Tower of Zanid by L. Sprague de Camp Read Free Book Online

I shall hold you squad-leaders responsible for turning out your men.”
    “I’m not feeling too well myself, sir,” said Fallon with a grin as he pocketed the half-kard due his rank.
    “Saucy buffoon!” snorted Kordaq. “Why we tolerate your insolence I know not… But you’ll not forget that whereof I spoke earlier, friend Antane?”
    “No, no. I’ll make arrangements.” Fallon walked off, waving a casual farewell to the other members of his squad.
    Fallon was, he supposed, foolish to spend one night out of every ten tramping the streets for. a half-kard-pick-and-shovel wages. He was too self-willed and erratic to fit into a military machine, having considerable talent for command but little for obedience. And as a foreigner, he could hardly hope to rise to the top of the Balhibo tree.
    Yet here he was, wearing the brassard of the Civic Guard. Why? Because a uniform had an invincible if childish fascination for him. Trailing his bill around the dusty streets of Zanid gave him, if only fleetingly, the illusion of being a potential Alexander or Napoleon. And in his present state, his ego could use all of such support that it could get.
    Gazi was asleep when he plodded home, his tired brain picking at the knots of the Safq problem. She awoke as he slid into, bed. “Wake me up at the end of the second hour,” he mumbled, and fell asleep.
    Almost at once, it seemed to him, Gazi was shaking his shoulder and telling him to get up. He had had only about three Earthly hours’ sleep; but he still had to arise now to work in all the things that he meant to do this day. Knowing that he had to appear in court that afternoon, he shaved and put on his second-best suit, gulped a hasty meal, slouched out into the bright mid-morning sun, and set out for Tashin’s Inn.
     
    The A’vaz District ranged from plain slums, where it adjoined the Juru near the Balade Gate, to slums sprinkled with studios as it abutted upon the artistic and theatrical Sahi to the north. Tashin’s, near the city wall on the west side of the A’vaz, was a rambling structure built (like most Balhibo houses) around a central court.
    This court was filled, this morning, with the histrionic characters who made up the inn’s regular clientele. A rope-walker had rigged up a rope stretching from one bit of architectural foofaraw diagonally across the court to another, and was slinking across, waving a parasol to keep his balance. A trio of tumblers were tossing one another about. On the other side of the inclosure a man rehearsed a tame gerka in its tricks. A singer practiced scales; an actor recited, with gestures.
    Fallon asked the gatekeeper: “Where’s Turanj the Seer?”
    “Second storey, room thirteen. Go you right up.”
    As he started across the courtyard, Fallon was forcibly bumped by one of a trio of Krishnans. As he recovered his balance, glaring, the burly character bowed, saying: “A thousand pardons, good my sir I Tashin’s wine has unsteadied my legs. Hold, are you not he with whom I got drunk at yesterday’s festival?”
    Simultaneously the other two closed in on the sides. The man who had bumped him was saying something genial about stepping over to Saferir’s for a snort, and one of the two who had flanked him had laid a friendly hand on his left shoulder. Fallon felt, rather than saw, the razor-sharp little knife with which the third member of the trio was about to slit his purse.
    Without altering his own forced smile, Fallon shouldered the Krishnans aside, took a step and then a leap, turning as he did so and whipping out his rapier, so that he came down facing all three in the guard position. He was not a little pleased with himself for still being so agile.
    “Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, “but I have another engagement. And I need my money, really I do.”
    He glanced swiftly around the courtyard. At Fallon’s words there came a ripple of derisive laughter. The three thieves exchanged glowering glances and stalked out the