Haggopian and Other Stories

“Come now, Hrossak!” gurgled the other. “What’s this I detect in your tone? Do you dare, in your unenviable position, to threaten? It bodes not well for our future dealings, I think! Be careful what you say. Better let me finish before you drop yourself even deeper in the mire. You see, I’m not an unreasonable man, and for all your treachery, I—”

“My treachery!” Tarra once more cut in, unable to believe his ears.

“Certainly! Didn’t you follow me when I tended my camels in the dusk, spying on me all the way? I had thought you might discover the cave behind the falls there and then. But no, you needed more encouragement. And so I gave it to you—tonight! Aye, and haven’t you admitted following me here, as I’d known you would? Curiosity, you say? But should I believe that? Am I as great a fool as you, then?”

“Amazing!” Tarra gasped. “And I’m talking to a self-confessed murderer?”

“Several times over!” Dyzm emphatically agreed. “And they needed killing all—but in any case, that’s quite another matter, part of an entirely separate set of circumstances. Now hear me out:

“Where was I ? Ah, yes—

“—So, there I was journeying with the caravan, putting a deal of distance twixt myself and sulphur pits, and along the way recruiting for my treasure hunt. And half-way down Lohmi’s eastern flank, lo! the mountain men struck. In great numbers, too. Now, perhaps on other occasion my converted guides might have stayed and fought and died for their rightful master, but now they had a new master and he had promised them riches. Once more the old principle surfaces, Tarra Khash. Namely: a poor man will risk his all for very little gain, but a rich man’s lust for life is that much stronger. Hasn’t he more to live for? So it was with the guides: my whispers had set deepest desires in motion, creating a conflict of loyalties. The choice was this: stay and remain poor and perhaps die—or flee and live and grow fat and rich. Need I say more? I doubt it…”

“You lured the traitors here,” Tarra nodded, “leaving caravan and all to tender mercy of mountain-bred barbarians. Very well, and where are your disciples now?”

“Alas, I know not,” said Dyzm, and the Hrossak sensed his shrug. “Except that you are closer to them than I am.”

“What?” Tarra gave a start, peering all about at the flickering shadows cast by his dying torch. (Hadj’s, upon the floor, had long since expired.) “Are you saying that they’re down here?”

“Aye, somewhere. More than that I can’t say; I’ve not seen them for a bit…” And this time Dyzm’s chuckle was deep and doomful indeed.

“You mean some harm’s befallen them, and you’ve made no effort to find and save them?”

“What? Lower myself down there?” the other feigned shock at the very suggestion. “Haven’t I explained? You speak to a man who toiled three long years in the sulphur pits, remember? And you think I would willingly incarcerate myself in another of Earth’s dark holes? For be sure such would be prison to me and surely drive me mad! No, not I, Tarra Khash.”

And now the Hrossak, for all that he was a hard man, felt genuinely sickened to his stomach. “You let them starve down here!” he accused, spitting out the sour bile of his mouth into the dust.

“I did not!” Dyzm denied. “Indeed I would have fed them well. Meat and fishes aplenty—water, too, if they’d needed it. My promise was this: a meal each time they half-filled this bucket here with gold and jewels. Any more than that and the rope might break, d’you see? And given a stouter rope they’d doubtless swarm up it. Anyway, starve they did not and my promise was, after all, redundant…”

“And that was their only incentive, that so long as they worked you would feed them?” Tarra shook his head in disgust. “‘Young bucks,’ you called them. Frightened pups, it seems to me.”

“Ah, no,” answered Dyzm. “More than hunger goaded them, that has to be admitted.”

His words—the way he spoke them, low and phlegmy, almost lingeringly—set Tarra’s skin to tingling. After a while, in as steady a voice as he could muster, he said: “Well, then, say on, old fox: what other incentives goaded them? Or better still get straight to the point and tell me how they died.”

“Two things I’ll tell you—” Dyzm’s voice was light again, however throaty, “about incentives. And one other thing about my age, for this fox is in no way old. ‘Aged’ I am, aye—by dint of sulphur steam in my throat and lungs, and my skin all yellowed from its sting—but not aged, if you see the distinction. And my belly puffed and misshapen from years of hunger, and likewise my limbs gnarly from hard labour. But my true years can’t number a great many more than your own, Tarra Khash, and that’s a bitter fact.”

“I’d marked all that for myself,” said Tarra, “but—”