The landlord was not immediately available for us to pay the reckoning. Heavy thumps sounded from the room overhead, and then doors banged, and footsteps clumped down an outside stairway, and loud voices lifted outside. There was a confusion of shouting, laughter, and that particular kind of freewheeling, innocuous oaths that some men adopt in the presence of ladies.
“Fetch the mirvols, Nulty.”
“Yes, Notor.”
Nulty went outside — he did not have to duck his head — and I strolled after, expecting to find the landlord dealing with his important guests, who had been decently housed in the private upstairs room and served personally.
The twin suns streamed down welcome rays, and the air sparkled with brilliance. The pot-man dodged after me. He did not dare to touch my elbow to halt me.
“I will take the reckoning, Notor.”
This suited me, and I paid him, using a few sinvers from the vosk-skin bag at my waist, for I had not as yet adopted the Hamalese custom of wearing an arm-purse.
“Thank you, Notor, may Havil the Green smile upon you, Notor, Remberee,” the pot-man rattled off in a monotone.
I stepped outside the paved area before the door. Over at the perching tower flyers were being brought down and there was a flourishing of cleaning cloths as their feathers and hides and scales — for the different species — were dried after the rain and polished and made presentable for the great lady and her retinue who waited with growing impatience.
I looked at the arrogant, brilliant group of people.
They were apims.
The men were hard featured, fair of hair, thick of jaw, clad in flying leathers adorned with much jewelry and gold lace. Their weapons were those of Havilfar. The girl who was the center of this brilliant group appeared to me, grown somewhat cynical in the ways of the mundane world, I fear, as completely out of place in that company. Her bright fair hair gleamed in the lights of Antares. Her small face, pert, with rosebud mouth, pale blue eyes, and a creamy-white complexion, seemed to me that of a child let loose in a world she did not comprehend. She was beautiful, in a china doll way, someone you might admire from a distance but scarcely wish to touch.
She wore the pleated and flared skirt adopted by young girls of Hamal. It reached down halfway to her knees and glowed more with brilliants and stitchings of precious metals than with its original pale blue color. Her white shirt, also, overflowed with cascades of frills and lace. Over the shirt she wore a bolero of magenta. Flung back from her shoulders her short flying cape hung now demurely, folds of fluttrell-green. Astride her bird that cape would sweep back most proudly. Then all my attention was taken by the birds the handlers were bringing from the perching tower. Nulty was being forced to wait before he could fetch our mirvols. I saw these white-feathered birds and I marveled. I had not seen their like before in Hamal.
All of pure white were these birds. Large, they were, powerful, streamlined in body, and with wide pinions that could sustain them and their riders in level flight for dwabur after dwabur over the world of Kregen. All of pure white save for their legs and beaks, which were scarlet, are the streamlined bodies and the quadruple-wings of these magnificent saddle-birds. These are the famed zhyans, and in money value alone one zhyan is worth ten good-quality fluttrells. So I looked with the keen interest of the flyer as the zhyans were brought down, dried and cleaned and polished, and I saw the huge birds were in a vicious temper.
As well they might be, considering they are basically aquatic birds, with a great love for lakes. These zhyans had been called on to fly over dry dusty Waarom. The rain had given them a memory, a remembered longing for wide expanses of water. In bodily form the zhyan is not unlike a Terrestrial swan, although the feet bear taloned extensions, very fierce. And the beak, although of the wide and flattened variety of swimming birds, has a swanlike knob much enlarged into near raptor-like proportions, with a vicious, down-curved, meat-tearing hook. These very large saddle-birds of Kregen must, by the very laws of nature, have bodies of lesser proportionate bulk than their smaller Earthly counterparts. Their size lies in their length and in their wingspread.
Nulty stood at the side, fuming, waiting to get at our mirvols, as the zhyans were brought down. One zhyan struck with a hiss at his handler. The man, a gul in a brown smock, staggered back, yelling, his arm slashed.
One of the brilliant gallants, hitching his sword out of the way, strode across, bellowing. A kind of order was produced, and the swaggering group mounted up. I watched as they did so, noting the birds, looking at them rather than the aristocratic onkers mounting up.
The zhyan is noted for its short temper. That is, perhaps, the greatest failing of the magnificent bird. Conscious of his own superiority, the zhyan does not like to be hustled. Maybe, had that girl out there been Delia, and I in command, I would not have allowed her to mount her saddle-bird. Oh, she would have flashed those gorgeous brown eyes of hers at me, and called me a fussy old hairy graint; and, I like to think, she would have mastered the zhyan with all that consummate skill of hers. But this girl was no Delia.
I, Dray Prescot, am an onker, a get-onker! What girl in two worlds can ever match Delia, save my Delia of Delphond!
Almost in the saddle, the girl moved with a clumsy lurch that snapped the self-control of the zhyan. It lashed ferociously at the two handlers, first left, then right, cutting them with that deadly razored beak, stretching them senseless upon the muddy ground. It fluttered its two pairs of wings, a massive and -
even in the abrupt horror of the moment — a beautiful movement. The girl pitched off. She screamed. She tumbled in the useless flailing straps of the clerketer, twisted and fell beneath the hooked beak of the zhyan.
The bird’s bright intelligent eyes told me that he would take his revenge for past insults now. Well, it was no business of mine.
The men were yelling and one jumped forward, a flying-stick uplifted. Flying-sticks are the invention of any of a hundred foul devils of Kregen. I never used one. If a flying mount needed a lesson, as they sometimes did, in obedience, there were other and less unpleasant ways than to thrash the poor beast. This man was caught across the face by the slashing hooked beak. He had no time to scream. He spun about and bright blood spouted from his ruined face.
Uproar burst about the perching tower. Men were yelling, women screaming, and the mud churned as the zhyan clamped his massive claws down. The girl dangling beneath him encumbered him. In the next second he would either rip her slender body to pieces with his claws, or tear her head from her shoulders with his beak. The pandemonium grew — and yet after the awful finish of the one who tried, no one else showed the determination to rush in to help.
Still, it was no business of mine. .
I ran forward.
“Help! Help me!” the girl screamed.
She dangled there, half upside down, her brave clothes spattered with mud gobbets thrown up by the claws of the maddened bird. His beak flashed toward me, hissing.