretching above her Afro hairstyle. She was reading a book — it was The Quest of Kyr Nath,[1]a rollicking tale of mythical adventure at least two thousand years old and known all over Kregen — and as I approached she put one slim black finger between the leaves to mark her place and looked up at me with a smile.