I learned that implacable frontiers had been drawn between Delia’s province of Delphond and Venavito, just to the west. Venavito was an Imperial Province. I should say, had been an Imperial Province. The Imperial Province of Vond, just to the north of Delphond, was in our hands; but Thadelm, to the west, was a battleground. I frowned at this news. We had fought battles in that part of the country and I had hoped we had cleared the enemy out.
“It is mostly a matter of border raids, majister,” I was told.
This area of action was altogether too close to the capital. Plans had been laid before I was summoned away by the Star Lords to my adventures in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar for an army to march to the southwest and liberate all that corner of the island. Why had not that been done? Why had the plans not been acted on? I could obtain no satisfactory answers to my questions on that score.
The answer that I guessed, at the time, to be near the truth, reflected my own caution and anxiety. The Lord Farris and the Presidio well knew my concern for dissipating our forces. We had the raging armies of clansmen in the northeast to deal with. We had Layco Jhansi and the Racters in the northwest. We had to pivot on a center to face all ways at once. If we committed too much in a single lone thrust, we exposed our backs. Yet, I was now convinced, we must strike, make a decisive move in one direction or another, and so begin the final campaigns.
When Captain Hando used the word “implacable” to describe the new frontier between Delphond and Venavito, I understood exactly what he meant. It was not an incongruous word. I stared after the fluttrells. But I did not give the order to swing the ship after them. Challenger continued on her course, sailing the sky, and the suns shone and the flutsmen vanished back to their camps and fortresses in Venavito.
Too much awaited me in Vondium. The state of the country had to be seen to first, before I could go harum-scarum after a pack of miserable sky-reivers, much as I would have liked to have done.
Even after all this time I know I have not done justice to the splendor, the beauty, the grandeur of Vondium. It is a human city, filled with warmth and light, and the brilliance of the vegetation, the silver-gleaming canals, the traceries of bridges, all the spires and towers, complement and enhance the city’s welcome. At this time much of the proud city lay in ruins. Rebuilding went on spasmodically, when we could spare workmen and materials. So as Challenger came slanting down out of the sky and the topmen swarmed aloft to furl her canvas and Captain Hando brought her nearly in to a landing in her berth in the admiralty complex alongside the Varmondsweay Canal, I felt the shiver of appreciation for the great city despite her scars and dilapidations. Here, in the capital of the empire, was the place where I worked.
There is a word in Kregish — diashum — which I suppose can be translated as magnificent. Certainly, in those days of travail and struggle for the island empire, it was diashum to be a Vallian. And, while that was true, it was also remarkably easy to join the ranks of the diashum dead.
For me, this homecoming turned out to be dust and ashes.
Practically no one was left in the city of those to whom I wished so urgently to talk. Prince Drak and most of the army had flown and marched north to deal with a new and serious incursion of the clansmen.
He had taken with him the majority of the Sword Watch, which explained, as I knew, why those who had flown for me in Challenger were from the Second Regiment. Seg Segutorio was already up there, locked in combat. Nath Nazabhan and the Phalanx were fully engaged. The Lord Farris had taken his air along. My son Jaidur, as usual, was missing. As for my daughters — Lela was Opaz knew where, and, likewise, Dayra was off conducting more mischief, I did not doubt. Inch sent news from the Black Mountains of violent affrays and ambushes and of a gradual clearance of his kovnate.
Filbarrka kept busy in the Filbarrka regions of the Blue Mountains. A number of my Valkan regiments had arrived in the city and had incontinently gone north. Jilian had taken her Battle Maidens off to the wars again. Many another fine comrade you have met in my narrative had gone.
So, as you can see, I felt down.
Yet, despite all this, I was fully conscious of the fact that I could not go haring up north after them. I had been accused by Tyfar of being overhasty in running on a leem’s tracks. Those people up there, they could handle the problems. I was firmly convinced that all that had happened to me since I had left Vondium bore most strongly on what was afoot. Very little, if anything, had happened by chance.
Everything was all a part of that master plan I now knew to be guiding my footsteps on Kregen.
Even Deb-Lu-Quienyin had gone. I was cheered to hear that Khe-Hi-Bjanching had returned, and the two Wizards of Loh, so I gathered from the palace staff, had warmed one to the other. Khe-Hi knew of Deb-Lu’s reputation. They would work together.
So... In all this... Yes. Delia. Where the hell had she gone to this time?
Chapter eighteen
Silda
The pouch containing the brooch and the baubles I had retrieved from the Moder and which I had retained through my adventures now lay on the desk before me. I sat in that small room in the imperial palace and I glowered at the brooch, at the shelves of books, and the maps that, as ever, mocked me from the walls, at the arms rack. In this room I had done a deal of work and, by Vox, was to do a damned deal more.
“Yes, yes,” I said to Chuktar Naroku, “you have taken employment with the Prince Majister and I shall honor the pledge.”
Chuktar Naroku rubbed his thumb along his right tusk. His three-inch-long tusks, thrusting up arrogantly from the corners of his mouth, were banded in gold. His oily yellow skin glistened in the radiance of the samphron-oil lamps. His pigtail hung down his back. He filled his armor. He sweated. He was not apim like me, he was a diff, a Chulik out of the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. Reared from birth to the handling of weapons, Chuliks are justly respected and feared as mercenaries. Of humanity...?
Well, they do have a modicum more of that precious commodity than, say, the damned Katakis.
The diff at Naroku’s side coughed. He had a long-nosed canine face, and his air of eternal supercilious superiority was guaranteed to get up the snub nose of diff and apim alike.
“My archers, majister—” began this Chuktar Unstabi.
“The same goes for you, too,” I said. I own my voice snapped a trifle pettishly. Chuktar Unstabi was an Undurker, from the Undurkor islands south of the huge promontory of Persinia. Both these Chuktars, which is a rank something like junior general, brigadier, were hyrpaktuns. They were costing my treasury good red gold.
My son, Prince Drak, had contracted to hire mercenaries to wage the war against the mercenaries hired by our enemies.
Fume though I might, I had to honor his pledge. But, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’ll have something to say to that son of mine when I see him, by Krun!
I looked sharply at the man who stood silently a little to one side of the two hyrpaktuns. He was a Vallian. He wore a fancy new uniform, all buff and red, with a solid iron breastplate. His shrewd, weather-beaten face conveyed the sense of a man of gravitas, and the brown Vallian eyes were partially hidden by down-drooping lids. He wore a rapier and main gauche. The two mercenaries also wore their weapons.
“And now you feel you are fit to march to the southwest, Kov Vodun?”
“Yes, majister, with your blessing.” Kov Vodun Alloran had lost his kovnate of Kaldi, right in the toe of southwest Vallia, to that rast Strom Rosil Yasi. Kov Vodun kept up an unceasing barrage of contumely against our enemies, and lusted after returning and hanging every last one from the tallest tree branches he could find.
A number of invasions had been launched through his province. We had resisted and now, with Kov Vodun to prod us into action, we felt the time was ripe for us to return in strength and kick Yasi and his foul henchmen out of our land. The trouble was, and this trouble explained our experiences after Mancha of Tlinganden had been wrecked, our army had been forced to march
north. The strength left in the capital was now rather too weak for my liking. But, still and all, that southwest rankled...
“If we can clear all the southwest,” I said, “it will free our hands for the sterner tasks ahead.”
Kov Vodun snapped erect. “Sterner tasks, majister?”
I sighed. Trust me to say the wrong thing.
“Only in matters of number, kov; not in anything else.”
“I see.”
A prickly customer, Kov Vodun Alloran. Very popular with the ladies, with his tales of guerrilla action from the hills. Alloran had done well at the Battle of Kanarsmot, and afterwards in that fraught action to take the fortress where Inch had rejoined us. Kov Vodun Alloran had been chosen by the Presidio, with the blessings of Prince Drak and the Lord Farris, to lead the Army of the Southwest to liberate that area of our land.
“Very well,” I said. “My mind is made up. You have the nucleus of the forces earmarked for you—”
“The most of which were taken away!” said Alloran, with a prickly nastiness. He had regained a very great measure of his own self-esteem since escaping from his kovnate and fighting with us here. I nodded.
“That is true. And, no doubt, that is why the Prince Majister contracted to engage paktuns. You will have a tidy army, Kov Vodun, to lead into your kovnate.”
He moved his shoulders under the armor and the polished iron caught the light and glittered. “There is the matter of the Fourth Phalanx, majister. I was promised the Fourth, and one wing was taken from me and flown north. I now have only one Kerchuri, and it is in my mind I should take a Kerchuri from the Fifth.”
My old blade comrade Nath Nazabhan had been busy, and besides finishing the raising of the Fourth, he had started the Fifth. Now a phalanx is a wonderful engine of destruction and the pikemen in the files, the brumbytes, of whom there are 10,368, are flanked by the axe and halberd men, the Hakkodin, of whom there are 1,728. There are also strong bodies of archers, and lads to strew caltrops and run with chevaux de frises. A whole lot of men are locked up in a phalanx.
I stirred the piece of paper on my desk. In Drak’s handwriting the composition of the proposed Army of the SW stared me in the face. Drak had written down: “One Kerchuri.” A Kerchuri is a wing of the phalanx, one-half. I looked up at Alloran.
“Two Kerchuris, kov?”
“Aye, majister, two.”
“But the Fifth Phalanx is green raw.”
“Their Ninth Kerchuri is ready. And, by Vox, by the time I have marched them a sennight or so they’ll smarten up!”
“You would leave Vondium with only the Tenth Kerchuri?”
“You need, with your permission, majister, archers to defend city walls.”
That was only half true.
I wondered if he was going to bargain his paktun archers, these Undurkers, for the Ninth Kerchuri. It was, in my view, no bargain at all.
I said, “What do your spies report of the strength and composition of Strom Rosil’s army?”
“Scattered,” he said at once. “He will have time to scrape his men together before I reach him, of course, after the initial breakthrough battles. He has something of the order of thirty thousand he can concentrate with reasonable speed.
Give him two of the Moons of the Twins and he will have fifty or more.”
I stirred Drak’s list again.
“If you move with speed, you can catch him before he concentrates his full strength.”
“That is my plan.”
“And the composition?”
Alloran smiled. “Mercenaries of varying quality. A normal mix of infantry and cavalry. He has also masichieri and aragorn. They hardly count.”
I looked up suspiciously. “Never underrate those rasts.”
“I am thinking, majister, of First Kanarsmot.”
“We surprised them there.”
“And I,” said Kov Vodun, “shall surprise the cramphs again.”
The decision I was being called on to make was your everyday, normal, ulcer-breeding decision facing emperors. If I allowed Kov Vodun to take the army as listed by Drak, less those units detached for duty in the north, plus the Ninth Kerchuri, there would be a skeletal force left in the city. I looked up. I know my face must have looked like a chunk of granite dredged from a thousand-season-old wreck.
The Southwest had to be cleared, the risk accepted. He could take a full phalanx, the Eighth and Ninth Kerchuris. The commands would mesh. Get the job done fast. I told him my decision. Then I said, “Very well. You will take upwards of forty thousand. That should suffice.”
His down-drooping lids lifted, then he smiled, and nodded his satisfaction with what he had salvaged.
“The original army was to have been upwards of sixty thousand, majister. But I will do what I must with these straitened circumstances.”
Just as I was thinking this was a damned boorish way of carrying on, he added, “And I give you my thanks, majister.”
“May Opaz go with you and guide you in the forthcoming battles.”
So off he went with his paktuns and in came Enevon Ob-Eye, my chief stylor, a man whom I trusted and who had a head for figures and lists, and the warrants were prepared.
“You leave the city perilously undefended, majis.”
“Aye, Enevon. But while we attack in the north and attack in the southwest, we have the cramphs off balance. They’ll be too busy defending themselves to attack us here.”
The heavy atmosphere in the room during the interview with Alloran seemed to have gone with him.
Enevon reported that the swarths I had ordered collected were stabled in the sleeth’s stables at the merezo, and the lads of the racing track were caring for their new charges. My experiences in the Humped Land with those damned swarthmen had convinced me a few regiments of swarth-mounted cavalry would not come amiss.
So, as you will see, I was in the thick of this paperwork and caring for it only insofar as I worked for Vallia and Delia. I just could not twine my thoughts around the whereabouts and well-being of Delia. She was off with the Sisters of the Rose, doing marvelous and secret wonders, and no doubt having a tremendous time. As ever, unless I felt that peculiar sense of urgency and disaster, I would not request a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out Delia’s whereabouts.
During this period both Quienyin and Bjanching paid a courtesy call on me. Oh, they were both up north; but their ghostly apparitions showed up in my room, and this comforted me considerably, as you may well imagine. Paying polite visits by these supernatural means, and taking it all as a matter of course, came with an all-standing kind of refresher to me, even if to them it was all in the day’s business.
One visit gave me immense pleasure. Silda, Seg’s daughter, called on me. She couldn’t stop, she said; she was on her way through. I did not inquire. She was about business for the SoR, that was clear.
Silda had grown more beautiful than ever, a bright, charming, happy girl who mentioned the death of her mother just the once. She was also very strong-minded. I could see that. There was in her much of Seg’s greatness of character, and also a deal of her mother’s outgoing warmth which in Silda was not inevitably brought to disaster. If I had to choose a daughter-in-law — and, by Vox, I did not have to, not with Drak making up his own mind! — there was no one I could think of to surpass Silda Segutorio.
She said her brother, Dray Segutorio, was now a hyrpaktun and had only just learned of the troubles afflicting us. He was on his way home.
“The quicker he gets here the better. We need every trained professional we can lay hands on. And I’m not talking about mercenaries. Young Drak has—” And I stopped. I would not too openly criticize Drak in front of Silda. I had seen the way her eyebrows went up, and the purse to those delectable lips, the flush of color along her cheeks. Silda would fight for Drak, aye, fight against his own father! And the luck of Opaz with her!
Then she said, with an abrupt switch of mood, “Have you seen Queen Lushfymi of Lome since you got back
, Uncle Dray?”
“I have not. And it’s about time you stopped calling me Uncle Dray. By Zair! It makes me feel a million years old.”
“I beg your pardon, majister. Of course—”
“Silda, Silda! Just knock it off.”
Her eyebrows flicked up again. Damned attractive, those eyebrows, like the rest of her.
“I mean, knock off the uncle bit. As for Queen Lush — I wish she’d go home to Lome. But of course, poor woman, she can’t. Not with Yantong ready to put her down if she does.”
“Poor woman!” flared Silda. Then, calmly: “It must be hard for her. Aunt Delia’s father meant a great deal to Queen Lushfymi. But do you really think Yantong is in Pandahem?”
“I do not know and I wonder if I really do want to know. No. No, I’d like to know. Then perhaps we could — well, all that is wishful thinking. Even Quienyin doesn’t know where Yantong hides out and tries to run the world.”
Then we talked of more personal matters. When she left with my good wishes and the last Remberees and her refusal of any aid in particular she might need — independent girl — I reflected that not once had she called Lushfymi Queen Lush.
What she had told me, and been at pains to tell me without acknowledging that she had told me, was that Delia was all right, was safe and well, and was chafing to get home. So I could draw a deep breath and soldier on alone. The passing on of that information, I saw, had been the reason for Silda’s visit.
I wondered, with a pang, if Delia knew, or if Silda had brought me the news of her own volition. That would be like Silda.
Kov Vodun was burning to be about his business of clearing up the southwest. I rode faithful old Grumbleknees out to Voxyri Drinnik to see the advance guard off. They were flying out. They would be reinforced as fast as the ships of the air could turn around. The breeze, the Todalpheme had told us, would stay fair, giving a good stiff-sailing course to be steered out and back.
Apart from the Eighth Kerchuri of the Fourth Phalanx and the Ninth Kerchuri of the Fifth, Kov Vodun was taking five thousand churgurs, three thousand archers and five thousand kreutzin, the light infantry and skirmishers. Many of these infantry were mercenaries. For cavalry I had let him have three regiments of totrix heavies, and five divisions of a mixed force of totrix and zorca lancers and archers. He took forty varters, the efficient ballistae of Kregen, wheeled and drawn by a variety of draught animals.
A Victory for Kregen Page 18
