“That’s partly why we snared you. You’ve got to go down there and drive him so wild that he’ll try to fight a seer in the dark. If he loses his jotunn temper, then you’ve got him.”
“Or the other way,” Rap said calmly, chewing, gazing levelly at Ogi—who was beginning to find that steady stare unnerving.
“You’ve got your shoulders now, Rap. You can deliver.”
“It isn’t going to work. Not for long. Everyone knows I have farsight, so if I win I’ll get a daylight challenge real soon, and you’re trying to rank a mule above hundreds of purebred jotnar . . . But I suppose the main thing is to live through tonight, isn’t it?”
He had some good points there, but tomorrow could look after itself. ”Right. Just get him so mad he can’t wait to get at you.”
“If I said that Wulli told me he couldn’t get it up for her, not even once . . . that would do it, wouldn’t it?”
Ogi’s forehead broke out in sweat at the thought of what that accusation would do to a drunken jotunn. “Just about. You may have her father to worry about tomorrow, but he’s pretty old.”
Rap threw his platter aside and wiped his mouth, as if he had reached a decision. Ogi held out the wine jug, but he shook his head.
“I’d rather be sober. “
“Oh, you’re weird! Sober, for Gods’ sake? Fight sober? Jotnar think that’s unmanly. That’s worse cheating than using farsight!”
In silence, Rap stood up and stretched. Apparently he’d accepted his destiny. Ogi had expected a much longer argument, and he began to wonder if this was a trick and the faun was planning to disappear into the woods. He certainly did not look like a tyro preparing to fight one of the top killers in Durthing.
Sounds of smashing shrubbery heralded the approach of Kani.
“You’re taking this very well,” Ogi said uneasily. Rap smiled, humorlessly. “It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Oh?” Ogi was dumbfounded.
The kid stepped closer, eyes glinting in the firelight. “What Wulli told me about Grindrog was something different. I’d have been tempted anyway, if I’d thought I had any chance at all. Now you say I have, and you’ve trapped me, so I have no choice. Fine! Friend Grindrog deserves to have his head kicked a few more times. And other things.”
Ogi opened his mouth and then closed it again.
“But we’ve got time to kill, haven’t we?” Rap said gently. “Id like to borrow some heavier boots from someone, and we must let Grindrog do his drinking and meditate on his troubles . . . mustn’t we?”
Suddenly, somehow, the faun had hold of Ogi’s shirt and was twisting it, hauling him right up off his seat and higher, up on tiptoe. And smiling. The first big smile all night. Not a cheerful smile, all teeth and much too close to Ogi’s nose.
“How much?” Rap demanded. “How much are you going to make if the faun mule beats the blind champion? Or is the blindness just a worm to hook me?”
“No, Rap. I really think he’s almost blind. And I was just about to talk about your share of my . . . our winnings . . . and—”
“And I may have time for a practice bout or two first!” Rap, of course, was half jotunn. It just didn’t show, usually. It showed now.
Ogi should have thought of that sooner.
The fist at his throat was choking him. His knees began to quiver. He could smell that jotunnish anger. Imps fought best when they had numbers on their side, and he was no great bruiser. He’d brawled a little when he first arrived, because he’d had to, and he was hefty enough, but usually he just groveled. Few jotnar in Durthing would even bother to jostle an imp.
“You and Kani and who else in this?”
Hefty or not, now Ogi had been lifted right into the air. The faun was holding him up one-handed, holding him close enough to stare right into those big faun eyes, and they were full of jotunn madness. He should certainly have thought of this possibility.
“You and Kani and who else?”
“Verg,” Ogi said with some difficulty.
“I’ll start with you, then—practice the jelly thing.” Ogi muttered a silent prayer to every God in the lists.
Kani burst into the circle of firelight, so breathless he could hardly speak. Obviously he had more on his mind than the proposed Rap—Grindrog contest, for he did not seem to notice the confrontation in progress. He gasped, pointed back over his shoulder, gasped again.
He said, “Orca! “
“What? “ Rap released Ogi, who dropped and staggered backward. By the time he had recovered his balance, Rap was gone in the darkness, the sounds of his progress through the shrubbery already growing fainter.
“Rap! Wait! Rap, that’s suicide!” The noises continued to move away. “Rap, we have no weapons! “ But obviously shouting was not going to stop the faun.
Orca?
Far, far more frightened now than he had been by the thought of a beating from Rap, Ogi took off after him, leaving the winded Kani to follow as best he could.
If he dared.
At the Oasis of Tall Cranes, Inos achieved the impossible. It started when Azak smiled to her as he strode by.
A smile from Azak was a fearsome sight. It displaced large quantities of copper-red hair. Since leaving Arakkaran he had let his beard grow in full, and it was a very full beard indeed. With his hook nose and scarlet djinn eyes, with his great height and unshakable arrogance, Azak was not a person easily overlooked.
For a moment Inos stood and watched him go, heading for the camel paddock; stalking along in his voluminous desert robes, one ruddy hand resting on the hilt of his scimitar. She sighed. Azak ak’Azakar was a problem. His proposals of marriage were becoming more frequent and more insistent every day, as the long journey neared its end. His logic was impeccable and his arguments unanswerable. Only sorcery could ever put her on the throne of her ancestors, the throne of Krasnegar. Only the wardens were permitted to use sorcery for political ends, and the Four would be much more likely to approve her petition if she had a competent husband at her side. Especially if he was a strong and proven ruler already. Like Azak.
A match foretold by the Gods.
The only flaw in this plan was that she did not feel ready to accept Azak as a husband, despite his obvious qualifications on all counts; despite the command of a God. She could not imagine him surviving the boredom of a Krasnegarian winter; and if the wardens refused to uphold her claim, she would then be faced with the alternative of being sultana of Arakkaran. That would not be the same thing at all.
As he vanished into the roaring melee of unloading camels, Inos returned to her immediate task, which was helping Kade erect the tent. Kade was waiting patiently, regarding her niece with faded old blue eyes—and a glimpse of those eyes could sometimes startle even Inos now, so accustomed was she to seeing only djinns around her.
“First Lionslayer seems remarkably relaxed,” Kade said. “Oh, I’m sure it takes more than a few brigands to frighten Azak . . . Now, which way is the wind blowing?”
But as the two of them set to work with practiced skill, Kade’s comment began to bubble in Inos’s mind like yeast in a beer vat. For weeks the women of the caravan had talked uneasily of the dangers of the Gauntlet. Here at the infamous Oasis of Tall Cranes, they were right in the middle of it, and most of them were visibly jumpy. The lionslayers’ wives muttered discreetly about their husbands’ ill temper, for the lionslayers were redeyed in more ways than one, standing watch all night and riding camel all day.
But Azak had been smiling?
Well, why not? No matter how the rest of the party had fretted, Azak had remained quite untroubled by the promised perils. Chuckling into his red bush of a beard, he had pointed out that Sheik Elkarath had traversed the Gauntlet many times unscathed. And of course Inos had known what he was hintingthat the old sheik could never be endangered by mere mundane bandits.
That must be what Kade was thinking at the moment, also. It just wasn’t something that could be said out loud, though. Kade had been unusually brash, or strong-willed, to say even as much as she had.
Inos glanced around at the gaunt, rubbly hills and the sharp peaks of the Progistes, dark against the setting sun like gigantic legionaries. There were no cranes in sight, tall or short, but then there had been no dragons at the Oasis of Three Dragons, either. The world had changed since place names were invented.