Fliers of Antares [Dray Prescot #8]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The far end of the inn was now doomed. I continued to fight, keeping a circle about the door, and with an evil cunning drawing Djangs in for combat so that they would screen me with their own bodies from their comrades’ shooting.

  Kov Nath, with his smooth helmet-head of coppery hair, tried again to get at me with that confounded great sword of his and I had to leap and then bend double to avoid the crunching back-handed swing. I circled him to his left, flickering the thraxter in and out like the tongue of a risslaca of the Ocher Limits, and then darting back and trying to cut him up in his right side. But those two damned right arms of his kept whacking the great sword about so that I had to take it on my blade and let a supple wrist twist slide it free. When, with the fighting-man's instinctive attack following defense, my blade merely scraped across his shield I grew hopping mad.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “You're a bonny fighter, Kov Nath!"

  “Aye, apim,” he said merrily, and came at me again. “And I'll split your head on my sword to prove it."

  We clashed and banged and every now and then I had to jerk away and flick my thraxter up to swat a quarrel off or snatch at a flying stux. It seemed to me then that this could not go on much longer. I did not take a stux cleanly with my left hand and the broad iron blade scored up my forearm, at which I let out a curse.

  “By the Black Chunkrah, Kov Nath! Let you and me settle this between ourselves, like true Horters."

  He laughed.

  “I am no Horter, apim. I am Nath Jagdur, the Kov of Hyr Khor!"

  That betrayed him. For although I am not a gentleman, and do not pretend to be, having seen too much of their nasty ways, I do know that the Horters of Havilfar and the Koters of Vallia and all the other gentlemen of Kregen consider themselves Opaz-elect. Any noble considers himself a gentleman, by birth and right, except in those cases or men who—like myself—fought and struggled to become Notors from lowly origins, and then they are nobles by right only. But, such is the custom of Kregen, birth means far less than achievement in the eyes of most peoples.

  As we thus struggled before the lenken door of the blazing inn a Djang screeched and ran out from the streaming smoke.

  “Kov Nath! They come! They come!"

  Kov Nath went mad. His great sword whirled into a silvery-blue blur, for he had not tasted blood with it as yet. He bellowed his anger.

  “By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds! I'll spit you yet, yetch!"

  His face congested with blood. Apart from his four arms he looked exactly like an apim, and his face was darkly handsome, with bright merry eyes, a thin black moustache, and a chin that jutted with a dark bristle to show he had not shaved that morning. He bore down on me again even as his men yelled and began to decamp.

  “Rast!” he yelled at me, and spittle flew. “I'll degut, debrain, dissect you, you two-armed weakling!"

  “By Vox!” I ducked a swing and surged up to him and so took his throat into my left hand and dragged his handsome head forward. I glared into his congested face. “You'll know you've met me, Kov Jagdur the Boaster!” And I slashed the thraxter down. The blow would have finished any ordinary man. But this Kov Nath Jagdur was a Djang. He had four arms. The shield came around and caught me in the side, just beneath the ribs, and I grunted and let him go, and he brought the great sword around and down to finish me.

  I rolled away and my thraxter came up just in time and slid that long wicked blade. The steel bit into the turf.

  A crossbow bolt went whirr-chunk against the great blade. The double hilt was violently wrenched from Kov Nath's fists. The sword spun across the turf.

  He roared and straightened up and another bolt hummed past his ear.

  From the smoke more Djangs appeared, running and loosing crossbows, holding their shields high, their thraxters low. At their belts swung djangirs.

  “Now by all the devils in a Herrelldrin hell!” bellowed Kov Nath.

  He hesitated—he stood there, balanced, ready to lunge one way for his sword and the other in flight. A bolt pranged glancingly from his lorica, and that decided him; with a final blood-curdling curse he ran around the far end of the inn. Moments later the thud of animal hooves sounded and the band of rogues burst into view, racing with straining necks and heads low, riding fast away along the white dusty road.

  I looked up into the point of a stux.

  The Djang holding the stux looked as though he would like nothing better than to thrust down.

  Just as I was about to teach him the error of his ways in thus treating a Krozair of Zy, four arms or no four damned arms, the little diff with the mouse-face came running out of the inn, squeaking. His whiskers were all a-twitch as he pushed the stux aside and dropped on a knee at my side.

  “Apim! You still live! Now may Mother Diocaster be praised!"

  I did not fail to notice the offhanded way this little fellow thrust the stux aside, nor the way the Djang soldiery stiffened up at sight of him. These were signs I recognized.

  He was most solicitous.

  “You are hurt, sir, you are hurt. You bleed!” He leaped up and tore into the gathered newcomers. “Deldar! Take this Horter into the unburned room and care for him. Bandages, water, needles, palines.” He swung about. “Sinkie! Sinkie! I am coming, my love! It is all right now, the Opaz-forgotten leemsheads are gone! You may come out from under the table now."

  I had to let myself be hoisted up to keep a smile off my face. Lord knew, I needed a smile then!

  As we went into the unburned end of the inn I observed how the Djangs were going about dousing the flames, working with a swift eager efficiency that heartened me. Hauling water from the well in the rear courtyard, they had the fire under control very soon. Truth to tell there was little left of that end of the roof. The little fellow pranced at my side very solicitously.

  “I have the honor to present myself to you, sir. I am Ortyg Fellin Coper, Pallan of the Highways."

  He looked at me expectantly, his bright eyes alert, his whiskers quivering. He wore rich robes of a dark blue material liberally splattered with gems and silver lace. His scarlet velvet hat with its white feather looked now a sumptuous part of his costume. He wore no weapons, apart from a small silver secretarial knife in a silver sheath at his belt.

  All naked and bloody as I was—although a cloak had been flung across me as I was half-carried in—I pondered what answer to make. This, I thought, must be the man the Star Lords had sent me here to rescue. I had done that, for if I had not stood before the door and prevented the leemsheads from getting at him before his bodyguard came up he would have been a dead man. If I was, as I sincerely believed, in my own past, then perhaps I was not Strom of Valka yet; certainly I was not the Prince Majister of Vallia.

  “I am Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Pallan."

  “Well, you are right well and heartily met, as Mother Diocaster is my witness!"

  He introduced his wife, a charming little lady whose whiskers added, if anything, to her coy beauty. Her clothes, too, although simple were richly jeweled. I could not fail to notice the affection between these two, and, also, the affection and respect accorded them both by the tough warrior Djangs. O. Fellin Coper handled them with the casual unthinking courtesy of a man habituated to absolute authority tempered with concern for those that fate had put into his hands. Also in the unburned room were two other mouse-faced diffs like himself, lesser in rank and importance but still treated with grave gruff respect by the Djangs, and a Djang woman, very much pregnant and very near her time, as I judged.

  She lay on a pallet, pale-faced, her long fair hair damp, her face streaked with sweat. She was still beautiful, despite the difficulty of the birth. Three Djang women were attending her but there was no doctor with acupuncture needles in attendance. This did not seem right to me and so I mentioned it to O. Fellin Coper. His gerbil-like head twisted.

  “You are quite right, Notor Prescot. But when Mother Diocaster calls forth the babe at the appointed hour—why, then, the babe has to come w
hatever the circumstances."

  A great bustle began as preparations were made for the Pallan to leave the inn. The pregnant Djang woman was not of his party. Her husband had been burned in the fighting and had died. For a moment I pondered, and then Ortyg Coper called to me from his decorated carriage which his men had brought up.

  “I am returning to Djanguraj, Notor Prescot, and if the city was your destination before you fell among these leemsheads, I would be most honored—my wife and I would be most honored—if you would deign to take advantage of our carriage for the journey."

  It was nicely said, and it explained why no one had commented on my nakedness. They assumed I had been set on and was fighting the leemsheads to get my clothes and money back. To dispose of another problem here and now, they also took me for a member of the Martial Monks of Djanduin, which would explain my hairlessness.

  My wounds had been seen to, and I was busy as any old mercenary would be. The dead Djangs yielded clothes, weapons, and money. I rifled the dead men with as much compunction as I would sweep the table of breadcrumbs. A paktun is a paktun, when all is said and done.

  So it was that when I walked toward Ortyg Coper's carriage at the far end of the yard I was suitably clad in a pair of gray trousers with an orange cummerbund and a white shirt. A lorica was collapsed and slung over my shoulder. In a pouch lay enough shivers and obs to last, and there were three golden deldys. No one, I thought, had seen that quick rifling of the dead. For weapons I took a thraxter, a pair of stuxes, a djangir and a shield, which I draped about myself. At the last moment I picked up Kov Nath's enormous sword, and so stepped into Ortyg Fellin Coper's elegant carriage for Djanguraj.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Pallan O. Fellin Coper of Djanduin

  “We do not see many apims in Djanduin, Notor Prescot. Nor many other diffs, come to that.” Ortyg Coper glanced at me obliquely as the carriage rolled along the road and left a wide swath of white dust in its wake. His bodyguard rode up front and well astern. I had noticed they rode totrixes, the awkward six-legged riding animal of Havilfar, and carried long slender lances upright in boots attached to their stirrup irons. “So,” went on Coper, looking out of the window at the passing fields of corn and marspear and crops I did not recognize, “it seems you are the Lord of Strombor and so therefore cannot be a Martial Monk of Djanduin."

  “I lay no claim to being a Martial Monk, Pallan Coper."

  The dangers here were obvious. This man was a Pallan, a chief minister of state, and, as he had told me, one charged with the upkeep of the highways. He held a very real power. To judge by other parts of Kregen I knew he would think nothing of having me thrown into a dungeon if it suited him or his master the king, and the fact that I had saved him from the swords of Kov Nath's leemsheads would mean nothing. So I had to tread warily, for all that he seemed a pleasant enough little fellow.

  He brushed his whiskers in a finicky fashion.

  “Tell me of Strombor, Notor."

  Had I been a man given to empty gestures I might have smiled then, for this was so clearly a cunning opening ploy in a conversation designed to trap me into giving away my secrets. No further mention of my nakedness—its fact lay there between us—but it was: “Tell me of Strombor."

  I considered. If this past was far enough back he would not have heard of Strombor, for that enclave had been taken over by the Esztercaris in distant Zenicce. Had he heard of Zenicce? Had he heard of Segesthes?

  “You know the continent of Segesthes, Pallan? The great enclave city of Zenicce?"

  He inclined his head.

  “Indeed. We have records in our libraries."

  I said easily, “Strombor is an enclave in Zenicce,” and then I went on matter-of-factly. “I, naturally, consider Strombor the most beautiful and the best, even if not the greatest; but we are a rich people and I am fortunate to be their prince."

  His wife, Sinkie, fluttered up at this, but Coper gave me a sly sideways look and said: “You saved my life, Notor Prescot, and for this I am in your debt. I shall not forget. But there will be those in Djanguraj who will—ah—wonder what a noble prince of a great house of Zenicce is doing, wandering naked and hairless in Djanduin, so far from home."

  Well, you couldn't say fairer than that.

  “How are arguments that touch a man's honor settled in Djanduin, Pallan Coper?"

  “With the sword."

  “That will be quite suitable."

  He chuckled then, this little mousy fellow, and stroked his whiskers in high good humor.

  “You are apim, Notor Prescot! You have, like me, but two arms. How do you think to face a Djang champion, who has four arms?"

  About to say, “I had thought you had witnessed that,” I paused. To make that remark would be boorish, despite its other and intended meaning.

  So I said something about fighting as Zair willed (he like most Kregans accepted strange gods, devils, and saints without turning a hair) and so we rolled on for a space in silence.

  I found that to suggest I had been shipwrecked, an obvious stratagem, would not work, as the inn and crossroads were dwaburs from the sea. I told a part of the truth, and said I had tumbled off a voller. Like the Horter he was, he did not refer to it again.

  In the southwest corner of Havilfar the sea surges in a cleft that, looking at the map, reminds me of the Bristol Channel, except, of course, that the scales are vastly greater, for Havilfar is a broad continent. The northern promontory sweeps out boldly south of Loh, with a ruggedly indented coastline and a wide and sheltering band of islands, some quite large, running off the northwestern shore. At the tip of the channel is sited the town of Pellow in Herrelldrin. Sometimes the smot[2] of Pellow is referred to as standing in a bay, but the bay shape begins farther out, below the Yawfi Suth. The Yawfi Suth is a frightful area of bog and fen, of marsh and quagmire, penned between a tonguelike intrusion of the sea to the north, and treacherous ground to the south, alongside the channel. Here, also, is the Wendwath, that vast, misty lake of magic and superstition, and, too, of a strange, haunting golden beauty when the twin suns slant through the mists upon the water. They call the Wendwath the Lake of Dreaming Maidens.

  [2 Town.]

  The promontory that extends westward south of the channel—that same Tarnish Channel—curves southward to the southernmost land of Havilfar: Thothangir. Off the jagged and wind-eroded cliffs there lies the Rapa island that had once been the home of Rapechak, the Rapa with whom Turko the Shield and I, with those two silly girls Quaesa and Saenda, had escaped from Mungul Sidrath. Rapechak had not surfaced in our sight above the waters of the River Magan. It hurt me still to recall that, but I did not believe he was truly dead.

  But we were in the northern promontory, near its far western extremity, rolling along toward Djanguraj, the capital of Djanduin, which is situated at the head of a wide, island-protected bay notched into the southwestern corner, above the Tarnish Channel.

  To the west, as far as man could know, stretched the Ocean of Doubt.

  So I was in the southwest of Havilfar. Now I had to prove myself acceptable to the Djangs, and I had to see about organizing transport back home to Valka.

  Then I froze.

  I knew the Star Lords would never let me leave here until time had once more caught up with the present I had left at the Heavenly Mines. I had had experience of their ways before. A great storm would arise, supernatural lightning and thunder would bar my path, as rashoons had done on the Eye of the World, as gales and typhoons had penned me in Valka, as I had been prevented from leaving Huringa in Hyrklana.

  It was no use cursing and crying and calling out against the injustice of it all. Where I was I must stay until the time was up, until once more the green sun preceded the red across the sky—and I knew where else on Kregen I would be when that happened! I took the only comfort I could from the fact that Delia would not share this enforced and lonely exile. To her, when I returned—for I would return!— it would seem I had but minut
es before tumbled out of the voller.

  This would be.

  How I was to make the Star Lords keep their part of the bargain I did not know. I had only the haziest idea what their plans were, but I suspected they wished me to do something drastic about the omnipresent slavery of Kregen. Very well, while I sweated out my sentence in this prison of time I would amuse myself. I would take what satisfaction I could get from upsetting as many unpleasant people as I could. I would do the aragorns’ business for them, if any came my way, or I would dot a few eyes for the flutsmen, or show the cramphs of Gorgrendrin the error of their ways.

  By Zim-Zair!

  I would!

  But—how long? How long?

  On the thought I cocked my head out of the carriage window and, shading my eyes as best I could, squinted up to get an idea of how far apart were Zim and Genodras. They looked a long way, a damned long way, apart. I remembered how in the warrens of Magdag and in the Emerald Eye Palace—which was the second best palace in all Magdag—I had waited and watched for the red sun to eclipse the green. When it had happened I had not been in either the warrens or the palace; and then—as you must guess—I felt that old life surge back. What were we all doing now, Zolta and Nath, my two oar-comrades, my two wonderful rogues of Sanurkazz?

  If you think in those first few moments of understanding I grew overly maudlin, you are probably right. But I missed Nath and Zolta, oh, how I missed them!

  And Mayfwy, the widow of my oar-comrade Zorg. And Pur Zenkiren. The inner sea knew little of the outer oceans and cared less. Would that I were there now, if I could not be in Valka!

  “You look troubled, Notor Prescot."

  “I was thinking of old times, and that ill becomes a man, as I know to my cost."

  Sinkie, the Pallan Coper's wife, gave a little cry.

  “Oh, my dear Notor Prescot! Pray, do not alarm me so! You looked so stern and—and—oh!” And she buried her quivering little nose in her lace handkerchief that had come all the long way from Dap-Tentyrasmot across the Shrouded Sea.