Allies of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Bad cess to you,” I said, loosing again and taking a wildman in the rump who was trying to take cover.

  The very neat Deldar had formed his handful of men in a line among the boulders and we were separated by a short open space from Tyfar and Jaezila. I shot again. Tyfar and Jaezila fought on, and I switched my aim and was able to take out a couple of moorkrim and so assist my comrades. I reached for another arrow and — lo! — the quiver was empty. So much for hotheaded intemperate rushings after people; Seg would be scathing with me for so glaring a dereliction of the archer code.

  Dealing with the wildmen who lined out after us was not as difficult as I’d expected, for the neat Deldar was neat in swordsmanship and neat in his handling of his men. When we straightened up after that small affray within the larger, we were down two men and the wildmen, those still alive, drew back.

  I said to Deldar, “Your name, Deldar?”

  “Fresk Thyfurnin, notor.”

  “If all the swods fought like your men, I’d be easier.”

  “I think, notor,” said this Deldar Fresk Thyfurnin, “that this is our last fight.”

  “I’ll not have that kind of talk—” I started to bluster. Thyfurnin simply pointed along the cleft of the Pass of Lacachun.

  They flew up and they seemed to fill the air between the two rock faces. The cliffs echoed to the rustle of their wings. The mist drifted past, very high, shredded now for some time to allow the radiance of the twin suns to burn through. Below the mist they flew on, hundreds and hundreds, it seemed, drawn to the pickings to be found at Laca’s Jaws.

  “Well, now. Deldar Fresk. I still do not think you right. We will have to pull back to the caves and defend ourselves there.”

  “Of course, notor. And guard our backs against the moorkrim creeping along their holes in the cliffs. Our wounded were lucky to have escaped them. But we will fight.”

  Tyfar and Jaezila dispatched the last of their opponents and walked across the open ground toward our group. Everyone looked depressed. The darkness in the air shadowed from that enormous flying host was enough to make a laughing hyena weep. We gathered together before the entrances to the caves.

  “We’ve won this fight.” Tyfar sounded as though he would burst a blood vessel. “No one thought we could win; but we did. We beat ’em. And now we have this whole new force to reckon with.”

  “How many men do we have?”

  Deldar Fresk, it turned out, was the senior surviving officer. All the Hikdars, each commanding a pastang, and the two Jiktars had been slain. The roll was a lamentable affair.

  The host in the sky flew nearer.

  In defeating the flying wildmen and the cave wildmen we had lost over two hundred men. We had, counting lightly wounded, some two hundred and twenty remaining.

  The noise of beating wings filled the air now, close and closer. The volume of sound caught and re-echoed from cliff to cliff bore down oppressively, making the nerves twitch. We took a fresh grip on our weapons and positioned ourselves among the boulders and the cave mouths. In that small breathing space I took the opportunity to fetch what arrows I could find embedded in moorkrim corpses. I managed to bring in ten.

  So a moorkrim bow and a few full quivers had to be brought back. Each arrow was a life. The flying host began to descend and the leading elements planed in for the platform. They could see the dead people lying everywhere.

  Deldar Fresk served in the crossbow regiment.

  Tyfar called across, “As soon as they are in range.”

  “Quidang, prince,” said Fresk, and set himself.

  Now this Deldar Fresk was a fine fellow and the swods were of value. But there was no shadow of a doubt in my mind, no shadow of doubt whatsoever, that what I was going to do would be done, and would be the right thing to do. I anticipated no opposition from Tyfar. The moment I laid my hands on a tyryvol — or any other quality saddle-flyer — I’d have him or her and get Jaezila away. Tyfar would help. We’d get Jaezila out of this debacle alive if it was the last thing we did.

  The leading tyryvols alighted on the platform and Fresk opened up on them, the crossbows clanging and hissing in rotation. Of the two hundred and twenty swods some ninety were crossbowmen. Shooting in the harshly disciplined Hamalian way, they carried out considerable execution. Return shafts came in, outranged by the crossbows but brought into range by the advance of the shooters between the rocks. Such was the weight of the enemy’s dustrectium[2] and the numbers of his swordsmen that this snapshooting party would not last very long. The force on the ground built up and positioned itself nastily and neatly and started the advance.

  We watched the vulpine forms of the wildmen slipping between the rocks, skulking forward, jumping across open spaces and affording no chance for a shot. They edged forward.

  “I—” began Tyfar.

  “Not so, Tyfar.” I put a hand on his shoulder. We stood just within the overhang of the cave so that descending arrows could not strike us. Jaezila stood at the side, her face calm, brooding, perhaps. We all had a deal to brood over, by Zair! “In this the task falls to my hand.”

  “You do not know what—” Then he stopped speaking. He closed his mouth, opened it deliberately, said: “I am an onker! All this time we have been comrades, and still I try to make stupid suggestions that you and I do not think alike. Of course. Except, Jak, except — the task falls to me.”

  “You are the general of the Twentieth Army, and this handful of men is your total command here and now. If you make a run for it and they see you — and, believe me, they’ll see you! — what will they think of Kapt Tyfar, Prince of Hamal? Hey?”

  “You are my blade comrade, Jak, and you have a damned sneaky underhand downright illegal way with you!”

  “See that wildman just alighting?” I nodded toward a splendid-looking saddlebird and a splendid-looking rider. Among the others fluttering down to be hidden in the rocks, this man stood out.

  Tyfar said, “Just grab the first one—”

  “Oh, come now, Ty! While we have a choice, let us exercise it. That is the flyer we will have.”

  “The wildman is a leader, a Jedgar, and he’ll have a canny bunch of his fellows with him.”

  Jedgar is simply a corruption of the word Jiktar, and generally denotes barbarian or irregular captain, and what Tyfar said about this moorkrim Jedgar was perfectly correct. In my frame of mind, with Jaezila in such dire danger, I rather fancied going as near to the top as I could contrive.

  “His canny bunch will be no crazier than we are.”

  “That is true.”

  “So that is settled.”

  “You have the besting of me,” Tyfar grumped, “in this argument. But I fancy I shall rank Deldars again, and soon, and then we shall see.”

  The moorkrim rose from their places of concealment. Screeching their battle cries they hurtled on. Difficult to kill, yes. Not as difficult as reptilian schrepims, with their phenomenal speed and insensate capacity to stay alive and battling when they should be dead, having been cut up into pieces. The eyes of schrepims contain the pigment rhodopsin which confers good night vision and which also glows in reflected light. As Kregans say: “To see the eyes of schrepims glowing at night is to look on the watchfires of hell.” As the wildmen raced in I took a silly and, although stupid, real comfort from the thought that I was glad they were not schrepims. This is paradox of a low-volume capacity, of course; but it serves to illustrate the frame of mind I was in. Jaezila had to be flown away to safety. Besides that — nothing else mattered.

  Tyfar agreed with me. Honor meant nothing to either of us if honor meant Jaezila would be killed.

  We’d both cut and run, escorting her to safety, and leave those brave swods to fight on to the end.

  Contemptuous on our part? Yes. I do not deny it.

  I remembered Velia.

  It was what I would have done, without doubt.

  There was no need.

  Glorious!

  Men shouted and pointed. Amon
g the flying clouds of wildmen swirls became visible. As though a broom clashed along sweeping up autumn leaves, so some force brisked along the pass driving the tyryvols and their moorkrim riders before it.

  The mist darkened as the twin suns struck more sharply upon its upper surface, and the level rays of jade and ruby pierced through below to shine along the pass. In that strange almost undersea radiance, a hollow luminescence, powerful winged shapes bustled through the whirling tyryvols. Black beaks slashed left and right, and frightened flyers fluttered away from wicked polished talons.

  The massed feathering of yellow wings heralded the storming onslaught of ferocious four-armed fighters. Impetuous, unstoppable, superb, my Djangs roared onto the platform and chopped the wildmen up fine and served them up frittered. The fight exploded in a frenetic movement of blades and was still. Kytun rolled over toward me, shaking drops from his sword, his dagger being wiped with an oily rag — already! — and his remaining hand lifted in cheerful salute.

  Up there over Kytun’s head the roiling mass of wildmen pressed back and we could see the aerial conflict clearly.

  If you cared for aerial evolutions it was extraordinarily clever. The maneuvering and pirouetting were of a high standard; but everyone watching saw instantly that the flutduins, whether flown by Djangs or apims of Valka, had the mastery of the wildmen no matter what saddle flyer they flew.

  I frowned and, staring up, called to Kytun: “Is that all of you?”

  “All of us—”

  I yelled then, loudly, at him and bounded out onto the platform, hurdling boulders, reaching him as he thought to indulge in our back-slapping, arm-gripping, gut-punching rhapsody of delight in meeting. Instead, I said in his ear: “Call me Jak or I’ll three-arm you! No king! Is that clear, Kytun?”

  “But, Dray — you are the—”

  “Jak and no king!”

  “Very well—”

  “Is that all of you, up there and here?”

  “That’s all, Dra — Jak. And I am fortunate my party found you. We split up and split up, and in the end I imagined looking for you all on my own.”

  “Where’s Seg?”

  Kytun laughed in that huge Djang way and looked about. At that moment a moorkrim fell from the sky to splat on the rocks. My eye was caught by the movement and as Kytun said, “There he is,” I saw the rose-fletched arrow, a clothyard shaft, through the wildman. Moments later Seg landed and leaped off his flutduin and hurried over. He said: “Jak!”

  “All right, Seg,” said Kytun. “I forgot.”

  Seg sighed. “Djangs,” he said.

  “And not many of you.” Looking up and around, it seemed to me there were barely three or four hundred in this relief force, Djang and Valkan combined.

  Tyfar and Jaezila came over. The introductions went well and when this pappattu was finished it was a general “Lahal!” and the remark from Jaezila: “It looks as though you’ve just brought in more fellows to be trapped with us.”

  Again that massive Djang laugh scorched up echoes from the cliffs. “Not likely, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! Look, up there. The wildmen have had a bellyful. They fly.”

  It was true. Not only did they fly, they fled.

  “Remarkable.” Tyfar had not cleaned or put down his axe; it cocked up in his fists, ready for action. He looked at Kytun, a magnificent, fearsome, four-armed fighting man, and he looked at Seg, lithe and limber, broad with an archer’s build, and he saw the way they greeted me. His open face bore the shadow of a frown. I felt for Tyfar. My heart — to use one Kregan expression — turned over for him.

  Jaezila felt more. She was pale, very pale. Her head was held up, erect, and her eyes were brilliant. She was a woman who had made her own way on a harsh and hostile world; she may have been my daughter, she was her own woman now.

  Slowly, Tyfar said, “I am beholden to you, Kov Kytun, and you, Kov Seg, and your people, for my life and the lives of my people. But, if I mistake it not, you are no friends to Hamal.”

  “Of course they’re friends, Ty!”

  “They are your friends, Jaezila.”

  “Oh!”

  But it was not a moment for lightness.

  Tyfar went on: “Djangs overthrew my city of Ruathytu. Valkans are from Vallia, and they joined in the fight. And here we are, a Djang kov and a Valkan kov and—” He turned to look at me. “And you, Jak?”

  I could say nothing.

  Tyfar turned and looked at Jaezila.

  “And you, friends with these enemies, Jaezila?”

  Seg said, “The Empress Thyllis asked for trouble, bought trouble, stored up trouble ahead of time. Now she has paid. And, by the Veiled Froyvil, she’s only paid a tithe of the mischief she caused.” He lifted a hand, and he was not smiling. “No, Prince Tyfar, wait and hear me. You talk about Hamal as ‘your country’ and we respect you for that. But you must know the stench and offense Hamal has become because of mad Empress Thyllis.”

  “And that maniac Phu-Si-Yantong,” chipped in Kytun.

  One thing was sure, they weren’t repentant about beating the Hamalese and taking their capital city, and they weren’t about to become remorseful now because a defeated prince chose to feel sad.

  “And you, Djang and Valkan, sack my capital—”

  “No, prince. No sack.”

  “I would like to believe that. But soldiers tend to go berserk if they have to fight to take a city—”

  “True. Damage was caused, mostly by the Wizard of Loh. The Djangs,” said Kytun, “keep the peace and ensure order in Hamal these days.”

  “The truth is, Ty, Hamal is much better off without Thyllis. You know what you have to do to secure the throne for your father—”

  “Zila! How can I — in honor? With enemy help?”

  I put my teeth together and clamped my jaws. I refused to speak. You can drive, as they say, and never make.

  Seg was in full command of all the details, all the plans, all the emotions of what we hoped for.

  “Hamal used to be an enemy to the lands surrounding her and also other countries over the seas. That is no longer so. The alliance embraces Hamal. Safeguards—”

  “Conditions and terms of servitude?”

  Tyfar’s contempt cut like a quality blade.

  The suns’ rays lay long and level through the pass. More Djangs and Valkans alighted and began to tend the wounded Hamalese. Fires were lit from the provision commissariat birds’ loads together with what of brush and gorse grew sparsely in crevices. Water heated. Food was prepared. The group around Prince Tyfar was left alone, and the talk and wrangling went on. After all, Jaezila was in a privileged position here in Tyfar’s eyes — as, I suppose, was I, had I cared to exercise that option — and Tyfar was a prince talking with two kovs. So it was easy for me to ease back and observe.

  “Do you believe I want the best for you, Ty? The best personally, I mean?”

  “How can you ask such a question?”

  Jaezila bit her lip.

  “I know, I know. We spar and fence. Something makes me treat you badly, and laugh.” She looked away, and back at Tyfar. “But you respond, now. You never used to.”

  “Maybe I have learned—”

  “Precisely! But you have not learned enough! We all want the best for you, for your father, and for Hamal. Yet you will not listen to us!”

  “So you do ally yourself with—”

  “Ally? Of course if you were going to say our enemies—”

  “Our late enemies, it seems.”

  “Or do you want to see King Telmont on the throne?”

  Tyfar put a hand to his bandaged head. Over by the lines the lads staked out for the flutduins, a commotion arose, to be settled quickly. You cannot expect Djangs to be plaster saints. The suns slid away beyond the hills. A breeze got up and blew along the pass. After the exertions of the day it would be nice to eat a gargantuan meal, to drink some good wine and to sing some of the old songs of Kregen. Then a profound sleep and a few pleasant dreams. The morro
w would dawn and bring fresh problems, but, by Vox, we’d be fit to tackle ’em!

  One of the Jiktars from Valka walked up, Erdil Avnar, talking to one of his Hikdars. They were lithe and agile men who had joined the Valkan aerial cavalry early. They wore equipment and uniforms of the particular splendor Valka brings to this kind of martial show, bullion, flounders, lace, pelisses, frogging — a parade of the tailor’s art no less than that of the military designer’s. They saw me and Erdil Avnar bellowed out: “Lahal, strom, lahal!”

  “Lahal, Erdil. Lahal, Edin,” to the Hikdar. “How was it aloft?”

  “These wildmen fight like cornered leem.”

  “Aye. But you bested them.”

  “Of course they bested them,” said Jaezila from over my shoulder. “And now we are trying to make that victory worth something even more than simple victory.”

  Erdil and Edin straightened up into a rigidity like unto the pine forests of the petrified mountains. Their chests swelled, creaking their equipment. As one, they slapped up full salutes, and bellowed: “Quidang, majestrix!”

  Now quidang means an agreement and acquiescence in orders rather like the terrestrial navy style of “aye aye, sir!” Tyfar looked hard at the Jiktar and the Hikdar, and then with a puzzled expression at Jaezila. For majestrix is the way empresses and queens are addressed, and the eldest princesses, the princess majestrix of her country. Tyfar was not called majister, not even Nedfar his father, although it was sometimes known in a strictly irregular way. So Tyfar frowned.

  And I thought to myself — as though ice had started to melt in my head, for thought and I had been damned distant relations of late — I thought that perhaps if Tyfar knew what there was to know, it would help to crystallize the problem and force him to make up his mind.

  Rather naturally, I expected him to see the advantages of what was offered in time — although I was prepared for his final refusal — and to join with us in persuading his father.

  “Erdil, Edin,” said Jaezila. “You are very welcome. You must tell me more of the fight.”