Myself, I owned with a matching grimness that I’d as lief see the paired opponents mutually exhausted, Hamalese and radvakkas alike, so that honest Vallians could claim back their own land.
Filled with her busy plans Marta Renberg saw me as I crossed to the door. Her face clouded and then brightened.
“You will fight in the battle, Jak the Drang?”
Standing with my hand on the door, aware of the guards posted at either side, I felt the need for a little gentle stirring...
“Mayhap, kovneva. I remember a certain promise, made upon a fallen log in a clearing.”
She flushed up, as she did so easily, and her lips tightened.
“I have warned you aforetime, eeshim. I do not forget old scores.”
“But promises?”
“I do not wrangle in public with a rast like you. Guards! Seize the insolent cramph—”
I went through the doorway before the guards could react and slammed the heavy lenk shut. I was down the stairs of the tower and out into the inner ward, the outer ward, and the kyro swallowed me up in its busy activity long before anyone got a glimpse of my departure. Silly woman! Well, she had her Ring of Destiny. I almost felt sorry I would not be here to see how efficacious it was in action.
Just how serious this petulant kovneva was about having me taken up I was not sure; but it appeared a wise plan to keep myself out of sight until evening. The parallel between this action and the action of hiding in radvakka Nikwald occurred to me, you may be sure, and with an unpleasant reminder of the evil days fallen upon Vallia, a sprightly young Hamalian Air Service man went to sleep in a side alley, perfectly unharmed save for a headache when he awoke and a chilly feeling around his nether regions, because his smart uniform was missing. Wearing that uniform and almost busting the stitching, I sat myself down in a tavern, in a dark corner, to await my chance. Thus placing myself in the jaws of the beast, as it were, seemed the safest course.
These men were off duty, and in the nature of off-duty soldiers or airmen they drank and gambled and chased the girls and sang. They sang the songs of Hamal. Well, I’d sung them, in my time. I listened, not joining in, marking down a weasely little fellow with the insignia of a shiv-Deldar who was trying to sing and could only manage a croak or two because he was so far gone, half-falling off his bench, lolling foolishly near me.
They sang “Anete ham Terhenning,” a stupidly tragic song about poor Anete who for the love of a stalwart cross-bowman of the emperor’s guard hurled herself from the Bridge of Sicce. I felt easier when they passed on to the good old favorite: “When the Fluttrell Flirts His Wing.” The shiv-Deldar lurched and slopped his ale and I moved smoothly across and caught him, supported him up against the wall. He waggled his head at me, owlishly.
“Whereaway, dom? The old voller’s in a real hurricane—”
“Rest easy,” I said. “Have another drink.”
So we sat and drank companionably and he talked. He was not at all sure he’d been as clever as he’d thought, volunteering for the Army against Vallia. I learned that the Hamalese regiments and aerial wings and cavalry were not regular units of the Hamalian army; they’d been given the chance of volunteering and, as the shiv-Deldar, who was called Naghan the Boxes, said, the Empress Thyllis wasn’t paying them. Their regimental cash boxes were filled by prompt and regular payments from the person he called the Hyr Notor. The High Lord. I did not have to be told that was what Phu-si-Yantong had adopted as a cover name for himself in dealing with Thyllis and her people and army.
Vallia was being cut up into different areas, dominated by the forces of different factions and nobles. His lot had been run out of the North East and they did not like it. Come the morrow, said Naghan the Boxes, and drank deeply, come the morrow and they’d chuck their firepots down on these nurdling Iron Riders and crisp ’em in their iron.
You may judge of my joy when, by casual enquiry, I discovered that the Deldar actually knew of Rees and Chido, and could assure me they yet lived and were hale and hearty. This pleased me greatly. Other things I learned, which you shall hear when they are germane to my narrative.
The Deldar blinked at my broadsword. “Naughty,” he said. “Where’s your thraxter? Your Hikdar will not allow non-squadron equipment.” He belched. “He’ll mazingle you as the Law allows.” By mazingle he meant discipline. The uniform I had acquired was that of a simple aerial soldier, a voswod, so I forced a smile and nodded and offered another drink.
The conversation came around to the vollers of the squadron and I learned what I needed to know. So I excused myself and the suns having set and my appetite for the moment satisfied by the ingestion of a superb vosk pie, I sauntered out into the moonslit darkness. Now, as you know, I have some skill in the art of stealing airboats. It is not a gift of which I am particularly proud; but I console myself with the reflection that I practice the art only to use a voller when the need is dire. It is not a skill used for mere self-gratification.
As I left the tavern with the lights shining from the windows the swods were singing “Black Is the River and Black Was Her Hair,” another farcical tragical ditty. They’d roar and roister until the patrols hoicked them out, and they’d maybe have sore heads in the morning; but I knew they were Hamalian swods and they’d fight like demons when the Iron Riders charged.
I hummed a few bars of “The Bowmen of Loh,” in a manner to redress the balance, and went up to the vollerpark. I took a voller. I hurt no one. The flier lifted into the moonshot dimness as one of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtled across the sky. The night air breathed sweet about me. I turned the airboat’s head eastwards. I was on my way home.
Looking back, I realize the futility of anger. I should have known. That dratted Scorpion had not crawled out from under a rotting log and given me implicit instructions to let me get away so easily now.
The tempest boiled up in a maelstrom of whirling winds that buffeted the craft this way and that, that scythed me with a pelting blast of hail, that drove the voller swooping and skimming to the ground. I hauled at the controls; but the voller flattened out and skidded along the ground, less than two ulms from the town. The noise racketed about my head.
And then — and then the noise and the tempest vanished in a heartbeat, and the Gdoinye flew down, arrogant and bright in his power, and perched on the coaming.
I glared at that gorgeous bird whose plumage sheened with metallic luster in the moonlight as She of the Veils rose.
“Dray Prescot, onker of onkers.”
My harsh old lips clamped shut. Confound the bird! The raptor would get no change out of me...
“Do you not understand what the Everoinye demand of you?”
So, my resolution flung to the winds, I burst out: “By Vox, you brainless bird! Do they know themselves?”
“They know, onker, and they know you are the man to fulfill their desires and to obey their commands.” The Gdoinye stuck his head on one side and regarded me balefully from one bright avaricious, beady, knowing eye. “A crossbow bolt was loosed at me—”
“I wish to Zair it had pierced your foul heart!”
“You do not. And you know you do not. Now, hearken! You will stop the Iron Riders. The Star Lords command. You will halt the radvakkas and drive them back over the sea to whence they came. This, Dray Prescot, king of onkers, you will do.”
I laughed. “Stop them? With what? How am I supposed to halt that mailed cavalry?”
“You saved the Miglas and halted the Canops, I remember.”
“Sarcasm, Gdoinye, ill becomes you. And to fight the Canops I brought my Freedom Fighters from Valka and mercenaries from Vallia. You know Vallia never has had a national army—”
“Do not prevaricate, onker! You know the answer. We do not ask you to perform a deed beyond your powers, puerile though they be.”
“If they are so puerile, by Makki-Grodno’s diseased tripes, then you should be able to do it all yourself!”
The Gdoinye let out a squawking cackle, of amusement, of scorn, I didn’t know or care. I glared and shook my fist.
“I’m going back to Strombor—”
“Your empress is safe, Dray Prescot, safe in the Heart Heights of Valka surrounded by your Freedom Fighters. They take a heavy toll of those who invaded Valka.”
“She is safe? Delia is safe?”
“Assuredly. Now, emperor of onkers, do as you must and drive back the radvakkas. And then, why you may do as you wish with Vallia. For a space.”
I opened my mouth to ask what the damned bird meant by a space; but he ruffled his feathers, struck his wings and soared aloft. In an instant he was a dot against the face of She of the Veils, and then he was gone.
So I, being in truth the onker of onkers the Gdoinye dubbed me, cursed and cursed again. I would have to do as the Star Lords commanded. And, of course, I’d mightily enjoy discomfiting the radvakkas. But I had to admit I would far rather tilt at the Iron Riders on my own account.
Back to Thiurdsmot I flew and replaced the voller. Scowling ferociously, I took myself off. Only one thing pleased me, and that tempered by parting. Delia was safe. I hungered for her and I knew she yearned for me. The quicker I saw the Iron Riders to the Ice Floes of Sicce the quicker I’d see Delia again.
“Give me your sword, jen, and you would see!”
I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, hunkered down under a thorn-ivy bush with a crossbow bolt through my thigh and could no longer curse. There was another bolt through my arm; but I was able to break off the leather flights and draw the confounded thing through and wrap a chunk of breechcloth around to check the bleeding.
All about me the yells and screams and moans of wounded and dying men beat fearfully into the lowering sky. The Suns of Scorpio were sinking over the field of carnage, and already the scavengers were out, slinking like gray wolves from body to body — if the body was not dead at first, it soon became dead after.
“You will fight in the battle, will you not, Jak the Drang?” that stupid Kovneva Marta had said, and so I had, and had fought and this was the result. The Iron Riders had ridden. They had ridden well. They had ridden clear over the ranked regiments of Hamal and the mercenaries, ridden slap bang through the cavalry, gone rampaging on to Thiurdsmot itself, which was the prize they coveted. As for the famed aerial cavalry and the squadron of vollers, they had made no impression, and were long gone. Only the Hamalian varters had put any real impediment in the way of the radvakkas, and that had been for a short space only, the artillery being swept away in the rout.
And the ring? The damned Ring of Destiny?
Opaz knew what the woman had done. She believed fervently in the magical properties of the ring. Well, they hadn’t worked. If she knew Phu-si-Yantong as I was beginning to know the devil, she should not have been surprised. Poor old Chuktar ham Holophar — if he still lived he’d not lightly put his trust in a silly woman’s belief in a magical talisman again...
The quarrel through my leg was a nuisance. It had to come out and the wound attended to. The crossbows the radvakkas had used had been shot off with a fine abandon, much jollity must have been evinced as the barbarians played with these toys of civilization. Their own bows were puny, mere flat arcs of wood and sinew, and the captured crossbows were, for all the mockery, rather wonderful to them. Anyway, some dratted barbarian idiot had sent a quarrel into me, and his mate had slapped a second to follow the first. Mind you, I must blame only myself. Being hit by a flying arrow or bolt in the midst of a hectic battle is a chance all fighting men must take.
Not wishing to dramatize my predicament unduly, I will only add that here I was, wounded, without transport, abandoned on a stricken field, surrounded by implacable foemen — and with the stricture laid on me to defeat and drive out of Vallia the very enemy who was now so triumphant.
Well. It was a task. It was a challenge. I fancied I would go into the task with a greater zest now.
First things first...
The bolt drew out of my thigh with a deal of unpleasantness. The breechcloth had to be wrapped and pulled tightly. I peered out from under the thorn-ivy. She of the Veils was not yet up but in the last dying wash of light of the suns set the Twins rose in the east, eternally orbiting each other, lurid with a ruddy light. The wind blew soughingly. The yells and screams had mostly died away now and only occasionally a long groan broke that whispering silence.
I crawled out and stood up — very shakily.
The broadsword had snapped across in the melee and the shortsword had been carried off wedged in the breastbone of a radvakka whose iron corselet had been burst through. It had been hot work there, in the press.
Vague ideas of what I was going to do had already formed in my vosk-skull of a head; but I fancied I’d have to walk in on my own two feet — as I have done before, Zair knows. So, grumbling and cursing, I started off, hobbling along. That dip in the Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph in far Aphrasöe would most certainly speed my recuperation and leave me whole and unscarred; but the process of recovery was none the less highly fraught for all that.
Half-under a corpse of an infantryman I found a thraxter.
One of the gray scavengers approached and I showed him the blade, lurid in that ruddy light, and snarled, and he withdrew.
One hell of a racket was breaking up out of Thiurdsmot as I skirted the town. The townspeople would have made good their escape — or I devoutly hoped they had — the moment they had realized the battle was lost. The rout would have been a Cansinsax on a greater and more ghastly scale. Now the barbarians whooped it up in best barbarian style. I flung a few ripe curses at them as I hobbled past in the dappled moons light.
The three water bottles I had picked up were soon emptied and I had to cast about for a stream. I was ragingly thirsty.
The light of a small fire twinkled ahead. Carefully I scouted the little camp. These were Vallians — all of them natives of Vallia, I judged, and not a Hamalese among them. They sat hunched around their fire by the stream and their conversation, low-voiced, made me realize just how low-sunk we Vallians had become.