Nulty deserved to have my promise to him honored.
With a half-reluctant pull on the guiding reins I wheeled the mirvol in the sky and winged back toward Paline Valley.
If you have listened to these tapes of my life on Kregen you will already have guessed what chance had let me in for. Kregen is a world that demands the utmost from a man or a woman. Half measures will bring only catastrophe. I knew that when the slavers had attacked, a messenger had somehow scrambled off astride a volclepper, one of those small and exceedingly fast flying animals of Havilfar, and had succeeded in reaching Amak Naghan ham Farthytu as he was marshaling his warriors. Their return had saved their village and saved my life.
But the wild men from over the mountain had not thrown away the chance thus vouchsafed them. They had visited Paline Valley.
They had destroyed, they had wasted, they had not cared to take prisoners for slaves; preferring to slay, they had obliterated that smiling valley. I came in on the tail end of the fight and was able to speed the wild men on their way with biting shafts. A slight struggle followed as I mopped up a party assaulting the Amak’s house which, burned and crumbling, still held men and women who resisted. In a wild skirling of blades, I went through the wild men, smelling their stink, seeing their knotted braids of black and greasy hair, sundering their shields, lopping heads, degutting. It was all a dreadful reprise. But, this time, there was a still more dreadful difference.
When the last of the wild men made his decision to stay and be killed or take flight and save his skin, I turned to the barricaded door and bellowed in a cracking voice: “They are gone! Open up! It’s me, Dray Prescot.”
The door did not open.
I heard a thin and scratchy voice — Amak Naghan’s voice.
“We are all — sore wounded — Notor. Near to death. We — cannot — open the door.”
The last of the wild men had gone and I felt they wouldn’t stop running until they were safe beyond the mountains. I looked around. A fallen beam made a handy battering ram.
“Stand clear of the door!”
“We — cannot stand-”
Smash went the beam at the door. The sturdy oak creaked. Lenk wood, it was, bound and barred with iron. Smash went the beam. These people had been good to me and I felt a cherishing affection for them. Now they were all slain. The door went in with a splintering ripping and I plunged through. They must have crawled here after fighting hard and long and, covered in wounds, barred the door and sunk down to rally for the final attack. Nulty lay to one side, unconscious, breathing like a blown stallion, his body a shiny mass of blood. Other men and women were there, all wounded. In a corner lay a pile of bodies. To one side lay the corpse of Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak’s son. I bent to Naghan.
“It is finished, Dray Prescot. All done.”
“No, Naghan.” There was a pitcher of water, and I moistened his lips. He tried to drink, but only choked and coughed. His wounds were dreadful. “No, Naghan, my friend. You will recover. Paline Valley will bloom again.”
“We saw you fighting — through the chink in the door — we saw you. You are a great Jikai, Notor Prescot. But it is all finished. The honor of the family of ham Farthytu no longer matters.”
“Oh yes it does!” I said to him sharply. I thought he was dying, and no man should die without some hope. “You leave a great name, a name of which to be proud.”
My Anglo-Saxon forebears would have understood that, to die well and leave a good name. His head rolled restlessly from side to side. I do not think he was in pain; that had numbed in these final moments.
“Our name will be forgotten, Dray! Obliterated! For my son is dead.”
There can be few words in any human tongue more dreadful than those: My son is dead. Before I could answer, Naghan went on: “He did not die well. He ran and hid. The wild men found him. They mocked him. They — they had sport — with him. I died, then, I think, before I bit the sword.”
“Rest easy, Naghan-”
“I shall never rest, Dray, in this world or on the Ice Floes of Sicce.”
So, there, in that shambles, chance played a card that put the idea into my head. It existed, of itself, full-grown like Athena in less than a heartbeat.
Naghan ham Farthytu was dying. His thoughts clouded. His stern grave face slackened, and spittle and blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He started to choke and I eased him. He was no longer truly of the world of Kregen.
I said: “Naghan ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley.” I spoke with formality and he responded to my tone. “If you will it so, your name will not be forgotten. It will be regarded with the honor and respect it is due.”
He was dying. But he was past my foolish notion of going to Ruathytu and there erecting a monument to him and his family, a noble marble cenotaph in the Palace of Names. His bloodied hand lifted and grasped my sleeve. I bent closer. He rasped out the words, now, spitting blood, struggling to force his dying body to obey the commands of a brain abruptly clear and utterly determined. So, I truly think, chance brought me to that spot, and to the last words of a dying noble, and chance made me anticipate what he would say, what he would ask, even as I discarded the notion of erecting that monument in the Palace of Names as the only thing I might do for this man.
“Dray Prescot! You are a man of honor, a Jikai. It is my dying wish you take upon yourself the name of ham Farthytu! I would think well if the empire saw in you and your prowess the name of ham Farthytu.”
I hesitated. Stealing names can be habit-forming.
But Naghan gripped my arm, and his lined face implored me. He whispered weakly now, obsessed with his idea and his wishes, quite unable to see past his own desires to the problems attendant on the other side of the question. This was a thing he would never have asked of me in life. In death he had a privilege.
“You will do this for me, a dying man, Dray Prescot?”
Still I hesitated.
Then: “Yes, Naghan. I will.”
His sigh started deeply and finished in a choked fit of bloody coughing. But he would not let me go. His grip tightened feverishly. We must have made a macabre pair, blood everywhere, dead men and women scattered about, and, at his feet, the dead and dishonored body of his son.
“Dray — Dray — promise me, promise me by your god, you will take the name of ham Farthytu-”
How cheap to have betrayed him! To have promised by Havil the Green! He would have believed -
and I would be just as foresworn when I broke the oath.
“By Opaz, Naghan, I will use the name in Hamal. I will go to Ruathytu and there I shall be Naghan ham Farthytu.”
“No! No!” He tried to shake me, and his hand merely fluttered. “No, Dray! My son! My son!”
And then I saw what he truly wished.
I thought of my own father, and of the scorpion that killed him. I marveled. And then I thought of my little Drak — and I understood.
“Very well, Naghan. I will take the name in Hamal of Hamun ham Farthytu.”
“Yes, yes, Dray.” He was going. “You will be Amak. Amak Hamun. I wish — wish it so. .”
I stayed with him until he died.
When he gave the last death rattle, a sound I have heard many and many a time, I stretched, for I had held him at the last to ease him, and Nulty from behind my shoulder said: “He was a good man, Notor Hamun.”
I looked at Nulty.
His broad-barreled body with its glossy covering of blood made a ghastly sight.