Warlord of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page B

us.
    His voice was gruff, throaty, harsh, clanging with the resonances of a lifetime’s application to the demanding rigors of combat.
    “Jikais! A stand-off.”
    “Impudent devil!” exclaimed Seg, under his breath. “I can shaft him where he stands, one, two, three, and Havil take his damned swordbreaker.”
    This Seg could do. No doubt of it. And, mark me, there was not an iota of boasting in his instinctive remark.
    A tinkle of metal did not distract us. The Star of Death toppled onto its side. It had rolled along in a strange lopsided way, rhythmically bouncing in its progress. Something like a Japanese Shuriken, it was asymmetrical, its Kregan creators imparting a swooping deflection to its flight. Even so, the Krozair disciplines had enabled the Krozair longsword to deflect it from its intended target.
    “Jikais!” called the Kanzai again.
    “He,” observed Seg with some relish, “sounds suddenly apprehensive.”
    “Didn’t expect his Star of Death to miss.”
    “Quite.”
    “Shaft him, Seg,” counseled Nath in his unruly bellow.
    The Kanzai heard that.
    The metal links stirred ripplingly across the cavern floor. The upflung throwing star glittered.
    “Do you adhere to the decadent Rumay customs, doms?” he called across.
    “No!” yelled Seg in a virulent voice.
    I said nothing. Truth to tell, it might have been interesting to discover the adept’s reaction had we acknowledged the Rumay customs to him.
    “That is as well.” He lowered the Star of Death.
    “Look,” I said once more. “We can’t hang around here.” I shouted then, and I admit I put a little testiness into the bellow. “Kanzai! Stand aside and let us pass or you will suffer the consequences of your own foolishness.”
    I started forward, the Krozair brand in my two fists, ready to swipe away a Star of Death or two or remove his head if he didn’t shift.
    For a moment he hesitated. Clearly, he didn’t like what he saw of us. Just what he was doing down here in the Coup Blag was his affair and of no real interest to us.
    The Star of Death vanished into its pouch. The links of chain coiled miraculously into loops and were stowed. As he stepped aside his right hand fastened on the hilt of his thraxter.
    I stood next to him. I stared at him balefully.
    “The ladies will now pass, Kanzai.
Dernun?
” [1]
    He nodded and that gruesome skull atop his helmet, flounced with feathers, bobbed. He used his left hand in a gesture to indicate we were to pass.
    “Get the shemales moving, Nath!”
    With a scurry and bustle, and with many a white-eyed sideways glance at the adept, the girls scuttled past. Some did not scuttle. Some walked arrogantly past, heads high, swinging in their gait and bold. These were women who had not first sought for clothes to cover their nakedness but had first snatched up weapons. The Kanzai eyed them as they strutted past as he would have scrutinized any potential foe.
    When all had gone by I said: “I give you thanks, dom.” I went to move off and then halted and turned to say: “And you? Down here?”
    “I have my mission.”
    That’s all we would get out of him. As a Kanzai Warrior Brother, an adept, he was answerable only to his master.
    It takes all sorts to make a world and Kregen is a world of many wonders, many marvelous oddities, by Zair!
    Turning to march off after the others, I heard him draw a breath and in the same instant I’d ducked, swerved and sprung about to come up with the longsword pressing against his ribs. I halted the thrust.
    He took a step back, a very smart step back, and his face expressed stupefaction.
    “I was just—” he began. And then he swallowed and burst out: “By the Names! I do not know your Disciplines, dom; but you are sudden, most sudden.”
    I glared at him, eyeball to eyeball.
    Some cheap remark could have come so easily to my lips then.
    I contented myself with a simple: “That is so, dom. Remberee.”
    “Remberee, dom. I shall not forget you.”

Chapter