Warlord of Antares by Alan Burt Akers

“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! I’m swamped to know if I’m sorry or glad to see the back of the fellow!”
    “Oh,” I said with a nonchalance I did not feel. “We’ll see old Loriman again, never fret.”
    Nath the Impenitent sniffed. He had an arm about the waist of one of the more comely of the ladies. “I give him the chance of a hot cinder in the Ice Floes of Sicce if he goes up against the Witch. By Vox, she’ll devour him whole!”
    “Let us press on, doms,” I said. I did not say to Nath that with the occult caul of protection afforded by our friendly Wizards of Loh, Loriman shouldn’t come to too much harm. That is, if the caul had been extended to encompass him in its magical embrace.
    I trusted Deb-Lu had done that. I needed Loriman for a key part in my schemes.
    The decision had been long in coming, and hard in the taking. But, come it had and taken it I had — now all that remained was to implement it.
    “Come along,” I said in a tone of voice that made Seg favor me with a quizzical look. I knew I sounded far too casually light-hearted for this grim situation; but the decision, once taken, set that part of my worries free. And good old Seg would buckle down to his part in the scheme, that I knew, after he’d had a good old moan.
    The girls set up a screaming just then and surged back on us in a frightened mob. There was a splendid display of thrashing arms and legs, of half-naked bodies tumbling one over the other, of faces screaming in fresh fear. The smells became near overpowering.
    The fellow who caused all this stood like a gnarled tree, legs wide apart, black and golden armor — all shiny leather and dull metal and golden studs and rivets — relieved by a dramatically flung-back scarlet cape. His helmet held a skull-crest and surmounted a face of compressed ferocity, of down-drooping mustaches, of serrated sharpened teeth, of veinous-crimson eyes, of nostril slits pulsating like the underbelly of a fish.
    Harsh and compelling without a morsel of humanity remaining in him after a lifetime of bloodshed, this Kanzai Warrior Brother was no figment of sorcerous imagination.
    The Kanzai take in recruits from any suitable race although it is said they favor Chuliks and Khibils and Laceroti, and train these acolytes into adepts and Warrior Brothers. After that the world of Kregen is their oyster.
    We were not overly bothered with them in Vallia, for the old emperor’s grandfather had cleared them out in a wholesale rubbish-clearance that was now the subject of many songs and stories. Pandahem had its share of Kanzai Brothers.
    This fellow carried a thraxter and a shortsword scabbarded at his waist above the skirts of the laminated armor. He appeared to have no missile weapons, and this appearance was deceptive. He carried no bow; he had other nasty objects he could hurl with neck-slicing speed.
    The Kanzai despised shields.
    Now, from its scabbard he drew a chunkscreetz and this swordbreaker was more like a Japanese Sai than a European swordbreaker. Of strong iron, with two curved quillons designed to trap and snap an opponent’s blade, the swordbreaker was a weapon that had to be taken into account.
    He moved with precise control, each movement taking a segment of time between periods of absolute stillness.
    The length of chain he swung from a pouch made Seg draw in a quick breath. At one end of the chain swung a three-bladed knife, and the other a three-tined grappling hook. The thing was a Kregen adaptation of the Japanese Kyotetsu-shoge. The Kawa-naga, as an improvised weapon, varied subtly. I shared Seg’s distrust of these cripplers.
    The links of chain spun about his head. His thin lips widened in a smile of invitation. He did not boast, for that is not the way of the Kanzai.
    Nath blurted out: “I’ll settle his hash—”
    “Stay, Nath. Maybe we can talk to this Kanzai Brother rather than fight him.”
    “As soon hold back the River of Golden Smiles with your bare