We had shaken out into a loose organization, all wearing those tromp-colored uniforms which, gradually and against all expectations, smartened up and grew into proper uniforms. Larghos the Sko-handed commanded a group of expert staff-slingers. Drill the Eye commanded his bowmen — they used the compound reflex bow, not the great Lohvian longbow. The bulk of the force consisted of swordsmen, many of them sword and shield men, churgurs, and these were handled by Clardo the Clis. Although these people had gathered together relatively recently to return to Vallia, many of them had served as groups in one war or another, and in general their names and reputations were known among themselves. On the evening when we knew on the morrow we would have to go up against that half regiment, I stood talking quietly to Torn Tomor. The campfires burned and the viands sizzled and the wine passed around companionably. We talked of his parents, Tom Tomor ti Vulheim, the Elten of Avanar and his wife, Bibi, who were comrades of the Strom of Valka and Elders of the high assembly of Valka.
“And you will wear the orange of the high assembly in due course, Torn,” I said. “Be very sure of that.”
“Before that, majister, I will serve in the Strom’s Sacred Life Guard.”
He saw my instinctive frown, a twist of irritation to my lips I could not halt. I have mentioned before my equivocal feelings regarding these bodyguards. When we had been clearing out the island of Valka, before I was fetched to be the strom — which is grandly recorded in the famous song “The Fetching of Drak na Valka” — they had put together a devoted band of blade comrades to stand watch and ward over my person, in battle and camp and wherever the blade of an assassin might strike. They had served nobly, even though I had still managed to find a few adventures on my own account, as you have heard. As I struggled to find the right words, a man passed us. He was, as I thought, talking to himself. Torn Tomor glanced across. The fellow’s head was turned to his left shoulder and his right hand gestured vehemently as though he spoke to someone who walked at his side. He was a swordsman, with thick brown mustachios and that swagger of your true hyrpaktun.
“Oh,” said Torn, “that’s old Frandor the Altrak.”
“He looks-” I began cautiously.
“Don’t bother your head about old Frandor. He lost his twin brother in a battle seasons ago and still fancies he is with him. He talks to him all the time. Watch him at meals. He takes a phantom plate and fills it with phantom food and offers it to his brother — who lies moldering somewhere in Loh, and his ib is wandering the Ice Floes of Sicce seeking the sunny uplands beyond.”
“He is not makib,” I said. I guessed Frandor was not insane. He just had one of those little funny habits fighting men are prone to.
Many of the most renowned of fighting men had peculiarities that would, on this Earth, have landed them in lunatic asylums. Nath the Flimcop, when his name was shouted out at roll call, would answer with a roar: “Gone fishing!” No punishments could break him of the habit; and now that he was a paktun he could get away with that very mild example of irrational behavior. Some of the near nut cases among seasoned fighting men would shrivel your hair. Naghan the Thumb collected the right thumbs of those he defeated and he wore a belt of the shriveled things around his waist. He had swum ashore with the thumb belt. It had grown considerably since, and he was debating how best to loop it up into a double thickness.
Talk of the Strom’s Sacred Life Guard — Torn had said En Luxis Bliem Juruk, and Sacred Life Guard is a near enough translation. Kregish is particularly rich as a language, filled with colorful words. Bliem, for life, is merely one word, and the one chosen here. These fellows had fought well and loyally and I had thought the Praetorian Guard, the Imperial Guard, idea had died when I became emperor. But then, as you know, the Sword Watch had been formed. So, what with Frandor the Altrak wandering past carrying on an animated conversation with his dead twin, I was spared the embarrassment of stumbling out some words or other to Torn about my feelings on bodyguards.
And, by Vox! Bodyguards are a delightful invention when some of the cramphs trying to kill me on Kregen take action!
On the next day my seasoned veterans caught that half regiment and tumbled the three pastangs into bloody ruin. When it was all over and we turned over the loot, as all good paktuns do, sharing one with another, we were able to outfit our whole little force with armor. And, over the armor, these men wore their old yellow homemade jackets, still.
On the way back to our camp our outriders spotted a flier cruising over the island. Instantly we all faded into the bushes. Down here any air-service boats were operated by adherents of Strom Rosil. Peering up through the leaves, I studied the craft as she flitted past. She was a very small single-place job, and no doubt before the Time of Troubles had been some sporty fellow’s pride and joy. Then I stared again, harder.
“Keep your heads down, you famblys!” Clardo the Clis rumbled the words. He had no need to, for these men were kampeons[7]; but Clardo no doubt felt the need of expressing his feelings about cowering in the bushes.
I stood up. I walked out from the bushes. Lifting my arms and waving, I shouted.
“The emperor!” someone yelled from the bushes.
“Shastum!” came Clardo’s irate voice. “The emperor knows what he is doing. But, by Vox, I do not!”
The flier circled and dropped down. With a sweet swoop of precise piloting she landed ten paces from me.
I knew that a score of bows were aimed for the pilot’s heart.
He stepped out and threw up an arm in salute.
“Lahal, majister! Well met!”
“Lahal, Quardon,” I said. “Well met indeed.” I half turned and bellowed at the bushes. “Come on out. We have been found.”
From the short flagstaff in the stern of the voller flew the union flag of Vallia. That yellow cross superimposed on a yellow saltire, all on a red field, had told me the airboat was friendly. Down here, she could only be looking for us on the advice of Quienyin. And, as you will readily perceive, none of these paktuns freshly returned to their native land would know that the flag they saw was their new flag of Vallia.
The splendid upshot of this meeting appeared a few burs after young Quardon, a rip-roaring lad of the Sword Watch, shot off in the voller. Soaring in over the trees, all her sails set, one of our flying ships from Vondium threw her long shadow from the suns. The paktuns gathered with me stared up and it was a wonderful sight to see their faces. The sails came in smartly and the ship let down through thin air, upheld and supported by her silver boxes that were, alas, in nowise as efficient as the silver boxes of the powered vollers.
Flags of Vondium flew from her, and men’s heads dotted along the bulwarks. She was a fine craft, three-decked and with proper accommodation, and armed with varters and gros-varters. I own to a thrill, myself, as she touched down.
Well, the Lahals rang out and there was much clasping of hands and back-thumping. Many of the new Second Regiment of the Sword Watch were there. These fighting men had come ahunting me when Quienyin in lupu had sussed out our whereabouts.
“She is a fine, large craft, majister,” said Torn. “Finer, I daresay, than those with which Vallia thrashed Hamal at the Battle of Jholaix.”
“As good, Torn,” I said. “As good. Now let us all board and catch the breeze for home.”
Only two men looked glum. These were the brothers Niklaardu — for their home was Wenhartdrin itself.
“Have faith,” I said, speaking the easy words, but meaning them, and demanding a response in kind.
“We will free all Vallia. You will return to your home in Wenhartdrin. Believe that.”
“Aye, majister. We believe it. But it will be a hard road.”
Sheer common sense and the practicalities of government told me that during my absence many changes must have taken place at home. I asked questions, an endless stream of them, and digested the answers. I preferred this method to allowing my comrades to babble on haphazardly telling me what jumped into their memories. All the re
levant information I will retail as and when it affects this my narrative; suffice it to say now that Vallia was still an island sundered and divided, with factions warring for power, and the capital city of Vondium, still in our hands, standing like a rock in a raging sea. With those silver boxes we had made ourselves in Vondium uplifting the ship, we sailed on. The boxes gave us no forward motive power, as the complete boxes did for the vollers; but they extended gripping, invisible holds into what the wise men called the ethero-magnetic lines of force and thus afforded the ship a kind of keel so that we could tack and make boards against the wind. Leaving Wenhartdrin, we sailed east over the sea with the lovely coastline of Vallia passing to the northward. One item of news gave me an itchy feeling up the spine. Delia and I had discussed the designs of Queen Lushfymi of Lome upon our splendid son Drak. Drak was our eldest, the stern, sober, competent one of our sons. Queen Lush had been sent by Phu-Si-Yantong from her country in Pandahem to seduce, suborn, and destroy the old emperor. Instead, she had turned to us Vallians, and stood at our side against the Wizard of Loh. Now that the emperor was dead, Queen Lush was set on marrying Prince Drak, well knowing that one day she would thus become Empress of Vallia. Delia and I felt that Seg’s daughter, Silda, was the proper mate for Drak. Nothing openly had been said. This was one of those fractious knots of problems that bedevil men and women, whether they be puffed-up emperors or empresses, or shopkeepers with a business to care for.
By Zair! How I was looking forward to the day when I could throw down the burden of empire, and become once again plain Dray Prescot, of Esser Rarioch in Valka!
And, of course, Lord of Strombor and King of Djanduin and all manner of other splendid and sometimes mocking titles and estates.
The flutsmen circled out of the suns’ glare as I pondered the problems facing me. The trumpets pealed the alarm.
How marvelous to see the Sword Watch and these new comrades in their yellow jackets work together!
Shafts rose from the flying ship, leaden bullets flew. The flutsmen, screeching, their mottled clumps of feathers flying, their weapons glittering, swooped upon us. It was a pretty set to. The flying argosy was called Challenger, registered in Vondium, and as she coursed through thin air with all her canvas pulling and the flutsmen spun and darted in to attack, I felt that here we had a microcosm of the evils inflicting Vallia with agony, a prophecy of the struggles to come.
When the flutsmen saw their attacks were fruitless, what remained of them drew off. Their wings bright in the suns’ light, the fluttrells swerved away. They sped in a long, defeated string northward for the coast.
“We are within a few dwaburs of Delphond, are we not?” I said to Captain Hando, the master. A thin, razor-nosed man with a tufty chin beard, he screwed up his eyes. He had been a galleon captain, and had transferred to the new flying ships service.
“Aye, majister. Devil take the flutsmen. So near the capital! It is beyond bearing.”
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 ma
ps 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.
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