One of the Mantissae slashed his bonds loose.
Instantly, without hesitation, he flung himself forward.
Alloran knew that had the girl on the bed been apim he would himself have been demonically impelled forward by passions bursting into flame all over his body. The Khibil had been given to drink, and had no control over himself of any sort.
Watching with a fascination that grew on him each time he witnessed this sacrifice, Alloran saw the climax approaching. A Mantissa moved to the side of the bed. She carried a heavy-hiked dagger. The blade was not a Vallian dagger, being snake-curved; Alloran blinked involuntarily, and took another sip of wine.
From under the figures on the bed a hand showed, a left hand. It moved between their legs with deliberate speed down the bed. The hand opened at the end of a long and flexible tail, stringily muscled, ridged, glinting in a shade far removed from the reddish skin tint of the Khibils’ bodies.
Into that tail hand the Mantissa placed the snake-curved dagger.
Alloran sucked in his breath and the wine slopped from the goblet.
The tail hand struck. Viciously it sliced the dagger upwards, upwards and in, deeply in. The Khibil’s scream compounded of agony and ecstasy shrieked into that blue-draped room. He collapsed. With a gesture finicky yet savage, Arachna pushed him off and he fell limply to the carpet. The Mantissae did not move. No one moved. Blood smothered the breast of the Khibil girl.
The voice from Arachna was entirely different from that with which she had spoken to Alloran. It husked as though reaching in past cobweb veils of mystery and distance, remote yet penetrating, the voice past reason.
“Strom Rosil will continue to retreat. His powers are limited and grow weaker. You must seize the leem by the throat, not by the tail. Water will not always wash away blood.”
The voice swelled so that undercurrents of passion shook the husky words.
“You must choose to drink water or drink blood!”
The voice ceased.
Arachna lay still, eyes closed, the blood shining upon the glorious Khibil body. The Mantissae closed in and wrapped the blue silk cloak about her, drew the concealing mask across those glowing features.
Slowly, Alloran stood up. He was shaking with the passions of the sacrificial ceremony.
He was King Vodun of Southwest Vallia! That could not be denied. There was no more to be discovered here and he walked purposefully to the exit. If Strom Rosil failed him...
Water or Blood? Would he drink Water or Blood?
Which was more fitting for a king?
At the Leather Bottle
Lon the Knees said: “If you insist, Lyss...”
“I do damn-well insist, so that’s an end to it.”
“The Leather Bottle is not the place for—”
“Look, Lon. A poor weak defenseless girl has been known to stick a knife into a hulking great brute of a man insulting her. Well, is that not true?”
“Aye, aye. But—”
“That’s an end, Lon!
Queyd-arn-tung
!”
[9]
They were standing in a shadowed doorway of a respectable street, the Lane of Sweetmeats, and the evening drew on in long mingled shadows of emerald and ruby. Already the Maiden with the Many Smiles floated over the rooftops of Rashumsmot casting down her fuzzy pink light to blend oddly with the last trailing remnants of the radiance from Zim and Genodras. The air tanged with spicy odors. Folk moved with purpose, to reach home after the day’s labors, to find the first wet of the evening, to see what pickings there might be in any of the thieves’ quarters abounding in any town where an army is quartered.
Lon stared at this glorious girl, and shook his head.
She wore a beigey yellowish dress that gave a dusty impression and the patterns of green leaves threaded in the material did not please Lon in an obscure way he couldn’t fathom. The dress was halfway thigh length and her legs were bare. She wore sandals tied up with, on the left foot, a leather thong and on the right foot a piece of string. She carried her brown leather and canvas knapsack on her left hip.
Over her right hip a frippery of the dress created a flounce that effectively concealed the long Vallian dagger scabbarded to her belt there. Her hair, lustrous and sweetly clean, was tightly bound up. As a Battle Lady she did not habitually let her hair grow long; but she was too much a woman to allow it to be cropped mercilessly, as so many of the Jikai Vuvushis did. Her face, though was not sweetly clean. That gorgeous face was decidedly grubby.
Black spots dotted it here and there, her eyes were smudged, and an unwholesome looking sore extended down from the right corner of her mouth. She’d painted that on herself in this quiet doorway, with her back to the Lane of Sweetmeats and with Lon standing vacantly at her back.
In one of her belt pouches reposed a small vial of a secretion from the skunk-like animal called a powcy. It really did, as one of her dear friends would say, pong ’orrible. So far she had not had the courage actually to daub the nauseating gunk over herself.
If the going got too rough, though, she would — by Vox, she’d stink the place out!
Lon tried one last time.
“Look, Lyss. Yes, all right, we’ll go to The Leather Bottle. But if you wore your black leathers and carried swords—”
“D’you think anyone in there would trust me, talk to me? I’d be more likely to be stuck through than I am now, dressed like this.”
“Women!” said Lon to himself. “By Black Chunguj! There’s no way past them.”
With which piece of sage internal logic he set off with Lyss the Lone toward their rendezvous at The Leather Bottle.
As for Lon the Knees himself, his finery had had to be returned from whence it came, that is, back to those from whom he’d borrowed the attire. He wore his own decent rough homespun, a tunic that was improbably hard wearing and might even see him out. The color was indeterminate but tended to the brown. The main gauche was stuffed down inside in its scabbard. He carried a cudgel. He was a Vallian citizen, not a koter, out for the evening and dressed for the occasion.
At that, he’d never really got on with those danged breeches. Yes, so all right, his legs were on the — curvy — side. But there was nothing like a clean breechclout and bare legs. He felt limber as he walked along beside Lyss, reveling in this aspect of the evening alone.
Even had there not been mineral oil in abundance, folk tended these days not to be so strictly bound by the twin suns in their going to bed and rising. The seven moons of Kregen among them, at different times, cast down light. The Leather Bottle, therefore, at this early hour, had not yet begun to hum.
The place looked snug under its low ceil, with wooden benches aptly situated in nooks and with a rotund barrel-row mounted on trestles behind the bar. The landlord polished up a tankard with his upper hands while his middle pair poured drinks for the two Fristles leaning against the bar. They were giving inconspicuous glances to the six Rapas sitting in the bay window, making a deal of noise and clearly intending that this should be the start of a night to remember.
The Rapas looked out of place here, even to Lyss, for no one else was a soldier in uniform, while these Rapas were churgurs, sword and shield soldiers out of one of the new king’s regiments of foot. Their feathers bristled, brick red and dusty black, and their fierce beaked faces showed animation as they toasted one another in turn. They were in undress, wearing the king’s colors of maroon and gray with the badge of the sea barynth.
“And, Lon,” said Lyss when they were served at a small table in the opposite corner, “you wanted me to come here all dressed up in black leathers.”
“Upvil, the landlord, may be an Och, but he knows how to respect a lady.” Lon gave her a mean look. “You do not, Lyss, look a lady right now.”
“I suppose not.”
For this night’s adventure, Silda Segutoria had consciously forced herself to think and act as Lyss the Lone. So she did not throw her head back and roar appreciation of the neatness of Lon’s remark. She just quaffed her ale and looked about, and her right hand rested easily at her side, not too far from her dagger.
The Rapas were kicking up a din so that Lon shook his head and said: “Pretty soon Upvil will have to call the heavy squad and have them chucked out.”
“But if they weren’t soldiers?”
“Oh, well, that’d be different.”
“Well, I hope your friend Crafty Kando turns up before the fight starts.”
Lon started to say something, halted himself, and then spat out: “So do I.”
His cudgel propped against his stool would be adequate in the typical tavern brawl; against the straight cut and thrust pallixters of the Rapas it would soon prove lacking.
The tavern began to fill, ale flowed, fruits and biscuits were available, and pretty soon customers began to ask for wine. Lon kept on looking at the door. Crafty Kando might be too crafty for his own good in this business, for while Lon did not know what Lyss wanted the thief for, he felt instinctively that there would be profit in it.
There were girls circulating in the tavern, gauzily dressed, clashing bangles, heavily made up and wafting scents that cloyed in the odors of ale and wine and food. They drew shouts of approval and the occasional coin. They indulged in a few ferocious hair and bodice-pulling fights over the money. And still Crafty Kando did not put in an appearance.
Seeing girls in this condition upset Silda far more than watching them on the battlefield.
The people patronizing Upvil’s Leather Bottle were mostly from the rough side of life, folk like Lon who did the unpleasant jobs. The regular patrons grew restive with the high spirits and uproar from the Rapa soldiery.
It made not the slightest difference who started the fight. That there would be a fight was perfectly clear. Lon suddenly half-rose and then sank back on his stool. In a low voice he said, “Thank Opaz the Merciful! Here he is now.”
Looking quickly toward the door past the bulky shoulders of a Brokelsh just standing up with a bottle in his hand, Lyss saw the fellow in the doorway. He was dressed inconspicuously in drab browns, with a down-drawn hat obscuring much of his features save for a sharp chin. On his hip rested a goodly sized canvas bag.
Then the Brokelsh threw the bottle, the Rapas bristled up with feathers flying, and the tavern erupted.
Lon sprang up to run to the door after Crafty Kando and was instantly engulfed in a crashing moil of men striking out with joyous abandon. One Rapa was already down with a bent beak. The hairy Brokelsh who’d thrown the bottle ducked just too late to avoid the stool that thwacked solidly into his thick Brokelsh skull. Men were staggering about locked together, others were swinging wild punches, others were flailing with bottles and stools. No one — so far — had drawn a steel weapon, edged and pointed. This was a tavern brawl with unwritten laws.
How long before the Rapa churgurs, massively outnumbered, would draw their swords was in the jovial hands of Beng Brorgal, the patron saint of tavern brawlers.
A big fellow with a purple nose rose up before Lon and hit him over the head with a bottle. Lon yelped, managing to duck most of the force, and stuck the end of his cudgel into the fellow’s ribs. He yelped in turn.
A man with the effluvium of the fish market upon him lashed out with his boot at Lon’s undefended back.
The boot did not quite reach Lon because a sandal tied up with string stuck itself out sideways and the man’s shin smacked into the edge of the sandal-clad foot. The shin came off worst from that encounter.
Lyss didn’t stop. Her foot whipped down, planted itself firmly on the tavern floor and her other sandal, with the leather thong, swirled up as she swiveled forward. Her toe investigated most forcefully portions of the man’s anatomy that could not bear the scrutiny.
He let out a gargling screech and fell down.
Lyss put her fist into a fellow’s mouth and felt teeth break.
She skipped quickly sideways to allow one of the Rapas to go charging past. She let him go and clipped the man following him alongside the ear. The Rapas might be Rapas, fierce vulturine diffs, but they were soldiers and they were outnumbered.
The tavern resembled a chicken coop when the fox breaks in. Men — and some of the women — were tangled up everywhere, lashing out, kicking, biting, scratching. Bottles flew. Upvil the Och landlord put his head down behind his bar and wondered if being a landlord was worth the trouble. The Watch might be along soon; by the time they arrived he’d be well out of pocket.
The original locus of the fight around the Rapas had long been forgotten. Men hit anybody handy. It would not have been surprising if one Rapa had hit another in the confusion.
Lon dragged himself off the floor, whooped a breath, spotted Lyss hitting a Gon beside his ear, and yelled.
“He’s run off!”
“Well, run after him!”
Lon’s face empurpled to match his nose. He dragged in another breath smelling the dust of the floor mingled with spilled wine and blood, and thought savagely to himself what he wouldn’t yell out at Lyss.
“Run — in this lot! Like flies in treacle!”
He climbed up onto his feet and instantly a bulky fellow tangling with two furry Fristles collided with him. He was knocked flying again, skidding across the floor on squashed juicy gregarians, the fruit greasing his swift passage under a table. That fell over on him and the tankards of ale upon it liberally baptised him with libations to Beng Dikkane the patron saint of all the ale drinkers of Paz.
Lon shook with frustrated anger.
He clambered up, his cudgel still gripped in his fist.
His hair fell over his eyes. He glared about. There was red in the eyes of Lon the Knees.
He spotted a Rapa and a Brokelsh, representatives of the diffs who’d started the fracas, locked together, each trying to throttle the other.
Lon marched over, knocking a fellow out of his way.
He used the cudgel twice.
One blow knocked the Brokelsh senseless to the floor.
The other struck the Rapa down so that he collapsed in a flurry of his own feathers.