A Fortune for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page B

apt and it is right...
    The Kildoi was instantly visible, surrounded by a gang of roughs. They were not attacking him, but they were not friendly. Now Prince Mefto the Kazzur was a Kildoi. He had bested me in swordplay — oh, yes, I had cut off his tail hand at the last — but he had proved the superior swordsman. Kildoi have four arms and a powerful tail with a hand. Korero, my comrade who carried his shields at my back in battle, was a Kildoi. They are marvels — and this specimen, although sporting a beard darker than the golden blaze of Korero or Mefto, was just such a one, bronzed, powerful, superb in physique, cunning and most proficient with his five hands.
    “We don’t want your sort in here,” shouted one of the roughs, a cloth around his neck stained greasily with sweat.
    “Prince Mefto was a great man!” declared another, a runt of an Och slopping ale.
    “Aye,” said another. “Prince Mefto may have lost our wagers, because his side thought he would be chopped. But you can’t say things about him here. He’ll be back to win again—”
    Sweat rag chimed in. “You’d better clear off, schtump, five hands or no, before we blatter you.”
    “You misunderstand me, my friends—” began the Kildoi.
    “No we don’t. You’re asking questions about Mefto the Kazzur and we’re all his friends here, and you bear him no good will.”
    A flung dagger streaked from the gloom of the counter. The Kildoi put up a hand and deflected the dagger. The action was instinctive and unthinking, and I recognized the superb Disciplines that gave Korero such wonderful command of his shields.
    “I see you are not friendly,” said the Kildoi. “So I will retire—”
    A blackjack swung for his head, and he leaned and moved and the blackjack spun away, harmlessly.
    The very contempt of his actions, innate in their display of consummate skill, incensed these fellows.
    Mefto had always been a favorite, and these people did not know the full story. In the next instant, summoning their courage, they leaped upon the Kildoi.
     
    I started in to help, intrigued by all this, and, after a pause, Pompino joined me. There was a deal of shoving and banging, and swearing, and a collection of black eyes and bloody noses before the three of us burst from the door of the tavern. On a wooden bracket the inflated skin of a vosk swung in the wind, and the inn was called The Jolly Vosk.
    “Whoever you are,” said the Kildoi, with a jerk of the thumb of his upper right hand, “my thanks. The sign over the tavern proclaims the denizens within.”
    We walked off along the sidewalk, and we began to laugh. Snatches of the bizarre flying acrobatics of the fellows in there as the Kildoi threw them hither and yon recurred to us, and we laughed.
    “Lahal, I am Drogo, and a Kildoi, as you see.”
    We made the pappattu, me as Jak and Pompino with his full name. Then Pompino burst out with: “And, Drogo, this is the same Jak who cut off the tail hand of that bastard Mefto.”
    Drogo stopped dead. He turned that magnificent head to study me more closely. I looked back.
    His eyes carried that peculiar green-flecked grayness of uneasy seas, of light shining through rain-slashed window panes — the images are easy but they convey only a little of the sense of inner strength and compulsion, of dedication and awareness, the eyes of this Kildoi, Drogo, revealed.
    Presently he took a breath. His arms hung limply at his sides. I noticed that one end of his moustaches was shorter than the other. His teeth were white, even, and showed top and bottom when he smiled.
    He smiled now, a bleak smile like snow on the moors.
    “I am surprised you are still alive.”
    “That’s what we all say,” burbled on Pompino.
    “Mefto was foolish,” I said, deliberately turning along the flagstones and walking on, forcing them to keep pace.
    “Any man who faces Mefto in swordplay is foolish.”
    “Aye,” I said, and with feeling. “Aye, by Zair!”
    As is generally