The lamp glowed less vigorously overhead, and she lay there under me, her eyes open and her body open. I was still pleased with my victory, the shallow victory outside, the shallow victory of her.
I said, at random as she did not speak the tribal tongue, “That was a fine treasure to take in your lord’s tent, and his dead eyes watching.”
And she answered in a whisper. “Be happy then, you filth, you diseased and verminous rubbish. Be happy and die of it.”
I started up. She turned me cold with her surprises.
“Where did you learn krarl talk?”
“From the Moi. Who but, when we barter with them? Are you stupid as well as distusting, oh shlevakin accursed?”
I was confounded. I had raped women on countless raids and tribal wars. They had bitten me, screamed, cried tears, or whined with pleasure. They had not coolly insulted me. Nor had they such eyes.
“Since you follow what I say,” I said, “tell me why the men here took their own lives.”
She smiled at that.
“The three princes of Eshkorek slew themselves on learning that Vazkor had risen from his tomb.”
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“Vazkor,” I said. My belly turned about in me. “Who or what is Vazkor?”
“You,” she said. “Tribal savage, dog, offal. Ask the dead.”
“You will tell me tomorrow if you tell me nothing now.”
“Am I to be with you then tomorrow, oh my master?” She was shivering, not so much from fear as from denying it.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said. “I am a chief’s son, and will protect you in the krarl.”
“Oh rejoice, Demizdor,” she said. “The savage will protect you in the stinking den of his idiot people.”
“Be civil or the savage shall change his mind. Was it your ijame you spoke?”
She shuddered all over, and said, “Demizdor is my name.”
I could not say it quite. I was eager to forget the city tongue I had used.
“Demmis-tahr,” I said. She laughed, more like choking than laughter. I could not make her out, though I meant to keep her.
“Even my name is to be defiled,” she said. “But I will call you Vazkor.”
“Call me that, you bitch, and I will kill you.”
At dawn, I and twenty-three red warriors rode out of the fortress. Our tribal dead we had burned with their ornaments and weapons; the city men we left for the carrion birds of the mountain valleys. We took all their riches and all their horses, either riding or leading them. They did not like us much after their former lords, but they should come to it, since they must. I had half dreamed of bringing away one of the tubular cannon on its wheeled cart, but the braves would not touch it. It had been only a whim-I had no idea of their workings, nor much hope of learning-so I let it go.
I had kept an eye out for the dark slave-men but saw none, and we did not seek them. We had one prisoner only and she was mine.
I had clad her hi her furs over the finery of emeralds so the warriors should not see them or any other of her treasure, gem or flesh, and grow envious. By day I made her tie her hair in a piece of velvet. Only the deer-mask stared out. She was calmer.
I said to her, “Obey me and you are safe. You found me
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rough, but try tricks and you will be at the mercy of others who are less courteous even than I.”
“That is a winsome thought indeed,” she said. Then, as we were going out, she called to me mockingly, “Vazkor, Vazkor.”
I could not bring myself to hit her. I was intoxicated with her body and would not damage it, and this she knew, sensing her power already, and she my slave. I took her shoulders and lifted her off the ground.
“I have been thinking, bitch-lady. Maybe you are right. Maybe your king Vazkor-he was a king, was he not, a golden-mask?-maybe he is in me, as the old men said when they kneeled. So. Call me by that name. I shall beat you if you use another. I am Vazkor. One day I shall steal a golden mask and wear it when I stopper you.”
After that she kept quiet, for she was no less contrary than other women.
Still, the thought took root in me. If I resembled their dead prince, his must be the spirit which had guided me, my possession. This made it harder to reason myself from the notion, as I had been attempting to do since the fight. The incidents upon the rock had not declined like the dream that began them, but I told myself I would not dwell on them. And I had other things to consider.
The krarl men bellowed for me that dawn, as they would bellow for the chief after a battle raid. When they observed I had got myself a doxy from the city tents, they shouted the louder. I might have what I liked, they would not grudge it, for this hour at least, for I was the hero who rescued them. Later, of course, they would hate me the more for the favor owed.
I set Demizdor on a horse. Though few women rode among the krarls, my woman should ride. Slave she might be, but she had been valuable in the fortress.
I had not had her since that first coupling. She judged me a savage, a dog, whose sex drove him back to her, and I sensed she imagined she might get the better of me through it. So I did not touch her, though my loins were full of snakes. I had never troubled with diplomacy before in the matter of a woman. Like a boy, silly for some wench who would not, I practiced her name under my breath, striving to get it right. When I offered her food and drink she turned
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away, as if this were the rape, and she would rather be forcibly bedded than fed. I recalled the weird myths of the cities and let her be.
We holed up that night among the mountain steeps. We had encountered no fresh’ game to shoot, and drank to mute the hunger. I took her a bowl of city wine-there had been casks of it among their tents-but she would not drink when I was by. I left her the bowl, and coming back I discovered it drained.
I lay by her for her own safety, for my pride too. The warriors would have made a sweet song of it, if I had taken a girl and not served her. I did not sleep well. I lay all the while arguing with myself, whether or not to have her and be done.
Close to dawn I heard her stirring, and told myself I had been wise to keep awake. I recalled the dagger she had thrown at me. Presently I saw her outlined on the lightening sky, standing where the ground jumped away into air. For a second I fancied she meant to throw herself off the rock, as the city men fell on their swords.
I tensed, ready to spring and tumble her back, and she said, “Lie easy, warrior. I am not brave enough for that. Not today, at least.”
“You are to call me Vazkor,” I said. “Did I not tell you?”
Her hair was like a bright smoke in the dawnlight and I could see every curve of her through the silver dress, and it nearly drove me from my wits.
She said, “There is the rubble of a tower near Eshkorek. That is the grave of Vazkor. Twenty years ago he took up the cities in his hands and ground them to his will, and smashed them. He wed a goddess-witch; she was called Uastis. There is some child’s legend that she was slain but recovered from death, that she took on the form of a white lynx, and fled before the soldiers came for her. They say she is living yet, in another land, Uastis Karnatis. But Vazkor is dead.”
Her words struck echoes inside me. My spine shivered and I bade her be silent. I could still picture how they had kneeled to me in the fortress, the elder men who could remember him, who maybe had looked in his face, and witnessed it once more in mine.
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Late in the morning we reached the valley of the spring gathering. There was some smoke rising; it had misled us. We trotted the fine city horses over the upper ridge, and looked down on the aftermath of the great tribal camp, black from old fires and entirely vacated. Not even a hound to welcome us. Only a few flapping, mottled heaps of wings and beaks, where the big birds were dining on dead dogs and horses and on parts of men. The krarls had meant to bum their dead as we had done, but, impatient at the numbers of the slain, had not stayed to tend the funeral fires. These had presently gone out, and left dainty roasted meats for the scavengers. It was not a pleasing sight and turned my stomach. I had seen corpses in plenty, but had not returned to a battlefield when the crows were banqueting there.