Garfon the Staff came in, belted his golden-banded balass staff down and said in what was for him a very soft whisper: “The four smiths are here, majister!”
“Right. I’ll see ’em now. Get all this stuff down to the forges right away.” Briskly, I strode off and as I went I tweaked a neat little dudinter trinket from a side table. This was a miniature of those enormous statues that come from Balintol, of an eight-armed person, a Talu, dancing with fingers outstretched like an abandoned cartwheel.
The attractive pale yellow color of electrum, named for amber in the old Greek, glimmered in my hand as I went off to the reception room. The four smiths stood a trifle uneasily, summoned by the emperor to the palace. I hoped not a one of them was uneasily running through his mind the list of his latest crimes!
Well, the job was simple enough.
“We have to rid ourselves of this ganchark, my friends. And to do that we have to stick him with a weapon forged from dudinter. Arrow piles — and the broad fleshcutters particularly. Swords and spears. You’ll have to get an edge the best way you can.”
“We will forge an edge, majister,” said Naghan the Bellows, the armorer.
Ortyg Ortyghan, the goldsmith, nodded eagerly. Logan Loptyg chipped in to say that he would work night and day. He was the silversmith.
The foxey Khibil face of Param Ortygno expressed confidence, and also caution.
“I am the dudinter smith you have summoned, majister. Maybe the chief place should be given to me, for, after all, we are to work in my specialty and I am a Khibil.” At that he brushed up his arrogant whiskers, a true-blue haughty fox-faced Khibil to the life.
I did not laugh.
“I am grateful to you for your willing offer of help, Koter Ortygno. The fate of Vondium is at stake in more ways than perhaps you may imagine. I think it best if you four work in harmony, as a team, like a quadriga. There should be no need for any professional secrets to be revealed. Those parts of the work may be conducted as each one of you sees fit.” I fixed them with an eye that has often, most unkindly, been described as a damned baleful Dray Prescot eye. “Am I understood?”
“Understood, majister!” they sang out in a chorus.
“Queyd am tung!”[3]
They each gave a respectful little nod of the head and turned to leave. If sometimes I overreact to all this bowing and scraping and condemn it too harshly, I hope the reason is not some deep psychological flaw in me that demands and rejects an attention I cannot bring into the open lights of day. Those four little nods of the head I reasoned showed proper respect not for me as a man but for my position. It was to the emperor the respect was due, who represented Vallia. These men had been among those clamorous crowds who had called me and elected me emperor to sort out their troubles. If a fellow or a girl cannot feel respect for their own country, then the world may not roll around.
Of course, that brings up the knotty problem of what happens when your country falls below the standards you consider to be proper and decent in the world...
I became aware of the little dudinter statue in my hand. I called after the four smiths.
“Wait, my friends.”
They turned at once and I threw the Talu toward them. Interestingly enough, it was not the haughty Khibil, Param Ortygno, who caught the thing. He might be the dudinter smith; but it was Naghan the Bellows who took the eight-armed idol out of the air and without a scratch.
“Remberee,” I said.
“Remberee, majister.”
Delia’s note merely said she’d been called away to the bedside of a dying friend. She did not name the friend.
I thought I knew.
The sorority to which Delia belonged, the Sisters of the Rose, was in any terms a powerful Order. Much of their work was carried on in the open; a very great deal remained secret. Through the surprising favor of the Star Lords, I had been afforded the privilege of vicariously sharing in some of Delia’s adventures, discovering thereby many secrets Delia would never reveal to a man, and, also thereby, feeling honor-bound to keep them totally concealed. In fact, I never thought about them if I could manage that trick.
One fact, however, I did know. The mistress of the Order, who had once been known as Elomi the Shining, from Valka, was dying. Delia had been chosen to be the next mistress, and had refused. The Sisters of the Rose were in every sense important; for Delia being Empress of Vallia was also important in an entirely different fashion, a fashion in which the idea of obligation and service figured in just as dramatic a way as it did in the Sisters of the Rose.
So, I knew Delia had gone to Lancival. The location of this place, so secret and unknown, remained a secret as far as I was concerned, even although I could laugh with glee along with the SOR at the impudence of the place’s disguise in Vallia. There Delia would confer with her peers, politic with some, cajole others, argue, plead, seldom order — although that she could do supremely well, by Vox! — and eventually they would elect the new mistress.
If by some mischance some feminine chicanery landed Delia with the job, I fancied she’d make a different kind of mistress of the SOR from any hitherto in the Order’s long history.
All our daughters had been educated and trained by the SOR, as our sons by the Krozairs of Zy. I devoutly believe there is no better education or training anywhere in two worlds.
Because something of that kind had been flowing through my mind when the outlying islands of Vallia had been attacked by the reiving fish-headed Shanks from over the curve of the world, we’d formed an Order, originally in Vallia, based on the Krozairs of Zy. The mystical and superhuman woman we knew as Zena Iztar had been instrumental in aiding us to get the new Order, the Kroveres of Iztar, formed and aware of the fact that it was in the process of creating a tradition for the future.
Seg Segutorio was the Grand Master of the KRVI.
Where there was injustice, where tyranny, where we were attacked by the Shanks, there — in theory — the brothers of the KRVI would be found assisting the oppressed and resisting the Shanks.
A new and what was, I suppose, a daring idea had recently been giving me some interesting prospects for future action.
Why not, I’d said to myself, why shouldn’t both men and women join the same order and fight injustice, succor the weak and helpless, fight the damned fish-headed Shanks?
Well, it was a thought...
At this point it is proper for me to mention that I knew very little of the other female Orders of Paz. The Sisters of the Sword, the Sisters of Samphron, the Grand Ladies, the Little Sisters of Opaz, and many others were secret still.
I did know that a new Order, the Sisters of the Whip, had collapsed.
So when Seg joined me the first thing I said was: “It seems to me that this damned werewolf is a suitable job for the kroveres.”
“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! You are right!”
“We have lost touch a little lately, of course.”
“Well, we’ve been off in Pandahem. But — let me see—” and although Seg’s fey blue eyes did not actually cross in thought, his face took on a most menacing expression as he mentally began sorting out the brothers available to undertake this mission.
In this my narrative of my life on Kregen there are many people who appear illuminated, as it were, in the forefront of the action, only to subside into the background as fresh events overtake us. But these folk were not forgotten. They formed the living breathing fabric of life and friendship. Many of them met and talked with me almost every day. Others I saw at banquets, dinners, rowdy parties or within the harsher environs of business, the church, the law and the army.
Unmok the Nets, for instance was — still — undecided what business to undertake next. The Pachak twins still cared for Deb-Lu-Quienyin. Our Khibil wrestlers had found ready employment, going eventually with Turko. Tilly and Oby were a permanent part of life. And — Naghan the Gnat. As I said to Seg: “We didn’t hoick our friends out of the Arena in Huringa for nothing. Naghan can star
t fashioning dudinter weapons right away.”
Seg said: “Do wha—? Oh, yes, surely. I can put my finger on a score of brothers within a day. And, as for Naghan the Gnat, I am more than happy to wield any weapon made by him.”
“Good.”
“Although it is a pity Vomanus is still poorly.”
“He is taking more time to recover than I like. But he will. He has, like us, bathed in the Sacred Pool of Aphrasöe.”
“Don’t remind me. I am still totally confused by all the implications—”
“You are not alone!”
“That’s as may be. His daughter, Valona, turned up pretty sharpish, so I heard, after Delia sorted out the trouble up in Vindelka.”
“Sister of the Rose, business conducted by these formidable women to our confusion. There was a time when I sincerely believed that Valona was my daughter Lela—”
“If I made some humorous remark about that’s what you get for chasing off to the ends of Kregen, then I’d be a dolt. Now I know about your comical little Earth with only a yellow sun and only one moon and no diffs, I can understand a lot more that you’ve never spoken of.”
“You can? Maybe, Seg my Bowman comrade, it is time for us to try a few falls on the mat.”
“You can take on Korero the Shield. I’m off to find Balass the Hawk and start this werewolf thing moving.”
“Korero?”
“Drak has sent the First Regiment of the Emperor’s Sword Watch back to Vondium. Well—” and here Seg laughed in his rip-roaring raffish way “—he couldn’t hold on to them for a single heartbeat when they learned you were back in Vondium!”
“No,” I said. “No, that rascally bunch will insist on putting their bodies between me and danger.”
Although I spoke flippantly, I felt the leap of spirits at this news. 1ESW might be a rascally bunch, the regiment was also a smashingly powerful fighting instrument, devoted, very much a law unto itself in matters of regimental honor and pride, and still a unit of the army, standing shoulder to shoulder with their comrades in the defense of Vallia.
Seg moved off and called back: “They’ll want to go with us up to Turko, Dray.”
“Yes. I shudder to think what 2ESW will say...”
Chapter nine
Werewolf at the party
I draw a merciful veil over the uproarious happenings when my lads of 1ESW flew into Vondium.
By Vox! Carouse! They did not quite tear the place to bits, but they beat up the city sorely.
They were all there, thanks to the mercy of Opaz, and while some had taken wounds, all were recovered. There were new members of the regiment, of course, and it was my task to get to know them all as quickly as possible. No one entered the ranks of the premier guard regiment unless he was a proven kampeon, a swod of merit, a superb fighting man.
They decided they’d better have some kind of formal parade, and march through the streets to the Temple of Opaz Militant, and there render up thanks. The bands played, the flags fluttered, the suns glinted off massed ranks of armor and weapons. The spectacle delighted the crowds who turned out in their thousands to cheer. The rogues had even organized a bevy of pretty young girls, half-naked sprites in silken draperies all a-swirling, to dance ahead and scatter flower petals. That made me give a grotesque tweak of the lips which my friends recognized as a smile.
Not one of them, nobody, not a single swod, got drunk. I have explained how that kind of idiotic anti-social behavior was not tolerated in the guard corps.
Targon the Tapster, Cleitar the Smith who was now Cleitar the Standard, Ortyg the Tresh, Volodu the Lungs, all of them were there. Korero the Shield, a magnificent sight as always, a golden Kildoi with four arms and a tail hand, uplifting his shields in protection, Dorgo the Clis, saturnine and with his facial scar a livid blaze, and Naghan ti Lodkwara together with all our other comrades from the original Choice Band joined by our new fellows, marched in the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio.
Vondium, the proud city, as the capital of Vallia is a civilized metropolis of a civilized country. Yet, as I watched the parade and marveled afresh at the panache and bearing, the spirit and devilment of the jurukkers of 1ESW, I could not fail to be aware of the barbaric appearances everywhere, the feeling of passions bursting through regimentation, the savage warrior spirits chafing at and yet understandingly accepting discipline. Mazingle, the swods call that on occasions, and sometimes they call unfair and too harsh a discipline mazingle, with darker and far more ugly meanings.
For a brief moment a vision of the zazzers of the Eye of the World, the inner sea of the continent of Turismond, took my inner attention. Drunkenness was more common among both Grodnims and Zairians there, although still generally regarded as the pastime of the feeble-minded. The zazzers were those folk — men and women, apim and diff alike — who quaffed until they reached a fighting frenzy before battle. Unlike the old Norse berserkers, who either wore bear skins or stripped naked, according to your sources, they smashed into action fully accoutred and armed, ragingly high seas over, roaringly sloshed, and fought until they won or were cut down. The zazzers’ philosophy may appeal to many; as a shortcut to personal extinction it repelled more.
A tremendous shindig was held that night; the torches flared their orange and golden hair, the sweet scents of moonblooms mingled with that of exotic foods and enormous quantities of wines. While we might not have shaken the stars, we surely shook all Vondium.
As I say, I draw a decent and merciful veil over the proceedings.
After the orchestra in their platform-shell at one side of the flower garden had played the Imperial Waltz of Vallia, which as you know was the best rendering I could contrive of the Blue Danube, and the folk had danced the whole sequence three times over, I spotted young Oby.
Well, I should not refer to him as young Oby, of course, for he was a grown and limber man. Two girls clung to his arms, another rode his shoulders and waved a bottle aloft, and a fourth in some mysterious way held on with her naked legs wrapped around his waist from the front, and was busily kissing him in between laughing and drinking. He saw me and, disengaging his mouth from its amorous combat, grimaced and called across.
“I cannot help it!”
Oby ran the Aerial Squadron attached to the palace, and always seemed to be in peril of sudden and immediate marriage, which with a sleight of hand much admired among the raffish bloods and despaired of by the maidens, never was — in his words — trapped.
“I would feel envy, Oby, but for good reasons!”
“Aye, Dray, aye! Would that I could find—” and then he was devoured again.
I yelled: “Where’s Naghan?”
Oby twisted his head and the girl’s lips sizzled down his cheek. She started to bite his ear — of course.
“In the armory — he’s finishing up the first of the arrowheads.”
“Then,” declared Seg briskly, “that’s where I’m off.”
“I’ll join you.”
The palace jumped. Lights festooned the alleyways between hedgerows of sweet-smelling shrubs, lamps twinkled in the trees as a tiny zephyr trembled the branches. It was a glorious night, with She of the Veils flooding down her roseately golden radiance.
“I could wish Milsi was here,” said Seg. “But she has gone off with Delia.”
“Ah! That means, I would guess, your Milsi is about to be inducted into the Sisters of the Rose.” I shot my comrade a hard glance. “I don’t know if you should be congratulated or consoled, by Krun!”
“Young Silda never had any doubts.”
“Your daughter, and my son, ought really to sort things out — Silda is down in the southwest, I suppose?”
“Aye.”
We strode through the various gardens and arbors until we’d skirted this side of the palace and so crossing a graveled drive walked up to Naghan’s armory.
Naghan the Gnat had once been all gristle and bone; now he had filled out a trifle and his thin and wiry form filled his t
unic to greater effect. Amazingly cheerful, quick and lively, he could bash his hammer on his anvil with consummate skill. He is among the finest of the armorers I have known on Kregen. Now he turned as we entered, feeling the heat from the furnace, and he held up between iron tongs a palely yellow arrowhead.
“The edge is the art of it,” he said. “Seg — there are a full score over there for you.”
“Well done, Naghan,” I said. “And a sword?”
Naghan had worked damned hard, that was clear. He had taken the pattern of sword called a drexer which we had developed in Valka and knocked out three of them. His assistants were hard at it, bellows pumping, heat pulsing, hammers ringing, and the hissing turbulence and aromas of quenching going on neatly within the armory. Picking up a dudinter drexer I swung it about experimentally.
“Nolro!” yelped Naghan. “Fetch the quiver.”
A young lad, streaming sweat to the waist, jumped to a peg and fetched down the quiver. This was a simple, plain quiver as issued to the archers of the army. Nolro handed it to Seg. It contained a score of arrows, fletched with the rose-red feathers of the zim korf of Valka.
“I had Lykon the Fletcher do these up for you, Seg,” explained Naghan. “Speed is the watchword now.”
Seg drew out an arrow. It lacked a point. “Thank you, Oh Gnat. I trust Lykon’s handiwork. But—”
We all knew Seg liked to build his arrows himself. He now meant that he’d accept another’s work in fletching the shafts, but was pleased to bind on the heads himself. This he at once started to do, there and then, at a side bench where the necessary equipment had been prepared.
The party still racketed away among the gardens of the palace. There were Jikai Vuvushis there, out of uniform, dressed exquisitely, laughing, dancing. I own I felt an ache that Delia was not here.
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