Read Online Storm over Vallia by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online
Authors: Alan Burt Akers
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Poor hulus! If she’d... Well, they’d have either run screaming, or tried to scream without faces...
It was absolutely imperative then for her to lean against the greasy wall and to suck in draughts of the evening air. She did not so much shudder as let the shakes cleanse the feeling of dirt from her.
After wiping her forehead, she cleaned the rapier on the oiled rag all prudent warriors carried against this kind of eventuality, and sauntered out onto the street.
There was, of course, no sign of the four drunks and their evil genius, Nath. What his sobriquet might be, Silda did not know. Probably it was the Cunning, or the Clever, or the Fixer.
Plenty of the girls she knew would piously hope that the little runt’s elbow would seize up and would never work properly again.
And, being apim, Homo sapiens, he had only two arms.
The various races of Kregen blessed with four arms, or a tail hand, were, she had often thought, extremely lucky. To have four arms in a fight! Or to have a tail with a dagger strapped to the tip, or, like the Pachaks, a hand with which to grasp a blade... How perfectly splendid that would be!
Walking along, she kept herself more on the qui vive than she would have done before the fracas. Lon the Knees had said that he did not think The Leather Bottle would be the nicest place for a lady to meet him, and had suggested an inn, The Silver Lotus, which he considered suitable. In the ordinary course of his life, Lon would never dream of entering so expensive and so — to him — high class an establishment. But he’d mumbled something to her about a deal he could arrange, and she’d gathered he was going to do something particular to find the silver stivers necessary for admittance.
People like Lon, and those louts back there, habitually worked in copper or bronze coins. Silver was hailed with joy. Gold — wha’ that?
Just about the only way they’d get their Diproo-fingers on gold was the way they’d tried in the alley. And, to be sure, during the Times of Troubles many lawless men had snatched more gold than they, their fathers and grandfathers, and sons and grandsons, would ordinarily see in their combined lifetimes.
Lon the Knees, face aflame, nose a purple beacon, eyes brimming, looked splendiferous. He glowed. He waited under the dismounting porch so that he might enter the inn with the lady, and glory in the feeling that all eyes would be fixed upon his companion.
“Lahal, Lon.”
“Lahal, my lady.”
Silda composed her face. Then she contrived a dazzling smile. She really wanted to bust a gut laughing.
Lon! Lon the Knees! His famous bandy legs were encased in riding breeches that almost fitted, and their color owed more to judiciously applied brown chalk than to natural cloth. He’d borrowed those, that was for sure. Yet they were not too far removed from the usual Vallian buff breeches the gentlefolk wore.
His boots glittered. Silda did not make too close an inspection of them. But that superb polished shine, that had come only from loving ministrations right here under the dismounting porch, for most people’s boots were dusty if they walked a pace or two. Her own were a sorry mess compared with Lon’s.
And his coat! Now where the hell had he got that from? Originally the garment had been a khiganer, a heavy brown tunic that fastened by a wide flap along the left side of the body and along the left shoulder. The neck came in a variety of styles, and this specimen possessed what appeared to Silda to be the highest, stiffest, most constricting neck she’d ever seen fitted to a khiganer. Lon’s chin jutted out like a chick sticking his neck out of the egg.
The arms of the khiganer had been cut off to reveal the loose flowing sleeves of Lon’s shirt. The color was ivory, for he did not wear the normal bands of color denoting allegiances. Silda was prepared to take a bet that Lon was wearing sleeves and no shirt at all.
He wore no hat. This was probably, Silda
Poor hulus! If she’d... Well, they’d have either run screaming, or tried to scream without faces...
It was absolutely imperative then for her to lean against the greasy wall and to suck in draughts of the evening air. She did not so much shudder as let the shakes cleanse the feeling of dirt from her.
After wiping her forehead, she cleaned the rapier on the oiled rag all prudent warriors carried against this kind of eventuality, and sauntered out onto the street.
There was, of course, no sign of the four drunks and their evil genius, Nath. What his sobriquet might be, Silda did not know. Probably it was the Cunning, or the Clever, or the Fixer.
Plenty of the girls she knew would piously hope that the little runt’s elbow would seize up and would never work properly again.
And, being apim, Homo sapiens, he had only two arms.
The various races of Kregen blessed with four arms, or a tail hand, were, she had often thought, extremely lucky. To have four arms in a fight! Or to have a tail with a dagger strapped to the tip, or, like the Pachaks, a hand with which to grasp a blade... How perfectly splendid that would be!
Walking along, she kept herself more on the qui vive than she would have done before the fracas. Lon the Knees had said that he did not think The Leather Bottle would be the nicest place for a lady to meet him, and had suggested an inn, The Silver Lotus, which he considered suitable. In the ordinary course of his life, Lon would never dream of entering so expensive and so — to him — high class an establishment. But he’d mumbled something to her about a deal he could arrange, and she’d gathered he was going to do something particular to find the silver stivers necessary for admittance.
People like Lon, and those louts back there, habitually worked in copper or bronze coins. Silver was hailed with joy. Gold — wha’ that?
Just about the only way they’d get their Diproo-fingers on gold was the way they’d tried in the alley. And, to be sure, during the Times of Troubles many lawless men had snatched more gold than they, their fathers and grandfathers, and sons and grandsons, would ordinarily see in their combined lifetimes.
Lon the Knees, face aflame, nose a purple beacon, eyes brimming, looked splendiferous. He glowed. He waited under the dismounting porch so that he might enter the inn with the lady, and glory in the feeling that all eyes would be fixed upon his companion.
“Lahal, Lon.”
“Lahal, my lady.”
Silda composed her face. Then she contrived a dazzling smile. She really wanted to bust a gut laughing.
Lon! Lon the Knees! His famous bandy legs were encased in riding breeches that almost fitted, and their color owed more to judiciously applied brown chalk than to natural cloth. He’d borrowed those, that was for sure. Yet they were not too far removed from the usual Vallian buff breeches the gentlefolk wore.
His boots glittered. Silda did not make too close an inspection of them. But that superb polished shine, that had come only from loving ministrations right here under the dismounting porch, for most people’s boots were dusty if they walked a pace or two. Her own were a sorry mess compared with Lon’s.
And his coat! Now where the hell had he got that from? Originally the garment had been a khiganer, a heavy brown tunic that fastened by a wide flap along the left side of the body and along the left shoulder. The neck came in a variety of styles, and this specimen possessed what appeared to Silda to be the highest, stiffest, most constricting neck she’d ever seen fitted to a khiganer. Lon’s chin jutted out like a chick sticking his neck out of the egg.
The arms of the khiganer had been cut off to reveal the loose flowing sleeves of Lon’s shirt. The color was ivory, for he did not wear the normal bands of color denoting allegiances. Silda was prepared to take a bet that Lon was wearing sleeves and no shirt at all.
He wore no hat. This was probably, Silda
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