Bladesman of Antares dp-9

by Alan Burt Akers

  “You are the man known as Bagor ti Hemlad, slave?” The wizard’s voice crackled like old parchment.

  “I am, San. Ask your questions.”

  His head went up when I gave him that ancient title for sage, dominie, master. He stared at me narrowly.

  “You have met a Wizard of Loh before?”

  “Aye, San. He did me a turn — as I did him.”

  “Then maybe I will find something here to make of my life less barren. I do not receive the meed that is my due.”

  “It is strange that here in Hamal I should find a Wizard of Loh, in a land where all things Lohvian are detested.”

  “The Queen has her fancies. I am kept secret.”

  “Get on with it, get on with it!” rasped Doghamrei.

  The great blockheaded idiot didn’t seem to realize that in this three-cornered contest the Wizard of Loh was already in my corner.

  Que-si-Rening sat on the straw-stuffed pallet that served as a bed. There were not above a dozen nits in it, for I had gone hunting with thumbnails sharp and at the ready.

  “Tell me, Bagor, whom men dub a wild leem, do you lust after the body of Queen Thyllis of Hamal?”

  “Eh?” I gaped at him.

  “Don’t shilly-shally, you rast! Give an answer, or you will be flogged jikaider!”

  “If you need a Wizard of Loh to worm out the answers to questions that have no sense, cramph,” I said to King Doghamrei, “you should know jikaidering will avail you nothing.” I added, for good measure,

  “Kleesh!”

  He roared and tried to strike me, but I ducked, my chains jangling, and he hit the wall and bellowed like a stuck chunkrah.

  “May Havil the Green pour onto you from a great height, cramph,” I said with great equanimity. The wizard brushed his long moustaches. He’d enjoyed it, too.

  But this was a serious matter. I saw what was in this puffed-up king’s mind. Truth to tell, in all honesty, it must have seemed, to many people around the court in this great island palace of Hammabi el Lamma, that the Queen was besotted by more than mere cruelty. Her treatment of me would be measured in many a scheming brain as an exhibition of frustrated lust. Well, so be it. I had to turn this to my own account, as any wily clansman would.

  The king sucked his knuckles and swore. Que-si-Rening bent forward. His dark hypnotic eyes bored into mine, and I forced myself to contain all that was Dray Prescot, to hold on to my own ib, as the Kregan saying has it.

  “You will save much pain, Bagor, if you speak.”

  “I’ll speak,” I said. “By Krun! This nurdling oaf Doghamrei may have that ice-cold bitch to bed at night, and he’ll freeze to death.”

  Doghamrei started bellowing for the guards and but for the wizard’s few quick and pointed words we might have had a fair old dust up then. I had been eating, if not luxuriously, enough, and I had not lost my strength. I was a little stiff and sore, to be sure, but I am used to discomfort.

  “Tell this onker he can keep his queen. And to the Ice Floes-”

  “Enough, Bagor!”

  Well, enough is enough. But, being Dray Prescot, I was ready to take this as far as it would go. A streak of agony hit me as I thought of my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. Then the king, still sucking his knuckles, was yelling violently at the guards, and going out, and ordering the Wizard of Loh to get his stupid backside out after him.

  If he was satisfied with my answers — all well and good. I thought I had made it clear. As it turned out, the fool didn’t believe me — for which, later on, I mentally gave thanks to Zair in his omnipotent wisdom. As though her spies had given her cognizance of what had transpired in my cell, the very next interview with the Queen differed radically from all those that had gone before. I was dressed up in those ridiculous and demeaning clothes. I was led in my chains along new corridors, the guards very tense and nervous (the acupuncture needles must have been busy pricking their aches and pains away), and so to a private chamber deep within the palace of Hammabi el Lamma.

  Queen Thyllis was dressed most sumptuously to receive me. Smothered as ever in jewels, she shimmered in the soft samphron lamps’ glow. Yet she wore a tight black bodice, and a wisp of black skirt. Her long white legs hinted at rosy curves under transparent tissues. Her midriff was bare, her navel blazing with a gigantic emerald. She’d blundered there, had she known it; a scarron would have pleased me more. And, for the first time, her hair swung free, massively looped in pearls, yet glittering and glinting a cornfield yellow. That hair was bleached and dyed, I wagered, cynical in such matters.

  “You will drink wine with me, Bagor my Jikai?”

  “If it is Jholaix.”

  “Ah!” She stared at me hard, the lamplight shining on her moist lips. Their thinness had all gone. She gestured and one of her chained slave girls poured.

  As though to impose her will completely upon mine, she leaned back, one naked arm behind her head, the other lifting a golden cup of wine. She said: “Shall I have you tortured as you deserve, Bagor?”

  I did not shrug. That is a gesture foreign to me. But I sipped the wine, grimaced, and put the goblet down.

  That aroused her.

  “It is best Jholaix, rast!”

  “Third-grade Jholaix, Queen. You have been swindled if you believe you drink of the best.”

  Her pale face flushed. Her slanting green eyes fairly snapped. Suddenly I was ashamed of what I’d done. The wine was good — very good. Not the best, of course, for that seldom leaves Jholaix in Pandahem. But fine. It was better than third class. Now I realized that my spiting of her might have put some poor devil of a wine merchant’s life in danger.

  Then she said, spitting the words out: “I know wine, nulsh! This is the finest. You cannot mock me!”

  Again I did not shrug. “One does not need to mock you, Queen.”

  I think, then, that she realized something about me she had not hitherto allowed herself to see. She panted a little, the mass of jewels upon the black bodice in turmoil. Then she clapped a golden hammer against a golden gong — always a handy item of ornamental furniture to bring the slaves scurrying — and when the guards came she said: “Take him down.” She added a few terse instructions about the items of torture I was to undergo.

  The guards by now thought they understood my mettle. I was trussed up like a side of vosk ready for the spit of a pagan feast. Down the stairs we went, and I saw over the stolid faces of the guards carrying me the alive, vibrant, coldly evil face of Queen Thyllis, gloating.

  The moment we were outside that chamber the guards relaxed. Poor devils, they went in mortal terror of the Queen. They were a vile bunch, I knew, but their evil paled to nothing beside hers. As I say, the guards thought they understood my mettle. They had trussed me like a roast vosk, but they had not used lesten-hide. They relaxed when we passed from the presence of the Queen, and I was able to bunch up my body, exert a bursting muscular surge of power, snap the bonds, and then set about the guards with my chains. I had fixed those damned chains myself, after being caught once, and so I had a little movement.

  We had a fine old skipping, lunging, prancing set-to on the stairs. I wedged my back against the wall in an angle and kicked and bludgeoned them down the treads. They went clanging and clattering down in fine style. I belted the last one across the face with a lethal bight of chain even as he thought about using his thraxter with intent. They tumbled away. I leaped down, kicked the nearest, hurdled them and scooped up a thraxter on the way.

  As for getting out of the vile palace of Hammabi el Lamma, that was an entirely different kettle of fish. I prowled along, most angry, not caring for the moment to trust myself to grab a guard and prod the information from him. Soon as look at the cramphs I’d do for them, such was my black mood. So, once again, sheer black anger undid me. .

  In that maze of galleries and corridors I stalked along. I saw no one. This struck me as strange. Then I found myself in the corridor wherein was situated my own cell. I
walked past the door, looking in as I did so, and saw my late meal laid out, the second supper of Kregen. The cup of water was what I needed, so I stepped in, took up the cup, and drank it all down at a gulp. It was foul and bitter, but it wet my throat.

  “Mother Zinzu the Blessed!” I said. “I needed that!” Which statement was a pure blasphemy, seeing that Mother Zinzu the Blessed is the patron saint of the drinking classes of Sanurkazz. So, standing in the center of my cell, the door open and unbarred, I girded myself afresh to bash a way out. The dizziness crept treacherously, at first, a faint white tremor along my limbs, a distant gong-note, infinitely repeated, in my skull. I felt — oh, I felt nothing. I knew I was swaying, for the walls were rocking. I fell. I fell full length even as I knew I had toppled backward toward the door. So, as I fell toward the east my thraxter flew from my nerveless fingers and flashed under the straw pallet. It was the most curious experience. My head and shoulders hit the bed, I rolled over, feeling nothing, slumped down, half sitting, my head hanging. I could see and hear perfectly, yet I could not move!

  I was held in a paralysis. Conscious, helpless, I just slumped there. The dip in its niche in the stone wall quivered and spider-shadows ran. I lay there, too astonished to swear. By the time I had worked out that the water had been drugged — why? why? — and had made stupendous and entirely useless efforts to move, I had also come to the grim conclusion that I could do nothing until the effects of the drug wore off.

  A face peered suspiciously around the door. This face bore a huge badly sewn scar across the right cheek, the nose, and the left eye; the blade that had caused the damage had gouged out that eye, so that this guard was known as Derson Ob-Eye. He withdrew, I heard a faint whistle, and then two guards clanked into the room, lifting me, stiff and stark and paralyzed, carrying me out like a side of roast vosk, bound without cords!

  They moved furtively. Derson Ob-Eye led the way by shadowy runnels, down winding flang-infested stairways, under low arches where the cobwebs brushed and caught and streamed from the guards’ steel like Spanish moss. At a small postern stood a bulky man swathed in a massive gray cape. He turned as we approached and I saw it was King Doghamrei.

  So that was one little mystery solved.

  Ob-Eye grunted and lifted a butt end of a torch from its becket, held it against my face. I could not blink, could not so much as twitch a muscle.

  King Doghamrei smiled.

  “I know you can see and hear me, nulsh. I will not strike you, for you will not feel it.” Doghamrei was really enjoying himself now. “You will be taken well out to sea. You will be dropped from that great height you promised to have Havil the Green pour on me. I shall not be there. But it will be done. Ob-Eye and my guards know the penalties for failure.” He was trembling, and sweat dewed his upper lip and forehead. “Take him, and go, and your Kuerden the Merciless will seem to you a kind and tolerant mother beside me if you fail!”

  This Derson Ob-Eye was an apt pupil to a vile master. He chuckled, with a brown snaggletoothed smile.

  “The pleasure will be ours, King, when he pitches overboard and makes a coffin-sized hole in the sea!”

  “Far out, dolt. Far out, so that no one will ever look upon his filthy face again.”

  I tried to speak. I know my face remained stony, but some hint of the effort I was making must have shown in my eyes, in the veins of my neck and forehead, for King Doghamrei laughed again, bending close in the sputtering torchlight to gloat upon my helplessness.

  “There will be no escape for you, rast! The Queen even aids my scheme, for she sends sky ships to deal with vermin off our coast.” He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and reluctant to see me go. “I use my own ship in a dual purpose this day! Now may Lem the Silver Leem be praised!”

  Well. That did, of course, explain much. .

  Brisker now, exultant, King Doghamrei tongue-lashed his men into action. “And tell Hikdar Hardin well out to sea, mind, Ob-Eye! I want no trace of this kleesh ever found again.”

  “As you command, King.” Ob-Eye let his single eye’s gaze wander toward me and he sniggered. “And I have a scheme that will delight you, great King.” The two guards hefted me and carried me off, and so I had to wait to hear Ob-Eye’s little scheme. When I discovered it I knew he was right: it would delight the great cramph King Doghamrei. How I wanted to yell at him that if he thought Queen Thyllis would tolerate him alongside her on the throne of Hamal for an instant, he was so great a get-onker as to be ineffable. But I could not move.

  They took me in a little flier out to the coast in the dawning light as the emerald-and-ruby glory broke over the land, and we slanted down to a vast flat area of dust and scrawny grass where row after row of monstrous Hamalese sky ships were lined up. I watched everything with feverish eyes. Ob-Eye had me loaded aboard a giant of the skies, a veritable aerial fortress. Thick were her timbers, massive her upperworks, profuse her provision of varters and catapults, her ports for bowmen. All this was a revelation to me, accustomed to the small vollers and airboats; the greatest fliers I had seen had not even approximated in size to these monsters. I saw then something of the awful power of Hamal. Two sky ships lifted off as the twin suns cleared the horizon, and as we rose, so the suns raced up the sky. Ob-Eye had the complete confidence of his master, and I saw and heard him giving intolerant and contemptuous orders to the captain of the ship, this Hikdar Hardin. This ship sported the colors and insignia of Hirrume. The lead ship showed the purple and gold of the Queen. In trail we flew out over the sea.

  A hexagonal structure mounted on stilts just forward of the center allowed an uninterrupted sweep of deck fore and aft beneath. Other towers of various shapes and sizes housed artillery, the varters and catapults; this hexagonal bridge was the center of command, and there I was carried. The sky ships are built in a number of different fashions and styles, in the never-ending effort to achieve better efficiency. High in the control area, with Hikdar Hardin most uneasy, with Ob-Eye chuckling away, chewing cham and thoroughly enjoying himself, I waited like a chunk of frozen beef. When a lookout shrilled, high and fierce, everyone, including me, felt a climactic moment had arrived. Under Ob-Eye’s malicious eye the guards hoisted me up. They unlocked my chains and threw them on the deck. They stripped off my gaudy and humiliating clothes — for I had not had time to remove them after my regretted drink — and they dressed me in a gray shirt and blue trousers. Ob-Eye explained. He wanted to distill every moment of horror thrice over.

  “When you fall into the sea, rast, those onkers aboard the Queen’s ship will think you a crewman and will suspect nothing.” Then he nearly split a gut laughing. “But, cramph, you will not be falling into the sea, will you?” And he guffawed his merriment to the skies.

  Over our heads fluttered the bright colors of Hamal, and I realized we had slowed. Ob-Eye gave curt instructions. I was lifted and twisted so that I could look forward and down. I saw — and, seeing, I understood — and the full horror of what these cramphs from Hamal were doing drove coldness between my shoulder blades and a painful cramp into my stomach. Below on the blue glittering surface of the sea sailed two beautiful ships. I recognized one for sure; the other I did not know. They foamed along, their sails stiff and curved, proud, and from their trucks floated the yellow saltire on a scarlet ground that was the flag of Vallia.

  Vallian galleons!

  Oh, yes, it was perfectly plain what was afoot here. If Hamal would not sell vollers to Vallia, then Vallia must try to buy them elsewhere. Never before, I had been told, had Vallian galleons been allowed farther south than the towns of the northern coast of Hamal. They were restricted to the westward of the Risshamal Keys. The deputation to Ruathytu had been exceptional. And now here were these two gorgeous galleons, their sails proudly billowing, the spume flying, their forefeet crashing through the blue seas, driving on southerly to Hyrklana!

  Like an onker I wanted to yell a warning to those two galleons down there, small with the distance and yet clear in every detail. The suns b
linded from their paintwork, their gilding caught gleams from the ivory curve of their sails.

  The Queen’s sky ship from Hamal was Pride of Hanitcha, and she had drawn out ahead of us. I watched in pure horror as she circled twice, coming up with the wind on the wake of the nearest galleon. I knew, then, and I felt the surging blood clashing and clamoring in my skull.

  “Look, Bagor the wild leem! Look!”

  A primitive lust for killing swept over the decks of King Doghamrei’s sky ship, Hirrume Warrior. Lips ricked back from teeth, eyes showed a devilish gleam, weapons were more fiercely grasped. Pride of Hanitcha slowed, hovered. I saw the black rocks tumbling down. I saw the iron pots spouting fire screaming down through the air to burst upon the spotless deck below, to spread and grow and devour the galleon, flickers of flame mounting with horrid swiftness up shrouds and stays, bringing down yards and spars, utterly consuming that marvelous galleon, so far from her home port in Vallia. I could not weep, for I was paralyzed.

  “See, you rast! Now we burn the other — and you, Bagor the kleesh, will be the first torch to be flung down on her decks!”

  They wheeled up an iron cage stuffed with combustibles. A torch glared in Ob-Eye’s hand. His one eye was quite mad.

  “Thrust him in, put the torch to him, and throw him down upon the Vallian ship!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Sky ships and galleons

  They stuffed me in the iron cage among the combustibles.

  They wheeled the cage to the bulwark.

  They lifted it on tackles.

  They swung it out over the water.

  Ob-Eye himself put the torch in.

  Flames crackled up about me.

  By Zim-Zair! This was no way for a Krozair of Zy to die and leave this wonderful world of Kregen and go reiving among the Ice Floes of Sicce! By the Black Chunkrah! What would my maniacal clansmen say, riding their voves like the wind across the Great Plains of Segesthes? By Vox! How would my people of Valka take the news? By Djan! My Djangs would nod their heads and say a man needed four arms, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! And Strombor. . and Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?