Chacor gave his hand in return.
“Chacor Am Corhl,” he said, friendly, feeling clever, feeling slightly drunk.
“Yennef Am Lan. Am everywhere it begins to seem.”
About a hundred feet away, the two giant pillars of the Dragon Gate, white, unfeatured, went soaring upward, losing themselves in the coming of the dusk.
“An historic place for our adventure,” said Yennef, Rehger’s father, glancing toward them. “Don’t they say, the first Vis kings came to earth there, carried in the bellies of dragons?”
Chacor shrugged. “That’s the mythos of Dorthar. You’re in the Lowlands now. Come, share our camp. Maybe we can cheer you a little regarding robbers.”
Supper was, again, grilled dust rat and hard biscuit, and some agreeable wine from the fort village, unadulterated by water.
As it got dark, and the stars of the Plains, thick-strewn and effulgent, appeared overhead, they sat talking in the firelight. Yennef gave the impression of being communicative. He was much-traveled—of everywhere, as he had titled himself—Lanelyr, the Middle Lands . . . Vardish Zakoris . . . and Iscah, too, Chacor inwardly observed. The man was an accomplished wanderer, what Chacor might have been, or might still become. Yennef, too, had done “some soldiering in youth.” For the present, he earned his bread as an agent for a merchant guild in Xarar, and his masters were not going to love him since he had been robbed. Chacor described briefly the plan to raid the bandit nest. Yennef promptly offered his help. “If you can loan me a mount and a sword, I’ll eat my luck as I find it. I can still fight, and after today I’d like one.” “And to take an order?” said Chacor. Yennef said, “I’ll admit, I never served under so young an officer when I was your age. But, of course.” The Xarabian, however, Yennef excused. The man was his servant and, as you saw, not tough. He had been brave with the tirr perforce.
It was not yet Zastis, and there was no moon. Chacor sent scouts along the slopes an hour later, where they unearthed some snoozing bandit lookout. He was persuaded into picturing the nest in some detail, which corresponded with prior information. Gathering his men, and leaving the Xarab and two watch in the fire-ringed camp, to make a camplike stir, they set off.
When they got there, about midnight, the raid was quickly accomplished, for the robbers had been smug enough to bed down for the night. Javelins brought the sentries crashing. Next it was hand to hand. The den was in the undershore of a raised embankment with an old ruined wall on it. Some thirty villains came flying and stumbling down from the crest or out of holes. Three or four were mixes. The king himself had light gray eyes. It was an undistinguished fight, with no openings for prowess, for the thieves were used to attacking unarmed civilians. As it turned out, Yennef s robbers were another crew, parasites without the instinct to murder—they and the Xarar goods had gone elsewhere. Nevertheless there was some quantity of loot in the dirty shambles of the warren. Yennef, having acquitted himself very well, got a promise of compensation for himself and his master.
Before sunrise everything was settled, the surrendered foe roped and haltered, having been pressed into burying their own dead. Chacor’s detail had only three serious casualties. Since Yennef s wagon was going on to the fort, it proved a convenient vehicle for their transport.
Yennef rode alongside Chacor on the route west. He continued chatty over the evening fires. He seemed perfectly sociable and outgoing. Yet when Chacor, who had a leave due him and now badly wanted to take it in Moiyah, suggested they might go that way together, Yennef put him off. “Even with the peerless zeebas hired from your fort, wagons make slow riding. We’d hold you back.” Chacor, who had the northwest Visian’s utter abhorrence of homosexuality, wondered if Yennef and his weapon-shy Xarab servant were bedfellows and did not want interruptions. He did not care to regard Rehger’s father in that manner, so concluded there was some other secret.
“Well,” he said, as they got up to the fort, “do you know where you’ll be lodging in Moiyah?”
“Oh. Some inn.”
“Don’t think I’m prying. But this compensation. I’ll be in charge of that. Til need to have some means to meet you in the city.”
“Ah, the compensation. Well, sergeant, isn’t there a famous wine-shop called the Amber Anklet?”
“For sure. On Amber Street. And I can recommend it. A lot of Dortharians drink there.”
“Do they? A Xarabian told me about it. Say you go there and ask for me. When I get your message, I’ll call on you,”
Chacor, having no fixed abode in the city, and feeling they were now playing a silly game, said, “I tell you what. Be at the Anklet the first evening of the new month.”
“That’s Zastis. Won’t you be engaged elsewhere?”
“I’ll make sure I’m not.”
Yennef gave him an odd look. Did Yennef now think he was being propositioned?”
“You’re too generous,” said Yennef, “all this care about getting me requited for a few ragged blows with a lent sword.”
“Moiyan codes,” said Chacor. “Even if I hated your insides, my friend, I’d have to do it.”
He rode for the city full-tilt, and half a mile off—to increase the drama—the sky soured purple and a summer storm of grandiose violence encompassed him.
Vanek’s studio on Marble Street was the first place he went.
There was some flurry there, for they were getting the buckets uncovered on the roof to catch the downpour. (Rain water, when no sah wind was blowing from the sea, was judged the better for the studio’s needs than that of the public cisterns.) Vanek was not present. The apprentices were running everywhere at once, the studio offices empty but for desks, and the outer shop contained one attendant and one rich mix idler, poking amid a cupboardful of ivories after a “something.” Of Rehger there was no hint. A clerk, hastening to his midday snack, informed Chacor that seeking Rehger meant the house of Arn Yr.
Chacor pelted out, remounted and dashed through the running streets under the pouring rain.
He knew from Jerish, now set up with Annah in the married state on Amber Street, that her father was away with Pretty Girl, trading along the Xarabian coast and up to Ommos. The steward in the outer hall of the house told Chacor that Arn Yr’s wife was also away, at an embroidery group in the home of a friend. They were approaching the whereabouts of Rehger, when Arn Yr’s younger daughter appeared suddenly from a doorway.
The steward fell silent.
Chacor and Elissi, equally silent, looked at one another.
He was like a being of fire, so fast-ridden, so keyed up, and so drenched by the tempest that even now straddled the roof and drummed the slates.
She was luminously beautiful, with garden flowers in her hand—she had been arranging them in a vase—scarcely tinted with summer and now extremely pale.
“Thank you,” she said to the steward. “Won’t you come in here?” she asked Chacor.
For a fact, seeing her had checked him. He had thought of her, been reminded of her by innumerable items on endless occasions. Now a sort of calm flowed over him, as once before in her presence. He thanked her in turn, and walked into the room which gave on a covered corner of the garden.
She laid the flowers on a table. She stood gazing at him. Her whole body seemed expressive of a question.
Intent on his own question, he did not think how it must appear to her. She saw he had ridden there headlong, through the rain, on some impassioned errand. Because she wanted this to be herself, how could she suspect that it was not?
“Elissi—I know you’ll pardon the state of me and my hurry, it’s on a matter of importance—”