Renegade of Kregen [Dray Prescot #13]

by Alan Burt Akers

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Museum pieces

  The red sun of Antares, Zim, preceded the green sun of Antares, Genodras, across the heavens. A small but powerful body of men rode hard across the plain kicking dust in a straight line for the northern gate of sinister Magdag. All about on the plain stretched the megaliths, monstrous edifices, cutting enormous blocks of darkness against the radiance of the suns.

  When the red and green suns passed in eclipse awful rites took place in those megalithic chambers, which only the highest of the land might see. The ordinary folk must huddle in their hovels and shudder at the wrath of Zair upon the land.

  Always, Genodras would emerge from the pierced flank of Zim, and thus proclaim that Grodno still ruled.

  We rode hard. The suns were drawing apart again in their cycle and were about a quarter of the way through that outward and inward movement. Our cloaks flared in the wind of our passage and our sectrixes labored with snorting nostrils, for they sensed the stables ahead and knew the journey was almost over. There was no time to reflect on the mysteries of Grodno and Zair within the spider-webbed shadowy chambers of the megaliths.

  The sky held a high, drawn look, streaked with ocher clouds, and a few magbirds fluttered and cawed, whirling spots of blackness against the light. Heads low, trailing dust, we raced for the northern gate of evil Magdag.

  Among our company, surrounded by Pachaks, rode a figure in armor and green robes glittering with precious gems. She was clad and accoutered like a warrior, but I could not mistake the erect, graceful carriage of the Lady of the Stars.

  I was grateful that her protection had been entrusted to Pachaks. They are intensely loyal, honoring through their own system of nikobi the obligations of their hire; mercenaries whose code places them above the common herd. Two left arms has a Pachak, so that with a shield he is a formidable fighter. A long, sinuous tail equipped with a strong hand has a Pachak, so that he may slice you down from aloft or spit you clean as the blade leaps between his legs. Oh, yes, I employed Pachaks whenever I could.

  There were no Rapas among our company.

  The hooves of the sectrixes rang loud on the stones beneath the gate. Passing archways with that pointed Grodnim shape, we saw the alert forms of guards and watchmen, the slanting rays of the suns bright on their weapons. The echoes bounced from the yellow stone walls and the dark granite walls as we clip-clopped along. People scattered from our path. A basket of gregarians overturned and the ripe fresh fruit rolled, squishing.

  Straight to the Jade Palace we rode, and Gafard, lost in thought, led us, his head sunk upon his breast and his powerful body lumbering along in time to the ungainly gait of his mount.

  As in any well-run palace everything was prepared against the master's homecoming.

  In the hullabaloo and uproar as slaves ran and men bellowed, Duhrra and I took ourselves off to the small chamber we had been allotted for our personal use. This lay under the roof to the rear, overlooking a courtyard where daily vast amounts of sweat were spilled by swods drilling. When Gafard needed us he would call. In the interim we spent the time arguing, as was inevitable, here in Green Magdag, about the best ways of getting back to the Reds.

  I felt sure that Duhrra had either completely forgotten or had never really understood just who I was. After all, there had been only the scraps of quick conversation between Pur Zenkiren and myself, there in besieged Shazmoz, to afford any inkling that I was not the Dak I claimed to be. For Duhrra the task was simply that of escaping from Magdag and returning to the Zairian side of the inner sea.

  For me, of course, there awaited slavery at a galley oar in Zairia, for I was an unfrocked Krozair, Apushniad.

  After we had bathed and eaten a huge meal and were thinking about emptying a few pots, the call came.

  I took care to dress in my mail and to bear my arms as I followed the Relt messenger along the corridors and so down to Gafard's private suite, secluded in a separate wing of his palace with the windows cunningly angled so that the occupants might not be overlooked. The suns had long set and She of the Veils rose over the steep roofs and the flat roofs, set alternately in pleasing patterns. The long shadow of the Tower of True Contentment lay across the last corridor. The shimmer of golden light at each end burned unfocused. The Relt hurried on, silent on his foofray satin slippers, and I in my mail clumped on after in my studded sandals.

  This was not a private audience. A number of Gafard's chief officers crowded the anteroom to his study. Grogor, of course, was there, to favor me with a scowl as I entered. The others looked up without speaking and then went back, as I considered, to biting their nails. They knew far more than I of the intrigues festering in Magdag; whatever news Gafard had brought back from the king was not good. The close, oppressive atmosphere as we sat in silence and waited told me that.

  We were called in at last and trooped through the green velvet-draped doorway and so came into Gafard's study. There were books here, papers and charts, maps and the paraphernalia of the fighting-man by both sea and land. Also on separate tables lay spread out six separate games of Jikaida, all in different stages of progress. Gafard waved us to seats.

  We sat, expectantly, waiting for him to speak.

  “Gernus,” he began, and so we knew this was a serious business, for he used the usual euphemism, calling us lords. They do not go in for koters and horters in Green Magdag. They fancy kyrs and tyrs are below their gernus—as, indeed, they are—their overlords of Magdag.

  “There is serious work afoot. I have to tell you the king is highly displeased with some of the recent actions over against the rasts of Zairians. Shazmoz is not taken. Shazmoz is relieved."

  There was a stir at this, a buzz, a murmur of speculation.

  “Yes, well may you be astonished. For was not Shazmoz closely ringed, besieged, due to fall like a ripe apple? And now the king, may his name be revered, tells me that not only is Shazmoz undefeated, it is relieved, and the cramphs of the Red press on to the west."

  I own I felt perky at this news. Mind you, I had given up any concern over the outcome of the internecine strife between the Red and the Green; but I own I felt a lift of the heart at this news.

  “What, gernu, of Prince Glycas?” Grogor, Gafard's second in command, spoke up.

  “Aye, well may you ask, Grogor! The king has heard ill words of Prince Glycas, who commands our armies there against Zair. But the disaster cannot be put down to him. He was to the last, pushing ahead, when two things happened that deprived us of Shazmoz."

  If Pur Zenkiren, who commanded in Shazmoz, was still the powerful force I had known, for all he had sadly fallen away after he had been passed over in the elections for Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy, then I was not at all surprised at what miracles he might achieve.

  Gafard went on speaking, and he ticked off two points on his fingers.

  “One, a new, fresh strong force came up out of the hinterland and caught the besiegers of Shazmoz unprepared. They were led by a damned Zairian noble, a Roz Nazlifurn. He coordinated his thrust with the commander of their eastern army, Roz Nath Lorft."

  Now I understood what Pur Zenkiren had stopped himself from saying, and I rejoiced. How the Krozairs must be laughing!

  Gafard went on, “And, two, a freak tide swept away the shipping. We lost a great deal of supplies. Explanations are being sought from the Todalpheme, whose task it is to prevent such catastrophes in the Grand Canal."

  I kept my hard old face straight. So the tide had reached Shazmoz and had swept away the damned Grodnim shipping! Well, that was good news. No doubt, also, the tide had created havoc on its way, and many a good man had lost a boat, a shed, a house. I felt sorrow, I felt the guilt I carried, but most of all I felt some deep pleasure that the tide I had created had not only swept away the Menaham argenters carrying King Genod's damned vollers, but had also contributed to the Zairian victory at Shazmoz.

  “So we are for the southern shore, gernu?"

 
“Aye. We take a swifter squadron, and broad ships with mercenaries and men-at-arms. We make a landing and we strike at the rear of the combined Zairian army. The king, whose name be revered, is confident we can restore all that has been lost."

  Here, then, was a task set to the hand of the king's favorite general and admiral.

  Preparations were already well under way under the aegis of the king's hyr gernu admiral—his lord high admiral. He was a man past a hundred and seventy who would be only too grateful not to have to command the expedition, for he was a hedonist much given to the daily inspection of the bottoms of many glasses. He held the titular rank, to keep up the face and the pretense for the overlords of Magdag; it was Gafard, the King's Striker, the Sea-Zhantil, who held the real power.

  In all the bustle, as the final details were attended to, I had to take serious stock of my position.

  For Duhrra, the future was clear. The moment he reached the southern shore he would break free and rejoin his comrades. With contempt he would hurl the name Guhrra back in the teeth of the Grodnims, and as Duhrra would joyfully embrace Zair.

  I said, in the privacy of our room, “The Grodnims have sent your name to Zo, the king in Sanurkazz. You are renegade."

  He swelled his enormous plated chest. “Maybe so, Dak—Gadak—but I shall explain. As you have explained to me. The king will understand, for he is wise and just."

  I hadn't seen King Zo in fifty years; I did not smile.

  “As to his wisdom, it would be impolitic to doubt that. But his justice—you will run a mortal danger."

  “I know. We both will. But I have faith in the justice of Zair."

  You couldn't say fairer than that.

  What I did say, and at that merely giving expression to a thought that had been building for some time, was, “And if when we were thrown down before King Zo, crying piteously for mercy, we could bring with us, in chains, this same Gafard, the renegade?"

  Duhrra turned slowly to stare at me. His idiot-seeming face bloomed with blood, a flush seeping from forehead to neck. He half lifted his good left hand, and let it fall slowly to his side. His hook trembled.

  “That would be a deed, by Zair!"

  “Think on, Duhrra of the Days."

  He surprised me.

  “I hate the Green as any man of the Red must hate the Green. I do not forget my brother. All my friends who are dead and gone. But, yet—for all his villainy, I would not joy in delivering up my lord Gafard to his enemies."

  I looked at him. He was sincere. He shared my thoughts.

  In so many ways the early life of this Gafard—who had then been Fard—paralleled my own. From a humble birth he had faced a life completely without prospects. He had striven to improve his lot and had become a Jikaidast, and a good one. Then he had fought for the Red, and fallen foul of Zairian justice—from what I gathered he had knocked the teeth out of a Red Brother—and had for a space served in the galleys and then had been taken by the Grodnims. As he had said from the moment he had changed his allegiance, aiming for the main chance, his fortunes had dramatically improved. Would I, having served a similar apprenticeship, not have embraced the Green? Was I not a newly converted enthusiast to Zair? All my early convictions remained unimpaired, merely overlaid with newer convictions of Kregen.

  “No, Duhrra,” I said. “He is a man, for all he is a renegade. He is very likable, for all his villainy. And, do not forget, the Lady of the Stars loves him dear."

  “There must be good in him.” Duhrra rubbed his hook flat over his bald head, a trick that, at first, had quite turned my stomach. Now I was used to it. He put his thoughts awkwardly into words, reverting to his old ways. “Duh—I wonder if his good outweighs his bad. A rogue, yes, but I believe his heart still belongs to Zair."

  He could have said “his heart is still in the right place,” but that would not have conveyed the flavor of his thoughts.

  “Then,” I said, “he has sent a damned lot of good Zairians up to Zim to spy out his welcome."

  “That, of course, he will pay for."

  For my own plans to prosper I needed something like the enormous prize that Gafard would represent. If I could haul him in at the end of a chain and dump him down in the Krozair Isle of Zy, display him a captive to Pur Kazz, the Grand Archbold, might not that win me back my place as a Brother of the Krozairs of Zy?

  I believe the sight of my Lady of the Stars affected my decision, even then. I had seen her face, and talked with her, and I felt this spiritual attraction, and I felt absolutely confident she loved Gafard as he loved her. And there was the man himself, confident, hard, but likable, generous, friendly. The two halves of his personality were not any the stranger than the two halves of my own.

  The thought of betraying him so basely, after his extended hand of friendship, despite all the hidden threats, sickened me.

  I'd do it, of course, like a shot, for my Delia.

  Nothing could remain undone for Delia.

  Even this Lady of the Stars could not stand against Delia, could she ... ?

  My unforeseen, too familiar brush with the Lady of the Stars led Gafard to appoint me to a task of some honor on Kregen. I have indicated how the banners and standards of armies and ships are regarded with deep veneration—not the tawdry bit of cloth, but the meanings the bright colors and symbols contain—and men have had their arms hacked off rather than give up the standard. This is known on our Earth, also. In certain armies men vied to carry the standard into action and when honored prepared everything for their own deaths. The honor of bearing the banner into action was so great they were prepared to give their lives, for they knew as everyone knew that the standard-bearer was the target for the most violent attack. So they would dress themselves in their full-dress uniforms, clean and smart, would go through their necessary religious observances, make their farewells of their friends, and then take up the standard and march into battle, expecting to die. Usually they were not disappointed.

  Summoned to the presence of Gafard, I found him lounging in a long white silk robe, his concerns for the moment thrust aside. He had chosen one of the luxurious saloons of his palace, with padded walls and soft furnishings, mellow lamps and many potted flowers, the scents heavy in the close air. There was a great quantity of different wines from which to choose. He waved the majordomo away and beckoned me in. I wore mail and my weapons, a custom I had faithfully followed since I had turned Grodnim.

  “Sit down, Gadak—wine? There is a matter I wish to tell you, and, after that, another matter."

  “I await your commands, gernu."

  A Fristle slave girl dressed in bangles and pearls poured wine. Gafard waited until she had finished and then waved her away. We were alone. He handed me the wine goblet; it was all of gold with great rubies set about the bowl and stem. I sipped, making the sign to him of salutation and thanks. It was Zond.

  “When we used to drink this, gernu,” I said, wishing to get him started on this interview, “we would say: ‘Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that.’”

  “Those days are best forgotten.” He drank quickly. He looked not so much agitated as keyed up. “You, Gadak, will carry the standard of my Lady of the Stars."

  I gaped at him.

  “Close your mouth, you fambly, and listen."

  I shut my mouth with a snap.

  “My Lady will accompany me on this expedition. She will dress and travel as a man, a great gernu. This for reasons that need not concern you. Arrangements have been made for her cabin in Volgodont's Fang. She will not be seen. But, as an overlord, she must needs have her deviced banner. This will be your charge."

  I knew what was required of me. I bowed my head, and then looked up. “The honor is undeserved, but I will serve till death."

  To a Green Grodnim, such a promise meant nothing; it was rote.

  “Good.” He stood up. “I have taken a liking to you, friend Gadak. After this expedition, who knows, you may well be Gadak of some honorable title. Come—there is that I wo
uld show you."

  He led me toward a tall single door, which he unlocked with the bronze key on his belt, and we went through into a tall narrow room lit by lancet windows. The room flamed’ with color.

  Red!

  Banners and standards of all kinds hung from the walls. There were stands of arms of Krozair manufacture—although there were no Krozair longswords I could see—and I looked.

  “Aye, Gadak. This is my trophy room. These are the trophies of my battles and actions."

  I swallowed down hard. I recognized some of the devices.

  There was much there I was dismayed to see. This man, this King's Striker, had roamed the inner sea like a leem. I walked slowly along, looking up. At the far end in a small alcove stood a balass-framed glass case. The light struck across it and lit its contents. I looked.

  A scrap of red cloth, not eighteen inches square, with faded gold embroidery, and, along one edge, a strip of yellow cloth. Also in the case lay what was clearly a fragment of mesh mail. Also a main-gauche ... A main-gauche? The left-hand dagger was not a familiar weapon in the inner sea, for they were not rapier-and-dagger men.

  I looked back at Gafard. He stood there, one hand to his beard, staring at the case with an expression I found hard to read.

  “You wonder at these pitiful relics, Gadak?"

  “Trophies of your first action?” I suggested, doubtful.

  He smiled. “No, Gadak. My first victim sank in a bubble and all was lost.” He came closer and stood looking down at the red cloth, brooding. “No. These are precious to me. Most precious. You will not understand, and yet, I sense in you a spirit, a spark that can ignite if fanned with skill."

  “Swifter actions are violent and bloody—"

  “Aye! And the man who owned this red flag, and this mail shirt, and this dagger, was violent and bloody above all."

  So I knew.

  I looked closer.