Golden Scorpio [Dray Prescot #18]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Yes, majis—pri—Jak."

  So I drew a breath and told him what to write. It was all good rousing stuff and I will not repeat it word for word. Briefly, I told the citizenry that the city would not fall, that we would outface these miserable radvakkas, that we'd see them all buried in their damned iron armor, and anyone who skulked would have his ears cropped, if not worse. Then I went on to give orders the import of which will become plain as I go on with my tale. Very quickly, the stylors were summoned and began to copy out the proclamation for distribution.

  Then I ran Nazab Nalgre out onto the balcony fronting the kyro and by gesticulations we obtained a quietness in the mobs.

  I shouted. I put forth that old fore-top hailing voice and reached out well into the square, and waited between sentences so that they might be repeated to those farther back.

  Again I will not repeat all I said. It was perilously near boasting.

  “People of Therminsax. Vallians. Hearken. Your Justicar, Nazab Nalgre, has given me the high honor and duty of resisting the Iron Riders, of saving Therminsax, and of burying every radvakka in a plot of soil. Those that are not burned to a crisp, that is. Think how a radvakka would broil in his armor! All the gates will be closed. Now. Those men who wish to shut the gates they know best—shut them. Those men who have iron bars to hand place them in the canals under the gateways so that no skulking radvakka may gain entrance there.” I went on bawling, detailing work to be done, seeing groups of men running to obey. I scaled the work so that the most obvious tasks were performed first. Soon I was able to finish with a resounding burst of oratory, rousing stuff, and then go to meet the leaders of the city. The masters of the guilds, the heads of each ward, the magistrates, the Hikdars of the Watch, the chief of the fire service and, most important, the high priests of the various temples. Therminsax is well-served with temples, fine imposing buildings, and the priests held great if tenuous powers.

  With this collection of frightened men in the main chamber of the palace I called for quiet and then told them, simply and forcefully, that Therminsax would not fall, that if they obeyed me they would be saved, what unpleasant things would happen to them if they did not obey, and finished off with a direct statement. “You are Vallians. Do not forget that. You have a pride in your city and your land. These rasts of Iron Riders are uncouth barbarians, illiterate. They have no idea how to lay siege to a city. All they know is charging in their mail, brainless. Obey me and you will be saved."

  Then it was a matter of giving each group its orders.

  All weapons must be gathered up for ordered distribution. If a man possessed a favorite sword—or spear, for they were spearmen of a sort—he might keep that, if he would use it. The weapon most used by the tumultuous townsmen was the stave with the cudgel held ready in the belt. The spears were used in vosk-hunting, and this was not done for a living but as a sport. The wild vosks were vicious beasts, as all men know, and quite unlike the domesticated vosks from which come such succulent rashers. I already had ideas on the old vosks, as you may imagine. Then I took myself off on a circuit of the city. The suburbs built outside the walls were a handicap, no doubt of that.

  Barriers were erected across the ends of the streets, from house to house, where we could. In other places I gave orders for awkwardly placed houses to be pulled down. Now that the citizens had a task to do, had been given some hope, and had an intolerant devil to goad them, they saw fresh hope where all hope appeared dead. They worked. City folk are accustomed to working together, in disciplined order, their habits of mind are orderly. They work together, each relying on the next. That is for work. For play they are a wild tearaway bunch, of course, given the opportunity. Both these traits would be used by me in the defense of Therminsax.

  The herds of vosks and flocks of ponshos were being driven into the city through the gates specially left ajar for the purpose. Cattle were brought in. The drovers had, perforce, to work afoot, for the only saddle animal in the entire city was young Wil the Farrow's preysany. At my direction stylors were making a count of food. Well and well—for now. If the siege was protracted—and I did not think it would be—then would come the time to search out hidden hoards.

  The iron bars under the gates through which the canals flowed were fixed firmly, and I checked them all, ducking down into the water, conduct which brought knowing nods, and whispers that this Jak the Drang was a canalman, then...

  A small but cheerfully clear stream ran chuckling through the city, flowing on across the country to swell other streams and eventually to empty into a tributary of The Great River. Along both sides of this little stream, called the Letha Brook, grew tall stands of the letha tree, well mixed with a kind of beech. The letha tree gives a tough, elastic wood, very white, much used for the handles of agricultural implements. The leaves of the letha are light green, frondulous, very pleasant, and afford a pleasing contrast to the red and black buds and flowers. In the bed of the Letha Brook I made sure the iron bars were firmly fixed against the flow of water. The Iron Riders were perfectly capable of pulling off their iron armor and wading up the stream into the city.

  These preparations, rushed though they were, filled in the time until the approach of the radvakkas signaled the time for me to go up onto the wall facing their serried ranks. They ringed the city in metal, sitting their benhoffs lumpily, watching us, and an embassy rode forward, under a great banner of benhoff tails, and trumpets blew for a parley.

  Chivalric ways of warfare were not for the radvakkas, and a parley to them meant nothing like what it would mean to a professional soldier of more civilized lands. So I did not go outside the gates to parley.

  A fellow clad in iron with much gilding and a profusion of feathers and benhoff tail plumes spurred forward. He bellowed.

  I heard him well enough.

  I was pretty sure they were perplexed that an army had not ridden out to meet them and, in the familiar and highly satisfactory fashion they had established in this new land, be crushed to powder beneath their iron hooves. This fellow wanted us to open the gates pronto, to stand aside as the radvakkas rode in. He made no promises. His absolute confidence was, in truth, somewhat amusing. I guessed this band—an offshoot of the westward horde—had heard of the prowess of their fellows down south and burned to emulate them here. The city lay before them, open and defenseless, for they were well aware that an army had marched out—had run off. Their astonishment that we did not let them in abruptly ceased to amuse me. It affronted me. I leaned over the battlements and bellowed back.

  Well—I cannot repeat what I said. It might burn out the machinery of this tape recorder. But I let fly with a choice selection of insults nicely calculated to upset these haughty and brainlessly arrogant barbarians.

  I finished: “And any one of you can enter the city any time he likes, horizontally with his guts hanging out."

  For a moment a dead silence hung over the assembled host.

  Then a deep and passionate diapason of fury burst out from the crowded ranks. A cloud of arrows flew up. Every one fell short. The Iron Riders set spurs to their steeds, put their heads down, and charged. In a thundering roaring mass of iron they hurtled on.

  Nazab Nalgre standing next to me took a few paces back across the ramparts. I stood watching the oncoming avalanche and I half-narrowed my eyes, studying them, thinking, scheming, imagining standing on the ground and facing that little lot...

  Of course, the radvakkas had to halt as they reached walls and buildings. Some tried to hack through the barricades we had erected across the ends of the outer streets; but the men I had stationed there reported that the defenses held against this passionate, headlong, ill-considered charge...

  The riders began to mill, some fell back, others started to gallop around the city seeking an entrance. All the time they were blowing trumpets and horns, yelling, kicking up the devil of a racket. Looking down on them I longed for a great Lohvian longbow and an inexhaustible supply of clothyard shafts.

 
Presently, the band drew off, waving their spears, shouting, reforming their ranks. They had no real organization apart from the war band clustered about a leader, and of discipline their ideas were that anything they did to an inferior was lawful, and if an inferior objected then they'd strapado him or do something equally unpleasant. Sheer brute force was their guiding principle. Everyone in the city was fully aware of the horrors that would ensue if the radvakkas took the place.

  For the rest of the day they surged about, like aimless waves, rushing forward, recoiling, riding about, showing off, attempting to awe us. Steadily the citizens improved the barricades. The radvakkas were cavalry—heavy armored cavalry. They had many camp followers and slaves, who walked or rode in the band's wagons. Of infantry they had none. The concept of a man attempting to conduct fighting standing on his own feet was to them not so much ludicrous as insane.

  Mind you, in the last idea, my Clansmen shared much. They did fight on foot, for they had experience of the occasional necessity of that on the Great Plains. But any Clansman would regard saddleback fighting as the normal fashion.

  When the suns began to decline the radvakkas hauled off and rode back to their camps, which ringed the city, and the fires blazed up. They were finished for the day. The morrow would bring fresh problems, and I would be up nearly all the night organizing.

  At meetings with the various civic leaders their questions were all the same and my answers uniformly simple.

  “How can we resist them?"

  “They cannot break into the city."

  “But they will starve us out."

  “If we let them. We have food for six or seven months of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. In that time we shall organize. Do as I tell you. Obey me. Have courage. Have confidence."

  “But, Jen Jak—"

  “Buts are not wanted here, koters. You are citizens of a great city. You have the skills, the discipline, the power. I shall channel that. Believe in me. And, always, remember you are Vallians."

  “Vallia is destroyed, the empire fallen—even the emperor is dead."

  “So I am told. So we fight for Vallia through the pride you have in your city of Therminsax. Are you not a city of an imperial province?"

  “We obey the Justicar through habit, we think, and we tremble for the fearful evils—"

  “Enough!"

  In one fashion or another the meetings ended on the same note.

  “Enough babbling like witless onkers, like wailing women. You are men. Vallians. From Therminsax we will destroy these Iron Riders who camp so uselessly outside our walls. And then we shall march and destroy the remainder. I have spoken. Do as I command—in the name of Vallia!"

  * * *

  Thirteen

  The Raid Against the Radvakkas

  Clouds sped erratically across the faces of the Twins and the Maiden with the Many Smiles. The land breathed with the quietness of a country night. At our backs the bulk of the city rose against the sky, ill-defined, speckled here and there with lights. The civic leaders were carrying out strict instructions to make sure their people stood an alert watch along the walls and at the barricades. I stole silently across the sleeping land, heading for the nearest radvakka camp. With me came a choice band of desperadoes from Naghan ti Lodkwara's Hawkwas, and a few lively spirits from the city.

  The days had been spinning past and I had already set in motion many of the measures needful for the safety of the city and the prosecution of the war against the Iron Riders.

  Although it had seemed to me everything lay to my hand; the task was not easy. I had already fashioned a number of armies for specific purposes on Kregen—Fetching the young people of Valka out of the Heart Heights to defeat the slavers and aragorn; creating an army for the Miglas to defeat the Canops; forming the phalanx of my old vosk-skulls from the slaves and workers of the warrens in Magdag; and others I have not mentioned. But now when I thought the task would be relatively simple I was finding odd, stupid, little impediments.

  Naghan whispered. “There is a camp, jen.” We approached cautiously upwind so as not to alarm the benhoffs, tethered out in long lines. We carried flint and steel and armfuls of combustible. We were a grim and deadly bunch and were not a party to be met with lightly on an overcast night.

  Stealing on we passed the first rows of leather tents. We left them strictly alone. A sentry, riding his benhoff, for no self-respecting radvakka would walk when he could ride, was dealt with, silently. A leap onto those skinny hindquarters—hind-sixths—and a grip around his mouth, a heave and a thump. We pressed on. And all the time I was only half there in this raid to create mayhem, for my thoughts kept going to the preparations to be made.

  The rapier and left-hand dagger were the arms of the gentlefolk of Vallia at that time, and the clanxer—the common clanxer, as it was called—was coming more and more into favor as the people witnessed the execution of the Hamalese thraxter, which the clanxer resembled. I had with Naghan the Gnat designed new styles of weapons in the armories of Valka, and the new sword we had developed from the thraxter, the clanxer and the shortsword, now equipped the regiments of Valka. Those regiments had been dispersed through the orders of the emperor and the wiles of Ashti Melekhi and Layco Jhansi. Well, much good it had done them...

  But Therminsax was not plentifully supplied with iron and steel. We must husband all we had. The women and girls were busily making arrows, and we were using flint heads, for flint is often sharper than steel and is never scorned by even the famed Bowmen of Loh. The bows themselves were compound, fashioned from horn and wood and sinew; but even then our numbers of men who could use a bow were limited. We were fortunate in having Larghos the Bow with us, for his family had been making bows for generations for the city and the districts around.

  Now we approached the compound where the slaves were quartered. The meanest of the slaves would be chained up for the night. Those more privileged, those whom I, probably erroneously, call helots, would sleep nearer their masters.

  Cautiously, we stole into the compound and started our work.

  Slaves—well, there were many slaves in Therminsax, and they were going to prove a problem.

  Because of the ease with which the Iron Riders had ridden over and through the legions of Hamal, it was clear to all that a relatively thin line of sword and shield men would never stop a radvakka charge. We had no aerial cavalry and no fliers. We did have one preysany, though ... At that comical thought I came back to the present and heard Naghan whispering fiercely to the freed slaves. I did not think they would wait until we had fired the tents before they broke out; but we had to try.

  Just as Foke the Waso struck a light and blew on the tinder the Maiden with the Many Smiles broke free of cloud wrack and cast her fuzzy pinkish light over the sleeping camp. We froze. The freed slaves, taking this sudden appearance of the Moon as a sign, broke out. Yelling and screaming and whirling their chains, they surged in a tide of vengeance against the leather tents. I cursed.

  “Time to go, Naghan. Pull your men back. Chuck the fire pots and let us get out of here."

  “Quidang, jen!” The firepots flew, setting the nearer tents afire. The dried leather burned clammily, belching smoke. But fire shot up satisfactorily from piled stores. We ran from tent to tent, hurling firepots, which contained combustibles and were surer for this work than simple firebrands. We reached the benhoff lines. The animals were restless, stamping their hooves, tossing their heads, letting rip with that raucous whinnying belching sound they have.

  “Up with you, Hawkwas all!"

  There was only fractional hesitation.

  “If you can ride totrixes and hirvels in Sakwara, you can ride benhoffs in Thermin. Mount! Ride!"

  There is a fellow in North Yorkshire in England who has trained bulls to be saddled and ridden and jumped. To a Kregen the idea of riding any sort of suitable animal is natural. The Hawkwas mounted up and, bareback, we belted out of the camp.

  Uproar rose behind us. Flames leaping, slaves s
hrilling, radvakkas roaring in rage and tumbling out, women screaming.

  We left them to it and racketed back across the land toward the gate of the city where a guard waited to open for us.

  I twisted around to look back. By Krun! Following the lead we gave a whole bunch of benhoffs charged out of their lines, pelting along in our wake. Their hooves thundered. We sped along. Clouds obscured the Moon for a space and then shifted across, intermittent shafts of pinkish light flooding down as the Twins rode free. In that hallucinatory light I saw a group of riders bearing in from the side, aiming to join us.

  Naghan shrilled a warning, and then the newcomers were yelling: “Vallia! Vallia!"

  Well, that is an old trick. I hefted my thraxter, ready to fend them off. My only object this night was to cause confusion to the radvakkas, as much damage as we could, but, mainly to let them know they fought warriors and their task ahead was going to be difficult and unpleasant.

  The riders raced along on our flanks. There were totrixes, hirvels, a couple of nikvoves, and a few zorcas. Fleetly, the riding animals closed with us. I saw the fierce dark faces, the flash of eye and teeth, the glitter of weapons.

  Now the radvakkas were swarming out of their camp, like a swarm of enraged bees, racketing over the plain after us. In a bunch, we raced ahead of them.

  “Vallia!” yelled a man on a zorca, riding with that long-legged, loose style. “Let us into the city!"

  As to that, I said to myself, we will see ... I didn't like the way he said Vallia, the way his tongue twisted around the word. I kept a wary eye on the newcomers as we fleeted toward the walls. Riding the benhoffs bareback my people jerked and swayed, gripping on, grasping their mounts convulsively. The zorcas moved ahead with their superb speed, and their riders eased them back to pace the slower totrixes. To pace the slower anything, I should say, for, indeed, the four-legged, close-coupled zorca with his single central spiral horn is an animal of fire and spirit and enormous heart and gusto, superb, superb ... We crashed on and the radvakkas shrilled in pursuit.