A Victory for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Brothers Fre-Da,” I addressed them seriously. “San Quienyin is for Vallia. Would you consider accompanying him?”

  They looked, one at the other, each waiting a sign.

  I went on, “I can assure you he will be received with honor in Vondium. As will you.”

  “Will there be honorable employment for us there, Jak?”

  I pulled my lip. “I am told the Emperor of Vallia no longer employs mercenaries to fight for his country.”

  “This word,” said Logu Fre-Da, “we have heard.”

  “With acrimony among the paktunsa,” elaborated Modo Fre-Da.

  “It would not be seemly to allow the San to travel alone. I think if you give your nikobi, Vallia will welcome you royally. And there are many Pachaks who now call Vallia home.”

  The twins looked at each other again and the looks said it all. They nodded. “This we will do.”

  “Good.” I felt relieved. “Then that is settled.”

  Nodgen returned to camp then bearing two huge armfuls of paline branches, and we all fell on the yellow cherry-like fruits with delight. So the day passed. Any good Kregan likes his eight good square meals a day — six at a pinch. But, as I say, our meals were woefully unbalanced. The suns began to sink.

  The ostentatious way in which Prince Tyfar and Jaezila each avoided the other’s company amused me.

  We were given a demonstration again of her prowess with the bow, for she hauled the bow off her shoulder, nocked the shaft, and let fly, and the bird that had been fleeting across the clearing fell plump down alongside Hunch. He jumped a foot.

  “By Tryflor!” He grabbed the bird by the neck and swung it about, so that the arrow whirled. “It would not surprise me if the bird descended already plucked and stuffed for the fire!”

  We all laughed.

  Shadows of russet and sea green lay across the clearing. The Suns of Scorpio plunged into banks of ocher and rose clouds, and the broad bulk of Kregen rolled up to enfold them once more in night. The vollers were brought out from under the trees.

  Barkindrar the Bullet declared roundly that, by the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh, he could get his leg up into the voller without assistance. He climbed in awkwardly. Nath the Shaft hovered over him. Tyfar was in the cabin stowing away his armor. At the second voller the Pachaks were stowing their gear and organizing the meticulous arrangements for their new employer to whom they had given their nikobi, and Quienyin was leaning on the coaming watching me walk across to him. I made up my mind.

  “Hunch! Nodgen!”

  “Jak?”

  “You will fly with San Quienyin.”

  “But—!”

  “I shall see you soon. But I value the protection you, together with the twins, can afford the San.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Hunch, crossly. “We can look after him all right.”

  “So long as there is somewhere to run away, eh, Hunch?” And Nodgen guffawed. But there was no malice in him. He had seen how his comrade Hunch could fight, as had I.

  “Up with you,” I said.

  The good-byes were made. Tyfar came over with the others and we all called the Remberees...

  Quienyin and those four men to look after him lifted away in the voller into the darkling shadows. The suns were nearly gone.

  Tyfar hurried back to finish stowing his armor. He had picked up a fine harness and cared for it. Jaezila and Kaldu stood looking over the coaming of the foredeck beside the control levers. I started for the remaining flier. Then I halted and swung back. I wanted a final word with Jaezila and Tyfar both, some jumbled notions in my old vosk skull of a head of trying to get them to see reason, one with the other.

  When Jaezila arrived in Ruathytu that young lady would discover that the gallant ninny Tyfar was a Prince of Hamal.

  A twinge of disappointment that I would miss that entertaining spectacle afforded me resigned amusement.

  From under the shadows of the trees men broke in a long savage line of twinkling steel and bared teeth.

  They yelled war cries as they charged. They raced for the voller where Jaezila’s bow slapped into her fist. I stood halfway between the voller and the thrusting line of foemen.

  “Run, Jak!” screamed Jaezila.

  There was no time to reach either of the fliers.

  I unlimbered the thraxter and swung about.

  “Take off!” I bellowed.

  The men running in with such headlong ferocity were a mix of races. I cast a swift look back. Jaezila was about to leap over the coaming to join me. There was no sign of Tyfar.

  In a buffeting of wings, scores of mirvols catapulted over the trees, fell toward the voller. The flying animals bore flyers on their backs, counterparts to the footmen advancing against me. Weapons flamed in the last of the suns.

  The trap had been sprung. But the cramphs were too late to take Quienyin’s airboat. Just before I swung about to start hammering at the running men I saw Kaldu seize Jaezila and draw her back into the voller. Heartbeats later the voller lifted into the air, smashing through the fluttering wings of the mirvols.

  She turned, she lifted, two mirvols collided and fell away in a smashing clawing of wing and talon, and then the voller soared away over the trees.

  I was left to face the savage onrush of naked steel.

  Chapter eleven

  Vajikry

  The thongs binding my wrists were not lesten hide and when the time came for me to burst them, I fancied they’d snap without too much effort. As I stood before Trylon Nath Orscop I had to check myself and realize that time had not arrived yet.

  His private room was furnished with an austerity surprising in a man wielding his kind of power. He sat behind a plain desk of balass, black and shining, the walls were covered by plain silk drapes, the floor by plain carpets of some indescribable weave that scratched the feet, and his men wore plain dark harnesses of black and bronze. But they had been smart enough in knocking me over, netting me with iron links in the old way of man management on Kregen. Now I was brought before the trylon to discover what he wanted.

  A trylon is four rungs down the ladder of nobility, usually. This Nath Orscop, the Trylon of Absordur, ruled a small trylonate; but it was buried in the woodlands, rich in timber and minerals, and he kept himself to himself. He had a single ruling passion, and I was to discover what that was rather sharply.

  “You claim your name is Jak the Sturr?”

  “Yes, notor.”

  I spoke with just enough neutrality in my voice to pass muster. I was prepared to humor this trylon, for the fellow intrigued me. He wore clothes of severe cut, a rusty black, with a flat, black velvet cap. His face was long and narrow, gaunt, very pale, and his gray eyes seemed filmed. Deeply indented lines grooved beside his nose and mouth. A tall oblong of pallid violence, that face, framed in the rusty black.

  “You play Vajikry, of course.”

  “Moderately, notor. Now, if it is Jikaida—”

  The guard at my side, a hulking Gon, hit me alongside the head with his bludgeon.

  “My lord!” bellowed the Gon. “I heard nothing!”

  ‘That is good,” said Trylon Nath, as I put a hand to my head where the famous Bells of Beng Kishi were starting their second round of campanological mayhem. “That name, that game, is never mentioned here.

  Only—” And here he leered at me. “Only we flog jikaider — that is the only use for the name here in Absordur.”

  “As the notor pleases,” I said, eyeing the Gon’s bludgeon.

  Many a fellow winces when Jikaida is mentioned; this cramph seemed possessed of more than a fair share of hatred for the game. But, for Vajikry, his passion was all-encompassing.

  “All who enter my trylonate uninvited are given the opportunity to play Vajikry. The game is supreme here. If you win you go free and with a handful of golden deldys to go with you. If you lose...”

  He didn’t have to tell me, did he?

  I said, “Do many men win, notor?”

  He sni
ggered and wiped his pallid lips with a kerchief.

  “Do not let that disturb you, Jak the Sturr. You will need all your concentration for the game.”

  I’d been playing games a lot, just lately, what with Kazz-Jikaida and Monsters and Moders — and now, Vajikry. I’m no real hand at it, and admit that. Maybe I was in a tighter spot than I had realized.

  Trylon Nath stood up from behind that black balass desk. At his waist he wore a bronze-link belt, and a thick, curved dagger sheath swung from lockets. The blade of that kind of dagger, well-known in Havilfar, is often as wide as a knuckle at the hilt, and a Kregan knuckle is 4.2 inches. The blade curves very sharply to a fine point, is sharpened on both edges, and can go in your guts and burst your heart.

  The Havilfarese call that manner of dagger a kalider. The hilt was thick and heavy and without gems.

  “Now, Jak the Sturr, you will be given refreshment. We meet here as the suns go down. You will play Vajikry with me. Whatever your gods may be you would do well to pray to them for guidance.”

  “Yes, notor,” I said, bowing. “Thank you, notor.”

  He smiled.

  They stuffed me into a small stone-walled chamber with a window large enough for a woflo to squirm through and gave me to eat. Rough viands: coarse bread, fatty vosk rashers, stewed cabbage, momolams too long in the tooth for tastiness, and, at the end, a clay dish with eleven palines. I know, I counted.

  The water from an earthenware cup tasted of weeds and mud.

  In the next cell a man was singing a nice cheerful song. His voice rose dolorously. He sang “The March of the Skeletons.” This starts off by recounting how a brilliant and charming girl returned from a boat holiday, and goes on, as is the way of that inscrutable Kregan humor, to detail her story of how the skeletons all marched from the graveyard in search of their missing flesh and blood. As I say, a nice, rousing, cheerful song for the surroundings.

  The spires and battlemented towers we had glimpsed as we set the vollers down crowned the very place in which I was confined. This was the palace and chief city of Trylon Nath’s Absordur. I had seen little of it, being brought here festooned with iron nets. Pretty soon when the shafts of emerald and ruby from that mocking window shifted to the far wall the guards took me out and spruced me up a trifle under three buckets of water, and then we all marched off to Trylon Nath’s private room.

  If I felt just as those skeletons felt, marching off all clicking and bony in search of their missing flesh, I am sure you will grasp my feelings. Vajikry! That infuriating game!

  I remember once, in the Fleeced Ponsho in Sanurkazz, Nath and Zolta starting on a game in all friendship with a couple of swiftermen, and how, long before the end, the bottles were flying, the fists were flying, the ale was flying, we were flying and the mobiles — well, jolly fat mobiles with their rusty swords, no, they weren’t flying after us. But it was a right old punch-up — and all over a simple board game. Trouble is, Vajikry is not as simple as it looks.

  Trylon Nath Orscop sat at his black balass desk and I saw his long pallid face and the way he gloated on the Vajikry board set out on the polished desk surface. The board was hexagonal, although you can have round or square boards, and a serpent or ladder-like series of hexes or squares coil inward from one edge to the center. Often there are two parallel coils, curled one within the other, and this confounded mournful-faced old buzzard would have the dual-coil variety, naturally.

  The Vajikry board looks not unlike a coil of rope. If you set squares so that two squares abut onto one, giving two ways to go, you have what is in effect the same as hexagons. I am not a hexagon man, preferring eight ways to go rather than six; but the linear distance argument holds some weight. I looked at the board, and at the guards standing beside me with their bludgeons ready and their swords scabbarded. Four samphron-oil lamps shed a mellow light, a silver dish contained a piled-up display of fruits, wine stood in flasks — it looked a cosy scene, and this old vulture brooded over it like a dopa-doomed Rapa.

  “Come in and sit down, Jak the Sturr. I trust you are ready for the game?”

  “Notor,” I said, and sat in the sturmwood chair across from Trylon Nath.

  The pieces were set out, and, surmising that I had better show some interest in the confounded game, I studied them. It is not necessary to understand very much about Vajikry to follow what happened. By Vox, no! But, all the same, the game is a tartar. You have a number of pieces of different ranks, and the irritating thing is that while the chief piece, called a Rok, of which you have two, can take the other pieces of superior rank, he cannot take the lowest ranked superior piece, called a strom. In between, the kov can take vads and trylons; vads can take trylons and Stroms; and trylons can take Stroms. This is the old scissors, stone, paper idea, or pikes, swordsmen, cavalry on a sterner field. For — a strom may capture a Rok.

  The Roks cannot take the opposing Roks; but of the inferior pieces, some are called flutsmen, and when a Rok chooses to land on a square — or hex — containing a friendly flutsman he can fly right off the board and reappear during a later turn at a prescribed distance. I suppose there is a resemblance to the zeunt of Jikaida in this move. The other inferior pieces cannot be taken by their opposite numbers. Some inferior pieces are zoids, traps, and a secret mark is made on a flap of the board denominating which particular pieces are traps. When a superior piece lands on the square of a zoid, the secret mark is turned up and, lo! the superior piece is taken instead.

  That, at the least, has always appealed to me.

  If a superior piece is taken, not a Rok, of course, you can promote an inferior piece, not a flutsman, to his place.

  So I studied the board and saw that Trylon Nath was a Vajikry fiend, all right, for he had laid out the maximum number of pieces allowed to each rank. The numbers, in varying, control the duration of the game, as well as changing its character.

  We were in for a long session, until one of us had taken both the opposing Roks and then safely seated at least one of his own Roks at the spider’s web center of the board.

  And no flutsman may enter the final circle at the center.

  “I shall, of course, allow you to go first.”

  “Thank you, notor.”

  “Play well, Jak the Sturr. I do not trouble myself over winning or losing.” In that, the old buzzard lied most damnably, that was very clear. “But, for you, a lost game is a lost life.”

  “So I gathered — notor.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Let us get down to it, as King Naghan said to the fifi.”

  “Yes, notor.”

  So, not without some hesitation, I moved my first piece. This was a nicely carved representation of a swordsman, an inferior piece, called a hiviku. Now Hiviku the Artful is, I suppose, the Havilfarese equivalent to Vikatu the Dodger, the archetypal old sweat, the old soldier who knows all the tricks and can swing the lead furiously. And this I was now about to do. I took my time. I played cautiously, well guessing that Trylon Nath would suss me out in no time and then bore in with all his force. And his long mournful face would look more mournful still. For he might be an old reprobate; but he dearly loved his Vajikry, and longed to meet an opponent who would give him a prolonged and engrossing tussle. I knew I was in no frame of mind to concentrate. My Val! Didn’t Turko, all Vallia, await me?

  Well, that’s as may be.

  We played. I fell smack into one of his traps, and with a mournful look he turned up the secret mark and his zoid whisked one of my vads away.

  I had a nice opening showing, and took a chance, and one of my flutsmen removed a Rok from the board, ready to come in hell for leather when he least expected it. He reached for the wine.

  He poured himself, so I judged his temper concerning slaves.

  “You will join me, Jak the Sturr?”

  The wine was a green pimpim, thick and cloying, out of Loh.

  “Thank you, notor. A little pale yellow, if I may...?”

  He waved a negligent hand to t
he array of bottles and amphorae stacked on the side table and the floor on tripods.

  I stood up. The guards were all looking at the board, and I judged Trylon Nath was forced to play them when he had no unsuspecting and uninvited guests. The thongs binding my wrists impeded me only a little.

  The chains and nets had been removed. I moved to the side table and took up a goblet. I half-turned, looking at the room, placing the positions of the guards.

  Very well...

  Turning my back on the Trylon so that I could break the thongs, I suddenly turned back. The old devil was in the act of lifting up the flap of the board to look at my secret mark denominating one of my hivikus as a zoid.

  The yetch!

  Swiftly I twisted back to the table and broke the thongs. My wrists tingled as they came free. Holding a glass, low, I swung back to face into the room. The guards were smirking away, one to the other, letting their lord see how much they admired his astuteness.

  There were four strides to the desk — three if I jumped a trifle.

  Three strides took me there, that wicked curved dagger came free of Trylon Nath’s scabbard, and the broad, sharp blade pressed against his neck.

  “Just all hold still,” I said, cheerfully.

  Trylon Nath was a rigid lump. He knew a single twitch from that deadly curved blade could slit his throat from ear to ear.

  “Yes, trylon,” I told him. “And will slit your damned throat. Now you will play my game, and not your cheating brand of damned Vajikry.”

  “You are a dead man, Jak the Sturr.”

  “And, my friend, so are you, if that be the case. Now, up with you. I am tired of games.”

  The guards sweated. They looked at me and I looked at them. They knew the score.

  “We are going to take a little walk.” I didn’t care if I sounded like a cheap melodrama down on Wharf Street in Vondium. “You have a voller? Good. I shall regard that as fair quittance for unwanted hospitality.” Then I wounded him sorely. “And for a damned cheating rogue who wins foul at Vajikry.”