Haggopian and Other Stories

Standing, he’d be a tall one, this Hrossak, and despite his current leanness his muscles rippled beneath sun- and sand-tortured skin. Hair a shiny, tousled brown (now that dust and dirt were washed away) and eyes of a brown so deep that it was almost black; long arms and legs, and shoulders broad as those of any maned and murderous northern barbarian; strong white teeth set in a wide, ofttimes laughing mouth—aye, he was a handsome specimen, this steppeman—but doubtless as big a fool as any. Or if not yet a fool, then shortly.

“Hadj Dyzm,” he informed now, “sole survivor of a caravan out of Eyphra.We had almost made it through a mountain pass and were headed for Chlangi—our planned watering place, you understand—on our way to Klühn. Mountain scum ambushed us in the eastern foothills. I played dead, as did two others…” (Tarra, still munching, glanced quickly about and to the rear, his keen eyes missing nothing.) Dyzm nodded: “Oh yes, there were three of us, myself and two young bucks.” Tarra could almost taste him biting his lip. Well, he wouldn’t pry. The old man could keep his secrets. Anyway, it was easier to change the subject.

“Khash,” he said.”Tarra, to my friends. I’m heading for Hrossa—or should be! Now—I suppose I’ll rest up here for a day or two, then get on my way again. Go with me if you will, or is your aim still set on Chlangi the Doomed?”

The other shrugged. “Undecided. Chlangi is a place of brigands, I’m told, and your Hrossa is likewise somewhat…wild?”

“You’d be safe enough with me, and there’s sea trade with Klühn—though not much, I’ll admit. Again, I’ve been away for many a year; relations may well have improved. One thing’s certain: if a man can pay his way, then he’s welcome in Hrossa.”

“Pay my way!” The other laughed gratingly.”Oh, I can do that all right. I could even pay you—to be my protection on the way to Chlangi—if you were of a mind.” He dipped into his robes and came out with several nuggets of gold, each big as a man’s thumb.

Tarra blinked.”Then you’re a rich merchant, Hadj Dyzm, or at any rate a man of means! Well, I wish I could be of assistance. But no, I believe it’s Hrossa for me. I’ll think it over, though.”

Dyzm nodded. “Fair enough!” he barked in that strange rough voice. “And in my turn I shall give some thought to your own kind offer. But let me say this: of all my treasure—of the veritable lumps of gold which are mine—those nuggets I have shown you are the merest motes. For your help I would pay you ten, nay twenty times what you have seen!”

“Ware, man!” Tarra cautioned. “Men have been killed for a toothful! Speak not of lumps—at least not so carelessly!” It was a true statement and a sobering thought.

They sat in silence then, eating their fill for a long while, until the pork was finished and the wineskin empty. By then, too, the sun was riding high in a sky so blue it hurt, and Tarra was weary nigh unto death.

“I’m for sleeping,” he finally said.”I’ll be happy to find you here when I awaken, Hadj Dyzm, and if you are gone I’ll not forget you. Peace.”

Then he climbed to a shady ledge almost certainly inaccessible to the oldster, and with a single half-speculative glance at Dyzm where he sat in the shade of the willows below, and another out across the glittery pool, he settled himself down to sleep…

II

Tarra Khash was not much given to dreaming, but now he dreamed. Nor was his dream typical, for he was not a greedy man; and yet he dreamed of gold.

Gold, and a great deal of it. Heaps of it, ruddily reflecting the flickering light of a torch held high in Tarra’s trembling fist. Trembling, aye, for the dream was not a pleasurable thing but a nightmare, and the treasure cave where the dreaming Hrossak waded ankle deep in bright dust not merely a cave but—

—A tomb!

The tomb of Tarra Khash! And as behind him its great stone slab of a door pivoted, shutting him in forever—

—Tarra came awake in a moment, jerking bolt upright with hoarse cry and banging his head on jutting rim of rock whose bulk had kept the sun from him. But now…the sun already three parts down the sky and shadows stretching; and already the chill of evening in the air, where overhead kites wheeled against a blue degrees darker, their keen eyes alert for carrion; and the great pool grey now where it lay in the shade of the basin, and the spray from the cataract a veil of milk drifting above the fall.

Tarra lay down again, fingering his skull. He shivered, not so much from chilly flesh as a chill of the spirit. A dream such as that one were surely ill-omened, whose portent should not be ignored. Tarra touched his bump again and winced, then grinned however ruefully. What? A Hrossak full-grown and troubled by a dream? Terrors enough in this primal land without

conjuring more from surfeit of swine-flesh!

“Ho!” came a gritty, coughing shout from below.”Did you call me? I was sleeping.”