He shook his massive head and licked his lips. His mannerisms were those of a man, diff or apim, both.
“I am a flutsman, apim.”
“Aye! A reiving mercenary of the skies who owes no allegiance to any save his own band, despite the hire fees you take. Well, many of your band have gone down to the Ice Floes this day. What say you, Flutsman?”
His blunt chin went up. Uncouth they may be, the Brokelsh, exceedingly hairy with a coarse black body hair; but they are men.
“I am Hakko Bolg ti Bregal, known as Hakko Volrokjid. Perhaps I deserve to die. I do not think so. I have a great hatred for all you Hamalese — and mayhap that will serve.”
“In that case, by the disgusting tripes of Makki-Grodno! I shall not slay you. I do not want your blood on my blade.”
I said this, you will perceive, to conceal the truth.
He squinted his eyes down, this Hakko Volrokjid. I, too had had trouble with volroks, those winged flying men of Havilfar. “And this blade,” he said. “I have not seen its like before.”
“And I’ve not heard of Bregal.”
“A small town, in Ystilbur of the Dawn Lands.”
“I have heard of Ystilbur. An ancient land.”
“And razed with fire and swords by you rasts. By Barflut the Razor Feathered! I would dearly love to slay you all!”
“Seize your fluttrell, before the onkerish thing strangles himself on his own harness. Get you gone. I am not a Hamalese. And, dom, if you meet me again, remember, and tread small.”
He glared for a heartbeat at me, his bristly face working, then he scrambled back and grappled his bird, who would have bit at him had he not clouted it over the head. I spoke big, like that, to conceal deeps I did not want this Brokelsh flutsman, Hakko Volrokjid, to see revealed in me. He freed the bird and vaulted up into the saddle, doing all this with the practiced ease of your true flutsman. He buckled up the clerketer. His bristly face lowered down on me.
“I shall not forget you, apim. Be very sure of that, by the Golden Feathered Aegis!” He drew up the reins, handled most cunningly in one fist. Then he shouted down words that surprised me, although they should not have. Many a paktun — although he was far too callow to have earned the coveted mortilhead — would not thank a man for giving life. They might feel shame, depression, humiliation, the outrage of their professional ethics, depending on their beliefs. But this young flutsman bellowed down: “I thank you for my life. May the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh have you in his keeping. Remberee!”
And with a great beating of wings the fluttrell swooped away and this singular flutsman was gone. I poked my head over the side of the voller.
The flutsmen toiled along after me, all in formation, the wings of their flyers going up and down, up and down. Hakko Volrokjid spun away through the level wastes to join them. Then, all in formation, they swung away and strung out in a beeline for the coast to the west. Hakko flew strongly after them. So, guessing what was afoot — or, rather, in the air — I looked ahead and there were the fliers lifting from the scattering of cays and bearing up for me.
A single look reassured me.
They were not vollers of the Hamalian Air Service.
My friends, waiting at the rendezvous, had witnessed the little aerial affray and were no doubt thirsting to get into the fight.
This was true — deplorably so.
The moment my voller touched gunwales with Seg’s impressive craft he yelled across: “One missed, Dray — the blue flash of feathers was not to be mistaken.”
“My finger slipped on the string.”
“Aye!” he roared, joyously. “You always had slippery fingers.”
Inch bellowed across from his flier. “A good long axe, Dray — that’s what you need up here in the sky.”
Other greetings rose from the other fliers. We formed a little fleet, a tiny armada, there off the coast of a hostile empire. But we wanted nothing of Hamal on this trip.
I landed the little voller across the deck of the large flier Delia had provided for us. She waited for me, alight with joy at my safe return. All my comrades and their families were here, in good spirits, although chafing to have missed that little spat of a fight. So I knew the emperor was not yet dead. Delia smiled at me, her face pale.
“He still lives. But he is weak, so very weak. We must hurry.”
I shouted out the course to Vangar.
“Southwest! Southwest at top speed.”
We were on our way to Bet-Aqsa and the men who might tell us where away lay Aphrasoe, the Swinging City of the Savanti.
Chapter Nine
In the Akhram of Bet-Aqsa
The encounter between the ranked Pachak swods and the Rapa Deldars had been sanguinary in the extreme. Two Chulik Jiktars, powerful, had been swept away in the bloody rout, and an apim Paktun and a Brokelsh Hikdar were thrown with the others regretfully back into the velvet-lined box.
“Do you yield?” demanded Delia, most fierce.
“Aye,” I said. I did not tip my king over in the terrestrial way of chess but I pushed back in the chair and, looking on the ruin of my forces, said: “Aye, I bare the throat.”
Jikaida is a game where women can be so damned deceitful it amazes mere mortal men. But I could not help adding: “I notice you are using as your Pallan a female figure. I still do not recognize the representation.”
“You are not meant to.”
I glanced out through a port. The airboat fled on through the level wastes of air, speeding towards Bet-Aqsa. We had slept and eaten and I had thought to occupy the mind of Delia by Jikaida, that absorbing game that dominates so much of Kregan intellectual thinking, giving opportunities for rigorous mental disciplines. I did not pick up her Pallan, the most powerful piece on the board. But I cast the gorgeous little figure a most baleful glance.
Delia smiled. “She carries the yellow cross on the scarlet field. What more could you ask?”
I grunted. “Only that she play for me, woman!”
At this, Delia laughed, and so I knew much of her fear for her father had been damped by the amazing success we had so far enjoyed in our mission to save his life, and with it the life and well-being of all Vallia.
Most people have a game of Jikaida stuffed away somewhere in a dusty cupboard; most people play from time to time. It demands much more than the game Jikalla. Some folk play so often that the game becomes their life. Gafard, the King’s Striker, who was our son-in-law and who was now dead, had once earned a living as a Jikaidast, a man — or woman — who sets up in a suitable place and challenges all comers for wagers. Such Jikaidasts are regarded differently in various countries; usually they are given honor and I, for one, gave them due honor within the craft.
Most people who are halfway serious about Jikaida also own at least one personal set of playing pieces. Although the opposing colors are usually blue and yellow, sometimes black and white — almost never red and green — the individual figures are embellished in wondrous ways. I happened to have been using a mixed set in which diffs and apims filled the functions of representing the various pieces. I admired the fine martial appearance of the little warriors, of whatever race they happened to be. Delia had produced a marvelous set, all of delicately carved ivory and balass and gold, including Pachaks and Djangs. With, of course, her confounded mysterious female figure as her Pallan.
Now, lifting up my own Pallan, a neat little apim with a finely wrought Lohvian longbow and a sword too long for comfort, I laid him away in the balass box.
“Having bared the throat, will you wet it with some wine?”
Our son, Prince Drak, came into the stateroom just then and did the honors, pouring Gremivoh, the vintage favored in the Vallian Air Service.
“It is all going amazingly well,” he said. He still experienced difficulty in calling me father, and Jaidur always avoided the embarrassment. “The island will be in sight within a bur or so.”
We spoke for a few moments of the trip and the prospects, ground we had
covered time after time. Drak expressed himself as most pleased that when we had stopped off in Djanguraj for fresh provisions, nothing would stop Kytun Kholin Dom and Ortyg Fellin Coper and their families from joining us. Then, speaking to Delia although looking at Drak, I said: “Can you tell me why this well set-up, handsome son of ours has not married so far?”
Drak’s powerful features lowered on me at this, and Delia shook her head in a quick admonitory way.
“That is my business,” said Drak.
“Oh, aye,” I said. “But the emperor is your grandfather. We are going to save his life. Rest easy on that. But, one day, it is likely you will be emperor.”
His head went up at this. Powerful, Drak, hard and strong, filled with a dark purpose I could only admire at a distance.
“Yes. Consider that well. With a family to sustain you, you will seem an even better choice to the people and the Presidio.”
“And you?”
“Me? I want only your well being — as for the emperor — throne, crown, title, wealth — they are all gewgaws. I have enough of that kind of thing already.” Here, again thinking of Djanduin of which land I am king, I paused. “At least, if it comes to it, and if your mother agrees, why, then. .”
Drak set his glass down carefully. He was worked up, his handsome face, dark and powerful, set in harsh lines of determination that, I suspected, were very like those lines I see in the mirror when I shave.
“I do not anticipate becoming emperor while you or mother live.”
He went out then, quickly, and the sturmwood door slammed somewhat too hard.
“I really do not know what to make of that boy,” I said.
Delia laughed: “You do realize, my heart, that because of our dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism, we are younger than he is?”
“Deuced odd that, by Zair!”
She became grave, on a sudden. “They — the Savanti — they would not let me go — you remember
— and you — it was a dreadful journey to the pool-” She bit her lip, and said, on a rush: “Suppose they will not let father be cured?”
“I have thought of that. We fly directly to the Pool of Baptism. Once we are there and your father is cured, it will be too late for the Savanti to interfere.”
So we agreed on the plan between us. I felt some confidence that with the tearaway bunch of ruffians with us, and with the fine navigation of Vangar — I would help, of course — we ought both to find the River Zelph and the Pool and take care of any opposition along the way. What the Savanti might say I did not much care. I own I felt some concern over what they might do. But they were, as I knew, a civilized people who wanted to make of Kregen a world fit for people to grow into fulfilled lives without the dark fears that plagued them now. The stakes were too high to draw back now out of phantasmal fears of what might be.
We went up on deck into the clean swift rush of wind.
Our friends were peering ahead from every flier. Wersting Rogahan, who could shoot a varter and hit the center of the Chunkrah’s eye every time, had been the man they had found to guide them to the Yuccamot island in the Risshamal Keys. He had been shipwrecked with me in the old Ovvend Barynth, a rough-tongued rapscallion, an old sea-dog; but he was a man I fancied I understood and could rub along with. He had advanced just one step in rank since I had had him made up to so-Deldar, and was now a ley-Deldar. He still wore that dark strip of chin beard under his jaws, his lean knowing face was just the same with the broken nose and the mahogany tan of a life spent at sea. Up here in a flying craft he had donned a buff shirt where normally he went bare-chested, and the old buff trousers cut off at the knees might have been the same pair he’d worn when we’d shot our varters in competition against the pursuing shanks.
“Land ho!”
The shrill yell skyrocketed up from Oby, perched high. He pointed ahead. Soon we all saw the low dark outline of coast, with hills beyond, and the cream of surf and the wink of rivers. Bet-Aqsa was a sizeable island, triangular in shape and some one hundred eighty or so dwaburs across at the widest part, smaller than the forbidden island of Tambu to the north. Kytun Kholin Dom, my fearsome four-armed Djang comrade, bellowed across the wind-rushing gap between fliers: “So that’s where those Drig-loving reivers live, is it? Now we know, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! we will pay them a visit and return their gifts to us in fire and the sword!”
Well, knowing my Djangs as I do, and knowing of the raids they suffered from the sea people — not the Shanks — I could not be surprised.
If the inhabitants of Bet-Aqsa as distinct from the Todalpheme of that place made a habit of raiding the western coasts of Havilfar, secure that their home was far enough west to deter anyone reckless enough even to think of sailing that far into the Ocean of Doubt, then they would be in for a nasty shock. The place was secretive enough, Zair knew. Events were changing fast on Kregen, and the world would never be the same again.
Over the horizon to the north and east the forbidden island of Tambu presented no lure. I had met men who claimed to have been there and the stories about the place, not all apocryphal, I feel sure, were calculated to curdle the blood. Gruesome, distasteful, the stories, most of them, as I was to discover. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps the forbidden character of Tambu could be explained away by the unsuspected presence there of the Savanti.
That, we would soon discover.
Over the island we flew, seeing towns and villages of peculiar aspect, and long rolling downlands, forests, marks of cultivation. A few fluttrell patrols winged up after us; but we flew vollers high and fast and left the laboring saddle birds far below. Also, there arose other flyers riding beasts new to us, flying steeds of remarkable appearance, all speckled with ruby and amber feathers, with gappy jaws and long whiplike tails. Still and all, despite their efficient wingspan, long and wide like an albatross’s and despite the gesticulating figures upon their backs, they were outdistanced also.
“Straight to the Western Akhram, Vangar,” I told the captain of my Valkan Fleet, admiral, Chuktar, flag-captain and skipper of whatever voller I happened to be flying in all rolled into one efficient, loyal, great-hearted man. He nodded and bent to his map, the self-same map I had drawn out for him from my memory of the one shown me by Akhram of the Todalpheme of Denrette.
Soon at the best speed of our vollers the western coast came in sight, a green-blue glittering expanse of water stretching out beyond the last fingerings of land, a vast mass of empty water stretching out no man knew whither. This was the Ocean of Doubt.
“There!” screeched Oby, pointing, the wind in his hair.
A collection of yellow-green onion domes rose from the edge of an inlet. Ships lay moored and signs of activity from what were clearly dockyards showed that these people kept themselves busy, an impression heightened by the size of the town strung along the water’s edge. The low yellow fortress guarding the mouth of the inlet was not lost upon us. These folk trafficked upon the sea, and yet they built defenses. We all thought we knew for whom those stout walls had been built.
The Akhram stood aloof from these mundane pursuits, the cluster of onion domes glistening in the limpid air.
How far we had come! Right to the edge of the known world — over it, for all we had previously known of these foreign parts. Where one might have expected to discover an uncouth half-savage people, it was clear there was wealth down there, industry and commerce — and, for sure, a deal of loot from the coasts of Havilfar, including Djanduin.
I had argued with my friends and overborne them.
Delia said: “But I should go with you! I have been to Aphrasoe before. Therefore-”
“Therefore you will stay here, with the fleet.”
She pouted at me, making a mockery of my heavy-handedness. But I would not be swayed. I had brought a fleet and a large body of fighting men, for that is the best way to travel on Kregen when you are in a hurry and will meet foes — and carry a bedridden, dying emperor. The very best way, of course, is
alone, like a savage clansman in hunting leathers — and, truly, better even than that, is just the two of you, just the two, alone in the whole wide world of Kregen. .
So I would not be swayed now. Nath the Needle said he dare not leave the emperor. The poison wasting away the once stalwart frame was insidious, and any cure that might once have been possible was long since too late, by far. All he could do was administer what antidote he could. Every bur the emperor had to take a teaspoonful of the nauseating mixture Nath prepared, swallowing it down past clenched teeth we had gently to prise open with silver levers. Also, acupuncture needles had to be used, carefully inserted in the right nodes and along the correct lines to ease the increasing pain. I had studied assiduously with Nath the Needle as well as other eminent doctors to discover all I could of the arcane mysteries of the needleman’s art. I could insert a needle now and know with sure certainty that it would do the work intended.
Making preparations as the fleet hovered over the Akhram, I gave my last instructions. “I go alone and hope to win through with gold and peaceful talk. If I am not back within three burs then, Seg and Inch, you’d better fly down and see what is keeping me. I trust you will bring a few sturdy fellows with you, and, as well, leave another pack of sky-leems up here to guard our return.”
They nodded. They were not joking, even if I tended to treat this whole escapade as just that. They didn’t like me jaunting off by myself. Even I had to admit that that was because they cared for my leathery old hide, and not, as I dearly loved to believe, because they fancied I was hogging all the action. All my experiences on Kregen so far indicated that the Todalpheme were quiet, studious, peace-loving men who wished only to get on with their tasks of tracking the course of the moons and the suns and of predicting the tides. They kept up a force of brown-clad workpeople who were not slave, superintended by the Oblifanters, answerable directly to the Todalpheme. The Oblifanters and their work force were not cloaked by the universal acceptance of the sanctity of the Todalpheme. They might be entrapped, made slave, killed. So they were a rougher bunch. Their methods of work I had seen at the Dam of Days.
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