George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

Haviland Tuf let Morho y Varcour Otheni utter scarcely a word until they were alone in the same chamber to which he had taken Herold Norn, sitting diagonally opposite. “You heard of me from the Norns,” Tuf said then, “obviously.”

Morho smiled toothily. “Indeed we did. A Norn houseman was persuaded to reveal the source of their cobalcats. To our delight, your Ark was still in orbit. You seem to have found Lyronica diverting?”

“Diversion is not the crux of the matter,” Tuf said. “When problems exist, my professional pride requires me to be of whatever small service I can. Lyronica is rife with problems, alas. Your own individual difficulty, for example. Varcour is, in all probability, now the last and least of the Twelve Great Houses. A man of a more critical turn of mind than myself might remark that your lizard-lions are deplorably marginal monsters at best, and since I understand your realms are chiefly swampland, your choice of arena combatants must therefore be somewhat limited. Have I divined the essence of your complaint?”

“Hmpf. Yes, indeed. You do anticipate me, sir. But you do it well. We were holding our own well enough until you interfered. Since then, well, we have not taken a match from Norn once, and they were previously our chief victims. A few paltry wins over Wrai Hill and Amar Island, a lucky score against Feridian, a pair of death-draws with Arneth and Sin Doon—that has been our lot this past month. Pfui. We cannot survive. They will make me a Brood-Tender and ship me back to the estates unless I act.”

Tuf stroked Dax, and quieted Morho with an upraised hand. “No need to belabor these matters further. Your distress is noted. Since my dealings with Herold Norn, I have been fortunate enough to be gifted with a great deal of leisure. Accordingly, as an exercise of the mind, I have been able to devote myself to the problems of the Great Houses, each in its turn. We need not waste precious time. I can solve your present difficulties. There will be some cost, however.”

Morho grinned. “I come prepared. I heard about your price. It’s high, there is no arguing, but we are prepared to pay, if you can . . . ”

“Sir,” Tuf said. “I am a man of charity. Norn was a poor House, its Beast-Master all but a beggar. In mercy, I gave him a low price. The domains of Varcour are richer, its standards brighter, its victories more wildly sung. For you, I must charge two hundred seventy-five thousand standards, to make up for the losses I incurred in dealing so generously with Norn.”

Morho made a shocked blubbering sound, and his scales gave metallic clinks as he shifted in his seat. “Too much, too much,” he protested. “I implore you. Truly, we are more glorious than Norn, but not so great as you suppose. To pay this price of yours, we must need starve. Lizard-lions would run over our battlements. Our towns would sink on their stilts, until the swamp mud covered them over and the children drowned.”

Dax shifted in Tuf’s lap and made a small meow. “Quite so,” Tuf said. “I am abashed to think that I might cause such suffering. Perhaps two hundred thousand standards would be more equitable.”

Morho y Varcour Otheni began to protest and implore again, but this time Tuf merely sat silently, arms on their armrests, until the Beast-Master, red-faced and sweating, finally ran down and agreed to pay his price.

Tuf touched a button on the arm of his chair. The image of a great muscular saurian materialized between him and Morho; it stood two meters high, covered in grey-green plate scales and standing on four squat clawed legs as thick as tree stumps. Its head was a massive thing, armored by a thick yellowish plate of bone that jutted forward like the ramming prow of an ancient warship, with two curving horns at its upper corners. The creature had a short, thick neck; dim yellow eyes peered from under the jut of its brow ridge. Between them, square in the center of the head, a large, dark, round hole pierced the thick skull plate.

Morho swallowed. “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Very, ah, large. But it looks—was there originally a third horn in the center, there? It looks as though it has been, ah, removed. Our specimens must be intact, Tuf.”

“The tris neryei of Cable’s Landing,” Tuf said, “or so it was named by the Fyndii, whose colonists preceded humanity on that world by several millennia. The term translates, literally, as ‘living knife.’ There is no missing horn, sir.” A long finger made a small, precise motion, pressed down upon a control. The tris neryei turned its massive head toward the Varcouri Beast-Master, who hiked his bulk forward awkwardly to inspect its image.

As he reached out toward the phantom, tendons bulged in the creature’s thick neck, and a sharpened bone stake, as thick around as Tuf’s forearm and more than a meter long, came thrusting out of the beast’s head in a blur of motion. Morho y Varcour Otheni uttered a high thin squeak and turned gray as the bone spear skewered him and pinned him to his seat. An unfortunate odor filled the chamber.

Tuf said nothing. Morho, blubbering, looked down at where the horn entered his swollen stomach as if he were about to be sick, and it took him a long horrid minute before he realized there was no blood and no pain and the monster was only a hologram. His mouth made an “o.” No sound came out. He swallowed. “Very, ah, dramatic,” he said to Tuf.

The end of the long, discolored bone spear was held tightly within rings and ropes of pulsing blue-black muscle. Slowly the shaft began to pull back into the monster’s head. “The bayonet, if we may be so bold as to call it that, is concealed within a mucous-lined sheath along the creature’s upper neck and back, and the surrounding rings of musculature can deliver it at a speed approximating seventy kilometers per standard hour, with commensurate force. This species’ native habitat is not entirely dissimilar to the areas of Lyronica under the control of the House of Varcoijr.”

Morho moved forward so his seat creaked beneath his weight. Dax purred loudly. “Excellent!” the Beast-Master said, “though the name is a bit, oh, alien. We shall call them, let me think, ah, spear-carriers! Yes!”

“Call them what you will,” said Tuf. “That is of small concern to me. These saurians have many obvious advantages for the House of Varcour, and should you choose to take them, I will also give you, without any additional charge, a breeding stock of Cathadayn tree-slugs. You will find that . . . ”

Tuf followed the news from the Bronze Arena with diligence, although he never again ventured forth to the soil of Lyronica. The cobalcats continued to sweep all before them; in the latest featured encounter, one of the Norn beasts had destroyed a prime Arneth strangling-ape and an Amar Island fleshfrog during a special triple match.

But Varcour fortunes were also on the upswing; the newly introduced spear-carriers had proved a Bronze Arena sensation, with their booming cries and their heavy tread and the swift and relentless death dealt out in sudden thrusts of their massive bone bayonets. In three matches so far, a huge feridian, a water-scorpion, and a Gnethin spidercat had all proved impossibly unequal to the Varcour saurians. Morho y Varcour Otheni was ecstatic. Next week, cobalcat would face spear-carrier in a struggle for supremacy, and a packed arena was being predicted.

Herold Norn called up once, shortly after the spear-carriers had scored their first victory. “Tuf!” he said sternly, “you have sold a monster to Varcour. We do not approve.”

“I was not aware that your approval was required,” Tuf said. “I labored under the impression that I was a free agent, as were the lords and Beast-Masters of all the Great Houses of Lyronica.”