First, Reflect On What Led You To Your Current Straits. Second, Devise A Plan To Avoid Such Circumstances In The Future
Anyone watching Dirant Rikelta then, and he strongly hoped nobody was, would have seen nothing but a muddy young man stand still for about ten seconds. That observer next would have seen that Ritualist hurl himself into the suspected fray after the fashion of his class, hunched over and scuttling sideways as if to squeeze himself between members of a busy road crew whom he wished not to disturb on account of his appreciation of the importance of public works.
How he advanced notwithstanding, he did, until he saw one figure squirming on the ground and three others still standing tall, one especially so. That man either belonged to the Brawny Knight class or threatened its monopoly on hugeness, for so extravagantly thick were his arms and chest that at least one tinker surely had knocked on him by mistake and asked to see the lady or gentleman of the house. He had shaved his head and moved the leftovers down to his lip, for his dark mustache could not otherwise have achieved such magnificence, and altogether he looked quite Tandish as far as Dirant could determine based on the occasional sighting and portrait of that people from Geft east across the ocean.
The other two required no examination. They were his Dvanjchtliv friends, and they were having a hard time. The Drastlifar-looking one approached the Tand with a dagger and left with nothing, knocked aside by a single blow. While he struggled not to fall over entirely, the more obvious Dvanjchtliv of the pair pelted the giant with any pebble he could find and did more with them than rude children ever managed. Red spots were popping up all over the exposed sections of the Tand's body and his white shirt became rags, but he took no more notice of that than did a non-Brawny Knight when the gymnasiums closed early because of a holiday.
The Tand moved to finish off the stumbler, who bent over farther for a handful of mud he flung at his enemy. Nothing about Brawny Knights, either their abilities or their temperament, demanded they take everything that came at them straight on for all that they typically were capable of it, and so the Tand shifted to let the attack splash over his side. Unfortunately for him, the dagger mixed in with the muck would have been better avoided altogether.
It seemed certain both the Noiswawauan agents belonged to elite combat classes. The probability a single Brawny Knight could beat both had to be low, but his prospects of accomplishing his objective and effecting an escape were a different thing. He at least figured it that way to judge from how he turned away from both Dvanjchtlivs and toward the man on the ground.
When he saw yet another man in that direction, he recalculated his odds to the highest precision possible given that he knew nothing of the newcomer's class or intentions. In the end he sneered, withdrew the dagger without regard for any pain he may not have even felt, launched it toward the pebble-thrower, sent a wave of mud at the other with a stomp worthy of several stanzas in a heroic poem, and ran. The muscled speed of a trained Brawny Knight was too much for the battered Dvanjchtlivs to contest, and perhaps they were happy to have the affair end in such a way.
The newcomer who altered the situation by his presence alone began to slide himself away, softly, quietly, so as not to disturb the senior participants, but courtesy taken too far or applied at the wrong time may become rudeness. The Dvanjchtlivs had already seen him, and to deny them the chance to display their own gentle manners was therefore unconscionable. Their demeanors implied all that as they approached Dirant, and so he greeted them after all.
“Hello, Eizesl,” he said, and for the first time realized he did not know the plural of eizesl. If it had one. It ended like an adverb, but that made no sense. “They say the weather always gets worse than you think it will, and so it has. The road is making itself so hard to find! I will leave you to your business and keep looking.” He used Drastlimez because he had no reason to suppose they spoke Adaban and good reason to pretend not to recognize them as foreign Dvanjchtlivs rather than the grandchildren of immigrants who came to Drastlif in consequence of mercenary work and stayed because they preferred the climate. In addition, his clumsiness in Drastlimez gave his speech an endearing buffoonish quality, he hoped.
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Whatever the success of his ploy, all three interrupted themselves to look at the man on the ground when he groaned. Doing so gave Dirant a sharper shock than the first time he successfully completed a ritual, and it may not have been his imagination that the Dvanjchtlivs inhaled and stepped back as well. The victim, they saw, was Poiskops Bodan-Tin.
Any possibility of extricating himself from a simple private dispute vanished like ghosts kept doing whenever people tried to confirm their existence. An assassination attempt aimed at one of Drastlif's oligarchs could be made more serious only if the perpetrators decided to do away with the Ritualist witness, which doubtless the Brawny Knight would have done given a chance. That was if Dirant's interpretation of the scene held. If instead his Dvanjchtlivan friends, his buddies, his compatriots, had not just prevented one murder, they were about to commit two. Still, Dirant trusted himself, and he trusted his Fascination Ritual too. Recalling the non-word loojweirloo which would complete said ritual and mesmerize them unless they beat the stat check as was distressingly possible, he said, “The Stanops! What can we do for him?”
“Are you a doctor, Eizesl?” asked the bearded one. He and Dirant were alike in pretending not to know things. Perhaps they might establish a beautiful concord after all. “If not, run to town straightaway, ere his time passes.”
That sounded like a paraphrase of a Dvanjchtlivan epic poem to Dirant. Not the Beisgaignu; the Drajvignu, perhaps. Did Noiswawau train its agents who operated in Drastlif to make literary allusions sure to reveal their origins? An unconventional tactic. Possibly it helped them identify one another. Spycraft notwithstanding, Dirant questioned an element of the proposal. “I am neither a doctor nor a runner, and you bold fighters must be swifter than I am. Should you not go yourself?”
The Dvanjchtlivs looked at each other and laughed. The mustachioed one nodded, whereupon Eizesl Beard dashed off at a speed which fully justified Dirant's surmise about their comparative qualifications for the task. That left Eizesl Mustache as a conversational partner. Dirant tried to talk to Poiskops instead. “How do you feel, Stanops? Is there anything we can do? Is thirst a problem?”
Since Poiskops tried to reach up at that last question, the answer might be presumed to be “yes.” Dirant unhooked a canteen an authoritative guide to travel in Drastlif advised all travelers to keep about them at all times because the heat made itself a sudden and dangerous enemy when it wished. Evidently the Dvanjchtliv had read the same guide, for both offered water to the poor, though rich, coughing man.
Eizesl Mustache pulled back. “You do that while I look for an umbrella I think I saw,” he suggested. That was done, with Dirant being careful to tip the water in at a manageable rate while the operative searched through the mud and damp while asking, in Adaban for the other's convenience, “Now, Eizesl, between men who sound awkward whatsoever we say in this foreign land, tell me an honest word. Do you believe that, if we wanted to work our evil will on a fallen man, that you could stop us? I mean this as a thought experiment. If not, does sending one of us away do anything? This is a personality test for new acquaintances. I go by Ebringsawm Ulzchorgnu, by the way.”
“This meeting is a blessing for me. I am Dirant Rikelta. Ah, to prevent any evil will is far from my mind, and to dare think you possess any such is too much. A far different matter is a mercenary will that demands recompense for aid provided free of compulsion or request. My presence may hinder that, if only because I offer an inferior alternative at a lower price. Though unable to win many fights, I can turn this noble man a bit to lessen the intake of rain, which is a convenience at least. Of course I say nothing about winning a favor myself. Now I must in turn test you. There are three doors in front of you, and you are asked to pick one. The rest escapes me.”
“I draw my saber and slay the man who dares offer me insolent commands, like a conqueror. You I know would open all three; if anyone objected, you would proclaim how aggrieved you feel as you kick him in the stomach. That's the Adaban way. What would someone like you want to get? Are you a man of business?”
Though Ebringsawm knew exactly what Dirant did, he could hardly complain about deception and still consider himself a fair-minded man, and so he did not. Dirant met that honest spirit with words of his own that were not lies as such. “In fact there are negotiations underway already, and so it is ugly to say more. How fast would you say that other man is?” He might have said “your colleague,” but without knowing their cover story, he hated to impose.
“I'd estimate that having long since found a doctor, he's almost to the gate if he has to carry him or a little past it if the doctor takes his own advice about regular physical activity.”
“There must be one of those somewhere,” Dirant said, and both laughed. Their cultures, it seemed, overlapped in certain regions. Far more of them than their neighbors liked.