When the king said, “Harran, I’m not a good word-smith: you’d better come along,” it surprised me far less than finding he meant to begin in Holym, and northern Holym at that, which meant riding clean across Everran to the great border pass where Kemreswash heads. And like the rest of the palace, I most assuredly did not expect the king of Everran to set out with a harper and a pair of horse-handlers as his entire entourage. But he was adamant enough to out-shout Inyx, and I did not know all his purposes at the time.
The road north was painful. Beryx had not ridden before, and we began on the highway where the Guard had passed so merrily, thence entering the Raskelf, so mangled by Hawge. Empty sheep camps, burnt hillsides, hospital camps everywhere: and Beryx visited every one.
Across the Helken the road swung west into my own austere land, which as with all long-delayed homecomings was the same and not the same. The people I knew were changed, the places misremembered, and if the yeldtar still splashed crimson under the silver hethel leaves they now minded me of unsold oil. Beryx watched, and said nothing. To perception he added tact.
But in Stiriand we entered the oldest desolation of all. Nothing could have been more pathetic than Findtar and Pensal’s blackened ruins crumbling in the summer glare amid acre upon acre of ruined vines. Pentyr’s entire deme was the same. I was thankful to reach Dun Stiriand’s sullen red fort, perched in its border-eyrie above the muddy stream of Kemreswash.
The Stirian governor had been summoned by mirror-signal from his keep, which is also a depot for the gold-washers who make a wild and risky living from the border streams, and Beryx told him flatly that their license fees would have to rise and their barter rate fall. “I have a dragon,” he said, “asking ten ingots a month.” When the governor flung up his hands, he added, “Tell them to visit Pentyr Resh.”
A week more found us on the saddle between the Helkents’ flaming red abutment and the delicate gray spines of the Histhira range, with Holym filling the eye to north, west, and south. Its long, rolling prospect of summer-browned and silvered plains was broken by stands of staring white helliens, tall black coastal elonds, and the short twisted trees named riendel for their lovely white and scarlet-filamented flowers, but there was not a town in sight.
While I wondered about directions, Beryx took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Let’s begin,” he said.
* * * * *
Holym is called cattle-land with reason: save a few mines near the Mellyngthir delta marshes, and some sheep running along the Quarred border, the cattle own it all. Nor do they keep a few head on each farm as in Everran. The Holym cattle are numbered by tens of thousands, they live wild on holdings big as a Resh, they are worked with horses by men who set small value on their necks, and they are not our short hairy red breed but huge smooth-skinned whites, blacks, yellows, and brindles, with horns long as bows and temperaments to match. The towns comprise a few houses along streets widened to handle such herds, and in place of markets there are stockyards tall as houses: moreover, the cattle jump out of them. This I have seen.
Instead of kings, Holym has an annual Council in the capital Holymlase, to which every Resh elects a delegate. It is supposed to voice the people’s will to the biennially elected consul. The real ruler lives permanently in Holymlase, supposedly to fulfill the consul’s commands, and is called the Scribe. But there is a schism in Holym politics, chiefly over border dealings with sheep lords from Quarred. One party supports free trade and an open border, the other insists Holym should be reserved to cattle alone. Those favoring trade are called Open, those against are the Closed. Add to this schism that all Holmyx prefer tending cattle to assemblies, that the council delegates are usually ignorant of all but their own Resh, and that Holym continually suffers violent floods or extravagant droughts, and you see why it is nicknamed the quiet Confederate.
A month or so before the Council gathered we reached the first town, Savel, an Open Resh. Its collection of wooden houses is built on stilts along streets the cattle had churned to deep red dust. Assembly day was also sale day, and since no Holmyx cares who buys his cattle, the town was bursting with sleek Estarians, haughty Quarreders, bellowing Hazyx, wild-eyed Holmyx, and wilder-eyed Holmyx cattle bellowing loudest of all.
With no time for a state visit’s formalities, Beryx had sent a message to Holymlase, but Holmyx rarely heed government announcements, and nobody had the slightest idea who we were. Luckily a harper and two body servants are a good deal easier to bivouac with the drovers by the stockyard than a royal entourage.
The assembly meets at the back of the tavern, just beyond earshot of the beer: northern Holym does not drink wine. The Assembly Ruand was pleased to see us, but unfortunately, all but three cattle lords were busy with buyers, or even busier with a drought. After an hour or so the Ruand apologetically told Beryx, “We don’t have an assembly quota. Would you want to begin now, and we could open assembly when they come along?”
Beryx looked at the audience. One was asleep, one looking over his shoulder at the beer, and the third haggling with a Quarred buyer. He looked at me. I sighed, and unwrapped my harp.
One must admit Holmyx are good listeners. When I finished the battle-song, the entire tavern was breathing on my neck, with some of the merrier fighting each other in lieu of Hawge. By the time I finished the plaint of Everran’s ruin, half Savel was weeping in its beer and the assembly was ramping to assist us. Three lords each pledged a hundred cattle that summer, the delegate would support us at Council, we were offered a variety of beds and an undrinkable quantity of beer. I thought I saw why Beryx had begun in the north.
The next town, Caistax, was a Closed Resh. It had a big assembly, but when the herald tallied seventy I realized he had counted dogs and children too. Beryx’s speech earned loud applause, and the Council delegate was entrusted with several motions urging Holym to do this or that, but nobody offered cattle, and nobody mentioned gold. When we asked about notable weapons, one kind soul did offer us his cattle-dog: “Takes ’em by the nose and they follow ’im anywhere.”
This mute string merely made Beryx shrug. “We’ll find it by chance,” he said. “In the songs, they always do.”
In a month we covered most of northern Holym, amassing promises of Council support, pledges of over a thousand cattle, no miraculous weapons, and no hope of gold. We reached Holymlase bronzed as drovers, accomplished beer-drinkers, with Beryx managing a horse as if he had ridden one-handed all his life. One thing I liked about Holym was that nobody seemed to notice either his arm or his scar.
Holymlase straddles the Mellyngthir and Histhira river junction, a big town full of splendid white town houses and less splendid mining depots, stockyards, and slaughterhouses which stink to the sky, pierced by a long line of wharves. It is busy, fast-moving, and violent, which comes of miners, drovers, and sailors mixed in taverns that sell wine as well as beer. The Council would meet that new moon. Looking back on our northern tour, I entered the chamber full of hope.
I never knew cattle were such problems to keep or to sell. For two days the Council droned over wild dogs, red fever, lung-rot, iniquitous Confederate and slaughterhouse buyers, drovers wanting higher wages, and shippers who charged exorbitant freights. The third day, when all the Council was hung over and two thirds of it asleep, the consul called, “the Everran delegate.”
Gauging his audience’s patience, Beryx offered a summary of Hawge’s deeds, a tally of its demands, and a bald request for help. “Everran cannot raise the cattle, let alone the gold. If we do not, the dragon will ruin us. Then it will move on the other Confederates.”
Some delegates favored sending cattle. One thought they might spare “a gold ingot, at least.” Several woke up. Then a Closed delegate jumped up with a passionate opposition to any government action, right down to accepting Everran immigrants. This roused the Open party. Southern delegates began to rumble about “leases” and “export-balance.” In the midst of it, the Scribe rose to speak.
First he gave a recital of Holmyx finances at such low pitch and high speed that he lost most of the Council on the spot. I gathered there were fifty ingots in hand and three hundred due, but then we modulated into a tale of desperately needy government projects and more desperate government expenses, after which Holym was not merely living on credit but head over ears in debt. There followed an elucidation of the Confederacy pact which left me in the dark as well. Finally he moved to dragons, which were not covered by any clause of the pact, not being famine, pestilence, corsairs, or floods. It was unsure they could cross mountains. And, most clinching argument, there had never been one before.
At this Beryx rose and said clearly, “Their favorite food is cattle. Everran’s are running out.”
That caused a stir. One Open delegate moved that “help be sent.” The Scribe claimed this was too vague. “What help?” Beryx caught the delegate’s sleeve and whispered, “Three hundred cattle and five gold ingots a year.” The Scribe re-sang Holmyx finances and concluded, “It can’t be done.” Then the Closed delegates rose in arms crying that stock sent must include sheep as well as cattle, the southern Opens grappled them over involving Quarred, the delegate altered his motion to “help on a voluntary basis,” and the Council voted against.
Our Savel Ruand was also their delegate. He overtook us outside, saying awkwardly, “Our fellows will send the cattle; I’ll throw in another hundred myself.” Beryx gave him a smile I could see would probably double it, then he grinned and said, “Better than I expected.” The Holmyx looked startled. But then he grinned too, and they shook hands on the pact.
* * * * *
From Holymlase to Quarred’s capital is further than round Everran. I wanted to ship downriver, then sail along the coast to the Hazghend isthmus, but Beryx said, “No time.” We crossed south Holym’s plains at the limit of horseflesh, riding long into the night, resting in the oven noons, while the trees thinned and the heat-waves jumped on the horizon and the grass turned to sheets of silvered beige that hurt the eyes.
In four days we reached the Quarred border, whence to Heshruan it is seven days’ ride: first through the Hasselian marshes, cracked black soil, withered reeds, shepherds complaining bitterly of fever from a summer denied them in Everran, and then over Heshruan Slief, wider than Everran itself. We rode parched and wordless across tussocks of blonde taskgjer grass mixed with prickly shrubs, covered with flocks like huge gray earthbound clouds, and dotted with innumerable windmills about the steadings of Quarred lords.
There are no towns in northern Quarred, but these enormous steadings are towns in themselves, with palace, household, shepherds’ barracks, and all a town’s other trappings. Some even maintain a potter’s shop. We reached the first at sunset, dusty, unshaven, filthy, and a’horseback. Quarred nobility rides in carriages. We followed the long avenue of matched black imported morhas trees to the palace, a low, green-roofed place, set in luscious gardens, with verandas wider than an audience hall, but the housekeeper, a sort of female chamberlain, met us at the outer gate and consigned us to “the men’s quarters,” without a second glance.
I raised my brows to Beryx. He grinned wickedly. We used the communal bath-house, shaved, and went to eat.
It was the apprentices’ mess, also used for needy travelers. Shepherds, steading workers, and Ruands like treasurer and smith and carpenters have another mess, and shearers a special one of their own. When we finished the roast mutton, Beryx caught my eye.
The battle-song’s applause brought in the shepherds’ mess. My marching song produced a roar that drew the steading Ruands and the housekeeper’s palace cohorts, and after Everran’s plaint a flustered underling begged us, “Come up to the big house. There’s been a mistake.”
We were ushered off to the main audience hall where the sheep lord himself made amends like the prince he was, even producing a ten-years-matured Everran wine. He had Holym holdings and already knew our errand. Moreover, he had lost so much face over sending a king to eat with his apprentices that he passed us on with letters of urgent support to the Clan patriarch in Heshruan, and introductions to Clan steadings along the way. Luckier still, his patriarch was the current Ruand of the Tingrith as well.
In some way or other most Quarreders spring from eight enormous clans, but they are so intermarried and interbred it is impossible for an outlander to comment on any Quarreder without another taking umbrage for “the Family.” Their government is called the Tingrith: the Eight. A person from each clan, usually an elder, often the patriarch, lives in Heshruan and holds the Tingrith seat until he dies, when a relative replaces him. It is more efficient than Holym, but it produces ferocious clan rivalries and an obsession with birth. In Quarred, if you are not “born” into the upper ranks of one of the Eight, you may as well emigrate at once.
Heshruan is most splendid, however: a brand-new capital—corsairs burnt the old one—full of elegant buildings, green parks, scented and flowering trees, and innumerable fountains fed from an artificial lake. You see the city for miles ahead, a vast green and white splash on the tawny uplands, appearing and vanishing with the movement of the earth.
The Clan Ruand first invited us to stay at the Ruler’s palace, and then to the horse-races that afternoon. Beryx refused the first in favor of the Clan palace, and accepted the second. Quarreders love horses, which, unlike the Holmyx, they keep for sport and war. They are bred on the huge southern cape of Culphan Skos: I made a song of how we saw them as we sailed to Hazghend, great skeins of bronze and chestnut and mahogany running loose on the green southern uplands, above gray-blue cliffs and bright southern waves.
They looked quite as beautiful on the race-track. Beryx’s eye brightened. I was more taken by the crowd: the men in dark clothes and huge white turbans—the higher the rank, the bigger the head—the women in filmy summer dresses with equally immense flowered hats. I thought it a pretty conceit, before I found the flowers were of cloth. Garlands should either be precious, or real. I saw Sellithar in her gold terrian coronal, and lost interest in the formalities, which were as numerous as the crowd.
Heshruan is extremely formal: greetings, clothes, precedence, all is significant and rigidly observed. There is also a massive load of ceremony. The Ruand drags a fifty-man entourage, the Lords’ days are celebrated with processions, bands, strings of prancing cavalry, carriage loads of Clansmen, officials, and bedizened generals. When I asked where the soldiers were, Beryx grinned, “Ask Ragnor. Or wait till we head for Estar.”
There are also daily banquets, horse-races, and afternoon entertainments, but never a harper plays. The populace are government scribes or Clan potentates, and soon I would have traded them all for one rowdy Holmyx in high-heeled boots and harpoon spurs, or a single shepherd cook with greenhide to uphold his trousers and salt under his tongue. In Heshruan everybody is climbing, up or down, and the ladder they use is words.
The Clans did receive us well, for if you cannot be “born” in Quarred the next best thing is to be visiting royalty. Especially Everran’s, since the Eight drink our wine. But there were questions about Beryx’s arm, a thing unheard of in Holym, and many open stares, especially from the unmarried girls. Being “unborn,” I did not count, but Beryx collected a court wherever he went, one of whom confided to me that his scar was “so romantic,” whatever she meant by that.
Recalling Astarien, I doubted our definitions would agree. But a few mornings later I woke from a dream of Sellithar, and going along the cavernous upstairs corridor in search of fresh air, met Beryx farewelling the nymph in question at his bedroom door.
She gave me a brazen smile, and blew a kiss back up the marble stairs. He looked positively sheepish. Then with a sudden, gleeful, small-boy’s chuckle remarked, “You can do some things one-handed, after all.”
I opened my mouth to invoke conjugal faith and a scale of other such pomposities. Recalled who I had last shared a bed with, and thought again. Essaying levity, I began, “If you end in a Clan paternity suit...”
His face shut like a door. He answered bleakly, “No chance of that.”
But he had chosen the Clan palace for more than amorous intrigues. “If you want to plant in the Tingrith,” he said, “you have to plough plenty of dirt.” Three weeks we kicked our heels awaiting an audience, and in those three weeks he juggled the Clans more cunningly than ever I did the truth and Hawge. I could not follow half the scandal levers, the power and blood knots, and was reduced to seeking a notable weapon, which in Heshruan is as witty as hunting a sea in Hethria. The city is not even walled.
On audience morning, Beryx appeared on crimson cloak and coronal, saying, “Bring your robe.” We walked silently to the Tingrith meeting house, past the resplendent guards and up the marble steps.
The Eight sat round a circular table in a rank of tremendous white turbans and shrewd leathery faces. None were below middle-age, and the Ruand’s beard was white as the mushroom on his head, but all bore the mark of sheep lords, who work for their wealth with their own hands, and know it from the ground to the mighty pair of ram-horns behind them on the wall. Everyone bowed solemnly. We were ushered to chairs, and Beryx gave me a nod.
Quarreders understand fighting, especially with fire: dry storms scourge them every year. Their eyes flashed at the battle-song. I knew they felt for the warriors of Saeverran, and would honor Astarien’s fellow conquerors. I could not resist an extempore coda for Inyx in the Raskelf, for it was their sheep he saved, and I felt they would favor a fighter more than one who merely begged.
Beryx told them the rest, this time including my interview, which won my first glances of respect, and adding Hawge’s words, along with the weapon search. “We do not ask help forever,” he concluded. “What we are buying is time. For the Confederacy as well as ourselves.”
The Ruand’s eye sharpened. He said formally, “Quarred hears you.” Then the debate began.
Quarred’s finances. Confederate claims and worths. Hawge’s faith or probable lack of it. Within five speeches I knew there was a power-struggle in progress, for which we were just the rope in a tug-of-war. The northern Clans favored us, since they use the Raskelf, unlike the Southerners, who stretch down into the grain and fruit and horselands of Culphan Skos. But they were fighting for mastery of the Tingrith, not for our cause.
Beryx sat quiet, barely moving his eyes. The Ruand, also impassive, watched the battle sway to and fro.
Presently it resolved into a struggle for the two Heshruan lords, who have a foot in both camps. The Northerners quoted Hawge’s taste for horses, Quarred’s proximity to its lair, the Raskelf’s importance, the threat to the wine trade, Hawge’s invulnerability to all but this frail chance. All Beryx’s arguments. The Southerners were against extortion, risk, and getting involved. The debate grew warm. Veiled thrusts about “biggest export,” “biggest spenders,” “unfair representation,” “tax evaders,” were exchanged, cryptic comments about the Army—northern soldiers, southern generals—and less cryptic comments about “favor from the Chair.”
At last a Heshruan lord crumbled before the threat of Hawge near his march-line, and a long-faced Northerner with a beaky nose and bright blue eyes veiled in folds of leathery skin sat back and demanded, “Vote.”
The Ruand straightened. “Those in favor,” he asked slowly, “of sending Everran ten ingots a month?” Four hands went up. “Against?” Three. “As Vethyr clansman, I have one vote. I cast it against.” The Northerner’s blue eyes flashed. “As Ruand, I have the casting vote. I cast that... also against.”
Into the silence he spoke in his slow, deliberate voice. “I will move that Quarred send three ingots a month for the present year. We have lost the Raskelf for this summer. It will be a future risk. A debit of a hundred and twenty gold ingots for an unknown number of years is too great a risk. Those in favor?”
I did not see the Northerner’s look, but Beryx gave a tiny nod. Seven hands went up. “Carried,” said the Ruand. “Three ingots a month.”
“Three!” I burst out in the street. “When they sell their wool to Estar weight for weight in gold! And he’s a Northener! He uses the Raskelf! The old—old—”
“And he’s a Quarreder,” Beryx said composedly. “He remembers my Raskelf note. They like their dignity. And he knows quite well that if Everran’s ruined, Quarred will lead the Confederacy. They’ve hankered after that for years.”
“If Hawge crosses the range, he won’t be leading anything!”
There was irony in his smile. “He’ll knows I’ll talk my tongue out now to move Estar. And I just might succeed. I do the work, Estar bears the cost. Quarred’s no worse off with Hawge, and ahead in the Confederacy.” He glanced down the clean, handsome street, and grimaced. “Let’s saddle up and go.”
* * * * *
The quickest way from Heshruan to Estar is straight east to the bridge where Khallien and Mellennor join. We approached it in ceremonial garb instead of our usual farmers’ shirts and Holmyx boots, which I understood when we passed border guards on both sides, Quarred’s with wearisome formality and Estar’s with blunt demands for “identification” from the gray-clad soldiery. Beryx touched his coronal, gestured at my robe, and said with unbelievable hauteur, “Everran. And suite. Have your communications broken down?”
We sat an hour in the guard hut while it was proved they had not. Then with “cordial apologies” an unsmiling commander ushered us into Estar and a rabble fell on us waving wax tablets and shouting at the top of their lungs.
Estar is infatuated with “news.” They use mirror-signals on clear days, smoke on dull ones, fires at night, town-crier is the land’s most coveted post, and lords grow rich solely by maintaining news-takers in every Resh. These had left the nearest town after eavesdropping on the border signals, and meant to extract value for their sweat.
As the swarm landed, Beryx swept both hands before him in the scout’s signal for “Halt. No road,” and yelled, “Harran! This is yours!”
Later, when I read the signals and heard the criers, I could hardly credit it. Harpers have good memories, naturally. These could write as well, yet they put Saphar in Stiriand with Beryx challenging the dragon to single combat at its gates, had me leading the phalanx while Inyx ran away, gave Hawge four wings and horns, claimed it had incinerated the Saeverran fire-fighters, that it demanded maidens for food, and was now poised to descend on Estar. But when I exploded, Beryx said, “Don’t disturb yourself. All that matters is ‘poised to descend.’”
Not content with songs, they rushed us afterwards, all yelling at once. “What happened to your face, sir?” “Will your government fall because of the dragon?” “Is Everran bankrupt?” “What did you think of Quarred’s help?” “How do you feel about the dragon in Everran, sir?”
Beryx had been forging steadily ahead, uttering inanities: at that last question, he spun on the fresh-faced youth, who recoiled. “How would you feel,” he said harshly, “if it were in Estar?” And strode away.
We slept in Cushoth, a city bigger than Holymlase and still not the Resh-capital, lodging under siege from news-takers in the governor’s house. I now saw fresh reason for Beryx’s beginning in Holym. All Cushoth knew of us and wanted to see for themselves.
So we climbed on the dais in the town square, and I sang to immense crowds who stared, pointed, chattered, laughed, squabbled, and ate nuts throughout. Then the news-takers attacked again, this time catching me as well. “Why do you wear that robe?” “Who wrote the songs?” “Are you married?” “Is the royal marriage withstanding the dragon?” “Is that your own harp?” Beryx mouthed, “Steady,” just before I burst, so since he judged them important, I strove to stay in earshot of courtesy.
This farce went on clear to Rustarra, amid town-criers competing for sensational catch-lines. “Confederacy crumbles.” “Everran King appeals to Estar.” “Everran bankrupt: Estar next?” “Harper says, Dragon is a hypnotist.” “Death by sting and claw.” “Nervous collapse of Everran queen.” By the time we reached Rustarra, I would have paid Hawge to eat the lot.
Estar itself is stupefying: mostly dead-flat plains, every inch of them cultivated, mined, covered in towns or factories, which suck in the Confederacy’s sheep, cattle, wool, meat, hides, fish, coal, iron, tin, copper, gold, oil, silk, linen, timber, and spew out artifacts. Grain it grows itself. Resh-size fields stretch from one to the other horizon, with tillers thick as ants. And everywhere else are innumerable people, all in a frenzy of activity for the Four know what.
Rustarra, the essence of Estar, spreads for miles round the Tarrilien estuary, which has been dredged, extended with moles, and lined with endless quays. Behind them lies the town center: grimy, ornately carved official buildings, then fortified tower-like lords’ houses, then the city wall, in good repair and thick with military machinery. Outside are mile upon mile of dirty little houses, factory chimneys in place of trees, army barracks, City-Resh council houses, depots, stores, granaries, stables, slaughterhouses, reservoirs, and slums full of outcasts, all sunk in a dirty brown sludge that blots the sky, and making a noise to burden the earth.
At first I thought government was the two annually elected shophets who lead the Resh Assembly’s six-monthly sessions: finding the shophets only execute its commands, I supposed rule was the assembly’s. Then, seeing swarms of the loudest folk in Estar deafening assemblymen over causes from higher jugglers’ wages to government-issued yeldtar juice for slaughterhouse fowls, I thought this to be the government, until I realized these wind-horns never mentioned anything like trade or wages. And then I found there are men who never stand for election, never enter the assembly, never become shophet, but quietly command all those who do.
The most obvious are the lords of trade, carriage, news, and manufacture, who live wealthily but vulgarly in mansions within Rustarra’s walls and point Estar where their money wishes. Less obvious are the guilds. Estar’s number millions, for every trade from doctor to horse-boy permits only dues-paying guildsmen to follow their work, and when they strike for higher wages or cold water on tap for street-sweepers, the lords, shophets, and assembly are obliged to bow. Yet it is not these millions who actually hold the power.
Guild leaders mostly live in the poorest house available, dress meanly, keep no horses, and strive to resemble their poorest subjects. But since I never saw one without white hands, frog’s jowls, and a globular belly, I conclude that telling others to strike is a richer trade than doing it yourself.
All these people were agog to see us in the flesh. We housed with the shophets, banqueted with the lords, addressed the assembly, lectured the guilds, and were beset by news-takers, the whole of it only adding to Rustarra’s noise. “This is Estar,” said Beryx. “Think later, talk first.”
We soon attracted some wind-horns who deafened assemblymen on behalf of, “Everran’s starving children,” and were out-yelled by a group defending poor, innocent, mistreated Hawge: “An evolutionary treasure that must be preserved.” We ourselves were objects of intense interest, for Estar thinks monarchy “so quaint,” and royal retainers quainter still. I was asked how much the king paid me, if he beat me, if I could leave him or was a palace thrall, if my wages were “tied to inflation,” if I had a guild to protect me, and if he censored my songs.
After that one flare at the border, Beryx had Estar’s key, and would now, unblinking, tell the most stupendous lies. Asked if I really “bit the dragon to make it talk,” I nearly choked with rage before catching a bland green eye.
So in self-defense I spread my own slanders, that Beryx used a whip on his chamberlain, dined off gold and threw the plates away, beheaded generals who disputed his orders—that one almost cracked Beryx’s public face—and locked up his council for three days on bread and water before he consulted them. But next time a squat factory-lord’s wife dripping fur and thillians asked if he “really had first choice of all Everran’s virgins,” he waved at me and answered demurely, “Ask my scribe: he knows court etiquette back to front.”
Among the mountebanks a group of scholars, who are lorebards without music, invited me to a conference. These were called Draconists, their lore being dragons, so I went with alacrity, hoping to learn something of use.
First they asked if I were a master or a doctor, taking my robe for an Everran scholar’s gown. Then they said songs were not “scientific data” and wanted to know if Hawge laid eggs or was marsupial, how many teeth it had, if it hibernated, and how much it weighed, before forgetting me in a furious combat over Hawge’s classification as a “worm” or a “firedrake,” and its descent from insects, on account of its eyes, or reptiles, on account of its legs. Later, some actually extracted money from the government and went off to study it, armed with theories of dragon-language and something called a “submission crouch.” They lived three days round Kerymgjer before Hawge came out feeling peckish and ate the lot.
Away from these sideshows, Beryx was visiting lords and guild-leaders and making useful talk. A grain lord does not like to hear how Hawge ravaged a Resh in a night, nor a weaver lord how his wool-stores would burn: “all that grease.” Nor does a weapon lord wish to consider how Estarian sarissas bent on Hawge like pins: “such a bad advertisement.” Guild-leaders melted for Everran’s jobless, while both lords and guild-leaders winced at the thought of drinking no more Everran wine. “We’ll go to assembly,” Beryx told me, “when we’ve won the assembly ground.”
Meanwhile I searched for a weapon, not among the potentates, but in the slum taverns where Estar’s surviving harpers play. I liked the slums. They are ridden with thieves and violence, hatred, envy, hardship, dirt, and beggars who would wheedle a gold ingot out of Hawge, but they are human as newsworthy Estarians are not. Moreover, they liked harpers: especially the harper of “Thorgan Fenglos” himself.
It means, The Moon-faced King. It refers to the scar, and at first I disliked it, for Feng is the moon’s bad aspect, the lamp of robbers, demons, and ghosts. But in truth it was a sign of liking. They saw Beryx as a fellow loser, and would have wished to see him win.
But the harpers had less lore than I, and even in the Confederacy’s arsenal nobody knew of a notable weapon recently made. After a week I gave up, and went home to find Beryx’s assembly assault prepared at last.
For three days shophets, delegates, and Beryx made speeches which the news-takers regurgitated for the people, while the wind-horns went hoarse and one news-taker scaled the shophet’s bath-house window to eavesdrop on our talk and win “the inside news.” On the third day, when I was all but deaf and most orators voiceless, the assembly was near a vote—but then some wind-horn made an oration from the city wall on the moral outrage of a republic backing a monarchy, corrupt by definition, against an innocent beast only wanting love and understanding to make it sweet as mother’s milk.
The news-takers were in ecstasy. The wind-horns went hoarse. The guild-leaders suddenly recalled they were against lords on principle, and Beryx was clearly a paramount lord. The lords, unnerved by the thought of Hawge led on a string into Estar, leant on the assembly, which voted Everran twelve ingots a month. At this the guild-leaders announced to the news-takers, “Any aid to Everran, and Estar will have a general strike.”
This is apparently more fearful than the plague. The lords bent, the shophets recalled the assembly, which obediently reversed its vote. Everran would get nothing at all.
Beryx came out of the assembly hall like a red-eyed arrow, clove a phalanx of news-takers, grabbed my arm, bellowed, “Get the gear!” bade our servants take the horses to the Isthmus, and whipped me straight down to the docks. Halfway along was a Hazghend whaler which had been discharging oil. Beryx yelled up at her captain, “Are you sailing? Yes? To Hazghend? Yes? No matter where! Will you take two passengers? Yes? We’re coming aboard!” And we were out of Rustarra on that evening’s ebb.
* * * * *
All through that I had not dared speak to him. His eyes were quite black, and the scar, which had been fading, stood out lividly. But when Rustarra was a mere yellow glow on the smirched horizon and an easterly was lifting the whaler with a horse’s living roll and surge, so I was wondering if whale stink would make me sea-sick, he came swiftly across the after-deck to grip me by the arm.
“Four preserve me,” he said, “from news-takers, puppet assemblies, Yea-saying shophets, and all other word bungle-ists.” He broke into a laugh. “Except harpers, of course.”
It was a surprise to find the sun shone and the world had color, after Estar’s murk. We ran the coast westerly, across Belphan Fer and past the huge forehead of Culphan Skos, athwart the path of the late summer storms, which would blot the uplands in tumors of lightning-livid cloud and buffet us madly as they passed. But the whaler was two years out, her crew sick for home, and though the skipper was happy to land us at Hazghend’s capital in Hazruan, rather than his home port of Tyr Saeveryr, he was not yielding way to storms. He laid his course further seaward, cutting across the vast bay of Belphan Wyre, straight for Culphan Saeveryr, “the cape where the wind turns,” and shook out another reef as he went.
From the sea Hazghend is beautiful, a wild coast of cliff and cape with inlets so long their gores of tourmaline water dovetail straight into the mountains that draw snow in winter, are too rocky for anything but goats, and rise in their capricious splendor straight from the turbulent cobalt and emerald-shot sea. One moment it is eggshell blue, the next purple with thunder, then lost in white squalls of rain. There are no factories. The air is clear as polished crystal, and as cold. You pass fisher-boats, or whalers, or freighters out for hire, or the long low galleys in which Hazyx go raiding. Ship-building is Hazghend’s fourth-favorite occupation, after drinking, fighting, and going to sea.
Hazruan lies in the longest narrowest inlet of all, with Culphan Saeveryr’s black-cliffed peninsula stretching south, and the gray morose bulk of Culphan Morglis squatted to its north. The inlet is walled in sheer after sheer of midnight green pines mirrored a darker green in green-tinged sea, with tiny fish-villages, shipyards, laid-up galleys, and careened schooners in the coves between. At the inlet’s head, the massif lifts straight to Asterne Brenx’s snow-tipped fang, and beneath it Hazruan’s stockade and timbered roofs crown the red and gray cliff, over a crescent of beach crammed with everything from fishing dories to the galleys of Ragnor’s lords. Hazyx fight corsairs when they are raided and hunt them when others pay, and are otherwise indistinguishable, except to themselves.
We clambered into a whaleboat amid cries of, “No trouble! Good fishing!” and were rowed into the uproar of taverns and fishing nets, impromptu auctions and barterings of spoil. Threading the crowd of blonde, bellowing Hazyx who brandished cups, axes, women, and oars, we reached the steps that Ragnor calls his front door.
They are bare holes in the cliff where you mount in single file, and all the way the two mighty catapults above Hazruan’s stockade stare silently down on you. They can throw clear to the opposite cliff. Ragnor, as he puts it, “does not like to be surprised.”
His hall tunes with Hazghend: ship timbers mostly, I suspect, high-treed and cavernous, hung with trophies more bizarre than Inyx’s, above benches and trestle tables built to withstand Hazyk quarrels as well as their rumps. It is full of smoke from the huge rough-stone fireplace, with rushes on the floor and arm-thick tallow dips around the walls, a perfect corsairs’ lair. But a hearthbard sat on the fire’s right, and Ragnor himself, albeit on sealskins, occupied a king’s chair. Already I felt at home.
As is the custom, we entered without ceremony. All friends are welcome, and if any enemy did get past the gate, the hall is full of Ragnor’s blood-vowed warriors. When I let the hide door-curtain drop, Ragnor looked up sharply from his wine.
He is a golden bull of a man, red-faced, blue-eyed, burly as Gjarr, with a sword-cut across the nose to give him character. He pulled his head back as if struck. Then he almost shot out of his chair.
“By Rienvur’s flaming steeds!” Hazyx do not follow the Sky-lords, but the Crimson Planet, master of war. “By the—it is!” That bellow shook the candle-flames. “Beryx! You skinny upland grape-squeezer, what have you done to your arm?”
I did not know whether to wince or curse. But to my utter amazement Beryx retorted, grinning, “You windy seaside octopus, a dragon dropped me on it.”
“Dragon, uh?” rumbled Ragnor when we were seated at his high table, behind ornate silver goblets of Everran wine and huge portions of spit-roasted sheep. “Courtesy of Quarred,” said Ragnor briefly, and at Beryx’s look his blue eyes twinkled yet more brilliantly. “Well, let’s hear.”
“Courtesy of your hearthbard,” answered Beryx, “and if mine isn’t sick of it, he can tell the tale.”
Hazyx are prodigal in appreciation as all else. Amid the thunder of beaten cups, two or three gold armrings came arching at my head, and Ragnor laughed and said, “Don’t give those to Hawge.” Then he looked at Beryx with a glinting grin.
“Well, you upland fox, you didn’t come here for sheep—or cattle. Did you?” Ragnor may look a beer-swilling pirate, but you do not make yourself Ruand of Hazghend, and hold together a country unsecured by inheritance and rotten with blood-feuds, unless your sword arm is bettered by your head.
Beryx spat in the fire. He related our reception in Holym, Quarred, and Estar. Ragnor spat too.
“I owe you,” he said, “for the corsairs. But then, you also owe me—yes?”
Beryx’s grin was as glinting as his own. “Was it you who told me about the king and the yeldtars? Or did I tell you?”
The tale is hoary as harps: the tyrant asked by a green fellow tyrant for a ruler’s recipe, who takes the messenger into his garden and silently uses his stick to lop the tallest yeldtar heads. Ragnor chuckled and slapped his thigh. “Ah, well, take that one. Gjarr’s boots were getting a sight too big. We’ll start even. What is it you want?”
“Seven gold ingots a month,” Beryx said bluntly, “and a weapon that hasn’t been forged.”
In the next ten minutes he had every weapon in Hazruan at his feet or across his knees. Two-handed swords, curved lopping knives, double-headed axes, boot-top daggers, bows tall as a man or shorter than my arm, thrusting, throwing, fighting, hunting spears, maces and sling-throwers, jeweled, gold- and silver-chased, hafted or scabbarded in ivory, in blood-tinged wood or plain greasy iron. Beryx smiled at Ragnor across them, rather ruefully. “You know my Guard?” he said. “I took them to Coed Wrock.”
Ragnor whistled. Then he laughed. “A poxy great hedgehog that falls apart if one man gets out of step!”
“The dragon,” Beryx replied, “was very taken with Gjarr’s axe.”
Ragnor frowned: then he sighed. Then he said, “So, Scarface.” To my wonder, Beryx looked quite pleased. “I can’t give you a weapon. As for gold... You know how I am. I don’t have these measly account books and fat scribes to sit about playing treasuries. If it’s here I give it away, and if it’s not I go out and get some more. No sea-lord worth a dipper of pitch does otherwise. ‘Open-handed’—you know how it goes.”
Beryx nodded. I knew too. It is the first epithet Hazyk bards apply to a great king, the first thing warriors seek after a champion’s prowess, the keel of Hazghend government.
Ragnor looked down the hall. “You could try to take it back, but—” A gleeful chuckle. “It’d be a long day’s work.”
Beryx nodded again. Ragnor shifted in his chair.
“Everran bad, uh?” he asked abruptly.
Beryx said, “Yes.”
Ragnor pondered. “I’ve ten galleys beached. A day or so’d crew them. Which do you fancy—sheep or goats?”
Beryx shook his head. “You’d reach Heshruan no more than half strength. You’d never get back. And Rustarra’s armed the mole with catapults.”
“Flat-worms. No spirit of adventure,” Ragnor complained. He looked sideways. His face softened. “Rienvur, gimme a catapult before word-throwers, any day.”
Then, of a sudden, he began to strip off his gold arm-rings: flat, round, thick as thumbs, headed with boars and dragons, inlaid with enamel, running from wrist almost to shoulder on both arms. His golden torque followed, a couple of gold chains, his dagger with thillian-encrusted hilt. “Can’t have the sword. I’ll want that.” Then he rose and bellowed down the hall. “Hoy! Hoy! You beer-guzzling gut-fillers! I want your gear!”
“Melt it down,” he said across the heap. “I dunno what it’ll make in ingots, but it ought to do one month. I’ll send you more.”
Beryx looked up at him. He was smiling, in a way that reminded me how he had looked at his thousand volunteers.
“Thanks,” he said softly, “pirate.” His mouth-corners lifted. “Now all I need is a... ship.”
Ragnor flung both arms in the air and nearly snuffed the candle-flames. “You guzzling land-shark! Next time I’ll take the dragon neat!”
He found us a ship, a low, lean schooner, “fastest thing with masts,” but not even Ragnor the open-hearted and open-handed could find us a wind. We woke to a ferocious southerly, blasting up from the ice with all its chill and twice its power, and Ragnor shook his head. “No, Scarface,” he said. “I’ll give away gold, but not throw it. She’d never get round the cape.”
Beryx bit his lip. “I’m over the three months,” he said. “And new moon’s in ten days.”
Ragnor was at a loss. Then his face cleared. “Come on,” he clapped Beryx’s shoulder. “Best lore in the world: when you can’t do anything else, get drunk.”
He must have had a head like Hawge’s hide, for he was drunk all of seven nights afterward. And every night the southerly pounded Hazghend, and every morning he and Beryx clambered to the spy-post to come down salt-rimed and teary and grimmer than before.
Beryx wanted to take a galley. Ragnor said, “Give you one and welcome, but she won’t weather Morglis either. You’ll swamp in the open bay.” He stared out where Culphan Morglis humped gray and obdurate, with swathes of spray obscuring its crest as the fifteen-foot rollers came tearing in and blew up marbled and foaming and green as Hawge’s eyes. “First of the season’s busters. Thing must have the Eye on you, Scarface. Earliest one I’ve ever known.”
Hazruan did its best to solace us. I learnt three fine sea-songs from the bard, and could have had other comfort if I chose. The Hazyk girls respect harpers, and find more subtle gallantries than, “Lie down, you pretty harlot,” very much to their taste. The trouble was, Sellithar would not let me warm myself.
* * * * *
The eighth morning Ragnor slitted his eyes at the sea a long time, the look of a Holmyx measuring a well-known and wicked bull he means to yard. Then he said abruptly, “Give it a try.”
He gave us his own war galley and chose the crew himself, weeding ruthlessly through brawny battalions. Then he swung up beneath the high, gaudily painted sternpost, laid a hand on the steering oar, and glanced along her seventy feet to the dragon head rearing with scarlet jaws and golden scales above her prow, the look of a man for a well-beloved sword. “Tie your ears on, Scarface,” he said. “If anything can get you there, it’s Beraza.”
He had shipped five extra hands: “bailers.” As he nodded one hulk to the steering oar, Beryx jumped up. Ragnor said rudely, “When I’m gutting sharks with m’war spear, I’ll let you know.” Beryx, with a grin, sat meekly down.
Ragnor took her out, the men rowing almost lazily, while she bucked crossways to the swell and the fine spray chased across her bows. Gradually the swells deepened. They put more power in their strokes. Two hours later the troughs were ten feet deep, Culphan Morglis lay over the sternpost, the ship was bounding like a maddened horse, and the bailers were working for their lives. Ragnor bellowed, “Give ’em a hand, harper! Good’n steady!” Shot a glance seaward and roared into the sea-roar, “Ready to tack!”
The rest is a blur of water and terror and unbroken singing that has permanently impaired my voice, from the green hill that sat on our bow as the stern whipped up to the incoming roller to the frenzy that succeeded it as the gale thrashed seas in on our quarter and the Beraza cork-screwed and leapt and dived and bucked like a lunatic net-float with no two planks the same way at once, while the keel groaned and the bailers worked like madmen and Ragnor fought the steering oar with every tremendous muscle and roared pitilessly, “Port! Starb’d! Heave! Hold! Send her! C’mon, harper, sing!” While the oars bent like lathes as the rowers soused head-under and came up spluttering, then sobbing like winded horses, and Morglis slavered over its escaping prey, while the salt got up my nose, down my throat, into my lungs—until they set the sail with three men hauled back from overboard, before I sang for those whole thirty-six hours while Beraza plunged and rolled her heart out as she ran under sail and oar slantwise to the unrelenting wind, first north-east up the outer width of Belphan Wyre, then north-west up the narrow inner arm to Tistyr’s blessed mole.
Ragnor called in the rags of a whisper to a staring Quarreder, “Catch t’warp!” The crew collapsed where they sat. The white-coated dripping ship finally fell still. And Beryx, who had been baling in the thick of it with his right arm anchored over a thwart, got out of the bilge in the scraps of his crimson cloak, looked over to Ragnor, and quietly shook his head.
Ragnor grinned back, slumped over the steering oar, a frosted snowman with wine-red eyes. “Wanna say anything,” he whispered, “use that bard of yours. He’s not too bad.”