But I did not express my concern, thankful that we were still alive and still fit to travel. Thelda was hardening, and Delia positively glowed with the fresh air and exercise.
The climactic shadow of The Stratemsk lay to our rear now, the forests indicated that, and the badlands must be an effect of absence of soil or presence of minerals and poor soil and the millennia-long erosion. The mountains had been traversed and although we did not know their names we were conscious of their puniness in contrast to The Stratemsk; all the same, they were arduous on foot, and we near froze a couple of times. On the eastern side the whole country changed in character.
Now we were hard-pressed to avoid cultivated areas, to bypass towns and villages, to keep off the highroads that intersected at towns and posting stations and gave us clear indication that this land was populated.
We would scout with the minutest attention to every detail of the land that lay ahead. From whatever eminence we could climb we would plot our passage. Some of the towns we saw and avoided were nearer cities than towns. Many times we lay in hedgerows while cavalcades of armed men and trundling wagons rolled along paved roads. The roads were, indeed, objects of wonder. I was reminded of the old Inca or Roman roads, and I suspected that they were still in such good condition only through the skill of their builders, for the present inhabitants of this land looked hard and brutal and contemptuous of labor, lusting after silver and gold and the good things of life.
“They remind me of my own people in their hardness,” said Seg. “These cities and towns must be constantly warring one with another.”
“I agree,” said Delia. “The roads link them, but between each city and its surrounding cultivation lies barrenness.”
More than once we saw high-flying birds or winged beasts, and concealed ourselves, for we knew what to expect.
Now we began more fully to understand why all the continent lying between The Stratemsk and the eastern coast of Turismond had been dubbed the Hostile Territories. The true hostility came from men and not from nature or the animals of the wild.
I continued to feel concern over the northerly drift of our course; but in the nature of things with an infuriating obstinacy events conspired to force us more northerly still. I knew that Turismond extended in a bold out-thrust promontory into the Cyphren Sea and if we were traveling eastward we could march as much as five hundred unnecessary miles to the east with the sea away down to our south. But I was not prepared to risk an encounter with the inhabitants of these pinnacled cities, these battlemented fortresses, for I sensed from what we saw of them that they differed in kind from those peoples I had already met on Kregen.
More than once we bypassed cities inhabited by beast-men, half-men of races with which none of us was familiar, although given the strangeness of human nature I felt a comical sense of relief when the semi-humans of these cities turned out to be Ochs or Rapas, much though I distrusted the former and detested the latter — emotions which, I hasten to add, were germane to my continued existence at the time, whatever subsequent changes a long life and a great experience have brought.
None of us had the slightest hesitation in giving the widest of wide berths to the sprawling city filled with Chuliks upon which we almost stumbled as we came down out of a hill-cleft into a wide valley.
We crawled back up into the hills again and when I tried to lay off a course southerly we were halted by a river on the banks of which a string of guard-towers had been built. Perforce we struck northward once more.
The whole land was cut up into city-states. Antiquaries say there were ninety city-states of the ancient Minoan civilization in Crete. They must have been very small. Here the city-states sprawled over vast areas of land, or huddled around a natural fortress-holding on a hill within a valley. The state of savagery of the intervening areas can best be judged if I tell you that Seg and I had often to cope with sudden attacks from leem, those eight-legged demons, furred, feline, and vicious, whose fangs in their wedge-shaped heads can strike through lenk. And, too, we met graints, those wonderfully vital and obstinate animals I had met and battled outside Aphrasöe with the magical swords of the Savanti that did not kill but merely stunned. These, and other wild animals, were not in the usual way to be found anywhere close to settled human or half-human habitations.
‘According to my calculations,” Delia said to me as we rested in a fold of gentle, grass-clad hills, eating the rich flesh of a deer-like animal Seg had brought down and the girls had cooked, “I figure we have something like two hundred dwaburs between The Stratemsk and Port Tavetus.”
“Yes.”
“We must have covered that by now — we’ve been walking for ages—”
“Yes, Delia. But we are north of our course—”
“Oh, yes, I know you have been concerned. . .” She pondered. Then, briskly, she said, with that defiant tilt to her chin: “All right, then. The airboat carried us a good way, and we have marched a long way. We do not seem to be able to head south — so we must go on. I think we will find the next Vallian port city up the coast will be Ventrusa Thole. There are port cities of Pandahem, but I think we would be wise to avoid them.”
Pandahem, I knew, was a great rival of Vallia’s in the carrying trade and in business of the outer oceans. But there was a quiet animosity in Delia’s tones that startled me.
“Do you hate them so much, then, my Delia?”
“Hate? No, not really. We both seek to enrich ourselves on the leavings of the empire of Loh. We both maintain settlements on the eastern coast of Turismond. We both try to extend our business contacts to the west—”
“And a fat lot of good that does!” broke in Thelda. She pushed up on an elbow. Thelda had lost weight on our journey and her figure had trimmed off into statuesque beauty that poor Seg found mightily disturbing. “By Vox!” she said, with some force. “I heartily wish all the devils from Pandahem a watery grave!”
“Quite still!” said Seg. His voice cracked. The green radiance of Genodras lay on his face and turned that lean tanned visage into a ghoul-skull newly-risen from the grave with the grave-mold crumbling upon it.
We all remained absolutely still.
Now I could hear the beat of many wings. From the sky that susurration floated down, ominous, breath-catching.
Shadows flitted across the grassy hills, twinned-shadows from the twin suns, at first in ones and twos, and then in clumpings until the whole sky darkened. We did not look up.
Delia still looked at me and I at her, and her face remained calm, her eyes bright and mocking on my face, and I yearned to take her in my arms. But we lay there rigid and unmoving.
And now I could hear a strange clinking from the sky, mixed with the massive gusting as enormous wings beat at the air.
The noise dwindled and the fleeting shadows drifted away again into twos and threes. Seg touched me on the arm, for he had been able to watch everything.
“Gone.”
We looked and saw the host of flying beasts like a low cloud vanishing beyond the farther hills.
Seg’s face remained grave and serious, despite Thelda’s babblings of relief.
“What is it, Seg?” asked Delia.
“I have heard the tales — all men of Loh have heard the tales of our great empire that Walfarg forged on Turismond. The legends that creak with age and are hung with cobwebs. But—” He wiped a hand over his forehead and I saw the sweat slick there. “But I never thought to see them come to life!”
“What do you mean?”
“They were impiters. But — they carried men upon their backs!”
At once I remembered what Pur Zazz, the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy, had spoken to me when we had said Remberee. “I would welcome news, Pur Dray, of your adventures and the sights you encounter. Men say that beyond the mountains, in the Hostile Territories, there are whole tribes who fly on the backs of great beasts of the air.”
And so there were.
Of course, when one considers that men
on this Earth have tamed horses and camels and donkeys and ride them as a mere fact of everyday life, and on Kregen men and half-men ride zorcas and voves and sectrixes and yulankas and many more wonderful animals, and given that the impiters and corths we had seen were large enough to support a man’s weight in the air, the wonder would be if there were not men flying birds and beasts, the miracle would be if men did not form aerial cavalries.
And so it was that I felt no surprise at Seg Segutorio’s words.
“They did not see us,” I said, “thanks to Seg’s sharp eyes. But, by Zim-Zair, had we four of those flying beasts we could manage this journey to Port Tavetus or Ventrusa Thole with less damage to our feet.”
Delia looked at me sharply. Her surprise was understandable; she knew how much this leisurely progress meant to me and then she smiled as the realization that I really did want to go to Vallia pleased her. And yet, she still felt doubts of the outcome, that I knew. Her father’s reputation was a frightening reality.
“Aye!” said Seg, leaping up. “And we’d soon unravel the knot of how to fly the beasties. They must be well-trained.”
“Assuredly,” I said, “otherwise the riders would either fall off or hang upside down between the beasts’ legs.”
So saying, we gathered our belongings and took up our weapons and continued our journey.
Below us, in the valley, an army marched.
At once we sank down below the crest. We looked out and down onto infantry and cavalry and artillery — different types of varters and catapults — and I heard Seg whistle softly between his teeth.
“Tell me, Seg.”
“It is as though I am Loh-borne again,” he said. His eyes stared with a fey hunger on the marching host. “It is as though I am looking through the illuminated scrolls of my people — for I tell you, Dray Prescot, that army marching there is an army from the past!”
I said nothing, respecting the mood that had overtaken him. He had told me of the pictures in the illuminated scrolls of his people. They were artifacts common in lands where literacy was not high or widespread, and conveyed stories by many thousands of pictures stretching along scrolls that might be, when rolled up, as thick around as a chunkrah thigh. Many men dedicated their lives and the contents of their paint-pots to producing these items, and many of them were objects of great beauty in their own right, irrespective of the story they told.
Now Seg drew in a shuddery breath. “An army from the past, an army of Loh, marching in all the glory of the empire of Walfarg!”
In my time on Earth and on Kregen I have seen many armies on the march, and there are ways to assess the qualities and the strengths as well as the weaknesses of hosts of marching men. These men below me marched with a swing, in step and in ranks, their spears all slanted at identical angles. Cavalry rode picket. Artillery — strange-looking varters to me, used to the ballistae of the inner sea — all arranged in a neat symmetry. I studied the way in which the army marched, and came to certain conclusions. But it was Delia, watching with us that army of something like ten thousand men, who pointed out the most important observation of all.
“I feel like swearing just like Thelda!” said Delia, crossly. “For — do you see? — they are marching in exactly the same direction as the way we wish to go!”
And — as I said with a nice round Makki-Grodno oath — they were.
There was nothing for it but to wait out their progress and then follow along with the utmost caution, for as Seg and I observed, their scouts were very good.
“Although,” I said, with a trace of dubiousness, “they seem a little too good.”
“How come?”
“Well — they scout ahead, checking every knoll and defile, and they’re spread to the flanks. But it seems to me, somehow, done by rote, as though each man has a drill book in his hand.” The English word was: mechanical. “For instance — if I was commanding that army I would want to know if four desperadoes were lurking on a neighboring hill — there might be more.”
Thelda looked alarmed for an instant, and then she laughed, and tapped me on the bicep, and said, “Oh, Dray! You mean — us!”
Very gravely, I said, “Yes, Thelda.”
As we trailed them Seg relaxed his first incredulous disquiet and told us that the uniforms worn by the soldiers were those of three hundred years or so ago, and I was quite prepared to believe him, for in the main the uniforms of Kregen are colorful, practical affairs that change slowly. Although life and culture on Kregen varies widely from place to place, in general culture is outward-looking and thrusting forward, new lands opening up, new kingdoms raised, new empires being formed. Many new peoples were lifting their fortunes on the debris of the empire of Loh, and here in the Hostile Territories we had stumbled across an army constituted as Loh would have organized it.
“For a moment,” said Seg, and his laugh did not sound genuine to me, “I thought they were an army of ghosts!”
The truth was that in the collapse of the old empire and the inrush of barbarian hordes, fragments of culture from Loh, Lohvian attitudes and customs, had survived. Clearly, this army belonged to a city-state that had retained its Lohvian character. I confess, now, that at that moment the idea cheered me. With a civilized people we might find shelter in this crazy patchwork of Hostile Territories and rest and relax.
Why then, do you ask, did I not run down and introduce myself to the army commander?
My friend — whoever you are listening to this tape — if you think that, you have not listened well to my tale of Kregen.
Since the eclipse of the green sun Genodras by the red sun Zim — an event that had entailed direful consequences for me in distant Magdag — the green sun preceded the red in sunrise and sunset. When we camped that night in the amber rays of Zim falling slanting across the land we could see the campfires of the army like a miniature flame-filled reflection of the stars above us.
In the morning the army formed up in a welter of heel-clicking and rigidly correct lines; there was much drilling about, parading, and wheeling past fluttering colors before they at last set off. My suspicions of the army spread out below me grew — and shattering confirmation came when that ominous low cloud dashed into sight above a crest a dwabur away.
We watched, fascinated.
The fight was not our concern and we wanted nothing of it. We sheltered in the lee of a crest and watched. We had drunk refreshingly from an upland lake, a little tarn, and we had palines to munch, and we did not wish to become embroiled in what was going on between the Lohvian army and the boiling mass of wing-beating animals and ferocious men. The flying armada came on with cloud-driven swiftness and immediately began a long series of diving attacks on the men on the ground. These reacted with all the strict order of men obeying the rule book. And this was where I saw the weaknesses I had suspected revealed. Their dispositions for combating the aerial attack were excellent, but the manner in which they carried out their instructions left them shattered and confused.
The flying beasts were impiters, right enough, possibly the same group we had seen before, possibly another tribe. The men perched on their backs were too distant to discern properly, but I guessed they would possess some, at least, of the attributes of humanity along with their obvious bestiality.
“Look at them!” screamed Thelda, and Seg had to reach up a hand to drag her down, so carried away by excitement was she.
The flying beasts would swoop down and the men on their backs would loose arrows or fling javelins. Then they would zoom up again and reverse to swoop again. The Lohvians were shooting upward, and many flying beasts fell, but the army was split, segments were running wildly. The whole confused area before us became covered with hundreds of separate combats.
“No, no, no!” Seg was saying, over and over. His eyes betrayed his excitement. His hands kept gripping into fists and relaxing, gripping and relaxing. He held his longbow now, and I said, softly: “Seg?”
He looked at me with blank, drugged eyes. H
e breathed very quickly.
“They are of Loh!”
“You are of Erthyrdrin, Seg. But, if you will it. . .”
I started to bend my longbow and Delia said: “No!”
“No, Dray! This is madness! Suicide!”
“Oh, Dray!” wailed Thelda.
Only one woman in two worlds could hope to sway me in any decision I make, right or wrong.
I, Dray Prescot, hesitated. . .
And then a dark shadowed shape gusted above us and there were a dozen great winged beasts circling us and circling, too, the dazed little group of riders who had spurred their mounts at the hill in the hopes of riding beyond it to safety.
The riding beasts were nactrixes, cousins of the familiar sectrixes, with their six legs and their blunt heads; but they were deeper of chest and taller, with an altogether more hardy look about them. Their slatey-blue hides were covered with a more profuse coat of hair, which was trimmed and cropped.
The riders were officers, with sumptuous saddle gear and brocaded cloths, with as much finery about their mounts as about themselves. Some attempted to shoot their arrows aloft, but absolute concern over their own safety drove them on and the shafts flew wide of their marks.
Thelda screamed.
Seg cursed. He drew, let fly, and his shaft hurtled true to bury itself in the body of one of the aerial attackers.
Even as the screech rang out and the great body pitched from the sky my own shaft winged its way to its mark.
At once Seg and I were in action. All about us beat the massive pinions of the impiters, shining and heavy, feather-flurried in the wind of their smiting. We dodged and ducked and avoided the flung javelin and the loosed shaft. In return our own shafts plunged home in wing and belly, in breast and head. I saw three of the barbaric riders shriek and topple from their high saddles, to swing wildly from restraining straps as their mounts struggled to stay aloft.
Warrior of Scorpio Page 11
