Read Online Avenger of Antares by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online Page B

so. I had acted the part of the foppish buffoon, too feeble to grasp a sword in earnest, even though I had wounded, as though by accident, a Strom in a duel. Duels were regulated by the laws, a part and parcel of the raffish, exciting, foppish, decadent life of the sacred quarter.
    “Nulty,” I said. He looked up quickly at my tone. “You have done right. You will collect all the people you know. I am sure you have picked well. You will no longer be my body-servant, you will be Crebent of Paline Valley.” A Crebent stands rather in the light of a bailiff or castellan, a trusted man who commands and operates estates, castles, industries, for his master. He looked at me, and I did not know, at first, if joy or sorrow was the predominant emotion he felt.
    Then: “I thank you, master. I shall be a loyal Crebent. I joy in that and in your trust in me.” He scowled. “But, by Havil the Green, I wish you were returning yourself!”
    “That cannot be. You know, Nulty. But I fancy we have nowhere near enough money to finance a return.”
    “No, Amak.”
    “In that case, Nulty, I really think that Hamun ham Farthytu will have to forget what he told you at the shrine of Beng Salter.”
    A fierce and unholy satisfaction lit Nulty’s hairy face then. He brushed his mop of hair back and glared with joy upon me. “And we will inscribe the name of ham Farthytu on a fine marble monument in the Palace of Names!”
    “We will, Nulty.”
    This we did, in all pomp and ceremony, after the events I am about to relate. In addition to Nulty’s clear excitement at recruiting people to go to Paline Valley, a long distance, and there put the estates back into order, I sensed that these people who would go with him, guls and clums, were also quite anxious — to pitch it no higher — to leave Ruathytu at this moment. The army would be out recruiting in full force, soon. There were many of the poorer folk who would be willingly admitted to the army, where previously that career would have been closed to them. Mind you, I was realistic enough to realize that no gul, let alone a clum, stood any chance of making promotion past the rank of so-Deldar, and that only after he was extraordinarily lucky and had survived battles enough to have made a more fortunately placed man an ord-Hikdar at the least.
    “How much money do we have left, Nulty?”
    He made a face and went and fetched the lenken chest with the brass hinges and locks. He took out four golden deldys, five silver sinvers, and a leather bag of obs.
    “Is that all?”
    “You took everything with you, Amak, when you went away.”
    “So I did. And I sold the voller, too.”
    Nulty was not to know that all that money had been used to bribe my way to the secrets of the vollers. I cleared my throat and lifted the cup and the tea was cold. I could use that fact to clear the moment, and I bellowed: “Nulty! Tea, Nulty, tea!”
    “Yes, master!”
    So that was what he thought of my gambling habits.
    I quite agreed with him.
    The plan, then, when it was formed, came out of necessity and vicissitude. It was not foolproof, but it was serviceable.
    Unlike some men who would have jumped up right away and gone roaring off to find their friends of the sacred quarter and start the ball rolling, I sat and drank the tea Nulty brought. No tea, and especially Kregan tea, can be taken lightly or without due thought.
    The fates of nations hung on my actions here in Hamal — this is true — and yet I spent time working a petty little gamble in order to send a pack of folk a bare step above slaves to a distant estate to renovate it. Truly, I wondered if I was quite sane, and fretted over just how I could explain my foolish actions to Delia.
    Would she say that a true Vallian would consign all these cramphs of Hamalians to the Ice Floes of Sicce? Somehow, I thought my Delia would not say that, would understand what I was doing and applaud.
    Thus with Delia uppermost in my mind — the most usual and loving