Legions of Antares [Dray Prescot #25]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Feeling a traitor, I said, “Lobur is eager to please."

  “Ah!"

  We walked along in silence for a space among the throngs out to enjoy themselves, their faces animated in the torchlights becketed to walls and archways. The air smelled sweet, even here in the Sacred Quarter, and the scent of moon blooms drenched down, refreshing and nostalgic.

  Then Tyfar said, “I refuse to listen to anything said against Lobur, as you know. Thefi is in love with him, I think."

  “You think?"

  He lifted a hand, the gesture a helpless appeal. “I am not sure. Kov Thrangulf is everywhere laughed at as a stick in the mud, a bore. He has no ham in his name, true, but he held onto the kovnate. I think he is more worthy than folk are willing to give him credit for."

  Very quickly I decided this moil was not for me. I liked Princess Thefi well enough, and she was Tyfar's sister. Lobur, despite the dealings I had had with him, remained an unknown quantity. I did not believe the triangle of passion and hatred here could affect my work for Vallia. Well, in that I was wrong, as you shall hear.

  So, in that honest if misguided conception, I could say, “There is every indication that this evil war will hot up, and when it does Lobur will be in the thick of it. A man's fortunes may change overnight."

  Tyfar glanced back, and I knew he was not checking if the four guards assigned us were following on discreetly, as feeling the annoyance that a man could not take a stroll in the Sacred Quarter without guards. A straightforward Bladesman's ruffling fight, all swirling capes and shouts of “Ha!” and “Hai!” and much leaping and twirling, well, that was one thing. And the ever-present possibility of a hired stikitche going in to earn his hire and assassinate you was another. But this new business of Spikatur Hunting Sword, where men didn't give a damn if they died or not just so they could skewer you—well, that did call for four hulking guards to dog the prince's footsteps.

  He swung back and gave that fighting man's hitch to his belt where his axe snugged ready to hand. We'd never satisfactorily settled between us how soon Tyfar could dispose of a rapier and main-gauche Bladesman with his axe, and we'd mocked each other, saying the rapier would snick past a clumsy axe swing and an axe would lop a head before the onker realized and so forth, and so forth. Now Tyfar took his hat off and bashed it against his thigh, and punched it, and put it back on his head.

  “We are for the Twentieth Army and the mountains,” he said.

  I stopped walking. I stared at him where a torchlight threw orange smears like butter down his cheeks and set skull-shadows under the hatbrim.

  “The Twentieth? The mountains of the west? You said nothing—"

  “No. Security. I suppose I should be pleased. After all, I am young and have been given an army."

  I glared at my comrade. I spoke as the Ice Floes of Sicce must grate and grind together as they suck down the ibs of the departed. “I give you my congratulations, prince, on your new command."

  “Jak!” He flung up one hand, appealing, his face distorted in that orange and black grotesquerie.

  “You are my comrade, Tyfar, and dear to me. But, by Krun, you don't expect me to follow you to the Twentieth, do you? Molder away out in the West?"

  “I take over from Kapt Thorhan, who fell from his bird. I know the army guards the western frontier against the wild men, I know we should be facing the other three points of the compass, I know the men will be dispirited and sullen—"

  “They'll be mutinous, a rabble—"

  “—but my father commands it.” He was appealing to me, to understand and, perhaps, to forgive. “You are a fighting man with your way to make in the world, just like Lobur. I shall not hold you. Havil knows, I would escape this posting if I could; but I am given an army as a trial. If I fail, if I refuse..."

  “It will lead on, Tyfar, to greater commands. Of course."

  I couldn't go blindly back to the western mountains and sit in strongholds and fly patrols against the wild men! I had so many hooks baited the fish would be snapping at my ankles. And Tyfar, as a prince, still had to work his way up the hierarchy of command. The Hamalese are not stupid—or not more so than most peoples—when it comes to handing out responsible posts.

  “You will write to me—?"

  “If you leave an address."

  “Your letters will reach me at Hammansax."

  I nodded.

  He went on, “The wild men have caused disturbances among the vo'drins."

  I knew about the volgendrins, marvelous flying islands where the Hamalese grew an abundance of pashams, honey-melon-sized fruits which, although they might smell like old socks and taste like the sweepings of a totrix stable, were processed to form a component in voller production. And facts clicked into place. Production of the silver boxes which powered vollers in the air was down. The wild men were “creating disturbances."

  Slowly and with meaning, I said, “It could be this posting is vitally important. You won't be sitting on your hands out there."

  Tyfar drew a breath. “Then you'll come?"

  “No."

  “I do understand. I shall miss you.” We walked on past the brilliantly lit entrance to a lord's villa and into the shadows beyond where small shops flickered their lesser lights. “What will you do? The Air Service needs support."

  To be honest, I was not absolutely sure of what would be best as my next step. I had a certain project to accomplish here in Ruathytu before I hared off down south into the Dawn Lands to help coordinate their attacks on Hamal. I anticipated objections to our plans down there.

  “As your aide I have been granted the honorary rank of ob-Jiktar. I appreciate that. Will it open doors?"

  “Ah!” Ahead of us now past the shoulders of folk pushing into and out of the shops a tavern's sign proclaimed The Bolt and Quarrel and we made for a quick wet. “The rank may be honorary but I shall have a few words in the right ears. You wish to command a voller with a little more weight than that a Hikdar pulls?"

  “Yes."

  “Then consider it done. Who knows? You may even fly out to visit me as I moulder away in those damned mountainous forts."

  I quelled my sigh of relief. I thoroughly detested bamboozling my friend and comrade like this. I wanted command of a Hamalese flier for reasons that would make Tyfar's hair stand on end.

  “Jak, one thing—you'll probably have to find your own crew. We are stretched for quality voswods and, another thing, it may be possible that instead of a voller they'll assign you to a famblehoy."

  I made a face. “If that is to be, I'll accept. But a voller—"

  “I'll do what I can."

  Thoughts of my days on Earth when as a first lieutenant of a seventy-four I had hungered for my own command mocked me. How relatively easy it was to obtain your heart's desire when you had Influence!

  The Bolt and Quarrel was packed with army officers, and the diffs among them, paktuns, kept themselves to themselves along one side. This new and unpleasant hostility to diffs in Hamal showed least among fighting men. A warrior recognizes another warrior, no matter if he has scales, or a tail, or three or four arms. We managed to acquire a couple of glasses and then went outside to the patio, under the torchlights which drowned the moon-radiance of She of the Veils. If there was a tension between us, it would pass.

  At the far end of the patio a troupe of jugglers and fire-eaters and magicians went through their repertoire of tricks, and the roars of delight and wonder as a man swallowed a flaming brand or a pyramid of muscle-bound fellows stood on one another's heads drove us farther away. Our talk although offhand remained of vital importance to us both. At length Tyfar could not keep back the thought that stood foremost in his mind. He put his glass down. “You are going away again, Jak. And Jaezila? By Havil! How I miss her!"

  I said, with a fervor that was absolutely genuine: “So do I!"

  Despite the uproar with the jugglers, or perhaps because of that, and with the tavern crowded with fighting men, there was in the air, strong
and unmistakable, the feeling of departure. Soldiers shouting out good-bye, and the people waving and calling as the armies left—yes, this feeling is one dreadfully familiar. That feeling itched everyone here this night, even though the departures lay for the morrow. With what lay between Tyfar and me we did not make a night of it, but took ourselves back. Two days later Tyfar was gone.

  He had been as good as his word. I had been made up to dwa-Jiktar and given a voller to command. If I could not find a crew within a month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, the voller would be taken away and given to someone who could.

  The Hamalese officers commiserated with me, being helpful and encouraging, saying things like, “You'll never find a crew these days,” and, “Let the nobles take the commands, they can always find crews."

  My problem was quite the opposite from what these Hamalese imagined.

  On the question of crewing my new voller, once I made known in certain quarters I needed men, I would be inundated by offers, and infamously injure the good feelings of magnificent fighting men by having to choose elsewhere. And, by Zair! How was I to make the choices? How was I to select a mere fifty or sixty fellows from the thousands who would fight to be with me?

  * * *

  Chapter twelve

  Mathdi

  As the voller bore on steadily southward I wrote names on a sheet of paper. The first sheet filled up rapidly, and I took another from the rack. A glance through the forward windows—they were more than scuttles—showed me the empty sky and the high clouds all suffused with the glory of Zim and Genodras shining refulgently. The second sheet filled. At the fourth sheet I sat back, in despair, knowing the task was impossible.

  The voller the Hamalese Air Service had assigned me flew well and confidence could be reposed in her that she would not arbitrarily break down as the airboats the Hamalese used to sell abroad would invariably do. She was called Mathdi. I was alone. The reason for the flight I had given was firstly to test out Mathdi and get the feel of her, and secondly to recruit a crew of volmen and the fighting component of voswods. Having said that, I could say nothing about the age and state of the craft, for Mathdi was old and if not decrepit then weak at the knees.

  In the current fraught state of voller production in Hamal everything that could fly had been pressed into service. In the normal course of events Mathdi would have been broken up and her silver boxes freshened up to give them a longer lease of life before they turned black and useless, and a new ship built around them. There was no time for that now. She was a beamy craft of two decks, with fighting towers and balconies and her design had long since been superseded by new models. She carried the venerable air of fragile antiquity about her, and I loved her.

  All the same, to find her crew ... Every name I had written down had been winnowed from a much longer list in my head. I needed men who could carry off a deception and who would not instantly bellow out at the sight of a Hamalese and go charging down to blatter the poor fellow. Many of those names you know—and plenty you have not so far been introduced to—and every one a ferocious fighting man, a warrior, a soldier, a man who knew his trade and, more importantly, knew why he fought.

  Mathdi would sink under the weight of the men who would clamor to follow me into battle.

  Not, I confess, a comfortable thought. I am not one of your charismatic killers. At least, I devoutly hope not. I do have that special form of charisma the Kregans call the yrium, and this may curse or bless indifferently. Men will follow me. With that responsibility on my shoulders I had to lead well, so that as few as possible suffered. Not easy. Not easy at all, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux!

  And, too, although I would disagree with the judgment, some people might say that reluctance to send men off to their deaths caused me to joy so much in adventuring off by myself or with a chosen band of comrades. The reasons for that were quite obvious, and quite removed from considerations of empire.

  Unable to come to any sensible decision over the lists I threw the paper onto the chart desk and took myself off on another tour of inspection. The controls were locked to a steady level flight. Up on the topmost lookout tower where on Earth the crow's nest would have perched, I stared around the wide horizons. By Zair! What a world is Kregen!

  Ahead hills stretched in folds of blue and gray threaded by sillver watercourses. Dense clumps of trees strewed the flanks of the hills with darker greens and browns. The sky lifted, sheer, crystalline, suffused with the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. I looked down. Mathdi looked, as all ships look small from the masthead, a cunningly wrought toy. Her bulwarks were solid lenk, the oak of Kregen, and her fighting towers were armored in iron and bronze. As for her teeth—the ballistae snouted along her sides, ranked deck by deck, and catapults lifted in cleared areas. She might be old and creaky; she was a beautiful craft, and I overlooked the severe dint in her larboard flank where, in the long ago, some idiot had rammed her.

  Her main color scheme tended to blue, with gray and white adornments. There was precious little gilt left, and the gingerbread work was mostly gone. The eyes in her bows, one larboard, the other starboard, had been freshly painted. No need to wonder that the sea and air-faring folk of Kregen adorn their ships with eyes, still, as we did—and do, by Zair!—here on Earth to let the ship see where she's going. Mathdi was clearly Hamalian in origin and to avoid as much unpleasantness as possible where I was going I'd prepared a few flags ahead of time. The flagstaffs were all bare. With a sigh I climbed down to the deck and went into the armored conning tower just forward of amidships to make sure the lock on the controls was still in place. I'd had experience, on Earth, of old ships where one sailed in the constant expectation of the bottom falling out. The conning tower with its racks of crossbows and stuxes, its air of spartan efficiency, did not depress me. From here a captain would conn his ship in action, if he did not, like me, feel more at home out on the open deck.

  Soon Mathdi would resound to the noise of her crew. And still I could not choose from all those splendid fighting men. A thought occurred to me. Of course! I could not simply take away men from their regiments, their ships, their aerial cavalry squadrons—of course not. I would say, firmly, that their duty demanded they continue the struggle there, and not go haring off with me. Well—it might work.

  “By the revolting pestilential carcass of Makki Grodno exhumed!” I said. “Sink me! I'll line ‘em all up on paper and toss an arrow for each one. That's what I'll do, by Vox!"

  Let chance decide among peers.

  Just to give myself an edge, I could push the crew of Mathdi up to a hundred. She'd take that number without bending in half or having bits fall off.

  So, alone in the ship, on we pressed, Mathdi and I, on to what of peril the Dawn Lands would afford us.

  No difficulty presented itself in choosing a course to take us clear of any continuing fighting. With such a large area and so long a frontier, inevitably the gaps between actions, sieges and routs were immense. A sharp lookout had to be kept to spot the aerial patrols the contending forces would maintain between their major areas. With the River Os, He of the Commendable Countenance, left far to the north, Mathdi and I flew on over the Dawn Lands of Havilfar.

  From staring overside I brought my gaze back to look forward along that sweet curve of Mathdi's decks. Deb-Lu-Quienyin stood just beside the third starboard varter, a pale shimmer of ghost-shine about his robed figure. I climbed down and walked toward this apparition.

  “Jak! You'll have to go to Ingleslad—that's the capital of Layerdrin—right away."

  “I know it's the capital, Deb-Lu—and what's the trouble this time—?"

  I stopped speaking, for I was speaking to myself. The solid wood and iron of the varter showed through the Wizard of Loh, and as he vanished so the ballista exuded a breath of cold. Well, now. Deb-Lu was in the devil of a hurry. So, obediently, I went back to the conning tower and directed Mathdi on course for Ingleslad. Layerdrin was just one of the small countries of the Dawn Lands, long sinc
e overrun by the iron legions of Hamal. The distance was on the order of five hundred or so miles, and I'd make it in six hours or so. Locking the controls again I went off for a bite to eat.

  The necessity of keeping up my cover as a dwa-Jiktar in the Hamalian Air Service, commanding a voller, made me wonder how long I could stretch this flight before reporting back. Truth to tell, the thought that I would not have to decide on the names in those confounded lists today cheered me up, coward that I am. As soon as I'd found out what Deb-Lu's mysterious words meant, I'd have to high tail it for Ruathytu and the Air Service berths at Urnmayern where I was based.

  The people of Layerdrin had lived under the Hamalese yoke for some time now and were thoroughly cowed. The chances of a revolt originating there seemed remote. Yet as I slanted in through a gap in the Mountains of Yallom fringing the eastern boundaries of the country, with a wide basin ahead threaded by rivers and patterned with agriculture, I saw the old and dreadful signs of combat ahead.

  Swarms of flyers winged high above the city. Flames shot up and smoke rolled away downwind. The flyers were mostly fluttrells and, for a moment of horrid doubt, I thought they were flutsmen. Then, as I swung in nearer, I saw the picture and realized the truth, a truth so overwhelming I hammered a fist onto the lenken coaming before me and swore.

  “By the putrescent putrid eyeballs of Makki Grodno! The idiots!"

  But it was true. Here in this cleft between the mountains the first invasion of Hamal had begun.

  Down there, and swinging high in the sky, the armies of our allies from the central and southern nations of the Dawn Lands fought the Hamalese garrison, seeking to batter their way through. This should have taken place when the armies from Hyrklana and Vallia invaded, so as to provide a pincer movement that prevented the Hamalese from reinforcing any one front. A combined offensive had every chance of succeeding. But these hotheads had struck ahead of time. They could be crushed, and the Hamalese turn, fresh from victory, to deal with the invasions from north and east.