“Now, Hap Loder, tell me, quick! Have you seen a girl carried off by such carrion as this dead thing?”
“No, Dray Prescot. I speak truth. I have not.”
He scrambled up, backing away from my point. He drew himself up in the position of attention. He put his palms to his eyes, his ears, his mouth, and then clasped them over his heart.
“I make obi to you, Dray Prescott. With my eyes I will see only good of you, with my ears I will hear only good of you and with my mouth will I speak only good of you. And my heart is yours to feast upon.”
“I don’t want your bloody heart,” I told him. “I want to know where Delia of the Blue Mountains is!”
“Had I that knowledge it would be yours.”
I stood looking at him, at a loss. He was a young man, proud and upstanding, and a fine swordsman. If he got into many fights he’d be taking obi all the time.
He stirred awkwardly and then bent and retrieved his sword. I watched, alert, but he fingered the weapon and then walked across to his animal. He spoke to it for a moment, soothing it, and a pang of remembrance touched me.
Then he came back leading it by the reins.
“My zorca is yours, Dray Prescot, seeing that you are afoot, which no clansman may be.”
A zorca! So this was the type of animal from which Delia had fallen.
“Are you not a clansman? Would you then not have to walk?”
“Yes. But I have made obi to you.”
“Hmm.” Then the obvious question asserted itself. “Which way lies Aphrasoe, the City of the Savanti?”
He looked blank.
“There is only one city. I have never heard of any other.”
This was the answer I had feared to hear. I must be stranded in some remote and forgotten region of Kregen. Then the truth presented itself painfully. It was Aphrasoe that was isolate and hidden; these people were of the planet Kregen, living a natural human life. I thought of the cat-people-or as natural as their customs and environment allowed.
All I could do was go along with Hap Loder and learn all I could from him. I would find Delia, I would! And to find her I must learn, and quickly, damn quickly, everything I could. I studied the zorca with its twisted single horn. The saddle was richly decorated, but it was functional, comfortable, and the stirrups were long so that there was nothing here of the bent-legged crouch of the Rotten Row jigger up-and-down. One could ride a long way in that saddle. I fancied I would.
Besides the pair of swords and the willowy lance, Hap Loder owned an ax of a peculiar and deadly character, double-bitted, daggered with six inches of flat-bladed steel. Also he had a short compound bow. I looked at his arsenal with amusement; then again at the bow, with respect. He could have shot me down with that long before I could reach him. I cocked an eye at him.
“Show me your skill with the bow, Hap.”
He responded willingly. He strung it with a quick practiced jerk, looking up apologetically. “This is a light hunting bow, Dray Prescot. It has no great power. But I joy to show my skill to you, obi-brother.”
A piece of driftwood lay in the sand fifty yards off. Hap Loder put four arrows into the wood- thunk! thunk!
thunk! thunk! — as fast as he could draw back the string, and loose. I was impressed.
Maybe that was all the weapon he needed, after all.
Also strapped to the saddle in the confined space allowed to so short-coupled an animal were a number of pieces of armor. Most were steel, although some were of bronze, and it looked as though Hap had built up his harness at different times and from different sources. He told me that a Jiktar commanded a thousand men, and my respect for him increased. The Clan of Felschraung was less than ten miles distant. I have for the moment spoken of distances in Earthly terms; when the time is ripe I will tell you more fully of Kregan methods of mensuration and numerology and of time. With two suns and seven moons the later is complex and fascinating.
I had yearned for years to return to Kregen; now I was here and I must not waste time.
“Wait here, Hap,” I said. I leaped up to the saddle. The feeling was at once strange and familiar; but altogether exhilarating. It was not the same as swooping down and zooming up in an Aphrasoean swinger; but as I pounded along with the wind in my hair I felt much the same feelings of freedom and exultation. I would find Delia-I would!
I skidded to a halt before Hap Loder and jumped down.
“We will walk together, Hap.”
So we started off toward the Clan of Felschraung.
Loder pulled the Fristle spear from the dead zorca. “It is not good to waste a weapon,” he said.
“Where do they come from, Hap? Where would they have taken Delia?”
“I do not know. The wise men may answer you. We have but lately come into this area, for we cover many miles in a year. We wander forever on the great plains.”
We left the sea far behind us and I realized I had not seen one sail on all that vast expanse.
I learned that there were many clans wandering the prairies of this continent, whose name, according to Hap Loder, was Segesthes, and that between them was continual conflict as one vast conglomeration of people and animals moved from grazing area to grazing area. The city, which was the only city he knew of and which he had never seen, was called Zenicce. There was in his demeanor when he spoke of Zenicce not only hatred but a certain contempt.
Some few miles inland we ran across the hunting party from which Hap Loder had parted in chase-a chase, incidentally, he had lost-and I was introduced. The moment we had made pappattu, the necessary preliminary to the challenge, Hap cried out that he had made obi to me.
On the bronzed faces of the clansmen I saw a dawning respect. There were a dozen of them, and two looked as though they would challenge me, anyway, for the custom was that any man may challenge any other to take obi; but the others recognized that if I had beaten Hap Loder I would also beat them. Hap looked down haughtily. Among the clansmen honor and fierce pride ruled. Weakness would be instantly singled out and uprooted. I was to learn of the complicated rituals that governed a clansman’s life, and of how by a system of duel and election their leaders were chosen. But at this time I looked about ready to fight them all if needs be. And, according to their custom, had I chosen to do so, then Hap would have fought at my side until either we had been killed or they had all made obi to me.
That they had all made obi to Hap was in abeyance at a time of new pappattu; whenever a new challenge was made to take obi, all old obis died. In effect this would never work in practice, and the challenge and the giving and taking of obi would be left to the two contestants.
One of the men, a surly giant, decided. There seems always such a one in a group, resentful of his defeat at the hands of him who has taken obi from him, putting it down to chance or ill luck, and vengefully always on the lookout to reclaim what he considers is rightfully his. This one was a deposed Jiktar. He leaped from his zorca, immediately pappattu was over, and said to me, sneeringly:
“I will fight you at once.”
Hap stiffened and then said: “According to custom, so be it.”
He drew his own sword. “This sword is in the service of Dray Prescot. Remember that.”
The fellow, one Lart, stood balanced on the balls of his feet, a steel-headed spear out-thrust. I caught Hap’s eye. He nodded at the spear across the zorca that was ours.
“It is spears, Dray.”
“So be it,” I answered, and took the spear, and poised it. As I had known it would be, it was heavy as to blade and light as to haft, ill-balanced, and clumsy. It would throw reasonably well, and no doubt that was its primary function. But if Lart threw his, and I dodged, I would break his neck.
As we circled each other warily I understood that Hap had challenged me with his sword because that was the weapon I had been wearing. This must be another of their customs.