A Life for Kregen dp-19

by Alan Burt Akers

  It was enough to make a man swear off strong drink for life.

  No, I will not go into that journey or into my state of mind.

  The occasion is worth a mention when, during the night of storms when the wind blew streamers of screaming fury across the sky and the moons remained hidden so that the world became bathed in darkness like a night of Notor Zan, Hyr Brun, Vaxnik and Dayra escaped. They hardly escaped. They simply staggered off into the darkness, holding on to one another and with Brun like a massive anchor to hold them to the earth. They vanished within a couple of arms’ lengths and we did not see them again, or for a very long time thereafter.

  In order to bolster my failing sense of direction and to give some semblance of rationality to what I was doing, to counter the absolute loss and waste of my efforts with Dayra, I told myself that this journey had been worthwhile for the rescue of Thelda and my discovery of the misery in store for Seg and Thelda, and for Lol Polisto, too. So I told myself.

  In the fullness of time we trailed into Vondium.

  We had obtained vollers for the last part of the trip and when I vaulted out on the high landing platform of the palace and searched the faces of those who waited to greet us for just the one, and failed to see her, I felt another and more treacherous feeling of loss. I needed Delia near me now. And then — well, I looked again at the faces of the crowd.

  Glum. Drawn. Haggard. Cast down as though sent reeling by some ghastly catastrophe. Many of the women were mourning. A chill gripped me. And, of course, I already knew. But I did not know the full horror of what had befallen the pride of Vondium, capital of the Empire of Vallia. Kyr Nath Nazabhan, a good comrade, a fine fighting man, commander of the Phalanx, Kapt, was so cast down in his pride that at first he would not look at me, merely cast himself down in the full incline, trembling, clad in black, contrite, ashamed, grief-stricken — and guilty.

  “For the sweet sake of Opaz, Nath! Stand up straight and tell me. Openly and honestly, as we are comrades.”

  “Majister — majister — the army. My Phalanx…”

  “Voves, was it?”

  His gray-carved face looked up. “Majister? How could you know that?”

  “You forget, the Emperor of Vallia has eyeballs everywhere.”

  Well, how can one remain unamused and not essay a feeble jest in the face of disaster?

  So the story came out, brokenly, the grim, ugly, cold story.

  I sat at my desk in that book-lined room with the maps and the weapons, and presently Nath was persuaded to sit across from me. He stabbed the map as he spoke. Lines, arrows, routes of penetration, ambush and surprise, and, at the end, the battle. News had reached Vondium that an army had at last been sighted, an army marching southwest from Vazkardrin on the east coast. I nodded. Vazkardrin lay between the coast and the Kwan Hills which demarcated the borders of Hawkwa country thereabouts. Zankov clearly had inserted his tendrils of power into the vadvarate of Vazkardrin, which had been run by canny old Vad Rhenchon, a numim, who had always kept himself unaligned in the struggles of power politics. Zankov had taken over with his cronies and his renegade Hawkwas and provided a secure base for the arrival of the clans carried in Zeniccean ships from Segesthes. It had to be. Southward of Vazkardrin lay the imperial province of Jevuldrin. That was flat country, ideal, as Nath said, for the maneuvers of the Phalanx. It was also ideal cavalry country. And there is no cavalry in all of Paz, so I thought, to compare with vove chivalry. The only animal and human thing to stand against a vove charge was another vove charge…

  “We shipped out,” said Nath. Then he caught himself, and paled, and ground his fists together. “No, majister. I shipped them out. Me. I did it. Every sailing skyship we had. Every last one. We — I — took the First and Second Phalanxes, leaving the Third here. The churgur infantry, the axemen, the spearmen, three quarters of the cavalry of all kinds. And the artillery. We were a brave sight.” He swallowed. “A brave sight.”

  “Yes.”

  “We landed and formed. And then came a storm, a monstrous storm. The sailing ships of the sky could not stand before it but had to run.”

  In the skirts of that storm Dayra and her friends had run, too…

  “So,” I said. “Farris could do nothing with his air?”

  “Nothing. The army formed on the second day. Magnificent, magnificent. You should have seen them, majister-”

  “I wish,” I said, with a note of dryness in my voice I could not withhold. “I wish I had.”

  Nath understood and he bowed his head.

  “We stood as we had been trained. The Phalanx resplendent in crimson and bronze. The paean was chanted and the songs sung. And we advanced. And they rode like an avalanche, like the wind, like the irresistible tides of the ocean. The voves…” For a space he could not go on. Well, in Vallia they ride the nikvove, the half vove, and that is indeed a fine animal. But he does not have the fangs and the horns, does not have the sheer crushing battering bulk. A vove, it is half believed, could knock down a church steeple. I have ridden in many a vove charge, coursing knee to knee with my clansmen, charging headlong into the massed ranks of the enemy clan. Terrible, a whirlwind of destruction, the vove charge. I did not want to think what had happened to my Phalanxes. But I had to. I was responsible. Not Nath. I had warned him, oft and oft, against fighting unsupported against sword and shield men, the churgur infantry. But he had believed implicitly that the Phalanx could defeat any cavalry charge, any cavalry charge at all.

  “There were many casualties?”

  He could only nod.

  “And the army?” I riffled out well-thumbed papers. “Here are the lists. Take up this pen and strike through the formations that no longer exist.”

  He did as he was bid. As the pen scratched with a vicious stab across the paper, time after time, I felt the cold clench around my heart. Most of the fine Army of Vondium had been swept away. People talk of an army being decimated, not knowing what the word means, intending to imply wholesale destruction. We had been far worse than decimated. We had lost far more men than a mere one in ten. The units had been drastically thinned, the ranks devastated. That army had to be written off. That campaign had been lost. This was not Jikaida. Those men had not been swept up in the cupped hand to be placed back in the velvet-lined box, to be brought out again all fresh for the next game. They were gone forever. They were dead.

  “The Third is still here,” I said. “With its Hakkodin and three regiments of archers and spearmen. There are two regiments of zorcamen, four of totrixmen and one of nikvove-men. Artillery is thin, but can cover.” I looked at Nath. “This army of clansmen from Segesthes was not brought against us by that Opaz-forsaken Wizard of Loh. His ruse is still hanging. We still have him to contend with. This cramph Zankov — he brings the clans against us.”

  “Nothing has happened in the southwest. Fat Lango’s army stagnates. The man you saw, Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, has disappeared. Had he assumed the command-”

  “Thank Opaz he did not. But, Nath, mayhap he has gone to command the real army from Yantong against us.”

  Nath spread his hands. “We are doomed, it seems.”

  “No.” I rubbed my nose. “No. I do not think so. I remember a man called Filbarrka. He is a great zorca man, the Filbarrka na Filbarrka. He and I have talked about zorcas and voves and his theory is overripe for the testing.” I stood up. “You and Farris, and everyone else, must rebuild the army. Work hard and work fast and work well. I am for the Blue Mountains.”

  “The Blue Mountains? But-”

  “Yes. But I fancy Filbarrka has not taken kindly to a damned invasion from anyone. Build up the army. And stay close. If I am wanted, ask in the Blue Mountains.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We Gamble on Filbarrka’s Zorcamen

  Certain important tasks had to be completed before I could leave. I went to see Barty, who was up and pacing about, rotating his arm and bristling to get back into action. I told him to see about raising fresh regime
nts. We had lost a doleful number of good men; but there were others, and the spirit of the people, with that stoical and yet fierce Vallian integrity, rose to the crisis. New armies would be formed. He wanted to go off adventuring with me until I convinced him he was more valuable in Vondium. As to Dayra, I told him what had happened, and he blamed the storm again, this time not for wafting away an air fleet leading to the destruction of an army. I wondered. Perhaps I had secretly wanted my daughter to run off again. Perhaps I could not face the meeting between her mother and me and her… Had I wanted to keep her close I could have hobbled her feet and tied up Hyr Brun and Vaxnik. Then, with a mere continuation of my feelings, I went to see Seg. He mended. That cheered me. Very soon, he told me, he would be back fighting fit. He, too, wanted to come with me. I told him, sternly, to get well first. I could not speak of Thelda. How could I? He did not know. The hateful thought occurred to me that perhaps Lol and Thelda were dead already. They had not flown to Vondium, and had no reason to, since they resisted the occupation of Falinur.

  All of life during this period was a pickle. Delia was away, Seg’s problems and Barty’s problems weighed on me. Jilian cheered me up a little; but she was busy doing just what she had said she would, and I stole a half-bur to watch her Jikai Vuvushis at practice.

  “By Vox, Jilian. They frighten me. Opaz knows what they will do to the enemy.”

  “Not a one of them has been through Lancival and so none wears the — wears the claw. But they come on apace.” She looked ravishing, seductive in her black leathers. I thought of Dayra and I could not find a smile. She went on to talk of the disaster to the Army of Vondium, which had taken place near a little village called, ominously, Sicce’s Gates, from the eons-old cracks in the earth nearby which led down so deeply into the crust of the planet none had ever ventured to the bottom. The Battle of Sicce’s Gates would be recorded in agony and lamenting in the records of those times kept by Enevon Ob-Eye. I bid Jilian farewell and took myself off to the landing platform.

  Farris, with a pinched look, had spared me a fast single-place airboat. My mission demanded urgency. I missed the fond preparations made by Delia on these occasions, and shifted for myself in the matter of provisions. Be sure I took many wicker hampers. My armory remained as it had been, it had served me well so far.

  Observing the fantamyrrh with care as I went aboard I called down the Remberees. Barty had come up to wish me all speed with Opaz. I had a hell of a game with Korero and the others. But the voller was a single-place job and that, it seemed to me, was that.

  “I will send for you when the Lord Farris can place a sizable voller at our disposal. But the defense of Vondium is vital and our air fleet — well-” I did not go on.

  That dratted storm had not only blown the sailing fliers away from Sicce’s Gates, it had destroyed the majority of them. Farris was busily rebuilding. And we had cut down forests to build those ships… It would be infantile and pompously stupid of me to suggest that my brief reappearance in Vondium had made a vastly impressive increase in the recuperation of the people from the debacle. But more than one old sweat had said that, by Vox, now I was back and safe they could get on with drilling the coys and look forward to knocking the daylights out of those zigging vovemen. Off on my travels again, I prayed that Farris and Nath and Barty and all the others — including Seg when he had recovered — would, indeed, recreate the Army of Vondium.

  For much of the journey the River of Shining Spears paralleled my course. Once I had taken a roundabout way to the Blue Mountains, by way of Delphond, riding a hired zorca. I felt that Korf Aighos would have dealt very harshly with the invaders of Delia’s country. Filbarrka ran the wide plains country at the foot of the Blue Mountains in the fork of the two rivers, and that country, I believed, was the best zorca country in Paz. Now I was going to put to the test the theories Filbarrka held. Despite all the long series of misfortunes, despite what had happened, despite my intense sensation of loneliness, despite the foreboding dread with which I viewed the future in spite of my brave words, I still experienced a profound excitement at what was proposed.

  Vallia swirled past below and I ate roast vosk sandwiches and drank superb Kregen tea brewed on the little spirit stove packed within a sturm-wood box. I looked up. Yes, there he was, the Gdoinye, the giant raptor of the Star Lords. A beautiful scarlet and golden bird, glistening in the mingled rays of the Suns of Scorpio, he flew lazily above me, looking down with one beady eye from his sideways cocked head. The Star Lords wanted to know my doings. Well, I felt the uplifting sense that I was far more involved with what I was doing in the here and now, attempting to hold Vallia together, than in the machinations of the Everoinye, who could hurl me back to Earth, four hundred light years away, at a whim. There appeared to be no sign of the white Savanti dove.

  More out of habit than with a positive feeling of enmity, I shook my fist at the Gdoinye. He slanted a wing, and flew away. I went back to my food, and scooped a fistful of palines. There was a squish pie in the hamper and I thought of Inch, and sighed, and so prepared to finish the long flight and bring the flier to earth. I did not anticipate too much trouble in finding Filbarrka. He would be leading the resistance and, I felt sure, the local people would be solidly on his side, the Vallian side, against the mercenaries and flutsmen and aragorn who had flooded in on the misery of Vallia. A few careful inquiries in out of the way places, and I would be directed to him. I just had to steer clear of the occupation forces.

  These things worked out to plan and I caught up with Filbarrka as, big, bluff, red-faced, happily twitching his fingers together, he watched his zorcamen run rings around a hapless party of totrixmen. I landed the flier and walked across, aware of the bows bent against me. But Filbarrka recognized me and bellowed a cheerful greeting.

  “Lahal, majister! I am glad to welcome you to the fun. See how the rasts run!”

  The totrixmen were remorselessly cut down. I did not particularly relish the sight; but it had to be done if you concede that the freedom and happiness, not to say health, of a country matters more than the lives of its harsh invaders.

  The amusing thing here was that Filbarrka did not seem in the least surprised to see me. He talked away, filled with his news, as we jogged along together. In a predominantly grass land I would have thought that guerilla tactics would prove particularly difficult; but Filbarrka would have none of that.

  “We ride rings around ’em, majister! And there are the foothills of the Blue Mountains if things get tough.”

  My flier was stashed away in a wood and the locals would keep an eye on it. The country was pastureland, lush and lovely, well watered and wooded, and zorcas could live here as though grazing in a zorca heaven. I told Filbarrka that as I was the emperor now, and the Blue Mountains and this plains section of it called Filbarrka, the same name for man and country, was the empress’s, he, Filbarrka na Filbarrka, was now an imperial Justicar and might style himself Nazab. He was pleased. But titles, I felt, meant little to him beside the thrill of simply riding a zorca.

  I told him the problem.

  He fired up at once. Eager, alive, filled with a fretting spirit, he tore into the problem.

  “Voves. Ah, yes, voves…”

  He had seen voves in action, having visited my clans in Segesthes at the invitation of Hap Loder. Now he began to talk in his quick, bubbling way, red-faced, twitching, full of cunning and guile and sound common sense.

  “As San Blarnoi says,” he observed. “Preparation is improved by digestion. Ha! We have a snug little camp in a fold of the hills — pimples to a Blue Mountain Boy, to be sure — where we can eat and drink

  — and think. But the tactical situation vis-a-vis a zorca and a vove is fascinating, fascinating. And I have had thoughts, by Vox, yes!

  “No clansman would dream of riding against voves with zorcas.”

  He did not say: “But they are only shaggy clansmen,” as many a wight would have done in Vallia. For, was not I, Dray Prescot, taken for just such
a shaggy graint of a clansman?

  He did say with bluff politeness: “We do not have voves to go up against voves with, majister, as they do on the Great Plains.”

  “Discard all notions that I can magically produce an army of vove cavalry. The damned Hamalese burned most of the galleons. I’d hazard a guess that the shipping from Zenicce has been engaged to transport these voves we’re up against. And our own sailing skyships were dispersed and smashed up by the storm at Sicce’s Gates. We’re on our own, Nazab Filbarrka. It is zorcas for us-”

  “What could be better?” He rubbed his hands as we stepped away from the steeds where handlers were already leading them off, talking to them, cajoling them, for every Filbarrkian loves a zorca. We entered the camp area, tents under the trees in a fold in the hills. The weather remained bright; but I fancied it would rain before morning. The food was good, straight from a looted caravan. Filbarrka ate and drank as hugely as he talked. “The zorca is close-coupled, we know that. A good animal can turn on a copper ob. So we can run rings around voves-”

  “They charge in an unbroken knee-to-knee mass.”

  “Naturally. They aim to crush anything in their way.”