INSIDE THE RED stockade there was a crowded
community. The Salariki demanded privacy of a kind, and even the
unmarried warriors did not share barracks, but each had a small
cubicle of his own. So that the mud brick and timber erections of
one of their clan cities resembled nothing so much as the comb
cells of a busy beehive. Although Paft’s was considered a
large clan, it numbered only about two hundred fighting men and
their numerous wives, children and captive servants. Not all of
them normally lived at this center, but for the funeral feasting
they had assembled—which meant a lot of doubling up and
tenting out under makeshift cover between the regular buildings of
the town. So that the Terrans were glad to be guided through this crowded
maze to the Great Hall which was its heart.
As the trading center had been, the hall was a circular
enclosure open to the sky above but divided in wheel-spoke fashion
with posts of the red wood, each supporting a metal basket filled
with inflammable material. Here were no lowly stools or trading
tables. One vast circular board, broken only by a gap at the foot,
ran completely around the wall. At the end opposite the entrance
was the high chair of the chieftain, set on a two step dais. Though
the feast had not yet officially begun, the Terrans saw that the
majority of the places were already occupied.
They were led around the perimeter of the enclosure to places
not far from the high seat. Van Rycke settled down with a grunt of
satisfaction. It was plain that the Free Traders were numbered
among the nobility. They could be sure of good trade in the days to
come.
Delegations from neighboring clans arrived in close companies of
ten or twelve and were granted seats, as had been the Terrans, in
groups. Dane noted that there was no intermingling of clan with
clan. And, as they were to understand later that night, there was a
very good reason for that precaution.
“Hope all our adaption shots work,” Ali murmured,
eyeing with no pleasure at all the succession of platters now being
borne through the inner opening of the table.
While the Traders had learned long ago that the wisest part of
valor was not to sample alien strong drinks, ceremony often
required that they break bread (or its other world equivalent) on
strange planets. And so science served expediency and now a Trader
bound for any Galactic banquet was immunized, as far as was
medically possible, against the evil consequences of consuming food
not originally intended for Terran stomachs. One of the results
being that Traders acquired a far flung reputation of possessing
bird-like appetites—since it was always better to nibble and
live, than to gorge and die.
Groft had not yet taken his place in the vacant
chieftain’s chair. For the present he stood in the center of
the table circle, directing the captive slaves who circulated with
the food. Until the magic moment when the clan themselves would
proclaim him their overlord, he remained merely the eldest son of
the house, relatively without power.
As the endless rows of platters made their way about the table
the basket lights on the tops of the pillars were ignited,
dispelling the dusk of evening. And there was an attendant
stationed by each to throw on handful of aromatic bark which burned
with puffs of lavender smoke, adding to the many warring scents.
The Terrans had recourse at intervals to their own pungent smelling
bottles, merely to clear their heads of the drugging fumes.
Luckily, Dane thought as the feast proceeded, that smoke from
the braziers went straight up. Had they been in a roofed space they
might have been overcome. As it was—were they entirely
conscious of all that was going on around them?
His reason for that speculation was the dance now being
performed in the center of the hall—their fight with the Gorp
being enacted in a series of bounds and stabbings. He was sure that
he could no longer trust his eyes when the claw knife of the
victorious dancer-hunter apparently passed completely through the
chest of another wearing a grotesque monster mask.
As a fitting climax to their horrific display, three of the men
who had been with them on the reef entered, dragging behind
them—still enmeshed in the hunting net—the Gorp which
Dane had stunned. It was uncurled now and very much alive, but the
pincer claws which might have cut its way to safety were encased in
balls of hard substance.
Freed from the net, suspended by its sealed claws, the Gorp
swung back and forth from a standard set up before the high seat.
Its murderous jaws snapped futilely, and from it came an enraged
snake’s vicious hissing. Though totally in the power of its
enemies it gave an impression of terrifying strength and
menace.
The sight of their ancient foe aroused the Salariki, inflaming
warriors who leaned across the table to hurl tongue-twisting
invective at the captive monster. Dane gathered that seldom had a
living Gorp been delivered helpless into their hands and they
proposed to make the most of this wonderful opportunity. And the
Terran suddenly wished that the monstrosity had fallen back into
the sea. He had no soft thoughts for the Gorp after what he had
seen at the reef and the tales he had heard, but neither did he
like what he saw now expressed in gestures, heard in the tones of
voices about them.
A storm priest put an end to the outcries. His dun cloak making
a spot of darkness amid all the flashing color, he came straight to
the place where the Gorp swung. As he took his stand before the
wriggling creature the din gradually faded, the warriors settled
back into their seats, a pool of quiet spread through the
enclosure.
Groft came up to take his position beside the priest. With both
hands he carried a two handled cup. It was not the ornamented
goblet which stood before each diner, but a manifestly older
artifact, fashioned of some dull black substance and having the
appearance of being even older than the hall or town.
One of the warriors who had helped to bring in the Gorp now made
a quick and accurate cast with a looped rope, snaring the
monster’s head and pulling back almost at a right angle. With
deliberation the storm priest produced a knife—the first straight
bladed weapon Dane had seen on Sargol. He made a single thrust in
the soft underpart of the Gorp’s throat, catching in the cup
he took from Groft some of the ichor which spurted from the
wound.
The Gorp thrashed madly, spattering table and surrounding
Salariki with its life fluid, but the attention of the crowd was
riveted elsewhere. Into the old cup the priest poured another
substance from a flask brought by an underling. He shook the cup
back and forth, as if to mix its contents thoroughly and then
handed it to Groft.
Holding it before him the young chieftain leaped to the table
top and so to a stand before the high seat. There was a hush
throughout the enclosure. Now even the Gorp had ceased its wild
struggles and hung limp in its bonds.
Groft raised the cup above his head and gave a loud shout in the
archaic language of his clan. He was answered by a chant from the
warriors who would in battle follow his banner, a chant punctuated
with the clinking slap of knife blades brought down forcibly on the
board.
Three times he recited some formula and was answered by the
others. Then, in another period of sudden quiet, he raised the cup
to his lips and drank off its contents in a single draught, turning
the goblet upside down when he had done to prove that not a drop
remained within. A shout tore through the great hall. The Salariki
were all on their feet, waving their knives over their heads in
honor to their new ruler. And Groft for the first time seated
himself in the high seat. The clan was no longer without a
chieftain, Groft held his father’s place.
“Show over?” Dane heard Stotz murmur and Van
Rycke’s disappointing reply:
“Not yet. They’ll probably make a night of it. Here
comes another round of drinks—”
“And trouble with them,” that was Captain Jellico
being prophetic.
“By the Coalsack’s Ripcord!” That exclamation
had been jolted out of Rip and Dane turned to see what had so
jarred the usually serene Astrogator-apprentice. He was just in
time to witness an important piece of Sargolian social
practice.
A young warrior, surely only within a year or so of receiving
his knife, was facing an older Salarik, both on their feet. The
head and shoulder fur of the older fighter was dripping wet and an
empty goblet rolled across the table to bump to the floor. A hush
had fallen on the immediate neighbors of the pair, and there was an
air of expectancy about the company.
”Threw his drink all over the other fellow,”
Rip’s soft whisper explained. “That means a
duel—”
“Here and now?” Dane had heard of the personal
combat proclivities of the Salariki.
“Should be to the death for an insult such as that,”
Ali remarked, as usual surveying the scene from his chosen role as
bystander. As a child he had survived the unspeakable massacres of
the Crater War, nothing had been able to crack his surface armor
since.
“The young fool!” that was Steen Wilcox sizing up
the situation from the angle of a naturally cautious nature and
some fifteen years of experience on a great many different worlds.
“He’ll be mustered out for good before he knows what
happened to him!”
The younger Salarik had barked a question at his elder and had
been promptly answered by that dripping warrior. Now their
neighbors came to life with an efficiency which suggested that they
had been waiting for such a move, it had happened so many times
that every man knew just the right procedure from that point
on.
In order for a Sargolian feast to be a success, the Terrans
gathered from overheard remarks, at least one duel must be staged
sometime during the festivities. And those not actively engaged did
a lot of brisk betting in the background.
“Look there—at that fellow in the violet
cloak,” Rip directed Dane. “See what he just laid
down?”
The nobleman in the violet cloak was not one of Croft’s
liege men, but a member of the delegation from another clan. And
what he had laid down on the table—indicating as he did so
his choice as winner in the coming combat, the elder
warrior—was a small piece of white material on which reposed
a slightly withered but familiar leaf. The neighbor he wagered
with eyed the stake narrowly, bending over to sniff at it, before
he piled up two gem set armlets, a personal scent box and a thumb
ring to balance.
At this practical indication of just how much the Terran herb
was esteemed Dane regretted anew their earlier ignorance. He glanced along the board and saw that Van Rycke had
noted that stake and was calling their Captain’s attention to
it.
But such side issues were forgotten as the duelists vaulted into
the circle rimmed by the table, a space now vacated for their
action. They were stripped to their loin cloths, their cloaks
thrown aside. Each carried his net in his right hand, his claw
knife ready in his left. As yet the Traders had not seen Salarik
against Salarik in action and in spite of themselves they edged
forward in their seats, as intent as the natives upon what was to
come. The finer points of the combat were lost on them, and they
did not understand the drilled casts of the net, which had become
as formalized through the centuries as the ancient and now almost
forgotten swordplay of their own world. The young Salarik had
greater agility and speed, but the veteran who faced him had the
experience.
To Terran eyes the duel had some of the weaving, sweeping
movements of the earlier ritual dance. The swift evasions of the
nets were graceful and so timed that many times the meshes grazed
the skin of the fighter who fled entrapment.
Dane believed that the elder man was tiring, and the youngster
must have shared that opinion. There was a leap to the right, a
sudden flurry of dart and retreat, and then a net curled high and
fell, enfolding flailing arms and kicking legs. When the clutch
rope was jerked tight, the captured youth was thrown off balance.
He rolled frenziedly, but there was no escaping the imprisoning
strands.
A shout applauded the victor. He stood now above his captive who
lay supine, his throat or breast ready for either stroke of the
knife his captor wished to deliver. But it appeared that the winner
was not minded to end the encounter with blood. Instead he reached
out a long, be-furred arm, took up a filled goblet from the table
and with serious deliberation, poured its contents onto the
upturned face of the loser.
For a moment there was a dead silence around the feast board and then a second roar, to which the honestly relieved
Terrans added spurts of laughter. The sputtering youth was shaken
free of the net and went down on his knees, tendering his opponent
his knife, which the other thrust along with his own into his sash
belt. Dane gathered from overheard remarks that the younger man
was, for a period of time, to be determined by clan council, now
the servant-slave of his over-thrower and that since they were
closely united by blood ties, this solution was considered
eminently suitable—though had the elder killed his opponent,
no one would have thought the worse of him for that deed.
It was the Queen’s men who were to provide the next center
of attraction. Groft climbed down from his high seat and came to
face across the board those who had accompanied him on the hunt.
This time there was no escaping the sipping of the potent drink
which the new chieftain slopped from his own goblet into each of
theirs.
The fiery mouthful almost gagged Dane, but he swallowed manfully
and hoped for the best as it burned like acid down his throat into
his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had
eaten. Weeks’ thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed
with malicious enjoyment that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the
table which made his knuckles stand out in polished
knobs—proving that there were things which could
upset the imperturbable Kamil.
Fortunately they were not required to empty that
flowing bowl in one gulp as Groft had done. The ceremonial mouthful
was deemed enough and Dane sat down thankfully—but with
uneasy fears for the future.
Groft had started back to his high seat when there was an
interruption which had not been foreseen. A messenger threaded his
way among the serving men and spoke to the chieftain, who glanced
at the Terrans and then nodded.
Dane, his queasiness growing every second, was not attending
until he heard a bitten off word from Rip’s direction and
looked up to see a party of I-S men coming into the open space
before the high seat. The men from the Queen stiffened—there was something in the attitude of the newcomers
which hinted at trouble.
“What do you wish, sky lords?” That was Groft using
the Trade Lingo, his eyes half closed as he lolled in his chair of
state, almost as if he were about to witness some entertainment
provided for his pleasure.
“We wish to offer you the good fortune desires of our
hearts—” That was Kallee, the flowery words rolling
with the proper accent from his tongue. “And that you shall
not forget us—we also offer gifts—”
At a gesture from their Cargo-master, the I-S men set down a
small chest. Groft, his chin resting on a clenched fist, lost none
of his lazy air.
“They are received,” he retorted with the formal
acceptance. “And no one can have too much good fortune. The
Howlers of the Black Winds know that.” But he tendered no
invitation to join the feast.
Kallee did not appear to be disconcerted. His next move was one
which took his rivals by surprise, in spite of their
suspicions.
“Under the laws of the Fellowship, O Groft,” he
clung to the formal speech, “I claim
redress—”
Ali’s hand moved. Through his growing distress Dane saw
Van Rycke’s jaw tighten, the fighting mask snap back on
Captain Jellico’s face. Whatever came now was real
trouble.
Groft’s eyes flickered over the party from the Queen.
Though he had just pledged cup friendship with four of them, he had
the malicious humor of his race. He would make no move to head off
what might be coming.
“By the right of the knife and the net,” he intoned,
“you have the power to claim personal satisfaction. Where is
your enemy?”
Kallee turned to face the Free Traders. “I hereby
challenge a champion to be set out from these off-worlders to meet
by the blood and by the water my champion—”
The Salariki were getting excited. This was superb
entertainment, an engagement such as they had never hoped to
see—alien against alien. The rising murmur of their voices
was like the growl of a hunting beast.
Groft smiled and the pleasure that expression displayed was
neither Terran—nor human. But then the clan leader was not
either, Dane reminded himself.
“Four of these warriors are clan-bound,” he said.
“But the others may produce a champion—”
Dane looked along the line of his comrades—Ali, Rip, Weeks
and himself had just been ruled out. That left Jellico, Van Rycke,
Karl Kosti, the giant jetman whose strength they had had to rely upon
before, Stotz the Engineer, Medic Tau and Steen Wilcox. If it were
strength alone he would have chosen Kosti, but the big man was not
too quick a thinker—
Jellico got to his feet, the embodiment of a star lane fighting
man. In the flickering light the scar on his cheek seemed to
ripple. “Who’s your champion?” he asked
Kallee.
The Eysie Cargo-master was grinning. He was confident he had
pushed them into a position from which they could not extricate
themselves.
“You accept challenge?” he countered.
Jellico merely repeated his question and Kallee beckoned forward
one of his men.
The Eysie who stepped up was no match for Kosti. He was a
slender, almost wand-slim young man, whose pleased smirk said that
he, too, was about to put something over on the notorious Free
Traders. Jellico studied him for a couple of long seconds during
which the hum of Salariki voices was the threatening buzz of a
disturbed wasps’ nest. There was no way out of this—to
refuse conflict was to lose all they had won with the clansmen. And
they did not doubt that Kallee had, in some way, triggered the
scales against them.
Jellico made the best of it. “We accept challenge,”
his voice was level. “We, being guesting in Groft’s
holding, will fight after the manner of the Salariki who are proven
warriors—” He paused as roars of pleased acknowledgment
arose around the board.
”Therefore let us follow the custom of warriors and take
up the net and the knife—”
Was there a shade of dismay on Kallee’s face?
“And the time?” Groft leaned forward to
ask—but his satisfaction at such a fine ending for his feast
was apparent. This would be talked over by every Sargolian for many
storm seasons to come!
Jellico glanced up at the sky. “Say an hour after dawn,
chieftain. With your leave, we shall confer concerning a
champion.”
“My council room is yours.” Groft signed for a liege
man to guide them.
INSIDE THE RED stockade there was a crowded
community. The Salariki demanded privacy of a kind, and even the
unmarried warriors did not share barracks, but each had a small
cubicle of his own. So that the mud brick and timber erections of
one of their clan cities resembled nothing so much as the comb
cells of a busy beehive. Although Paft’s was considered a
large clan, it numbered only about two hundred fighting men and
their numerous wives, children and captive servants. Not all of
them normally lived at this center, but for the funeral feasting
they had assembled—which meant a lot of doubling up and
tenting out under makeshift cover between the regular buildings of
the town. So that the Terrans were glad to be guided through this crowded
maze to the Great Hall which was its heart.
As the trading center had been, the hall was a circular
enclosure open to the sky above but divided in wheel-spoke fashion
with posts of the red wood, each supporting a metal basket filled
with inflammable material. Here were no lowly stools or trading
tables. One vast circular board, broken only by a gap at the foot,
ran completely around the wall. At the end opposite the entrance
was the high chair of the chieftain, set on a two step dais. Though
the feast had not yet officially begun, the Terrans saw that the
majority of the places were already occupied.
They were led around the perimeter of the enclosure to places
not far from the high seat. Van Rycke settled down with a grunt of
satisfaction. It was plain that the Free Traders were numbered
among the nobility. They could be sure of good trade in the days to
come.
Delegations from neighboring clans arrived in close companies of
ten or twelve and were granted seats, as had been the Terrans, in
groups. Dane noted that there was no intermingling of clan with
clan. And, as they were to understand later that night, there was a
very good reason for that precaution.
“Hope all our adaption shots work,” Ali murmured,
eyeing with no pleasure at all the succession of platters now being
borne through the inner opening of the table.
While the Traders had learned long ago that the wisest part of
valor was not to sample alien strong drinks, ceremony often
required that they break bread (or its other world equivalent) on
strange planets. And so science served expediency and now a Trader
bound for any Galactic banquet was immunized, as far as was
medically possible, against the evil consequences of consuming food
not originally intended for Terran stomachs. One of the results
being that Traders acquired a far flung reputation of possessing
bird-like appetites—since it was always better to nibble and
live, than to gorge and die.
Groft had not yet taken his place in the vacant
chieftain’s chair. For the present he stood in the center of
the table circle, directing the captive slaves who circulated with
the food. Until the magic moment when the clan themselves would
proclaim him their overlord, he remained merely the eldest son of
the house, relatively without power.
As the endless rows of platters made their way about the table
the basket lights on the tops of the pillars were ignited,
dispelling the dusk of evening. And there was an attendant
stationed by each to throw on handful of aromatic bark which burned
with puffs of lavender smoke, adding to the many warring scents.
The Terrans had recourse at intervals to their own pungent smelling
bottles, merely to clear their heads of the drugging fumes.
Luckily, Dane thought as the feast proceeded, that smoke from
the braziers went straight up. Had they been in a roofed space they
might have been overcome. As it was—were they entirely
conscious of all that was going on around them?
His reason for that speculation was the dance now being
performed in the center of the hall—their fight with the Gorp
being enacted in a series of bounds and stabbings. He was sure that
he could no longer trust his eyes when the claw knife of the
victorious dancer-hunter apparently passed completely through the
chest of another wearing a grotesque monster mask.
As a fitting climax to their horrific display, three of the men
who had been with them on the reef entered, dragging behind
them—still enmeshed in the hunting net—the Gorp which
Dane had stunned. It was uncurled now and very much alive, but the
pincer claws which might have cut its way to safety were encased in
balls of hard substance.
Freed from the net, suspended by its sealed claws, the Gorp
swung back and forth from a standard set up before the high seat.
Its murderous jaws snapped futilely, and from it came an enraged
snake’s vicious hissing. Though totally in the power of its
enemies it gave an impression of terrifying strength and
menace.
The sight of their ancient foe aroused the Salariki, inflaming
warriors who leaned across the table to hurl tongue-twisting
invective at the captive monster. Dane gathered that seldom had a
living Gorp been delivered helpless into their hands and they
proposed to make the most of this wonderful opportunity. And the
Terran suddenly wished that the monstrosity had fallen back into
the sea. He had no soft thoughts for the Gorp after what he had
seen at the reef and the tales he had heard, but neither did he
like what he saw now expressed in gestures, heard in the tones of
voices about them.
A storm priest put an end to the outcries. His dun cloak making
a spot of darkness amid all the flashing color, he came straight to
the place where the Gorp swung. As he took his stand before the
wriggling creature the din gradually faded, the warriors settled
back into their seats, a pool of quiet spread through the
enclosure.
Groft came up to take his position beside the priest. With both
hands he carried a two handled cup. It was not the ornamented
goblet which stood before each diner, but a manifestly older
artifact, fashioned of some dull black substance and having the
appearance of being even older than the hall or town.
One of the warriors who had helped to bring in the Gorp now made
a quick and accurate cast with a looped rope, snaring the
monster’s head and pulling back almost at a right angle. With
deliberation the storm priest produced a knife—the first straight
bladed weapon Dane had seen on Sargol. He made a single thrust in
the soft underpart of the Gorp’s throat, catching in the cup
he took from Groft some of the ichor which spurted from the
wound.
The Gorp thrashed madly, spattering table and surrounding
Salariki with its life fluid, but the attention of the crowd was
riveted elsewhere. Into the old cup the priest poured another
substance from a flask brought by an underling. He shook the cup
back and forth, as if to mix its contents thoroughly and then
handed it to Groft.
Holding it before him the young chieftain leaped to the table
top and so to a stand before the high seat. There was a hush
throughout the enclosure. Now even the Gorp had ceased its wild
struggles and hung limp in its bonds.
Groft raised the cup above his head and gave a loud shout in the
archaic language of his clan. He was answered by a chant from the
warriors who would in battle follow his banner, a chant punctuated
with the clinking slap of knife blades brought down forcibly on the
board.
Three times he recited some formula and was answered by the
others. Then, in another period of sudden quiet, he raised the cup
to his lips and drank off its contents in a single draught, turning
the goblet upside down when he had done to prove that not a drop
remained within. A shout tore through the great hall. The Salariki
were all on their feet, waving their knives over their heads in
honor to their new ruler. And Groft for the first time seated
himself in the high seat. The clan was no longer without a
chieftain, Groft held his father’s place.
“Show over?” Dane heard Stotz murmur and Van
Rycke’s disappointing reply:
“Not yet. They’ll probably make a night of it. Here
comes another round of drinks—”
“And trouble with them,” that was Captain Jellico
being prophetic.
“By the Coalsack’s Ripcord!” That exclamation
had been jolted out of Rip and Dane turned to see what had so
jarred the usually serene Astrogator-apprentice. He was just in
time to witness an important piece of Sargolian social
practice.
A young warrior, surely only within a year or so of receiving
his knife, was facing an older Salarik, both on their feet. The
head and shoulder fur of the older fighter was dripping wet and an
empty goblet rolled across the table to bump to the floor. A hush
had fallen on the immediate neighbors of the pair, and there was an
air of expectancy about the company.
”Threw his drink all over the other fellow,”
Rip’s soft whisper explained. “That means a
duel—”
“Here and now?” Dane had heard of the personal
combat proclivities of the Salariki.
“Should be to the death for an insult such as that,”
Ali remarked, as usual surveying the scene from his chosen role as
bystander. As a child he had survived the unspeakable massacres of
the Crater War, nothing had been able to crack his surface armor
since.
“The young fool!” that was Steen Wilcox sizing up
the situation from the angle of a naturally cautious nature and
some fifteen years of experience on a great many different worlds.
“He’ll be mustered out for good before he knows what
happened to him!”
The younger Salarik had barked a question at his elder and had
been promptly answered by that dripping warrior. Now their
neighbors came to life with an efficiency which suggested that they
had been waiting for such a move, it had happened so many times
that every man knew just the right procedure from that point
on.
In order for a Sargolian feast to be a success, the Terrans
gathered from overheard remarks, at least one duel must be staged
sometime during the festivities. And those not actively engaged did
a lot of brisk betting in the background.
“Look there—at that fellow in the violet
cloak,” Rip directed Dane. “See what he just laid
down?”
The nobleman in the violet cloak was not one of Croft’s
liege men, but a member of the delegation from another clan. And
what he had laid down on the table—indicating as he did so
his choice as winner in the coming combat, the elder
warrior—was a small piece of white material on which reposed
a slightly withered but familiar leaf. The neighbor he wagered
with eyed the stake narrowly, bending over to sniff at it, before
he piled up two gem set armlets, a personal scent box and a thumb
ring to balance.
At this practical indication of just how much the Terran herb
was esteemed Dane regretted anew their earlier ignorance. He glanced along the board and saw that Van Rycke had
noted that stake and was calling their Captain’s attention to
it.
But such side issues were forgotten as the duelists vaulted into
the circle rimmed by the table, a space now vacated for their
action. They were stripped to their loin cloths, their cloaks
thrown aside. Each carried his net in his right hand, his claw
knife ready in his left. As yet the Traders had not seen Salarik
against Salarik in action and in spite of themselves they edged
forward in their seats, as intent as the natives upon what was to
come. The finer points of the combat were lost on them, and they
did not understand the drilled casts of the net, which had become
as formalized through the centuries as the ancient and now almost
forgotten swordplay of their own world. The young Salarik had
greater agility and speed, but the veteran who faced him had the
experience.
To Terran eyes the duel had some of the weaving, sweeping
movements of the earlier ritual dance. The swift evasions of the
nets were graceful and so timed that many times the meshes grazed
the skin of the fighter who fled entrapment.
Dane believed that the elder man was tiring, and the youngster
must have shared that opinion. There was a leap to the right, a
sudden flurry of dart and retreat, and then a net curled high and
fell, enfolding flailing arms and kicking legs. When the clutch
rope was jerked tight, the captured youth was thrown off balance.
He rolled frenziedly, but there was no escaping the imprisoning
strands.
A shout applauded the victor. He stood now above his captive who
lay supine, his throat or breast ready for either stroke of the
knife his captor wished to deliver. But it appeared that the winner
was not minded to end the encounter with blood. Instead he reached
out a long, be-furred arm, took up a filled goblet from the table
and with serious deliberation, poured its contents onto the
upturned face of the loser.
For a moment there was a dead silence around the feast board and then a second roar, to which the honestly relieved
Terrans added spurts of laughter. The sputtering youth was shaken
free of the net and went down on his knees, tendering his opponent
his knife, which the other thrust along with his own into his sash
belt. Dane gathered from overheard remarks that the younger man
was, for a period of time, to be determined by clan council, now
the servant-slave of his over-thrower and that since they were
closely united by blood ties, this solution was considered
eminently suitable—though had the elder killed his opponent,
no one would have thought the worse of him for that deed.
It was the Queen’s men who were to provide the next center
of attraction. Groft climbed down from his high seat and came to
face across the board those who had accompanied him on the hunt.
This time there was no escaping the sipping of the potent drink
which the new chieftain slopped from his own goblet into each of
theirs.
The fiery mouthful almost gagged Dane, but he swallowed manfully
and hoped for the best as it burned like acid down his throat into
his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had
eaten. Weeks’ thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed
with malicious enjoyment that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the
table which made his knuckles stand out in polished
knobs—proving that there were things which could
upset the imperturbable Kamil.
Fortunately they were not required to empty that
flowing bowl in one gulp as Groft had done. The ceremonial mouthful
was deemed enough and Dane sat down thankfully—but with
uneasy fears for the future.
Groft had started back to his high seat when there was an
interruption which had not been foreseen. A messenger threaded his
way among the serving men and spoke to the chieftain, who glanced
at the Terrans and then nodded.
Dane, his queasiness growing every second, was not attending
until he heard a bitten off word from Rip’s direction and
looked up to see a party of I-S men coming into the open space
before the high seat. The men from the Queen stiffened—there was something in the attitude of the newcomers
which hinted at trouble.
“What do you wish, sky lords?” That was Groft using
the Trade Lingo, his eyes half closed as he lolled in his chair of
state, almost as if he were about to witness some entertainment
provided for his pleasure.
“We wish to offer you the good fortune desires of our
hearts—” That was Kallee, the flowery words rolling
with the proper accent from his tongue. “And that you shall
not forget us—we also offer gifts—”
At a gesture from their Cargo-master, the I-S men set down a
small chest. Groft, his chin resting on a clenched fist, lost none
of his lazy air.
“They are received,” he retorted with the formal
acceptance. “And no one can have too much good fortune. The
Howlers of the Black Winds know that.” But he tendered no
invitation to join the feast.
Kallee did not appear to be disconcerted. His next move was one
which took his rivals by surprise, in spite of their
suspicions.
“Under the laws of the Fellowship, O Groft,” he
clung to the formal speech, “I claim
redress—”
Ali’s hand moved. Through his growing distress Dane saw
Van Rycke’s jaw tighten, the fighting mask snap back on
Captain Jellico’s face. Whatever came now was real
trouble.
Groft’s eyes flickered over the party from the Queen.
Though he had just pledged cup friendship with four of them, he had
the malicious humor of his race. He would make no move to head off
what might be coming.
“By the right of the knife and the net,” he intoned,
“you have the power to claim personal satisfaction. Where is
your enemy?”
Kallee turned to face the Free Traders. “I hereby
challenge a champion to be set out from these off-worlders to meet
by the blood and by the water my champion—”
The Salariki were getting excited. This was superb
entertainment, an engagement such as they had never hoped to
see—alien against alien. The rising murmur of their voices
was like the growl of a hunting beast.
Groft smiled and the pleasure that expression displayed was
neither Terran—nor human. But then the clan leader was not
either, Dane reminded himself.
“Four of these warriors are clan-bound,” he said.
“But the others may produce a champion—”
Dane looked along the line of his comrades—Ali, Rip, Weeks
and himself had just been ruled out. That left Jellico, Van Rycke,
Karl Kosti, the giant jetman whose strength they had had to rely upon
before, Stotz the Engineer, Medic Tau and Steen Wilcox. If it were
strength alone he would have chosen Kosti, but the big man was not
too quick a thinker—
Jellico got to his feet, the embodiment of a star lane fighting
man. In the flickering light the scar on his cheek seemed to
ripple. “Who’s your champion?” he asked
Kallee.
The Eysie Cargo-master was grinning. He was confident he had
pushed them into a position from which they could not extricate
themselves.
“You accept challenge?” he countered.
Jellico merely repeated his question and Kallee beckoned forward
one of his men.
The Eysie who stepped up was no match for Kosti. He was a
slender, almost wand-slim young man, whose pleased smirk said that
he, too, was about to put something over on the notorious Free
Traders. Jellico studied him for a couple of long seconds during
which the hum of Salariki voices was the threatening buzz of a
disturbed wasps’ nest. There was no way out of this—to
refuse conflict was to lose all they had won with the clansmen. And
they did not doubt that Kallee had, in some way, triggered the
scales against them.
Jellico made the best of it. “We accept challenge,”
his voice was level. “We, being guesting in Groft’s
holding, will fight after the manner of the Salariki who are proven
warriors—” He paused as roars of pleased acknowledgment
arose around the board.
”Therefore let us follow the custom of warriors and take
up the net and the knife—”
Was there a shade of dismay on Kallee’s face?
“And the time?” Groft leaned forward to
ask—but his satisfaction at such a fine ending for his feast
was apparent. This would be talked over by every Sargolian for many
storm seasons to come!
Jellico glanced up at the sky. “Say an hour after dawn,
chieftain. With your leave, we shall confer concerning a
champion.”
“My council room is yours.” Groft signed for a liege
man to guide them.