Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  That would not be easy, for obvious reasons, but unless I did something more positive I felt the whole scheme would come to nothing and my bowing and scraping would have been wasted.

  The manufactory of Zhyan's Pinions lies north of the River Havilthytus, in a gul suburb. To return to the sacred quarter due south I had to cross the Bridge of Swords. This bridge is so called because it affords ingress for the soldiers quartered all along the north bank of the river opposite the palace island to the sacred quarter in the V of the rivers. Ahead of me as I raced south I could see the three lofting green domes of the Great Temple of Havil the Green. They shone with a sickly patina of mingled light beneath the moons. This great temple stands on the very tip of the V, connected downstream by a bridge to the dominating castle on a spear-point island extending downstream. The interesting phenomenon I have mentioned, that the waters of the Black River do not at once mingle with the more ocher waters of the Havilthytus, is well shown here, for south of the castle the waters are inky black, to the north they are rolling ocher. This sharp division extends downstream for a good long way before, at last, the waters of the two rivers commingle into a muddy brown.

  The castle reared to my left. The name of the castle is the Castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, but the folk of Ruathytu call it simply the Hanitchik.

  I've known a few dungeons in my time. I heard then of the dungeons of the Hanitchik and determined they were not going to hear me yelling my head off in there, chained to the slimy walls.

  By the time I had crossed the Bridge of Swords and passed swiftly beneath the shadow of the Great Temple of Havil the Green, I could remove my mask. Enveloped in the swathes of my old gray cloak I strode along, heading south into the sacred quarter, past the expensive villas in their own grounds and the colonnaded squares and the wide boulevards. There were people still about in these open spaces, but I pushed on into the festering warrens of the taverns and dopa dens and infamous palaces of all delights, past the stables where zorcas snorted softly in their sleep, past the flyer perching towers, and so back to my inn with my mind firmly made up.

  The very next day I set about the inquiries that led me at last to a Horter—although he bore the title Horter, he was no gentleman—who employed guls and hired them out at a fat fee and pocketed a good sixty percent of it for himself. The guls had to consent to be plucked, or resign themselves to not having work. This system could only work, I thought, in a city. The labor exchange systems operated for the clums—the great mass of free men in even worse case—were even more diabolical, where they existed.

  This Horter, one Larghos ti Frahthur, looked me up and down as I stood before him clad in a decent gul costume of brown shirt and trousers: patched and darned, but clean. I just hoped his beady eyes would not penetrate the cosmetics on my ugly old face that disguised what I know to be the face of a devil. We stood in an outer room of his house. There were desks and shelves, and various files by which he kept track of his villainous proceedings.

  “And you say, Chaadur, you have experience with vollers?"

  “Yes, Horter Larghos. I seek a place in Zhyan's Pinions."

  “Do you now? Well, it is true we have need of more vollers than anyone could have dreamed before the war.” He grunted and stuffed a wad of cham in his mouth, chewed somewhat discontentedly, staring at me. “You look strong. Why do you not join the army?"

  “I would join the air service, but my experience here—"

  “All right, all right! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I have my job to do, Havil knows.” He wrote something on a scrap of paper, folded it, sealed it with his ring and a dollop of wax (so it was important enough for him not to use a wafer and so risk my managing to open it), and half flung it at me. “See Deldar Ramit. Now, be off with you!"

  And away he went back to his house and his luxuries, secure in the comforting knowledge that I would work and he would pocket sixty percent of what I earned.

  It might be interesting to upend him and shake him, in the presence of some guls, and let them take what fell out.

  Instead I trudged off and found Deldar Ramit in the echoing corridor surrounding Zhyan's Pinions. The twin suns shot a brave emerald-and-ruby fire across the flagstones. The corridor was patrolled ceaselessly by parties of soldiers. The swods—that is, the common soldiers—looked seasoned tough men, and I guessed they were pulling this duty as a rest from the front. Their officers, too, looked efficient.

  This kind of essential but boring guard duty can wear down a soldier. The swods at the Heavenly Mines had been—were, still—real right cramphs. These men of Hamal reminded me sharply, as I followed Deldar Ramit to the work area, reminded me with a pang of those soldiers of Canopdrin with whom I had talked around a campfire after a battle—and not so long ago, either.

  Well, these were the men who were the enemies of my people.

  No matter that I could feel for them as one fighting-man for another. They were the foe. And, as the foe, they must be slain.

  How dreadfully simple are the black calculations of war!

  I studied these soldiers of Hamal as I followed Deldar Ramit, grumbling away to himself, a rolled list under his arm and his sash of office dangling loose around his fat belly. A Deldar, as you know, is the lowest of the four chief ranks of officer on Kregen. An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get, as any swod will tell you, but here in Hamal, as, occasionally, elsewhere, they employed an intermediary rank below Deldar. In Hamal they called a man who had been given a little petty authority, and a green badge, and the right to boss the swods about, a Matoc. I was given into the charge of Matoc Ganning, a miserable fellow with tufty eyebrows, a lantern jaw, and an itch in his guts he could not control.

  In Hamal, military ranks are given to workers in the government-controlled voller manufactories.

  “Chaadur? Well, get hold of that broom, and sweep up the mess here!” Matoc Ganning bellowed, and held his guts, which rumbled like the volcano of Muruaa.

  So began a period in which I did all the dirty jobs. When I thought that I was actually sweeping up the droppings of the minerals that powered vollers, I swear the broom trembled in my fists.

  Getting anywhere near the guarded rooms where the mix was made was impossible for a mere sweeper. I complained to the Hikdar of the Floor, and with many dirty looks from Matoc Canning, I was put on to humping loads from the leather-lined wooden boxes into the troughs feeding into the inner rooms. I kept my eyes open. The proportions of the mix must be established. I did not think that even Vallia, my home country, possessed men capable of analyzing the minerals and their mix. The guls might go home to their miserable row-houses to sleep at night, or, as many did, to sleep in the barracks in the grounds around Zhyan's Pinions. I chose to sleep in. I put in a few nights’ good shut-eye, and then I went prowling.

  I had to break the necks of only two guards.

  I could not get into the iron-bound lenken doors; they remained obstinately shut.

  I returned to the barracks in so evil a frame of mind, I would have jumped on the first person to say boo.

  Some uproar followed the discovery of the guards. I had to banish the specters. These people were busily engaged in building machines with which they would invade my country, slaughter my people, destroy everything I loved in Vallia and Valka. Twice more I tried, and on the last occasion, a borrowed thraxter in my fist, I had to fight like a demon to win clear and back to the barracks. It was so close a shave I knew my chances here had to be considered finished.

  Once again, I had failed.

  The idiocy of employing a gul to do work that might ordinarily be done by slaves was simply another pointer to the fanaticism with which the Hamalians protected their secrets. Slaves were used mercilessly outside, on heavy work. Inside Zhyan's Pinions, guls—and on occasion clums—who could be trusted to be loyal to Hamal were employed. I would not get near the amphorae as they were filled in the normal course of promotion for a very long time.

  Smarting under my feelings of inadequacy, I det
ermined to get out of Zhyan's Pinions. I had another string to my bow, and now if ever was the time to use it.

  Had I had the vision to foresee what was going to happen before that bow was strung ... Perhaps Zair knew what he was doing when he denied to frail humanity the gift of prediction. Perhaps, as I often thought, those who claimed that gift, like the Wizards of Loh, were not the happiest of mortals.

  A fit of fury possessed me. I could not thus abjectly leave without one last try. This time I would find a sledgehammer and batter the doors down. Inside this one of the four halls of Zhyan's Pinions I must find the secret. I must!

  Dirt and air!

  How I hated the very thought of the mystery, taunting me with my own shortcomings, my own failings.

  I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, would not let myself be beaten by a stupid iron-bound lenken door and a regiment of guards!

  Down by the slave quarters would be the place to find a sledgehammer, neatly numbered and docketed and hung up in its place. From the gul barracks the distance was not far and I arrived in time to witness the opening blows in the floggings of a half dozen slaves. What they had done would be meticulously entered in the daybooks of the officers, so that the Under-Pallans might scrutinize them for misdemeanors, for floutings of the law. The first screams scythed through the moonlight as I slid between bushes, heading for the huts where the tools were stored.

  Torches flared from a ring of posts; She of the Veils cast down her fuzzy pink haze over the scene. The slaves had been suspended from whipping-frames, all according to the book. A massively muscled Deldar had started in on number one. The poor devil's back would be a raw red pudding before the regulation number of blows were given. He writhed and screamed, and then fell silent, his head hanging.

  I looked along the line of whipping-frames.

  Number four was Nulty.

  Even as I looked I saw in the torchlight how his left hand, extended and the wrist thonged to the wood, contracted and cupped, the fingers whitening and contorting. So much for the bones of Beng Salter!

  Well, Nulty was a Hamalian, one of the men of the country of my enemies. I had important work to do tonight. The whip smashed down again, brutally. It was a cart whip, not a knout or a sjambok—had it been the man would have been dead already—and not a cat-o'-nine-tails. If Nulty was whipped ... But I had my job to do. I remembered the Amak Naghan, and his death, and Nulty one living sheet of blood, back in the ruined house of Paline Valley.

  Was it any business of mine?

  The Deldar doing the flogging was clearly enjoying his work. His lips ricked back at each blow. He struck with all his strength. Well, was he not far more of an enemy than ever poor Nulty could be?

  My business?

  Number two screeched in anticipation as I went off for my sledgehammer. I bashed the shed door open. I came out with the sledgehammer in my fists. No, it was no business of mine. The sledgehammer glimmered evilly in the moonshine as I went toward the whipping-frames and a business that was no business of mine.

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  Affairs of Honor

  I, Dray Prescot, of Kregen and of Earth, am so often a spineless ninny when it comes to seeing friends of mine being knocked about. I knew, even as I stalked forward with the ugly black iron of the sledgehammer cocked ready for action, that I should not be doing this. I should be hammering this sledge at the iron-bound doors, smashing them in, racing into the secret halls to discover the mysteries of the vollers.

  Instead I was sacrificing all that to go to the aid of an Hamalian, an enemy, just because I didn't like the idea of his being flogged.

  But then—how on this terrible world of Kregen could I call Nulty an enemy?

  The Deldar was joyously putting his back into the flogging. There was a Hikdar in command of the punishment detail; he was a lowly holder of his rank, a so-Hikdar.[5] There were ten swods, lined up on parade, their shields to the side and their thraxters in their hands, point up, ten glimmering pink-gold blades in the moonlight. A pace to the front on their left flank stood their Matoc. A pace to the rear of the so-Hikdar stood a drummer. As is the case in so many armies, the army of Hamal employed young lads as drummers. This one stood there, beating a brave rat-a-tat on his drum, brilliant in all the gaudy trappings of a drummer-boy, but his face a trifle green.

  [5 So is Kregish for three. The man had risen three steps in his rank of Hikdar. [A.B.A.]]

  If he didn't run for it he'd be sorry.

  The whip-deldar had just finished with number three. Numbers one and two were hanging senseless; number three was making a disgusting blubbering moan of agony. Nulty was number four.

  I broke a cardinal rule.

  To give Nulty hope, as I raced forward, I yelled.

  “Hai!” I shouted. “Hai! Kleeshes! Fight a man who is not lashed to a post!"

  Nulty's head jerked around as though he already tasted ol’ snake.

  The Hikdar jumped. He stared as I burst from the shadows into the torchglow. The sledgehammer whirled about my head in that cunning two-handed grip that is normally given to an ax of the Saxon pattern, descendant of the great Danish ax. The clansmen of Viktrik use a single-bitted ax in that fashion...

  The line of swods broke as the Hikdar yelled. They rushed me.

  The facts of the matter are that I should have stood no chance.

  But I was thoroughly annoyed with everything, and mostly with myself, and so I swirled the hammer and crushed the ribs of the first and ducked the thraxter of number two and kicked him in the belly in passing and split open the skull of number three and on the continuous circle splattered blood and intestines out through the crevices of number four's lorica. It was swing and jump and swirl and bash and crash. I let the head of the sledge go on swinging, merely guiding it onto the next target, and straightening it and giving it fresh impetus after each collision. This was the way our ancestors fought at Hastings, before the shield wall broke. This was the way an unedged weapon might smite through the bronze hoops of a lorica, crushing and smashing the ribs and inner organs beneath.

  Nulty was shrieking; thankfully he was not using my name.

  Through a trail of mangled wrecks I forged across to the whipping-frames. The whip-deldar tried to lash me and I caught the thong around the hammer. The Deldar yelled, then, thinking he had me and need only jerk the hammer from my grasp. Instead I hauled him in as a fisherman hoicks in a tarpon. As he spun toward me I shifted grips, took his throat in my hand, and squeezed. As I squeezed I whirled about and the flung stux bit into his back, stripped as he was for the flogging. He grunted, and bright blood gushed from his mouth. I did not simply fling him from me. Dead, he was still a weapon. I hurled him at the Matoc who had flung the stux, and before the non-com could recover I had brained him. The Hikdar, mouth open and frozen, stared at me. He was stricken with the horror of what had happened. The drummer-boy had stopped his retaplan. He hovered, first on one leg, then on the other, uncertain.

  I glared at him. Blood dripped over the disguise on my cheeks; I had to be quick if he was to live.

  “Run, boy! Run for your life!"

  With a squeak he abandoned his drum and fled.

  My shout brought the Hikdar to life. His thraxter glimmered in the moonlight as he leaped for me, thinking me distracted, seeking to bury the sharp point in my guts. I backhanded him and brained him. I looked up at Nulty.

  His frame was far less well filled than when I had seen him last, at the time of the abortive duel with Strom Lart ham Thordan. I dropped the blood-, brain-, hair-, and intestine-smeared sledgehammer and reached for the knife that, as a gul, I was allowed to carry.

  The knife slashed through his thongs and I caught him as he dropped.

  A hoarse voice wheezed from whipping-frame number five.

  “Nath, old friend! You would not—not leave me!"

  By this I knew Nulty had told them his name was Nath.

  Nulty swallowed and managed to stand up. His nose
was still as bulbous as ever, and this cheered me.

  “It is for the Notor to say, Emin."

  Could I leave the other two slaves, and free just my friend? I damn well could, of course, but I did not. The knife slashed Emin free. He was an apim, bulky and strong, not a Hamalian, I judged, by the language he used about them. Number six was in worse case, and had to be helped down. She was a Fristle. (A Fristle is a furred diff after the fashion of a cat. The females are considered among the most beautiful of Kregen.) Like all Fristle women younger than middle age she was lissome and furrily attractive; she had been sent here to be punished from the retinue of some Hamalian officer's wife. She sobbed her gratitude, tears streaking the soft down of her cheeks, her eyes glistening.

  “No time, no time,” I said, deliberately harsh. “We have to run for it now. Can you run, Fristle?"

  “I can run faster than a furless apim, apim!"

  “Good! Then let us run."

  We ran.

  Nulty and Emin had taken up thraxters for themselves from the dead guards, and—as was proper—the officer's sword for me. They had also ripped off four of the soldiers’ short green capes for us. We ran beneath the moons of Kregen, out through the shrubs, beyond the trees, leaving the barracks. We heard the beginnings of the alarm and saw flaring torches as we left Zhyan's Pinions...

  We ran due south.

  I guessed the guards would assume we had taken to the guls’ quarters, to the eastward or northward, for due south over the Bridge of Swords lay the sacred quarter. No fugitive gul or slave would find much of a haven there. So we were able to slink through the shadows, following my well traveled routes, closing up into a compact body when we traversed an open space, pressing ever on to the inn. Getting them inside presented the problem only of sliding them down the roof and onto the balcony. Everything was as it had been when I'd left here to assume the identity of Chaadur, the gul. Now we all crowded into my room and I whispered to them with great fierceness to be quiet in their joy.