(eng) Alan Burt Akers - Dray Prescot 22 by A Victory for Kregen

Author:A Victory for Kregen [Kregen, A Victory for]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter fourteen

The Khamorro Way

Like fish struggling upstream, the audience battled their way out beneath the collapsing folds of cloth. The uproar was just as prodigious as a sensible man would expect. By the fuzzy pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles we stared on that heaving scene. I stuffed the kalider away and moved across the boardwalk where mud lay in thick cakes from heedless boots.

“Watch for the rast! Spread around the marquee.”

“This is not in the plan, Jak!” Kimche looked wild, gesticulating, his bald yellow head glistening in streaks of mingled color in the moons’ light.

“But it will get him out, Kimche. We need to ask him, do we not?”

“Aye. Aye, Jak, that we do.”

No one could believe the marquee had fallen of itself and the first conjectures, expressed with many oaths, took the view that some god or spirit inimical to Beng Drudoj Flying Alsh had wrecked the bouts out of spite. Some very watchable fights started between the pirates and the steelworkers, and drew admiring crowds. No doubt Beng Drudoj Grip and Fall took pleasure from this substitute entertainment. The light of torches splashed the scene with vivid color. The smell and mood of the crowds thickened. The wrestlers from the Golden Prychan spread out and pretty soon Sly Nath the Trivet came arunning, pointing. His eye was beginning to look magnificent. We followed him and saw a group of men staggering out from the folds of fallen cloth. They staggered up amid much blasphemy. The guards had come running up; but the marquee was fallen and they couldn’t put it up again. The wrestling was abandoned for the night. The cut guy ropes were found, and the blasphemies mounted against the night sky. Sly Nath, eye and all, was chuckling away to himself.

Well, yes, it was funny, too, if you thought about it...

We followed Jimstye Gaptooth and the bravo-fighter Miklasu, as they went off with their people. I would not have been surprised if they stayed at an inn called The Black Neemu; but its name was The Wristy Grip, which showed how proud they were of their wrestlers.

“I,” said Fat Lorgan, “do not have my club with the nail in its head with me.”

“I think, Jak,” said Kimche, after due consideration, “that I would like to have a sword. A Khamorro can break the bones of a swordsman, that is well known; but if the swordsman is very good, an unarmed man has no chance. It is a matter of relative skills.”

I well knew that Kimche would have the skills of the sword, being a Chulik.

“I only want to talk to this Gaptooth, not fight his army of khamsters.”

“But the two will of necessity go together.”

“May Drig take the fellow!” I am used to going ahunting alone. I said, briskly, “Do you return to the Golden Prychan and fetch what weapons you have, and mine, also. I shall sniff around a little. Something May Turn Up.” Shades of Quienyin!

The fairground formed a pulsing bubble of light and noise in the moonlit night.

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