How I proposed to make my escape, I have no idea. Perhaps I would have metamorphosed suddenly from savior to destroyer, and struck a path for myself with killing energies. Instead, another authority resolved the puzzle.
There came a yelling and thrusting from the edge of the mob nearest to the square and the Winged Horse Gate. Shortly, over this hubbub rang the commotion of iron hooves and a bellowing of horns.
Near me, one of the Hessek crew who had remained at his post began to shout, “Jerdat! Jerdat!”
Kochus gibbered, “Someone’s told the citadel. They’ve smelled riot and turned out the garrison.”
The crowd, no doubt aware of what was good for it, was parting down its center, and through this parting came galloping some two hundred mounted soldiers, the fifth portion of a jerd.
The horses were all salt-white, one or two with a freckle of chestnut or black, and trapped in white. The jerdiers were dressed in the way of the Masrimas statue in the bay: boots, wide trousers, and pleated kilt of white leather, the latter reinforced by strips of white metal. Above the belt, their color changed. Red leather chest harness with pectoral plate of bronze, collar and shoulder-pieces of bronze, bronze sleeves to the elbow, and gauntlets of red kidskin. The spired bronze helmets were grafted onto a wig of brass mesh like the hair of some curious clockwork man-doll, and striking, mated to black beards. It was well known from the annals of the Masrians that their first military advantages were won its horseless lands because of this mode of kitting the cavalry. Each white to the waist and showy red and gold above and mounted on a white horse, they blended into the animal and looked, from a very slight way off, to be a race of fourlegged equine monsters. Such days of glory, however, were gone.
The jerdat commander reined hi his gelding and the fifth
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of a jerd pulled up immaculately behind him, spectacle perfected at a million practices in the drill yard.
In the way of such things, the press was sidling off from me, leaving me space to greet official wrath alone.
Shining in his bronze, the jerdat took in the scene. He was near my age, my man’s age at least, and constructed in a manner to please his women. Finally he thought he might speak to me.
“You, sir-are you the cause of this disturbance?”
“You, sir, are the cause of it, not I.”
Plainly, he did not care for my answer.
“Express yourself afresh, sir.”
“Gladly. You have ridden your troop headlong into a peaceful gathering, thereby creating something of a riot. I hope I make myself clear.”
The jerdat nodded, as if an assessment he had privately formed of me was showing itself as accurate.
“Be good enough to tell me your rank and your blood.”
“I am a foreigner to Bar-Ibithni.”
“Yet you talk like a Masrian. Well. And your rank?”
“I am a king’s son,” I said.
At that he smiled.
“Are you indeed, by the Flame. Well, then, and what is this foreign princeling at, stirring up a mob of Hesseks?”
“I am a healer,” I said, “among my other powers.”
“You dress mighty fine for an amputator of warts, I’m wondering if you’re a thief’s son rather than a king’s. Maybe I should offer you a night of entertainment in the Pillar jail.”
Supremacy, once established, must remain constant, and I could not afford to let these soldiers best me in public. I was weary, too, and he riled me. I watched his face smiling, and I watched it alter as I let the slender bolt of light from my arm, which had been itching with it, into his plated breast.
He almost toppled down, but, rare horseman that he was, he kept his seat while the animal itself neighed and danced with fear, rolling its eyes between the silver blinkers.
The crowd stood, huge-eyed.
The soldiers broke ranks and started a rush at me, but the jerdat checked them with a shout.
White-lipped, he accused me with the truth, “A magician!” I said, “Order the people home; they will go. I am done with my work for today.” At that there were wild entreaties on every side. I held up
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my hand and got silence, as normally only a fifth of a jerd would get it.
“I said, for today I am done. There will be other days. Captain,” I added, not taking my eyes off him, “I cede the matter to you.”
The crowd fragmented at the urging of the jerdiers, and bubbled away over the lawns of the Grove. There was no violence, and few lingered between the trees to molest me, afraid the soldiers would chastise them.
The jerdat and three of his subalterns sat their horses at the perimeter of the grass while this went on, below the enclosure with the tiger in it. Their mounts, schooled to beasts as they were schooled to an assortment of terrors, were stony-still as the red cat prowled and growled above. Presently the captain rode back over to me. Obviously, the blow still pained him and he was half stunned, but he meant to have it out with me.
“You have dishonored me,” he said. “Not content with that, you did it before a mix rabble off the Amber Road, and before my own men.”
“And what had you in mind for me?”
He said, “If you’re a stranger to the city, I must ask if you know the code of the Challenge?”
I said, “A challenge to what?”
“To combat, you and I.”
“Ah, warrior matters,” I said. “Do you think you can match me?”
“If you will abide by the code. You claim to be a king’s son and appear at least to be a gentleman. I will take so much on trust, for redress I will have, magician.” Shaken as he was, he lost his control, and rasped out at me with his eyes burning, “By Masrimas, you shamed me, and must give me something?’
“If I refuse?”
He smiled, reckoning he had my weakness, and not far off at that.
“Then I will personally see to it that the whole city understands, sir, that you are afraid to meet me, doubting your powers. Which will do your trade no good, I promise you.”
“Assume I accept. That thing I did I can do again. What weapon can enable you to best a sorcerer?”
“If you have any honor, you will observe the code of combat and use only the weapon that the code permits-a sword.
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If you prefer jackal’s tricks, you may find me more ready. I, too, have had priestly training.”
A feature I had noticed casually a moment before now disconcerted me. Despite his Masrian coloring, his eyes were blue, and I recalled hearing that this was a mark of the Hragon kings.
“You had better tell me who you are,” I said.
He said steadily, “You guess already, by your face. It makes no odds. I am the prince Sorem, son of the Emperor. And the challenge still stands.”
“You must think me mad,” I said, “to invite me to kill the heir.”
“I am not the heir,” he answered coldly. “My mother is his former wife, and he has cast her off. You need expect no trouble from that quarter-I am not in favor. I will see you have safe conduct besides, if you harm me. //. Don’t worry too greatly on that score. You will hear from me inside the month.”
He turned the horse smartly and rode off, the column of men falling in behind at a parade trot.
Glancing about, I saw Kochus’s face and nearly laughed.
“Courage, man. I am to fight, not you.”
He gabbled something, saying it would likely make my fortune if I slew this superfluous prince who was out of favor. All the princes constantly warred with each other in the citadel and out of it. The heir himself, nervous of his future, as most heirs have cause to be, would find means to reward me for Sorem’s death-one less threat to his throne. As for the Emperor, he had fathered too many to keep count, had grown obese with age, and cared only for the tricky adolescent boys he took to his bed, and then, the tale went, could do little with.
This chat of the imperial court, which seemed much removed from my own destiny, bored me. I was only astonished at the twist to the afternoon’s work. Besides, there was a disturbing element in Sorem, something that recalled to me my own self as I had been, still was, perhaps-hotheaded and young and out of temper with my life. (I wondered idly if the cast-off second wife was ugly, that she had been cast off. It seemed to me the woman who mothered him had had her share of beauty, for you saw it there in him. But no doubt the years had dealt unkindly with her. It put me in mind of Ettook’s krarl, of Tathra, of all that wretchedness I had thought left far behind me.) Regarding his commission in the