Seeing the kovneva and her party safely into Thiurdsmot, I had refused the offer of a flying mount from the Hamalian aerial cavalry squadron. They acted under the orders of Marta Renberg. People in Vallia were becoming more and more used to flying cavalry, great birds of the air being used as saddle flyers; but I refused the offer of a fluttrell since I considered that would attract more attention than a benhoff, attention I wished to avoid. I had insisted on going alone. Larghos had offered to accompany me, which made me look at him afresh; but I managed to convince him his duty lay with the kovneva. Truth to tell, he might have attempted to prevent my return with the ring, seeing that if Marta did as she intended then it would be a quick exit for Larghos.
A different route from the one I had followed previously swung me a trifle to the north. The same gradual trending of the land from forest to grassland to the sere plains progressed. On a bright morning I broke camp and set off and just before the Hour of Mid observed a dark mass approaching over the plain. Lumpy and I took ourselves as quickly as might be into a hollow. I watched.
These people were Vallians. They wore Vallian buff and their colors were a mixture of many of the provinces of the North East. But they were no advancing army bent on conquest. Carts were piled high with homely possessions. Women strode along with children clinging to their skirts. The men rode guard on the flanks. They were Hawkwas, well and true; but they were refugees, seeking to escape from the wrath of the Iron Riders. They passed away traveling west. I mounted up again and set off eastwards.
If ever I could say about the island empire, as I often say about other places, my Vallia — then my Vallia was in sorry shape. And I was pattering off on a footling errand for a silly ambitious woman who wanted to be empress, searching for a confounded ring said to be possessed of magical properties. Almost, I drew rein and turned back. But The Scorpion had left me in no doubt. I had to get that damned ring. It was a quest of the most farcical kind; but however ludicrous that side of the quest might be, the reality on the other side was dark and horrifically serious.
Despite all the appearances to the contrary, this was no splendid game of quest in the high tradition I played. I fought and gambled for stakes far greater than those of a simple quest.
I have no desire to go into the full details of all that went on during that search for the Ring of Destiny. Marta had given me all the information she had on its whereabouts, and this proved highly accurate. Phu-si-Yantong would not fail on that. I guessed he used this ploy to distract the poor woman, seeing that his iron legions of Hamal had failed. He, like any other man, had to work through the tools available. In Yantong’s case the tools were more often than not other men and women. But the Hamalese had been humiliated in the field. No doubt Yantong in his insane ambitions would assemble other forces; for the moment he kept this woman working for him by means of a transparently dishonest folk tale.
The defeat suffered by the Hamalian Army outside the walls of Cansinsax was not the first time they had been bested by the Iron Riders; but they would not face the humiliating fact that all their expertise, their professionalism, their famous Laws, could not withstand the mailed cavalry charge delivered by the radvakkas astride benhoffs. The talk in Thiurdsmot had been of a fresh battle with flyers and vollers to give aerial support and with batteries of varters to supplement the crossbows. The job could be done, of course; I did not know if I wanted to be there at the time to witness the horror and the splendor of it.
The shrill battle cries of the Hamalese as they clashed with their enemies — the vicious, shrilling, demanding: “Hanitch!” “Hanitch!” — had rung with a desperation, almost an hysteria, over that stricken field outside the walls of Cansinsax.
Nikwald bore the marks of its altered status. Many of the brick buildings and wooden outhouses were mere shells and charred skeletons. But a central section remained around a kyro with pretensions to architectural respectability, and here the radvakkas stabled their benhoffs, set up their cooking arrangements and their armory and generally conducted themselves in the way of bombastic barbarians two worlds over.
Originally there had been four temples in Nikwald, the chiefest being dedicated to Junka, a manifestation of godhood well thought of in the North East. The second, which should rightfully have been the first in view of the real importance of Opaz for all the genuine self-negation that is a small part of that belief, was dedicated to the Invisible Twins. Both had been partially destroyed. Benhoffs and calsanys were tethered within the shattered walls.
Shuffling along leading Lumpy, an old shaggy pelt flung over my shoulders, I passed well enough for a radvakka slave caring for his master’s steed. Other slaves went about their businesses, and all wore that hangdog defeated look of the oppressed when in private, and all put on that inane cheerful look of happy subservience when their masters bellowed at them.
All I saw convinced me that the radvakkas had sailed from Segesthes and landed in Vallia in strength. The fate of the eastern islands concerned me profoundly — what had befallen Veliadrin, Zamra and Valka? Had my people managed to hold out against this new threat? The moment the Star Lords were satisfied, I knew where I was going — before, even, I thought, Strombor.
The temple of brick and wood erected to the greater glory of Mellor’An, a local god of agriculture, husbandry and fertility in general, was of altogether lesser proportions and only a part had burned. Men moved about purposefully and I saw they had set up a forge in the outer court where benhoff shoes were repaired and where the iron fittings of gear and equipment might be made good. The armories did not share the same fires and anvils as this blacksmithing work. I meandered along past the outer wall.
In a crumbled corner of brick I took a swift look around. No one watched me. The town hummed with activity. Working with a deceptive smoothness I probed a nail loose in Lumpy’s middle offside hoof. I already had a broken chain, and cursed it. I walked Lumpy lumpily back to the smithy.
Inside, the radvakkas in charge bellowed slaves about their work. “Here, slave, hurry!” rumbled one at me as I approached. Then he spat out that vicious, cutting order:
“Grak!”
So, being sensible in these things, I grakked and handed the broken chain across. Radvakkas, like many barbarians, set no store by money; when it fell into their hands they melted it down for the precious metals to be used in ornamentation. Communal work was done on a communal basis. The radvakka blacksmiths grasped whips instead of hammers, and beat their skilled slaves into the work. The broken chain would be mended as a mere part of maintaining the military equipment of the whole band. Then I led Lumpy around to have his shoe fixed.
For the moment freed of observation I wandered away from the busy activity of the fires, as though seeking a corner where I might eat my bread and cheese and, if I was fortunate, munch on an onion. A hierarchy existed among slaves. Those attending personally to radvakka masters were a cut above the poor devils tending the fires or bashing iron. A group sat on sacks in a corner, and they called out to me to join them in their game of knucklebones, as they waited for repairs to be completed.
“I have had the luck of Ernelltar the Bedevilled lately, doms,” I called across. “Give me leave to sit awhile and eat. Mayhap later I will chance a round or two.”
They made crude remarks at this, all of them pleased for the moment to be on a duty that gave them a trifle of spare time so rare and precious in their lives. I moved on into the shadows past where the altar to Mellor’An had once lifted and now lay in shards of broken brick and pottery and charred wood.
Without a shred of modesty I can claim that no ordinary Vallian would have escaped detection for a moment. But I was a Clansman — a Clansman of Felschraung and Longuelm and now of Viktrik. If Hap Loder had not been out collecting obi from other clans, also. I knew the ways of the radvakkas passing well. Talk of Ernelltar the Bedevilled raised uncouth and sarcastic comments, for all knew that runs of bad luck were attributed to him in North Segesthes.
The space at the rear of the altar was badly broken down. In a cavity within the pediment below the altar, Marta had said. I kicked charred timbers aside and swiped at the clouds of dust and ashes. The rumble of voices and the clang of the smithies’ hammers resounded comfortingly from the exterior. I poked around. There was a crevice, a slot in the baked bricks. I reached down. A box? Something hard-edged. I got my fingers around it and then took a quick look back. I was still alone.
With a grunt and a heave the box came out. Sturmwood, scuffed, with a brass lock and hinges, it looked nothing special. It went under the shaggy pelt as a warvol devours flesh.
Then I yawned and wandered back to the knuckle-bone players.
For the look of the thing I played a few hands, and lost one of the daggers, and felt too amused even to curse.
The slaves laboring at the fires, at the bellows, hammering the iron, would slide liquid envious glances in our direction. Hardly slaves at all, these fellows who so liked to lord it over the less fortunate, cowed before their masters. In a sense they were more like the militarily employed helots of the Spartans. With good and faithful service and the signal proof of courage they might even be given a kind of manumission and join the hard-riding ranks of the radvakkas. The process was continuous, Iron Riders in the making.
Not all the slaves were apim. There was a marked brutality in the treatment the radvakkas meted out to the diffs. They would in their rough uncouth ways stand far more from an apim slave than a diff. I saw a Rapa knocked headlong into a fire. A little Och whose job was to bring water for quenching was tripped and his bucket upended over his head and rammed down around his ears. The Iron Riders were intolerant of diffs, that was known.
Many diffs bore the savage marks of barbaric punishments.
“Here, slave!” bellowed a radvakka, and he cracked his whip. “Your work is done. Now schtump. Grak!”
I detest that hateful word grak. As the radvakka yelled so the slaves all jumped, quite automatically, when the vicious cutting word of command bit into the stifling smoke-filled air.
As humbly as might be contrived I took Lumpy and the chain and went out. The air smelled sweet after the singing stink of the smithy.
All this time I had been alert, strung-up, making myself appear relaxed, expecting detection at any moment. Now, as I led Lumpy out along the street, with Nikwald filled with the clamor of the Iron Riders about me, I thought I had done it. I was set. Clear away. I had only to mount up and ride.
That would have been a disastrous mistake.
Since when would a slave, even a master’s slave, a helot, dare to ride his master’s steed back from the smithy in the barbaric encampments of the Iron Riders?
“By Getranchi’s Iron Fist!” bellowed a radvakka as he kicked heartily at a Khibil carrying a sack of flour. “Grak, you useless worm. Or I’ll cut your hide to pieces.”
They were but a pair acting out the lunacy of their respective social positions, one swaggering, the other staggering. Perforce, I had to look the other way. One day, Opaz willing, we’d have sanity back in Vallia and do away with slavery for good and all. I led Lumpy on and ground down the instinct to whip out the broadsword and lay the flat against the arrogant Iron Rider’s skull.
A hullabaloo broke out ahead, with people shouting and running, so I guided Lumpy into the shadows of a tumbledown shack at the side of a ruined house. Men were pointing up. So up I looked, shielding my eyes against the declining rays of the suns. Up there, high, three vollers fleeted across the sky, traveling southwest and going fast. They were mere petal-shaped outlines; but they were Hamalian and they were scouting radvakka Nikwald. Judging from the comments of the Iron Riders, they thirsted for the chance to drive a spear into the marvelous flying craft up there, and were stumped as to how to do it.
An odd sound as of a piece of wood striking the palm of the hand, although heavier, meatier, floated from the ruined building. I ignored it. In this concealment seemed a good time for me to discard the sturmwood, brass-bound box, which was too awkward for easy carriage. I took the ring out. The Ring of Destiny. It looked an ordinary enough ring, with two emeralds, a ronil and an indeterminate whitish stone, not a diamond, all fastened with gold claws. I stuck it down safely into my breechclout.
The slapping noise continued and I pushed further back and looked through where once a window had been and where now a gap stretched from ground to sky. The tamped earth space within was clearly illuminated by the angled rays of the suns. I saw.
The foul bile of disgust rose into my throat.
A circle of radvakkas stood with whips, with pieces of wood, with iron bars. They surrounded a stake. Tethered by his tail to the stake a man stood and was struck and struck again. The game was to make him run round and round the stake, his tail fastened to an iron ring that enabled him to circle, to duck, to dodge and weave. At the side a radvakka was totting up the bets on a wooden slipstick. The Iron Riders sweated over their work; but they did not call out or make any noise. So I guessed there were bets on the shrieks of pain of their victim, also, and they would not wish to miss these.
In a corner lay the corpses of a number of men — all diffs.
The fellow who was now being tortured for sport did not run. He stood there, his four arms bound at their four elbows into his back. His face — his face showed a dark and passionate hatred of these radvakkas, a tawny-haired face, with tawny moustaches and a golden beard, a savage, noble, suffering face. But he did not cry out. He stood there and I marveled at the way he moved himself, shifting on his feet with a litheness that reminded me of the way great unarmed combat men fight in their disciplines — a fluid shifting grace of movements that avoided many of the blows. But many more struck home. His naked body, banded with muscle and yet slender and limber, bore the bloody marks, the weals and cuts, the bruises.