Poul Anderson: A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

“Kraich.” Having started dinner cooking, he settled back on the tripod of clawed feet and massive tail. “You’ve earned a double drink this evening, Dama. A regular sundowner, and one for killing the dyavo.” He poured into cups from a flask of shlivovitza. “Though I must skin the beast and carry the hide,” he added.

The hoarse basso seemed to hold a note of genuine complaint. Startled, Kossara peered across the fire at him.

To a dweller in the inner Empire, he might have been any Merseian. No matter how anthropoid a xenosophont was, the basic differences usually drowned individuality unless you knew the species well. Trohdwyr roughly resembled a large man—especially in the face, if you overlooked endless details of its heavy-boned, brow-ridged, wide-nosed, thin-lipped construction. But he had no external earflaps, only elaborately contoured holes in the skull. Totally hairless, his skin was pale green and faintly scaled. A sierra of low triangular spines ran from the top of his forehead, down his back to the tail’s end. When he stood, he leaned forward, reducing his effective height to tall-human; when he walked, it was not on heels and soles but on his toes, in an alien rhythm. He was warm-blooded; females of his race gave live birth; but he was no mammal—no kind of animal which Terra had ever brought forth.

By a million signs Kossara knew him for Trohdwyr and nobody else, as she knew her kinfolk or Mihail. He had grown gaunt, deep furrows lay in his cheeks, he habitually spurned boots and trousers for a knee-length tunic with many pockets, he wore the same kind of curve-bladed sheath knife with knuckleduster handle which he had given her and taught her to use, years before …

“Why, I’ll abandon it if you want,” she said, thinking, Has time begun to wear him down? How hurtful to us both.

“Oh, no, no, Dama. No need.” Trohdwyr grew abashed. “Forgive a gaffer if he’s grumpy. I was—well, today I almost saw you ripped apart. There I stood, you in my line of fire, and that beast—Dama, don’t do such things.”

“I’m sorry,” Kossara said. “Though I really don’t believe I was taking too big a chance. I know my rifle.”

“I too. Didn’t you learn from me?”

“But those were lightweight weapons. Because I was a girl? Today I had a Tashta, the kind they’ve issued me in the Voyska. I was sure it could stop him.” Kossara gazed aside, downslope toward the bottom of the Kazan, which night had already filled. “Besides,” she added softly, “I needed such a moment. You’re right, I did provoke the dyavo to attack.”

“To get away from feeling helpless?” Trohdwyr murmured.

“Yes.” She could never have opened thus to any human except Mihail, maybe not even to him; but over the years the ychan had heard confessions which she did not give her priest. “My man’s yonder.” She flung a hand toward the first stars as they twinkled forth, white upon violet above the lowlands. “I have to stay behind in my guard unit—when Dennitza will never be attacked!”

“Thanks to units like yours, Datna,” Trohdwyr said.

“Nevertheless, he—” Kossara took her drink in a gulp. It burned the whole way down, and the glow spread fast to every part of her. She held the cup out for a refill. “Why does it matter this much who’s Emperor? All right, Josip was foul and his agents did a great deal of harm. But he’s dead now; and the Empire did survive him; and I’ve heard enough from my uncle to know that what really keeps it going is a lot of nameless little officials whose work outlasts whole dynasties. Then why do we fight over who’ll sit crowned in Archopolis for the next few years?”

“You are the human, Dama, not I,” said Trohdwyr. After a minute: “Yet I can think how on Merseia they would be glad to see another Terran Emperor whose spirit is fear or foolishness. And … we here are not overly far from Merseia.”

Kossara shivered beneath the stars and took a strong sip.

“Well, it’ll get settled soon,” she declared. “Uncle Bodin told me he’s sure it will be. This thing in space is a last gasp. Soon”—she lifted her head—“Mihail and I can travel,” exploring together the infinite marvels on worlds that circle new suns.

“I hope so, Dama, despite that I’ll miss you. Have plenty of young, and let them play and grow around me on the manor as you did, will you?”

Exalted by the liquor—how the smell of the roasting meat awakened hunger!—she blurted: “He wanted me to sleep with him before he left. I said no, we’ll wait till we’re married. Should I have said yes? Tell me, should I have?”

“You are the human,” Trohdwyr repeated. “I can simply answer, you are the voivode’s daughter and the Gospodar’s niece. But I remember from my cubhood—when folk still lived in Old Aferoch, though already then the sea brought worse and worse floods—a female ychan of that town. I knew her somewhat, since a grown cousin of mine used to come in from our village, courting her—”

The story, which was of a rivalry as fierce as might have stood between two men of different clans in early days on Dennitza, but which ended after a rescue on the water, was oddly comforting: almost as if she were little again, and Trohdwyr rocked her against his warm dry breast and rumbled a lullaby. That night Kossara slept well. Some days afterward she returned happily to Dubina Dolyina. When her leave was up, she went back to Zorkagrad.

There she got the news that Mihail Svetich had been killed in action.

But standing before the slave shop’s audiovisual recorders, Kossara did not think of this, nor of what had happened to Trohdwyr himself on cold Diomedes. She remained in that one evening out of the many they had had together.}

The chemical joy wore off. She lay on her bunk, bit her pillow and fought not to yell.

A further day passed.

Then she was summoned to the manager’s office. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve been bought, luckier than you deserve.”

It roared in her. Darkness crossed her eyes. She swayed before his desk. Distantly she heard:

“A private gentleman, and he must really have liked what he saw in the catalogue, because he outbid two different cepheid houses. You can probably do well for yourself—and me, I’ll admit. Remember, if he sells you later, he may well go through me again instead of making a deal directly. I don’t like my reputation hurt, and I’ve got this switch here—Anyhow, you’ll be wise if you show him your appreciation. His name is Dominic Flandry, he’s a captain of Naval Intelligence, a knight of the Imperium, and, I’ll tell you, a favorite of the Emperor. He doesn’t need a slave for his bed. Gossip is, he’s tumbled half the female nobility on Terra, and commoner girls past counting. Like I said, he must think you’re special. The more grateful you act, the better your life is likely to be … On your way, now. A matron will groom and gown you.”

She also provided a fresh euphoriac. Thus Kossara didn’t even mind that the servant who came to fetch her was hauntingly like and unlike an ychan. He too was bald, green, and tailed; but the green was grass-bright, without scales, the tail thin as a cat’s, the posture erect, the height well below her own, the other differences unreckonable. “Sir Dominic saw fit to dub me Chives,” he introduced himself. “I trust you will find his service pleasant. Indeed, I declined the manumission he offered me, until the law about spy bracelets went into effect on Terra. May I direct you out?”

Kossara went along through rosiness, into an aircar, on across the city and an ocean, eventually to an ornate house on an island which Chives called Catalina. He showed her to a suite and explained that her owner was busy elsewhere but would presently make his wishes known. Meanwhile these facilities were hers to use, within reason.