The Spikatur Cycle, page 22
Noran took his seat. It was a throne in everything but name. We settled alongside on the lesser seats. Each one was softly upholstered, with padded arms and back, and with a small table alongside with wine racks beneath. As I sat down and looked out across the suns shimmer along those silver sands I caught my breath.
Here I was, looking out over the arena in Hyrklana instead of being down there, with a sword in my fist, facing death for the entertainment of gilded trash in the stands and the howling crowds!
Sitting in those plush surroundings with the waiting oval of silver sand spread out below me, I wondered what was going to happen next. My thoughts veered off to a vision of this kind of obscenity finding a place in Vallia. The bloody tradition of the arena flourished in many countries of Havilfar. Even the games of Jikaida City were in truth an offshoot of the Jikhorkdun. No, in Vallia we drew spiritual sustenance and refreshment from other sports. There were precious few Vallians I knew who would wish it otherwise.
Three of the escaped schrepims moved into view below. They stepped cautiously backwards, feeling back with each foot in turn, moving with the reptilian grace of their kind. Following them in a curved line, the guards advanced cautiously. There was a sense of hunting animals closing in for the kill in the way that semicircle of guards shuffled steadily forward. But it was clear to us all that they were in no hurry to get to grips with the scaled men.
Noran picked a candied fruit from a box on his table. He bubbled now with good humor.
“This is more like the way life was meant to be led.” He popped the fruit into his mouth. His cheek distended, glistening. “I paid my money, now I want my entertainment.”
“The guards are not happy,” commented Callimark. He, too, sat forward in his chair to watch, and a lick of spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth.
“Get on with it!” Noran abruptly shrieked down. He waved a fist at the guards. “A dozen gold pieces for the first to attack!”
My small knowledge of the fighting habits of the scaled men told me the guard who accepted the offer would not live to collect his dozen gold pieces.
I studied the schrepims.
Their greenish-grayish scales were dull. Different races have different shapes and colors of scale, of course, and the edges glister with different contrasting colors. These three had orange edges to their scales under their fighting harness. The straps were all of scales. Their armor was scale. But their swords were solid thraxters, efficient weapons in the hands of experts, although in nowise the finest swords of Kregen, as you know. The tails of the schrepims were thick at the root, and heavy, flat, flailing instruments. They were nothing like the supple whip-tails of Katakis, for instance, or the superb handed tails of Pachaks or Kildois.
“What are you waiting for?” bellowed Noran again.
The guards shuffled forward, swords pointed, shields up, the visors of their helmets pulled down.
“They’re all jikarnas,”[4] said Callimark. He beat a fist on the marble coping before him. He looked contemptuous.
No one sought to contradict him. Also, no one suggested he might like to hop down there and set to himself.
The aura of the scaled men exuded a menace that comes as much from their reputation as from their mere presence. Ordinary mortals steer clear of them, and they have their own ways on Kregen.
“Jikarna!” Noran shouted the word down. It made no difference. Slowly and steadily the guards advanced and as steadily the three schrepims retreated. It was quite clear the guards had decided that no single one would rush forward — the notor’s dozen golden deldys or not — but they would attack together, in a bunch, and overpower all three in a final massive onslaught.
That made the sweetest of sweet sense to me, by Krun.
The three scaled heads, so much like those of lizards, turned this way and that, in purposeful summing up of the situation. When the action began the speed of the schrepims would be blinding. And, I own it with some diffidence, I began to calculate just how many guards might be left at the end, or even if any would be left alive, and whether or not the scaled men might win free.
“Fifty deldys,” roared Noran.
One of the guards, a Khibil, reacted. Khibils with their overbearing ways and haughty foxlike faces always consider themselves to be a superior race of beings. Well, I own to a fondness for Khibils that, although of a different nature from my affection for Pachaks, shares much of that fellow feeling. This Khibil hoisted his shield, whirled his sword — and charged.
He shrieked as he went in, boring dead for the center scaled man. “Fifty golden deldys!” he screamed, and with all the cunning of the fighting man sought to overpower the center antagonist before the two flankers could strike at him. Taking his onslaught as the signal, with equal cunning the other guards rushed forward.
The Khibil had time for one stroke. It was a bold, slashing blow that would have taken the head off the schrepim had it landed. But the schrepim was not there as the blow whistled past. A superb sliding glance of the scaled man’s body, a glint of greenish gray, and the wicked sword smote once, and was still.
The Khibil staggered away, his shield falling uselessly, his sword dropping. His foxy face was a mere mask of blood.
The remaining guards howled and flung themselves on. It was all a flurry of blows, and the quick scrape and ring of steel on steel, the screech of steel on bronze. How they fought, those schrepims! Superb in their reptilian strength and speed they danced on their massively muscled legs, balancing on those thick tails, striking and avoiding, chunking into the guards and slashing and hacking, and withdrawing with bewildering rapidity.
Yes, oh, yes, I remembered their style of fighting!
Four guards were down, then three more, their throats slashed, their unshielded sides cut through. Blood smoked on the silver sand. The uproar deafened. Three more guards staggered away, their legs unable to support them, sinking to the sand. Three more — and yet three more. The four remaining waited no longer. They cast down their shields and ran.
With long reptilian strides the schrepims chased them.
Swords lifted and blurred down in savage blows.
The last man, the single survivor, screamed and ran blindly.
One of the schrepims tossed his sword into the air. He caught it by the forte. His arm went back and he hurled, a vicious, cunning, superlatively destructive cast. The running man staggered on for four paces, lurching, before he fell with the sword burst through heart and lungs.
“By Havil!” Noran was on his feet, one hand to his chest. His face was flushed. “By Glem! They were superb, superb!”
“Money well spent!” declared Callimark.
I looked at these two with interest. None so blind...
Unmok nudged me.
“Jak! They’ll—!”
“Yes,” I said.
Rich blood puddled the silver sand.
Vad Noran was suffused with pride. This villa was a palace and a fortress. Within its walls his will was law. My early impression had convinced me that it would take far too much time to break an entrance in my own old swashbuckling way. The trick with the werstings to gain us entry had been essential, and had worked. But, also, that very impregnability of his villa meant Noran, standing now flushed with the excitement of the combat, had no fear of the three schrepims. He looked down at them as they walked alertly back toward his box.
“Well done, Slacamen,” he shouted, giving them a nickname common among diffs and apims, a name, incidentally, I had heard the Schrepims often chafed under. “There will be much gold for you, aye, and rich foods and fine clothes.”
Still the three advanced, silently, across the sand. The blood glimmered most evilly upon their blades.
Unmok the Nets choked out some unintelligible comment. He started to scrabble over the back of his chair.
Noran did not turn.
“Sit quietly, Och! These Slacamen cannot climb up here.”
Unmok collapsed onto his seat. He was quivering.
“You are sure? Notor — you are sure they cannot get at us?”
“Of course. Why should they?” Noran’s contempt seemed to me to reveal a sudden and unwelcome thought — the kind of thought he would not allow himself to think.
The scaled men couldn’t climb up here, could they?
From my own experience I fancied they could — and would.
I said, “Van Noran! There are three down there. Were not there four in the cage?”
Callimark let out a squeal of pure terror.
“By Flem! He is right!”
“They will not harm me!” Noran bellowed it out. He put a beringed hand to the hilt of his sword. “I am Vad Noran! I bought them to fight for me! I pay them and feed them — they owe their lives to me.”
“I do not think they see things that way.” I looked along the seating, left and right. There was a fourth, and I did not think he would have run off and left his fellows.
The throaty sound of breathing, hoarse and rasping, came from Callimark trying to nerve himself. Unmok crouched in his seat. Noran yelled down, “I am Vad Noran! I pay you gold to fight for me, Slacamen!”
Left and right, along the seating, and up to the lip of the arena wall, along the trees, and down again, to the ornate entrance. My gaze flicked about. No sign... No sign, yet...!
Very quick and sudden, schrepims, very fast and deadly.
But although Vad Noran’s guards were not, in the judgment of a hard old fighting man, worthy of their hire, some, at least, of that score who had died in the arena had struck shrewd blows before they perished. Two of the schrepims bore wounds, from which a green ichor leached. Hard to kill, these reptilian humans, but die they could, given courage and strength and skill and the effort of willpower to pit against them.
Around the arena I looked, carefully, seeking a glimmer of greenish scales along the seatings or up among the overarching trees. Callimark continued to breathe noisily. Unmok sat up straight and hauled out his sword.
“I am not in the habit of doubting the word of a noble,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice. “But it seems to me the schrepims will climb up here and we will die. I will strike a blow first, by the golden jeweled cup of the Och Kings!”
“Nulsh!” said Noran. But his voice faltered.
Around and around, searching, searching...
The three walking toward us across the blood-puddled silver sand gave off that aura of menace that breathes from reptilian things. They walked easily and their thick tails were lifted high. You did not cut off the tail of a Slacaman as easily as that of a Kataki. Although the contest between Kataki and scaled man is instructive — in a gruesome way — and conducive to many serious lessons, it remains for all that a spectacle I would not cross the road to witness. All the time as these three advanced and Noran began to gnaw his lip and Callimark tried to get himself under control and Unmok quietly whistled his sword about to get his eye in, I twisted my neck and stared about, up and down, along and around, searching, searching...
“Perhaps, vad, we had best depart,” said Callimark, and his voice pitched up and down the scale alarmingly.
Give Vad Noran his due — he just could not understand why men he had bought to fight for him, men recommended to him as hyr-kaidurs, should want to slay him. That was too personal. He delighted in the atmosphere of the Jikhorkdun, living its thrills and glorying in its valor and blood. But he hadn’t considered that his own blood would be risked in any valorous combat. He would enter the ring to a challenge from an equal, he would fence with a professional kaidur, but that would not be for real, not for blood and guts real.
Just when he realized the schrepims would — damned well would! — climb that barrier and leap on him with lifted swords, with fang and claw, I do not know.
But, in the instant I spotted a staggering group of slaves boil out of the entranceway and totter, sprawling, shrieking, groveling, scrambling any-old-how along the seating, Noran’s nerve broke.
Blindly, drawing his sword and thrashing about with it as though he slashed weeds, he bolted.
I said to Unmok, “Time we were leaving.” The little Och came up out of his chair like a gazelle. “As Ochenshum is my witness you speak sense.” He joined me as we moved back from the ornate seating. The uproar farther along grew. “But, Jak,” said Unmok, and the avaricious old devil looked green. “This great noble, Vad Noran, has not yet paid me for the werstings!”
The slaves had scattered, shrieking, and Noran was rampaging along toward the exit with its curious carved nymphs upholding torches that were, at this time of day, as yet unlit.
“I think, Unmok, my friend, we will not get paid at all from that one.” And I started to run.
Unmok let out a screech. Callimark took to his heels and ran the other way. Noran staggered back from the exit. He waved his sword about drunkenly. The schrepim who moved out of the opening between the torch-bearing nymphs looked no different from his three brethren in the arena. The same reptilian-snouted face, the heavily hooded eyes, the snaggle of sharp teeth, the same grayish-greenish scales with their bordering of orange. His clawed hand grasped a thraxter. His left arm was concealed by a shield. That, as I judged it, was the only difference.
Unmok screeched again. “Jak! They climb the barrier!”
Time for a single swift glance back. It was all there, the picture I remember and hate to recall. Callimark was flung across an ornate chair, his body slashed almost in two. The three schrepims leaped like lizards over the seating. Unmok was running toward me. Ahead Vad Noran, screaming in a paroxysm of fear, blundered back. The fourth scaled man followed him purposefully.
No doubt now remained that the schrepims would kill and go on killing until they were stopped.
I stopped running toward Noran. Unmok was my first concern. Noran would have to take his chances.
And then — and then, by Zair!
As I stared at the three scaled men in one direction, and was aware of the fourth in the other, I experienced for a fleeting moment of horror an image, scorched on my brain, of a splendid golden Kildoi, four-armed, tail-handed, brushing aside with superior swordsmanship all my efforts at swordplay.
Damn Prince Mefto the Kazzur!
But, with a little crippled Och to save, there was no time to blither-blather about the past and what was dead.
Not that Mefto the Kazzur was dead...
Noran was screaming in a crackling voice for the cadade. I did not know if the cadade was dead or not, but he wouldn’t be turning up here.
“Out of the way, Noran!” I said. My voice must have penetrated the scarlet fear cloaking his senses, for he jumped, shivering, and then fell over the backs of the row of seating, tumbling among the bright cushions.
The schrepim didn’t mind whom he killed first. Just so long as he could get his sword into someone, just so long as he could vent the frustrations of being taken up and forced to fight as a kaidur in the arena, chained, caged, whipped, sent out to fight like a wild beast — and he a man! — and then caged again if he lived, and dragged off with a hook through his heel if he died.
He came at me with the flashing speed of a reptile.
Whatever happened with him must happen fast. His comrades were breathing down the back of my neck.
He used his shield with skill, for he was a hyr-kaidur, and I had to skip and leap and parry for longer than I liked before my thraxter managed to loop inside his. I shoved the shield up and the rim took him under that ferociously toothed snout. He grunted. His squamous body was like a wriggling eel. But the thraxter went in, punching through scale, sliding on, cutting. I withdrew at once, green ichor sliming the blade, kicked him as he went down and then jinked sideways without looking back. I leaped over the chair upward from the rank, landing and spinning about.
That dramatic exercise had been necessary.
The leading schrepim’s blow chunked stuffing from the chair seat.
I leaned forward to strike down on that sleek scaly head, but with lizard-like swiftness he recoiled.
For an instant we glared, eye to eye.
The fourth tooth along each side of his lower jaw protruded up at an angle. Larger than the other teeth, it slotted into a groove outside the upper jaw. The jagged line his jaws made as they clicked together gave him a ferocious aspect, almost as though he grinned at sight of his prey. The scales hooding his eyes looked like monk’s hoods. Just below and closer together than the eyes the two deep pits of his heat-sensing organs were no doubt picking up my sweaty radiations and helping him to locate me even more exactly. Although his eyes were dark, the pigment, rhodopsin, in them which gave him good night vision would appear to glow an eerie red-orange at night from any reflected light. To see the eyes of schrepims glowing at night, the Kregish saying runs, is to look on the watchfires of hell.
His thick tail thumped the ground between the seats. I did not wait but leaped to the side. Using his tail as a lever, he soared up, his sword flashing out at me. I landed first. With solid ground under my feet I was able to roar forward and slash him while he was still in the air. Green ichor gushed from his side. He fell awkwardly.
Now he uttered sounds, a spine-chilling hissing, a spluttering rush of words and a ferocious shrilling.
Schrepims mostly speak their own language, their forked tongues giving a sibilant quality to their words; but they are well able to speak the universal Kregish language. By reason of that genetic language pill given to me by the Savanti I am able to understand tongues. Even as he fell, he was shrieking, “You will be caught up in the coils of Ratishling the Sinuous and crushed until your bowels smoke, apim, for the indignities you heap on me.”
Oh, yes, I could feel sorry for him. But his two fellows were leaping like lizards along the seating toward me, and I knew their rage was such they’d prefer to use their fangs and claws on me rather than the swords they wielded. The wound in this one’s side leaked green; but that wouldn’t kill him. I aimed a delicate cut along his neck, where the scales smoothed and were more tightly fitted and of a lighter hue, just above the black scales of his harness. The thraxter bit and drew, cutting cleanly.
