A Victory for Kregen dp-22

by Alan Burt Akers

  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 sniggered 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 pi
eces, 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 the 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.”

  “Never!” he said, and he tried to twist that gaunt head to glare at me. The blade bit and he choked. “I had you — you know nothing of the arts of Vajikry-”

  “I know enough to know when to take a dagger to your scrawny throat. Move!” And I amplified that with: “Bratch!”

  He jumped.

  We went out of the room and if the guards thought to stop me they saw my face and made no move. Which was the wiser course for them. We went up the stairs, and retainers and servitors shrank away as the trylon called, hoarsely: “Let us pass. This mad leem means me ill.”

  “Right, trylon,” I said. “Absolutely right!”

  “You will spare me my life? I can give you wealth-”

  “A voller is all I need. And, Trylon Nath Orscop, I may return your voller to you, one day, and play another game of Vajikry with you. It is, I own, infuriating and fascinating.”

  A thought struck me. They had in the nature of these things stripped my splendid mesh steel from me and taken my weapons away. I am so used to padding about in the old scarlet breechclout I’d clean forgot I owned a pretty little arsenal, and fine armor.

  “Oh, trylon. Bid your people bring my belongings. All of them.” And the bright curved kalider twitched against his skin.

  “You heard!” shrieked Nath Orscop. “Run, you nulshes! Fetch this — this man’s armor and weapons!”

  So, as we emerged onto a flat roof between two spires and I fastened my gaze on a chunky little voller, retainers ran up bearing the mesh steel and the armory. “Into the voller with them!” I snapped it out, and they obeyed. I wondered why no one had challenged that dagger at the throat of the lord. Surely, some one of all these folk would wish to see the trylon dead?

  But I climbed into the voller gripping Orscop by the neck.

  He slumped down and his gaunt face turned up, pleadingly.

  “You said…”

  I looked over the side. The landing chains were cast off. I moved the control levers and the voller lifted a couple of feet into the air. I nodded, satisfied.

  “Over you go, Orscop. And thank whatever gods you pray to that I spare you your miserable hide.”

  He clawed up, gibbering, and as he went over the side I assisted him with an ungentle foot. Then, roaring with laughter, I sent the voller skimming into the night sky, racing away under the Moons of Kregen.

  Chapter twelve

  Of an Invitation at the Golden Prychan

  Why is the air of one continent or island so different from that of any other? Each country’s air holds its own essences and aromas. Does the air over Valka smell sweeter than the air over any other part of Vallia? I believe so — but to ask me to explain it — ah, there you should better question the Todalpheme, the wise mathematicians and meteorologists of Kregen.

  I know that as I breathed in the air of the island of Pandahem, I tasted the difference, and vivid memories of Pando and Tilda rose up to torment me. Yes
, at that time on Kregen I still owed dues to many people. I gave thanks that Deb-Lu-Quienyin had eased my mind on the score of Que-si-Rening. But, when I went to Hyrklana this time, I vowed, as well as seeking out Balass the Hawk, Oby, and Tilly, I would make more strenuous efforts to discover what had befallen the Princess Lilah. All the agents I had sent off to make inquiries had reported a total absence of news. All that was known then, all I had heard here and there, were merely rumors. Rumors of the “tragedy” that had overtaken Princess Lilah of Hyrklana.

  So I marched down from the jungly foothills where I had hidden Trylon Nath Orscop’s voller. And, of course, he had not lost on the deal. The airboat I had left in the clearing, the one of the three we had liberated in Khorunlad was fair recompense.

  The island of Pandahem, between Vallia to the north and Havilfar to the south, is divided into two halves by a massive east-west chain of mountains, variously named along their rambling length. Kingdoms divide up the northern portion of the island, lands some of which I knew well. The southern half’s kingdoms were virtually unknown to me, and were mostly smothered in thick, lush, hot, and mostly inhospitable jungles.

  Walking along the overgrown path toward the town of Mahendrasmot I fell into conversation with a lanky Relt. He was clad decently in loincloth and sandals, with his rolled coat over one shoulder. Looking like skinnier replicas of their distant cousins the fierce and voracious Rapas, the Relts do have beaked faces, but these are of altogether a gentler aspect. He carried a hollow bamboo filled with pens, and a scrip with paper and three bottles of ink, bamboo bottles, swung at his girdle. He was a stylor, and so we fell into easy conversation, as I had been a stylor at one time, working for the Overlords of Magdag. He, this Relt called Ravenshal, knew nothing of the inner sea of Kregen, of course.

  “The fair, Jak?” he said, striding along easily, with the deep green of the foliage each side of the path framing his eager birdlike face. “It is a dire place, dreadful, sometimes. There are a large number of seafaring folk who go there, and, well, you know how rough they are.”