Armada of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  I do not believe I wish to dwell more on that day.

  It was absolutely certain that if Rees, Chido, Nath Tolfeyr, Casmas the Deldy, or anyone of that circle of friends and acquaintances I had made in Ruathytu, saw me as I staggered along, the chains clanging and hampering me so that often I fell and was dragged before I could claw up to my feet again, then they would never recognize this man at all. It makes sense. If you see a man you know to be the Prince Majister of Vallia, all filthy and grimed, chained and humiliated, dragged through the streets at the tail end of a calsany, how could you possibly for a moment imagine he was Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley? No, there was no risk that I would be mistaken for the Amak.

  The day ended at last. Thyllis had spent four burs in the Great Temple of Havil the Green being crowned, and I had spent the time getting my wind back and slopping up a bowl of slursh, without red honey this time, and no palines either. The guards looked curiously at me. But they must have seen walking dead men many times before, working as they did for the Empress Thyllis. At the end of the day when the twin suns of Antares at last sank I was carted off, still in my chains, and thrust back into my hole.

  The gloom of the dungeon matched my thoughts. I had felt no humiliation, no shame, during that parody out there in the streets of Ruathytu. Anger I had felt, of course. Determination to bash a few skulls and escape, yes.

  But the Opaz-forsaken chains would not yield. I could not bend or break them. What Thyllis had in store for me next would be physically unpleasant. The psychological unpleasantness she had already handed out would have pleased her, no doubt assuming me to be crushed in spirit. But that kind of naked display of power offends me. Taking no material store in it for myself, it could not inversely harm me. Had Thyllis been in my position on that day she would have been asphyxiated with shame and humiliation.

  Dark figures moved into view under the single torch and I bawled down at them.

  “Jump to it, you rasts! It’s time for supper and I’m famished!”

  But it was not my guards who stepped forward into the torch light.

  “Dray Prescot?”

  I did not answer.

  The cloaked figures moved closer. There were half a dozen men in bulky armor beneath their cloaks, with naked thraxters in their hands. They were Katakis. Their bladed tails curved above their heads. Blood shone thickly on four of the blades. There had been four guards on duty in this deep inner cell.

  These Katakis I ignored. I stared at the man, powerful, hard, arrogant, who led them.

  Strom Rosil na Morcray, the Kataki Chuktar.

  I looked with a swift searching stare for his employer, Vad Garnath, for that cramph would know me as Hamun ham Farthytu.

  This Kataki Strom would not know my face, for when we had clashed in Smerdislad I had been wearing the Dudinter mask and he had thought me to be Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District, of Ba-Marish. I knew this man to be violent and dangerous, a lethal tool in the hands of unscrupulous men, a man who would turn on them to his own profit. The Katakis are slave-masters, expert in the manipulation of slaves, as I have said.

  He spoke again, harshly, impatiently, flicking a whip against his boots.

  “You are the man they call Dray Prescot?”

  “If you watched my little promenade today you would not need to ask the question.”

  He drew in his breath with a hiss.

  “I see the wizard was right!” He gestured to his men. “Unchain him.”

  I rubbed my wrists when I was freed. They were raw.

  “There is no time to dillydally. We have bribed and killed our way here. Grak!”

  There it was again, that slave-driving word . . .

  So they shepherded me along the runnels and the corridors and we met no one except the four guards they had slain to gain ingress. We came out under the light of the moons at that very same postern where King Doghamrei had sent me off with Ob-Eye to set me alight and dump me overside from a skyship. A voller was waiting. We clambered aboard and the flier leaped aloft.

  “You do not ask why we rescue you?”

  “No doubt you have your reasons.”

  Again he drew in his breath with a hiss.

  “I was waiting for my supper,” I said, just to keep him on the boil. “Do you have anything aboard?”

  They rummaged out a wicker basket and I set to on bread, cold vosk, and palines. They did not know what to make of me, and that suited me. I of course could have no idea what their plans were. For sure, the wizard, this certain Phu-si-Yantong of whom I then knew nothing, must consider me vital to his mad schemes of taking over Hamal and through me controlling Vallia. It seemed to me as I ate and thought that he must no doubt consider me the only man in Vallia who could hold the empire together after the old Emperor’s death. If I died, he would be faced with the task of controlling many splinters. Through me he could run the entire place. As I say, I did know this of the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, even then: the man was a megalomaniac of the highest quality.

  The notion crossed my mind that if he was a megalomaniac for wanting to run Vallia, what did that make me? I had no desire to run the place, however, and I wished Delia’s father long life.

  “You will be required to do certain favors for your rescue,” said the Kataki Strom in his hissing voice. “But for me and my masters you would be unpleasantly dead on the morrow.”

  I munched vosk, swallowed, and took a fresh bite.

  “You act very coolly. When the wizard has dealt with you you will fly a different wing.”

  “As to that,” I answered, “I am my own man.”

  “No longer!”

  He wore a thraxter. His tail was bladed. There were five others similarly armed with him. Their shields ranked around the coaming of the voller. I was not feeling on my top form. Zair knows, I had been through much. But the old Dray Prescot began to struggle and fight his way through all the good intentions I had been trying to impose on myself. I had been kicked around and tortured — only the beginning of that, I grant you — and hung in chains. I was feeling mean. Very mean.

  The only gratitude I felt to these Katakis was that I wouldn’t slay them unless they forced me.

  Over our heads the Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils shone down lambently. Their gold and pink light fuzzed the edges of the voller and shone on the close-set helmets of the Katakis and their bladed whip-tails.

  I said, “You rescued me. For that I give you thanks. But you did not rescue me because you were sorry for my plight. If you have a quarrel with Thyllis I am not your pawn.” That should make them think I did not know the fuller plans of the wizard.

  “What are you talking about, Prescot?”

  “I have given you thanks. Now you had best set the voller down and let me go about my business.”

  Strom Rosil laughed. His Kataki tail lashed above his head, very deadly in the golden pinkish light.

  Ruathytu fled past below. The familiar streets and kyros vanished with the domes and towers into the pinkish haze.

  “You are coming with us to receive your instructions.”

  “I think not,” I said, leaning forward, very smoothly, very fast, and drew his thraxter from the scabbard.

  They are man-managers, the Katakis. But they had none of their damned iron chains with them now.

  We fought.

  The tails of the Katakis are superb weapons, but they have their limitations. Against my thraxter their thraxter-work could not stand, and the straight sword chunked into the throat of the man who threw himself at me in front of his leader. Rosil staggered back. The voller bored on. The next came at me and I ducked his tail, slashed it off so that the bladed tip spun far out into the void. He screamed. I stuck him through the throat, also, for these cramphs wore armor. The next two sparred for a moment and I leaned to avoid their thrust. I took a tail blade on my sword and so slashed across and down. Then, shortening the sword, I drove it in low and deep enough on the second one.
That left two of them with Rosil raging to get at me. He snatched the thraxter from the hand of his man and the blades crossed and twinkled in the pink moonslight.

  “You ungrateful cramph! Is this how you repay our guile and cunning in freeing you?”

  To confuse him further, I said, “Thyllis probably paid you well to lay this trap, kleesh.”

  He did not like that.

  His man flung himself at the controls and the voller lurched and swooped down. Trees flicked past, dusky golden blobs in the shifting light.

  “Get behind him, onker!” bellowed Rosil.

  He was a fine fighter, and his tail was a marvel. I missed a slash at the tip and had to jump, weave, and parry to avoid his counter. The voller skidded along the ground, a cornfield going past with a loud hissing of broken stems. The last man tried to obey his leader and brought his tail up through his legs in that deadly stabbing thrust. I swirled the blade down, lopped the tail, and swung back to Rosil. He looked around. The voller came to rest. He had four dead men and one holding a bladeless tail, looking stupidly at the blood gushing out of the stump. The Kataki Strom was a cunning and resourceful man. I did not doubt his courage. Evidently the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, had studied the Prince Majister of Vallia most carefully, but he had not discovered that I could be an onker when it came to taking orders. He must have realized I was some kind of fighting man; Strom Rosil knew that, now.

  With a baffled yell he sprang over the side of the voller and vanished into the moons-shot darkness. He yelled back:

  “Your day will come, Prince. The wizard will cut you down to size!”

  His tailless man followed.

  I had command of the voller.

  I threw the thraxter down into the blood-reeking pit and hauled the bodies out, tossing them overboard. I kept all the weapons, and I chopped all the tail blades off, too.

  Then I set the controls and up we went, the silver boxes performing their usual uncanny function, sending us fleeting over the surface of Hamal.

  I set the course.

  Peacefully, equably, feeling a lot better, I sent the voller speeding north to Pandahem and Vallia.

  Chapter 20

  Armada against Havilfar

  “You have done wonders, Majister!” I said, for the hundredth time, feeling the breeze on my cheek and joying in the free onward rush through the air.

  “Most of the credit belongs to your sage, San Evold. But for his tireless energy the fleet would not be ready.”

  “But it is ready,” I said, overjoyed. “And now we will show those cramphs of Hamal what real fighting men of Vallia are like.”

  All about us in the air floated the new sailing navy of the Vallian Air Service. The ships were mere wooden boxes, built in great speed, built solidly and crudely, built to fight. Each ship was upheld by a pair of silver boxes produced in the workshops of Valka. Those boxes held only half the secrets I had sought, for they would only lift a ship into the air; but with the promise of the remaining four minerals dazzlingly before us for the future, these crude ships made a proud sight as they flew from Vondium, the capital of Vallia, to Jholaix, which lies in the northeastern angle of Pandahem.

  The new ships flew in long strings, towed one behind the other behind a voller equipped with genuine vaol and paol boxes for forward motion. We flew crosswind. Each of the ships had been equipped with masts and sails; that task had been easy for an ancient seafaring nation like Vallia. The skills of centuries of ship construction had gone into these vessels’ masts and sails. Mind you, the hulls were different, for you cannot lift an ordinary wooden ship into the air without it falling to pieces without the water to support it.

  Each ship consisted of a simple slab-sided wooden hull, heavily built to keep its shape when in the air. The masts rose from the deck, three of them, fore, main, and mizzen. The masts were joined at the top by a smaller box-like construction which gave strength to the whole. And from every bulwark and top these sailing ships of the air sprouted catapults and varters.

  We flew south over the sea.

  Jholaix in northeastern Pandahem lies something like three hundred and forty dwaburs from Vondium in Vallia.

  With us came all the flutduins Naghan Kholin Donamair, that majestic fighting Djang, could scrape together. They were housed in various of the ships and would take wing when the action began. There were Crimson Bowmen of Loh. There were regiments of my Valkan Archers. There were fighting men of my freedom-fighters, fierce active men who had won Stromnates and were not likely to forget the glories they had won under Old Superb. There were mercenaries of many and many a race, and notable among them the Chuliks recently hired, and the Pachaks I so much valued for their loyalty. But there were Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes, and plenty more, and we were blended into a fighting force the like of which had seldom been seen before in Vallian history, certainly not since the time of the Emperor’s great grandfather and the period of the troubles. That ancient history, too,-could serve a purpose now.

  At my side Seg, the Kov of Falinur, said, “You took a chance. If Tom ti Vulheim cannot hold them until we arrive—”

  “He is Tom Tomor ti Vulheim now, the Elten of Avanar. And he will hold long enough for us to reach him.”

  No one needed to be told the importance of an open bridgehead. If the Hamalians swamped over the last defenses of Pandahem we would have a much tougher job landing. For the flying ships were also packed with men. I had seen what could happen in a sea battle when the decks were crowded with useless soldiers.

  Delia’s father had attempted diplomacy and had been met with a hostile wall of contempt and hatred from Thyllis, secure in her newly won power. She had taken Pandahem and was Empress of Hamal. The Vallians were next on the list. The Emperor had had little trouble in persuading the Presidio and his nobles of the necessary course. Even Kov Ulverswan of the Singing Forests had admitted he could see no other recourse but an all-out stoppage of the Empress Thyllis — now.

  I had seen my Delia. She had chided me. I had chided her. We were both consumed by a love that joyed and feared in the doings of the other lest disaster strike. I had given instructions that were totally unnecessary to Doctor Nath the Needle. Thelda had fussed, and Seg had laughed and drawn her away. Aunt Katri had been coping with the twins. All in all I had spent a hectic time since my return to Valka in the voller so thoughtfully provided by Strom Rosil na Morcray, the Chuktar Kataki.

  Work had been going on all day and all night since that first successful experiment with the flying boxes in Esser Rarioch. The fleet had been cobbled together. The task could not have been accomplished without cutting every corner. The hulls were mere wooden boxes, sturdy and reinforced with crossbeams, and the sail plan had been ruthlessly simplified. Many a mast and sail had even been uprooted from a seagoing ship and transferred bodily to the aerial sailing ships.

  Two things are worth recounting here, and the first made me look at the Emperor with fresh eyes. He was a much-feared man. His powers, for all the Presidio and the nobles plotted against him, were immense. He had told me that his secret agents in Hamal — and that was the first I’d heard of them, by Zair! — had fought their way through to the cell to find dead guards and no sign of the prince they had come to rescue. Their report had reached Vondium after my arrival. But, as I say, I looked afresh at Delia’s father.

  The other event was altogether more strange. Strange and shuddery, to me, a plain sailor man of Earth who had become a warrior of Kregen.

  Walking in our sweet secret garden among the flowers, I had felt an odd, chilling shiver in the air, most eerie, and had looked up. I was walking alone, for I needed to think about the sailing ships of the air, and I saw the figure of a man standing against the red brick wall with its freight of perfumed flowers. He was indistinct, vague and blurry, as though a mere reflection in a pool of water. As I looked up he disappeared. Disappeared. I started forward at once and the rapier flicked from the scabbard. How could he have reached the gate so rapidly? Besides, the doo
r was locked and only Delia and I held the keys. Perhaps I was overwrought, strained far more than I realized, and the man had been a mere figment of my senses, tired and weary as I was. He had worn a long robe of black and green, with a wide cummerbund of red-gold. The vagueness of the vision — for it could have been nothing else — prevented any clear definition of his face. I merely had the impression of great force and power.

  Troubled — I had no wish to lose my faculties at so important a moment in history, when the fate of empires hung balanced — I did not mention this occurrence to anyone.

  I had walked back to the long open terrace overlooking the Bay and Valkanium. This terrace supports that smaller, more private terrace higher up on thin white columns entwined with vines. It is a pleasant place for those of the fortress who care to stroll in moments of leisure. I saw San Evold Scavander in deep conversation with the Emperor’s personal wizard and, not caring for conversation at that time, turned to go another way up to my rooms.

  “Prince!” And Scavander approached, his face betraying a mental struggle. “My Prince—”

  “Yes, Evold?”

  “San Deb-so-Parang has told me of something . . . something you should hear.”

  I think I guessed then, but my ugly old face betrayed nothing. “San,” I said to the Wizard of Loh, this Deb-so-Parang. I have said he was a pleasant old buffer; although he had failed to warn the Emperor of the plot of the third party, he was a useful man to have around the court.

  “Prince . . .” He hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “Men say many things about the wizards, my Prince. Many are untrue, and many are true. By the Seven Arcades! I have no wish to alarm you at this time.” He licked his lips. Then: “I have a duty to the Emperor . . .”

  “And he is my father-in-law.”

  “Quite so.” He took a breath. “I have felt an intrusion here in the fortress of Esser Rarioch. It was fleeting. It was, I cannot be mistaken, the visitation of a wizard in lupu.”