Armada of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  He had the cham in his mouth now and was working it up into a succulent wad that would last him through better than two burs.

  So it was somewhat indistinctly that he said: “What they do with ’em I do not know, by Krun! They taste like the sweepings of a totrix stable. And you never see ’em sold in the markets.”

  This emboldened me to say, “I’ve never seen any pashams in the markets of Ruathytu.”

  “I come from Dovad. I’d sooner be there than here.”

  “I know Dovad,” I said. “A charming town and the waterfall is most impressive.”

  “Ah!” he said, chewing. “Many’s the time I’ve taken a pretty little shishi on a trip to the falls. Well, no one then believed you could ever go as far as the Mountains of the West.” He spat, the cham working up nicely. “And they’re right, by Havil’s Greenness! I’ve no wish to serve on a vo’drin, and that’s a fact.”

  There was no difficulty at all in picking up a pasham. The slaves were being flogged into clearing up and I simply walked past the collecting bins. The bins were running with a green juice that had called forth all manner of obscenities, for the fruit was not ripe and was useless. The juice ran down, smelling of old sweaty socks. I picked up a reasonably undamaged pasham, making a face, and wrapped it in leaves. This I stowed away in the lower pockets of the green dolman I wore slung over my left shoulder under the cloak.

  The fruit looked to be as large as a grapefruit and would probably swell into melon size — honey melon, that is — when ripe. If it was not edible and yet was so assiduously cultivated and provided with soldiers to act as guards, then it must be connected to voller production. It could simply be that the pasham was pressed for oil, for lubrication, for example. But I hankered after my unfounded belief in the Star Lords. They had used me as their puppet and I had resisted them. Of late they had left me alone. I knew that at any minute I could find myself caught up in the mistiness of that radiant blue scorpion and go head over heels back four hundred light-years to Earth. But, despite the aloofness of the Everoinye, I persisted in my notion that they had sent me here for a purpose connected with the vollers. That being so, pashams had to be the answer.

  From my previous experiences with the management of voller production in Hamal I surmised that the people here would simply grow and pack the pashams. After that the binhoys, those huge flat barge-like fliers, would take the fruits to be processed at another plant. Then they would go on somewhere else and then — the thought occurred to me with no excitement but only a dull feeling of my own ineffectiveness — they could be dried and ground into a powder, a powder I had previously thought of as a mineral.

  There were four minerals we had not found in Vallia, for all San Evold Scavander’s researches and the field trips of Ornol. The iron-masters of Vallia did not know. Coal was known and used; the coal-masters did not know. Nor did the masters of the various chemical works, all in a relatively primitive state, to be sure, know. The dyers threw up their hands and shrugged. So perhaps one of the mystery minerals was no mineral at all, but a dried and powdered fruit.

  In the past, Vallia had bought everything she required except her navy from the traders of the world of Kregen under Antares.

  Now the Hamalians were clamping down, and it was high time I returned to my army in Pandahem. There was one other question, and then I would be off.

  The binhoys were late, as the Matoc had foretold. I wandered down to the lowest open sections of cliff face, fenced in, and looked down at the writhing mat of vines and tendrils below, stretching out to join the other volgendrin which was, really, a part of the whole, the whole Volgendrin of the Bridge.

  Away to my left another volgendrin drifted along, partly shielded by the island across the Bridge. I walked along the rail walkway above the mat of vines, walking quietly, coming up to the Hikdar who stood there, overseeing his overseers as they flogged on a line of slaves hard at work. I did not know what they were doing. The Bridge extended out from the cliff face above our heads, casting two pencil-thin lines from the twin suns. Something glittered on the distant flying island and I looked across, between the two halves of the Volgendrin of the Bridge.

  The Hikdar saw me.

  “That’s where we’d all like to be, Naghan Lamahan. Over there having a good time.”

  I nodded and forced a grimace of a smile. It looked like a town over there on the other island, with domes and towers.

  “About time the binhoys were here,” I said, leaning on the wooden rail at his elbow and looking down at the slaves.

  “Aye, Havil take ’em!”

  “The ripe crop . . .”

  He laughed, a bitter laugh. “What there is of it. We have little enough to show, and the other vo’drins not much more, I’ll wager.”

  As I asked my next question I was fully prepared to upend him over the rail and see him well on the way to his death before I raised the alarm and shouted the equivalent of “Man overboard!”

  “What about the other end?” I said. “The destination of the binhoys, they’ll be going mad.”

  “Well, let them! Hanitcha may harrow them for all I care. If they don’t know our troubles we don’t give a fluttrell feather for theirs!”

  “I believe you. You’ve never been there?”

  He fleered a look at me. “Who has? And I wouldn’t have the knowledge you have in your heart, Horter. I remember my vows. I want to know nothing more beyond my duties here.”

  He seemed to bear me no ill will for the way I had treated him when I’d first arrived. He would have put all that down to the high and mighty ways of merkers, who notoriously consider themselves above the normal ruck of men, having access to secrets.

  So I commented on the slaves and he grunted and said the wind had weakened a guy rope of the Bridge. If that was not put right — now! — Pallan Horosh would be dealing out a few of the nasty punishments of Hamal, and every one legal. I spent a few more murs in conversation so that those exchanges dealing with the destination of the binhoy loads of pashams would not stand too starkly in his memory, and then bid him Remberee.

  In a culture as hard and authoritarian as Hamal, and many another country of Kregen, there are of necessity many cruel words shouted at slaves and workers, words that mean hurry up, get a move on, and all that intemperate display of power being ruthlessly used. So far I have adhered to English, but one word the Hamalians favored is, in the Kregish, grak. I can tell you the air above the Volgendrin of the Bridge resounded with “Grak! Grak! You yetches! Grak!” It is an ugly word, harsh and unpleasant, and I have seen a slave jump as though scalded with the lash when the overseer bellowed “Grak” at him.

  The shout of “Grak!” and the crack of the lash are inseparable.

  The sky-god of draft beasts in Magdag is called Grakki-Grodno, as you know, and those Grodnims of the northern shore of the inner sea know what they are doing when it comes to making slaves run and haul and work. Among the megaliths of Magdag, as among the warrens and the swifters, the yells of “Grak” resound to the misery of those in bondage. Well, one day I would revisit the Eye of the World away there to the west of Turismond, and how I would joy to see my two oar comrades again, Nath and Zolta! How we three would roister through all the succulent taverns of bright Sanurkazz!

  I do not forget I am a Krozair brother, a Krozair of Zy.

  There were family plans to be made . . . and when I thought of what Delia would say to what I proposed I hastily turned to thinking about something else.

  These volgendrins floated in the air like massy clouds, drifting in their own silent rhythms in vast orbits for dwabur after dwabur that covered many a kool of land beneath. The sight of their blocky hardness against the real white clouds high above, the wind catching a tree here or a high platform there, the very implacable nature of their onward progress, all these things combined to impress the volgendrins most forcibly on my brain.

  We had drifted far enough now to leave the worst of the barrens to the north and the Mountains
of the West a good few dwaburs off; below us a river tumbled along, still white and rapid from the hills. Scattered vegetation showed, gradually clumping and thickening. One could find a living down there, but I saw no single sign of any habitation. The volgendrins moved, I judged, at about five knots. At that speed they would tire a man on foot to keep up. The speed also meant that their shadows, never exactly the same on any following orbit, did not stunt or destroy the vegetation below.

  Before I went to report to Pallan Horosh for orders I saw four separate clumps of Gerawin flying high, their tridents winking brilliantly in the streaming light of the suns. They were watchful, prowling, on patrol. I noticed that every soldier from time to time cocked his head aloft and searched the bright bowl of the sky.

  I, the Amak of Paline Valley, had no need to be told for whom — or what — they watched so carefully.

  As I went through into the Pallan’s quarters, the Pachaks passing me through without comment, I heard Horosh talking about that selfsame threat to a man who stood with his back to me.

  “Three times like leems, during the last month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles!” Horosh sounded fretful, angry, and a little fearful. I fancied he was not frightened of the wild men who flew over the Mountains of the West from the Wild Lands beyond to lay waste. Rather, he was frightened of the queen in Ruathytu when his production schedules slipped. “My Gerawin fight bravely; indeed, they are fearsome warriors. And my soldiers are brave, as is any soldier of Hamal. But those wild ones still attack us, like werstings foaming at the mouth.”

  “I know about werstings,” said the man with his back to me.

  I stood stock still. I knew about werstings, also, and I knew this man who stood talking about them. The last time I’d heard him he’d been bellowing and screeching at the door of a voller manufactory, blaming me for the death of his wife, the Kovneva Esme, and threatening to let his pack of slavering werstings rip me limb from limb, until he’d thought of a better way of dealing with me.

  “Come out, you Kovneva-murdering rast! Come out so I can plunge my hands into your guts and rip out your evil stinking heart!” That’s what this man, this Ornol ham Feoste, this Kov of Apulad, had shouted and screamed at me there in Sumbakir.

  He would know me as Chaadur, the gul, the worker on vollers.

  I half turned to leave but Pallan Horosh, looking past Ornol ham Feoste, called, “Ah, Horter Lamahan. You are late, sir! Here are the reports! Use your best speed back.”

  Half turned, I hesitated. There was a chance . . .

  And those reports would be going to the place where they processed pashams. The risk was worth the prize, for Vallia . . .

  Swinging back and hunching my right shoulder a fraction against the Kov of Apulad, I went to the desk. Horosh lifted the wrapper with its shining seal.

  The Kov of Apulad said, “As Malahak is my witness! Chaadur! The murdering nulsh who slew my wife!”

  His thraxter cleared the scabbard with a screech of steel.

  I made a grab for the wrapped report; Horosh jerked it back as he stumbled to his feet with a startled oath. The thraxter lunged for my midriff. I knocked it away with my right hand and, there being two Pachaks at my back, whirled away intending to grab that report and then do what was necessary.

  Action exploded in that sumptuous apartment.

  Chapter 17

  Of vines and exorcs

  “The man’s a maniac!” I bellowed, leaping away from that swishing thraxter. “He’s mistaken me for somebody else!”

  “I’d know you, Chaadur, in the mists of the Ice Floes themselves! Take him alive! Guards! Guards!”

  “No, no, you onker!” I shouted, and the two Pachaks came running in, shields up, thraxters out, their tail blades coiled above their close-fitting helmets. If I couldn’t convince Pallan Horosh in the next half-mur that this Kov was mistaken, the Pachaks would attack and seek to overpower me.

  “I know you, gul! Sumbakir knows you! You may have run away to Ruathytu and joined the political guls there — call yourself a Horter now, do you! By Hanitcha the Harrower! I’ll fry your liver for breakfast and gnaw on your bones for supper.”

  He was quite possessed. Given that his wife had indeed been foully murdered — with her own dagger at the hands of Floy, the Fristle girl who had been one of Esme’s Chail Sheom — he was entitled to be angry to the point of madness. That he had proved himself to be a most evil Kov, joying in his power for the capacity it gave him for the infliction of pain, meant that sympathy for him came hard.

  One last try: “Pallan Horosh! Call this madman off or I will not be answerable for the consequences!”

  There was little time to finish what I was saying as ham Feoste hurled away the chair that impeded his progress and lunged after me with his thraxter. I had to avoid that dangerous implement and watch out for the Pachaks. They were looking at the Pallan for orders.

  Kov Ornol ham Feoste clinched it when he bellowed: “You know me, Hennard! I’m your cousin’s son! I am the Kov of Apulad! This is a gul, a cramph, calling himself a Horter—”

  I really believe it was mainly my own odd behavior since arrival here that tipped Horosh’s decision, that and the fact that the man calling for my head was a relation and a Kov.

  “Take him, guards!”

  So, feeling sorry for the Pachaks, I was finally forced into an action I had sought to avoid.

  The two Pachaks slumped to the carpets with a sighing wheeze from one and nothing at all from the other. Each Pachak wore a terchick through the eye.

  “In Havil’s name!” screeched the Pallan, completely shattered, horrified. He began to yell for guards in a voice that quavered up and down the scale. The Kov of Apulad bolted for the door. He did not yell until he was well outside; he saved all his breath for running. I let him go.

  To the Pallan I said, “I’ll take that report now, and do my duty. You will have to explain the dead guards.” The Pallan stopped shouting to look at me, dazed. “They were good men. It is the fault of that foul Kov, and yours, that they are dead.”

  “You . . . you . . .” He was trying to breath, to get the breath down into his lungs, wheezing and gasping. His head was hunched down between his shoulder blades and he rested both his hands, his arms at full extent, on the desk. He glared up at me and his eyes showed red-rimmed. “You . . . Naghan Lamahan . . . you are a dead man.”

  I picked up the report. “Not yet, and you look out for yourself — Hennard, was it? A most distinguished name.”

  Outside I composed myself and looked swiftly around. Soldiers were running up from the left, over the yellow grass. Leading them, the Kov was still waving his thraxter and shrieking. He must have felt naked without his pet werstings.

  The path to the right into the orchards lay open so I ran that way. The report I had thrust down into the breast of my shirt and the pasham in my pocket were far more important than an exhilarating interlude of swordsmanship now. As for the Kov of Apulad, the man was a blot, but I did not feel called on to deal with him. It could safely be left to the next slave revolt to see him off.

  All the laws on Hamal wouldn’t save him then.

  I ran.

  I ran into the orchard, with a definite plan in my head.

  There were crossbowmen back there and a few bolts whispered past through the leaves. I jinked left-handed and so pelted on, through the leaves and their dependent pashams, still green and unripe. No time to stop to pick a basketful now.

  The Kov was still yelling, his voice coming faintly and most irritatingly, like that of a nagging wife through closed doors, destroying the harmony of a home. “I’ll have you, Chaadur! You’ll wish you’d never been born! I’ll—” Well, thinking about it, I will not repeat his threats. They possessed nothing of originality to make them worth remembering.

  The orchards here were planted for ease of upkeep, with wide lanes. I had to hurdle the bent forms of slaves as they weeded. Weeds drank too much water, which was precious on a volgendrin. The pack bay
ed after.

  There would be no hope of reaching Liance. The mirvol would immediately be ringed by soldiers waiting for me to run that way. As you know, I can look after myself reasonably well in a little fight like this and can usually, although not always, make a break for freedom. The problem is always that of numbers. However hard a normal human being fights, in the end he can be swamped by numbers. It is only the heroes of myths and fables, the giant men of the dawn and the phantasms of sick minds, who can fight and fight and never be beaten.

  And, anyway, if a hero can never be beaten, where is the interest, where the chivalry, where the sport, in hearing of his adventures?

  I’ve always considered Achilles a real heel in comparison with Hector.

  You who have been listening to these tapes will know that I am merely making excuses for myself for what happened very soon after that . . .

  The grass padded by underfoot. I wore the military boot of the Horter class, tall, black, and shiny, not too well adapted for running. The trees passed backward with hypnotic effect. It was highly desirable to jink from row to row to stop a clear shot, and soon the swods spread out to take a shot at me in whichever row of trees I ran.

  When a bolt thwunked a trunk ahead of me, shredding bark and a yellow sliver of wood, I put on a burst of speed, angling through the trees, coming into each open row fast enough to be gone before the crossbows could be loosed. The way brought me to the very edge of the volgendrin, with a wooden fence rearing up before me. Beyond that fence lay thin air.

  Up over the fence, with a grip and a twist, and I let myself down on the other side. There was perhaps a pace of ground here to give sufficient purchase for the fence stakes.

  I looked down.

  It was a long long way to the ground.

  A river trended slowly past below, with the green of trees and the lighter green of open spaces. I thought I could see a glimpse of sleek brown forms running, but it could have been a trick of the eye.