Fliers of Antares [Dray Prescot #8]

by Alan Burt Akers

  We sent back a noncommittal reply by the merker and his flier shot away, traveling fast and low as a flyer came in from the scouts to report the Valley of the Bantings clear.

  I set about rearranging our dispositions. Truth to tell, I was merely marking time, giving this new King Kolanier enough rope to hang himself. I knew—or thought I did—that Ortyg Coper would send me the word when it was time to move.

  The banting, by the way, is a cheeky little rock-bird of brilliant coloration, not unlike the English chaffinch in a superficial way; their nests high along the rocky clefts grow greater each season and they fill the valley with their darting wings. They live on lizards and insects and are regarded with great affection by the Djangs.

  My own messengers were out in force, and with the Kholin tan solidly behind me, and with the obvious scarcity of Obdjangs either capable or willing to take the throne, I felt it to be a mere matter of waiting until the right time and then of striking hard and surely. I had no wish to gain the throne in the same stupid way of those onkers who would, when I succeeded, become my predecessors, and then of having someone else rise up behind my back. Also, I admit, the whole country was sick and tired of this nonsense. They needed a person at the helm who would direct and control, fairly and justly, giving aid to the weak and yet not penalizing too unfairly the strong and clever, so that the wheels of industry and commerce, of religion and order, might continue to turn.

  I, Dray Prescot, had set out to take the throne because I had nothing better to do. Now that I had had my eyes opened by the sheer loyalty, the dependence of my men, I hesitated. What right had I to aspire to another country's throne? Would I do any better for them than any of the other idiots who had grabbed the crown from greed? Perhaps I might; as you know I had had considerable success in Valka, and the Clans of Felschraung and Longuelm had prospered. But—and it was a big but—had all the joy gone from the scheme? Because I might now take the throne, had all the contest gone from the exercise?

  With all the force of a millstone running downhill events had taken charge.

  I discovered that the Kov of Hyr Khor, this Nath Jagdur, had once been of the Djin tan. When he had been declared leemshead, an outlaw, his tan had rejected him. He had made short work of them, and now he alone remained of the tan, with the exception of a young, crippled girl who had sought protection in North Djanduin with the Bolin tan, and who was now, therefore, behind the enemy lines, in an area dominated by the Gorgrens.

  Day by day secret messages of support flowed in. Coper was now working urgently. The treasury was bankrupt. The soldiers received no pay. No ships called. The harvest had been good but the farmers, true to their canny nature, hid most of their produce and sold only a tithe of it in the markets. There were riots in the city. The new king, this Kolanier, caroused in the palace, and sent his men out into the countryside to burn barns and seize hidden food. This food was then brought back to the city and distributed only to those in favor with the king. That meant his army and their dependents. Coper wrote that he felt disaster of a colossal scale could not now be prevented unless I struck soon.

  So I had to make up my mind.

  I prevaricated.

  Oh, yes, I was very far from the Dray Prescot who once would hurl himself unthinkingly into the leem's jaws. Now I pondered long and deeply, and, if I say that in the end I made up my mind to do as Coper and Kytun and our other friends begged me to do, and if that sounds megalomaniac to you, I can ask only for understanding. I am conscious always of that old saw about absolute power corrupting absolutely. I had held power in my hands. If I was corrupt I could blame only myself. That I did not think myself corrupt meant merely that, perhaps, I did not grasp the truth. But, also, I doubt if any of you would care to stand up and say to me, face to face, what you might murmur behind my back.

  Is that megalomania?

  I try always to treat a man fairly, to give him his just deserts, and to seek for mercy if he is evil, and to heap overpraise on him if he is meritorious.

  These are a weakling's ways, I know.

  On the day appointed we marched for Djanguraj.

  We made a magnificent spectacle.

  The flutduins beat the sky with their yellow wings, their sharp black beaks pointed on toward success. The infantry marched in their regulation formations, pastang by pastang, regiment by regiment. The artillery trundled on, drawn by sleek teams of quoffas or calsanys. The joats of the cavalry jingled as they trotted on over the white roads. And, over all the host, which had swollen day by day with fresh and eager men anxious to have an end of the troubles, there floated my old scarlet and yellow flag, Old Superb.

  A flier reached us from Coper. The merker was that same Chan of the Wings, whom I had grown to trust.

  “Lahal, Notor Prescot—soon to be King of Djanduin!"

  “Lahal, Chan of the Wings."

  He told me the news even as he handed me the balass box.

  “The King, this Kolanier, is dead. The Kov of Hyr Khor, Nath Jagdur, sits on the faerling throne!"

  My first thought was one of relief.

  I might not need, after all, to march in and fight and place the crown upon my head.

  Then—to my surprise—Kytun burst out laughing. He roared. “By Nundji! So the cramph has done it at last!"

  The explanation was simple. All the time I had been building my strength, Kov Nath had been doing the same. He had recruited leemsheads, outlaws, wild savages from the distant western islands surrounding Uttar Djombey, criminals, and those who believed he could bring the country out of its troubles. He had bribed Kolanier's guards and subverted his army, that had once been the army of the east. Now, truly, Kov Nath thought he had succeeded. He sat on the throne and his word was law.

  But—no more food came into the city, and starvation now stalked the streets of Djanguraj.

  Now I saw very clearly, with an appalled vision that summed up that dreadful charisma I possess, that this was no time for my personal relief. Now I had to make myself king and save the country of Djanduin.

  Megalomania?

  We marched for Djanguraj and the faerling throne.

  My men and women of the army called me the apim with the yrium.

  They had lived so long on promises: promises that they would be paid, their dependents cared for. They had subsisted at times on roots and berries and water from the streams. Some country folk had assisted us, but I had hanged a party of infantry who had burned a farmhouse in search of hidden food. I had issued notes, promissory notes, and very few had ever believed they would be honored.

  What right had I to hang men, even if they were soldiers caught looting and raping and burning? In truth, I had not passed sentence, for the court did that; but the court knew my views and they worked to rules and regulations I had set down for all to read who could. For those who could not read a stylor had been appointed to read out to every unit the standing orders under which my army marched into a campaign.

  “In Hamal,” said Kytun, perplexed at my discomposure over the hangings. “The law gives the next of kin the right to select tortures for the condemned before they are executed."

  “I know,” I said. There had been a husband, distraught, howling his grief as he mourned over the ruptured bodies of his wife and three daughters. “I know."

  Kytun's Kovnate island of Uttar Djombey lay at the extreme southwestern tip of Havilfar. Hamal extended over the whole northeastern corner of the continent. Yet word of the laws of Hamal penetrated even to Uttar Djombey.

  Also, Kytun told me as we had fought and campaigned together, his island of Uttar Djombey, which lay off the west coast of Djanduin, as you know, was flanked on the north by an island of equal size. At the west ends the two islands were not above two ulms apart. They trended north and south as they extended eastward so that a large, sheltered sheet of water lay between them. This second island was the home of Kov Nath Jagdur. This was the island of Hyr Khor.

  “And a worse nulsh for a neighbor no man could have!
"

  Judge, then, my mental state when I replied, “You will have a bad neighbor for not very much longer now, Kytun!"

  So many of the troubles of the country could be laid directly at Kov Nath Jagdur's door. Through his barbaric assassination of Obdjangs he had stripped the country of those who could guide it and keep it on a safe and level course. My first task, after securing the food supply, must be to strengthen the civil service and bolster the courage of the Obdjangs. Many had left the country, as Coper had told me. This gave me a measure of the Pallan of the Vollers. He had courage, to stay on. I thought of Sinkie, and I determined that nothing could harm them.

  If I do not dwell on those last days of the troubles it is, I suppose, because good men fought one another, and died, and as the streaming opaz light of Zim and Genodras drenched the battling armies in color and warmth and light, so the thraxters and the stuxes and the djangirs sucked the life from them and stained the dust with blood.

  Old Superb flew over my victorious army.

  Truth to tell, the battle was not much of a fight, from a strategic point of view, although there were one or two tactical moves I rather liked, for as soon as the way of it was clearly seen Kov Nath Jagdur's men began to desert him and to come over to our side. I had to use them, of course, but with all of human frailty in me I knew I would never fully trust them, which is a great pity.

  Being a bit of a maniac still, and seeing this battle as the outcome of a foolish whim made manifest in destiny, I had dived into the battle myself. The great and impossibly long sword I had taken from Kov Nath at our first encounter at the inn had given me ideas. Without Naghan the Gnat I had done the work myself, with the assistance of a young armorer, Wil of the Bellows, who was handy with a tempering hammer.

  At least, memory of our days spent in the smithy around the forge as, stripped to the waist, our bodies running with sweat, our muscles bulging, drinking huge drafts of a much-watered weak wine, we worked the metal in cunning fashion, yes, at least, those memories recur with pleasure.

  I took off enough of the blade to bring what was left to the length of the blade of a Krozair longsword. We were scrupulously careful not to impair the temper, for the steel was of fine meld, springy, strong, capable of taking a sharp edge. I rebuilt the handle, and gave it that subtle two-handed Krozair grip. I bound it with silver wire we took from the shattered effects of a Gorgren supply column, looted and burned in the hills. The overly ornate and clumsy quillons were cut back by a fine craftsman, for they had been built snugly into the blade and handle, and I rewound the velvet before them, thinking it a flamboyant touch, but, possibly, a useful one, and I left the lugs before the velvet, for obvious reasons. So it was with a sword not properly a Krozair longsword, and yet with a weapon that had much of the superb quality of that magnificent brand, that I went into action.

  As to the balance, Wil of the Bellows and I spent a long time getting the pommel weight just right. The blade balanced perfectly.

  Wil had shaken his head, at the beginning, and said, “The great swords of the islands of Djanduin are notorious, Notor. You are cutting this one down—"

  “Aye, young Wil. And for a reason."

  But he, like them all here, had never heard of the inner sea, the Eye of the World, and a Krozair of Zy meant nothing to them. Well, in various actions, they saw what a Krozair longsword might do in the hands of a Krozair brother skilled in these matters.

  “By Zodjuin of the Rainbow, Dray!” yelled Kytun as we pressed the remnants of Kov Nath's army back past the canal of fresh water, over the arcaded bridge, and into the Palazzo of the Four Winds. “You fight almost as well as a normal man with four arms!"

  It was an old jest.

  Djanguraj is a sprawling, arcaded, windy city with much granite and brick and little marble. The merezo—where the zorca and sleeth race—is one of the finer buildings. The palace contains many courtyards and inner ways, with the sacred court of the warrior gods placed centrally. To reach it we encircled the entire area and with flutduin flyers on patrol and the fliers available also helping to cover escape by air, we pressed on to the central sacred court.

  Ortyg Coper had joined us, and he wore armor and carried thraxter, shield, and djangir, but he was not at home in a warrior's garb, and I detailed sturdy Nath ti Jondaria, a Djang who understood that an order from me was to be obeyed until death without a thought or a question in that craggy skull of his, to look out for Coper and to guard him from his own excitement and unskilled desire to be a man among men.

  Now we came up against wildly vicious Djangs armed with the great sword of the islands of Djanduin. They were Nath Jagdur's personal bodyguard, men recruited from his own island of Hyr Khor. Against them, and with an unholy zest that infuriated all present, went the great swordsmen from Kytun's island of Uttar Djombey. There was work to be done here for the future.

  A merker alighted in a rush of fluttclepper wings and I had to draw back from the forefront of the battle at this vital moment of conquest to deal with problems of handling the city. There were orders to give, and decisions to make, all the pressing demands on a commander in battle that, in truth, were my proper role instead of bashing on with my longsword. I sent a scrabble of merkers into the air and racing on zorcas among the arcaded avenues of the city so as to make absolutely sure of every point within Djanguraj.

  Coper had done his work well. Despite my proud boasts I could never have kept the city once I had taken it without his work. The fruits of those labors now bore sweet fruit. The people appeared everywhere, shouting for Notor Prescot, and great crowds surged up the avenues, waving flags of orange and gray, and there were many who waved small copies of Old Superb in their violent excitement.

  Coper was hauled out of the line by the scruff of his neck and Nath ti Jondaria, a bluff fellow with a moustache wider than his ears, grinned hugely as he dumped Ortyg Coper down. They are good friends in nature's way, are Obdjang and Dwadjang, but the four-armed Djangs love to exhibit their strengths to the gerbil-faced Obdjangs. We are all human.

  “Here, Notor, is the Pallan as you ordered!"

  “Thank you, Nath. If you wish to carve yourself some fun in the battle—"

  But he was off, running and waving his sword above his head, screeching with sheer joy at being alive.

  “Now, Ortyg, we must plan the food supplies. That is the most important item in our plans. The people shout for us now, and for that I thank you with all my heart, but they will change their tune if we cannot feed them."

  Ortyg Coper squirmed inside his uncomfortable armor.

  “You speak the truth, Dray. And, as Mother Diocaster is my witness, I was never cut out to be a warrior. Now, as to food, there are caches we have uncovered here and there—” And so we went at it, with maps and lists and sending off of merkers with orders to the detachments of the army. Quoffa carts were collected by the hundred, and calsanys with panniers ready prepared. Djanguraj would not starve if I could help it.

  The noise of battle sensibly diminished. Coper and his stylors and I worked on in a feverish bustle, for we knew we must instantly show the people that we were not as other conquerors had been, and that we really meant what we said about the welfare of the Djangs of Djanduin.

  Presently Chan of the Wings appeared. He was walking. His leather flying gear showed a streak of blood, and he held his djangir in his hand. When he advanced to stand before me at the long tables set up in the court of the Stux of Zodjuin, he looked not so much tired as regretful and resentful of his errand. This was most unlike a merker.

  “Well, Chan of the Wings,” I said, scribbling notes at the foot of a distribution list—that was for palines, I noticed, having asked to inspect the paline supply position personally—and looking up sharply. “You have a message?"

  “Aye, Notor Prescot, whom henceforth men will hail as King of Djanduin. The last remnants of the leemsheads are barricaded within the sacred court. Kov Kytun Kholin Dom pens them there. And the Opaz-forsaken rast of a Kov Nath Ja
gdur has sent a message—"

  Instantly my mind flew back seven years, to the moment when I had appeared by the Star Lords’ command in Djanduin, beside the burning inn. And I could hear myself shouting, so as to give a little breathing space, throw a little bafflement into the picture, half-taunting this Nath Jagdur, Kov of Hyr Khor. His men had been hurling stuxes at me, and loosing when they could, and he had been trying to get at me with that damned great sword which now swung at my side. I remembered letting him have a curse and an offer.

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

  And he had laughed and said he was no Horter.

  Neither am I, when it comes down to it. If I had to cut him up or stick him I would do so, fairly or foully.

  “I am coming, Chan of the Wings,” I said, and rose and clapped my left hand to that great sword of the island of Djanduin that I had cut down into an imitation longsword of the Eye of the World. I strode off toward the sacred court of the warrior gods.

  Chan shook his head.

  “You seem ever able, Notor, to read a man's mind."

  How easy to have said, in the old harsh way, “Believe it!"

  But that would have been cheap.

  Kytun met me, blood-spattered, angry, alive with his deep humor and his fighting blood aroused and baffled.

  “By the blood of Holy Djan-kadjiryon!” he bellowed. “The yetch challenges you, Dray! He challenges you to single combat!"

  “He but takes up a challenge issued seven years ago, Kytun.” I spoke mildly. I had no wish, now, to fight this wild leem of a rebellious Kov who had made himself king; but I would so do. I would do so for the sake of this new country of mine. For, make no mistake, Djanduin had become a country I counted and honored.

  Coper had also pushed up with us, and now he squeaked his own outrage.

  “If he kills you, Dray, if he does—why—it is all for nothing, for he will be the rightful king still—"