Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “You see, Delia. It is even more important, now that Hamal refuses to sell us fliers, that we must learn to build our own."

  We were sitting on our favorite terrace high in the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium and the sweep of the bay. Drak and Lela were safely sleeping after all the excitement of seeing their father—and did they chatter and jump up and down! The streaming mingled light of the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, fell about us in the early evening. Soon it would be night, one of those sweet soft nights of Kregen when the moon-blooms open their petals and drink the moons-light, and the sky is filled with the pink radiance of the moons. I sipped a fine Jholaix, a wine with few equals.

  “But, dear heart,” said Delia, her sweet face troubled, “is it ethical to steal this secret from the Hamalians?"

  I knew what she meant.

  I tried to explain.

  “In the normal way, no, of course not. But think how Hamal has behaved. Not only do they charge inflated prices for vollers—and remember, I have seen them built and built them with my own hands!—and refuse all service, they deliberately manufacture them with built-in faults. I am now absolutely convinced of this."

  “But, Dray, that is—"

  “I know, Delia. But it is so. And we all know the fine men and women who have been killed in faulty fliers. This is murder. We owe it to the memory of the dead and to the well-being of the living to make sure a voller is safe in the air."

  “This all sounds high and mighty, you great shaggy graint! But the fact remains. You are stealing a secret from another country so that you will not have to buy their goods."

  My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, has a confoundedly cutting way with her at times! She put her pretty rosy finger right on the central core, on a fact that had troubled me. I tried in my gruff way to explain that, as far as I could see, the Hamalians had forfeited all rights to their own secrets, through their despicable use of them. “If they treated us fairly, there would be no need to steal the secret. They are a nasty lot, anyway—well, most of them—and they have done me mischief and will seek to do so again."

  “I know, Dray, you do not seek to justify your actions by talking of revenge.” Delia spoke with just enough hesitancy to make me sit up and take notice. She is the most beautiful woman in two worlds. She is also shrewd, clear-sighted, realistic—and maddeningly romantic, too!—and clever enough to tie in knots the smartest politicians and lawyers of those same two worlds.

  “Revenge is for the softheaded, Delia,” I said. I drank some wine to break up my words. “Oh, I know I've thumped a few heads when I was annoyed—"

  “I believe you have."

  “Yes, well. This is taken by me to be a matter of state. If Hamal attacks us—as I believe it will—we must have vollers to defend ourselves. I can find vollers only in Hamal.” She sat there, looking at me, her glorious brown hair with those dazzling auburn highlights catching the last of Zim as the red sun sank in swirls and floods of orange-and-crimson fire. She wore a simple sleeveless gown of white sensil, soft and clinging, without any jewels save a tiny brooch I had given her pinned to the left shoulder. That brooch blazed now in the fiery light with brilliant orange, yellow, and blue gems in the hubless spoked wheel within the circle.

  “And, you great onker,” she said, her face radiant, “what of your fat friend, Queen Fahia of Hyrklana?"

  I laughed.

  I roared with joy.

  “She'd feed me to her pet neemus, and those black-souled cats would chomp me with great delight. No, if I am to discover high state secrets—and those damned silver boxes are just that—I need freedom of movement. As Amak Hamun ham Farthytu, I can move around Hamal."

  “We might consider,” she said, putting her head on one side, “whether it might be an idea to import the rank of Amak into Vallia. I will talk to Father. It would reward many good men and their wives."

  “It's a thought, Delia. An Amak's holdings need be only an estate, not a village, even. Something a little grander than a Tyr, which is really a title only."

  So we talked on in that glorious evening as the suns sank and the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, rolled by above our heads casting down their gold-pink light. We had much to say to each other. But, true to my determination to do all I could for my island of Valka, the following days saw my preparations being finalized. I would use the flier from Djanduin. Once again Delia made up gear for my travel. I kissed her and held her close, I kissed the twins, Drak and Lela, and then I stepped aboard the voller, observing the fantamyrrh, and as I rose into the clear air I shouted down.

  “Remberee, my Delia!"

  “Remberee, Dray, and mind you come back in one piece!"

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind—lion-man

  To fly off and leave my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains! Just to sail away like that, leaving my Delia with all her beauty and love and sound common sense and untold flights of romantic happiness! What a fool I was! What an onker, what a get-onker! I turned the flier around over the sea westward of the island of Astar, isolate and remote, and swung back. What were state secrets and high politics compared with Delia—Delia, Princess Majestrix of Vallia!

  Away over on my larboard lay the island of Pandahem, where Pando was no doubt attempting to shore up his Kovnate against his foes, and Tilda, Tilda of the Many Veils, was trying to support him and fighting against taking too much drink. I must visit them soon. But the Opaz-forsaken rasts of Hamal were attacking northward over the mountains in Pandahem, and soon they would conquer North Pandahem as they had subdued the South. Then it would be Vallia's turn. How could I take my people of Djanduin, my people of Valka, up against the Hamalians without a strong air service? Oh, yes, the Vallian Air Service was strong and devoted and would fight. But I had seen the sky ships of the Hamalians. Against them the poor fliers the Hamalians sold to other countries would stand no chance. Against them flutduins would hurl themselves in vain. And Vallia, that great island of which the smaller island of Valka was a Stromnate, possessed no aerial cavalry at all.

  No.

  No, I could not selfishly return to Delia and let the world of Kregen go hang. I must turn this pitiful little voller about, and head south again, flying over the Southern Ocean to the continent of Havilfar, and to Hamal.

  It was a doom laid upon me.

  Because I had no heart to fly near the devastated ruins of Paline Valley, this time I took the little flier in over the northern coast of Hamal close by the town of Eomlad to the east of Skull Bay. Below lay thick impenetrable jungles and the heat persisted. Eomlad was situated inland on the banks of a wide sluggish river and as I passed I saw smoke and flames rising in the sultry air. Shades of that earlier visit!

  This was, again, no business of mine. This time, I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, forced my voller on and left the burning town. I had business in Ruathytu.

  Every instinct in me warred together. I wished to go to Eomlad and help. I knew that time was running out for my mission to be of use. Hamal's attacks on Pandahem, leading to an invasion of Vallia, would not cease because I went to a burning town to see what help I might render. Anyway, the fighting was over. I had seen the swarms of sky ships departing. What had been going on there I did not know; I would discover all that concerned me at the capital, Ruathytu.

  The burning and sack of Eomlad, a famous occasion, was a symptom of a great event that directly assisted me, as you will hear. I flew on, filled with the urgency of my quest, determined this time to allow no obstacles to stop me, obstacles like, for instance, a red-faced onker of a Strom with a grudge.

  Well, men grow corn for Zair to sickle, as they say in the Eye of the World.

  From Eomlad, the capital, Ruathytu, lies due southeast a distance just over two hundred dwaburs.

  With the shining level spear of the River Havilthytus in view along the southern horizon and with a luxuriantly growing farming area below
, with small tributaries flowing south into the Havilthytus, their banks dotted with the white-walled, flat-roofed houses of villages, the confounded voller gave up on me. With some exertion and a masterful display of the aerial skill taught me by Delia, I brought the flier to earth with a bone-shaking jerk. I had plowed a nasty-looking furrow through a field of rich crops, and I knew the farmer would not be pleased.

  I need not have worried about that poor devil of a farmer.

  Even as I jumped from my ruined craft I saw evil tongues of flame burst from his flat roof, shimmering palely in the glow of Zim and Genodras, the two suns that are called Far and Havil in Havilfar, and greasy smoke broke away in puffs downwind.

  So familiar are scenes like this in my homecoming to Kregen I had to remember that I was here because I had willed it, and not through the summons of the Scorpion. I ran toward the burning farmhouse.

  For my playacting part as Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, I wore a crisp new white tunic run up for me by Delia's sewing maidens. A rather handsome bead necklace of gold and rubies hung around my neck, borrowed from Delia's gem casket. But, because I had taken my leave in Valka, I wore belted to my waist a rapier and a left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar. As I ran I saw men fighting, and women running, and I heard the bestial sound of combat.

  Why I embroiled myself in a single burning farmhouse when I had flown past a burning city I leave to others to explain; my flier had broken down here and so here was where action lay. The situation had to be sized up. I dare not plunge in on the wrong side; my mission in Hamal meant too much for silly mistakes like that.

  There was, to my mind at least, no question which side to take.

  The flutsmen were going about their work with dreadful efficiency.

  These mercenaries of the skies are a fascinating phenomenon of Havilfar. If you pay them they will fight for you. This is true of the many various sorts of mercenaries on Kregen, yes; but the flutsmen consider themselves a cut above every other kind of fighting-man—and in this, as I had shown and was to show with greater severity, they were wrong.

  Most of them were off their fluttrells, the birds chained down out of the way of the fighting, and the riders were shooting with crossbows at anyone who tried to break out of the flames.

  Familiar scenes! Horrible scenes! I had no business here and should get my tail out of it as quickly as possible; but, like the onker I am, I jumped in, flickering my rapier and main-gauche. Three flutsmen went down, narrow-bladed steel thrust through their midriffs, before any of them were aware of me. Cutting down the odds is one way of staying ahead. Three of them wielding thraxters came at me: Rapier and main-gauche against thraxter ... Well, the thraxter is a vertical-bladed weapon, and the rapier a horizontal-bladed weapon. The left-hand dagger gave me an advantage, but two of the flutsmen carried shields. It was warm work. I skipped and jumped, and braced away the seeking blades with my left-hand dagger while the rapier slid in, smooth, low, deadly, and so whipped out, glistening with blood. The fight did not last long.

  A crowd of flutsmen took the sky amid a rustling of wings. I was alone. This meant that succor for the farm was at hand—or so I thought. I walked across to the door, which was just slaking into gray-and-black ash where the different woods had burned away. I could see no one alive.

  Inside the house lay a charred mass of burned bodies, most unpleasant, and I backed out. The suns still shone. The breeze blew. The smell of the crops reached in over that charnel-house stink. I went around the corner of the building to the stables, for youngsters often hide there during raids, and at first could see no one. I wiped my weapons on a piece of cloth hanging from a nail in a beam. There were no animals in the stables. The smell of urine and dung and straw hung rich and earthy on the air, and the flat evil taste of charred wood drifted from the husk of the house.

  A pile of straw moved. A hand showed and, even as I watched, the hand gripped my ankle. I saw the straw slide away and I was staring down into the face of a Rapa, his fierce beaked birdlike face bloody and gashed, one eye missing, and in the remaining eye a dying glare of mad, vengeful terror.

  He gobbled at me, and blood ran greasily.

  “Yetch! Nulsh! By Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls! You will die!"

  “Steady, dom!” I spoke with some acerbity. “I'm on your side."

  He did not hear me. His grip was just tight enough for me to have to kick harder to free myself than I would wish to kick a dying man. The Rapa's wounds were very terrible, and he lurched from his hiding place, the straw falling away and glistening red with blood. I forced myself to remain upright, but I was not going to allow him, dying or not, to continue to grip my ankle. He was trying to trip me, and his strength would not have matched a woflo's.

  Like a stupid onker, I stood there with a dying man hanging on to my ankle and feebly trying to pitch me over. I heard two voices, two short sentences, the second following hard on the heels of the first: “Hai Jikai! For the Emperor!” And then: "Your back, dom! Look out!"

  Then someone hit me under the ear. He hit hard enough for me to go headfirst over the prostrate Rapa, to break his grip on my ankle, to send me pitching into the bloody straw. I spat mouthfuls out, and in my head those famous old bells of Beng-Kishi rang and rang and dizzied me.

  Blearily I looked out on the stables.

  The wounded Rapa was now dead. Another Rapa, dressed in blood-smeared half-armor, was also dead, his head near severed.

  I blinked, I swallowed. Then I put a probing finger very gingerly to the tender spot under my ear, and I winced.

  “He didn't pay quite enough for your passage to the Ice Floes of Sicce, dom! Or else you have a skull as thick as a vosk's!” said that second voice.

  “As stupid as a vosk's,” I said, staring blearily up at the man who boomed in so jovial and stentorian a voice, the man who had shouted to warn me, the man who had dispatched this poor pair of Rapas.

  He was not apim. He wore bronze lorica and helmet, with workmanlike straps of plain leather. He held a thraxter, shining with blood, in the professional grip of the fighting-man. In his helmet feathers glowed, brave feathers of purple and gold. He wore greaves, and they were gilded and shining. His face showed the glorious golden mane, now mostly confined beneath the helmet, and the equally glorious golden beard under his chin, of the Numim. He was not apim, like me. As I have promised you, I introduce types of people on Kregen when they impinge on my story. I had met Numims many times: they had served with Viridia the Render; they had marched under my flag, Old Superb, many times; I had fought with them and against them. The nearest approximation to their faces I can give you is to liken them to a human lion. If I refer to Numims as lion-men, you will understand why.

  Now this Numim yelled at me as he put down a hand and hauled me to my feet.

  “I can see by your clothes you are no fighting-man, dom!” He took in my rapier. “And I see you have taken up this fancy notion of the young bloods. Rapiers and daggers, they're all the rage with the young aristos in Ruathytu these days!"

  He pulled me up and I winced as pain flowed over my scalp. I brushed bloody straw away, and so the Numim must have taken flutsmen blood upon my white tunic for Rapa blood from the straw. Many races do not have red blood on Kregen, but red is the color mostly seen on battlefields.

  “You did well, dom!” the lion-man roared again. He was in high good humor. Truth to tell, I seldom knew when he was not in high good humor. “We cleaned out this rast's nest of emperor's men; cleared them out with fire!"

  “The Rapa shouted for the emperor,” I said, cautiously.

  A thought occurred to him, and he drew himself up. “Llahal and Llahal,” he said, with the double-L sound that is the greeting for strangers upon Kregen. “Your name?"

  I knew he was an important personage, from the ornamentation of his dress and the jewels in the hilt of the thraxter. As part of my plan I would humor him.

  “Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. Llahal."

&nbs
p; “I am Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind."

  So we made pappattu.

  “You are fit enough to move, Amak Hamun?"

  “I can move. But my voller cannot."

  He laughed. The Trylon of the Golden Wind was seldom able to pass a bur without breaking into great gusty laughter.

  “The flutsmen are as always anxious to earn their hire. You must accept my hospitality. I return to the city now that our work here is done. I was checking its thoroughness when I came across you. You are keen, I will say that, Amak; but not overly skilled, by Krun!” He was laughing away now. “To be caught and held by the foot by a stinking dying Rapa while another clouts you over the head! That is a story! You were fortunate he hit you with nothing worse than a wooden beam."

  “Yes,” I said.

  We went out into the suns-shine to his voller. A Trylon is the next rank of nobility above a Strom. He was an important man. These Numims are a boisterous crowd, and they do not share that strong attribute of Earthly lions—they are not lazy. Trylon Rees was a bundle of energy.

  “I had best fetch my things from my—” I began.

  He waved a gauntleted hand most airily.

  “Leave them, Amak Hamun. We will send a voller from the city to collect yours and bring it in. Climb aboard."

  Observing the fantamyrrh, for I did not wish to offend this lion-man, I stepped aboard his flier. She was a nice handy craft, with a smart Hikdar as captain, and a crew who wore the purple-and-gold favors in colored feathers and in scarves around their waists and shoulders. We went into the cabin and the voller lifted off for Ruathytu.

  What Trylon Rees told me as we lolled in the cabin, drinking wine, a nice light pale yellow vintage from Barrath, interested me mightily. The emperor had been overthrown. Now Hamal was ruled by Queen Thyllis, who would soon be proclaimed empress. She was the old emperor's niece, and she was, by the Trylon's account, a remarkable woman. Any hopes I had that the outward expansion of Hamal's frontiers and the consequent eternal wars would now cease were crushed as Rees said: “The old emperor was past it. He was leading us to disaster. Now that we have cleared him and his followers away—you had a hand in that, Amak, and therefore you have our thanks—we can get on with the job of prosecuting the war as it should be fought.” He shook that massively maned head. “Although I like a good fight, man to man, I am not overly fond of war."