Jorian took out and crammed his money belt full of Mulvanian golden coins; without taking the time to count, he thought he had well over a hundred crowns' worth. He gave handfuls to each of the slave girls, with instructions to stow them as securely as possible. From the shelves and the jewel boxes he selected several handsome gauds, including a jeweled golden cup, a jeweled pendant, and several rings and bracelets. These he likewise gave to the girls to carry.
"Now come," he said. "We're going up yonder stair, but not all the way. Blow out that candle."
At the head of his little procession, Jorian stole up the stair to the main hall, until over the top he could see into the hall. Keeping back out of the lamplight, he silently watched events unfold.
The sound of talk in the hall had risen to a roar. Everywhere the Brothers were engaged in hot disputes, pounding their tables, smiting their fists into their palms, and wagging forefingers under one another's noses. Several more instruments of execution had been brought into the hall. As Jorian watched, two men came in carrying a little portable forge and a set of iron implements. They put the forge down, and one of them set about building a fire in it with stone coals and kindling. The other joined one of the raging arguments.
A louder shout drew Jorian's attention. One Brother had just thrown his beer into another's face. With a scream of rage, the victim hurled his mug at the first man's head and drew his dagger. The other man retreated to the space in the midst of the tables, now occupied by the instruments. He wrenched a beheading ax from its block and, as the other man rushed upon him with uplifted dagger, brought the blade down upon the attacker's head, cleaving his skull to the teeth.
The hall exploded into violent action. Everywhere men madly went for one another with whatever weapon came to hand. All the instruments fit for such use—axes, swords, knives, and the sledge hammer used in breaking prisoners on the wheel—were snatched up. Blood and brains spattered the tables and the floor; bodies fell right and left Men grappled, rolling over and over on the floor, stabbing with knives and tearing with nails and teeth. The noise rose to a deafening pitch.
Jorian beckoned the girls. Sword out, he led the way to the top of the stair. By skirting the walls of the hall, he kept as much in the shadow as he could. He made the half-circuit to the vestibule that led to the outside. There he paused, waving the girls ahead of him.
As he did so, a figure detached itself from the bloody chaos in the hall and rushed towards him. It was Mehru, his erstwhile guide, waving his two-handed sword. Blood ran down his face from a cut, and his eyes gleamed wildly.
"Get along down to the pier and signal the dinghy," Jorian told the slave girls. "I shall be with you shortly." Then he faced the garrulous Brother.
"You did this, by some sorcery!" screamed Mehru, aiming a slash at Jorian's head.
Jorian parried with a clang, and again and again. The blows came so fast that he had no time for a counterattack. Although Mehru was the smaller man, he wielded his heavy weapon as if it were a lath, and his length of blade kept Jorian beyond the latter's reach. Jorian tried to catch the blows slantwise, so that the headsman's blade glanced off his own, but the force of them numbed his arm.
Step by step, Jorian backed into the vestibule and then into the archway that supported the portcullis. He kept glancing right and left, measuring the distances from side to side of the archway. Now he had backed out on the planks of the drawbridge, which, contrary to the custom of the Brothers, was down despite the darkness.
There he halted his retreat. Mehru, still attacking, was slowing down and panting heavily. Jorian permitted himself a smile, calling out:
"Why do you not fight, sister-impregnator?"
It was the ultimate insult in Mulvani. With a piercing scream, Mehru wound up for a terrific cut intended to shear Jorian in two at the waist.
The archway, however, was a little too narrow for such tactics. As a result, the tip of the long blade hit the masonry, striking sparks. The stonework stopped the blow; Jorian leaping in, sent Randir in a full-arm slash at the executioner's neck. Mehru's head leaped from his shoulders in a shower of blood. The body fell; the head bounced and rolled.
Jorian wiped and sheathed his sword. He sprang to the windlass for manual operation of the drawbridge and heaved. After a couple of turns, something went clank, and the wheel began to spin of its own accord from the weight of the unseen barrel of water. Jorian ran up the ever-steepening slope of the rising drawbridge, taped to the path beyond, and trotted for the pier.
'Ten thousand devils!" growled Captain Strasso. "What means this, Master Maltho?"
"I've told you, sir captain: They refused the shipment. Something about trouble with their wives. We argued for hours. I insisted that a bargain was a bargain, whilst they said they would be damned if they'd pay for merchandise for which they had no use. At last they gave in and paid the amount agreed upon. Here are Belius' ninety-six crowns; pray give them to him when you return to Vindium, as Doctor Karadur and I plan to leave you at Janareth. Since the Brothers averred that they had no use for the lassies, they commissioned me to take them to Janareth to sell, retaining one-fourth of the money thus earned as my commission and returning the rest by your hand."
"Mmp. Be you through with the Castle of the Ax?"
"Aye. Sail when you list."
"Then I'll up-anchor and away. My lads fear the ghosts they say haunt this isle. Besides, there's less chance of meeting pirates in these waters at night. With this moon, we can hold a true course."
Later, in the cabin, Karadur said: "Ah me, I must practice austerities to atone for my craven conduct ashore today."
"You may forgive yourself, Doctor," said Jorian. "As things fell out, you'd only have been in the way when the butchery started."
"What took place, my son?"
Jorian, sitting on his bunk and patiently whetting the edge of Randir where the blows of Mehru's sword had nicked or dulled it, told his tale.
Karadur: "Why, after so deceiving Captain Strasso as to the course of events, did you return Belius' money to him? Why not send the girls back to Vindium and keep the gold, which in the circumstance were scarcely theft?"
"I have other plans for them. Besides, we're rich again. I got more than the price of the wenches out of the Brothers' coffers; here's your share. And I need the girls more than I need the gold."
"How did you ever escape from the castle, with the drawbridge up?"
"It wasn't up. I moved one of the keys of the mechanism that controls it, to make it rise after midnight instead of at sunset. And now to bed; this has been a fatiguing day."
Karadur looked fondly at his young friend. "Do you remember, Jorian, when you told me of the witch's advice to you, to be either a king or a wandering adventurer?"
"Aye. What of it? I have tried the role of king, and once enough."
"I fear you are not cut out for the adventurer's part, either."
"How so?"
"You are just not ruthlessly selfish enough to succeed at it. A true adventurer—and I have known several of the breed—would have embezzled Belius' gold and would never had tried to rescue those wenches, at least not at any risk to himself. And that brings us to the great moral question that for thousands of years had baffled the keenest minds amongst the philosophers of Mulvan: What is virtue? Some aver…"
But Jorian was already snoring.
Chapter Five
THE BUTTERFLY THRONE