A Fortune for Kregen

Chapter one-1

Chapter one

On a roof in Jikaida CityThere are more ways than one hundred and one of stealing an airboat and this was going to be way Number One. Just walk up to the craft, step aboard, and take off — first making sure she was not tethered down.

That was the theory.

The guard stepped from a shadowed doorway on the first landing and stuck a glittering great cleaver under my nose.

“Stand where you are, dom, or your head will go bouncing down those stairs you’ve just walked up.”

Light from the lamp held in the hand of a bronze cupid at the head of the stairs struck sparks from his eyes. All he could see of me must be a silhouette. The muffling mask of gray cloth over my face and head and the dull baggy clothes were unrecognizable.

“Why, dom,” I said. “You’re making a mistake—”

No doubt he understood me to be attempting exculpation. When I lowered him gently to the carpet with my left hand gripped in the fancy front of his uniform, and, my right hand tingling just a little, took away that murderous cleaver, he slumbered peacefully — but he’d wake up understanding the mistake I had pointed out to him well enough.

Stepping carefully over him I went on up the next flight of stairs. This hotel, a veritable palace in the Foreign Quarter of Jikaida City, was occupied by the great ones of the world who came here to play Jikaida without affiliation to the Blue or the Yellow. On the roof rested the only flying boat in the city. That airboat was my ticket out of here and, because it was owned by a man from Hamal, and Hamal was at war with my own country of Vallia, it was morally quite proper for me to steal the craft.

Well — morals take the devil of a beating when there’s a war on. There are, to be sure, far too many wars and battles on the world of Kregen, four hundred light years from Earth, but I was sincerely doing what I could to lessen the number.

The time was just on halfway between midnight and dawn. The hotel remained quiet. The carpets muffled my tread. There must be a few more guards about and, sentry duty being what it is, there were bound to be one or two having a quiet yarn up on the roof, one eye on the airboat.

The quicker I got out of Jikaida City and, if the Star Lords permitted, back to Vallia, the better. A caravan across the Desolate Waste to the east would be far too slow for me in my mood. Vallia was in good hands, that I knew; but I still felt the need to get home. Also, knowing the way fate — which is a poor second best in any confrontation with the Star Lords — has the nasty habit of hurling me headlong into adventures that are none of my seeking, I fancied I had a few sprightly moments in front of me before I reached home. Well, by Vox, that was true.

As I stole up the next flight of stairs sounds floated down from above. I frowned. There was laughter, and high shrieks, and a tinny banging. A small orchestra was playing and trying to make its music heard over the din. I went on and came out onto the top landing. In the corner the small door that led onto the roof was unguarded. I had only to cross the stretch of thick pile carpet, open the door, close it carefully after me, and creep up the stairs, my sword in my fist...

More confounded theories.

A door opened and a man staggered out. He wore only a blue shirt and he was highly excited, his arms draped over the shoulders of a couple of sylvies half-dressed in tinsels. He roared, his head thrown back, warbling out a song whose words were unintelligible and whose tune was unrecognizable.

The wall at my back felt flat and hard. I pressed in as though trying to burrow through into the room beyond.

Beyond that suddenly opened door the lamplight glowed, spilling out and casting shadows over me. The noise in there racketed away and now the orchestra, no doubt having made up its mind to be heard, howled and shrilled and scraped. Men and women shrieked with laughter and shouted over the music, determined to be heard. The clink of bottles and the crash of overturning glasses added a genial blend of bibulous accompaniment. The man and the girls staggered past, screaming with laughter, to disappear into a darkened room along the corridor.

Lamplight fell across the carpet in a butter-yellow lozenge.

To reach the door leading onto the roof it was necessary to pass that lozenge of light.

The orchestra and the people — all grimly determined to be heard — redoubled their efforts. The racket coruscated. The door remained open and people passed and repassed — or staggered and restaggered — from side to side. Another man came out. He crawled on hands and knees. A slinky little Fristle fifi rode his back, alternately hitting him with a slipper and giving him sips of wine from a glass. Most of the wine — it was a light straw color — soaked into the carpet. They were both yelling their heads off. I shoved another inch or two into the wall.

Somebody else reeled out of the door, tripped over the man on his knees and the fifi, and collapsed, howling with laughter. His wine went all over them. He had been drinking a deep red wine, and the color blazed up in the lamplight.

A voice yelled over the din.

“Hey, Nath! C’mere, for the sake of Havandua — these Hamalese have me—” The rest was lost in a gurgle.

The fellow who was being ridden by the girl stood up. He reeled. The girl clung to him, her naked legs wrapped about him. Making no effort to throw her off he went barging back, and the chap who had fallen over him lurched up, shaking his head from side to side and chuckling foolishly.

He looked at his empty glass, made a solemn clucking noise, and wandered off toward the open door. He hit the wall beside the door, bounced, shook his head, took a grip on himself and navigated back into the room.

Somebody shut the door.

Oh, yes, by Krun. They were all Somebodies in there...

Letting out my breath I eased from the shadows and started for the door. My hand was on the latch. I was pushing the door open — when the light sprang into being again at my back.

A girl’s voice, all giggles and hiccoughs, said, “Leaving already? You Hamalese are too solemn! Come and have a drink.”

Without turning, I said in as light a voice as I could muster, “You should try telling that to a Bladesman in the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu.”

A man’s voice, heavier than most, said, “Hamalese? I don’t—”

There was nothing else for it.

I went through the opened doorway, slammed the wood at my back, and shot the bolt across. No time to catch a breath. It was up the stairs hell for leather and out onto the roof under the stars of Kregen.

The airboat was there — tethered down, of course! — and with a canvas cover thrown across her slim lines.

The first chain ripped free. The second chain was in my fingers. The scrape at my back sounded clearly. In an explosion of movement I dived sideways, recovered, hauled out my sword.

The two guards were in nowise chagrined that they had failed to surprise me. She of the Veils floated free of cloud wrack then and showed them to me — as the moon showed me to them.

A banging started below as the party-goers hammered on the door I had bolted.

The guards bore in, their swords held in the professional fighting man’s grip. They wore the fancy uniform of employees of this establishment, a riot of ruffles and bronze-bound armor, the whole outlined in black and yellow checkers. They knew what they were about. They anticipated no real trouble from me. The gray cloth mask over my face would hearten them rather than not, for they would take this as a sign of one who wished to remain unknown in the shadows, and unwilling to face a fight.

And, by Zair, they were right!

The wounds I had taken in that last fight on the Jikaida board were nowhere near properly healed. I was still weak. Yes, I could wield a blade and give some account of myself. But to engage in protracted swordplay, I knew, was beyond my present powers. This night’s doings had been intended as a quick and furtive entry, a fast snatch of the airboat, and a remarkably smart getaway.

These two hulking guards had no intention of allowing me to carry on my plans for another moment.

As I say — so much for theory.

With the nerve-tingling scrape of steel on steel, the blades crossed.

Now — now these two were fair swordsmen. They earned their hire by standing guard. And, also, it was perfectly clear they would kill me as a mere part of earning that hire. That was their job. There was no great panache in it, not a sign of lip-licking enjoyment in their work. They just went about the business determined to prevent me, a masked thief, from stealing the airboat they were paid to protect.

As I say, they were fair swordsmen. After a few passes I knew, weak as I was, that I had the mastering of them both.

The blades screeched and rang as I fended them off, and pressed, and retreated, luring them on to the final passage that would settle this thing. But — but they were just men earning their daily bread. They were doing what they did for purely economic reasons. Their morality encompassed my death as a thief so that they might earn their daily bread, in the same way that my morality encompassed stealing this airboat in order to fly back to Vallia.

I could have slain them both; run them through in a twinkling.

Many a superior swordsman of the darker persuasion would have done so and thought nothing of it. There is enough misery in two worlds without adding villainy to it and calling it heroism. These two guards went to sleep after a flurry of blades and a rapid double thump — one, two — from the hilt.

The delay they had caused, slight though it was, had undone my plans and earned their hire.

Men boiled out from the stairway onto the roof, so I knew they had broken down the lower door. Some of them wore shirts, some of them wore trousers or breechclouts, and although very few were possessed of all items of clothing, they all possessed swords. They set up a howl as they saw me, a dark, masked, mysterious figure just stepping back from two unconscious guards. They charged, screeching.

I recognized the tone, the mood, the feeling of their yells.

Anger, of course — but, chiefly, a high delirious excitement, a sudden passion for the chase, the game, the feeling that in a spot of action would come the highlight of the evening’s entertainments.

The chains tethering the flier remained fast locked.

Now there was no time to act as I have acted in other places and other times in circumstances not too dissimilar.

I ran.

The roofs of the hotel presented a bewildering jumble — a jungle of tiles and cornices and chimneys and spires.

Away we all went in a rout, and they were hallooing and yelling and prancing about back there, waving their swords, their naked legs flashing in the fuzzy golden and pinkish light of She of the Veils. Kregen’s largest moon, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, lifted over the edge of the world and shone pink and rose down through shredding clouds. There would be plenty of light. As I ran and skipped from roof to roof I reflected that, by Vox, there would be far too much light.

This quiet, cautious, carefully planned exercise had turned into a right old shambles.

The fellows chasing me back there were not all apims, not all Homo sapiens like me. Among them the wonderful variety of diffs of Kregen was well represented. A loose slate which made me slither down a prickly roof almost did for me; with a convulsive lunge I hooked my fingers around the guttering and managed to hang on. Below me the gulf yawned. Far below, far and far below, light spilled across a cobbled courtyard as a door was opened. A voice bellowed up.

“What in the name of Vilaha’s Tripes is going on up there?”