“None, except that we be told what is happening elsewhere and what you plan as a consequence. Chitar says, too, that you must understand that he knows the peril here; that this stalemate cannot last forever, and that he awaits your suggestions.”
And so I told him of our meeting with Draslich, King Chitar’s old enemy and “friend”, and what I thought Chitar should do to supplement our common effort. “Above all,” I insisted, “keep doing what you’re dong. The enemy’s bound to react eventually. I do advise that your city be evacuated; still, I’m sure that your king will know what to do for he knows his people better than I. As for ourselves, well sir, we wish the loan of your revered Plati, King Chitar’s sorcerer. Ill take him with me now, for a conference, and return him within two days.” v
“Ah!” Our fat friend shook his head and sighed a corpulent sigh, redolent of basted fowls, pickled gog’s feet and flatfish soup. “Plati’s dead, my lord; died of an ague while I was with you in Marack.”
I winced. He’d made it sound as if I was somehow responsible.
“Well, then,” I told him strongly, “in the absence of Plati, we’d like someone else with equal competence.”
“It’ll take a couple of hours to reach the king, my lord.”
“Why, so?”
“He’s to the south. We’re to the north—and we’d have to go round-about”
I arose, signaling my comrades to do likewise. “My lord,” I told Tils-Alden, “be pleased to inform my old friend, Chitar, that m be here tomorrow between the eighth and tenth hours to pick up the sorcerer of his choosing, whom I’ll return on the following day. Advise him of the urgency here—and give him my best regards.”
“I’ll do that, my lord. Rest assured. And my lord?”
I slowed my step toward the door.
He said hesitantly, “I’ve a baked tug-fish of some twenty pounds. Tis a rarity and the taste is delicious. Tis like no other. Take it with you, sir—as a gift from me.”
I smiled and begged off. Not that we couldn’t use a twenty pound tug-fish. It was the look in his eyes—as if the gift was really his right leg, basted and logged in turnip juice, and cool’d in its own jelly. I hadn’t the heart “But I do thank you deeply,” I told him. “Another time.”
He gratefully returned to his flatfish and mollusks.
Within minutes of the release of our dottles who, as always, were reluctant to go, we were cruising low over the Kelbian capital of Corchoon.
As in Ferlach, the castle was totally destroyed and the city had suffered considerably. Landing, we met our ambassador, Rariko, at the appointed spot, together with the young king’s sorcerer, Dretus. Dretus, I must confess, looked like the very devil himself. He was a pinto, for one thing, his fur being black, white and strawberry. He was also the only red-eyed man I’d ever seen on Camelot-Fregis. Moreover, he seemed more warlock than sorcerer. And there fc a difference.
The pattern in Kelb was the same as that of Glagmaron and Ferlach: a new order, a new religion, and with the Alphians as the new gods. Only one thing was different. The young king, Laratis, who’d fought the dead-alives so bravely in the second attack of the Dark One, had been slain with his new queen and all the lords of his privy council. The people were desolate.
We took the red-eyed wizard and left the ambassador, Rariko, to organize what resistance he could. Sensing an urgency I’d not felt until now, I ordered, too, that all professional practitioners and teachers of magick proceed along the highroad toward Glagmaron city. Somewhere on that road we would stop them all. A few would be taken to Gortfin, the remainder sent on to Glagmaron, or back to Corchoon—where they could still be used.
It was well after high noon when we settled to ground just a few hundred yards from the opened south gates of Janblink City. Unlike the capitals of the previous kingdoms, inclusive of Glagmaron, Janblink was walled. Warehouses, stables and great dottle pens pressed solidly against the expanse of towering stone. In time of war they’d be the first to suffer the fires and swords of a besieging army.
The ambassador from Great Ortmund had promised either to meet me personally at the first dottle pen to the west of the gate, or to send his substitutes. They were to watch for four unmounted knights in brown cloaks. We’d left the now quite impatient Kriloy, with the two sorcerers, in the lee of a small hill—safe from all prying eyes.
On a hill to the north of the city was great Castle Janblink. And precisely on its military-tournament field was the last of the five Alphian warships.
We plodded our way around the hill and down the road to the clutter of wooden buildings under the walls. Dosh had walked stumbling, with mouth agape and eyes bulging. He’d almost fallen a number of times and had to be rescued, such was his intensity.
Young Alien Dosh was no stranger either to Janblink City or Castle; indeed, he’d been raised there when his father, the Lord Breen Hoggle-Fitz, was warlord of all Ortmund’s armies under the false king, Feglyn. When Feglyn had made his pact with the Dark One, Breen had immediately raised the flag of revolt from his own city of Durst. Four of his sons were killed in the ensuing battles as well as many hundreds of his household. Excepting Caroween and Dosh, his remaining children had later been captured and executed. Dosh, the youngest, had supposedly been killed at Dunguring where he’d gone to join his father who was then supporting Marack, Ferlach and Gheese against the Dark One’s hordes who’d come swarming across the river-sea… . An exceptionally hard thump to the pate—and it would have had to be that, considering—and young Dosh was out of it; only to revive as a mindless nitwit Where he went then, or how he managed to survive until his memory returned to him, will always be a mystery. But then, just a month before, he’d appeared at Glagmaron, tattered, barefoot, but still insufferably proud, the very image of his father, to demand to see his sister and to claim the Ortmundian name and heritage.
With Feglyn slain, Breen, the father, was to have been named king at the late summer harvest. His death gave the crown to his daughter, Caroween. Dosh, being youngest, made no claims; nor could he have. The right of succession in all of Fregis is to the eldest child, male or female. Caroween would be the queen.
Which was perfectly all right with Sir Dosh since, despite his pomposity, a certain religious fanaticism and an ingrained belief that he was superior by blood to most around him, he was, in contradiction, easy-going, generous to a fault—and without guile.
“You know, of course, my lord,” he plucked my sleeve and questioned as we walked, “that I am knowledgeable as to Janblink’s secret passages. I often played in them when a boy.”
“We’re not here for such deeds today,” I told him. “My intent’s to chat with a few who’ll meet us, then get out”
His eyes glittered. “But we will return, Collin, right?”
I murmured, “Indeed we will.”
At the dottle pens, and being nosed lovingly from between the pen-rails by a dozen or so of the beasts—they were apparently quite bored with the pens and sought a friend to free them from such dullness—we found no one as yet to greet us. We petted and soothed the dottles to pass the time, while their fat fannies wagged in doggy happiness and their tails flailed the air like hairy windmills.
We continued to wait, the four of us, or rather the three of us since Sernas chose against my discipline to wander after a pie-maid and to take advantage of her burdensome tray and her knapsack to maneuver her against the great wheel of a potter’s wagon. At that point, while we watched entranced, he began skillfully to stroke an unprotesting buttock, being amusingly indecisive the while as to which pie to purchase. Not that the maid resented either his advances of his use of her time. Oh, no! Indeed, even after the sly devil had kissed her soundly and fiercely gripped the captured buttock as if he’d purchased that too, and then left to rejoin us—her eyes had followed him hungrily.
Rawl, breathing heavily in my ear, said enviously, “By Ormon’s ass, Collin, that raunchy bastard has but to seize their parts and they fall to their knees in adul
ation. I swear, I don’t understand it.”
“He knows,” I said softly, “the secrets of womankind; that they indeed prefer such direct action; that they are in no way built for pedestals.”
Sernas, overhearing as he approached, said bluntly, “Our Collin’s right. ‘Tis a fact that Hoom-Tet teaches. All women are fated to be loved, my lords. They desire it, live for it; are built for it. To waste time with the silliness of wooing, poetry reading and the like is, in Hoom-Tet’s eyes, plain stupid. Shoot for the target; waste not a second. That’s the ticket. As our gracious wise one so blithely puts it: ‘A pat on the ass of a queen will win a crown where all else fails.’ Be not laggards in love, sirs. Moreover—”
“My Lord Sernas,” Rawl interrupted sourly, ‘I’ve learned to dislike you less as the months go by. Don’t press your luck, sir.”
Sernas turned instantly to me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Ah, ha! Did you hear that, my lord? He’s at it again. Pure jealousy, sir. And he knows I’ll not be challenged, lest it be for the immediate rights to a willing crotch which, when you get down to it, is never his to defend or offer. Why, my lord—”
“Have done, Sir Omnian,” I snapped—and I, frankly, was a little tired of his obsessions— “Save your strength for the cause we fight for. No peasants are allowed in brothels, sir. And that’s what you’ll be, at best, if our enemy has his way.”
Sernas grinned and shrugged. His skin rivaled a gerd’s in thickness. Nothing could touch him. With a lightning-like display of his skill with the faldirk—it was his weapon, and fittingly so—he quartered the pie and offered us each a portion.
Since the pastry was of meat and not of fruit, I deemed it quite poisonous and shrugged it away. He grinned again, winked, and ate the full portion in one greedy gobble. My stalwarts did likewise with theirs, leaving not even a crumb for the diving, chattering tic-tics….
Sir Dosh, in the meantime, had been eyeing a group of a dozen or so men-at-arms led by a husky young knight with a round, stupid face, small eyes and a pronounced scar from temple to chin. He announced suddenly, “I know that bastard. Indeed, if my memory serves me, ‘tis I who am the cause of his ugliness.”
He was about to say more, but I wanted no trouble. “Then turn away,” I told him. “Don’t let him see you.”
Dosh did better than that. He removed himself from our group for about thirty paces and gave his attention to the dottles. If the worst should happen there would then be no connection with us, unless he chose to make one.
I’d noted that the scarred knight and his dozen all wore patches of white on their shoulder harnesses. They passed us and Dosh in a jingle of steel, going on toward the main gate of the pens where another large group of citizens had gathered. At that moment, too, a foursome in cloaks of dark blue, as opposed to our brown, came directly toward us. They paused just once on the way, ostensibly to appraise the dottles. Then, when they were within but a few feet of us, a stocky man, cowled until that moment, threw the cloak back to reveal himself as Gen-Disti, Ortmund’s ambassador, from whom we’d parted the previous noon.
“My lords,” he said without hesitation, “since I deem it that you came here by other ways than dottle-back, 111 assume also that you know our enemy is here.”
“We do. Have you brought the king’s sorcerer?”
Disti nodded to the oldest of his group. “We bring you Per-Teens, one of our best.”
“What is the situation?”
“The same as Marack’s, but with less bloodshed. They killed a hundred or so at random to prove they could do it, then awed the townsfolk with their magick—the magick of their weapons; this, with a few destroyed homes and buildings. They then announced themselves as being our new gods. And that’s it. They held a meeting this very morning. Declarations have been posted. The temples of the Trinity were invaded, the priests and wizards killed. As of now the temples are being renovated by guildsmen as ordered by the enemy. Their leader’s a man remarkably like the lord Tarkiis.”
His tones were so casual that I became alarmed. I asked sharply: “Do the people take this so easy then?”
He frowned, actually glared at me. “They’ve been without a leader for some time, Collin.” He was forced to shout the words so as to be heard above a sudden caterwaul of fighting dottles—and was then forced to a quick whisper when the fighting ceased. “Before that they had only Feglyn and the Dark One. True, they loved Breen Hoggle-Fitz. But Fitz is dead—and his daughter? Well who really knows?”
“Lord Disti,” I said firmly, “the fact that ‘tis you who are here rather than a guard of the sky-men to take us suggests that you at least are loyal. That you’ve brought your sorcerer proves it. Still, the reaction, as you describe it, is disturbing.” I then told them all that had happened. Disti agreed to begin the sanie sort of operation, the rallying of those loyal to Ormon as well as to Great Ortmund; the immediate preparation to participate in whatever we deemed necessary—and the sending of additional sorcerers and witches toward Glagmaron.
“Fear not, Collin,” he told me firmly. “You’ll find the Ortmundians at your side in the end.”
I nodded a reserved satisfaction, saying, “I’ll return this good sorcerer within forty-eight hours with our conclusions as to what to do… .”
And then what I’d least expected happened!
Riding through the city gates and with the citizenry falling back in panic in all directions so as to make way and keep a goodly distance from them, there came two quite resplendent Alphians on prancing dottles.
Their spotless white and silken jumpsuits repelled dirt. They glowed as I had never done. They were beautiful; too beautiful. They were indeed “angels.” Some of the crowd were already beginning to kneel. Those beyond us, at the main dottle gate, also began to disperse in fear of the skymen’s passing. The young knight and his men-at-arms turned back to us, and came on to offer themselves to their, masters.
“My lord,” Gen-Disto said quietly, “we knew nought of mis, and now we are undone. Still, we will die with you. That I swear.”
I ignored him. There was no time. I could kill both the Alphians with the belt-laser. But again, if I did I’d draw attention to myself; bring the sphere, too, into the arena. One way or the other all would be lost—except?
“My Lord Sernas,” I said softly, and he stared as paralyzed as my companions, “would you risk a chance at the love of humankind for all eternity?”
He answered, “Why surely, and do you mean love the way I mean it?”
I slipped my faldirk into his hand. “You now have two,” I told him. “When they,” I nodded, “are within ten paces, I want these blades embedded securely in their throats. Understood?”
Semas had gone cold sober. His face paled. The elvish light in his eyes had dimmed. He said calmly, “I died once, Collin. Do not think that I’m unaware that ‘twas your magick and that of ‘the little brown one’ that returned my life to me. Just pray now, with me, to Hoom-Tet, that my hands be steady.”
“You know I will,” I told him.
The squadron of men-at-arms was just then passing Sir Dosh. The Alphians were thirty feet away. Dosh, alert to what was happening, decided on his own on a tactic which proved him, at least to me, a true son of his father. He stepped out boldly as the last man passed him. Hands on hips he shouted to the young knight: “Well! By bloody ghast, you snot-nosed bastard. I knew I’d seen you before. You’re Tostan, that burnt my father’s keep when none of our name were there to defend it. I thought I’d killed you, turd. But no mind. I’ll do it now!”
A man of absolute action, he’d drawn his greatsword, thrown his shield to the front and, as the last word passed his lips, drove a whistling blow to Tostan’s head that would have sent it flying had he connected.
“Hold to the front!” Tostan roared after his dozen, who still came on toward us and the Alphians.
They halted, turned, saw their commander attacked and moved instantly to attack the attacker. Dosh, whirling with the wei
ght of his own heavy blade, followed through on squat Tostan, took an arm, and sliced through cloth and metal to cut the man halfway to the spine. Not stopping there, he fell to one knee and caught the first of his attackers on his shieldfront} arose, threw the man over his head to crack his neck and then literally skewered the next swordsman to reach him.
We, in the meantime, were not idle. The Alphians were almost upon us. I said simply: “Now!” to Sernas who let fly with the proper deliberation so that only the sound of a double, sibilant hiss and the twin thunk of steel in flesh disrupted the already growing chaos around us.
They fell from the dottles, the welling blood in their throats choking their cries. Their heels beat a drumfire tattoo on the hardened ground. I was upon them, instantly, to rip the belts and weapons from their bodies. These I tossed to the aged Gen-Disto, saving, “Hold them.”
I think it was the pent-up frustration of all that had happened that then caused us to unleash the fury we did. It could also have been because I raised the cry of “No quarter.” I had by accident, when handing the weapons to Disto, glanced to the skies—and saw that the clouds had receded toward the west. Great patches of blue were suddenly and dangerously visible.
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