The Pandahem Cycle I

Chapter four

Chapter four

What chanced in the ArenaThe Emperor of Hamal said in his sternest voice, “Remember, Dray Prescot, you are the Emperor of Vallia. And King of Djanduin. And many other notable titles and ranks. It is not fitting that you should not go attired as an emperor.”

“As to that,” I said, adjusting the plain lesten-hide belt with the silver buckle, “I never feel comfortable in all that popinjay finery.”

Seg let loose a cross between a grunt and a chuckle.

So, quickly, very quickly, I said, “I speak only for myself, Nedfar. You, I am sure, understand that.”

Nedfar took it in good part.

He was dressed magnificently, a shimmering statuesque emperor, a lordly one of Kregen, dominating and superb.

Seg and I wore the brave old scarlet, with a cunning coat of mesh-linked mail, and over that we wore a breast and back apiece, since that pleased Seg on my behalf. Our harness was plain, workmanlike, without any of your frills. The smell of rich leather-oil pervaded the chamber not unpleasantly. I say rich — any fighting man will use the best equipment he can lay his hands on, and taking care of weapons and harness is a number-one priority. That oil was expensive.

Seg found himself in something of a quandary.

His strong face looked puzzled. I laughed and said, “Luckily enough I am not in that predicament.”

He hefted two bows, one in each hand, and he looked at and weighed one and then he looked at and weighed the other.

Finally, he said, “Were it not thought excessive, what our old comrade Fran the Zappim would call Vulgar Ostentation, I would take them both.”

“Even a Djang finds difficulty in shooting two bows at once. They do not recommend the practice, and—”

“And they have four arms! I know...”

“We are only going to speak to a poor woman, alone, out on the silver sand.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“No more do I. Take them both, then. They will snug up over your shoulder well enough, seeing they are so alike.”

He made that little grunting chuckle of his, and shook his head, and shoved both bowstaves up over his shoulder.

“I may look a ninny, but that does not bother me.”

Nedfar shared the general amusement over Seg and his precious bows.

We strapped up our usual arsenal of weaponry — a rapier and main gauche, a drexer, a shoulder pack of throwing knives, those little deadly weapons the girls of the great clans of Segesthes call the Deldar, a hunting knife, odds and ends of lethal nastiness. Weight had to figure into all this, of course, but a fellow can carry a tremendous load when his life depends on it, and we took nothing we felt we did not need or might not require.

For helmets, which we took because Nedfar insisted, we chose plain, smoothly round, headpieces, rather like basinets, and the gallant red feathers flaunted from minuscule silver rosettes. Over all we each flung a scarlet cape. This was, perhaps, carrying effect to extremes; but I had taken some heed of Nedfar’s words.

So dressed up in a curious mixture of men going off to war and men intending merely to impress, we set off.

If I do not mention that snugly scabbarded down my back lay a Krozair longsword, it is merely because whenever the opportunity offers I take a specimen of that great brand as a matter of course. There was, I firmly believed, on Kregen only one pattern of sword superior to the Krozair longsword, and that was the marvelous Savanti sword.

So, dressed and accoutred and with a good meal under our belts, we went down to the courtyard and mounted our zorcas.

As we rode along through the crowded streets after the short haul across the river, our zorcas patient of this delay before we remounted, I reflected on how well I knew this once-hostile city, how great and magnificent a place it was, and yet how different in atmosphere from the other great cities I knew on Kregen.

Everywhere people were busy about the task of rehabitation. The place hummed with activity. Our small bodyguard rode at our backs, a party of Nedfar’s personal guards, and a half-dozen files of my duty squadron, which happened to be this day from 1ESW. The First Regiment of the Emperor’s Sword Watch. I knew every man, and every man knew me. But, as we rode, we attracted little attention.

For this I was glad, but it showed all too clearly that the people of Ruathytu might have misinterpreted the attitude of their new emperor.

Nedfar rode between us, and presently he half-leaned sideways and said to me, “The Empress Thyllis would never have ridden through her capital city like this, Dray. There would have been processions, and regiments of guards, and chanting and singing everywhere she went.”

I acknowledged the truth of this observation.

“The people do not fawn on me, and that is good. It seems your brand of emperorship works here in Hamal as well as in your Vallia.”

“That pleases me. I can’t stand the sight of rows of upturned bottoms.”

Seg laughed.

The sounds and scents of a busy city surrounded us. But as we neared the Jikhorkdun the clamor fell away. The aqueducts bulked black against the sky. The cobbles rang louder under the hooves of the zorcas. These splendid riding animals, proud, curveting, each with his single spiral horn jutting arrogantly from his forehead, were full of fire and mettle.

And the Arena brooded like a dark blot upon the city.

Hamdi the Yenakker waited for us inside the first of the shadows.

He bowed most respectfully to Nedfar.

“Lahal, Emperor!”

Nedfar acknowledged with a Lahal and a gesture, and then we dismounted and, with the guards closed up around us, went through the first of the warren of courtyards and practice rings and bazaars. Everywhere they lay deserted and empty.

Once, this place would have been frantic with the everyday carryings-on of the Jikhorkdun. The booths were shuttered, the stalls empty. The practice rings gaped blindly.

Through the colossal arches supporting the seating of the amphitheater we went, and our booted feet rang hollow echoes.

And so we stepped out from one of the ring of gateways, out onto the sands of the Arena, out onto the Silver Sand.

One could fancy all those rows and rows of seats, towering up into the sky, filled with the insensate beast-roar of a blood-mad crowd. Thousands of people, screaming with the blood lust upon them, and, down here where we stood, a small forlorn group, the kaidurs would have fought and died.

I gave a little shivery shake of my shoulders.

An airboat drifted in over the stands, lowering down to the sand.

Seg said, “At least she travels in comfort.”

“It was thought best, kov, by the Jiktar of the guard.” Hamdi spread his hands, saying it was no affair of his. The airboat settled out in the center of the arena.

Nedfar took a step forward.

He halted, and turned to us.

I do not see why — at that stage — we felt tense, jumpy. We were just humoring a proud and willful woman, attempting to gain secrets from her without the use of force. But, all the same, I own to putting my fist down onto the hilt of my drexer, and of looking sharply into the blue-black shadows around the arena.

“Dray?” said Nedfar.

“You are emperor here now, Nedfar.”

“Only because of you... Very well. Let us all go out together.”

Seg, Nedfar and I walked across the silver sand.

Sometimes, in the old days, the Jikhorkdun of Ruathytu had used golden sand.

Red blood still looked dark and unwholesome, spilt on gold as on silver sand.

The heat beat down. The suns were halfway down, sending mingled shadows across the floor of the arena. All the rows of flagstaffs were bare of treshes, naked and like withered sticks after a gale.

Pancresta alighted from the airboat.

We walked on.

She advanced to meet us. We would meet just over halfway.

She wore her long blue gown, open now at the throat. Even at this distance she gave the impression of hard dominance, of authority, of determination. She walked well.

“We have done well,” said Nedfar, “to have caged this one.”

“Aye,” said Seg.

The way Nedfar observed that we had done well, and my own observation that Pancresta walked well, chimed. One supported the other. The Arena in Ruathytu is large. We took our time walking to this meeting. All the time we strode on, in a strange and affecting way, yet in no sense a weird or eerie way, I could hear the crazed roar of a blood-lusting crowd in my head. I could hear them, and if I half-closed my eyes I could see them — see the rows of inflamed faces and upraised fists, see the spectators as I fought out on the Silver Sand, see them all, by Beng Thrax’s Glass Eye and Brass Sword!

In the airboat parked beyond the advancing form of Pancresta, the guards waited. There were not many of them in the small flier; after all, they merely guarded a lone woman. They were Hamalese, decked out in blue and green and with a deal of silver lace and colored feathers.

An airboat flitted in over the western edge of the amphitheater. Seg glanced up, following my gaze.

Nedfar said, “I gave orders that the patrols should be active.”

By the way we walked, the way we talked and, I suppose, by the way we thought, we gave an enormous importance to this woman Pancresta. Incongruous? I was beginning to think so when the airboat abruptly swooped.

She passed directly over the flier that had brought the woman to this meeting.

A small dark object tumbled out, and then another and another.

They dropped down, plummeting into the flier.

They were not pots of combustibles.

“What?” said Nedfar, and he halted.

A man leaped from the parked flier.

He flailed his arms around his head. He danced like a crazy man. Another followed him, and then a third. They swirled and beat their arms. Around their heads a hazy shadow drifted, joining and parting, a grayish shroud lapping them together in a cloud of torment.

“Wasps,” said Seg. “Or bees.”

“Aye.”

We started to run. Seg and I raced over the silver sands, and as we ran so we drew our swords.

No thought of the incongruousness of all this armory could stand now against the stark reality of the trick by which we had been fooled.

Pancresta stopped. She looked up. She held up her arms.

There was tremendous triumph in the gesture.

The voller sweeping through the air dived low, flew above her and a net spun out, a mesh of glinting silver.

The net grasped Pancresta as she grasped the strands.

In a twinkling she was drawn up.

She vanished over the coaming of the voller and the air-boat pivoted, rose and stormed away. She disappeared over the lip of the amphitheater.

The whole thing was over in the time a rapier takes to pierce a man’s lung.

Seg stuffed his sword back into the scabbard and I did the same. There was no need for us to exchange words.

Both of us knew what had happened.

We belted in a straight run for the abandoned flier.

Corruption had been at work, bribery, force. The Hamalese guards had been got at. Pancresta’s friends had been in communication with her in her dungeon cell. A guard had acted as a go-between. The chances were strong that he was himself a secret member of Spikatur Hunting Sword. Whatever the truth of that, the result was plain. The patrol had been outwitted, a flier had snatched up the woman, and the guards were reeling about, screaming, stung and bitten and tormented.

Seg and I bundled into the voller.

She went up with Seg at the controls like a stone from a catapult.

Low Seg hurled her, low over the topmost tier of seating. We scraped across and shot away.

“There,” said Seg.

Ahead of us, speeding into the sunset fires of red and jade, the dark shape of the voller flitted like a moth against a lantern.

As we watched she turned northward, swinging in a wide arc.

Instantly, Seg swung the levers of the craft over and we hared off to cut the corner.

“We won’t lose them now,” I said.

“They have a fast airboat. It will be a long chase.”

“Aye.”

Below us, glimpsed and lost as we sped on, the smoking wreckage of a guard voller appeared and disappeared. She had obviously been burned by Pancresta’s friends.

“Just put your foot down to your left, will you, my old dom?”

I glanced down and then did as Seg requested.

The crunch did not please me.

“I’ll check if there are any more—”

A few more half-drunken wasps were disposed of.

The strange thing — and I make a particular note of the strangeness of it — was my complete lack of emotion when I saw the brown and red scorpion. He waddled out from under a fold of a flying fur. I just squashed him.

I was so wrought up with mortification at the simple way Pancresta had tricked us, I just did not have time to dwell on the propensities of the Star Lords for sending scorpions to whisk me off to other parts of Kregen, or to send me packing home to Earth, four hundred light-years away.

And, anyway — home?

My home was on Kregen.

Seg said, “Cleansing finished?”

“As far as I can see. Do we keep up with them?”

“Just. The vollers are well matched.”

I glanced back over the stern.

“There is no one following us.”

“Ha,” said Seg. “We did get away smartish.”

“Yes.”

We were two old campaigners and we worked together as a team. We did not waste words, unless we jested. I know Seg was as affronted as I that we had been so easily sucked in.

Even in the rush of wind the voller held the tang of spilled wine. The Hamalese guards had started their drinking early. I found a simple earthenware jug that might contain ale or water or oil, and prised the stopper out and sniffed.

“A middling Stuvan, Seg. You will join me?”

“The Spikatur rascals used pots of stinging insects and scorpions. They did not, I fancy, poison the wine. Yes, my old dom, I will join you.”

As I poured I reflected that the Spikatur people had been clever. They had burned a guard voller outside the Jikhorkdun. They had dropped their little stinging allies on the airboat inside the arena. No doubt the guards were rushing to the burning flier, and Nedfar was having some difficulty in finding guards and fliers to obey his orders inside the amphitheater. Had they burned the voller that had brought Pancresta, the flier in which we now pursued them, they’d have been swamped by patrols.

As it was, Seg and I were just two people to chase them out of all the patrolling guards.

Ironic.

Yet for me, and I thought for Seg, also, this was just what the doctor ordered, as they used to say.

There exist on Kregen as well as Earth bone-dry pundits who scorn tales of adventure. If these people lack the breadth of imagination to encompass an understanding of the pressures on, condition of, illumination of and triumphs and failures of the human spirit then that is their loss, not ours. The unwillingness to accept defeat tamely does not brand a person as a monster — it may, of course. But then, that is what adventure tends to do, sort the sheep from the goats, the ponshos from the leems, make people face themselves, shorn of pretensions, and — perhaps, if they are lucky — grasp at a little of what the human spirit exists at all for...

Seg and I were off, and we were off on adventure-bent, and Spikatur was only half the answer and hardly any of the reason.