She could taste the ceremonial wine they had drunk before the regiment left Vallia, still see in the eye of memory the long refectory tables, the candles, smell the flowers so tenderly cared for. As though less than a single heartbeat separated that farewell dinner, she was here, in Hamal, among the dust and heat and flies, the smells of so different a nature. The effort of opening her eyes to look at Nango as he spoke the words he felt necessary consumed her.
Her own emotions were forcing her on, and she could foresee in part what the future might hold.
Less than a heartbeat...
The regiment had marched out with the bands and the banners. Duty called them to a hard life here in the Mountains of the West of Hamal. She had met this hard, competent Jiktar of Aerial Cavalry, this Strom Nango ham Hofnar. It seemed to her less than a heartbeat ago she had left Vallia to serve overseas, and now here she was overseas and in Hamal and far too many of her fine young girls were dead...
Such misery she did not think she could bear alone. As the ceremony concluded with the proprieties reverently fulfilled, and she walked slowly away, she looked across at Nango. At the same moment he turned to look at her.
In that moment, in the enervating heat and the dust tasting of schoolroom chalk in her mouth, her gaze met Nango’s. Oblivious of heat, of dust, of flies, negating everything else, they stared one at the other, and their futures were settled.
Chapter four
We disagree over the Werewolf of Vondium
Delia hurled her slipper at me. Catching the silky scrap in my left hand I instantly hurled it back. She ducked, laughing at me, whipped off the other slipper and chucked that one at my head. When I raked out a hand to grab it she leaped the bed and was on me, bearing me down, ramming my back hard into the rug.
“D’you cry quarter, you fambly? Do you bare the throat?”
“Aye, aye, my love, I bare the throat. And my back’s digging in most uncomfortably.”
She kissed me lightly and then let me up. I wriggled around and sat up and put an exploratory hand down.
“More like digging into you!” she said, and laughed. I hauled out the big black riding boot and did not throw it at her. She sat up, flushed, radiant, divine. Well, there are no words too great or grand or divine in themselves for Delia of the Blue Mountains.
“What irks you, then, my heart?” I spoke philosophically, starting to rummage around for my clothes. The hour was still early, but we had a lot to do today.
“I am trying to prevent myself from feeling amusement instead of annoyance that Marion’s party was spoiled — well—” Here she reached for the laypom-colored slip trailed across the bed-end. “Well, not exactly spoiled. But the werewolf story, and that poor guard of yours, and the rest of it. I do not think Thantar the Harper’s great new story about Marion and Nango was as well received as it otherwise would have been.”
“Amusement?”
“You know what I mean. Anyway, I am positive I am preventing that feeling. Marion is a dear. And she has ambitions. She—”
“She is, of course, of the Sisters of the Sword and not of the Sisters of the Rose.”
“The SOS put more regiments of Jikai Vuvushis into the field than the SOR. But they do not use the Claw or the Whip, as we do. Now I am not going to talk any more about that. I think I will pay her a call today. That will please her. And her Nango looks — h’mm? useful?”
“A sound fellow.”
“So I deemed him.”
“Although, mind you, I own I was a little disappointed in Thantar’s story. I have told you of the time Jaezila—”
She interrupted not sharply but firmly.
“Yes, my dear. I still think of our daughter Lela as Lela, and not as Jaezila. I am sure you think of her as Jaezila.”
“Yes.”
Well, there was no mystery in that. After all, I’d adventured and fought with Jaezila long before I knew she was my daughter Lela. I went on:
“That time Jaezila and Seg and me went off to rescue Prince Tyfar and his father from the wildmen in the Mountains of the West — it must have been a very similar scene.”
Delia has had to suffer greatly in her life since she first met me. I own I ache for her, and feel guilt and remorse. But, she is a princess, an empress, and hollow though the titles may be to some, she is a very great lady. She is, also, cunning, shrewd, subtle, tough and altogether enchanting — and damned infuriating. She had come to terms with her extraordinary life long before I’d told her I’d never been born on Kregen, but came from a small planet orbiting a yellow sun that was, by the standards of Zim and Genodras, very small and insignificant. And it had only one silver moon, to boot, and possessed no splendid array of human beings not built in the same mold as apims, as Homo sapiens sapiens, like Delia and me.
“We saw the wildmen off that time, thanks to a very brave Hamalese officer and his men. But, all the same, I own I was a trifle disappointed with the story—”
“We were all tired by then. And the werewolf did not help—”
“You mean the story of the werewolf?”
“Yes.”
The breeches I pulled on were sober Vallian buff. The tunic on its stand was of buff. This day I was to begin by officiating at the opening ceremony for a whole new complex of houses and shops. Slowly we were rebuilding Vondium, trying to make the once proud city vital and alive again.
“The story of the werewolf did not cheer us up, true. All the same,” and here I tightened up the lesten-hide belt and rummaged around for the boots that had so sorely assaulted me. I felt — to use the imagery of another age — that the snapper was lacking in Thantar’s story of Marion and Nango. There was no punch line. I said as much to Delia as I buttoned up the tunic.
“You could say, could you not, my dyspeptic Dray, that the fact we heard the story at all was its suitable finale. Marion and Nango are happy. Surely, one might think, that is a quittable ending?”
I eyed her cautiously.
“One might.”
Delia’s first task this day was to open a new hospital and rest home for invalid soldiers. The usual customs of earlier times on our own Earth and to a great degree on Kregen, of employing soldiers when needed and when the war was over of discharging them to starve and die in the gutter, could not be allowed to continue in the new Vallia we were building.
The problems did not arise where mercenaries were hired. This had been one of the sticks my opponents had beaten me with when we’d been creating a true Army of Vallia to replace the mercenary forces heretofore used. My reasons for the decision were plain and commonsense. Now we had to pay the reckoning.
Delia, instead of drawing on tall black riding boots, put on softer, lower boots. For the proper atmosphere to be created when she attended the hospital opening she would ride in her palanquin. The gherimcal, carried by her corps of Womoxes, would give just that necessary extra feeling of the presence of the empress without the harsh reminder that trampling hooves would have brought. At least, that was the theory...
“With you, Dray Prescot,” she said with some considerable mock-tartness, “one might anything!”
“True, true — and I still think the story lacking.”
“Maybe Thantar should have ended it earlier, at the moment of rescue.”
“Marion wanted to show the results. The girls have been brought home, and she is on a furlough, although—”
“That, my dear, will be the business of the Sisters of the Sword.”
My early feelings of abhorrence that women should fight as soldiers, bequeathed to me from my upbringing on Earth at the end of the eighteenth century, persisted only in certain cases here on Kregen. Folk regarded me as a loon when I stumblingly tried to explain my reactions. If women demand equality with men in all things, as well as their already achieved superiority in others, then they can damn well shoulder a weapon and go off and fight. That was that theory...
So when in some mysterious way I found that I was to have another bodyguard force to
add to those already created, the fact that this corps was to be composed of Jikai Vuvushis did not discompose me as it would have done before. It seemed that all the women were agreed. If the Empress Delia could have regiments of men in her bodyguard, then the emperor could have a regiment of women — surely?
Two splendid numim girls, lion-maidens, Mich and Wendy, had taken the initial steps — when my back was turned, I might add — and an emperor’s regiment of Jikai Vuvushis was recruiting.
With that eerie but wonderfully warming meeting of thoughts, Delia effortlessly picked up on the subject in my mind from what she had been saying.
“Marion’s duties, as you must guess, concern your new guard regiment. How much she wishes to tell you about the SOS must remain for her to decide.”
“If she tells me twice as much as you tell me about the Sisters of the Rose, that will still be nothing.”
“Which is as it must be,” said Delia, primly infuriating.
Just as we were leaving the bedchamber to go down to the first breakfast, Delia put her hand on my shoulder.
“Dray — suppose there is a werewolf running loose in Vondium?”
Her tone pushed aside any inane reply of denying the possibility. Delia was penetrating through to the eventuality that a ganchark might really exist, and if so, what were we to do about it. On Kregen they do not take so lightly the stories of the undead, the kaotim, stories of lycanthropy, as we do on Earth. Delia was being highly practical. If a ganchark intended to terrorize Vondium, we ought at least to have thought seriously about the problem and the measures we could take in self-defense.
My reply was therefore considered.
“We must summon all the sorcerers and wizards who may give us answers. Thantar’s story suggested there is an answer. We must find, if it is necessary, the appropriate answer now.”
“Yes. I do not wish to think of it; but if it is necessary then we must.”
“After you have seen to your hospital and I to my complex, we must meet with Nath na Kochwold. He is clamorous regarding the Fifth Phalanx—”
“You worry too much, my dear. The Phalanxes have proved their worth in battle—”
“Surely. They triumph. But I do still worry over the numbers of men tied up in the brumbyte files.”
We had four Phalanxes with a fifth building. One was up in the northeast, one was with Turko in the midlands, one and a half were with Drak in the southwest. So we needed a fifth. Yet for every soldier trailing his pike as a brumbyte in the phalanx files, we might have trained up an archer, a kreutzin, a churgur. Oh, yes, it takes a special kind of fellow to be a brumbyte and maneuver pike and shield close packed with his comrades, but, all the same...
Going into the first breakfast we were met with luscious odors and the incessant rattle of animated conversation. Most folk of Kregen like to sit down for one of the breakfasts, usually the first, and then take the second standing up, filled with the doings of the morning and aware of what remains to be done before the hour of mid.
More often than not I took both breakfasts — when I was fortunate enough to eat two — standing up.
The room lay awash in the early rays of the twin suns. Folk were eating and chattering away nineteen to the dozen. Schemes were hatched, plans laid, news reported at this time. Helping Delia and myself to a considerable quantity of breakfast we went over to a group centered on Farris, who looked as calm, competent and in complete command as he always did.
The subject of conversation was, inevitably, the werewolf of Vondium.
Perforce I had to let the talk run on. Any attempt to block off speculation would only arouse more. Balancing a plate and a cup and eating is all very well for folk with three or four arms, or a tail hand; for apims like me with only two hands the process is highly demanding. I listened, chewing, weighing up what was said and what were different people’s reactions.
Some just pooh-poohed the whole idea.
Others would believe if there was sufficient proof.
A goodly number were perfectly convinced that a werewolf was running loose in the streets of the capital.
Pallan Myer, stooped over as ever from hours of reading, coughed his dry little tickler of a cough. He was the Pallan of Learning, responsible for education, and now he gave evidence of the way he regarded these stories.
“Utter balderdash. Quite unconvincing. The smallest child in my schools would laugh at this nonsense, for it defies credibility by its lack of logic.”
“But logic,” pointed out Nath na Kochwold, “is not necessary when one is dealing with the supernatural.”
One or two interrupted at this; but Nath went on: “At least, not logic as it is understood by pedants. Internal logic, of course, is essential, otherwise the world would come to an end. We need far more evidence yet before any sound judgments may be made.”
“I agree,” said Farris, and put a paline into his mouth and chewed. For many people there that was the end of the argument.
One of these fine days, when Nath na Kochwold could be weaned away from his only true love — the Phalanx — he might well find himself standing where Farris now stood.
“My father,” he said, “is Nazab Nalgre na Therminsax, who is the emperor’s Justicar governing all the province of Thermin. In Thermin you will find many folk who devoutly believe in the existence of gancharks.”
Senator Naghan Strandar, a member of the Presidio, glanced across at the Lord Farris before replying, as though to say that Farris had ended the conversation but there was just this little codicil.
“If the proof is forthcoming we must be prepared to meet it.”
Delia looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. By meeting the proof, Naghan Strandar openly accepted that that proof would be positive, that werewolves did exist and that one was terrorizing Vondium.
Chapter five
Concerning the phalanx
The day passed, as days do pass with work accomplished, but not enough — by Zair! never enough — to make me feel I’d earned my daily crust.
Truth to tell, with the Lord Farris and the Presidio we had set up perfectly capable of dealing with the problems of empire and the woes of Vallia, there was for me really only left the showy, emperor-type of function. Farris ran the place when I was not here, for which I gave thanks to Opaz, and I had no intention of making any attempt to usurp his functions.
When Drak at last threw out Vodun Alloran from the southwest and returned to Vondium in triumph, then Farris would gracefully retire from his position as Justicar Crebent and let Drak get on with it. Farris’s heart was with the Vallian Air Service.
So it was that I opened the complex of houses and shops, then, after the second breakfast, went on to officiate at other functions. Much of Vondium at this time still lay in ruins. We concentrated on rebuilding the most essential structures first. When it was time to see Nath na Kochwold about his new Fifth Phalanx I brightened considerably.
With those thoughts occasioned by the kind of day I’d had I said to Nath as we stood in the anteroom leading from the barracks out to the square: “Well, Nath, there is only so much money and only so many resources. If we spend a thousand gold pieces to build a new school and what-have-you, there are a thousand talens less topside to pay the army and equip the lads.”
“A school will not stop those rasts who raid us.”
I pulled my ear. “Yet it may teach the youngsters what they will need to know for our future.”
“They need to know how to shoulder a pike, to handle a shield, to wield a sword.”
“Inter alia, inter alia.”
Using the Kregish, the meaning was plain, and Nath smiled.
“You are, of course, majis, quite right. But, all the same—”
“All the same, my fiery kampeon, somehow we will build the schools and hospitals and find the wherewithal to fund the troops — even if the brumbytes in the files, being good soldiers, wear the old vosk-skull helmets still.”
Seg walked in at that point
and, overhearing, laughed.
“Vosks have skulls as thick through as Mount Hlabro. And, you know what has been said about our skulls.”
“Aye,” I said. Many and many a time I’d been told I had a skull as thick as a vosk’s. Being an emperor made no difference there...
“Now, Nath,” said Seg, very briskly. “I do not pretend to the pikes in the Phalanx. I’ve come to see about you archers. Dustrectium[1] is, after all, the secret of success.”
“They come along, Seg,” said Nath. “They come along. But, of course, they will never satisfy your standards.”
He spoke only half mockingly.
Seg nodded, still sharp.
“True. But we must do what we can.”
Trumpets pealed outside.
“Time to go.”
So, out we went, all dressed resplendently for the occasion, and saw the Fifth Phalanx go through its paces.
“Commendable,” I said. I did not commit myself further.
Seg puffed a little air between pursed lips, and said nothing.
The Fifth Phalanx contained the Ninth and Tenth Kerchuris, each totaling 5,184 brumbytes, 864 Hakkodin and a chodku of 864 archers.
“The ranks are well-filled,” observed Seg.
“Aye.” Here Nath stuck a fist onto his sword hilt and stared at Seg. “We had to use the old Fifth Phalanx to replace men leaving. The Tenth Kerchuri — the old Tenth — fought brilliantly at the Battle of Ovalia. The Ninth had a bad time down in the southwest, along with the Eighth from the Fourth Phalanx, when that cramph Vodun Alloran betrayed his trust and traitorously turned against us.”
“I heard.”
“There are enough men in this new Tenth to warrant the battle standards, and the honors. I have attempted to build a tradition into the phalanx force.”
“And you have succeeded, Nath,” I said, speaking with some force.
Werewolves of Kregen Page 4
