The Tides of Kregen [Dray Prescot #12]

by Alan Burt Akers

  But they were human beings in these stark surroundings, and I saw the real affection these two grim fighting men bore for each other. Duhrra and I might pass on; Logu's brother would not, of course, in the ethics of nikobi, allow him to pass.

  After that we were passed through and Logu's brother said in his gruff voice, “You had best leave your greens here."

  We doffed the hated green and, once more clad in the brave old red, set forth into the darkness. In only a bur or so we came under the walls of Shazmoz and the first patrols. With many exclamations of wonder we were escorted into the encircled town.

  The sight of a city under siege is unpleasant The place moved with a sluggish air most displeasing. The men looked gaunt. We passed fires made from smashed houses and saw women there, poor bedraggled creatures who held out their hands to us. When a few gold coins were tossed to them they spat and hurled them back. Of what use gold? One cannot eat gold.

  A Hikdar met us under the lamp over the citadel door. Like any city that sought to exist on the coast of the inner sea, Shazmoz was heavily fortified, with a defended harbor. The citadel frowned on a hill above the nighted waters. I said, “It is necessary that I see Pur Zenkiren."

  “Your business? You come from Roz Nath?"

  “No. My business is private."

  The Hikdar was not a Krozair. I wondered if I dared presume, but guessed the news of the disgrace of Pur Dray Prescot would already have been spread. He looked at us undecided. Duhrra moved uneasily on his sectrix and then dismounted.

  “Hikdar, Is there one here called Molyz ti Sanurkazz? Molyz the Hook-Maker?” And Duhrra held up his stump.

  “Yes. He is here."

  The Hikdar made no move to admit us. A guard party hovered near, bows drawn. This was an anticlimax. And yet who could blame the Hikdar? Strangers coming in the night through enemy lines demanding to see the general in charge of a besieged city? This stank of treason.

  So I spoke a few short words that, whispered in the ear of a Krozair Brother, would apprise him that one of his fellows sought audience. The Hikdar nodded. “I will see. Stay here."

  The wait stretched. Then he was back. “Come."

  Many and many a time have I marched through a grim gray castle surrounded by guards. Often they have been my men, as often perhaps they have guarded me. Our feet rang on the flags. Torchlight flared and marked our way with fleeting shadows. Up through the levels we marched, stairway by stairway, past guards who, every one, showed the ravages of hunger and privation.

  Along a passage a carpet muffled the tramp of our feet, then we reached a lenken door bound in iron. The Hikdar bashed on the door; it swung back and we were ushered into an anteroom filled with aides, young dandified men wearing profuse red decorations. There was another door, another knock, a fresh entrance. I did not see the room. I did not see the furnishings. I was hardly aware of the guards crowding at my elbow, of Duhrra breathing hoarsely in my ear.

  All my vision concentrated on the man who stood in the center of the floor, half turned to greet this importune Krozair Brother come so suddenly in the night.

  Pur Zenkiren.

  I stared at him. By Zair! I knew I had changed not at all in appearance from the man he had known and to whom he had bid remberee in Pattelonia far away on the eastern shore. But Pur Zenkiren! I felt the blood thump from my heart. Where he had been tall and limber, with a fine bronzed fearless face, now that face looked gray, with folds of sagging skin. The bold black mustache still jutted fiercely upward beneath the beak of a Zairian nose, but that nose was bone-fine, thinned down, razor-edged. His black curled hair was as profuse as ever. About Zenkiren there hovered the black vulture wings of defeat and despair.

  He wore a long white robe and a Krozair longsword belted at his waist. The device of the hubless spoked wheel within the circle shone dimly on his breast, the threads dulled and the scarlet embroideries broken away. The hem of the white robe was caked with mud.

  “You have important business with me?"

  His voice had lost the firm ring of authority. In the lamplight—cheap mineral oil which stank in the chamber—he peered toward me. I stood positioned most carefully so that the shadow of the gross bulk of Duhrra fell over me, casting me into limbo.

  “My name is Dak, Pur Zenkiren. I pray you"—and here I mentioned a word or two known only to the Krozairs—"hear me in private."

  Whatever had befallen this man, he remained a Krozair. He waved his hand and the guards withdrew. He stared at Duhrra's stump.

  “Yes, Jernu,” said Duhrra, immense in the shadowed room, bending his head. “I seek a boon from Molyz the Hook-Maker."

  “There was no need to ask me.” He gestured at me, in Duhrra's shadow. “Stand you forth, you who dub yourself Pur Dak, and let me see you."

  I said, “I did not presume to dub myself Pur, Jernu. But I must beg you to listen to what I have to say before you make a judgment. All men know of your wisdom and upright countenance. I humbly crave your indulgence."

  This, I fancied, was how a man might think it proper to address a powerful lord who commanded a city, besieged though that city might be. I knew from old experience that Pur Zenkiren put as much store by flowery words as I did myself.

  “You speak in riddles! Step forth so that I may see you. Instantly!"

  There came the old hard smack of command.

  Slowly I stepped into the light.

  He stared at me for a long time.

  Then he walked a few steps to a table cluttered with lists and maps and an empty bottle on its side, where the oil lamp trailed a thin plume of blue smoke. He put a hand to the wood; he did not sit in the broken-backed chair.

  “Why do I not instantly call out for the guards? Are you broken from your ib and come to torment me? Is it you? No, it cannot be you."

  “I stand before you, an innocent man adjudged guilty. Think back, Pur Zenkiren! Think back to the deck of a Magdaggian swifter running with the blood of the Overlords, and a slave with a brand in his fist. Think back to Felteraz and Mayfwy and the broad prizes brought into Sanurkazz. Think of Zy and loyalty and comradeship, and then tell me, face to face, man to man, looking me in the eye, tell me, Pur Zenkiren, if Pur Dray is or ever can be—"

  He did not let me finish.

  He lifted up his voice and shouted: "Apushniad!"

  He had not let me finish; he had finished the sentence himself, and he had finished me.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  A case for casuistry

  A vision of Delia sprang into my head. Clear, distinct, infinitely appealing. My course was set.

  The guards would come boiling in in the next mur. I leaped for Zenkiren and clapped a hand around his mouth and with the other pinned his right arm to his side. And I laughed. I roared with laughter, shouting my glee!

  “Aye!” I roared. “Aye, Jernu, well may you laugh!"

  Duhrra said, “Uh?"

  I said, “Laugh, Duhrra, just a little.” Then, in a heartbeat: “Thank you, Duhrra. Your laugh clinches all."

  Zenkiren writhed. But his strength was wasted away. I held him. I bent and whispered in his ear.

  “You will listen to me. We were friends once. We remain friends for my part. I know that if I said I would kill you if you cried out again for the guards, you would cry out, defying all, for the sake of the Brotherhood. This I know."

  He rolled his eyes and we both knew I spoke the truth.

  “The Azhurad was sounded. I did not come. I do not deny I failed. But it is the nature of my failure that needs examination.” It is said on Earth that it takes a Jesuit to chop logic. Casuistry of itself forms little part of the techniques of dialectic of the Krzy, but intricately detailed arguments and debates that sweep away the confines of mundane limitations are a joy to them. The brain must be honed and sharpened to an edge keen enough to slip between reason and reason. I felt Zenkiren's interest as I went on to present the case. There were two impossibilities and each one negated the other. “I
am—was—a true Krozair. I would slay any man who denied me that. And yet I did not hear the Call. How may such a dilemma be resolved, Zenkiren? And, in studying the problem, bear two things in mind.

  “You must recall that day in Pattelonia when you asked me to help you in the fight in Proconia. You ordered out a liburna. We sailed and the storm rose and the thunder rolled and the lightning struck. You understood that at the time I was fated to journey east. You were to consult Pur Zazz on the matter. I do not know what he may have told you—” Here I felt a strong jerk from Zenkiren, as though he wished to speak. I gripped him fast and went on. “But it must be clear to you I am not like ordinary men."

  When I said that I admit I felt like the cheating impostor I truly was. Duhrra let out a gurgling noise which I ignored. The stink of the mineral oil wafted across and the light wavered on the littered table, on the weapons in their racks, the draped alcove where Zenkiren slept.

  “That is the first thing you must consider. And the second touches us both. Oh, yes, I know it is long and long since you and I met. I have been too many places and seen many wonders and done many things—aye, and many of them I would rather not have done. But through all my wanderings and in whatever place I have found myself, I have always thought of myself as a Krzy. Always. It has been the single most important fact of my life—always, as you will understand, after my Delia. You will not understand this, Zenkiren, but it is even of more importance than the Swinging City of Aphrasöe."

  Even as I spoke I caught my thoughts treacherously swinging, as we used to swing from growth to growth, from house to house in Aphrasöe. After my Apushniad, how could this inner sea be of consequence to me? That was a garblish fool talking. It was not the Eye of the World that was important, it was the mystique of the Krozairs of Zy that grew to overtop the highest peak of the Stratemsk and their concepts of world-shattering import that drew me on. And they drew me on even then, even when I had appointed myself a meeting at the Akhram on the Grand Canal.

  I moved Zenkiren, gently, preparing to ease him free.

  “I mention this, but without weight in the argument or the dilemma. You may solve the dilemma how you will, riddle it how you may. But one thing I mention without influence: we were friends, Zenkiren, blade comrades. I have never forgotten you nor ceased to regard you with Brotherly affection. This may be a feather-weight, a passing cloud, a midge that lives a day—I can only speak for myself. For me it has been as the keel of a swifter that strikes cleanly through the seas."

  Duhrra said: “Duh ... by Zair, Dak! And you a—"

  “Hold, good Duhrra. I love this old man, yet if he cries out to betray us he must be silenced."

  The tides of my life on Kregen had moved me up and down, washed me this way and that, willy-nilly. Now I knew the ebb tide might turn. Now, perhaps, the flood might make.

  I took my hand away from Zenkiren's mouth.

  The presence of Duhrra could afford me no comfort now. I wondered if I could kill Zenkiren and knew I might have to silence him as I had before. He looked at me and slowly, slowly, wiped a hand across his mouth. His eyes melted into me.

  “Pur Dray, and is there no lahal between us?"

  “Lahal, Pur Zenkiren."

  “A long time. I did not believe it could be you ... and you Apushniad. That was no doing of mine, although my vote was cast against you."

  “I knew it would be. You could do no other."

  “But what you say ... so long ago and yet only yesterday in vaol-paol. I imperil my vows talking to you, and yet is not talk better than skull-breaking?"

  “Or ib-breaking. No, Zenkiren, you do not break your vows, for the judgment against me was false. I am still a true Krozair although unacknowledged and declared Apushniad."

  Again Duhrra let go that gurgling grunt and again I ignored him.

  Telling him anything now would only complicate the matter.

  “What you say is of surpassing interest, for there is indeed in it the classic case of two opposites...” We all know the various examples cited; here was another one. I knew the knot could not be untied but only cut, and dared I place the sword in Zenkiren's hand and indicate where he should strike? Would even he believe? I think, had I confided in old Pur Zazz, that he would have believed my story of Earth. He would have offered words of comfort. For better or worse I decided not to make Zenkiren the first person on Kregen I told of my Earthly ancestry. I knew who had the right to the first confidence. And if the knot therefore remained uncut and all that followed from it, then so be it. I was in a pretty ugly mood, I can tell you, and closer than I probably suspected to impatience and contempt of all the mighty and mystical Krozairs of Zy.

  We talked for a while. No refreshments were offered. Shazmoz lay under siege and I knew Zenkiren well enough to know he would share the rations with his men. He said that among the Krzy present were none who had known me in the old days. Fifty years is a quarter of a man's life on Kregen. Despite their longevity, it is still a monstrous span of seasons. If I had not known who Zenkiren was, there is every probability I would not have recognized him. This dreadful alteration in his appearance was not so much the erosion of the passage of time, of course, but the immediate effects of the siege and the more subtle and far-reaching effects of his failure to be elected Grand Archbold.

  He would not talk of that sad subject and instead launched into an impassioned tirade against this new leader of the Grodnims who led them from success to success. He was not an Overlord of Magdag. He had sprung up on the green northern shore like a weed that grows overnight and with leeching suckers strangles the plants that sustain it. And the name of this man, previously referred to by obscene and odiferous names in my conversations with the men of Zair, I now learned was Genod Gannius.

  Genod Gannius.

  I knew the name Gannius. I had held it in my memory against the day when I might begin to unravel the mysterious purposes of the Star Lords. Was this Genod Gannius connected with that Gannius I had first met in the Eye of the World?

  My speculations on this point were shatteringly interrupted as I understood what Zenkiren was now saying. He had seated himself and he looked tired and worn, with only a flicker of that old martial blaze about him. Duhrra had gone to stand by the door, folding his brawny arms on his chest as he had done when Naghan the Show cried up his prowess. I realized Zenkiren had filed away the Krozair dilemma; he must have resolved the ultimate answer in my favor—for whatever reason—and would wait for a more opportune time to decipher the proof. Now he was talking about Genod Gannius and the armies of Grodnims, the forces he called the “new” armies.

  As I listened my thoughts whirled and I felt the shattering effect of his words.

  I will not repeat word for word what he said, although they lay graven on my brain. In effect, Zenkiren indicated that the Grodnims had developed a new and devastating form of warfare for which they owed nothing to the Overlords of Magdag. Whispers of it had seeped out. Then an army trained by this Genod Gannius had appeared and annihilated one of the typically sprawling, roistering, swashbuckling armies of Zairians.

  The way of it was this: when the Zairians stirruped up and set spurs to their sectrixes they were met with a wall of enormous spears, held cunningly like a thickset hedgerow. When the infantry attempted to wade in with their swords flashing, the crossbows had loosed and the storm of bolts fell on them, piercing them through and mingling them with the wreckage of the cavalry. The crossbows had shot quarrel after quarrel. And then, at the end, a final deluge had strewed the field with red corpses. The green banners had flaunted high in victory.

  And so it had gone on, on field after field, with the results that led up to the desperate straits the Zairians now found themselves in. When the red archers loosed their shafts they were deflected from the green ranks by that coward's trick, that despicable device, the shield.

  I knew.

  You who have heard of my previous sojourn here in the Eye of the World, and of my doings in the warrens of Magdag
with my old slave phalanx, my old vosk-skulls, you will also know—and to my shame.

  By Zair!

  I had trained the slaves and workers to beat the Overlords. I had given them pike, shield and crossbow drill. We had been in the very act of thrashing the hated Overlords when the Star Lords had seen fit to snatch me away from Magdag and dump me down in Upalion in the far east of the inner sea. It had taken me no time at all, on my return here, to know that all my fears had been proved right and that the Overlords had turned and beaten my friends, the workers and slaves of the warrens. They must have, else Magdag would have perished. And the inevitable had happened.

  Blind! Onker! Stupid fool, idiot, idiot. A weapon given to my friends—a sharp, lethal weapon. Oh, what a cretinous object I was!

  It had not needed a genius in war to seize on the devices used by the rebellious slaves, though from all I was to hear I think this Genod Gannius was a near-genius. It was Gannius, in his own hold, who had taken what I had given the slaves and molded it and trained his men and so taken Magdag. He had thrashed the Overlords, seized into his own hands all their power and wealth, and turned it to his own crazy schemes.

  He had set himself up on the high throne in Magdag and all men bowed in the full incline before him.

  “When I first heard of the new manner of war practiced by the rasts of Grodno,” said Zenkiren, and he looked across at me with a slow reflective stare that made me extremely uncomfortable, “I was minded of a memory I had thought forgotten. I harked back to what I had been told of a Krozair Brother who roused the warrens in vile Magdag. It seemed to me he had told me something of training slaves to unseat Overlords in all their might and power, of sticking them through. I reminded myself of this, but I did not speak of it to a living soul."

  “I had thought,” I said, “that mayhap that was a further reason for Apushniad."

  “No. To give sharp weapons wantonly to children is to invite being cut in return."