Armada of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  Like a bucking bronco it carried me crazily across the grass.

  Trees showed ahead. I took a much firmer grip, bashed in my naked heels, yelled in the ordel’s ear and swerved him away. In the next second I was flying through the air — again — and rolling head over heels on the grass, winded and bruised but very much alive!

  I sat up.

  The ordels had reached some kind of sanctuary among the trees. They would have to come out to graze, and then the exorcs would get at them again. I looked up. Already the volgendrin was sailing on past. It was already beginning to take on the appearance of a black cloud in the sky, and other flying islands showed to left and right, bringing the perspectives into proportion. The suns blazed down gloriously.

  I stood up.

  It seemed a good idea to put the clothes on, to put the dolman on as a pelisse, to fashion the cloak up loosely around my left arm, to see to the rapier and main-gauche, and then grasp the longsword in that cunning Krozair grip.

  I did all this . . . and only just in time.

  The exorcs swarmed down to attack.

  They glided in, hissing, their fanged jaws wide, their ruby eyes like the lights of hell.

  The longsword could deal with them, shearing wings, heads, and legs. Four legs they had, with those nasty hooked claws, webbed, leathery, vicious. I took cuts; the clothes were ripped and blood marked my body. But the sword kept a ring of steel about my head, and dead and writhing exorcs littered the ground. I saw them running off on all fours, like cats after a fight with a dog, running to the monstrous cows which flew down to pick them up. These were the mothers. They could really fly. The exorcs hooked onto the cow’s underside and the broad wings flapped and away up to the nests under the volgendrin they went, so that their offspring could be launched once again to make the kill. The mother cow would then return to pick up the killers who could not fly and to feed on the kill.

  Covered in blood, ripped, scratched, weary, at last I saw the stream of exorcs dwindle. The volgendrin had passed too far and they were attacking a bunch of short-horned cattle in the next open space. I put the point of the longsword into the ground and leaned forward on the pommel, gasping for air.

  I suppose a four-armed Djang might have been ready for fresh combat instantly. I admit I felt wrung out. The strain of climbing down the vine had taxed me, the fight in its sheer insensate ferocity had drained me. I am, after all, only human. Those exorcs had glided in hissing like a constant succession of paper darts launched at my head. There had been no single instant when I could pause for breath. So I leaned and drew enormous gulps of air, my head hanging.

  I heard the rustling and I lifted my head, which felt as though a damned volgendrin itself rested on my neck.

  The Gerawin handled it all very smoothly, very professionally.

  They alighted in a ring about me.

  They had crossbows. Their tridents glittered in the light of the Suns of Scorpio.

  The leader advanced, his feathers flaring, his leggings tightly strapped around his bandy legs.

  “You fight well, dom.”

  “Aye,” I said hating the pant in my voice. “Do you wish to find out how well?”

  “I do not think so. I would prefer, if you wish it, to put a score of shafts into you.”

  “That might be preferable.”

  He snickered. They are good guards, the Gerawin, if very much on the predatory side. Also, they consider their tyryvols to be the best flyers in all Havilfar. I believed my Djangs and their flutduins would disabuse them of that idea, but there were no friendly Djangs around their king now. There was only me, that onker Dray Prescot, who had escaped into captivity.

  They made a rush at me from the front and I put up the longsword ready to take a few of their heads off. Their tridents flashed but they withdrew and the leader yelled, “Now, Genarnin the Chank!”

  I swung around sluggishly. The iron links knocked me down. The iron chains wrapped me up. The longsword spun away. I was on my hands and knees, and chain after chain lapped me. Then I felt the grass against my cheek. I welcomed the dark advances of Notor Zan, but only to conceal from myself my own foolishness.

  Chapter 18

  A longsword falls

  “You nurdling get-onker!” The Gerawin’s voice hammered close to my ear and I opened my eyes, feeling as sluggish as Tyr Nath after he’d drunk the sylvie’s poisoned cup in the Grotto of the Trell Kings. I was being carried along like a rolled-up carpet, swaying from side to side. I cocked an eye down.

  Below me lay a windswept, empty space beyond the slats and ropes; below that was the undulating mass of creepers and vines.

  So I knew that Gerawin were carrying me across the bridge that gave this volgendrin its name.

  We halted and the bandy-legged flyer thus addressed shouted something about no sane man having to cope with such a bar of iron. His yells were the furious and desperate shouts of a man seeing vast unpleasantnesses fast approaching.

  “You have only yourself to blame, Genarnin the Chank!”

  The chank is that vicious white shark of the Outer Oceans of Kregen, a somewhat smaller cousin of the chank of the Eye of the World. The nickname is often given to men who possess that swift and deadly ferocity that marks them for small-sized killers.

  Breeze fleered the trappings of the Gerawin, there on the bridge over the vine jungle far below. I felt the blood painfully pulsating in my body. My head rang with Beng Kishi’s finest reverberations. The bar of iron had caused trouble. I did not laugh, but the thought was in my head, somewhere, mixed with the woolly balls of fuzz that scrambled my brains. The Gerawin stopped and the leader bent his head to stare at one of the bracing rope uprights. It was slashed through, hanging by a single thread. So the old longsword still possessed an edge, then . . .

  The Gerawin who carried the sword in so awkward a fashion looked properly horrified by what he had done. A mere single upright keeping the hand-rope fixed to the side-rope would never bring the bridge down, but I knew the laws of Hamal would be ferociously strict about the minutiae. The law would no doubt have already prescribed the very punishment he must undergo for exactly this misdemeanor.

  So, stopped as we were, I gave the Gerawin holding my legs a twisting kick, at which he fell back, yelling, grabbing for support above that windy height. The next Gerawin fell half through the slats of the bridge, over the edge, grasping it and screeching. The one with the longsword tried to run, but tripped. Then the familiar silver wire-wound hilt snugged into my palm grip and I turned, ready to slash them all — and the damned bridge, too, so ugly was my mood.

  The bridge swayed. Gerawin were running. I felt the breeze. The suns were declining now. Also, I felt most decidedly queasy. My legs trembled. My arms somehow brought the sword up with a speed I knew would mean my death in a fight. I shook my head and those old devil Bells of Beng Kishi rang and caroled, shooting silver and green sparks through my eyes. I felt as though a herd of stampeding chunkrah had trodden all over me.

  The Gerawin, no doubt completely unprepared for an unconscious man to recover and get into action as fast as I had — and I, a Krozair of Zy, knew just how slow I had really been — nevertheless went methodically about their man-snaring again.

  “Come on, you rasts!” I said. My voice sounded like a whistling faerling with an ague. “Fight like warriors!” That was pitiful, of course, but I threw it in as a player throws in his last charge of Deldars across the final drin at Jikaida.

  They sneered at me. They were professionals. But, for all that it was perfectly clear they did not wish to cross swords with me. The great longsword — that bar of iron — kept them back.

  The iron chains flew again. The loops snagged. I struggled to free myself, hampered by the swaying bridge and the ropes and supports. More chains settled about me. I knew that running, fighting, defiance itself, were over.

  With a last yell I stretched up tall, dragging on the chains. I whirled the longsword over my head.

  “For Zair!�
�� I shouted, and hurled.

  The Gerawin flight leader was quick. He ducked. The longsword, a blinding bar of silver in the lights, for they had wiped it off, spun through the air. It arced high and then fell. Over and over it tumbled, glittering, a silver brand of silver fire falling away and away into the mat of vines far below.

  “Zair rot you for a pack of cramphs!” I said. And then the last loop of iron chain sledged into my head and, once again, I plunged into the darkness of the enveloping black cloak of Notor Zan.

  * * * *

  During all my sessions in relating my life on Kregen I have attempted to speak the truth. No matter how fantastic what I say appears to be, it is the truth as well as I can express it. For the next few days of my life on that terrible if beautiful world I feel it expedient to gloss. I will cover the events as quickly as may be until I found myself back in Ruathytu, under strong guard, heavily chained but back to strength. The attack of the Wild Men on the Volgendrin of the Bridge had been beaten off with loss; my recapture had been a mere small incident. The Kov of Apulad, bearing down with all the authority of a Kov, had asserted his prior claim to my carcass and had insisted on taking me back to the capital for judgment. After he was through with me, he had told Pallan Horosh, the Pallan might have what was left to send to trial for the deaths of the two Pachaks.

  So, here in Ruathytu, I was lodged in those grim, famous, horrific, and extraordinarily diabolical dungeons of the castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, the infamous Hanitchik.

  An unduly great part of my life has been spent in prisons of one sort or another.

  The Hanitchik was a most unpleasant specimen. Torture was a way of life. The food was atrocious, yet it always came up at regular intervals and was enough to keep body and soul together. The prisoners had the laws of Hamal to thank for that.

  Escape, of course, was the primary concern.

  Just in case you have forgotten — and I most certainly had never forgotten — it is written in the laws of Hamal that the nearest relative of a murdered person may choose between certain dire tortures which may then be inflicted upon the murderer before he is dragged off to be hanged. I fancied the Kov of Apulad would decide on the most unpleasant tortures the law allowed.

  The trial, with which I will not weary you, wound its way to its inevitable conclusion. Stoutly protesting that I was not Chaadur at all, I was indicted by the Kov. Now that he had taken up his new post under the Queen, his weight and prestige were fully sufficient to have me condemned.

  Even during the proceedings, which were carried out with a great attention to scrupulous fairness in every detail, even though the whole affair’s outcome was cut and dried before it began, thus making a nonsense of the very justification for laws at all, I mulled over Ornol ham Feoste and his new appointment. He had been in charge of a small voller factory in Sumbakir. It had all been very provincial. Now, after the death of his wife Esme, he was here in Ruathytu high in the Queen’s favor and even more strongly connected with the vollers.

  On Kregen two and two make four — sometimes.

  The Nine Faceless Ones who chose the high nobles to oversee the secrets of the vollers must have chosen this Kov Ornol ham Feoste. There seemed no other explanation.

  So as the guilty verdict was brought in by the three judges — they did not run to the jury system in Hamal for all the laws — I had found another piece of the jigsaw. It appeared it was going to do me no good at all. It certainly wasn’t going to stop what the Kov planned to do to my hide.

  Because like any normal human being I did not believe I was going to die just yet and that must mean I would escape in some way, I had refused to offer up the alias of Hamun ham Farthytu as an alibi for myself. If Rees and Chido were apprised of my plight they would be there to do all they could, and I fancied their testimony might shake the hard identification of the Kov. This was comforting. One of the turnkeys, an apim with one eye and a crippled left leg, smashed that bubble.

  “The Queen’s happier’n a vosk in swill,” he told me as I took my regulation one bur of exercise in the enclosed yard, roofed with iron bars, the suns invisible and only the streaming mingled opaz light falling across the grim stone walls. “The army o’ the north’s won the big victory we’ve all waited for.”

  I felt the chill. I swallowed.

  “Yes,” he went on, chewing his cham from one cheek to another. “Havil smiled on us. Those rasts of Pandahem were all smashed up. It was a great victory.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Those foreign places is all the same to me. By Kuerden the Merciless! The stories! The army chased after ’em for three full days. The loot! If’n I had both my eyes and a sound leg I’d a bin there, believe me, with my sack stuffed with gold and jewels — ah! It don’t bear thinking of.”

  It certainly didn’t bear thinking of. But I had to think. And there was more.

  “The Queen — may Havil bless ’er! — is going to be crowned Empress! That’ll be a sight! Ruathytu’ll go mad. The procession will take all day to pass, an’ I’m going to see it, right from the top of the Hanitchik.” He chewed. “Well, that’s my right, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Was it only the Pandaheem? Any other . . . ?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard the tales, too, have you? Yes, they say there was an army out of Vallia. Rasts of Vallians! May Hanitcha harrow ’em to hell!” He chuckled and spat. “All smashed up. Tumbled back to a place they call Jholaix — they’re hiding out there now. All we’ve gotta do is go in and finish ’em.” He spat again. “I’ve heard of Jholaix, not that I’ve ever bin able to afford to drink of it, never not once in my whole life.”

  Thus spoke Nath the Keys, my jailer and an enemy, yet just an ordinary man.

  One of the most telling indictments of the gul Chaadur had been that he had pretended to be a Horter.

  The official torturing was scheduled for three days away.

  I could delay no longer. Rees and Chido, and the others who had known me in Ruathytu as the Amak of Paline Valley, must be called on. Hamun ham Farthytu must be used as an alias. I should not have delayed so long. The remnants of the armies of the countries of Pandahem, and my army of Vallia and Djanduin, were penned up in the extreme northeastern corner of Pandahem, in Jholaix. One final battle would destroy them utterly and put the whole island into the power of Hamal. My place was with my army.

  Having reached that decision I called for Nath the Keys and he was there already at the cell door, swinging his lamp and jangling his keys.

  “Stop your bawling, Chaadur! Your time has come, there’s no sense in kicking against it, lad. You did a foul murder and now you must pay the price.” Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.

  “But,” I said stupidly, “there are three days.”

  “Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov’s in a hurry, like. It’s now.”

  They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out. When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards . . . and with the black- and red-robed tormentors.

  Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, “I have chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!”

  They had gagged me so I couldn’t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I could not break the chains.

  The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in that ominously black material.

  I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal
and I considered once more that the country was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone — anyone — other than Chaadur, the condemned murdering gul.

  My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasöe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.

  Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star Lords.

  So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once been the Kov of Falinur.

  Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and betrayed me, there at The Dragon’s Bones.

  Would he recognize me again?

  Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.