"All right," Kissur said, "You can go back but I will be waiting for
you in Black Nest on the twenty third."
"What do you mean twenty third? Are you going to ride your horse to the
castle in five days?"
"Seven years ago," Khanadar said, "I made this trip in five days and I
had two hundred shield and spear horsemen with me and we had a skirmish
every day."
"All right," Bemish said," I will take a car and drive to your Nest,
whether it's black or white, and I am sure that I will get there before
you."
The guests came in the next morning - the Federation envoy, Mr.
Liddell, Shavash and his direct boss, the finance minister Sarjik. The
finance minister was in really bad shape - his bald head shook and his
watery eyes kept running. Shavash extracted this man from somewhere in
Chakhar province where he had been sitting since sovereign Neevik's times.
Accordingly to the non-confirmed rumors, the finance minister didn't have
credit cards and, seeing other people using them, he would shake his head,
"Nothing good will come out of it I assure you! Say, Shakunik Bank had also
issued private money and then the bank was confiscated and the money was
lost! What if the Federation government runs out of money and confiscates
your bank?" The old minister firmly grasped in his youth the following rule
- the richer is an entrepreneur, the more the state covers his riches - and
he couldn't change himself.
They abandoned the minister in a room and Shavash drove examining the
construction.
"Where is Kissur," he asked. "And why are you so disheveled?"
"Kissur," Bemish said, "rode to Black Nest with his friends, on a horse
back."
Shavash grinned.
"And what's happened to you?"
"And I rode back all night. There was not a single phone in the
villages around and I was dumb enough not take a satellite phone with me."
Bemish was exhausted, since he rode slowly, afraid of tiring the horse
out, and he couldn't sleep in saddle and he wasn't going to learn this
skill.
"I see," Shavash said, "Khanadar the Dried Date is going to ride down
the glorious battles' path. These people live in the previous century."
In the end, Bemish asked, where the story of Kissur trafficking in
drugs came from, but smiling Shavash claimed his total ignorance.
Upon serious consideration, Bemish decided to drive and he was very
proud that he would see the Country of Great Light not through an airplane
window but through a windshield.
He chose an old 4WD jeep with large wheels and he put in the trunk the
second spare tire, high hunting boots, a whole battery of drinking water
bottles and several tinned food cans. He welded steel supports to the rack
and fastened a light motorcycle to them. Bemish remembered how Khanadar had
smiled saying that it was impossible to reach Black Nest by a car and one
had to ride there on a horse. Knowing Khanadar, he suspected that he had
been a butt of a dirty joke and a car road to the castle existed only on the
map.
Bemish was driving out of the Empire's center to its barbarian
outskirts and it seemed that every kilometer, put between him and the
capital, was transposing him backwards in time. Cute manors with satellite
dishes disappeared first, foreign goods on the road stands disappeared next,
factory-made shirts on people around him disappeared last. A different
landscape stretched around him - rice paddies covered with water, clay
villages where dogs barked and drums boomed in precincts and where peasants
in hemp pants sang thousand-year-old songs while collecting the harvest, and
only a perfect highway, like a bridge spanning over time for a curious
observer, connected a sprightly rolling jeep with the faraway world of glass
and steel.
In thousand kilometers the road finally ended - the jeep started
hopping down a rocky mountain path - the highest achievement of the
construction methods in sovereign Irshahchan's times. The animals became
more audacious and began crossing the road. Occasional people, however,
dashed away from a weird cart into the woods. Rice paddies disappeared; the
few villages existing in these mountains still lived by hunting and
gathering and by robbing occasional travelers.
In the second day's evening, Bemish saw five familiar horses at a
roadside tavern and stopped there.
Kissur and his companions were sitting at a plank table and gobbling up
a wild boar. Bemish joined them.
"I'll leave you behind," Bemish said.
"Hmm," Kissur said, "By the way, I could order to puncture your tires."
Bemish bantered back, "And I can sue you."
Kissur was chewing greedily on the boar.
"This is my land. I am the master of taxes and jurisdiction here. So,
if you sue me, I may as well sentence you to hanging for perjury."
"Do you judge this way often?"
"Never," Kissur said. "If you sentence a man to death, his relatives
will start hunting you in a vendetta. Who will avenge you?"
"Nobody will avenge an Earthman," Khanadar the Dried Date agreed.
"Earthmen think that their government should avenge them. Soon, their
government will sleep with their women for them."
Bemish was assigned the best den in the tavern and Kissur sent him a
girl. The girl had been washed and she was quite cute. She stood shyly
tugging at a mat with her bare toes. Bemish seated the girl on his knees and
started fingering her necklace. There were numerous coins on the necklace -
several heavy silver asymmetric coins with a hole inside and a partially
rubbed off Gold Sovereign's seal, a dozen of dimes and quarters, a Swiss
frank and even as far as Bemish could decipher German, one Cologne subway
nickel token.
Bemish pushed the girl off his knees, dug in his wallet and spilled all
the change on his hand. He found there a dime that had spent a long time in
the wallet, showed it to the girl and tapped with his finger a silver
"unicorn" the size of a chicken egg, square shaped and with a round hole in
the middle and an encryption glorifying sovereign Meenun on the girl's
necklace.
"Let's exchange," he said.
The girl's eyes blossomed with joy. She quickly started pulling the
necklace off her neck. Bemish grabbed her hand.
"Listen, stupid," he said. "If you take this dime and one more and a
hundred more and a thousand more and fill this coffer in the corner with all
these dimes, the whole coffer will be worth less than this silver coin. Got
it?"
The girl nodded.
"And now get out," Bemish said. The girl's eyes saddened.
"Won't we exchange?" she asked looking at the dime with an unconcealed
longing. Bemish gave her the dime and kicked her out.
When Bemish woke up next morning, Kissur and his retinue were no longer
there, they had ridden away at the crack of dawn.
"Will I catch up with them soon?" Bemish asked the hostess.
"No," the hostess said, "You need to take a detour via the White Pass
and they rode straight. You will reach the castle by the evening."
"And what will happen to them?"
"Hmm," the woman hesitated, "If snow melts a bit in the daytime and an
avalanche comes down, you, of course, will get their first but if no
avalanche happens they, of course, will get there before you."
"Is the straight path hard?"
"I don't know. Since old Shun broke his neck there ten years ago,
nobody has taken it."
The mountain road winded like a pumpkin vine. Heavy rain shredded with
snow started suddenly. The wipers were not able to handle it. Bemish was
horrified for Kissur - he was not old Shun, of course, but he still could
break his neck.
This mountainous area was wild to the utmost. Trade had flourished in
the coastal regions and three dozens years ago local cities such as Lamass
or Kudum could brag about their good communities and abundant traders. The
civil war in the Empire turned everything around - the castles' inhabitants
straightened up, the traders' sons left for the castles' regiments and their
daughters became concubines. The demand for warlike Alom nobility was such
that an average knight could rob more in two month in the Empire than an
average trader could make in two years. By the war's end, trading paid off
so little that Lamass traders became extinct and it was the land of bandits
and robbers that welcomed the people from the stars.
The hands of the Empire could barely reach this strange region;
formally a castle owner was responsible for upholding order in the local
lands but he usually happened to be the biggest bandit. Nobody even
considered mine development here because horsemen with rocket launchers
under their armpits invariably approached mine engineers to demand a
tribute.
No passerby was safe here. The most disgusting accident happened three
years ago when a World Bank vice president, an amateur mountaineer, and two
friends of his decided, damn it, to conquer a local mountain Aych-Akhal.
While approaching the peak, he was taken prisoner by a local pedigreed
bandit and escorted to his castle. Next day the bank received a fax with a
picture of the vice president sitting chained in a real underground pit and
a one trillion dinars ransom demand. The World Bank stock capital was five
trillion dinars.
The media howled.
The Galaxy demanded the Empire to take decisive actions. The Galaxy
demanded to locate the castle the prisoner was in. "Whatever," the Empire
envoy shrugged his shoulders, "Whoever caught him keeps him." The Galaxy
demanded the decisive actions to be taken at this region.
The castle owner announced that if anybody resorts to decisive actions,
the prisoner would have his throat cut. Kissur helped the World Bank out. He
flew to his castle immediately and called the local lords in for a feast and
counsel. They arrived. Kissur imperturbably arrested the three dozens guests
that came to visit him and announced that he would shoot all these folks if
the vice president was not released.
The landowner who took the vice president prisoner was not present
among Kissur's guests. However, his brother and his father-in-law were
there. The same night, the vice president was released without any ransom.
Afterwards, Kissur didn't even bother meeting the man he had saved.
By the evening, Bemish reached the main and the only one street in
Black Village; faraway on the mountain amidst the clouds, the castle and its
wall, jagged like an EEG, showed up for a moment.
Right at this moment, a goose appeared on the wet road.
Bemish expected the goose to move aside and let the car pass since, in
the Earthman's opinion, roads were created for cars not geese. In the
goose's opinion however, roads were created for geese and accordingly to his
views the goose stared at the car with curiosity and then turned its back to
it and lowered its head.
They explained to Bemish afterwards that he should have lowered speed
and driven over the goose and the goose would have been unharmed and the car
would have been fine. But Bemish wasn't familiar with local geese' customs.
He turned the steering wheel to the right and floored the brake. The
car spun like a feather. Bemish flew into boysenberry bushes that the locals
used for fences and he almost split his head apart over the steering wheel.
The car shuddered and froze. Bemish slammed the door and stepped out to take
a look. The front wheels sat deep in the rut and one of them fell off.
Bemish looked around. The gosling, glancing sideways, desperately ran away
from the road. "Son of a bitch!" Bemish said loudly.
It was getting dark quickly. There was no way to fix the car. A dog
behind the boysenberry fence tried to compensate for a lacking fire alarm.
More and more dogs were joining it. As for the people - the village seemed
to be dead.
"Hei," Bemish shouted, "is anybody there?"
He had to shout for a while. Finally a house door opened and somebody
asked from a doorstep,
"What's this shouting in the dark?"
Something was gleaming behind the door but Bemish was not able to see
the man.
"Do you have a phone?" Bemish asked.
"I don't have a phone. I have a fan laser," the answer was.
Bemish bared his teeth.
"I have a fan laser myself."
The guy shut the door. Bemish kicked the car thoughtfully. He threw the
fan emitter on his left shoulder, a daypack on his right shoulder and took
the small bike off the rack. "Fan laser," he thought, thinking about the
gleam in the opened door, "No way, it's a fan laser, damn it - it's at least
a plasma rocket launcher."
The guards let Bemish into the castle without any surprise; bike or no
bike - who can understand these Earthmen? "Yes," Bemish thought, "people
here are very different from the plains' dwellers, they hugged their swords
in silence for a thousand years and now they silently hug their rocket
launchers, every trial verdict starts a vendetta here..."
It was slippery and wet in the castle yard, like in a defrosted
refrigerator. Kissur hadn't arrived yet. Old Elda was napping in an armchair
in the upper hall. She looked at the nervous Earthman as she would look at a
frog and said that the Earthman's iron cart would fall apart on the
Earthmen's roads smooth like a eunuch's cheek before her son falls from a
steep slope in the local mountains.
Bemish took off together with his nerves.
The young castle owner Ashidan, a Cambridge student, was passed out in
the main hall having dropped his golden curls into a plate with leftovers. A
bull mask with torches in place of horns bared its teeth above him and
something smoldering in the fireplace under the mask produced a horrible
smell; at a closer view it, appeared to be a hand phone remnants.
"What is it?" Bemish asked the majordomo.
"Lady Elda," he answered, "said that she didn't want any witchcraft
objects in her house. She just found it in the morning having gone over the
rooms."
Bemish looked Ashidan over more carefully. He slept shuddering
nervously and he didn't appear to Bemish to be drunk.
"Aren't there any communication devices in the castle?"
"Oh," the servant said, "what communication are you talking about?!
Look - even the cloth is homespun. She would burn anything else." And he
pointed at his dress. Bemish felt his sleeve - it really was burlap. He
hadn't understood that at first and thought in surprise that the servant had
a very luxurious jacket - thick knotted cloth like this was fashionable this
year.
Bemish didn't sleep at night and tossed; old pines squeaked behind a
narrow window, designed to shoot out from not to look out of, and their
squeaking branches made sounds like a hanged man's rope. Bemish pulled an
antenna out of a small radio and started listening. Suddenly while he was
searching for a station, he heard his name and a long string of words
spitted out in Alom - Bemish didn't make them out through the noise. Bemish
turned the dial again but the conversation had ended. "Hmm," Bemish thought,
"Somebody in this castle hid a transmitter away from old Elda."
In the morning Bemish left for the village. He didn't really want to
complain to old Elda that his iron cart fell apart on the road that even a
ram would pass through in a snowstorm and he was also sure that the castle
inhabitants knew as much about cars as he knew about divination on oil.
Bemish walked down a fresh road passing boysenberry fences and curious
chicken, thinking about this strange area where a phone in a house was a
luxury and an assault rifle was a necessary tool.
He reached the car and stopped in surprise.
The car stood at the same place and the busted wheel still hunched in
the rut. The other three wheels had disappeared in an unknown direction -
the lonesome car sank on its axles. The wipers were gone off the windshield
and the windshield was also gone. Bemish's eyes traveled into the car -
radio, head supports, rugs, handles and all five windows beside the
windshield had carefully packed up and left. An untouched first aid kit sat
in the back seat.
Bemish walked around the car and opened the trunk. There was nothing
inside except for a pair of old worn out bark sandals. Bemish was surprised
at first because he didn't have a habit of wearing bark sandals but then he
realized that the thief probably put Bemish's leather boots on and left the
bark sandals there. With gloomy anticipation, Bemish raised the hood and
gazed at the engine. Bemish was quite familiar with the car's design. He
immediately realized that the night thieves were much more familiar with
this design.
Bemish looked around - geese and turkey with red snot surrounded him
and the same rocket launcher old guy was digging cabbage in his garden. He
didn't have the rocket launcher next to him, probably thanks to the
daylight.
"Hey," Bemish said.
The old guy turned around. He wore a shirt that used to be white in its
youth and the pants that nobody would be able to say anything about.
"Come here," Bemish said. The old guy approached. Further into the
garden, his son hoed the ground mechanically without looking around. Bemish
waved the bark sandals and extended them over the fence.
"Do you know," Bemish said, "Who owns these?"
The old man took the sandals and fished out a ten dinar note that
Bemish had pushed down the toe earlier. He rolled the note and stuck it
behind his ear and handed the sandals back to Bemish.
"I don't know," he said.
Bemish lost his speech.
He looked at himself suddenly with the peasant's eyes. He looked at a
well dressed alien coming out of the world that all the people, who worked
well and obeyed the authorities, would go to after death - and he looked at
this half bare destitute village where no phones existed but news about a
car that could be stripped spread quickly without the phone, where no
toilets existed but mortars were available, and everybody knew everything
but would say nothing about his neighbors - and he realized with utter
clarity that even if the night adepts had stripped the car in the view of
the whole village and it probably had happened this way, not all the police
in the world would be able to find out who had done this.
Wheels rustled on the road.
"What's the problem?"
Bemish turned around. Behind him in a sport car, turquoise and narrow
like an orchid petal, Kissur's brother, Ashidan sat. A perfect shirt, a
precise hairdo, the smell of cologne - a starting manager and a Cambridge
graduate - Bemish felt his world pleasantly coming back to him.
Terence Bemish sardonically raised the bark footwear.
"Here," he said, "somebody decided to exchange transportation means
with me."
But Ashidan had figured it out already. He got out of the car, opened
the passenger's door and bowed to Bemish inviting him into the car. Bemish
got in. The peasant watched them with frightened eyes.
"Hey," Ashidan shouted to the guy in the garden, "come here!" The
peasant approached.
"Get in the car," Ashidan told the guy.
Bemish stretched to open a door.
"Get in the trunk," Ashidan added, looking in disgust at the guy's bare
and dirty feet. "Ah, well, you may change your clothing."
The guy ran to the house. Bemish regained his speech.
"Why do you think," Bemish asked, "that he stripped the car? It could
be anybody..."
"If," Ashidan said in an even voice, "a crime is committed in a village
and the criminal is not apprehended, the lord should arrest several village
inhabitants and keep them as hostages till they die or till the others
deliver the guilty party."
Bemish stared at Ashidan with wide opened eyes. The charming boy - and
he was a very beautiful lad - looked very much like a successful manager.
"In this voice his ancestors spoke generation after generation," Bemish
thought, "It looks like progress here is characterized by the lord putting a
peasant in a car's trunk instead of tying him to a horse's tail."
"This man," Ashidan said, pointing at Bemish, "is a named brother of my
brother and a guest of my ancestors. My brother is coming today - the
servants brought news that he got stuck at the Trekking Pass and took a
detour via Lokh."
The peasant dropped to his knees.
"Master!" it was unclear whether he addressed Ashidan or the alien.
The peasant's son walked out of the house in clean white clothing with
a satchel in his hand. A ten-year-old boy accompanied him.
"Master," the oldster continued, "take the younger one, we have so much
work now!"
Ashidan thoughtfully tapped the leather steering wheel.
"Our ancestor's guest," he said, "had a bad dream that somebody robbed
his car. I had this dream, too, and I hurried here. But now it seems to me
that it was a false dream and that the car, complete and unharmed, will
return to the castle by the evening."
Having said this, Ashinik floored the accelerator and the car sprayed
the white peasant's dress with a load of mud and rushed away.
Kissur reached the castle only by noon. The rumors appeared to be
correct - an avalanche had descended off the Trekking Pass and it had
brushed by the people and the horses. Everybody was alive but Kissur's
horse, Stargazer, with a white arrow on his forehead and wide hooves, was
dragged down and only a red spot blinked in the snow for a moment. They took
the same road that Bemish had used; Kissur's eyes swelled with blood like
ripe cherries because of the horse. Kissur glanced at Bemish and snapped,
"You won the bet. We will hunt tomorrow." And he ran upstairs.
Bemish didn't pursue him. Something scary suddenly hung in the air, the
stone gods' masks grimaced with their mouths at the Earthman and clanged
their teeth. Bemish turned around - pale Ashidan stood next to him rubbing
his temples.
Kissur locked himself in a corner tower and didn't let anybody in.
Khanadar explained that he was mourning the horse following the customs.
When Bemish's car drove into the castle's yard in the evening, Bemish
was sitting on a guard tower looking at the dragon-like clouds. Bemish ran
downstairs.
A well-built flaxen guy stepped out of the car and, bowing, handed the
keys to him. Everything was fixed including the broken wheel. Bemish looked
the guy over and said,
"Thanks. How many auto repair shops are in the village?"
"One," the guy answered without blushing.
Bemish looked at the guy's feet - he stood in a pool wiggling his bare
toes. The Earthman walked around the car and unlocked the trunk - the case
bristled there self-importantly. Bemish opened the case - underwear and
clothing was there, only two shirts were wet - clearly, they had been washed
and ironed. Bemish extracted leather boots out of the case.
"Hold it," Bemish said, "That's a gift for you. The guy gasped and took
the boots. Bemish stuck his hand in his pocket, took three hundred local
"unicorns" out and handed them to the guy.
"It's for your work."
"Mister," the guy said, "we just fixed the wheel. It costs twenty
"unicorns."
"Where are you going now?" Bemish asked.
"I am going to the Blue Ravine, to the village's left end."
"Get in," Bemish said, "I'll give you a ride." The village stretched
along the road, between the mountain and the canyon. It was rarely more than
hundred meters wide and about eight kilometers long. The guy squeezed
himself in a corner almost under the seat and kept silent. One could think
that he sat in the car first time in his life. "Hmm," Bemish thought, "on
the other hand, a master and an alien is giving him a ride for the first
time... I hope I am not compromising White Falcon clan's honor."
"How long has Ashidan been living in the castle?" Bemish asked.
"It's been two months, master."
"Does he drink?"
"No, master," the guy said nervously.
Bemish dropped the guy off at a field where girls in blue and red
skirts were already starting to dance and came closer to see what it was
that they grew in this field. He was going to ask for how long the peasants
had been growing this stuff but the bailiff rushed towards him. Bemish
turned around and drove away.
It was just before the sunset - he drove down a forest till he found a
nice lawn to the road's left. He drove into the lawn, turned the ignition
off, lifted the hood and gazed at the engine.
The carburetor was assembled like a bird's nest from many different
parts and the air filter was also taken from another car. The night thieves
from the only auto repair shop in the village had installed everything else
where they had taken it from.
Bemish turned around and drove back.
Kissur had already descended to the yard and they explored the castle
together. It was huge, the walls rose one after another like cabbage leaves.
The castle sat on the very mountaintop and only one road led to it from
the west. The outer wall hovered above an abyss on all the other sides and
the abyss had been hewed off for better defense, forming a wall smooth like
glass.
Kissur showed his guest a yard where Kanut the Falcon had been killed
and a small castle garden where Kissur's great grandmother had sinned with a
winged two-headed bull under an apple tree. Bemish told Kissur that tourists
from the whole Galaxy could visit the castle.
"This castle is not fit for tourists," Kissur smirked, "It does not
have disabled access." And he squeezed himself nimbly onto a narrow and
incredibly steep staircase spiraling along one of the outside walls.
Merriness ruled the castle in the evening - the grooms braided the
horses' tails, servants dragged out of the closets huge yew old bows,
wrapped in old rotten cloth with silver inscriptions. Bemish glanced into a
semi-dark stable and froze - Kissur, smiling coldly, was hiding a stubby
black assault rifle in a saddlebag.
Bemish stepped inside. Kissur lowered the woven bag lid.
"What game," Bemish asked, "are we going to hunt tomorrow?"
"In this area," Kissur said, "people have been hunting big game -
boars, bears - since old times."
A question hung on Bemish's tongue tip, "What kind of boar would you
hunt with an assault rifle?" But Bemish licked his lips and swallowed the
question.
They rode out before the crescent left the black sky, equipped the same
way as eight or hundred years ago - Kissur wore grey suede tall boots,
decorated with lilies, with high red heels but without spurs, green pants
and a red jacket girdled with a heavy belt made out of gold plates - every
plate depicted a beast or a fish. Kissur's overcoat was also green, with two
wide lanes sewn with golden mesh. A bow hung on his shoulder and a leather
quiver hung behind his back; arrow feathers, white like plastic foam, stuck
out of the quiver. A throw-axe hung at his belt and two yew javelins and a
sword hung at the saddle. The other nobles were dressed the same way. It
would be wrong to call it carnival dress - Kissur, like the majority of
Weians, dressed archaically even in the capital and he practically always
wore a wide necklace, made out of jade plates set in woven gold and
depicting falcons. As for Bemish, he clearly understood that his hunting bib
layered with PVC would call the local gods' fury at his head and they would
withhold the game that they guarded, from him. Now he felt like an impostor
in leather pants embroidered with silver.
Before leaving, Kissur threw a piece of fresh meat on an altar next to
the gate and tapped a bare sword over a rock to attract the god's attention.
Bemish looked at the sword with interest; it was very heavy and long,
with a three edged blade and some engraving that looked like running horses
along its edge. The handle had been made in the shape of intertwined snakes.
Bemish asked why they needed a sword and Kissur replied that gods didn't
grant fortune without a sword since the road to the other world went along
its edge and they brought and took away beasts down this road.
They watched the sunrise from a mountaintop, aerial wind danced in
their horses' tails - they said that this wind used to mount fillies in
ancient times and black horses with white spots had been born of this wind -
shells scrunched occasionally under the hooves reminding that a sea had been
there millions of years ago. Then, Kissur espied a deer that also decided to
enjoy the sunrise and they released the dogs and rode following them.
There were five nobles - Kissur, Ashidan, Khanadar the Dried Date,
Aldon and Bemish, there were also eight dogs and three servants - they drove
the deer at Kissur and he, having opened his eyes wide and screamed wildly,
threw a spear handed to him by one of the servants. Painted yellow, with a
green pinecone on the end, the spear almost pierced the deer all the way
through easier than it pierced the old maple in Kissur's manor in the
capital. Suddenly the forest buzzed and leaves flew. Either it entered
Bemish's mind on its own or the gods gave him a hint, "Kissur will get in an
accident. The mountain took the horse yesterday, today..."
By noon, Bemish was drunk with blood, the servants lagged somewhere
behind, he, Kissur and Ashidan rode out to a lawn overgrown with red
flowers. Kissur, having ridden to another side of the lawn, was making out
moss on a tree, he was probably foretelling.
At this moment, a bear cub jumped out on the lawn and crazily rushed up
the tree.
"Don't do it," Kissur told his brother, "It's a bad omen."
But Ashidan had already pulled his bow and shot - the cub let the tree
go and fell. Ashidan jumped off the saddle and ran to the cub. The bushes
were pulled apart, a roar issued forth and a huge black and brown she-bear
barged in.
"Ashidan," Bemish screamed.
Ashidan turned around. The she-bear rose on her hind paws and the youth
stood in front of her, bewildered with a broken arrow pulled out of her son.
Bemish snatched at his gun. Before he raised his hand, Kissur had
rolled off his saddle with a sword in his hand and dived under the bear's
belly. Ashidan with a squeal jumped aside. Bemish fired. The bear swung its
paws heavily in the air and crashed on Kissur. She shuddered and froze like
a pile of peat dumped off a truck.
Bemish and Ashidan rushed to the bear.
"Kissur are you alive?"
No answer issued.
Bemish approached the bear and started pulling it by its ear. At this
moment the pile of seemingly dead meat moved and Kissur materialized.
"Damn," he bared his teeth, "sword..."
But the sword, after they had turned the bear over, appeared to be fine
- it had entered her belly almost all the way to the guard. They examined
her snout - the bullet hit the bear right in her eye.
Yes, the hunt was excellent, even Dried Date who was not capable of
smiling screamed and hooted. He sat at the fire next to Kissur's knees and
started singing his songs that Bemish had heard so many times from boom
boxes in the workers' barracks that he came to liking them.
They rode back in the dusk. The horses walked down the path two
abreast, black oily earth crumbled under their hooves, a forested slope rose
like a dark wall on the right, the fuzzy sun was rolling behind the faraway
mountains covered with gleaming snow like a cake glazed with white. The
birds fluttered up from under the hooves and life was wondrously good. "Oh,
my God, it's such a great place for a hotel," a thought passed Bemish's
mind. He was a practical man and he always sought for ways to adjust nature
to money.
After the bear cub accident, Ashidan saddened and it happened somehow
that Kissur and his retinue raced in front and Bemish lagged behind them and
rode next to Ashidan. The latter was pale - either due to the weed that the
peasants grew in a local field or because of Cambridge. Bemish leaned to
Ashidan and asked quietly,
"Does Kissur know that you are a drug addict?"
"I am not a drug addict, I am just curious! I can stop this any
moment."
Bemish sniggered involuntarily. The youth shuddered. Then he abruptly
turned his grey eyes to the Earthman. His pupils were unnaturally
contracted.
It's not my fault, it's yours," he said, "Seven years ago Warnaraine
was ruled from this castle, and now it's a dump because there is no eight
line highway next to it! You have chased our gods away and what have you
given us instead, a Pepsi can?"
Ashidan grabbed the Earthman by his hand.
"This weed has always grown here! They ate it to speak to the gods! You
declared even talking to the gods to be a crime!"
"Come on, Ashidan! You don't converse to a god or a demon, you just
gobble this weed up to get high and you are afraid of Kissur because he will
throw you into a hospital for drug addicts or just chain you."
"I am afraid of the sword he took," Ashidan said, "I saw this sword in
Khanalai's hand and if people are killed, their souls enter their swords."
Khanalai was the rebel that fought Kissur seven years ago.
"Khanalai?" Bemish was astonished, "Have you met Khanalai?"
"He took me prisoner," Ashidan answered.
Bemish stared at the youth - he was young, slim like a snake and
incredibly beautiful, with golden hair and grey eyes heavily mascara coated
for the hunt.
"Oh, my God! How old were you?"
"I was fifteen, almost fifteen. Kissur entrusted me with five thousand
horsemen and Dried Date and Aldon's uncle - Aldon the Striped - were with
me. We should have waited for Kissur in the Black Mountains. But we heard
that down there, in the town of Lukhun, merchants had come in for a fair and
were bunched all together there because of the war. We decided to seize this
town because we would get more loot if we didn't wait for Kissur.
So, we approached this town with a guide and when the sun came out we
realized that it was a trap - Khanalai's army encircled us. Khanalai was
going to catch Kissur."
Ashidan rocked in the saddle.
I rode forward and challenged Khanalai to a duel. My shield had an
image of the White Falcon on it; Khanalai thought that Kissur himself got in
his trap. He really didn't want to fight but he had to accept the challenge.
He was afraid that his captains would mock him.
There is not much to say about this fight - Khanalai split my shoulder
and threw me to the ground like a kitten and then he removed my helmet to
cut my head off. He was really surprised and he asked me, "Who are you,
brat, to wear a White Falcon shield?" I told him that my name was Ashidan
and that my brother Kissur would avenge me and why wouldn't he just shut his
lousy trap and cut my head off. I was a very cute boy and Khanalai suddenly
took pity on me. He raised his sword and then he thought, "I will die - and
these words contained all the horror of irreversible, you couldn't sleep at
night having heard them. So, would it be worth it to bring the sword down?"
At least, that's what he told me afterwards. So he threw me like a wench
over his horse's back and rode to his army. And my army was obliterated down
to the last man. You see, it was a war very different from a war between two
countries. When one country and another country make a war, it's fair to
spare the enemy and to make him your vassal. While when a government fights
rebels, it's fair to obliterate the rebels completely.
"What happened to Dried Date?" Bemish suddenly realized.
"Dried Date and old Aldon were taken prisoners."
"And what happened next?"
They brought me and Dried Date to Khanalai's tent where he was feasting
after the battle and Khanalai said that he would like to hear a song about
this battle from Dried Date. Dried Date answered that the battle was not
finished yet because not everybody, supposed to be executed after this
battle, was executed and when Khalai executed everybody who was supposed to
be executed, there would be nobody left to sing this song. Khanalai grinned
and gave his new lute and his sword to Dried Date, and this sword was so
valuable that it cost more that Dried Date's honor. He sat and sang a song
of praise to Khanalai and I don't think that you'll ever hear it from Dried
Date or on a tape recorder. Then, Khanalai turned to me and said that he
would like to let me go. I was insolent to him. He paused and said, "All
right, they will crucify you tomorrow, brat. At first they will crucify
Aldon and then you."
"What happened tomorrow?"
"They brought Aldon and me out and Khanalai said, `If you let me pardon
you, I will let Aldon go.' I spit in his face."
Ashidan paused. He face paled completely and Bemish suddenly imagined
how cute a boy he had been at "almost fifteen."
"Khanalai rocked on his feet for a while and then said, `You are too
beautiful a boy to die.' They crucified Aldon and quarreled for a while and
then took me away."
"And what happened to Dried Date?"
"Dried Date sang songs of praise to Khanalai till he was offended, that
he, a man from a noble family, was serving a commoner who used to tread cow
dung in his childhood. He cut one of Khanalai's aides head off, threw it in
a sack and raced to Kissur with this ransom. And he also gave Khanalai's
sword to Kissur."
Ashidan paused and said, "I also met Khanalai's son there - we were of
the same age and the lad was quite gifted. I think that Khanalai took mercy
on me because of him. He asked me once, "What if Kissur gets a hold of my
son? Do you think he will let him live like I let you?"
"Yes," Bemish thought, "Kissur, however, didn't take mercy on
Khanalai's son and he didn't take mercy on anybody else."
"Hey," Khanadar the Dried Date shouted ahead, "have you fallen asleep?
Come here quickly!"
Bemish and Ashidan hastened their horses. The road split in two in
front of them, the riders grouped at the fork.
"We should go left," Kissur said, "We should visit Aldis so that the
next hunt would be even more fruitful than the last one."
"Well," Ashidan objected, "we won't reach the castle before nightfall."
"No problem," Kissur said, "we will sleep over at the old altar house."
Ashidan's face fell.
"Look," Khanadar said, "you aren't afraid of the old altar house, are
you?"
And he continued having turned to Bemish,
"Aldis the White Falcon is buried next to the old altar and two
families were assigned to take care of the grave. But they ignored their
duty and Aldis ate them and he liked it - he started climbing out every
night, chased passersby with all his retinue and herded them into his place
for a feast. A traveler passes by and sees a manor with lights on, and only
his bones are left by the morning. People took notice - if on a new moon
night there were fire and commotion at the old altar house - then, some
family would wail somewhere soon enough. They would have pounded a stake
down his coffin long time ago if he had been a commoner but they are afraid
of doing it - you know, he is Kissur's great grandfather." Ashidan grinned.
"It's not fitting to visit ancestors' graves with an Earthman
outlander," he said, "It's enough for a stranger that we took him for a
hunt."
"I have never hunted here before," Kissur answered, "and not shared my
booty with my ancestor."
And they rode to the old altar house, having dismissed the servants and
having tied the bear cub's body to a saddle.
The old altar house sat between a forest and a horseshoe shaped
mountain on the very edge of a sheer, as if cut with a knife, gorge. Behind
a black carved fence, one could see a roof tied in a knot; yellow light
issued forth from a round window, people's voices were coming from behind
the fence. Ashidan's face acquired a pallid color of toothpowder.
"Oh-ho-ho," Kissur said, "is Aldis getting rowdy again?"
The riders quietly dismounted, Kissur petted his horse so it wouldn't
neigh and stuck covertly a stubby assault rifle under his overcoat. A pine
tree, that had fallen last year, crushed the fence and miraculously spared
the chapel - they took a look over the tree log into a wide yard. There, on
a stone site, a small space boat Orinoko-22 stood looking like a striped
squash. People in body suits were standing in a line and passing sacks from
the altar house to the boat.
"Heia," Kissur said loudly, "that's called progress! Even ghosts can no
longer fly without engines!"
He bounced over the log and stepped in the lit circle. Frankly, it was
Kissur that looked more like a ghost here - a hunter in an ancient green
caftan with a yew bow hanging over his shoulder and his face painted with
blue stripes for the hunt - amidst people in flying suits who froze for a
moment next to a cargo hatch. The people dropped plastic sacks. Three guys
jumped out of an altar house window with long barreled lasers in their
hands. A horse quietly neighed - Khanadar and Ashidan stepped out into the
light from the other side, leading their horses.
"False alarm," somebody said, "these are the landlords."
Kissur unhurriedly walked to a short round eyed character whom Bemish
recognized to be the local bailiff.
"Oh, it's you Lakhor. What are you doing here?"
"You know, my Lord," Lakhor said with a certain dignity, "We are
loading..."
Kissur placed his foot on a sack, dragged a hunting knife from his belt
and ripped the plastic cover from top to bottom.
"I swear by god's goiter," Kissur said, "Everybody around says "Lord,"
"Lord" to you, kisses your knees while you don't even know what it is that
you lord over. What are these oats you are hauling to the boat? Nothing but
oats has ever grown around here, if my memory doesn't fail me."
Kissur scooped up a bit out of the sack with his hand and sniffed it.
"No," he shook his head, "no way, oats could smell like this. Khanadar,
do you know what it is?"
Khanadar also picked a sack, tore it apart with his whip's claw, picked
some weed up and stuck it under his horse's nose. It neighed and turned its
head aside.
"No," Khanadar said, "I don't know what it is but it's not oats. Look,
Striped is putting its nose up and it doesn't want it." At this point, Aldon
the Lynx Cub joined the conversation.
"Hey, it's hemp," he said, "wolf's whisk." Weian zealots and local
serfs have used it since old times to visit the skies and now people carry
it to the Sky in plastic bags. I heard, they pay a lot of money for this
weed on the sky. Earthmen always pay a lot of money for what a horse put its
nose up away."
The only thing that Bemish couldn't understand was why they were all
still alive.
Here, Ashidan's breaking voice sounded.
"Kissur," he said, "it's my fault. I failed to ask your permission."
Kissur span around.
"Are you trying to say," he spoke with a phony astonishment, "that you
allowed my serfs to trade weed grown in my lands without asking for my
consent?"
"But I was not sure..." Ashidan started.
"Tell me," Kissur inquired, "who is the senior in our clan, you or me?"
"You are."
"And who owns the land and everything above it and below it, the senior
or the junior?"
"The senior does."
"Then, why are you breaking the law and pocketing the profit from this
business?"
"I was afraid that you won't understand..."
"Of course, I won't understand," Kissur thundered, "my serfs on my land
start a business and don't pay me two cents! Who should feed me, the
sovereign or my own holding?"
"My Lord, my Lord," round eyed Lakhor hurried, "We didn't know that
master Ashidan paid you nothing, I'll turn into a frog if we wanted to break
the law!"
At this point, a man in a flying suit ducked out of the cargo hatch.
"I bring my apologies, Mr. Kissur," he said in Interenglish, "We really
didn't know that you were not aware of our modest business."
Kissur looked him over from head to toes.
"How much do you pay my brother for a sack?"
"Ten."
"You will pay me twelve. I want money now."
"Do you think I have so much?" the pilot snapped.
"Don't cross him," Lakhor peeped in horror.
"I am waiting," Kissur said coldly, "or I will rip all the sacks
apart."
"Don't pick a fight with him," another Earthman said, "he is livid."
"You would become livid here," Khanadar the Dried Date objected, "when
your own serfs don't pay you their taxes fairly and you brother cheats you -
hasn't Ashidan promised you Kissur's protection?"
you in Black Nest on the twenty third."
"What do you mean twenty third? Are you going to ride your horse to the
castle in five days?"
"Seven years ago," Khanadar said, "I made this trip in five days and I
had two hundred shield and spear horsemen with me and we had a skirmish
every day."
"All right," Bemish said," I will take a car and drive to your Nest,
whether it's black or white, and I am sure that I will get there before
you."
The guests came in the next morning - the Federation envoy, Mr.
Liddell, Shavash and his direct boss, the finance minister Sarjik. The
finance minister was in really bad shape - his bald head shook and his
watery eyes kept running. Shavash extracted this man from somewhere in
Chakhar province where he had been sitting since sovereign Neevik's times.
Accordingly to the non-confirmed rumors, the finance minister didn't have
credit cards and, seeing other people using them, he would shake his head,
"Nothing good will come out of it I assure you! Say, Shakunik Bank had also
issued private money and then the bank was confiscated and the money was
lost! What if the Federation government runs out of money and confiscates
your bank?" The old minister firmly grasped in his youth the following rule
- the richer is an entrepreneur, the more the state covers his riches - and
he couldn't change himself.
They abandoned the minister in a room and Shavash drove examining the
construction.
"Where is Kissur," he asked. "And why are you so disheveled?"
"Kissur," Bemish said, "rode to Black Nest with his friends, on a horse
back."
Shavash grinned.
"And what's happened to you?"
"And I rode back all night. There was not a single phone in the
villages around and I was dumb enough not take a satellite phone with me."
Bemish was exhausted, since he rode slowly, afraid of tiring the horse
out, and he couldn't sleep in saddle and he wasn't going to learn this
skill.
"I see," Shavash said, "Khanadar the Dried Date is going to ride down
the glorious battles' path. These people live in the previous century."
In the end, Bemish asked, where the story of Kissur trafficking in
drugs came from, but smiling Shavash claimed his total ignorance.
Upon serious consideration, Bemish decided to drive and he was very
proud that he would see the Country of Great Light not through an airplane
window but through a windshield.
He chose an old 4WD jeep with large wheels and he put in the trunk the
second spare tire, high hunting boots, a whole battery of drinking water
bottles and several tinned food cans. He welded steel supports to the rack
and fastened a light motorcycle to them. Bemish remembered how Khanadar had
smiled saying that it was impossible to reach Black Nest by a car and one
had to ride there on a horse. Knowing Khanadar, he suspected that he had
been a butt of a dirty joke and a car road to the castle existed only on the
map.
Bemish was driving out of the Empire's center to its barbarian
outskirts and it seemed that every kilometer, put between him and the
capital, was transposing him backwards in time. Cute manors with satellite
dishes disappeared first, foreign goods on the road stands disappeared next,
factory-made shirts on people around him disappeared last. A different
landscape stretched around him - rice paddies covered with water, clay
villages where dogs barked and drums boomed in precincts and where peasants
in hemp pants sang thousand-year-old songs while collecting the harvest, and
only a perfect highway, like a bridge spanning over time for a curious
observer, connected a sprightly rolling jeep with the faraway world of glass
and steel.
In thousand kilometers the road finally ended - the jeep started
hopping down a rocky mountain path - the highest achievement of the
construction methods in sovereign Irshahchan's times. The animals became
more audacious and began crossing the road. Occasional people, however,
dashed away from a weird cart into the woods. Rice paddies disappeared; the
few villages existing in these mountains still lived by hunting and
gathering and by robbing occasional travelers.
In the second day's evening, Bemish saw five familiar horses at a
roadside tavern and stopped there.
Kissur and his companions were sitting at a plank table and gobbling up
a wild boar. Bemish joined them.
"I'll leave you behind," Bemish said.
"Hmm," Kissur said, "By the way, I could order to puncture your tires."
Bemish bantered back, "And I can sue you."
Kissur was chewing greedily on the boar.
"This is my land. I am the master of taxes and jurisdiction here. So,
if you sue me, I may as well sentence you to hanging for perjury."
"Do you judge this way often?"
"Never," Kissur said. "If you sentence a man to death, his relatives
will start hunting you in a vendetta. Who will avenge you?"
"Nobody will avenge an Earthman," Khanadar the Dried Date agreed.
"Earthmen think that their government should avenge them. Soon, their
government will sleep with their women for them."
Bemish was assigned the best den in the tavern and Kissur sent him a
girl. The girl had been washed and she was quite cute. She stood shyly
tugging at a mat with her bare toes. Bemish seated the girl on his knees and
started fingering her necklace. There were numerous coins on the necklace -
several heavy silver asymmetric coins with a hole inside and a partially
rubbed off Gold Sovereign's seal, a dozen of dimes and quarters, a Swiss
frank and even as far as Bemish could decipher German, one Cologne subway
nickel token.
Bemish pushed the girl off his knees, dug in his wallet and spilled all
the change on his hand. He found there a dime that had spent a long time in
the wallet, showed it to the girl and tapped with his finger a silver
"unicorn" the size of a chicken egg, square shaped and with a round hole in
the middle and an encryption glorifying sovereign Meenun on the girl's
necklace.
"Let's exchange," he said.
The girl's eyes blossomed with joy. She quickly started pulling the
necklace off her neck. Bemish grabbed her hand.
"Listen, stupid," he said. "If you take this dime and one more and a
hundred more and a thousand more and fill this coffer in the corner with all
these dimes, the whole coffer will be worth less than this silver coin. Got
it?"
The girl nodded.
"And now get out," Bemish said. The girl's eyes saddened.
"Won't we exchange?" she asked looking at the dime with an unconcealed
longing. Bemish gave her the dime and kicked her out.
When Bemish woke up next morning, Kissur and his retinue were no longer
there, they had ridden away at the crack of dawn.
"Will I catch up with them soon?" Bemish asked the hostess.
"No," the hostess said, "You need to take a detour via the White Pass
and they rode straight. You will reach the castle by the evening."
"And what will happen to them?"
"Hmm," the woman hesitated, "If snow melts a bit in the daytime and an
avalanche comes down, you, of course, will get their first but if no
avalanche happens they, of course, will get there before you."
"Is the straight path hard?"
"I don't know. Since old Shun broke his neck there ten years ago,
nobody has taken it."
The mountain road winded like a pumpkin vine. Heavy rain shredded with
snow started suddenly. The wipers were not able to handle it. Bemish was
horrified for Kissur - he was not old Shun, of course, but he still could
break his neck.
This mountainous area was wild to the utmost. Trade had flourished in
the coastal regions and three dozens years ago local cities such as Lamass
or Kudum could brag about their good communities and abundant traders. The
civil war in the Empire turned everything around - the castles' inhabitants
straightened up, the traders' sons left for the castles' regiments and their
daughters became concubines. The demand for warlike Alom nobility was such
that an average knight could rob more in two month in the Empire than an
average trader could make in two years. By the war's end, trading paid off
so little that Lamass traders became extinct and it was the land of bandits
and robbers that welcomed the people from the stars.
The hands of the Empire could barely reach this strange region;
formally a castle owner was responsible for upholding order in the local
lands but he usually happened to be the biggest bandit. Nobody even
considered mine development here because horsemen with rocket launchers
under their armpits invariably approached mine engineers to demand a
tribute.
No passerby was safe here. The most disgusting accident happened three
years ago when a World Bank vice president, an amateur mountaineer, and two
friends of his decided, damn it, to conquer a local mountain Aych-Akhal.
While approaching the peak, he was taken prisoner by a local pedigreed
bandit and escorted to his castle. Next day the bank received a fax with a
picture of the vice president sitting chained in a real underground pit and
a one trillion dinars ransom demand. The World Bank stock capital was five
trillion dinars.
The media howled.
The Galaxy demanded the Empire to take decisive actions. The Galaxy
demanded to locate the castle the prisoner was in. "Whatever," the Empire
envoy shrugged his shoulders, "Whoever caught him keeps him." The Galaxy
demanded the decisive actions to be taken at this region.
The castle owner announced that if anybody resorts to decisive actions,
the prisoner would have his throat cut. Kissur helped the World Bank out. He
flew to his castle immediately and called the local lords in for a feast and
counsel. They arrived. Kissur imperturbably arrested the three dozens guests
that came to visit him and announced that he would shoot all these folks if
the vice president was not released.
The landowner who took the vice president prisoner was not present
among Kissur's guests. However, his brother and his father-in-law were
there. The same night, the vice president was released without any ransom.
Afterwards, Kissur didn't even bother meeting the man he had saved.
By the evening, Bemish reached the main and the only one street in
Black Village; faraway on the mountain amidst the clouds, the castle and its
wall, jagged like an EEG, showed up for a moment.
Right at this moment, a goose appeared on the wet road.
Bemish expected the goose to move aside and let the car pass since, in
the Earthman's opinion, roads were created for cars not geese. In the
goose's opinion however, roads were created for geese and accordingly to his
views the goose stared at the car with curiosity and then turned its back to
it and lowered its head.
They explained to Bemish afterwards that he should have lowered speed
and driven over the goose and the goose would have been unharmed and the car
would have been fine. But Bemish wasn't familiar with local geese' customs.
He turned the steering wheel to the right and floored the brake. The
car spun like a feather. Bemish flew into boysenberry bushes that the locals
used for fences and he almost split his head apart over the steering wheel.
The car shuddered and froze. Bemish slammed the door and stepped out to take
a look. The front wheels sat deep in the rut and one of them fell off.
Bemish looked around. The gosling, glancing sideways, desperately ran away
from the road. "Son of a bitch!" Bemish said loudly.
It was getting dark quickly. There was no way to fix the car. A dog
behind the boysenberry fence tried to compensate for a lacking fire alarm.
More and more dogs were joining it. As for the people - the village seemed
to be dead.
"Hei," Bemish shouted, "is anybody there?"
He had to shout for a while. Finally a house door opened and somebody
asked from a doorstep,
"What's this shouting in the dark?"
Something was gleaming behind the door but Bemish was not able to see
the man.
"Do you have a phone?" Bemish asked.
"I don't have a phone. I have a fan laser," the answer was.
Bemish bared his teeth.
"I have a fan laser myself."
The guy shut the door. Bemish kicked the car thoughtfully. He threw the
fan emitter on his left shoulder, a daypack on his right shoulder and took
the small bike off the rack. "Fan laser," he thought, thinking about the
gleam in the opened door, "No way, it's a fan laser, damn it - it's at least
a plasma rocket launcher."
The guards let Bemish into the castle without any surprise; bike or no
bike - who can understand these Earthmen? "Yes," Bemish thought, "people
here are very different from the plains' dwellers, they hugged their swords
in silence for a thousand years and now they silently hug their rocket
launchers, every trial verdict starts a vendetta here..."
It was slippery and wet in the castle yard, like in a defrosted
refrigerator. Kissur hadn't arrived yet. Old Elda was napping in an armchair
in the upper hall. She looked at the nervous Earthman as she would look at a
frog and said that the Earthman's iron cart would fall apart on the
Earthmen's roads smooth like a eunuch's cheek before her son falls from a
steep slope in the local mountains.
Bemish took off together with his nerves.
The young castle owner Ashidan, a Cambridge student, was passed out in
the main hall having dropped his golden curls into a plate with leftovers. A
bull mask with torches in place of horns bared its teeth above him and
something smoldering in the fireplace under the mask produced a horrible
smell; at a closer view it, appeared to be a hand phone remnants.
"What is it?" Bemish asked the majordomo.
"Lady Elda," he answered, "said that she didn't want any witchcraft
objects in her house. She just found it in the morning having gone over the
rooms."
Bemish looked Ashidan over more carefully. He slept shuddering
nervously and he didn't appear to Bemish to be drunk.
"Aren't there any communication devices in the castle?"
"Oh," the servant said, "what communication are you talking about?!
Look - even the cloth is homespun. She would burn anything else." And he
pointed at his dress. Bemish felt his sleeve - it really was burlap. He
hadn't understood that at first and thought in surprise that the servant had
a very luxurious jacket - thick knotted cloth like this was fashionable this
year.
Bemish didn't sleep at night and tossed; old pines squeaked behind a
narrow window, designed to shoot out from not to look out of, and their
squeaking branches made sounds like a hanged man's rope. Bemish pulled an
antenna out of a small radio and started listening. Suddenly while he was
searching for a station, he heard his name and a long string of words
spitted out in Alom - Bemish didn't make them out through the noise. Bemish
turned the dial again but the conversation had ended. "Hmm," Bemish thought,
"Somebody in this castle hid a transmitter away from old Elda."
In the morning Bemish left for the village. He didn't really want to
complain to old Elda that his iron cart fell apart on the road that even a
ram would pass through in a snowstorm and he was also sure that the castle
inhabitants knew as much about cars as he knew about divination on oil.
Bemish walked down a fresh road passing boysenberry fences and curious
chicken, thinking about this strange area where a phone in a house was a
luxury and an assault rifle was a necessary tool.
He reached the car and stopped in surprise.
The car stood at the same place and the busted wheel still hunched in
the rut. The other three wheels had disappeared in an unknown direction -
the lonesome car sank on its axles. The wipers were gone off the windshield
and the windshield was also gone. Bemish's eyes traveled into the car -
radio, head supports, rugs, handles and all five windows beside the
windshield had carefully packed up and left. An untouched first aid kit sat
in the back seat.
Bemish walked around the car and opened the trunk. There was nothing
inside except for a pair of old worn out bark sandals. Bemish was surprised
at first because he didn't have a habit of wearing bark sandals but then he
realized that the thief probably put Bemish's leather boots on and left the
bark sandals there. With gloomy anticipation, Bemish raised the hood and
gazed at the engine. Bemish was quite familiar with the car's design. He
immediately realized that the night thieves were much more familiar with
this design.
Bemish looked around - geese and turkey with red snot surrounded him
and the same rocket launcher old guy was digging cabbage in his garden. He
didn't have the rocket launcher next to him, probably thanks to the
daylight.
"Hey," Bemish said.
The old guy turned around. He wore a shirt that used to be white in its
youth and the pants that nobody would be able to say anything about.
"Come here," Bemish said. The old guy approached. Further into the
garden, his son hoed the ground mechanically without looking around. Bemish
waved the bark sandals and extended them over the fence.
"Do you know," Bemish said, "Who owns these?"
The old man took the sandals and fished out a ten dinar note that
Bemish had pushed down the toe earlier. He rolled the note and stuck it
behind his ear and handed the sandals back to Bemish.
"I don't know," he said.
Bemish lost his speech.
He looked at himself suddenly with the peasant's eyes. He looked at a
well dressed alien coming out of the world that all the people, who worked
well and obeyed the authorities, would go to after death - and he looked at
this half bare destitute village where no phones existed but news about a
car that could be stripped spread quickly without the phone, where no
toilets existed but mortars were available, and everybody knew everything
but would say nothing about his neighbors - and he realized with utter
clarity that even if the night adepts had stripped the car in the view of
the whole village and it probably had happened this way, not all the police
in the world would be able to find out who had done this.
Wheels rustled on the road.
"What's the problem?"
Bemish turned around. Behind him in a sport car, turquoise and narrow
like an orchid petal, Kissur's brother, Ashidan sat. A perfect shirt, a
precise hairdo, the smell of cologne - a starting manager and a Cambridge
graduate - Bemish felt his world pleasantly coming back to him.
Terence Bemish sardonically raised the bark footwear.
"Here," he said, "somebody decided to exchange transportation means
with me."
But Ashidan had figured it out already. He got out of the car, opened
the passenger's door and bowed to Bemish inviting him into the car. Bemish
got in. The peasant watched them with frightened eyes.
"Hey," Ashidan shouted to the guy in the garden, "come here!" The
peasant approached.
"Get in the car," Ashidan told the guy.
Bemish stretched to open a door.
"Get in the trunk," Ashidan added, looking in disgust at the guy's bare
and dirty feet. "Ah, well, you may change your clothing."
The guy ran to the house. Bemish regained his speech.
"Why do you think," Bemish asked, "that he stripped the car? It could
be anybody..."
"If," Ashidan said in an even voice, "a crime is committed in a village
and the criminal is not apprehended, the lord should arrest several village
inhabitants and keep them as hostages till they die or till the others
deliver the guilty party."
Bemish stared at Ashidan with wide opened eyes. The charming boy - and
he was a very beautiful lad - looked very much like a successful manager.
"In this voice his ancestors spoke generation after generation," Bemish
thought, "It looks like progress here is characterized by the lord putting a
peasant in a car's trunk instead of tying him to a horse's tail."
"This man," Ashidan said, pointing at Bemish, "is a named brother of my
brother and a guest of my ancestors. My brother is coming today - the
servants brought news that he got stuck at the Trekking Pass and took a
detour via Lokh."
The peasant dropped to his knees.
"Master!" it was unclear whether he addressed Ashidan or the alien.
The peasant's son walked out of the house in clean white clothing with
a satchel in his hand. A ten-year-old boy accompanied him.
"Master," the oldster continued, "take the younger one, we have so much
work now!"
Ashidan thoughtfully tapped the leather steering wheel.
"Our ancestor's guest," he said, "had a bad dream that somebody robbed
his car. I had this dream, too, and I hurried here. But now it seems to me
that it was a false dream and that the car, complete and unharmed, will
return to the castle by the evening."
Having said this, Ashinik floored the accelerator and the car sprayed
the white peasant's dress with a load of mud and rushed away.
Kissur reached the castle only by noon. The rumors appeared to be
correct - an avalanche had descended off the Trekking Pass and it had
brushed by the people and the horses. Everybody was alive but Kissur's
horse, Stargazer, with a white arrow on his forehead and wide hooves, was
dragged down and only a red spot blinked in the snow for a moment. They took
the same road that Bemish had used; Kissur's eyes swelled with blood like
ripe cherries because of the horse. Kissur glanced at Bemish and snapped,
"You won the bet. We will hunt tomorrow." And he ran upstairs.
Bemish didn't pursue him. Something scary suddenly hung in the air, the
stone gods' masks grimaced with their mouths at the Earthman and clanged
their teeth. Bemish turned around - pale Ashidan stood next to him rubbing
his temples.
Kissur locked himself in a corner tower and didn't let anybody in.
Khanadar explained that he was mourning the horse following the customs.
When Bemish's car drove into the castle's yard in the evening, Bemish
was sitting on a guard tower looking at the dragon-like clouds. Bemish ran
downstairs.
A well-built flaxen guy stepped out of the car and, bowing, handed the
keys to him. Everything was fixed including the broken wheel. Bemish looked
the guy over and said,
"Thanks. How many auto repair shops are in the village?"
"One," the guy answered without blushing.
Bemish looked at the guy's feet - he stood in a pool wiggling his bare
toes. The Earthman walked around the car and unlocked the trunk - the case
bristled there self-importantly. Bemish opened the case - underwear and
clothing was there, only two shirts were wet - clearly, they had been washed
and ironed. Bemish extracted leather boots out of the case.
"Hold it," Bemish said, "That's a gift for you. The guy gasped and took
the boots. Bemish stuck his hand in his pocket, took three hundred local
"unicorns" out and handed them to the guy.
"It's for your work."
"Mister," the guy said, "we just fixed the wheel. It costs twenty
"unicorns."
"Where are you going now?" Bemish asked.
"I am going to the Blue Ravine, to the village's left end."
"Get in," Bemish said, "I'll give you a ride." The village stretched
along the road, between the mountain and the canyon. It was rarely more than
hundred meters wide and about eight kilometers long. The guy squeezed
himself in a corner almost under the seat and kept silent. One could think
that he sat in the car first time in his life. "Hmm," Bemish thought, "on
the other hand, a master and an alien is giving him a ride for the first
time... I hope I am not compromising White Falcon clan's honor."
"How long has Ashidan been living in the castle?" Bemish asked.
"It's been two months, master."
"Does he drink?"
"No, master," the guy said nervously.
Bemish dropped the guy off at a field where girls in blue and red
skirts were already starting to dance and came closer to see what it was
that they grew in this field. He was going to ask for how long the peasants
had been growing this stuff but the bailiff rushed towards him. Bemish
turned around and drove away.
It was just before the sunset - he drove down a forest till he found a
nice lawn to the road's left. He drove into the lawn, turned the ignition
off, lifted the hood and gazed at the engine.
The carburetor was assembled like a bird's nest from many different
parts and the air filter was also taken from another car. The night thieves
from the only auto repair shop in the village had installed everything else
where they had taken it from.
Bemish turned around and drove back.
Kissur had already descended to the yard and they explored the castle
together. It was huge, the walls rose one after another like cabbage leaves.
The castle sat on the very mountaintop and only one road led to it from
the west. The outer wall hovered above an abyss on all the other sides and
the abyss had been hewed off for better defense, forming a wall smooth like
glass.
Kissur showed his guest a yard where Kanut the Falcon had been killed
and a small castle garden where Kissur's great grandmother had sinned with a
winged two-headed bull under an apple tree. Bemish told Kissur that tourists
from the whole Galaxy could visit the castle.
"This castle is not fit for tourists," Kissur smirked, "It does not
have disabled access." And he squeezed himself nimbly onto a narrow and
incredibly steep staircase spiraling along one of the outside walls.
Merriness ruled the castle in the evening - the grooms braided the
horses' tails, servants dragged out of the closets huge yew old bows,
wrapped in old rotten cloth with silver inscriptions. Bemish glanced into a
semi-dark stable and froze - Kissur, smiling coldly, was hiding a stubby
black assault rifle in a saddlebag.
Bemish stepped inside. Kissur lowered the woven bag lid.
"What game," Bemish asked, "are we going to hunt tomorrow?"
"In this area," Kissur said, "people have been hunting big game -
boars, bears - since old times."
A question hung on Bemish's tongue tip, "What kind of boar would you
hunt with an assault rifle?" But Bemish licked his lips and swallowed the
question.
They rode out before the crescent left the black sky, equipped the same
way as eight or hundred years ago - Kissur wore grey suede tall boots,
decorated with lilies, with high red heels but without spurs, green pants
and a red jacket girdled with a heavy belt made out of gold plates - every
plate depicted a beast or a fish. Kissur's overcoat was also green, with two
wide lanes sewn with golden mesh. A bow hung on his shoulder and a leather
quiver hung behind his back; arrow feathers, white like plastic foam, stuck
out of the quiver. A throw-axe hung at his belt and two yew javelins and a
sword hung at the saddle. The other nobles were dressed the same way. It
would be wrong to call it carnival dress - Kissur, like the majority of
Weians, dressed archaically even in the capital and he practically always
wore a wide necklace, made out of jade plates set in woven gold and
depicting falcons. As for Bemish, he clearly understood that his hunting bib
layered with PVC would call the local gods' fury at his head and they would
withhold the game that they guarded, from him. Now he felt like an impostor
in leather pants embroidered with silver.
Before leaving, Kissur threw a piece of fresh meat on an altar next to
the gate and tapped a bare sword over a rock to attract the god's attention.
Bemish looked at the sword with interest; it was very heavy and long,
with a three edged blade and some engraving that looked like running horses
along its edge. The handle had been made in the shape of intertwined snakes.
Bemish asked why they needed a sword and Kissur replied that gods didn't
grant fortune without a sword since the road to the other world went along
its edge and they brought and took away beasts down this road.
They watched the sunrise from a mountaintop, aerial wind danced in
their horses' tails - they said that this wind used to mount fillies in
ancient times and black horses with white spots had been born of this wind -
shells scrunched occasionally under the hooves reminding that a sea had been
there millions of years ago. Then, Kissur espied a deer that also decided to
enjoy the sunrise and they released the dogs and rode following them.
There were five nobles - Kissur, Ashidan, Khanadar the Dried Date,
Aldon and Bemish, there were also eight dogs and three servants - they drove
the deer at Kissur and he, having opened his eyes wide and screamed wildly,
threw a spear handed to him by one of the servants. Painted yellow, with a
green pinecone on the end, the spear almost pierced the deer all the way
through easier than it pierced the old maple in Kissur's manor in the
capital. Suddenly the forest buzzed and leaves flew. Either it entered
Bemish's mind on its own or the gods gave him a hint, "Kissur will get in an
accident. The mountain took the horse yesterday, today..."
By noon, Bemish was drunk with blood, the servants lagged somewhere
behind, he, Kissur and Ashidan rode out to a lawn overgrown with red
flowers. Kissur, having ridden to another side of the lawn, was making out
moss on a tree, he was probably foretelling.
At this moment, a bear cub jumped out on the lawn and crazily rushed up
the tree.
"Don't do it," Kissur told his brother, "It's a bad omen."
But Ashidan had already pulled his bow and shot - the cub let the tree
go and fell. Ashidan jumped off the saddle and ran to the cub. The bushes
were pulled apart, a roar issued forth and a huge black and brown she-bear
barged in.
"Ashidan," Bemish screamed.
Ashidan turned around. The she-bear rose on her hind paws and the youth
stood in front of her, bewildered with a broken arrow pulled out of her son.
Bemish snatched at his gun. Before he raised his hand, Kissur had
rolled off his saddle with a sword in his hand and dived under the bear's
belly. Ashidan with a squeal jumped aside. Bemish fired. The bear swung its
paws heavily in the air and crashed on Kissur. She shuddered and froze like
a pile of peat dumped off a truck.
Bemish and Ashidan rushed to the bear.
"Kissur are you alive?"
No answer issued.
Bemish approached the bear and started pulling it by its ear. At this
moment the pile of seemingly dead meat moved and Kissur materialized.
"Damn," he bared his teeth, "sword..."
But the sword, after they had turned the bear over, appeared to be fine
- it had entered her belly almost all the way to the guard. They examined
her snout - the bullet hit the bear right in her eye.
Yes, the hunt was excellent, even Dried Date who was not capable of
smiling screamed and hooted. He sat at the fire next to Kissur's knees and
started singing his songs that Bemish had heard so many times from boom
boxes in the workers' barracks that he came to liking them.
They rode back in the dusk. The horses walked down the path two
abreast, black oily earth crumbled under their hooves, a forested slope rose
like a dark wall on the right, the fuzzy sun was rolling behind the faraway
mountains covered with gleaming snow like a cake glazed with white. The
birds fluttered up from under the hooves and life was wondrously good. "Oh,
my God, it's such a great place for a hotel," a thought passed Bemish's
mind. He was a practical man and he always sought for ways to adjust nature
to money.
After the bear cub accident, Ashidan saddened and it happened somehow
that Kissur and his retinue raced in front and Bemish lagged behind them and
rode next to Ashidan. The latter was pale - either due to the weed that the
peasants grew in a local field or because of Cambridge. Bemish leaned to
Ashidan and asked quietly,
"Does Kissur know that you are a drug addict?"
"I am not a drug addict, I am just curious! I can stop this any
moment."
Bemish sniggered involuntarily. The youth shuddered. Then he abruptly
turned his grey eyes to the Earthman. His pupils were unnaturally
contracted.
It's not my fault, it's yours," he said, "Seven years ago Warnaraine
was ruled from this castle, and now it's a dump because there is no eight
line highway next to it! You have chased our gods away and what have you
given us instead, a Pepsi can?"
Ashidan grabbed the Earthman by his hand.
"This weed has always grown here! They ate it to speak to the gods! You
declared even talking to the gods to be a crime!"
"Come on, Ashidan! You don't converse to a god or a demon, you just
gobble this weed up to get high and you are afraid of Kissur because he will
throw you into a hospital for drug addicts or just chain you."
"I am afraid of the sword he took," Ashidan said, "I saw this sword in
Khanalai's hand and if people are killed, their souls enter their swords."
Khanalai was the rebel that fought Kissur seven years ago.
"Khanalai?" Bemish was astonished, "Have you met Khanalai?"
"He took me prisoner," Ashidan answered.
Bemish stared at the youth - he was young, slim like a snake and
incredibly beautiful, with golden hair and grey eyes heavily mascara coated
for the hunt.
"Oh, my God! How old were you?"
"I was fifteen, almost fifteen. Kissur entrusted me with five thousand
horsemen and Dried Date and Aldon's uncle - Aldon the Striped - were with
me. We should have waited for Kissur in the Black Mountains. But we heard
that down there, in the town of Lukhun, merchants had come in for a fair and
were bunched all together there because of the war. We decided to seize this
town because we would get more loot if we didn't wait for Kissur.
So, we approached this town with a guide and when the sun came out we
realized that it was a trap - Khanalai's army encircled us. Khanalai was
going to catch Kissur."
Ashidan rocked in the saddle.
I rode forward and challenged Khanalai to a duel. My shield had an
image of the White Falcon on it; Khanalai thought that Kissur himself got in
his trap. He really didn't want to fight but he had to accept the challenge.
He was afraid that his captains would mock him.
There is not much to say about this fight - Khanalai split my shoulder
and threw me to the ground like a kitten and then he removed my helmet to
cut my head off. He was really surprised and he asked me, "Who are you,
brat, to wear a White Falcon shield?" I told him that my name was Ashidan
and that my brother Kissur would avenge me and why wouldn't he just shut his
lousy trap and cut my head off. I was a very cute boy and Khanalai suddenly
took pity on me. He raised his sword and then he thought, "I will die - and
these words contained all the horror of irreversible, you couldn't sleep at
night having heard them. So, would it be worth it to bring the sword down?"
At least, that's what he told me afterwards. So he threw me like a wench
over his horse's back and rode to his army. And my army was obliterated down
to the last man. You see, it was a war very different from a war between two
countries. When one country and another country make a war, it's fair to
spare the enemy and to make him your vassal. While when a government fights
rebels, it's fair to obliterate the rebels completely.
"What happened to Dried Date?" Bemish suddenly realized.
"Dried Date and old Aldon were taken prisoners."
"And what happened next?"
They brought me and Dried Date to Khanalai's tent where he was feasting
after the battle and Khanalai said that he would like to hear a song about
this battle from Dried Date. Dried Date answered that the battle was not
finished yet because not everybody, supposed to be executed after this
battle, was executed and when Khalai executed everybody who was supposed to
be executed, there would be nobody left to sing this song. Khanalai grinned
and gave his new lute and his sword to Dried Date, and this sword was so
valuable that it cost more that Dried Date's honor. He sat and sang a song
of praise to Khanalai and I don't think that you'll ever hear it from Dried
Date or on a tape recorder. Then, Khanalai turned to me and said that he
would like to let me go. I was insolent to him. He paused and said, "All
right, they will crucify you tomorrow, brat. At first they will crucify
Aldon and then you."
"What happened tomorrow?"
"They brought Aldon and me out and Khanalai said, `If you let me pardon
you, I will let Aldon go.' I spit in his face."
Ashidan paused. He face paled completely and Bemish suddenly imagined
how cute a boy he had been at "almost fifteen."
"Khanalai rocked on his feet for a while and then said, `You are too
beautiful a boy to die.' They crucified Aldon and quarreled for a while and
then took me away."
"And what happened to Dried Date?"
"Dried Date sang songs of praise to Khanalai till he was offended, that
he, a man from a noble family, was serving a commoner who used to tread cow
dung in his childhood. He cut one of Khanalai's aides head off, threw it in
a sack and raced to Kissur with this ransom. And he also gave Khanalai's
sword to Kissur."
Ashidan paused and said, "I also met Khanalai's son there - we were of
the same age and the lad was quite gifted. I think that Khanalai took mercy
on me because of him. He asked me once, "What if Kissur gets a hold of my
son? Do you think he will let him live like I let you?"
"Yes," Bemish thought, "Kissur, however, didn't take mercy on
Khanalai's son and he didn't take mercy on anybody else."
"Hey," Khanadar the Dried Date shouted ahead, "have you fallen asleep?
Come here quickly!"
Bemish and Ashidan hastened their horses. The road split in two in
front of them, the riders grouped at the fork.
"We should go left," Kissur said, "We should visit Aldis so that the
next hunt would be even more fruitful than the last one."
"Well," Ashidan objected, "we won't reach the castle before nightfall."
"No problem," Kissur said, "we will sleep over at the old altar house."
Ashidan's face fell.
"Look," Khanadar said, "you aren't afraid of the old altar house, are
you?"
And he continued having turned to Bemish,
"Aldis the White Falcon is buried next to the old altar and two
families were assigned to take care of the grave. But they ignored their
duty and Aldis ate them and he liked it - he started climbing out every
night, chased passersby with all his retinue and herded them into his place
for a feast. A traveler passes by and sees a manor with lights on, and only
his bones are left by the morning. People took notice - if on a new moon
night there were fire and commotion at the old altar house - then, some
family would wail somewhere soon enough. They would have pounded a stake
down his coffin long time ago if he had been a commoner but they are afraid
of doing it - you know, he is Kissur's great grandfather." Ashidan grinned.
"It's not fitting to visit ancestors' graves with an Earthman
outlander," he said, "It's enough for a stranger that we took him for a
hunt."
"I have never hunted here before," Kissur answered, "and not shared my
booty with my ancestor."
And they rode to the old altar house, having dismissed the servants and
having tied the bear cub's body to a saddle.
The old altar house sat between a forest and a horseshoe shaped
mountain on the very edge of a sheer, as if cut with a knife, gorge. Behind
a black carved fence, one could see a roof tied in a knot; yellow light
issued forth from a round window, people's voices were coming from behind
the fence. Ashidan's face acquired a pallid color of toothpowder.
"Oh-ho-ho," Kissur said, "is Aldis getting rowdy again?"
The riders quietly dismounted, Kissur petted his horse so it wouldn't
neigh and stuck covertly a stubby assault rifle under his overcoat. A pine
tree, that had fallen last year, crushed the fence and miraculously spared
the chapel - they took a look over the tree log into a wide yard. There, on
a stone site, a small space boat Orinoko-22 stood looking like a striped
squash. People in body suits were standing in a line and passing sacks from
the altar house to the boat.
"Heia," Kissur said loudly, "that's called progress! Even ghosts can no
longer fly without engines!"
He bounced over the log and stepped in the lit circle. Frankly, it was
Kissur that looked more like a ghost here - a hunter in an ancient green
caftan with a yew bow hanging over his shoulder and his face painted with
blue stripes for the hunt - amidst people in flying suits who froze for a
moment next to a cargo hatch. The people dropped plastic sacks. Three guys
jumped out of an altar house window with long barreled lasers in their
hands. A horse quietly neighed - Khanadar and Ashidan stepped out into the
light from the other side, leading their horses.
"False alarm," somebody said, "these are the landlords."
Kissur unhurriedly walked to a short round eyed character whom Bemish
recognized to be the local bailiff.
"Oh, it's you Lakhor. What are you doing here?"
"You know, my Lord," Lakhor said with a certain dignity, "We are
loading..."
Kissur placed his foot on a sack, dragged a hunting knife from his belt
and ripped the plastic cover from top to bottom.
"I swear by god's goiter," Kissur said, "Everybody around says "Lord,"
"Lord" to you, kisses your knees while you don't even know what it is that
you lord over. What are these oats you are hauling to the boat? Nothing but
oats has ever grown around here, if my memory doesn't fail me."
Kissur scooped up a bit out of the sack with his hand and sniffed it.
"No," he shook his head, "no way, oats could smell like this. Khanadar,
do you know what it is?"
Khanadar also picked a sack, tore it apart with his whip's claw, picked
some weed up and stuck it under his horse's nose. It neighed and turned its
head aside.
"No," Khanadar said, "I don't know what it is but it's not oats. Look,
Striped is putting its nose up and it doesn't want it." At this point, Aldon
the Lynx Cub joined the conversation.
"Hey, it's hemp," he said, "wolf's whisk." Weian zealots and local
serfs have used it since old times to visit the skies and now people carry
it to the Sky in plastic bags. I heard, they pay a lot of money for this
weed on the sky. Earthmen always pay a lot of money for what a horse put its
nose up away."
The only thing that Bemish couldn't understand was why they were all
still alive.
Here, Ashidan's breaking voice sounded.
"Kissur," he said, "it's my fault. I failed to ask your permission."
Kissur span around.
"Are you trying to say," he spoke with a phony astonishment, "that you
allowed my serfs to trade weed grown in my lands without asking for my
consent?"
"But I was not sure..." Ashidan started.
"Tell me," Kissur inquired, "who is the senior in our clan, you or me?"
"You are."
"And who owns the land and everything above it and below it, the senior
or the junior?"
"The senior does."
"Then, why are you breaking the law and pocketing the profit from this
business?"
"I was afraid that you won't understand..."
"Of course, I won't understand," Kissur thundered, "my serfs on my land
start a business and don't pay me two cents! Who should feed me, the
sovereign or my own holding?"
"My Lord, my Lord," round eyed Lakhor hurried, "We didn't know that
master Ashidan paid you nothing, I'll turn into a frog if we wanted to break
the law!"
At this point, a man in a flying suit ducked out of the cargo hatch.
"I bring my apologies, Mr. Kissur," he said in Interenglish, "We really
didn't know that you were not aware of our modest business."
Kissur looked him over from head to toes.
"How much do you pay my brother for a sack?"
"Ten."
"You will pay me twelve. I want money now."
"Do you think I have so much?" the pilot snapped.
"Don't cross him," Lakhor peeped in horror.
"I am waiting," Kissur said coldly, "or I will rip all the sacks
apart."
"Don't pick a fight with him," another Earthman said, "he is livid."
"You would become livid here," Khanadar the Dried Date objected, "when
your own serfs don't pay you their taxes fairly and you brother cheats you -
hasn't Ashidan promised you Kissur's protection?"