Presently Inky the Chops halted. The way, such as it was, stretched ahead between water-grasses and bulrushes and clumps of floating weeds. The stink offended man and beast alike. Mist wreathed and there was nothing silvery in that oily, greenish-black effluvium.
“Well, Inky?”
“It gets a bit tricky hereabouts,” said Inky, flashing his snaggle teeth. “There’s risslaca in some of these stretches of open water. Real nasty ’uns.”
The risslacas come in a fantastic variety of sizes and shapes, and only some are akin to Earthly dinosaurs. I could see the wriggle of a leepitix as it chased a fish in a pool to our left. Oily mist swirled down on the other side, and a vast and creaking giant of an un-named tree hung over the squelchy trail. I cocked an eye at Inky.
“Do you wish me to lead?”
He had no time to answer before Korero — and Targon and Naghan and Dorgo and Magin — were up and pushing to get to the point position. I let the corner of my mouth twitch.
“Go on, Inky. You will have spears to protect you.”
“Spears!” He spat — most accurately, overwhelming a dragonfly. “If’n you get a real big ’un — don’t git in my way when I runs!”
“I won’t,” I promised him. An engaging rascal, Inky the Chops, in the style of Kregen rascals I have known.
We pushed on for a space in this fashion, my men taking it in turns for the dubious honor of leading out. I made good and sure I was up near the head of the column. The beasts did not like it at all, and were growing increasingly restive. What happened, when it did, at last, happen, reflected scant credit on any of us. The labyrinth of boggy pathways and precarious footholds along the compacted dirt gathered between tree roots, mazed in its complexity. Inky seemed to know where he was going. We reached an open space that bore the marks of solid land. Trees bowered it in that green and orange dangling slime, and mist coiled, and no birds sang.
But the risslacas were waiting.
Equally at home on land or in water, they charged us with clawed and webbed feet expanded to give them perfect support on the treacherous boggy surface. Squamous hides gleamed in orange and green, camouflage colors, and bright and glittering eyes measured us for size. Talons raked. In an instant we were battling desperately with spear and sword against talon and fang.
The noise spurted. Ichor smoked as sword strokes opened up reptilian innards. We were fortunate in only one thing; they had attacked head on instead of lying in wait.
With the drexer slicing away and the zorca a live coal between my knees I was forced to pirouette away, and felt the beast sliding dangerously, hock-deep, into slime. With a convulsive heave he was up and out of the muck. On a semblance of dry ground he gathered himself. Lol Polisto had stayed near me throughout this nightmare journey. His zorca collided with mine. Both animals squealed their fears.
As though impelled by the same evil spirit they took to their heels. Heads down, spiral horns thrusting, they bolted.
No effort of sawing on the reins would halt my zorca. He went baldheaded up the trail, brushing past Inky, and I got in a good thwack at a reptilian head, all scales and eyes and fangs, as we racketed past. Lol led. We were both carried on and away and into the shrouding mists and we left the sounds of that desperate combat far in our rear.
As I say, little credit to any of us — and least of all to me.
By the time we had the zorcas under control once more we were well and truly lost.
“Well,” said Lol. “I am not giving up.”
“Nor me. There is a — girl — who was at Trakon’s Pillars. She may have left there by now; but I hope to find someone who saw her, who perhaps knows where she has gone.”
“And I will fetch my Thelda and the child out of that filthy den.”
“Then let us go forward. This lead looks promising.”
We led our mounts for a space, quieting them down, and walked with careful feet along the shuddery trail between quagmires. We walked with naked steel in our fists, and, because I was now afoot, considered it more fitting to unlimber the Krozair longsword. Lol stared.
“I know I am in the best of company with Jak the Drang,” he said. His own clanxer glimmered. “Men have heard of the deeds of Jak the Drang.”
“And you?”
“I was tending my estate of Sygurd when the Troubles began. I had no truck with politics. But in evil times a man must turn his hand when he can. And then I was able to help my Thelda, and we married and we carried on the fight as guerillas. At times, I think, you could almost call us drikingers.”
“I have used bandits, Lol. Properly motivated they are just people — it is those who seek only self-gratification who pose the problems.”
“Aye. We have been fighting Layco Jhansi’s men for a long time now, and never seem to gain an advantage.”
“And the Kov of Falinur? How stands your allegiance?”
“He is dead—” Lol started to say and then he swung about sharply and the clanxer flashed and a tendrilous mass of fleshy pseudopods writhed onto the trail. In the next instant we were fighting together, shoulder to shoulder, almost, to clear the path as bulbous growths, half-flesh, half-plant, descended on us from the dank recesses of the overhanging trees. I say almost shoulder to shoulder. I like to stand with a free space so as to get a good swing with the longsword. So, together, as comrades in arms, we fought, and cleared a passage through for ourselves and our zorcas.
When at last we burst free, Lol drew the back of his hand across his brow, and ichor dripped from the blade of the sword.
“That weapon, Jak the Drang, is incredible.”
“It has been called an old bar of iron.”
“Would we had a thousand such to face Jhansi and his lurfings.”
“We shall deal with Jhansi, if the Racters have not done so first, in due time. What d’you know of this fellow Zankov?”
“Only that he is a devil. He seeks an alliance with Jhansi. There is some foeman they both fear — apart, that is, majister, from you.”
“Aye, me. They mock me, I know.” I told him about Yantong and his crazy schemes. “If Zankov has fallen out with his Hyr Notor, he is in parlous case and must seek fresh allies.”
“They could form a powerful combine across the center of Vallia. If—”
“You said, Lol, you were not a political.”
“I said, if you will pardon me, majister, that a man must turn his hand to the business of the moment in evil days.”
“And so you did, Lol, so you did. And what is that, striking a hard corner through the mist?”
On the instant we halted and remained perfectly still and silent.
Strands of spiderweb drifted from tree to tree, intertwined bundles of gold-glinting threads like gilded thistledown floating on the breath of the breeze, and at the center of each small aerial maze the darkly red body of the spider, crouched and ready, feeling the currents of the air upon his senses and the trapped thrashings of insects on his hairs. Beyond the drifting spider-silk puffballs and the down-drooped trees, beyond the last curl of orange and green mist, the hard outline of a blockhouse thrust a manmade objection into the running deliquescence of the marsh.
“The first outpost,” breathed Lol. I barely heard him. “Now may Opaz be praised.”
“Amen to that. D’you know the best place to hit ’em?”
“No. But I guess we should circle around—”
“They’ll be wary of that trick, I’d guess. Mantraps, stavrers, spikes. Let’s just stroll up to the front door and knock. What say you, Lol?”
His features brightened and took on a fierce look of joy. He moved his sword, freely, liberated from worry over trivialities. “By Vox, majister! I am with you!”
So, as calm as you please, we strolled up to the front door of the blockhouse, leading our zorcas. Yes, we were an impudent pair, or a foolhardy pair; but we did it.
A Rapa stepped out, a dwa-Deldar, big and vulture-like in his leather and bronze harness. His sword pointed at us.
“Llanitch!” he shouted when we were within a dozen paces. “Llanitch!” Which is by way of being an intemperate order to halt.
We moved on a full four paces before we hauled up and I said: “Llahal, dom. This bog! It is enough to give the Reiver of Souls a touch of the black dog. Layco Jhansi is expecting us.” Then, as though that little halt had fully obeyed his order and as though it was the most natural thing in the world, still speaking, I started to move on. “This bog — it tires the sword arm and that is the truth, by Krun!”
The Havilfarese oath must have gone a little way to reassure him, perhaps, even to soothe him, for he lowered his sword and half turned to call back into the blockhouse.
I sprang. I was on him like a leem. He went down, unconscious, gathered under the black cloak of Notor Zan, and Lol and I were into the ominously gaping doorway.
There were four others inside, lolling on bunks, and another two who contested fiercely over Jikalla. We dispatched them all after a short and not very bloody struggle. We did not slay them all. I was pleased at the way Lol worked. Short, efficient strokes, a minimum of fuss, and a neatness about his fighting told me he might have been a peaceful farmer before the Time of Troubles but, like so many Vallians, he had been forced to take up the sword instead of the ploughshare and found in the new occupation an aptitude that, while it must please him, left him also with that dark and hollow feeling of self-disgust and despair.
We surveyed the interior of the blockhouse, then Lol went out and dragged the Rapa in. The Rapa’s big cruel beak of a nose was dented in where he had hit the dirt face-down. It had been his misfortune to find a solid chunk of earth instead of the ubiquitous mud.
“This one is half-conscious,” I said, and hauled the fellow up. He was an apim, like us, and wore a fine fancy uniform of leather and bronze with a short and ridiculous cloak of ochre and umbre in checkerboard style.
“Wha—?” he said in immemorial stupid question.
“We did,” I said, cheerfully.
“Uh?”
“I assume you were asking who or what hit you?”
It was a little too much for him. He decided to tell us what we wanted to know when Lol, very casually, asked which portion of his anatomy he fancied he could best do without.
The trail opened out past the blockhouse, becoming firmer and less treacherous and there were no more risslacas. That, at the least, was good news. The openness was something else again. We put him to sleep, gently, and bound and gagged all those still alive and, going out and bolting the door and wedging it with a half-rotten log covered with woodlice and limpet-like sucking slugs, we took ourselves and our zorcas off along the trail to Trakon’s Pillars.
Presently Lol, who had been showing acute symptoms of earnest thought, said: “Why not take a couple of their uniforms? We could pass muster for guards, you and I.”
“Aye, Lol. We could. I think you have been a farmer and a guerilla. Those guards back there — their uniforms. They are outpost men, exterior details. If Jhansi is still as slippery as I think, he will have arranged first-rate and differently accoutred guards for inside.”
“Oh,” said Lol. Then, “I see.”
“We’ll try the same trick again, and this time say we have been passed on by the outpost guards. It should serve to bring us within range for handstrokes. I’m loath to shaft ’em without warning.”
The wide-eyed and incredulous gape Lol favored me with indicated, truly enough, the flabbiness of this my later self and the unwelcome realization that I would have to stiffen up, brassud! in the near future.
To attempt some limping explanation of my words and thus reveal my hopeless confusion seemed to me an enormous task and one from which I shrank. I was saved further emotional turmoil of that nature by the simple-minded and cunning lie the guard we had questioned had told us, seeking in his professionally loyal way to encompass our downfall. He had said there were no more risslacas.
Quite evidently, the beastie which hopped up out of the bog, dripping slime and stinking like a Rapa barracks the night after, had not heard the guard. He opened his gapers and charged, hissing.
“My Vall!” shouted Lol. He let go of his zorca and swung his sword forward. I stepped up to his shoulder on the narrow trail and held the longsword, two-handed, pointed front and center. There was no room to dodge, no time to run and only a squidgy and slime-sucking death in the swamp on each side. So we had to face the monster.
His clawed and webbed feet slapped like suction pads against the ground. His hisses were boiler-punctures. His fetid breath hit us like a furnace blast from hell. His fangs glinted yellow and green, choked with bits of rotting flesh. Without a coherent thought I took a step forward and swung the Krozair brand.
That magnificent steel bit. It chunked solidly alongside the risslaca’s head and then I was knocked lengthwise. The mud sprayed. I near choked on the slime and was on my feet and hacking at the beast’s underside. His back was armored with spines a foot long, draped with trailing weeds. Lol had struck and was down and stabbing away from underneath. Green ichor flowed, bubbling. Together we worked on the dinosaur, hacking and spearing, and avoiding the desperate tramplings and slashings of his feet. Luckily — and I mean that fervently — he was a four-footed fellow, and so we did not have that extra or those two extra pairs of death-dealing talons to worry about. He sagged to his chest, and we stood to either side, hacking away as though we chopped down trees in a primeval forest. Lol took a razor slash along his thigh, and cursed, and set to again with a will. We did not shout or rave; just got on with the disgusting job.
By the time the beast decided he had had enough and attempted to evade us, sliding like a parcel of rotten cabbages into the marsh, we, too, had had our fill.
Lol sagged back. His face showed a greenish pallor.
“By Vox! He nearly had us.”
“And the zorcas have gone, Drig take it.”
“Yes.” And Lol Polisto laughed. “Now Thelda will have to walk out. She will not like that, if I know her.”
“Well, let us go on. Now we look enough like half-crazed fugitives from the niksuth to make our story watertight.”
“Which,” observed Lol with another laugh, “is more than that sorry beastie is right now.”
As I say, Lol Polisto was quite a character when he got a head of steam up.
We padded on soundlessly with ready weapons as the mist gyrated and swung oily green and orange streamers about us, mingling in confusing gossamers with the trailing slime from arching tree branches. We met no more risslacas. The trail gleamed like a cobbled street after rain. The smells lessened. The mist still clung, dank and miasmic; but the way opened ahead and the next guard was, most unfortunately, a bleg. He and his companions came trotting along in that weird jerky way of the four-legged blegs, and while they were no doubt anxious to traverse the trail through the bog and reach the outpost where they would relieve the guards on duty there, we were as anxious that they should not betray us. The unfortunate circumstance lay in that they were blegs. With their Persian Leaf Bat faces and four legs like Chippendale chairs, they were clad in uniforms that, although we might make shift to don, would never serve to fool another guard. So we fought and passed on, and looked always ahead.
A parcel of slaves lurched lugubriously across a side trail. They were burdened with sacks and staggered as they struggled on under the whips and goads of Och guards. One tends to talk of slaves in this context in terms of parcels; no disrespect is meant by it. The Och guards were disposed of and the slaves, dully incurious, went on their lurching way. We walked on into the mist. A Fristle astride a totrix came lolloping along singing a song, his feet jutting out at arrogant angles. He went whiskers first into the quagmire. Lol stood back and put his hands on his hips.
“I,” he said, “just do not believe this.”
“You may ride, Lol,” I told him. “We’re bound to run across a couple of decent uniforms soon.”
We found the uniforms stretche
d across the broad backs of three Chuliks. These diffs were a different proposition, and we had a nice little set to before we could claim their garments for ourselves.
“I see what you meant about the uniforms and gear,” observed Lol as we dressed in the fancy ochre and umbre and buckled up the lesten-hide harness. The sleeves were ochre and white — the serving swod’s approximation to Layco Jhansi’s kovnate colors of ochre and silver — and the accoutrements of the men were of good quality. I nodded and stowed the longsword and longbow and quiver over my shoulder, draping a checkerboard cloak across them.
“We’ll penetrate a good long way dressed like this. But do you keep your own sword, also.”
“I understand.”
When we reached the artificial lake surrounding Trakon’s Pillars and surveyed the narrow wooden bridge that connected the pillared stronghold to the land — so-called — we realized what a foolhardy errand we were on. But there was nothing else for it now but to press on as cheerfully as might be. So, singing that silly little ditty about Forbenard and the Rokrell, we pushed on over the bridge. At the far side under the overhanging wooden gateway a Fristle guard awaited us.
“Six of ’em, majister,” said Lol, leaning down from the saddle. “I’ll rush ’em, and then—”
“Hold, Lol! You may rush ’em, with my blessing. But I shall feather three of them for you as you ride. And, once inside, make for the deepest darkest dirtiest shadow and await me. I shall not be long.”
“Majister!” He looked stricken. “I did not mean—”
“I know what you mean, Lol Polisto, and I welcome your thought. Now, as you love Vallia, do as you are bid.”
He grunted, and said, softly, “As I love my Thelda and my son.” But he waited until I had unlimbered the bow. Then he clapped in his heels and was away and I hauled back the string and snapped three arrows across the gap, whistling past Lol’s down-bent head. Three of the Fristles coughed bright blood and collapsed. Lol took two more and the last turned to run. Lol’s totrix, tangling his stupid six-legs, stumbled the wrong way. The Fristle, screeching, his whiskers flaring, would escape and arouse the castle — all I could do was call on Seg’s Supreme Being, Erthyr the Bow, and cast a last shaft.
A Life for Kregen Page 15
