Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14]

by Alan Burt Akers

  She did not waste time on preamble.

  “On the morrow we beat the accursed Grodnims. I am the queen of Zandikar. I shall stand on the wall so that all my people may see me."

  “And get a quarrel through your pretty head."

  She flushed. “If Zair so ordains—"

  “Zair would ordain nothing so foolish. Anyway, I forbid it."

  “You! I am the queen!"

  “You are the queen. You have responsibilities. If you are slain, and slain so stupidly, what will happen to the loyalties of your people? Could you care for them then? And what of my—what of this man Zeg you prate of? Is he Vax's brother or not? Would you spite him?"

  Her face blazed scarlet in the torchlight. She fumbled with the golden mortil-crowned staff, the emblem of Zandikar.

  “You speak boldly, my lord."

  “You call me jernu. I am Dak."

  Nath Zavarin, sweating and panting as usual, coughed and said, “It would be meet for the queen, whose name be revered, to witness the fight from afar. But in a place where her loyal warriors may easily see her and be heartened thereby."

  “Find such a place out of arrow range,” I said. “And I agree. But not otherwise."

  Vax scowled at me.

  I said to him, straight, “If the queen is slain, what do you say to Zeg?"

  He did not answer, but the hilt of the Krozair longsword went down under his fist and the scabbarded blade licked up, most evilly.

  Then it was the turn of Roz Janri to be dissuaded from putting himself in the forefront of the fight. I had to be brisk; but I think he understood. I gave him the task, which he accepted, of bringing up our cavalry at the decisive moment. I did not tell him I devoutly wanted the thing done before our sectrixmen became involved. The poor beasts were very tottery on their legs, and a lot had been eaten so that our chivalry was weak.

  In the crowd waiting in the High Hall it was easy enough to pick out Dolan. I said to him, “Dolan the Bow. Will you pick me out a bow—a good one—and a couple of quivers? I think I will join you at the breastworks tomorrow. I have not shot of late. I need practice."

  “Right gladly, Dak."

  He was as good as his word and produced a good specimen of a Zandikarese bow. I know Seg Segutorio would have smiled quietly had he seen it, for it was a puny thing compared to the great Lohvian longbow. But to my misfortune we had not a single one of the Kregen-famous Bowmen of Loh in our ranks. There was a small corps of the redheaded archers from Loh with Glycas. I gave orders about them, not caring overmuch for what we would have to do to them. The main missile strength of the Grodnims lay in their sextets of crossbowmen, working to the system I had devised so long ago in the warrens of Magdag for my old vosk-skulls.

  Many imponderables must weigh down one side or the other of the balances; success or failure would be a composite of many disparate events. We did all we could to weigh down our balance pan to success and then, after that, it would be up to Oxkalin the Blind Spirit.

  The vacuum in the higher commands left by the evanishment of the paktuns meant that my own men could be employed, and there were many good men of Zandikar. Zena Iztar had aided us then; in the siege and more particularly in this coming fight we were on our own. Unless the Savanti decided to send more Savapims, of course.

  It seems scarcely necessary to mention that all day the incoming hails of warning went up. The boys on the ramparts would beat their gongs and the yells of “Incoming” would shriek out and we'd all either duck or stand stoically until the spinning chunk of rock had found a billet inside the walls. The Grodnims used catapults for this general mayhem; they had gigantic varters designed as wall-smashers lined up against the point of the breach. The catapult throws with a high trajectory; the varter with its ballista-like action hurls with a low trajectory. Glycas had at least six fine engines, not as sophisticated as the gros-varters of Vallia; but big. They played on the point that both Glycas and I had selected as the point d'appui, and very early in the morning the first stones tumbled free and the evident cracks, visible from outside, widened to let daylight through.

  A great cry went up from the assembled Greens.

  We let them have an answering cheer.

  To an impartial observer the decisive moment would clearly be seen to be at hand. As the suns shone down and the varters clanged, huge chunks of rock smote into the wall. Stones chipped into dust and fractured and fell. The parapet vanished. The wall slumped as rock after rock smashed in. Fountains of rock chips burst upward, the dust made men cough, the noise clanged on and on. During the morning two feint attacks were made and disposed of. By midday Glycas had moved all his wall-smashing artillery to this decisive point. From the vantage point of a tower I could see the solid square of his infantry paraded, ready to deal with any sortie we might make. His cavalry waited in long glittering lines. The mercenaries seethed in clumps of never-ending movement. And still the wall was bitten away.

  Our work from the inside brought all down with a run as the suns began their decline. We would have a long afternoon.

  So thorough was the work and so sudden the final collapse that the way was just practicable for sectrixes. But, like a sensible commander, Glycas sent in his mercenaries first.

  Howling and shrieking, waving their weapons, they poured forward in a living tide of destruction. At least, they no doubt assumed themselves to be a living tide of destruction. We Zandikarese archers looked forward with calm confidence to the ebbing of the tide.

  Breaking down the walls of fortresses usually takes time and patience with the battering engines. Glycas had picked this weak spot and now he saw victory opening before his eyes, all in a day. The trumpets of Grodno pealed triumphantly above the charging masses as they clambered the low breach and flung themselves forward into Zandikar.

  The lethal horizontal sleeting death awaited them.

  They pitched to the dust in droves. The high triumphant yells turned in an instant to shrieks of agony. Remorselessly the shafts drove in. More and more men clambered up only to jump down to death. When they stopped coming we clambered up in our turn, and jeered and taunted the massive ranks of the Magdaggian army poised beyond artillery range, and yet still and not moving. The cavalry made one or two feint advances, and then retired. The varters took up their bashing work and the catapults began to sing.

  Within that square of stone the ground ran red. A shambles in very truth we had created. Now was a time for clearing up and rebuilding the wall more strongly. The resistance to the Green attack had been decisive, without the desperate touch-and-go incoherence of the previous assaults, and it marked a new stage in the siege operations.

  That was the end of the beginning of the Siege of Zandikar.

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Siege of Zandikar: II.

  I am short with a Krozair of Zy

  I do not wish to dwell overlong on the Siege of Zandikar. From that day of the slaughter of the mercenaries in our trap it was a constant round of repelling assaults, of building walls, of keeping awake, of siting varters and catapults in advantageous positions, of keeping alert, of making the rounds, of maintaining morale, and of building walls and building more walls.

  Twice more we caught the damned overlords of Magdag in the same trap. The second occasion was noteworthy, for we used a gateway, the gateway on the east of the city called the Gate of Happy Absolution. Instead of building a square of stone walls within the gate, we built a wedge shape, a triangle of death. One of the paktuns whom I felt I could trust repeated the exploit of his compatriot and betrayed us to Prince Glycas. He must have spoken eloquently for he returned with a bag of golden oars and news that all would go as planned.

  So the shooting intensified around the Gate of Happy Absolution, and then as the return shots came in, slackened and died away. We began a great shout within the battlemented towers of the gate, shrieking for: “Shafts! Shafts! In the name of Zair bring up arrows!"

  From a rearward tower I watched
. This time Queen Miam stood to watch with me, and Vax hovered nearby. We saw the mailed chivalry of Magdag trampling up, proud in their power. They formed before the gate as infantry ran in with hide-covered rams and smashed in the gate. We had removed the good stout bars and replaced them with old beams that were artfully sawed and cut so as to break with a satisfyingly genuine rending of wood. The gates flew open. The siege-batterers leaped clear and, heads down, swords pointed, the overlords of Magdag charged in through the gateway.

  We repeated the previous two performances, and this time we drove our shafts with such an unholy joy that the hated overlords themselves felt each biting head.

  After the second trap we had discovered the bodies of several Bowmen of Loh scattered on the rubble where they had been shot attempting to shoot in the attack. So I had a great Lohvian longbow to my hand. I could not stop myself from going down among the archers of Zandikar and showing them what a Lohvian longbow might do in the hands of a skilled archer.

  The cruel walled funnel is a bitter trick. The riders rode boldly through and charged on, yelling, and so the farther they galloped the more compressed became their ranks. Confusion set in; they recoiled and men toppled from the high saddles; they shrieked now as the arrow storm sleeted upon them. The bow of Zandikar may be only puny compared to a longbow; but it could wreak havoc in these conditions where the shafts sped so thickly that the air appeared filled with their whispering death.

  Sectrixes screamed and thrashed their six hooves. Men fell, to be battered to death. The arrows never ceased their spiteful singing. A handful of mail-clad riders reached the far wall and I leaped up, placing the longbow down carefully first, and so went at them on a level with the Ghittawrer blade. It was all pulsing and high excitement for a space; we beat down those who had survived to reach the end of the funnel. They died unable to fall, so great was the crush. Men in the gate towers shot into the riders from above, and great stones fell upon them.

  By the time we closed the doors and put the stout beams back and walled up the aperture, my men were stripping off the harnesses and mail, leading away those animals that had not died, carting off the corpses, collecting up the weapons. Details of archers with wicker baskets picked up all the shafts. The broken ones would go back to the factories, where women and girls would reshaft the old heads, fletch them with the feathers of the Zandikarese chiuli bird—a deep plum color, most pleasing.

  “How long can they sustain such losses?” demanded Janri.

  “As long as this genius king orders them to,” I said.

  Thereafter we maintained a careful watch upon all the walls and beat back sudden attacks, and prepared for grand assaults, and listened for mining operations, and so caved in two tunnels upon the diggers beneath. The siege went on.

  I said to the Queen's Council in the High Hall of the Palace of Fragrant Incense, “I think Glycas will try an assault from the sea."

  Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, a Krozair of Zamu, leaped up, declaring, “Let me take the swifters and ram and sink them!"

  He was given permission and took as well as our three swifters the four smaller swifters the Zandikarese navy had left of those they had begun the war with. On the day the expected attack developed the land operations demanded my attention. Pur Naghan reported in as the suns sank, smiling, blood-spattered, grim, and triumphant.

  “We lost Zandikar Mortil and Pearl," he said. “But we took four and sank three. It was most satisfactory."

  “Hai Jikai, Pur Naghan,” I said. “The queen will see you."

  Queen Miam, without much prompting from me, expressed her thanks to Naghan, and then said, “We feel it right in the Jikai that you should be known henceforth as Pur Nazhan. Do you agree?"

  “I agree, Majestrix. I thank you."

  So Pur Naghan became Pur Nazhan. I was happy for him.

  The siege went on.

  All this time, for all the power I could exercise in the city, I did not forget that, in truth, I was in deep dire trouble in the areas of life that mattered to me. I might bellow orders and send mailed men scampering into action, whip my blade down and so order the release of five hundred deadly shafts from the bows of the Zandikarese archers, I might chivy and cajole and instruct a queen, I might be imperious with Pallans and Chuktars; all the time I remembered I was Apushniad, outlawed from the Krozairs, debarred from returning home to Valka and my Delia.

  And, too, I had most certainly not lost sight of my business with King Genod—the genius at war, who had murdered my daughter Velia—and with Gafard, the King's Striker, the Sea Zhantil, Velia's lawful husband.

  We knew these two were not with the army of Prince Glycas, and we surmised they were with the Grodnim army of the west, pressing on along the coast, and no doubt thinking about encircling Zimuzz, if they had not already taken that great city. Genod's plans had worked so far, for he had enclosed various centers of resistance as in a nutcracker. We could afford no assistance to Zimuzz. They could not aid us. Zamu, the next great fortress-city to the east, would be the next to fall, and then it would be Sanurkazz—Holy Sanurkazz.

  Pur Naghan—or, as he now was, Pur Nazhan—had scored a notable victory and as a result four of the Ten Dikars were open again. This was small consolation to us, penned in Zandikar, for we knew there were no forces at sea waiting to come to our relief. We were wrong in our suppositions, and the correction of our misapprehension came one dark night before She of the Veils rose to flood down in fuzzy pink moonlight. I had just completed one of my eternal circuits of the walls and had thrown myself down in the small room of the palace I used for sleeping when I could. Duhrra snored noisily in the corner. Roko, Roz Janri's dwarf and chief chamberlain, bustled in flat-footed with a girl bearing a torch. He shook me awake.

  “A messenger, Dak—a Krozair of Zy! Just come in.” Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and girding on my weapons, I followed Roko to the High Hall. I let Duhrra slumber on. The hall held a narrow cold look and a feeling of meanness in the night as I entered. Numbers of the high officials of Zandikar waited whispering together. The queen arrived shortly afterward and seated herself on the throne, with her handmaidens and guards about her. She had not yet adopted any throne step pets; I'd had experience of neemus and Manhounds and chavonths; I wondered what she might choose when she understood more of her power. Her small elfin face looked sleep-drugged, as did all our faces, for the sake of Zair; but we knew what we were about.

  I was prepared for the newly arrived Krozair of Zy to take one look at me and to whip out his sword and bellow, “Pur Dray! The Lord of Strombor! Apushniad!"

  But he did not. I did not know him. He looked a proper Krozair, well-built, erect, clear-eyed, with the fierce upthrusting moustaches of a Zairian. We ex-oar-slaves had grown most of our hair back by now, although still somewhat straggly. I looked at the coruscating device on his white surcoat, that hubless spoked wheel within the circle, and I own I felt an ache. He was all business.

  “The Grodnims take all along the southern coast to the west. Zy still holds. We have been bypassed. Zimuzz is about to fall. The king is there, may Zair torture him eternally."

  I stood half in the shadows at the foot of the throne steps and I did not speak. Roz Janri stood at the side of the throne, a tall and dignified figure, and he it was who said, “You are welcome here, Pur Trazhan. Have you no good news for us in our darkness?"

  This Pur Trazhan smiled. “Yes, Roz Janri. I am bid to tell you that the city of Zandikar must not fall. You must hold. An army is on the way. It is a strange army, for it is composed of men who do not swear by Zair, and who fly in the air in metal boats."

  There was a quick buzz of surprised comment and conjecture at this startling news. I felt a glow all over my limbs. But—of course!—it was Vax who started forward, eagerly, calling excitedly above the hubbub.

  “This army of men who fly in the air, Pur Trazhan! Are they of Vallia?"

  “Yes, they are.” Trazhan was clearly not quite sure what to call Vax or how to address him. />
  “Then, by Vox!” exclaimed Vax. “It is Prince Drak and the army of Vallia, with fliers! It must be!"

  “That is so,” said Trazhan. “It is Pur Drak, a great and renowned Krozair of Zy, who leads them. Long have we awaited their coming, since the Call went out. And now Pur Drak has answered the Azhurad, as he promised he would when he was given permission to go to his home country, wherever that may be."

  So that explained what Drak had been up to. My eldest son had answered the Call in a typically Prescot way. He'd sought help from his own. I learned that he had brought vollers by sea from Vallia, vollers loaned by his grandfather, the emperor of Vallia. They had sailed all the way in those marvelous race-built galleons of Vallia. I knew why they'd sailed and not flown. The same reason had prompted Rees and Chido to sail and not fly. And, it also meant that the emperor, the tightfisted old devil, had not spared first-quality vollers. He'd let his grandson have those fliers bought from Hamal and therefore suspect, not safe for long aerial journeys. I did not blame Drak for sailing. This way, he brought all his men and fliers into the Eye of the World instead of leaving them stranded all the way across the Sunset Sea, the Klackadrin, the Hostile Territories and The Stratemsk. Soon, he would be here and we would be relieved!

  “I have heard of Pur Drak,” said Roz Janri. A frown crossed his face. “He is the son of Pur Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, once the most renowned Krozair upon the Eye of the World. But that was long ago. Now this Pur Dray is Apushniad. It is common knowledge."

  Vax did not say a word.

  “Certainly Pur Drak is the son of this accursed Dray Prescot,” said Trazhan. “But Pur Drak is an honorable man. He is well worthy of the trust of the Krozairs of Zy and the respect of ordinary men."

  That was a clear and chilling reminder that Krozairs were not as ordinary men. Nor are they, by Zair!