Witches of Kregen [Dray Prescot #34]

by Alan Burt Akers

  They belonged to my secret group of agents, and they'd been trained by Naghan Raerdu, who was a spy par excellence. His attitude was either to go invisible, or to go big.

  He, himself, habitually went big, and yet could become inconspicuous on the spot if needs be—when he laughed. These triplets were of the invisible variety; once seen never remembered. They handled the flier I'd prised out of Farris very well, and I was confident we had not been observed.

  “If only you'd let us go with you, majis,” grumbled Oby.

  Dwaby added, “We wouldn't get in your way, majis."

  And Sosie finished: “Majis, please say yes."

  I said, “Nope, and that's final. Get my gear off and then you can shove off. Farris needs this voller."

  They didn't enjoy this; they obeyed and soon my zorca, preysany and piles of kit were overside and under the trees. I bid them the remberees in a most cheerful fashion; they replied in a way that suggested that they'd seen the last of me. The voller rose beyond the trees, turned and fled hugging the contours.

  I said to Snagglejaws, my zorca: “Well, my lad, you and Swivelears here are in for it now."

  He tossed his single spiral horn in reply, and stamped a hoof. That spiral horn was not particularly long. His hide was of a mangey grayish color, rather more hairy and tufty than smooth and sleek. He had a damned wicked eye. He looked a mess. Yet Snagglejaws was among the strongest, sturdiest, most willing of all the zorcas; he wasn't in Shadow's class; but then, what zorca was?

  This reminded me of the time in Djanduin when I'd made the acquaintance of just such a zorca, Dust Pounder—although, to be fair, Snagglejaws looked a mess while Dust Pounder was a blood zorca.

  The preysany, Swivelears, showed the whites of his eyes as I loaded the kit onto his back. It was perfectly clear he was saying in preysanish: “Why by all the gods do I carry the kit and Snagglejaws doesn't?"

  Still, that was the way of it on Kregen, and when I swung up into the saddle on Snagglejaws’ back I fancied Swivelears gave a whinny of satisfied amusement.

  So we set off along a trail toward Fakransmot, a town where, so our intelligence said, Natyzha Famphreon recruited paktuns.

  For, of course, despite the zorca between my knees, following Naghan the Barrel's advice I'd chosen to go big. I'd be a hyrpaktun, one of the most renowned of all mercenaries. I'd wear the pakzhan at my throat, the silken cords looped up over my shoulder, and the golden dazzle of the Zhantil's head device would tell any onlooker that here was a free lance of formidable reputation.

  Naturally, I'd shifted my features around a trifle and allowed my whiskers to grow so that they helped disguise me, and the multitude of bee stings on my face that was the price of too drastic changes could be substantially muted.

  The small golden or silver rings that secure the golden or silver devices to the silk at a paktun's neck serve another purpose. If one paktun slays another in fair combat he takes the ring and threads it up on a trophy string called a pakai. I'd put on a whole hefty chingle of rings on my pakai. If I got into a fight I could secure it firmly so that no foeman could grab it and so catch me at a disadvantage. All the same, I didn't like the thing.

  Very briefly, then, I will say that I was equipped as a Kregan would like to be equipped—a stout zorca between my knees, a tough preysany loaded with kit, and armed with a Lohvian longbow, a drexer, a rapier and main gauche, a few odd knives and terchicks about my person, and the great Krozair longsword scabbarded down my back under the plain black cape.

  In addition, a tough shield of an oval shape and with a snarling neemu on its face lay athwart Swivelears’ rump. I had no lance. There was a reason for this. When I was employed by Natyzha Famphreon's officers, I intended to go for a swod as a bowman, not a lancer. The shield I would explain away. It was black, and the neemu of bright brass.

  The forests up here in Falkerdrin extended for considerable areas over the kovnate. Some of them were infested with wild hatchevarus; but they were fierce enough to drag down a charcoal burner and not powerful enough seriously to challenge a soldier with a sword. I trotted on, easily, guiding Snagglejaws with my knees, although he followed the track and did not need guidance. Swivelears trotted along behind on the leading rope.

  He was carrying the bits and pieces of armor I'd thought suitable. Reluctantly I'd discarded any idea of taking some of the superb supple mesh from the Dawn Lands. I had a kax, shoulder pieces, pauldrons, pteruges and greaves. Even then it was doubtful if I'd use the lot all at once. Wearing armor is a funny old business; you most devoutly need it in the heat of battle, yet you chafe under it and wish for the freedom of movement you'd have if you chucked the lot down.

  Still, there it was if I needed it. Easing the zorca to a walk I let him amble along. The edge of the woods was soon reached and I debouched out into a long slanting valley, well-watered and lush with flowers, and with the sea distant and blue on the horizon.

  We'd chosen to land here because the port of Roombidge on the north coast of the kovnate received the argosies from overseas bringing in the mercenaries hired by Natyzha Famphreon. The paktuns were streaming ashore at many ports along the coast, and at ports on the coasts of the Belains to the southwest and of Vekby to the west. The plan was for me unobtrusively to join up with a caravan journeying to Fakransmot.

  To this end I reined in when a village showed up ahead. The suns were declining and I was lucky. A string of riders wended along the trail clearly intending to put up for the night in the village of Rernal, and as they dismounted by the single inn I eased in among them, as though seeking for a good position. I did not make a fuss over it. I was gambling that in the short distance from the coast everyone might not have come to know everyone else. From the conversations as the mercenaries spread out I realized they had traveled aboard ships different from their countries of origin. There were plenty of diffs among them.

  I stayed with that bunch all the way to Fakransmot. The state of the kovnate impressed me. Natyzha was a damned hard overseer of labor; there were many slaves and the fields were in good heart. We had done as well down south; I doubt if we'd done better.

  During the ride I spoke when spoken to, kept to myself and stayed out of trouble. This was the attitude of most of the paktuns; some of the youngsters—untried, green, coys—starting out on their first mercenary job skylarked around a little; the old hands kept clear of them.

  Every day I rode for a considerable period with my eyeballs, as it were, out on stalks and scouring the skies. There was no sign of the Gdoinye, the scarlet and golden-feathered bird sent by the Everoinye to spy on me. Typical! Just when you wanted the flaming onkerish thing, it didn't show up!

  “Duck your fool head, dom!” The voice purred level and habituated to command.

  Without thought I ducked.

  The tree branch went past over head and the leaves snatched off my fancy wide-brimmed hat with the maroon feather. Hauling up Snagglejaws I looked around. We'd been riding slowly through a field moments before, when I'd been apostrophizing the Star Lords; feeling down, I'd put my head down for a space, and an angle of the woods had nearly kinked it off.

  “I thank you, dom.” I hopped off the zorca and fetched my hat. “My head is of little value; I wouldn't like to damage this hat."

  “Ha!” he said. “A joker."

  By the dripping mucous and yellow puss of Makki Grodno's left eyeball! What would folk say to that? A joker?

  “One has to live,” I said, and climbed back into the saddle. He reined alongside and gave the lahal.

  “I am Nalgre the Point—not, I hasten to add, a name of my own choosing and one of which lately I grow tired.” He was not apim like me. He was an olumai, and he looked like a panda; he wore a white tunic with a golden hem and he did not carry a rapier, instead he had a lynxter strapped to his waist. The lynxter instead of a rapier and main gauche, which many of the paktuns wore for travel, indicated Nalgre the Point's origin. He was from Loh. Also, like me, he concealed his pakzhan at
his throat.

  I said my name was Kadar the Silent. Kadar was a name used by me aforetime and happened to be the name inscribed on the reverse of the golden image of the zhantil on its silken cords at my throat. By Zair! That had all happened a long time ago! Now, I was a properly accredited and legal hyrpaktun—I was no fake.

  We talked occasionally and I gathered Nalgre the Point hankered after something he kept secret. He did say: “I find myself feeling a strange emotion for the people of Vallia. I almost feel sorry for them. Yet troublous times give us our livelihood, brother. Who are we to complain?"

  A trifle incautiously, I said: “When all Vallia is pacified we paktuns will find employment elsewhere."

  “For one dubbed Silent, Kadar, when you speak you enlarge grandly upon the course of events."

  Acting my part, I did not reply.

  When we reached Fakransmot we discovered that mercenaries were being hired on there; but the dowager kovneva had shifted her headquarters northwards, almost to the Mountains of the North, often called the Snowy Mountains.

  Nalgre the Point looked out from the tavern windows where they were signing men on to the yard, where the red and green suns smoked dusty ruby and jade across the waiting men, the saddle animals, the hurrying slaves. He put a powerful paw to his chin.

  “I have been told that in Vallia it is not cold weather until you cross the Snowy Mountains."

  “That is right, zhan[ii],” said the Hikdar at the table. “Now just sign on with us and—"

  “My heart was set on joining the dowager kovneva."

  Instantly, standing at Nalgre's side, I got out: “Mine too."

  “That is, of course, your privilege.” The Hikdar, flamboyantly attired and smothered with the black and white favors, Racter colors, gave a grimace which indicated he was conveying a private confidence. “We fare better down here against the forces of the so-called Emperor of Vallia than they do up in the north against the King of North Vallia."

  He made a further attempt to induce us to join his regiment, and when we refused, waved us pettishly away.

  Outside, Nalgre said: “So we ride north?"

  “Aye."

  “Let us, for the sake of Beng Dikkane, find another tavern to refresh ourselves first."

  Without wearying you with details of our ride north, I will content myself with saying that Nalgre the Point proved an agreeable companion. He nursed this secret hurt, something troubling him he wrestled with constantly; but he remained cheerful and alert. I made what inquiries I could and discovered that everyone believed the two wars, north and south, were being won handsomely. The dowager kovneva shuttled from front to front. There was not the slightest whisper that she considered herself to be dying. As for her son, Kov Nath, he was universally condemned as a weakling and of no account in statecraft.

  If the old biddy really wasn't at death's door I could be wasting my time up here. There was comfort in the fact that Csitra couldn't spot me and therefore should not be bringing further plagues and curses upon my people.

  In the end I decided to have a good look around, find out everything I could, and then get back home sharpish.

  Ha!

  Natyzha Famphreon could really be dying, could even already be dead, and for obvious reasons of state no one at her court would admit to that. This was the possibility that caused me to travel north with Nalgre the Point. I'd given a promise to Natyzha, enemy though she was, and I intended to keep it as best I could.

  Nalgre came from Whonban in Loh and he told me somewhat of that mysterious place. I told him I came from Hamal, which seemed reasonable at the time.

  Once he'd commanded his own group of mercenaries. Zhanpaktuns can attract followers with the promises of employment and loot. Lone zhanpaktuns usually have a colorful history. His band had been chopped in a disastrous battle and, from his demeanor and what he didn't say, I gathered he hadn't had the heart to create a fresh band of followers.

  I simply said I'd been fighting in Hamal and preferred to be a loner.

  Most wealthy fighting men when they travel and go by road ride one animal and have a few in the string to carry their belongings. I had Swivelears. Nalgre had three preysanys and a totrix. Naturally, being a sensible fellow, he rode a zorca. The very ride itself, wending through the country, proved delightful. Neither of us was in a hurry. The war would still be there when we arrived.

  The Snowy Mountains appeared on the horizon ahead. The weather remained good, for Kregen's enormous temperate zone assures sensible weather from the equator north and south over a much wider series of parallels than on Earth. We put up at inns, ate and drank well, and got on famously.

  The absence of bandits was welcome. Natyzha policed her kovnate with a hand not so much of iron as of carbon steel. We suffered only two assaults, and of these the first fracas was over in a twinkling with a few lopped heads and limbs, a few writhing bodies and the rest running on bandy legs as fast as they could get away.

  The second fracas was of a more serious nature.

  As Nalgre said, carefully wiping his sword on the tunic of a fellow with no face: “I do wish these fellows would think before they acted."

  Casually, returning my sword to the scabbard, I said: “Oh, they mistook us for a couple of idiots, easy prey, I suppose."

  The bandits had chosen a narrow trail between overhanging vegetation-clothed banks from which to make their attack, and these drikingers consisted of fellows to make your hair curl, all dripping furs and golden-ornaments and fierce eyes and bad breath.

  “They might have profited from the wasted year I spent at school learning of the philosophic theories of Olaseph the Nik.” Nalgre mounted up, chik-chikking to his zorca, Goldenhooves. “I cleared out as soon as I could and went for a mercenary. That was a long time ago, by Hlo-Hli!"

  We trotted on out of the shadowy trail into the twinned sunshine. There had been little of value to be liberated from the dead drikingers, although Nalgre found a nice ring, which I indicated I wanted nothing of.

  He went on, as though ruminating: “I remember that fool teacher hammering at me that appearances are all. What one sees on the surface is all there is. Nothing of what lies beneath can be revealed by insight or self-analysis because there is nothing beneath the surface."

  “Umm?” I said, letting Snagglejaws take me along, and thinking what a powerfully intellectual comment that Umm was. It takes all kinds to make a world, and all kinds of philosophies and theories to furnish that world with concepts to play with and, perhaps, to extend understanding.

  “Those drikingers looked down and saw your execrable zorca, the string of pack animals, my Goldenhooves, who no doubt brought the light of avarice into their eyes, and they failed to observe the glitter of gold at our throats. They saw two men lumpily riding and talking, taking no notice of the world about them. They went by appearances, sensing nothing below the surface."

  “You stretch the analogy a trifle, I feel. The surface did include the pakzhans at our throats. It was faulty observation, surely—"

  “I grant you that.” His panda face showed intense pleasure, as a panda's face, diff or not, quite clearly could reveal an emotion understandable by an apim. “But my argument encompasses their reading of the gold as a mere ornament. They saw an appearance of a couple of ponshos ripe for the shearing, and they fell upon a couple of leems."

  “They fell right enough. I grant you that."

  “But you agree, also, that one cannot judge all there is to be judged by surface appearances alone? A person is more than his outward shell, more than his words?"

  “Sometimes."

  “Well, if you grant only one sometimes, the philosophy of Olaseph the Nik must fail."

  “You have me there, Nalgre. Hip and thigh."

  “Although the philosopher marshals vituperative arguments, suggesting for example that people prone to self-analysis have not grown to adulthood, he finally does not convince me. And, through your admission, you either."

  Nalgre us
ed Kregish words and language concepts, naturally, encompassing what I have rendered here, including “self-analysis.” It struck me that I was not, in this context, yet adult because I continually questioned what I did. Did this mean, therefore, that anyone who simply knew that they were always right was fully adult? The theory would seem to imply this.

  Back in the real world, of Kregen or of Earth, anyone who always knew they were right usually trailed a whole string of catastrophes in their wake. Also, did I patter on too much about my problems? I could simply bash straight on, as I used to do, and hell take anyone else. That, to me in those days, seemed the immature approach to life. What I felt about Vallia, about all of Paz, about our coming confrontation with the Shanks who appeared to want only to raid and kill us, nerved me into taking decisions the enormity of which would appall me if I felt those decisions to be—not so much wrong as ineptly directed.

  The real world impinged again as Nalgre lifted in the stirrups, pointing ahead: “There's the tower we were to look out for. And I can see the walls of Tali. Good! I'm for the very first tavern and a stoup of ale."

  “And a dish of palines.” Now we were talking of the important things of life, by Krun!

  There was no doubt that the philosophic theories of Olaseph the Nik were supremely correct about this city of Tali. The walls were tall and thick, the towers many and strong, the twinkle of weapons along the ramparts clear evidence of a powerful garrison. Stringing blue-white along the far horizon the Snowy Mountains floated against the sky. From there descended the perils Tali guarded against.

  Up here past the northern boundary of Natyzha Famphreon's Falkerdrin we rode through the vadvarate province of Kavinstock. Kavinstock's ruler, its vad, had been Nalgre Sultant. He and I had had our run-ins before; he was a fanatic Racter, and a mad-dog in many people's eyes, certainly a man who hated my guts. I did not much care for him myself. He could easily be reported dead, and his heirs could now rule here in Kavinstock for all I knew.