The Forests Of Old Rthfrdia

4

The Forests Of Old Rthfrdia

    Roz, the Playfair Pleasure Girl, lay back weakly on the grass and goggled up at the handsomest male humanoid she’d ever seen. He was very tall, and he had beautiful hair, short red-gold curls in the yellow sun, and his face was a little burnt with the UV rays and a little tanned, and just a little freckled, and he had short, thick, pale gold fur all the way up his forearms. And wide shoulders and long legs in soft nyr-hide breeches. Two galaxies!

    He didn’t speak to her, he said clearly: “Just come out from behind those vtt’lberry bushes, you girls, and don’t even dream of trying anything silly.”

    Two scruffy red-headed girls in badly-cured nyr-hide appeared, glaring.

    “Drop the knives,” he said.

    They opened their mouths and let the knives drop. The taller one dropped her nyr-hide lasso without being prompted. “We saw her first, kna-worm dropping!” she snarled.

    At this the little boy kneeling beside Roz and emanating terror forgot to emanate and cried indignantly: “No, ya never! I did!”

    “Yes, I think he did,” said Roz weakly. “I felt him there. And the other being.”

    Drouwh Mk-L’ster stared down at her, frowning. She was very pretty, in spite of the strange black hair. “Other being?” He himself hadn’t sensed anybody in the Forests of Mk-L’ster except the little boy and those two ridiculous bandit girls. –On the hunt for his nyr, as usual, blissfully unconscious that they were permitted to lead their archaic and illegal life of sylvan bliss only because his foresters had been strictly forbidden to lay a finger on the pair of little idiots. Oh, well—you were only young once.

    “That small spotted being,” she said.

    The little boy squeaked: “Spotty? He’s not a being, he’s a dog!” and Drouwh smiled a little, though his suspicions of the girl from the crashed lifter immediately grew stronger.

    “What’s your name?” he asked.

    “Roz. –I think,” she said groggily.

    “She’s been sick,” explained the little boy cautiously. “Look, it’s all blue.”

    “Klupf,” she said faintly. “I must be out of my mind.”

    He sincerely doubted that. It was about as likely as the off-world’s lifter’s crashing in his forests at this precise time was likely to be a coincidence. “Mm, I can see that,” he said to the freckly little boy. “Do you think you could go and get those knives and that lasso for me, sonny, without getting between me and the girls?”

    “Um—yeah,” he said uncertainly.

    “Listen, kid, we can come to some arrangement!” said the taller girl swiftly. “We’ll cut you in for a share when we sell the girl! Ignore this bandit, throw in with us!”

    The little boy went very red. “You don’t sell people,” he croaked.

    “Bandits do,” drawled Drouwh.

    “Kna-worm fucker!” she shouted.

    “Get me that lasso!” he snapped.

    The little boy scrambled up, ran to the girls, then threw himself on his front and wriggled over to the lasso. Panting, he brought it back to Drouwh.

    “Thanks.” So fast that they had no time to move, he shouldered his long bow and lassoed the pair of them.

    “OW!” they yelled as he jerked savagely on the line.

    “What are you going to do with them?” asked Roz, wondering what he was going to do with her.

    “Oh—very much what they’d have done with you, I think,” he drawled.

    “NO!” shouted the elder.

    He smiled, and pulled on the line again, so that the girls were jerked towards him. “I know a Lord who would pay a lot for a couple of little wild snr-kits like you.”

    “NO!” they shouted.

    Wrinkling his nose a bit at the smell of poorly tanned nyr-hide and grimy girl, he knotted the lasso round a tree.

    “They’ll get out of that,” warned the little boy.

    “Well, you tell me if they try. Let’s see how sick your find is.” He knelt beside Roz and felt her all over, very gently. “No bones broken,” he reported.

  · “Haven’t you ever heard of blobs?” she returned, faint but rude.

    Drouwh said nothing, but his lips tightened. There was no doubt she was an off-worlder.

    “I seen a blob once,” ventured the little boy.

    “Look in the lifter, there’s megazillions,” she said faintly.

    “Galaxies! Can I?” he breathed.

    “No. Keep an eye on those snr-cats!” said Drouwh loudly.

    The little boy picked up the knives and crouched at a discreet distance, watching the girls nervously.

    “Where are you from?” Drouwh asked, taking a look inside the girl’s head. Thundering herds of grpplybeasts, it was a scrambled klupf nightmare in there! What brain she had appeared all right, though. A Pleasure Girl, eh? Hmm.

    “Playfair. I think,” she said.

    “Mm.” He got up and strolled over to the lifter. The hatch had been open but it closed quickly. Drouwh broke its blob-control without mind-effort and looked in. Departure point, Playfair Two. Playfair Two? He leant on the lifter and looked down at her sardonically. “Playfair Two, it would appear. You must have belonged to someone very rich, little Pleasure Girl Roz. Was he so bad that you had to klupf-trip to escape him?”

    “No. I don’t remember,” she said in a confused voice.

    It was a miracle she’d remembered her name, with a body full of that stuff. “No,” he said. “Well, never mind. You’re here now. Do you want to stay?”

    “Who would I belong to, Great Lord?” she asked timidly.

    “Why are you calling me Great Lord?” he asked drily, senses alert.

    “He’s not a Great Lord, he’s a bandit!” explained the little boy. “Have you got a keep, sir?”

    “Uh—sort of,” lied Drouwh, concealing a wince.

    “A bandit’s keep! Galaxies!” he breathed.

    “Shut up, he’s a kna-worm!” snarled the elder of the two bandit girls, straining towards the knot in the lasso.

    “Stand still!” he snapped, bow at the ready. She stood very still, glaring. “Well?” he said to the Pleasure Girl. “Why call me Great Lord?”

    “I don’t know, sir,” she said in confusion. “I’ve been trained to say that to male humanoids... I think.”

  · “Mm. Well, do you want to stay here, or should we contact Playfair Two?”

    “NO!” cried the elder bandit girl angrily.

    “Shut up, you’re out of this,” he drawled.

    “Sir, you can’t contact any Federation world until Federation Day,” said the other bandit girl faintly.

    “If necessary it can wait until then. Then shall we contact your point of departure?”

    “What? No,” she said dizzily. “I think I’ve escaped from there.”

    “Hey, listen! If her owner wants her back,” said the elder bandit girl eagerly, “we could probably sell her back to him for a zillion igs! Listen, I’ve got contacts—”

    Drouwh wrenched the scarf off his neck and stuffed it into her mouth.

    He turned slowly back to the Pleasure Girl, frowning. This was a cursed unnecessary complication. But on the unlikely chance she was only a Pleasure Girl, he could hardly leave the creature here at the hands of these two young forest bandits: the luckiest fate she could expect would be to end up as the mistress of a fat businessman from the town. Ugh. Presumably the sort of fate she’d been trying to escape from. She was really very pretty: what a cursed pity that she wasn’t anything that you could call a human being.

    “You’d better come with me,” he said on a grim note.

    “Sir, my mother could look after her!” the little boy urged.

    “It’s very kind of you, sonny, but she’d be another mouth to feed, you know: I doubt very much she can do anything useful. What does your father do?”

    “He goes to work. He’s got a great big office!”

    A clerk in the nearest town, Drouwh presumed. He looked kindly at this little freckled creature who’d had the sense to escape to the open spaces while he could and said: “I see. And how many spare rooms has your house got?”

    “Um—well, ’tisn’t a house, it’s only a layer. My little sister’s got the spare room, she’s too big for her cot, now,” he admitted.

    “Mm. Well, I’ve got lots of spare rooms.”

    His eyes shone. “Yeah! In your bandit’s keep!”

    Even in its current dusty, servantless state he wouldn’t have called the hunting lodge that. Drouwh cleared his throat but said: “Yes. She’ll be comfortable enough. You’d better come with us, sonny.”

    He had been looking wistfully at the lifter but now he said eagerly: “To your keep? Can I?”

    “Uh—no, not that far. I’ll take you back to the road.”

    The thin, freckly little face fell.

    “Just a minute.” Drouwh went and felt around inside the lifter. “Here,” he said, handing him a small blob.

    The boy’s face shone. “Galaxies! Thank you, sir!”

    Drouwh smiled a little wryly. It was highly unlikely the kid could do anything with it, most Old Rthfrdians couldn’t. One of the reasons why they’d been kept out of the Federation for so long, of course. But now— His long mouth tightened. He lifted the Pleasure Girl up. She was heavier than she looked, but nothing like the dead weight of a nyr. He sent a Close message at the lifter’s hatch and, saying casually over his shoulder: “Don’t try to get into that lifter when you’re out of those ropes, it’s permanently sealed,” walked out of the little clearing.

    The boy pattered happily along beside him with his pup at his heels, but when Brown emerged silently from the bush where he’d been keeping watch, ready to leap to his master’s defence, he gasped, and grabbed at Drouwh’s breeches.

    “It’s all right: this is Brown, he’s a Goodie,” he said with a smile. “Shake hands, Brown!”

    The big dog sat and held up a paw. Gingerly the little boy shook it. “Galaxies! Isn’t he great? Could I teach Spotty that, do ya reckon?”

    The creature had the brain of a bowl of yi’ish! Well—capable of snuffing out lr under the autumn leaf litter, yes, but that was about it.

    “It takes a long time, and lots of patience,” he said temperately.

    “I’ll try,” the boy decided.

    Drouwh dropped a hand on his shoulder as they walked through the forest. “What’s your name?”

    When the boy said defiantly, sticking out his chin: “Eeain Mk’Lh’m Mk-L’ster,” he smiled and said: “I’m a Mk-L’ster, too.

    “I knew you weren’t a Mk-D’rm’d!” he cried.

    Drouwh swallowed a little sigh. The clan rivalries were millennia old, and it was centuries since they had really meant anything on Old Rthfrdia. Most of the population lived and worked in the big cities. Yet the traditional prejudices were still fiercely maintained in the rural areas. This little freckly thing must have learnt them in his cradle. One more thing that was holding his people back, and that had to change. “Not all the Mk-D’rm’ds are black villains, you know,” he said mildly.

    “Yes, they are, sir, you wanna look out for them, they’d do ya as soon as look at ya!”

    Drouwh sighed. “Do you imagine those two girls back there are Mk-D’rm’ds?”

    “Uh—dunno.”

    They were his father’s get, or his name wasn’t Drouwh M’A’ail Mk-L’ster. Either of them could have passed for his little sister, A’ailh’sa. The younger one even had the same little mole beside her mouth as A’ailh’sa. “They’re Mk-L’sters, they look just like some Mk-L’ster girls I know very well. Would you call them Goodies?”

    “No, sir,” he admitted.

    “Think about it,” advised Drouwh heavily, sure the kid wouldn’t.

    They trudged on steadily.

    After a long time the boy said: “This isn’t the way to the road.”

    “Mm? Oh, not directly, no. I’ve got a pack-horse back here. I’d just as soon not carry this snoring heap.” –She was, by now.

    “Yeah. Is she okay?”

    “I think so. I’ve never seen anybody before who’s been stupid enough to take klupf.”

    The little boy looked worried. After a moment he ventured: “It can kill ya, eh?”

    “Yes. It nearly always does.”

    “She was lucky, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    “That’ll be how she come through the Feddo x’nb-web!” he said brightly. “They musta thought she was dead!”

    Drouwh stopped in his tracks. “Listen, Eeain Mk’Lh’m Mk-L’ster, it may be very important for the clan Mk-L’ster for you not to breathe a word about seeing this girl,” he said, with a mental sneer at himself.

    The boy’s face fell.

    “Or about having that blob,” he said drily.

    “Oh! No, I won’t tell anyone, not even T’m M’Grggr Mk-L’ster!” he promised.

    They walked on through the forest.

    The boy was too stunned by the day’s events to remark the quality of the harness on the pack-horse, thank the old gods of Rthfrdia. If Drouwh hadn’t needed the meat, he’d have got rid of the nyr buck he’d shot earlier and insisted the kid ride. As it was he just slung the girl up, roped her on, and led the horse off to the road. As the sun rose high the little boy’s cheeks got very red and he began to flag. Finally Drouwh picked him up and carried him. The kid felt like a handful of fragile ghrr bones against his shoulder.

    Unexpectedly Drouwh Mk-L’ster, who fancied himself too busy to bother with a family—though he had once had a wife, who fancied herself still married to him, so she was in for a shock come Federation Day and IG-legal divorce—was filled with an immense tenderness.

    Back in the clearing K’t-Ln and M’ri Mk’Strt Mk-L’ster were free by noon. They immediately climbed on the lifter, but their knives made no impression on its hatch. Since they’d both had considerable experience with blobs they concentrated hard on sending OPEN! at it, but nothing happened. Though M’ri swore she was getting a message back of Blast it out your something ear.

    Then, not pausing to wonder why the bandit had left them their knives, they circled, picked up his tracks and, climbing a tree, launched themselves on the wind, their nyr-hide cloaks with the illegal blobs in them spread wide, both so used to gliding that they no longer needed to concentrate once they were off. Mk-L’sters didn’t give up that easily, the bandit was in for a shock!

    K’t-Ln and M’ri were in for a shock. They sighted Drouwh five hundred arm-measures from the hunting lodge.

    “He’s going to The Mk-L’ster’s lodge,” said M’ri uncertainly.

    “Kna shit!” snorted K’t-Ln.

    “Yes, he is, K’t-Ln, look!”

    They looked, perched high in a fl’oouu tree. He was and he did. The door was opened to him by a servo-mech.

    “K’t-Ln, you don’t think it was him, do you?” quavered M’ri.

    K’t-Ln chewed a fl’oouu catkin angrily. “Piece of kna shit,” she muttered.

    “Isn’t The Lord supposed to be about that old? You remember when we lived with Mum, we saw him once, she said he was a handsome young man!”

    K’t-Ln snorted richly and almost fell out of the fl’oouu. “She would!”

    It was true that handsome men, young or old, had always been M’ri-Kaay’iit’s downfall. She had been left a widow very young, with the two little girls on her hands, when the charming but improvident Strt had died in an unfortunate accident in a bubble which didn’t belong to him. So she married the rich stuffed-shirt who ran the local village store and owned the tavern. Somewhat later she had T’m but the rich husband disowned him, so she put him in the Children’s Refuge. She and the girls had gone regularly to see him and made no bones of the fact that they were his family: M’ri-Kaay’iit was dumb and man-mad but her heart was in the right place. The husband paid for the boy’s keep, he didn’t mind doing that, but he wasn’t going to bring the brat up as his. There were several later episodes but the husband didn’t divorce her: for one thing divorce was not legal on Old Rthfrdia and for another thing he was still crazy about her. Many millennia back Old Rthfrdia had been a pioneer world and many of its customs dated from that period. Thus, taking several concubines was legal, if you could afford them, and so was taking several live-in lovers, if you were a woman and could afford them, though the latter was generally now frowned upon by the respectable of all classes.

    The rich husband had died a year ago and M’ri-Kaay’iit had mourned respectably for at least three months. She’d urged her errant daughters to return to the nest, but they’d refused: Mum would only marry them off to some rich stuffed-shirt. Her delinquent son was also asked to return from his new refuge in the forest with his sisters, but T’m had rejected life in a house with wall-to-wall carpets and curtains and beds and stuff in favour of staying in the forest and sleeping in a cave and eating real nyr meat! And—though he had prudently not mentioned this to his mother—learning to glide! So M’ri-Kaay’iit had invited two young men to live in.

    K’t-Ln had sunk into a scowling silence. Finally she announced: “Maybe it was The Mk-L’ster. He had a long bow, all right.”

    “I think it was,” quavered M’ri.

    Scowling terrifically, K’t-Ln said: “Why did he let us think he was a bandit, then?”

    “Um… Maybe he was afraid of us?”

    “Huh! –No,” she said slowly, “he was up to something. Maybe it wasn’t an accident that that lifter crashed on his preserves.”

    “Um—ye-es... All the way from that off-world place?”

    “Playfair Two, Feddo-head, are you deaf?” she said furiously.

    “Um, where’s that?”

    “I dunno where, exactly, but it’s where all the richest people in Feddo have their filthy pleasure palaces, I do know that! I bet he’s in touch with them!”

    “Who?”

    “The Mk-L’ster! In touch with Feddo off-worlders, are you dumb, or what?”

    “Yeah, I think I am,” said M’ri glumly. “I don’t understand, K’t-Ln. Why would he be in touch with off-worlders, and—and how can he, nobody can until Federation Day, and—and how would one of those Pleasure Girls help, anyway?”

    K’t-Ln scowled. This last was the weak point in her argument and she hadn’t expected M’ri to spot it. “Dunno. But I bet it’s a plot. Maybe he wants to get rid of the Lords’ Circle and all the Parliamentary Reppos, or, um, like that.”

    “I thought you thought the Lords’ Circle was a load of useless kna-worms that ought to give the preserves, I mean the clan lands, back to the clans?”

    “YES! So what?”

    M’ri subsided. “Dunno.”

    “Maybe he’s plotting with the Reppos—something to do with mineral rights or money. Well, anyway, if the Lords and the off-worlders are in it, the clanspeople’ll come off worst!”

    “Yes. Or maybe it’s something to do with the companies,” said M’ri vaguely.

    “The Lords and the Reppos own the companies, how dumb are ya?”

    M’ri said nothing. After a while, since nothing was happening at the lodge, she began to gather fl’oouu catkins. “We could take some to Mum,” she ventured.

    Resignedly K’t-Ln began to gather catkins. “All right. We can watch the Services on her receiver. See what the official lies are about the cursed Lords’ Circle and those crooks of Reppos. And if The Mk-L’ster’s plotting against the clanspeople, I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I do!”

    M’ri sighed, but nodded.

    K’t-Ln jumped down from the tree. “Come on. We’ll walk, save the blobs.”

    They set off on foot under the delicate, sun-dappled, pale yellow-green spring foliage of the forest, both blissfully unaware that it was only by the grace of Drouwh M’A’ail Mk-L’ster that they were able to maintain their archaic and illegal way of life therein.