Women. Firm-fleshed Mountain girls from Vaela. Dusky, raven-haired charmers from the Desert Worlds. Great stupid mammoth-breasted milky females from the Port o’ Worlds.
Or boys. Men. Animals. Drugs. Stimulators—why ruin one’s digestion, or risk a venereal disease, when one could slip on a mesh helmet and have the pleasure-centers of the brain throb with ecstasy beyond the limits flesh could bear, with a tickle of electricity?
Raul loved the bazaar. The bustle and jostle, the shapes and colors. Even the smells. Especially the smells. He lingered by a straw-floored stall to watch a leggy Nomad Prince from the Veil haggling over the purchase of a fine hom-stallion. Paused to watch the antics of a troupe of jugglers and clowns, whose Gypsy ancestry went back ages further than the history of Galactic civilization.
Here went a chieftain from Arkonna, his pointed beard dyed indigo, jewels dangling from his stiffly-waxed mustachios. And there strutted a mercenary swordsman from the Orion Stars, if his green-gold cloak and wheat-blond hair were any sign. There a cowled, crimson-robed Star Scientist paced with shaven skull, thumb holding his place in a leather-bound Ephemeris, the constellations of his nativity tattooed in blue ink on his naked brow. There, to the left, ivory baton raised warningly, crowd melting away from before him, went a Herald in full canonicals, bearing the ukase of some Planet- Prince on a small silken cushion. Further beyond him, a Cat- man from Kermnus prowled sleekly, a high-caste Holy Chief from the patterns dyed in his smooth-napped fur.
The out-pourings, dregs and spewed-up froth of a hundred planets jostled around him in all the colors of twenty rainbows. Soldiers. Thieves. Whores. Tradesmen. Nobles. Technics. Priests. High-bom Ladies. Painted boys. Mercenaries. Wrestlers. Spies. Wizards. Assassins. Farmers. Naval officers. Fortune-tellers. Policemen. Officials of this bureau or that subdivision. Tourists. Slumming society fops. Minstrels. Pickpockets. Expensive courtesans. Poets.
Raul Linton loved it, all of it.
It was real. Honest. It stunk, of course, but at least it was alive and sweating. He grinned at the jugglers, tossed coins to beggars, bought a stoup of sour beer at a booth, a flower from a barefoot, grimy boy, laughed at clowns, watched a professional strongman from the heavy-gravity planet, Strontame, crush a gold ingot into glittering pulp. He began to enjoy himself, the stuffy, dusty vapors of Officialdom clearing from his head. Many turned to watch him pass, this alarmingly tall, eagle-eyed, deeply-tanned terrestrial with shabby gray space-fatigues tucked into high, scuffed, dusty boots, a great boat-cloak slung around his rangy shoulders, his shaggy thatch of fire-red hair tossed to the noonward sun. Some were “professional” women who measured his lean-muscled height with an admiring eye, and his shallow purse with a glance at the condition of his clothes.
But others watched also. One was a tall, thin, sour-faced and dark-skinned man in unobtrusive green, a black cap pulled over his eyes, an extraordinary number of “rings” on his hard long fingers.
Colonel Nijel Pertinax. Spy.
Another was a tall, bearded man with sternly uncompromising mien, wrapped in a heavy Border cloak of brown stuff, the crested tarboosh of a Rilké warrior-chieftain on his head. Thoughtful, clever eyes in a tanned, bony, leathery face—eyes of startling canary yellow.
Sharl ka-Nabon Tahukam. Spy—perhaps. Or—patriot?
Pertinax did not bother keeping out of Linton’s sight. He knew well enough Raul had never seen him. P-5 agents did not mix socially with Old Family Aristocrats—or even with Naval officers. Except, once in a while, in their professional capacity. As, for, example, now. He brushed by Raul casually, one lean bony hand just touching the hem of Linton’s huge, billowing boat-cloak. A miniscule bead of dark gray ceramic flew from his hand to adhere to the lining of the cloak. He smiled sourly, smugly, and stalked on. None had seen the encounter.
Or had they?
From the deep, purple shadows of the arcade, a pair of keen yellow-eyes flashed with a sudden smile. Colonel Nijel Pertinax was no stranger to Sharl of the Rilké Warriors. They had met, socially, even professionally, many times before.
Keeping within the velvet shadows of the arcade, Sharl paced Raul Linton, keeping at his stride. Shrewd, cool canary eyes measured—weighed—appraised, slowly, without hurry, without hope, and without error.
Raul stopped short.
So short that a fat, perspiring Diikan pottling along behind him jammed into him, cursed briefly and pungently, glanced up at the towering Herculian, taking in the raw-boned and red-thatched height of him, and meekly scuttled around and off.
Raul did not take his eyes off the Sword.
It lay, alone, on a space-black cushion of virgin sable fur. Five lean, long, narrow feet of glittering mirror-bright ion-steel. Long and thin and needle-pointed as a fencing épée … but center-ribbed and keenly strong and sharp-edged enough for a saber. Superb. A princely, no, a kingly weapon. The hilt, a spiral of narwhal-horn, would grip the hand like a silk glove. The crossbar was also ion-steel, welded with purest gold. A great glowing drop of emerald fire throbbed at the knobbed ends, and a greater orb of grass-green crystal weighted the hilt.
It was love at first sight. Besides the gold-hilted long-sword, the booth was cluttered and crammed with mursks, scimitars, straight-blades and hook-swords, jag-edged saw-swords—the blades of a score of native worlds.
He had eyes only for the one.
They had measured him well. The tradition of the Landed Gentry had raised him, sword in hand. Half his childhood had been given over to the 35th Century equivalent of a salle d’armes.
Without thought his hand went out.
“I would purchase that blade.”
THREE
“KAZAR, but the sword is not for sale,” the proprietor said in smooth Rilké, spreading fat jeweled hands helplessly.
“I would buy it. There is naught that hath not price, sayeth the Singer,” Raul replied. His command of richly colloquial Rilké lifted the painted eyebrows of the sword-seller, admiringly.
“Ah, the kazar speaks the Tongue with agility. It does honor to my People. But, I deprecate, I deplore—the golden sword is for display only. It hath no price, but, for gentility, the kazar may try its heft and balance, if he wills.”
Raul took it up gently. The hilt gripped his hand, fitting it as it had been tailored to the breadth of his fingers, finely carved to the width of his individual palm.
He held his breath, blood singing.
He was wrong: the blade was faintly curved, so slightly it took a seasoned eye to note it. A fine, slim, tapering curve, like a lily’s stem or a girl’s long throat. And the razored edge, with the shallow curve, made it technically a saber, he supposed. And yet the point was deadly. Fierce as a rapier, nor was the curve deep enough to keep its master from employing it for thrust and counter as an épée.
The weight was perfect.
The balance was unearthly, magical, sheer perfection beyond a swordsman’s dream of perfection.